Elmore Leonard - Bandits

“He loves nature.”

“Is that why he’s contaminating the Gulf?”

“I thought he leased helicopters.”

“He’s in the oil business. He’s been in the oil business all his life. My mother calls him Texas Crude. Men in her family wore white linen suits and owned sugar plantations in Plaquemines.”

“I’m not good at environment,” Jack said. He could fall asleep by closing his eyes. “Or, what’s that other word, ecology. I’m weak in those areas.”

“You see my dad as a nice guy.”

“I think he works at it some. Wants to give you that impression, one of the boys.”

She said, “Then you know he’s not just good old Dick Nichols, he’s Dick Nichols Enterprises. He sings Cajun songs, eats squirrel and alligator tail, but he’s also been to the White House for dinner, twice. He loves nature as long as he and his pals can suck oil out of it and he doesn’t give a damn about that tree. He’s using it. He’s the guy at the Petroleum Club with the live oak that cost him a half million dollars. Not a yacht or a plane, they all have those, including my dad. No, this is a tree.”

Jack said, “Well, it’s nice to be rich.”

“Buy anything you want,” Lucy said. “My dad came to visit me in Nicaragua, seven years ago. An embassy limousine arrives, a long black Cadillac, and my dad steps out, the last person I ever expected to see. Except that he loves to surprise you and act very nonchalant about it. ‘Hi, Sis, how are you? Nice day, isn’t it?’ He knows he’s obvious, so it’s funny. I showed him around and he seemed interested enough, he was cordial. But he’d pretend not to see the lepers, the ones who were crippled or disfigured.”

“Wouldn’t shake hands with ’em.”

“Not even with the staff. He kept his hands behind his back. He said, ‘Sis, this place is awful. What do you need?’ I said, ‘How about giving the patients a ride in your car?’ I told him it would be an experience they’d never forget. He gave me a check for a hundred thousand dollars instead.”

Jack took a sip of his drink, wondering if her dad had kissed her when he arrived. He could understand her dad not being a toucher. How many people were? He said, “I know what you’re getting at.”

She said, “No, you don’t.”

“It’s easier to give to ’em than go near ’em.”

She said, “Jack,” not reacting, but with her quiet manner, knowing what she was going to say, “last week he wrote another check, this one for sixty-five thousand.”

“For the hospital?”

“For the man who destroyed the hospital, the man who burned it to the ground and hacked ten of the patients to death. I was there, Jack. I saw them drive up in a truck… The men got out and began firing, all of them with automatic weapons. They shot our dogs, they shot out the windows of the hospital… I came out of the sisters’ house and heard him yelling at them and thought he was trying to stop the firing. He was, he was yelling at them in Spanish, ‘With machetes! Do it with machetes!’ Some of the patients ran or were able to hide. I brought a few of them into our house. But the ones in the ward, who couldn’t run, were hacked to death in their beds, screaming… You know who I’m talking about, Dagoberto Godoy and his contras . When he came to kill Amelita and didn’t find her.” She paused and said, “I had never laid eyes on him before that day, and now I’ll never forget him.” She paused again and said, “Excuse me,” getting up now. “I’ll say good night to Amelita and fix you something to eat, if you’re hungry.”

She came back with a pack of Kools, tapping one out. Jack picked up the silver table lighter and held it to her cigarette. He watched her sit back blowing a slow stream of smoke, relaxing in the green cushions of the sofa, and he said, “You mind?” Picking up the pack of cigarettes and getting one for himself. He’d have one , and inhaled for the first time in nearly three years, telling her he still wasn’t hungry, not the least bit. He was keyed up and told her he was a little confused, trying to get all of it straight in his mind. He said it seemed like whenever she told him something else he’d have more questions and not know where to start.

She said, “What would you like to know?”

“This guy tries to kill Amelita and she says, well, he was angry, but he really wants her to be with him. She even calls him Bertie.”

Lucy’s head remained against the cushion. She said, “I know. Amelita’s a little screwed up. Bertie , I love it. He changed her life and she doesn’t want to believe he murders people. But she wasn’t at the hospital when he came. She was with her parents. That’s why I was able to get her out of there.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course not.”

“He killed them because they were lepers?”

“With machetes-he doesn’t need a reason. He shot Dr. Meza to death. He assassinated a priest while he was saying mass and formally executed six catechists in Estelí. They killed an agrarian reform worker with bayonets, shot his wife in the spine and left her for dead… She watched them strangle their year-old baby. Ask Bertie why he let his men do that. They slashed the throats of nine farmers near Paiwas, raped several of their daughters, raped and decapitated a fourteen-year-old girl in El Guayaba. Murdered five women, six men, and nine children in El Jorgito… Do you want a complete list? I’ll give you one. Do you want to see photos? I’ll show you those, too. Have you ever seen a little girl’s head on a stake?”

There was a silence in the room that seemed to Jack, for a moment, like a stage set: the backdrop of wallpapered banana trees as she told him about death in a tropical place.

“He did all that?”

“I haven’t counted the disappeared,” Lucy said, “or the ones who were only tortured. Or the ones who were killed with more sophisticated means. A priest in Jinotega opened the trunk of his car and was blown to bits. Bertie killed him. He found out it was the priest who drove us to León to buy the car, when we escaped. I have a letter from one of the sisters; I’d like to read it to you sometime.”

Jack felt awkward, not sure what to say.

“But what can you do? It’s a war.”

“Is that what you call it? Killing children, innocent people?”

“I mean you can’t have him arrested.”

“No, not even if he were still in Nicaragua. But now he’s here, raising money to buy more guns and pay his men. Three days ago in Lafayette my dad had Bertie to lunch, listened to the guy’s pitch, and gave him a check for sixty-five thousand dollars.”

“Your dad’s helping him? Why?”

“There are people, Jack, who believe that if you aren’t for Bertie you’re for communism. It’s much the same as saying, if you don’t like Dixie beer then you must like vodka.” She said it with that dry tone, the quiet look, her head resting against the cushion. “My dad and his friends are passing Bertie around, inviting him to their homes-he’s a celebrity. He has a letter from the President and that’s good for a check every time he shows it.”

“The president of what? You mean the president?”

“Of the United States of America. He calls the contras our brothers. ‘Freedom fighters.’ Quote. ‘The moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’ And if you believe that you can join my dad’s club. But here’s the part you’re not going to believe.”

He watched Lucy lean out of the chair to stub her cigarette in the ashtray, the light touching her dark hair. He was glad she didn’t get the perm.

“At dinner my dad began telling me about the Nicaraguan former embassy attaché war hero he invited to lunch, a personal friend of several important people in the White House.” As she sat back, Lucy said, “And anyone affiliated with that club is more than welcome at my dad’s, no questions asked. My dad hadn’t told me the hero’s name, but I knew it was Bertie. First, my dad tells me how this guy is a guerrilla commander, leading a dedicated fight against the Communists. And then he puts on his nonchalant act and says, ‘Oh, by the way. The colonel mentioned that you two have met, or you know each other from somewhere.’ I haven’t said a word yet. But now I’m pretty sure that when I do I’m going to let him have it. I could feel it tightening up in me. My dad says, ‘Yeah, he’s looking for some girl up here, a friend of his or used to be his sweetheart, and wonders if you might be able to help him find her.’ “ Lucy paused. “You like it so far?”