Gideon nodded his agreement. Any way you looked at it, it was the truth.
The rest of Vargas’s story, which he told with an occasional shamefaced glance at Gideon, and with many self-serving asides (“He talked me into it against my better judgment,” “Never have I done this before,” “It was my intention to do it only this one time, for enough money to upgrade my poor ship,” “I didn’t realize, I never thought, that we would be in a region of interest to El Guapo; had I known, I would never have agreed, never!”) was pretty much what Gideon was expecting by now. He had realized from the moment he had walked into the cantina and set eyes on Guapo and his men that John had been right: he, John, and Phil had gotten themselves into the middle of a drug-trafficking imbroglio. And Guapo’s original certainty that the Indians had brought him Arden Scofield, and his incensed disappointment that they had not, had made it clear that Scofield was the major figure in it.
The substance involved was coca paste, Vargas said. He understood that there were sacks of it hidden within the coffee bags (he himself, of course, had never seen any of it, but had only taken Scofield’s word for it; he himself had no part in the arrangements, but only provided the space and transportation) that were to be deposited at the warehouse “Was it you who had the warehouse burnt down?” Gideon asked Guapo.
“Hey – who told you to speak?” Fox-face said, but Guapo waved him down.
“Yes, sure, that was my man,” Guapo said. “Do you think I didn’t know what was happening? Do you think I would permit such a thing? Do you think anything happens in North Loreto Province about which I don’t know?”
“I guess not,” Gideon said, which seemed to please Guapo.
“How many coffee bags?” he asked Vargas.
“Forty or fifty, I believe.”
“Forty-eight,” said Guapo. “And how much paste?”
“About… about a hundred kilos, I think.”
“A hundred and fifty,” Guapo said, his voice hardening. “Be careful, my friend.” He sat back, slowly rotating the knife in his left hand, its point gently rotating against his right forefinger. “And for whom was it destined?”
“Destined? I-”
“Think before you answer. Tell the truth when I ask you a question, and you may yet get out of this with your life, and maybe even with all your appendages.”
Vargas fished in his pocket for his glasses and put them on, as if they might help him think more clearly. “Guapo… senor… I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, I didn’t want to know, I had no wish to be-”
“It was destined for Eduardo Veloso of the Cali cartel, whose carriers were to pick it up tomorrow night,” Guapo said, and Gideon began to think that there really wasn’t much going on, at least in this particular aspect of the regional commerce, that got by El Guapo. “And how is it hidden? Is there some in all the coffee sacks?”
“It’s in plastic bags – so I was told by the professor – not him” – a gesture at Gideon – “the other professor – in several of the sacks, fifteen or twenty of them, I think-”
“Thirty,” said Guapo warningly.
“Yes, thirty, that was it, that was it!” Vargas gibbered, the perspiration actually dripping off him onto the floor so that there was a little puddle on each side of his chair. Was he lying because he yet hoped to siphon off some of the paste for his own profit? Or was lying simply his instinctive reaction to stress? “Yes, thirty, that’s right, now I remember, of course. It’s thirty, all right. Now, senor, the honest truth is I do not know which bags it’s in, I was never told-”
“That’s all right, Vargas. It doesn’t matter.”
Vargas licked his lips. “ Senor, you are only too welcome to come and take it, to take it all. I regret extremely that I allowed myself to be used in this way, that I caused offense to you. I only want to go home and forget I was ever so stupid. It would be an act of kindness to me to take it away. Please-”
“What, and have the Cali people find out I have their paste? No thank you. I have no interest in taking any of it from you at all.”
If wheels turning in one’s mind made a sound, the room would have been filled with grindings and squeakings from Vargas’s quick brain. His eyes darted right, then left, then right, as he assessed the rapidly changing situation. Guapo had practically said he would be allowed to live. Was he going to get to keep the paste – all of the paste – as well? Surely it was worth many thousands – hundreds of thousands – of soles. It would change his life, he could go away from Iquitos, leave all this behind him, start fresh in the south with a fishing franchise, down by Pucusana Guapo could read Vargas’s thoughts as readily as Gideon could, and he laughed; a voiceless rumble that changed his expression not at all. “You are not going to keep any of it either, Vargas.”
Vargas blinked. “Ah… no?”
“No. You are going to throw it overboard. Into the river.”
“Into the-? But, sir, as I told you, I do not know which bags it’s in.”
“That doesn’t matter because you are going to throw all the coffee bags into the river. My Indian friends will take you back and will watch you do it. And my sincere advice is not to try and trick them. And never, never let me hear of you in this province again. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Guapo, but all the coffee? I have no insurance, I will have to pay for it myself-”
“Are you arguing with me? Negotiating with me, goddamn you? You should be thanking me for not burning your lousy boat and you with it,” Guapo said, looking as if it was still a distinct possibility.
“No, no, Guapo, of course not, Guapo,” Vargas mumbled. “Whatever you say. Thank you for your understanding. I can promise you-”
“And in case you’re wondering whether the Arimaguas have a number for ‘forty-eight’ (which was exactly what Gideon was wondering), I should tell you that they will have a bag with forty-eight pebbles in it. Each time a coffee sack goes in the river, a pebble is removed from the bag. When you have finished, you’d better hope that there are no pebbles left in the bag.”
“Of course, Guapo,” Vargas said glumly.
“And you,” Guapo said, turning to Gideon. “Now what are we to do with you?”
“I have some good ideas,” said a grinning Fox-face. The burning cigarette stuck to his lower lip couldn’t have been more than a half inch long.
“No, no, an American professor,” Guapo said, “I don’t think we want that kind of trouble. I’ll tell you what, Professor. You give me those pretty American dollars you have in that wallet of yours – you can keep the lousy soles – and I will send you back to the ship with your good friend the captain to go on with your life. You’ll have a good story to tell. What do you say?”
Gideon looked at Guapo, at the big knife, at the leering Fox-face, at the other armed men, and sighed.
“Sounds fair to me,” he said.
EIGHTEEN
Showered, changed, his cuts and bug bites attended to, Gideon felt like a human being again. The hike back to the ship hadn’t been as bad as the one from it (the fire-ant mound was given plenty of room this time), and a glorious pint of carambola juice – looking like orange juice but tasting like cool, thinned-down papaya juice – that he had poured down his throat had brought him back to life. They had been gone a mere three hours, he was shocked to learn. It had seemed like ten.
He had told his story to a fascinated, half-incredulous John and Phil and answered their hundred questions. Now they were lounging at the grassy edge of the thirty-foot bank overlooking the Adelita, having just watched a gray-faced Vargas, who looked like death on two legs, supervise the dumping of four-dozen sixty-kilo sacks of coffee – and presumably a fortune in coca-paste balls – into the Javaro River. The other passengers had watched from the deck, subdued, shocked – and no doubt thrilled – with the knowledge that Arden Scofield had been up to his eyeballs in drug-trafficking. The Arimaguas had disappeared back into the jungle, leaving their forty-eight pebbles behind in six neat rows, and the three-man crew that had dumped the sacks – Chato, Porge, and the cook, Meneo – were sitting on some logs along the muddy riverside a few yards downstream, taking a cigarillo break.