White Cargo

8

“Can I speak with Mr. Catledge, please?” The accent was broad and flat. He might have been calling from downtown Sydney.

“Speaking.”

“This is Ronald Holland. I got a message to call you.”

“Have you got cab fare?”

“Yes.”

Cat gave him the address. “Tell the driver it’s off West Paces Ferry Road, west of 1-75.”

“Right. About an hour, I guess.”

Cat had somehow been expecting somebody on the scrawny, weasly side, but when he opened the front door he was confronted with a man of about six feet five, two hundred and fifty pounds. Cat, at six-three, didn’t look up at all to that many people, but he looked up at this one. The face was round, open, cheerful; the sandy hair was receding. Cat put him at about forty-five. Bluey Holland held a small canvas suitcase in one hand.

“Holland,” the man said.

“I’m Catledge; come on in.”

Cat showed him ahead toward the study. On the way Holland got an eyeful of the large, handsomely furnished living room of the contemporary house. In the study, Cat offered a chair and sat down at his desk. Even though this man was his only hope at the moment, this was an employment interview, and Cat didn’t want him to think he was going to automatically get the job.

“How do we know each other?” Holland asked.

“I understand you know your way around South America,” Cat said, ignoring the question.

“Afraid not,” Holland replied.

Cat felt a moment of panic. Had he got the wrong man?

“Just Colombia,” Holland continued. “I know more about that place than the bloody Colombian Tourist Board.”

“That’ll do,” Cat said, relieved. “How’s your Spanish?”

“Useless in the libraries and classrooms of the world, crackerjack in Colombian bars and whorehouses,” Holland said. “How’d you come by my name?”

“You available for a few weeks, maybe a few months?”

Holland slapped his hands down on the arms of the leather chair. “Listen, mate, I’ve asked you twice how we come to be introduced, and you haven’t answered me. I just did two years and seven months of a five-to-eight for doing business with people I didn’t know, so I’ll just push off...”

“A mutual acquaintance,” Cat said. “Carlos.”

Holland stopped talking, his mouth still open. “I know lots of blokes named Carlos,” he said, warily.

Cat tried to keep his face still. He hadn’t counted on this.

“Half the Latinos in the hemisphere—” Holland began.

“This Carlos isn’t a Latino,” Cat said quickly.

“The son of a bitch,” Holland grinned. “I thought he was dead.”

“Nope.”

“Well, now I know how I got paroled first time at bat. You and Carlos work together, do you?”

“Just acquaintances,” Cat said.

“Mr. Catledge,” Holland said, relaxing into the chair, “my time is your time. What can I do for you?”

“How about a drink?” Cat asked, rising.

“I wouldn’t spit up a scotch,” Holland replied.

Cat picked up an old copy of Time magazine from his desk and dropped it in Holland’s lap on the way out of the room. “Page sixty-one,” he said. “That’ll bring you up to date.”

In the bar, Cat took his time about mixing their drinks. When he came back into the room, Holland was still reading. Cat handed him his drink and sat down on the sofa across from the man. Holland looked up, his face sad.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a bloody rotten deal.”

“That’s about the most complete account of the event the press published,” Cat said, “but a lot has happened since then.” He told the Australian in some detail of his efforts to find the pirates, then finally of the phone call from Jinx. “I’m going down there after her,” he said. “I need help. Somebody who knows the territory; somebody to keep me out of trouble. Carlos says you’re the man. Want to go with me?”

“Be delighted,” Holland grinned.

“I’ll pay you fifty thousand — ten up front and forty when we get back alive.”

“That what Carlos told you to offer me?” Holland asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, that seems fair, but how long are you reckoning on?”

“As long as it takes.”

Holland made a sucking noise in his teeth. “That could be an awful long time,” he said.

“I see your point,” Cat agreed. “Tell you what; if it takes longer than a month, I’ll pay you five thousand a week for as long as it takes.”

“Done,” Holland said. “Now what?”

“Let’s go to Colombia.”

“Now, let me get this straight,” Holland said, holding up a hand. “You don’t have any information you haven’t told me about?”

“No. Now you know everything I know.”

Holland rubbed his chin briskly. “Well, then, I guess we start at Santa Marta, then, since that’s where this thing began, and since we haven’t got a clue in the bloody world where else to start.”

“Not a clue,” Cat said. “I know it’s a big country. Do you think we have any chance at all of finding her?”

Holland shrugged. “Listen, mate, Carlos thinks you’ve got a shot at finding her, or he wouldn’t have put you in touch. If he thinks so, that’s good enough for me. Sure, it’s a big country, but when you’re tracking down something as dirty as this, the geography shrinks. The people who do this sort of thing tend to congregate in certain parts of the country. We’ll start in Santa Marta, because that’s the beginning of the trail. I doubt if she’s there, but somebody knows something. I know a couple of people there; we’ll call on them. If I had to guess where she is, I’d say one of three places: The Guajira Peninsula, in the northeast; Cali, in the west; or in the Amazon country. If she’s alive.”

“She was alive a week ago,” Cat said.

“That’s your best hope,” Holland replied. “If they didn’t kill her when the boat went down, they want her for something.”

Cat didn’t want to think about why somebody might want Jinx. “Why those three places?” he asked.

“Because that’s where the drugs get made, and sold, and smuggled.”

“Why do you think this has something to do with drugs?”

“Because everything in Colombia — everything that’s dirty, anyway — has something to do with drugs.”

Cat had heard that before.

Holland reached down, unzipped his canvas bag, and removed a large magazine, printed on yellow newsprint, called Tradeaplane. Cat had seen it around the flying school. “We’re going to need an airplane,” he said.

“What for?” Cat asked, surprised. “Don’t the airlines fly to Colombia?”

“Oh, sure,” Holland said, “but I don’t have a passport; they took it away before my trial. And anyway, I expect my face would light up a few computers in both Colombian or U.S. Customs and Immigration. Then, once we’re in the country, we have to be able to move around without the police paying too much attention to me. There’s always police in airports.”

“Then where would we land a light aircraft?”

Bluey grinned. “Well, there’s airports and there’s airports.”

Cat remembered that he had a passport for Holland, but he remembered Jim’s advice, too. “Okay, if you say so.”

Holland waved a hand. “Your house, your car — you look as though you can afford a good airplane.” He began flipping through Tradeaplane. “I reckon we’ll need to spend somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand bucks, depending on what’s available locally. Of course if you want to go looking around the country, we could save some money.”

“I’d rather save time. We’ll get whatever you want.”

Holland stood up. “I’ll start looking today. You got a car I can borrow?”

Cat went to his desk and got some keys. “There’s a Mercedes station wagon in the garage.” He tossed Holland the keys.

Holland fingered his suit. “I’ll need to pick up some gear as well.”

Cat took a banded stack of bills from his desk drawer and tossed it to Holland. “There’s your ten thousand,” he said. “You’ve got yourself a job, Mr. Holland.”

The Australian stuck out his hand. “Call me Bluey,” he grinned.

Cat grinned back. “I’m Cat.” He liked the man, but he still felt a little uncomfortable with him, knowing what he did about his past. Now, he was giving him ten thousand dollars and Katie’s Mercedes. What the hell, he thought, he could never do this on his own. He needed Bluey Holland, and he would just have to trust him.

That night Cat lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and conjured up Jinx’s face, but it was not the face he had most recently seen. It was younger — twelve or thirteen. He could not quite form her image at a later age in his mind. He wondered if, eventually, he would not be able to remember her at all.

“I’m coming, kid,” he said aloud into the darkness. “I’m coming to get you.”