Rivera regarded her with astonishment for a few unguarded moments and then hopefully concealed it. He’d never imagined, ever, that Henrietta would reject him! It was inconceivable; it still was, despite her arrogant, spoiled words. Every consideration had always been when, not if. Rivera felt foolish, abjectly foolish; he recalled her giggled outburst—Oh darling, oh my darling—and realized she had been laughing at him. Actually laughing! At him, José Gaviria Rivera! As she must have laughed before, when he didn’t know she was doing so. Those at the dinner table tonight had doubtless laughed at him, knowing his function. A gigolo. He would have been perfect for the jokes, ideally qualified according to the tradition. A Latin, tango-dancing gigolo. Had she seen his brief, honest reaction to her dismissal? He hoped not—worried now about later jokes, among her friends—but it was too late. Only one thing mattered now. Getting out with as much dignity as possible. He tried an uncaring laugh, not sure if he fully succeeded, and said, “Of course I’m not asking you to abandon all that, not if it’s important. I just thought I’d give you the chance.…” Striving for lightness, he added, “It might have been a different sort of fun, for a while.”
“That’s just it, my darling: for a while. But where would we go from there?”
You could go to a whorehouse, where you’re naturally suited, thought Rivera. He didn’t try to laugh again but he smiled and said, “But you’re right; Paris is only an hour away.” It wouldn’t be much of a victory, but he was trying to grab what he could and he’d enjoy turning her down when she suggested coming. And she would call, he knew. Flying to Paris for an assignation would be exciting to Henrietta—fun, like traveling with armed bodyguards.
In immediate confirmation Henrietta said, “I’d like that! And we’ll have all the time in the world, won’t we?”
Where was his dignified exit line? “Nothing to do except have fun!” he said. The bitch, he thought, in a fresh flush of rage, treating him like a gigolo!
“On the subject of fun,” said Henrietta, coquettish again. “Is this a late-night-drinks party or do we fuck?”
This was the moment, Rivera thought, the moment to dismiss her and haughtily walk out. And then he paused. That would be turned into another joke, if he did. The poor darling was so crushed that he scuttled away with his tail—or maybe it was his prick—between his legs. He hoped she’d realize later he’d treated her like the whore she was, for that one last time. “We fuck,” he said.
The City of Athens, upon which the tanks and the Stinger missiles had supposedly been loaded in San Diego, together with acceptable End-User Certificates naming France as their destination, was a rusting, engine-strained hulk of a freighter chartered by Belac because it was cheap and because he had gained $40,000 on the budgeted transportation costs. A day after sailing, one of the turbines failed, and the freighter put into Manzillo for makeshift repairs. It was there that the master received the expected instructions from Havana, rerouting the tanks direct to Angola. By return, the captain advised Havana of his engine troubles and warned of a delay.
It took a further four days for the City of Athens to cover the comparatively short distance to Balboa, almost at the mouth of the Panama Canal, and there the engines failed again. This time Havana cabled that the City of Athens should not attempt the Atlantic voyage.
It should make for Cuba.
A message advising Rivera of the unexpected detour was sent that night from Havana.
TWENTY-EIGHT
O’FARRHLL HAD no idea how long everything would take, so he called Petty on the man’s outside, insecure line and said he was being held in Chicago on family business for a few days; all the bookkeeping was up to date and there was nothing outstanding. Petty said he appreciated being told and solicitously asked if there were anything he could do. O’Farrell said he didn’t think so.
O’Farrell went to see McMasters on the second day. Billy’s description had rung some bells with people in the narcotics division. There was a blank on anyone named Rick, but there was a rap sheet for narcotics dealing on a Felipe Lopez Portillo, who was known to drive a Toyota. He was gay, so Rick was probably the current lover; Felipe got them through their drug dependence and could always take his pick. Boxer had been identified. There were two possession and three supplying convictions against a Rene Ibañez. He’d fought flyweight and briefly been considered a Golden Gloves contender in his class. He’d started living the good life before the good live arrived and had screwed up: he’d fought so badly in his last official fight that there’d been a drug test that had proven positive and he had lost his license. He still fought sometimes on the fifty-dollar-a-night circuit, so he kept himself in shape; particularly by bicycling on a racing machine. And he had a red rose tattooed on the middle finger of his left hand.
“Portillo?” O’Farrell asked. “Ibañez? What nationalities?”
“Portillo’s Colombian. Ibañez is Cuban-American.”
O’Farrell waited to feel something, but nothing came. The anger—the forbidden emotion—of that first night had gone now, and he knew although he had an identification he wouldn’t go seeking them, tonight or any other night. It was still difficult to believe that he’d done that, someone with his supposed control. He said, “You going to pick them up?”
McMasters shook his head. “They’re not on the streets, won’t be, I guess, until they think the heat’s off. And we won’t, even then. Not for what happened with Billy.”
“What!”
McMasters frowned. “You think we’re going to arraign streetwise drug dealers on the word of an eight-year-old kid? Their lawyers would suck us up and blow us out in bubbles.”
“Then what the fuck was it all about?” O’Farrell exploded. “Why’d you have me drive Billy so far into the ground that he’ll need a psychiatrist, if it was all one great big waste of time!”
“It wasn’t a great big waste of time, Mr. O’Farrell,” the other man said calmly. “We didn’t know Portillo and Ibañez were operating. Now we do. And we know how they’re operating, which is something else we didn’t know. There’s a marker sheet on both of them and we wait and we watch. We watch until they try it again and this time we catch them, only we have more than the word of a kid who believes spacemen exist. We have the evidence of an equally streetwise, hairy-assed narcotics officer who won’t be sliced up like chopped liver in the witness box.”
“Bullshit!” O’Farrell said. “They won’t try a kid from Billy’s school again, if they’re as streetwise as you say. So what have they got? The choice of a hundred schools, all over the city. You got enough officers to stake out every likely school, for as long as it takes? Your way they could go on operating for months! Years!”
“What’s your way, Mr. O’Farrell?” McMasters asked. “Pick them up off the streets, when we do see them, or bust into wherever we find they’re living? Take them to some back lot and tell them they don’t deserve to live, which they don’t, and blow them away? Summary justice, quick and neat and tidy, no need to bother a judge or jury? That’s not the way justice works in this country, sir, irritating though it is sometimes.”
O’Farrell swallowed, gazing at the other man, any response jumbled and clouded in his mind like those children’s toys that instantly become an obliterating snowstorm by being turned upside down. Finding them and killing them had been exactly what he’d been thinking, what he still thought. Justice—the justice of courts and attorneys and measured argument—didn’t come into it, had no place. At last he said, “And so it goes on?”