Red Jungle Read Online Free PDF

head. Russell threw the roach in the gutter. The Dutch girl was window-shopping further up the street. Russell could see her outline in the moonlight. He felt very high from the joint and the wine he’d been drinking. It seemed to hit him all at once.
    “I’m suggesting you throw in with me,” Mahler said. His eyes glowed behind the roach’s ember as it raced past his face and fell in the gutter.
    Mahler told him he thought the Red Jaguar might be on a plantation that bordered the site at Bakta Halik. He said the plantation was up for sale because of the coffee crisis. “That’s my suggestion. I have no money to buy the place.” Mahler said.
    A week later, for no good reason, Russell had decided to do it, to throw in with Mahler and search for the Red Jaguar. Sometimes, he thought, you do things and you don’t even know why. He was just stumbling through life, and couldn’t stop himself.
    In the late afternoon, Russell pulled up in front of a formidable steel gate. Wind whipped at the ragged banana trees along the road to the plantation’s main house, their broad green leaves writhing wildly. His windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the torrents of rain.
    After eighteen miles of horrible dirt roads and a filthy rain, he’d found Tres Rios . He’d made only one mistake, and it had cost an extra hour. An ancient faded sign read, Finca Tres Rios Familia O’Reilly.
    The plantation house stood a football field or more away, behind the locked gate. He could see that the house was big and very old. If not grand, it was still impressive-looking. It had been built with a very deep veranda on the main floor, and had a stick Victorian façade that belonged to another century.
    He honked his horn, giving it a long blast as the Frenchman had instructed. He had been told to wait; someone would let him in.
    A young girl in a bright yellow dress, maybe eighteen, darted out of one of the shacks on the road above. Her hair was rain-wet, very long, and very black. She ran towards him like a deer in the forest, beautiful in the rain. Russell got out of the jeep and met her at the gate.
    He glanced at an abandoned guard shack to the right. The rain was pouring through a hole in its roof. The girl smiled at him, her beautiful face wet. She had big eyes, the whites startling like snow in the jungle. Thin and tall, her waist was flat against her dress. He offered to help her and reached for the key, the rain pelting him hard in the face, but she didn’t give it to him.
    “No, yo lo abro, Señor,” she said, and bent down to unlock the gate, her yellow dress soaked. It clung to her back and shoulders like a skin. She unlocked the gate, then stood up, managing a smile. The gate, she told him, was too heavy for one person to move. He helped her pick up the steel pole, and they walked it back across the driveway. The entrance to the plantation clear, they set the pole on the ground and ran back to his jeep. Russell picked the shot gun shells off the seat so she could sit down.
    “Thank you,” he said, looking at the girl once the doors were closed. He was struck by her beauty. He couldn’t help but notice the way the water pearled on her face.
    They heard a thunderclap. It rolled the way it does there on the coast, forever, and then broke hard in parts, as if the sky were cracking apart. She was a stunner, the kind of girl you see on magazine covers in America.
    He leaned back in the seat, wiped his face, and put the jeep in gear. They passed through the gate and went up the dirt road towards the big house.
    “Aquí, por favor, ” she said suddenly. He stopped the car. “I’ll leave it open,” she said in Spanish, nodding towards the gate. She glanced quickly at him once, their eyes meeting, then opened the door and jumped out. He watched her disappear into one of the wood shacks, its low corrugated metal roof a deep orange-red. The doorway of the shack was black, like her hair. He looked down at the wet empty seat where