it.
Scofield had spent a lot of time in Peru. He knew the way things worked here, so he almost certainly knew that Vargas was conning him. Still, he looked pleased, and why not? A thousand, five hundred, four hundred, whatever it was, it wasn’t coming from his pocket. “Very good, Captain. I appreciate that.”
“It’s my pleasure, Professor.”
Well, not quite. The man known as el Curandero Blanco was in fact a disreputable and notoriously unreliable misfit called Cisco – a fitting name, with its faintly disparaging connotations. What his last name was, if he had one, nobody seemed to know, not that that was any great rarity in Iquitos. He had been hanging around the city, on and off, for as long as Vargas could remember, having come from who-knew-where. His Spanish wasn’t Peruvian, but what he was was in dispute. Some claimed he was a colocho, a transplanted low-level Colombian drug-dealer who had hurriedly left Colombia in advance of a gangland reprisal for offenses unspecified. Others were sure that his accent was Catalonian; a Spaniard. Still others believed he was Argentinian, which went along with the rumor that he was the grandson of Nazis who had escaped to Argentina in 1945. Cisco himself was known to have told each of these stories at different times. Vargas suspected he was simply one of the many lost souls of the Amazon, a rootless drifter from Ecuador or Colombia who had settled in Iquitos the way a stone settles wherever it falls in a stream. More than likely, Cisco himself might be a little confused as to who he was and where he’d come from, and where he was when he wasn’t in Iquitos.
What Vargas had told Scofield about him was mostly true, but there was plenty that he hadn’t told him. Foremost among these things was that Cisco’s knowledge of the curandero ’s arts was deep, all right, but pretty much limited to those relating to hallucinogenic plants. He had sat many long hours at the feet of various tribal healers and shamans and learned of the psychedelic virtues of ayahuasca, epena, ajuca, and a hundred others. In return, he had introduced several of his gratified tutors to the similar if less spectacular pleasures of cannabis and LSD. In short, what he was, when you got down to it, was a dopehead, vague and fog-brained, who was thought to live with an Indian woman in a shack down in the mudflats near Belen (where he went in flood season was anybody’s guess), and who eked out a living, such as it was, by occasionally hiring himself out as a guide to unsuspecting tourists.
It was true enough that many people – well, a few people – referred to him as the White Shaman, a title he promoted for himself, but others who knew him referred to him sarcastically as the White Milkman. Somehow or other, he had made a friend of a small, local dairy farmer who had taken pity on him and offered him on-again, off-again work with his paltry herd of a dozen or so skinny cows. He was not really a milkman in the sense of delivering milk, since no one in Iquitos drank fresh milk (babies drank thick, yellow stuff that came in cans from the U.S. and Austria), but he did milk and tend the cows, which were used to produce cheese, and so the Spanish term el lechero blanco, with its droll, mocking associations of gallantry and adventure, had stuck to him. It wasn’t much of a secret that he also made a little pocket money by running menial errands for the petty jungle drug traffickers or carrying messages for them. In Iquitos, this kind of behavior elicited no more than a noncommittal shrug from others. It was hard to make a living in Iquitos.
There had actually been some positive reports on his guide work. Once he’d taken a party of Swedish amateur botanists into the Yuturi wilderness, and they’d come back raving about his knowledge of the ecosystem. But another time he’d up and left a group of English horticulturists stranded in the jungle south of Pucallpa because he’d had a vision telling him
Scofield had spent a lot of time in Peru. He knew the way things worked here, so he almost certainly knew that Vargas was conning him. Still, he looked pleased, and why not? A thousand, five hundred, four hundred, whatever it was, it wasn’t coming from his pocket. “Very good, Captain. I appreciate that.”
“It’s my pleasure, Professor.”
Well, not quite. The man known as el Curandero Blanco was in fact a disreputable and notoriously unreliable misfit called Cisco – a fitting name, with its faintly disparaging connotations. What his last name was, if he had one, nobody seemed to know, not that that was any great rarity in Iquitos. He had been hanging around the city, on and off, for as long as Vargas could remember, having come from who-knew-where. His Spanish wasn’t Peruvian, but what he was was in dispute. Some claimed he was a colocho, a transplanted low-level Colombian drug-dealer who had hurriedly left Colombia in advance of a gangland reprisal for offenses unspecified. Others were sure that his accent was Catalonian; a Spaniard. Still others believed he was Argentinian, which went along with the rumor that he was the grandson of Nazis who had escaped to Argentina in 1945. Cisco himself was known to have told each of these stories at different times. Vargas suspected he was simply one of the many lost souls of the Amazon, a rootless drifter from Ecuador or Colombia who had settled in Iquitos the way a stone settles wherever it falls in a stream. More than likely, Cisco himself might be a little confused as to who he was and where he’d come from, and where he was when he wasn’t in Iquitos.
What Vargas had told Scofield about him was mostly true, but there was plenty that he hadn’t told him. Foremost among these things was that Cisco’s knowledge of the curandero ’s arts was deep, all right, but pretty much limited to those relating to hallucinogenic plants. He had sat many long hours at the feet of various tribal healers and shamans and learned of the psychedelic virtues of ayahuasca, epena, ajuca, and a hundred others. In return, he had introduced several of his gratified tutors to the similar if less spectacular pleasures of cannabis and LSD. In short, what he was, when you got down to it, was a dopehead, vague and fog-brained, who was thought to live with an Indian woman in a shack down in the mudflats near Belen (where he went in flood season was anybody’s guess), and who eked out a living, such as it was, by occasionally hiring himself out as a guide to unsuspecting tourists.
It was true enough that many people – well, a few people – referred to him as the White Shaman, a title he promoted for himself, but others who knew him referred to him sarcastically as the White Milkman. Somehow or other, he had made a friend of a small, local dairy farmer who had taken pity on him and offered him on-again, off-again work with his paltry herd of a dozen or so skinny cows. He was not really a milkman in the sense of delivering milk, since no one in Iquitos drank fresh milk (babies drank thick, yellow stuff that came in cans from the U.S. and Austria), but he did milk and tend the cows, which were used to produce cheese, and so the Spanish term el lechero blanco, with its droll, mocking associations of gallantry and adventure, had stuck to him. It wasn’t much of a secret that he also made a little pocket money by running menial errands for the petty jungle drug traffickers or carrying messages for them. In Iquitos, this kind of behavior elicited no more than a noncommittal shrug from others. It was hard to make a living in Iquitos.
There had actually been some positive reports on his guide work. Once he’d taken a party of Swedish amateur botanists into the Yuturi wilderness, and they’d come back raving about his knowledge of the ecosystem. But another time he’d up and left a group of English horticulturists stranded in the jungle south of Pucallpa because he’d had a vision telling him
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