Blood of Paradise

Assigned to protect an executive in El Salvador, Jude McManus, a young American bodyguard, is stunned when he is approached by Bill Malvasio, the corrupt ex-Chicago PD partner of his father, who enlists Jude's assistance in locating and bringing to El Salvador a third member of the former crew run by Malvasio, unaware of Malvasio's true motives. Original. 30,000 first printing.

Whatever Became of the Laugh Masters?

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

-Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands

1

Cocooned in a hammock at Playa El Zonte, Jude launched the siesta hour with a lusty tug from his beer, swaying beneath the thatched roof of a glorieta. Above, the sun was blistering; even the skirring wind off the ocean felt parched and hot. Below, the beach of black volcanic sand with its scatterings of smooth dark stone curled out to the point. He wondered what it would take to know-not suspect or hope or pretend but know-that the woman he spotted, out there on the rocks, was or wasn't the love of his life.

He knew her: Eileen Browning, fellow American. They'd bumped into each other here and there the past month at Santa María Mizata, Playa El Sunzal, most recently on the pier at La Libertad, browsing the fishmonger stalls. There, with the briny tang of ice-tubbed shrimp, mackerel, and boca colorada brewing all around them in the rippling heat, he'd almost convinced himself that Dr. Browning, as she hated to be called, had been coming on to him.

At this particular moment she walked the beach alone, sandals in hand, wearing a polka-dot halter and cutoffs and a wide-brimmed hat, eyes toward the water as she watched a stray dog take a crap in the shallows.

Mark that in your tourist guide, Jude thought, memorizing the spot where the dog crouched and guessing at the current so as to avoid an unpleasant step later. Meanwhile Eileen turned back and resumed her lazy march toward the glorieta, holding her hat atop her head against the scorching wind.

From their previous encounters, Jude had learned she was a marine's daughter turned scholar, down here for postdoctoral work in cultural anthropology. She was cataloging folk crafts-pottery, weaving, embroidery-before they disappeared forever. He liked that about her, the devotion to vanishing things. He liked a lot of things about her, actually. She'd grown up around strong men-raised by wolves, she put it-and was pretty in a smart-girl way, lanky and leggy with strawberry blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. There were those, he supposed, who might find fault with her large teeth and big boyish hands, her long skinny feet, but he was at that stage when these things seemed the true test of her loveliness-the endearing flaws that made her unique. Her perfection.

As she came closer it became clear she intended to stop and visit, and his heart kicked a little. He roused himself from his torpor, thinking: Comport yourself, soldier.

It was the heart of the dry season, the beginning of Lent. The surf camp was otherwise empty of foreigners, just the two of them. The restaurant and bar remained open, though, for day-trippers like Jude, drop-ins like Eileen.

Entering the thatch shade of the glorieta, she dropped her sandals, removed her hat, and shook out her hair. Her halter was knotted at the neck, revealing bikini tan lines striping over her shoulders to her back. Jude pictured the triangles of white skin around her nipples, then nudged the thought away, not wanting to be unchivalrous.

"We meet again." She perched herself on the nearest table, took out a kerchief and mopped her face and neck, then dusted sand off her shins. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were following me."

Her voice was a raspy alto, one more thing to like. Jude said, "If I was following you, I'd be behind you."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Point taken." Nodding at his beer, she said, "Mind if I . . . ?"

"No. No." He handed it to her and she knocked back a swig. He tried to picture her on campus, earthy babe of the brainy set. The bohemian broad.

"I'm going to want one of these." She handed back his beer and glanced over her shoulder. "Have you eaten yet?"

Behind her, two indígena women worked the kitchen attached to the bar. It was a rustic business: wood roasting pit, propane grill, a sand floor with a hen and several chicks dithering underfoot-plus the briny dog from the shallows earlier, watching as her two pups tumbled together, chasing each other around. The fried corn fragrance of pupusas wafted toward them, mingling with the smoky aroma of a roasting chicken.

"Just." Jude patted his midriff.

"Oh well." She made a lonesome-me face. "I saw the truck when I drove up-it's yours, right?-but there was nobody around. When did you get here?"

"Dawn." The best surfing came at daybreak and late afternoon, when the doldrums smoothed the chop from the ocean, the waves glassy. He'd stayed out longer than usual this morning, though, enjoying the solitude. Gypsies would show up the next few weeks, jamming the lineups. Come the rains, the ocean swelled. So did the crowds. "I was out beyond the break."

"I got here sometime around ten, I think, and-Oh." She took her glasses off. "Excuse me." She started working a speck of sand from her eye, blinking. It took only a second, but in the moment after, sitting there with her glasses in her hand, her face transformed. Unwary eyes. A helpless smile.

Jude marveled at that sometimes-the way a woman changed when all she'd done was remove a scarf, an earring. Her glasses. Maybe it was his little fetish, but he doubted that. He suspected the French even had a word for it.

"Anyhoo," the glasses went back on, "I got here hungry, then just decided to take a long walk down the beach before lunch."

Looking for me, Jude suspected. Hoped. Pretended.

"Now I'm famished." Instead of heading off to order food, though, she picked up her hat and started fanning herself with it. Wisecracking eyes, a rag-doll smile. "I didn't figure you for the type, by the way." She nodded at his board. "Given the work you do."

Suddenly, the air between them felt charged. "Figure me for what type?"

"You know." She affected dope-eyed hipdom and a blasted voice. "Jude McDude."

"Oh. Right. Me all over."

She nudged him with her foot. "I'm teasing." A new smile, half-impish, half-contrite. "My dad surfs. Big-time. So I'll grant you there isn't a type. And if an old leatherneck like Pop can hang with the waterheads, I don't see why a bodyguard can't."

He cringed. Bodyguard. It called to mind steroids for breakfast and cream corn for brains, all stuffed in a bad suit. But he guessed that if he reminded her the term of art was "executive protection specialist"-EP for short-it would hardly redeem her opinion of what he did. Or of him.

His cell phone trilled inside his ruck.

"I'll let you grab that," she said, getting up.

"No, it's okay." He reached down, pulled the phone out, and read the number on the digital display. He didn't recognize it. And he'd just begun his furlough, ten days off after twenty on, his usual work schedule. He was on his own time and didn't want intrusions. Especially now. "I can let it go."

"It's okay. I'll just grab some lunch and a cold one." She shot him another mischievous smile. "Let you deal with the captains of industry."

It's a wrong number, he wanted to say, but she was already ambling off. Jude stared at her back, exposed by her halter and crisscrossed with its misfit tan lines, and doubted he'd ever hated his cell phone more-at which point the ringer chirped again, the same numerals reappeared. He picked up simply to cut short the bother: "¿Quién es?"

It took a second for the voice on the other end to emerge from the static. "Hello? Yeah. Hello, Jude? . . . My name's Bill. I was...