Mr. Hooligan (29 page)

“Nah, we’re done.”

Miles passed behind him and pitched the parts in the garbage can under the sink. “This house is going to send me to the poor house. Every day it’s something else busted. Last week the gutter, now today this. Harvey, listen, you’re gonna have to use the downstairs toilet till I get this fixed. Who’s Sir Belly?”

“What?” Harvey waking from a trance. “My cat … I know, I know, Gertrude…”

“She’s still crying up there.”

In the center of the table Harvey’s cell phone started buzzing. He picked it up, checked the screen. “See what I told you, that’s him again.”

Riley said, “Before you answer, just one more thing.” He waited, the phone buzzing. “To make yourself believable, you got to act like you’re ready to keep on stabbing me in the back.”

Harvey’s eye flickered with the hurt, then he rose with the phone and walked out of the room, saying, “Hello? Hey, brother … what’s that you say?”

Leaning against the sink, arms folded, Miles watched Riley. “You’re turning the screws on him, huh?”

Riley raised his cup to his mouth, put it down.

“Making him feel like shit, which is proper, but at least it’s better than dead.”

Riley drank off the coffee.

“What I can’t understand, though, is why you go out of your way to protect a man you don’t know you can trust anymore.”

Riley turned the cup around and around, staring at the dregs. “Because he’s my friend, the oldest friend I have,” and he looked up at Miles.

“Okay. Same reason I open my doors to you guys, because you’re my friend, and as a friend? I hope we’re doing the right thing. I know you, Riley, but Harvey—I’m not too sure about Harvey. I like him, okay, but you know…”

“I hear you.”

“And as a friend, I know you’ll understand why I have my daughter staying at my fiancée’s this weekend. This life I’m living with Lani, it’s peaceful and predictable and boring, and my house—”

Riley raised a palm. “You don’t have to say it.” He stretched out his hand and they bumped fists. “If there’s even a shadow of trouble at your door we’re off like a prom dress.”

Miles’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “But I’ve been restless, too, so if you need my help outside these doors…”

“I’ll holler.”

“Cool,” Miles said and Riley responded, “Cool.”

And that’s all they needed to say.

*   *   *

“Lopez is furious,” Harvey said, holding the cell phone in his lap with both hands.

He and Riley were sitting in the dark family room filled with old mahogany furniture and dusty photos on the walls of Miles in his boxing days.

“What he say?”

“He wants
get back
. He kept saying he wants to fucking hurt somebody.”

“Any plans?”

“One to come, it sounds like. But this is the big news: Minister Burrows cut him off for good. No further assistance. He says they’re coming down on her, some kind of internal investigation, he says. Police, people from the DEA involved, all that shit, he doesn’t know who else, except the minister’s telling him she’s out, he’s on his own. Until it cools off, but the way he’s talking, all defiant and arrogant, he doesn’t want to cool off.”

“Who’s he got with him, did he tell you?”

“Two guys still hanging with him. That’s it. One is a cousin of one of those guys that got killed in Caye Caulker the other day, and the other dude is a policeman still wants a big payday. But he’s got nobody big behind him. Everybody is scared, he says. His contacts on the BDF won’t take his calls. He says the head of the Coast Guard threatened to string him up if he comes by asking for help, and that’s why he’s pissed, Riley. He says everybody turned their backs on him because of this DEA and police pressure, and he’s blaming you and the Monsantos for it.”

“So just him and two other guys, no Coast Guard boats, no BDF guns, nothing like that?”

“That’s about it. What it sounds like, none of his contacts want nothing to do with him at the moment so he’s taking this one up himself.”

“How about you, he have any doubts about you?”

Harvey chuffed. “That’s the funny thing. He’s hardly listening to me. Just keeps giving orders, pontificating. Wants me to keep my eyes open around you.”

“Good.”

“No no, not good, not good at all. I don’t want to be in the middle of this.”

“What did I tell you about that?”

Harvey flung himself back against the chair and said, “Shit,” shaking his head. “Not good, not good. He’s threatening your life, Riley. He sounds crazy. He’s talking about taking your
life,
how he knows where you live, what you drive, serious stuff.”

“He really said that?”

Harvey nodded, gravely. “He said somebody saw you and two other men the other night at Caye Caulker in that bar.” Then, after a moment, “That true, Riley? You did that?”

“Who you gonna believe?”

“I’m just asking.”

“What else did he say?”

Harvey exhaled. “He said … well, he said something like, ‘One gets the sense that Riley James isn’t bright enough to see beyond friendship, so let’s fuck him.’ That’s him saying that, not me, okay? Like he wants me to set you up or something. ‘One gets the sense that Riley James isn’t too smart,’ shit like that.”

“Juan gets the scents, huh? Who is Juan and what do his scents have to do with me?”

That halted conversation.

Harvey sucked his teeth and waved a dismissive hand, looking away. “You’re turning this into a joke? How can you take this for a joke? Man, Turo’s rubbing off on you.”

But when Riley kept staring at him in mock seriousness, one eyebrow lifted, Harvey couldn’t fight it, he chuckled, and for a moment, a brief moment, it was like old times.

“Hey,” Harvey said. “We screwed?”

“Not if you don’t set me up.”

“No, no,” Harvey jumping to his feet, “no, that’s not … Yeah, okay, maybe I deserve that but I can’t laugh through this, I’m sorry, it’s like, like—I’m dying inside.”

“We’re going to get through this, man.” Riley watching Harvey pace the room. Riley twisted around in his seat, ignoring the pain in his abdomen, to get Harvey’s eyes. “Listen to me,” and Harvey stopped pacing and looked at him. “We’re going to get through this but we need to keep our heads,” pressing a fist against his stomach, “and think from down here. Centered. You understand? Like a rock. Right down here.”

Harvey looked at Riley. “Where did you hear that from?”

Riley shrugged. “Read it in a book one time.”

“Really? Like what, some Zen comic book?” Harvey’s mouth threatening to break out into a grin.

“Comic book? No, man, higher learning. A graphic novel.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

The ice rattled when Candice set the glass on the coaster and sat back in the rattan chair. “This is nice.”

“The whiskey?”

“Well, that too. I meant out here, this breeze, the view. I don’t think I’ve ever come out here.”

Sister Pat followed her gaze out toward the sea and boat lights winking in the distance. They were on the verandah of the Château Caribbean, no one else out there. “How long have you been here, in Belize?”

“A year and a half? Yeah, about that, maybe a few months shy.”

“And you like it?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful. Now. At first, the poverty, the heat, the dust—it was too much, too much in your face, but now—it’s a different story. Just, just look at this. That is a perfectly raw beauty out there. It’s been great for photographs. Don’t even get me started on the cayes, or the rainforest.”

Sister Pat nodded thoughtfully. “Photography, this is the place for some interesting shots, that’s for sure. And there’s Riley.”

Candice reached for her drink, putting on a tight smile. “Who is the reason you’re asking me to meet you here, I’m assuming.” She sipped the drink, peering at Sister Pat over the rim of her glass. “Mmm, this is so good. I’m not a big fan of single malt but
this
is awesome.”

“I can’t drink anymore. But I did enjoy it. To a fault.” Gazing over the railing, Sister Pat said, “When I first came to Belize, I was about your age. Wow, so long ago. I was stunned when I first came, just stunned. I was a nun, mind you, very sheltered, naïve. Taught school but didn’t really understand the culture. Trouble was I was more adventurous, relatively speaking, than the other sisters. I wanted to explore. So I did, whatever chance I got. Went on trips to the Maya Mountains, to the Blue Hole out on the reef, toured all those villages in Punta Gorda, every chance I got.”

“That’s what I try to do.”

“Good. You’ll get a good feel for the place. When I couldn’t travel, I drank. Maybe to cope with the strangeness, I’m not sure. At parties, school fairs—discreetly of course. I even became an accepted member of the expat community—the Brits, this was before independence, when the British Forces were here and there were so many Americans from the embassy. That’s when it really struck me how some of us Americans view the world. I’d do a lot of listening, I’d listen to my acquaintances talk and talk and sometimes I’d see myself reflected in them.”

“Okay, I’ll take the bait. How do Americans view the world?”

“Like it’s our playground. Like it’s Epcot. And if it’s not what we are accustomed to, well, then something must be wrong with these people. That these aren’t real people struggling with real issues just like us, you know? ‘How could they not have a mall? Why aren’t all these streets paved? My God, their leaders are so corrupt.’ We come here and demand that they meet
our
standards. It repels some of us, we won’t or can’t even imagine what it must be like struggling to make ends meet in a place that’s not like Peoria, Illinois.”

Looking at Candice as if she might be included in this assessment.

So Candice said, “You think I—being an American—you think I see Belize like that?”

“I sense you have a great affection for this country.” Sister Pat holding her eyes. “And one person in particular. But I guess I wonder, I have my doubts, how well you know what you like.”

Candice finger-stirred the ice in her drink, deciding simply to listen.

“There’s the saying ‘Where there’s smoke there’s a fire.’ The locals have one that goes, ‘If da no so, da nearly so.’ ‘If it’s not so, it’s nearly so.’ Let’s say you’re an expat, you’re new to the country and you’re driving, like a lot of them, a shiny new Range Rover, something big, you’re going to attract attention. Not only are you two shades paler than the average Belizean, but you may very well be living in a pretty nice house, relatively speaking. People notice, they talk. And let’s imagine you have a certain kind of job that requires a certain level of secrecy, you’re in the DEA, let’s say, you must necessarily associate with others like yourself, in government buildings and the U.S. embassy and the like, and people notice that, too. Word travels.” Sister Pat’s fingers swept up and fluttered. “Like pollen, settles here, settles there. Nothing dramatic, it just happens. Like dust rising when a car rolls by, part of the scenery. People talk, people listen. It’s a small country, and soon enough people have heard a little something. No big deal, you might think. But, no, in some situations, it can be a big deal. For me, anyway.”

“You’re trying to tell me something, Sister Pat, but seems to me you’re making a huge assumption.”

“I have lived here thirty-five years and I’ve seen Americans and other expats come and go, nervous white people, quiet and secretive, reserved Brits, I’ve befriended many of them. Something else—I became their de facto local guide, the—one of them called me this once—the hip sister. True. A tour guide is what I was, I had a universal pass to parties and conversations. I was a dreadful, just a dreadful embarrassment to the convent, but outside—everybody trusts a nun. I was privy to drunken confessions many a night and learned an awful lot about other Americans, just by being the friendly smiling nun at the dinners and cocktail parties and over drinks on those windy sea-view terraces, just like this one.”

Candice sipped her drink, no longer tasting it.

Sister Pat said, “There is a young man who works at the embassy, who is a friend of an old friend of mine long gone from here. This friend was once the agent in charge of DEA in Belize. We still keep in touch. And now his young protégé, I believe his name’s Henry Malone—he’s the person in charge now. Don’t ask me how I know, I can’t say—just trust me, I know. And Mr. Malone … Well, enough of him. Now we come to you.”

Candice removed her hands from the table and folded them in her lap. A slow swell of dread rolling over her. “Ask me what you want to ask me.” Her tone sharper than she intended.

“Do you love Riley?”

Candice didn’t trust her own voice right then so she only nodded.

“What are your intentions? To marry him, or imprison him?”

Candice tamped down the impulse to wisecrack, Aren’t they the same thing? Something she didn’t believe. Plus, the time for clever retorts was over. “Sister Pat, you’ve stepped over a line, way the hell over it and I’m beginning to not trust you.”