Donald Westlake - High Adventure

Outside, blinking in the dusty sunshine, still not seeing Galway anywhere — he wouldn’t have reneged at the last second, would he? — Lemuel fought off the persistent taxi offerers with just as persistent head shakes, until he realized one of the men was calling him by name: “Mister Lemuel? May I take your bags, Mister Lemuel?”

Lemuel frowned at him, seeing a short and skinny Indian type, with bright black eyes and a big smile showing gaps between his teeth. “You know me?” he said.

“I am from Kirby Galway.” The man had an accent that was nearly Hispanic, but not quite. “I am Manuel Cruz.”

“I expected Mister Galway himself,” Lemuel said, prepared to be irked.

“There were little problems,” Manuel Cruz told him, more confidentially, flashing looks left and right as though afraid to be overheard. “I’ll tell you in the truck.”

“Truck?” But he permitted Cruz to carry both his suitcases and to lead the way over to an incredibly filthy, battered, rusty pickup truck. When the suitcases were thrown in back, onto all that rust and dirt, the Customs chalkmarks became irrelevant.

The interior of the pickup was at least roomy and fairly comfortable. Cruz was a bit too short for the controls, which only increased his childlike aura; also, he drove in sudden jolts and hesitations, his feet playing the floor pedals like a pianist, hands struggling the wheel back and forth, back and forth.

Out on the empty blacktop road, Cruz settled down to a less fitful driving method, and explained, “Kirby, he had to see some other men. You know about the gage?”

Lemuel didn’t. “Gauge?”

“Pot,” said Cruz. “Weed. Tea. Smoke.”

“Oh, marijuana!”

“That’s it,” Cruz said, happily nodding.

“He smuggles it into America,” Lemuel said, with some distaste. “Yes, I know about that.”

“Okay. Now, some men come down from up there,” Cruz said. “Kirby, he didn’t know they were coming, you know? But these kinda men, they come down, they say, ‘We gotta talk,’ you say, ‘Okay, sir, yes, sir.’”

“Ah,” said Lemuel, nodding at this glimpse of what was under the rock.

“So Kirby, he sent me down, pick you up, say he sorry.”

“I see,” said Lemuel.

“I take you to the hotel. Kirby, he call you later, he take you out there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Not today?” One of the reasons Lemuel had decided to come down to Belize a week early — in addition to the honest excitement and anticipation he’d cited in his message — was the fact that he didn’t entirely trust Kirby Galway. He didn’t know what sort of scheme Galway might be able to perpetrate against him, but perhaps if he were to show up a week early it might keep the man off balance and give Lemuel some advantage. But now Galway was begging off until tomorrow; was that significant? Was there anything Lemuel could do about it?

Probably not. Still, it was worth a try. “My schedule is pretty tight,” he said. “Perhaps I should talk to Galway right now.”

“Oh, no,” Cruz said, looking a bit frightened. “Kirby, he told me, ‘Don’t let Mister Lemuel come talk to me when I’m with these men. Tell Mister Lemuel to pretend he don’t even know me.’ That’s what Kirby said.”

“Why?”

“These are very bad men,” Cruz said. “They got — whatchu call it — front, some kinda legitimate life up in the States, they don’t want nobody know what their business is. They kill a man if they got to.”

Lemuel, of course, had heard of such people, as who of us has not? The drug world quite naturally drew them, and yes they would kill rather than have the seamy truth exposed to their families and neighbors. “I see,” he said.

“If you go to Kirby with those men,” Cruz went on, “if you say, ‘Hi, Kirby,’ then you and Kirby and me, we all in terrible trouble. If those men know you know Kirby, and they got to know you from the States just to look at you, then they figure you know Kirby’s in the gage business — you know, the marijuana—”

“Yes yes,” Lemuel said. “Gauge. I do remember.”

“Well,” Cruz said, as they drove down the tom streets of Belize City, “they got to protect their lives, you see? Their front .”

“So if I see Galway with any Americans,” Lemuel said, a bit amused at the cloak-and-dagger aspects of the situation, “I should just pretend I don’t know him.”

“Oh, you’ll probably see him,” Cruz said. “Kirby, he’s with those men at the hotel right now.”

“Oh, is he?” Lemuel hoped he would see Galway and his mobster friends; curiosity and a faint prickle of danger made his eyes light up, and he rode the rest of the way trying to imagine what the “very bad men” would look like.

The hotel itself was decent enough, the staff competent, the room large and cool and pleasant. Lemuel undertipped the bellboy, then removed the constricting bow tie, opened his shirt, strolled over to the window, and looked down at the swimming pool, wondering idly why no one was in it. He had brought a bathing suit; perhaps, after he’d unpacked, he would go for a dip himself.

An el of the building was to the left, with large windows on the first floor through which he could see the dining room, where he would undoubtedly be eating tonight. At one of the window tables sat three—

Galway!

Lemuel pressed close to the louvered window, looking down. Galway and two men, just finishing their lunch. The other two were hard to make out, at this angle and from this far away, but they were certainly white men, undoubtedly Americans.

The three stood, pushing back their chairs. Galway said something and laughed. All three men wore moustaches; a change in male style that Lemuel had failed to notice just as thoroughly as he’d missed the demise of the bow tie.

What could he make of Galway’s companions? They didn’t look like mobsters out of a George Raft movie, but of course they wouldn’t. These were drug dealers, a new breed of criminal, used to working with huge amounts of cash, trading with rich and influential people. They were dressed a bit flamboyantly, but not too much so, and Lemuel remembered what the man Cruz had said about them being men with a front back in America. Record company producers, perhaps, or with a business in commercial real estate.

Galway shook their hands; first one, then the other. A few more words were exchanged, rather sinister smiles formed under the moustaches, and then Galway left. The other two remained standing a moment longer beside the table, murmuring together, one with his hand on the other’s elbow. Menace seemed to hover about them. They both turned to look out the window, and Lemuel flinched back, suddenly afraid.

Had they seen him?

What a lot of different positions he likes, Valerie thought as she rested on knees and shoulders and left cheek. If she lifted her head slightly to look down her own length, the parts of Innocent St. Michael that she could see framed by her arched legs dangled comically, but the feelings he was inducing through her body were not comical at all. “Again?” she asked, surprised, and the answer came in a rush.

This time, Innocent joined her, and after a brief spell of intense thrashing they lay beached together on the sheet, companionably side by side, catching their breath. Above, a slowly turning fan made absolutely no difference.

Shortly, Innocent heaved himself up off the bed and padded out of the room. Perspiration slowly drying on her body, Valerie rolled onto her back and stretched, long and luxurious, from her down-pointing left big toe through her happily achy body to her upthrust right wrist, her knuckles brushing the rough stucco wall.