Aaron Elkins - Little Tiny Teeth

A promising sign? Gideon wondered. He believes me?

“Professor Scofield has… has died, I regret to say,” Vargas stammered, clearly realizing how extremely unlikely it sounded. “Only last night.”

Guapo eyed him suspiciously.

“I swear it on the grave of my mother,” said Vargas. “A crazy person, a drug-crazed lunatic, threw him from the ship. He also threw another passenger, a-”

“And what do you say?” Guapo asked Gideon.

“It’s true. Scofield’s dead.” Well, that had hardly been established beyond doubt, but it was highly probable, and this was not the time for complicated answers.

“They’re lying,” said the fox-faced one. “Why are we wasting all this time?”

Thoughtfully, Guapo drained the tumbler and poured a little more, finishing the bottle. Another sip, another delicate smoothing of the silky mustache, and he turned to Vargas to address him directly for the first time, other than having told him to shut up. “And you, I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re not Vargas.”

“No, senor, I’m Vargas, all right, that’s completely correct. Alfredo Vargas, Captain Alfredo Vargas, at your service.” His hand reached up to his braided captain’s hat, but it was no longer there, having been lost when he fell into the river.

“That’s good. I’m very glad you didn’t lie, my friend. You should be even more glad you didn’t lie. Now I want you to tell me exactly what happened to Scofield.”

“Of course, with pleasure-”

“And I want you to tell me exactly – exactly – what your boat is doing on the Javaro River.”

“Certainly, I have nothing to hide from you-”

Guapo held up his hand. “ You know who I am, don’t you? You’ve heard of El Guapo?” With a jerk, the knife was pulled from the table.

Vargas’s eyes followed it as if magnetized. “Of course, senor. Everyone has heard of El Guapo.”

“And have you heard of what happens to people who tell falsehoods to El Guapo?” With the point of the huge knife he gently, almost tenderly, touched Vargas’s left earlobe, then ran it around the entire ear. Gideon saw a single spot of blood where it nicked the top rim. Vargas sat through it as rigidly and motionlessly as was possible for a human to sit, although his Adam’s apple, beyond his control, glugged up and down a couple of times.

“Yes, senor,” he croaked through barely moving lips.

Guapo withdrew the knife, but his fingers remained around the handle. “Then go ahead. And don’t be nervous.”

Fox-face laughed nastily. “No, no, don’t be nervous, what is there to be nervous about?”

And so the story came out. The first part, about how Scofield and Maggie had been thrown overboard, and Maggie, but not Scofield, had been rescued, was told pretty much as it had happened. Gideon was asked to verify the details once or twice and complied. Guapo didn’t ask why Cisco would have wanted to kill Scofield. He seemed to accept Vargas’s description of a “drug-crazed lunatic” on the loose (which was accurate enough), and neither Vargas nor Gideon volunteered anything more about it. The simpler, the better. “You are very lucky you are not Scofield,” Fox-face said to Gideon with undisguised regret.

Gideon nodded his agreement. Any way you looked at it, it was the truth.

The rest of Vargas’s story, which he told with an occasional shamefaced glance at Gideon, and with many self-serving asides (“He talked me into it against my better judgment,” “Never have I done this before,” “It was my intention to do it only this one time, for enough money to upgrade my poor ship,” “I didn’t realize, I never thought, that we would be in a region of interest to El Guapo; had I known, I would never have agreed, never!”) was pretty much what Gideon was expecting by now. He had realized from the moment he had walked into the cantina and set eyes on Guapo and his men that John had been right: he, John, and Phil had gotten themselves into the middle of a drug-trafficking imbroglio. And Guapo’s original certainty that the Indians had brought him Arden Scofield, and his incensed disappointment that they had not, had made it clear that Scofield was the major figure in it.

The substance involved was coca paste, Vargas said. He understood that there were sacks of it hidden within the coffee bags (he himself, of course, had never seen any of it, but had only taken Scofield’s word for it; he himself had no part in the arrangements, but only provided the space and transportation) that were to be deposited at the warehouse “Was it you who had the warehouse burnt down?” Gideon asked Guapo.

“Hey – who told you to speak?” Fox-face said, but Guapo waved him down.

“Yes, sure, that was my man,” Guapo said. “Do you think I didn’t know what was happening? Do you think I would permit such a thing? Do you think anything happens in North Loreto Province about which I don’t know?”

“I guess not,” Gideon said, which seemed to please Guapo.

“How many coffee bags?” he asked Vargas.

“Forty or fifty, I believe.”

“Forty-eight,” said Guapo. “And how much paste?”

“About… about a hundred kilos, I think.”

“A hundred and fifty,” Guapo said, his voice hardening. “Be careful, my friend.” He sat back, slowly rotating the knife in his left hand, its point gently rotating against his right forefinger. “And for whom was it destined?”

“Destined? I-”

“Think before you answer. Tell the truth when I ask you a question, and you may yet get out of this with your life, and maybe even with all your appendages.”

Vargas fished in his pocket for his glasses and put them on, as if they might help him think more clearly. “Guapo… senor… I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, I didn’t want to know, I had no wish to be-”

“It was destined for Eduardo Veloso of the Cali cartel, whose carriers were to pick it up tomorrow night,” Guapo said, and Gideon began to think that there really wasn’t much going on, at least in this particular aspect of the regional commerce, that got by El Guapo. “And how is it hidden? Is there some in all the coffee sacks?”

“It’s in plastic bags – so I was told by the professor – not him” – a gesture at Gideon – “the other professor – in several of the sacks, fifteen or twenty of them, I think-”

“Thirty,” said Guapo warningly.

“Yes, thirty, that was it, that was it!” Vargas gibbered, the perspiration actually dripping off him onto the floor so that there was a little puddle on each side of his chair. Was he lying because he yet hoped to siphon off some of the paste for his own profit? Or was lying simply his instinctive reaction to stress? “Yes, thirty, that’s right, now I remember, of course. It’s thirty, all right. Now, senor, the honest truth is I do not know which bags it’s in, I was never told-”

“That’s all right, Vargas. It doesn’t matter.”

Vargas licked his lips. “ Senor, you are only too welcome to come and take it, to take it all. I regret extremely that I allowed myself to be used in this way, that I caused offense to you. I only want to go home and forget I was ever so stupid. It would be an act of kindness to me to take it away. Please-”

“What, and have the Cali people find out I have their paste? No thank you. I have no interest in taking any of it from you at all.”

If wheels turning in one’s mind made a sound, the room would have been filled with grindings and squeakings from Vargas’s quick brain. His eyes darted right, then left, then right, as he assessed the rapidly changing situation. Guapo had practically said he would be allowed to live. Was he going to get to keep the paste – all of the paste – as well? Surely it was worth many thousands – hundreds of thousands – of soles. It would change his life, he could go away from Iquitos, leave all this behind him, start fresh in the south with a fishing franchise, down by Pucusana Guapo could read Vargas’s thoughts as readily as Gideon could, and he laughed; a voiceless rumble that changed his expression not at all. “You are not going to keep any of it either, Vargas.”