¹⁴

THEY WERE IN THE UPSTAIRS dining room, seated near the wall of glass that looked out on the palmetto garden, the green foliage illuminated with pinpoints of light. Dick Nichols said, “Like having Christmas all year round, huh?” as he turned back to his dinner guests, the colonel and his silent friend from Miami.

Dagoberto Godoy said, “Feliz Navidad,” in a flat tone, not sounding too merry. “By nex’ Christmas I want to be in Managua, but I don’t think is going to happen.”

Dick Nichols looked at Crispin Reyna across from him, over the place settings of crystal-see if he could get him to open his mouth. “Why is that? You boys aren’t doing so good?” The guy from Miami shrugged, but didn’t change his cool-sour expression or say anything; which could mean he either didn’t know or didn’t give a shit. So Dick Nichols turned to the colonel. “What’s the problem, Dagaberta? I thought you had your war good as won.”

“You read in the news we have seventeen thousand freedom fighters,” Dagoberto said. “We have maybe fourteen thousand. The Communists have sixty thousand, more than that in reserve, and all those chicos plasticos in Managua, the kids with no work, nothing to do, they can put in the army when they want. They have helicopter gunships, the Mi-24 from the Soviets. We need ground-to-air missiles, the SA-7, many of them. But most of all we need to have those flying monsters of our own, the gunships.”

Dick Nichols said, “Now you’re talking about a big-ticket item.” He looked up, almost caught the eye of a good-looking woman at the next table, but the headwaiter got in the way, coming over. Dick Nichols said, “Hey, Robert, I think we could manage three more of these. Tell you what, make ’em doubles and we’ll save you a trip. Huh? How’d that be?”

“Chivas, Mr. Nichols?”

“You bet, Robert. Listen, what you do, stop by every twelve and a half minutes and see how we’re doing.” Deadpan, waiting for Robert to give him his haughty-waiter smile. “Is that a deal?”

Robert said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Nichols, my pleasure,” giving him just a flick of a smile, not looking at the Nicaraguans.

Dick Nichols was drinking scotch with them because they seemed to favor it. He drank scotch or bourbon with people in the business, drank beer with Cajun fishing guides, and chased whiskey with beer sitting with drillers over in Morgan City. It was how you learned things. Drink and grin, egg them on some and listen. He told Dagoberto and his buddy from Miami, dying to call him Crispy, that raising the capital to buy a helicopter was one thing, then you had to service the son of a bitch. An engine overhaul’d run you a hundred and twenty-five thousand or more. Hell, get a bullet in your fuel-control system, it’s like your carburetor, you’re talking forty-five Gs to replace it, and that’s just your four-seater model. He told Dagoberto he was talking big bucks to maintain a fleet. Was he going to raise enough to finance a real war or not?

Dagoberto said, “You want me to tell you the cost of making war? To pay each freedom fighter twenty-three dollars a month before we buy one bullet? A wealthy friend of yours, rich beyond measure, gives me a check for five thousand. I look at it… Do you know what it will buy? It will buy rice for a few weeks and maybe twenty thousand rounds of AK-47 ammunition. You want me to tell you what it is to buy from the Israelis? Arrange a drop shipment to Honduras and all the ones in between you have to pay?”

Dick Nichols said, “Not if it’s gonna depress you, Dagaberta.” That woman at the next table had a pretty face but picked at her dinner and didn’t appear to have much juice in her: the kind would rather go to a club meeting than slip out for a nooner. He said, “Hey, you boys slowing up?” And watched them get busy with their drinks. Couple of macho banana pickers. “I had a geologist look at a piece of land one time, he said, ‘Mr. Nichols, you hit oil on this property I’ll drink it.’ Shortsighted son of a bitch didn’t look deep enough.” Dick Nichols’s gaze slid over to the colonel idly rearranging his silverware. “But I have never forced a man to drink anything he didn’t want.” He looked up at the headwaiter and said, “Robert, you’re just in time.” Waited for the headwaiter to serve them and leave, then turned to the colonel and said, “Dagaberta, my little girl tells me you like to kill people. Is that right?”

The colonel stopped fooling with his silverware and tried to give Dick Nichols a calm, steady look. “Your daughter saw war as a civilian. Naturally she didn’ understand it. In war the purpose is to kill the enemy.”

“She says you killed women and children.”

“And you didn’t when you bombed cities in your wars? It happens.”

“I didn’t know you people had an air force.”

“I mean is the same thing. In guerrilla war you hit and run, hit and run. Without jails you don’t take prisoners. But you can’t let them go free, uh? Or tomorrow they try to kill you.”

Dick Nichols said, “There’s killing and there’s coldblooded murder, two different things.”

“And there is assassination, with a thin line between them in war,” Dagoberto said. “Listen, your own government, the CIA, they instruct us on the selective use of violence to neutralize people against us. What does that mean, neutralize? Your own President Reagan tells us it means, ‘Well, you jus’ say to the fellow who sitting there in the office, you not in the office anymore.’ Isn’t that beautiful, he think is so easy. I wish your president was at Ocotal with us. I see one of my men so afraid he can’t move, he’s shitting his pants, pressing himself to a wall. I say to him, ‘Come on, man, let’s go.’ But he won’t move and there are others behind us watching this. I take his gun, the magazine is still full. ‘Man,’ I yell at him, ‘you haven’t fired a single shot.’ Good grief, what kind of example is this man? I neutralized him with his own gun and neutralized several of the enemy after we tore down the Sandinista flag and set it on fire. What I’m saying to you, Dick, the only thing neutral is the gun. It doesn’t care who it kills.”

“How old was the man you shot?”

“Old enough to die for freedom.”

“Whose freedom?” Dick Nichols said. “My daughter says we’re on the wrong side in Nicaragua and have been for seventy-five years.”

Dagoberto said, “Twenty-first June, 1979, the ABC journalist was killed by a Guardsman in Managua and everyone in the entire fucking world saw it on film. That should never have happen, but it did and is the reason some people don’t like us. Ninth July the Sandinistas took Le'on. Estel'i on sixteenth July, the same day they overran the garrison at Jinotepe. I was looking at an M-16 in my face, refusing to close my eyes, and Somoza is flying to Miami with his family and his chiefs of staff and the coffins of his father and his brother. Leaving us to die.”

Dick Nichols watched the Nicaraguan glance at his friend from Miami.

“Just as he left the family of Crispin to die, on their coffee estate, taking the Guards away from there. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the Supreme Ruler and Commander of the Guard, Inspired and Illustrious Leader, Savior of the Republic… Do you want some more of his titles? How do you think of a son of a fucking whore who left us to die?”

Dick Nichols watched him.

Boy, a little Chivas could stir the man up. Dick Nichols watched him raise his drink, throw his head back to take a macho gulp, and knock over a couple of empty wine glasses putting the drink down again. While his buddy remained impassive. Maybe he was stoned. But now Crispin’s dead expression belonged to a man born of coffee money and had everything handed to him. Dick Nichols would bet Crispy had swung with a sizable amount, now invested in some Miami venture. Wasn’t that interesting?

It got even more interesting when Dagoberto said, “I returned to Nicaragua to fight the war. But I’ll tell you something, Dick, you can understand. You say the business of America is business…”

“I did?”

“You know it if you don’t say it. Okay, is the same with me. What I do is not in the name of nationalism or Somocismo, an allegiance to a dead man. What I do is a matter of economics. I want what you want. And what’s good for you, Dick, is good for me.”

Wally Scales followed Dagoberto into the Men’s room, watched the way the colonel weaved standing at the urinal and had to flatten one hand against the wall to steady himself. Close behind him, Wally Scales said, “You feel somebody breathing down your neck?… Hey, watch where you’re aiming.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come with intelligence of grave importance.” Wally Scales stepped up to the next urinal, not liking the colonel’s glazed look one bit. “You okay?”

“I feel better when I do this. Oh, man.” The colonel shivered, jerking his shoulders.

“You find out about your girl friend?”

“The hell with her. I’m not going to worry about the leprosy.”

“I wouldn’t. I’d worry more about raging social diseases, if you’re gonna entertain French Quarter whores. Or I’d worry about a guy breathing Bushmill down my neck. That’s what they drink over in Ireland. They love it, booze and Guinness stout, that dark stuff. You smell either one in your room you know he’s been in there again. Well, we were in his room, too; he’s staying in your hotel. Found his burglar tools but no gun-unless he packs it. Though I doubt that, being a visitor with an iffy passport. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Shake it but don’t break it. Hey, you’re pissing on your shoes… There you go. Now wash your hands.”

The little Nicaraguan, with his glassy eyes and gigolo mustache, zipped up and pushed off the wall to the washbasin.

Wally Scales said, “You don’t know it but you have an IRA agent on your ass, a Provo living in the same hotel. Checked in through New Orleans Immigration from Shannon by way of Managua, the provisional IRA’s great circle route; stop off to visit with comrades, the Micks now sleeping with the Latin Marxists. Why not? Jerry Boylan would take Khaddafi in his mouth for a rocket launcher. Five years in Long Kesh, the Ulster slam, flies down to the tropics for R and R and what have you, and now makes his appearance in New Orleans. Ask him, he’ll tell you to address Holy Name Societies, raise a few quid for the Sinn Fein and the unification of bloody Ireland. But he follows you all over and goes in your room when you’re out to dinner. Now, what do you suppose he wants, outside of all the freedom dollars you’re raising?”

Dagoberto splashed his face with water, rubbed it hard with a towel, but didn’t look much better than before.

“This guy is irland'es?”

“Irland'es negro-black Irish and full of bullshit. You can hear him across the room telling stories to bartenders. It’s his cover. No one with that big a mouth could be an agent.”

“What will you do with him?”

Wally Scales said, “Not what will I do with him. I have three weeks coming I’m gonna spend at Hilton Head, get out of this goddamn humidity and not do a thing but feel proud of myself, how I’m playing a vital role in the manifest destiny of my country. That have a ring to it? In any given situation I can exercise a flexible response, up to a point. But something like this, I think it comes under your taking up arms against an oppressive government and its agents. I have nothing to lose but a little self-esteem if you fuck up; and I can handle that, it’s a temporary loss. You, on the other hand, stand to blow your mission and lose everything.”

Dagoberto listened, squinting, till he threw the towel in the basin and fire came into his bloodshot eyes.

“Goddamn, you say something to me, say it!”

“His name’s Gerald Boylan and he’s in 305.”

“You want me to neutralize him?”

Wally Scales put his hand on Dagoberto’s shoulder. “Did you hear me say that? No, that would be unacceptable for me to say that. You must’ve heard somebody else say it.”

Clovis, Dick Nichols’s driver, walked away from the white stretch limo to where the dude in the dark suit was standing across the street by the edge of the cemetery. The dude had stood by the black Chrysler Fifth Avenue without moving and finally had gone over by the cemetery entrance and stood there without moving, up the street from the restaurant. The dude was good at standing without moving. Clovis said, “How you doing?”

The dude nodded at him; sort of nodded. Close up he looked like a light-skinned brother with a little Chinese or something in him. Strange-looking dude, Chink with nappy hair.

“Gets tiresome, huh?”

The dude didn’t say if he thought it was tiresome or not, standing here like a cemetery statue. Clovis turned to the restaurant, a big old mansion of a place with striped awnings in front and neon lights up around the roof.

“Place look like a boat to you?… Oh, is that right? Yeah, it looks like a boat to me, uh-huh.” Clovis turned to the dude and said, “My name’s Clovis. I believe the man you work for, one of those two guys or both that got out of that Chrysler, are with the man I work for.” Clovis waited a moment, looking at the dude standing like death at the iron-grilled entrance to where dead people lay. “You speakah English? You don’t, it’s cool. But if you speakah English, then I want to know what you have up your ass prevents you from opening your fucking mouth. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

Franklin de Dios smiled.

Clovis said, “Well, hey, shit. The man come to life.”

Franklin de Dios nodded and said, “I learn English from the time I was born, but I don’t use it much or hear it until last year. The people I work for don’t use it.”

“You from Nicaragua.”

“Yes, from there. I learn Spanish, but I learn English first, at home and also at the school.”

“Wait now. You telling me you from down there, but you didn’t learn Spanish when you a baby?”

“No, they make us learn it. I’m Miskito. You understand? Indian. The Sandinistas make us learn Spanish, but I learn English first.”

“No shit, you Indian, huh?”

“No shit.”

“Say something in Indian.”

“N’ksaa.”

“What’s that mean?”

“How you doing?”

“Yeah.” Clovis grinned. “No shit, you a real Indian.”

“No shit.”

“Man, why didn’t you talk to me when I said hi and all that shit what I said before?”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“I told you who I was. You bashful, what? Man, I look at you close I thought you were a brother. You know what I’m saying? I thought you were black.”

“Yes, one part of me. The rest Miskito.”

“How ’bout the man you work for? He Indian too?”

“No, he was from Cuba, but now is Nicaraguan. Also the other one is Nicaraguan, the colonel. We both fought against the Sandinistas, but not together. I don’t know why he don’t like them. I don’t like them because they come to my home, Musawas, and kill some people, kill the animals, the cows, with machine guns, and made us leave. They burned all the Miskito villages and made us go to asentamientos-you know like they say a concentration camp?”

“Man, that’s bad.”

“So, some of us go to Honduras, go to a place-you know Rus Rus?”

“No, I don’t believe I do.”

“But it’s not good there. So I join the war. You know the CIA?”

“Yeah, CIA, sure.”

“They gave us guns, show us how to fight the Sandinistas. Nice guns, they shoot good. But I don’t like it in the war, so I go to Miami, Florida.”

“Yeah, shit, if you don’t like the war. How’d you work that?”

“You fly there by the airline. Tell them you going back, but you don’t.”

Clovis said, “Uh-huh.” Thinking, but how did a Nicaraguan Indian know enough to do that?

“But when I go to Miami, I don’t like it so much. They have war there too, but a different kind. They arrest me one time, want to deport me.”

A car came along the street toward the restaurant and Clovis saw the Indian’s face in the headlights. Then it was dark again by the cemetery, but he had seen enough of the man’s face to know the man was talking to him straight on like he wanted to talk, not to show he was cool.

“So they try to deport you.”

“Yes, but the guy I work for spoke to somebody-I don’t know. They said it was okay and then we come here… I like this place. Some of it is like the city in Honduras, where they have the airport. Not like Miami. I could live here. But you need money, what it cost to eat.”

“You need it anywhere,” Clovis said. “I was wondering, you kill anybody in the war?”

“I kill some.”

“Yeah? Close that you could see ’em?”

“Some close.”

“With a gun?”

“Yes, of course, with a gun.”

“I never had that experience.” Clovis looked off at the restaurant. “So you just drive for the man?”

Franklin de Dios hesitated.

“Or you have to do anything around the house. You know what I’m saying? Clean the garage, drive the kids, anything like that?”

“He don’t have a garage or any kids. He has women.”

“I know what you mean. But what it is, you drive and wait, huh? Wait and then drive some more.”

Franklin de Dios said, “I drive, but I don’t wait so much. I go with him… Or sometime I go alone.”

There was a silence. Clovis had a question all ready. Go where alone? What’d that mean?

But then the Indian said, “You like the man you work for?”

Clovis said, “He’s okay. He’s full of shit, but he can’t help it. The man’s got so much money nobody can say no to him.”

And there he was, like coming out on cue, Mr. Nichols waving at him, and that was the end of the visit with the Indian.

The man sat in the front seat most of the time, the rest of the limo stretched out empty behind them, unless he was working, talking on the phone.

Clovis said, “That’s an Indian drives for one of the gentlemen you were with. A Miskita. I try to talk to him, he don’t say a word, like he’s a wooden Indian. But then, see, he does, he becomes friendly. I said to him, ‘How come you wouldn’t say nothing before when I’m talking to you?’ He said, well, he didn’t know me, was the reason. No, what he said was, ‘I don’t know who you are.’ I said, ‘Man, I told you who I am.’ You understand what I’m saying, Mr. Nichols? Why’d he change his mind like that?”

“He said he didn’t know you.”

“That’s right. ‘I don’t know who you are.’ ”

“It sounds to me like he was being polite,” Dick Nichols said. “He didn’t want you to know who he was.”

“Yeah, but he told me all about himself.”

“Like what?”

“Like being in the war and killing guys. Like he went to Miami…”

“What’s he do now?”

“He drives for one of those Nicaraguan fellas.”

“What does the Nicaraguan fella do?”

“He never said.”

“So what did you really find out?”

Clovis kept his mouth shut and held tight to the steering wheel. Pretty soon the man’s head would nod and he’d sleep all the way to Lafayette, dreaming of how smart he was. The man looked at things from way up where he was, on the boss level, too far away to feel things down on earth that didn’t feel right.

It was quiet for some time, the interstate stretching ahead of them in the high light beams.

Close in the dark of the car the man’s voice said, “How did the Indian get to Miami?”

Clovis grinned. Because the man could surprise you. He said, “Mr. Nichols, now you asking a good question.”