Carl Hiaasen – Native Tongue

Chelsea nodded. “What do we give the winner? Mr. Five Million, I mean.”

“A car, Jesus Christ.” Kingsbury looked at him as if he were an idiot. A few years earlier, Disney World had given away an automobile every day for an entire summer. Kingsbury had never gotten over it. “Make it a Corvette,” he told Chelsea.

“All right, but you’re looking at forty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

Kingsbury extended his lower lip so far that it seemed to touch his nose; for a moment he wore the pensive look of a caged orangutan. “Forty grand,” he repeated quietly. “That’s brand new, I suppose.”

“When you give one away, yes. Ordinarily the cars should be new.”

“Unless they’re classics.” Kingsbury winked. “Make it a classic. Say, a 1964 Ford Falcon. You don’t see many of those babies.”

“Sure don’t.”

“A Falcon convertible, geez, we could probably pick one up for twenty-five hundred.”

“Probably,” agreed Chelsea, not even pretending enthusiasm.

“Well, move on it.” Francis X. Kingsbury thumbed him out of the office. “And tell Pedro, get his ass in here.”

Pedro Luz was in the executive gym, bench-pressing a bottle of stanozolol tablets. He was letting the tiny pink pills drop one by one into his mouth.

A man named Churrito, lounging on a Nautilus, said: “Hiss very bad for liver.”

“Very good for muscles,” said Pedro Luz, mimicking the accent.

Churrito was his latest hire to the security squad at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. He had accompanied Pedro Luz on his mission to Miami, but had declined to participate in the beating. Pedro Luz was still miffed about what had happened—the old lady chomping off the top joint of his right index finger.

“You’re useless,” he had told Churrito afterward.

“I am a soldier,” Churrito had replied. “I dun hit no wooman.”

Unlike the other security guards hired by Pedro Luz, Churrito had not been a crooked cop. He was a Nicaraguan contra who had moved to Florida when things were bleak, and had not gotten around to moving back.

While Churrito was pleased at the prospect of democracy taking seed in his homeland, he suspected that true economic prosperity was many years away. Elections notwithstanding, Churrito’s buddies were still stuck in the border hills, frying green bananas and dynamiting the rivers for fish. Meanwhile his uncle, formerly a sergeant in Somoza’s National Guard, now lived with a twenty-two-year-old stewardess in a high-rise condo on Key Biscayne. To Churrito this seemed like a pretty good advertisement for staying right where he was.

Pedro Luz had hired him because he looked mean, and because he’d said he had killed people.

“Comunistas,” Churrito had specified, that night at the old lady’s apartment. “I only kill commoonists. And I dun hit no wooman.”

And now here he was, lecturing Pedro Luz about the perils of anabolic steroids.

“Make you face like balloon.”

“Shut up,” said Pedro Luz. He was wondering if the hospital in Key Largo would sell him extra bags of dextrose water for the IV. Grind up the stanozolols, drop them in the mix and everything would be fine again.

“Make you bulls shrink, too.”

“That’s enough,” Pedro Luz said.

Churrito held up two fingers. “Dis big. Like BBs.”

“Quiet,” said Pedro Luz, “or I call a friend a mine at INS.” He couldn’t decide whether to fire the guy or beat him up. He knew which would give more pleasure.

“They got, like, three flights a day to Managua,” he said to Churrito. “You getting homesick?”

The Nicaraguan grimaced.

“I didn’t think so,” said Pedro Luz. “So shut up about my medicines.”

Charles Chelsea appeared at the foot of the weight bench. He had never seen Pedro Luz without a shirt, and couldn’t conceal his awe at the freakish physique—the hairless bronze trunk of a chest, cantaloupe biceps, veins as thick as a garden hose. Chelsea didn’t recognize the other fellow—shorter and sinewy, with skin the color of nutmeg.

“I’m working out,” said Pedro Luz.

“Mr. Kingsbury needs to see you.”

“Who ees that?” Churrito said.

Pedro Luz sat up. “That be the boss.”

“Right away,” said Charles Chelsea.

“Can I go?” asked Churrito. He didn’t want to miss an opportunity to meet the boss; according to his uncle, that’s what success in America was all about. Kissing ass.

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