was much larger than the palms, and as it stepped into the light, I saw it was tall, but shorter than a tree. It looked like someone had stacked some brown tires in a pile, put sumo wrestler legs and arms on it, fastened a vague facsimile of a human head to the top, and tied an anaconda between its legs. It was, of course, our living Michelin Man, in the nude.
Juan Miguel saw our gaze had shifted from him to somewhere over his shoulder. He grinned. “Hammerhead, we call him.”
Hammerhead leaped into the pool with a splash that almost started a tidal wave. He swam across the pool with a couple of strokes, climbed out dripping on our side. He ambled toward us. Moby-Dick gone bipedal.
“What do you think?” Juan Miguel said, as proud as if he was showing us a pet, and I suppose he was. “Is he not something?”
Jim Bob, naturally endearing, said, “An ambulatory shit pile. But I wouldn’t want him to fall on me.”
As Hammerhead grew closer, he became even more frightening. Through the telescope I had not been able to see how strange his head was. The front of it protruded, then sunk toward the nose, which lay flat against his face like a splattered man who had jumped from a great height. He had more scars than a Gurkha division and there were little pale scars like road map lines against the darkness of his body. It was hard to tell his nationality. He was dark, but his features were almost blank. He had Asian eyes and a little mouth that held tiny white childlike teeth. When he moved, water trapped beneath the rolls of his flesh squished out. He came to stand next to Juan Miguel’s chair.
“You’re a cute couple,” Jim Bob said.
I thought, that’s it. Jim Bob’s gonna be dead so fast Juan Miguel will forget why we’re here. But nothing happened. He just stared at Jim Bob for a while. Then at me. He said, “You listen to me. You hurt Ileana, Hammerhead here, he will beat you to death.”
“He could probably do that with that sausage between his legs,” Jim Bob said. “Considering that peanut you carry, I’m surprised you keep this guy around. Seems like it would remind you of your shortcomings.”
Juan Miguel leaped to his feet, his fist crashed down on the table and the glass split and splattered into thousands of fragments that caught the light and ricocheted images of trees and shrubs at us.
When the glass fallout was over, Jim Bob, in a bored voice, said, “You broke your table.”
“Enough!” Juan Miguel said. “It is enough!”
“I guess he’s had enough,” Jim Bob said to me.
“Reckon so,” I said.
Juan Miguel was panting. “What is… How do you say it? The deal? What is it? Tell me now, or I have you killed.”
Juan Miguel’s hand was bleeding. He pressed it to the towel at his waist.
“The deal is this,” Jim Bob said. “We want half a million dollars for your little doll, and we want to tell you why we want the money.”
“I know why you want the money,” Juan Miguel said. “I know why anyone wants the money.”
“No,” I said. “No, you don’t. We want the money because of Beatrice and Charlie.”
“Who?”
“We want the money because you wanted to kill me and the old man. I even want it for Billy, and I didn’t even like that sonofabitch.”
“What is it that you are talking about?” Juan Miguel said, his words becoming more accented and purposeful. “What is the fuck you want?”
“That’s what the fuck,” Jim Bob said. “That’s the way you say it. No slight there, just thought you might like to know that for future reference.”
“You do have half a million?” I said. “We’d hate to think you don’t. ’Cause you don’t, we got to take less, well, you get her back, but without a little finger or a thumb. You know what I’m saying?”
“Let me tell you a little thing you have not thought of,” Juan Miguel said. “I get her back with any part missing, her hair cut, a scar on her thigh, I do not want her back. She must come back as she is supposed to be. She does not, she is of no use to me, understand?”
Definitely not true love, I thought. And, unlike us, he wasn’t bluffing.
“Very well,” I said. “She comes back pretty quick if you act pretty quick.”
“How dare you threaten me.”
I knew we were beginning to play it pretty close. Maybe Juan Miguel was thinking now he could let Ileana go, shop for another. Then again, she was special. Unique. And she was his, and he liked to own things, and once owned, he didn’t like giving them up.
I said, “Here are our demands. And we want you to know our reasons. So just listen. And tell Gorgo here to go play somewhere. He makes me nervous.”
Juan Miguel spoke something in Spanish. Hammerhead’s face stayed just the same. Not a flick of an eyelash. He went to the pool, dove in, began to swim.
“Because of his size, the way he looks,” Juan Miguel said, “you might think he is a fool. He is not. He is very strong. And very loyal. He would do anything I ask. I want you to keep that in mind as you deal with me. You must prove to me that Ileana is alive. That she is okay. That she is unharmed merchandise.”
“We can do that,” Jim Bob said. “That’s how we’ll begin the down payment, with proof she’s okay.”
“What kind of proof?”
“A phone call. She can speak to you to let you know she’s all right. We come back here, you give us half the money.”
“How much is this half?”
“This half is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The other half, well, obviously we’re talking half a million here. But you try to be smart. You try to get by not paying the money, I’ll send her head home to you in a box. Comprende?”
Juan Miguel said, “Very well. But what has this to do with the people you named?”
“You’re making me mad,” I said.
“That bothers me so greatly,” Juan Miguel said.
Jim Bob looked at his watch. “We’re not back in half an hour, they kill the girl. So you had best listen and cut with the shit. Tell him, Hap.”
I gave him a brief outline of the events I thought he needed to know, and when I was finished, Juan Miguel said: “That was a personal matter. She had it coming. She lied to me. She did not do as she said. That I cannot allow. I will not allow it with you. Do you understand?”
“What about Charlie, the man you killed because you thought it was me?”
“I thought you had helped her to try and con me. I did not like that. The same with this Billy. Mistakes. I can see that now. I was angry. I like to make a clean sweep, as you Americans say. I have her killed. She gives your name. They find this other man’s name on a card. I send Hammerhead to the States. He does the job. He comes home.”
“That’s it?”
“That is it, senor. Nothing mysterious. That is all.”
I wondered how a giant like Hammerhead had wandered around LaBorde without the cops hearing about him from some source. Juan Miguel must not have been kidding about him being smart.
I suppose I had wanted there to be more, some semi-valid reason for all the deaths, but there was none. It was as Jim Bob had figured. Juan Miguel cleaning up after himself, not wanting any messes left over from his dealings with Beatrice.
“So, this is your plan,” Juan Miguel said. “I could hold you, of course. I could make sure you do not leave.”
“We been over that,” Jim Bob said. “Fuck with us, the woman’s dead. For whatever reason, even if the reason belongs to someone else, you fuck up, she’s toast.”
“Toast?”
Jim Bob slapped the back of his hand into his palm. “Burned. Done. Wiped out.”
“Very well,” Juan Miguel said. “But do not make a mistake. Take care of Ileana. Very good care. And when I get her back. When you have your money. Please run. Run very far. For I will be at your back, my friends.”
“We’ll remember that,” Jim Bob said.
