Free Nightlife by Brian Hodge Page A

than Vasquez seemed to him. Which was where the man’s true fear lived.
    Kerebawa backed them across the room until the woman stood beside a canopy bed and Vasquez by a large desk. Kerebawa made a show of stepping aside and looked the woman straight on. Beneath reddish-brown hair, her dusky face was flushed, her lips trembled.
    “Vete a freír monos,”  he told her. In short—get lost.
    She took a tentative step forward, then another, eyeing him the whole time. Apparently felt no great loyalty toward her man. As she passed by, Kerebawa lashed out to give her a solid whack across the temple with the machete’s flat side. Certainly not a killing blow, but it would keep her trouble-free for a while. Her lacy gown billowing, she half spun and crumpled to the floor.
    Vasquez looked considerably paler than he had a moment before. A man of bluff and bluster, it seemed. Strip him of his support, and the true coward would be revealed.
    “Dónde está el hekura-teri?” Kerebawa asked the sweating man.
    Vasquez looked at him, confusion pinching his face. “No comprendo.” His voice quavered.
    Of course. How could he know its true name?
    “Dónde está el polvo verde” —green powder— “de Venezuela?”
    Vasquez made a relieved face, nodding and smiling broadly. As if he had nothing whatsoever to worry about. Laughing, even. Kerebawa was immediately suspicious.
    “Ah, es no problema! Está en la gaveta.” He eagerly pointed to a desk drawer. Slowly moved his hand for the knob.
    Impossible. Large as the drawer was, the load of powder taken by the traders couldn’t fit in there. Ignorant man, taking him for a brainless fool.
    Vasquez slid his hand inside the drawer, barely open wide enough to accommodate it. Kerebawa brought the machete around and down in a vicious arc that severed the hand at the wrist with a meaty crunch. Vasquez’s mouth dropped open as he watched the hand jitter atop the butt of an automatic pistol, then fall still. While gouting blood sprayed across papers and books strewn over the desktop. A moment later he shrieked, lifting the stumpy wrist in disbelief. He cradled it to his chest, a huge stain spreading across the silk robe.
    Kerebawa recognized the glazing eyes. The man, even were the bleeding to stop, wasn’t going to be of much use for very long. Shock was setting in.
    “Dónde está el polvo verde?” he asked again, this time threatening with the machete.
    Vasquez was past tricks. And when he sputtered the powder’s destination, Kerebawa’s heart took a high plunge. He pushed paper and pen across the blood-dewed desktop and had Vasquez write down as much pertinent information as he could.
    And when he was done, Kerebawa accomplished something that neither the DEA nor the leftist guerrillas nor the rival cocaine exporters in the nearby city of Cali had managed.
    He effectively removed the head of the Vasquez family.
    And now, a couple of weeks later, here he was in the belly of the flying canoe once again. Ready to resume the trail of the hekura-teri in an even stranger land, a land he’d visited but once.
    Miami-teri.
    He looked at its name, written on a crumpled, dirty sheet of paper, stained with brownish splotches of dried blood. And the name of another man to seek out: Luis Escobar. Plus the word Estrella.
    Miami.
    He was dressed for it; gone was the nudity of the jungle. He wore fresh clothes from Angus’s hut, garments the Padre had given him on their previous trips but that had gone unused since. Pale brown shirt, olive pants, purple socks. Horribly confining shoes with the mysterious word Keds on the sides. The clothing was all cotton and smelled of mildew.
    Kerebawa dared to look out the window; maybe he could see God. But no, only the sun-splashed water below, coarse and silvery gray. And the skimming shadow of the plane itself.
    He looked back into the plane when he heard the cockpit door latch. Barrows was wandering back to him, bald head sunburned and big belly loosely