Chameleon

  He left the rest room and went to the airline counter to check in.

  Hinge arrived at ten the next morning. The drive up from the airport to Caracas was hot and uncomfortable, with the air still humid from the rains the day before, and storm clouds threatening to deluge the city again at any moment. To make matters worse, the cab was not air-conditioned. Warm, moist wind blew through the open windows, and Hinge was wind-whipped and sweaty. The traffic, as usual, was wicked and pollution burned his nose and throat.

  "Pit-fuckin'-city," Hinge said, only half under his breath. It wasn't his first trip to the capital of Venezuela. He knew it well. The city fills a narrow nine-mile-long valley between Mount Avila, a sixty-five-hundred-foot forested mountain, to its north, and the foothills of the Cord Del Maria mountains to the south. Beyond the Cord Del Maria, going farther south, there is not much of anything but jungle and more jungle, and eventually Brazil. The Del Maria foothills had always struck Hinge as un poco loco, a little crazy. Schizoid would probably be closer to it. On the western slopes are some of the worst slums in the world, the ranchitos, thousands of red huts and adobe shacks that huddle together in squalor, while to the east are the haunts of the rich and the powerful, speckled with costly homes, swimming pools and private clubs, the Beverly Hills of Caracas.

  Between them is the sprawling downtown section of, as Hinge would have it, "pit-fuckin'-city"; made rich by oil, grown up far too fast for its own good, and which, despite its towering glass-and-steel skyscrapers, still suffered the same ills as most boomtowns. It was overbuilt, overpopulated, polluted, had a terrible phone system, water shortages, lousy garbage collections, the worst traffic jams in the world and its ugliest whores.

  At night it glitters like Tiffany's window.

  Hinge wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to ignore the discomfort.

  What the hell, he could be in Johannesburg.

  Pit-fuckin'-city, squared.

  Instead, he thought about the job. Out there somewhere, among the three million people, in the nightmare of downtown or among the squalid ranchitos, was poor old Lavander, like a sinner at a prayer meetin', prayin' to be saved. Well, Hinge thought, if me and ol' Spettro can't spring him, he can't be sprung.

  So they were staying at the fanciest digs in town. Thank Quill for that. Everything first cabin. Hinge registered and took the key, refusing to allow the bellman to carry his black parachute-silk traveling bag. The room was on the fourth floor.

  Good. Hinge didn't like to be up too high. He had once been in a hotel fire in Bangkok, and his fear of hotel fires was paranoid. The elevator whisked him to the fourth floor. The room was large and opulent with a beautiful view of the teleférico, a Swiss-type cable car that carried patrons up one side of Mount Avila and down the other to the Caribbean Sea, twelve miles to the north.

  He put his duffel-type bag on the bed and opened it, taking out fresh underwear, a shirt, socks and a pair of khaki pants. Anxiety hummed along his nerves. He was already tuning up for the assignment, but he was even more excited knowing that his partner for this job was in the next room. After ten years in the business, he was finally going to meet il Spettro—the Phantom—according to legend the most skilled assassin in the business and a man who could kill you with a dirty look.

  III

  At the same time that Hinge was driving toward his hotel in Caracas, O'Hara was pulling up in front of the flamboyant old hotel on St. Lucifer.

  Le Grand Gustavsen Hotel sat on the side of a foothill overlooking the main city, Bonne Terre, which had a population of five thousand, to the azure Caribbean beyond. Towering palm trees lined the coral road that led up to its main entrance. Nothing here had changed since O'Hara's last visit to the island. Driving up to the entrance, O'Hara always felt as if he were lost in time. The sprawling four-story, virginal-white Victorian hotel was perhaps the most elegant old gingerbread castle in the world, its latticework a masterpiece of curlicues and filigrees and spindles and arches. Broad porches surrounded the second and third floors of the ancient old hostelry, and the building was framed by tall ferns and palm trees. The main floor of the hotel was actually on the second floor. The bottom floor, once a basement and wine cellar, had been turned into a kind of mini-international bazaar. Hidden discreetly behind French doors were gift shops from England and Spain and the Orient. A famous French couturier had a small showroom there. And the newsstand boasted periodicals and newspapers from almost every country in the world, including Russia. A fountain bubbled quietly at the front of the hotel, with a winding escalier on either side, leading to the first floor and the main entrance.

  The hotel had been built as an investment in 1892 by Olaf Gustavsen, a Norwegian shipbuilder. Three pestering wives and nine children later, old Gus had forsaken it all and retreated to his island castle, where he had married a beautiful local who had borne him a son and died in the doing. Gus welcomed expatriates, soldiers of fortune, itinerate journalists, down-and-out writers, tired-out old spies on the last leg to retirement, and anyone else with a good story to tell. He had, through the years, begrudgingly added plumbing, running water and electricity. His son, Little Gus, who spent most of his time fishing, kept up the tradition of tawdry elegance, never succumbing either to air-conditioning or telephones in the rooms. Messages were accepted by anyone who happened to answer the phone on the desk, and might or might not be delivered. Outwardly, nothing had changed since 1892 except for an occasional coat of white paint. The only modern touch was a small red neon sign near the driveway, which read:LE GRAND GUSTAVSEN HOTEL

  Presents

  Six Fingers Rothschild

  The Magician of the Keyboard

  Appearing nightly

  The Magician must have blackmailed the old buzzard to get that put up.

  The doorman was a giant of a black man who wore a white short-sleeved shirt and black bellbottoms.

  "Bonjour, monsieur," he said, and took O'Hara's suitcase.

  "Bonjour," O'Hara said. "Merci."

  The place was as colorful as ever. As he was paying the cab driver, two men approached. They were stubby little black men, each with a straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye and each holding a fighting cock in hand. Behind them, an amateur fire eater popped a flaming torch in and out of his mouth.

  "Excusez-moi, monsieur, s'il vous plaît," said one of the cockfighters, doffing his hat and smiling broadly enough to show a gold tooth at the side of his mouth, "Parlez-vous français? Habla Usted español? Speak Englis?"

  "Je suis américain," O'Hara said.

  "Ah, monsieur! You have the privilege to meet the greatest coq in the islands. This fellow once pecked a tiger to death."

  The rooster had seen much better times. Its cone was chewed and ragged, and it only had one leg.

  "Merde!" his companion exclaimed. "A blind old grand'mére hen bit off his leg." He held his cock high in one hand. "This guy once killed an eagle in flight."

  "Ha! Such lies! Monsieur, ten dollair américain and we will settle this thing right now," said the man with the one-legged chicken.

  "Some other time," O'Hara yelled back, following the doorman up the stairs to the main lobby.

  The two locals were undaunted.

  "Je m'appelle Toledo. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles!" the man with the one-legged bird yelled to him.—I am Toledo. Let me hear from you! And they all laughed.

  Double French doors led to the hotel's enormous main room, which served as its lobby, bar, waiting room, restaurant and registry. Sitting just inside the doors was a large hulk of a desk, littered with letters, bills, telegrams, messages, and an antiquated French telephone. The hotel's old-fashioned registration book lay open on one corner. The oak bar, smoothly polished by time, was to the left. Its twenty-foot-long zinc top had once decorated the main room of a famous Parisian brasserie until old Gustavsen had won it from the owner in a game of baccarat and shipped it to the island at great expense. A Montana rancher who had been a regular customer of the hotel for years had presented th
e old man with a brass plaque when the zinc top arrived. It was mounted at one end of the bar and read: "Won fair and square in a game of chance between old man Gustavsen and Gérard Turin, Paris, December 4, 1924."

  To the right of the desk was the restaurant, nothing more than several tables with wicker chairs, but the food was prepared by a young native who had been taught his skill by the previous chef, the great Gazerin. The food alone was worth a trip to the island.

  The room itself was a collection of oddities, things left behind or donated or bartered across the bar for drinks: an airplane propeller over the bar, hurricane lanterns of every size and shape, an enormous anchor that had lain in the same spot in one corner of the room for thirty-four years, a wine cooler that Hemingway supposedly gave to old Gustavsen, an Australian bush hat, a blow gun and several darts which, according to legend, had been left there by a pygmy in a seersucker suit. There were several autographed photographs of prize fighters and wrestlers and musicians, hanging awry on the walls, and a good-sized tarpon over the upright piano. The room was dark and comfortably cool, stirred by ceiling fans.

  "Tiens, voilà le Marin! Bonjour, bonjour, mon ami," someone yelled from the bar, and O'Hara peered through the darkness to see Justice Jolicoeur approaching him.

  Justice Jolicoeur stopped a few feet from O'Hara and posed for a moment, as though he were studying a painting.

  "Alors!" he said. "You have not changed by so much as an eyelash. Obviously you weathered your exile well."

  He was a wiry little man, and every inch, every ounce, was pure dandy. He wore a white-linen three-piece suit, a thin fire-engine-red tie and a blood-red carnation in his lapel. His boots were of black English leather and his cane was polished enamel with a hand-carved golden swan's head grip. His curly black hair was slicked back tight against his skull, and when he spoke, his polished and cultured patois was superbly refined Creole, although for effect he sometimes lapsed into French, which he spoke like a scholar. Jolicoeur was a Haitian who had left the country with the Tontons, Papa Doc's vicious secret police, hard on his heels. What he had done to earn the wrath of the dictator was a mystery. Joli, as he liked to be called, never discussed the past. But it was rumored that he had arrived in St. Lucifer with two hundred one-hundred-dollar gold sovereigns in his hollow cane, and immediately conned Gus Junior into a retainer as the hotel's official ambassador of good will. It was worth it to Gus to have Joli around. He gave the place a touch of class.

  "Quite," said O'Hara. "And you, you've never looked more prosperous, Joli. Are you keeping busy?"

  "You would not believe it. Thanks to the new hotels I have hardly a moment to myself. Merci, merci, Messieurs Hilton, Sheraton and you, too, Master Host." He blew them a kiss. "We have had to add a third voodoo show each night, just to satisfy the tourist demand."

  "Voodoo? There isn't any voodoo on this island."

  "There is now, Marin. So far I have imported eighteen families from Port-au-Prince. They make more in tips in one night than they did in a year in Haiti."

  "I see you're still working the rooster scam at the door."

  "Oui. And did you see the fire eater? He adds flavor to the coq fights."

  "That's almost a bad pun, Joli."

  "Monsieur?"

  "Forget it. You know, you really oughta get that one guy a new chicken. That one-legged rooster doesn't even look good enough to eat."

  "Hey, that's one mean bird, Sailor. Think about it—would you not be mean if you were that ugly and had to hop around on one leg to keep from getting your brains pecked out? Certainement he is the world's champion one-legged fighting coq."

  "I must tell you, Joli, among the many resourceful people I've known in my life, you are the most resourceful of all. You are the king of all con men."

  Joli beamed. His brown eyes twinkled with gratitude. "Ah, O'Hara, you are a true cavalier." And he bowed with a flourish.

  "Now, where's le Sorcier?" O'Hara demanded.

  "He is waiting for you. Venez avec moi."

  Jolicoeur led him back past the bar and down a short hall. He rapped ferociously on the door with the cane.

  The muffled voice behind the door bellowed, "Jesus Christ, Jolicoeur, come in, don't tear my goddamn door down."

  Joli stepped in first and, with a flourish, said, "I am pleased to announce the arrival of le Marin, the Sailor, returned from exile."

  "Hot shit," Rothschild said.

  And the man they called le Sorcier jumped up and wrapped his arms around O'Hara. "Joli," he said, "go to the bar and bring back the best bottle of Napoleon brandy we have and a couple of glasses."

  "Do we say 'Please'?" Joli said, offended.

  "S'il vous-fucking-plaît," Rothschild said.

  "Just two glasses?"

  "Okay, Joli, three glasses."

  "Tout de suite," the little man said and rushed off.

  "Jeez, Sailor, you look better than the last time I saw you. It musta been good for you, bein' on the dodge."

  Time and the islands had tempered his accent, but it was still definitely Lower East Side Manhattan. He was a slender man, about as tall as O'Hara, deeply tanned, with high cheekbones and a hard, definite jaw. He had the wondrous expression in his eyes and mouth of one constantly about to laugh, which indeed he was. It was the way he looked at life. Life to Rothschild was a joke waiting for the punchline, and he gazed, through stoned eyes, at the world as a madhouse, filled with frantic, scrambling, driven inmates.

  An unruly-looking joint was tucked, unlit and forgotten, in the corner of his mouth, and the sweet smell of marijuana hung lightly in the air.

  "How about a hit? This is home-grown shit from right up there behind us on the mountain."

  "I'm on a tight timetable, Michael. I don't have time right now to get whacked out on your smoke."

  "Suit yourself, Sailor. Grab a seat."

  The Magician rummaged through his tattered white jeans and then the pockets of his faded blue workshirt, trying to find a light. He was wearing white gloves. Rothschild always wore white gloves. He was not embarrassed by the fact that he was missing the two small fingers on each hand—that's not why he wore gloves. He wore them because people seemed less concerned with his deformity and more concerned with the quality of his piano playing when they could not see where the missing digits had been.

  The room was a small office, miserably cluttered, with a rolltop desk, an ancient and decrepit desk chair with a peeling leather seat and two rusty bridge chairs for guests. Junk was jammed in every cubbyhole and opening in the desk. He finally found a book of matches among the debris and lit the roach. He took a deep drag and sighed with relief.

  "What are you doing in Gus's office?" O'Hara asked.

  "Well, it's a long story. But to make it short, Gus Junior is dead."

  O'Hara was genuinely sorrowed. "Well," he said, "there goes one of the greats."

  "A true believer," said Rothschild. "What happened, the old boy went out fishing by himself one day, didn't come back. We found him the next day, floating just off the South Spike. Heart attack. Musta been fighting a big one. The pole was still in the cup and he had strapped himself in the fighting chair. Whatever it was, he killed himself trying to land it. The fish was gone, hook was bent out straight."

  "I can't think of a better way for the old man to go," O'Hara said.

  "Anyway, the old bastard left me the place, all his money, everything! I couldn't believe it, Sailor. I mean, he left it all to me!"

  "A helluva responsibility, pal."

  "Yeah. I already got some heat about the air-conditioning. I tell everybody, hey, it's in old Gus's will. I can't change a thing. It's a sacred trust."

  Joli returned with the brandy and poured three snifters almost to the brim.

  "Merci bien," O'Hara said.

  "Ce n'est rien," said the little man, and raising his glass, offered a toast: "À votre santé!"

  "To payday!" O'Hara echoed in English.

  "Goddamn, we gave old Gus a send-off wou
ld have made the czar happy," Rothschild said. "In his will he says he wants a Viking funeral, like in Beau Geste, remember, with Gary Cooper, when they burned the fort with Brian Donlevy at his feet?"

  "Before my time," O'Hara said.

  "Mine, too, but I've seen it a dozen times on TV. Anyway, that's the way old Gus wanted to go, so I send Christophe downtown, grab one of these runty little dogs always yapping in the street, and I rent a half-dozen fishing boats and we fill 'em with stock from the bar and we wrestled the piano on Duprey's big charter boat and took everybody in the hotel out beyond the South Spike and we laid the dog at his feet and I burned that goddamn fishing boat. I mean Gus, the dog, the boat, every-fuckin'-thing. And I played the damn piano and everybody got drunker than Chinese-fuckin' -New Year. It was beautiful. I'm sure Gus was cryin', wherever he was. Everybody else was.

  "A thirty-thousand-dollar Chris-Craft, Sailor, and we burned that fucker right to the water line. Well, why the hell not? I'm still running down numbered accounts on every island in the fuckin' Caribbean. So far I've turned up more than three hundred thousand bucks, and I ain't even been to Switzerland yet." The Magician leaned over and winked. "God knows what the hell's in that account, over there." He leaned back and took another sip of brandy. "So, anyway, you're lookin' at the owner of the damn place. If you're not nice to me, I'll lose your reservation."

  "It's all gonna change, Michael. The chains have discovered St. Lucy."

  "Yes," said Joli. "Bonjour paradise."

  "Hell, they never come here. The tourists, I mean. That's Joli's job, discouraging visitors. But just before the new hotels opened up, these three guys show up one day. I mean, Sailor, these guys look like they eat nails for breakfast, leaning across the desk there and telling me how we are—we are, right!—gonna convert the lobby and bar and restaurant into a casino and they're gonna run it for me and I'm gonna get all of ten percent. Ten-fuckin'-percent, can you beat that? So I looks this one bent-nose asshole in the eye and says—shit, O'Hara, you'da been proud of me —I says, 'No dice.' Just like that. The guy with the bent beak kinda rears back, looks at the other two jokers, they look back at me and they flash those this-looks-like-a-smile-but-actually-it-means-we' re-gonna-cut-your-heart-out grins and Bent Nose says, 'No dice?' Incredulously. And I says, 'You heard it, chubby, no dice. D-i-c-e'—spelled it out, kinda rubbing their noses in it. It got tense for a minute, okay, I can tell you it did get tense. Then I tore it. I says,"This place is a CIA front. You wanna start a gang war with the Feds, start shootin'. But no gambling. Period. Everybody got it? And bon-fuckin'-soir to all of ya.'"