Honey in His Mouth

Mr. Hassam’s eyes were suddenly alert and shiny. “I was coming to the point.”

“Yeah? How, by way of Detroit and points between? What are you driving at anyway?”

“Harsh, I was pointing out that we both like money.”

“Well goddamn it now, I know what you were pointing out. I understand the word money.”

“Harsh, you had a narrow escape yesterday. With the telephone in the cabana, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t know what you mean. And if I did, I would have a hell of a time figuring out what it had to do with money. I’m sorry, I don’t follow you, Mr. Hassam.”

“Harsh, you did not knock that telephone off the table accidentally. What you did, you picked up the telephone to make an outside call. Possibly you planned to reach a confederate to help you crack this nut. You found the telephone was not an outside line, and Brother answered on the switchboard, so you pretended the phone had just been knocked off the table. That was quick thinking, Harsh. A man who was not alert, a man who did not have natural instincts of wariness, would have hung up the phone. That is what a stupid man would have done. But you did not. You were a wary man.”

Harsh watched the other intently. “Mr. Hassam, I don’t know what you’re driving at. You’ve got me going.”

“I am trying to tell you the telephone incident convinced me you are the kind of a man it would be safe to do business with, Harsh.”

“How was that?”

“You can think on your feet. I mean thinking on your feet comes naturally to you.”

“I guess opinions about that might differ.”

Mr. Hassam gave the neighborhood a precautionary look. “You do not need to call in an outside confederate, Harsh. Not when you have one ready-made who knows the ropes.”

“I guess you mean you and I might work something together.”

“Precisely.”

“We put out heads together, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“You help me, I help you. That the idea?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Hassam, how do you expect me to help you? I mean, what will I have to do?”

Mr. Hassam smiled thinly. “That will come. I am sure it will come. Frankly, I had not yet worked out a plan.”

“Well, you can help me right now. I already got my problem. My problem is fifty thousand dollars in that safe, plus nineteen hundred for my car. That son of a bitching Brother locked the money in the safe and gave me one key and kept the other key himself. My problem is to get my dough out of that safe.”

“Yes, I know about that.”

“There by God is one place you can help me right now.”

Mr. Hassam tilted his head back and watched an airplane that was circling high in the sky above the sea. “I do not have the other key to the safe, you know.” The plane’s wings gave off reflections of light like faint sparks.

“Well, I know one way to get the key off Brother. Knock the son of a bitch on the head and take it.”

“Yes. Yes indeed.” Mr. Hassam’s voice was dry. “Then you could pocket the fifty thousand, and off you could go. Right?”

Harsh’s eyes narrowed. “I get it.”

“You get what?”

“You wouldn’t just hand me the fifty thousand bucks now, would you. I mean, that would be a real sucker deal for you.”

Mr. Hassam nodded. “I think we are beginning to reach a sense of compatibility.”

“You could call it that, I suppose.” Harsh caught a movement near the house. “Look, Hassam, this sniffing around the post you’re doing, are you figuring you might latch onto a part of my fifty thousand?”

Hassam smiled. “Not in the least. I might even add to it, if things break right.”

The figure at the house was Brother, who had popped into view and was running toward them. “We better knock it off. Here comes Brother.”

“Where?” Mr. Hassam looked around.

Harsh pointed. “He’s got the ants for some reason. Look at him run.”

Brother ran toward them with the long loping lurching pace of a distance man. He had been interrupted while shaving for there was lather on one side of his face and he carried a towel in one hand.

Brother confronted Mr. Hassam breathlessly. “Miss Muirz. Long distance. Urgent. You are to return at once. I looked all over hell for you.”

“We were here on the beach, working on his Spanish.” Mr. Hassam’s face began to be less coffee-colored. “Urgent, you say? Has something gone wrong?”

Brother drew himself erect. “El Presidente has resigned.”

Mr. Hassam turned and ran toward the house.

PART THREE

FIFTEEN

El Presidente had made his move against the Catholics, and it had not worked out as he had hoped. Posturing, shouting, standing on the balcony of the Presidential residence on Avenida del Libertador General San Martin— he had learned the effectiveness of the balcony speech from Mussolini a long time ago—he made his bluff, screaming that he would resign his office if the people wished, if the people felt it would bring peace and prosperity. The expected cries thundered back from the mob below. No, no! Prefero El Presidente! Viva la Senora de la Esperanza! However the crowd had amounted to only about thirty thousand, which was disappointing, since the organizers of the descamisada, the shirtless ones, had worked like dogs and had been able to turn out but little more than half of the fifty thousand demanded of them. Also the wave of hysteria that swept the shirtless ones was neither violent nor long-lived.

The moment he got back from Miami, Mr. Hassam could sense a change in the people. He went to the bank at once. Not officially an officer of the bank, he had however access to its information pipelines, and the conclusion he drew was that the inevitable had come. He heard that two Catholic leaders, two prominent Bishops, had been tossed in jail accused of sex perversion. Mr. Hassam felt the bastard had made a real big mistake there. Rumors were tearing like sky rockets through the town, the main one a report that some of the army leaders had been unable to stomach the rank thing with the Catholic prelates, and had set up a clique among themselves.

Mr. Hassam had as yet found no reliable evidence that El Presidente had resigned. He wondered if the bastard was shacked up somewhere with one of his tarts and doing nothing about the situation, happy to fiddle while Rome burned. Mr. Hassam was fairly sure he had resigned, however, or was resigning—Miss Muirz had said so, and Miss Muirz was the one person El Presidente was likely to confide in.

The telephone rang in Mr. Hassam’s office and he jumped like a gazelle.

“My place. Right away. You took your time getting down here.”

Miss Muirz’s voice.

“On my way. Did my best.” Nervousness made Mr. Hassam just as cryptic as she.

Miss Muirz lived in a four-story house in Calle Corrientes, and this was Mr. Hassam’s first visit to the house. He expected to be impressed and he was; the luxury, the costliness of the furnishings, struck him as fantastic. Also the taste was far worse than he expected, so bad that he wondered if she