Guns [John Hardin 01] (18 page)

By the time the sun was low, setting the western flanks of Mount Avila ruddily aflame, they had worked up ravenous appetites so they went back to the Hilton and took a table in a dim corner of the well-appointed L’Incontro Restaurant. They ordered a lavish five-course meal and took their time enjoying it. They lingered over desserts with strong coffee and an excellent nut-flavored wine, both of them acquiring a pleasant glow. They laughed and touched hands and smiled knowingly and it seemed the most natural proceeding in the world for her to go with him to his room.

She showered and came out dressed in a hotel terry-cloth robe, her hair undone and brushed back. He went in to shower and before too long he heard her coming into the bath. She slid the frosted glass door aside, smiled mischievously, stepped out of her robe, and joined him. She took the soap out of his hand and began lathering his chest, humming some tune softly.

In bed she was laughingly energetic and fresh, teasing and prolonging, making of it a wonderfully innocent lark, and he responded strongly. It was close to midnight when they finally fell asleep exhausted in a tangle of bedding, a Latin ballad playing low over the stereo, the room washed softly by the bright lights of the city coming in the balconied sixth-floor window.

In the morning they enjoyed a hearty room-service breakfast and they made love again. Then she said she must go to register for the advertising convention and she quickly showered and dressed.

He said. “Will I see you again? Is there a number where I can reach you?”

She smiled brightly and kissed him softly on the cheek. “I will be very busy for the next few days, but we will see. I have much enjoyed showing you some of my city.
Hasta luego,
my
llanero
.” And with a smile, a swirl of her skirt, and a wave, she was gone.

That evening as he sat in the Orinoco Lounge having a margarita, hoping she would show up, Montgomery Davis took a stool beside him and ordered a draft. He said, “How about that Maria Ortiz twist. She’s something, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must have done something Strake really liked. She was a little present to you.”

“Are you trying to say she was bought and paid for?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Davis said. “She’s strictly a high-class whore. Probably clean enough. I think I might try her myself tonight, maybe tell her to bring a friend. Make it a three-way.”

“Do you have some kind of problem with me?”

Davis shrugged and looked at himself in the bar mirror. “Why would I have a problem with you? You’re just the pilot. From what I’ve seen most pilots are a little too cocky for their own good. Sooner or later they step on their own dicks.”

He finished off the margarita and got up without a word, leaving Davis at the bar. He took a taxi—settling on the fare up front—to a
parrillera
that the bartender had recommended, a restaurant where he watched his steak cooked to perfection on a table-side grill and where he got mildly dizzy on margaritas.

19

F
LIGHTS BECAME MORE FREQUENT OVER THE ENSUING
months, mostly within the States but also several times to Central and South America—Panama, Argentina, Ecuador, and again to Venezuela. Strake would often take the co-pilot’s seat and talk about various aspects of the business. Cowboy listened and learned.

On a Saturday morning Strake called him to the office. He placed a manila envelope on his desk and said, “I have to stay in New York for the next several days. I would like you to fly the plane to Chicago on Monday. I have a stock of bayonets in the warehouse, World War Two items for the most part. The complete list is in this envelope. Look it over. I’ve had samples drawn from inventory to take with you. They’re in a briefcase in Margaret’s office. Meet with the owner of the catalog company that is outlined in the envelope; he will be expecting you at one o’clock. He sells military surplus, collectors’ items, and survival gear. There’s also a list of other items we have in inventory. The catalog company might have an interest in some of them. Don’t let anyone else see that list. Make the best arrangements you can. There are suggested retail prices in here. You’re free to make a contract for us, but don’t let anything go for less than the minimum wholesale prices listed. Do you have any questions?”

“Why are you trusting me to do this?”

“I believe you will show an aptitude for it.”

He spent the rest of the weekend going over the inventory list and reading through books he got from a library. The bayonets included the model for the famous bolt-action M-1 Garand of World War II, a Swedish Mauser blade, the Soviet AKM, the 1907 Enfield that looked more like a sword with its 17-inch blade, the 1909 Argentine Mauser, an 1895 Chilean Militia blade made in Germany, the Yugoslavian K-98, and half a dozen other models, most with scabbards. There were tens of thousands of them in stock.

There was a sample catalog from the Chicago company in the envelope. They sold military field and camping gear, surplus camo outfits, stun guns and pepper sprayers, karate weapons, a wide selection of gun magazines and ammo, replica swords, holsters, paintball guns, black powder rifles, crossbows, and a variety of shooting accessories such as scopes, laser sights, and hearing protectors. The catalog was glossy, sharp full-color, and well designed. Somebody had devoted considerable thought to the photography, graphics, and copy writing.

At the meeting in Chicago the florid overweight owner of the company leaned back in the big leather chair behind his desk, lit a large greenish-looking cigar, and said through the smoke, “So why should I pay you people thirty percent more than I’ve been paying for some of the same items from other suppliers?”

“Our prices are fair for several reasons. First, we have a larger inventory than any other supplier so we can guarantee to fill all the orders you get. You won’t be stuck with an item listed in your catalog and no inventory to back it up. All of these bayonets are packed in cosmoline. They’re NRA rated to be in ‘very good to excellent’ condition and that’s something you can put in your catalog listing. It’s a good selling point. Let’s take the M-1 Garand bayonet. You sell it with a scabbard and with a frameable certificate of authenticity that will cost you what, a few cents? You tell your customers these aren’t replicas. These blades have seen real action from the Ardennes to Korea. The same bayonets their fathers or grandfathers carried. Put your catalog people to work on the certificate and on a good presentation for the bayonet, maybe with a genuine World War Two recruiting poster for a background. You’ll get top dollar for them.”

The big man blew a small mushroom cloud ceiling-ward, smiled, and said, “Where did Strake find a slick bullshitter like you? No offense. I like your style. The certificate’s a good idea. Let’s see those samples you brought. Then we’ll get my manager in here and work out a realistic deal. You got any other ideas to help make my accountant happy? I don’t need old uniforms or helmets; I’ve got plenty.”

“As a matter of fact, I was looking over your latest catalog and thought of a possible cover item for your next one. Something that will really command attention.”

The man raised a thick eyebrow, squinting in the smoke, and said around his cigar, “And what will that be?”

“A machine gun. A Browning M1919 A4 .30 caliber machine gun, mounted on its tripod. You feature it big on the cover, with an actual greyed-out background combat photo showing it firing. Your graphics people can do a great job with it. We’ll replace the receiver with a dummy so it’s non-firing and can’t be converted to fire, so it’s entirely legal. You sell it as a show piece, a collectors’ item, in this case with a framed certificate. You could even offer a two-foot belt of dummy ammunition for it as an extra. The gun and tripod should sell for a thousand dollars, maybe more. It’s a genuine war relic that was used from the 1930s to the 1960s all over the world, even in the early days of Vietnam. It fired eight rounds a second, air cooled. It was an infantry favorite. They’re rare today, but we happen to have a good stock of them. Again, they’re all in excellent shape.”

“You know you just might have something there. Even if we didn’t sell all that many it would make a dynamite cover. Tell you what, you get tired of working for that thief Strake, you come see me. Let’s get my manager in here.”

The deal with the catalog company was profitable for Worldarms and was eventually expanded to include a stock of old Thompson submachine guns, modified with aluminum dummy receivers, that would list for $495 each in the catalog.

Strake sent him on other errands, several times in the King Air and twice on commercial flights. He surprised himself with his own confidence and small successes, and realized Strake was gradually feeding him more and more details about how the far-flung business functioned. And was testing him.

Strake scheduled a trip to an arms exhibition in Budapest. They left Teterboro before dawn on a humid summer day with Montgomery Davis and another taciturn man who was introduced only as Gordon and who looked like an ex-prizefighter. They flew northeast in the gathering light over New England and beyond the Bay of Fundy, the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and Nova Scotia to land in lush and cool Goose Bay, Newfoundland. After refueling, Cowboy set a course for Iceland that would take them over the southern tip of Greenland, offering the possibility of a landing at Narsarsuaq if any problem developed with the plane, but the sleek King Air performed flawlessly and they passed over the tip of the frozen continent at 23,000 feet.

Greenland was anything but. Clear air made the stark white mountains blindingly brilliant. Giant blue-green icebergs formed a defensive fleet around the shore and the sea was a deep cold blue. Black rock showed through the ice cap here and there and the coastline was scarred and cracked with barren steep-walled fjords. It was a forbidding land.

At Reykjavik the airport was in the middle of the town, which was a random assortment of spaced-apart low buildings on a plain by the water. It was a perfect summer day there with light winds, the temperature a balmy 59, and only a few scattered fair-weather cumulus decorating the clear hard sky. The approach end of Runway zero-two began close by a rock wall at the water’s edge. There were some grassy patches among the buildings, and purple mountains were strung out along the horizon. They ate lunch in the Loftleider Hotel right beside the FBO and then took off on the next long over-ocean leg to foggy Glasgow, where the King Air was refueled before they pressed on in clouds and light rain for an instrument approach into Budapest. The flight consumed the entire day.

The arms exhibit had an incredible variety of weaponry and accessories on display and was thronged with intently interested people from the European countries, Africa, and South America. They stayed for three days and Strake went off with Davis and Gordon for lengthy periods to handle business that Cowboy was told nothing about, which was not at all an unusual situation for a corporate pilot, most of whom certainly knew far less about their employers’ affairs than he did about Strake’s dealings.

A month after the Budapest trip, Strake told him to plan a flight to Vancouver. When the departure day arrived, Strake’s wife Elaine came to the FBO at Teterboro along with Strake and Montgomery Davis and half a limousine full of luggage. It was the first time Cowboy had seen Elaine. She was a doll-beautiful blonde at least fifteen years younger than Strake, with shoulder-length hair, green eyes, and a remote smile. She wore a vividly multicolored skirt and a sheer ruffled blouse. She seemed subdued around Strake. There was no affection evident between them. He seemed to treat her as he would another of his prized possessions.

There was a scheduled stop at Denver so Strake could meet briefly with a potential customer. As they approached the jagged horizon-wide belt of the Rockies on a cloudless morning Cowboy found himself wondering about those souls back in the frontier days who had plodded across the plains, day by day watching that formidable range grow closer and higher, undaunted by the prospect of crossing through those awesome peaks, some over two miles high, on steep rutted trails in overloaded wagons or on foot, drawn by the dream of finding some verdant fold of land beyond to claim as their own, or of discovering a long gleaming sprinkle of yellow flakes in the bed of some magical California stream. They had to have been some tough people, he thought as he began the descent into Denver, which from the air looked like just another smog-shrouded city, albeit this one perched a mile high.

At the FBO Strake and Davis took a courtesy car and left for the business meeting. After a half-hour of sitting in the FBO lounge with the quiet Elaine, both of them leafing through well-thumbed magazines, Cowboy asked her politely if she’d like to walk a short way to an on-field restaurant for an early lunch.

“No, thank you. I’d better stay here,” she said, but gave him a slight smile.

“The man on the fuel truck told me they make the best egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches he’s ever had, and cinnamon coffee, with homemade pies for dessert. We could be there and back within an hour. I’m buying. I’ll just put it on my expense account. What do you say?”

“Well it
is
pretty boring just waiting here, and I didn’t have much of a breakfast. All right, but we’d better not be gone too long.”

The food was as good as promised and they both enjoyed the lunch. They made light conversation and he managed to draw her out somewhat.

“I grew up in Binghamton, New York,” she said. “My father worked as a salesman for Louis’s father.”

“Mr. Strake is an impressive man.”

She looked at him seriously, something hidden behind her eyes. “Yes. He’s successful and likes to live well. So do I.”

“Do you travel with him often?”

“Occasionally. We’ll be going to the Bahamas sometime soon. It’s very pleasant there. What do you do besides flying?” Her green eyes were cautiously appraising.

“Not much. I try to stay in shape. I like to read, and watch old movies. I like good music.”

“Classical?”

“Yes, some of it.”

“I studied fine arts at Syracuse,” she said. “I paint abstracts in watercolor and acrylics. One day I hope to establish my own gallery in the city. A place for really unusual art. Where good unknowns can be showcased.”

“I don’t know much about fine art, but I have the impression it must be a tough way to make a living.”

“It is. This is not a world where art of any kind, even the best of it, is easily successful. You have a few writers, sculptors, and painters making insane money way up there in the stratosphere, and then you have those starving thousands back down here on Earth. My gallery would be a place for talented artists to break in, and I believe it could be a commercial success.”

“It sounds great. I hope it all works out for you.”

They were eating wedges of hot apple pie crowned with melting vanilla bean ice cream along with refills of cinnamon coffee when Strake came into the small restaurant with Davis following. Strake’s eyes were depthless black marbles and there was a tick in his left eyelid. He stood erectly and looked steadily at Cowboy but said, “Elaine, go get in the plane.”

She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, unhurried but obviously nervous, then got up without a word or a glance, leaving the food unfinished, and went out.

“Mr. Strake,” he began, smiling, “we were just having a bite of lunch here—”

“Shut up. You listen to me very carefully. You are hired help. You are not to associate with my wife.” His eyes glittered darkly. “Is that clear?”

He met Strake’s glare with a steady calm gaze but said nothing. Standing off to the side, Davis smiled and idly inspected a thumbnail. A couple at a corner table stopped eating and looked their way. The waitress stopped wiping the counter. The room was still.

After several long seconds Strake motioned to Davis and said, “Montgomery, go pay the check. We will be leaving now.” He turned and walked out of the restaurant as Davis went over to the woman behind the counter, tugging his wallet out. The couple at the corner table went back to their meals.

Cowboy watched Strake leave. He finished the slice of pie and the coffee, taking his time. Davis came over, grinned with a raised eyebrow, and said, “See? Like I said, sooner or later they all step on their own dicks. I think we better go now, hotshot. That is, if you want your job.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin and got up, leaving a good tip.

When he boarded the King Air Elaine was sitting in the rearmost seat, gazing out the window. Strake said nothing to him for the remainder of the flight.

The weather in Vancouver was light rain falling from low cloud cover and he followed the vectors and altitudes dictated by Vancouver approach with precision, aware of the mountains hidden nearby in the swirling grayness. He captured the ILS and broke out at six hundred feet, the airport just south of the city suddenly materializing as if by magic, and made a light touchdown on the wet pavement.

Strake had a large modern house northwest of the city on several wooded acres in the Coast Mountains looking out over an arm of the bay and massive Vancouver Island beyond. Davis told Cowboy to take one of the two small rooms above the garage.