Cat Chaser

14

NOLEN AND RAFI HAD BEEN DRINKING the better part of two days and were both drunk when Moran found them in the early evening. Nolen was keeping it going. Moran saw it right away: Nolen had to stay up there because if he came down now he’d crash and burn.

They were having a private party in oceanfront Number One with scotch and rum, Coke cans, a bowl of watery ice and potato chips on the coffee table and the smell of marijuana in the room. There was no sign of Loret. They were wound-up drunk: Nolen bare to the waist, stoop-shouldered skin and bones, his slack cheeks sucked in on a joint; Rafi wearing a scarf rolled and tied as a headband, the ends hanging to his chest, his sporty Dominican shirt open all the way. Nolen was calling him Ché.

“You meet Ché? George, shake hands with Ché Amado, one of your premier fanatics, brought here by special request to combat the toadies of oligarchic imperialism, but don’t ask me what it means.”

“You didn’ know that,” Rafi said to Moran. Rafi sat slumped in a plastic chair, feet extended in glistening, patent-leather zip-up boots. “You think I come here to bite you for money. It work pretty good, didn’ it? I had you fool.”

“You had me fool, all right,” Moran said. “I thought you were just a pimp. Which one of you did the job on the boat dock?”

“That was him,” Rafi said, “he’s the powerman.” He squinted up at Moran and said, “What did you say before it?”

“That’s powderman,” Nolen said, “in the trade,” and gave Moran a sly look. “I hear we’re in business. Is that right? I heard it from a certain party, but I’d rather hear it from you… Where you going?”

Moran got a glass from the kitchen and came back to sit at the opposite end of the sofa from Nolen. He poured himself a scotch; he would probably need it.

“You’re over your head,” Moran said. He drank the scotch and poured another one.

Nolen was grinning. “So what else is new?”

“Stick to acting.”

“It’s what I’m doing, man. What’s the difference?”

Aw shit, Moran thought.

He wondered why he’d ever had a good feeling about Nolen, why he’d been comfortable with him and went for that grunts together, old war buddies grinning their way through life bullshit; he wasn’t anything like Nolen. Nolen was pathetic trying hard to be tragic and any more of him, Moran knew, would be a bigger pain in the ass than he could bear. He wanted to hear about it though, what they were into. He would hardly have to encourage them and it would come sliding out of their mouths with alcohol fumes.

“What’d you use,” Moran said to Nolen, “on the boat dock?”

Nolen said, “On the dock?” focusing his eyes. “I was gonna go with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, little dynamite, and light up the sky. But if these people’re suppose to be pros, I thought no, you gotta go with a nonhydroscopic plastique, you dig? Slip in there in a Donzi, half-speed all the way. Me and my shipmate, this spic that steared-excuse me, Ché-guy was wearing sunglasses at night. You head due south from near Dinner Key where we launched till you get the Cape Florida light off your port bow, then hang a right and there you are. Drift in… I’ve already run the det-cord through the blocks, they got adhesive backing on ’em now, stick ’em flat under the boards but use a linear-shape charge on the pilings so it’ll cut ’em off clean. Twelve pounds of plastique, could’ve done the house. I’m scared of timers, so we drifted down by Matheson Hammock and I blew it remote control.” Nolen made an elaborate exploding sound on the roof of his mouth with his jaw clenched. “The dock’s gone.”

Moran said, impressed, “You remember all that from your paratrooper days?”

“No, I did a bit in A Bridge Too Far and hung around with the special effects guys. It’s all make-believe, George.”

“What’d you blow it for?”

“Show him somebody means business.”

“Who did the lettering?”

“Ché. Right, Ché?”

“De nada,” Rafi said.

“Don’t put yourself down,” Nolen said. “You did it, man. Our silent partner goes, ‘What’s he gonna write?’ I told him don’t worry about a thing, this man’s been writing on walls all his life, fuera or muerte to whoever happens to be around that pisses him off. The man’s ace of the spray paint. You see his work?”

“Your silent partner,” Moran said. “Who you talking about, Scully?”

Moran saw Nolen’s fuzzed gaze shift to Rafi and return to stare at him. Nolen shook his head from side to side. The drunk being secretive. But Rafi was even drunker and didn’t notice; he was eating his ice. Nolen pulled himself out of the sofa, took Rafi’s glass from him-Rafi still holding his hand up, cupped-fixed another rum and Coke and put the glass back in Rafi’s hand. Nolen stumbled sitting down. They were both in bad shape.

Moran could not see Jiggs Scully bringing these two into the game. Unless he had a special use for them.

“We’re gonna publicize Mr. de Boya’s past sins,” Nolen said and gave Moran a stage wink, obvious enough to be seen in the back row, “unless he comes across with a generous piece of change… Isn’t that right, Ché?”

“ ‘Less he pays,” Rafi said.

“Tell George what the man did,” Nolen said, “when he was in charge down there.”

“What he did?” Rafi said. “He was the head of the Cascos Blancos, he sent out the death squads to get people he don’t like or people who talk against Trujillo. He take them to La Cuarenta in Santo Domingo for the torture. Sometime he take them to Kilometer Nueve, the army torture place at San Isidro.”

“Tell him what de Boya did to people,” Nolen said.

“Well,” Rafi said, “he like to sew the eyelids to the eyebrows and put them in a light. He like to beat them with Louisville Sluggers. He like to put acid on them sometimes. He like to castrate people. He like to take the nipples and pull them out and cut them off with scissors.”

Moran said, “Is that what happened to you?”

“No, no, he do that to girls. Cut the nipples off. Men he cut everything off with-how do you say it, these big tijeras?”

“Shears,” Nolen said.

“Yeah, chears. Cut off your business with them. I had a uncle that happen to. Then when General de Boya finish with them he have them killed and thrown from the cliff into the sea to be eaten by the sharks. You want to find out what happen to somebody, you ask, nobody knows. They say he’s gone to Boca Chica to visit the tiburones, the sharks. Or sometime to Monte Cristi. That was twenty years ago-the sharks still come looking for General de Boya to feed them. He like to put ants on people, too.”

Rafi rolled his eyes back.

“I don’t like to think about it.”

“Have a drink,” Nolen said. The answer to most things.

Rafi took a drink. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe I go lie down; I’m feeling tired.” He stood up unsteadily, spilling some of his drink.

Moran watched him. He wanted to get up but didn’t have the energy; the scene was depressing. He watched Rafi shuffle into the bedroom, Nolen calling after him, “Don’t throw up on the floor, Ché. You hear? Go in the baño.”

He said to Moran, “I don’t know what it is about them, partner, those people just don’t hold the juice.”

Moran watched Nolen pour himself another scotch.

“What’re you gonna use him for?”

“He’s our spray painter, man. You see his work?”

“But he doesn’t know Scully.”

“Jiggs wants to see how he works out first. So I told Rafi we got a guy on the inside, but he doesn’t want his identity known just yet.”

“I don’t imagine he would,” Moran said. “All right, what’s the deal? What’re you going after?”

“Jiggs says he told you.”

“Come on, this isn’t your kind of a thing.”

“Is that right? Tell me what I’m saving myself for. It’s the best part I’ve read for in ten years. Shit, I don’t even have to act tough.”

“He’s using you,” Moran said.

“Jesus, I hope so. I need to be used, man.”

“You know what he asked me to do?”

“I sent you to him, didn’t I, for the interview?”

“Come on-you know what he wants?”

“Yeah, he wants you to ask your lady where her husband hides his cash. What’s hard about that? Shit, call her up right now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Moran said. He drank down his scotch and sat back. “How does he know… Hey, you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m listening. What?”

“How does Jiggs know she won’t tell her husband what’s going on? How does he know I won’t tell him?”

“Well, shit,” Nolen said, “because I told Jiggs you’re my bud, we see eye to eye. I said sure, George’s the old Cat Chaser, we served down in the D.R., man. I told him it was me almost put out your lights with the one-oh-six and Jiggs got a kick out of that. He sees the humor in life, everybody busting their ass trying to score off each other. I told you he’s a funny guy and I was right, huh?”

“Yeah, he’s funny,” Moran said. “But I still don’t understand. Why would he trust me? Tell me a story like that?”

“I just told you. And you want the husband out of the way, don’t you? Jesus Christ, or else I came in late and missed something.”

“Look,” Moran said, trying to keep Nolen’s attention. “You listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’m listening.” Pinching the roach, sucking his cheeks in with a sound like the north wind.

“I’m not in it,” Moran said.

“What happened?” Nolen grunting the words as he held his breath. “You change your mind? There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“I never was in.”

Nolen expelled smoke in a long sigh. “Well, Jiggs says you gave him a hell of an idea. He told me. Make the man run and head him off at the pass. I said to Jiggs, I told you he’s good, he’s a fighting leatherneck. Jiggs says he didn’t think much of the idea at first, frankly, ‘cause what if the man took off in his boat? Jiggs doesn’t like to have anything to do with boats. He goes, ‘I don’t want no parts of them fuckers.’ He gets seasick he goes out. But then, hey, with the dock gone the man can’t bring his boat in, can he? He runs, he’s got to go by car. And when he does, Jiggs says he’ll be way ahead of him… He likes you,” Nolen said.

Aw shit. Moran felt heavy, out of shape, and the scotch wasn’t helping at all. He said, “Nolen?”

“What?”

“I’m not in. I didn’t give Jiggs anything. You understand? What he’s doing, he’s using you. I don’t know for what, but when he’s through he’ll dump you. He can’t afford not to.”

“We made a pact,” Nolen said. “Us against them.”

Moran tried again. He said, “You told me who he works for, what he does for a living, right? He leans on people. He breaks their bones. Isn’t that right? That’s what you told me.”

“He used to.”

“Okay. But does he sound like the kind of guy you can trust? You can put your life in his hands?”

“Jiggs says we’re his kind,” Nolen said. “He’s sick and tired of the guineas and the spics raking it in, taking everything, guys like de Boya sitting on top. Look at the guy. He’s a fucking death squad all by himself. And he’s married to your lady. What more like incentive you want, for Christ sake?”

“Don’t call her my lady, all right?”

“What should I call her?”

It annoyed him, “my lady.” He never liked the expression; but that was something else. “Think a minute,” Moran said. “What if somebody else put Jiggs up to this and he’s playing a game with you?”

“That’s it, man, a game.” Nolen was half-listening. “It’s us against them. Shirts against the skins, man. They’re swarthy fuckers, but they got white legs… if you know what that means on the basketball court can figure it out.” He gave Moran a feeble grin. Then came alive again. “We’ll get little Loret some pom-poms, she’ll be the cheerleader. Muerte a de Boya, Fight! The old locomotive. M-U, M-U, M-U-E-R; T-E, T-E… What do you think? Get her a short little red and white pleated skirt…”

“Where’s Loret?”

“Jesus, that’s right. She hooked up with some guy at the Fontainebleu, guy in the lounge smoking a cigar. She gives him the eye, says excuse me, going to take a leak and I haven’t seen her since. I know, you told me. But don’t say it, all right? I hate guys like that. Have to rub it in.”

Moran said, “What am I gonna have to do to get you to understand something? You dumb shit.”

Nolen grinned, eyes out of focus. He held up the dirty stub pinched between his fingers. “How ’bout a smoke? Good stuff.”

“It makes me hear tires squeal when I’m barely moving,” Moran said. “No, this’ll do me.” He raised his glass. “Like it’s doing you in. I don’t want to sound preachy-”

“Then don’t.”

“But I got to tell you. You’re in a no-win situation. The best you can get out of this if you’re lucky, I mean if you come out alive, would be something like fifteen to twenty-five at Raiford. Hard time.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Nolen said. “I’m having fun.”

Moran stared at him before easing back in the sofa. All right then. Okay…

He was tired.

He saw Mary in his mind, in the room in the University Inn, her hands between her legs on the chair cushion and could see the line of her thighs beneath the tan skirt. He saw her looking at him with her look of quiet awareness, waiting. What did he need to talk to this shithead for?

Corky came out to the red and white Cadillac in the drive. He asked Jiggs, getting out of the car, then reaching in to punch the headlights off, what he wanted. Jiggs said, “If I thought I had to tell you, Corko, I’d be in pretty bad shape. Tell Mr. de Boya I’ll be around back where you used to have a boat dock somebody took out while you’re keeping an eye on it.” And walked away.

He was inspecting the splintered stubs of the pilings, barely visible in the dark water, when de Boya came out to him. Jiggs turned very carefully on the crumbled edge of the retaining wall and stood with his back to the tide breaking in below him, giving de Boya a casual, death-defying pose.

He said, “Seems you got a problem here,” with a grin of sympathy. “Jimmy Cap says take a look. He don’t care to see any his friends get fucked over by parties unknown. Jimmy says it’s like they’re doing it to him.”

De Boya was looking down at the water now, at the stump remnants of his dock.

“How do you think of it?”

Jiggs took cautious half-steps from the cement edge until he felt the safety of grass underfoot. “Well, my first thought when I read about it in the Herald, I think to myself, some dopers’re having a disagreement and one of ’em sends his guy to the wrong address. ‘Seven hundred Arvida. Oh, I thought you said six hundred. Oh well.’ “

De Boya’s reaction: nothing. Like a statue with clothes on.

“But then I started asking around.”

“Yes? What did you learn?”

“You understand we got contacts in Little Havana,” Jiggs said. “I first come here they’re referring to it in the company as Sowah Seda. This girl Vivian Arzola used to work there says, ‘Go on over to Sowah Seda,’ I’m supposed to see somebody over there. I ask her where Sowah Seda is. She says, ‘Sowah Seda, Sowah Seda.’ Finally it dawns on me. Oh, Southwest Eighth Street. She says, ‘Yeah, Sowah Seda.’ Well, I talked to a guy down there this time name of Benigno, runs a tavern, if he’s heard anything. What’s this shit, a man’s dock getting blown up? He looks around see if anybody’s listening. They got the salsa on so loud I can’t even hear Benigno. He says it’s the work of the FDR. I said FDR? Franklin D. Roosevelt? You said that name to my mother she’d genuflect. Christ, she’d have left home, all the kids, for FDR, he ever wanted to get it on. But, it turns out, Benigno says it stands for Democratic Revolutionary Front.”

“It’s Salvadoran,” de Boya said. “It has nothing to do with me.”

“That’s what Benigno says, they’re from El Salvador. But evidently these people, your different revolutionary groups, are getting together, helping each other out. They don’t give a shit you’re Dominican, you’re Nicaraguan, you come from the ruling class you’re one of the bad guys. What do they call it? The oligarchs. You’re one of them and they’re all working for Castro anyway, they don’t give a shit. See, he’s sending ’em here to spread a little terror.”

“For what purpose would that be?”

“I check around, hear it from some other sources there,” Jiggs said. “These people with little bugs up their ass, they come here to cause trouble, score a few big names.”

“What do they destroy the dock for?”

“Get your attention,” Jiggs said. “So you know it’s coming. Like toying with you. Little terrorist foreplay. You go to the cops for protection you’re all right for a while. Then when you aren’t looking-whammo. They hit you a good one, for real this time and get their initials in the paper.”

Jiggs felt de Boya studying his face in the dark, probably trying to look in his eyes, the truth test. De Boya said, “Yes, and what do you do for me?”

“Well, are the cops helping any?”

“They say they keep an eye on my house. They drive by.”

“You hire any more people?”

“Not yet.” De Boya turned abruptly. “We go inside.”

“I know you like Corky, but get rid of the rest of ’em,” Jiggs said, following de Boya, “and I’ll send you over a couple guys, couple heavy-duty Cubans worked for the CIA when the CIA had a hard-on for Castro. Now these guys’re freelance. Jimmy Cap says take care of you, that’s what I’m doing.”

“It’s kind of him,” de Boya said.

They went up on the deck, through the two-story hallway filled with plants and young trees like a path through the jungle, and into de Boya’s study. Jiggs liked it, the oak paneling, the gun cabinet, the framed photographs of people in military uniforms all over the walls. There was a big one of Trujillo himself in a white uniform full of medals, shots of de Boya with different people, another one of de Boya in what looked like a German SS uniform, de Boya nonchalantly holding an old-model Thompson submachine gun. Jiggs paid his respects to the photographs, nodding solemnly, while de Boya went around behind a giant oak desk and sat down. There was a tape recorder on the desk, a tray that held a brandy decanter and glasses.

Jiggs finally took a chair. He said, “I wanted to ask you. I locate any of the party responsible, General, you’re gonna want to prosecute, I take it.”

“In my own way,” de Boya said.

Jiggs said, “That’s how I’d feel about it myself. You have ’em arrested they’re back on the street in twenty-four hours.” He said then, “I understand, what I’ve heard, you were the expert at getting people to tell you things they didn’t want to. Back in the old days.”

“Really? I’m surprised you hear anything about that,” de Boya said.

“You kidding?” Jiggs said. “General, there certain areas you’re a living legend among people that know anything about or appreciate the fine art of interrogation. It used to be, when I was a youngster on the Force in New York, we could use our own resources, so to speak, in extracting information. Now, the guy doesn’t even have to tell you his name his lawyer isn’t present. Fucking Miranda changed everything.” Jiggs shook his head, began to grin a little. “Wasn’t like that where you come from, I don’t imagine.”

“You say to get information?”

“Yeah, interrogate a suspect.”

“The trick,” de Boya said, “when you question someone is not to ask a question.”

Jiggs maintained a pleasant expression. “You don’t ask ’em anything?”

“No, never. You take the person’s clothes off. Always you do this, strip the person naked, and sometimes it’s enough. Or you subject the person to an unpleasant experience, increasing this gradually,” de Boya said, giving his recipe. “The person wants to tell you something, but you still don’t ask him. He pleads with you, he begins to say things, to ask the questions himself, yes, and then answer them, he’s so anxious to please you if you’ll stop the unpleasantness.”

“The unpleasantness,” Jiggs said, his face creased in appreciation. “That’s not bad, general.”

“But the information,” de Boya said, “that isn’t the important reason for interrogation.”

“It isn’t?”

“What do you wish to know?” de Boya said. “Where someone lives? Where they hide arms? Something they’re saying about you, the government? No, the purpose of interrogation is preventive. What you do in the secrecy of the act always becomes known to others, to the ones against you.”

“And it scares the shit out of ’em,” Jiggs said, nodding. “I getcha.”

“I like to think it gives brave men pause,” de Boya said. “Remember, fear is of more substance than information.”

“Yes sir, that’s a good point.”

“Information, it has degrees of importance at different times,” de Boya said. “But fear, you can use fear always.”

“Keeps your people under control,” Jiggs said.

“Yes, they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing.” De Boya began to nod, a pleasant expression masking his thoughts, his pictures from another time. “I always do a good job at that.” He gestured with his hands. “Well, it was my especiality, of course.”

A few minutes past midnight Moran’s phone rang. He turned off Johnny Carson and got to the counter, knowing it was Mary, feeling wide awake now.

She said, “Jiggs Scully was here, earlier this evening. They were in Andres’s study with the door closed for almost a half hour.”

Moran said, after a moment, “I know what you’re thinking… But I talked to Nolen and now I’m leaning the other way, back to Jiggs.”

“You think the whole thing’s his idea?”

“I’m pretty sure. If Andres wanted to get the goods on us there’s got to be a simpler way than all this.”

“Then why did Jiggs come here? He must be working for Andres.”

“For him and against him. Listen, you got to get out of there.”

“I will, soon.”

“Have you written down what you want to say?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Does Andres know I was there today?”

“He didn’t mention it, but I’m sure he does. He got home late.” Mary paused. “Wait a second, okay?”

“What’s the matter?”

“I heard something. Hold on.”

Moran waited, standing straight up now. He heard it then, away from the other end of the phone connection, sounding like shots, glass breaking. He pressed the phone to his ear and heard a voice far away, someone shouting. He heard Mary’s voice, closer, call out, “What is it?” Then nothing. He waited. He heard jarring sounds close, as though she might have dropped the phone picking it up. Now her voice in the phone was saying, “I’ll call you back.”

“Wait a minute. Are you all right?”

Her voice came as a whisper now. “I’m fine, but I can’t talk now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Andres is upstairs.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

But she’d hung up.