Chapter Seventeen
Doc leaned back and looked around the carefully contrived luxury, then told Harvey, “It’s a gig, Harve. I’m not shooting anything out, just stealing something back.”
“Yeah, a broad. Figures.”
“Cherchez la femme, you know.”
“Aw gawd, not French. This place drives me nuts with that crap. If they want French, why the hell do they come to Mexico?”
“Well, it’s pretty cold in Quebec right now. So you got anything on this guy, old buddy?”
“Yeah, a distinct phobia. Have you been by the Iguana Lounge?”
“The old Same Place?”
“More or less. Check around there. Ask Eduardo or Lupo about this guy. Or Aida, come to think of it. She’s probably fucking him on alternate Thursdays.”
“Careful, you’re speaking of the woman I could no longer afford to love.”
“I’ll get back to you on it. Maybe day after tomorrow? Early.”
“That’s really solid, Harve.”
“You know how I detest these maudlin scenes. Get a picture of this gin-joint in ‘Holiday’ and we’ll be square. Tell me, what do you think of her?”
“Think of who?”
“Paloma. The girl with the menus.”
“She’s lovely, Harve. With the lace and all, the pearls in her hair. Your own loving touch?”
“Having her usher people in was my idea, and dressing her like that. My loving touch hasn’t laid a glove on her yet. But anticipation is three eighths of delight.”
Doc shook his head, “Anticipation of what? Dancing with her at her 15 años party?”
Harve pursed his lips and wagged an admonitory finger. “She’s eighteen, sport. Just looks fourteen.” He looked at her and sighed, “Thank God.”
The girl came back over by him, beaming sweetly at the three men, her stack of menus held across her soft breast like a hymnbook. Harve introduced everyone in Spanish. She shook hands with Doc and Primo, gracing them both with a shy smile. Harve put his arm around her shoulders in a patronly manner, like a suave father presenting his daughter at her first formal. He spoke to Doc in English, “Have you ever seen such sweet, clean pussy in your life? I sit here watching her, thinking of her walking around with that smooth, moist, fragrant little thing, just a touch of fine hair around it. I can hardly wait. In fact, I wait hardly.”
The girl dropped her eyes, not understanding a word but knowing she was being complimented. She dipped to them, murmured, “Permiso,” and went to greet an American couple that had walked in wearing neon shorts and luau shirts. Harve glanced at them and winced, made no move to greet them.
“She doesn’t speak any English at all?” Doc asked. A rarity in Vallarta.
“Not a word,” Harve smirked. “I just love talking about her quim right in front of her like that.” I’ve picked a fine spot to graze, eh, Doc?” Harve’s weakness for young women had proven a very unfortunate trait for a trafficker in jewelry.
“The happy hunting grounds,” Doc agreed. Not even taking into account the thousands of young American and Canadian women who pour into Vallarta every week bent on showing off their bodies, getting drunk and taking home a sunburn and sexy memoirs; or the hundreds of more sophisticated women all the way from Europe; there are the local girls. They are taller and slimmer than most Mexican women, and tend to keep their figures later in life. There is probably a little Oriental blood around, as there definitely is in the exotic and nationally famed beauties from Tomatlan down the road. But mostly it is just a happy gene pool that makes Vallartensas so beautiful, one little facet of the bounty that graces the whole bay, makes it look like one of God’s favorite spots. And they dressed to the nines, combining the natural fastidiousness and sexy sensibilities of Mexicanas with a dash of imported style. Doc could lose his heart every fifteen minutes walking around town. Taking a bus was breath-taking and heart-breaking. To him they’d always seemed untouchable; marriage-minded, baby-craving, wrapped in olden moralities. Sheer decoration, like deer or tropical fish. But Harve could reach out and touch anybody.
“You’ve got it made here, Harve,” Doc said, “Bon appetit.”
“More fucking French,” Harve groaned then suddenly looked solemn, peering at Doc from under shaggy brows, “I know what you’re looking at, Doc. I’ve lost my edge now that I’m on easy meat and don’t hone myself against thirty years on rat soup in some Medellin shithole. I was a finer, purer human being when I was running. Now I’m just an old gringo lecher in paradise.
“You seem to be making ends meet,” Doc allowed, “Can I assume you haven’t stooped so far as honest labor?”
“Bite your tongue, will you? I’m a dealer in antiquities these days. Mostly pre-Columbian artifacts. A sort of service to the discriminating archeological collector, really.”
That got Primo’s attention right away. “In other words, you are looting this country’s heritage?” he asked in a flat, dark tone.
“Oops, forgot we had a restless native among us.” Harve looked boyishly abashed.
“I think we can conclude Harve’s stuff is bogus,” Doc told Primo.
“Of course it is,” Harve seemed exasperated. “Though I prefer to think of it as a tribute to the spirit of bonafide relics. But that’s what makes it so sweet. I have it made for nothing, sell it dear as hell. The marks smuggle it out very carefully, since they think it’s hot. And if anyone catches them, who cares? The stuff is worthless. It’s perfect. All profit, no downside, no jailhouse.”
“And regular hours here at the Gaie Parisienne.”
“That’s the best part,” Harve cackled, “I do most of my business right here out of my little “casa blanca”. They pay me to run everything the customers can see, and I’m worth it. It covers my drinks and drugs. But what I’m really doing is trolling for well-heeled heathens gullible and arrogant enough to be customers for Recht’s Repo’ed Idols. I call it the “Pray It Again Scam”.
Primo missed the English pun but smiled at Doc’s laughter. He was studying Harve like a portrait artist and was taken aback when the obviously demented greeter turned his faun’s face to him and asked in a kindly tone, “And you Señor, what do you think of the place?” It was the first time anyone had ever called him “Señor” in his life.
He looked around and said, “I think it would take me several weeks to even know what I’m looking at. Is this the “Jet Set” then?”
Doc chuckled at the English phrase. Harve leaned towards the boy and said, “In a way. They come here on jets. But most are just middle class. They come here because here they can live like the rich.”
“Mexico as a fantasy island movie.”
“Exactly. Cut-rate Hawaii. But there are those with a sufficiently favorable ratio of money to good sense to make their company rewarding.”
“So people come here for dinner, then order expensive illegal cultural treasures ‘to go’?”
The last two words in English made it seem funny to Harve, who gave a deep, gratifying bellylaugh. “They come here to see and be seen,” he said, “I see that and raise them a piece of it for keeps. The take home game. My pose here is calculated to create a nice blend of worldly confidence and raffish suspicion. Then it requires only some insidious insinuation, possibly my single greatest gift other than the prodigious and disgusting sexual appetites that are practically an international byword.”
“They are flattered to meet you elsewhere later?” Primo suggested, “Perhaps to see a private collection that would be wasted on anyone of less sophisticated appreciation than their own? And not at all for sale, especially with the law as it is?”
“But with the economy as it is, what can one do?” Harve beamed like a headmaster at a bright pupil. “You’re not as dumb as I’d expect of someone dragged in by Doctor Kodak, here. And often while their husbands are scoring Recht’s Factory-Direct Antiquities, the wives (frequently quite young, willful, and with tastes for the best in life) become interested in various other services that I purvey to the select. It’s a tricky market but one I do very little to discourage.”
Harve took an elegant sip, then burped. He spoke aside to Primo, “I’m actually from Waukegan, you know. But how about you, Doc? You’re looking pretty fit for a carriage trade photographer. Dealing shots of flowers and titties now, I hear, instead of sucking chest wounds.”
“Well, I try to keep in shape.”
“Try real hard several hours a day, I’d say. What’s your real angle?”
“Buy me a drink and I just might tell you,” Doc said.
“Buy me one day after tomorrow and I may favor you with my rare impression of someone who gives a shit.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” Doc said.
“You’d better be. Because I might have a line on this Lios-Leyva guy.”
After leaving the Cafe, Doc moved further uphill, rambling through the walled streets, looking at architectural charms and peeking at Los Quatro Vientos and Chez Elena as they swung around onto Matamoros. He liked this part of town with it’s streets connected by stairs winding through fragrant gardens and flowering trees. Just walk a few blocks east from the Malecon and when the streets get steeper and no longer attract tourists and shops, the avenues turn into a tumbling white village with crenellated towers, blue tiles, yellow Moorish domes, terra cotta balconies, and the walled, whitewashed construction logic one associates with Mediterranean villages.
Primo walked along, taking it all in quietly. After a few blocks he said, “A white piano must be extremely expensive.”
“No doubt,” Doc nodded idly, “But that’s Vallarta for you. It’s major trouble and expense to import a white piano, but it provides a little grace note, so voila.”
Primo said, “How many kids could you feed on what it cost?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Che,” Doc said. “But I know it wouldn’t touch even the mordida that place pays. Not to mention the taxes, the salaries, the tips. And of course, it’s locally owned, so even the profits go back into the local economy somehow–what doesn’t end up in the Mexico City. You been reading Fanon or something?”
“Just testing your reflexes.”
“I’m in favor of beauty, Mano. It always pays its way. I’m also in favor of industry, and tourism is the only industry this town’s got. You don’t see a lot of hungry kids in this town, unlike many places with no pianos at all.”
Primo nodded, almost smiling. He said, “How many colors of piano do they make, anyway?’
“Just black and white as far as I know.”
“Nice and simple.”
“Hey, I’m a photographer. Shades of gray are my living.”
Primo looked out at the bay a minute, then back at Doc. “So were you a communist when you were nineteen, Doctor?”
“No, military regulations frowned on it. But I saw ‘I Was A Teenaged Marxist’ seventeen times.” He seemed to lose the thread of the humor, stared out at the bay awhile himself. “Yeah, I’ll admit it. There was something wrong with my heart.”
“And now?” Primo asked softly.
Doc sighed and stretched, his vertebrae popping audibly. Raising his right hand to rub his left shoulder muscle, he said, “It’s spreading to the rest of me.”