When they reached the office-a converted outhouse with a pair of folding metal chairs-Bartleby said, “Mr. Woolsey, my clients have already contacted the proprietors.”
Bartleby withdrew a cashier’s check from the briefcase he’d brought and handed it to Woolsey. Woolsey read the check, which was made out in the sum of $140,000 to a company called Conch Bay LP.
“This cashier’s check reflects my clients’ estimate for the costs of renovation, marketing, and maintenance that would be required to keep this resort running, profitably, for the foreseeable future. Do you feel this number is realistic?”
“Realistic?” Woolsey shook his head. “I don’t know, Guv. Asking price is a hundred K, and that’d leave you with forty. Could be done, you could dress the place up a little, I suppose, but you’ll lose money, probably a lot of it in fact, if that’s all you’re puttin’ into it.”
“I’m sorry,” Bartleby said, “allow me to clarify. My clients have already purchased the resort. Or to be precise, they have had the ninety-nine-year lease from the local government assigned to them. And you’re correct-the price was one hundred thousand U.S. dollars.”
Bartleby pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from his briefcase and handed both to Woolsey.
“This is a limited partnership agreement. If you sign it, my clients’ rights to the ninety-nine-year lease will be assigned to the partnership. In exchange for such assignment, and the check I’ve just given you, my clients would like to retain a forty-nine percent stake in the limited partnership, which obviously would entitle them to the equivalent share of any profits generated by the partnership, in perpetuity.”
Woolsey read the document, where he discovered the odd feature of his name, printed in the text of the agreement. He looked up at Bartleby with a forced, lopsided grin intended to mask his confusion.
“Look, Guv’nor, I’m not sure your clients understand how-well, bloody hell. Mr.-Bartleby, is it?”
“Yes.”
“You see, well, I’m not sure I understand, mate.”
Bartleby offered a firm grin.
“The fifty-one percent share goes to you, Mr. Woolsey, as managing partner. In exchange, of course, you would need to be willing to run the day-today operations of the resort on a continuing basis. My clients,” he said, “intend to be passive partners in this venture.”
Later that afternoon, Woolsey found Cooper out on the beach, sipping a Cuba libre on a lounge chair. Woolsey pulled up another chair, clicked it back to the same angle as Cooper’s, and sat beside him.
“Listen, mate,” Woolsey said. “A pesky little man representing a Cayman Islands holding firm came by to see me this morning.”
“That right,” Cooper said.
“Seems they’ve bought the resort,” Woolsey said. “Want me to run it, seems.”
Cooper grunted. Woolsey was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “You have any ideas about that?”
Cooper looked out into the bay, reaching up with his right hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. “Sounds to me,” he said after a long while of looking out at the bay, “that things may just stay the same around here.”
Woolsey nodded, and the two of them stared out at the bay, sitting in the two lounge chairs, the sun glaring down at them from the sky, careening off the water and the sand, keeping the air warm as the wind rustled the trees behind the bungalows.
“I’ve given this some thought,” Woolsey said.
Cooper didn’t say anything.
“I get through putting this place together, I’m thinking it’ll have nine bungalows. I’m thinking the one I’ll build over there, the one with the most privacy, I’m thinking you ought to stay in that one.”
Cooper kept looking out at the turquoise bay. Soaking up the sun.
“I’m thinking you ought to stay there free of charge,” Woolsey said, “and I know you like to drink a lot, so once I get the restaurant going, remodel the bar, maybe put up a thatched roof, then you’ll also be able to eat and drink for free. That sound all right to you?”
After a while, Cooper nodded, said, “I don’t see why not,” and fell asleep.
After a while Woolsey stood, but didn’t leave. Cooper woke up, feeling Woolsey’s annoying presence behind him as he attempted to relax. Woolsey shifted his weight from one foot to another in the sand. Finally, Cooper shaded his eyes from the sun with a hand again, craned his neck to look up at Woolsey, and said, “What do you want?”
“What I told you that day,” Woolsey said, “that part about skimming off the top. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be doing that any longer.”
Through with what he had to say, the gangly young man walked away and left Cooper alone with the sun.
20
For his first exercise since the long haul up the hill, Cooper took one of those twenty-lap runs on Conch Bay’s quarter-mile beach and swam across the lagoon a dozen times. Afterward, he collapsed into a chaise lounge under the shade of a palm tree. After almost a week of zilch, his legs and back still ached. The salt water and sand had stung the healing blisters on his feet, but he could feel the water’s purifying effect on his wounds, the exercise clearing his arteries. Opening his lungs.
Trudging up the hill, he’d dropped Alphonse only five times. Upon reaching the summit, he found that nobody had stolen the pickup, so he put the vehicle to use and got Alphonse to a hospital in Port-au-Prince. The journey had taken maybe eighteen hours, cemetery-to-door. In the end, they hadn’t been able to save Alphonse’s arm, but when the docs said it looked like the kid would make it, Cooper had a specialist flown in from the U.C.L.A. Medical Center, assembled a wire transfer covering the treatment, and arranged to have the kid outfitted with the latest version of a prosthetic arm. He wired enough to cover a few months of recovery in the hospital room, food included, Cooper thinking it meant better living than Alphonse had ever known, but still came up short of the boy’s natural-born right arm. At least the kid would get three squares for a while, and maybe even get laid, thanks to the conversation piece they’d be hooking up to his shoulder.
It was easier, Cooper thought, to help somebody when the person was actually alive. Somebody’s dead, you can bust a few caps in the witch doctor who offed him and still wind up with the kid’s ghost banging around your head. Ce n’est pas fini, mon ami, Marcel’s ghost saying to him, Cooper hearing him more clearly in his mind’s ear now, knowing the accent he’d have after listening to Simone-Non, mon ami, you not finished. Not yet. You still all I got, Cooper. Et wi, c’est vrai-I still got more for you, too.
He’d left a bag beside the chaise lounge before embarking on his morning workout. The beige canvas sack was stenciled with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BUSINESS.
The regularly scheduled diplomatic pouch that Cooper received as chief of station for the British Virgin Islands came every three weeks. International law specified that customs officials weren’t allowed to examine diplomatic pouches, and some countries actually observed this rule. BVI customs officers rarely even opened personal luggage at Terrance B. Lettsome International, let alone a U.S. government pouch; Cooper figured he could probably run dope with the bag if he ever ran low on funds.
Usually the contents of these shipments meant nothing to him. On days when the pouch arrived on the launch, typically accompanied by food supplies and a handful of guests, Cooper had a tradition going: he would sit on a lounge chair, smoke a cigar, and burn each of the papers as he withdrew them, reading a line here, a paragraph there, brushing the end of the cigar against the page, blowing to get the flame going, then flipping the burning page into the sand. Nobody bothered him when he sat out here lighting fires. Not even Ronnie. He figured he looked dangerous, or possibly even insane. It gave him some space.