Saffire (18 page)

“How about instead you explain your reluctance to speak to me. You've already admitted that you've been sent by the group.”

“It is based on the group assumption that I should use womanly wiles to learn about you, something I resented. So while I agreed that I would ask you our questions, I've decided, without group permission, not to try to hide behind coquettish conversation and instead be blunt and explain that I am asking it on behalf of the group. Why are you in Panama asking about my father?”

“Who is in the group and why does it matter to them?”

She took a small step along the beach, her body language inviting me to walk with her. I could not resist.

“If you can't make an accurate guess,” she answered, “then you have less intelligence than I estimated. Impress me. Live up to my expectations, and tell me who is in the group.”

“What if I'm not interested in impressing you?”

“I would be disappointed.”

She slowed so that I closed the gap between us, and stepped toward me, tilting that beautiful face upward to look at me directly. Had there been no moonlight, she would have been only an outline. Instead, I clearly saw those delightfully curved lips.

There was tension. Of the delicious sort. And enough of a hint in her smile to show she knew it.

I said, “I can see why the group consensus was to make you ambassador.”

“Who is in the group?” She smiled. “Tell me, Holt.”

She was toying with me. Knowing that the soft way she said my name was a seduction of sorts.

“Not your father,” I said.

“No?”

“From what little I know of him, I can't see him whispering little plans with your fiancé or Harding and Waldschmidt and Odalis. Does that cover the group?”

“Essentially.”

“Your father is not in the group.”

“No, my father is not in the group.”

“Neither is Miskimon.”

“Neither is Miskimon. Odalis, however, does have a soft spot for that man.”

I waited for her to reveal the secret about Odalis, but it did not come. “This group has a purpose?”

“Some of us resent the American occupation of our young country. Some of us think we are no better off than when we were a province of Colombia. The United States has taken a lot from us and given us little. Other countries have more to offer.”

“Ah, Waldschmidt and his games. Tempting you with Germany.”

It made clear sense. With a canal between the two oceans, this small country was worth a great deal on the world stage. And the kaiser believed in aggression. Germany's military assets made it formidable, and few doubted the kaiser's will to use those assets. All that Germany needed was a way to negate the British naval powers. From a military point of view, all it would take was a base at each end of the canal to hold the entire isthmus.

“Perhaps. Why are you in Panama asking about my father?”

“Why I'm in Panama is my business. I don't mean that unkindly.”

“When you wander about this city asking questions about my father and his business, I think that makes it my business. Especially when you visit my family home and try to speak to one of our maids.”

She'd stepped back. Gone was the seductive pose. I felt real anger from her.

“Your mistake is assuming that one is related to the other. Why I'm in Panama is my business. Why I wandered the city with questions about your father is something entirely different. And the simple reason is because of Saffire.”

This seemed to startle her. “Saffire?”

“Here's the truth, Señorita Sandoval.”

“If it's to be Holt, then please, call me Raquel.”

“Here's the truth. Somehow, in less than twenty-four hours, that girl managed to drag me into a situation that I didn't see coming.”

“Yes,” Raquel said. “She has that capacity. And I do know about your troubles in the night. The bite of the alligator. I'm not surprised that your questions led to that.”

“You'll explain that to me?”

“My father is a powerful man and dangerous to many. Even his enemies would want to know why you appear with questions about him.”

I scratched my head, wishing I could put my hat on again. But that would be ungentlemanly.

“You are welcome to tell your friends—and your father's enemies—that I have no more questions. Tomorrow, I'll be gone. In fact, I visited your home this afternoon to assure myself that all would be fine for Saffire, so I could leave the country in good conscience.”

“Why should you care about a girl you barely know?”

“My only child is a daughter close to her age.”

“You are married then. That surprises me. You don't seem tamed.”

“I am a widower.” I knew why I wanted her to know that. I was rewarded again with a smile.

“I doubt I can get my friends to believe that Saffire is the reason. In this world there are many girls the age of your daughter. You can't save them all.”

“At one time, I cherished a cynicism that allowed me to believe that was a good enough reason not to try to make a difference.”

“And then?”

“I held my newborn daughter and wept for the joy of it. It's one of the best memories of my life.” And one of my worst.

Raquel put an arm through mine and led me down the beach in a slow stroll.

“Soon”—her subdued tone wrapped around me—“I will be married to a man who would believe that kind of admission is a contemptible weakness.”

“I wish you the best.”

“It will be a pragmatic marriage. I have no illusions about what is ahead. I am also a woman of honor, and a woman of honor does not disgrace herself by shirking a commitment such as the sacrament of marriage. Keep that in mind, and know that while the admission I'm about to make might seem of little matter to you, it is of great significance to me because it is something that I'm aware will be close to a betrayal of that upcoming marriage. Yet it is something I know I will regret not saying if I do not take this opportunity to say it.”

She stopped and faced me, continuing so softly that I strained to hear her above the lapping of water on the sand. “I am grateful for a shared walk that I will remember for a long time, with a man to whom I feel drawn, when I'd begun to believe I would never feel like this again. So thank you for letting me discover my heart is not entirely dead. It will be bitter and sweet to speculate on what could have been, had we met under different circumstances and had you felt the same toward me.”

“I—”

“Do not tell me whether you feel the same. Let me believe what I want to believe.” She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “I would have liked to hear about the Sioux warrior. I wish you safe travels as you return to your daughter. Good night, Mr. Holt. And good-bye.”

She turned and walked back to Odalis, and I watched her outline grow smaller and smaller. My emotions were as roiled as the waters coming in from the Pacific.

I did not sleep that night. Instead, I walked until dawn, thinking through every word she had said, every nuance.

When I finally returned to the hotel suite, there was another note under the door.

As you take the train to Colón, don't stop at the administration office in Culebra for your valise and its contents, as I have taken it. If you want it back, meet me at the Gatún Locks at 11:00 a.m. T. B. Miskimon.

January 12, 1909

Col. Geo. W Goethals,

Chairman & Chief Engineer

Culebra, Canal Zone

Sir:

On Saturday evening, May 30th, the Commanding Officer of Culebra Police Station, and the Commanding Officer of Empire Police Station, both on horseback, rode their horses at a lope into the saloon of Jose Sandy at Empire. Riding up to the bar, they dismounted and each took a drink. While in the saloon one of the horses deposited dung upon the floor, which the Panamanian servant was obliged to clean up. These men were not in full uniform, but as Commanding Officers of Stations are always considered on duty, an act of this kind certainly looks like rowdyism and these men are guilty of “conduct unbecoming officers.” According to police regulations, this is considered a serious discharge and justifies dismissal. This is especially a serious charge inasmuch as these men are Commanding Officers of their respective precincts.

The Sergeant, Carter, of Empire, I am informed, resigns from the force in a few days, if he has not already done so, but even if he could not be punished for same through the Police Department, I think this matter should be taken into consideration in the granting of a saloon license at Empire for which I understand he has applied.

I was able to obtain the following witnesses to the incident:

Mr. Rome, Proprietor, Pennsylvania Hotel, Empire

The proprietor of this saloon, his wife and servant.

Mr. F. Werzenberg, Inspector, Tax Collectors Office, Empire

Mr. Rome states that he considered the men intoxicated, but the statement is not borne out by the other witnesses, except that Mr. Werzenberg stated to me that he did not consider any man sober “who would ride in a man's place of business at a gallop.”

Respectfully,

Inspector T. B. Miskimon

I
t was a selfish and childish impulse that compelled me to rise early enough to prowl the streets of Panama City. Raquel Sandoval had seized far too much of my emotional attention. Had I been a teenaged cowboy with a first crush, I could have rationalized it, but I was far beyond those years, and not just in age.

The sorrows over the deaths of those I loved grounded me long ago. I was at peace with my role as a widowed and doting father, happy to worry about my daughter's happiness instead of my own. Since Winona's birth, I had not mooned over any woman, nor had I felt that my life would be incomplete unless I found a companion.

Desire, I understood. Desire, however, could be disciplined, ignored.

How could I actually love Raquel? Didn't real love grow with an investment of time, of slowly learning who the other person was? Why, then, did the prospect of sitting on the front porch of my ranch house as an elderly man, simply holding hands with her as an elderly woman, seem like such a wonderful, perfect thing?

I did not want to be afflicted with this emotion. And I certainly did not want to take it back with me to the Dakotas, where it would be too easy to romanticize the brief time she and I had spent along the beach of the Pacific on a moonlit night.

So, how to scourge it? My mind muddled on it until a plan formed. I would look past the romance and try to see the reality. Raquel Sandoval was nothing more than a high-society woman with a fashionable veneer of charity. Remove the illusion, and I'd see her more clearly.

All it would take was a few questions.

I changed my course, moving with firm steps to the sanitarium.

It was shortly before 8 a.m. that I arrived at my destination, my shirt heavy with sweat.

The gate to the high wall was unlocked, and I pushed it open. The well-manicured courtyard had a path of stepping stones that took me to a door on the far side. This, too, was unlocked.

I stepped inside to an unattended open area. Children's laughter drifted to me, as did the crying of babies.

I walked a generously wide hallway. With no one to stop me, I walked farther inside. The door to the first room was open, and I glanced within.

A girl with heavy pockmarks on her face, looking barely older than a child herself, sat in a rocking chair, a baby cradled in her arms.

“Hello,” I said.

She didn't seem frightened by my presence.

“May I enter?”

She nodded. The baby clutched one of her fingers and gurgled.

“She is beautiful.” I moved nearer and squatted so that my height would not be intimidating. “What is her name?”

“Olivia,” the girl said.

I felt unkind now that my first thought when I saw her was about the pockmarks. For when she spoke her daughter's name, she smiled—and that bestowed on her a dignified beauty.

This place was a haven for the women who worked the streets at night, and I feared any questions I might ask would sound demeaning.

“Yes,” I said. “A beautiful girl. I wish both of you the best.” I straightened out of my crouch to leave.

“Why are you here?”

I could give a truthful answer—something I had not planned. But it was one thing to hear about what happened behind these walls and another to see it and realize the desperation of becoming a mother and having no help.

“I would like to donate money to help with expenses here,” I said. “I wanted to see if the money would be spent well.”

The young mother nodded. “Then perhaps you should speak to Señorita Sandoval.”

“She is here?”

“Of course. Every day just after dawn. Someone is always sick or afraid or sad. For me, it was a difficult birth, but she was with me all through the day and the night.”

“Where will you go? After?”

“All of us have two choices. Some simply leave and return to the streets, and the child is raised here or at the farm. Some choose to work at the farm to be able to stay with their child. Me, I will work at the farm. From there, many have found ways to live a life off the streets.”

Her daughter, as babies are wont to do, began to wail, and the girl bent her head down and kissed the infant's forehead.

“She is hungry,” the girl said.

I nodded and backed away from the room to give her privacy. Well, I had my answer about Raquel, and I wasn't sure if I liked it.

It would have been much easier to learn she was just a facade.

It was almost criminal, my decision to allow myself to sleep on the train ride from Ancón back to the locks at Gatún. It would be my final look at Panama, and I should have soaked up the exotic scenery, even if I had viewed it already.

The lush hills; the slow waters of the rising lake; the large, colorful birds; the hum of activity of men and machine—all of it was so different from the lonely, open hills of the Badlands.

Yet after the events of the previous few days, it seemed as if my emotions were not capable of absorbing anything else, not even the wonders of the isthmus. I woke shortly before Gatún, the second-to-last stop before Cristóbal and Colón on the Atlantic. Even so, it was enough for me to see the approach to the locks, those monstrous walls that would have swallowed a hundred rail cars.

As I disembarked, I saw a hideous yellow rail car parked on a shuttle set of tracks. What kind of idiot would crave that kind of attention?

Then I began to look for Miskimon, but he found me first, slipping up behind me and coughing discreetly.

I turned. “Muskie.”

He merely drew a deep breath as if he were steadying himself.

His hands were empty.

“You promised me my valise. Not much of a man of integrity, are you?”

“Let me repeat back to you the words of the note I left at your door. A note, I might add, that I had to leave behind because you weren't in the room.”

“Maybe I didn't feel like answering the door.”

“No, you weren't in the room. I checked. One last night out in the red-light district before heading home to pretend to be a humble cowboy?”

“My valise.”

“ ‘If you want it back, meet me at the Gatún Locks.' Those were the exact words on the note. Your choice to infer that I would have it with me.”

“I'd like it back. My steamer leaves in a few hours.”

“Follow me.”

“That will lead me to my valise?”

“Yes.”

“Take the lead then. The sooner I'm away from here, the better.” I stayed beside him as he walked away from the station, although I'm sure he would have preferred if I had kept my distance and trailed him like a younger sibling.

As we walked, I lifted my hat to give a breeze across my scalp. A felt cowboy hat truly was a thing of vanity in this humidity. Good thing I wouldn't be here much longer. “Hey, how are things with Odalis?”

His shoulders stiffened, just enough for my satisfaction.

“I'd give him my vote for mayor,” I said. “You?”

“My only interest in Panamanian politics is in how it might affect the canal project. I doubt civic matters will have an impact, so I give it little thought.”

It would have been enjoyable to press him more, but we were passing along the hideous yellow rail car behind the train station.

“What kind of buffoon would be responsible for this?” I gestured at the rail car.

“Why don't you ask Colonel Goethals? He's down by the locks, waiting for you. With your valise.”

“Last question,” I said. “What do your initials stand for? You can tell me that at least.”

Miskimon picked up his pace and refused to speak again until we met Goethals, who stepped away from a couple of men holding blueprints to join us.

“Thank you, Mr. Miskimon.” Goethals was carrying my valise. The colonel did not appear to be suffering from the humidity. My own shirt felt drenched, and rivulets of sweat ran down my back. Goethals, on the other hand, didn't show a bead of moisture anywhere on his face, and his uniform appeared as crisply ironed as if a maid had just handed it to him. “I trust you resolved the cigar situation to our satisfaction on a visit this morning to our offender?”

“As you suggested, it was a good opportunity to test our relationship with the locals after what happened to Mr. Holt,” Miskimon answered. “I am glad to report that despite, or perhaps because of your firm words with them, it appears we can still work in harmony with the police in Panama. I was pleased at their timely and prompt cooperation in the matter. Based on a previous visit, the arrest and subsequent fine of the cigar seller took less than an hour. This relieved me, because as you know, I felt it was important to make it back here before Mr. Holt's arrival. You'll have the report tomorrow.”

Goethals nodded.

“A shame, then, that you were on an earlier train,” I said to Miskimon, wondering about the arrest and Goethal's firm words, but too stubborn to ask. “It would have been such a pleasure to journey with you across the isthmus.”

“Yes,” Miskimon told me. “A shame.”

“Before you go,” Goethals said to Miskimon, “you should know that a few more men have been found unconscious along the tracks.”

Miskimon's forehead creased. “Same stretch as before? I've checked those tracks thoroughly three times already.”

“Same stretch, same story. That the hand of God struck them from the sky. Same lack of memory of events right before. It is troublesome. You know that many of the laborers are superstitious. I don't want them walking away from their jobs.”

“I will continue to make inquiries,” Miskimon answered.

“Thank you.” There was a tone of dismissal in his voice.

“One last thing, Colonel,” Miskimon said. “You might be able to help Mr. Holt with a recent question. It's in regard to our railway stock. He wants to establish the identity of a buffoon. I'll take my leave now.”

Miskimon saluted and turned on his heel. That left me alone with Colonel Goethals and my valise.

“Let's get to my railway car first,” Goethals said. “Out in the open, I tend to draw construction questions from just about everyone. I want us to be alone, and I want this to be private. Then you can ask your question about the railway stock.”