Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition (33 page)

Oh? And take a bus instead of a plane to
David?

Well, planes had records that were actually
checked. Buses had the information, but no one would look for it
except in special cases.

“
Why not
fly over?” he asked Ralph Conners innocently.

“
Oh,
because we want to see the countryside. We’ll probably fly back.
There isn’t much to see.”

“
No. Not
until you get closer to David. It’s sort of typical cattle country
for a ways more here.”

Which information was clear before they took
the trip – not to mention it was night. What were they going to see
from a bus except in the towns? And why the secrecy? Ralph looked
just the least bit uncomfortable. He changed the subject to the
rainy season and was it really raining every day for twenty or
thirty days?

“
There
will be short rains almost every day, but not steady for more than
one or two days and that rare. It’s, as I tried to explain to a
rather obnoxious tourist, a rain forest country. He griped because
it was hot, and that was only because he was standing by a wall in
the full sun – and looked like rain.

“
Lord! If
people want sun all day every day go to Arizona or New Mexico or
something!”

“
Ha, ha!
I certainly have to agree with that! Personally, I like a little
rain to cool things off and if I only wanted a lot of heat I’d GO
to Arizona or somewhere.

“
It isn’t
all that hot here from what I’ve seen the last few days. It’s –
what? – about ninety degrees in the middle of the day? Hell, in
Texas it’s over a hundred for months in a row! I guess some people
just want to gripe.”

“
Yes. He
was the type who wasn’t happy unless he was whining or ranting
about something. Well, your bus is loading. Bien viaje!”

He went to talk a bit with Amanda at the food
counter, got a bag of patacones and a piece of chicken and went
back to the bus as it started loading. They arrived in Panamá City
just before midnight. He saw Jose’, a friend from David who drove a
cab. He was meeting some people at the terminal who were coming in
from San Andreas in about an hour to take them to David. They had a
lot of money and not much sense, but that suited him. A big bus was
a lot more comfortable than a taxi. He didn’t understand the
thought patterns of such people.

“
Gringos,
probably?” Clint said, nodding.

“
Si. From
Chicago. They were here about six months ago and I took them all
over. A hundred balboas per day and they bought gas and meals.
Couldn’t turn that down! I don’t know why they want a taxi from
here to David. I can see why they might want one to take them
around in David. They could fly there cheaper and a lot more
comfortable than five hours in a taxi.”

“
No
records. They don’t even have to give you their passport number or
anything.”

“
I sorta
figured that was it.”

“
They go
anywhere but David when they were here before?”

“
Concepcion, Boquete, Frontera, Calderas, Puerto Armuelles.
Everything out there on that side. La Barqueta. Volcan, Cerro
Punta.”

“
Oh. the
Browning family? I met them.”

“
No. Mr.
and Mrs. Brooks and Mr. and Mrs. Carlson. That’s another thing. I’m
to call them Mr. and Mrs. and they call me Jose’. They have a lot
of money, so they’re better than the people here.

“
They
aren’t snobby or anything. They can joke and have fun, but they’re
used to being called by their last name. It’s what they’re used to.
They talk about money and investments all the time and I couldn’t
care less about that stuff.”

They talked about other things and Jose
called another cabbie over and said to take Clint to Hotel
California. He’s not a tourist, he’s a very close friend. It cost
four dollars instead of twelve.

Clint had reservations he’d called in and was
given a room across from Arnold. He went into the bar a few minutes
before it closed and had a beer. There wasn’t anyone interesting in
the bar. He went to bed.

In the morning he had his breakfast in the
restaurant and met several people from Germany and the states. They
chatted about the country and he made suggestions about places to
see. No one mentioned Puerto Armuelles and he didn’t suggest it,
though he usually would.

A bit later a small nondescript man came in
carrying a briefcase he opened to take out a laptop and use the air
internet. Natalie, the waitress, pointed to him. That was
Arnold.

Clint waited until Arnold rolled out some
papers on the table to walk close to pay his bill. Arnold looked up
and nodded at him. He nodded back and said he knew what those
papers were! Sonic mapping! Was he with the international survey
team who were supposed to be covering the country with all kinds of
satellite mappings and sonic mappings and such?

“
I was
with a project last year. We didn’t find much. There’re some few
small deposits of metals and some cinnabar toward the mountains
near Costa Rica. Not much of value.”

“
Oh? In
Chiriqui? I hear they found some zinc there.”

“
Zinc? I
suppose it’s possible around the old volcanos on the western end,
but most of that will also be in Costa Rica.” He looked a little
suspicious. “We were more in, er, Colón and Bocas del
Toro.”

“
Well,
there wouldn’t be much in Colón, but Bocas might have some old
pirate treasure or something,” Clint replied with a laugh. Arnold
agreed that was the case. Very little of anything. He asked if
Clint was doing surveys.

“
Not me.
I’m checking up on some things for friends who want to invest here,
but more to live here than to make money. Most of them have found
that money is one hell of a demanding mistress.

“
I’m
Clint Faraday, retired detective who gets more jobs here than he
ever did in Florida.”

He really looked wary then, realized it and
said, “Er, a detective? I most certainly hope you’re not
investigating ME? Ha, ha. That would be about as dull a job as you
ever had in Florida or anywhere else, I’m sorry to say. I WISH I
had the gumption to do something I’d be investigated for! Life
would be so much more exciting!

“
Is there
much here or ... oh. Not divorce and that kind of thing, I hope?
Maybe insurance fraud?”

“
No.
Criminal. Mostly murders.”

“
Murders!? Here? These people are mostly non-violent and
wouldn’t commit murders that would take more than an hour to
solve.”

“
So far
it’s among tourists to the greatest extent. That helps solve them
because it’s tourists knocking off other tourists, usually to hide
something or because of money. There are a hell of a lot of scams.
Some of the murders I’d just as soon not solve. It’s not like the
states. The worst schemers don’t seem to ever catch on that they’re
likely to get knocked over about screwing somebody out of their
life savings. They always think they’re so clever they won’t get
caught. The last fact they learn is that a lot of the time there’s
somebody who’s more clever than you. They’ve got you figured, then
they’ve got you dead.

“
Well, I
suppose nothing will ever change. I’ll have a lot of work here. I
try to find the scam and prevent the rest of it, but that happens
about a third of the time. I usually don’t hear about it until
somebody’s had their throat cut or something on the order. Those
are deep sonic charts. I doubt there’s anything you could get out
that deep. Maybe some natural gas, but that’s too expensive to go
after in an area that has that much rock. There’s a dome of
something that looks ... I’d say sulfur in that kind of dome. You
couldn’t make a profit on it.”

“
Oh, that
was just there. What we were looking for is in these little spots
here, here and here. Cinnabar and some silver. We think this little
bit might mean there are some larger lodes closer to the surface.
We certainly aren’t going to sink a shaft three hundred fifty
meters for what would never pay for digging a hundred!”

Clint agreed, but said the volcano was too
new for some things and too old for others. Outlying areas like
Arriba Blanca and Calderas were more likely.

“
You’re
probably right, but I survey where they pay me to map. I would
choose far different areas than Panamá to look for things simply
BECAUSE it’s either too old or too new over the whole
country.”

Clint soon said he had an appointment. Have a
nice day.

He’d definitely recognized the area in those
maps – and he knew sulfur in a sonic map. It was distinctive. The
lodes Arnold had shown were probably nothing but large lumps of
fused quartz. Much too deep to even consider trying to dig down to
them. The scam would be to identify the sulfur in that big dome as
oil.

Clint spent the day in Panamá City, then
called the airport to book a flight back to David. He would arrive
at 6:55. He spent the night in the Hotel Iris and took the first
bus in the morning to Puerto Armuelles. Tom met him at the terminal
and said that several people were asking about him. He didn’t know
what they wanted and told them he hadn’t seen him since yesterday
morning early.

“
That
Monica woman said I must have meant day before yesterday morning,
but I said it was yesterday morning at dawn on the pier. She said
her information must be wrong because some people said they saw you
in Santiago.”

“
Maybe
they saw Denton Hanrady. You met him (he’d used the disguise where
Tom met him very briefly a few months ago). Looks something like me
and is in Santiago most of the time.”

“
Oh,
yeah. Maybe so. What’s going down with that stupid bunch? That
asshole bastard with the big mouth and his old lady really offed
the Wallace bitch?”

“
Yeah.
I’m slowly learning a thing or two about this stupid deal. It seems
to be one of those old things where they find a little seam of gold
or something and make it sound like they’ve found the biggest lode
since Columbus.”

“
Yvon’s
in it up to her neck. I think she leads Bathner around with a ring
in his nose. Her real beddie-bye is that Monica woman, you ask me.
They think this is the US so they try to act straight.”

Clint nodded and agreed it looked that way at
times. They were probably bi and hadn’t noticed that a lot of the
people here were. No one cared.

“
That
type doesn’t notice anything at all about the people here,” Tom
agreed. “Figure they’re so much better they can’t waste their time
finding out about reality. That fucking loudmouthed idiot wasn’t
acting about most of it. I think THAT’S his real
persona.”

Again, Clint agreed. Cartworthy was far more
the type he was trying to act like than the normal tourist.

Someone had searched his room at the hotel.
He left little traps set, all of which had been sprung. The search
wasn’t professional, but was fairly thorough. He didn’t leave
anything there he cared if anyone found. He half expected something
such. He cleaned up and went to the pier. He’d seen Downy and Abel
hanging around the little parque and figured he’d let them know he
was back. He was there about fifteen minutes when Batty came out
with them to say he’d tried to find him for a couple of days, since
he returned, but he was in Santiago or somewhere.

“
I knew
you’d caught those people who were out to get me,” he explained.
“Yvon said it was the Smith brothers from Colón and they were all
dead or had been warned never to come back here. It should be safe
enough now.”

“
That
kind of trouble can wreak havoc on business. Something that was
actually unrelated made a mess of things for awhile and drew the
wrong kinds of people. The Cartworthys weren’t part of that. They
were acting for someone else to try to hide a scam.”

“
Er, hide
a scam?” Abel asked. “What kind of scam? One of those land deals?
Sell ten people the same piece of land for a hundred grand apiece
and disappear before they discover the papers were all
phony?”

“
Oh,
that’s more a gringo scheme. I was talking with a man in Panamá
City about how that usually ends. Somebody loses their life savings
and finds the crook somewhere alone. Cut throats are almost
epidemic in certain circles. The courts are sympathetic so long as
it’s gringos killing gringos.

“
No, this
seems to be more a salted mine kind of deal. There area lot of
small seams of minerals and whatever that are made to look like
major finds to sell a bunch of naive people percentages, then the
mine runs out after a hundred bucks worth of whatever is
mined.

“
Oh,
dear! How would I have KNOWN? I had this expert tell me it was ...
oh, dear! Same old same old. Get a new line. That one will get your
throat cut for you – Or maybe get you smothered with a
pillow.”

They gave each other “meaningful glances.”
Was that because they were in on the scam or because they were
worried that they might be the ones being scammed? Or both?

His phone buzzed. It was John Dougal in
Bocas. Clint hadn’t seen him in months. He said Travis had asked
that he call Clint if people came in little touristy bunches and
asked about Puerto Armuelles. There were six people from the states
in the Tropical Suites. They were asking about how to get to Puerto
Armuelles. Which bus and did they ask for a lot of ID if you went
by bus. They were booked for two weeks, but would be coming and
going, meanwhile.