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Morocco 1987 - David Noble, French Foreign Legion
Johnny Truffles speaking. Giovanni Garibaldi Tartufo.
HARLEM, FORTY MINUTES LATER - THE LENOX LOUNGE
Black Jacket just came through the door. By himself. He's looking around. He's looking for his girlfriend, Roxanne.
FIVE WEEKS LATER
I'll tell you about the rest of that night some other time . . . the night the feds came down on me in the Harlem jazz joint and locked me up. The night of the front-page melee.
Pause now to watch this woman in rag-doll free fall or move her with your cursor and left click.
I'm here on one of the Sea Islands off Beaufort, South Carolina, marooned. I'm in Gullah-Land, in The Low Country, where there are ragged stumps on the beach, lots of them, and where hurricanes and tropical storms have piled huge trees at all angles among the many still standing along the shoreline. This place still looks like it must have looked to the Spanish when they landed here in 1520.
We're here where there are alligators in the long Congo lagoon, where big ferns and ancient cycads stand among the thick palmettos, where Spanish moss clings like ghost-love to the live oaks, where the spots are jumpin' and the herons, egrets, terns, gulls, pelicans, ibis, and skimmers hunt and perform.
So we're stuck here, shipwrecked, marooned, stranded in the jungle.
I bent the propellors of the Baja cigarette boat (twin 454 Mercs) and it's stashed now, totally hidden under the island debris we collected after coming ashore. It was the first job.
The damage was my fault, not hers. Three nights ago I hit some floating wood at about 75 miles an hour.
We're headed for Havana, and I'll tell you more about how this came to be in a few minutes.
Right now, I'm cleaning my four handguns, all revolvers. I'm cleaning and oiling the small S&W Chief's Special with the +P punch, the blue Detective Special, the S&W stainless steel Model 66 workhorse, and the imposing blue Colt Python with the long barrel. I may need every one before this is over.
The breakout went perfectly. While I was on Riker's, my eye was always on ways out. I was always looking. There were three or four methods I could have used, but I went for the vault-and-swim. It seemed like something they wouldn't expect because they hadn't seen it before.
Once I settled on the plan, it took me only four days to make the fiberglass pole, assisted in the shop by this old friend from high school, Bobby Three-Heads. Hoboken. He got his name after somebody told him nobody could be so ugly and have only one head. And we made the oak plantbox too, which I was able to slip into place against the fence during my evening walk . . . about two hours before I made my move.
So in the gloaming, just before darkness fell, when there were only a few minutes left for me to see the box on approach, I did it . . . four or five loose steps forward, then into a trot as I began to line up the pole and adjust my moves to its heavy and rhythmic rippling, then the burst toward the plantbox with all I had . . . just like I'd done it in high school.
I felt it sock in solid, and the pole bent quickly into its deep arc. I rose slowly at first, then faster, and then the final whip and spring and leap up over the razorwire -- clearing it by at least six inches, maybe a foot.
I came down hard but I did three fast rolls, then it was up on my feet and off to the water, flat out. No sirens, no searchlights, no alarms, no gunfire. I was surprised. I was expecting the whole show and got none of it.
The deal was, a cigarette boat would be waiting about fifty yards offshore. In one of the tackle trunks would be maps, cash, credit cards, fake IDs, clothes, my guns, a cell phone, and a duffel bag I couldn't open. This boat would be heavy on the green lights -- that's how I'd know what to swim to. The man at the wheel would head out into Long Island Sound and then bolt. I'd be on my own after that.
In return for this boat and a driver for ten minutes, I would stop at a marina north of Ocean City two days later and pick up a woman at dawn. After that, Cuba. Drop her off, and then some nights at the Floridita for me. The two of us would ride at night, sleep and hang out during the day.
A friend of my father's, Frankie Panorama, visited one afternoon and laid out the boat part for me, so I knew it was for real and would happen as described. I could depend on it.
"That's it, Dutto," he said as he was standing up.
Frankie was smiling when he left, and I wasn't really sure about what. Maybe he just loved the getaway plan. Maybe there would be some kind of surprise.
The surprise came at that marina in Maryland, at dawn. I'm coming in from a night of hard chargin'. I'm cutting the engines and floating into my spot. It's very quiet as I'm tying the boat down, and it's still quiet all the time I'm stretched out on the bow.
But within an hour, through the early-morning fog, just like Frankie said it would, a beat-up fishing boat floats into view; it's barely making a ripple as it heads out to sea.
On deck is Floyd Z, dressed for some deep-sea board meeting, four other sharp-dressed men, and a girl I soon recognize as Roxanne.
Then it happens. One of the men runs to the foredeck and motions to the others. Except for her, they all rush to join him. They're looking out into the fog, out toward the Atlantic. Roxanne goes aft, drops down into the water carrying nothing, and swims back toward me.
And now we're here, marooned.
FOUR DAYS AFTER THAT
I just finished talking to Jefferson on the cell phone. He says Wanda has taken a vacation week, but things are smooth on 52nd St., Birdland Street.
I'm beginning to like it here. I'm beginning to like the pace of things, the syrup slowness of it all. My watch is off. I'm beginning to wonder if I should ever leave. I'm thinking humans were designed to live like this.
Sunsets that go on forever in all shades of gray and blue and purple and yellow and orange. Slow ocean sunrises.
And Roxanne and I just slipped into Beaufort and bought a hot-rod. In her name. It's a red 69 Camaro Super Sport -- coupe, four-speed, finely tuned and tight, 375 horsepower, posi-traction rear end. Not what you would expect to see me in. We're gonna keep it until we decide what to do -- get the boat fixed, drive to the Keys, or split up.
We're cruising around this other Sea Island, St. Helena, at 30 miles an hour, with all that power and acceleration in reserve. We're taking in the bright and shadowy scenery. We're finding out what's around the next curve, what's at the end of the next straightaway. It's a tough life here on St. Helena at 30 miles an hour.
Yesterday, around dusk, we were walking on a wide path about a mile behind the dunes and discovered a huge pond at the edge of a marsh where birds of all shapes and sizes were zooming in to roost. The trees were thick with them. The sky was full of them. There were thousands, filling the air around us as if we were mere shrubs or branches, flocking in from miles around to gather at this one pond for the night.
Last night Roxanne told me several secrets from her late teens. I learned that her mother died under mysterious circumstances when she was fifteen, and during the three years before she left home for college she lived with her father and his new wife, who was very strict. She says that her experiences with this woman, who was only a few years older than she was and whose name was Helen, made her what she is today. Her father's more temperate nature, and her mother's, are absent within her.
"Everything was erased by Helen," she says, "and I was re-formed."
I'm not sure about what parts of her many cryptic and partially told stories I should believe.
I'm drinking a 6 oz. Grapette. She's drinking Topo Chico mineral water from this beautiful clear bottle and she's peeling fresh shrimp. Every now and then she slips one between my teeth; every now and then we pull over and take a closer look at things.
A vision of someone else appears, but I give my attention back to Roxanne.
And every now and then we have these fights. One was a death-match about being here like this. She's in love with this sweet Cubano she met two months ago in a salsa club, so she had to take an emergency leave from NYU and escape from Floyd Z and get to Havana to pursue this romance while it is still hot. And she has to do it in this cigarette boat with me as the driver.
No problem with any of these details so far. It was a good deal. We both got what we wanted. And the timing was good for both of us. But as Rousseau says, she's got a streak of pure strato.
"I've always wanted to get married, and he asked me," she says. "This looks like the real thing."
I keep a straight face for three days while she talks like this, but then the straight face gets harder to keep, and once, a smile got through. She doesn't like the smile, so she asks me what I'm smiling about.
"You," I say. "I'm smiling about you."
She wants to know why.
I ask her how well Juan Castro Guevara El Salsa knows her. I don't even ask how well she knows him.
It blows. Scorched earth. And she will go low. I will too. Before it's over, she's called me a judgmental jerk, a pronouncer, a base Neanderthal, a cad, a fop, a narcissist, a signifying monkey, an American, an amazing abomination, and an animal.
She says I'm controlling, cynical, aggressive, argumentative, sneaky, deeply angry and hostile, violent, mean, rude, self-destructive, and crazy. She tells me I hate women and I got no class. I'm really just a punk hoodlum with no respect for money or authority.
While she performs, I draw true runes into the sand with a stick.
In the inspiring heat of the moment I say she's just another contempo sensation-seeker, just another sleep-around thong with a hungry ego who's got to get stroked, got to get the reassurance, got to get the new fix. I say it's the air she breathes. Any blind man could see it.
She acts like this is a new idea, and as she pauses and pretends to consider it, I take the moment to give her some credit. I tell her she has a style, which I describe as the Euro-Movie Exquisite.
"You're a girl who falls in love. You love them, and the possibilities that come along with them. And then you examine these possibilities. And sometimes things get complicated, which is engaging in its own right."
Behind us in the shade is the stainless steel cooler of coolers. Shrimp, crabmeat, raw oysters, limes and lemons, fruit juices, nectars, bright waters. It's beautiful.
She's in a rage, so I pop a bottle of champagne, dripping with icewater, and pour some into a thin flute, hold the top of the flute up to my ear, and listen to the bubbles.
She doesn't want any of this champagne. She wants to smash her glass against a palmetto, she wants to throw the nearly full bottle out into the waves, she wants to stomp the cooler, barefoot, with her heel, and really put a dent into it; she wants to throw a log at me. But she never threatens to turn me in.
That was the essence of it.
When it happened, we were stretched out on the palmetto-frond mat I'd made, in the shade of our canvas fly, by the boat. That's where we're spending most of our time. It's beach view, ocean front, 24 hours a day.
All things on this island warm to about 98.6 degrees as the day moves along, so you become a living, breathing part of this aboriginal stew.
The gray-blue water is warm, and sometimes we swim out to where it is shoulder-deep, and float together. My arms around her waist. Her arms around my neck. Out there we bounce slowly in rhythm with the waves and play around.
And now this super-sport Chevrolet.
THE NEXT NIGHT
We bought a load of expedition equipment this afternoon in Beaufort's only hunting and camping shop and hauled it out here to the island.
It's about 1:00 now, and we're both sort of asleep, under the fly, beside the boat, inside the mosquito net. The surf is out there breaking and rolling. We're under a thin cotton sheet, on top of our two sleeping bags, on the heavy-duty XL air mattress. And we've got these eider-down pillows.
The oil lamp is burning low and Roxanne's arm is across my chest. Every now and then she moves a little and makes these dream-sounds.
The phone rings. I thought I had it turned off, and I'm thinking that tomorrow it goes in the ocean. So I don't answer. It wakes her up, though, and after a few moments we begin talking slowly.
"What do you think," she asks slowly.
"About what?"
"About this. About being here. About going on to Cuba."
I tell her that Cuba's looking less attractive all the time.
"I'm an American," I say. "That's a police state run by some banana republic orator in fatigues who was once a high-minded revolutionary. I'm thinking I'll wait until the Mob gets it back. How old is Castro?"
"Johnny," she says, "who cares? What do you think we should do? Do you think we should split up?"
"I want to stay here awhile."
"You're avoiding the question," she tells me.
"That's up to you. I'll get the boat fixed and deliver you. That was the deal. I'll be pleased to do that. Or you can stay, or you can take the car and drive down to the Keys. Salsa Man will find a way to get you across."
"You're funny," she says.
"And you're funny-looking," I tell her.
TWO MONTHS LATER
I'm back in the city and I'm incognito. To some, that's my new name -- Giovanni Incognito, and for others I'm using the name I was born with -- Giovanni Garibaldi Tartufo. And if you don't like these names, you can take your problem to the United Nations.
I'm living out here at Brighton Beach, in the far reaches of Brooklyn, with the Russians. Everything's Russian here. I call all the men Kalishnikov or Tsar and, except for the Asian, I call all the women Volga. Nobody seems to mind.
Most of these Russians are hard cases. They're fierce, mean, they got no sense of humor, no style, and what they want is the dollar. They're no mystery, they're simple, and I get along fine with them. This is a good place for a fugitive from justice.
I bought this house last month. I can see Coney Island from the small porch off my upstairs bedroom, and from the front porch I can see the boardwalk, the beach, and the Atlantic.
It's the same ocean that rolls up on the Sea Islands, but you could never tell by the appearance. I didn't want to leave there, the temptation to stretch out was strong as sin, but I drove north. And I'm here.
Before leaving, though, I did some soil tests and bought two hundred acres of good-looking farm land. I have a plan for these two hundred acres, where the world's finest long-staple cotton was once grown. My plan leads to this.
The last dance for Roxanne and me erupted late one afternoon in this lagoon-side Gullah bar we both loved. There was a big screen porch with swings and hammocks, and we would stretch out and listen to the music coming from inside. Low-Country soul and afro-reggae jukebox. Soft lights. Rough cypress top to bottom. Some pink and yellow and lime neon.
That night, after we'd called it a day, she called Havana and got Juan Castro Guevara El Salsa on the line. She hadn't talked to him once since we left the marina in Maryland. It had been two weeks.
They decided to get married in Rio. The travel for her would be much simpler (no need for some other country first), and besides, it would be fun.
So she flew out of Savannah the next afternoon and that was it. She's Mrs. Salsa, who had a Corcovado-Ipanema-Bossa Nova honeymoon. She's a wife. Maybe they've stayed in Cuba. Maybe she's got him up here by now, in New York.
I was on the island for more than a month.
Sometimes at night I put on my disguise, step into the Camaro, get behind the 396 cubic inch V-8, and go through the gears, winding them out -- toward the Brooklyn Bridge, onto the Brooklyn Bridge, and across the Brooklyn Bridge.
I slip into Manhattan and then drive uptown, up to Birdland Street, wildly enough to match any taxi driver. Then I roar into my favorite garage, half a block from my place. Rousseau and Jefferson and I have some fun for a few hours, but I don't stay too long. I develop a feel for when I should leave, and I go by that. It's all mojo.
I'm putting a plan into shape.
POP POP POP-POP-POP
One heron.
