Adios Muchachos Read online

  Chapter

  Eleven

  Victor walked in rapid strides into the double mansion in Siboney, not through the house with the pond, where he had taken Alicia, but through the front door of the adjoining house.

  “Yoo-hoo, Elizabeth! Where are you?”

  He took off his jacket and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He opened a door and stepped into the shadows of a large, heavily curtained room. The only source of light was the bluish reflection coming from one corner of the room where a TV set was hissing at a non-existent audience.

  There was a large lump on the bed under a bundle of silk sheets and comforters. Only the long blond hair indicated that the lump had its back turned to the door.

  Beside the bed rested an ashtray overflowing with half-smoked butts, and on the floor stood a half bottle of vodka with the top off. Victor sat on the edge of the bed and gently shook the shoulder of the sleeping woman.

  “Elizabeth?”

  No answer.

  Victor probed the bundle of bedclothes to try to find the remote control. The screen displayed a still announcing the end of a skin film.

  Victor turned the TV off, put the remote back in the bundle, and ran one of the curtains to flood the room with daylight. He approached the lump and murmured into its ear, “Good news, Eli: I think I’ve found the broad we were looking for.”

  More asleep than awake, Elizabeth rolled over. Blinded by the light, she covered her eyes with the sheet and sank her face between Victor’s legs.

  A hoarse and pasty voice asked, “Are you certain?”

  “I’m certain. She’s the one we need. In a few days you’ll be seeing her in action.”

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Somewhere off the coast of Cayo Largo, a diver was videotaping images of the coral reef. He had aqualungs on his back and was shooting with a conventional 8mm camera.

  As he slowly drifted toward the surface, he took a final panning shot of the reef and the fish in every conceivable color against the white sandy bottom along the Caribbean island shelf.

  Suddenly the diver stopped his ascent and began to film upward, closing in on a topless swimmer alternating between a back stroke and a crawl. The rising diver surprised her; they horsed around a bit and then he pulled immediately beneath her to swim in unison.

  Together, he on the bottom swimming backward and she on top swimming forward, they executed a water choreography that no aquacade had ever shown. When the diver finally emerged, they both headed for the boat with the bronze lettering on the prow: RIEKS GROOTE.

  A deckhand was letting down a rope ladder with wooden rungs. The sailor leaned over the rail to take the flippers and air tanks. And when the diver removed his mask, the huge van Dongen nose again stole the show.

  Carmen remained in the ocean, only her head and shoulders above water. Rather than hide her beautiful body, the crystal clear waters gave it a magical evanescence.

  As van Dongen climbed the ladder, she asked, “What does Rieks mean?”

  “It’s a nickname for Hendryck.”

  “So Groote named the yacht after himself?”

  Jan turned around on the ladder. “Well, in a way. The boat was actually named in honor of his grandfather, but he was Hendryck, too. So in the end, it’s all the same.”

  Once aboard, van Dongen picked up a towel, and when Carmen rose over the rail, her breasts gloriously free, he covered her. She snuggled up in the towel and finished the climb onto the deck.

  “Old man Rieks was a big sailing fan.”

  A Chinese cook with an enigmatic smile asked from the stern, “Should I serve your breakfast now?”

  “Not yet, Chang, thank you. In about half an hour will do just fine.”

  “What do you mean in half an hour? I’m starving.”

  “I want my ecological breakfast first.”

  Carmen laughed and took him by the hand. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  Arm in arm, they crossed through the sitting room and into the master cabin. With the towel around her neck and laughing at the pure joy of being alive, Carmen sat on a low stool and crossed her legs.

  Jan opened a bag, took out his black mask, and began to put it on.

  Carmen spread the ends of the towel, propped her fists on her hips and raised her chest to offer her breasts. As he knelt at her side to kiss her, she stopped him with a hand on his lips and closed her eyes in anticipation of the pleasures to come.

  “Why don’t you have your breakfast today without the mask?”

  Jan van Dongen raised his arms and let them drop in a gesture of resignation and impotence. “Don’t ask me to do that, Carmen. It would be a disaster. Without the mask, I’m dead in the water.”

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  Alicia was wearing a white frock that hung loosely on her body. She emerged in a cloud of steam from a glass and aluminum cabin. She was trying to take off her bathing cap as she raced to the kitchen to turn off the Italian espresso maker.

  She collected two demitasse cups, spoons, and the sugar. She poured two glasses of mineral water, put everything on a tray, and started off down the hallway. Passing by a vase, she snatched a carnation and added it to the tray. As she opened the door to the bedroom, she nearly bumped into Victor, who was up and about in a dark dressing gown.

  In a tone that bordered on rude, Victor explained, “No, no. I have my coffee at the table, after my shower, when it’s practically cold.”

  As he climbed into the shower, Alicia stood there looking at him with an expression on her face that eloquently said, “Now what wild bug got up his ass?”

  Then she raised her head, scrunched up her face, bit her lip, and finally walked into the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she placed the tray beside her. She drank her coffee slowly, pensively. Finally she got up, checked her appearance in the mirror in the armoire, and fixed her hair.

  From the chair where she’d left her clothes, she lifted a very short dress, then put on a pair of open-heel pumps, picked up the tray, and left the room.

  Moving into the living room, she found Victor sitting on the couch, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, counting a stack of bills on the center table. He did not seem to notice that Alicia had entered the room.

  Alicia came closer and placed the tray on the table, but Victor went right on counting without taking his eyes off the bills.

  “What time were we supposed to be leaving?”

  Victor went on counting. “Sit down.”

  Alicia moved toward the couch to sit down beside him.

  “No, sit down over there,” he said without looking at her. Lifting a handful of hundred-dollar bills, Victor pointed to the easy chair in front of him and launched into a monologue: “Monday afternoon, twice; once again on Tuesday morning; yesterday afternoon, two; and again last night … that makes six, right?”

  “Six what?” Alicia asked.

  “That’s six times we’ve fucked; six tricks, as you might say.”

  Alicia knit her brow, alarmed.

  “So what about it?”

  “At three hundred dollars a trick, that comes to eighteen hundred dollars,” he said, laying the bills out on the table before her.

  Alicia went pale. She was beside herself with alarm and rage. She could not react.

  “The party’s over, sweetheart.”

  “How dare you!”

  Victor cut her off sharply: “Don’t be ridiculous, goddamn it.”

  Alicia retreated. Fear was setting in.

  “Now, shut up and listen,” he said, a lot more serenely. “The routine with the pedal that falls off the bike was all a scam. And the line about studying at the university, another scam. Last week you were whoring around with a Panamanian and the week before that it was an Italian. So why the all the fucking lies? To make a couple of bucks! Now don’t look so offended. This is what you love most in the world. You worship the almighty dollar, baby doll. So take the money; you’ve earned
it. Oh, and here’s another five hundred for the dancing lesson.”

  As he counted off another five bills, Alicia was on the verge of tears. She bent over on her knees and hid her face in her hands. A couple of seconds and Alicia had beaten her fear back into a corner of her mind. She raised her head, and, assuming the reality of her situation, looked him right in the eye, almost a challenge.

  “OK, Victor … the play’s ended.”

  She bent over to take the stack of bills and began counting out loud: “One hundred, two hundred …”

  With a firm and steady hand, like a professional dealer handling a deck of cards, she counted the money. Then she slowly dropped five hundred on the table and beamed a friendly smile at him. “That’s the five hundred for the dancing lesson. You were a gifted student and I enjoyed the lesson so much it would be almost immoral to charge you for it.”

  She put the rest of the money into her purse and rose. “I’m going to call a taxi.”

  More than a little flattered, Victor shook his head and laughed out loud.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, you really do have class. And you’re intelligent as hell. Take your five hundred and sit down,” he said, pointing to a spot on the couch right next to him.

  “Would you treat me to a drink?”

  “Sure. What’ll you have?”

  “Cognac.”

  “So early in the morning?”

  “I need something to give me a kick in the pants.”

  Victor walked over to the bar, picked out a couple of small snifters, and reached for an opaque black bottle laying on a Napoleonic gun carriage. From a distance the bottle appeared to have a handwritten label. He poured two servings of the Extra Vieille.

  Alicia slapped most of her drink down in a single slug, without even proposing a toast.

  “Let us suppose,” Victor said, drinking his cold, bitter espresso and delighting in his first sip of cognac, “just for argument’s sake, that I give you a key to my house as my lover, an allowance of three thousand dollars a month, a brand-new car, and all the gasoline you can burn. Could I interest you in working for me?”

  Alicia had to keep her jaw from hitting the table.

  Sonofabitch! she thought. First the artillery barrage to soften up enemy positions and then the pitch!

  Alicia rose suddenly, took a few steps, breathed slowly, looked him over, and smiled slyly, her eyes darting around the room as if she were looking for an answer on the ceiling or one of the walls. She smiled again and even let out a small chuckle. Covering her mouth in a gesture of self-reproach, she coquettishly ran the heel of her shoe along the arabesques of the floor tiles. She bit her lip and sat down again.

  Alicia needed to stall just a few seconds because Victor’s proposal had pulled the floor out from under her feet. Her intuition told her that the game she had been playing for the last five days had just taken a quantum leap; this was the World Series, Monza, Le Mans, Wimbledon. Her mind was preoccupied with that very special variant analysis that high-stakes players calculate almost unconsciously: best case A, worst case B. In the meantime, she could not find anything witty or sharp to say, something on a par with the masterful one-two combination Victor had just used to throw her for the count. Of all the possible replies, she finally opted for the straightforward and the obvious, the answer that might not score a point but would put the ball in the opposite court: “What do I have to do?”

  “You do exactly what you have been doing to earn these eighteen hundred smackers.”

  “Go to bed with you?”

  “Not precisely with me.”

  “Now wait a second, that’s something else …”

  “But it would always be with good-looking guys. Isn’t that your preference?”

  “Could I choose them?”

  “Sometimes you get to choose,” he said, taking another sip. “Other times, I might ask you to, let us say, attract someone.”

  “Attract …?”

  “Hey, with your body, your brains, the right clothes, and the right car, you could twist anyone you like around your little finger and have him for breakfast.”

  Despite the smile that the top-of-her-class evaluation had brought to her lips, Alicia was still perplexed. She needed more information.

  “You flatter me, but go on.”

  Victor continued in his best briefing style: “For example, you may receive a photograph of someone, or a description, and it would be your job to bring him here, make love to him, and display all your virtuosity.”

  “Yeah, right. And in the meantime, you’re filming it all to make live skin films. Up yours! Pornography for three thousand a month? Think again, Victor. This time it’s you that have overshot the mark by a mile. If you want fuck films, it’s going to cost you a hell of a lot more.”

  “You’ve got me wrong; it’s not like that at all.” Victor shook his head, laughed, and calmly took another sip from his snifter. Alicia poured herself another cognac and picked up a cigarette. He reached over with a gold Ronson. Both their hands were shaking just the slightest bit.

  “Your performance would be for the exclusive enjoyment of two people.” He paused, tapping the side of the snifter with his ring, trying to watch this gifted but novice poker player sorting though the frills and cutting to the quick.

  “Who?”

  “Elizabeth and myself.”

  “Elizabeth? Is that your wife’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  Alicia stood there, thinking. It did not make sense. Let him keep talking.

  “Elizabeth and I were terrified of AIDS and we have taken refuge in monogamy. The only deviation we allow ourselves is to stimulate the imagination with a little private voyeurism.”

  “Can’t you just buy porn movies?”

  “The fact is that Elizabeth is a few years older than I am, and she understands that sometimes I find it difficult to limit myself to sexual relations with her alone.”

  “So?”

  “So then, she has the immense good taste to feign that she gets excited by identifying with the girl behind the glass, when, in fact, she does it to stimulate me.”

  “What glass?”

  Raising both index fingers like smoking guns, Victor pointed to the mirrors covering almost the entire length of wall behind Alicia.

  “So you can see from the other side?”

  “Perfectly!”

  Alicia stood and turned, took a few steps toward the mirrors, stroked the smooth surface with her hand, and, snapping down the rest of her cognac, walked resolutely back toward Victor.

  “OK. You’re on. When do we start?”

  “Right away. Do you know how to drive?”

  “Yes!”

  “Have you got a license?”

  “Yeah. Until a year ago, I used to drive Daddy’s car.”

  “Perfect! Next Tuesday I’ll assign you one of the company cars. Wait for me at your mother’s place. And make yourself beautiful.”

  1996

  MARTINIS

  AND OLIVES

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  Four months after discovering Alicia, Victor was still congratulating himself on his good luck (for having run into her) and his expert eye (for recognizing true genius). Their secret agreement was not only extremely satisfying for his personal sex life, but Alicia’s fresh and earthy manner was also a source of solace and refuge from the twenty-hour schedule he had set for himself to try to push through his old archeological tourism project.

  Early in September, the Ministry of Tourism accepted his plan to set up a joint enterprise to prospect for sunken galleons in Cuban waters. A few days later, his boss, Rieks Groote, had carried the day in his first knock-down-dragout confrontation with his brother Vincent, who was opposed to the project from the start.

  The brother had done a thorough job of lobbying the rest of the decision-making members of the Groote family to get them to trash what he called the “King Project.” Whether it was merely his lack of vision or his gu
t rejection of anything that smacked of daring and creativity—or perhaps just a mean desire to frustrate a new and grander success by his younger brother—Vincent Groote campaigned mercilessly from the very beginning against the “wild idea” of getting the Groote interests involved with Spanish galleons in the Caribbean. He labeled the plan the ill-conceived, ill-advised delirium of an opportunistic upstart and predicted that it had as much chance for success as the 8-track tape or the Edsel.

  But for the last five years, the winds had been favorable to Rieks. Against the judgment of his late father (who was not convinced but did not oppose the idea) and his older brother Vincent (who opposed everything), Rieks had set up the Caribbean Division of the Groote Group and it had done nothing but make money ever since. Thanks to the momentum generated by the success of the Caribbean Division, Rieks was able to steam-roll this new idea past his brother’s opposition, winning the first round in the feud over the King Project.

  A short time later, however, an unexpected crisis arose, driving a chilly wedge between Rieks and Victor.