Night of the Jaguar (22 page)

The gringo giant ambled by and Ajax pretended to study the switch. But he got enough of a look to determine that the giant must be a longtime resident. No one arrived in Nicaragua with a pallor as sickly as his, and no one who'd been in-country a while kept a pallor as glowing as Amelia's.

His cop's intuition told him to delve deeper. Or, at least that's what he told himself. He slid the switch back into his belt, revved the engine, raced up behind her, and slewed the bike to a noisy stop.

“Hey, jugo.”

She spun around and Ajax pretended not to notice the two shimmies it took her breasts to come to a complete stop.

“I'm not Hugo.”

“No, not Hu-go, Who-go.”

“What?”

“Like jugo de naranja.”

“Isn't that…”

“Orange juice.”

“You are such a goodwill ambassador.”

“Who's Lurch?”

“What?”

“The giant gringo you just said good-bye to.
The Addams Family
? Didn't you watch TV as a kid? Lurch, their giant butler.”

“You grew up in America.”

“
The Addams Family
was as much an American export as the Marines.”

“I'm not asking, I'm telling you. You grew up in Los Angeles.”

Usually at this point in an interrogation, he'd lay his hand on the butt of the Python to signal authority. He wasn't wearing it, so he laid his hand on the switch.

“How would you know where I grew up?”

“I suppose you're off to the circus to drool over your Hula Hoop Queen?”

“No, I caught the matinee. You?”

“I had wanted a quiet stroll, but seems not.”

“Why are you here?”

Ajax turned off the bike. When he looked down to set the kickstand, Amelia grabbed the switch, and before he could stop her she'd drawn it and held it over her head, like Arthur had Excalibur from the stone.

“What're you playing? Knights in shining armor? I bet you'd like that Russian as your damsel.” She laid her hand over her forehead. “Oh, sir knight, please save me, the dragon has melted all my hula hoops!”

She put a hand over her mouth and laughed, either at him or her own hamminess, Ajax wasn't sure. He didn't like being teased. Nor did he really dislike it. He did like looking at her neck as she bent her head back.

“I use that stick to hunt wolves.”

That, he noted gladly, stopped her.

“Wolves? There are wolves in Nicaragua?”

“There are wolves everywhere. These are urban wolves. They come down from the mountains at night. Root around in the garbage.”

She ran the switch over the palm of her hand. “And you use
this
to hunt them?”

“I don't kill them. Kind of like your American Indians, I use it to count coup. It's a national pastime in Nicaragua.”

Amelia turned her head to the side, pressed her lips into a flat line, and made a skeptical noise in the back of her throat. “Yes, I'm sure you do.”

“You calling me a liar?”

She looked directly into his eyes, and even in moonlight they shone emerald green.

“I don't think the delusional are liars.”

Ajax stood the bike up and kicked it to life.

“Get on.”

“I'm not…”

“You're one of those gringos who come down here with fixed ideas who won't be shown otherwise no matter how
wrong
you are?”

“No! I'm not. I mean…” She looked at the bike. “I've never been on one.”

Ajax reached back with his foot and flipped down the passenger footpad. “I'll drive slow, at least until we find the wolves.”

Amelia Peck swung her leg over the seat. She seemed to adjust herself as far back on it as possible to avoid actual contact with his body. But he felt her knees touch his hips.

“How do I hang on?” she asked.

“There's a handhold just under your leg. Grab it.”

She waved the switch. “What do I do with this?”

“It's your coup stick. Slide it in your belt, like a sword.”

“Go slow.”

“Of course.”

Ajax popped the clutch and the bike lurched forward. Amelia squealed. To save herself from tumbling backward she threw an arm around his neck.

*   *   *

As they rode off into the darkness, the Conquistadores' Land Cruiser trailed slowly after them. Captain Pissarro was behind the wheel; Major Cortez was next to him, an AK between his legs.

“You think he's fucking her? The Boss would love to hear that.”

Major Cortez looked at his partner. “Don't be a dumbass. Don't you get it?”

Pissarro studied his partner—he didn't.

“Montoya's with the gringa, she's with the priest, they may all be with the reporter, and they've got Cuadra's body in the gringo's truck. Where do you think they're
going
?”

Pissarro watched the motorcycle's single taillight disappear around a corner. “Cuadra's farm?”

“Goddamn right. El Tuma. Fucking bandit country. Krill operates in the whole area and what the Boss expects to
hear
is that we followed them there.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.” Cortez laid the rifle in the backseat. “I say we lost him.”

“But the Boss…”

“Ain't nothing compared to Krill.”

2.

Matthew was into his third rum and OJ when he answered the knock at his door.

“Father Jerome.”

“Matthew. I'm sorry if it's late.”

“No. Come in.”

The priest ducked his head and took the seat Matthew offered, folding himself like a paper doll with well-worn creases.

“Can I get you something? Coffee?
Trago
of rum.”

“A rum and coffee would be welcome.”

Matthew knew Jerome was a “whiskey priest.” So were most of the priests he'd grown up around in Boston. It was no sin among the campesinos who made up most of Jerome's flock. Matthew also knew Jerome, while a drinker, was celibate—unlike many country priests whose “housekeepers” produced children known locally as
milagritos
: little miracles. Celibacy counted more than sobriety in the mountains, and explained the high regard in which Jerome had been held for the twenty years he'd ministered to a parish a hundred miles in diameter, much of it accessible only by horse.

Matthew set down the drink. “You know about Enrique. I was with Gloria.”

“Yes. Epimenio told us what he knew when he returned.”

Gloria and Enrique had been married some twenty years. She was his second wife and was fifteen years his junior.

“How's she taking it?”

Jerome spread his enormous hands. “Devastated. She lost her sister recently. And now Enrique. All those years farming amid all that war, and he is killed in Managua. Was it robbery? Epimenio said they killed him for his car.”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

For reasons he wouldn't understand until later, Matthew pulled the old newspaper photograph from his desk and handed it to Jerome. The priest took a long drink of his rummed coffee and read the caption.

“Do you know about this? Enrique's connection to this gas station?”

“He owned it, of course.”

“I was there just yesterday. What happened to it? When did he sell it?”

“He didn't. Sell it. It was confiscated by the government.”

“When?”

“After Enrique was released from jail.”

“Jail?”

“El Chipote.”

“Chipote!” Matthew drained his drink. El Chipote had been Somoza's most infamous prison during the dictatorship. It was now the Sandinistas' most infamous prison, and was the private reserve of Sub-comandante Vladimir Malhora, head of State Security, the man who had certainly executed Jorge Salazar and who was front and center in the photograph.

“Why would they put Enrique in El Chipote?”

“You had better ask Gloria that.”

3.

Ajax cruised the side streets of Matagalpa looking for wolves.

Amelia balanced her discomfort at their closeness on the bike with a need to stay on by placing one hand on Ajax's shoulder. The other clutched the bar beneath the seat, the coup stick in her belt.

“This is silly.”

“Shhh.” Ajax braked to a stop at the bottom of a darkened side street. One hand held in the clutch, the other revved the accelerator. He'd done battle already up this street, and now the engine sound was priming their foes somewhere up ahead in the dark.

“Do you hear that?”

“No.”

“Hold the coup stick in your right hand. Hang on with your left.”

Amelia's giggle seemed to Ajax more delighted than doubtful.

“Anything else, Captain Crazy Horse?”

“Yeah.
Confias en mi.
”

“Trust you?”

Ajax's left foot pressed down on the shift pedal, the bike popped into first gear, and he launched them into the Valley of Wolves. They hadn't gone more than ten yards when the headlight picked them out of the gloom: six genuine curs, lining both sides of the street in squads of three. Crouched in full-on ambush mode. Scrawny little things, none over two foot tall, but they packed eighty pounds of meanness into forty pounds of lean.

“There they are!”

“But they're…”

“Get the stick out!”

“Don't go up there!”

“Patria Libre…”

“No!”

Then the dogs attacked. Launched themselves, ears flat, hackles raised, teeth bared, snarling, growling creatures whose ferocity, Ajax knew, would pierce some ancient part of Amelia's brain, set off some primal alarm. As it did his own.

“Get me out of here!” One arm locked around his waist, the other around his throat, choking him. He had to let go the accelerator to free his larynx. The move slowed the bike and the curs gained, inches from Amelia's freckled ankle.

Her squeals of fright were more roller-coaster panic than Grim Reaper terror. Ajax sped up, keeping just enough ahead of the snarling teeth to ensure both Amelia's safety and maximum alarm.

“Get me out of here!”

“Use the stick, use the stick!”

“No! Just go!”

She'd freed one hand, the better to pound him on the back, but the other was wound tightly around his waist.

“Count coup. You've got to count coup.”

“Nooooo!”

Ajax slowed so the mutts could gain a few inches. Amelia screamed again, but stopped pounding his back. A moment later, Ajax heard a pain-filled, “
Yip
!” In his side mirror he saw one of the dogs fall off from the chase.

“Coup!” He laughed so hard the bike wobbled for a horrible moment.

“Now go, you fucking maniac!”

Amelia pounded his back, but her laughter made her clutch him tighter with the other hand. Ajax hit the gas and sped them to the top of the hill. As they had before, the dogs broke off the attack at some invisible boundary where honor was secured.

“You're such a bastard! You are a lunatic!”

She kept hitting him, but each blow was softer than the one before, gentler, a little more helpless. She reached around his body, pressed both hands into his chest, and leaned into him, exhausted with terror and laughter.

“You are an insane person. Who
does
something like that?”

“Hey, you got one. You counted coup.”

She giggled into his back. “The poor thing, I really nailed him, too.” With her forehead she banged his back. “I can't believe you made me do that.”

Ajax let himself relax into her, and for a moment they quietly held each other up.

“The good news is, you're now halfway to membership in the ‘
Cazador de Lobos Urbanos.'”

“Dad will be so proud.” She lifted her head, and Ajax felt her breath on his neck. “What do you mean ‘halfway'?”

He revved the engine, downshifted into first, and started back down the hill. Amelia's shriek could be heard for blocks, but Ajax saw the coup stick rise over her head.

4.

“Oh yeah.
Oh yeah
. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah
.”

Ajax's head was locked between Amelia's thighs as she rocked them both in the twisted sheets of her bed. His mouth was wrapped around as much of her sex as he could get hold of, his tongue frantically working that button her fingers had guided him to. Her orange pussy hair was scratching his face. Her hands kneaded his head, then pulled at his hair as she ripped his face up from between her legs.

“We've got to put it in now!”

She handed him the round, slippery diaphragm, a thing Ajax had never touched before. Earlier, in the midst of shredding each other's clothes, she'd paused—agonizingly—to smear the diaphragm in spermicide, and had told him she liked her men to slip it into place when the time came.

It had come.

Ajax took hold of it, but when he tried to bend it in half like she'd shown him it popped out of his fingers like a spring, flopped open, and landed on her belly with a plop. They both laughed, and Ajax was amazed at how it thrilled him, fired him, to look into her eyes while she laughed. Amelia grabbed hold of his neck and lifted her hips while her other hand dexterously folded the barrier and slid in into place. She moaned a little when it entered her.

“I hope that's all the help you need, Captain Crazy Horse.”

Ajax lifted her left leg and used it to turn her onto her belly. She obeyed and her fingers grabbed a handful of sheets as Ajax entered her from behind.

“Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.”

He slid his cock only halfway into her, and then most of the way out. It opened her up and made her flow. He counted silently each time until he reached nine, and on the tenth thrust he rammed himself into her as far as he could, and then more until Amelia's head smacked into the headboard.