Lullaby

He asked him instead what the name of this posse was.

Herrera said again that it was bigger than Shower or Spangler, bigger even than the Tel Aviv posse, which was a strange name for a gang run by Jakies, but it happened to be real nonetheless. As a side excursion, Herrera told Kling that the way the Jakies decided to call their gangs 'posses' was from watching spaghetti Westerns down there in the Caribbean, which were a very popular form of entertainment down there, the Westerns. Kling thought that was very interesting, if true. He still wanted to know the name of the posse.

'I don't know the name of this posse,' Herrera said.

'You don't.'

'I do not,' Herrera said.

'These guys want to kill you, but you don't know who they are.'

'I know the people you arrested were trying to kill me.'

'Did you know those people before they tried killing you?'

'Yes,' Herrera said. 'But not who they were.'

And here the fairy tale began to grow and grow like Jack's beanstalk.

Or Pinocchio's nose.

According to Herrera, he'd been sitting in this very same bar, Las Palmas, where he and Kling were sitting at the time of the tale, in one of the booths there across the room, when he overheard a discussion among three black men sitting in the adjoining booth.

'Uh-huh,' Kling said.

'These three men were talking about the shipment I just told you about.'

'Talking all the figures and everything.'

'Yes.'

'The hundred kilos . . .'

'Yes.'

'The discounted price . . .'

'Yes, all of that.'

'And the date of delivery. All the details.'

'Yes. Except where. I don't know where yet.'

'You overheard all this.'

'Yes.'

'They were talking about a shipment of cocaine, and they were talking loud enough for you to hear them.'

'Yes.'

'Uh-huh,' Kling said.

But, according to Herrera, they must have seen him when he was leaving the bar, and they must have figured he'd been listening to everything they'd said, so they probably asked the bartender later who he was, and that was how come they'd tried to kill him on New Year's Eve.

'Because you knew about the shipment.'

'Yes.'

'And, of course, you could identify these men.'

'Of course.'

'Whose names you didn't know.'

'That's true, I didn't know their names.'

'James Marshall, and Andrew Fields and . . .'

'Well, yes, I know the names now. But then, I didn't know the names.'

'You didn't.'

'I did not.'

'So why were they worried about you? You didn't know who they were, you didn't know where delivery would be made, why should they be worried about you?'

'Ah-ha,' Herrera said.

'Yeah, ah-ha, tell me,' Kling said.

'I knew the delivery date.'

'Uh-huh.'

'And how much cocaine would be on the ship.'

'Uh-huh. What's the name of the ship?'

'I don't know. Swedish registry. Or Danish.'

'Or maybe Finnish.'

'Maybe.'

'So they got very worried, these three guys in this posse - they did mention a posse, huh? When you were listening to them?'

'Oh, yes. The posse this, the posse that.'

'But not the name of the posse.'

'No, not the name.'

'Too bad, huh?'

'Well, that I can find out.'

'The way you can find out where delivery's gonna take place, huh?'

'Exactly.'

'How?' Kling asked. 'These guys are trying to kill you, how do you plan to find out where they're gonna take delivery of this shit?'

'Ah-ha,' Herrera said.

This was some fairy tale.

According to Herrera, he had a cousin who was a house painter in Bethtown, and this man's wife cleaned house for a Jamaican whose brother was prominent in posse circles, who in fact reputedly belonged to the Reema posse, which wasn't the posse in question here. Herrera knew that if his cousin's wife, who was his cousin-in-law, asked a few discreet questions about the person - Herrera himself - who'd almost got killed on New Year's Eve, she could find out in three minutes flat the name of the posse the three assassins belonged to. And once she told Herrera the name, the rest would be easy.

'How do you know this isn't the Reema posse?' Kling asked.

'What?' Herrera said.

'You said the Reema posse was not the posse in question.'

'Oh. I know that because my cousin's wife already asked some questions, and it wasn't this posse that tried to do me.'

'So once you learn the name of the posse in question, why is the rest going to be easy?'

'Because I have connections,' Herrera said.

'Uh-huh,' Kling said.

'Who know such things.'

'What things?'

'Posse business.'

'Uh-huh.'

Kling looked at him.

Herrera ordered another Corona and lime.

Kling said, 'So what's in this for you, José?'

'Satisfaction,' Herrera said.

'Ahhh,' Kling said, 'satisfaction.'

'And, of course . . . protection. You owe it to me.'

Here we go with the owing again, Kling thought.

'You saved my life,' Herrera said.

Kling was wondering if there was even the tiniest shred of truth in anything Herrera had told him.

* * * *

The Steamboat Cafe was in a newly created mall-like complex directly on the River Dix. South and west of the midtown area, Portside had been designed with an adult trade in mind. Three restaurants ranging from medium-priced to expensive to very expensive. A dozen better shops. But, alas, the teenagers who discovered the area weren't interested in eating at good restaurants or buying anything in up-scale shops. They were interested only in meeting other teenagers. Portside was a good place to do that. Day and night, teenagers began flocking there from all over the city. In no time at all, thousands of them were wandering through the beautifully landscaped area, congregating on the benches, holding hands on the walks, necking under the trees on the cantilevered riverside platforms.

In this city, adults did not like teenagers.

So the adults stopped going to Portside.

And all the boutiques, and the bookshop, and the florist, and the jewelry stores were replaced by shops selling T-shirts, and earrings, and blue jeans and records and sneakers. The very expensive restaurant closed in six months' time, to be replaced by a disco called Spike. The merely expensive restaurant also closed; it was now a thriving McDonald's. The Steamboat Cafe, the medium-priced restaurant, had managed to survive only because it actually was a transformed steamboat floating there on the river and docked alongside one of the platforms. Teenagers loved novelty.