Night of the Jaguar (12 page)

“That's right, Ajax, without the Soviets we wouldn't have this Lada. So how about some gratitude for that?”

“For what? The Soviets came here telling us what to do like we were the inmates taking over the asylum and they had our medication. Look out there.
There
is an energy, a vigor, a spirit that the Revo should've freed, not caged.”

Ajax hid the Python under his seat. “Little countries like ours are threatened by a two-headed monster, my dear lieutenant. One head's an eagle, the other a bear, but know what? No matter which mouth chews you up, they shit out the same asshole, comprendes?”

“Whatever.”

“I'm not grateful for anything but a good night's sleep and a decent cigarette. You, on the other hand, should be grateful, 'cause without this Lada you're the burro I'd be riding.”

She looked out the window—he hoped, to hide a smile.

“Donkeys kick. And bite.”

“Not if you beat 'em regular. Come on. Let's go walk amongst the people.”

“Unarmed?”

“Scared?”

No sooner had they plunged into the market than Ajax felt its inner order alter slightly. At the sight of their uniforms, a flabby arm waved and a whistle tweeted. It started up close and rippled two hundred yards away. The monkeys passed the word: jaguars on the prowl.

In a nation that lacked everything, the Oriental was chock-full of goods as only a black market can be. Foodstuffs, hardware, dry goods, textiles, American cigarettes, French perfumes, Mexican porn, Chinese watches, live iguanas, dead monkeys, old pistols, and love potions were for sale. Anything that came within a hundred miles of Nicaragua's coast could be found here—or anything that went missing inside its borders.

They walked under the high zinc roofs and among the tin shacks of the official section of the market, past the greens, reds, and yellows of the fruit and vegetable vendors. Discards made a slimy skin on the concrete. The screechy symphony of voices calling prices and enticements in this grubby market was the same energy that had built the temples of the Maya, the pyramids of the Aztecs, stacked the monoliths at Stonehenge. And if women had not built those wonders? Well, the men who did had had mothers like these women.

Ajax stopped to look over some guavas at a stall lorded over by three women with identical fat rolls and mischievous, quick eyes who were so homely in late middle-age they reminded Ajax of the Weird Sisters who ruined Macbeth.

Gladys sidled up close and whispered, “What did you make of that dream Epimenio went on about—the widow seeing her dead husband?”

“What do
you
make of it?”

“He seemed to tell the truth, but who knows with that type? Superstitious bullshit is as much an opiate of the masses as the church.”

Ajax repressed a need to smile and shake his head disapprovingly. “Ah, Lieutenant, there are more things in Matagalpa than are dreamed of in your Marxist philosophy.”

“Meaning?”

“First of all, never judge any information. Just study it.” He picked up two guavas, weighed them, and set the lighter one down. “Either Epimenio told the truth or he did not. If he did, then the question is, why would the widow tell him such a thing? Either she had the dream or she did not. If she did, then she did. But if she did not, why would she tell Epimenio she did? If you wanted to get a campesino moving, but couldn't tell him the truth, you'd make up such a story.”

Ajax thumped one guava with his forefinger to check its ripeness.

“So, she either had the dream or made it up to hasten the messenger. The more interesting scenario is that there was no dream. So what did the wife know about her husband's business that she would send his cousin to look for him under such a pretense?”

“She comes down to collect the body we can question her.”

“I suppose … maybe…” Ajax uttered the words softly, let the words hang there, like butterflies amid the raucous cawing of the bizneras. They finally alighted on Gladys's mind. She snatched the guava from his hands.

“You can't fucking seriously be thinking of us going to Cuadra's farm.
In the mountains!”

“No, not
us
.” He took the guava back.

“Hey, Comandante
,
you gonna buy that guava or just play with it?” The larger of the three snatched it from his hands and wiped it down. “You should, you know. Guava puts iron in your pole!”

A second laughed and held up another guava. “Two for the price of one—twice the iron, twice the pole!”

Ajax held his hands up. “Señora, please. Don't embarrass me in front of my girlfriend.”

The sisters eyed Gladys up and down. “That cat don't eat sausage.”

Gladys flushed red, and Ajax hurried her away as the sisters' laughter followed them like flies.

*   *   *

They walked on in silence until the pavement ran out. They were on the dusty tracks of the unofficial section of the market, now. It was filled with stalls run by those without a government permit, only need. The sounds and sights were the same, but the vendors' eyes were harder, narrower. There were more men than women. Not only were the stalls technically illegal, but they sold only what had been smuggled or stolen.

Ajax spotted the two young guys he was looking for, lounging in front of a stall. A dirty curtain veiled the action behind it. They wore the latest tough-guy styles—T-shirts rolled up their chests to show off their flat stomachs and olive-colored nipples. In the States, they'd have been called “guidos.” They spotted Ajax and ducked behind the curtain.

“Come on!” He sprinted down the alley with Gladys behind him and heard a car engine fire up. He got to the stall, ripped the curtain back, and got his hand on the pickup truck's hood just as the driver clutched it into gear.

“Don't do it!”

The truck engine raced, nosed forward, pushing Ajax, flat-footed, on the dirt. Gladys crashed in behind him with a .38 snub-nose in her hand.

“Shut it off!” she yelled.

The driver killed the engine.

“Get out of the vehicle!” She turned on the nipple men. “Hands up!”

Ajax was amazed. “You carry a backup?”

“And aren't you grateful.”

He pushed her gun hand down, went to the driver's window, and greeted the smuggler fuming behind the wheel. He was a wiry bantam cock of man with a spine so twisted he always appeared to be leaning away.

“Qué pasa, Hunchback?”

“Captain Montoya.”

“You were gonna run me over?”

“Accelerator got stuck.”

“That hurts, Hunchback.”

Gladys stuck the snub-nose in his face. “Get out of the goddamn vehicle!”

Ajax went to the truck bed, laid his hands on the unopened boxes there. “I thought we were friends, compadres.”

“Why, 'cause you clip me for product every month?” The Hunchback climbed out the cab. “I would break my own blood's legs for shit like that. And you ain't family.”

“I'm not here for cigarettes, Quasimodo.” Ajax drummed his fingers on the boxes. “Just some information.”

The Hunchback looked him over. “Take your Marlboros and fuck your ‘information.'”

Gladys grabbed his shirt collar, kicked him in the knee, and the moment he dropped to the ground she slapped the snub-nose's barrel into his temple.

“Watch your mouth!”

“He's half your size and a hunchback, Gladys. Let him up.”

Ajax pulled the Hunchback up and dusted off his dirty blue jeans. “You okay?”

“
Viva la revolución.”

“Holster it, Gladys. Wait outside and take the nipple boys with you.”

She walked out ahead of the Nicaraguan guidos, and Ajax pulled the dirty curtain closed.

“Sorry about that.”

“You ain't sorry about shit. Why me, Montoya?”

“'Cause you sell the good stuff.” Ajax tore open a box in the truck bed and peeled out one of the many red-and-white cartons of Marlboros. He ran his finger along one side. “See? Says right there. ‘Made in Winston Salem, North Carolina.' Rest of your compañeros sell cheap Mexican knockoffs. These are quality. You sell quality, you get quality customers.”

“Lucky me. You gonna pay for them today?”

“I can't afford these on
my
salary. Besides, I'm not here for the cigarettes, but thanks for offering.” He tucked a carton under his arm, considered for a moment, and helped himself to a second. “I need to know where to buy car parts. Fresh ones, not something been sitting out in the sun and rain for weeks.”

“You steal my merchandise
and
want a favor?”

“Let us agree we have marveled at that irony. And I'm not stealing. I'm taking a small bribe for not arresting you.”

“Then how about some help with the others?”

“The economic police? I've got no influence with them. I'm homicide, so if you ever kill someone…”

“Don't think I haven't thought about it.”

Ajax looked the Hunchback up and down while he peeled open a carton. He could tell the little man
had
thought about it.

“Hunchback, we've all thought about killing. Some have done it, and others not. And of those who've done it, some of us got good at it and others not.”

He fished out a pack and opened it.

“So you go about what you're good at, smuggling these smokes in. It earns you some hard currency, eh?
The yanqui dollar.
You got this truck, a house with a concrete floor I bet, electricity, and kids that don't know hunger and go to school, don't they?”

The Hunchback squinted, but nodded yes.

“Your customers are foreigners, big shots in government, the rich, so you pass on the cost from me tapping you to them, and you go on while you still can. This black market won't last forever. The government's gonna wake up to the inevitability of
market forces
and eventually all this”—Ajax swept his arm around the dirty little stall with its dirty little truck while he pulled at a butt in the pack—“will go away and be given back to the rich who had it all in the first place. And you'll be back selling mangos in the street, which is where you started, wasn't it?”

He held a pristine tobacco cylinder in front of the Hunchback's face. “Got a light?”

The Hunchback flipped open a Zippo embossed with a Budweiser logo.

Ajax blew a long trail of smoke into his face, smacked his lips. “Now
that
is a good smoke.”

The Hunchback smiled. “Other than to break my balls and talk me to death, what do you fucking want?”

“I want to know who I would see if I had a stolen pickup to get rid of. Cigarette?”

The Hunchback shook one loose and fired it up, took a long drag and let the smoke drift into Ajax's face. To the Hunchback, Ajax knew, it felt like defiance. But it really signaled capitulation.

“Don Augustino.”

“He got a stall here?”

The Hunchback snorted like a pig at the trough. “He sells here, the parts after they're chopped. But he don't come here. He's got an office. At the Inter.”

“The InterContinental Hotel?” The Hotel Inter was the one true landmark in Managua. Its claim to fame was that it survived the '72 earthquake when Howard Hughes was slowly decomposing on its top floor. The crazed billionaire had decamped right afterward, taking, local lore later suggested, the last of the Ogre's luck with him. “He buys stolen cars out of the Inter?”

“No, sells them. To your friends in the government. Foreigners. Everything that comes across the borders, mostly from Costa Rica. He's the stolen car king.”

“What if it's stolen locally?”

“Chopped for parts. That stall's down toward the fence. Look for the blind gypsy. If they don't know you, he'll have to read your palm before they'll sell to you. But everything either side of him has been chopped.”

Ajax patted the man's shoulder. “You know, Hunchback, I could grow to love you.”

“Then my damnation will be complete.”

*   *   *

Ajax left Gladys with the blind gypsy who, Ajax was sure, was neither. He went on alone, to stroll among the jumble of car parts trying to assemble a jigsaw. He'd liked doing jigsaw puzzles as a kid. They had been a part of the “Nicaraguan education” his father had furiously built, like a dam against assimilation, while dreaming of going home.

In the Los Angeles of his youth, Ajax recalled, if you weren't Anglo or Black, you were Mexican. No one thought or cared about shades in the Latino crowds. Not even the Mexicans. It had driven his father crazy—the food, the holidays celebrated in schools, the ethnic slurs, all Mexican. His father had been shocked by the prejudice he'd encountered when they first fled to California after he and his coconspirators had bought their way out of the Ogre's prison. “Even the Mexicans hate us!” he would shout and thump the table. But the Anglos could not care less, and the Mexicans all looked down their noses at Nicaragua the same way that the gringos did Mexico.

So his father had determined to make Ajax and his siblings as Nicaraguan as possible. History and geography lessons were mandatory over the summer. Dessert was a reward for reciting poems by Rubén Darío.

And then the puzzles.

His father gathered topographical maps of Nicaragua, old newspapers from Managua, or portraits of the heroes like President Zelaya and Sandino. Ajax's mother would painstakingly glue them onto old cardboard, and then cut them up into jigsaws. Doing one such puzzle Ajax read an article in an old
La Prensa
about a group of bandits who'd robbed a bank in Matagalpa. It was the first time he'd seen the word
Sandinista
.

So Ajax had learned early to like puzzles, and the quarters his father handed out with squeezes to the neck for the first to finish. Not that his father's puzzles had been that difficult to solve. It took Ajax a few years to realize that the puzzles were only a prelude to his father lecturing on geography, biography, history, poetry. He had been one of the youngest-ever professors in Managua before “my blindness,” as he called it, led him to his failed rebellion which he'd mourned first as tragedy, but later as folly. His daily humiliation as a gardener and pool cleaner made his exile, and heart, bitter. He hated the Mexicans who daily dismissed him as an overeducated bourgeois. And he despised the Americans who would not believe their gardener had a PhD.