Randy White: Dead Silence

Farfel, with his jackal wariness, had ordered Hump to duct-tape my hands-a mistake. When I’d taped Nelson Myles’s hands, I had made sure his thumbs were exposed and that his fingers were not symmetrically interlaced. Myles hadn’t protested, and Hump didn’t care, because neither of them was aware of that basic escape-artist’s ploy.

Hopefully, it was the last mistake the two Cubans would ever make.

Since then, I had been steadily stretching the tape, working it off my hands so it now covered them like gloves. I had been polite and cooperative and acceptably submissive.

I had remained submissive as I listened to Hump warn me, “You will learn to jump if I tell you. You have never dealt with a man such as me.”

I had answered honestly, saying in Spanish, “You are very strong-stronger than me-you’ve proven that.”

“Yes, it is true,” he had replied. “Many men have said so.”

We had been talking long enough by then for me to risk mentioning Will Chaser. I still didn’t know if he was alive or dead so I had nudged the truth closer, saying, “With your size, you should have been an athlete in the Olympics. Cuba always does very well. You could have been a great boxer or weight lifter. Boys all over the world would have admired you. Boys everywhere, even here in the United States.”

Hump had nodded, his expression saying If you say it’s true, I won’t argue. “When I was only twelve, I could lift the front end of a Lada from the ground! I could have held an entire Calina over my head, but they are difficult to balance, those ugly Russian cars.”

I suggested, “By the time you were fourteen, you probably could put a horse under your arm.”

The man made the association. “Don’t mention boys or horses to me. I never want to hear about them again. I have always distrusted horses, but now I distrust them both. The boy you call William, can you guess what my name for him was?”

I shrugged.

“Devil Child, that is what I called him. I was afraid of that brat, I admit it! What man wouldn’t be afraid of a vicious demon? Have you noticed that he ate part of my ear? It is true!”

Hump turned his head to show me and I felt another surge of admiration.

“Perhaps it was because the boy was an Indian, an Apache, he claimed, like the painted ones I watched on television in Rene’s barbershop in Havana. They are savages, you know. Why, the Devil Child even threatened to scalp me.” He lowered his voice to confide, “The child put a curse on me. He admitted it, then bragged of it!”

Hump had already let other information slip. I now knew that he and Farfel had planned the kidnapping with men from two different organizations. Choirboy wanted documents that would embarrass Rome. There was an American who took orders from another American, Tinman, although Hump didn’t say it. They wanted all the files destroyed but were also in it for the money.

I already knew why Hump and Farfel were involved, so now I was concentrating on the boy. This was the first time Hump had spoken openly of Will, but he was using the past tense.

Hump was borderline mentally retarded, I was convinced. It took him many sentences to communicate even simple facts. But he spoke with the carefully constructed syntax of a slow learner. It was unlikely he would confuse tenses, but I refused to be so easily convinced because I didn’t want to believe it.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time around William Chaser,” I told Hump. “One time, the boy swore at me. He threatened me, too. It’s true.”

“Hah!” The man was pleased to hear it. “What a dangerous hostage he made. As I said to Farfel”-the man craned his neck to confirm that Navarro couldn’t hear-“no one will pay ransom for a demon teenager. We should kill the boy, I told him, before the U.S. demands money from us.”

I affected a casual disinterest. “Good. Sometimes, a bullet’s the best way.” “Not in this case. Because of the curse, you see. Also, we have made certain promises. Unlike Farfel, when I give my word I keep it! So we buried the boy in a box. He is less than three kilometers from here.” The man motioned toward the bay, then stopped to focus on something that surprised him. “What is that orange light in the distance?”

He was looking toward a line of mangrove islands, dark shapes on moon-blue water. Beyond the islands was an orange corona of light. It pulsed like a slow-motion explosion.

I said, “A fire. Maybe a boat,” but was thinking of Tamarindo, more worried than I’d been before.

Because his attention was still on the fire, it took a moment for Hump to reply, “We used a little fan. I connected the fan to a battery for air… for the boy, I’m telling you. By now, though”-Hump didn’t have a watch so his eyes moved to the night sky-“the battery was not strong, and the fan, it didn’t work so very well. So the brat, he is probably dead. Although, personally, I hope he is not.”

I said, “What?,” before remembering I didn’t care.

“Before I filled the grave, the boy promised he would remove the curse if I returned. I told him I would come back. I would like to. It would be a wise thing to do. He’s going to die anyway, so I could kill him later. What’s the difference?”

The man reached and lifted a necklace from beneath his shirt. “These beads are blessed to protect me from evil. I also made a small offering to the Devil Child. But it didn’t help. Not ten minutes later, Farfel crashed our boat.”

I pretended to look at the beads, as I said, “Well… the boy is an Indian.”

“An Indian priest, he told me, but used a word I do not know.”

“Some people scoff at religion,” I said. “Not me. I’ve heard of voodoo curses and Santeria curses. People have died-it’s been documented. Some say they can bring the dead back to life. That, I doubt. But from an Indian? Maybe your curse isn’t fatal.”

“You think I don’t know of these things? I have Santeria priests who instruct me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking me a fool. I am not. Even Farfel now takes my advice. Sometimes, I come right out and tell Farfel what we must do! Of course… I do this privately. Why embarrass an old man?”

He was swerving off topic, so I said, “Personally, I don’t care if the kid’s dead or alive. But, if you’re asking me to help, the answer is no.”

Confused, Hump said, “Help do what?,” then demanded, “Why are you refusing me?”

“Because I can’t. I’m not taking you back to where you buried the boy just to have a curse removed.”

Hump had been leaning against the safety railing, his attention now on the shell road watching for the senator’s car to appear. He straightened. “You told me curses sometimes kill people!”

“It’s not part of our agreement. I’m taking you to Cuba, that’s all. Sorry. I follow Dr. Navarro’s orders, not yours.”

“But Farfel is not the one who has been doomed by that bastard savage! If you expect me to go with you to Havana and drink beer, then you should at least-”

That’s when the rental van appeared.

Hump crouched low as he touched the gun to my head, saying, “Get down.”

Men shout and bellow when they’re angry. But men who have transcended anger, who function daily with murder in their brains, are transformed when the moment finally does arrive.

The normal voice is displaced by a primitive voice that is linked, unencumbered, to the limbic cortex-the lizard brain, an aficionado like Rene Navarro might call it.

I could hear a lizard voice speaking to Navarro now, saying, “Quit lying. You think I could ever forget your face? Those eyes? Stop backing away… Farfel. You don’t have a gun? You always did. Question is, how many rounds?”