continuation of Undercover of Darkness the Adventures of Sin Cargo
I'm just going to cover the South American sequence of the book so here goes:
The Score
Eventually the day changed to afternoon and the afternoon to evening. Dude went back to the hotel and took a nap. When night suddenly fell as it does in the tropics the forest came alive with the sound of a million tree frogs advertising for mates. He woke up and grabbed a cab back to the plaza then headed to the slim room down from the church. It was nearly ten o’clock and he had an appointment to keep.
Hugo was already there waiting. Dude handed him the money.
“I’ll be back.”
The only things in the room now were the bare bulb, the two mattresses, the cricket and Dude. He would have watched television but there was no television. He could have listened to the radio but there was no radio. Maybe he should have read the newspaper, but he couldn’t do that either. You know why.
An hour went by. The time was as still as the hot tropical air.
“I’m sitting in an empty room in a foreign country and a stranger has all of my money.”
More time passed.
He stepped over the cricket and gently picked him up. The cricket didn’t resist or try to escape even when he opened his hand. He stared at the fragile insect in his palm.
“A stranger is holding my cash, and I’m holding a cricket. What kind of an *ssh*le am I anyway?”
He said the last bit aloud.
“Perhaps a very rich *ssh*le, Mon,” said a voice from the door. Hugo was back.
“Here,” he said, and handed him the most enormous bag of coke he had ever seen.
He could smell the ether a mile away. Dude realized quickly he had underestimated its size. It was much fluffier than the sugar he’d practiced with at home. He had nowhere to put it. So where does a man place large valuable things?
He stuffed it in his pants.
Hugo smiled. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk. I’m sure you have somewhere to go right now.”
“All right, OK, I’ll see you.”
Nervous as all get-out, that's what Dude was.
With the bag in his pants looking like some sort of giant erection Dude stepped into the street. The bulge was unsightly and conspicuous. Never before in his life did he want a cab so badly.
Fortunately for Dude that’s exactly what showed up, a cab, and whisked him off to the hotel.
When he went up to his room to open the door, a gigantic green tree frog was stuck on the wall near the doorknob. He ignored it, got inside quickly and locked the door.
Pulling out the bag out he realized he’d never done a single line of thanks with Hugo.
“But that’s OK,” he figured, “I’ll do one with myself instead.”
That’s coke logic for ya.
He took a crisp peso Boliviano and rolled it up and secured it using the fold. Then fingered a razor blade out of his wallet and took the picture of Lake Titicaca off the wall. He scooped a small pile out of the bag, then made a line the size of a match-head on the glass of the frame. Underneath was a photo of the lake and altiplano. The line was so small you could barely see it. Then he went to the wall and turned on some canned music that came piped through a speaker in the wall.
They were playing Dick Dale and the Daletones. It was surf music. Surf music!
“I’m in a land-locked country, not a beach in sight, listening to surf music. Whadda you think about that?”
He snorted the line and as it began to numb his nose he thought,
“It makes so much sense. Maybe the Beach Boys will be next.”
It woke him up and changed his mood.That was just what he needed. Although it was more than late, he had work to do. And now, with the substance numbing his nose, he took a different attitude. He felt now as if it was early, and that whatever work he had to do should be done immediately. He would do a good job. He had to do a good job. His freedom depended upon it being…a good job… and nothing less.
Frankenstein Prepares the Monster's Mix
The first thing he did was spoon the powder from the one large bag to many smaller seal-top bags that would be placed in the blocks. Then he’d prepare the resin filler.
This required concentration. Mixing the chemicals would be a one-time shot. If he made a mistake nothing could be redone or replaced. If the resin didn’t get hard enough, it couldn’t be remixed. If it got too hard it would heat up too much and melt the bags, ruining the product.
He laid everything out on the dresser. The cups, resin, catalyst, color, lead, aluminum flakes and popsicle sticks for mixing. When everything was there and in order he started to mix the mix.
It was time for the one-time shot.
Outside a tropical storm crept near. Forked and flash lightning and thunder filled the sky. He mixed the chemicals, measured the amounts with precision and stuffed the coke into the blocks.
He needed somewhere to put the blocks, somewhere that was flat. The dresser was taken up. He placed his American Tourister on the bed since it was almost flat. He poured in the resin and waited for the results. It is the waiting that kills. Would it get hot, just hot enough? Or would it get too hot? He stepped away and tried to wait but anxiety was no friend to Dude. He was no good at waiting.
Outside the sliding glass door to the balcony inky thunderclouds were crowding the sky with a vengence. Then came streaks of forked lighting followed so closely by thunder it sounded like canon fire. The glass of the windows began to shake violently with their report. And it was hot, steamin hot. He wiped his brow of sweat. When he saw the sweat on his fingers it hit him.
That’s what he hadn’t figured on!
The ambient temperature in the room might throw the whole thing off! It was hotter here than in San Diego. He didn’t know. He had to find out.
He approached the bed with reverence, the suitcase stacked on top like an alter designed by American Tourister. He reached for the block to check its temperature. Lightning flashed through the window flooding the room with white light just as his finger tip touched the block. It was more than just warmth.
It was the spark of creation.
“It’s alive,” he whimpered like a dog and drew back his finger.
He turned away. His breathing became irregular. He spoke the magic Collin Clive words again,
“It’s alive!”
Then his hands became nervous shaking hands, and he didn’t know what to do with them or with himself for that matter. The smell of the ether and cooking resin permeated the room like a laboratory. He couldn’t stand breathing the suffocating toxic vapors.
Grabbing the handle to the sliding glass door and the storm without, he threw it open.
Serious thunder boomed like a howitzer, forked lightning slashed and tore at the clouds rending them asunder. Savage rivulets of rain ran in torrents down his face and crept down his body like an anaconda.
He faced the seething sky and announced to the heavens with his fist just as the lightning struck,
“It’s alive!” he petitioned the Gods of Thunder and Lightning, “Alive!”
He liked being a dramatic fool at times, Dude did.
Then he said, “Frankenstein’s got nothing on me,” and calmly walked back inside.
He fell to the floor laughing, and rolled over on his back and tilted his head until he could see out the window. The clouds rushed past. The lightning appeared smaller and more distant. The interval between the thunder and lightning grew longer indicating the storm was heading away.
The worst was over.
The evil deed was done, and the demon? The demon substance disguised as yellow rock was locked between the layers of resin in the blocks.
It was controlled for now.
What would happen when it was released state-side could only be imagined or dreamed.
Dude would be the last to know because right now he was asleep on the floor and wasn’t dreaming at all. The sh*t hadn’t lasted that long. The effects disappeared after forty-five minutes and he was exhausted from lack of sleep. While Frankenstein Dude slept soundly the storm headed north.
The storm he’d imprisoned in the resin would soon be heading north too.
Either way, the north land was due for some changes, and Dude was to be their epicenter.
continuation of Undercover of Darkness the Adventures of Sin Cargo
Ice Cream and Danger to Go
The next morning Dude went back to town and saw Hugo. They went to the plaza around noon to have ice cream at a popular shop. While they were eating, two men who dressed impeccably saw Hugo from across the room and came over. They looked so alike they had to be brothers. They shook hands with Hugo and Dude when he introduced them. Then they sat together and talked. Later, after they left, Hugo said,
“That’s the two bothers I score from.”
“Really, they don’t seem like coke dealers.”
“Neither do you, my friend.”
Dude looked down at himself.
“I see what you mean.”
They started to talk of psychedelics again, and Dude mentioned Yage, a substance Alan Ginsberg had written about in The Yage Letters.
“They have it here, but here they call it ayahuasca.”
“I’ve always wondered about it, what’s it like?”
“Maybe I can arrange something,” Hugo said, “get back to me tomorrow.”
It seemed innocent enough, that ice-cream soda. But Dude’s nose was numb. He’d done a line before heading into town and couldn’t smell the evil in the air. It was there, drifting from the back room where it had been hiding behind a curtain.
Lenny and Phil liked ice-cream too.
They were sitting in the back room when Dude and Hugo walked in, watching the two brothers who they’d been trailing for weeks.
“Who’s that they’re talking with now?” sweated Phil.
“Looks like an American trying to score,” Lenny greased back.
“What an idiot.”
“From the frying pan right into the fire.”
That’s all they said to each other before returning to swilling their cheap beer. It was more than enough. Just by saying it they’d placed Dude on their “to get” list.
Why?
Guilt by association, that’s why.
Poor Dude, wrong place, wrong time. He should have stayed back in California where things weren't so hot. Instead, he picked the tropics.
They still needed to find out where he was staying. That gave him time to breathe.
The Hut on the Yapacani
“You have a feeling of achievement when you discover a new plant, even a plant that has no use.” --Richard Evans Schultes.
The next day Hugo met Dude and headed into the forest, first by jeep and then by foot.
The journey Dude was about to take wouldn’t all be by jeep or foot either. But he would put in some miles.
When they left the road the going got rough. It was hot and humid and the air was still. After only ten minutes they sweat through their shirts, first under the armpits, then on the centers of their chests and backs. It was never quiet off the road. Howlers would be howling, and added to that was the chatter of numerous birds, the squawking of Green Amazon parrots, and the constant buzzing of insects around their heads. The forest was alive with greens from head to foot. The constant crunch of their boots crushing through dead leaves on the forest floor scattered myriads of emerald-green lizards escaping into the jade forest. It was shady in most parts and only sunny in a very few patches. Up ahead they spied an open spot. This was the clearing they were looking for.
A small tributary of the Rio Yapacani ran languidly behind a bamboo hut with a single jacaranda growing nearby, planted to provide shade.
The hut was guarded by a Scarlet Macaw, its wings aflash in the dazzling sunlight. He screeched a warning to the inhabitants, who came out immediately. An old man appeared who had a face as wrinkled as the stream, followed by a girl of about seven who possessed especially knowing eyes for someone so young. Dude learned later she was his granddaughter. He recognized Hugo immediately. So did the girl.
Dude expected a man who lived there, and with that appearance would probably speak Chiquitano, or at best Espanol. Instead what he heard was,
“Hugo, you pendejo, where have you been?”
“Nowhere but where I am, Old Man.”
Evidently they knew each other.
“Who’s this then?”
“This is Dude, a friend. An explorer like you.”
“Like me eh?” he laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
The girl was close now and would not allow her presence to be denied.
*“I’m Rima,” she said, and put out her hand.
“Don’t laugh;” said the old man. “I always liked Green Mansions.”
“Maybe it was Audrey Hepburn you liked,” said Hugo.
Dude smiled, then knelt down and shook it with gusto.
“I’m Dude,” he answered politely. “Pleased to meet you.”
Dude was good at formalities when he had to be, and always got along with women, no matter their age.
“Ayahuasca then?” said the old man.
“Yes,” replied Hugo, “that’s what we’re here for. How did you know?”
“That’s what you’re always here for,” he answered. “They don’t call me a curandero for nothing. Let’s go.”
He grabbed a canteen slung from the tree, filled it with water, and then soaked it to keep it cool. They followed him into the forest. They wandered a bit, and the old man pointed to several plants, then trees, even vines. He told them the name of each and what they were for. Rima would repeat each one in turn as if she were memorizing them.
“When I kick the bucket,” he explained, “it’ll be all up to her.” He said with no accent at all, as if he spoke English as his mother tongue.
“You speak English really well,” Dude observed.“Like a native.”
“I should, I went to UCLA four years. I knew English before that. But I picked up American English in college when I got my degree.”
“What in?”
“New world ethnobotany.”
“So you’re a botanist.”
“Sure am.”
It was getting thick now; every step required a swing of his machete. All the trees had creepers, and in their branches were purple and white orchids and pink flaming bromeliads.
“Got stuck here while doing some field work. Now I’ve got family I’m stuck here for good. In the states I was just a cog in the wheel. Never liked being just a cog. Here I’m respected, got a family. Family is important to me. Far more important than being a cog I can tell you.”
Dude nodded in agreement. The fact didn’t require much verification to his way of thinking.
Finally they reached a set of vines with pink and white flowers. The old man directed them to cut off portions, but leave them attached by carefully leaving strips of bark whole on the edges.
“Leave the sections attached by a piece of bark, whatever you do.”
When they did, seeds fell out.
“Look Grandfather! It has seeds now!”
“It’s that time of year, Nieta.”
She stooped down to gather them up in her hand, then handed some to Dude.
“The plant is in the seed Dude, use these when you need to.”
When Dude placed them in his shirt pocket, his fingers felt a small compass he’d put there with a chain that he got in a box of Crackerjacks. He pulled it out with the tips of his fingers and gave it to the girl in exchange.
“Good,” laughed Grandfather, “you won’t need that where you’re going.”
Hearing this, Rima laughed too. She knew what was in store.
The Ceremony with Jaguars
They returned to the hut and made a fire to prepare the drink. When they scraped the center free of the bark, it oxidized like an apple and turned blood red. Then they added water and cooked it up just as the sun was going down. Dude noticed it glowed blue-green in the dark. The girl added wood to the fire one stick at a time.
They drank.
It was bitter in the extreme and hard to stomach.
Within fifteen minutes Dude’s stomach grew heavy and he threw up his guts. After that visions began. The old man began to chant something he didn’t understand. It was in Chiquitano. He spoke it after all.
Dude noticed something moving in the shadows, a serpent with skin of multi-colored jewels. Another appeared in the branch of a tree. They met and wound around each other.
When the old man changed the words he sung, the visions changed as well.
“What do you see?”
“I see birds now,” Dude answered, “multicolored birds, beautiful multicolored birds with fabulous colors…”
The old man started singing another sort of song now. The girl placed another stick in the fire.
“What do you see now? You may see… this, or you may see… that…or you may see….”
His voice trailed off. There was something else out in the darkness approaching. No, two things, two things coming closer. They were a pair of Jaguars, one male, one female. Both were outlined with green glowing light. It reminded Dude of a painting by Matisse, that’s how loaded he was. The glowing throbbed in time with their purring.
“It’s jaguars I see now.”
At this the old man and his granddaughter shot knowing glances back and forth.
“I thought so,” his voice pointed to Dude, but his eyes were on his granddaughter.
At first Dude, who was unfamiliar with the ways jaguars, thought they were fighting. But he soon realized that wasn’t what they were doing. Mating is what they were doing. It was a spectacular sight.
Afterwords he fell exhausted into a deep dream-filled sleep.
The dream was this:
He flew through the air at a tremendous rate, over the forest, then the mountains, then above a coastal desert full of ruined Chimu buildings formed of geometric patterns. Then a coastal plane where he saw fantastic images of spiders and hummingbirds made of rock outlines laid out on the ground. He continued over a large dark sea that sparkled in the moonlight and ran on forever. He regained a coast again and flew north, ever northward, until he saw a city below him with tall buildings with regular outlines. One was taller than the rest and was made of glass and obsidian. Here he slowed down and landed on the roof. A girl with rope hair appeared in a white cotton dress that was stained with blood. As forked lightning surged above, a fine mist began to fall. She grasped his shoulders with hands so strong he couldn’t resist and drew him towards her. They made love, and as they violently climaxed at the same moment, jagged lightning flashed and reflected in the river below like a dark curving mirror.
Then the dream ended as suddenly as it began.
When he awoke he couldn’t remember a thing, but the dream slept inside him as many dreams do.
He got up the next morning and inspected the fire, smelling the burnt wood and ashes. Nearby, between it and the forest, he found a tuft of hair. The old man appeared from the hut and came to join him.
“This is real hair,” said Dude, “I thought it was an illusion, like the dream.”
“Are you saying you think dreams aren’t real?”
“Well, I thought maybe the plant, the ayahuasca…”
The old man cut him off.
“Don’t be foolish. They’re as real as you and me. Here, let’s sit and talk a while.”
Close to the river they sat on the rocks as the water swirled around them in blue eddying pools. Dude noticed that the day was incredibly clear, and that the river itself had a flow or direction that seemed to have purpose and was no distraction at all.
“Some plants have a special relationship with men,” the old man began.
“Many men judge plants to be stupid because they see they have no brain. It’s true of course, plants have no brain at all. But plants have consciousness and respond to light and sound and the feeling of men. So never confuse brains or central nervous systems with consciousness. And plants are rooted, not in just clay or sand or mud. Sometimes they are more firmly rooted in reality than men. This ayahuasca vine is a healer and psychedelic. When we cut the outer sections we are careful to leave the outer skin intact. By next year they’ll have grown back. Some plants are good at healing, right?”
“I guess so. Many plants grow back fast.”
“And plants can heal. Look at penicillin. You ever use Neosporin?”
“Sure.”
“It’s related to penicillin. As far as plants go it’s a stupid plant, just a mold really, kind of primitive. Imagine how more evolved this vine is, and the relation is has with the insects and birds and monkeys…even men. I tell you, my friend, right now eighty-five percent of medicines come from organic sources, and they’ve only scratched the surface. It’s a pharmacy we’re sitting in, a vast pharmacy.”
Dude looked at the trees and plants surrounding them. Certainly there could be more. There was always more to everything.
“So the treasure here isn’t the El Dorado the Spaniards were seeking.”
“The treasure here isn’t gold at all. It’s green. If you want healing, healing on a molecular level, this is it. Remember it. Use it for what it’s good for. Nothing else. It’s what God intended, that’s all.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but what about the jaguars, why did I see jaguars?”
“That’s simple enough, Amigo. In your heart you’re a jaguar. You just saw a reflection of your knowing self.”
“But I’m no jaguar, I’m lost right now. I’m always lost. I have no focus. I never know where the hell I am.”
“Don’t worry, this feeling will pass. You're young, a cub really. You’re not really lost; you’re just on an excursion, an excursion of both mind and body. Jaguars are the wisest cats in the new world, and the most powerful. They always find their way home.”
The others woke up and were starting to appear. It was time to eat and leave. Dude and Hugo bid goodbye to the old man and Rima with the knowing eyes, who was wearing the compass and chain around her neck.
As they were leaving, Dude gave his shirt pocket a pat to check if the seeds were still there.
They were.
Return to Santa Cruz
When Dude got back to the hotel and was going up to his room and getting his key, he asked the concierge for an envelope and paper. He sat down in his room at the dresser and wrote a short note to Alex, giving him instructions on how to sprout the seeds. It was the only communication with the boy he’d had in weeks. The note was short, the letter was thin. All in all if you had to judge it from the outside, it wasn’t much. About the most valuable thing about it was the stamp.
Two days later Dude was getting into a cab at night to head into town. Canadian Steve told him there was a rumor going around that some agents from the DEA had busted one of the two brothers and was searching for the other. The cab had two passengers in it already but Dude was willing to share and took a seat in front next to the driver. As they pulled away from the hotel he felt cold steel pressed on the back of his neck between the top of his spine and his head.
A voice said, “You’re under arrest.”
He never even made it to dinner.
Later, as he sat in the damp cell in center 42 watching pairs of cockroaches slow-dancing across the floor, our Excitable Boy remembered the words of the immortal Warren Zevon.
“I’m hiding in Honduras
I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers guns and money
The sh*t has hit the fan.”
Yes, he wasn’t in Honduras and yes, he wasn’t being realistic. But then again, when have you ever known Dude to be realistic?
Never.
Not in this lifetime anyway.
The Road of Death
When the DEA left Center 42 with the prisoners in back of the truck it was temprano en la manana-still dark. That was usually early for Lenny and Phil to wake up.
Their plan was to take them to a lock-up in the capital, La Paz where, unlike in Santa Cruz, the officials could not be bribed. It was probably a mistake. The only way there was by a single road named El Camino del Muerte that wound its way up, into the Eastern Cordillera or Cordillera Oriental of the Andes and was called that simply because it was a treacherous single-lane tract, with many switch-backs, at times steep, and many buses of Indians had gone down there, like a ship at sea, falling over its edge and drowning in its canyons, which were common, as the altitude climbed from sea-level in the yungas, or valleys, to fourteen thousand feet near La Paz.
It had a reputation for danger. This day it would keep its reputation… in spades.
As they pulled out of town the forest began to surround the road. It was cool and still early. An hour later the dew was still on the grass, and the leaves, and the steel barrels of the AKs held by the primos (or cousins) of the two brothers in the truck. They secreted themselves in the forest. Hugo had seen to that. Dude knew nothing about this. He was only along for the ride. Handcuffed to the other two for crimes of his own, they jostled and bumped along the road in the back of the truck. On the truck rolled, deeper and deeper into the gaping mouth of the forest. There would be no arrival at the capital and no turning back on this trip.
Yet there would be a stop.
A tree had fallen across the road. One agent stepped down to inspect.
“We’ll just use the winch and pull it aside,” he told the other who remained in the cab.
“It’s OK,” the second one answered, “we’ve got all day.”
The first one went to the trunk of the tree to take a closer look.
When the agent came to the trunk he didn’t see a break or an uprooting. He saw it had been cut.
He noticed the forest go quiet, quiet as a tomb.
When he considered both the cut and the quiet he knew he was dead.
A shot rang out of the shadows proclaiming liberty. The other barrels grew so hot they turned the dew to steam. The prisoners regained their freedom and along with the gunmen gained the safety of the forest. Their laughter was soon muffled by the leaves and the creepers and lianas, and the clearing went silent save for the drip drip dripping of scarlet death as it stained and soaked the dry fallen leaves as if trying to give them new life.
They walked between the trees on a footpath and the footpath gave way to a trail, the trail to a dirt road where their jeeps were lying in wait. From there it was to the skirts on the outskirts of town. With warm skirts the beer was always so cool. They entered Esmeralda’s place from the back and took her by surprise.
She was elated.
Each found his favorite skirt or woman, same thing. These wild-eyed pistol-wavers weren’t afraid to die, yet they weren’t afraid to party either.
That’s how they do it in the tropics.
Real simple.
