Beneath a Panamanian Moon (21 page)

Choppo called for a taxi to pick us up, and while we waited, I went outside where the woman sat casually in a butterfly chair, smoking a cigarette.

“Thank you for your hospitality.”

“You're welcome,” she said. She looked toward the water. “Would you like to see our view, Mr. Harper?”

I said I would, and followed her into the yard, a thick carpet of Bermuda grass that stretched to a far seawall. We walked out to where the view broadened and we could see beyond the bay where freighters and cruise ships moved leisurely in that space between water and sky, and a black curtain full of lightning drew across the stars.

“You'll help us stop them,” she said.

“Stop who?”

“The men at La Boca.”

“From doing what? That's what I don't know. What are they trying to do?”

She turned her face to me, the distant lightning reflected in her eyes. The wind blew back her hair and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. “They are trying to steal my country,” she said.

“But how, how am I going to stop them?”

“I don't know. And I don't think we have much time.”

Phil called me from the house.

Her words stirred up a deep green fear, and where I looked for encouragement, all I saw was sharp darkness littered with hard questions. Now, it wasn't enough for me to know who the guests were; now I had to know the students. And it wasn't enough for me to deliver information, now I had to stop an army.

“It's been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Harper. I had heard so much about you from our mutual friend, Mr. Smith. He was very complimentary, but he did not do your bravery justice.” She allowed me to take her hand and I was surprised by the strength of her grip.

“So you made the recordings.”

She nodded. “And I will continue to help in any way I can,” she said, “but I'm being watched and I must be careful.”

Phil called me again and said the taxi was here. I told Lauren that I would do my best and she assured me that would be enough. I did not share her confidence.

We took the taxi back to where Phil had parked the car he'd stolen from La Boca, an old beetle-backed Volvo sedan whose paint had dulled from years in the salt air. Panama has a way of taking the shine off everything. We got in and buckled up just as the nine o'clock rain swept over us, turning the streets into fast-moving rivers. Phil turned on the wipers and they whapped away the water in thick waves.

“Hey, Phil?”

“Yeah.”

“How'd you get your nickname? Mad Dog?”

Phil took his hand off the wheel and turned his arm over so I could see the tattoo at the soft crook of the elbow. The tattoo was of a bulldog holding a human skull in its jaws.

“See that?”

“Yeah. How come the eyes look like that?”

“I shot off part of the tat with a needle. Makes him look a little crazy, doesn't it?”

“You mean like drugs?”

“Yeah, like drugs.”

“You were a junkie?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't think I've ever met a junkie before.”

“Fucking figures.” Phil reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a joint the size of a Cuban Monte Cristo.

“What's this for?”

“It's from Choppo. He said it was a gift for the man who would change history.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The rain stopped by the time Phil dropped me off at the hotel. I crept past the lobby and up to the third floor. The corridor was empty, and I unlocked my door and fell across my bed. When a knock woke me up, it was morning and I was still in my damp clothes, unshaven, with a sore jaw and the stink of burned hair. It was Tuesday, one day before New Year's Eve.

Eubanks, the little clerk, stuck his head in the door and said, “Kelly wants to see you. He got a phone call from the State Department wondering where the fuck you were.”

“Okay.” I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. Part of it was extra crispy. “How do I look?”

The kid squinted at me. “You know,” he said, turning his head this way and that, “nobody's face is symmetrical.”

“Thanks.” He was about to go when I said, “Eubanks, you like to get high?”

Eubanks raised his eyebrows in appreciation and gave me his best surfer, “Yah.”

I pulled the cigar-sized doobie from my shirt pocket and said, “I need a favor.”

Eubanks was transfixed. “Sure, dude.”

“I need the password to Kelly's computer.”

Eubanks blinked. “But that's classified.”

“I have a clearance,” I said. “Hell, I've played for the president.”

Eubanks took the joint, put it into his pocket, and whispered, “It's ‘Osama.'”

“Osama?”

“Yeah. Osama. Weird, huh?”

I thanked Eubanks and went downstairs to Kelly's office. The door was open and I found him standing at his window, watching the whitecaps on the black water. “Ah, Harper, our newest star,” he said, way too friendly for my comfort. “I was just discussing today's continuing adventure with the State Department. Have a seat.”

I sat on the edge of his visitor's chair.

Kelly stayed at the window. “Seems like every place you show up, someone gets killed. Not a good way to keep friends, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Let's talk.” Kelly sat on the edge of his desk, trying to look like my uncle, trying to help out this fine young man who just seemed to draw mayhem the way shit draws flies. Kelly steepled his fingers, and held them to his chin, as if he'd just had an epiphany. “You know, Harper, the Panamanian authorities don't like it when North Americans get killed on their watch. It makes them look slack. It tarnishes their machismo. And when they start looking for someone to blame, they particularly like to blame other North Americans. They find solace in the circularity of the thing, and it gives them closure. Do you comprende?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, the sticky part of all this is, I have to give them someone. So I was thinking of your friend. What do you think?”

“Phil didn't have anything to do with Ren's murder.”

“Now, why would you mention Phil Ramirez? I was under the impression he'd been here all day yesterday. Why, the man Cooper swears to it.”

I tried backing away, hoping to cover. “I just assumed, when you said friend—”

“Don't lie!” Kelly was up and standing over me, forcing me against the chair.

“I'm not.”

“Would you know the truth if you heard it, you little shit?”

“I know the truth when I see it, and Ren was murdered by your men, Kelly, your men at that warehouse. I know because I recognized them.”

Again, I was too slow and too stupid to jump out of the way. His fist came across time zones, catching me square at twelve o'clock. I felt the snap more than I heard it, as my nose broke and I went backward, heels up, taking the chair with me, novas exploding inside my skull. When I could see, Kelly was standing over me, his fists ready to hit me again. I got even by bleeding all over his buffed parquet.

“Get up,” he said.

I did.

“Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a Panamanian prison, I suggest you give up your friend. You and I both know he was there. Wasn't he, Harper?”

“Doe. I wuz alode.”

This time I stepped out of the way of Kelly's fist. When it went by my ear I turned into his exposed gut and drove my elbow hard into his solar plexus. He rewarded me with a satisfying “oof.”

But he recovered too quickly and before I could spin out of reach he closed his forearm around my neck and squeezed. I pushed and we stumbled backward against his desk. The phone, a jar of sharpened pencils, and a stapler crashed to the floor. I clawed at his forearm as my vision collapsed. I was on my way to blacking out, and I knew if I did, I'd never regain consciousness.

In a move of sheer animal desperation, I drove my thumb backward, aiming for his eye. I missed, but hit him hard enough to cripple my thumb and close enough to his eye for him to loosen his grip. When he did, I dropped to the floor and rolled under his desk.

He fell across the top of the desk, reaching for me, his face red as a ripe tomato, and I hit him with the first thing I could pick up. Swinging the Swingline like a hammer, I drove a staple cleanly into Kelly's forehead. His face squinched in pain and shock, and then he came at me again, blind with rage, and I drove another staple between his eyes, this time smacking the stapler with the heel of my hand. He bellowed like a stuck bull and pulled away far enough for me to back against the wall, the desk still between us, and when he reached across the desk to grab me again, I rolled over to the window and sprang to my feet, my fists up, ready for round two. I'd had enough.

Kelly came at me, blocked several of my best jabs with his forearms, and then barreled into my chest with his shoulder, raising me off my feet. I grabbed his head and held on, twisting like a rodeo rider trying to bring down a running calf. We fell to the floor. I tried to roll away but he pounced on me, my back to the floor. He gripped one of the sharpened pencils in his fist and was driving the point toward the center of my eye.

I held his wrist, but he was stronger, much stronger, and as he put his weight behind the graphite tip, it quivered closer to my eyeball. We hung like that, each grunting with exertion. My arms shook, but I refused to die by a number 2 Ticonderoga. It would be too much like my SATs.

Blood from Kelly's forehead dripped onto my face and I began to pray that he'd stroke out before he could kill me. Just as the equilibrium changed and Kelly's weight began to overcome the stamina of my arms, Eubanks knocked on the office door frame. He looked from me to Kelly, saw the murder in Kelly's eyes, the blood on my face, and the pencil. Eubanks gulped.

Kelly was remarkably cool, considering. He looked at Eubanks and said, “Well?”

“Sorry, Mr. Kelly, sir, but there's a Panamanian here, says he's with the Department of Tourism.”

“What the hell does he want?”

“He wants to see Mr. Harper, sir.”

Kelly straightened and rolled off me. I stood up, my rage evaporating, but not my caution. He had hit me twice by surprise and it wasn't going to happen again.

Kelly pulled the staple from his forehead and said, “This isn't finished, Harper. Not by a long shot.”

“Any time, old man.”

“Get the fuck out of my sight. You make me want to puke.”

I left the office. Eubanks handed me a wet paper towel and I held it to my nose. I pictured my face with a busted beak and thought it might give me a little character. I try to look on the bright side.

Outside, waiting by his car, was Marquez, the man who had talked to me the night Zorro was murdered. “Good afternoon, Señor Harper. Can you come with me?”

We walked into the garden, away from the buildings and anyone who might want to listen in on the conversation.

“Looks like you're running out of friends, señor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you all right?” He examined my nose the way another man might examine a painting. “That looks like it hurts.”

“I'm okay. What's this about?”

“About yesterday afternoon at the warehouses.”

“The explosion?”

“Yes, the explosion. For some reason, the police seem to have lost interest in talking to you, an eyewitness. Do you have any idea why that would be?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there anything I should know?”

“You know it was no accident, don't you, sir?” My nose was beginning to clear although the paper towel was red with fresh blood.

“Yes.”

We walked a little farther down the path, between orange hibiscus and tiger lily blossoms.

“I read a book about Vietnam not long ago,” Marquez said. “It was very interesting.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It detailed the guerrilla war, ‘asymmetrical warfare' I believe your Pentagon calls it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the ingenious ways the Viet Cong overcame their technological shortcomings. One of the simplest, so simple a child could do this, was to wrap a rubber band around a grenade, around the safety”—Marquez snapped his fingers—“what do you call that?”

“The spoon,” I said.

“Yes, the spoon. They would wrap the rubber band around the spoon, pull the pin, and drop the grenade into the gas tank of a jeep or truck. The gasoline would eat away at the rubber band, the spoon would fly off, and boom, the vehicle would explode. A very simple but effective time bomb.”

“But Ren's car didn't have a gas tank opening big enough,” I said. “Not like a jeep.”

“I wondered about that, too. Then I remembered seeing a can of gasoline in the back seat of his car on the night Señor Alonzo was killed. That would be big enough, would it not?”

I thought about rubber bands and how they get eaten away in gasoline. I thought about sitting next to that can, holding up Ren's kitchen chair. I thought about Ren being a better driver, or that rubber band being a little thicker, or if my stomach was a little stronger and I hadn't wanted fresh air. I thought about how close I had come to not standing in that garden, bleeding all over my shirt, talking to a man from Tourism about Ren's murder.

“Are you feeling well, Señor Harper?”

“Yes, sir. Just thinking.”

“You didn't perhaps get a good look at the man who put the thing in the car?”

“I could point him out if I saw him again.”

“I will pass that along.”

“By the way, did you happen to speak to Lieutenant Consuerte about those smugglers?”

Marquez shook his head slowly, watching me as if I might slip away. “Smugglers?”

“Yes,” I said, and told Marquez about the firefight at the river. He studied me as I spoke and I know he was looking for reasons why I would lie. When I was done he said, “This is the first I've heard of this, and I don't know of any Lieutenant Consuerte. Are you absolutely sure of the name?”