Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 11-5-1996 Double Fortune Dan Bentley-Baker Florida International University DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI14051103 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Bentley-Baker, Dan, "Double Fortune" (1996). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1609. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1609 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida DOUBLE FORTUNE A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING by Dan Bentley-Baker 1996 To: Arthur W. Herriott College of Arts and Sciences This thesis, written by Dan B. Bentley-Baker, and entitled Double Fortune, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgement. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. Lester A. Standipord Charles Elkins James W. Hall, Major Professor Date of Defense: Nov. 5, 1996 The thesis of Dan B. Bentley-Baker is approved. Dean Arthur W. Herriott College of Arts and Sciences Dr. Richard L. Campbell Dean of Graduate Studies Florida International University, 1996 ii This thesis is dedicated to Kandy. All other contributions fade by comparison. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, especially Prof. James W. Hall, for all their critical and caring help. In addition, a great deal of background for the manuscript comes from many conversations with Brig. Gen. Robert M. Clinkscales, USAF (retired). Special thanks to Juana Sarmiento for reading the manuscript, and first and last, to Kandell W. Bentley-Baker for contributions both fundamental and sustaining. iv ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS DOUBLE FORTUNE by Dan Bentley-Baker Florida International University, 1996 Miami, Florida Professor James W. Hall, Major Professor Double Fortune is a novel relating events taking place in Miami, Central America, and The Bahama Bank in October and November, 1983. The main character, Michael Hayden, is a free-lance music producer who has become jaded and impotent. A chance encounter on the Bay with Marisol, a Salvadoran heiress, and Hector, her brother, propels him into a complex plot to expatriate money through U.S. government channels. Willy, a brooding Cuban bodyguard hired to protect and instruct the Salvadorans, emerges as both nemesis and key to the duplicities of the scheme. The final showdown involves the four of them on the water above the Cay Sal Bank, a part of the Bahamas equidistant to their disparate worlds. v ONE Willy Lopez checked his watch by the light of his cigar. It was nearly two in the morning. Twin reflections of flame appeared in the deep shadow beneath the prominent ridge over his eyes. Oily skin on his cheeks looked like orange peel in the glow. Willy carefully tapped his ashes over the side and spat into the dark water. It was cloudy and the stars were blotted out. A lazy tide swelled up through the roots of nearby mangroves and ran off the exposed oyster banks in respiratory rhythm, illuminated only by a narrow band of dull light from the boat's cabin. The night fit down close around the boat and the narrow inlet it occupied. In the cabin, tastefully done in tropical prints and bright oak joinery, the one who called himself Jose, the banker, and la rubia -- the blond -- were plainly visible screwing like two dogs in the alley after a good meal of fish heads and onions. They thought it so revolutionary -- no, that could not be the word -- they considered it so radical to fuck now, here, where Willy could see how much they didn't care. 1 Jose, a young man still showing the shadows of a bad case of acne on his cheeks, wore his fatigues down around his ankles and pried with the toes of his surplus jungle boots for a better purchase on the settee. It was a roughly typical end to a typical day of 'counter- revolutionary training' on the coastal margins of the Everglades. The two on the boat, except for their youth, were representative of the grand army of Cuba in exile; the Crusade for Liberation, Los gusanos, or whatever dogshit battle flag these Miami Cubanos wanted to wave. That Jose the banker and his North American lover chose this opportunity for a rendezvous meant little to Willy Lopez. It made his job more complex but not more difficult. Willy was disciplined. Nineteen years in prisons where you didn't eat unless you stole the food from another inmate, where you didn't live unless you killed. Chinese penologists took special interest in him because they wanted to learn about such things, about his power. Then Mariel happened. Mariel was Willy's entree to all this and Mariel was his battle cry. Mariel, the Cuban port that gave its name to more than a hundred thousand who took Jimmy Carter's invitation and left the island. Willy was confident enough to sincerely believe that the whole release program and Castro's humiliation of the American president was calculated specifically to get him, Willy Lopez, to Miami and put him in place. He believed it was 2 so. He was a believer. He believed in Willy. When the noise stopped behind him, Willy scanned the line where the mangroves ended and the murky sky began. No lights, none except the immense sodium glow of Miami looming in the sky twenty miles to the north. But no red and green running lights, and no halogens -- the kind police boats mounted on their bows to probe the islands and inlets for smugglers. There was no sound; nothing above the quiet gurgling of the water and whirring insects. Alligators had been croaking and hissing in the distance all night, looking for mates in the brackish water of the estuaries. But the big lizards were now silent. Boats could be heard coming five miles away, but none was passing now. Willy heard the occasional whine of a male mosquito, the ones that don't bite, blundering close to his ear. Only they make the noise. But no low-flying planes. Without looking, Willy pictured the banker lying back, his blond whore laid out beside him with her tits lolled to the sides, shining with sweat in the light of the battery lamp. It was time. "Jose. Better come out here, man." Jose refused to answer. "Better come look at this, man." "What? Jesus!" Willy pulled on his cigar and made the tip glow bright. He kept his back to the door and stared out to the 3 east. The banker would come. A glance back through the door confirmed it. Jose turned and kissed the woman and patted the moist tangle of brown hair between her legs as he sat up. He had already pulled up his olive drab combat pants but refused to zip up or buckle. Willy turned back to the trees as Jose came out on deck hiking up his pants with one hand. "What the fuck you talking about, man?" Willy raised his arm and took a step to the side, closer to the side of the boat. "Over there, next to that old wreck." Jose strained to adjust to the dark. He saw the dim contours of a half-sunken wooden boat, a crumbling plywood derelict half burried in the mud. Jose shot a look at Willy. "Don't fuck with me, man." Willy dropped his arm but kept staring out at the wreck. Jose walked up behind him. "You decided what you're going to tell Calvado about that guy?" The banker was still feeling triumphant from the sex, now bold enough to challenge a man he was afraid of. Willy turned halfway toward him. "What guy? Alvarez? He's a fucking Communist. He'd say anything to save his ass. He's a spy. Why you believe what that asslick says, eh? He calls me a spy today, tomorrow he calls you a spy. That's how they work, you should figure that out. You're 4 not very experienced, are you? Cono." Jose took a step back. "Alvarez said he knew you in Cuba. Said you were on the Isle of Pines. And your name wasn't Willy Lopez. Willy Lopez died." "Isle of Youth. That's what they call it now." Willy untied the bandanna he wore around his neck and mopped his face with it. Jose zipped up his pants. "Such a little kid, man," Willy said, spitting between his teeth. "So I change my name, so I don't want to use my real name. The fuck, man." Jose watched the man who called himself Willy Lopez. "You and Alvarez are going to have to talk it out with Calvado. We don't just take new people, man. Who the fuck are you, anyway?" Willy snorted and turned to Jose. "The new guy, eh? You Florida Cubanos pissing on the new guy. Well, you do your job, cachorro. You hear? Willy Lopez going do his job." Willy gave him time to think about it. This ugly marielito was brought in by the boss. Willy gave him time to think. "So what is Alvarez talking about? And what does Calvado need with you anyway?" Willy shrugged and pulled a cloud of smoke through his cigar.