“Maybe I will say yes, eh?” she answered coyly.
Charlie shook his head, feigning sadness. “I can hope, but I know you will break my heart.”
Rebecca laughed raucously. “I say, Charlie, you bullshit me too much.”
Charlie smiled. “Do you think you can find me a cold Heineken?”
Almost everyone in Batanga lived from day to day. Baptiste’s secret police exploited their destitution by paying for information. Charlie had learned that it was wise to trust no one, but Pierre had told Charlie that he could trust Rebecca, a beautiful Batangan woman who had once been the mistress of the cabinet minister, who owned the Mauna Loa. Charlie frequented the bars on Lafayette Street and knew Rebecca. He had never heard her utter a subversive thought or discuss politics, and he was shocked to learn that she was part of the underground.
Bartenders meet a wide range of people and Rebecca had acquaintances, Batangan and otherwise, up and down the social ladder. Pierre had told Charlie that Rebecca would find someone who would help him escape from Batanga. This morning, a small boy had begged him for money using a code phrase. While Charlie was giving him a quarter, the boy told Charlie to come to the Mauna Loa at eight thirty.
Rebecca set a frosted green bottle on the bar, while Charlie casually scanned the room. The men in the bar were in groups or chatting up women. None looked the least bit interested in him. When he swiveled back, a white man who’d been sitting two stools away leaned across the bar girl who sat between them.
“I know you,” he proclaimed so loudly that he could be heard over the music.
“I don’t think so,” said Charlie, who could smell the booze on his breath from the distance of two barstools.
The man was broad-shouldered, big through the chest, and spoke with a southern accent. Charlie figured him for six two and two hundred. He was bald with a ruddy complexion and faint traces of boyhood acne and looked like he could handle himself in a fight.
“No, no, don’t tell me. It’ll come to me,” the drunk insisted. He gazed into space for a moment then snapped his fingers. “TV! I’ve seen you on TV.”
Charlie held his breath.
“You’re that guru. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“No, you got it.” Charlie sighed.
“Hey, honey,” the man said to the bar girl who sat between him and Charlie, “would you mind switching places? I’ll buy you another to make it worth your while.”
The bar girl surrendered her stool and the man moved next to Charlie.
“Hope you don’t mind but it’s not every day I bump into a celebrity in this place. Brad and Angelina don’t pop in here much,” he said with a braying laugh that set Charlie’s teeth on edge.
“Chauncey Evers,” the man said, reaching out a large hand. Charlie shook it reluctantly.
“Charlie Marsh,” Charlie answered as he tried to figure out how to get away. His contact was never going to approach him while he was with this clown.
“I have to apologize upfront. I haven’t read your book. I meant to but I haven’t. But I did see you on TV during the thing at the prison when you saved the prison guard’s life. That was something.”
Two men and two women vacated a table. Evers picked up his glass.
“Let’s grab that table and you can tell me all about the standoff at the prison.”
“That’s okay,” Charlie said, desperate to beg off. “I’m supposed to meet someone.”
“Well, you can drink with me until she gets here,” Evers said with an exaggerated wink, “and the drinks are on me. It ain’t often I get to meet a genuine hero who was on television and wrote a book.” Evers lowered his voice. “And wants to escape from this hellhole.”
“You’re…” Charlie started, but Evers had turned away and was weaving unsteadily through the close-packed tables. As soon as he was seated, he thrust a pen and a napkin at Charlie.
“Can I get your autograph for my girlfriend?” he asked loudly.
“Can you get me out of here?” Charlie said as he leaned over the napkin.
“That’s easy,” Evers assured him.
“How soon can you do it?”
“As soon as you pay me seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Seventy-five?” Charlie repeated anxiously.
“And it’s got to be in cash. I don’t take checks. Is that a problem?”
“No,” Charlie said.
World News had agreed to do the interview, so Charlie would ask Rebecca to get a message asking for the seventy-five-thousand-dollar fee to Martha Brice through Pierre Girard and the rebels.
“What I want to know,” Charlie said, “is how you’re going to deal with Baptiste’s secret police?”
“You mean that guy over by the wall?” Evers said as he kept his eyes on Charlie, a big smile on his face. “I spotted that clown as soon as he walked in.”
“Yeah, well, don’t be so smug. I spotted him too. He tailed me from my apartment and he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was following me. There are people outside my place every minute I’m at home and someone on my ass whenever I go out. Baptiste wants me to know he’s having me shadowed. His secret police are very good. They can make themselves invisible if they want to. This is Baptiste’s way of telling me I’m on a short leash. What I want to know is how you’re going to deal with these guys.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Evers said confidently. “You get me the money and I’ll get you out.”
“Why should I believe you?”
Evers shrugged. “Beats me. But you’re the guy who sent for me. So,” the mercenary asked, “what did you do to get Baptiste’s panties in a bunch?”
Charlie hesitated. If Evers found out that the president had a personal grudge against him he might change his mind about taking him home. An American passport went only so far as protection, in Batanga.
“Come on, Charlie. If I’m going to risk my neck to get you out of here I have to know what I’m dealing with.”
Charlie looked down at the tabletop. “I had an affair with one of Baptiste’s wives.”
Evers whistled.
“He tortured her to death and showed me the results. Then he pretended he didn’t know who her lover was, but he knows,” Charlie said bitterly.
“Man, you are in a heap of trouble. But never fear. Chauncey Evers will come to the rescue.”
“What do I do next?” Charlie asked as he handed the autographed napkin to Evers.
“Get the money. Tell Rebecca when you have it and she’ll tell me. Then you do exactly what I tell you to do and you’ll be back in the good old US of A before you know it.”
CHAPTER 4
Some people said that God was good and merciful, but Dennis Levy knew that was not true. One had only to turn on the television news to see evidence of gross injustice in the world. One percent of the Earth’s population skied at Gstaad and lay on the beaches of Nevis while millions starved in Africa. And what about AIDS and Katrina and the poor in India, who lived in the streets and scavenged in garbage dumps for their meals? Closer to home, there were undeserving people who held positions of power and worked in luxurious offices with views of Central Park because they had married money, while those with real talent-like Dennis Levy-slaved away in a cubicle and had to kowtow to them.
These were some of the things Dennis was thinking about as he trudged from his cubicle to the luxurious office of Martha Brice, his boss at World News. Levy had grown up lower-middle-class on Long Island and had worked like a dog in high school to earn a scholarship to an Ivy League university. While he bused tables in the cafeteria at Princeton, the legacy morons in his class received a weekly allowance from dear old dad. When Levy was studying into the wee hours and graduating with a three-point-fucking-eight GPA, the sons and daughters of the rich were getting drunk and stoned and screwing anything that moved, safe in the knowledge that plum jobs in their parents’ firms or corporations waited for them regardless of their grades. Where was the justice in that, and what had all his hard work and sterling academic career gotten him? His rich classmates were raking it in as stockbrokers and lawyers; people who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag got the choice assignments at World News while he was making peanuts reporting on stories that would never earn him the reputation he deserved.