receipt for the hotel. He studied the photograph of Lavander, a gangly, unkempt man with a gray complexion and thin, straggly hair, for several minutes, and when he knew the face, he burned the photograph and flushed the remains.
He left the rest room and went to the airline counter to check
in.
Hinge arrived at ten the next morning. The drive up from the airport to Caracas was hot and uncomfortable, with the air still humid from the rains the day before, and storm clouds threatening to deluge the city again at any moment. To make matters worse, the cab was not air-conditioned. Warm, moist wind blew through the open windows, and Hinge was wind-whipped and sweaty. The traffic, as usual, was wicked and pollution burned his nose and throat.
‘Pit-fuckin’-city,’ Hinge said, only half under his breath. It wasn’t his first trip to the capital of Venezuela. He knew it well. The city fills a narrow nine-mile-long valley between Mount Avila, a sixty-five-hundred-foot forested mountain, to its north, and the foothills of the Cord Del Maria mountains to the south. Beyond the Cord Del Maria, going farther south, there is not much of anything but, jungle and more jungle, and eventually Brazil. The Del Maria foothills had always struck Hinge as un poco loco, a little crazy. Schizoid would probably be closer to it. On the western slopes are some of the worst slums in the world, the ranchitos, thousands of red huts and adobe shacks that huddle together in squalor, while to the east are the haunts of the rich and the powerful, speckled with costly homes, swimming pools and private clubs, the Beverly Hills of Caracas.
Between them is the sprawling downtown section of, as Hinge would have it, ‘pit-fuckin’-city’; made rich by oil, grown up far too fast for its own good, and which, despite its towering glass-and-steel skyscrapers, still suffered the same ills as most boomtowns. It was overbuilt, overpopulated, polluted, had a terrible phone system, water shortages, lousy garbage collections, the worst traffic jams in the world and its ugliest whores.
At night it glitters like Tiffany’s window.
Hinge wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to ignore the discomfort.
What the hell, he could be in Johannesburg.
Pit-fuckin’-city, squared.
Instead, he thought about the job. Out there somewhere, among the three million people, in the nightmare of downtown or among the squalid ranchitos, was poor old Lavander, like a sinner at a prayer meetin’, prayin’ to be saved. Well, Hinge thought, if me and ol’ Spettro can’t spring him, he can’t be sprung.
So they were staying at the fanciest digs in town. Thank Quill for that. Everything first cabin. Hinge registered and took the key, refusing to allow the bellman to carry his black parachute- silk travelling bag. The room was on the fourth floor.
Good. Hinge didn’t like to be up too high. He had once been in a hotel fire in Bangkok, and his fear of hotel fires was paranoid. The elevator whisked him to the fourth floor. The room was large and opulent with a beautiful view of the teleferico, a Swiss-type cable car that carried patrons up one side of Mount Avila and down the other to the Caribbean Sea, twelve miles to the north.
He put his duffel-type bag on the bed and opened it, taking out fresh underwear, a shirt, socks and a pair of khaki pants. Anxiety hummed along his nerves. He was already tuning up for the assignment, but he was even mo re excited knowing that his partner for this job was in the next room. After ten years in the business, he was finally going to meet il Spettro — the Phantom — according to legend the most skilled assassin in the business and a man who could kill you with a dirty look.
At the same time that Hinge was driving toward his hotel in Caracas, O’Hara was pulling up in front of the flamboyant old hotel on St. Lucifer.
Le Grand Gustavsen Hotel sat on the side of a foothill overlooking the main city, Bonne Terre, which had a population of five thousand, to the azure Caribbean beyond. Towering palm trees lined the coral road that led up to its main entrance. Nothing here had changed since O’Hara’s last visit to the island. Driving up to the entrance, O’Hara always felt as if he were lost in time. The sprawling four-story, virginal- white Victorian hotel was perhaps the most elegant old gingerbread castle in the world, its latticework a masterpiece of curlicues and filigrees and spindles and arches. Broad porches surrounded the second and third floors of the ancient old hostelry, and the building was framed by tall ferns and palm trees. The main floor of the hotel was actually on the second floor. The bottom floor, once a basement and wine cellar, had been turned into a kind of mini-international bazaar. Hidden discreetly behind French doors were sift shops from England and Spain and the Orient. A famous French couturier had a small showroom there. And the newsstand boasted periodicals and newspapers from almost every country in the world, including Russia. A fountain bubbled quietly at the front of the hotel, with a winding escalier on either side, leading to the first floor and the main entrance.
The hotel had been built as an investment in 1892 by Olaf Gustavsen, a Norwegian shipbuilder. Three pestering wives and nine children later, old Gus had forsaken it all and retreated to his island castle, where he had married a beautiful local who had borne him a son and died in the doing. Gus welcomed expatriates, soldiers of fortune, itinerate journalists, down- and-out writers, tired-out old spies on the last leg to retirement, and anyone else with a good story to tell. He had, through the years, begrudgingly added plumbing, running water and electricity. His son, Little Gus, who spent most of his time fishing, kept up the tradition of tawdry elegance, never succumbing either to air-conditioning or telephones in the rooms. Messages were accepted by anyone who happened to answer the phone on the desk, and might or might not be delivered. Outwardly, nothing had changed since 1892 except for an occasional coat of white paint. The only modern touch was a small red neon sign near the driveway, which read:
LE GRAND GUSTAVSEN HOTEL
Presents
Six Fingers Rothschild
The Magician of the Keyboard
Appearing nightly
The Magician must have blackmailed the old buzzard to get that put up.
The doorman was a giant of a black man who wore a white short-sleeved shirt and black bellbottoms.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ he said, and took O’Hara’s suitcase.
‘Bonjour,’ O’Hara said. ‘Merci.’
