Chapter Twenty

Where else but the Iguana Lounge, Doc thought, would you see someone as sweet and pretty as little blonde Allison Miner chatting with a heavy like Gian Lupo? Doc tried to picture a collage of Allison’s light, sunny paintings with the battered faces and shattered kneecaps Lupo dealt out when he was bouncing drunks or collecting debts for Raul Prieto’s little disco cocaine mafia. Doc asked him about Lios Leyva, but he’d never heard of him, surprising for someone in the same business, but then Lupo was more noted for keeping his lips to the ground than his ear. Doc remembered Lupo arm-wrestling with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Carl Weathers during the local filming of “Predator”. He’d even been type-cast in a bit part as a guerilla thug that Arnie wiped out in the big attack scene. So he was an artist, too. The whole town’s a set and we’re all stand-ins, Doc thought. So I might as well stand in the shade.

But his luck asking about Lios didn’t get any better as the afternoon wore on and everyone got either more talkative or more comatose. He wasn’t even doing very well digging up the guys he really wanted to ask about him. The Pineapple had screwed up, gotten stupid or desperate enough to sell coke in O’Brians, and been run off by Federales who controlled that turf. Doc heard the story from Bad Wave Dave, who’d been crashing on the Pineapple’s couch when they came through the front door and the Pineapple went out the back window stark naked. “Haven’t seen the dude, since. It’s the gonest he’s been. Left his girlfriend lying there naked and scared shitless while the Feds stomped around waving guns and looking for toot. They told us not to leave and took off after him. Dumb shit. They warned him twice.”

“Weird, Dave. So what did you do?”

“Well, I couldn’t just leave her half-fucked could I?”

Shit, Doc thought, one crazy Hawaiian MIA. Maybe dead. And no doubt about Willie. “Yeah, he showed up with a van full of guns,” Bad Wave Dave had droned on, “Big suckers, I mean machine guns and shit. Then he goes out to Punta Mita to meet this big buyer, supposed to be a guerilla dude. Never came back. They found the van, so you know how it went. Later Cisco said the “buyer” was really a Fed from Colima. Man you’re way better selling coke than guns in this country. Way better.”

“Well, hell.” Doc was stymied and getting that depression he always got when gossip started turning into a roll call of departed colleagues. “Who’s running anymore?”

“That’s just it, Doc. Nobody’s carrying any major weight these days. The cops run it all. And who wants to party with cops?”

Doc nodded, “Really. I mean who you gonna call?”

“I heard that.” Bad Wave Dave heard everything on the beach. He just didn’t remember much of it.

Meri slipped up and stood beside him a minute as he surveyed the crowd. “You’re not just looking for a good time, are you, sailor?” she asked without looking at him.

“Mostly for directions,” Doc said.

“And you’re not doing so good.”

“Nobody who knows anything is still around. All’s left is people looking for a good time.”

Meri walked away from a few steps, turned to say, “Maybe that ought to tell you something,” then walked off towards the kitchen door.

Primo came by, carrying a mango on a stick and a cold Pacifico. He stopped by Doc and gestured with a shoulder at all the exposed flesh. “Why do you people sit outside without protecting your skin from the sun?” he asked, a typical confusion among Mexicans, to whom dark skin is a shameful liability and sun exposure is carefully avoided.

Doc shrugged, hiding his grin, “To get bronzed.”

“Ah.” Primo nodded sagely. “And why do you want to get bronzed?”

“To protect our skin from the sun.”

“Boy, you know it, Doc,” Alicia said, setting a responsible example by fussing with creams and unguents, reading labels and SPF numbers. “It’s very important to have the right protection,” she informed him.

“How come all of a sudden it’s cancer alert?” Doc wondered, “Isn’t this the same sun it was five years ago?”

Alicia jerked her head up, dingbat curls flying, “Of course not. Haven’t you heard of ozone?” She squinted at the sky suspiciously. “I wouldn’t trust this sun for a hot minute.”

“Then why sit out here in it?”

“I just like the radiation. I sit here and I just feel…you know, totally aware.”

Doc fought down his smile and asked, “Aware of what?”

Alicia closed her eyes, spread her hands in a mudra of surrender and murmured, “Absolutely nothing.”