Little Tiny Teeth

THREE

Captain Alfredo Vargas, founder and president of Amazonia Cruise Lines, headquartered in Iquitos, Peru, conducted most of his business meetings with government officials, potential investors, and prospective clients in the bright, pleasant bar of the Hotel Dorado Plaza, self-described, with some justification, as “the only five-star hotel in the Peruvian Amazon.” While this practice might seem extravagant to some, it was in reality a measure of thrift on the captain’s part, being far more cost-effective than renting a bona fide office full-time, especially inasmuch as his business meetings were few and far between. Of course, once Amazonia was on its feet, once there was a steady stream of passengers for the Adelita, once another ship or two had been added to what he fondly thought of as his “fleet,” then there would be a fine office with an anteroom and a receptionist, and right on the Malecon Iarapaca too, the grandest boulevard in all Iquitos.

But for the time being, the elegant hotel bar served his purposes. It was where he had first met with the famous professor, Scofield, to negotiate the terms for the Adelita ’s maiden voyage as a passenger ship. It was where he was sitting with him today to iron out the final details. But the meeting was not going well. Scofield had taken exception to Vargas’s intention of having three additional passengers aboard: the man from On the Cheap and his two associates.

“I don’t know about that now, Captain,” he said pleasantly enough, digging at his cheek with the bit of his pipe. “That wasn’t the arrangement, as I recall. Didn’t we agree that my party would have the ship to themselves?”

“True, professor, very true, you’re right about that. But these men, you see, are not passengers at all, not in the usual sense of the word. They will be there only to look at life aboard the Adelita. It’s going to be in a travel book, you see – that is, if they are favorably impressed – and as you can imagine, this can be a great asset to my business.”

They spoke Spanish. Although Vargas could converse quite well in English, he was more comfortable in his native language. Scofield was equally at ease in both.

“We can’t have them interfering with our activities, you know,” Scofield said. “That wouldn’t do at all.” He was a stocky, apple-cheeked man, handsomely boyish and twinkle-eyed, and he was speaking, as usual, with a playful, jokey air, but Vargas knew from their earlier meetings that he was not to be taken lightly. Underneath the pleasantries there was a man who was used to getting what he wanted.

“No, no, I can assure you that they won’t. They are observers only. You’ll hardly be aware they’re there.”

“All right, but I must require that the ship pursue our itinerary. Your eventual aim may be tourism, but on this trip it’s strictly botany. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly, perfectly, professor. On that you have my word.”

Despite the hotel’s air-conditioning, Vargas was sweating. Scofield was a difficult customer, had been from the start. But he was also Vargas’s only customer, with no others presently in sight. If he insisted that he didn’t want Phil Boyajian aboard, Vargas would have to accede. But it would be a blow to his hopes and plans. “Flowers and shamans, that’s what it will be about,” he said jovially. “Don’t give it another thought.”

Scofield pointed the pipe bit at him. “ Plants, captain,” he said merrily. “Botanicals. Not ‘flowers.’”

“Yes, yes of course. Did I say flowers? Plants, I meant to say plants, nothing but plants and shamans.” He hesitated. “Well, that is…”

One of Scofield’s eyebrows lifted. “Yes?”

“Well, I’m sure this is already understood, but perhaps it’s best to be perfectly clear. I am at present still in the cargo business. In addition to your group, we will be carrying a consignment of coffee, along with a few miscellaneous items – a little lumber, a little mail, a generator, a few pairs of rubber boots, a dining room table and chairs, a wooden door, and so on. The coffee is bound for a warehouse in Colombia; the other items will be dropped off on the return-”

“You use one of the warehouses on the Javaro tributary, do you not? The one not far from, what is it, San Jose de Chiquitos?”

Vargas was astonished. “Yes. How is it that you know that?”

Scofield laughed again. “A little preliminary research. Naturally, I wanted to know your regular routes and your stops.”

“Oh, very few stops, and I can promise you there will be no inconvenience to you, no interference with-”

Scofield brushed his concerns aside. “That’s fine, Captain. An excursion along the Javaro will be just the ticket.”

Bernardo, the shirt-sleeved, bow-tied barman – very likely the only person in Iquitos who wore a bow tie, let alone owned one – brought their second round of drinks: a bourbon and soda for Scofield, and an Inca Kola for Vargas, who was too nervous to trust himself with anything alcoholic.

“All right then, I think we’re all set as far as that goes,” Scofield said after swallowing some of his whiskey. “Now that I think about it, I can see some real advantages to having these guide book people along taking notes on everything. At any rate, I imagine we can look forward to some excellent meals.” He chuckled, shoulders shaking and face pinkening a bit more.

Vargas played it safe and responded with a neutral smile.

“So then, on to other matters,” Scofield said. “Have you found us a decent guide?”

“Indeed, I have, senor.” Vargas was relieved to change the subject. “There is a local man, a fine guide, much in demand up and down the river. He knows the jungle trails like the back of his hand. He is-”

Scofield was shaking his head. “Knowing the jungle trails is all well and good, my friend, but we require something more. We need someone who is something of a botanist himself, who knows what he is looking at; we don’t want simply to wander blindly in the jungle. And we need someone who can give us access to the curing shamans in the area-” He waggled a finger. “I mean the real shamans, not the ones that stick a feather in their nose and put on a dance performance for the tourists.”

“Yes, yes, I’m trying to tell you. This is a person who has actually studied with the curanderos and who has learned many of their secrets. The White Shaman, we call him, the perfect man for you. As luck would have it, he finds himself available, and I have secured his services for your cruise. You are very fortunate.”

Scofield cocked his head, weighed this information. “He speaks English? Because some of my people don’t speak Spanish.”

“English, Spanish, Yagua, Chayacuro-”

“Chayacuro!” Scofield exclaimed. “I don’t want anything to do with the Chayacuro! I don’t want to go anywhere near the Chayacuro.”

“No, no, certainly not, why should we have anything to do with the Chayacuro? No, I was only describing this highly accomplished gentleman to you.”

“Mmm.” Scofield’s tone indicated that he was well aware of Vargas’s tendency toward hyperbole. “And how much will this paragon of virtue cost us?”

“His fee is one thousand nuevos soles.”

“A thousand?” Scofield’s bristly eyebrows shot up. “For taking us on a few walks and introducing us to one or two-”

“Well, but you see, professor, it’s a whole week of his time, after all. He can’t very well get off the boat in the middle of the trip, can he? Ha-ha-ha. He has to stay aboard. Really, it’s a bargain.”

“All right, all right. A thousand soles. Soindollars, that’s another-”

Vargas was ready with the answer. It was his ace in the hole. “It comes to about three hundred American dollars, professor, but it will cost you nothing. His fee has already been arranged, as part of the service provided by Amazonia Cruise Lines.”

Considering that his take from Scofield’s people would come to over seventeen thousand nuevos soles – more than five thousand dollars – and that there was the sweet, added promise of a possible On the Cheap recommendation, it was an investment he was happy to make. Besides, he was, naturally, not paying the guide a thousand soles. Three hundred was the agreed-upon fee, and the man was glad to get it.

Scofield had spent a lot of time in Peru. He knew the way things worked here, so he almost certainly knew that Vargas was conning him. Still, he looked pleased, and why not? A thousand, five hundred, four hundred, whatever it was, it wasn’t coming from his pocket. “Very good, Captain. I appreciate that.”

“It’s my pleasure, Professor.”

Well, not quite. The man known as el Curandero Blanco was in fact a disreputable and notoriously unreliable misfit called Cisco – a fitting name, with its faintly disparaging connotations. What his last name was, if he had one, nobody seemed to know, not that that was any great rarity in Iquitos. He had been hanging around the city, on and off, for as long as Vargas could remember, having come from who-knew-where. His Spanish wasn’t Peruvian, but what he was was in dispute. Some claimed he was a colocho, a transplanted low-level Colombian drug-dealer who had hurriedly left Colombia in advance of a gangland reprisal for offenses unspecified. Others were sure that his accent was Catalonian; a Spaniard. Still others believed he was Argentinian, which went along with the rumor that he was the grandson of Nazis who had escaped to Argentina in 1945. Cisco himself was known to have told each of these stories at different times. Vargas suspected he was simply one of the many lost souls of the Amazon, a rootless drifter from Ecuador or Colombia who had settled in Iquitos the way a stone settles wherever it falls in a stream. More than likely, Cisco himself might be a little confused as to who he was and where he’d come from, and where he was when he wasn’t in Iquitos.

What Vargas had told Scofield about him was mostly true, but there was plenty that he hadn’t told him. Foremost among these things was that Cisco’s knowledge of the curandero ’s arts was deep, all right, but pretty much limited to those relating to hallucinogenic plants. He had sat many long hours at the feet of various tribal healers and shamans and learned of the psychedelic virtues of ayahuasca, epena, ajuca, and a hundred others. In return, he had introduced several of his gratified tutors to the similar if less spectacular pleasures of cannabis and LSD. In short, what he was, when you got down to it, was a dopehead, vague and fog-brained, who was thought to live with an Indian woman in a shack down in the mudflats near Belen (where he went in flood season was anybody’s guess), and who eked out a living, such as it was, by occasionally hiring himself out as a guide to unsuspecting tourists.

It was true enough that many people – well, a few people – referred to him as the White Shaman, a title he promoted for himself, but others who knew him referred to him sarcastically as the White Milkman. Somehow or other, he had made a friend of a small, local dairy farmer who had taken pity on him and offered him on-again, off-again work with his paltry herd of a dozen or so skinny cows. He was not really a milkman in the sense of delivering milk, since no one in Iquitos drank fresh milk (babies drank thick, yellow stuff that came in cans from the U.S. and Austria), but he did milk and tend the cows, which were used to produce cheese, and so the Spanish term el lechero blanco, with its droll, mocking associations of gallantry and adventure, had stuck to him. It wasn’t much of a secret that he also made a little pocket money by running menial errands for the petty jungle drug traffickers or carrying messages for them. In Iquitos, this kind of behavior elicited no more than a noncommittal shrug from others. It was hard to make a living in Iquitos.

There had actually been some positive reports on his guide work. Once he’d taken a party of Swedish amateur botanists into the Yuturi wilderness, and they’d come back raving about his knowledge of the ecosystem. But another time he’d up and left a group of English horticulturists stranded in the jungle south of Pucallpa because he’d had a vision telling him to go home at once. So the man was a loose cannon, all right, but what choice was there? Who else could knowledgeably guide Scofield and his people and also introduce them to genuine jungle shamans? No one, only Cisco. Vargas had advanced him a hundred nuevos soles to get his hair and that wild beard of his trimmed and to buy a pair of new shoes to replace his disgusting, falling-apart, ankle-high sneakers. Whether he’d actually do any of that, or would even remember that he’d been asked, was strictly a toss-up.

Scofield, ready to leave now, drained his whiskey, smacked his lips, and set down the glass. “All right then, Captain, we have ourselves a deal.” His left hand went into the pocket of his neat plaid shirt, from which he withdrew a blue leather checkbook. His right hand clicked the top of a ballpoint pen and held it, poised, above the top check.

“Five thousand four hundred dollars, correct?”

“Perfectly correct,” said Vargas, his heart in his mouth. Five thousand four hundred dollars would almost cover what was still owed for the Adelita ’s refitting. The pen remained poised.

Write, write, damn it!

Scofield began to scratch away at last. “Let’s round it off and say fifty-five hundred, shall we?”

“Thank you, professor.” Vargas started breathing again. They were actually closing the deal. “I do have many expenses that-”

Scofield completed the check, tore it off with just about the sweetest sound that Vargas had ever heard, but then practically stopped the captain’s heart by drawing it back across the table before Vargas could snatch it.

Now what? “Is something wrong?” he said, managing what he hoped was a smile.

“I wonder, Captain,” Scofield said slowly, gently waving the check, “if you would be interested in earning an additional five thousand dollars?”

Vargas’s heart started up again. At about a hundred beats a minute. “You’re thinking about another cruise?”

“No, not another cruise. Something more in the nature of a simple favor on this one. No additional trouble on your part at all.” He leaned closer, smiling. “I have a proposition in which I think you might be interested, Captain Vargas.”

Twenty minutes later, the two men stood up and shook hands, Vargas having first used a cocktail napkin to surreptitiously wipe the sweat from his palm.

“We’ll look forward to our departure on the twenty-sixth, then,” Scofield said. “Thank you for the drinks.”

“Thank you, professor.”

Once Scofield had left, Vargas flopped back into his soft leather chair. With the thousand soles he was being paid for the mail and cargo deliveries, he would gross almost $11,000, an incredible sum, enough to outfit his beloved Adelita in the manner it deserved, enough for a down payment on a second ship! Yet all the same, an edgy panic, as thick and turgid as cold mud, pressed painfully on his heart. What had he gotten himself into?

He shoved his Inca Kola aside, and limply signaled the barman.

“Bernardo, a double aguardiente.”