The Dream Merchant (32 page)

Angela must have come into town on her own. It was her little surprise, Jim decided. He went to the Tropicana and waited. He read the newspaper and waited. But he had a feeling in his stomach she wasn't coming. Something was wrong. Something about the birthday present. There had been a misunderstanding. After two hours he called home and she wasn't there. No one knew where she had gone. She must have misunderstood his intention, or she would have run to meet him. Any woman would have.

Angela didn't come back to the house that night, or the next night.

She didn't come back. He decided that she must have returned home to the village to visit her parents and little sisters. There was nowhere else she could have gone. Surely she would come back in a week or two. Or if she didn't he'd go to the village and bring her back. He settled on this idea and calmed himself down. Jim returned to the camp and went back to work. The camp was the solution to all his problems. It quickly absorbed him.

*   *   *

After six months operating the machine, and nearly four years since losing his factories in Canada, Jim was back in the money. He had more than eight hundred thousand stashed in his wall safe in Manaus, and each week there were more thousands coming to him from the gold sale. Only he didn't know what to do with the money. His whole adult life, he needed wealth as a test of character—for Jim, simply the act of making money was the hot button—but after buying the basics he wasn't sure what came next. Having a glut of wealth was the backwash of having none, and each generated pools of anxiety.

Marvin Gesler had always made the large-money decisions beyond houses, cars, and boats. Jim couldn't keep stuffing money into the safe. One of his men could have pried it out of the wall. Jim was afraid to use the local banks. He called Phyllis because he didn't know where to stash his money. He instructed her to fly to Miami and take a room for a week in the old Eden Roc hotel on the beach. He prepped Ribamar about the trip, warning that the sluice box mustn't be operated unless he was standing there himself, monitoring the final sifting of rich gravel. If he turned his back for a minute, the gold would walk. Jim reminded Ribamar to keep logs across the runway, although he understood the implications better than Jim. While Jim was in Florida, Luis would also remain in the camp. Luis was broken with anxiety, but Jim couldn't bear to let him go and kept up the pretense that Luis was his key guy. He was a dear man and Jim believed he'd snap out of it. Before Jim left he gave Iliana his room number at the Eden Roc, where Phyllis had already checked in. Iliana offered to fly into the camp, to make sure things were running smoothly, and he reminded her to call Ribamar on the radio first and ask what supplies or spare parts he might need.

*   *   *

Jim flew to Miami feeling an unfamiliar gloom. The good life, all of his dreams, was back in the jungle clearing. It was like a premonition, he reflected to Mara and me. He felt impatience and dread at the prospect of sharing a room with his young wife. Jim was safe in the rain forest, but she could maim him.

I should never have married Phyllis, Jim said to us, and Mara nodded solemnly, as if they were back again on the same team. And he believed her, believed all her junk like the biggest sucker in town. But it was easy for me to say he should never have married Mara. Another man couldn't have found respite in the jungle.

*   *   *

In the vast but worn lobby of the hotel, Phyllis greeted Jim standing beneath a giant discolored chandelier. She wore a puzzled smile and her body was all soft, particularly her shoulders and arms. It was the first glimpse of his wife in two and a half years. She was the same age as Iliana, but Phyllis couldn't have survived two days in the jungle.

She took his hand and guided him to a restaurant near the pool, ordered a bottle of red wine. The place smelled of chlorine and laundered towels. Phyllis was looking at him for clues, for a way inside. She was shaking her head, amazed. Jim had grown so taut, all sinew and brambles. He'd lost thirty pounds. What? he asked her impatiently.

I'm just so happy to see you, she said.

She jumped into the narrative to fill the void. Marvin had run off to Europe without ever making a court appearance. No one knew where he was.

You know, Jim, you and Marvin have become big mystery celebrities in Toronto. Both of you on the lam like bank robbers. You've been in all the papers.

Now her big daffy smile.

His eyes kept slipping away from hers. He asked her a few questions about Marvin. After so much mileage Jim still had a taste for his partner. But she didn't know much. Marvin also had lost his house, and soon after his secretary left him for a salesman. The government had built a massive case against Jim and Marvin for just under $20 million in back taxes and penalties. In the indictment Jim's crime had been described as a tax evasion scheme as financially sophisticated as it was venal. He smiled at that. Jim could barely balance a checkbook. She smiled back.

But he had nothing else to say. He'd become so skinny she couldn't find him, and he had so much disdain. In her desperation, she talked a jag. Facts, goodwill, stories burbling out. Michael had left for California to join Ava. He'd done things before he left Phyllis hadn't wanted to tell Jim on the phone. Michael had run around with a group of boys who took drugs. One night they stole a car. Jim nodded. That was it, next subject. He didn't want to think of the boy or anything in her world. Phyllis's singsong voice was wrenching.

After three days in the hotel he said he needed to get back to Manaus. There was no discussion. Jim, she said, shaking her head. She'd just wanted him to feel her caring heart; she'd kept it for him. But he couldn't. Despite the savings accounts they had just opened together in ten Miami banks, she never expected to see him again. She could never have guessed that from this point in the story they had another twenty years of marriage ahead, many of them rich with travel and friends and Jim's contagious optimism.

 

31.

On a clear Sunday morning, Iliana flew from Manaus to the camp with Ramon Vega and his youngest brother, Herman. When they were ten miles out, she called the radio operator to say she was arriving in Ramon's helicopter and there was no need to remove the logs from the airstrip; they'd set down in front of the cantina. She added to tell Ribamar, if he was around, that she'd managed to find a replacement water pump for the spare generator and that Ramon had brought gifts for the men. That was code for Cuban cigars and fine Kentucky bourbon. Jim's men all liked Ramon. He was one of them.

Ramon banked the orange helicopter over the tall trees on the east end of the clearing, passing over Jim's gold sluice, and then at twenty feet he came racing down the center of the landing strip. He took a swing over the dormitory and cantina, and he hovered there, creating a tornado above the buildings. A few of the girls ran outside and waved. What a cowboy!

As he brought her down in front of the cantina he could see Jim's gunmen appreciating their lazy Sunday morning. Most of them were relaxing on benches and chairs along the two westerly buildings, about twenty men, Ramon guessed. Some were talking to the girls, who looked angelic with their sleepy faces. He knew the men would be hungover from Saturday night.

The day was gorgeous, not so hot as usual, and yet the morning sun cloaked the jungle in a honeyed glow. Ramon stretched and smiled at his kid brother, who nodded once, sharply. If Jim had been here to see the helicopter bank down over the trees on this lazy day of rest, he might have recalled Ramon's warning.

While the rotors idled to a stop Ramon waved to the men from his window. Ribamar was standing a few yards away at the corner of the barracks, leaning against his old carbine. Iliana, seated behind Ramon, took in the morning camp and gestured hi to Luis, who smiled back meekly. Then one of the girls waved and Iliana turned away.

Jim had always liked Ramon's brother, who was a strong kid of about twenty-four. Herman was fearless and he understood the jungle. He could track game and despite a thick-muscled body, he could pull himself up a tree like a cat. And he was true, like Ribamar. Herman would gladly take a bullet for Ramon, whom he adored. Jim would have hired Herman, made him a top guy, but that wasn't possible. Herman always wanted to be with his older brother.

Ramon was smiling as if he were off to a picnic with his wife and kids. Herman was wired, but he was also pleased about the morning's adventure, nodding to some
musica
inside his head. On their laps, beneath the line of the Plexiglas window, the brothers were holding short-stocked Uzi automatics with long clips that rode up into their bellies. Herman kept finding the trigger with his finger.

Don't shoot your legs off, Brother, said Ramon. The brothers grinned broadly, and then on the beat Herman pushed open the door on his side and stepped out, blocked from Jim's men by the cockpit. There was no one on the outboard side of the helicopter and Ramon took his time climbing down like an old creaky guy, he was such a player, and he liked tweaking his little brother, who was very high-strung. Herman shook his head, oh man.

Then the brothers took four long steps in tandem, clearing the front of the fuselage, and they leveled the guns and started firing. They fired and fired with the guns pulled tight against their shoulders, fired at everyone in sight. The men dropped like deadwood and the air was filled with burning metal and smoke. In the cockpit, Iliana was shouting, No, no! and shaking her head.

Most of the men and women were already down and the brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, glued to their guns, crisscrossing their fire, showering everything with lead.

Ribamar managed to get off one shot before he was hit. He struggled to get around the corner of the building.

Then Herman seemed to stumble over his own legs and he flopped onto his back. He reached up with his hand, grinning toward his brother.

Ramon slapped one more clip into the gun and began firing at bodies, though most of them were still. Herman couldn't get off the ground, though he tried to get his powerful legs moving. He was holding his belly. Iliana was staring out the window with a dead expression.

In less than half a minute the brothers had shot off four hundred rounds into twenty-odd men and five women. The air smelled like it was burning up.

Ribamar had made it behind the barracks. He had been shot through a leg. Ramon thought about chasing him down. Ramon could have caught him in a minute, but Herman was bleeding through his fingers and Ribamar was as good as dead. He'd try to make it into the jungle before Ramon's men arrived. The men would kill Ribamar before the day was out or the jungle animals would do it, unless he first bled to death. Everyone else in the camp was dead except for the radioman and one of the girls. They both came outside with their hands up. Ramon shrugged. Now they worked for him. He hauled his brother into the helicopter, started the engine, and pulled out of the clearing.

*   *   *

The following afternoon, when Jim arrived at his estate in Manaus, he found the front gate open and the place nearly deserted. Everyone had left except for a maid and two of his gunmen who were packed to go and clearly unnerved by Jim's unexpected appearance. They told him of the massacre in measured words. Now it was Ramon's camp. Jim could feel loyalties shifting even while they spoke. He asked about Luis and Ribamar, and one of the men shrugged. They'd heard that many had been killed, even some girls. Jim needed to get out of the house fast. Any minute, Ramon could drive through the gate with his men. He would kill Jim on the spot unless Ramon restrained himself to first enjoy a beer and a few laughs. Jim went to his bedroom, took the remaining cash from his wall safe, a few pieces of clothing, and the stainless rifle, and shoved them into a large duffel bag. He left in the waiting taxi.

He recalled something Ribamar had once said to him. All problems are small problems. He wondered if this was a small problem. He got out of the cab in the downtown area of the city, across from the opera house, and walked a few blocks down a side street until he found a nondescript hotel. He checked in and went up the elevator to his room. Jim, when you are afraid, don't move; think about the situation. It was Ribamar's steadying voice.

But in fact, Jim didn't feel afraid. He needed to decide what he wanted to do. The logical alternative was to go back to the States. But the Manaus airport would be very dangerous. Ramon Vega ran a charter service and his men were usually sitting around. If they saw Jim, they would kill him and the police would be paid off. Jim was a fugitive. If he went to the Canadian embassy for help, he'd be arrested and sent back to Canada.

The life in Brazil had led him to a set of alternatives that would have been unthinkable three years earlier. But Jim was no longer that person. Phyllis had recognized this immediately in Miami when she saw him and touched his arm. This moment was an expression of who he had become.

Jim could try to escape or fight. His education in the jungle had prepared him to do either of these things with considerable skill. If he had the opportunity he would kill Ramon Vega. Killing was no longer a line that stopped Jim or even caused great turmoil. It was one of his options. This pleased him, although he knew it was much more likely that he'd be seen by Ramon's men and killed himself. Either way, it didn't seem earth-shattering.

Jim had a lot of cash. He could hire a car and drive to Barba or Ayrao or perhaps take a slow riverboat to Tabatinga. From these places maybe he could rent a small plane and get to Rio. He had to decide.

He kept imagining Ribamar, wounded and hiding out in the trees, waiting for him. He tried to shake it off as a bothersome fantasy. Ribamar was dead. But sneaking out of the country felt wrong.

Jim had long been guided by appetites, needs, and urges, like his own father half a century before. In this one respect Brazil had not changed Jim. He had never been moved greatly by formal religion or social conventions except insofar as precepts that might facilitate his selling. His fidelity toward family and friends flowed naturally from his affection and caring, which was intense and deeply felt. Loved ones were a sublime pleasure and yet over the years their faces changed like the seasons. Old favorites were cast out for misunderstandings or financial treasons or because Jim grew bored and needed to change venues, but for that finite and acute period of inclusion those closest to Jim were held very dear, and for them he'd walk the line.