"Disappointed?"
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "But you do know the area, right?"
I've been playing Cosmo's game for 30 years. There is a ritual to all of this. As far as Cosmo Leach is concerned, knowledge is power — and Cosmo knows a lot about a lot of things. The bottom line is that Cosmo is one powerful dude. The heady combination of money, contacts and nearly 70 years of experience has taught me to respect and listen. Thanks to him, I've turned a farthing or two over the years, and I made up my mind many moons ago to listen when Cosmo barked. If I knew the man at all, he was about to bark.
"Elliott, let me assure you, it's not our government. I'm not sure our government knows any more than we do. Someone else is calling the shots."
"Who?"
"Are you interested?" he asked innocently.
"Dammit, Cosmo, I got up at four o'clock this morning, plowed my way through six inches of snow, caught the local 'fly and die' into O'Hare, flew down here and you ask if I'm interested. Of course I'm interested. You called, I came; that's the way it works with friends."
Cosmo graced me with one of his infrequent smiles. It was the second indication that the transition from surliness to civility was near completion. "Suppose I told you that Schuster Laboratories had an interest in all of this."
"Schuster Labs is Chicago based, privately held, mostly research, lots of DOD contacts and contracts. Sales reported to be over a billion but nobody knows for sure because old Bearing Schuster is such a conservative tight-lipped son-of-a-bitch that he makes Jack Kemp look like a radical."
"I'm impressed," Cosmo allowed.
"Want more? His son, Marshal, was in grad school with me at U. of M., a thieving little bastard that went on to open his own firm somewhere down here."
"Near Boca," Cosmo added. It was his way of demonstrating that he hadn't lost touch.
"Outside of that, I don't know much. I've heard rumors that Junior is into some bad stuff."
"Good," Cosmo evaluated, "you know just enough to be of some value." He wadded the piece of paper up, signaled Goosey for refills and relaxed. "In about one hour, you're going to be sitting face to face with old Bearing Schuster himself."
"I can hardly wait," I said, grinning. The way I viewed it, the sun was out, the snow was far to the north and I was getting an opportunity to exchange barbs with Cosmo Leach. I wasn't about to let a meeting with Bearing Schuster screw up what would otherwise be a delightful experience.
I was supposed to be impressed — and I was. Cosmo managed to maneuver us off of Gulf Boulevard onto a side street that appeared to be going nowhere until we came to a secluded but ostentatious private drive that headed us up and over a small sandy rise toward the gulf. The guard at the gate looked decidedly Cuban and even more disagreeable. He recognized Cosmo but wanted to see my identification. Despite my mentor's assurances, he made a quick phone call, verified that I was on the "let-him-in" list and waved us through.
It took several more minutes to get up to the main house, and when we did, I was even more impressed. The citadel itself was a three story affair constructed of pink brick, surrounded by lush tropical landscaping and enough of what I could only assume to be bodyguards to start a small revolution. Cosmo parked. We went through an automatic gate, followed a meandering walk that took us past a swimming pool complete with a bevy of sunbaked lovelies and out onto a flagstone patio overlooking the gulf. I recognized Corsican reef, but I didn't recognize the old man wrapped in a shawl sitting at a table at the far end of the spectacular overview.
He looked up and with the same wave of his bony hand managed to send away a long-legged blonde animal in a tiger print jumpsuit and summon us to him.
"Ask him if she can hang around," I whispered.
Cosmo gave me one of those "won't-you-ever-grow-up" looks he had been famous for back in his academic days and steered me straight to our host.
"Bearing, this is the young man I was telling you about."
When Bearing Schuster looked up at me, I knew immediately that everything I had heard about the old war horse was true. If ever a man possessed penetrating, yet dead eyes, Bearing Schuster must have been the prototype. The eyes were deep set in a hollow, unmerciful face that looked to be every bit as old as the 81 years his biographers had estimated him to be. He stared at me momentarily then turned to Cosmo. For Cosmo, at least there was a fainthearted effort at a smile.
"Youth is a relative thing," Schuster wheezed, turning his craggy head back toward the gulf. "How old are you, Mr. Wages?"
"Mentally, spiritually or physically?"
Bearing's eyes darted back to me. This time the look was decidedly colder.
"I talked to Elliott on the way over here," Cosmo began. "He's aware of the recent incident, but none of the details."
"I detest repeating myself, Mr. Wages, but since this is the first time we've met, there's no way you could know that. So, I ask you again: how old are you?"
"I've got a half a century under my belt," I informed him.
"Cosmo tells me you are a writer of sorts." He emphasized the word "sorts." I'd heard it before. Lots of people don't care for my little literary niche.
"That's because Cosmo thinks anyone who isn't sitting in a musty cubicle somewhere churning out some monogram on academia can't be doing anything worthwhile."
Bearing appeared to be amused. "Do you like the view, Mr. Wages?"
"The blonde or the gulf?"
Ignoring my question, Bearing offered me a chair. Before we had settled in, he had signaled to a pouting young man with coal black hair and a white waistcoat to tend to our needs.
"Would you care for some refreshments?"
I glanced at my watch, happily noted that it wasn't that long till the noon hour, took solace in the fact that until told otherwise I was enjoying an all-expense paid trip to sunny Florida, and ordered a Scotch. "Black and White with shaved ice."
"I'll just have some coffee," Cosmo muttered.
"Tell me what you know about the Doobacque Cluster," Bearing insisted.
I leaned back, anticipated my first drink of the day, caught a quick glimpse of the blonde peeling out of her jumpsuit down at the pool and began. "Seven islands, not much more than coral outcroppings, some forty, forty-five miles southwest of Jamaica. Up until a few years ago it was inhabited mostly by Caribs. Windy, taking the brunt of a lot of the storms that brew up down there. What else?"
"So far, so good," Bearing appraised. "How long has it been since you were there?"
It was a simple enough question. The problem was that I couldn't give him a simple answer. In order to get there, I had to sort through the tangle that my old flame Gibby had left behind. It was stuff I didn't like to think about, and Cosmo knew it. "Five, maybe six years ago," I tossed out.
"How long were you there?" Bearing probed.
"Long enough to fall in love with it."
"Why didn't you stay there, Mr. Wages?"
"I had this biological function called eating and a bunch of unpaid bills back in the States. Dropping out didn't seem to be a prudent course of action at the time."
The young man arrived with the drinks, quietly serving Cosmo his coffee, me the Scotch, and Bearing a glass of something that looked a lot like flat beer. The old boy swooped down on it like a hungry vulture and devoured it in one long continuous chug. When he looked up, his eyes managed to look a little clearer, and I could have sworn some of the wrinkles in the piece of weathered leather that served as his face had disappeared.
"I find it curious that you haven't mentioned your academic affiliation with my son."
"We didn't like each other much."
"But you knew him?"