Adios Muchachos Read online

  On September 15, Victor had addressed a memo to the Board of Groote International Inc., demanding a commission of three percent on the net income accruing from all business activities stemming from, or in connection with, the King Project.

  Rieks was outraged. He said his family would never even consider such a notion. This time Victor had gone too far. His ambition had gone to his head. He had lost touch with reality.

  “They can take it or leave it,” Victor said, leaving no room for negotiation.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Vic!”

  There were a few days of stubborn refusals and flaring tempers when the whole project seemed to be heading for a grave deeper than the galleons they hoped to exploit. Finally, Jan van Dongen, the gray eminence behind the company’s success, asked his boss to let him run a Financial Performance Evaluation Projection on the whole deal before the debate went any further because he suspected that Victor’s “ambition” might not be so ill-woven.

  Rieks did not like the idea at all, but van Dongen had proven himself in combat and his acumen had garnered trust. He gave the order to proceed with the performance evaluation. In a month’s time, using the proprietary methodology and support software licensed by the consulting firm that had developed the FPEP, van Dongen came back with the unimpeachable verdict that Victor King would be a key player in the sustained success of the so-called King Project. Of course, he could be cut loose, but that would introduce a reliability variable with a potential financial impact that was unacceptable.

  The van Dongen report to Groote International Inc. recommended two variants that could be offered to Mr. King: A) two percent of the net, plus stock options to be detailed subsequently, plus $250,000 per year deductible from future commissions; or, B) $1.5 million per year for ten years.

  When the results were presented to him by van Dongen, Victor recognized that, while variant A could yield much more over time, variant B was a cold, tangible fifteen million with no risks. No brainer.

  “But when Vincent finds out that we’re going to pay him three million every two years, he’s going to go through the roof!” Rieks objected.

  Van Dongen explained that the project was either worth it or it wasn’t, and if it was worth it, two percent would cost the company much, much more than the flat rate Victor was settling for. It was up to Rieks to convince Vincent and the Board with the figures.

  “But what if we don’t find anything under the goddamn water in the first two years?”

  “That’s a possibility, Rieks. But what you have to keep in mind and try to make Vincent understand is that this has been thoroughly researched. The tourists will be flocking in to do the exploration at their own expense. We know the wrecks are down there, and we will have finder’s rights. Victor is the person who will be running the advertising and promotion campaigns to keep the tourists coming, and using his Mexican Spanish to keep contacts with the government loud, clear, and private … no translators. He’s the plexus of the whole operation.

  “With moderate success, Groote International Inc.will net 400 million in the first ten years of operation. With variant A, Victor would be getting around twenty million and (Vincent will love this) he would own a piece of the company forever. Sorry for pressing the point.”

  While the gods and their pit bulls were deciding his destiny, Victor took a few days off—to stay out of the way, he explained—but in actuality, to fuck himself into a therapeutic coma.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  From the day that Alicia began to work for Victor and Mrs. Victor, she had been pulling down $3,300 a month, including her gasoline allowance of ten dollars a day. Everything had evolved without a hitch. Since the beginning of her contract to the middle of October, according to her own calculations, she had put on fifty-six shows with eleven different men, almost all of them chosen by Alicia herself. On only three occasions did Alicia have to carry out a “contract seduction” using descriptions and photographs given to her by Victor. And even they were good-looking. It was just like he had predicted: with her talents, the right clothes, and the perfect car, she had had no trouble getting them into the room with the pond.

  Alicia no longer had to hunt for clients by the sweat of her brow, among other things, and she was being handsomely paid for going to bed with guys she liked. Yes, Alicia was convinced that this was certainly the best of times. Furthermore, Victor had told her that Elizabeth complimented her choice of partners, was satisfied with the frequency with which they were rotated, and was thrilled with the new inspiration that had come to their lovemaking. Not a cloud in the sky for as far as the eye could see. Everything seemed to indicate that the covenant was satisfactory for all parties involved and that Alicia was destined for a long, long run with star billing.

  She had, in fact, kept her word about the absolute discretion that had to reign over the entire matter. It would not do for the unsuspecting men to detect what was going on. She had worked out a simple and convincing scenario with Victor (who was always present on the other side of the silvered screen): she was the official mistress of a powerful foreign banker, and it had to be clearly understood that, while he was abroad, they could have a handful of passionate, anonymous lovemaking sessions—only this and nothing more. On the two occasions that her partner seemed to take too much of an interest in the details of her life, she had cut him short. “Listen, did you come here to get laid or to research the life and times of me?”

  One lovesick idiot, or perhaps a scam artist in his own right, who made the mistake of launching into dithyrambs about the depth of his love for her, got brushed off in no uncertain terms: “What! Are you out of your fucking mind? Do the math: Alicia loves millionaires, plus, you haven’t got a pot to shit in, equals, you haven’t got a fart’s chance in a windstorm.”

  Elizabeth, who according to Victor was pathologically timid, never let herself be seen by Alicia. But as testimony to her approval of Alicia’s ars amandi, Elizabeth gave her a ninety-six-piece set of Sevres China, which pleased Alicia to no end because it was perfectly beautiful and capable of being converted into cash any time she wished. Then, on her return from a trip to Spain, Elizabeth brought Alicia a fine concert guitar that she was almost afraid to play.

  Except for the brief interludes with her anonymous paramours, Alicia lived at home with her mother, and Victor lived in the house with the pond. No one in the company knew that Alicia existed.

  In July and August, while Elizabeth was in New York, Victor made use of Alicia’s services for himself. That kind of arrangement soon came to be so natural that whenever Elizabeth was away from Cuba, Alicia would move into the house with the pond and stay there for weeks on end, with or without Victor.

  From the beginning, the sex had been very satisfactory for both of them. They enjoyed each other and had a good time. And even though there was no audience and, consequently, no show during that time, he kept her allowance coming like clockwork on the first of each month. Victor was a spender, a real prince, exactly the kind of man Alicia adored. There was nothing cheap or calculating about him.

  The convertible she had been assigned for her hunting was entirely at her disposal. This had allowed her to take her mother out a little, weekends in Varadero or Viñales, afternoons at Marina Hemingway, private dinners in good restaurants. They even rented a house out in Guanabo without having to suffer the vicissitudes of travelling to and fro via the decrepit public transportation system.

  Victor had taken great pains to keep Alicia completely invisible to anyone and everyone related to Groote International Inc., and he had explained that the house with the pond was to be used exclusively by the men who were part of the covenant on official covenant dates. Any other casual lover, personal friend, relative, or acquaintance of Alicia’s was strictly barred from using, seeing, or even knowing about the house with the pond.

  Alicia had recently met Fernando, another Argentine, with whom she locked herself away for three days in her own home in Miramar. On two occa
sions he invited over his friends, who were bewitched by the music and charm of the daughter and the culinary arts of the mother.

  Yes, Alicia did not need to go out pedaling or to break the air conditioner or the Soviet refrigerator or her watch. She no longer needed to put on a show about painters who were blimps or bone heaps or midgets or geezers or ugly as fucking sin; nor did she have to strip on the couch in her living room to get things going with her new clients as quickly as possible. Now she could let relations develop at their own pace, without pushiness or humiliation. And now it was God’s honest truth that she did not accept invitations or presents. Now she was the one who treated, with her own money. Her enthralling charms, invigorated by money and a fine car, became lethally effective, practically without effort. The routine about “never offend me with gifts” and “our dignity is all we have left” had taken on the ring of devastating devotion to the cause. By the end of a week, the Johns were spending fortunes on her. That Fernando guy had even offered to take her to Buenos Aires.

  A few days later, she got a firm marriage proposal with the immediate prospect of moving to a luxurious pre-war apartment on Madrid’s La Castellana Boulevard.

  But Alicia was no longer in a hurry; she could afford to wait. With the stable situation she had with Victor and the new image of independent wealth she was projecting, she knew she could play out the game of lonely heart and love sincere. Accordingly, she had decided to be prudent. She would not accept the first Tom, Dick, or Harry with a few bucks to his name. The guy that was to take her away from all this would have to be a real millionaire, rolling in dough, re, mi.

  Both the Argentine and the Spaniard were put on the back burner.

  “You honor me with your proposal, but this is a big step …”

  “You must let me think about it …”

  Alicia had a well-rehearsed array of parries that invariably kept the Johns hotter than ever. And keeping the flame alive was precisely what she needed, because these guys were her strategic reserve, her escape hatch, just in case.

  If they came back, fine, she would receive them in her home and treat them with the expertise of a geisha. But it was decided, and her mother supported her decision—they had to wait for a guy with real money to come along.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  “There’s a Mr. Polanco to see you, sir.”

  “Thank you, Julia, please ask him to come in.”

  Van Dongen looked at his watch. Right! He had asked Polanco to be there at one. Inexplicably, he had lost all track of the time.

  Captain Polanco, a former officer of the Policia Nacional Revolucionaria, had been, until his retirement, Cuba’s liaison with INTERPOL headquarters in Paris. Now the high command of the National Revolutionary Police had authorized him to do his own modest investigation work for foreign nationals and corporations.

  Two months earlier, when van Dongen had run his Financial Performance Evaluation Projection on the King Project, he had taken the initiative, without informing anyone, not even his boss, Hendryck Groote, of running a background check on their Mr. Victor King. He had no suspicions about him; in fact, he admired the man’s talent and had taken a liking to him from the very beginning. But when the King Project became the center of a nasty quarrel in the company ranks, Jan decided that he had best play the game with all the cards in his hands. The truth was that no one had any hard information on the man’s history. He had come into the company on the personal recommendation of Rieks, who found his lost-galleon project fascinating. That was fine for starters, but very soon this Victor King would be heading an operation worth hundreds of millions and not knowing anything about him could become a significant liability. It was not a question of mistrust or suspicion, only a matter of method, a mere prophylactic routine.

  When Jan van Dongen asked his contacts in Amsterdam to supply him with a contact in Cuba to perform a delicate piece of investigation, he was referred to an official in the Paris office, who, in turn, recommended Captain Polanco, Ret., who subsequently agreed to do the job. Not wanting to run the risk of smearing Victor King’s name without reason, Polanco was only given a set of fingerprints and asked to find everything he could about the owner of those prints. He wasn’t even told that the person worked for the company. The official position was that the prints belonged to a prospective client and that the company wanted to make certain that he had no criminal record. Polanco understood what was expected of him; he accepted the retainer and asked no further questions.

  That very morning Polanco had reported to van Dongen over the telephone: “The glass you gave me was a perfect match with a set they have in the Paris office—”

  “Please come over as soon as you can,” van Dongen interrupted, not wanting to say anything more on an open telephone line. “Yes, I’ll be here all morning.”

  That was bad news. Van Dongen’s icy exterior betrayed nothing, but his mind was racing. If this man was really a dangerous criminal, the King Project could be seriously compromised. It would be a terrible blow to Rieks’s grand plans to build a Caribbean empire and, in the worst-case scenario, would shoot the bottom out of Rieks’s position in the company—which did not bode well for anyone who had supported him against Vincent.

  “I lifted the prints off the glass you gave me,” Polanco explained when he was face-to-face with van Dongen, “and sent them to a friend of mine who had no trouble putting a name on them. The man has an interesting record of which you will find a synopsis in my written report.”

  Polanco removed a Manila envelope from his briefcase and handed a single typewritten sheet over to van Dongen:

  “Do you read French?”

  Van Dongen nodded, took the sheet, and read:

  The prints you sent me in file, N§ 3324/Cu belong to a Henry A. Moore, Canadian, born in 1952. On December 18, 1974, at the age of twenty-two, Henry Moore single-handedly held up the National City Bank of New York office in Vera Cruz, Mexico, getting away with the equivalent of $87,000 US, which he invested in an underwater prospecting venture that fell through. On August 12, 1976, he robbed the National City Bank office in Cancún, taking $200,000, but was apprehended two weeks later. He was tried in April of 1977 and sentenced to seven years, of which he served sixty-two months in a local prison. For further information, see the complete microfiche file. Photograph attached.

  Jan van Dongen looked at the picture. There could be no doubt. That was Victor King. The police haircut did not suit him and he was twenty years younger, but it was certainly King.

  When Polanco left with his neatly folded fee and a considerable bonus for confidentiality, van Dongen sat back to analyze the situation and consider what dangers or opportunities it might pose.

  He fixed his gaze on a charcoal of Carmen he had recently framed, and mumbled to himself as he often did: “So now you tell me the man’s name is really Henry Moore, that he’s an impostor and a bank robber. Who would have thought? Our own little Dillinger.”

  “Shit!” he exclaimed.

  And yet van Dongen did not accompany that expletive with a corresponding gesture of displeasure, fear, disgust. Quite the contrary. He pushed his chair back, slapped his knee, and smiled in utter satisfaction.

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  Alicia’s white convertible pulled into the parking area of a fancy open-air café. Victor was watching her from the terrace, smoking a cigar and toying with the ice in his Chivas. Alicia had already asked him to order her a mammey apple shake, which was ready and served in a tall “tulip” beer glass.

  Alicia stepped out of the car and approached the table. She looked great, and she knew it. Her stride was confident and proud. She greeted Victor with a conventional peck, seated herself, picked up the shake, and took a long draught.

  “Mmmm, thanks. I needed that. I have a slight hangover.”

  Victor studied her, enjoying her beauty.

  “I imagined you might. Last night was really something.”

  As Alicia cros
sed her legs to the side of her seat and stirred the shake with the tip of her finger, Victor caressed her golden knee.

  Alicia made herself comfortable.

  “Leave that for some other time; let’s get down to business.”

  Victor smiled and took a drag of his cigar. He searched the inside pocket of his jacket and, without saying a word, placed on the table before her a photograph of a very handsome mulatto man dressed in full African ritual regalia.

  Alicia took the picture and made a sideways nod of approval: “Well, now, who is this?”

  “His name is Cosme. We saw him dancing a few days ago and Elizabeth has taken a fancy to him.”

  Without taking her eyes off the photograph, Alicia arched her eyebrows in admiration: “Damn, your Elizabeth has good taste. Where do I meet this piece of brown sugar and spice?”

  “At the National Folk Ensemble.”

  “I love dancers. They’re flexible and can twist into almost any shape …”

  “Be careful, you can’t always bend everything.”

  Alicia laughed, finished off her shake, put the picture away in her purse, and stood up.

  “Leaving already?”

  “Yes. I have a few things to do. When do you want the show with the mulatto?”

  “If you could get him there Sunday evening it would be perfect.”

  “That doesn’t give me much time. I’ll get on his ass this afternoon. If I hook him, I’ll give you a ring on your cell.”

  “We’ll be ready at nine.”

  She nodded, bent over for the goodbye peck, put on her dark glasses, and started off across the terrace, the summer sunlight projecting an X-ray of her generous thighs through her white skirt.

  Watching her walk away in the blazing sunlight, a young waiter with a glass in his hand came to a sudden halt. The glass he was about to set before a customer also stopped halfway between the tray and the customer’s table. And there it stayed, frozen in time and space, until Alicia pulled away in the convertible and drove off around the first bend.