“Are you on some kind of medication, Stoke?” Vicky asked, grinning at him. “I can tell, you know. I’m a professional.”
“Alex, he says, ‘Stoke, you be nice to Vicky,’ is all I’m sayin’,” Stokely said. “So, I’m bein’ nice to Vicky.”
“Funny, I thought you were always nice.”
“Try to be, mostly. But the boss, now he thinks I need noodging. That’s what folks call encouragement in New York.”
“Noodging.”
“That’s it. He asked me put on this damn sport coat, just for you. Sharp, ain’t it? Boss looks sharp tonight, too. Got on his tux. Man is fixated with tuxedos. Hell, wouldn’t surprise me he wore one he was taking you to KFC.”
“I know. Weird. Do you think he’s weird?”
“Hell, everybody’s weird. You ought to know that more than most folks.”
Vicky nodded her head and said, “I mean, do you think he’s a little bit … abnormal?”
“ ’Course he’s abnormal! Normal folks is a dime a dozen. Now, maybe I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do know one thing. Alex Hawke is a fine man. Maybe the finest I ever knew. Rich as he is, that man will do anything for anybody at any time. You know what I’m sayin’ ?”
Vicky was silent the rest of the way, lost in thought. Stoke had taken a series of turns that brought them to the entrance of the Georgetown Club. A doorman stepped out from under the canopied walk and opened Vicky’s door.
Before she got out, she said, “Thanks, Stoke. I wasn’t trying to get you to say anything negative about Alex, you know. I love him, too. I just thought you could help me understand him a little better.”
“I know what you’re sayin’. He does act funny sometimes, way he dresses and talks and shit. Part of that whole English thing, I guess. But I think it all comes down to this. That boy is chipper.”
“Chipper?” Vicky said, shaking her head. “Yeah, now that you mention it, he is chipper.”
She blew Stoke a kiss and turned away to go inside. It was freezing out in the wind.
“I’m going to tell you something, Vicky,” Stoke said then.
“Yes?”
“I seen ’em come and I seen ’em go. Women been chasin’ Alex all his life. Ain’t no thing. He never cared about one of them. Until you, I mean.”
“Thanks, Stoke,” Vicky said.
“See, you figured the boy out. You want to catch Alex Hawke, rule number one is you don’t chase him.”
“Nobody’s chasing anybody here, Stoke,” Vicky said. “Believe me.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. Must be the reason why he’s so happy these days.”
The maоtre d’ didn’t bother to look up as she approached his podium. He was new, she saw, and didn’t know who she was. When he deigned to lift his head from his reservations book, he was somehow able to look down his nose at her at the same time. Even though Vicky was a good foot taller than he was.
“Oui?” the man said, assuming she was French for some unknown reason.
“I’m meeting someone,” Vicky said. “He may be waiting.”
“The name of the reservation?”
“Hawke. Alexander Hawke,” Vicky said, and started a mental countdown to see how long it took the name to have its predictable effect. One point five seconds.
“Ah, mais oui, mademoiselle! Monsieur Hawke. Oui, Monsieur Hawke, il attenderait au bar. Mais certainement!” the man said, bowing from the waist.
He had metamorphosed from an imperious little snob into a groveling little toad in just less than three seconds. It wasn’t even a world record.
“You prefer smoking or nonsmoking?” he asked.
“You’re new. You probably never heard what my father said about smoking sections in restaurants?”
“Mais non, mademoiselle. He said?”
“He said having a smoking section in a restaurant was just like having a pissing section in a swimming pool.”
He looked at her for a second, not sure if this was funny or serious.
“Monsieur, il est lа,” the man finally said, pointing in the direction of the bar. “You go through the door and—”
I’ve known where the bar is a lot longer than you have, buster, Vicky wanted to say, but she merely plucked the menu from his chubby little fingers and headed happily for the bar.
She’d been wondering why Alex had chosen the Georgetown Club. Alex had no idea how happy the choice had made her. It was her favorite restaurant in all of Washington. She still recalled the countless hours she’d spent here alone with her father, Senator Harlan Augustus Sweet. There were fireplaces in every room, all ablaze on a cold, snowy night like this. Large, overstuffed leather chairs were scattered everywhere, and the dark paneled walls were adorned with gilt-framed English landscapes and foxhunting scenes.
Coming here as a little girl had always felt like sneaking into the secret world of men. There was the intoxicating aroma of fine whisky and illegal Cuban cigars, and the clink of ice in crystal glasses. There were whispered stories she was too young for and the raucous laughter at their completion.
“Cover your ears, Victoria” was the way she knew when one of those was coming.
Her father, the retired United States senator from Louisiana, had been a much-loved figure in these rooms. He loved a good story and could tell one better than any man. He could also drink most of them under the table and frequently, to her mother’s dismay, did just that.
If the senator wasn’t at his office or on the Senate floor, he was on the Chevy Chase golf course. If he wasn’t on the golf course, he was here, holding down the bar at the Georgetown Club.
And his curly-haired daughter had always been the little princess by his side. Now she squeezed her way through a press of loud, cigar-smoking lobbyists and politicos and saw Alex waiting for her at the cozy little bar.
23
Fidel Castro had gone pale as death.
He had not said a word in the last hour, which was fine with Manso. He still had his big black Cohiba stuck between his teeth, but had never gotten around to lighting the trademark cigar. He sat hunched against the window, staring down at his green island. His silence had become as ominous as the furious diatribe that preceded it.
Through the forward cockpit window, you could see lush mountains and valleys rushing beneath your feet. To the south, you could already see the blue waters of the Guacanayabo Bay, now tinged with the gold of the setting sun. Endless echelons of whitecaps were rolling in, row after row breaking upon the white beaches. He was almost home.
Beyond, Manso could see a pale green hump of land lying about a mile off the town of Manzanillo. The island known as Telaraсa. He could only imagine the state his men on the ground must be in, seeing the approach of the familiar olive-green chopper. It would signal the end of all their endless planning and plotting. Events now would take on a life of their own. Every move they made would write a line in history.
Manso himself would be happy just to get this goddamn machine on the ground. His nerves were like strings of barbed wire running from the base of his skull down his arms to his fingers. He had a death grip on the control stick of an aircraft that demanded a light touch.
In the last half hour, Manso had lost anything even resembling a light touch. The chopper was pitching and yawing as he corrected, overcorrected, and then overcompensated for every correction.
It’s like flying in combat, Manso tried to tell himself; you have to keep your wits about you. Steel your nerves and fly the plane. He had many happy memories of his days as a narco, flying for Pablo. The Colombian army and the americanos had shot up his planes many times. He always counted the holes in his wings and fuselage once he’d returned to one of the cartel’s secret airstrips.