The Edible Exile Read online

Sixto waited until Cuervo was done and helped him step down from the stair pedals. Cuervo took a lavender bath towel and shuffled toward the kitchen.

  When he came back, holding a tall club soda, he noticed that Sixto had taken his jacket off. He was sitting in Cuervo’s favorite rattan chair, the one nearest the picture window.

  “Well, did you call for the barber?”

  “Not yet,” said Sixto, staring. “There is news from Managua, no?”

  “Yes,” said Cuervo, toweling the pink folds of his neck. “The fight is over.”

  * * *

  Zacharias came over while the NBC crew was setting up in Cuervo’s living room. The banker said he wanted to watch the big man do his thing.

  Sixto went into the master bathroom, where a makeup man was dusting a thin brush under Cuervo’s iguana-like eyes. Sixto asked Cuervo if he could invite two of his friends up to the penthouse to see the live TV spot. “Certainly,” Cuervo said. “Sixto, what do you think of this shirt?” A baby-blue guayabera, custom-made at a men’s shop in Bal Harbour.

  “Very handsome,” said the bodyguard, thinking: Where are the ones he usually wears, the ones with the tiny polo ponies on the breast?

  * * *

  The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, and Vincent Pucci got on. When he pressed the button marked PH, a dark young woman passenger smiled at him and said, “You must be the one who sent the chickens.”

  “That’s me,” said Pucci. “And you must be Sixto’s cousin. Pleased to meet you.”

  Sixto was waiting for them in the hallway outside the penthouse. He led them quietly into the living room, and they sat down behind the camera crew and its contraptions. Three portable kliegs were aimed at Cuervo, who was perspiring voluminously. He was so damp that the tiny flesh-colored earphone kept falling out, landing like a spider on the shoulder of his guayabera. Zacharias hovered behind the light stems, sucking noisily on ice cubes. “Nice haircut,” he called out to Cuervo.

  In Spanish, Elena whispered to Sixto: “Look at this place. How does he afford it?”

  Sixto didn’t answer.

  Elena pointed at a huge silver fish on the wall, and Sixto told her it was a tarpon, more than a hundred pounds. Cuervo had caught it in the Keys, on a fishing trip with George Bush. Elena asked why they had not eaten the fish instead of mounting it, and Sixto said he didn’t know.

  At exactly 6:48, one of the TV crew—a shaggy man in tinted blue glasses—aimed a finger at Cuervo, and Tom Brokaw began asking questions via satellite from New York. Without a monitor, no one in the penthouse could see the newsman. However, Cuervo could hear the famous voice on the earpiece, which he mashed against his head with two nervous fingers. The interview lasted only two minutes and ten seconds, but everyone agreed that Cuervo had done a nice job. Elena was particularly impressed with his flawless English.

  It took about an hour for the NBC crew to pack and clear out, during which time Cuervo and Elena talked about the newest peace plan. Elena said she had lost track of them all, and Cuervo said yes, it got confusing. Sixto was waiting for Cuervo to ask Elena about the fighting in the countryside, but he did not.

  Afterwards, Zacharias announced that they should all have a drink to celebrate.

  “Celebrate what?” Sixto asked sharply.

  “I’ll have a martini,” Cuervo said.

  “Make mine a beer,” Vincent Pucci said.

  Elena said she would love a glass of cold water. “With ice cubes,” she added. “I forgot how much I liked ice cubes.”

  When they were settled in with their drinks, Sixto turned to Pucci and said, “Now I would like you to tell the story of the chickens.”

  “Jeez, it was no big deal,” Pucci said. “It was a breeze.”

  “You saved our lives,” Elena said.

  “What?” Zacharias asked. “What was a breeze?” Cuervo, too, said he would like to hear the story, though he had no idea where it would lead.

  So Pucci told how he had gotten the chickens to a rebel outpost in the hills of northeastern Nicaragua.

  “In three days,” Sixto declared. “Seven hundred chickens.”

  “Yeah, but let’s talk fresh,” Zacharias said, rolling some gin around his cheeks.

  Pucci laughed. “Hell, these birds were alive,” he said. “Can’t get much fresher than that.”

  Cuervo shifted slightly in the big rattan chair. In a chilly voice he said, “We are all very grateful, Mr. Pucci. And impressed.”

  “It’s nothing. You just gotta know the right people.”

  Pointedly, Zacharias said, “Our operation is much more sensitive. And complicated.”

  “And slower,” Elena remarked, an edge to her voice.

  “We have to take certain precautions,” the banker went on. “The logistics cannot be compared.”

  Sixto said, “He even fronted us the chickens.”

  Elena looked at Pucci as if he were Saint Francis. “You did?”

  “Jeez, it was just chickens. What are we talkin’, a couple grand? Come on.”

  In a formal tone, Sixto addressed Cuervo. “Mr. Pucci hasn’t been paid yet.”

  Here Zacharias lost his slick composure. “So what!” he snapped at Sixto. “You pay him. It wasn’t our deal. You’re the one set this up.”

  But Cuervo didn’t wish to argue. He told Sixto to go to the safe in the bedroom and get what was necessary.

  The bodyguard came back with five thousand cash, in a bankroll. Zacharias recognized the stamp on the wrapper.

  Sixto put the money in Pucci’s pudgy hand. Pucci looked over at Elena. “You were down there?” he asked.

  Elena said yes, but it wasn’t so bad.

  Pucci said, “Is it worth another trip? I mean, I can get five hundred more on a DC-6 tomorrow—”

  “No,” Elena said. “It’s over.”

  Pucci handed the money back to Sixto. “Don’t worry about the dough,” he said. “I’ll make it back on the voodoos. Jack ’em up another seventy cents a bird, they don’t care.”

  Cuervo took a very long sip from his martini, while Zacharias made a noise like he was disgusted with the whole affair. Pucci knew where things were headed, knew it was time to go home. He stood up, smoothed his lime-colored golf trousers, and thanked Cuervo for the beer. He smiled at Sixto and gave Elena a fatherly peck on the cheek. “I’ll find my way out,” he said.

  Elena waved. “Thank you, again,” she said.

  When Cuervo looked up from his martini, Sixto had the Browning on his lap.

  “What is it now?” Cuervo asked sternly.

  “Chow time,” said the bodyguard.

  * * *

  Sixto set a lovely table.

  “Where did you learn to do this?” Elena asked.

  “He entertains often,” Sixto replied, jerking his head toward Cuervo, “so I learned to be a butler.” He took his cousin’s hand and squeezed it. “Go look around the place,” he told her. “Let us be alone for a while.”

  Cuervo sat stiffly in the tallest chair. His hands were folded across his belly in a manner meant to indicate impatience, but that was an act. Cuervo was worried.

  “Something must be done,” Sixto said.

  “Like what? Sadly, we lost the war. It’s the end.”

  “But not for this life of yours, no?” Sixto poured another glass of wine for Cuervo. The label on the bottle said it came from Chile. “You should finish this,” Sixto said.

  “What do you want from me? These rich Americans, the Ducklings—already they’re looking for new communists to fight, a new crusade. There will be no more money for our people.”

  Sixto thought, None of “our people” live in penthouses.

  “How much is left in the bank?” he said to Cuervo.

  “You should have asked Zacharias before you sent him home.”

  “I didn’t send him anywhere. He said the gun made him nervous.”

  “You should put it away,” Cuervo said, “so we can talk as friends.”

  “How much i
s this place worth?” Sixto asked. “A million dollars? More?”

  “That’s a rude question.”

  “But it would pay for lots of chickens, no?”

  “Now you’re talking nonsense,” said Cuervo. “If not for men like me, nobody would give a shit about our people. Nobody in this country could find Managua on a map. Who went on Face the Nation to tell the world? Who does Brokaw call on for interviews?”

  “Eat,” Sixto said.

  Dinner was sautéed grouper topped with hearts of palm and diced Florida lobster. Afterwards Sixto told Elena that he and Cuervo were going out for the night. He said she was welcome to stay in one of the guest rooms, and that she shouldn’t bother to wait up.

  * * *

  He had trouble finding a truck, so he called Vincent Pucci, who said it was no problem. Later that night, Zacharias was puzzled to see a seventeen-foot U-Haul pulling up to his house in Coconut Grove; he’d been expecting Cuervo’s slate-gray Mercedes. There were more surprises to come, at gunpoint.

  The boat that took the men to sea belonged to a shrimper on Virginia Key. Back in Nicaragua, Sixto’s father had been a fisherman, and Sixto had known how to read the tides since the age of fourteen. The shrimper was happy to loan out his trawler for a thousand dollars cash, which Sixto had taken from Cuervo’s crocodile-skin billfold.

  It was a calm night, an easy ride. They were three miles off Key Biscayne when Sixto shut off the engine. He could see the condo tower topped by Cuervo’s penthouse, where his cousin was spending a mosquito-free night. Sixto could also make out the Bear Cut Bridge and the merry lights of the Sonesta Beach Hotel, where sometimes Cuervo would meet women.

  Women he paid for with money that should have gone to los comandos.

  On the deck of the boat, Zacharias wriggled like a bug-eyed sardine. He was hog-tied with a yellow ski rope clipped to a fifty-pound dumbbell. His gold diamond-studded wristwatch added more ballast. A strip of black duct tape covered his mouth.

  Cuervo was also bound with ski rope, though no gym weights had been added. As a courtesy, Sixto peeled the tape from his lips.

  First came the angry guilt trip: “You would be in prison if it weren’t for me! For shooting that American newsman!”

  “I wasn’t the one who did it. You know that.”

  “They were frantic to lock somebody up! You were in the Guard, you were there when it happened, so who’s to say? It was me who spoke up for you, and this is how I’m repaid? I got you out of the country. Brought you here to Miami and gave you a respectable position.”

  Sixto said he was grateful. However, certain facts could not be swept aside. Cuervo’s lifestyle in exile was as luxurious as the late General Somoza’s, while in the hills Elena and the other rebels were frying up rodents for breakfast.

  Next Cuervo tried negotiating: “Do you want money? A foundation owns the penthouse, but there are other resources available to me.”

  “A foundation?”

  “Zacharias set it up. For tax reasons, he said. Ask him yourself.”

  The squirming Zacharias grunted some sort of objection, as if he understood Spanish. His fine shoes squeaked on the slick deck.

  To Sixto, the penthouse was only a garish reminder of what had gone wrong, and how slow he’d been to take notice. He wasn’t interested in having a conversation with Zacharias, the man who took one percent just for counting the money. Sixto gathered him up and dropped him overboard.

  Cuervo gasped at the sound of the banker hitting the water. The boat barely rocked. Within moments the bubbles and swirls were gone, and the ocean turned velvet again. The cabin lights cast a soft glow on the shrimp nets hanging slack from the outriggers.

  Sixto yanked Cuervo upright and sat him against the transom.

  “Why can’t you understand?” Cuervo said in a voice much higher than the one he’d used with Tom Brokaw. “There was no other way to accomplish what we did. From the bottom to the top, everybody had their hands out! Try to appreciate the difficulty of our situation.”

  Sixto had a tendency to oversimplify. That he knew about himself. Still, some things were impossible to rationalize no matter how many angles were considered—for example, his boss riding down Brickell Avenue in a climate-controlled German sedan while in the jungle Elena’s boots were rotting off her feet.

  Ironically, Sixto had never thought much about the politics behind the war, the competing ideologies. Were it not for loyalty to a family friend, he might have easily ended up on the opposite side. He might still be living in Managua, wearing the uniform of a Sandinista officer.

  But he was here, in the richest country in the world, bodyguard to a famed freedom fighter who once had his photograph taken with Oliver North.

  Perhaps it had been cruel to make Cuervo help move the Nautilus machine from the penthouse to the truck and then onto the shrimp boat, but Sixto couldn’t risk pulling a muscle doing it all by himself. He knew he would need all of his strength later.

  Cuervo had quickly figured out what was coming, though he’d hoped to talk Sixto out of it. Now he understood there was no chance.

  “Just use the damn gun on me,” he rasped bitterly.

  “You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Sixto said.

  He stood Cuervo on the stair-climber and tied his bound wrists to the handlebar. Then he removed Cuervo’s loafers, tossed them over the stern, and handcuffed one tan ankle to the foot pedals.

  “They would’ve got nothing all those years, your cousin and the others, no food or weapons, if it weren’t for me,” Cuervo said. “I was the public face of the pro-democracy resistance!”

  It was a line often used to introduce Cuervo at private fund-raisers. Sixto had heard it many times.

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  Flexing his knees, he braced both arms against the stem of the Nautilus machine and pushed as hard as he could until it toppled sideways over the gunwale. At the end, he had to jump clear to avoid being snagged by the steel footing.

  The shrimper had left a cooler on the boat, and Sixto helped himself to an American beer. He darkened the cabin and sat on the stern, watching a lighthouse wink on a distant reef to the south. He was familiar with the freshwater bull sharks of Lake Nicaragua, but he knew nothing about great whites except that they were man-eaters.

  Perhaps one would make an exception for Cuervo.

  About the Author

  Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives with his incredibly tolerant family. He is the author of several bestselling novels, including Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case, Skinny Dip, Nature Girl, Star Island, and, most recently, Bad Monkey. He has also written a number of novels for young readers: Hoot, Flush, Scat, and Chomp. At age twenty-three, he joined the Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the paper’s weekly magazine and later its prizewinning investigations team. Since 1985, Hiaasen has been writing a regular column, which still appears most Sundays in the Herald’s opinion-and-editorial section. Dance of the Reptiles, a new collection of his columns, will be published in January 2014 by Vintage.

  For more stories by this and other great authors, visit Byliner.com.

  Photograph by Tim Chapman

  About Byliner

  Byliner offers unlimited stories from the world's best authors and publications. The complete library of Byliner Originals—including bestselling fiction and nonfiction e-books by Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby, Jon Krakauer, Ann Patchett, Carl Hiaasen, Alexandra Fuller, Elmore Leonard, and many more—is available in the Byliner subscription service and wherever e-books are sold.

  Read more at Byliner.com.

  Follow us:

  Twitter.com/thebyliner

  Facebook.com/byliner

  If you enjoyed The Edible Exile, you’ll also enjoy …

  Read an excerpt at Byliner.com

  Everyone’s Reading Bastard

  By Nick Hornby

  Newspaper columnist Elaine Harri
s has always written about her life with husband Charlie. Her readers count on full disclosure from her, but what no one—especially Charlie—anticipates, only a week after the couple decide to divorce, is the speed with which she crucifies him in print. Only a storyteller like Hornby—who’s given us so many unforgettable novels of comedy and heartbreak (High Fidelity, About a Boy, Juliet, Naked)—could conceive of an average guy trying to survive an ex’s wrath gone viral. His latest rollicking account of love’s fallout should be instructive: Sometimes no one wins. Sorry, Charlie.

  If you enjoyed The Edible Exile, you’ll also enjoy …

  Read an excerpt at Byliner.com

  You Were Never Really Here

  By Jonathan Ames

  A hero whose favorite weapon is a hammer clearly has issues. Meet Joe, an ass-kicking and psychologically tormented guardian angel who rescues others but refuses to save himself. A former Marine and ex–FBI agent, he has seen one too many crime scenes and known too much trauma. Solitary and haunted, Joe prefers to be invisible, making his living rescuing young girls from the deadly clutches of the sex trade. But when a high-ranking New York politician hires him to extricate his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel, he uncovers a web of corruption that even he may not be able to unravel. In this shocking and suspenseful new novella, Ames—novelist, essayist, and creator of the HBO series Bored to Death—goes darker than noir.

  If you enjoyed The Edible Exile, you’ll also enjoy …

  Read an excerpt at Byliner.com

  How to Get Away with Murder in America

  Drug Lords, Dirty Pols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIA’s Master Killer

  By Evan Wright

  Albert San Pedro and Ricky Prado were boyhood pals in Miami. Albert, a.k.a. “the Maniac,” went on to become a figure of great influence in South Florida—and a major drug trafficker. Ricky, it’s believed, worked for him as a hit man, then was recruited into the CIA, where he was promoted into the agency’s highest echelons and implemented some of the country’s most sensitive post-9/11 counterterrorist operations—including the agency’s secret “targeted assassination unit”—all while, federal evidence suggests, taking part in additional killings for San Pedro. How to Get Away with Murder in America is an extraordinary investigation into conspiracy, corruption, and political maneuvering, and what it says about the highest levels of America’s national security establishment is nothing less than sobering.