'Hush, hush, my friend,' said Ramon.
'You can get stuff,' said Frankie, oblivious to the scene. 'And by stuff, I suppose you mean contraband. I'm thinking narcotics.'
'Yes, of any sort.'
'In quantity.'
'I have my suppliers, yes.'
'The problem then is distribution.'
'Well, I would think those concerns would be handled on the other end. My more immediate concern would be importation, protection, intelligence, political allies, essentially the whole apparatus. It takes a skilled operator to set up such an organization. This, my friend, is where I thought you and I could have some conversations.'
' Aieeeeeeeeee!! Please! Please, no more, sir!'
'Hush,' said the captain. 'We are not ready for you yet.'
'My eyes! O my god, my eyes!'
'Yes,' said the captain in Spanish, 'your eyes. Anyhow,' he returned to his extremely fluent English, 'Senor Carbine, I seem not to get very far with the old men who run your business in America. They have their allies, their connections, their situations all set up. They seem committed to certain groups in Mexico. I suppose the temptation of that long border, so hard to patrol. But if only someone would see: my way is so much better.'
'You could move in quantity?'
'Of course. In time, though. All things in time. It would first be necessary to move small test shipments, to make certain the apparatus was adequate. But even in that small step, you see the genius of this business. The product, shipped in pounds, can then be stepped on and turned into hundreds of pounds. From so little, so much. The profits are astonishing. Once people are exposed, they cannot say no. Another thing: when the women are hooked, they will do anything to satisfy their need. Anything. Do you understand what I am saying? I am talking of beautiful women, too. It is amazing, truly.'
He turned back to Hector, reinserted the tip of the blade, and administered the next tiny little flick. The results were as desired and designed. Hector jacked in pain and terror. He had a bowel movement. His muscles stood out like ropes against his arms. He bucked and twisted, beyond degradation.
'Ugh,' Frankie said, 'do they always shit like that? Man, he dumped a ton.'
'It's hard to predict. Some do, some don't; you never can tell. All will talk, though. No one can stand the idea of the eye being sliced away, the pain, the humiliation, the infirmity. It always works. It always works, doesn't it, my friend Hector?'
'Please, sir. Please, please, no more, I beg you. I'll tell you anything.'
'I know that, Hector. But I am not ready for you yet. Contemplate the darkness and the pain more rigorously, if you please. Then I may blind you anyway, simply as punishment for your evil ways. That is, even after you spill the beans.'
He raised the scalpel and Hector, seeing it through the eye not awash in blood, began to cry grotesquely.
'See,' the captain said to Frankie in English. 'The power of it. Really, it's amazing.'
'Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, that. Yeah, that's swell. Anyway, this hold on the beautiful girls? See, there's a big deal coming to America. It would be dirty pictures but in color. High quality, great lithography, glossy pages. And not just the melons. You know, all of it, the plumbing, the tunnels, the bush, all that stuff. Maybe eventually the fuck itself. If we could show it, man, the moolah would just roll in. We would have something there, let me tell you.'
'Ah,' said Captain Latavistada, 'yes. Yes, that is very good. I like that. I had not thought of it. But, yes, the drugs, the girls in the brothels, some young and quite lovely, yes, I can see. Yes, there is potential there, too.'
'Good,' said Frankie. 'See, I see a two-pronged thing but only one organization. That's the thing of it. By the same methods that you import, protect and distribute the drugs, you could do the same with the pictures.'
'Yes, that's true. However, the drugs can be destroyed very quickly in a raid, while the pictures, being bulkier, would prove problematic. That's why initially the drugs seem a safer enterprise.'
'We could solve the destruction problem with the pictures, then we'd be in good shape. I'm thinking, well, I'm no expert or nothing, but acid. Some kind of acid. Much faster and more complete than fire. I saw a guy once get a faceful of sulfuric. Man, not even Hector there would change places with that guy. Let me tell you, acid works fast.'
'Hmmm,' said Latavistada. 'You may have something there.' He looked at his watch. 'Mother of god,' he said, 'how late. I have a meeting with a very beautiful young lady. You would excuse me, Senor Carbine.'
'Frankie. You have to call me Frankie.'
'Frankie, then.'
'But what about?'
'Oh, that. Yes, of course.'
He turned, and very quickly sliced through the eyeball of Hector, blinding him forever.
'Hector,' he whispered, 'tell me what I want to know.'
Hector muttered something desperately through tears and snot and tremors and gasps for breath.
Latavistada nodded gravely.
'He says this Castro can be found generally at one of three coffeehouses in the afternoon, and he will give my man Eduardo the addresses of all his known supporters. Tomorrow we may intercept this Castro in any of a dozen places. It's not to be any kind of problem, my friend.'
'You work very professionally.'
'I mean to impress upon you that Cubans are precise and motivated and capable, not lazy, sombrero-wearing peons like the Mexicans. It's our truer, richer, purer Spanish blood. Now, as I say, I must go. I have a date at the country club.'
Chapter 28
It was a quiet night at the little bar called La Bodeguita del Medio. The first wave of johns had gone off with the first wave of marias, the gamblers hadn't won or lost enough to come to celebrate or drink themselves into oblivion, no marine regiments or naval crews were on liberty, and so Earl sat alone, under a slowly spinning fan that looked like the prop on a Wildcat, and contemplated the bottle.
It lured him.
It beckoned him.
He didn't want to give in.
It sat before him on the bar, in the darkness, glinting magically, promising so much.
Fuck it, he said, and gave in.
He swallowed half with one swig, sucking greedily.
'Doesn't it go down better with something to drink?' asked someone next to him.
Earl set the aspirin bottle down before him, took a long swallow on a concoction he called a ginless-and-tonic and washed the dry, scratchy feel of the tablets from his throat.
'Yes,' he said. 'It does.'
'How's the wound?'
'It hurts like hell.'
'Why don't you take something stronger?'
'Boy, do I want to. But if I do, three weeks later I wake up in Shanghai with a Chinese wife, seven kids, four sets of grandparents and six new tattoos.'
'Ah,' said the man, 'you are such a creature of discipline-the secret, I suppose, of your many excellent accomplishments.'
Earl didn't have to look, but he did anyway. The man was still thin and papery, with dry skin, sharp, hard, bright eyes, a gray crewcut, dressed in a baggy suit.
'The last time I saw you, you was selling vacuum cleaners. What was the name then?'
