Adios Muchachos (11 page)

“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 hope 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.

Margarita took Elizabeth’s death like a real professional, rolling with the punches. She nearly went down for the count on the revelation of Elizabeth being a man, but it was Victor’s plan that really threw her for a loop. With all trace of color drained from her face, the grand old lady tottered just a smidgen. She turned her face away from her daughter, perhaps trying to avoid seeing in Alicia’s eyes a confirmation of what she had just heard.

Alicia saw that her mother needed a moment to get over the shock and went into the kitchen to brew herself a cappuccino.

“Have you made any decisions yet?” her mother asked from the living room, still not trusting her legs to move from the position in which she was frozen.

“I’ve only made one decision so far,” Alicia shouted from the kitchen, her face contorted into a mask of bleak determination. And walking into the living room, “I will not go back to the bike; never again will I pedal my ass on the streets of Havana! No way!”

Alicia could not discern from Margarita’s absentminded nodding whether her mother had given her blessing to her new-found resolve or was just reeling from the shock. She knew beyond any doubt that her mother was a very tough and practical old lady who had weathered more than her share of storms. Whatever the decision, she was convinced that her mother would ultimately support her and council her as much as possible. She always had.

What she never expected, though, was for her mother’s decision to be so immediate and categorical. “If the family adores him and if Victor is going to be on the inside with all the information about what they’re planning, I don’t think you’ll be in any great danger,” Margarita commented, bypassing the preambles and diving right into the nitty-gritty of the thing.

Damn, she’s good,
Alicia thought.
The old bird is not going to try to convince me not to do it; she’s making me convince her that I shouldn’t go through with it.

“Yes, Mother, I’ve got no problem with that part; it’s Victor who scares me—thief, ex-convict, opportunistic fairy. How can I be sure that he isn’t capable of anything else? What if I help him and then he decides to keep the whole thing for himself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! That’s what moronic delinquents do in Hollywood movies. Victor is not a moron and this is not a movie.”

“What if he decides to kill me to eliminate all trails leading to him? After the ransom I’d be worth another two million to him.”

“And what am I? Painted on the wall? If half a day goes by without me knowing you’re alive and kicking, I call the police and he’s through. He has to know that! He would have to kill us both, and that would be very, very messy.”

Alicia listened in silence, nodding occasionally.

“Besides, didn’t you say you had seen the olive skid mark and the position of the body and everything? He’s just not a dumb killer, and that’s that. You would have to be the stupidest person in the world to plan a kidnapping, murder the victim, and
then
go out to find yourself an accomplice. No, child, I’m certain that Victor may be anything you say, but he is not stupid, and therefore he is not a murderer.”

“You know, Mother, I think you even like this guy,” Alicia said, relaxing the tension.

“I would if you hadn’t told me about his thing with his boss,” she said, shuddering. “I guess I can go as far as admitting that if two men or two women like each other, well, what’s to be done? It’s a generational thing, I guess. But this guy has no scruples about screwing whatever comes along, and that just gives me the creeps.”

Alicia noticed how the wise, calculating old devil had disappeared to make way for her delightful, insufferable mother again.

“You don’t have to make that face, you know. He wasn’t screwing a leper. He really admired and respected Rieks.”

“Don’t make it worse.”

“Mother, everyone has the right to choose his or her own life style.”

“Yes dear, to each according to his needs and from each according to the quantity and quality of his instruments.”

Alicia laughed with genuine mirth. “Let it go, Mother. You never did understand anything about Marxism.”