Captain Gringo found Sally sitting on his bed in her chemise. The skirt and blouse were folded over a chair. Her black stockings and cotton drawers were hanging, wet, on a slat of the jalousied window. She said, “I hope you don’t think I’m used to sleeping with people I only just met. That Jenny told me there was no room with her.”
He said, “Yeah,” and took off his jacket.
Sally lowered her voice and confided, “I’ll bet she sleeps with that Sir Basil. But she wasn’t wearing a ring.”
“Sally, nobody can talk that dumb without a lot of effort.”
“That’s what my last boyfriend said. Is this a house of ill repute?”
“Not exactly. Sir Basil is a pervert and gun runner who’s out to overthrow the government. Jenny is a contortionist, I think.”
“But they’re not married, right?”
“No, and neither are we. I could be gallant and offer to sleep on the floor, but I saw this bed first. If you want to go on playing Little Bo Peep I’ll fix you a pallet or you can sleep across the foot of the bed. I’ve had a rough day and I’m not up to any more games.”
She lowered her eyes and said, “Oh, I’ll bet you’d like to get fresh if I’d let you!”
“Sally, I don’t care either way. You’re pretty and you know it. I’m a man and you’re a woman. It’s up to you. I’ve got a lot on my mind and, no offense, you ain’t it.”
He started to strip as she watched him in the candlelight. When he peeled off his pants and turned down the sheet she looked away and said, “Heavens, you’re naked! It’s indecent to sleep naked!”
“Look, you sleep your way and I’ll sleep my way. I wish you’d light somewhere so I could blow out this candle.”
“I’m not sleepy. Besides, I’m afraid of the dark.”
“Oh boy!”
“Can’t we talk or something? It’s so early and I feel so funny and I’m sort of scared.”
He sat up on one elbow and said, “Sally, you’re going to be all right. In the morning I’ll see about a steamship passage back to the States for you.”
“Oh? I suppose you expect me to pay you with my body, right? You’re just like all the other men I’ve met, after all.”
“Listen, baby, you’re going to have a hard time getting this through your fuzzy little head, but I don’t want you! So knock it off and let’s get some sleep.”
He plumped his pillow and put his head down, hoping if he closed his eyes she’d shut up.
She didn’t. She sniffed and asked, “Not even a little tiny bit?”
“Okay, maybe a teeny-weeny bit, but let’s not cry about it.”
She got off the bed and said, “I told you I studied dancing. Would you like to see me dance, Dick?”
“Not really.”
She began to hum a fast music-hall song and he felt the floor under them vibrate as she started bouncing around, going, “Oooh, la, lala la lalla.”
He growled, “What the fuck?” and opened his eyes. Sally was doing the can-can at the foot of the bed. Everything she had under the thin chemise was bouncing in time, and her high kicks were astounding. She wore nothing under the chemise, and Sally was blond all over.
He sat up and gasped, “Knock it off! They’ll think we’re smashing furniture in here!”
But she yelled, “Wheeee!” and kicked higher with the other leg.
He rolled his own legs off the bed and rose, pleading, “For God’s sake, Sally, have you gone crazy?”
As he took a step toward her, she raised a long, shapely leg and hooked her bare heel over his collarbone. He was afraid she was going to fall right on her plump bottom, so he grabbed her by either hipbone and pulled her closer. Her eyes widened and her mouth made a little ‘O’ as their pelvic flesh made contact. He hadn’t realized it was up until he felt himself entering her wide-open lips with one of her feet on the floor and the other around his neck.
She gasped, “Good heavens!” as, since he was holding her hips firmly, she raised the other leg and let her body fall backward. He stood there, in her to the root, as she did a handstand on the rug and began to do an inverted grind with her head somewhere near his braced shins.
He didn’t know how to get her up, so he bent his knees and went to the floor to join her. They wound up with her chemise around her upper chest and their heads under the bed. She wrapped her arms around him and began to sob, “Oh, please don’t do me like the others, darling. I know I’m not very clever, but I’ll make a good woman for you.”
He kissed her to shut her up, feeling like a rat in heaven as he pounded her soft curves on the hard floor. He didn’t want to hurt her, physically, so after their first orgasm he picked her up and spread her across the bed.
She started to cry. So he comforted her, and somehow they were at it again in another crazy position. Sally couldn’t seem to make up her mind where her dancing feet belonged. It was great, but he’d never had his hair rubbed like that by a lady’s foot while he was in her. The other heel was kicking him playfully in the butt at the same time. He was forced to revise his idea that Jenny was the contortionist. Sally didn’t feel like she had bones at all. It was like making love to a beautiful sex-starved jellyfish.
Later she made him get out of bed and lay on the floor, saying there was something she’d been meaning to try. He couldn’t imagine a position they’d missed, but he didn’t want her to start pouting again. She stood over him, chemise up around her waist, and began to can-can again as he muttered, “Nuts. Absolutely nuts.”
But he had a marvelous view, and when she ended her short version with the usual falling can-can split, he couldn’t believe the results. She came down with fantastic aim. She’d have ruined him if she’d missed. She was upright across his hips, a long leg out either way, and then she used her dancer’s strength to start bouncing in a series of . .. what the hell would you call it?
He’d thought at first the tightness was occasioned by the split. Then he reached down to feel between them as he marveled, “Honey, I think I’m in the wrong hole!”
She moaned and said, “Keep playing with me like that. Any hole’s the right one when it feels so good!”
He started to feel better. Not just because he was being milked out of his mind, but because her innocent act was wearing off. She still sounded like Little Bo Peep, but he doubted if a Dodge City whore in a hundred could throw a perfect ringer with her asshole from three feet up!
Feeling less like a rat, he enjoyed Sally more as a man. They made a hell of a mess out of the bed before they wound up sleeping in a ball near the foot.
In the next-door room, Sir Basil chuckled as he closed the peephole near the head of his bed and fondled Jenny’s hair as she teased his belly button with her tongue. He said, “I thought they were going to kill each other for a time, but he seems to have satisfied her for the moment. I wonder where on earth Greystoke found her!”
Jenny removed her face from his firm, small waist but went on stroking his semi-erection as she asked, “Are you sure the blonde’s a British agent? She seems as stupid as a sheep.”
“Oh, that’s the best kind, and Greystoke has a generous budget to work with. I wonder if they planned to let them escape together or if Sally is a born opportunist. From what he said, she was perfectly willing to kick a fellow Britisher down a ladder to gain his confidence. I admire the way she works. Wide-eyed, amoral, and completely ruthless.”
Jenny kissed the little man’s astonishingly large organ and murmured, “Pooh, I think she overdoes it. What’s the point of playing the maid betrayed one minute and leaping on a man the next? If she wanted to screw, why didn’t she just say so?”
“She’s keeping him off balance, of course. Like ourselves, she knows the notorious Captain Gringo hides a sentimental streak inside that hard-boiled exterior. Between us, we must have him totally mixed up.”
“You have me mixed up, and I know you better than anyone. Why do we always have to do things so complicated? You remind me of a chess master who cheats by moving pawns when his beaten opponent isn’t looking!”
“That’s the fun way to play the Great Game. To understand me, you would have to have been born a man. A very small man and a member of a despised minority. At six I cried a lot. By the time I was nine I had the village bully sucking me off.”
The redhead purred and murmured, “I can see you started raising this from an early age, darling. Why do you keep having us tell everyone you’re an impotent queer? I’ve never met a man of any age more virile, and if there’s a bigger cock on Earth, I’d be afraid to meet it.”
He chuckled and replied, “I learned years ago the advantages of being underestimated by the Neanderthals. Despite my best intentions, I’ve become notorious as a rather dangerous man. I try to offer every opportunity for others to hold me in contempt. They know I have money, and despite my schoolboy chatter they suspect I have a mind. My physical strengths are the ace in the hole I manage to keep hidden.”
Jenny licked his erection for lubrication and crawled her larger body atop his as she said, “Oh yeah, I want your ace in my hole.”
He lay back as the big pink woman lowered herself onto him, moaning, “Oh, my God, it feels like I’m going to split wide open. Don’t move ‘til I adjust to your size. Did you say you shoved this ramrod up some boy’s rear one time?”
“Yes. He bled and cried a bit. It was quite amusing, since he’d hit me when I was younger.”
“Brrr! You frighten me at times, Basil. Sometimes I don’t know if you’re making love to me because you like me, or because you hate the world so.”
“Don’t you enjoy it, either way? I don’t hate the whole world, dear heart. Only ninety per cent of it. How about moving a bit faster, or would you like me on top?”
“You hurt me when you get on top before I’m really warmed up. You make love so savagely. Is that why you’re not jealous when you ask me to give myself to other men?”
“Of course. Sexual jealousy is insecurity. When a man knows he’s the best there is, what do a few feeble jabs from his inferiors matter?”
Jenny closed her eyes and began to move faster as she warmed up. She didn’t think she’d better tell him Captain Gringo had really made her come. She knew the advantages of letting each partner think the other meant nothing to her, and they weren’t ready to dispose of the tall American yet.
Basil said, “Enough. I want to finish dog style.”
“Not yet. You hurt me when you go so deep.”
But he insisted, as she’d known he would. The dear little thing did have an astounding tool, and she liked to keep him proud of it. Jenny knew her life depended on pleasing the twisted little moral monster. Basil Hakim was a generous friend and employer, but he had the distressing habit of crushing those he had no use for, with less emotion than most men show when tossing away a smoked-down cigar.
As he stood behind her, thrusting skillfully but, as always, with the self-control that made his lovemaking last, he mused aloud, “I wonder if the Yankee next door sees the Knight’s Cross I’ve placed him in.”
“Knight’s Cross, darling?”
“Chess ploy. I have him set up, now, so that no matter which way he moves, he’s going to win for me.”
Captain Gringo met with the leaders of the Balboa Brigade during the following siesta time, after setting it up the next morning with Gaston. He’d left Sally at the Hakim villa, but brought the Maxim with him in Sir Basil’s carriage as a demonstration.
The meeting was in a banana warehouse near the rail yards, and the young rebels seemed impressed, albeit wary. There were eight or nine of them, mostly peasant mestizos with a couple of Spanish Creoles and one well-dressed woman of about thirty, the widow of a man executed in an earlier revolt against Colombia. She was dark and sullen with smoldering black eyes and a faint mustache. They called her Sor Pantera, or Sister Panther. The obvious male leader was a Sephardic Jew called Spinoza. He seemed sullen and suspicious, too.
As Captain Gringo demonstrated the action of the machine gun, Spinoza said, “Gaston has told us of your adventures in Mexico. We’ll take you at your word the gun will fire. You say this strange person offers us six of them, on credit?”
“That’s what he says. Ammunition’s going to be our problem. This gun’s chambered for the same rounds your Colombian Army uses. I assume you guys have been swiping all the ammo you can get?”
“Of course. But let’s get back to this strange business of a gun runner extending credit to rebels he’s never met.”
“Hell, Spinoza, Hakim knows who you are. So does everyone else. Gaston has a government spy running out for sandwiches for him. They’re probably watching us at this very minute. Last night they sicced a British spy on me.”
Sor Pantera raised her skirt to reveal a shapely ankle with a .44 snub-nosed Colt strapped to the inside of her high-button shoe as she snapped, “I knew this was a trap!”
Gaston soothed, “Don’t be hasty, my treasure. My young friend, here, is more devious than he might appear. He would not have walked into a trap he expected to be sprung.”
“I don’t trust any American. When they built the railroad over my grandfather’s land ...”
Captain Gringo raised a hand for silence and said, “Look, folks. I could be spending this siesta with a very pretty lady who’s expecting me to call. My first instinct when I caught on was to cut and run. I have money and a gun and they’re not ready to close the cage door for at least a few hours. I came because I owe Gaston, here, and because I don’t like being used. If you don’t trust me, fine, I’ll just be on my way before the egg hits the fan.”
He turned to Gaston as he added, “You’d better light out with me, buddy. These chumps have been had.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “They are new at the game, but sincere. Perhaps you’d better explain, if you have any idea what’s going on.”
Captain Gringo saw he had their attention, so he said, “I think Sir Basil is landing weapons. Lots of weapons, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus. The seagoing San Bias Indians have moved inland despite shoot-on-sight orders to the Colombian troopers. That means white men, tougher white men, using the offshore keys for landing and staging areas.”
Spinoza said, “There’s no rebel activity on that shore. Everyone knows our first move must be to seize and hold Panama City for our capital and rebel stronghold.”
“Spinoza, you guys have lost your revolution before it started. The French and British are working against you. The Wall Street wolves are backing another bunch. We’re not talking about winning. We’re talking about surviving. There’s always another day for a revolution, but you have to be alive when the sun comes up.”
Gaston said, “Merde, get to the point, Captain Gringo. Why is this Hakim so anxious to arm us if he’s written us off as a lost cause?”
“The Colombian Army is equipped with French Chauchat machine guns. The Maxim is twice as good as a gun and costs three times as much. His idea is for you to demonstrate this to the War Department in Bogota.”
“But with six machine guns and a full brigade of guerrillas, we might win!”
“Maybe. He has no intention of giving us the chance. This gun is it. If any of us try to take delivery of the others he’s offered, they’ll be walking into a police trap. He’s going to turn us in any time, now.”
Sor Pantera gasped, “A police informer arms us with a new machine gun before telling his friends where to find us? That sounds utterly insane!”
“Hakim’s not a police informant. He’s an arms merchant, and I don’t think he’s had a friend since his mother died. He knows Gaston and I tend to make a lot of noise when cornered. He handed us this gun on a silver platter so we could go down fighting well enough to convince the authorities the Maxim is one hell of a weapon. As they total up the casualty list, he intends to offer a good buy on the cargo of guns he’s hiding in the jungles right now. He’ll hint the British- and American-backed rebels might be buying guns as good. I imagine the Colombian general staff will order a Maxim for every company in their fair-sized Army, don’t you?”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Gaston nodded and said, “Of course. The government has more troops to supply, and more money, than all three rebel factions put together. Hakim is undercutting the French as the main source of arms.”
Sor Pantera said, “The government is most ruthless and corrupt. What is to stop them from simply seizing the guns Hakim lands, as rebel contraband?”
Before the American could answer, Gaston said, “The game is not played that way, Sor Pantera. Stoats hunt rabbit. They do not hunt one another. The guns alone are only part of any new supply chain. One must have spare parts and tools, a firmly established distribution of new ammunition. This demonstration gun is chambered to take French ammunition. I’ve no doubt the others he means to deliver will be chambered for Hakim’s own cartridges. He owns a factory in Switzerland that makes quite acceptable smokeless 7mm rounds.”
Spinoza nodded with a bitter little smile and said, “You are right, Captain Gringo. We have been had, as you put it. But at least we can write a glorious chapter as we go down for the cause of libertad.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather live to fight another day.”
“I agree, but what are we to do? If you are right about our being known and about to be betrayed—”
“We have a couple of advantages, beside this machine gun. The other side, or sides, are overconfident. They know you kids are new at plotting revolutions and they’ve taken Gaston and me for simple gun thugs. Hakim and the locals in his pay expect us to either walk into a trap, where I get to blow away a mess of disposable cops with this Maxim, or else he’s hoping I’ve caught on and will warn you—in which case the obvious move would be to start the revolution sometime this afternoon and smoke up the center of town. Either way, the top officials here get to look like heroes to the central government, and Hakim will rearm a nervous Army after we’ve been beaten.”
Gaston nodded and said, “Heads he wins and tails we lose. One would hope you have a third choice, my old and rare?”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “First we have to get our tails out of here. Panama City is no place for a growing rebel. They’ve got every possible hideout zeroed in, probably with field guns. I suggest we leave the small fry holed up for now. The police will only have the names and addresses of you leaders. We’ll sit tight until sundown, then run for the Culebra Mountains and get ourselves and this machine gun into the jungles on the windward side.”
Sor Pantera grimaced and said, “We are white people, not Indians. No civilized person can live in those trackless rain forests beyond La Culebra!”
“Guerrillas who want the comforts of home get buried pronto, senora. I’ve been through your jungle and you’re right. It’s a wet, green nightmare. It’ll be rough on anyone chasing us, too. Your Army officers will be high-landers from Bogota, less used to the tropics than we are. Here on familiar ground they’ll just throw bayonets at us ‘til we run out of ammo. In the jungle, troops move slow and watch where they put a foot. Guerrillas on the run have the advantage in rough country. They know nobody is behind the next tree down the trail ahead. So they tend to move faster than the best men after them.”
“But the jungles are a death trap to all whites! What good is it to escape the soldiers and police if it means being eaten by a jaguar or bitten by a bushmaster?”
Spinoza nodded and said, “The insects alone will devour us alive!”
Captain Gringo smiled and said, “You see? The people chasing us will be scared skinny, too! Gaston and I have been through some jungle. A ... an Indian lady I once knew showed me a few tricks about surviving the more obvious discomforts of the jungle. Nobody here is a kid, so I assume we’ve all lived through yellow jack at least once, and you can’t catch it twice. I’ll show you how to keep the bugs off. We’ll work our way over to the quiet side and if you’re still in the mood for a revolution we might surprise hell out of Hakim’s gun runners. Given a jungle base and enough machine guns for an army—”
Spinoza stuck out his hand and said, “I am for your plan. How do we move from this warehouse to the edge of town without attracting attention?”
“It’s siesta time. Hakim is expecting us to take delivery on the other guns this evening. I suggest you all go home separately, as if this meeting went according to his plan. Gaston and I will take this gun to his place in the carriage, as if to put it away for safekeeping. Each of you gather food and ammo, money if you have it, and we’ll meet under the second railroad trestle out of town, after dark. Don’t any of you draw money from the bank or do anything else to let them know you’re planning on leaving. If Gaston and I don’t make it with the gun, you’re on your own. Don’t wait for us more than an hour after sunset.”
Spinoza said, “An innocent after-dinner stroll offers no problem. How are you two going to manage smuggling that big gun past the police?”
Captain Gringo had hoped he wouldn’t ask.
He hadn’t figured that part out yet.