The last time I ever saw Mr. London in the flesh was in the lobby of the Hotel Renoit in Key Largo, caught in the glare of a wounded set of vinyl curtains and chipped sunflower china. He was in his suit, with that scratchy polyester shirt and the pearl buttons, sleeves rolled back to the bicep and the fading airborne tattoo—Samsonite in one hand, the other fiddling with his lapel, leaving little trails of pomade and cinnamon on the tweed. Across the road, two wings and a set of ailerons shifted, burning in the rising Key West sun.
In those days before the attorney generals and brass knuckles swung, we didn’t believe in notions of turf. In disputed formalities, low apartments or tainted nightclubs. Business was conducted in parallel. He charted evasion routes, false coordinates, complacent radar stations—short spurts of broken morse code, shipwrecked blots and tailwinds spiraling northbound from Medellin towards the mainland like a sickly anaconda. I punched the books. Steadied the yoke. Radioed lies, wheeling between date lines and overlapping ATC jurisdictions. Touch and go, waggling the C-47’s wings as the belly descended for the far end of a dusty airstrip, shadows eclipsing tin roofs and rust-eaten Land Rovers. Shimmy and sit up straight in an understuffed seat as the shocks jolted and we bled out momentum, rivets around the fuselage and cargo hatch depressurizing, popping slack. The cockpit smelled of bath salts and rotting basilisk tongue.
Crack open the overhead lockbox. Snap the rubber bands off a stack of Jacksons, feeling the edges react and coil inwards.
Shallow sighs. Fading indicator lights. His eyes were roving still—from the cluster of baggage handlers to the arriving petrol lorries, the moth eaten liferaft, the 7.62 casings flashing, clinking together in the earth under the palms and the crumbling seawall, extending, filthy green and corroding white-grey like the shaft of a speargun, into the coral shoals and sandbar beyond the corpse of what was the governor’s house. In what was our final layover together, after tipping off the customs man and the kid with the cheap shotgun, we wandered down to the market, gorging ourselves on fried plantains and jackfruit ice cream. Sitting in the corner past a small cluster of plastic stools and fading Marlboro placemats was an empty tank of catfish.
All out, the proprietor said, flashing a toothless smile while brushing off her hands on an apron, two ways you could have had them: fried whole in peanut oil or raked and peppered headless over the coals. I watched as she proceeded to dole out an alkaline solution into the tank, clouds of blue, black, dark red blooming, reaching equilibrium with table salt and sediment.
When we clambered back inside and I felt myself yawn and reach over to spark the engines, the altimeter and revolution gauges twitching—redlining into the negative values before settling at zero—all I could spot and now care to see—discern against the reflection of the saran-wrapped bundles and his dull and dissolving gaze—were the gulls swooping low against the retreating sun, hooking and flaring their wings in anticipation for the changing pressure and the muzzle glare and three smoldering drums of leaded BP, screaming Kilo, Kilo, Kilo…Kathie, Kathie, Kathie.