Chapter 3
Jeb was finishing his breakfast when he heard the horse coach draw up outside. There came the muted sound of voices, and he recognized a woman’s Yankee accent.
Someone rattled the lock on the street door.
Well, I’d best get this over with, he thought. He wiped his mouth on a coarse napkin, stood up, went out into the courtyard.
Maria was just starting down the steps from the balcony.
Jeb waved her back. “I’ll take care of this one, Maria.”
“Si, patron.” She returned to the balcony.
Again the street door rattled.
Jeb entered the atrium, unlatched the door, drew it open.
A red-haired woman stood before him, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
His first impression was: My God! She’s little!
“Yes?” he said.
“Are you Jeb Logan?”
“I am.”
And he thought: Oh, Jesus! She’s one of those cute little tomboy tricks!
Monti swallowed. She had worked out a plan of action, but now, confronted by the tall, rough masculinity of Jeb Logan, she wondered if she’d have to change her tactics.
“I’m Mrs. Bannon,” she said. “Mrs. Roger Bannon. I talked to you on the telephone from Puerto Bolivar.”
He thought: Dammit! I’m going to stick to my guns!
“You’ve had this trip for nothing, Mrs. Bannon,” he said.
She forced a smile. “Let’s talk it over, anyway.”
He glanced toward the Victoria. David stood beside the luggage that the driver had stacked on the cobblestones. The significance of the boy’s red hair was immediately obvious, and Jeb was struck by the resemblance to Roger Bannon. Hell! She’s got a kid as big as she is!
“There’s nothing to talk over,” said Jeb.
“You flew my husband and his partner in there, didn’t you?”
“And a half ton of their gear besides, but I’m not about to …”
“All right then.” She turned, addressed David: “Son, have the luggage brought inside.”
“Look, Mrs. Bannon, I’m too …”
“Are you going to leave me standing out here in the street?” she demanded.
Jeb took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened them. He stepped aside. “Be my guest.”
A group of Milagro urchins came up and stopped beside Jeb’s door, staring at David. The boy lifted his miniature camera, took a picture of the children. The scene struck Jeb as intensely decadent. He spoke sharply: “Kid! Get that stuff in here like your mother said!”
David looked startled, lowered the camera. “Yes, sir!”
Monti stepped past Jeb, walked through the atrium into the courtyard. She wrinkled her nose at the barnyard smells.
Jeb followed, noticed her sniffing.
“I guess the pig smell is pretty high,” he said. “It has a regular sty down at the other end of the courtyard, but the damn thing outgrew it. The gate won’t hold him.”
“I’m sure one can get used to anything,” she said.
Jeb frowned, raised his voice: “Maria!”
She appeared at the balcony rail above them. “Si, patron?”
He gestured toward the entrance where the coach driver was stacking the luggage. “Have him put that stuff in the guest room.”
“We’ve been up half the night on that beastly thing they call a train,” said Monti. “There was a drunk …” She shuddered.
Maria nodded to Jeb, disappeared in the direction of the stairs.
“Have you eaten?” asked Jeb.
Mont took off her dark glasses, fingered them nervously. “We brought food from the Hotel at Puerto Bolivar.”
Jeb stared at her, suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of recognition. Then his mind slipped a cog, substituted a movie screen for his courtyard background.
“Hey!” he said.
Her head jerked up.
“You’re the singer,” said Jeb. He snapped his fingers. “Monti Lee!”
She smiled. It was a static response, emptied of all friendliness by years of overuse. “I suppose Roger’s told you all about me,” she said.
And she thought: Now we’ll go through routine “A” about what it’s like to be an entertainer … and gosh! it’s sure interesting to meet you.
“Your husband never said a word,” said Jeb. “I had no idea.… I mean, him married to you. I never thought …” He broke off in confusion.
“Roger has hidden charms,” she said.
David came in from the street, crossed to the tiled edge of the reservoir. He saw the pig under the bougainvillea, lifted his camera, took a picture of it.
Jeb scowled.
“Now, about flying us to the rancho,” said Monti. “I thought …”
“It can’t be done,” said Jeb. “I’m sorry.”
She found a cigarette in her purse, fished out a pearl-inlaid lighter, touched flame to cigarette, spoke through the smoke: “You took Roger and the Gettler person in there. What’s so difficult about …?”
“This is a shirt tail outfit with only two planes, Mrs. Bannon. The twin-engine amphibian I use for the long hauls is grounded for repairs. My other’s a single-engine float job I use only for short hops—mostly passengers to the ranchos up the Rio Mavari.”
“How long before you’ll have your amphibian ready to fly?”
He shrugged. “God knows. Maybe a month. Maybe two.”
Anger painted two bright spots in her cheeks. She stamped a foot. “The train was bad enough! Then that horse cart! Now I have to deal with a white man gone native!”
Jeb said, “I’m sorry these things bother you.”
She thought: I’m going at this all wrong.
“I apologize,” she said. “The consul told me you were pretty stubborn. But I’m prepared to bid high.” Again the practiced smile. “And I like stubborn men.”
“Have you flown much, Mrs. Bannon?”
“With airlines … certainly.”
“Your husband’s clear over on the Amazon watershed, Mrs. Bannon. Now, there are regular airline flights from Puerto Bolivar across to Belem. From there you could …”
“Nuts!”
“Well, what’s wrong with …?”
“Lots of things, Mr. Logan.” She took three furious puffs on her cigarette, ground it underfoot. “My papers were all cleared for Ecuador, but it still took me two days to wade through the red tape. I didn’t have a letter from my hometown chief of police!”
He chuckled.
“Verrry funny! If I go over to Belem it’ll just be more of the same—only this time in Portuguese!”
“What’s your all-fired hurry?”
“I open in Las Vegas on October twenty-first, and I’ve only …”
“That only gives you a couple of weeks here! You’ll have to …”
“I know what I have to do, Mr. Logan. Now what I want to know from you is just how much it’s going to cost me?”
“You’re wasting your breath, Mrs. Bannon.”
“The consul said that if the price was right, you’d do it.”
Jeb made a slow, pointed examination of her figure. “He’s right. And there are even some things I’ll do just for the fun of it.” His gaze hardened, and his voice lowered almost to a growl: “But that doesn’t include committing suicide!”
“Oh, it can’t be as bad as all that. Single-engine planes make much longer flights all the …”
“How the hell do you know what my plane can do? You come here fresh from sitting on your fanny through an airline milk run, and you think all I have to do is …”
“What’s your price, Mr. Logan?”
“You don’t have that much!” He raised his hands. “Look, if that one engine failed up there over …”
“Can’t you coast down to a lake or a river and …”
“Judas Priest!” Jeb smacked his forehead with the palm of his left hand. “Coast down to … What do you think this is, a toboggan?”
Monti blushed. “I realize you might run into some problems that …”
“Come here!” He grabbed her arm, hustled her into the room beyond the kitchen that he used as an office. It was a cool room, dim after the glare of the courtyard. An ancient roll-top desk occupied one corner. A crude trestle table stood against the opposite wall, its top covered with a jumble of maps. Jeb found one map in the pile, spread it on top.
“That’s the map the consul showed me,” she said.
Jeb put his hands on the map, leaned forward, closed his eyes. “Lady, why the hell are you picking on me? There must be a thousand other guys who …”
“But you flew Roger to his ranch. You know where it is.”
“I see.” Jeb opened his eyes, looked at the map.
David came in from the courtyard, stood beside his mother. “Is that the map that shows Dad’s ranch?”
“Hush,” said Monti.
“There are some things the consul didn’t tell you,” said Jeb.
“He mentioned the gas problem,” said Monti.
“Oh, he mentioned the gas problem.”
“And he told me the range of your plane.”
“He told you the range of my plane.”
“He said it’ll go maybe seven hundred miles on …”
“Fine! Then we come down at some little native village, and we tell them to dig an oil well right away because we …”
“We sent a telegram to the village of Ramona,” she said.
“That was very enterprising of you, Mrs. Bannon.”
She nodded. “They wired back that they have gasoline.”
“Brazilian army gas for their patrol planes,” said Jeb. “Besides, that’s in Brazil … where you’ll meet some more red tape—in Portuguese.”
“It’s just a village,” she said. “The only papers we’ll need are green ones with George Washington’s picture on them.”
“Ah, the power of the Yankee dollar,” he said.
She smiled. “And Ramona is only about three hundred and fifty miles from here. I measured on the map.”
“Wonderful.” He nodded. “Now, shall we step out of your dream world, Mrs. Bannon?”
“What?”
Jeb put a finger on Milagro. “Here we are with a single-engine float plane.” He moved his finger across to a dot on the Amazon basin side. “And this is the gay native metropolis of Ramona: five hundred souls, assorted insets, lizards, amoebic dysentery, two cantinas and warm beer.”
“Not to mention gasoline,” she said.
“Of course. And the straight-line distance between Milagro and Ramona is a mere three hundred and fifty miles.”
“About half your range,” she said.
“True. Except that my little plane doesn’t have oxygen. Your straight-line route runs over peaks that’d push us up to twenty-two thousand feet. We’d have to fly down here through the pass. That’s only seventeen thousand feet. Still without oxygen—and closer to six hundred and fifty miles.”
“Well, your plane’ll fly that far!”
“You’re right. And what’s more, there are even places along that route where we could stop for gas. If we had wheels and if they happened to have some gas!”
“But you could fly it in …”
“Sure! Through some of the worst air in the world! And if we have to come down in that area with nothing but those jim-dandy puddle sticks under us—we have bought it! For good!”
“I think you’re vastly overplaying the …”
“Lady, I haven’t even told you the half of it! Just for the ducks, let’s say our engine conks out, and we do find a stretch of wet grass or a piece of water that’ll take us. There we are. This little bird of mine doesn’t have a radio, either.”
“I don’t get you, Mr. Logan. You’re a pilot. You’re supposed to keep a plane in the air. Yet, you talk as though the most important thing is staying on the ground!”
“Mrs. Bannon …” He stopped, swallowed, spoke slowly and carefully: “Mrs. Bannon, an airplane is a machine for going up into the air temporarily. When you forget that qualification, you’re on the way out: in pieces. Now, I grant you that there are some barnstormers and crackpots who’ll …”
“The consul told me you were a combat pilot in Korea. Wasn’t that kind of dangerous?”
His eyes narrowed. He nodded. “Yes. There were even some life insurance companies that wouldn’t write policies on us. But we were out to kill somebody, or get killed. That’s how war is, you know. But that’s over for the moment. I no longer want to kill anybody: not you, not your boy here … not myself. Nobody! I want to age gently in the flesh, become an old pilot. I’m in a business that …”
“That’s temporarily not making any money from the look of things!”
“True.”
“You can’t even afford a radio for your …”
“Wrong. My plane’s just temporarily without a radio. It had a radio. And I even had another pilot working for me until recently. By some odd coincidence, the pilot and my radio vanished at the same time. So … you see?”
“Mr. Logan …” She shook her head. “I just don’t have the time to fight with you … or to bargain with you … or anything. I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars to fly us to my husband’s ranch.
Holy Mother! he thought. And he scowled. “Why, this all-fired …”
“If we can get gas at Ramona, could you carry enough extra to return?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Is there any other complication?” she asked. “I mean … well, I see your point about distances. What’s the flying distance from Ramona to the ranch?”
Jeb glanced down at the map. “About four hundred and fifty miles.” Sudden anger overcame him. “But by God! You don’t fly a single-engine plane to the limit of its range over these mountains and that jungle!”
Monti put her left hand over her eyes.
Jeb took a deep breath, exhaled: almost a sigh. “Couldn’t you come down later, Mrs. Bannon? I mean after this engagement or whatever it is on the twenty-first of October?”
She shook her head without removing her hand from her eyes. What can I tell him? she asked herself. That I have to do this to save my marriage? But maybe that’s not true. I’m not being honest with him or myself. I don’t really know why I’m doing this. Except that I’m not getting any younger, and …
Monti lowered her hand from her eyes. “Let’s just say that I have to go in there, and that I’m willing to pay whatever it costs to get my way.”
“Even to getting yourself and your boy killed?”
She swallowed. “I don’t think it’s that dangerous.”
“You mean you won’t let yourself believe it’s that dangerous. Would you consider leaving the boy, and just going by yourself …?”
“David has to go with us. That’s part of it. I’m bringing him down to stay with his father.”
Jeb stared at her. “Does Bannon know you’re coming?”
“No. It’s a surprise.”
“I thought he’d written for you to come down … that everything was okay … that …” He broke off. “Do you have even the faintest idea what that rancho is?”
She shrugged. “Some kind of a plantation. They’re growing stuff for drugs.”
David cleared his throat, spoke in a squeaky voice: “And they’re trading with the Indians.” He blushed.
Jeb glanced at the boy, back to the mother. “That’s a jungle plantation, Mrs. Bannon. It’s new, raw. And there are Indians: Jivaro. The Jivaro are not tame Indians.”
“My dad never said it was dangerous,” said David.
“David’s very healthy,” said Monti. “He’s had all of his shots: yellow fever, typhoid—everything. I’m sure he won’t catch anything.”
“Except maybe a poison dart—or a spear in the guts!”
She paled. “You’ll go to any extreme to get out of taking us!”
“A visit might be all right,” said Jeb. “A short visit, but …”
“Poison dart!” said Monti.
“There’s always the possibility that a Jivaro will take a sudden dislike to you,” said Jeb. “And he may decide to add your tzantza to his collection for no reason you’d ever understand.”
“What’s that?” asked David. “A tzantza?”
Jeb kept his attention on Monti, spoke coldly: “A shrunken head.”
She drew a sharp breath. “You’re just trying to frighten me!”
He shrugged. “Some people go in there and never have a bit of trouble with the Jivaro. Some say the Jivaro are damn fine Indians, but …”
“Roger would’ve said something if it was dangerous!”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll pay you thirty-five hundred dollars,” she said.
The haunted mood of his morning dream returned to Jeb. It enfolded him like a thrown net. He felt swept up in a current he couldn’t escape, and this feeling aroused a core of determination within him. He shook his head. “No!”
“Forty-five hundred, Mr. Logan.” She managed a bitter smile. “You see, I’m a determined woman.”
He remained silent, shocked.
“How long would it take us?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“About nine hours?” she asked.
“More or less.”
“That’s about five hundred dollars an hour,” she said.
“It’s a lot of money for one ride,” he said.
Her mouth shaped into the reflex smile. “And what’s money if it won’t buy what you want?”
David took Monti’s arm. The boy looked pale, angry. “Mother, let’s go back and find somebody else. This guy’s afraid!”
Jeb took the sting of the words, drew in a deep breath, fought for control. Then: “You’re right, kid. I’m yellow. Scared as hell. That comes from having brains enough to know what can happen in those mountains and that jungle.”
“I’ll make it an even five thousand dollars,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”
He felt the net draw closer, thought about five thousand dollars: the money to buy a new port engine for the amphibian, to buy new radio equipment, to bring in another relief pilot … money to grease a few official palms and smooth out the red tape.
Mother and son stared at him.
Jeb took his flying cap from its hook above the map table, jammed it on his head. It was a symbolic gesture. Monti knew his decision before he spoke.
“All right!” His words were sharp, bitten off. “We’ll go to Ramona. If they’ll sell us gas at Ramona, we’ll go the rest of the way.”
She exhaled a long, sighing breath.
And Jeb knew from the feeling of the net around him that they’d be able to buy gas at Ramona.
Monti spoke the thought: “They’ll sell us the gas.”
Jeb stepped to the door, recalled the small mountain of luggage they’d unloaded from the Victoria. He considered the flying distance, worked the almost automatic calculation of weight-over-fuel that was like an instinct with him. It gave him a perverse feeling of pleasure to say: “Start cutting down your luggage. You can take sixty pounds between you.”
“What should we wear?” she asked.
“Cottons … Khaki. It gets damn hot over there.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Let’s get moving. We’ve just about enough time to make it before dark.”
Already, his mind was moving ahead into the flying problem: We’ll be heavily loaded. I’ll have Manuelo stir up the river ahead of us with a motor boat—give us a little chop to help get off. Dr. Iriarte has Jeep cans for carrying the extra gas. I’ll have to send some boys after them. Now, where the hell did I put my jungle kit?
“Maria!” he called.
“Si, patron?” She came out of the kitchen, tears running down her cheeks.
Jeb looked at the tears, surprised.
“Patron, you are going in the airplane!” she said. “My vision …”
His trapped feeling became anger. “Maria! Stop that damned foolishness! Send some of those children off the street to bring Dr. Iriarte’s gas cans. All of them! Get my jungle kit, then start making us a lunch.”
She bowed her head. “Si, señor.”
The courtyard became a scene of bustling motion.
Jeb found himself caught up by the excitement, but he still felt that he had been outmaneuvered. And there was the dark instinct from his nightmare.
He would not have called himself a deeply superstitious man, but in the minutes just before the takeoff he almost cancelled the flight.
It was the fretful stiffing of Premonition … the dream.
Something about a river … and death.
But the mood passed. The pilot within him took over. There came the moaning of the motor at full throttle. The pontoons stuttered through the light chop of Manuelo’s motor boat. Then they were off the water, lifting up into the clean air where sawtooth peaks stretched across the horizon: a stark barrier in black rock and cold white snow.