The Laughing Falcon (25 page)

“Bueno
. They listen, they try to analyze my thoughts.”

When they sat opposite each other, Benito pushed the coffee away. “It is dangerous to drink this. They are always trying to administer drugs. They sprinkle potions into my food to stop me from thinking clearly.”

However disturbed, he was no fool.

“Cardinal. Your name has great significance, it is the colour of the revolutionary martyrs’ blood. You are Jacques the Red.” He laughed. “And who is this man they call Halcón? Is he reliable?”

“You have not met him?”

Madrigal shook his head. “No.”

“No one knows much about him.”

“He seems ambitious. That is not necessarily a bad thing, if it is not personal ambition.”

“His desire is to free you, Don Benito. And we must let him know you are safe and well, and ready to join your comrades.”

“First, the state must pardon me of all crimes, that way they cannot arrest me again. That is the law.” Benito picked up the tape recorder, examined it as if expecting to find some hidden lethal device. “What do they want me to say? Are you sure it’s not a trick?”

“They want you to name a mediator. They are very anxious to use Archbishop Mora.”

Benito’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Slack leaned to him, conspiratorial. “I think they have some kind of hold on him.”

“Claro
. So he is working for the other side.”

“Yes, the forces of reaction.”

“I have never trusted him.”

“They could be setting a trap for your comrades.”

“You are right, Jacques Cardinal. We must warn them.”

Slack was getting along uncomfortably well with Benito, it worried him that he had so little trouble entering his world, they shared something. He reached into a pocket for pen and notepad and began writing out a brief script. “If we word this right, the media will be sure to broadcast it.”

When Slack placed the paper in front of him, Benito adjusted his glasses and began to read aloud: “ ‘I give comradely greetings to Comando Cinco de Mayo.’ Yes, excellent. ‘I am being treated well and soon will be with you …’ But do they dare release me, Cardinal? I know too much.” He lowered his voice. “Senator Walker also has an ambition — to dominate the world through the multinational corporations that support him.”

“I share your concern.” Benito had it pretty well right.

He leaned toward Slack’s ear. “He maintains a secret militia force.”

“How do you know?”

“I have seen this with my inner eye.”

Had Cinco de Mayo any idea what they were bartering for? They must have thought the claims of mental illness were lies of the state.

“The government says you will be released if you instruct our comrades not to harm the two women.”

“They must be desperate indeed.” He continued reading Slack’s message: “ ‘I urge you to send word immediately that our political prisoners will not be harmed. Do not trust
Archbishop Mora.’ Surely that is not what they want me to say.”

“No, but you must tell the truth, you must warn your people about Mora.”

“Our comrades will hear this on the radio?”

“I will make sure of it. I will send it out to all the stations.”

“They could alter my voice.”

“But I am your witness.” Slack turned on the recorder. “Read it in your normal voice, Benito.”

One of the guards took this inopportune time to come in with
gallo pinto
and eggs and mini-boxes of cereal. He set plates and cutlery before them.

“What is it this time?” Benito snorted. “Truth serum in the corn flakes? Did you piss on the
huevos?”

The OIJota glanced at the wall, the dangling cord Slack had yanked from it, and glared at him. “How long are you going tobe?”

“Just leave us alone, okay?” Slack said. As the guard made his way out, he added, “And keep that door shut, stop trying to listen in.”

“Bravo,” said Benito. He shoved his plate away and returned to the note. “It says I am being treated well. But sometimes they poison the
pinto
. Can you see how they are weakening my body? I am losing weight.”

He was probably quite hungry. So was Slack, he’d had a juice at the embassy, that was all.

“To be safe, Benito, let’s switch plates.” He moved them about, took a forkful of Benito’s eggs, they tasted fine, no arsenic.

Benito still looked uncertain, but his hunger got the better of his suspicions, he began eating voraciously as Slack again urged the tape recorder toward him. “This is our chance to get the word out, Benito, read it into this machine.”

But Benito began rambling. “The fifth of May, it is significant, yes? The second odd number following International Workers’ Day. In La Reforma, they laughed at me. Ha! Now
the laughing has died to a stillness. The government fears I will expose the corruption that infests it, and at least one minister is trembling in his shoes.”

That would be his former boss, the head of public works, who had Benito jailed for slander. Slack liked the vibrant speech, he could see how Benito could collect a few green followers.

“Your supporters are waiting for word from you. Give them the news that you are well.” He straightened out the paper in front of Benito.

“Yes, but I demand to meet with the president. He must grant me a pardon. I am not a criminal, Jacques Cardinal, what I did was for my country. And he must fire the minister. There is no reason for blood to be shed if he does that.”

Getting this message recorded was turning out to be no easy task. Slack was fagged, his exertions of yesterday were catching up to him, and those muscle relaxants were making him woozy. In fact, he felt … drugged. As the last of the
huevos revueltos
journeyed toward his mouth, he had an unpleasant thought, they had probably doctored Benito’s food, some kind of potent sedative. He set his fork down. He felt dismay mingled with light-headedness, as if he was moving out into some strange gentle space.

“Let’s get the message recorded, okay, Benito?” He heard his own voice as if from a distance, drawn out, drawled.

“Yes, we must get word out to the cadres, they are waiting.” He was standing at the window now, opening the shutters. “Raise high the banners, comrades, the national revolution has begun!” Slack heard a single cheer from outside, either he was hallucinating or Benito had a fan.

Slack fumbled for the recorder, but his aim was off, his hand nudged the device over the table edge. He went down on knees, saw that the two AA batteries had spilled out. He had trouble getting them back in, figuring out which went where. He felt very tired.

He sat on a couch, trying to make sense of the recorder and its batteries, one would be positive, the other negative. He tried to stay awake …

Someone was pulling at Slack, shaking him, speaking urgently in his ear. “You’ve been here two hours, what the fuck’s going on?” What
was
going on, he was lying prone on a couch. He rolled over, looked up into Ham Bakerfield’s scowling face.

“He told us not to disturb him,” an OIJota said.

In the background, a commotion. “Do not trust Archbishop Mora!” The voice of Benito Madrigal, the scene was beginning to focus. Slack sat up, saw Benito cowering in a corner of the room, shouting into the tape recorder. “Repeat! Do not trust Archbishop Mora!”

Dr. Bleyer was trying to calm him down. “Relax, no one will hurt you.”

As Slack pulled himself to a wobbly standing position, Benito tossed the miniature recorder to him. “Spread the word, comrade! Be brave, don’t give in to them.” He batted away Bleyer’s extended hand. “It’s too late, you swine! It’s out! The word is out!”

Joe Borbón wasn’t at the Quepos airport to greet Slack, so he took a taxi, the driver giving him suspicious looks all the way. He had lost whatever credibility he had in this community, even the gang at Balboa’s was avoiding him now. Elsewhere, however, the guerrillas had earned support, especially among the poor and the anti-American left.

To add to Slack’s unsavoury reputation, a false report had gone out to the media claiming he was wanted in the U.S. for passing counterfeit currency. That had been Slack’s own idea, though, the kidnappers might relate better to a fellow outlaw.

The media couldn’t get enough of Benito’s taped message, they’d been replaying it all day. Somehow, Madrigal had got the recorder working after Slack conked out, had read the script with frantic gusto. The sole slightly worrying note was Benito’s ad lib with its hint of paranoia, the archbishop was a spy for the capitalist oligarchy. Meanwhile, Monsignor Mora had withdrawn his name as intermediary. The security minister had expressed regret. Slack assumed the Tico government was unhappy with the machinations of Bakerfield’s team.

In pulling off this miracle, Jacques the Red had kept his handlers’ faith alive, though he’d undergone some painful ribbing for eating the wrong breakfast. Praise came from the humourless Chuck Walker, who seemed ever more staunchly behind him. “Way to go, soldier.” Soldier. He was growing to hate that. Waste the bastards, he’d ordered.

His house seemed unusually tidy, swept out. It was Borbón’s doing, like most over-trained agents he was a cleanliness freak. He’d got rid of all the beer, too, Slack had told him to give it to a charity for Christmas.

He made himself a sandwich, then spread out a foamy on the patio and lay on it, resting his back, wondering if there was poetry left in him – but what chance of inspiration amid yapping dogs and crowing roosters? He noticed a few families had started to put up more substantial homes in the
precaria
, footings, forms, concrete block. They were digging in, making the squat a
fait accompli
before the lazy courts could move on it. One of the buildings had been made into a store, a
pulpería
, a Borden’s truck in front of it, a Pepsi van arriving.

The squatters seemed to be holding a Christmas party, they were whooping and laughing, three different radios loudly competing, salsa, jingle bells, saccharine songs of love. Slack clenched his teeth.

He heard a diesel engine outside, burping, subsiding. After a few minutes, he said, “Joe, you here?”

“Just doing dishes. I don’t like ants.”

“Where did you deliver the beer?”

“Across the street.”

Free beer, that’s why they were celebrating. “Dammit, I said give it to a good cause.”

“They’re selling it, raising funds to build a church.” Slack wanted to weep.

“This is something you asked for.” Joe materialized beside him, handed him a packet, copies of some Nancy Ward novels plus Margaret Schneider’s notepad, left behind at the Eco-Rico Lodge. Her
Birds of Central America
, too, notations scribbled in the margins.

“Did they put the pinch on this Rebozo guy yet?”

“Nope.”

“Has he been
ID
ed?”

“A little fat nothing guy everyone calls Gordo. Former government payroll clerk. Worked under Benito Madrigal. Got politicized, joined the People’s Vanguard.” A long speech for Borbón.

“What about the couple he was seen with?”

“Nada.”

“Did the ground party pick up the trail?”

“Nope.” That was it. Joe disappeared somewhere.

“Chirripó, the Talamanca,” Maggie Schneider’s note said, Slack was having trouble accepting that. How would they supply themselves in the middle of nowhere?

He listened for a while to the howling
rancheras
coming from across the road, broken hearts, lost love,
vaya con Dios
, my darling. If Joe hadn’t carted out the beer, he’d be tempted to tie one on.

He leafed through a couple of Maggie Schneider’s books.
When Love Triumphs. No Time for Sorrow. Return to the House of Heartbreak
. “Her breath came in quick starts as his hand teased at her shoulder strap.” He read on, feeling mildly voyeuristic,
as the couple hotly coupled, lips, hips, and swelling breasts, rapturous surrender. He was embarrassed to feel a slight tremor in his pants.

As he flipped through
No Time for Sorrow
, a theme seemed to surface. “Had Emma, despite her ventures up many blind alleys, finally stumbled upon the wellspring of that imponderable rapture called love?” Emma, a comely crisis worker, was afraid of flying, Tod was a stunt pilot.

He opened the notepad, fluid slanting letters, paragraphs crossed out, begun again. He had asked to see it when he’d learned, to his surprise, that nobody had bothered to read her notes through to the end. “Romantic twaddle,” Ham had said.

The pages of her work-in-progress were filled with the stop-and-go adventures of one Fiona Wardell, a voluptuous alter ego, he assumed, altogether a scary creation.
She was not interested in pandering to the weak egos of shallow men who feared strong women
.

But here she was looking for a vanishing warbler, an admirable cause. But no, a few pages later the mission changed. A lost treasure, a Spanish mission on the Savegre River, where had she got that? One of his friends, a Quepos historian, subscribed to that theory, but many scoffed.

This was interesting: several pages of hurried scribbles, relating, it seemed, to an encounter with a certain Professor Pablo Esquivel and his, “Forgive me, I cannot hold inside what I feel.”

What he was feeling for was her U.S. dollars. Something tugged at Slack about this coming-together with a Tico flim-flam artist, its bittersweet symbolism, the kiss of the Laughing Falcon, the flowers of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow …

Her postcard to her mother had mentioned a “gorgeous” professor, so likely she was incorporating real events and characters into her book. Suddenly he had bizarre proof of that.

You’re Jacques Cardinal, aren’t you?

“Slack,” he said, slurring the name. “That’s what they call me around here.”

He pried his eyes from the page, looked around to see if he was still on planet earth.

Her impression was of a man either bored with life or defeated by its challenges …. Close up, he smelled rancid
.

How had she got close enough to smell him? Had he met her? Where, in what alcoholic stupor? She’d spent a day at Manuel Antonio, they must have bumped into each other.