He saw Roy look up. Lucy came around to the front of the sofa and sat down again.
“That was my mother. She can’t decide whether to go with Claude Montana or de la Renta. I said, ‘That’s a tough one, Mom. Let me think about it and call you back.’ ”
Jack kept his eyes on Roy. Do you get it, you dick? You see it? He could tell Roy wanted to say something, stay in control, not wanting to be outclassed by some girl who used to be a nun. Roy took a big sip of his drink, rattled the ice, and took another sip, giving himself time. Jack said to Lucy, “I guess everybody’s got problems, huh?” And looked at Roy again. “How about you, Roy?”
Roy said, “You mean outside of how we’re gonna pull this off? Outside of they know who you are, but I still don’t know who in the hell they are, or what side we’re on?”
Lucy leaned over the coffee table, began to go through her papers and clippings as Cullen said, “The money don’t care, Roy, what side it’s on. You want to know how much the colonel’s got so far?”
Roy said, “I want to know, for my own information, which are the good guys and which are the bad guys.”
Lucy pushed the pile of pages torn from magazines toward Roy. “Read the quote from the contra’s chief military strategist, Enrique Bermúdez. ‘We’ve learned the hard way that good guys do not win wars.’ Alfonso Robelo, another of their leaders, says, Well, atrocities always occur in a civil war. Look at the photo in there of a man lying in a grave, alive, his eyes open, while a contra rams a knife into his throat. Look at it.” She opened one of the letters then. “From a sister I worked with in Nicaragua. Listen to this.” Her eyes moved down the page, stopped. “ ‘The contras ambushed a truck with thirty people going to pick coffee. Those who weren’t killed by grenades were shot or burned alive on the truck. Including a five-year-old boy and four women… And we are to give thanks they’re fighting for democracy, fighting the antireligious Communists… They kill coffee pickers, telephone line workers, farmers on cooperatives. Who pays them? It comes from our government. Now I hear it’s from private corporations in the U.S. There is so much death. I have never seen so much death in my life.’ “ Lucy continued to read in silence. When she looked up from the page she said to Roy, “Would you like to hear more? Concepcion Sanchez was four months pregnant. They put a gun in her mouth and shot her, then used a bayonet to slice open her stomach. Paco Sevilla was tortured in front of his wife and seven children. They cut off his ears and tongue and made him eat them. They cut off his penis and finally they killed him… More?”
Roy said, “So if these dudes are fighting the Communists, then there aren’t any good guys. They’re both dirty.”
“If that satisfies you,” Lucy said, “fine. We’ll count you in.”
She was lighting a cigarette when the phone rang.
Roy waited until Lucy got up and went to answer it. “Tell you the truth, I don’t see you doing it without me. Shit, a cat burglar and an old-time bank robber.” He pushed up out of his chair and looked over at the bar. “I may as well help myself, huh?”
“You’re running the show,” Jack said, “I guess you can do what you want.”
Roy said, “If I didn’t, who would? You?” He walked over to the bar.
Cullen said, “Jesus, they cut the guy’s yang off.” He looked across the room toward Lucy, on the phone, then held up Vogue, open, and said, “Hey, Jack?”
He turned and was looking at five bathing-suit models in a fashion spread, a full-color shot, coming out of the surf smiling, having a wonderful time.
“Which one would you pick?”
“For what?”
“You mean for what? To go to bed with.”
“Cully, you’re out, you don’t have to do that anymore.”
“I think the dark-haired one. Jesus.”
Roy said, “Lemme see.” Cullen turned the magazine toward him. Roy said, “None of ’em. They don’t have enough tit between ’em to make one good set.” Roy sat down with his drink. “But old Cully now, he’d fuck a chicken if one flew in the window.”
Jack glanced over his shoulder at Lucy, across the room. When he turned back Roy was staring at him.
“You nervous, Jack? She can’t hear me… You chase her upstairs yet, show her what she’s been missing?… Not saying, huh? You want her, I won’t mess you up. She’s not my type.”
Jack said, “Thanks, Roy,” got up and went over to the bar. Lucy was about twenty feet away, leaning against the wall in her jeans and a black sweater, smoking her cigarette, concentrating, saying a few words into the phone, Lucy in profile against the green banana leaves. Jack watched her move her hand through her short, dark hair.
Roy waited for him to come back with his drink. “I spoke to Homicide, told ’em I’d heard about it. They have a victim was shot through the spine and the back of the head while thirty-seven people were having their lunch and they didn’t learn a goddamn thing. Hey, but I got you something.” Roy brought a notebook out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket. He said, “Alvin Cromwell,” leafing through pages.
Jack took one of Lucy’s cigarettes, his first one this evening. Alvin Cromwell was the name he’d copied off the memo pad in the fundraiser’s bedroom. Phone number with a Mississippi area code.
“Here it is. Cromwell Men’s Wear and Sporting Goods. Gulfport. Tell me why a Nicaraguan would go to Gulfport to buy his clothes.”
Jack said, “Why would anybody?”
“There you are. I got you the name, you go on over and find out who the guy is.”
“Maybe Alvin sells guns.”
“That could be.”
“Or he has a lot of money and he hates communism.”
Jack half turned as Lucy appeared. He watched her pick up the sherry and take a good sip. “That was my dad. He had dinner with the colonel last night.” She took another sip and sat down on the edge of the sofa, placing the glass on the coffee table.
Jack watched her. Composed, staying inside herself, hard to reach. He said, “What happened?”
“Nothing, yet. It’s what might happen. My dad said if he could stop payment on his check he probably would. He thinks it’s quite possible the colonel’s going to run off with all the money. And then he said-this is good-‘Of course, it’s still a tax deduction.’ He said even though it’s just a feeling he has, he’s going to tell his friends who haven’t contributed yet to think twice about it. He said it’s only a hunch… But my dad got rich playing his hunches.”
Jack said, “Is that why he called you?”
“He wanted to tell me I’m probably right about the guy and he shouldn’t have given him a dime. Then covers himself by saying the colonel does have credentials, a letter from the president, and the fund’s legitimate. They have an account, he said, at Hibernia.”
“At Hibernia and Whitney,” Cullen said, “four different branches, so far.”
Roy said, “Honey, how much did your dad give this guy?”
“Sixty-five thousand.”
Roy said, “Jesus Christ, I work two years to make that.”
Or even three, Jack was thinking, as Lucy said, “The colonel starts out, he suggests at least a hundred thousand. Then, if he has to come down, he tells about the woman in Austin, Texas, who gave sixty-five thousand and they named a helicopter after her. Lady Ellen. Well, a big oilman from Louisiana should be able to match that, at least.”
Jack said, “It’s like playing blackjack against a woman dealer. We’ll have to give this some thought. But if it’s true, it might even be better. You know it? This guy Bertie, if he’s honest he could have the CIA or even the military fly the money down there. But if he’s gonna sneak off with it, that’s something else. He’s on his own. Or, as far as we know, it’s Bertie and the other two guys.” He thought about it a moment. “It would even make sense why he brought in the guy from Miami, what’s his name? Crispin Antonio Reyna, if you see what I’m getting at. The guy was into dope, has a sheet…” He looked at Roy. “What was it, kiting checks?”