“Oh.”
“The one who died? Remember her?”
That shut her ass up. But she still never let up about the hootch. Afraid a little booze now and then was ruining his Navy career. As if it wasn’t ruined enough already. You didn’t exactly get promoted for spending a lot of consecutive nights in the brig.
What she didn’t know was that it didn’t goddamn matter! They were rich! That would shut her up on a permanent basis. He’d made them so goddamn rich they could thumb their noses at anybody in the whole stinkpot Navy.
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Rafael Goddamn Gomez, that’s who, and by God, he was one.
He even had this number he could call in Switzerland. He called it every day and gave the guy at the bank his secret account number. They’d give him the current balance in his secret numbered account. Money was growing like weeds over there. Hell, the interest alone was more than his shitty Navy salary.
Did he feel guilty taking all that money? Well, that was a good question. Did Uncle Sam feel guilty about the agony of his sainted mother in that hospital in Havana because of the goddamn U.S. embargo on medicines? That was another good question. How many innocent people had to die in pain before the idiots in Washington lifted that friggin’ blockade?
Guilty? Him?
“I don’t think so,” Gomer said aloud, looking out the greasy garage window at some little kids on their bikes. American kids with lots of Armour hot dogs and Diet Coke and individually wrapped American cheese in the fridge and eardrops in the medicine cabinet if their little ears got little friggin’ earaches. Hell, they even had a McDonald’s here.
Happy Meals! While everybody else in Cuba was going to bed hungry, these little rugrats were wolfing Happy Meals!
Guilty? Not in this friggin’ lifetime.
Gomer took out his pocketknife and flipped open the big blade. He held the teddy bear down on the worktable with one hand and slit it open along the seam under its arm with the other. White stuffing popped out and flew all over the bench. Christ. He looked at his watch again. Four-fifteen. How long did birthday parties generally last anyway?
It would look weird if he didn’t get over there pretty soon. The phone in the kitchen had been ringing off the hook and he was pretty sure it was Rita, wondering what the hell was keeping him. He was doing the best he could, wasn’t he? Providing for his family? There was a cold Budweiser sitting on the table that he didn’t remember bringing out to the garage. Weird. He took a gulp and felt better already. Beer was a goddamn miracle food and nobody ever gave it any credit.
Gomer walked over to his car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. It was an old car, a goddamn embarrassing heap to tell the truth. Well, his days of tooling around in crap like this would be over before you knew it. He had a stack of Corvette magazines under his bed to prove it.
He unlocked the trunk and opened it.
That’s where he’d hidden the package that Julio and Iglesias had given him in Miami. The one they’d wrapped up in his own friggin’ T-shirts and jockeys and put inside his own friggin’ suitcase! Which they’d given back to him in the coffee shop the day he’d agreed to go along with the Big Plan.
The package was in there, right under the spare tire. Since he was the only one who drove the damn car, he figured it’d be pretty safe under there. And there it was, too, right where he stowed it soon as he’d returned from stateside. Man. When you got it going right, you got it going right.
It took him a few minutes to get the package open. First there was all this goddamn Cuban newspaper wrapped in twine. And then all this goddamn bubbly stuff wrapped around the box. And you get that off, then it was goddamn shrink-wrapped inside! Christ. They certainly weren’t making it easy for him. He probably should have done this earlier in the day. Before he’d gone to work.
So he was a little late. Shoot him.
He was curious to see the thing itself. He ripped at the bubble stuff, just throwing it on the floor, trying to get to the box inside. Then he had it. The box was made of some kind of heavy black plastic. High-impact stuff. It had latches on all four sides. He flipped them open, easy.
It was like Christmas. What was in the box?
Oh. A thermos bottle.
That’s what it looked like. A silver thermos with some kind of foam packing all around it. And two other little gizmos packed in the foam right next to it. Everything wrapped in newspaper with some kind of damn Arabic writing on it.
He lifted the thermos out very carefully because he knew what it contained of course. El Motel de los Cucarachas, baby. He set it down on the workbench next to his beer. Careful. Don’t want to knock either of these two babies over! Then he pried the first gizmo out and placed it next to the thermos thing.
The gizmo was round, and threaded inside. And, man, it was heavy. He could see that the threads inside matched the threads outside the bottom of the thermos bottle. He had a vague recollection of the Cubans showing him a drawing, telling him to screw the little gizmo on the—the—what the hell had they called it, the canister.
That’s it. It was a canister, not a thermos bottle. He picked up the gizmo and screwed it to the bottom of the canister. The thing made a little electronic noise that surprised him, but it sounded like a happy noise. Like he’d done it right. Surprise, surprise.
Piece of cake. Birthday cake, he thought, and laughed out loud. You weren’t supposed to laugh at your own jokes, but still.
He turned the whole thing upside down and looked for the switch they’d told him about. They were very nervous that he’d forget the switch, he remembered that. But he hadn’t forgotten to remember, had he? Even though he’d had a little buzz on all day.
The switch was under a little clear red plastic cover that you had to slide back. So far, so good. He slid the cover back and flipped the switch. He took a swig of beer. Then he held the thermos up and looked at the gizmo end. There was a digital readout window with red letters that had now appeared.
He liked the look of the word he saw blinking there. It was just the kind of word that got a whup-ass alpha male like himself hyper-jazzed. In bright red letters it said:
ARMED
How awesome is that? Armed and extremely dangerous. He knew you weren’t supposed to laugh at your own jokes, but you had to chuckle at that one. Okay, now, by the book. Step one: Drink more beer. Step two: Put the thermos inside Mr. Bear, sew up his fat little tummy, and then wrap him all up in the pink paper and the big red ribbon. Put him very carefully into the car.
He’s shaking now, from the inside out. His whole body is thrumming like the frigging G-string on Axl Rose’s Fender Stratocaster.
Okay, the second little gizmo. What had they called it? A soda pop name. 7UP? No, RC. That was it. Leave the second gizmo, a little metal box with an antenna on it, right where it was, inside the black plastic box. He wouldn’t be needing that little item, not until he got The Call. Till then the box could go right back in the trunk under the spare.
Time to amscray on over to the Moonman’s birthday bash.
Easy as peas.
When you’ve totally and completely got your shit together and know exactly what you’re doing, that is.
16
“Nothing stirs the human blood quite like the sight of large dorsal fins knifing through the water,” Hawke said, pointing his sword down toward the sharks circling below. “Wouldn’t you agree, gentlemen?”
Grigory and Nikolai looked ready to vomit.
