Joe Lansdale - Captains Outrageous

The guy said, “Someone give you the hat?”

“Bought it.”

“With your own money, senor?”

Leonard didn’t respond to that. He went over and wrote a short note to John using a windowsill as a desk. He gave it to the guy behind the desk and the guy dropped it in an out box and smiled at Leonard’s hat some more. We left.

“It’s a good hat,” Leonard said.

“For what?”

“Keeping the sun off.”

“It’s more like an eclipse, Leonard. It looks like something goes on a stick over a table by poolside.”

“You wanted one.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in something like that.”

“It’s just that I’ve got the balls to do what I want and you don’t, that’s what’s got you irritated.”

“I’m not irritated.”

“Are.”

“Are not.”

It was just one of our usual goofed-up days. We might as well have been home in the States. We were unpopular and pissed off wherever we went.

About four we went down to the dock to catch the tender back to the ship. The tender was there with our original pilot standing on the deck, helping people on board, but out in the bay, no ship. Least not our ship.

We talked to the pilot. Our Spanish sucked. His English was good. He told us the Sea Pleasure had left at three-thirty. For a moment I thought we hadn’t changed our watches, crossed a zone or something, had lost an hour. But we had the right time.

Leonard said to the pilot, “You’re sure?”

The guy, who was short and gold-toothed, said, “You see the ship you want, senor?”

Leonard took a theatrical look out at the water.

“Nope.”

The pilot shrugged.

“Could it have sunk?” Leonard asked.

“Funny, you are, senor. I got to take people out to the real cruise ship now. And whatever you pay for that hat, it is too much.”

We walked back up the dock, stunned.

“That lying little ferret,” Leonard said. “I gave him an opening and he took it and told me the wrong time. I see him again, I’m gonna beat him until he has flashbacks.”

“Of what?”

“Me beatin’ him.”

“Can I hit him a couple of times?”

“If there’s anything left, of course. You are my best friend.”

We decided we might as well plan on being in Playa del Carmen for a day or two, so we ended up at a little pink stucco hotel where we rented a double. The room smelled of damp carpet and the bathroom smelled of urine beneath the warped linoleum.

Upstairs we sat on one of the beds and sorted our money. Most of what I had gotten for my heroic deed was back home in the bank, but I had more in traveler’s checks in my luggage on the ship, right next to my clean underwear and socks. I had some bucks in my wallet, two hundred dollars in traveler’s checks, and a charge card with a low limit on it. Leonard had a hundred dollars in assorted bills and a very ugly hat.

“Okay, we got enough for a couple nights, maybe three we need to spend them,” I said. “That also includes food, phone calls we need to make, and maybe some clean underwear.”

“I didn’t know you changed yours,” Leonard said.

I ignored that, said, “Okay, so what’s first?”

“I vote on the underwear for you, but I suppose the thing to do is call John, get him to arrange some plane flights, nearest airport and all that, then we find a way to get to the airport, fly to New Orleans, get a cab to where the ship will dock, get our luggage, cripple the asshole who lied to us about the departure time, break his dick in three spots, cover his balls in peanut butter, pack his asshole with a pound of pure cane sugar, and hold him down in an ant bed.”

“Might I point out this is all your fault.”

“That so?”

“If you hadn’t fucked with him in the first place this wouldn’t have happened. All you had to do was put on a jacket or go to the buffet.”

“I didn’t want the buffet, and I didn’t want to wear a jacket.”

“And you see the results.”

“That pompous motherfucker just thinks he got off scot-free with me. Besides, you said you wanted to hit him some.”

“I want to hit you some too. But we’ll make a phone call instead.”

We looked around the room. No phone. Downstairs they wouldn’t let us use the one in the office and there wasn’t a pay phone. Suddenly there was a language barrier. The desk clerk indicated he had no idea where we might find a phone.

I asked him if there was a Holiday Inn anywhere near. He just grinned at me. Now I was the Ugly American.

We went outside and around the corner and started walking in the direction of the post office. Had we seen a pay phone in the post office? We were uncertain. As we walked, Leonard’s hat provided me with a lot of shade. Which I needed. I was pretty warm. Not as humid as East Texas, but still warm, and by this time it was late afternoon.

The post office was closed.

“What the hell?” I said.

“They keep their own hours,” Leonard said.

We walked along the littered beach a ways and actually found an old-fashioned phone booth. But the phone was missing. Someone had torn it out. Some of the phone-book was there, though, just in case it was needed.

“Maybe we could just put a message in a bottle,” I said. “Toss it in the ocean.”

“I’m game,” Leonard said.

The beach was nice, and we decided for no good reason at all to just keep walking along it. I think, subconsciously, we were trying to get away from town, as if that would take us away from our miseries. There was a long wooden dock, and we walked on the sand next to that and watched the boats, some with sails, some without, bobbing in the slate-colored water like tops. Above us seabirds soared, made noises like insane laughter.

As we walked, no phone booth materialized but we saw three men coming toward us. They were stocky guys. One of them wore a coat, which seemed odd for the weather. We veered left around them and they turned and spread out and said something in Spanish.

One of them, a guy with a thick mustache, showed us a knife and a big grin. He said something in Spanish we didn’t understand, but the big knife was speaking loud and clear and needed no translation.

It was at that moment that I remembered some of the literature I had read on the boat: Don’t wander off from the main areas. Play del Carmen is a beautiful, quaint little town with the amazing ruins of Tulum nearby. But off the beaten path, thieves often rob tourists at knifepoint on the outskirts.

“Bad day for this,” Leonard said to the trio, but they just smiled at us. I watched carefully. The other two didn’t pull knives, but one of them did pull a machete from under his coat. I had sort of thought that coat was suspicious.

I didn’t feel up to fighting a machete, but I didn’t feel all that inclined to give them my money.

“Dinero,” one of them said.

“We’ve already eaten,” Leonard said.

“He means money,” I said. “Not dinner. Dinero.”

“I know that.”

“I think we should give it to them.”

They were circling us, waiting on us to make some kind of decision.

“What if we give it to them and they cut us anyway?” Leonard said.

“It’s still going to work out the same, they’re going to end up with the money. We give them the loot, we got a chance.”

“That what you want to do?”

I watched the guy with the machete ease around in front of me. Leonard and I had now ended up back to back, sort of rotating with the guys as they went around us.

All three were speaking Spanish, and shaking their hands at us like we should fill them.

“What I want,” I said, “is to stick that machete up his ass, crank it around like I’m trying to start a prop plane.”