Beneath a Panamanian Moon (33 page)

“What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

As she said that, a church clock began to strike twelve. Sirens howled like dogs in the distance. Music stopped and the entire city waited breathless until the final peal. When it struck, people cheered. They kissed strangers and danced with their wives. Bands tore into happy, sweating songs of celebration. Bells all over the city rang in the new year.

“Happy New Year,” Kris said.

I kissed her there in the jumping crowd. I kissed her and felt as though the earth had held still for a moment, long enough for us to enjoy this eye in the hurricane that was about to strike.

Then we heard gunshots and explosions.

“I failed,” I said. “It's happening. I couldn't stop it.”

Kris held both my hands in hers, as if we were praying. “But you did,” she said. “Phil got the files to Lauren and Lauren called your friend in Washington. He's on his way here. Those are fireworks being fired out over the bay, John, it's part of the celebration. No one is trying to take over the Canal, at least not tonight.”

“Did the police arrest the people in the cells?”

“I don't know, John, but look up.”

I did and saw a burst of red, followed by a boom that rocked the asphalt.

Kris kissed me again and said, “Everything you do is all right by me, John Harper.”

I pulled Kris into the doorway of a locksmith's shop where I could kiss her again, away from the crowds. When we broke apart, Kris saw a black and puckered shrunken head mounted in the window, under a bell jar.

She held on to my neck and looked at my face, as painful as that must have been for her, and smiled. “Is that the thing for locksmiths, John? Are shrunken heads the standard, I mean, if you're really good, do you display two heads?”

“Don't ask me, I'm new here.”

A long, open car slid quietly down the street toward us. Its headlights were off. Revelers crossed the street in front of its grill, but didn't slow its approach. I pulled Kris closer into the doorway. “Get ready to run,” I said.

Kris saw him, too. “I should have known better. I was having fun.”

We began to walk, the car following us, down toward a central square where we might find some safety in the crowd. As we walked faster, the car rolled faster. As we came to an intersection, the car picked up a burst of speed, cut us off at the corner, and as it drifted past, Phil hollered, “Need a lift?”

Kris and I ran alongside, and I yelled, “Stop!”

“I can't. My brakes are fucked. Jump in.”

So we did. When we hit the seat, Phil hit the accelerator and off we went. At the corner we ran a red light and forced a taxi up onto the sidewalk.

“I wish this thing had a standard transmission,” Phil said. One-handed, he wheeled around a bus. “Hey, how'd you like the Modello?”

“Two stars.”

The Caddy coasted through a stop sign, barely squeezing between two trucks and a group of tourists. From their curses, I would guess German tourists. We started up an incline, and as the Cadillac slowed to a stop, Phil nosed over to the curb and threw the transmission into park. “Get out and look under the car.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Brake fluid.”

“I'll look.” Kris jumped out of the car and got on her hands and knees, looking under the chassis.

“What do you know about cars?”

“I own a Volkswagen Bug,” she said. “An old one.”

“Good. So look for a copper line. I'm pumping the pedal. See anything?”

“Yeah.” Kris sniffed her fingers. “It's brake fluid.”

“That's what I thought. Come on, get back in.”

Kris jumped back into the car and wiped her hands on her pants.

“We're not going to drive this thing, are we?” I asked, hoping the answer would be no, but knowing the answer would be yes.

“Too far to walk.”

Phil floored the Caddy and burned rubber toward Choppo's bayside mansion. We accelerated and slowed and took turns too fast through residential neighborhoods. Phil ran up on the sidewalk to miss an oncoming bus, jerked back onto the street and sideswiped a light post.

“I told Choppo not to trust me with his car,” Phil said. Kris and I looked out over the bright bay reflecting a million lights and a show of fireworks that jumped up into the shallow sky.

The Caddy went up onto the sidewalk again, between the palm trees and the walls of the old mansions, took out a few thousand dollars' worth of landscaping, and came to a stop beside Choppo's gate.

The chrome and black leather living room never looked more like home. Choppo greeted us at the door with cognac and a cloud of reefer smoke and hugged me like a son, and hugged Kris for a considerably longer time. “Happy New Year to you, my heroes. Heroes of Panama!” he shouted and raised his glass.

The cognac smoldered pleasantly in the empty bowl of my stomach.

Lauren came into the room, kissed each of us on the cheek.

The living room was strewn with Kelly's files. A laptop sat on the coffee table next to one cordless and two landline phones. There were half-full cups of black coffee, an overflowing ashtray as big as a hubcap, and lined paper filled with scribbled notes in three different hands. Phil, Choppo, and Lauren had done a lot of work in a few hours, going through files and working their contacts in and out of three different governments.

Lauren led us to the sofa and I collapsed. Kris sat next to me but it wasn't long before she had her shoes off, her feet curled up under her, her head on my chest. “I am so tired,” she said.

“How thoughtless,” Lauren said. “Let me show you where to sleep. When you awake you will eat and we will celebrate.”

“Thank you,” Kris said. She pulled on my hand and said, “Come with me.”

“I'll be up in a minute,” I said.

When Lauren and Kris were out of the room I asked, “Does anyone know where Kelly is?”

Phil shook his head and Choppo looked away.

“I don't like it.”

“There is nothing he can do,” Choppo said. “He has no friends. He killed them all, every one.”

I looked from Choppo to Phil for an answer.

“All of the men who were supposed to be in the sleeper cells, all of the names on the CD you got from your friend on the yacht; there were nearly three hundred of them,” Phil said.

“They were murdered within a week of their training at La Boca,” Choppo said.

“Murdered? But how? Didn't anyone notice? How can three hundred men just disappear?”

“Because they were expected to disappear, my friend,” Choppo said. “They had taken new identities, new occupations, everything. They were invisible when they left La Boca, and how hard is it for an invisible man to disappear?”

“So the coup was supposed to fail.”

“It was never supposed to have happened.”

“I can't believe the Colonel knew about this.”

“The Colonel believed the U.S. would rush back in to take over the Canal, and the zone, just like the good old days.”

“But that still leaves the money men, the Boca guests. Where are they?”

Phil rubbed his face with both hands. “We don't know yet, but there are reports—”

“Unconfirmed,” Choppo said.

“—of a downed helicopter.”

I didn't think I had a drop left in my body, but at the thought of the entire crew crashing into the jungle, a spike of adrenaline zipped up my spine. “A Black Hawk or a Huey?”

“We don't know.”

I nearly jumped up, but my leg wouldn't cooperate. “You warned them, right?”

Phil said, “Yeah, I warned them about an ambush. I didn't think the bastards would shoot the helicopter down.”

“They shot it down?” Now I was on my feet. “Why didn't you say that? Do we have rescue teams in the air?”

“Sit down before you hurt yourself, Harp.” Phil wasn't taking the news any better than I was; he'd just had more time to turn it over and get used to the jagged edge.

“We don't know what happened. We don't even know if it was the Huey or not. It could have been the Bell, we don't know, so don't get yourself all cranked up, Harp. We did the best we could.”

“I should have thought about them shooting down the Huey when we found those Stingers. Goddammit!” It was my fault. If those boys went home in a box it was because I hadn't thought it through. “What about the money? Where's the money?”

Phil glanced at me, just a shift of his eyes. No other muscle moved and yet Choppo caught whatever it was, a spike in the karmic current, a change in the magnetic flux, as it blew across his radar.

“You mean the euros? They're right here,” Phil said, and pushed the metal strongbox with the toe of his boot.

I tried to cover, but Choppo knew something wasn't right. “Five million isn't much money when you consider he killed over three hundred people to get it.”

Choppo shrugged. “More people have been killed for less money.”

I changed the subject, but Choppo still looked at us both with bloodshot eyes and knew he wasn't being invited to share all of the pie, just the pie that was in this room. “Kelly has a partner,” I said. “A man named Morton.”

“We expect he's dead, too,” Choppo said. He stretched his fingers wide like a net and said, “Mr. Kelly is eliminating everyone. He has no interest in partners.” Choppo closed a fist and said, “He didn't think to take care of those who helped him, and that, my friend, is what will bring him down. What is it Bob Dylan says? ‘When you live outside the law you must be honest'?”

I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head. The throbbing bruises were almost a relief compared to the sick feeling I had gnawing away at my stomach. When I thought of all the people who had been murdered, I felt nauseated. And for what? Not justice for what Colombians considered a one-hundred-year-old wrong. Not the misguided patriotism of the Colonel, and his bloody attempt at attracting Washington's attention. It was all about money, and more money than Kelly could spend in a lifetime. I tried to do the math, wondering just how much money each human life was worth, but I was too tired to add past double digits.

“Where's the file of the families in Colombia?” I wanted to take that to Smith myself. “Smith'll make sure that the proper authorities are informed.”

Choppo handed me a manila folder. “Take it. You have earned it. And I want you to take this.” He threw one of the bound packs of euros, more than half a million dollars, on the coffee table.

I stared at it for a long time. I thought of the house I could buy for my father, and the new life I could buy for Kris, and if she'd have me, for myself, and I said, “No, I'd have bad dreams, Choppo.”

Choppo seemed relieved, but not satisfied.

Lauren joined us. “That makes two women you've brought here for safety, Mr. Harper. Can we expect any more?”

I shrugged and said, “It's the life of a musician.”

She pointed at my pant leg, stiff with blood. “Should we look at that?”

Phil jumped up. “Christ, I didn't even see that.”

“Blinded by the money, huh, amigo,” Choppo said.

“Helizondo shot me,” I said. “It's okay. Kris patched me up.”

Lauren shook her head. “No. Take off your pants. Choppo, get the first-aid and some towels.”

For the second time that night, I struggled out of my jeans. “Better bring hot water, too, Choppo.”

She unrolled the gauze and said, “This doesn't look good.”

“Just what every patient wants to hear.”

“The bullet went into the flesh of your thigh in the front, and out the back, causing two wounds, both needing stitches. And I'll have to clean inside the wound.” She looked up at me and I could see in her eyes that this procedure would be highly unpleasant for both of us.

“I have some Valium upstairs,” she said to Choppo. “And those antibiotics. Get them. Mr. Ramirez, if you would be kind enough to get the cocaine out of that drawer. And bring me that bottle of vodka.”

“Is that for me or you?” I said, and laughed. I was the only one.

“I'm drinking the vodka,” Lauren said. “The coke is for the wound. You do what you must.”

Choppo returned with the Valium. I took three and washed them down with a tumbler of Grey Goose. Lauren knelt between my thighs, in what would ordinarily be an arousing situation, but not when this beautiful woman was concentrating on two bloody holes in my leg. She cleaned the wounds with expensive vodka and sprinkled the cocaine liberally around my thigh.

Choppo, watching over Lauren's shoulder, tsked and said, “Such a waste.”

When she folded a piece of gauze into the jaws of a hemostat and soaked both in a bowl of peroxide, I looked away. Phil stood over me. I gripped both of his hands and he said, “Hang on.” When Lauren plunged the gauze into the bullet hole, my breath left me and I squeezed as hard as I could. I began to sweat. It seemed to take hours for her to work the gauze around the inside of the wound, but I knew it was only a few seconds. Finally, she was done and I let my muscles relax. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Lauren thread a sewing needle, and I looked up at Phil and said, “Don't let her cross-stitch a flower on my johnson.”

“We'll keep it manly. Maybe an eagle,” he said.

I didn't look back until she was pulling the last suture through. My jaw ached.

“Help him up to bed,” she told Phil and Choppo. “He'll be a little wobbly for a while.”

Kris was in the shower when they helped me into the bedroom. Unlike the living room, this room had been spared the Rat Pack decor. Oriental rugs softened the polished hardwood, the plaster walls were decorated with art that was both local and good, and the woodwork had the patina of decades-old varnish. The four-poster bed called to me. Phil and Choppo laid me on the mattress. My body, from my eyes down to my toes, was just one big throb of pain. Now that I'd stopped running I wanted to sleep away the new year.