He did a good job of trying to hide his surprise. When he started to reply with a predictable lie, I held up a warning finger. “No more of your bullshit. I’m going to have dinner now. Think it over. Find your pal Hassan Kazan and meet me at that little restaurant, La Habinita. No… make it Plaza de Santa Domingo.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s say eleven.”
Stallings wasn’t used to being on the defensive, but he was already regrouping. “I’ll meet you-but not so early. Let’s say midnight.” He nodded toward the woman with the purple blouse and Panama hat as he grinned, his incisor teeth gigantic, the color of yellow ivory. “I hired her for the evening. I want to make sure I get my money’s worth.”
As I left the bar and was walking through the hotel’s marble lobby, a tiny Arabic-looking man in a dingy white suit, his black hair pasted smooth, stopped me. He had a normal head, but his hands and his legs were dwarf-like. He was obviously very nervous, sweat beaded on his face, and his head swiveled constantly in a way that reminded me of a pigeon that has just heard a hawk. He was smoking a cigarette in a short black holder, and he took the cigarette from his mouth when he had my attention, and said with a Pakistani accent, “Senor, if I may be so bold as to offer you a warning. The man you were speaking with in the bar, do you know who he is? What he does?”
He was a humorous caricature of the sort of person one often meets in smuggler ports in the earth’s darker places. They make a living off the scraps of larger predators, but I did not smile. “Why do you ask?”
“Because he is a very dangerous man. Extremely dangerous. And he has many dangerous friends. If you are here to purchase something-anything-I am a much better choice. Emeralds? Gold? Women? Whatever you want, even items I have not named. I’ll leave those words for you to use.” He touched a finger to one side of his nose and sniffed to illustrate. “I’ll guarantee you fair market value, and I am not nearly so dangerous.”
I told him I’d think it over, maybe another time. As I was walking away, he called after me, “In the jungles here, there are still savages! On the street, as well. Trust no one!”
Back at our hotel, Amelia stripped the beige dress up over her head, draped it on a chair, and walked on long legs, pelvis rotating, through the wedge of light that came through the doorway. Then she stood beside the bed in silken bikini underwear, her nipples very dark on the white, white skin of her breasts, and she said, “Every time I see your body naked, I love it even more.”
I folded my hands behind my head, and said, “Same here, lady. I’m getting to be a very serious fan of yours.”
She laughed as she lay down beside me, her fingers already encircled around me, moving on me, eager for me to be ready, and she said, “Yes, you do seem to be a fan, right there for the world to see. No denying it.”
We made love quickly, both of us too eager and needy to attempt to slow ourselves, losing ourselves in a physical unity of belly-slapping, groaning, laughing without inhibition.
Then we held each other, saying private, silly things until slowly, gently, we were each ready again, and then we took turns pleasing each other, giving ourselves without restraint, and finally coupling to a final release that was simultaneous, and so powerful that I actually heard a ringing in my ears.
“You’re amazing,” I told her.
She replied, “No. We are. We’re amazing.”
Later, as we lay together in darkness, our bodies still wet, our legs tangled, Amelia pulled her face close to my ear and said in a tone that was touching for its uncertainty, “There’s a word my heart keeps wanting me to use, but my brain won’t let me.”
I said, “I hope the word’s not ‘three.’ After that last one, I’m going to need a little more recovery time.”
She chuckled. “That sounds wonderful. But you told me you had an appointment.”
“People in Colombia are big on midnight meetings. They sleep ’til noon and have dinner at ten. I’ll only be gone an hour or so.”
She lay silently beside me for a long time before she said softly. “The word is love. I don’t want to say it because it scares me. And it might scare you. Doc? It’s true. I think I’m falling in love with you. It scares me because I’ve never truly been in love and, if it happens, you’ll have all of me, everything about me. I don’t want to scare you away by saying it, but it’s true. I’ve never really given myself before, but, if I do, I’ll no longer be just one person. Forever.”
I nuzzled the hair away from her ear and kissed her cheek. “The funny thing is, what you just said should scare me. It always has. I’ve lived alone so long.”
“What are you telling me, Doc?”
“I’m saying that maybe it doesn’t scare me so much now. I’m not sure.”
“Maybe?”
I kissed her again, and said, “Let’s see how it goes.”
22
The Plaza de Santa Domingo is a wide park and courtyard of brick, open to the sky but walled by ancient, ornate buildings, including a massive, dun-colored cathedral that was built in the 1500s. During the Inquisition, people were burned at the stake here.
On this night, though, the only fire was from torches burning around the courtyard. They threw a yellow, oscillating light on the faces of men and women gathered beneath the black sky. People were still dining at outdoor tables, served by waiters in formal dress, while jugglers, street merchants, guitarists, and magicians moved from table to table, working for tips.
I arrived at the plaza nearly half an hour early. I bought an Aguila at Paco’s, and bribed my way upstairs. There’s a balcony there, closed to the public, and it gave me a good view of the narrow streets that entered into the plaza.
If Stallings was bringing confederates, I wanted to know who they were before they had a chance to get a look at me.
He was forty minutes late, but he came alone. I let him sit for a while, watched him order another drink and light a fresh cigar. He checked his watch repeatedly.
Twice he touched the right pocket of his baggy, tent-sized slacks.
It’s a nervous mannerism. Something that people do when they’re carrying a gun.
When I came up behind Stallings and touched his shoulder, he jumped slightly. The reaction was unexpected but encouraging. It showed me he was on edge, not as confident as he wanted to appear to be.
As I seated myself, he looked at his watch and said, “You’re late. I’ve been waiting for nearly an hour.”
I said, “No, I was early -which is how I know you’re lying again. Where’s Kazan? The guy you call Puff. He’s the one I want to talk to.”
The big man fixed an expression of amusement on his face and gestured with his hands: slow down. “ Taupou, if you keep pushing me, you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to reach across the table and pinch your little head off.” He flashed his toothy smile. “I think I’d enjoy that.”
Taupou, I didn’t know what that meant, and I wasn’t going to ask.
I held up my empty beer, signaling the waiter as I said, “You’re not mad, Earl, you’re just hungry. A guy like you needs lots and lots of calories. Let me get a menu.”
He leaned toward me, his voice loud enough to cause people at nearby tables to turn and stare. “Motherfucker. You are really starting to piss me off!”
“I’m not here to please you, Earl. You need to lower your expectations. And your voice. I’m going to ask you again: Where’s Kazan?”
He sat back, his cask-sized chest moving beneath the white guyaberra as he breathed, his hands flat on the table. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make me mad, man, you want to get me pissed off. It’s like a business thing, one of those deals the big shots on TV tell you to do. To get an advantage. Well, guess what? It’s not going to work. Keep it up, I’m not going to help you find your friends.”
“Don’t help me find my friends, you won’t get paid.”