63

(Santo Domingo, 2/26/69)

Drac flew them down. El Jefe sent a stretch. The runways were fresh-poured blacktop. Peons toiled up through the landing.

Aeropuerto de las Americas-strictly bush league. Bienvenidos: cardboard cutouts of Joaquin Balaguer beside the customs hut.

Crutch and Froggy de-planed. It was smack-your-head hot. Two Policia Nacional cops lugged their luggage to the limo. Four Harleys rumbled over. The stretch was ‘56-vintage. The choppers pre-dated it. The cops wore puffed jodhpurs and stormtrooper boots. The D.R., Take 1: We’re low-rent, but we try. Don’t fuck with us. We’ll kill you or suck up to you, according to whim.

The escort pulled out. The backseat was pre-cooled. Flags snapped off giant whip antennas. Crosses, ribbons, “Dios Patria Libertad.” Canned cocktails poked out of an ice chest. Crutch and Froggy popped daiquiris and worked up a buzz. Balaguer was throwing a lunch bash in their honor. The Presidential Palace, upcoming.

Crutch looked out his window. Some fucking island. The beach was no beach. Bare rocks dropped off at the surf line. The Malecуn was a downmarket palisades. The bluffs were rocky and brown-grassed. The boulevard was half pavement, half gravel. Froggy said, “We are needed here. We will further our personal agenda and revitalize the economy.”

Slums. Lots of spooks and spook-spic hybrids. Tin-roof buildings: ancient and cracker box-new. Boing-your-eyes paint jobs: hot pink, lime green, canary yellow.

They de-limo’d at the El Embajador. It was a cut-rate Fontainebleau upside a cut-rate Miami. A polo field adjoined it. Light-toned beaners rode white horses and banged around white balls. Light-toned women scoped the action from golf carts. They wore summer dresses and slathered on suntan oil.

Hotel slaves fawned and whooshed them up to their rooms. They were full bar- and goody basket-equipped. Crutch had a view: pastel pads, sludgy rivers, dilapidation. Statues and droopy power lines.

Pinch me-I’m here.

He changed into a seersucker suit. He was going for that Ivy League/white kahuna effect. He walked back down. Mesplede was black-suit spiffy. Ivar Smith met them in the lobby. He was slurping a liquor-laced sno-cone. It smelled like crиme de menthe.

They re-limo’d and took off. Crutch and Mesplede switched to canned martinis. The streets were narrow and ground down to soil. Foot traffic was two-thirds light spic and mulatto. The real darkies had a voodoo vibe. Crutch re-spun his head tape to Managua.

That codebook, that address book, the voodoo symbols crisscrossed. Twenty-odd days of code work. No make on Gretchen/Celia’s numbers and letters.

Tin-roof shantytowns and heat-wilted lowlifes. Calles and avenidas named for sugarcane kings. Streets named for dates, а la Managua.

Mucho vacant lots. Potential casino sites all. Two on Avenida Maximo Gomez, two on Calle 27 de Febrero. The escort was an onslaught of muscle. The choppers were un-mufflered. Their motors revved loud.

Smith said, “I’m lining up the work crews. They’ll sleep in tents on the sites and work twelve-hour shifts. The Cubans will meet you at the hotel tonight. They want to drive up to the north shore and look at staging points for your other business.”

They cut down Avenida San Carlos. The street was full-paved. The Palacio Nacional loomed. It was high-domed and built from roseate marble. It was a mini-White House, peach ice cream-colored.

Some ragtag kids loitered across the street. They held placards topped with red flags. They were mostly spook-spic crossbreeds, а la Harry Belafonte.

The palace gates opened. The limo braked and slowed. Smith cracked his window and pointed. It unleashed a rout.

There’s a parked van near the kids. On cue-four hard boys roll out. They’re all light-skinners. They’ve got piano-wire saps.

They charged. The kids ran. They caught them and trampled them and truncheoned their legs raw. The kids were too wire-whipped and bloody to stand up. They knee-walked and crawled to an alleyway. It took ten seconds tops.

Smith slurped his sno-cone. “The good guys are La Banda. They’re Jefe’s personal guys who work with my guys. The bad guys are 6/14. They have yet to figure out that dissent comes with a price.”

El Jefe was a midget. He ran five-one maximum. He mi casa es su casa’d them with no sincerity.

Balaguer knew their names in advance. He called them Seсor Mesplede and Seсor Crutchfield. He sent his regards to Senor Tedrow and his investors’ group. He did not say “the Boys,” “the mob,” “the Outfit.” Smith called Balaguer “Jefe.” Balaguer scaaaared him. Jefe sniffed his breath and smirked. Smith popped Clorets on the sly.

A palace tour followed. Smith slipped a Jefe stooge a satchel. Crutch knew the contents: fifty G’s U.S. The tour was all statues and jingoist oils. Recent Fuhrer Trujillo was omitted. Froggy was in on the Trujillo hit. The Midget was clueless. Crutch dug on that.

Lunch was seafood salad and paella. Three light-skinned women and the local CIA boss showed up. The chiquitas were courtesans brought in to un-stag things. Crutch sat down in eyeball range. The CIA guy and the Midget flanked him.

He kept it zipped and peeped cleavage. Mesplede amused the women with his pit-bull tattoos. The CIA guy’s name was Terry Brundage. He boozed and talked at Ivar Smith’s gasbag pace. He was a kidder. He joked at Mesplede’s expense. Your buddy wants to buy a PT boat. Did he serve with JFK? Has he ever been to Dallas? You’re not dope-peddlers and anti-Castro brigands, are you?

Crutch kept it zipped. The term open secret bonked him. A woman nailed his peeper act. She waved her napkin-shoo, you.

The Midget bloviated in English. He announced his spiels with little coughs that amounted to ACHTUNG! He talked up his Rural Development Plan. He told a joke about Papa Doc Duvalier and a chicken. He extolled his Urban Development Plan. Let’s build some pre-fab shacks to house the poor and lower the crime rate. Let’s build high rises to shield them from view.

Dessert was rainbow sorbet. The Midget spoke straight at Crutch.

“What is the intended meaning of your lapel pin?”

“I’ve killed fifteen Cuban Communists, sir.”

The Midget weaved a hand-comme ci, comme Зa. Crutch froze with his spoon raised. Sorbet dripped on his suit.

“There is a term for young men like you, Mr. Crutchfield. It is pariguayo. The literal meaning is ‘party-watcher.’ It derives from the time the United States Marines interdicted the spread of communism in my country. It describes the young marines’ reluctance to ask our girls to dance.”

THE EYE.

He hears “Scalp them.” He can’t do it. He’s hurled in the sand. The dead man’s face is powder-burned. A skin flap is loose. His knife slips into the eye socket. His grip falters. The blade severs the eyeball. He shuts his eyes. He can’t look. A two-handed thrust cracks ocular bones. He puts a foot on the dead man’s neck and steadies his work plane. His knife blade is serrated. He saws through to the scalp flap. Foot pressure forces blood from a neck wound. It soaks his boots. He’s a pump station now. The scalp removal takes ten minutes. Foot pressure re-routes the blood through the nostrils, eye sockets and ears.

Then crackle sounds and smoke and-

That’s wrong. I always get the scalp and wave it. Froggy always applauds me.

Crutch woke up. He was steam-room wet. Smoke poured from the air conditioner. He grabbed a soda siphon and spritzed out the fire. Sparks crackled and fizzed. The smoke dissipated and left a muck residue.