Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"Rostow." Something about these names.

"Three years ago, in Tingo, you remember, a DEA guy shot and killed one of Pepi Campo's people?"

"The gringos had to buy him back for a lot of money. It was a big diplomatic mess."

"That's him. That's the one. His name was… it wasn't Rostow. There was a picture of him in La Republica . I remember. That's him."

"Call Yayo in Lima. Tell him to send a fax of it, right away. Immediately, Virgilio."

Bendinck called back and said that Manet's "Absinthe Drinker" was still in the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek. Rupert was his usual gleeful self. "Were you thinking of making a shopping trip?" he asked.

"I can't get away right now. Business."

"Pity. I know the Glypotek very well. I'd love to show it to you."

"Do you know it as well as the Kunsthalle in Mannheim?"

Bendinck laughed. "So, were you thinking of an oil or a sketch?"

"It's hard to tell. It's a black-and-white photograph."

"Does the face look like Baudelaire?"

"I can't tell. To be honest, Rupert, I don't remember what Baudelaire looked like."

"The first was done in 1859. The Salon rejected it-"

"I know-"

"He painted another oil version of it after Baudelaire died, in 1867. Baudelaire scoffed at the first one, which must have hurt, since it was a kind of homage to him. Collardet, the bum in the painting, is right out of one of Baudelaire's poems. I forget which, the one that ends: 'He ends up bloodying his head and stumbling on the cobblestones like the young poets who spend all their days erring and searching for rhymes.' Baudelaire finally went crazy from syphilis, absinthe, laudanum and everything else and some nuns kicked him out of their hospice because he kept swearing from the pain. There's Christian charity for you, eh? In the end, Manet was his best friend. He was there at the funeral, and there weren't many, believe me. It's Baudelaire's face in the second oil. Are you interested?"

"As I say, business is busy."

"Yes, it's in the news."

"What is?"

"Your business. Anyway, it wouldn't be nearly as complicated as Mannheim. It's in a private collection in the U.S. I'm sure the owner can be persuaded to sell."

"Let me think about it."

"Of course. I'll be out of town for a few weeks."

"Where are you off to?"

"Florence. I have a client who's crazy for Quattrocento."

The fax from Yayo wasn't the best quality but the face in the two photographs was the same. He stared from one to the other as he listened to the lawyer in Miami.

"He left DEA after that. Then he went to work for G. Gordon Liddy. You remember him? The Watergate guy. He had a firm down here called Hurricane Force, sort of a private commando team that was supposed to rescue kidnapped executives overseas. That folded, and he went to do security for Marcos, in Hawaii. After that-"

"Yes, good, but where is he now , Ruben?"

"I spoke to his ex-wife, the most recent one. He's got four. She told me he's a mercenary and he kills people and doesn't report the income."

"She told you that? Why?"

"She hates him. He owes her alimony. In fact, she asked me to help her find him."

"Who did you say you were?"

"The IRS. They always cooperate when you say you're the IRS."

"Good thinking. What about Becker?"

The lawyer went through what he had, mostly from Who's Who and the business publications.

"… 1981, formed buyback partnership with 3M Corporation and bought back all public shares of Zacatecas Petroleum, turned around and sold company to T. Boone Pickens for $1.2 billion… 1982 received Knight of Maltahood, or Knighthood of Malta, in recognition of services to-"

"Ya ya, okay, he's rich, he steals from the poor, gives a little back and gets a medal from the Pope. What else?"

"There's not very much on him. He keeps himself inconspicuous. This is all from business magazines. He… was in the papers last year."

"Yes?"

"There was… an incident involving a granddaughter."

"What incident?"

"She, well, it's-"

"Ruben, this scrambler costs forty dollars a minute."

"She had a little… OD."

"Of…"

"Yes, but obviously it's her own fault. You don't blame General Motors if you drive a little too fast and go off the cliff, right?"

The howlers and the capuchins were screeching at each other in the canopy beyond the perimeter. Beyond them the toucans complained and somewhere beyond that he heard the death commotion between a jaguar and a peccary.

Soledad lay naked on the bed, asleep with her thumb in her mouth. He looked from her to the slatted windows and imagined the noises had shapes that came through the window and surrounded her like Fuseli's nightmare creatures. He found himself wishing, for the first time since he had been here, for the reassurance of a city sound, a passing bus, a car horn, a truck, the shout of a cigarette vendor.

He turned to the picture of the gringo on his yacht. His yacht was registered with Lloyd's as Conquistador . Well, it showed he wasn't deaf to the nuances. But Esmeralda was a little clumsy. The conquistadors came also for emeralds.

Well, billonario , do I hand you over to Espinosa? They'll promote him to general, and that's good for me, too.

But does Espinosa deserve you? Espinosa, who wouldn't know a Manet from a Monet, or for that matter, a Manet from a Mapplethorpe.

And you're not the type to put your hands in the air and give up, obviously, since you've come all this way. We don't want bullet holes in "The Absinthe Drinker."

But why bring your Manet on a trip like this, billonario? I can understand the Dufy, the Vlaminck, the Cocteau. But the Baudelaire "Absinthe Drinker"? You don't go into battle with Manets-it's irresponsible!

A light touch is needed. Eladio is needed. Eladio, who can walk across a floor of wet paint and not leave a track. Eladio, who floats on the air of his own beliefs.

"Eladio," he said. "I have dreamed a great white canoe and a kurinku pataa , a pistaco who comes for the grease of your people to make fuel for his rockets."

"Obviously I wasn't going to bring it up this morning in front of everyone."

"I appreciate that, Dick."

"It didn't seem like something for the whole cabinet."

"God no. Who's in the loop on this?"

"It's a tight loop, John. A very tight loop. DEA, obviously, me."

"Well, let's keep it tight until, until we can…"

"Get a handle around it. Right."

"As of right now, it doesn't feel, I don't think we need to take it down the hall to him."

"We may not be there yet."

"I don't think we are there yet, Dick."

"Anyway, Bill confirms that he's on this river, the-"

"Bill is in the loop?"

"Well, it's Bill's satellite."

"The NSA has satellites. I would have thought as far as keeping a tight loop goes, that NSA would be better."

"Maybe. Maybe. It's just that Bill's satellites have been monitoring the compliance on the deforestation thing down there and it was on station and, anyway, they're Bill's pictures. Amazing resolution, by the way. You can actually read the lettering on the-"

"Okay. So where does it stand?"

"They're several miles west of the village of Shucushuyacu."

"That doesn't mean anything to me, Dick."

"It just means he's well on his way, basically."

"Where?"

"We don't know that."

"Well, why, why can't we just call him up on the phone, he's got to have a phone, and, and say, 'Look here, we know all about this and get your ass back here on the QT.'"

"There's an open-line problem. Our friends would be listening in."

"Well, we don't have to spell it out. Call him and say, 'This is the AG calling and turn your butt around, buster.'"