The reason everybody but the greedy Colombian political clique wanted to see the stalled Panama Canal completed was that it was a bitch to get across the Central American land mass any other way.
Ever since Balboa had staggered over a hill, chasing gold and/or Indian slaves, his discovery of the Pacific Ocean had teased and taunted the mapmakers and seamen of the world with the seemingly infinitesimal land barrier between the vast and busy seas. In truth, the distance was greater than the few fractions of an inch on the map would indicate. At its narrowest, the wasp waist chosen for the canal route was over fifty miles as the crow flies, and a lot farther as a man or mule could walk. Less than ten percent of the country between the seas was suitable for agriculture or flat enough to build on. The rest was either a green hell of lowland jungle and swamp or a maze of elbow-to-elbow volcanic mountains, racing one another for the sky as they grew inch by inch, belching ash and lava down their flanks. The often heavy rains of the tropics added to the mapmakers’ confusion by carving nameless gullies, canyons, and mangrove-haunted rivers in every direction. Balboa had been lucky. Many an explorer after him had simply vanished into the chaos, trying to take a short stroll to the other side. But there were a few natural passages, discovered at great cost, and hence bought or seized as private property by the monopolistic travel interests of the era.
They had to get to the Pacific side, whether they headed for Bogotá – or, as Gaston suggested, Australia. Colombia had a Caribbean coast, subject to its next border dispute with Venezuela, but the route from the lowland seaport of Santa Maria to the highland capital of Bogotá was blocked by the vast uncharted Magdalena swamps. You could only get to Bogotá by rail via the Pacific port of Buenaventura. From there, a narrow-gauge railway might carry you up into the Andes, weather and bandits permitting. It probably wasn’t true that the Colombian highlands were as remote as Tibet. The clannish people who lived up there just acted like it was.
The northbound night boat from Limón was a Vanderbilt passenger-freighter with its more luxurious cabins and promenade deck perched above the malodorous cargo holds. It would take them up the San Juan to Lake Nicaragua and Granada, from where they could catch a Vanderbilt train to Chinandega-Corinto and then either hop a Pacific coastal steamer, or travel by coach and ferry north to San Salvador. Captain Gringo figured that if they hadn’t lost anyone tailing them by then, they weren’t likely to. He was keeping an open mind about Gaston’s suggestions about Australia.
Meanwhile, although he’d changed his name and altered his appearance, it had only been a short while since he’d visited Nicaragua, as a machine gunner for the losing side in the last revolution. So although he found it stuffy in his cabin, he decided to spend most of the trip there. The steamer had the new Edison lights and he’d brought along plenty of reading material. It wasn’t the usual escapist literature. He intended to use the enforced solitude to bone up on his geography and geology. He was pretty good at railroad bridges and dams. He hadn’t demolished many mines.
Gaston and the English girl were less restricted in their movements. Nobody ever remembered the nondescript little Frenchman and Liza, of course, hadn’t been to Nicaragua in the past. So after supper together in the ship’s salon, Gaston escorted her around the promenade deck. It was cool and pleasant on deck with the steamer underway and they’d agreed that during this leg of the voyage everyone should remember a tall flashy tart traveling with a dapper little man old enough to be her father.
Liza seemed as uncomfortable with the roll as she was with the polka-dot dress and egret-trimmed hat they’d made her wear aboard. She carried the flouncy parasol as they strolled the deck, but she refused to open it above her in the moonlight. She had taken Gaston’s elbow, but the Frenchman was intensely sensitive to the fact that she rested her gloved hand in the crook of his elbow with about the same enthusiasm he’d have displayed petting a cobra.
Gaston found this more unusual than painful. Gaston Verrier was one of those rare fortunate men who faced his image in the mirror as the world saw it. He was shorter than average, but well-built for his age and not short enough to feel sensitive on the subject. He was past middle age, but still virile enough to be taken seriously by those women who liked the rest of the package. He was dapper and rather courtly. His sardonic weather-beaten features were neither ugly nor outstandingly handsome. He genuinely liked women as fellow human beings, and most women, sensing this, were comfortable around Gaston whether they wanted to go to bed with him or not. He was an ideal escort for a woman of the world who wanted a little time to make up her mind. Younger girls tended to see him as a father figure, or an amusing and protective uncle. Gaston tended to be as polite a gentleman, or as much a rogue, as his feminine friends seemed to require. Hence, if this stuck-up English child found him repulsive, it was her problem, not his. He’d already observed she had a skinny ass.
As they rounded the stern of the promenade two men were lounging against the taff rail, smoking and apparently watching the phosphorescent wake of the steamer as it traced a ghostly pale streak back into the horizon against otherwise inky water. Liza waited until they’d swung up the starboard side before she whispered, “Those men are following me.”
Gaston had noticed the loungers, of course. He said, “I fail to see how this could be, m’selle. We have passed them at least twice. They have not moved. So how could they be following anyone?”
“I tell you, they are up to something. They keep looking at me!”
Gaston laughed and said, “But of course they have been looking at you. There is no cinema aboard this vessel. What else is there to look at on a nearly deserted deck at night? They would have given you the eye had you had two heads. Sacré how long have you been wearing skirts?”
She shook her head, swaying the egret feathers alarmingly, and insisted, “They weren’t looking at me like that. I can tell they’re up to something.”
“I shall take you to your cabin if you feel uneasy.”
“No, that’s even worse. I’d be alone there.”
Gaston considered another suggestion, but he didn’t think she’d go for it. “Very well, we shall find a breezy spot along the deck and simply stand and watch the moonlight.”
“But what if they come after us?”
“Merde alors! Forgive me, but you are behaving like a maiden aunt at a Gypsy wedding! We are aboard a passenger vessel. Ergo there are other passengers. The last anyone heard of Jack the Ripper, he was still somewhere in London. Look about you. Do you see anyone creeping along the deck with a knife between his teeth?”
Gaston found a space between two lifeboat davits and steered her to the rail as he added, “Here. We shall stand and die together, hein? Tell me when you see the first Indians on the horizon, hein? I am going to enjoy a smoke and then if we have not been murdered for your parasol I intend to say good night. It should be cool enough for sleep in the cabins now, and the doors lock from the inside.”
On the far side, in his own stateroom, Captain Gringo lay naked atop his bed covers, propped up on pillows against the bulkhead as he read about something called Mineral Associations. He had no idea how it would help them put that mine in the highlands out of business, but the chapter was sort of interesting. The book said that mineral ores didn’t run together higgledy-piggledy underground. You’d find cobalt, chrome, or nickel mixed with iron. But never iron and gold. You could expect lead and tin mixed with silver, and silver could mix with copper, but copper was almost never found with lead and ...
When the stateroom door popped open, Captain Gringo instinctively put the book in his naked lap and looked up with a puzzled frown. He’d been sure the door was locked. But now a lady in an open flowered kimono seemed to be standing there.
She looked as surprised as he was as her lush lips formed a rosebud O and she blushed becomingly, all the way down. She was a voluptuous brunette with henna red hair. He knew she’d henna-rinsed her hair because the kimono was open. She suddenly seemed to realize that as she hastily wrapped the loose cloth around her and stammered, “Oh, dear, I seem to be in the wrong cabin!”
He said, “Not necessarily. Me casa su casa, but before we go any further, how the hell did you open that door?”
The kimono-clad stranger raised the key in her free hand and said, “I just put it in the lock and ... Oh, dear, I’m in cabin thirteen and this one’s seventeen.”
He let that go, for now. Sometimes it paid to play dumb. So he didn’t ask how she knew the number of his cabin if she’d opened the door by mistake and had her back to it, now.
He smiled and said, “Forgive me if I don’t rise. I wasn’t expecting company.”
She stood undecided, staring at his bleached hair as her lip curled slightly. He said, “I wish you’d come in or go out, ma’am. Anyone passing that open door is liable to get the wrong impression.”
She nodded, stepped inside, and closed the cabin door, saying, “My, this is a little awkward, isn’t it?”
“Depends on what you came for. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, but it’s only fair to warn you that I don’t pay.”
She narrowed her eyes dangerously and said, “That was a nasty thing to say.”
He shrugged, patted the mattress beside him, and said, “Just like to get the record straight, right off. You’re too good to be true if you’re not a business woman. But sit down and we’ll discuss your problem.”
She smiled, albeit uncertainly, and he noticed she’d forgotten to keep her kimono closed as she moved over to gingerly sit on the very edge. He stared soberly at the dark turgid nipple of the breast presented for inspection. She was either hot or excited about something else. He knew he was supposed to grab about now, so he didn’t.
She licked her lips and lowered her eyes as she murmured, “You must think I’m awful.”
He shook his head and said, “No, we both know you’re very good indeed. But what’s the pitch, doll?”
“Well, I may as well confess. I saw you in the main salon before, and when I asked the purser, he said you were traveling alone, as I was.”
He thought back to supper, drew a picture from memory, and said, “Yeah. I didn’t recognize you without the hat and Dolly Varden dress. I’m supposed to buy this as one of those passing shipboard romances, right?”
“Please don’t be brutal about it, darling. I know I’ve started something on impulse that I’m already having second thoughts about and … well, you could be gentler with a foolish woman, couldn’t you?”
He sat up straighter, uncomfortably aware that he was getting an erection under the heavy book across his lap. “I’m game for almost anything and you’re beautiful even with your clothes on. But if you really want to be friends with me, you’d better start by leveling with me. What’s this all about, red?”
“My name is Mimi and one would think what I wanted would be obvious, to any normal man.”
“Naughty, naughty. You dye your hair, too. Look, let’s save some pointless sparring. You weren’t alone in the main salon the last time I saw you. You were with a couple of guys. One of them was packing a gun under his Panama jacket. I ask pursers questions, too. You’re not alone on this tub. You’re sharing a stateroom with the gunsel. And it’s not cabin thirteen. There is no cabin thirteen on this or any other steamboat. Some passengers are awfully superstitious.”
She started to brazen it, shrugged, and said, “I might have known they’d send another queer.”
Then she whipped a nickel-plated derringer out and held it under his nose. “Okay, I’m through screwing around, too. Let me have it.”
“Okay,” he said, and then his ready-cocked left arm struck like a coiled sidewinder and she wasn’t pointing the gun at him anymore. It landed in a far corner as he twisted her arm brutally, and pinned her face down across the mattress as he rolled atop her. Mimi – if that was her name – was stronger than she looked, doubtless from having led an active life. She clawed the bed for purchase with her free hand as she wriggled under him, right arm pinned in the small of her back. Her wagging derrière moved the loose kimono out from between them as he pinned her with his weight. One foot slipped. He caught himself and spread his feet wide on the carpet as he leaned forward to flatten her chest against the rumpled bed covers. This moved his surprisingly erect shaft into a very interesting position between the sweat-slicked hemispheres of her bare and writhing bottom. It felt great. So he shoved hard and she moaned, “Oh, you bastard! I might have known you’d go for the wrong hole!”
He laughed as he moved it in and out experimentally and then said, “Sorry, I don’t have a hotter poker to torture you with, me proud beauty. I’ll take it out if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
“Go fuck yourself, you brute!”
“I like fucking you better, doll.”
She moaned and pleaded, “Well, do it right, for God’s sake! I’m not getting anything out of it, except maybe piles! You’re too big for a girl to take that way!”
He shoved it into her harder and said, “It feels swell to me, and I said we couldn’t be friends until I got some answers.”
“Please, you’re really hurting me and I’ll let you, the other way.”
“Maybe. First give me some reason to owe you favors, doll. I get wild as hell when I’m coming, and I’m almost there.”
She sobbed, “Stop it, I’ll talk!”
So he pulled out just in time, and rolled her on her back, wide-eyed and totally bewildered. As he lowered himself between her thighs, she started to close them, but gave it up as wasted effort, and opened her body to his. As he sank into her, belly to belly, she hissed in mingled pleasure and distaste.
“Bastard! You might have wiped it off first! But all right, you know I was sent to search your cabin. You weren’t supposed to be here, but the open kimono trick was in case and—”
“Later,” he cut in, kissing her roughly as, despite herself, Mimi began to respond. They were both keyed up by the naked struggle, and the high stakes she was obviously playing for added to the enjoyment of his triumph over her voluptuous body. He could tell she didn’t give herself lightly. She was obviously surprised to be enjoying it as much, as she indicated with her bumps and grinds on the edge of the mattress. Maybe the big guy with the gun was only a business partner, after all. She wrapped her legs around his waist and gasped, “Good God, I’m coming!” and as he returned the compliment he could tell she hadn’t done so recently.
He left it in, letting her milk it with her post-orgasmic contractions, and as he got his breath back, he said, “You were going to tell me what you wanted me to give you, unless this was it.”
She sighed and said, “You know, you bastard. We’re after your delivery.”
He moved her into a more comfortable position on the bed and shoved a pillow under her hips as he said, “Right. Which side are you working for?”
“Our own, of course. Oh, that is a nice angle. Can’t we talk about it later?”
He started moving, teasingly, but insisted, “Come on, are you a Cuban rebel or a Spanish spy? It’s only fair to warn, you that I’ll laugh if you say you’re with British Intelligence.”
Mimi moved her pelvis experimentally, but frowned up at him in what seemed sincere confusion as she asked, “What are you talking about? We’re simply jewel thieves, like everyone else after those emeralds.”
He stopped in mid-stroke and said, “Emeralds? I’ve got emeralds?”
“Oh, don’t bullshit a bullshitter, darling. We know one of you is smuggling all those emeralds into Colombia.”
It was his turn to look surprised. He said, “Honey, you’re nutty as a fruitcake. People don’t smuggle emeralds into Colombia. They smuggle them out. That’s where they grow the goddamn emeralds, doll face. Why the hell would we be carrying coals to Newcastle, even if I’d ever seen your goddamn emeralds?”
Mimi placed a palm on each of his buttocks and groaned, “Faster. Don’t ask me why you and your friends are sneaking around with a fortune in uncut emeralds. We’ve been wondering about that, too. Oh, wait, I like it this way and, yes, yes, keep it at just that angle and pound me silly, you son of a bitch!”
He could feel what she meant. So, while he still had a lot of questions to ask her, they could keep until he came again.
~*~
Out on deck, Gaston flicked the last of his smoke overboard and smiled in the semidarkness at Liza, saying, “There, we have been here some time and the natives have yet to attack the mission. Have I convinced you it was just your imagination?”
Liza said, “Perhaps they intend to make their move ashore. But I still say we’re being watched.”
“And I say, so what? Where have you been spending your life, in a nunnery? You are an attractive woman. I say this with no ulterior motive, simply because it is true. Perhaps, up to now, you have carried your nose too high to notice the usual admiring glances. This business of secret missions and derring-do has set your nerves on edge. You are more aware of your surroundings than usual, hein?”
She lowered her lashes, more confused than pleased by his no-nonsense flattery. Gaston said, “Eh bien, I shall take you to your cabin now. But first, would you like to tell me something about the hold they have over you?”
She shook her head and said, “I couldn’t. I’m too ashamed.”
Gaston chuckled and said, “You are in the company of a man who knows about shame. Aside from being a deserter and a traitor, more than once, I have killed more people and fathered more bastards than a man my age could own up to without appearing boastful. Let me see: you are not a traitor to the crown, since we find you working for it. You hardly strike one as a murderess and – forgive me – I find you rather ridiculous as a wanton. You could be a runaway nun, but that would not give the Church of England much of a hold over you, hein?”
“I’m a thief,” she said, turning away from him.
Gaston laughed incredulously and asked, “Merde, is that all? My poor child, I was robbing banks before you could have been born! Welcome to the fraternity or, in your case, sorority. For a moment you had me worried. I thought you were something truly dishonorable, like a politician.”
She suddenly broke and buried her head against Gaston’s shoulder, bending a bit to do so. As he patted her and tried to sooth her with light banter, Liza said, “I betrayed a trust and they caught me red-handed. Oh, how can I make anyone understand? It was terrible of me, but it was only a momentary weakness. I know I would have returned everything, if only—”
“Ah, the mystery fades,” he cut in, adding, “Everyone with imagination has such moments. To be frank, I have often considered returning stolen goods, but so far I have always been able to resist the impulse. What did you steal?”
“What didn’t I steal, you mean! I was hired as the traveling companion for an elderly and wealthy woman of the peerage. I mean, she had so much, so very much, and she made me feel so small. I had to make all the travel arrangements, and she never gave me enough to tip the help where we stayed. That fusty old black dress you met me in – it was hers, a hand-me down.”
“Ah, the Robin Hood excuse. I thought you said you were a thief.”
“I am Gaston. My employer had been particularly demanding and was more than a little drunk one evening, and I suddenly found myself cleaning out her purse and jewel box. But the police stopped me at the railway station and when I asked to see the British Consul—”
“Enough!” he cut in. “It is all so banal and, as I said, trés amateur. People who do not take stealing seriously have no right to call themselves a thief. A true thief is a professional. He or she does not justify theft. A thief steals because it is the business of a thief to steal. Children say they are – how you say? – swiping something. Emotional cripples whimper that they are repaying a cruel world for not recognizing their genius. Don’t call yourself a criminal around me, until you are ready to steal something simply because you wanted it!”
Liza laughed, dabbing her eyes, and said, “Gaston, that is the most grotesque morality lecture I’ve ever heard. But it’s so comforting to feel you don’t look down on me.”
Gaston could have said he had to look up to her whether he wanted to or not, but he was on his best behavior. So he took her arm again and said, “Come, we shall put you to bed, hein? I would offer to tuck you in, but a wise man quits while he is ahead.”
They stepped out from between the lifeboats. One of the two men standing there swung the club in his hand at Gaston’s head as the other went for Liza.
Gaston ducked under the slashing club and crabbed sideways, snapping, “Liza! Run for Dick’s cabin!” and then he saw he was inside the club swinger’s guard, so he chopped the bigger man under the floating ribs, danced back a pace, pirouetted on one toe like a ballet dancer, and high-kicked the heel of his mosquito boot into the attacker’s throat.
The man dropped the club and followed it to the deck like a doused candle flame.
While all this was happening, the other thug had groped for Liza, arms out to the side like an advancing gorilla and wearing a self-confident expression, until the girl dropped into a bayonet fighter’s stance with the furled parasol held at port between them. The husky man grinned and kept coming as he said, “Hey, make it easy on yourself, honey.”
It was the last thing he ever said. Liza stabbed upward with the tip of her parasol, driving the steel-clad ferrule up his right nostril and into his brain.
As Gaston turned from his own victim to see how she was doing, Liza half turned with the man hanging from her weapon like a hooked fish, braced her shoulder against the shaft, and literally pitchforked him overboard!
Gaston stared slack-jawed at her for a moment. Then he nodded, said, “Waste not, want not,” and bent to pick his own unconscious victim up and shove him over the side to join his comrade in the ink black sea below. He took the blood-stained parasol from Liza as she faced him, frozen, and sent it over the rail, as he said, “Eh bien, nobody saw, and we have disposed of the evidence. All’s well that ends well, hein?”
Liza stared wildly at him and gasped, “It all happened so fast! My God, I think I just killed a man, Gaston!”
“Really? How curious, I remember seeing no one as we took our evening stroll about the deck. Forget it. It is over.”
She leaned against a davit to cover her face with her gloved hands as she sobbed, “How can you take such a thing so calmly? Who were they? What did they want?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “One learns to compose one’s nerves, after a few bayonet charges. I must say you could stand beside me in many a buttstock and bayonet action I’ve seen. As to who they were or what they wanted, they are hardly in any position to tell us, now. They may have been after my wallet. It may have been your fair white body. Neither of them were good enough to try whatever it was they had in mind.”
She sobbed, “I can’t go on! I keep getting deeper and deeper into a life I never knew existed!”
He started to take her arm again, saw she needed to cry it out, and decided there was time for another smoke before they went looking for Captain Gringo to compare notes.
~*~
So Captain Gringo and Mimi were not disturbed as they did it dog style. She’d completely shed her torn kimono by now, and the view was nice by the light of the Edison bulb as he pounded her with a hand gripping either hip bone. She seemed to like it, too, but as they climaxed together and fell limply across the damp sheets, she sighed and said, “I’ve told you all you wanted to know. When are you going to let me go?”
He rolled on his side, keeping it in her as he propped himself up on one elbow and absently kneaded a nipple. “You haven’t told me what I wanted to know by half, doll. I was too busy to argue with a lady, but, all bullshit aside, you know you never expected to find me sitting on a bag of emeralds. That straw you grasped tells me one thing, though. You know more about my real mission than I feel comfortable with. Who are you guys working for? I’m a live-and-let-live guy, but if you keep holding out on me... I don’t know. I’m obviously not going to be able to fuck you to death, but I might think of something.”
She moved her tailbone against his belly, partly for pleasure and partly from fear, as she insisted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Aren’t you a courier smuggling uncut jewelry?”
“No. Never mind what I’m really up to, but smuggling ain’t it. Where the hell did you get such a crazy idea?”
“All right. If you must know, the dealer who sold the emeralds told us. You must know lots of dealers see that as a way to make money at both ends.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and said, “Yeah, I know the dodge. Paris and Amsterdam are notorious for it. You sell a tourist jewelry. Then you inform the customs inspectors that said tourist has them. If he tries to slip them through without paying the duty, the informer gets a reward for his so-called honesty. But if some jeweler told you kiddies that we were smuggling gems, it not only means he was full of shit. It means you and your partners work for some government, no?”
She shook her head and nestled back against him. “No, I swear we’re simply crooks. Double-crossing jewelers don’t just inform to customs officials, you know. Jewel thieves pay a nice commission and, of course, they can fence the jewels with the same crooked dealer, once they have them.”
He slid his hand down her warm belly and began to tease her clit with two fingers while slowly moving in and out of her from behind. He frowned and said, “I’m getting used to the idea of you being a thief, doll. But it’s still a crazy yarn. Why would anyone tell you we were gem smugglers when, like I said, sneaking emeralds into Colombia is like carrying coals to Newcastle? Before you leave, you’re going to write the name of that weird jeweler down, aren’t you?”
“I can’t. They’d kill me!”
“They would if they found out. But I don’t intend to tell them. Come on, babe, give.”
She arched her back and said, “I’m trying to, but you’re in, at such an awkward angle. I love what you’re doing with your hand, though.”
He considered stopping, to torture her. But he wasn’t sure who’d be torturing whom, so he slid his free hand between them to withdraw the teasing tip and move it into a position that, while more natural for him, was a crime against nature to her.
She said, “Ouch, you bastard! All right, the fence who fingered you was Van Tassel, in Limón .... and speaking of fingers, would you tickle me a little faster?”
“We can roll you over and do it right, now that we’re friends again.”
“Wait, let’s not be hasty, lover. It feels more interesting, now that you’re ringing my front doorbell while you’re calling at the back door. But start out gentle this time. I’ve got to get used to the idea.”
He moved down a bit and made sweet music on her ukulele while he eased slowly into her in time to her contractions and dilations. She began to moan and wiggle and he asked, “How do you like your Greek lesson, so far?”
She obviously found it interesting, but before she could answer, a key turned in the lock and Captain Gringo stiffened, shouting, “Don’t come in, damn it!”
But it was too late. The door was open and, Gaston being a gentleman, Liza entered ahead of him. Liza said simply, “Oh!” as she took in the scene. At the same time, Mimi popped off him as if she’d just noticed she was sitting on a tack and tore across the cabin head down, like a charging bull, or – in her case – perhaps a cow.
It would never be established whether Mimi was going for the gun on the floor, throwing a flying tackle into Liza, or just trying to get the hell out of there. As the voluptuous naked redhead came her way, the taller and leaner English girl reached out to grab two fistfuls of henna-rinsed hair, and the two of them flew backwards out on deck as Gaston sidestepped. Their combined momentum carried them as far as the rail, where Liza stopped with her hip against the bulwark while Mimi kept going!
Captain Gringo had missed part of it as he rolled off the bed and scooped up Mimi’s derringer. As he straightened up, Liza faced him in the open doorway, stared, and then snapped, “For God’s sake, have you no modesty?”
Captain Gringo sighed as he realized what he had to look like standing stark naked with a gun and an erection. Then he shrugged and said, “Well, it’s a little late for maidenly modesty. For Chrissake, let’s all get inside and shut the door!”
Liza might not have moved, but Gaston came back from his exploratory glance over the side and shoved her inside. As Gaston closed the door, he said, “Nobody else on deck, praise Allah.”
“Did she get away?”
“No, our athletic young maiden, here, threw her overboard. She’s been doing a lot of that lately.”
Captain Gringo’s emotions were distinctly confused as that sank in. The girl had pulled a gun on him, but his shaft still tingled to the memory of her moist flesh. Liza turned and faced a corner like a naughty child as she snapped, “For God sake, put some clothes on!”
Gaston noticed for the first time and grinned as he said, “Oo la la! We did arrive at an awkward time, didn’t we?”
Captain Gringo growled a curse and tossed the gun on the rumpled bed as he wiped himself with a corner of a sheet and said, “I was making her confess. She busted in to steal something, with that derringer.”
Gaston blinked. “You, too?” Then, as the tall American slipped into his pants the Frenchman filled him in on the short savage struggle he and Liza had just had on the far side of the promenade.
Captain Gringo said, “You can turn around now, Liza. I got a name out of the girl. Do either of you remember a jeweler named Van Tassel, back in Limón?”
Liza looked blank. Then she suddenly sat down on the recently vacated bunk and started crying again. Gaston said, “She does that a lot, too; I know who Van Tassel is. He doesn’t have a shop at street level. You have to knock three times and tell him who sent you. He’s a dealer in stolen goods.”
Captain Gringo picked up his jacket, fished out a smoke, and lit up as he mused. “Hmm, that fits, partway. But it’s still crazy. Those so-called jewel thieves were supposed to be after our jewels – emeralds, to be exact.”
Gaston said, “But we don’t have any emeralds, do we?”
“No, but try it this way. Van Tassel is a Dutch name.”
“So?”
“Butcher Weyler, the soldier of fortune the Spanish hired to fight the Cuban rebels, is a Dutchman.”
Liza looked up and grasped, “Do you mean to say those people were Spanish secret agents?”
He shrugged and replied, “Could be. I don’t know about the guys you two tangled with, but I’m sure the girl was American. We know the Spanish hire people to take serious chances for them.”
“But why did she accuse you of having the emeralds, Dick?”
“Hell, she had to say something. Everybody knows Colombia is where emeralds grow, so it’s a natural straw to grasp. They knew Gaston and me are knockabout guys who know Costa Rica. She might have tossed Van Tassel at me as a bone I’d recognize, if the guy’s really a crook and not a Spanish guy. She might have been mixing fact and fiction. I was sort of twisting her arm and—”
“You call that arm twisting?” Liza cut in. Then she blushed and turned away.
Captain Gringo grinned sheepishly and said, “Let’s say I was sacrificing myself for the cause.”
He felt a little red-faced himself, right now. He still had a raging hard-on and he’d never noticed Liza’s perfume before. But, alas, he’d seen the look of utter horror on her face when she’d frozen in the doorway, staring down at his shaft. He wondered what size she found less frightening. Then he decided he’d better not think about it. For some reason the idea was making him harder than ever.