The Scared Stiff Page 4

  “What do you mean?” I felt a little bad-tempered in this noise and heat, what with being full of beer and not liking to be a syphilitic. “Who was she, anyway?”

  “We talked about her in the car the other day,” Arturo said. “Lola and me. Remember Lola?”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid, Arturo,” I said. “Who is she?”

  “Luz,” he said. “Luz Garrigues.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I remembered now. Luz. If it weren’t for this Luz, the Tobón family wouldn’t have any gossip worth mentioning.

  We walked another dry noisy half a block, and I said, “You mean, she and Cousin Carlos…?”

  “No, no,” he said. “She’s his niece. Carlos, he’s her uncle, he wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  We walked some more, and I became aware that Arturo was watching me, with that overly boyish grin of his. I said, “What now?”

  “Don’t go get yourself in trouble, hermano,” he said. “You know what I mean.”

  I looked at him. “What, me? You don’t have to worry about me.”

  8

  Friday was the day: Two days after my meeting with Cousin Carlos, almost a week after our arrival in Guerrera, and the beginning of the weekend. What better time for it? And what better place than Vista Alegar, the closest thing Guerrera has to a tourist attraction?

  At 837 feet, Vista Alegar is the highest spot in Guerrera, up in the mountains along the southern border with Brazil. As the crow flies, it’s probably sixty miles from Sabanon down to the border, but roads are few in Guerrera and meandering, mostly following the rivers and circling around mountains, so it can take nearly three hours to make the trip.

  The last several miles, one drives due south but steeply uphill, beside a narrow rocky tumbling northbound river called the Conoro. As the road climbs, the descending river becomes more and more agitated, till there are actual rapids, visible from the road, and swirling deep pools that the more adventurous tourists swim in, and even brief noisy white waterfalls. Vines dangle down over all, and there’s huge-fronded and huge-leaved jungle growth and incredibly gaudy birds flickering here and there, occasionally making sounds like a Marine Corps drill instructor.

  For the last few miles to the border and the town of Vista Alegar, the road veers away from the river, and soon there are dirt roads angling off leftward toward tourist spots constructed along the steep banks. Most of these turnoffs are marked by rough-and-ready signs painted on or carved into wooden planks. The one we wanted had two such signs: GLOBAL WARMING CAMP and THE SCARLET TOUCAN, that being the restaurant we were headed for.

  We turned in there and jounced over the roots and stones and brick-hard ruts of the narrow tan road through the jungle, the Beetle bounding around like a Christmas ornament in a hurricane and the both of us holding on for dear life, me to the steering wheel, Lola to whatever she could find. Twilight came more rapidly in the jungle, and I had to stop at one point to find the headlights.

  Soon those lights picked out another car ahead of us, going the same way, even more slowly; a bright red Honda Accord with a rental company sticker on its bumper. “Not our undertaker,” I said, “but he drives like an undertaker.”

  “He’s an undertaker in northern Michigan,” Lola decided. “Here he’s just a guy afraid of potholes.”

  The Scarlet Toucan’s parking lot is gravel, a broad, more or less flat area to the left of the restaurant, with a flimsy rail fence marking the edge of the dropoff to the river below. The lot is lit at night by kerosene-burning torches spaced around the perimeter, but that glow is nothing compared to the electric floodlights under the restaurant itself, which is cantilevered out over the cliff. All that light makes the river and its rocks and the surrounding jungle brighter and harsher and seemingly closer than by day.

  While the cautious driver of the Accord angled off to find a spot as close to the restaurant entrance as possible, among the ten or twelve cars already parked there, I steered the other way, to the nearest free spot along the fence. I parked with the Beetle’s nose not quite touching the rail, and when I got out I could look down at the sharply lit picture of the rapids. I could hear them, too, rushing and shushing down there.

  Not speaking, holding each other’s arms, we walked toward the restaurant. I could feel Lola’s tension trembling in her arm, and I suppose she could feel mine as well.

  The Scarlet Toucan, like most interesting restaurants in really obscure out-of-the-way places around the world, was owned, or at least operated, by a New Yorker who’d decided to get away from town for a few years. This particular Rick, whose name was Mike, was a wiry sharp-featured guy of indeterminate age and a deep tan and black hair flat on a stony skull. He’s aggressively friendly without content, but that’s okay; the food’s good.

  The restaurant seems rickety and probably is, but it’s stood this long and might stand awhile longer, so why worry? There isn’t much by way of building codes out here in the jungle, so what you have to rely on mostly is Mike’s self-interest. If the restaurant someday were to fall into the rocky river below — way below — we might or might not be here that day, but Mike certainly would. So it’s his confidence in the joint’s stability we’re relying on, and let’s hope he’s right.

  The restaurant is bamboo-walled, with a conical thatch roof, like a coolie’s hat. The interior is dark, mostly, except at the far end, facing the view. The mahogany tables and chairs are clunky but comfortable local workmanship. The decor makes me think of the South Seas, but I guess it’s just supposed to be generic expatriate.

  While waiting for Mike to come deal with us, I glanced at the other diners here, a mix of tourists and well-off locals, and tried not to guess which one would be my undertaker. I had deliberately avoided meeting the man, leaving all that part to Arturo. He would be here, that’s all, having a nice meal at my expense, ready to do his thing when the time came.

  Now Mike did come over, to shake our hands and introduce himself — we’d met him before, of course — and gush over us and say, “You folks having a great time?”

  “Great,” I agreed. I was a little drunk, just enough to be noticeable. “Even the wife is loosening up,” I said, “and that’s saying a lot.”

  Lola glowered at me but kept silent. Mike turned swiftly to his registration book. “Lemme see, lemme see: Lee. You requested a table by the view.”

  “I’m about ready for a view,” I said.

  Not looking at us, he reached for two menus and a wine list. “Come this way.”

  Lola and I both decided to follow him first, so we bumped into each other. She glared at me, while Mike tried not to notice, and I did an elaborate satiric bow, saying, “After you, your Majesty.”

  “A gentleman,” she commented caustically, and we followed Mike out to the view, which is to say, out to the far edge of the plank platform the Scarlet Toucan is built on. Out there, where the floor stops, there’s a rough wooden railing at waist height, but that’s all. Nothing else: no glass, no screens, nothing. When you sit at a table along this edge, you look down past your thigh at white water and black boulders way down there.

  “Enjoy your meal,” Mike told us before he left, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. And we sat there, me particularly resplendent in all that light in a royal-blue shirt, worn especially for the occasion.

  Our waitress arrived a minute later. A nice slender convent-bred local girl with a sweet smile, she was difficult to be rude to, but I did my best. When she stopped beside our table, before she could ask a single question or even wish us a good evening, I fixed a slightly drunken stare on her and demanded, “Do you know what Tanqueray gin is?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, would you—”

  “I mean Tanqueray,” I interrupted. “I don’t mean booga-booga or some other local crap, I mean Tanqueray. You know what that is.”

  “Yes, sir,” she assured me, her smile only slightly dimmed. “It is in a green bottle. Our barten—”


  To Lola, with elaborate astonishment, I exclaimed, “A green bottle! How do you like that? It’s in a green bottle! Civilization has come to wherever the fuck we are.”

  “Oh, shut up, Barry,” Lola said, clearly having had it up to here with me. “Since I suppose you’re going to insist on having a drink, why don’t you just go ahead and order it?”

  “Oh, I have your permission,” I said. “Oh, how wonderful. How gracious.”

  Lola, tight-lipped, stared down at the river and the rocks.

  To the waitress I said, “A Tanqueray Gibson. Can your bartender handle that?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, he—”

  To Lola I said, “And you, my darling? What would you like most of all on this lovely evening?”

  She glowered at me, and everything she wasn’t saying hung in the air over all heads in the immediate vicinity. Beneath their shimmer, after a little pause, she turned to the waitress, smiling politely in an effort to return civility to the table, and said, “Just water for me, thank you.” Yes, ma am.

  The waitress would have turned away, but I said, “You didn’t write it down.”

  The look she gave me was cool. “I don’t need to, sir.”

  “Oh, of course! Stupid me, I do beg your pardon.” I flopped first my left hand, then my right, onto the table, palms up, as I looked at each in turn and said, “One Tanqueray Gibson, one glass of water. Even I could remember that.”

  The waitress, without her smile, made her escape, and I grinned savagely at Lola.

  “Water. If you want water so much” — thumb gesture at the river down below — “why not just jump?”

  She leaned closer across the table. “Do try to keep it down, Barry,” she muttered, in a tense undertone that nevertheless, I’m certain, carried very well. “People are looking at you.”

  “If people are looking at me instead of their food,” I said, not at all keeping it down, “they’ll stab themselves in the cheek with their forks. And deserve it, too.”

  Well, it went on like that. I wasn’t funny, I was merely boorish. Clearly, I was either someone who couldn’t hold his liquor or I was someone who’d had more liquor than anyone could hold.

  It was hard at night to get rid of liquids at that table. There was no potted plant handy, to corrupt with alcohol. If you just poured your unwanted drink over the side to join the river, it would glisten and gleam in the floodlight glare all the way to the rushing water below.

  So what we did, we both drank our water right away, and I poured the first two Gibsons into those glasses after I’d fished out and eaten the onions. The third (and last) Gibson arrived just after the white wine had been delivered in a nice traditional ice bucket containing water and ice, so from then on the gin went to help cool the wine, and so did some of the wine.

  Meantime, I was picking at my food, getting drunker, slowly becoming louder without ever reaching the point where Mike might have to come over to have a word with me, and sniping without letup at Lola, who occasionally snarled back but usually just sat there in grim forbearance, frowned at her plate, and mechanically ate her food.

  Food. I really should eat something. I put down a couple of mouthfuls, which gave our neighborhood a moment of blissful rest, and which I ended by abruptly hurling my fork down onto my plate with a hell of a clatter, as I jumped to my feet, threw my napkin at the jungle — it floated downward through the air like a flawed parachute, in all that light — and yelled, “I can’t take it anymore! Do what the fuck you want! Stay here in this godforsaken place, if that’s what you want!”

  Stunned silence all around, except of course for the river, which went on with its own busy shushing sounds just as though some person weren’t making a scene right overhead. And now, as no one in the entire room ate, and no one spoke, and no one looked directly at me, I spun about, corrected myself in time so that I didn’t march into space, spun about in the other direction, and marched out of the joint.

  “You pig!” — said in clear tones of utter outraged contempt by Lola — was the only sound that followed me.

  Mike, near the door, looked as though he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to hit me or I was supposed to hit him, but whichever it was he was going to hate it. As I swept by him — no fisticuffs — I snarled, “She can pay for dinner. About time she paid for something!” And out I went.

  The Impala now was parked to the left of the Beetle, and as I ran from the Scarlet Toucan’s front door across the parking lot, Arturo got out from behind its wheel and came around to the car’s right side. The Impala’s interior light had never worked, at least not during the car’s years in Guerrera, so when he opened both right doors no lights went on. Nevertheless, I could see me slumped in the passenger seat. I recognized me, of course, from my royal-blue shirt.

  9

  In a small poor South American country with few records, where people still emerge from the jungle not knowing how old they are or how to write their names, unknown bodies are not rare. People live their lives, and then they die. If they’re still in the jungle, their families bury them right there. If they’ve come to the city, solitary, doing casual labor, living on the margins of society, when they die there’s nobody to claim them or bury them except the government. My undertaker, tensing over his dinner in the Scarlet Toucan at the moment, in addition to his regular family trade also had a contract with the government to deal with the unknown and the indigent. And that’s how we’d gotten our body at a reasonable price.

  Very reasonable. In addition to the meal at my expense that my undertaker was I hoped enjoying this evening with the companion of his choice, he could expect to be paid at American rates for his services to the late Barry Lee, not at Guerreran rates. Arturo had provided him with a second set of clothing identical to what I’d worn this evening, he had provided the clothed body, and I had provided dinner.

  “Quick!” Arturo whispered.

  “One second, one second.”

  The only thing I carried that mattered was my wallet. I went to one knee beside the Impala and pushed my substitute leftward so I could slide the wallet into his hip pocket. He was cold but not stiff; in fact, he was unpleasantly soft, not at all what I’d expected.

  The Beetle’s interior light switched on when I opened the driver’s door, but no one else was in the parking lot and it wouldn’t be lit for long. I grabbed the royal blue shoulders and Arturo grabbed the chino knees, and we lugged him out of the Impala and behind the wheel of the Beetle. I put one of his hands on the steering wheel, and in the brightness of the interior light I saw his hand was soft and pudgy, with a clear mark on the third finger where a ring had been removed. And wasn’t that a recent manicure?

  What was this? This was no indigent, no unknown peon. I tried to see his face, but he was slumped too far forward, I could only see that his cheeks and neck were not scrawny and his hair was neatly barbered.

  Something was wrong here, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. I’d have to ask Arturo later. Who are we getting rid of here?

  “Come on, hermano.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, “I’m coming!”

  I stood up out of the car and shut its door and the light went off. He was a peon again; he was me again; he was no longer a mystery. I reached in past him to start the engine, which immediately coughed into life. I shifted into DRIVE and got my arm out of there, and the Beetle moved forward to poke the rail fence, insistent but not strong enough to break through.

  Now, while I stood there, Arturo ran to the Impala. He got in, started it without switching on the headlights, and backed up to get behind the Beetle. As I stepped backward out of the way, he suddenly accelerated as fast as he could at the rear of the Beetle, hitting it with a crunch that popped the smaller car forward, through the fence and off the edge.

  Out it arched, into all that light above the river, a white descending balloon. No. A white descending refrigerator.

  Arturo slammed on the brakes, and the Impala stopped just before the drop.
He backed around in a tight circle, and I turned away from the dramatic instant of my death. As I ran for the Impala and jumped into the backseat, I heard the screams start inside the restaurant.

  I could pick out Lola’s scream. It was the loudest one of all.

  10

  When next I saw her, Lola described for me the scene after my departure from the Scarlet Toucan. Into the at-last-calm atmosphere of the restaurant, the shiny white Beetle made a sudden dramatic appearance in the middle of the air, hung there like a surrealist painting, then crashed with a great geyser of foam and spray and auto parts.

  The patrons, of course, were horrified and began to scream and point and leap to their feet. Naturally, Lola had recognized the car, and she made it clear that she knew at once what must have happened, and after her first horrified shriek she blamed herself, loudly and inconsolably: “It’s all my fault! I never appreciated him! I drove him to it!”

  The first thing that happened was that two guys in dirty aprons from the kitchen scrambled down the boulders and among the support pillars under the restaurant, carrying flashlights. They came out into the floodlit area, standing on the brink of the rushing river, while the observers above crowded dangerously close to the edge of the platform to watch. The staff guys couldn’t get very close to the car, but they stood on wet boulders and shone their flashlights into it and saw the royal-blue mound slumped in the front seat. Then they looked up at the people on the restaurant rim and shook their heads. One of them made a horizontal motion in the air with one hand, palm down, while the other drew a finger across his throat. The driver is dead; no hope.

  Fortunately, there just happened to be, among the diners in the Scarlet Toucan that evening, one Señor Ortiz, a well-known and widely respected mortician from the city of Marona. Grasping the situation at once, Señor Ortiz promptly volunteered his services, which Mike was happy to accept.

  Señor Ortiz ordered Mike to take down the names and addresses of all the patrons in the restaurant, as witnesses to the tragic accident, while he himself got on the phone. First he called his staff in Marona and told them to rush to the Scarlet Toucan with the ambulance used for dead bodies. Only then did he phone the police, but he didn’t call the small local constabulary in Vista Alegar, just up the road, but police headquarters instead, in San Cristobal, 170 miles away.