Carats and Coconuts (20 page)

It’s not as if I was totally shocked.
I kind of figured we had one on the reservation
somewhere.

Behind the glass walls lining the
room, prized and pricy aquamarines and Pink Morganite glittered in
intense hues of the sea and the finest of swirls of cotton
candy.

I hugged my parents then returned to
the table around which Roman, R and The Chief were gathered,
reviewing some sort of document.

“
So this is what Stanley and
The Foz are really after?” I asked, knowing damn sure well it
was.

T
he
spot where our Long Tom was set-up was obviously not the only super
deposit of aquamarines and Morganite to be had on the
Witherspoon-Sol Larga land.

From the looks of the ancient map laid
out on the glass case’s surface, there were two if not three others
remaining.

Before I could ask about the history
of the map, an alarm buzzer sounded. Its short, sharp blasts rocked
me to my core.

“
We’ve got company,” The
Chief said, his large square jaw moving in very small, tensely
calibrated motions.

“
Operation Armadillo is
about to commence,” R said, with a twinkle in his eyes that I knew
didn’t bode well for our guests.

It couldn’t have been more than a
couple seconds, while we all waited in silence, before a large
screen came down from the ceiling of the vault. A live shot piped
in of Stanley and Fosito being led through the tunnel right at
us.

Interestingly enough, neither one
looked the least bit frightened. Well, not any more than usual. As
of late, due to his predicament, Stanley never looked less than
green around the edges. And The Foz always carried himself with an
aura that he wanted you to believe he had everything under control,
even though he wasn’t quite sure he did.

You’ll have that when you surround
yourself with snakes every bit as poisonous as you are.

“
It’s time,” R said to my
parents.

My parents both nodded then led me by
the elbow as we all three followed Roman into a hidden room behind
the largest case of aquamarines.

I turned around to see R crawling
underneath the glass case table that the map was laid out
on.

That left just The Chief and Grams in
the room.

“
R trusts Grams to finish
this?!” I squealed.

“
Just watch,” Roman said as
he took my hand.

My mom sat down on one of the four
chairs set up near the viewing glass, which was evidently a two-way
mirror.

Maybe that was a good idea, I thought,
leading Roman and my dad over to join her.

Grams took out a small computer from a
drawer hidden in the side of the table.

“
How long have you been
setting all this up?” I asked, looking to Roman first and then to
my parents, who all obviously knew more than me.

“
A while. Just watch,” Roman
answered.

I looked at my parents, who seemed a
bit tense, but they also seemed relieved to just be at the end game
of Stanley’s shenanigans.

While Grams fingers flew across her
laptop’s keyboard, The Chief’s guards brought in Stanley and
Fosito.

Damn, I hated Fosito.

Even the way he held his arrogant ass
was enough to turn my stomach. I didn’t have a problem with
arrogance if someone was smart, but dumb and arrogant put you
squarely at the top of my shit list.

And that was The Foz…stupid and
arrogant.

Stanley, on the other hand, was just
plain dumb. So he wasn’t as far up on my list.

Then there was the fact that his wife
was my mom’s best friend, and his daughter Ugenie had always been
like a sister to me.

I squeezed my mom’s hand, knowing how
hard Stanley’s betrayal had hurt her. And how tough a spot it had
put her in with Myra, who still loved the guy, even though he’d
made some really, really bad decisions.

That’s one thing about being a
Witherspoon that few people understood. It wasn’t about the actions
that people took against us, it was all about their motivations and
intentions. If their intentions were pure, there was a good chance
we’d forgive idiotic behavior. But if they weren’t, God help
you.

I had a feeling Stanley just may be
saved. The Foz, on the other hand, was about to be royally
fucked.

The arrogant prick spoke
first.

“
If you’ll just make good on
this deal, I’d appreciate it. My little friend and I don’t have
much time,” he said.

“
You’re going by my schedule
now,” Chief Valente said, not so much as raising his voice even a
smidgeon. “And surely I misunderstood. You weren’t insulting
Stanley were you?”

Before The Chief could get an answer,
Grams left her laptop and karate kicked Fosito hard right on the
kneecap closest to her.

Fosito fell to his knees, doubled over
in pain.

“
There. Now you’re on his
level,” she said, going right back to punching away at her
keyboard.

I could tell The Chief was pleased
with Grams’ performance.

“
That woman has balls of
steel,” my dad said, his bowl-full-of-jelly belly shaking as he
chuckled.

God, I’d missed his laugh. With all
this going on, there hadn’t been many occasions for that
lately.

My mom laughed too and reached for my
hand.

“
You know, maybe there’s
another way to do this, Fosito. You know I’ve never liked your plan
from the beginning,” Stanley said.

“
You don’t have a choice,
you son of a bitch. You think I won’t make good on that promise
regarding your precious Myra and Ugenie?” Fosito hissed the threat
while leaning against the glass table to take weight off his
injured knee.

“
So all this time, Stanley
was being blackmailed?” My mom cried out, and tears began to slide
down her cheeks.

“
I thought it might be
something like that,” Dad said, putting his arm around her. “But we
just couldn’t be too sure.”

“
Will he be hurt?” I asked,
not wanting Myra and Ugenie to suffer any more than they already
had.

“
Not if everything goes
according to plan,” Roman said.

His arms were crossed while he rocked
on his heels, which I’d come to learn meant the shit was about to
big-time hit the fan.

“
We’ll be taking that map
now,” Fosito said, reaching his hand out to snatch it off the
table.

“
Not before you give us the
code, you slimy bastard,” Grams said, peering over the tops of her
bifocals.

“
Blue Macaw. There, are you
satisfied, you old bag?” Fosito asked through clinched
teeth.

“
You lie. You lie,” Grams
said typing in the code then shaking her head to The
Chief.

“
You are even more of a
stupid twit than I thought. Are you going to handle this or should
I?” She asked, looking up at The Chief.

“
It would be my pleasure,
Grams. You just keep working on that code.”

“
I already got
it.”

“
Well then, it looks like
it’s my turn to contribute to our team.”

With a single nod of his head, The
Chief’s two guards took hold of Stanley and were about to escort
him from the vault.

Stanley turned around to face The
Chief and Grams.

“
I’m sorry. Please tell The
Witherspoons I’m sooo sooo sorry. And please tell my wife and
daughter how very much I love them.”

“
I will,” Chief Valente
said.

“
What the fuck are you doing
with him? I need him,” The Foz said, attempting to go after Stanley
before he realized Grams had prevented that with her blow to his
knee.

“
You’re not going to need
anything but some fresh air,” Chief Valente said then proceeded to
tell The Foz the story of how the Sol Larga hunted
armadillo.

While The Chief started the smoke
rolling and tied Fosito to the table, R led my parents, Roman and
I, and Grams too out of the vault’s private room, back through the
tunnel, and to the elevator, where in just a minute more, The Chief
joined us.

What a hunt.

F
ollowing our armadillo hunt, we returned to our makeshift
fishing camp. We reached the site just as the sun was beginning to
rise.

I had no idea that while we’d been
hunting, R and Roman had arranged to have Myra and Ugenie brought
to the camp.

Their reunion with Stanley was
bittersweet. I’m sure it was sweet to see him alive, but bitter at
best to begin reconciling after all he’d done to our families and
friendships.

While they were trying to figure out
if Stanley’s intentions were pure of heart enough to even consider
forgiving him, Grams was seeking forgiveness for all her worldly
sins.

Why now?

Because she was way waaay under the
influence of beyond powerful Sol Larga herbal remedies.

Unbeknownst to us until we got back
into our camp, while nailing Fosito’s knee, she’d twisted her
ankle. She hadn’t said a word about her condition as she made her
way back through the jungle. But when we arrived at camp, she damn
near collapsed from the pain.

“
Bones and resolutions…two
things that break pretty easily at my age. So be careful there,
Medicine Man,” she warned the Sol Larga’s medicinal
healer.

“
Ouch!” She squealed,
pulling on the healer’s beaded and feather-dressed braid. “Bones
and resolutions…”

She kept repeating her new mantra, as
she faded in and out of consciousness.

“
What are you giving her?” I
asked, thinking it would be great if they could bottle some of that
for future use.

Anything to get her to stop with all
the Maxine-ism mantras.

Listening to the healer rattle off the
ingredients of his potion, I was fairly certain she’d be out cold
in no time.

“
The mudslinging,” she
mumbled, suddenly sitting straight up on the makeshift bed in the
healer’s tent, “is finally over in Iowa.”

“
You’re not in Iowa, Grams.
You’re in Brazil.”

“
Well, I think it was
mud…kinda’ hard to tell. It may have been monkey poop.”

The healer just looked at me then
waved some big ass leaf under Grams’ nose.

Boom! That did it. She was
out.

On second thought, screw the bottled
version. Maybe we could arrange to just bring back the healer and a
bag full of his magical leaves.

Exiting the tent, and yes, feeling
rather guilty about leaving the poor guy to take care of Grams, I
headed back toward the fish-roasting jiraus, hungrier than I can
remember being in a long time.

While I’d been helping tend to Grams,
however, our camping crowd had grown.

I looked toward the smoking campfire
then blinked my eyes twice. Surely the early morning sun or the
prior evening’s events had me hallucinating. That, or I’d also
inhaled too much of those all-too-powerful leaves.

Next to Roman, R and The Chief sat
Bunny and Beefcakes and…

Six drag queens.

I’m not kidding you.

Here we were on a Brazilian Indian
Reservation, in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, and now our
little fishing group included half a dozen drag queens.

And yes, I know what you’re
thinking…

The kinda’ poles in our fishing camp
were not the ones they’d be interested in.

I couldn’t wait to see what this was
all about.

I
could totally imagine Bunny and Beefcakes hanging with a
gaggle of gays, complete with all the cross-dressing drag queen
drama.

Personally, on account of my former
life, I had quite a few drag queens as clients.

And I loved them.

But drag queens here? With my Sol
Larga friends? In the rainforest?

Then it hit me.

Of course!

They must have arrived early for this
year’s Brazilian Carnival, which kicked off in mid-February. Just a
couple of weeks away.

But we were two thousand miles from
the heart of Carnival in Rio. So what were they doing around our
campfire? And how did they get here?

There was only one way to find out and
that was to join ‘em for breakfast.

I sat down in the spot Roman had saved
for me and could tell by his dopey grin that he was enjoying our
new friends.

I doubted he’d had too many drag queen
friends in the royal mafia world he came from.

Although, who knows…maybe there are
some queens who are gangsters too.

That could be fun.

Bunny spoke first, interrupting my
Godfather of Queens revelry.