Adios Muchachos Page 9

  “She slipped on an olive?”

  Victor nodded.

  Alicia looked again at the body and twisted her face into a grimace. “Elizabeth was a mulatto?”

  Victor lit two cigarettes and handed one to Alicia. Alicia hesitated a moment, but when she finally took it, she inhaled deeply. Victor moved away toward the windows to give her time to get her bearings. Then, elbows propped up on the backrest of a large easy chair as if covering himself from a possible attack, he blurted out the hardest piece of news—“She’s a man”—without looking up.

  “She’s a WHAT?”

  “Sometimes, I … just let myself be loved …”

  Elizabeth was dead. Elizabeth was a mulatto woman. The mulatto woman was a man. The man was Victor’s lover! Alicia was thoroughly at a loss before this array of unexpected revelations. She raised her eyebrows, sketched a melancholy smile, looked back at Victor. Suddenly she opened her mouth and raised her finger, about to say something, but there was nothing to say. She pressed her fingertips against her temples trying to push her thoughts into some sort of order. Then, finally, turning again toward the body: “So the … your wife … Elizabeth?”

  “Elizabeth never existed!”

  Alicia faced Victor again, her eyes running through expressions of shock, fear, suspicion.

  But Victor had been saving the biggest surprise for last: “It’s Hendryck Groote.”

  Alicia gasped and leaned over, as if moving a little closer to Victor might help her understand what she had just heard. “Your b … boss?”

  Victor did not even nod. He began to wander aimlessly around the room again, running his fingers through his hair.

  “For the love of God!” Alicia began to examine Victor like a stranger for the first time. Who is this guy? What am I doing here with him? Why am I not leaving? Birds of a feather and all that shit … The ominous proverb began to reverberate in her mind like the litany of a chiding tutor. Alicia closed her eyes and let herself drop into a wing chair. “Have you called for help?”

  “I called you.”

  “Why me?” And for the second time that night she cursed herself for getting mixed up with this man.

  “When they start investigating, they’re certain to find the screen between the two houses and there’s going to be a real stink; I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep you out of this. When they start questioning me …”

  What does he mean by keeping me out of it? Alicia was beginning to panic. Could he be trying to shift the blame for all this on me? Or to blackmail me? Wait; take it easy; let’s see what he’s up to.

  Alicia just stood there, biting her lips and not letting on that she was preparing a counterattack. She ran all the possibilities through her mind. Even if nothing came of it, her way of life was in danger of being seriously compromised. Her heart was racing, but her instinct told her to crush her fear. She took a long breath and stooped to get a closer look at the body, trying to give the impression that “it’s not such a big deal.”

  “You think they might try to blame you?” she asked, her voice in complete control.

  “Not a chance! Forensics will have no trouble verifying that what I tell them is true. The guy was drunk and he just slipped … and that’s all; I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Have you had sex with many men?”

  “A few. Imagine, I spent five years in a Mexican prison.”

  A Mexican prison, Alicia mused. Is this going to go on all night? Every time Victor opened his mouth he upped the ante. So my favorite boss is a bugger and an ex-con. Can you believe it? Every time I throw him a pitch, he whacks it out of the ballpark.

  In spite of herself, Alicia’s mouth was hanging open again. She watched Victor make himself comfortable in an easy chair and cross his feet on the center table.

  Damn if he doesn’t look in control.

  “Alicia, I called you because this mess involves both of us. No matter what happens, you’re peddling your ass on a bike and I’m out on my own ass, flat broke—a condition I have come to loathe.”

  “Well, I can see how I get tossed right back onto my bike, but why should you get shafted? You’ve got a big deal going and it looks like everybody likes it,” Alicia replied.

  Victor squared his shoulders and worked himself up to telling her the whole truth, or at least as much truth as he was capable of telling anyone. “It’s easy, really, when you know the story. Rieks and I have been lovers for close to three years, but it was the strictest of secrets. We never mixed business with our affair and no one ever suspected anything. Rieks has a wife and children, a mother and three brothers—all of them wealthy beyond anything you can imagine. Up until now, I’ve been working for a salary, but in a couple of month’s time, the company was going to sign a contract giving me one-and-a-half million dollars a year for ten years. However, with Rieks dead, it’s a cinch the sunken galleon project gets it in the neck and me along with it.”

  “You still haven’t explained why,” Alicia interrupted.

  “It’s a long and sad story, but suffice it to say that the older brother, Vincent, hates me and hates the project, and now gets to be in control of everything. The rest of the family doesn’t give a damn about the Caribbean Division that Rieks put together, and as a percentage of the family fortune, it’s really nothing. And nothing is what I’ll be left with.”

  Alicia put on her best poker face and listened. So it’s not about me, but about you … Go on, lover boy. I know you haven’t run out of surprises; so whatever it is, spit it out. What the fuck, I’ll deal with it!

  And out loud to Victor: “So what are you going to do?”

  Victor rose to his feet again and walked slowly around the room, taking his sweet time.

  Alicia was determined to be patient and let him set the pace. After all, he was the one who knew what had happened, and only he really had any idea of what he had to do now. Judging from his calm and collected attitude, she was convinced that the best was yet to come.

  After a seemingly endless pause, Victor leaned over to cover the corpse again and said something that sent chills through Alicia’s body: “Yeah, that olive has certainly screwed us both, but if we play our cards right, we can parlay this corpse into an easy four million.”

  Alicia stared at him in disbelief, but the sound of four million stuck in her ears, vibrating, tinkling like a crystal bell. With the sudden turn of the conversation toward something she could readily relate to, Alicia felt the thrill of her fear fading away to be reborn in the form of keen interest in this as-yet-undisclosed proposition. She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that said she was in no mood to have her chain pulled. Then she walked up to Victor, aggressively, her forehead at the height of his lips, smelling the alcohol and nicotine on his breath. “Let me see if I got this straight. You’re talking about four million dollars … USD … greenbacks, not lira, not francs, not any of that shit?”

  “His family’ll pay whatever we ask … if you cooperate, of course.”

  “Four million for a corpse?”

  “No one knows he’s dead. Listen,” Victor went on, almost smiling, “the plan is easy and totally safe, at least as safe as it is to go out into the streets every day when you go to work. I’ll be on the inside, so I’ll know exactly what’s going on at every turn, but I need a partner operating on the outside, and that can only be you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the only other person who knows what went on here, and besides, I don’t have anyone else.”

  Alicia stood there trying to digest Victor’s reasoning, nodding her head in subconscious approval of the concept. Of course, it was a long way from a concept to a plan that would actually work. But for the time being, it sounded good.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Equal pay for equal risk. Fifty-fifty; partners all the way. Two million for you and two million for me. If we invest it wisely, it can buy us our freedom for the rest of our lives.”

  Alicia
continued staring into the distance, thinking, her eyes darting back and forth.

  “Otherwise, it’s back to the bicycle and wiggling your ass all over the streets of Havana. Say goodbye to the convertible and bid farewell to the three thousand a month; without an order from Rieks, those drafts will never be authorized, and I have no way of justifying them.”

  Underneath her steely exterior, Alicia was on the verge of dry heaves. Oh, yes, the scope of the disaster was becoming clearer and something deep inside was counseling her to take action, counterattack, take measures, do something. Oh, yeah, sure, but what about this guy, Victor? Can he be trusted? Only if it’s in his own interest. Well then, that’s how it’s gotta be.

  Everything about his behavior, combined with her common sense and the logic of recent events, told Alicia that Victor was not a murderer. He was too smart to have killed the goose that was going to give him the golden eggs. No, Groote was his ticket to his pet project and a life of ease. He couldn’t have killed him. It was simply not logical to kill Groote to make a few bucks on the dead body. If it’s ransom you have in mind, you keep him alive … at least until you have the money. And if he had done that he would not have called her in after the fact. A lover’s spat? Nothing in the room pointed to that. No, no! Victor was a liar, a cheat, a cynic, and completely amoral, but he was not a murderous psychopath capable of such a stupid crime.

  “What if I want out?”

  “If you want out, you’re out. But without your help I’m screwed. I can’t collect the ransom.”

  “Then what would you do?”

  “I’d call the police in a few minutes and then put up with their suspicions and questioning for a few days until the specialists verify my story. His death was clearly an accident, and besides, everyone knows that Rieks was my ticket to the big leagues … I had nothing to gain by killing him and the world to gain by keeping him alive. No, it’s not the body I’m worried about. What is a problem is the investigation they’re going carry out in this house and the hue and cry that’s going to erupt when they find out what was going on here.”

  “What was going on where?” Alicia asked, looking around the room again and stopping at the red curtains that covered the entire dividing wall from one end to the other and from floor to ceiling.

  Understanding the object of her concern, Victor drew the heavy curtains and taking a key from one of the top drawers of the armoire, opened the lock and pushed back the louvered doors, revealing a panoramic view of the room with the pond.

  “This is what I’m worried about,” Victor explained with a sweeping gesture, “the screen, the two houses, everything.”

  Alicia studied the broad room as if she were seeing it for the first time. And there was the faun, as flat on his face as he could be, but ever smiling.

  “And when they interrogate me, there’s no way I can keep you out of it. I mean, they may think all this was real sicko, but it’s not a crime. If I begin lying to them, they’ll start to see crimes where there were none, you see?”

  “Right! So, what’s the third alternative? There’s always a third alternative.”

  “Oh sure, I can always take the Mercedes up to about a hundred and eighty and run the sonovabitch into a fucking wall.”

  Alicia’s gut told her to slow down. “Did you feel anything for Rieks?”

  “Sure! Gratitude, admiration … That sonovabitch had more balls than most straight men. And he was a good friend to me … He fell in love with me.”

  “He had good taste. Did anyone in the company know about him?”

  “So far, no one knows about him. But if I don’t get rid of that body, everybody is going to know tomorrow.”

  “How will they know?”

  “How will they know?! What the fuck do you imagine the police are going to think when they find him dressed and made up like the fucking African Queen and my semen halfway up to his epiglottis?”

  That was the end of Victor’s composure. With a sob that rose from his very intestines, he broke into quiet tears and hid his face in his hands.

  Victor’s brutal confession and the sincerity of his tears had a calming effect on Alicia. If she could strike him off the list of things to guard against, the rest might actually be easy. Of course! Kidnapping a stiff is much easier than kidnapping a live person. You don’t have to guard him or feed him. None of that shit. Alicia began to feel she was treading on more solid ground. She came up on Victor from behind and started to massage the back of his neck, giving him time to let it all out.

  “The deal is,” Victor began to explain, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand, “we’re either in it together or we’re out together—make it or break it. That’s why we have to decide this thing together.”

  Alicia was still thinking but could not seem to focus on the details.“I don’t feel right here,” she exclaimed, standing in front of Victor. “Why don’t we go next door?”

  “Do you have the keys to the back?”

  Alicia rummaged around in her purse and came up with a bunch of keys. They walked into the backyard together. The last stars of the night were still visible in the ashen backdrop of the western sky. From some far away outdoor restaurant, the bass thump thump of a jukebox was barely audible and the breeze brought with it the unmistakable bouquet of tropical ripeness.

  Victor pulled back the bolt on the chainlink gate joining the two yards. Together they skirted a small hill of cut grass, followed the cobblestone path around the back of the pool, and came up to the house. Alicia tried several keys and finally opened the sliding glass doors.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I’m going to have a soda. How about you?”

  “Beer would be better.”

  While Alicia went into the kitchen, Victor put the faun back on its feet and smiled. The smile on the faun was contagious.

  “Did you like yesterday’s show?”

  “It was absolutely brilliant!”

  “But unfortunately, it’s history,” Alicia commented, handing him the beer. “Nevermore! But let’s get on with our thing.”

  Alicia took a long draught from her tall glass of Coke, set a steno pad and a felt-tip pen on the table, and sat down to deal with the business at hand. “OK. Give me your impression of the game-plan—slowly, step by step, and in fine detail.”

  Alicia finished her last entry at exactly 7:15 am. She was almost convinced. Only a few of the details did not completely jibe. Yes, the plan to get rid of the body is good and should entail no difficulty … Well, unless something really unexpected happens, but what the hell. Everything Victor had planned was feasible. The hardest part would be the actual collection of the ransom money, but he was going to be on the inside and privy to every possible move Vincent Groote and his minions might concoct … What could possibly go wrong?

  Victor rose to go to the bathroom and Alicia used the break to take a stroll on the back lawn. She opened a faucet behind the garage and pressed her cool wet fingers to her temples and the back of her neck.

  When Victor returned, she folded the sheets into a neat packet, slipped them into the back pocket of her jeans, and picked up the car keys.

  “I think we have a plan. But I need to be alone to think it through,” she announced as she walked toward the kitchen door leading into the garage. “Wait here, if you like. I’ll be back in a while with my answer.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I don’t know. Check your watch; give me a couple of hours … I’ll be back by ten.”

  Victor did not reply at first. He bid her goodbye with a shrug of his shoulders and a great yawn. “Let me see if I can get some sleep.”

  Driving the convertible down Fifth Avenue, Alicia went over and over the situation. Destiny really was a pisser. One rat-shit olive and all her plans go down the drain. Son of a bitch! Now what the hell was she supposed to do? Without the money she got for her shows and without the damn car, she would no longer be a credible “young lady of breeding,” and she had about as much hop
e of bagging a millionaire as she had of winning a lottery. Possible? Yes. But hardly the kind of odds you want to stake your life on. Of the fifteen thousand she had been paid in five months, about ten thousand had gone into her wardrobe, public relations expenses, and, what the hell, a little bit of the good life. She was not about to blow the five she had left on promotion; so that made things a lot more difficult. Damn! Just when the hounds were hot on the scent of millions, bam, the turkey flies the coop … or whatever the hell turkeys do. The point was, she was screwed, in more ways than one. Should she accept one of the firm proposals she already had? Should she lift anchor and head for Madrid, Buenos Aires, or Milan? These Johns were not really that rich …

  Before reaching her home, Alicia stopped at the park on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street to have a cigarette. “Sonovabitch,” she said out loud for the hundredth time, “I refuse to believe that a drunken Dutchman is going to ruin my life!”

  If the scandal got out, every foreigner in Havana would know about it in exactly no time flat. MILLIONAIRE DUTCHMAN PAYS CUBAN CUTIE FOR PRIVATE PORN SHOWS. Her name would fly from mouth to mouth, firm to firm, disco to disco, whore to whore (possibly with a touch of hero worship), and inevitably to Otto, Alberto, Enzo, Yves, and everybody else in this goddamn city. Right! Ciao Europe, ciao Buenos Aires, ciao Madrid! Of course, there was always the bicycle. But with that kind of press, who the hell was she going to con into marriage or even into taking her out of the country? EUROPEAN BUSINESSMAN WEDS PORN WHORE PAID BY PANSY PEEPER. Like hell! The only viable option was to become a normal whore … no disguises, no pretense, just fucking for the money and the glory. Son of a bitch! Just when everything was beginning to pan out. Why couldn’t he have just been happy being gay? Why the high heels?

  Yes, Victor’s reaction was logical. After three years of living high on the hog, it was no joke to be chucked back into the street without a dime. In his place, Alicia would shoot herself, too. If it weren’t for her mother.