Between them is the sprawling downtown section of, as Hinge would have it, ‘pit-fuckin’-city’; made rich by oil, grown up far too fast for its own good, and which, despite its towering glass-and-steel skyscrapers, still suffered the same ills as most boomtowns. It was overbuilt, overpopulated, polluted, had a terrible phone system, water shortages, lousy garbage collections, the worst traffic jams in the world and its ugliest whores.
At night it glitters like Tiffany’s window.
Hinge wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to ignore the discomfort.
What the hell, he could be in Johannesburg.
Pit-fuckin’-city, squared.
Instead, he thought about the job. Out there somewhere, among the three million people, in the nightmare of downtown or among the squalid ranchitos, was poor old Lavander, like a sinner at a prayer meetin’, prayin’ to be saved. Well, Hinge thought, if me and ol’ Spettro can’t spring him, he can’t be sprung.
So they were staying at the fanciest digs in town. Thank Quill for that. Everything first cabin. Hinge registered and took the key, refusing to allow the bellman to carry his black parachute- silk travelling bag. The room was on the fourth floor.
Good. Hinge didn’t like to be up too high. He had once been in a hotel fire in Bangkok, and his fear of hotel fires was paranoid. The elevator whisked him to the fourth floor. The room was large and opulent with a beautiful view of the teleférico, a Swiss-type cable car that carried patrons up one side of Mount Avila and down the other to the Caribbean Sea, twelve miles to the north.
He put his duffel-type bag on the bed and opened it, taking out fresh underwear, a shirt, socks and a pair of khaki pants. Anxiety hummed along his nerves. He was already tuning up for the assignment, but he was even mo re excited knowing that his partner for this job was in the next room. After ten years in the business, he was finally going to meet il Spettro — the Phantom — according to legend the most skilled assassin in the business and a man who could kill you with a dirty look.
At the same time that Hinge was driving toward his hotel in Caracas, O’Hara was pulling up in front of the flamboyant old hotel on St. Lucifer.
Le Grand Gustavsen Hotel sat on the side of a foothill overlooking the main city, Bonne Terre, which had a population of five thousand, to the azure Caribbean beyond. Towering palm trees lined the coral road that led up to its main entrance. Nothing here had changed since O’Hara’s last visit to the island. Driving up to the entrance, O’Hara always felt as if he were lost in time. The sprawling four-story, virginal- white Victorian hotel was perhaps the most elegant old gingerbread castle in the world, its latticework a masterpiece of curlicues and filigrees and spindles and arches. Broad porches surrounded the second and third floors of the ancient old hostelry, and the building was framed by tall ferns and palm trees. The main floor of the hotel was actually on the second floor. The bottom floor, once a basement and wine cellar, had been turned into a kind of mini-international bazaar. Hidden discreetly behind French doors were sift shops from England and Spain and the Orient. A famous French couturier had a small showroom there. And the newsstand boasted periodicals and newspapers from almost every country in the world, including Russia. A fountain bubbled quietly at the front of the hotel, with a winding escalier on either side, leading to the first floor and the main entrance.
The hotel had been built as an investment in 1892 by Olaf Gustavsen, a Norwegian shipbuilder. Three pestering wives and nine children later, old Gus had forsaken it all and retreated to his island castle, where he had married a beautiful local who had borne him a son and died in the doing. Gus welcomed expatriates, soldiers of fortune, itinerate journalists, down- and-out writers, tired-out old spies on the last leg to retirement, and anyone else with a good story to tell. He had, through the years, begrudgingly added plumbing, running water and electricity. His son, Little Gus, who spent most of his time fishing, kept up the tradition of tawdry elegance, never succumbing either to air-conditioning or telephones in the rooms. Messages were accepted by anyone who happened to answer the phone on the desk, and might or might not be delivered. Outwardly, nothing had changed since 1892 except for an occasional coat of white paint. The only modern touch was a small red neon sign near the driveway, which read:
LE GRAND GUSTAVSEN HOTEL
Presents
Six Fingers Rothschild
The Magician of the Keyboard
Appearing nightly
The Magician must have blackmailed the old buzzard to get that put up.
The doorman was a giant of a black man who wore a white short-sleeved shirt and black bellbottoms.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ he said, and took O’Hara’s suitcase.
‘Bonjour,’ O’Hara said. ‘Merci.’
The place was as colourful as ever. As he was paying the cab driver, two men approached. They were stubby little black men, each with a straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye and each holding a fighting cock in hand. Behind them, an amateur fire eater popped a flaming torch in and out of his mouth.
‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, s ‘il vous plait,’ said one of the cockfighters, doffing his hat and smiling broadly enough to show a gold tooth at the side of his mouth, ‘Parlez-vous francais? Habla Usted español? Speak English?’
‘Je suis américain,’ O’Hara said.
‘Ah, monsieur! You have the privilege to meet the greatest coq in the islands. This fellow once pecked a tiger to death.’
The rooster had seen much better times. Its cone was chewed and ragged, and it only had one leg.
‘Merde! his companion exclaimed. ‘A blind old grandmère hen bit off his leg.’ He held his cock high in one hand. ‘This guy once killed an eagle in flight.’
‘Ha! Such lies! Monsieur, ten dollair américain and we will settle this thing right now,’ said the man with the one-legged chicken.
‘Some other time,’ O’Hara yelled back, following the doorman up the stairs to the main lobby.
The two locals were undaunted.
‘Je m ‘appelle Toledo. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles!’ the man with the one-legged bird yelled t him.—I am Toledo. Let me hear from you! And they all laughed.
Double French doors led to the hotel’s enormous main room, which served as its lobby, bar, waiting room, restaurant and registry. Sitting just inside the doors vas a large hulk of a desk, littered with letters, bills, telegrams, messages, and an antiquated French telephone. The hotel’s old-fashioned registration book lay open on one corner. The oak bar, smoothly polished by time, was to the left. Its twenty-foot-long zinc top had once decorated the main room of a famous Parisian brasserie until old Gustavsen had won it from the owner in a game of baccarat and shipped it to the island at great expense. A Montana rancher who had been a regular customer of the hotel for years had presented the old man with a brass plaque when the zinc top arrived. It was mounted at one end of the bar and read: ‘Won fair and square in a game of chance between old man Gustavsen and Gerard Turin, Paris, 4 December 1924.’
To the right of the desk was the restaurant, nothing more than several tables with wicker chairs, but the food was prepared by a young native who had been taught his skill by the previous chef the great Gazerin. The food alone was worth a trip to the island.
The room itself was a collection of oddities, things left behind or donated or bartered across the bar for drinks: an airplane propeller over the bar, hurricane lanterns of every size and shape, an enormous anchor that had lain in the same spot in one corner of the room for thirty-four years, a wine cooler that Hemingway supposedly gave to old Gustavsen, an Australian bush hat, a blow gun and several darts which, according to legend, had been left there by a pygmy in a seersucker suit. There were several autographed photographs of prize fighters and wrestlers and musicians, hanging awry on the walls, and a good-sized tarpon over the upright piano. The room was dark and comfortably cool, stirred by ceiling fans.