The Laughing Falcon (11 page)

Maggie was embarrassed slightly – but unsure why – to admit that the gossip she had overheard had inspired her to use the same Slack Cardinal in her next novel, but Glo thought the idea amusing. “Have you got a part for a shy southern belle? ‘Ah do declare, suh, you do say the most wicked thangs.’ ”

Glo offered a physical description of Cardinal for the novel: “Late forties, cute but shy, doesn’t own a comb, six-five and built like a work truck; bay window with love handles, and great glaring green eyes, full of suspicion. Someone has to teach him how to smile.”

Glo perched beside her on the bed, took her hand, and looked at her meaningfully. “I hired him for a private cruise — out of sheer boredom, understand? – to escape the cigar smoke and beer farts. But I didn’t tell Chester, and I had to threaten the agent who tracked me down. If this shows up in your book, know that I still have friends in Las Vegas who break arms.”

Maggie looked at her skeptically. What could anyone do in a kayak? Sex would seem impossible even in one built for two.

“Light flirting was the most I had in mind, just a little frolic.” She hesitated, as if unsure what more to divulge.

Maggie, who was more titillated than shocked, hoped Glo was not censoring.
He drew her trembling body onto the wet sand, his glaring green eyes hot with desire
. “Well? What happened?”

“Shit all, honey; he was as nervous as a turkey on Thanksgiving eve. Reacted like I was trying to bust his balls.”

Maggie felt let down; the story lacked an appropriately erotic punchline.

“Chester says he has a record of screwing up. Delete – I’m not supposed to say that. Classified shit. Anyway, Cardinal has a right curious background. Change of subject. You look good in this joint; it’s Jane of the Jungle in her tree house. Let me see one of your wet reads.”

Maggie rummaged in her bag for one of her Nancy Wards. She hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to draw details about Slack Cardinal from the loose lips of her confidant. A state secret, a nervous screw-up of a spy with a dark history: that did not tally with her other meagre information.

The sign on his shop had said, “Closed until creativity restored.” What mysteries were concealed behind the bay window of the brooding kayak man?

Maggie was woken by the trilling of nature’s early risers. She threw back her mosquito net, breathed in the pungent tropical air, picked up pen and pad — she enjoyed writing during the early morning while the world was stretching awake. It was a time of inspiration. This was her second day at Eco-Rico Lodge: her idyll was passing too quickly. Tomorrow evening she would return to the beaches of Manuel Antonio for a week of tropical tanning before retreating north. She shivered at the thought of cold winds whipping across the stubble.

Here she could lie under light cover all night, with the windows open, and awake not to the cruel jangling of an alarm clock but to serenades of birds. She could not count the
number of melodies in their repertoires. Her
Birds of Central America
recited light-hearted names: Black-Capped Pygmy-Tyrants, Scaly-Throated Leafscrapers.

There were bugs, naturally: Bare-Necked Umbrellabirds must eat. Some tropical species were delightful: fairylike fireflies that danced through the dark of the forest, priggish praying mantises, plodding rhinoceros beetles.

She had seen three species of monkeys: the grumpy, slow-moving ones were howlers, and their harrowing
whoofs
were resounding outside her window at this moment, though they could be a mile away. She had been shown a glass frog, almost transparent, and a gaudy poison-dart frog; she had seen tracks of a jaguaroundi.

Yesterday, Maggie had stared in awe at the green living sea of the canopy before being lowered on harness and zip line to a catwalk in the treetops. She’d found she was not much in fear of the heights despite her phobia about flying. Later, a steep hike had taken them up a trail to the hot springs, where they had luxuriated in a rock-lined bathing pool, steam billowing into the cool mountain air.

Enraptured by all that she beheld, her holiday gloriously recovered from its disastrous start, she was already plotting her return next winter. Maybe she would bump into Pablo Esquivel. Maybe she would thank him. Maybe she should stop thinking about him — why was he still popping into her mind? He was yesterday’s boring tragedy.

Glo had attached herself to her, always there, stride by stride, zip line to zip line. Though she smoked and drank to some excess – maintaining she was supposed to be on a “damn holiday” – she was naturally athletic and kept trim: stretch exercises for half an hour every morning and evening, followed by vigorous aerobics. After dinner, she would loll on a hammock with a gin and tonic and a Nancy Ward romance.
She is a lawyer. He is a cop. When they clash in court, they discover they share a strange passion
.

Glo entertained Maggie enormously; they had bonded like schoolgirls in a camp dormitory. But, to Maggie’s mind, shoot-from-the-hip Gloria-May made an odd pairing with stern, ambitious Chester Walker. Still, she clearly owned his heart, and could melt him with a word or a touch.

Maggie bent to her creative labours at her balcony table. It was becoming a frolic to insinuate real people into her fiction: a gangly heroine, a glib villain, a shy work truck with a dark past. What role could she assign to a Southern temptress or to a square-jawed ex-Marine officer?

His T-shirt smeared with grease, Jacques pulled himself from under his rust-eaten Jeep. “This is as far as this baby is going today. It’s a connecting rod.”

Fiona shrugged into her heavy packsack. “Let’s walk.”

“Let’s not. We’ll camp here; this is the heat of the day.”

His bossiness irked her. Fiona found the fellow sufficiently capable, however sour and laconic, but she worried that he might show another face once he dipped into the litre of whisky she had seen him stow in his pack
.

“Suit yourself.” She marched up the track alone
.

Fiona was disappointed when she reached the rushing river’s edge; her plan to follow it upstream was thwarted by a twenty-metre cascade falling almost vertically from a rocky ridge. This was a mortifying defeat in the battle of wills with Dr. Cardinal; she would be forced to swallow her pride, rejoin him
.

But first she would sample the pool hollowed out by the falls. She stripped off all her clothes, then arced like an arrow, feeling the cold fresh snap of the water as it engulfed her
.

Not long afterwards, as she was floating, enjoying the sun on her body, she opened her myopic eyes to behold a large humanoid shape looking down at her. “The lady’s even prettier when she blushes. Found yourself a nice spot.”

With one fluid motion, Jacques pulled his shirt over his tangle of red hair, exposing a broad chest and a waist thickened with careless
living. Unbuckling his trousers and dropping his shorts, she turned her eyes away as he hurtled into the water
.

Maggie reconstructed this last mangled sentence, planted a period at the end, then tended to her cramped toes. A story was definitely unfolding; the seeds of danger and romance were planted, erotic fertilizer added.

She put her manuscript aside at the sound of the breakfast gong. This morning’s schedule included an easy meander down a valley, then an interview with Senator Walker. Because he was frequently secluded with his two advisers, Maggie’s opportunities to chat with him had been brief and limited. Tomorrow one of the helicopters was returning to take Chester (he regarded that name as “wimpy,” Glo had confided) back to Washington “for vital affairs of state.”

Yesterday, during dinner, Maggie had merrily told him her tale of being swindled; Walker had pulled several hundred dollars from his wallet and pressed them on her, refusing to hear her protests. She accepted the money, but only as a loan to be repaid with appropriate interest. But still she felt vaguely compromised.

A champagne celebration was scheduled for after lunch: this was anniversary day. “No fancy folderol,” Chuck said, “that’s an order; we’re just having a casual glass of cheer with friends.”

The dining room was deserted except for the AP reporter, Ed Creeley. Maggie poured herself a coffee and joined him, determined to endure his cynicism.

“Got any idea why we’re here, Schneider? Guy’s seeking the Republican nomination; what’s he doing in this shithole, trying to tie up the monkey vote?”

“Maybe it’s the female vote he’s after.”

“That why they brought you in? To write about his romantic escape to paradise?”

Despite Maggie’s repeated assurance that she was not Walker’s secret hireling, retained weeks ago, Creeley insisted
she was not here coincidentally: the scenario satisfied his need to find evil machinations everywhere.

“Guy’s a lightweight. He got in by a fluky few thousand votes. He’s a senator for one measly year and suddenly he sees himself as leader of the free world? Chuck’s got as much chance getting past the primaries as a frog in a flushing toilet. Especially with that albatross around his neck.”

That seemed an awkward metaphor to describe Gloria-May but the reporter could be right: despite her beauty and her buoyant openness (or because of it), her tart tongue seemed a political liability.

“Thank God,” Creeley said, “because imagine his itchy fucking finger on the trigger.”

Maggie was not particularly starchy about the occasional blunt Anglo-Saxon word, but with Creeley she endured a surfeit. He picked up on her reproving expression, lit a cigarette, and wandered out to the veranda.

As she was tucking into her half-melon, Orvil Schumenbacker, the campaign manager, came in with a lazy pudgy smile and passed Maggie a typewritten sheet. “Here are some questions you might want to ask the senator this afternoon.”

“Thank you very much.”

With elaborate carelessness, she stuck his notes unread in her bag, letting him know her art was not to be choreographed. She could not believe Walker was as boring as made out by the pamphlets and speech reprints that had been showered on her: a man with a “mission,” bent on “restoring America’s greatness.” To give Walker credit, he seemed truly patriotic, though of firm, even rigid beliefs, and he was no coward; he had won the Medal of Honor for his bravery in Vietnam.

Schumenbacker excused himself as Glo slid into the chair next to her. “I have jungleitis. The next canopy I see better be hanging over a bed. After these crackers take off tomorrow, what do y’all say we scoot on down to the beach? Find ourselves a big old fancy hotel with a damn pool.”

Maggie eagerly agreed: the body and the broomstick go to the beach. Maybe they could even take a kayak tour with the grumpy giant.

“Chester’s sulking about me hanging around Manuel Antonio beach. I might get in a widdle twubble. I am going to have a holiday if it kills me.” She turned to the waiter. “Miguel, you be a sweetie now, and put the champagne on to chill.” The young man looked long and solemnly at her, uncomprehending. “El vino de bubbly. On ice.”

Miguel finally trotted off after Glo mimed popping a cork and fizz coming from her glass, then returned with a glass of champagne with a cube of ice in it. “That’s not … Oh, forget it.” Glo accepted the glass and waved him away.

“Okay, Glo, what lies do you want to tell me for my article?” Maggie brought out her notepad, and asked her how she had met her husband. The setting had been a show in Vegas, which he had attended with some fellow officers. Glo had recognized Colonel Walker from a televised hearing: coolly holding his ground against angry congressmen. His eyes had been on her steadily during the chorus numbers. Afterwards, a note arrived in her dressing room, a rose pinned to it. All this on a day for which her horoscope had predicted romance.

“He was gorgeous. I went nuts. Had him in the sack after three nights.”

Just before lunch, Boyer escorted Maggie to the veranda, where Chuck Walker was gently swinging in a hammock. “Forgive my poor manners, Maggie, if I don’t rise. Don’t know if I have the strength.”

“You’re forgiven, senator.”

“Washington seems light-years away. They’re going to have to wrestle me onto that helicopter tomorrow.”

Despite his claims of comfort, he seemed to be on edge; more than mosquitoes were biting him: affairs of state, or perhaps potential affairs of spouse.

“Gloria-May tells me you two will be sharing a hotel at the beach. I think that’s a fine idea, and I don’t want you girls to scrimp; the entire week is on me. You make sure you keep an eye out for each other.”

Maggie hid her irritation at the implied bribe to chaperone his wife. “That’s very generous, senator, but I’d rather bill the magazine. Don’t worry about us; I’m much too practical and Glo is very sensible.”

“She does get a little frisky at times — but, hell, that’s how she swept me off my feet. Now, I hope I can answer your questions without blushing too much. Never got over being shy about the intimate matters I suspect your readers will be interested in.”

Boyer chimed in: “If we say off the record, it’s off the record.”

Maggie nodded and opened with: “A lot of people might think the middle of the jungle is an odd place for a second honeymoon. Why did you choose it?”

“Well, for one thing, it beats the jungle in Washington. I prefer real monkeys and snakes to the two-legged kind who call themselves liberals.” He laughed. “Just joking. But, you know, Maggie, I feel at home in this part of the world. Spent a lot of time here in the army. Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua.”

“Yes, you were helping train the Contras –”

“Off the record here,” said Boyer.

“Hell, what for? “Walker said. “I’m proud of whatever small contribution I made for world peace. For democracy.”

Maggie wished she had unbiased background on the senator; the publicity handouts were skimpy about his time in Central America. She knew there had been a failed vote to hold him in contempt of Congress in his military days: there had been allegations about running drugs to bankroll the Contras. When she began to ask about the hearings, Boyer again intervened. “I don’t think the ladies will be interested in that. You needed to get away, senator, to have some time with your wife before the primaries.”