Checkers with Ahmed: on the edge from Solana del Mar, another inappropriate excerpt from the jungles of Belize (Solana del Mar, questionable fiction, 374 pgs, Amazon/B&N books and beyond CHAPTER 20 Sander groaned, “Your move,” struggling to cement a mental image in his mind of the checker board and the exact position of the pieces. “I need to hit the head,” he announced. “Hit the HEAD?” Cabeza bristled, “MY head?” “‘Head’s American for ‘restroom,’ Ahmed.” Cabeza’s given name was Ahmed, a fact revealed after tedious hours of cartoons and checker games. “You hit it?” Cabeza giggled. “I’m heading for the restroom.” “Your head is in restroom?” Sander massaged his temples. “What time is it? Don’t you believe in clocks?” “We have time.” Cabeza said. “Yes, you may use your HEAD as I consider my next move…A-HEAD of your return.” This was uproariously funny to Cabeza who laughed and slapped his forehead – he was still laughing as he turned to the armed guard at the front door. She rolled her eyes. “I love this American English,” Cabeza chuckled, head rocking back and forth as he moaned, “It is sooo…craaazy. How is that? Craaaaazy! Yes?” He watched Sander rise off the sofa and laughed again when his knees popped. “Pop goes weasel!” Cabeza chirped. “POPcorn! Soda POP! Hey baby, POP over see me. Yes?” As Sander went for an adjacent lavatory, Cabeza’s bodyguard, Hussa, left her post at the front door and started to follow. Over his shoulder Sander said, “Coming with me?” Cabeza shrieked and clapped his hands. “Yes, go A-HEAD with him, Hussa!” His eyes were twinkling. “She is virgin, yes? She needs man!” Hussa glared at Cabeza. “Yes, because there is no men here! Only sheeps!” She moved back into position by the front door. Cabeza was still laughing. Sander was now certain she’d been the leader of the smuggling crew on the beach – she’d been the husky shape of authority, her voice was identical – and she and Cabeza hadn’t recognized him. Yet, they were edgy as cats about something, which is why Sander had been detained, although Cabeza’s interrogations had been disconnected from the start, first having to do with Teddy and the St. Luciens fundraiser, shifting to Sander’s knowledge of Bannister, then imports, then people Sander might know in Mexico – Sander knew of no one in Mexico. Cabeza finally believed the latter, but his needling interrogations wore on around the same, tedious assumptions. Hussa went back to her pacing, glancing at a military watch on the underside of her wrist. Like Cabeza, she’d been jumpy all afternoon. Between his jokes and tirades - in the silent, incessant glare of a wide-screen television - Cabeza leapt at the slightest noise from the outside, frequently checking the connections to a satellite phone on the kitchen counter whose wiring trailed off to the master bedroom where it continued, Sander guessed, to a dish on the back veranda. All furnishings but the sofa and love seat had been shoved and heaped against the walls to accommodate a litter of waist-high cargo containers, the same he and MarJean had seen that night. And every picture had been taken off the walls while the front door was kept under perpetual guard and the windows were sealed with blackout curtains and Cabeza – a.k.a. “Ahmed” – allowed only two lamps to be lit inside the unit, one of which illuminated the checker board, the other dimly accenting an olive sat-phone and the leering monkey, which was sitting on the counter by the phone – gnawing on the shrinking doubloon. Sander came out of the lavatory and worked his way through the maze of containers to the sofa where he settled down with an easy grin. He sensed the importance of hiding his fear at all cost. Cabeza’s edgy interrogations were second only to a hair-trigger rage that fed on fear – his own, mostly, but it made him dangerous. Sander did a quick study of the checker board and chuckled. “Okay, Ahmed, we’ve been through this. I know exactly where the pieces were.” “Of course.” “Yes, but things have changed, haven’t they?” Before Cabeza could answer, a couple of silent flunkies came out of a back room. They had duffel bags full of stolen I-pads and Sander guessed they had a private boat and were headed for drop-points in Belize City, but that little enterprise would soon be over: Cabeza’s general inventory was down to a quick and Cabeza was clearly attuned to something else. Hussa opened the front door for the men slip through it. The rose-colored light of a late afternoon swept into the living room – the light of happy hour - further aggravating Sander’s rising claustrophobia, and Hussa quickly shut the door again, snapping the deadbolt in place with a loud clack. For uncountable hours in the darkened interior - with the garish light of cartoons and soap operas splattering the walls - Sander had been the “guest” of Ahmed Al Zahrani bin Faisal Karim,” known as Ahmed, a.k.a. Senor Cabeza, who was indeed a walking incendiary device. The first thing Sander learned was to avoid certain topics: anything related to heads, hair, hats that went on heads – the lavatory-head thing was a near miss - although certain things delighted Cabeza. Like Yosemite Sam cartoons and the way the nasty little monkey “Ali” was chewing his doubloon to a golden bead. Cabeza also enjoyed calling Sander a thief. “Perhaps you stole checkers in a thieving trance,” Cabeza giggled. “You know the rules, Ahmed.” Cabeza hummed a little tune, suppressing a grin. “Come on, Ahmed, I had a piece in that position.” Sander pointed. “Now it’s gone.” Cabeza yipped and giggled. “Yes, well you see Mister Givens…” he yipped again, “we were forced to confiscate your piece. You see…” “Ahmed…” Cabeza’s oversized head tilted back and he laughed and clapped his hands, and when he clapped, the monkey clapped. “Yes, you see, Mister Givens, some of your pieces were trespassing in my territory. They have been detained, of course...” He went into more yips. Sander groaned, “Game 17 and issues abound.” He looked up from the board, eyes leveled on Cabeza in his green jump suit – the suit was a greasy tapestry after weeks of wear. “Ahmed, you have to jump over my piece to an empty space. Then you can take it.” Cabeza started to speak. Sander stopped him with an upheld hand. “BUT…only when it’s your turn.” “Yes, however, this game is under Taliban rule.” Cabeza howled, hopping up and down on the love seat. “This is hopeless,” Sander said. “No, Mister Givens, there is always hope. Shall we play another game?” Without a word, a man appeared with two bowls of steaming lamb stew, which he set on the coffee table beside the checker board. Cabeza stopped laughing immediately and began to eat. Not a pretty sight, Sander thought: His jaw was so mal-formed the poor man struggled with every bite, self-consciously toweling his chin as the rest hit the jumpsuit. “I’m sorry you must witness my genetic curse.” Sander knew he had to respond, and with exceeding caution. “Your head is a symbol…of great nobility,” Sander recited, carefully, knowing Cabeza would explode over any misaligned phrase…and he was waiting for Sander to continue. “Yes?” “And,” Sander said, “as you suggest, the Hapsburgs had distinctive craniums.” He hastened to add, “…a symbol of royalty…” Cabeza cut in with a lecturing finger pointing upward: “I come from granddaughter of Queen Juana, wife of King Philip of Spain, in a land of suffering where…” Sander had heard it all: …where the incestuous Hapsburgs created descendants of Queen Juana the Mad who produced Carlos II, a feeble-minded Spanish king with a massive cranium. The rest was in Cabeza’s head. “…my great, great, great…” Cabeza spoke more slowly as he went, “great…great, GREAT cousin was secret nephew of King Carlos.” His voice quivered, his shoulders began to quake. “HE TOO…” “Take cover!” …the Jeannie voice in Sander’s brain, hot with panic. “…HE TOO WAS CURSED…” “Here it comes!” “…WITH…WITH…” Cabeza fingered his balding pate. “He TOO was cursed with this…THIS SATANIC UGLINESS!!” Cabeza leaped up, grabbed his head and screamed. The monkey leapt off the kitchen counter and Sander ducked as a fistful of I-pads shot across the room and shattered against a wall, and Cabeza whirled, slapping himself and shoving plates off a kitchen table as he wailed and ran down the hall for the master bedroom. A blazing TV commercial about something blue and silver immersed the living room in a parallel universe, making everything a photo-negative image as Sander methodically fished bits of plastic out of his stew and finished the meal - which was gamey and pungent with heavy curry. Cabeza’s was untouched. Sander could hear his muffled cries in the master bedroom and muttered, “Poor guy.” “Poor guy? He’s insane!” Jeannie hissed, close and whispering in his head. “You gotta’ get out of here.” “What do you suggest?” “Cornhuskers rush-and-blitz! Hussa the Human Gatehouse down for the count!” At that moment, another golf shirt came out of a third bedroom and wandered into the kitchen. He was sizeable. “I need a drink,” Sander muttered. “…And the freaking monkey reeks” - a classic-Jeannie outburst. He chuckled at the memory: she’d always been spot-on with aromatic issues. The air conditioner clicked in again, doing little to fumigate the place. The villa had been transformed into both a reeking monkey cage and a mini-warehouse for empty cargo containers. During the past 30 minutes, in particular, each frigid second had seemed more confining than the last. Sander heard a creaking door in the darkened hallway. Cabeza’s silhouette emerged from the master bedroom and slipped up the hallway to the mysterious second bedroom where he unlocked a monster padlock attached to a crude latch on the door. He went in as he did every thirty minutes or so, and as he did, Sander again glimpsed the weird, green glow on the stucco walls in the room – as if someone in there had been assigned to watch TV around the clock. Yet no one but Cabeza ever went in or out of that room, unless it held a captive – but restive captives made noise – the ‘green’ room was completely silent. Cabeza shut the door and locked himself in - always Cabeza and only Cabeza. No one else was allowed near the lock or the six-panel mahogany door. When he came out, Cabeza was finally calm and even a bit smug. The thing in the room always had that effect on him – even if everything else in his world set him off like a spring-trap in a jack-in-the-box. Returning to the love seat, Cabeza sat and serenely folded his hands in his lap. He looked at Sander. “So, Mister Givens, we are still very curious about your friendship with Mister Teddy.” “We’re FRIENDS, OKAY?” Sander moaned. “We’ve been over this a hundred times.” Cabeza leaned into Sander’s ear. “You seem to be very good friends,” he whispered. “So, what does Mister Teddy say about Ahmed?” Sander was anxious to squelch the issue, which lately had been edging into things Teddy “might have said” about “things on the beach in the night.” And if Sander had been able to feign ignorance of “things,” whatever Cabeza lacked in sanity he made up in perception. “Since Teddy knows everything,” Cabeza hissed,” perhaps Mister Teddy ALSO knows why I am Sir Bannister’s guest in his villa.” His eyes were facetiously querulous. He grinned and shook his head. “He must know that Sir Bannister owns all of your Solana del Mar. So, this means YOU, TOO, are a guest in your villa like me, Mister Givens, because Sir Bannister is your owner now.” His eyes gleamed with revelation. “Yet, as I ponder things as they truly are, Sir Bannister belongs to ME until he serves my business,” Cabeza said, “which means I own your Solana del Mar AND Sir Bannister. Do I not?” Cabeza narrowed his birdy little eyes. “Oh, yes, Sir Bannister knows I can destroy him – how you say? - like THAT!” Cabeza snapped his fingers. “H-hey, so we’re neighbors,” Sander said, a tremor in his voice. “Your purpose must be important…not that I need to know what it is.” “Of course you know. Teddy the myna bird tells you everything.” “Teddy said something about Bannister’s bank…” “His bank is nothing,” Cabeza said. With a smirk, he added, “Bannister lives on my import business because he and his imbeciles ruined the bank with their English greed!” He flung a hand at the ceiling. “Of course, they immediately agreed to vacate your Solana del Mar on my orders. Do you know why?” He leaned into Sander, eyes probing, hands resting on the checker board. “This was my wish in order to facilitate my business purposes.” He flung a hand at the blackened windows. “So your resort is empty now. Did you know that?” Cabeza giggled and let out a sigh. “Yes, your friends were escorted to San Paulo this morning. I am afraid you are quite alone.” He leaned back, mightily pleased with himself, grandly watching Sander. “Of course, Mister Teddy’s business with Sir Bannister is nothing to me. This is why you shall have no reason to hide your secrets about Mister Teddy.” He leaned forward with a conspiratorial wink. “Sir Bannister is a thief. Of course, you know this.” He straightened. The words exploded out of him: “NOW YOU MUST TELL AHMED THE TRUTH!!” “We’re going to die,” Jeannie wailed from afar, retreating further into Sander’s mind. “I’m Teddy’s friend, that’s all.” Sander said it without a flinch: “His family hates Bannister for bulldozing the old casitas by the airport.” He lowered his eyes. “But you already know that, don’t you? Sure you do: The families of San Paulo hate him.” “I have family, too, you know.” Cabeza was changing again, eyes welling up. Sander suppressed a groan. He’d been listening all day to Cabeza’s whining about his father, his father’s palace, the conspiratorial servants out to get him, and Cabeza wanting Sander’s opinion - over and over again - about the way Cabeza had pilfered a million in gold bullion from the family vault to make a forced “loan” to the regional warlords, which controlled a province in Afghanistan where prodigal son Ahmed had – very unwisely and unwittingly - purchased a string of poppy farms, which had long served the traditional warlords’ mission of flooding America with heroin, and how their leader had promised to repay the loan at 18 percent interest after a year, whereupon Ahmed would slip the bullion back in the family vault and pocket the interest, a deal that collapsed when his borrowers were reportedly “eliminated” by an American drone – leaving other warlords unaware of the deal, of course, along with the “collateral” Cabeza was now stuck with, which he would “not discuss,” although he was “desperate” to sell it, which was critical in order to replace his father’s gold to avoid having his hand cut off in a public ceremony for stealing from the family, which had to happen in order for the family curse against him to be removed before a mid-eastern bounty hunter named Ben Gazza tracked him down. That said… Cabeza was suddenly off the family jag and onto something else. In the light of a Bugs Bunny cartoon he ruefully inspected the shattered I-pads, whining, “These cannot be fixed!” His head shot up and he glared at Sander. “Mister Teddy tells you I smuggle these, does he not?” Sander stuttered, “Why, uh, NO! It never entered my hea…my mind…can I go outside?” Cabeza chuckled bitterly, slowly shaking his head. “Come on, Ahmed, just for a second.” “He tells you I am smuggler. I will SPEAK to Mister Teddy very seriously.” He leveled his eyes on Sander. “I am a business man. I pay for these. As you know, these are very popular with teenagers.” “How much?” Sander asked. “How much?” “How much do you pay?” Cabeza imperiously replied, “Oh, fifty dollars, U.S.” “They retail for hundreds, Ahmed.” Cabeza smiled. “I am a master wholesaler of global imports.” His lips spread into a greasy leer. “Ah, but Mister Teddy says I am stealing, does he not? Sander said nothing. Cabeza went on. “Of course he does. And he tells you I have something else, I think.” Sander didn’t want to talk about something else. He felt a globule of sweat in his crew cut, which was growing and creeping down his scalp. “That’s between you and Teddy,” Sander said. The glob of sweat was at his hairline. “Look, Ahmed, YOUR monkey stole my coin. I followed him down here to get it back. That’s it!” Sander tossed a glance at the monkey, which was back on the counter reducing the coin to a pellet. “Ah, yes, the coin!” Cabeza tittered. “He enjoys it so!” “Can I go now? We can play checkers in the lounge. I need a drink.” Cabeza laughed and shook his head. “You Americans and your liquor drinks. You will find no one at your tavern. They all are gone so you shall be comfortable here…do you have family, Mister Givens?” “My family’s here: Look, people are waiting for me.” “I have no family, and no one is waiting for you. They call me thief. Me, Ahmed the Generous! But this is merely a small misunderstanding.” “They’ll get over it…by the way, if you keep me here it’s kidnapping.” Cabeza shook his head and went on. “You Americans do not know how to listen. If I cannot repay my father, Ben Gazza the bounty hunter will behead me and send my hand to my father in a box.” “He’ll have a tough time at the post office…so what can I do about it?” “You will remain my guest until my business is concluded. It was opportune that you came to steal from me because I had many questions for you…” Cabeza turned to look at Hussa. She peered through a slit in the blackout curtains and shook her head. “Many in my family are disgraced by the poppy farms,” he confided. “Some wish for Ben Gazza to behead me for this, alone: We are a most honorable family.” He shook his head and sighed. “I bought the farms with my inheritance to build family wealth, which all sons must do: My brothers are doctors and great builders, you see, and yet I...” “HEY SANDER!” The voice was outside and echoed off the building. Cabeza froze. Sander shot a glance at the blackened windows. They all heard the crunching of dead leaves under many feet. “HEY, I HEARD VOICES!” The voice of Jasper Mendelsohn filled the room. “…CAME FROM THIS ONE, I’M PRETTY SURE. “You sure?” It was Chester. “Right as rain, I’m sure.” Sander listened to heavy boots tramping up a stairway. “LOOK AT THE MUDDY TRACKS! AN ARMY CAME THROUGH HERE.” “LAST NIGHT, MOST LIKELY,” Chester yelled. “EVERYBODY SPREAD OUT.” Murmurings of many people entered the clearing in front of the villas. They kept coming through the dead leaves and started thumping on doors, the sound growing into a rumbling mob as a unified choir of voices penetrated the walls. Cabeza froze. He blurted something in Farsi to Hussa, who parted a sliver of the blackout curtain. “SANDER!!” Jasper yelled. “WHICH ONE’S HE IN?” “THIS ONE, I’M PRETTY SURE.” “AREN’T THEY SUPPOSED TO BE VACANT?” From a third bedroom, Sander heard the sliding bolt of an automatic pistol. Two men in golf shirts came out of the bedroom and down the narrow hallway, anxiously looking to Cabeza, who shrugged as if to dismiss the world. “I come to this country for peace,” he whispered. “Yet, I hear broken remains of Al Qaida cells still wander Guatemala, even Mexico. Some pathetically huddle in small groups near American border without direction, little money, but they know of my curse and Ben Gazza and about my cargo, which I do not discuss, as you know.” “SANDER!” Chester shouted. He slammed his fist on the door of an adjacent unit. Sander grinned. “I guess Solana’s not so vacant after all.” “In a bold, elevated tone, Sander added, “You can LET ME GO, anytime!” “DID YOU HEAR THAT? “What?” “THE VOICE DAMN IT - SANDER! “LET’S OPEN ‘EM UP,” Chester said. “WE NEED A DAMNED BATTERING RAM!” Sander eyed Hussa, who was mesmerized by the view through a slit in the blackout curtains. The enclave beyond the door was alive with rumbling voices and fists on doors as the sounds reverberated through the cinderblock of the junk villas. “They are many,” she whispered, glancing at Cabeza. “They are everywhere…” “I SAW A CURTAIN MOVE!” Jasper shouted. Hussa quickly stepped away from the window. “RIGHT HERE, THIS ONE,” Jasper said. “DID YOU SEE IT MOVE? SOMEBODY’S IN THERE…SANDER!” Cabeza’s voice was a whisper. “Al Qaida is not strong in these Central Americas,” he said. “They are here but coming apart like threadbare shirt of an old man.” Jasper said, “HERE’S A FALLEN LIMB - SOMEBODY GIVE ME A HAND.” The thumping on doors and windows continued, loudly, methodically. Cabeza’s eyes quickly scanned the room. When his eyes fell on Sander again they began to mist. “I am alone…Sander. They call you Sander do they not?” His voice quickened. “I am not Al Qaida, I am Ahmed and I want only peace. You must tell your friends, Sander: you must say Ahmed had no choice - it is not Ahmed’s war.” “I believe you,” Sander said. “Do you believe in God?” “Yes, I do.” “I do as well. We believe in God with different names, but the same God yes?” “God used at least four different names,” Sander said. “In your Old Testament,” Cabeza corrected, “which is not unlike…” The sat-phone purred. Cabeza jumped up, rolled over a crate and stumbled to the phone. He picked up the receiver as the limb rammed another door. The door crackled on groaning hinges as a gang of voices shouted, “HEAVE…HO!” The limb again rammed the door and it splintered. (Excerpt from Solana del Mar, a novel, 374 pags., Steve Marsh, proprietor, on Amazon/books, Barnes&Noble, and beyond)
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:05:55 +0000
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