Upon deposit of their invoiced payment, Deng would bring his league of revolutionary leaders to see the launch headquarters for the project he had not yet named in correspondence with the brotherhood, but had privately come to call Operation Blunt Fist.
The customary flourish of an appearance by General Deng Jiang was dampened by the logistics of Mango Cay’s lagoon: to get from the pontoon of the seaplane to the dry sand of the beach required a calf-deep, three-step wade through the Caribbean. Deng, who had been here before, had come prepared: he’d removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his khakis to the knee while still inside the float plane. Ill-prepared by comparison, PLN Rear Admiral Li Zhu strode into the water in his tennis shoes and jeans. Li, at least, unlike Deng, had dressed in the assigned disguise-Levi’s jeans, Nike T-shirt, Reebok sneakers. He looked as American as a man like Li was capable of looking.
Deng and Li were met on the beach by the island’s security director, a grotesquely muscle-bound man with oily black hair and perhaps the thinnest neck ever seen on a man of his bulk. With dark bags under his eyes, whitehead zits spread across his forehead, and an upper body befitting a winner of the World’s Strongest Man competition, he represented a rare dichotomy of both sickly, blemished weakness, and near-ideal physical health. There was no one on earth who resembled this man.
His name was Spike Gibson.
Gibson gave General Deng a halfhearted bow.
“Lou bahn,” he said, Mandarin for boss.
Deng nodded at his middleman and kept walking, barefoot in the sand. “You have taken care of our guests, I gather,” he said.
“Eleven strong, most of them relaxing in the cabanas. The first six came in last night, the other five an hour ago.” The oddly disproportionate muscles in Gibson’s chest were nearly splitting the fabric of the tropical print shirt he wore, but when he spoke, his neck stretched even thinner than its normal, scrawny state.
Deng looked sternly about the resort.
“I don’t see any of them utilizing the facilities,” he said. “This is not what I ordered.”
Two steps behind, Li peered past Deng to take in the pool, the bar, the racks stacked full of plush towels, the rows of portable lounge chairs, the cabanas, the bartender, the maid. The sun was oppressively hot; Deng and Li had each already begun to sweat.
“Our guests are a little shy, General,” Spike Gibson said, telling a bald-faced lie. “Most of them are staying inside-looking to keep cool.” In fact Spike Gibson had instructed the men they were not allowed on the beach for longer than five minutes at a time.
Deng grunted. “Tell them that while they’re here, the point is to appear that they are vacationing. Tell them I expect all of them to take full advantage of the resort and all its amenities.”
Gibson said, “Of course, Comrade General. As you want it.”
“And your other projects?”
Gibson returned Deng’s gaze without speaking.
Deng didn’t budge. Gibson shrugged.
“All is well,” Gibson said.
Deng turned and walked onto the poolside tile, Admiral Li in tow. Gibson summoned the maid, asking that she show the leaders to their rooms.
Passing Gibson, Li caught the security director’s eyes and kept hold of them as he crossed the poolside patio. Just before turning the corner, he bowed officiously, the act meant to emphasize that Li was the honored guest, and Gibson, his subservient host. Gibson jerked his chin at Li-a bow in Gibson’s language-and watched as he walked away, Li’s wet tennis shoes squeaking on the tile as he went.
26
Deciding he needed a break from the stakeout routine, Cooper took a drive to the bar where it might have appeared, to the untrained eye, that the albino’s dark-skinned girlfriend was working as a cocktail waitress. He parked the Taurus around the corner from the place around six-forty-five, which gave him a good two hours before Jim came to collect his woman for another night of rapture.
The minute he came through the door, Cooper, private-eye-for-the-dead, confirmed the obvious: the girl was working there, all right, but not as a cocktail waitress. The only legitimate employee in the place was the bartender. He stood behind the bar, facing a pair of rummies, who sat on two of the pub’s four stools. The joint was a dump-a couple of naked bulbs dangling above the bar, some reggae playing on a boom box behind it, a handful of seats and tables in the narrow corridor between the bar and the opposing wall.
Seated at one of the tables were four girls. One of them was Jim’s woman; all four wore skirts that bottomed out around mid-ass and tops about as modest as Saran Wrap. They wore cheap jewelry that dangled from ears, wrists, ankles, and waist, Cooper figuring there were some dangling from places he couldn’t see too. There was the rich scent of weed, wafting to him from the hazy cloud of smoke over their table, starting to give him a buzz just from standing in the doorway.
Cooper took one of the vacant stools at the bar and ordered some bourbon. When the bartender finished pouring the watered-down, unlabeled selection of his own choosing, Cooper said, “How much for more?”
The bartender looked him over, shrugged, and said, “That depend on what you want, mon.” He had that accent, Jamaicans always sounding to Cooper like they were ready to party. Every little thing goin’ to be all right.
Cooper put a hundred-dollar bill on the counter and said, “I like the skinny one.”
The bartender’s eyes gleamed, staring down at the bill. Cooper could sense an inner turmoil. He guessed the man was thinking how to make a buck off him, since Cooper was obviously loaded, laying down a C-note like it was nothing. But the man didn’t want to lose his top client, either.
The bartender-pimp completed his inner battle and said, “That get you two hours.”
Cooper frowned, giving him an acting job, Man, tough decision, all that money. “All I get is two hours then?”
The bartender-pimp flipped his hands upside down and shrugged again. “Understand, any other time you get more than that, but Rhonda here, she got a regular kind of thing, mon. Friend of hers coming by ’round nine o’clock.”
Cooper nodded. He said, “Rhonda.”
“We got a deal, mister? Or you want another maybe.”
“No,” Cooper said, “Rhonda’s my kind of girl.”
Rhonda didn’t say or do anything different from what she’d been doing since Cooper had come into the bar: eyes closed, she pulsed slightly to the music, sitting on her chair, toking absently on the joint each time it came around to her.
The bartender-pimp swiped the hundred bucks off the counter.
“Nine o’clock,” he said. “Don’t be late, mon.”
Coming across the busy lobby of the Crowne Plaza around seven-thirty, Rhonda’s skirt showed an under-crescent of her skinny ass with every step, first one side then the other. She was so stoned that Cooper gleefully anticipated at least an “Excuse me, sir” from the concierge-or somebody on the hotel staff-but sadly, they made it through the lobby, into the elevator, and all the way into his room without incident.
In his suite he watched her shed the halter top and unzip the miniskirt. Lying on the bed then, eyes half-shut, one knee raised, arms splayed out with her palms outstretched, Rhonda telling him to come and get some, Cooper thought that the sight might have been appealing to him had his tastes run to anorexic, comatose preteen boys. Holding back from tearing off his clothes, he took out his wallet and fanned about fifty bucks in fives and tens on the table beside the bed. He was obvious about it, crumpling then unfolding the bills to help release her from the anticipatory trance she had going.