Now it made sense, the way Janet said that nothing surprised her about relationships.
Because I was her friend, I had to say it. “So Jeth came back to you on the rebound. How’s your pride dealing with that?”
“Pride? I really don’t give two hoots about pride anymore. What’s the worst that can happen? I get hurt?” She made a fluttering sound with her lips: As if I haven’t been hurt before! “Doc, after all the crap I’ve been through, here’s about the only thing I’ve learned for sure: It’s one hell of a short and lonely life. If I can make it a little happier, and a little less lonely, by forgiving someone I care about, then I’m going to risk it.”
I put my arm over her shoulder, the two of us standing, looking into the late sky and at the airliner. “Do me a favor. Pass that little gem along to Dewey, would you? I could use some forgiveness.” After a moment, I added, “What time did her flight leave this morning?”
Janet started to answer, “She didn’t leave this morning because-” but caught herself and stopped. Using two fingers to lift my arm away as if it were soiled laundry, she then turned and said, “Don’t do that to me, pal. I’ve worked with you, I know how that little calculator you call a brain functions. If I give you the flight time, you’ll figure out all the possible destinations, then start narrowing it down from there. Don’t you dare get tricky with me. So show a little respect. Or maybe we’re not as close friends as I thought.”
The last was added with a real edge-a verbal slap that told me how serious she was.
I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. That will never happen again.” I held out my hand. “Forgiven?”
The woman shook her head at me severely, smiled, ignoring my hand, and gave me a quick hug-“Of course I forgive you. Because I love you.”-then paused, listening. “Hey-do you hear something ringing? Kind of a weird warble?”
I listened and heard it, too. Muted, rhythmic. It seemed to be coming from the rental car.
Then I realized: The satellite phone was ringing.
I sprinted toward the Ford.
SIXTEEN
By noon Thursday, Prax Lourdes and Laken Fuentes were on a DC 10 cargo plane to Pinar del Rio, western Cuba, just them, the pilot, plus several tons of Masaguan rice in burlap sacks. By ten P.M., they were boarding a beat-up old fertilizer freighter that was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, a ship named Repatriate.
For the last six or seven years, when the cops or the Nicaraguan military were really on his ass, Lourdes hopped a freighter. Didn’t matter where it went. Pay cash, no questions. Nothing touched the privacy of a ship that was transporting fertilizers.
He preferred the tramp freighter Repatriate. The ship’s captain was a 250-pound Bahamian white woman named Micki who would do anything for money. Anything. She’d been born in Detroit, grown up in the slums of Nassau, chain-smoked Pall Malls, drank cane liquor, despised women even more than she did children, and probably hated men, too.
Men, at least, though, she could tolerate.
Not that she gave much of a shit about any human being on earth.
Once, in Bluefields, Nicaragua, she’d asked Prax, “Is it true? Do you really do what they say you do? I’d fuckin’ like to see it. Elsewise, I’m thinkin’ you’re jus’ one more freak fulla shit. With my own eyes, I’d like to see it happen.”
That was a first.
Prax had said to her, “You got anyone in mind?”
Micki told him, “Not really. But how about our Greek cook? He ain’t worth a shit, and he’s got so much grease pourin’ out of him, you won’t even need no fire starter.”
Captain Micki was close to right. The woman enjoyed it, watching the drunken Greek sprint toward the dock, ablaze. He was a burner.
Not at all like his driver, Reynaldo. The man had been a disappointment. Too stoic, some of those mountain Indios. Reynaldo, he’d run a couple steps, then just sort of balled up and smoldered.
His heroin junkie plastic surgeon, Fernando Delgado, hadn’t gone up much better. He was too strung out to run. Just slapped at himself and screamed, as if he might have been imagining it.
That took the fun out of it.
Killing the doctor had been a snap decision. It happened that way sometimes. It was after getting the good news about the kid’s blood type, and while looking in the mirror, seeing what a mess the quack had made of his face. That’s when he felt the sudden headache begin to move up his spine, and then the rage came flooding in behind his eyes like a scarlet starburst.
So he’d done the doctor, too.
Talk about burning bridges.
After the way the fat sea captain, Micki, had set up the Greek, Lourdes almost always used the Repatriate. Used it exclusively for trips to Florida. He went there whenever the feds in Central America got too close.
Micki was a psycho bitch, but she was also a hell of a captain. She had the routine down. She could get him off the boat and back aboard without the local cops ever having a clue. Micki, he could trust.
One thing Prax had learned working carnivals was that people who didn’t bother to pretend that they had morals or ethics were the only people who could ever be trusted. You always knew where they stood, and what they were after.
That was Micki. Cash, that’s all she cared about. Prax could do any damn thing he wanted aboard her vessel as long as he didn’t get in her way or piss her off.
Another reason the Repatriate was his vessel of choice was because there were seldom more than a handful of seamen aboard. The ship always carried a skeleton crew because everyone on the docks despised Micki. Seamen desperate enough to stick it out were exactly like her: They’d do anything for cash.
That made doing business aboard Repatriate easy.
All he had to have was money.
Prax had some cash now. He’d stolen Balserio’s $75,000-he loved that; only, the shit-heel had short-counted him. Plus, he had another $25,000 or so he’d copped during the last year traveling around the Masaguan countryside doing his thing.
So he’d flown out of Central America with close to $100K. But the cargo pilot had taken a chunk of that. Then Micki had taken a much bigger chunk.
At the freighter docks in Mariel Harbor, Cuba, she’d called him up to her cabin-the place was too filthy for pigs-and said, “I got all three of those things you said you ordered. Plus the instruments. But they’uz double what you said they’d cost. Even the Russian stuff, and it was used. It all cost more.”
Prax had expected this.
When he asked, she told him what the price was. The numbers had about doubled. He’d expected that, too, and had privately figured it into his expenses. Which was a relief.
Micki reminded him that the cost of the ship, her, and the crew, plus doing all the bullshit he wanted, was a hundred percent markup of the stuff for the infirmary, plus the usual nut, but times two. Cash.
A lot of cash.
She said, “You got that fucking kid locked in one of the cabins. I swear to Christ, if he starts to cry, or whine, or ask for shit, I’ll throw the little motherfucker’s ass overboard without slowing a knot. And I’m still gonna charge you the fuckin’ nut for his passage.”
Micki. You had to love her. She was one of the few people in the world whom Prax actually enjoyed hanging around with. The woman could make him laugh!
Still standing in her stinking cabin, he had listened to her return to the subject of the equipment they’d loaded aboard in Mariel, saying, “Jesus Christ, when you said you wanted a surgical microscope, I pictured something that would fit on a desk. We had to use the fucking ship’s derrick to get the thing aboard. Crew about busted its ass getting the damn thing into the infirmary.”