Santo Domingo was on-the-whole shitsville. The Gazcue section was Hancock Park for spies. It was a light-skin zone. He started peeping there last week. He looked for Joan and Gretchen/Celia. He settled for random women. He followed them from parks to restaurants. He followed them home. He peeped bathroom and bedroom windows.

Tiger Kart rolled into Jarabacoa. The town was full of tin-roof huts and jungle plumage. The site was two roads down. Crutch heard bulldozer crunch. Three kids ran out of the brush. They wore masks and Uncle Ho shirts and carried flame-topped bottles. Get it? Molotov cocktails.

They hurled them. The bombs hit Tiger Kart and made pissant explosions. Crutch swiveled his machine gun and fired their way. He cut down some cane stalks and missed the fuckers.

The kids got away. Jungle brush covered them. Tiger Kart rolled to the site. Shackled-up workers lugged debris. Bulldozers blitzed foundations. A four-jailbird crew hauled discarded-roof sections and cut up their hands. A cop on horseback whipped a slow guy.

The straw boss waved. The Krew tiger-growled back. Crutch heard three gunshots on the Autopista.

Tiger Kart cut back and rolled northbound. They saw the Molotov kids, dead in a ditch. They were head-shot point-blank. Their Uncle Ho shirts were slashed. Their hands and feet were severed.

A La Banda guy stepped out of the brush and waved.

Ivar Smith stashed a Jeep for them. Tiger Kart was too big for the border river crossings. The Plaine du Massacre was close by. Morales sniffed the air. He said he smelled the Goat and the soul husks of slaughtered Haitians. Crutch saw blood drawings on tree trunks. He got a vile voodoo vibe.

The Jeep was full-gassed. A canvas top beat the sun out. Dirt roads got them to the river. Tonton guys perched by the bridge. They wore stovepipe suits, wraparound shades and straw porkpies. They waved the Jeep across. They exuded French savoir faire and black hipster cool.

The river was muddy and eighty yards wide. Spades popped out of the water holding crawfish. They crossed and took dirt roads to the Cordillera Central. The ride was all swerves and plows through fallen brush. Morales puked in a paper bag. Froggy cranked it in low gear, forty mph-plus.

Pauper pads whizzed by. Tin-roof shacks plaster-laced with giant rhinestones. Wood shacks with pix of voodoo priests on the doors. Tree branches hung over the roadway. Lynched chickens dangled from them. A few leaked fresh blood.

They hit the peak and descended. Flat roads led to the north shore. A spook in a dead-bird hat hexed them from the roadside. Gomez-Sloan shot at him and missed.

The terrain was tropical forest. The air smelled like salt water and dirt. Every half-ass tree was blood-marked. Beware the Zombie Zone.

They hit the shore. The salt air heated up. Froggy consulted a map and slalomed on rock-strewn sand. Crutch saw an inlet. A wild-ass jigaboo popped out of nowhere and stepped in front of the Jeep.

He was six-eight. He ran 140. He had a Fu Manchu stash. He wore a purple porkpie and a madras suit. Two.45’s, two emerald rings, a crystal neck pendant filled with blood.

Froggy braked. The jig beamed and tossed rose petals in the Jeep. They were scented. They drifted down and perfumed up the Krew.

“I am Luc Duhamel. Welcome to my kingdom, baby boys.”

His palace was a stone hut with a BAR placement and a barbed-wire fence. A speedboat was moored in the water. A golf cart was tethered to a flagpole. Three voodoo-sect flags flew. The yard was strewn with dead rodents. Carnivore birds swooped and gorged.

Luc sat them down inside. The walls were sequined. Everyone got their own faux-mink chair. Luc served klerin liquor in rhinestone goblets. Everyone sipped hesitant and swallowed it intact.

Luc took his coat off. His skinny arms were needle-tracked. Crutch got big-eyed. Mesplede and the Cubans deadpanned it.

Mesplede said, “En franЗais?”

Luc shook his head. “English, baby boy. There is no challenge in speaking one’s native tongue.”

Saldfvar said, “Heroin.” Gomez-Sloan said, “Smack.” Morales said, “The beast from the East.”

Canestel rubbed a fake beard-the kill-Castro code. Luc said, “Yes, Colonel Smith informed me. He said these men will become your bons frиres.”

Froggy sipped klerin liquor. “We are purchasing a PT boat. It can do forty knots.”

Saldivar sipped klerin liquor. “Colonel Smith said you have a heroin source in Puerto Rico.”

Morales gagged on klerin. “It is a U.S. protectorate, but Tiger Klaw will be very fast.”

Gomez-Sloan said, “We understand that President Duvalier must be compensated.”

Canestel sniffed his klerin. “It is a three-island parlay. We will profit and Cuban Communists will die.”

Luc looked at Crutch and pointed to his goblet. Crutch guzzled the whole thing and saw stars.

“And you, baby boy? Have you anything to say?”

“Sir, I’m just happy to be here.”

The Krew ate dinner in Gazcue. Ivar Smith and Terry Brundage joined them. Dominicans dined late. It was pushing midnight. Crutch was achy from the ride back. He was amphetamized. He kept brain-screening the dead kids. Three gunshots, no hands and feet.

The restaurant was open-air and right off the Malecуn. Salt air had the wallpaper withered down to strips. The other guys talked death shit and chowed with gusto. Crutch poked at a squid and eyed women.

They were dining upscale. It was light-skin turf. He had a good range of Spanish land-grant types. His daily rev was incessant. Late-night uppers weirdly revolted him and put certain women in slow motion. His brain camera clicked for stills and panned for sensuous movement. Women ate, talked, laughed and touched their friends or escorts. He knew when to look and how to go with the swirl.

A La Banda dude dropped by the table. Ivar Smith palmed an envelope. The dude said, “From Bebe Rebozo.” Smith rubbed his fake beard. Crutch zoned them out. Morales nudged Gomez-Sloan. They said, “Pariguayo” in sync.

Crutch smiled and played with his food. The swirl re-adjusted peripherally. A woman crushed out a cigarette, tossed her head and exhaled. Her hair flew. A ceiling fan churned her smoke. She wore buckled high-heel shoes and a pale green dress. She raised her arms and tied her hair up. Dark stubble, beaded sweat. She was pale, with brown freckles. She wore a man’s wristwatch.

Crutch walked to the John. The woman adios’d her friends and went out the front door. Crutch ducked through the kitchen, cut down an alley and hit the street ten yards behind her.

She took Calle Pasteur to Avenida Independencia. She took Maximo Gomez to the Malecуn bluffs. A sea breeze tossed her dress up. She pushed it down like it was funny. Crutch fell back to twenty yards and re-framed his shot. She walked fast. His head processed it slow.

She turned back on a no-name street. The sea breeze evaporated. The turf went residential. She smoked. Window light caught her plumes on the updraft.

Crutch fell back five yards. The neighborhood was swank-ancient houses, eggshell white, no loud colors. She cut left on Avenida Bolivar. She unlocked the door of a slick two-story pad.

Crutch stood across the street and framed window lights. A blond woman tidied books on a shelf. His woman walked up behind her. The blond woman turned around. They smiled at the same moment and fell into a kiss.

The moment went fluid and held. Crutch watched. Their bodies merged and filled the window frame. Their hands went here and there and enhanced the embrace. The kiss held. They made it go faster, he made it go slow.

The light went off. His woman hit a switch. He strained to hear voices and heard none.