They timed it right. There was still perhaps an hour of daylight left when Captain Gringo’s launch hit a two-log balsa in a sluggish backwater of the tea-colored Rio Putumayo, upstream from the headquarters of Dom Luis, albeit well within the territory he claimed as his own. They knew this because Nunez, out on point, had spotted one of the rubber baron’s patrolling guards before the guard had spotted Nunez, and as he’d died, they’d gotten some information out of him.
Unfortunately, not enough, and hence the experiment with the balsa. Gaston wasn’t enthusiastic about the experiment as he stood in the shallows with his taller friend. Gaston was naked to the waist and Captain Gringo had taken his shirt back from Susan, which seemed fair when you thought about it, but not the main reason for the American to want to make himself more presentable. Gaston said, “Listen to me, Dick. I have backed you in many a mad venture, but this time you have most definitely cracked under the strain. Going in alone is madness. Going in with only a pistol and one rifle is even crazier. If you won’t take me with you, won’t you at least take the machine gun?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and replied. “That would really be whacky. I’m on an espionage mission, not a one-man war. Who the hell’s going to believe my story if I come wandering out of the bushes with a fucking Maxim? I’m supposed to be the only survivor of a party jumped by Jivaro in the first place and the pricks down the river saw those Mormon missionaries in the second. They might buy me as one of the guys from Salt Lake. It was a couple of weeks’ back that the Mormons passed through, and we all look alike to them, too. But Susan’s friends most definitely did not come up the river with a machine gun.”
“True. The Mormons were not attacked by Jivaro, either. They were flagelados.”
“You know that, I know that, Dom Luis knows that. I’m about to prove to him that his two-faced act worked just the way he expected it to. No survivor of Susan’s party would walk right into his lair like a big-ass bird unless he was too stupid to wonder what primitive Indians were doing with rapid-fire pump guns, right? When we first found Susan she still thought Indians had attacked her party. So it’ll seem natural that I, or rather the poor Bible thumper I’m supposed to be, saw things the same way.”
He climbed on the balsa with his long pole, laid the Colombian army rifle across the logs, and added, “Come on, push me off, damnit. Then go back and keep the rest of our gang quiet and out of sight till you hear from me.”
“What if we don’t hear from you, my old and rare?”
“Give me twenty-four, then run like hell and do what you can to get them to Manaus. It’ll mean Dom Luis is too smart for us, as well as too big.”
Gaston was still cursing as he helped Captain Gringo move the clumsy balsa into the current. The standing American started poling without looking back. The Putumayo was shallow this far upstream, but too deep to touch bottom as he got out on open water. So the balsa started drifting sideways. But what the hell, he was going that way anyway.
The current took him around the bend between thick green walls of rank growth and he soon spotted the gray tin roofing of a fair-sized river settlement ahead. He was feeling for the bottom with the pole, aware he was coming down the wrong bank, when he saw a dugout coming to meet him. The paddlers were Indians. The guy scowling at him from the bow of the dugout was a flagelado. The shotgun in his hands was American.
Captain Gringo called, “Help! Don’t let me drift back into that terrible jungle!” as the canoe approached. The gunman in the bow grinned crookedly and called back, “Have no fear, muchacho. Nobody passes the landing of Dom Luis without giving us an accounting!”
The dugout pulled alongside and Captain Gringo caught the line they tossed him. As the canoe towed him across, the man in the bow was too far forward for much conversation; soothe wary American studied the approaching landing. He was supposed to have been here before. Susan had coached him (and reproached him), but with an advance idea of the layout, it was going to take some acting to convince them he was a simple good old Utah boy too dumb to be running through the selva without a leash.
A little teapot Amazon steamboat was tied up at the dock jutting out from shore. The banks were blood-red and lined with quite a crowd of curious onlookers. He saw most of them seemed simple peons. But there was a sprinkling of swaggering armed flagelados. So the next few minutes would be dicey indeed. Nobody seemed to be pointing a gun his way. He figured they figured they didn’t have to. He was in no position to scare them as much as they scared him.
A more civilized-looking fat man in a white Panama suit stood on the dock as they towed him up to it. Captain Gringo hoped Susan’s description had been a good one as he waved and called out, “Dom Luis, thank God I made it back here!”
The Brazilian rubber baron’s fat sly face wore an expression of polite wariness as the balsa bumped against the pilings and Captain Gringo leaped over to join him on the dock. As the American held out his free hand, the fat man took it, but said, with a puzzled smile, “Do I know you, senhor?”
“I’m Reynolds, Mission of the Latter Day Saints. Don’t you remember me? We passed through here just a few weeks ago, although I must say it feels like a million years. Good Lord, if you knew what I’d been through out there!”
“My casa is your casa, senhor. Come, we shall talk about it over food and other refreshments, eh?”
The gunman from the canoe nudged him and growled, “You will leave your guns with me, senhor.”
Captain Gringo handed him the rifle with a hurt look and started to unbuckle his gun belt. But Dom Luis snapped, “Do not be rude, Pessoa. I have just made Senhor Reynolds welcome.”
Pessoa nodded and stepped back a pace. But he didn’t offer the rifle back. Captain Gringo shrugged and followed the fat man up the path to the imposing albeit jerry-built mansion on a rise dominating the landing.
As they walked, Dom Luis said casually, “Reynolds, Reynolds, there was a blond girl named Reynolds in your party, no?”
Captain Gringo put a slight sob in his voice as he answered, “My sister, Susan. I don’t know if she’s dead or worse off.”
“There is something worse off than dead, senhor?”
“Of course. The Indians may have her. You see, we were jumped by wild Indians a few days after we left you. I got away. I don’t think any of the others did. God, if you knew what I’ve been through, alone in the jungle all this time, living on monkey and parrot and ...”
“Easy, senhor. First we eat and drink and then we talk, eh?”
Captain Gringo knew why he displayed so little interest, but it meant Dom Luis was overconfident as well as a lousy actor. The oily prick was so used to this game he’d forgotten the subtle lines. No really innocent white man would have dismissed the excited babblings of a survivor popping out of the selva. Human beings would have wanted to hear all about it back there on the dock. Things were looking up. The cocky sons of bitches seemed to be buying his story simply because it didn’t seem possible to them that anyone else could be half so smart.
He knew Dom Luis had no intention of letting him leave this place alive. He’d ordered the missionaries killed to keep the Brazilian authorities downstream in the dark about just where he was and what he was doing up here along the border. This polite bullshit was intended merely to extract such information from him as they might find useful. Okay, he’d better make them think he knew lots of interesting fairy tales, like the dame in the Arabian Nights, right?
As Dom Luis led him up on the veranda and clapped his pudgy hands for the servants, Captain Gringo said, “I saw some other people those Indians must have attacked. There were bodies all over the place. At least fifty of them. It was awful. They were bloated and—”
Dom Luis whirled and cut in, “You saw some of my men dead out there in the selva, senhor?”
“I don’t know who they were, Dom Luis, but they certainly had been killed. I didn’t get too close. The smell was awful and I was afraid of the Indians.”
Dom Luis ushered him to a seat at the table on the wrap-around veranda before he answered, “Yes, the Jivaro and Colorados in the area are said to be most savage. These dead men you say you saw in the selva … could you guide a party of my men back to the place, Senhor Reynolds?”
Captain Gringo looked around as if trying to get his bearings and then he said, “I’m not sure. I remember you took us for a train ride around your holdings when we were here before, but I’m afraid I may be turned around.”
He pointed due east, away from the setting sun, and said, “That way is north, right?”
Dom Luis repressed a smirk and answered, “You are turned around indeed. How on earth did you ever find your way back here?”
“I didn’t know I was anywhere near your place. I guess I wandered in big circles until I came to a river. I found a raft on the bank and pushed off. I figured the current had to take me somewhere, and anywhere was an improvement! The rest you know. I might be able to find those dead men again, starting from here. I think I could find our camp, and the other party was hit fairly near it. Do you have any idea who they might have been, Dom Luis?”
“Yes, they worked for me. Tell me, did you notice if their heads were missing?”
“Gee, I didn’t look that close, but, no, I don’t think so. I remember one man’s face. It looked awful. But if I saw his face ...”
“Quite so, they were hit by Colorado Indians. That explains them being caught unawares. They were scouting Jivaro. We didn’t know any others were that close.”
A pretty Negress came out with a tray of refreshments. Dom Luis seemed unaware that she was also stark naked. But as the girl put down her tray, nipples swaying in time with her graceful movements, the rubber baron rose and said, “Forgive me, Senhor Reynolds, but we do not have much light left. Let us walk around the veranda together, eh?”
Captain Gringo had hoped he’d say that. He got up to follow as the pudgy Brazilian led him around the big frame house, saying, “Try to think back to the last time you were here. It is too late, of course, to mount a patrol into the selva, but if you could offer some suggestions about the directions, my boys and I could plan tonight more intelligently.”
So Captain Gringo cased the layout as the Brazilian made small talk. The American now had a mental map of the steamboat landing and everything between it and the house. He spotted a tin shack with a tall tin funnel like a riverboat and casually said, “Oh, that’s where you refine the rubber or something, right?”
Dom Luis shot him a curious look and replied, “One does not refine rubber, senhor. One makes it into bales by holding a stick dipped in latex over a fire. Don’t you remember? I thought I showed you through that powerhouse over there. I remember your poor sister commenting on my having electricity with some surprise.”
Captain Gringo was surprised, too. He’d asked Susan not to leave anything out and the silly cow had forgotten to tell him they had a generating plant. He shrugged and said, “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention. As you may recall, I was fighting a bout of malaria the last time I came through here.”
“Ah, I was wondering how I’d forgotten a man your size. You must have been one of those who stayed behind when I took most of your companions on a tour of my holdings.”
“Yes, my sister said she enjoyed the train ride. How far into the jungle do your tracks run, Dom Luis?”
“About fifteen of your American miles. That is the siding, over there, where your unfortunate friends boarded my train.”
Captain Gringo stared due west at the little switch-yard behind the main7 house. A single spur line ran past to the generating plant and beyond to the river. He’d missed the track in the tall grass, coming up from the landing. The layout was falling into place in his mind now. He nodded and said, “I don’t see any railroad cars or that gold engine, Dom Luis.”
The rubber baron chuckled and said, “Ah, you remember that, eh? Everyone remembers my pretty little locomotive. Some find my tastes a bit gaudy. But I ask you, what is money for, if not to enjoy it, eh?”
“It’s your money, Dom Luis. I guess this rubber boom has made a lot of people rich, right?”
Dom Luis shrugged and said, “One has to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, the wild rubber trees grow far apart. It takes organization to show a profit, even with cheap help. But we manage.”
Captain Gringo repressed a sarcastic answer. He knew how cheap indeed Dom Luis was about his labor force. But he was supposed to be a dumb missionary.
They completely circled the house on the veranda and as Dom Luis led him back to the table Captain Gringo said, “I know where I am now. I’m pretty sure I can lead your recovery party, Dom Luis.”
The rubber baron frowned and answered, “Recovery party? Oh, yes, of course we must see to a decent burial for my poor employees. But then we shall dispose of any nearby Indians with far less formality. The savages must be taught a lesson. I do not permit trespassers on my land, even when they don’t murder my help.”
The Negress had gone back inside, but Captain Gringo spotted her peeking out at them through the window, over Dom Luis’s shoulder. The girl caught his eye and gestured urgently, but he had no idea what the hell she wanted.
Dom Luis pointed at the sandwiches and the pitcher on the table and said, “Help yourself, my young friend. If you will forgive me for not joining you, I have already eaten and, as you see, I have a weight problem.”
Captain Gringo nodded thanks and picked up a sandwich. The pitcher looked like it was full of watered milk and smelled like rum. He asked what it was and Dom Luis said, “Rum and coconut water, of course. Unfortunately, even if you boil it, the local water leaves much to be desired.”
Captain Gringo was hot and thirsty. So the drink looked as good to him as it sounded. But he remembered, just in time, and said, “I’m sorry, Dom Luis, but as a Mormon I can’t drink alcohol.”
“That’s revolting.” The rubber baron frowned. “Everybody drinks a little here in the selva!” Then he remembered his manners and said, “I’m sorry, I forgot you were a missionary. I will have them prepare you a pitcher of pure coconut water before we tuck you in for the night. You will of course be staying in the master bedroom.”
Captain Gringo said, “I wouldn’t want to put anyone to so much trouble,” but the oily Dom Luis insisted. “I shall hear no more about it. I have so few guests up here on the Putumayo. It is my pleasure to make them feel most welcome.”
There was an odd glitter in the Brazilian’s eyes as he purred on about how much he liked to be nice to people. Captain Gringo knew how nice he’d been to Susan’s party. But he doubted they’d gun him down here in the house. Apparently Dom Luis had at least a few decent people down by the landing, and of course the crew aboard the steamer didn’t work for him at all.
He asked about the steamer, explaining he was anxious to book passage down the river. Dom Luis soothed, “You have plenty of time for that. The boat will not leave until we finish loading her. That will take two days. At the moment my train is out at the far end of the line and won’t be back until about this time tomorrow evening with half a cargo. It will take at least another day on another spur to gather all we need. One must learn to bide one’s time down here, my North American friend. The heat can kill you if you move too fast. In any case, I find it difficult to recruit good help these days.”
Again Captain Gringo bit his tongue. He knew that while the fat tub of lard rested his big ass in the shade of this veranda a lot of poor slaves were working hard indeed for him. And, speaking of slaves, where had that pretty black girl gone, and what the hell had she been waving at him about?
She hadn’t been making obscene gestures, so, despite her costume, that hadn’t been it. She’d looked more scared than lusty. This fat slob probably got all the sex action around here anyway.
They made small talk for a time and then, as the sun went down and the fireflies came out, Dom Luis excused himself with something about seeing the captain of the riverboat. He clapped his hands again and another servant girl, this one a naked Oriental, came out to lead the American to his quarters. As she switched on the lights he saw the Edison bulb was mounted in a revolving electric ceiling fan above a big brass bed. This was grand luxe indeed and he said so, in Spanish. The Oriental girl understood well enough to shrug and say something about Dom Luis being muy simpatico but he didn’t think her heart was in it.
It was too early to turn in. But he knew Dom Luis expected a guy who’d been lost for weeks in the selva to act pretty bushed. So, while he had no intention of staying the night, he decided he’d better go through the motions.
He undressed and hung his clothes and gun belt over the head rails of the bed, enjoying the cool breeze from the fan as he sat on the clean linen sheets. He saw they had indeed left a big pitcher of coconut water on the nearby dresser. He cursed Brigham Young as he thought back to the rum he’d missed on the veranda. But at least the stuff would be wet.
His bare heel felt something cold under the bed. It was a chamber pot. That reminded him that he had to pee, so he did. He could see he was a bit dehydrated as he put an inch of very yellow urine in the bottom of the pot before stepping over to the dresser for a drink. He poured some of the pitcher’s contents into the thick glass tumbler beside it. He raised the glass to his lips. A bell rang inside his head. He normally didn’t sniff his drinks too carefully, but he normally didn’t stay as a house-guest with a known murderer, either.
It wasn’t coconut water. He had no idea what it was, but he’d drunk a lot of coconut water in his time and this wasn’t it. It didn’t smell like any poison he knew. It hardly had any smell at all. Just a sort of juicy vegetable odor with a vaguely familiar whiff to it around the edges. He knew it would look funny if he didn’t drink anything at all after coming in from the selva with his tale of woe. So he poured the contents of the glass in the chamber pot, hoping his piss would disguise the skimmed milk appearance for now.
He put the glass down and started to shove the pot under the bed with his bare foot. Then he saw what was happening down there and marveled, “What the hell …?”
The stuff he’d poured in the pot was turning to thick goo. As he watched, it seemed to get even tougher-looking. He grimaced and reached in his pants for his jack knife before he hunkered down, bare ass, to watch the interesting chemistry. He probed the rubbery scum with the blade of the knife. Then he nodded and said, “Of course. Alcohol is alkaline, so you can mix it with latex. Piss is acid, so it coagulates latex to crude rubber. But what the hell would possess anyone to drink latex and ... son of a bitch!”
He rose, grim-faced, remembering where he was as he fought to control his temper. Dom Luis didn’t just kill people. He killed them dirty! Human gastric juices were almost pure hydrochloric acid. The sappy latex, having no particular taste and lacking the “rubber” smell of vulcanization, would go down smooth enough. Then, when it hit one’s stomach acids, lots of luck. An instant rubber ball you could neither digest nor throw up until you died, horribly, from what would look like some sort of jungle stomach upset to anyone curious enough to ask!
As he put the knife away, there was a soft knock on the door and when he called, “Entrada,” the black girl came in, looking like she’d have been blushing if she’d been able to.
He was stark naked, too. But what the hell, there was a lot of that going around. He nodded at her and asked, “Well?”
The girl licked her lips and said, “I am called Varginha. Dom Luis says I am to make you happy.”
She passed him to get on the bed, roll over, and spread her chocolate thighs with a resigned sigh. But not before he’d spotted the fresh lash mark across her back.
It wasn’t easy, but he stayed on his feet and kept from rising to the occasion as he said gently, “He did, huh? He must have odd views on your average missionary. What were you trying to tell me before, Varginha?”
The girl started to cry, but moved her hips teasingly and cupped her brown melon breasts up to him with her hands as she pleaded, “Don’t you like me, senhor? Dom Luis will be most cross if I fail to please you.”
“I’ll bet. Where is he right now, Varginha?”
“In his room, with La China. He told me to keep you company and, ah, keep you busy.”
“Get me thirsty, too, I’ll bet. Did he tell you what was in that pitcher, honey?”
The pretty Negress turned her face away with a shudder. He nodded and said, “Right. You did try to warn me, before they reminded you who you worked for with that whip. You’re kind of in a spot, for a nice girl, aren’t you?”
The girl sat up, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed, “Oh, Senhor, I was a nice girl, once. They told me I was coming up the river for to be a cook. But that was months ago, and if I told you half the horrors I have seen, you would never believe me.”
“I believe you. Do you want out?”
“How in God’s name? Nobody leaves here alive. Just yesterday another white man came down the river, and I watched as Dom Luis entertained him out there on the veranda, as he was just entertaining you. They gave him latex and rum, too. He died horribly not two paces from where you were sitting when I tried to warn you.”
“I told you I got your message and that we’re friends, Varginha. Cut the blubbering and tell me what else you know about the man they killed. Did you get his name?”
“Si, it was Jose Coronado, I think.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“What is wrong? Do you know this Jose, senhor?”
“I did. That oily slave master of yours knew all along who I was, if that deserter Jose got here ahead of me! Boy, Dom Luis is some cookie! He even kills people who come ratting to him on their friends!”
He stepped over to the head of the bed and started to dress. Varginha said, “Are you not going to make love to me, senhor?”
“Maybe later. If we get out of here alive. Don’t you have any clothes anywhere?”
“No, senhor. Why? Is it possible you really mean to take me with you?”
“I can’t leave you here. I guess basic black will have to do for now. If they don’t find me dead in bed by midnight they’ll swat you like a fly for failing.”
He hitched on his gun belt, held out his left hand to her, and said, “Come on. Stick tight to me and keep your mouth shut.”
Varginha raised his hand to her lips and kissed it as she rose from the bed, murmuring, “Oh, Mother of God, I thought I was meant to die in this terrible place!”
He said, “I told you to keep your mouth shut, so do it!” Then he switched out the light and opened the door a crack. The coast was clear. He drew his .38 and led the naked girl out into the dimly lit hallway.
They started down it toward the rear. She whispered, “There is a night guard walking the veranda, senhor,” and he hissed, “Gotcha. Shut up.”
They were passing a door that stood a little ajar and funny sounds were coming from the room on the far side. Captain Gringo risked a peek. Then he blinked and took a closer look. What he saw looked impossible.
Dom Luis was fucking himself in a mirror.
The rubber baron stood, naked and pinkly obscene, facing a big standing mirror in the center of his room under another fan. As the baffled American watched, the Brazilian was thrusting his pelvis against that of his own image, gripping the edges of the mirror and grinning at himself like a shit-eating dog.
Then Captain Gringo spotted the tawny curves of the Oriental girl on the far side of the mirror. She stood bent over, with her buttocks against the back of the mirror and her hands braced on her knees. Dom Luis was putting it to her through a hole in the mirror! He liked pussy as much as the next man, but he obviously loved himself more than he had any right to. So he was trying for the best of both worlds. Screwing his own unlovely image while using the pretty girl’s snatch as a surrogate for what he lacked himself.
Captain Gringo muttered, “Well, some guys collect stamps. Some guys have more unusual hobbies.” Then he led Varginha on.
He stopped by the rear door and told her to be quiet. She was frozen with fear as he listened for the sound of footsteps on the planks outside. A million years later the night guard passed the dark doorway and a second later he was laid low with a fractured skull. He’d been watching for€ an attack from the brooding darkness around the house, not from within it.
Captain Gringo led the Negress into the night, forcing her to run, not walk, for the nearest exit. They tore up the tracks until he was sure they weren’t being followed. Then he slowed to a walk and said, “Okay, doll, I think we made it. Just take it easy and get your breath back. We’ve still got some walking to do.”
Varginha stood beside him in the dark, panting for breath as he looked around in the dim light for someplace to sit down. He led her over to a mossy fallen log. They sat down together. Then she was wrapped around him, sobbing silly grateful things about his saving her and making it hard to remember he already had a girl back with the guerrilla band they were trying to reach.
That wasn’t all she made hard as she suddenly slid off the log to kneel between his knees and fumble for his fly. He said, “Hey, take it easy, Varginha. I like you, too, but I have an adelita who’s not going to like this very much.”
Varginha had his erection in her hand, so it seemed silly to lie to her when she asked softly, “Don’t you feel anything for me, senhor?”
He said, “Yeah, but you have to understand—”
“Don’t worry,” she sighed in a hurt voice, “I was raised a servant. So I know my place.” Then she proceeded to swallow him whole.
He said, “Hey, let’s not waste it!” as he peeled off his shirt and pants, threw them, on the ground behind her, and pushed Varginha on top of them to mount her properly.
As she wrapped her smooth dark arms and legs around him and felt his paler shaft enter her, she sobbed, “Oh, God, it has been so long since I have been like this with a friend.”
He said, “I wish you hadn’t brought that up, Varginha. Normally I’m a live-and-let-live guy, but that creepy Dom Luis is icky to think about when a guy has to take sloppy seconds.”
She crooned, “I never gave myself like this to him. He is a nasty pervert with a tiny little thing.”
“Oh, shit, you’re getting me soft.”
She arched her back and said, “I won’t allow that. You don’t understand. Why do you think I am so excited? He has all of his harem frustrated half to death. Right now, poor China is taking it in the rear from that disgusting little monster and—”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying he’s only been in you via the back door?”
“Of course. He’s not man enough to fill a woman this way.”
So Captain Gringo filled her as best he knew how, and Varginha seemed to love every inch of it.