Quintana Roo (6 page)

In the next two days, Hooker and Heinemann were busy making preparations for the trip to Quintana Roo. It was decided that the stopover would be Campeche, since Heinemann knew the man who ran the airfield there. Hooker assigned himself the task of procuring such supplies as would be unavailable in Campeche. He gave special attention to the weapons they would take along. His Colt .45 he intended to wear as if it were part of him. For longer range, he picked out a 30-06 Springfield-model Winchester for himself and a lighter carbine for Connie Braithwaite. He was somewhat reluctant about this, since the sight of a weapon in the hands of a woman always made him nervous. Connie assured him that she was no stranger to firearms, having excelled at skeet shooting with her husband. Hooker could only hope she would do as well if the target were live and threatening. He bought no weapon for Heinemann, since the German professed a dislike for all guns. Hooker decided it didn’t matter much, since they didn’t figure to do any shooting from the airplane.

As for any men they might pick up to accompany them into the jungle, they could make do with machetes. Hooker was not comfortable with the idea of putting firearms into the hands of Indians he didn’t know.

True to her word, Connie Braithwaite wrote checks for the expenses without complaint. She seemed as eager to get on with the project as Hooker was. Earl Maples stayed in the background handling the paperwork and grumbling steadily.

Klaus Heinemann, although he still maintained that the whole expedition was madness, threw himself wholeheartedly into the project. He made careful arrangements for the landing and refueling of his airplane at Campeche. At the Veracruz airfield, he supervised the removal of two of the Stinson’s five passenger seats and their replacement with an auxiliary fuel tank. The additional 300 pounds of fuel would increase the Detroiter’s normal cruising range of 680 miles by almost half. That would be enough to let them take off from Campeche and do a fair job of covering the flight path taken by Nolan Braithwaite before they returned.

On the night before they planned to leave, Hooker slept soundly. He had done everything he could to ensure that they got off to a smooth start. Nevertheless, he was awake well before the Big Ben alarm clock standing on the bureau next to the bed clanged its alarm. He reached over to depress the button. Beside him, Alita stirred like a cat. She moved closer to him while not yet awake. Her warm, smooth body lay against his from chest to foot.

He stroked her flank, and she made a little purr of contentment. She smelled good. A mixture of spicy and sweet, with the lingering musk of the previous night’s lovemaking. Hooker slid a hand up over her firm belly. He touched her breast.

“Mmm, good morning, Johnny,” she said. Then, raising her head to look at the clock, she asked, “Why are you awake so early?”

“I had enough sleep. Anyway, it’s almost time to start for the airfield and help the Kraut load up his machine.”

Alita raised her head and rubbed a downy cheek against his bristly chin. “Ai, for a little minute, I forgot you were going away.”

“It’s not forever.”

“Too long, all the same.” She made a face at him. “And with that rich blonde gringa.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about that,” Hooker said. “Jealous women are a giant pain in the ass.”

She squirmed around in the bed so her face was above his. “I know, Johnny, but I can’t help it. Just a little bit. If I didn’t have a little jealousy, how would you know that I adore you?”

He petted the black hair that fell to her shoulders in soft waves. It was always moist and fragrant in the morning. “Okay,” he said, “but just a little.”

She gave him an eager kiss, then pulled back. “Don’t you ever get jealous, Johnny?”

“About what?”

“The way men look at me.”

“Should I?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t do anything with them, Johnny. You know that. But they look at me.”

“No law against looking,” Hooker said. Then he added, “But they better not try to take it any further,” because he knew that was what Alita wanted to hear.

She smiled and snuggled closer to him.

Sure they look, Hooker thought. This loving, trusting, black-eyed girl with the supple body was something worth looking at. He held the girl close, thinking back two years to when he first looked at her.

It was in an old house on the north end of Veracruz that had once been occupied by a minor official of the Mexican government. When the official suddenly fell from power, the house had been converted into a nightclub with a semiprivate gambling casino in the back.

The new owner of the house was a shadowy figure from Mexico City who never appeared personally. He collected a fee from the people who ran the various activities — dining, dancing, gambling, and the bedroom sports that went on upstairs. The place had a natural attraction for the clients of John Hooker.

Back in the gambling room, one poker table was leased and operated by a soft-bodied man named Tulio Ruiz who smiled and sweated a lot. Tulio himself was not a great poker player, and he relied on his daughter Alita to distract the other players from their cards as she served nachos and drinks to the table.

Hooker never took part in the games to which he delivered clients. It would be poor business, he figured, to play against the man who was paying him. Instead, he would kill time at the old house sitting at the bar, apart from the gambling action. From here he could admire Alita’s graceful movements as she carried over a tray of drinks, then bent low over the table to offer the players a glimpse of the warm valley between her breasts. He had wondered about her with a natural curiosity of a healthy male, but since he considered her a part of the action of the house, he made no move to get acquainted. It was Alita who spoke to him first one night when she took an empty stool next to him at the bar.

“You come here all the time but never play,” she said. “Don’t you like to gamble?”

“Not while I’m working.”

“Do you ever come around when you’re not working?”

“No.”

“Maybe you ought to try it sometime.”

“I don’t think I could afford the action here.”

“I’m not talking about the card game.”

“I couldn’t afford the rest of it, either.”

Alita’s attitude changed suddenly. Her eyes flashed dangerously. “Hey, mister, you don’t think I’m one of the girls that works upstairs?”

“What you do for a living is none of my business,” he told her.

“Ai, cabrón!”

She swung at him. By reflex, Hooker caught her wrist just before the openhanded blow would have smacked the side of his head.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Just cool down. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry.
Lo siento
.”

Alita tried to pull free of his grasp for another shot, but he held her fast. She continued to glare at him.

“I should have seen,” Hooker went on, “that you are much younger and prettier than the girls upstairs. The light in here is so dim I couldn’t tell until you came close.”

She relaxed a little but still eyed him suspiciously.

“And now that I get a good look, it’s obvious that you have too much class, too much
elegancia
for such work.”

That did it. Alita smiled at him, and he realized how naturally beautiful she was. He let go of her wrist. She rubbed it while keeping her eyes on his face.

“Do you really think I’m pretty?”

“Hell, yes. I think you know it, too.”

“I’m not really as young as you think. On my next birthday, I will be twenty-one.”

“Well, you certainly don’t look it.”

She studied him gravely for a moment, then said, “I don’t blame you for thinking what you did about me. My father wants me to make the men at his table believe I will go upstairs with them. Then they don’t play such good poker. So I smile and flirt and show my chi-chis, but when the game is over and they look for me, I am not here.”

Hooker chose his words carefully. “Your father is playing a game more dangerous than poker.”

“He says I bring him good luck.”

“Sure.”

“He has been very good to me, my father. Maybe he is not such a strong man, but he is all I have. My mother she died when I was just a little girl. My father gave me what he could. Now it is my turn to help him.”

“You speak English very well,” Hooker said, hoping to get off the uncomfortable subject.

She beamed. “Thank you. I have been to school.”

“I can tell that,” Hooker said.

“You know, you’re nice.” She gave him the smile again. “What’s your name?”

“Hooker.”

“Ho-oker,” she drew it out. “That’s a funny name. You got another one to go with it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t use it much.”

“Tell me.”

“John.”

“John,” she repeated, taking care to pronounce the
J
. “I like that. Do people call you Johnny?”

“Never.”

“Good. That’s what I call you. Johnny.” She laughed with such infectious pleasure that Hooker found himself laughing with her.

“I guess I can’t stop you,” he said.

After that, whenever Hooker was required to wait at the bar for one of his clients to lose their money in the gambling room, Alita would join him when she was not busy at her father’s table. She drank only Coca-Cola on these occasions, explaining that she liked a little wine but never while working.

Little by little, without Hooker’s being aware of it, their relationship grew more intimate. He found himself talking more openly to the Mexican girl than he had talked to anybody in a long time. He felt different, less guarded, with her than with the regulars at El Poche or his neighbors at the Royale, whom he rarely saw. There was something about the way she listened with her eyes fastened on his, as though what he was saying was of great importance, that made him want to talk to her.

In turn, Alita talked freely to him, and to his surprise, Hooker found himself listening and caring. She told him about the small joys and the little hurts that made up her life. She talked about her father with a kind of protective love, as though she were both daughter and mother to the man. Of her mother, she remembered little; only that she had been a dark, beautiful lady who spent much of her time in bed coughing.

Their friendship grew over the weeks, yet they were never alone together. Hooker still felt that any fooling around would violate his rule against mixing business with pleasure. Nevertheless, when Alita would touch his leg to emphasize something she was saying, he found the light pressure more sensual than the passionate embraces of some of the women he knew.

Then, some two months after he had gotten to know Alita, Hooker brought an Italian named Zucci to the big house to gamble. From the start, Hooker did not like Zucci’s looks or the way he talked, bragging of his friendship with II Duce, or his scorn of the Mexicans as an inferior race. However, Hooker was in no position to make moral judgments, and his bankroll did not permit him to turn away a paying client just because he didn’t like the man.

Zucci was a reckless card player who gloated when he won and grew sullen at every hand that went against him. The night he played at Tulio Ruiz’s table, he could not lose. Even removed as he was at the bar, Hooker grew sick of the man’s loudmouthed arrogance and took himself to a nearby cantina where he could drink his tequila in comparative quiet. He would not admit to himself how much it bothered him to see Zucci’s hard little eyes crawling over Alita’s body.

When he returned later to pick up the Italian and return him to the hotel, Hooker was surprised to see Alita standing meekly by his side. She had always left before the game was over.

Zucci was in high good spirits. “Ah, Hooker, you earn yourself a bonus tonight. You pick a lucky place for me. Look what I win.” He wrapped an arm around Alita’s waist. She made no move to get away.

Hooker looked at her. She would not meet his gaze.

“What gives?”

“Her old man is one bad poker player. Not only does he lose, he lose more money than he got. In Italy, I would cut out a man’s eye if he did that to me. When I tell this to Ruiz, he all of a sudden is ready to make a deal. ‘You like my daughter?’ he say. ‘You take her for the night. That make us all even, no?’”

Hooker stared at Alita. She kept her eyes downcast.

Zucci went on, enjoying himself. “So I tell the old man that one bimbo for one night ain’t that much to Antonio Zucci. What the hell, I can have all the gash I can handle. But I feel sorry for the old fart, and besides, the daughter ain’t so bad. So I tell him okay. What do you think, Hooker? Did I get a bargain?”

“How much?” Hooker said.

“Eh?”

“How much did Tulio lose to you?”

“Four hundred pesos,” Zucci said. “Chicken feed. But the old man could only come up with three. I couldn’t let him do that to Antonio Zucci. I was ready to cut the other hundred out of his face when he offer me the girl.” He looked Alita slowly up and down. “I even let your old man keep his three hundred. You better be worth it, kid. You’re pretty dark, but I hear the browner they are, the hotter they are. That true?”

Hooker pulled out his wallet and emptied it. He counted out bills and shoved them under Zucci’s nose.

“Here’s your four hundred pesos. Let’s go.”

Zucci stared down at the money. Hooker stuffed it into his breast pocket. “Let’s go,” he said again. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

The Italian stared at Hooker, his eyes squinted into slits. “What’s the idea? I made a deal with the old man.”

“The deal’s off. You’ve been paid.” To Alita, he said, “Get inside.”

“Just a minute.” Zucci took hold of Alita by the arm and held her. “I don’t need your lousy four hundred pesos. I want the girl.”

Hooker grabbed Zucci by the lapels of his Italian silk suit and lifted him until he was standing on tiptoes. He frog-marched the gambler back until his shoulders hit the doorjamb. With his face so close their noses were almost touching, Hooker said in a low, dangerous voice, “I think you better take the money, Mr. Zucci.”

The color drained from Zucci’s face as Hooker held him just off the ground. He put on an unconvincing smile. “Hey, okay, Hooker, okay. I forget about the girl. I didn’t know how it was with you and her.”

“You still don’t,” Hooker said. He held the other man a moment longer, then eased him back to the ground and released his lapels.

Alita gave him a long, enigmatic look, then disappeared into the house.

• • •

Two nights later, Alita showed up at Hooker’s rooms in the Royale.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said. “I came last night, but you weren’t here.”

“I was out.”

“I know. And if you are out tonight, I come back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.”

“What for?”

“You paid for me. Here I am.”

“Forget it. Go home.”

“You don’t want me?”

Hooker took a closer look and caught the glint of mischief in the girl’s eye. “I didn’t say that,” he told her.

“Then how about if I come in?”

“Aren’t you working tonight?”

“I don’t do that work anymore.”

“Because of the Zucci business?”

“Yes. My father he swear he never do anything like that to me again, but I tell him one time is already too much. Did you say I can come in?”

“Well … sure, come ahead.” Hooker stood aside. Alita picked up a small traveling bag from the floor at one side of the door and carried it into the room with her.

“Hey, I said you could come in, not move in.”

Alita looked up at him through thick black lashes. “I just brought a couple of things with me. I want to look pretty for you.”

“You look pretty enough.”

She smiled. “You do like me, don’t you, Johnny?”

“Sure I like you, but — ”

He never finished the sentence, for Alita threw her arms around him, pulled his head down, and kissed him. Surprised at first, Hooker found himself enjoying it. Then enjoying it a lot. When at last they broke apart, they were both a little breathless.

“You can’t stay here,” Hooker said.

“Why not?”

“Because this is where I live, and I live alone.”

“It is not natural for a man to live alone.”

“I like it.”

Alita turned in a slow circle, taking in the scattered newspapers, the crumpled clothing, the unwashed dishes mounded in the sink, the unmade bed. “You could use somebody to tidy things up for you.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Maybe just once in a while?” She moved forward until their bodies touched.

“Oh, what the hell,” he said.

• • •

During the two years since that night, Hooker found, to his surprise, that it was a growing pleasure to have the girl around. She kept just enough of her things at his place to stay a few days at a time and never hung around long enough to get tiresome or to disrupt his life.

After the unpleasantness with Zucci, Alita’s father wisely sold his poker concession at the old house and invested in a shop that sold authentic Mexican handicrafts he obtained cheaply from Japan. When Alita was not with Hooker, she helped Tulio in the shop and lived in the small apartment behind it.

• • •

Thinking about the warm brown girl who lay next to him now, Hooker had a pang of regret about accepting the job in Quintana Roo. He shook it off.

“I’ve got to go.”

Alita made a small sound of protest and hugged him closer.

“Save it,
chiquita
,” he said. “I’ll be back in two weeks. Maybe less.”

“I got a bad feeling about this job, Hooker.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about that.”

“Do you have to go right this minute?”

“I’m already late.”

“Just a little while longer?” Her hands moved familiarly over his body.

“Oh, what the hell,” Hooker said.

Half an hour later, he got out of bed.