Luana (5 page)

“Where are you going?”

“To put together my business, see some friends, and then to Sandy’s—if you know where that is!”

“I know, I know!” shouted Mkristo. The distance between them was growing.

“But do me a favor as patient to physician, huh?” His voice rose to a shout. “You just left one coma . . . don’t be in such a hurry to fall into another one!”

Chapter III

Sandy’s was not an establishment frequented by tourists, American or otherwise. The place was adjudged by local guides as inhospitable to that necessary but odd species of homo sapiens. Not that the clientele which descended upon Sandy’s was especially sapient.

Sandy’s lies in the poor business district of Nairobi, south of the city, among tiny shops run by local Indians and Chinese. Specifically, Sandy’s sits squashed between a tire-parts store and the modest warehouse of a less than reputable import-export firm. No one knew exactly what Cheong-Sun imported and exported. It was deemed impolite to inquire, unless on serious business. Some opted for gold and jewelry, others favored simple woolens and other textiles. A few suggested women, but not too loudly, and never when passing in front of the building.

The bar is marked by one large sign and four small ones. They give the structure its only hint of color and habitation. The large one nailed over the single entrance says simply,
Sandy’s.

This is more cryptic than descriptive because no one knows who Sandy is. No one’s ever met him. Some say he’s a retired prospector who made a fortune in diamonds in the Transvaal. He built Sandy’s out of spite when another bar in Nairobi refused to serve him, for what reason is obscure. Others claim the story is pure termite juice, that there never was a Sandy, that the story is whispered around by manager Sam Jumapili solely to bring in the curious.

Oh, the other four signs? They say “Beer” in English, Swahili, Arabic, and French.

Sandy’s interior was dominated by a long bar of solid teak mounted on mahogany and split bamboo. In front was a shoal of tiny open tables, nearly always full. In the rear Sandy’s broke into alcoves like a giant chambered nautilis. Behind those bamboo walls a great deal of merchandise legal, not so legal, and perverse exchanged hands, found buyers, was consigned to destinations distant and strange.

Officially, Government House was the principal point of commercial operations in the Republic of Kenya. In reality, it was the back end of Sandy’s.

Jumapili was happy to see him. After all, Barrett enjoyed a good reputation. He was even known to pay his bill now and then without having to be beaten up once. Such a startling aberration made him a customer to be valued.

“Meester Barrett, Meester Barrett, so good to see you again! Everyone has heard of your unfortunate journey and your miraculous recovery! I myself am overwhelmed to find you looking so fit and—”

“All right, awready! I don’t owe you that much. Got a booth?”

The fat Chinese-Kenyan slid closer along the bar.

“Not only do I have a booth for you, Meester Barrett, I have also a young lady.”

“That’s swell of you, Sam, and I appreciate the thought. But right now I’m afraid I can only afford the booth. Besides, I’m really not looking for a woman just now.”

“Ah, but Meester Barrett, that is it!
She
is looking for
you!”

Barrett smiled, shook his head in despair. “Where did this errant flower escape from?”

“No, no, Meester Barrett, you got Sam all wrong. Honest injun, she come looking for you.”

“Come on Sam, cut it out. I just got out of the gut factory. She’s not one of your regulars?”

Jumapili shook his head . . . earnestly, it seemed to Barrett.

“Well, that’s a hopeful sign. Pretty?”

“A vision, Meester Barrett, a vision!”

“Yeah, but whose? Rich?”

Jumapili shrugged. “She seems to have money.”

“That means she’s overpaid you already,” nodded Barrett. “Married?”

“I saw no ring. Here, Barrett, why don’t you ask her yourself? She came to see you, not me.”

“Okay, Fu Manchu.” Barrett took a friendly swing at the manager, who ducked affably. Jumapili led him to a booth near the back rooms.

He pulled aside the curtain and the girl at the table looked up, startled. Dirty blond hair, blue eyes. Lips that belonged around more than the stub of a cigarette, and a more than competent if not spectacular body. Good boobs, okay hips, bad legs.

Barrett had once been told by a lady friend that he looked at a woman like a piece of meat. At this he replied that, first of all, he couldn’t see her mind and second, the most obvious thing you see when you look at a person is the person of the person, and lastly, he couldn’t think of anything more attractive or sensuous than a good steak, anyway. And if she wanted to regard him first as a piece of meat, that was okay by him.

Who’d argued that with him? Oh yeah, that had been Lily. When she made love while reciting Buddhist chants. Great kid, Lily, but a complete nut. She’d dumped him. Maybe he shouldn’t have ventured the opinion that Buddha probably pushed a sanitation cart behind the sacred cows in old India.

“Mr. George Barrett?” queried the girl. She had a nice voice, probably, but now she was trying to baby-talk him. Oh well.

“Mr. Barrett?” she repeated.

“Naw,” he replied, slipping smoothly into the other chair. He managed to kick her calf on the way in and she winced. “I’m President Kenyatta. I just like to travel this way incognito.”

She looked exasperated. “Are you or aren’t you Mr. George Barrett, the white hunter?”

“Are you buying?”

“Drinks?”

“I don’t mean cold cuts, lady.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to, if you . . .”

“Then I’m George Barrett, the white hunter. Or black hunter, or green, or yellow or pink or chartreuse. Personally, I prefer beige hunter. It’s kind of classy, and I think it’s sexier. Do you think it’s sexier?”

“I—” She glanced upwards. Jumapili was still standing by the curtain, grinning.

“Sam, one of Gunga’s Zombies.” He looked back at the girl. “And you, Mrs. . . .”

“Miss. Hard! Isabel Hardi.”

“Well, what do you drink, Miss Hardi? You do drink?” He looked at her expectantly.

“Pink Lady’s, usually.” Jumapili made a face that was unreadable. “Sometimes Screwdrivers. But I’ll have whatever you’re having!” she added quickly.

Barrett looked at her sharply, made an instant analysis. “Yeah. Okay Sam. One regular Zombie and one,” he glanced back at her, “half strength.” She looked rebellious but said nothing.

Sam bowed obsequiously and disappeared. Barrett turned to the girl and leaned back in his chair.

“You know,” he mused idly, “Gunga’s the only witch doctor bartender in Africa.” He picked at his nails—out of habit. Like everything else, they’d been scrubbed clean in the hospital. In fact, he hadn’t been this clean since he was six years old. It felt peculiar.

“Jumapili—Sam—likes to tell about the first time he asked Gunga if he could make a Zombie. Gunga said ‘sure, yes.’ Now first thing, he’d need a fresh corpse, then—”

The girl looked at him expectantly for a moment, then broke into unbabyish laughter. Barrett chuckled along with her.

“But ‘Zombie’ is a West Indian term, out of
West
Africa,” she finally gasped out.

“Yeah, I know, but it makes a good story. Besides,” he continued evenly, “it happens to be true.”

She stopped laughing and stared at him. “That’s a joke, isn’t it. Isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, only smiled questioningly at her.

Neither of them added anything consequential until the drinks arrived.

“To your health, Mr. Barrett.” He raised his own glass.

“Afya
to you, Izzy.” He downed three straight swallows of the powerful brew. “Well, go on, drink up!”

She hesitated, then took the glass firmly in hand. Ignoring the skewered pineapple, she took a careful sip. After she finished choking and gasping, and seeing that Barrett only smiled back at her, she took another, defiantly. Much to her surprise, this one went down with no trouble.

Barrett would have been content to sit and let her buy him drinks all day, only his damnable curiosity finally got the better of him. It was not a particularly useful trait for a wilderness guide and hunter to have, but he seemed to be stuck with it. Anyhow, she was obviously uncertain as to how to begin. If he wanted information he’d have to get things rolling on his own.

“Well, Miss Hardi?”

“Please,” she replied, “I’d like you to call me Isabel.”

And darned if she didn’t bat her lashes at him. Barrett had only seen that in old movies. He was startled to see that it could happen in real life.

“All right,” he agreed, experimentally batting his own back at her, “and you can call me Mr. Barrett. Look, Izzy, what do you want with me, huh? Safari? Photos of native villages? Pictures of the quaint natives in their natural habitat? Hunt with gun or camera, rock hounding, plant collecting—what?”

By way of answer she fumbled with the insides of a fat purse. The result of this excavation was a thick paperback. She dumped it on the table. When he made no move in its direction she nudged it toward him.

“I’ve read your book, you see.”

Barrett took another slug of the corrosive elixer. It settled in his belly like boiling syrup.

“Sunuvagun! That means my audience has just doubled. I’m flattered.”

“Mr. Barrett,” she continued, refusing to be put off by his snide attitude, “your book is well written. It may never be a best seller, but there is a marvelous insight in there. A deep feeling for the people, and especially for the land, shines through the commercial chapters on flesh-pots and shopping bazaar bargains.”

“Oh, crap!” he shouted, slamming the glass down on the table. “I wrote the goddamn book to make some money, not to inspire adulation in slap-happy tourists or would-be literary critics! No, that’s unfair, and not true. I wrote it to
try
and make some money. So far I figure, with the time I put into it, and the effort—I’m good at sentences but lousy at paragraphs—I just about broke even.

“As for anything above that, I guess you haven’t talked to many people around here or you’d already know that I’m nuts. Screwy, loony, ready for the rock ranch. Even sensible nuts look for lost cities. Me, I’m after a lost hamlet.”

“I don’t think a magnificent delusion qualifies you for insanity, Mr. Barrett. You’re not as crazy as you’d like me to believe. Just a little misguided. But you’re not afraid of the deep jungle. That shows in your book. And you’re not afraid of the
Wanderi.
That shows in your book. I need all that.

“And there’s one other thing. You knew my father.”

Barrett put down his drink, looked at her differently. “Your father?” Places, names, recent history fell neatly into place and formed a picture.

“Hardi . . . Hardi . . . you’re John Hardi’s kid?”

“That’s right,” she confessed proudly. She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice. Barrett shook his head in disbelief.

“My brilliant intuitive powers strike again—ten minutes too late to prevent my making an ass of myself. I can only repeat, John Hardi’s daughter, what do you want of me? This time I promise to listen. Cross my heart and hope to pry.” He did so.

Whammo, hand into purse again. This time it disgorged a map of central Africa. She spread it out on the table. One delicate finger descended in the wild, empty regions near Lake Tanganyika.

“You know this area?” Barrett leaned over the map, looked up at her and spoke softly for the first time.

“Izzy, nobody knows that area. The jungle grows so tough and thick there that . . . listen, if gravity were reversed, or turned on edge, you could still walk in that forest. I’ve probed at its fringes, yes, and I think I know it as well as any man who can read or write. Matter of fact, I was near that area just a few weeks go.” He smiled. “I had an accident.”

She looked excited. “Then the stories they told me were true! That’s terrific!”

“Yeah. I thought so at the time—up to a point.”

“But it is, it is! Don’t you see, George, my father’s plane went down somewhere in there over fifteen years ago. You know my father was a biochemist. It was believed at the time that he was working on some great discovery that would be of tremendous value to all mankind.”

“Sure, sure,” Barrett said placatingly. “The eternal eulogy for all scientists who disappear suddenly or mysteriously. They all go with their inspired legacy in their pocket.”

“It’s no joke, Mr. Barrett!” She huffed and angrily downed the last of her half-Zombie.

Well, he mused, the “George” didn’t last long, anyway.

“My father had all his important papers and equipment with him.”

“Of course, of course, I didn’t mean to be skeptical.” Which, of course, was exactly what he meant. He gulped down the rest of his own Zombie.

“There won’t be anything left of him now, if that’s what you’re thinking. The jungle is its own undertaker. It works slow and sloppy sometimes, but it’s efficient.”

She sat up straight—as straight as the Zombie would permit—and looked at him evenly.

“Mr. Barrett, I must find my father’s plane and try to salvage any of his work that might have survived. This is in addition,” and she looked down and away, “to any personal interest I may have in such a search.”