The Second Saladin - Страница 47

“Aiiieee!” He looked up happily. “Hey, come look at this one, Señor Gringo. They really give it to her. Right on the back bumper!”

“And no others? No visitors, no questions?” asked Roberto, fourth member of this hilltop Utopia.

“Nada. Not in El Plomo,” said the boy. “What’s for supper?”

“I can’t figure out why he hasn’t gotten back to me. What the hell is going on back there?” Trewitt said self-righteously. But he had deep suspicions. The El Plomo postman — he was also the mayor, the sanitary commissioner, the general store owner, the traffic cop — had been recruited, for a substantial fee, of course, to drive fifteen miles to the nearest town of consequence and dispatch another telegram via Our Lady of Resurrection to Trewitt’s own particular saint, Saint Paul.

“UNC,” the telegram had read, “FOUND BIG TACO BUT MUCHO OTHERS WANT RECIPE SPICY GOING SEND HELP EL PLOMO SIERRA DEL CARRIZAI

NEPHEW JIM”

But what if the public official had taken the money and said screw the gringo and his telegram and headed for the nearest whorehouse?

Trewitt shook his head. His rage, which was mostly self-pity, was inflating exponentially. Who the fuck knew what was going on back there anyway? Maybe Chardy had gotten the can. Maybe he should have sent his first message to somebody sensible like Yost Ver Steeg. Forget the cowboy; go for the corporate executive.

Trewitt began to pine, to mourn, for lost opportunities. Maybe it wasn’t too late, sure, even now, send an open wire to Yost, care of Langley, Va., dear Yost, it may surprise you to know that …

But —

But it was true Bill Speight had been murdered. It was true there were men trying to murder Reynoldo Ramirez. It was true all this began almost immediately after the Kurd, Ulu Beg, had come across the American border in a blaze of gunfire, assisted by Reynoldo Ramirez. And it was true that at any second an odd squad of gunmen might arrive. The linkages were not definite but they were certainly suggestive. Somehow it all fit together, though try as he might he could not exactly imagine how or why. Who was pursuing them?

There’s your key, Trewitt. Mexican gunmen, trying to rub out El Stupido for his nightclub, or for a past betrayal, or for …? Or some other force?

Trewitt shivered.

Behind the scabby line of mountains the sun collapsed into a great hemorrhage of purple swirls. Beneath, the valley was quiet and dark. Down there on those gentle slopes grew maybe fifty million bucks’ worth of marijuana. It was a wild country, bandit country, gun country. Around here everybody carried guns. It was a violent place.

Trewitt advised himself to deal with the reality of the situation, and forget the overview for the time being. Forget also his desperate prayers for Resurrection. He was going to have to get out of this one by himself.

He took the rifle off his shoulder, a Remington Model 700 in 7-mm magnum, with a 6X scope. Ramirez had two, for desert sheep, which once or twice a year the old Ramirez — prosperous vice lord and whoremonger — came up to stalk.

“Hey, some food is here,” called Roberto.

Trewitt reslung the rifle. Food meant more beans and rice, which meant farting all night, and he knew he had the two-to-six shift when the farting would be at its worst.

Jesus Christ, that was something Le Carré never wrote about.

35

This was his third day; by now he had established his talents and been nominally accepted, though no one had ever asked his name or inquired where he came from. They knew more important things about him: that he could hit from twenty-five feet out if given the shot, that he would dive for a free ball, that he set picks that would knock your teeth loose, that he was a furious rebounder, and finally, that he was honest.

“You do the pros, old man?” the tallest, the star, said to be a postman in real life, put to him sullenly.

“I had a week in the old Chicago Packers camp. But I couldn’t stick it.”

“Say, Jack: you think I could make it in the pros?”

Chardy paused a fraction of a second. He was, after all, a vulnerable figure, the only white man on the playground, even if the dome of the United States Capitol could be seen in the distance, across the river, an immaculate joke for the thousands of black teenagers who threw balls through hoops here.

“No,” he finally said. “No way. Sorry. You’re just not good enough.”

Chardy thought the postman might hit him. He was maybe twenty-two, six five, and had some great moves. He’d probably had a year or two of college ball before flunking out, or quitting.

But the postman thought it over and seemed to back off. Perhaps he was too elegant for a punch-out, or too smart; or perhaps he secretly knew the truth of Chardy’s judgment; or perhaps he sensed that Chardy didn’t give a shit about much of anything and would have fought him to the last bloody blow.

“Then let’s play, old man,” said the postman.

“Let’s do it,” Chardy replied, and they began again.

Chardy had by this time worked his way up to the best court, where the most talented players went five-on-five full distance. At first the blacks had let their rage show: they’d crowded and roughed him, and he’d been knocked to the asphalt more than a few times. But he fought back with elbow and hip, and his shots were falling. He was still the jump-shooter. You never forgot. It never left, that gift. He went for net, not rim or backboard, although these skirts were woven of chain, which clanked medievally when the ball fell through them. It was as though a kind of enchantment had fallen over Chardy. He played to lose himself forever, to hide, to vanish in the game, the glorious game. He knew only that he had to play or die. His limbs had ached for the sport.

He’d left Boston and driven straight from National into D.C., stopping only at a sporting-goods shop in a suburban mall to buy a luxurious pair of shoes — Nike high-tops, leather, the pro model — and a good Seamco outdoor ball, and headed deep into the city until he saw a playground, a good one, a big one, across a bridge in a meadow between a highway and a slow river. The place was called, after the river, Anacostia. He knew the best ballplayers would go there.

He felt he could play forever. At thirty-eight, he felt sixteen. If there was a heaven on this earth, he had at last found it: a playground, two hoops, and a shot that was falling.

Jesus, was it falling.

“Fill it.”

“Drop it.”

“Put it down, man.”

“Jam it.”

“Damn, you hot.”

He hit four in a row, then five, then six before missing. He fired rainbows that fell like messages from God, dead center, without mercy. He tried tap-ins and finger rolls and fallaway jumpers and drives off either hand. He fought to the baseline to receive a pass and curled backward through two defenders for a reverse lay-up. The ball felt like a rose, it was so light and smelled so sweet. In a trance he shot a wish from forty feet, only to watch it drop without a rattle. Even the postman gave him a tap on the butt after that one.

But eventually, in the hazy hour of twilight of the third day, when the moths had begun to gather in the cones of the fluorescent lights that would illuminate the hoops until midnight, into this athlete’s Eden there came a snake. Chardy pretended not to notice; but how could he miss the only other white face among so many black ones, even if it was far away, behind the windshield of a nondescript car.

Whoever was stalking him had patience. He waited like a grim statue in his car through several more games, even allowing Chardy to drink a can of cold beer that someone offered from a six-pack.

Finally, almost into full dark, as Chardy was firing from the baseline — a rare miss, too — the door popped and a short figure emerged.

Lanahan. They’d sent Lanahan.

Chardy missed the next two shots, and the man he was theoretically guarding put in two buckets.

Lanahan, in his disheveled suit, wandered over shyly, paused, and finally found a seat in some bleachers adjacent to the court.

Chardy missed another shot. All of a sudden he could not buy a basket. A terrible weariness suffused his limbs.

“Come on, Jack,” the postman ordered.

The ball came to him on the perimeter. Inside, a man on his team slipped open and Chardy should have hit him at the low post with a bounce pass; greedily he merely faked it. Chardy dribbled back and forth, the ball rising to meet his eager hands. He searched for an opening. Another teammate slipped out to set a pick and Chardy drove suddenly to it, losing his defender in the process.

He set himself for half an instant, and felt the ball rise and almost of itself decide to flee the thrust of his two hands as he leaned from behind the pick. The ball, obediently, disappeared through the basket.

Chardy got two quick baskets after that, and the postman finished the run with a ringing slam-dunk. Chardy raised his hand, announcing the desire to sit one out, and a high-school boy of great repute but few words jogged in emotionlessly to take his place.

“Nice stuff, man,” the kid said.

Chardy plucked a towel off the grass and circled the court to the bleachers. He flopped down a row behind Miles, stretching his legs out before him and working over his face with a towel. One of his knees was bloody. He couldn’t even remember a fall.

“You’re good,” said Miles, watching the new game before him, the cuffs and shouts and bounces now reaching them through the heavy summer air. “I had no idea how good.”