Night of the Jaguar (16 page)

Been a lot of dying lately.
Horacio's words again floated through his mind, but as past or prologue he was no longer sure.

At least all this death would get one good funeral.

He drove on, turning left or right without thinking, to Gio's house.
Our house.
There were no ugly gray walls here. No graffiti, no slogans.
No compañero.
Las Colinas was an upscale barrio of about twenty acres, full of diplomats, foreigners, and the upper-middle-classes of the Sandinista “nomenklatura”—a term imported from the Soviets as surely as the Lada he was driving. It was an old saw that there were three social classes in Latin America: dirt floor, concrete floor, and tiled floor. The Revo could no more change that than Christ could've declined crucifixion. Las Colinas was nothing but tiled floors as far as the eye could see, which was maybe why it was stashed behind the trees.

He turned down Gioconda's street and found it lined with vehicles. He parked at the end of the line. Their rides informed him how his old comrades had fared over the years. Some were Ladas, like Ajax's, only in better shape and none marked P
OLICÍA
. But most were Jeep Cherokees and Toyota pickups from various ministries: health, land reform, education, defense, State Security, the army. A dozen drivers milled around, the mark of the truly “in.”

He pulled to a stop, but could not yet will himself to go in and join old compañeros in mourning the death of one of their greatest. He'd skipped the burial service, as he'd told Marta he would. The morning newspapers, lying on Horacio's lap, had featured his exploits at the airport.
Barricada
and
El Nuevo Diario
had played up the government line about a desperate escape attempt by the notorious killer of young girls. But
La Prensa
had run an enormous headline, “Bienvenidos a Nicaragua,” above a half-page photo spread of a crazed-looking Ajax murdering the fat fuck, accompanied by one of that gringa in mid-slap. Connelly, all wide-eyed, was in the background of that one. Worse, they'd run two full pages inside—a sequence of shots from dignified VIP press conference to bedlam. The last one featured El Gordo in the choke hold, almost unconscious, Ajax's mouth pressed to his ear, a sadistic scowl twisting his face. Carrot Head was in that one, too. Strange, but she didn't look panicked. The worst, however, was a photo in dead center capturing Gioconda and the portly Foreign Minister running for their lives. For those not familiar with their ample backsides, the paper kindly identified them in a caption in type as large as a bullet.

How could he face anyone, even at this more private memorial service? Especially Gio. She was so vain about her ass. What could he say? “Photos never lie, but liars publish photos?”

He lit a Marlboro and smoked without pleasure, thinking that the Hunchback was not a hunchback, but had always been in pain.

The sounds of a mariachi band playing a funereal “La Vida No Vale Nada” floated out from the gathering. Ajax silently cursed himself for feeling so nervous.

“Ready, Ajax?”

“Do me one favor?”

“Of course.”

“Feed me what looks like rum and cokes, so I don't have to explain, you know.…”

“Your sobriety.” Horacio patted his leg. “Of course.”

“Horacio,
amorrrrrrrrr
!” Gio trilled her R's at him. “Come on, come in.”

Gioconda glided toward them. Barefooted. Her face unmade. Dressed in a simple black shift. Her hair tied back in a bandana—the red and black of the Sandinista Front. That hair. It was an unimaginable tangle of curls no woman ever believed was natural. The one time in his life Ajax had waxed lyrical, he'd compared her locks to vines in the Garden of Eden. How long had it been between that sober night and the drunken one he'd stood over her with scissors determined to denude the Gorgon?

“I see you brought the saboteur with you.”

He and Horacio climbed from the Lada. She hugged the old man's neck. Ajax noticed that she'd resumed shaving her armpits. Funny, she'd gotten all hairy back in '79 when the fashion was guerrilla chic.

She kissed Horacio on the mouth, and turned to her ex-husband.

“Why does it seem whenever I see you there is some disaster? The last time you were here”—she swept her arm over the house—“you started a fight with that American film director and pushed Bianca Jagger into the pool.”

“Did I?”

“She slapped you for it.”

“Her, too?”

Gio put her arm through Horacio's and led him inside, but turned back to Ajax.

“It is my honor to host this memorial. A truce for today. Come inside, everyone is waiting for you.”

Ajax followed a few steps behind. As they entered, Ajax slowed to let Horacio enjoy his greetings. But also to reconnoiter the walls of the entryway. They were covered in a gallery of photos of Gioconda in various places with a menagerie of the big shots she entertained as vice foreign minister—not of a nation, but of everyone's favorite
Revolución!
Ajax recognized the Vietnamese general. He'd been on that trip, the furthest from home he'd ever been. He also recognized a few of the Cubans. The others were a mélange of European, Russian, and Latin American dignitaries. Pride of place, he noticed, was given to the writers and artists who came to soak up the revolutionary milieu. He'd been around for a few of those assemblages. Gio had given him Graham Greene and Gabriel García Marquez to read before their visits. That photo was dead center on the wall, showing those two lions and a laughing Gio at a table littered with food and drink. He had sat somewhere to her left, not really following the literary shop talk that had droned on for hours. Maybe the scowl on his face had got him cropped out of the trophy shot. But he spotted his pack of Reds on the table at her elbow—which, as he recalled, the other two sons of bitches had helped themselves to all night while skewering yanqui imperialism with their wit.

It was after that visit he'd realized that all the novels and plays were not meant to enlighten him, but to make him presentable.

He searched the wall and was heartened to see himself in one photo—a copy of the one he kept in his drawer with her makeup bag. If the gallery was a map of her life, his photo had once been closer to the equator, but had since drifted to the far northwest. Any further and it would fall off the edge of the world.

*   *   *

The lawn in back of the house was filled with people in various states of mourning and sobriety. The crowd spilled around the tasteful flower beds, and around her small, crystal-clear pool. Ajax was met by a chorus of hearty voices.

“Ajax! Look at you, fucker, I thought you were dead!”

“Until we saw you in the paper! You fucked that fat shit up!”

“And scared them gringos back on the plane, man. I heard they went home!”

“You don't get out much, bro, but when you do, you know how to make some noise, compa!”

“Give up them Marl-burros, Spooky!”

Ajax handed around one of the extra packs he'd brought. He divided the mourners into two types, as he did the world, those he knew by their nom de guerre, and all the rest. El Chino was there. As were Flaco, Blondie, Isadora
,
Gordo, Negro, three different Gatos, El Matador
,
Rhino, Nora, Esteben, Cuqui
,
and Blue Eyes. Marta was there, too, huddled with her boys, and looking fine in jet black. These veterans—all of them the shot-callers of the Northern Front who'd survived at the expense of so many sandbags—all stood together, drunker and noisier than the other guests.

Ajax joined them, and amid their too-loud, backslapping, ball-busting camaraderie he felt the walls of his solitude become porous enough so that he could pass through. He wondered how they dealt with their ghosts, or if they had any. He guessed that some threw themselves into the work of the Revo, some obviously drank too much, and some lost themselves in the rhetoric that had sustained them as kids, The New this or the Socialist that, down with the yanqui something, up with the Soviet something else, or long live the Internationalist whatever.

He felt a drink pressed into his hand. Horacio slipped him a glass of teetotal Coke with lime that all but the most discerning eye would think was the standard Cuba Libre. Ajax sipped and felt a warmth spread across his middle, which once would've been the liquor. He realized it must be pleasure. He was happy to be among the old comrades.

“Be careful, Captain,” Horacio whispered. “You're smiling.”

“Been a while since we were all together.”

“It's been a while since you were together with all of them.”

Horacio turned to the assembled mourners. “Compañeros.”

He said it softly, but in the tone with which he'd called them into formation in the mountains. All the veterans immediately came to order, and shushed those who had not been trained to pay attention, so they fell silent, too.

“Compañeros. Our old friend Death has harvested yet another of us. It is his manner and so we do not begrudge him. We have come to bid ‘Saludos' to our comrade commander, Joaquin ‘El Mejicano' Tinoco. And we do so by quoting that ancient proverb, whose still-ringing wisdom reminds us: It is a far, far better thing to have died under the care of a pretty French nurse than with any of you ugly shit-eaters!”

The old compas let loose a roar of approval that Ajax thought loud enough to reach El Mejicano on the other side.

Horacio raised his glass: “To Joaquin, and to Victory.
Patria Libre!”

“O MORIR!”

Ajax tossed back his drink along with the others, and in that moment he meant it—
Free country, or Death!

It was a fight to the death. Or it had been. Someone, maybe Horacio, maybe Joaquin, had explained it to them years ago. The guerrilla fought so he could live, so that he could die in the fight to be free. And if he did not die that day, he fought to live to die another day. Fighting to live, living to die, it had been so simple.

“Compañeros! Compañeros!”
Gio tapped a knife to her glass. “We must mourn our friend Joaquin, but we must also celebrate him.
Música!”

The musicians broke into a Mexican norteño, one of Joaquin's favorites. A paroxysm of Yips! And Ye-Haw's! rolled out as one and all put on their best Mexican accents and stormed the dance floor around the pool like it was the Bastille.

Ajax watched the dancing, and held down a flank of the bar. The uniformed waiter was from the InterContinental Hotel. It reminded Ajax that the Hunchback had steered him to a don Augustino there; it was his next stop after the funeral. He'd already sent Gladys to stake out his home.

“Ajax! My brother!”

Rhino assaulted him with a sloppy, smelly hug.

“I love you man. I love you!”

Rhino was a few years younger than Ajax, shorter and squatter, a light-skinned pure-bred barrio boy from León. Rhino had joined them in the mountains later in the war, and so always felt like the little brother who had to catch up. Ajax and he had worked State Security in the early days of the Revo. Rhino was another one who adjusted to peace with too much drink.

“Rhino, you smell like a drunken Rhinoceros.”

“Yeah, man, 'cause I drink like one. Hey you! Give us some more here.” Rhino grabbed two glasses from the waiter.

“I'm good, just filled up.”

Rhino drained half the glass. “So, Captain Ajax Montoya, Policía Sandinista. How's that going, man? You working anything good?”

“No, man. It ain't like you cowboys in State Security. Working homicide in a country at war is like selling flip-flops to fish.”

Rhino smiled the way drunks did, out of camaraderie more than comprehension.

“Listen, Rhino. You know two Seguridad compas, Major Pissarro and Captain Cortez?”

“I love what you did to El Gordo Sangroso
,
man, you fucked him up.”

“Couldn't let him escape twice.”

“Fuck no, bro.” Rhino checked over his shoulder, although Ajax doubted he could see if anyone had been eavesdropping.

“I used to go with one of the girls he killed, you know.”

“I didn't know.”

“Not regular or anything.” Rhino looked into Ajax's eyes and smiled. “She charged me Nica prices!”

Ajax had learned in chasing down El Gordo Sangroso that Managua's whores always charged in dollars. It was a true mark of favor to accept the inflation-ravaged córdoba as payment.

“She must've liked you, Rhino.”

“She did man, she did.”

“So, you don't know Cortez or Pissarro?”

Rhino seemed to sober infinitesimally. “You fucked them up, Spooky!”

“Yeah, they rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Fucking Spooky, man. You don't give a shit about
anything
!”

Rhino swayed for a moment, his body, like his mind, leaning toward something. “You shouldn't do that man. Them two…”

“What?”

“These newer guys, man, they ain't like us. It's like … they're like…”

“Squares.”

“Yeah man! Back in the old days they woulda been goin' to catechism class while we were out gettin' high! Remember?” Then Rhino did remember. “Well, you were in the States. Boomboomboom. But León in them days, man. Shit. We partied.”

Rhino staggered through his memories of the good old days. “You been to Russia, right? Man, I fucking love Russians! They're all into the black market, drink more than I do. And sing! I mean who knows what they're singin' about but they are some singing motherfuckers! Am I right?”

Rhino shook his head at some inner marvel, and then threw an arm around Ajax's neck. “Pissarro and Cortez, they're more like East Germans, man. Boomboomboom!”

“Yeah, I hear you, Rhino. But what do they
do
?”