“Hit and run, you were. A veritable blitzkrieg. You trained and rotated them so fast they were long gone before their photos circulated. Your system was devastatingly simple and effective. Blackjack dealers who thought they’d seen everything never knew what hit them. Hats off to you, sir.”
“Uh, thanks. But, like, how’d you find me?”
“Resources. Everybody passed the hat and brainstormed. Your whereabouts was a challenge, sir.”
“Card counting isn’t a crime, you know. Having an idea what cards are left in the shoe shifts the advantage from the house to the player, that’s all.”
“It’s a question of ethics.”
Juan Gama laughs out loud.
“Oh, I admit it’s hypocritical, but that’s how it is. Nonetheless, my people want their money.”
Juan is on the verge of losing his breakfast. He pauses, takes a deep breath.
Charlie places a hand on his shoulder and smiles genially. “Juan, please do try to relax. It’s going to be all right. Bugsy and Moe and Icepick Willie haven’t inundated that environment for decades.”
Juan inwardly flinches. “You said negotiate?”
“That I did. The folks who run casinos nowadays have corporate bloodlines. They are cut from the entertainment conglomerates and tribal hierarchies. They understand that broken kneecaps don’t enhance the bottom line. They understand compromise, they understand business decisions.”
Juan nods grimly.
“A fifty-fifty split netted you in the neighborhood of one million smackeroos. You obviously live conservatively. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t expect you to have every last penny squirreled away.”
“You’re right.”
“We’ve written off your kiddy cohorts. I’m authorized to leave you ten percent free and clear. You give us ninety percent of the one million and keep the change. Down here, you’re set for life. They look at the swindle as tuition for the education you gave them. Whadduya say, guy?”
“Uh. Yeah. Okay.”
“When?”
Juan gazes out at the water. “Well, like I don’t have it in a suitcase under my bed.”
Charlie chuckles. “Ah. Offshore banks?”
“Grand Cayman,” Juan improvises.
“You were a statistics major before leaving academia without your degree, Juan. A brilliant albeit indifferent student. I’m pleased to be part of bringing peace of mind and stability to your life.”
“I appreciate that, Charlie.”
“When do you think?”
“Tomorrow maybe.”
“Let’s say tomorrow, definitely. Thanks to the miracle of electronics, we can do the transaction at the speed of light. All we require is the will. La Parroquia for breakfast. I’m buying.” Charlie gives him a slip of paper. “This is a wire transfer number. You say it’s done. I make a confirmation call. You live happily ever after.”
“Okay.”
Charlie gestures to the water. “Today’s the ninth of February. Quite a coincidence.”
“Huh?”
“The anniversary of the massacre, the ultimate plundering.” Charlie swings his arm inland, to the land gate, a manmade stone monolith. The attaching walls on this side are long gone. They are standing on land filled in the 1950s. “We’re at sea level. Before the fortifications, they simply moored and marched right in. No natural defenses. Tragic, tragic, tragic.”
Juan thinks of Teresa’s pirates. There must be a moral to Charlie’s story, but he doesn’t ask what it is.
“Translated, Juan Gama is Spanish for John Doe,” Charlie says. “Simplistic, yes, but you do have an engaging, impish quality.”
Juan replies by staring at his feet.
Charlie says, “Alas, we live in a grown-up world, Juan.”
Charlie sits on the edge of his bed. It is early evening, and he is watching the darkening horizon and the sea that is growing livelier by the minute. Charlie is five floors high, perhaps directly above where the pirates tied up. This hotel was the place to stay in Campeche during the go-go oil boom era, the late seventies and early eighties. Now it’s frayed, not entirely clean, and almost empty.
That’s just hunky-dory with Charlie. He doesn’t particularly like people and he enjoys the privacy.
He assembles his Colt .25 automatic, disassembles it, and repeats the process until the finest film of oil coats every moving surface. He wipes the excess and admires the machined creation that fits in the palm of his hand.
Smuggling the weapon into the country was no problema. Charlie’s clients flew him to Monterrey by private jet. From there he went charter to here.
He goes to the window and holds a round up to the fading light. In his home workshop, Charlie hollows his store-bought hollowpoints until the lead walls are nearly translucent.
Nobody can operate at my proximity, he thinks proudly. Nobody. And he’s right. Charlie’s affability permits him point-blank range. Everybody likes Charlie. Not even the most paranoid assignment knows what hits him.
Cold steel against the ear. An instantaneous recognition of betrayal. One low-velocity shot, no louder than a handclap, the auditory canal serving as nature’s silencer. A gurgle, eyeballs rolling up like blinds, then nothingness. No muss, no fuss.
Medical examiners who have removed Charlie’s slugs from brains of assignments he has turned into porridge comment that they resemble spiders. This is only one component in the legend of Charlie Peashooter, who uses a sissy gun and never misses.
Charlie slips the Colt into a pocket holster, mesmerized by what has become a spectacular display of lightning and howling wind and horizontal rain. Palm trees are bent like bows and there are whitecaps on the hotel’s pool. He has never before been to the tropics and is amazed. The weather seems to be changing as fast as it does on the TV news where the talking haircuts speed up the satellite photos.
He worries about this Juan Gama assignment. His clients were so anxious that they dispatched him as soon as they isolated Juan and his breakfast ritual. Charlie hasn’t the foggiest where Juan lives, though they did discover that he resides in the area with a woman named Teresa and her brother Perez.
Juan is a flighty young man who lacks graces. But he seems sensible. He should show tomorrow. After Juan Gama provides the magic number and the transaction is accomplished, Charlie will steer him someplace where he can complete his assignment. It isn’t, after all, all about money. It’s the principle of the thing.
Charlie shuts off the light. Early to bed, early to rise. That’s his motto.
He stares at the flyspecked ceiling, again finding it peculiar that his clients often prioritize retribution above financial recovery. He puzzles over them as he does serial killers. He’s never understood the breed. Why not kill for fun and profit?
He yawns, deciding that it takes all kinds.
Juan Gama stares at a ceiling that is not flyspecked. Teresa is an immaculate housekeeper.
“Your trouble, has it come for you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“How you were when you come home late from breakfast.” Teresa hesitates. “How you are now, how you hold me after we make love tonight. You never hold me afterward.”
Teresa is older than Juan. She is a kind, passionate woman with glossy black hair and trusting eyes. She has ample hips and comes up to his shoulders. She works as a travel agent at the hotels. Juan and she met on a day trip she led to the Maya ruin of Edzna. Juan was the odd man out in a group of French tourists.
Juan took her to dinner afterward. They ate broiled grouper and drank wine. They drank more wine and held hands. Teresa said he looked like he was lost. Not any longer, he said.
Teresa took Juan to her home in the old walled city. He has been there ever since, sharing the house with her worthless brother, Perez, who is Juan’s age. Teresa is lover, mother, and best friend to him, all that and more.