HOUSE OF JAGUAR

by Mike Bond

  “You telling me you’re not a dealer, Joe?”

  ”Not the kind that guy would know.”

  “I’ll make you a deal?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll go down to the Chronicle’s morgue, talk to some news people, check this stuff out for you. On the condition that when you get arrested I’m the only reporter who gets your story.”

  “Can’t you get it through your thick head, Melissa, they’re not going to arrest me! They want me dead.”

  There was the click, across the phone, of her hitting her teeth with a pencil. “Call me at six.”

  A black and white police car eased down Powell, two fat cops watching through shut windows. He bent down in the booth, pretending to speak into the phone; the car slid by and turned the corner.

  WHEN LYMAN checked Murphy’s house again there were two moving vans out front and a black BMW in the driveway. Men were carrying furniture from the house into the vans. A Mercedes and an Olds station wagon pulled up in the driveway; a bearded man in a gray suit came out of the house, shook hands with the people and led them inside.

  Lyman strolled along the sidewalk and stopped to watch. After a minute he spoke to one of the movers, then walked on, came round the block, got in the Dodge and drove downtown.

  “I could care he’s moved,” said the fat man at the desk on the third floor over the girly joint.

  “He’s going to vanish. We need coverage.”

  “We? A day ago you didn’ wanna know us.”

  “You and me, we’re supposed to keep distance. You know the drill. But the Congregation needs him. And you just lost one of your golden boys. Don’t you want this guy?”

  The fat man peeled plastic off a toothpick and shoved it in his mouth. “We’re just the ugly girl you fuck when there’s nobody else.”

  “You should be so lucky.” Unbidden, Lyman sat. “I need you guys to crank out a contact list, spread the ID on his vehicles. There’s a Ford pickup and a silver Porsche 944, license MZG 505... I got all the details, but I need you to find him before the cops do.”

  “Cops? The man laughed a raspy smoker’s cough. “If you think they’re going to find him then you’re one bright boy.”

  “And I need you to stay in touch with the media, make sure he’s not talking to anybody. We don’t want divergent stories.”

  The man shifted his toothpick. “One truth. That’s all there is. Under God. Indivisible.”

  “I WENT BACK to see Carlos Bonaventura,” Melissa said. “But he made bail.”

  “Damn!”

  “No! Don’t you understand? Here’s this nobody crack dealer, suddenly makes two hundred thousand bail the day after he identifies you for the papers.”

  “Where’d he get the money?”

  “I have no idea. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Be careful, Meliss.”

  “We need to talk. In person.”

  “You’re not going to run me in?”

  She laughed. “I’ll keep my side of the deal.”

  “Meet me somewhere, then.”

  “I’m working late. Edinburgh Castle at midnight? It’ll be safe for you, and it’s on my way home.”

  42

  THE RAIN HAD died; runnels glistened on the streets. Everything was sharp: faces in passing cars, shirts stacked in shop windows, cutlery on tables in closed restaurants, a Sprite can in the gutter. A cruiser tailed him up Polk then veered away like a shark sensing fresher blood elsewhere. A half moon burst through towering black clouds, tainting them silver, vanished. The rain returned.

  The Edinburgh Castle faced O’Farrell with its back on a narrow unlit alley where cars crouched along one side against grimy brick walls. Rain beat on cobblestoned puddles where the asphalt had worn away. Stairs with dripping rusty rails descended like gruesome mine entrances. Over the rooftops came the murmur of traffic from Polk and Geary; beyond the dark end of the alley was a Fish’n Chips stand with two distant skyscrapers looming out of the fog above it. The rain hammered his shoulders; his socks sloshed, his feet were numb. A cat scampered between trash cans, something wriggling in its jaws.

  A car’s lights leaped into the alley, the engine roaring, and he stepped between two parked cars to let it pass. It slowed, tires rumbling the cobblestones; he saw the rectangular Ford grille and dived behind a parked car down slippery stairs to a locked door, broken bottles grinding underfoot, fumbled for the latch but it wouldn’t open, and dashed back up the stairs to see the Ford continue down the alley, brake at the end, and turn left on Larkin. He rubbed a scraped elbow and stepped back into the alley. Fool, he cursed himself, even the normal betrays you.

  Another car swung into the alley, headlights making him a dancing bear’s shadow down the oily cobbles; he stepped aside, waiting for it to pass. It slowed, a searchlight hit his face, a megaphone: “Police! You behind that car! Get out here!” He sprinted along the wall knocking over trash cans and ducked past the cop car as it screamed into reverse after him and he leaped a car’s hood onto its roof and up a fire escape, his bad arm wrenched with pain, a cop clambering up behind him, cruiser lights flicking the buildings blue and white. He jumped the parapet and dashed across the puddled rooftop, leaped a gap between two buildings, a ghastly emptiness sucking at him, made the far side and crossed the next rooftop, reached the end and swung over the edge, the cars far below on Larkin casting little cones of light, people like ants on a strip of sidewalk tiny as a ribbon between his feet.

  The cop had halted at the gap between the buildings, yelling into his radio, his shiny bulk silhouetted by St Mary’s gleaming cross. Murphy dropped free, landed on the top rungs of another fire escape, ran down five floors as more police cars screeched through the Geary red light a block away; he jumped the last story to the sidewalk and slipped into a bar which stank of whiskey and cigarettes.

  Biker women in black jackets and chains stared him down as he hobbled toward the johns, reversed his jacket to its pale gray lining, grabbed a yachting cap off the coat rack and ran into a storeroom of aluminum kegs and beer cases. A dead bulb banged his forehead as he stepped into the alley where the blue globes of police cars blinked beneath the fire escape that three cops climbed intently, their flashlights darting up the walls. As though curious he watched them for a moment, then went down the alley to Larkin and around the corner to the Edinburgh Castle.

  In the men’s room he wiped his ragged hair and torn bloody hands with paper towels, staring at the stained sink, stinking urinal and carious scribbled walls as if even they would betray him. At the bar he rubbed whiskey into his hands to stop the bleeding, set the yachting cap tighter over his wet hair. Two cops came in, cloaks brilliant with rain. One stayed by the door while the other talked to the bartender, who nodded, thumbs in the pockets of his plaid vest, and jerked his chin down the bar at Murphy. The cop ambled over, splay-footed and chubby, cloak trickling. “Just come in?”

  Murphy pulled back his sleeve to inspect his watch. The crystal was scratched. “Jes’ little while ‘go.”

  “Got some ID?”

  He nodded, as if finding the question confusing, knocked back his whiskey and fumbled at his pockets. With the coat reversed it was hard to get at the wallet; he finally got it out and laid it laboriously on the wet bar, holding it open with one hand, and pulled out the Arizona license in the name of Lamar P. Bultz. The cop took it in pink cold fingers and held it to the light.

  Murphy held out his empty glass to the bartender, beckoning for another, waiting for the cop to put the license down quietly and pull his gun and walk him handcuffed out of the Edinburgh Castle. He imagined Melissa coming in as they left, her astonished look.

  The cop put the license down in spilled whiskey and glanced at Murphy’s cap. “What’s the name of your boat?”

  “The hat says SS Miranda. But I don’t have a boat.”

  The cops left and he finished the second whiskey and ordered a third. The clock over the
crossed guns and sabers over the bar said twelve fifteen; a couple trudged out hand in hand into rain gusting yellow across the lights. Twelve eighteen. Melissa wasn’t coming, but in a few minutes the cops would return.

  “You’re a bit laid back, aren’t you?” Melissa sat on the wooden bench beside him, blonde hair dripping down her yellow anorak. “For a wanted man?”

  He took her damp cold hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I wouldn’t be doing this, except I remember how you were, that one night we met...”

  “I was going to call you.”

  “You just weren’t the kind of person to do what they say you’ve done.”

  “I have flown weed, Melissa. That was my shtick, no big thing. I was going to tell you. What I told you about the village is true. And about the American soldiers.”

  She leaned against him. “Kiss me, quick. Two cops came in.”

  Her mouth was small, cold, a girl’s. He kissed her again, her hair wet against his hand. She backed away. “They’ve gone!”

  “You’re going to catch your death.”

  “I’m going right home, hot bath.”

  “What did you find, in the morgue?”

  “Not much. A recent Chronicle story about the CIA’s contras getting busted for ten million in coke, funniest part was that federal prosecutors gave the money back to the contras. Anyway, you asked me about this US Bureau of International Development? I called some friends back east who’ve done a lot of FOIA stuff, Freedom of Information Act? They said it’s been described in classified State Department cables as a CIA group operative.”

  “What kind of ‘group operative’?”

  “Formed by President Bush when he was Director of the CIA. He did a bunch of them. Its purpose was to build links with right-wing groups in developing countries, to funnel so-called ‘bank loans’ to start up commercial enterprises as a cover to channel funds for arms and paramilitary operations, death squads. In Central America it works with fundamentalist Protestant groups, façades. Its top man in El Salvador was Leon Rivera Morales, a close friend of Bush and a campaign manager of Robert D’Aubuisson. He was arrested when his private plane crashed a couple of years ago in Arizona, on its way up from El Salvador carrying four million in coke. After that the Republicans had to stop calling him the Abe Lincoln of Central America.”

  “And the Congregation Ranch?

  “I asked our Marin correspondent. It’s twelve hundred and seventy acres west of Nicasio, a private religious retreat. The Congregational Church of Christ Pentecost, very fundamentalist Protestant. Lots of missionary work in Central America. They’ve got an office in Guatemala City, Avenida las Americas. Where’d you hear about it?”

  “This guy Charlie who told me about the Syndic.”

  “The one you killed.”

  “I didn’t kill him, Meliss. I didn’t hit him that hard.”

  “Tell that to the Coroner . . .”

  “Charlie said that ranch is where they took me.”

  “Then there’s a connection. If the late Charlie was in this CIA front group, and they took you to this Congregation Ranch.”

  “And the Syndic?”

  “I wanted to ask Carlos Bonaventura. But he miraculously posted bail. The Syndic is just the Syndicate − the new word for an old plague − organized crime. The Mafia, that’s what we used to call it. It’s nobody’s secret that the CIA’s worked with them for years − like Air America’s drug flights out of Laos and Cambodia.”

  “Air America was the CIA airline in Vietnam, the one that used to ship heroin out of the Golden Triangle.”

  Melissa rubbed her hands, trying to work warmth into them. What a marvelous gift human flesh is, Murphy thought, how alive. “Interesting thing,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Southern California Savings and Loan, that’s being bailed out after losing three billion in government pension funds. They and Syndicate were laundering money for the Colombian drug cartels.”

  “That’s what banks are for, to launder money.”

  “It holds the mortgage on the Congregation Ranch...”

  An old woman had put money in the juke box, the slow rising strains of a bagpipe surging forth,

  I once was lost

  but now am found,

  was blind

  but now I see.

  “Southern California Savings and Loan was Charlie’s Visa card.”

  “Don’t leave home without it.”

  “I still have it.”

  “And the nice thing, the even nicer thing, is that Southern California Savings and Loan is in a similar situation to Silverado Savings and Loan in Denver. They’re being bailed out to the tune of three billion by the taxpayers.”

  “Bastards. Crooks.”

  “And guess who’s on Silverado’s board of directors? Neil Bush, whose father was director of the CIA. Before he became president.”

  He stared at the bar, the British colonial sabers and muskets, the regimental colors from Scottish regiments, the tartans and plaids. “If all this stuff can be discovered, why doesn’t the media reveal it? Why don’t they track this stuff?”

  “The American news media is a big cartel that doesn’t like to cover what people don’t want to hear. They depend, after all, on advertising. That’s why when you go to another country the news is so different.”

  “I don’t care about the news.”

  “And more than a few journalists, well-known ones even, have close ties with the CIA. When the Agency was founded one of its first administrative goals was its media program. There’s people with strong Agency connections who’ve used these connections − access to sources, insider information − to become prominent in newspaper and TV journalism, serving partially as a funnel for what the CIA wants to have said. If you watch the papers over the years you can tell who some of them are.”

  “All I care about is getting the story straight and protecting the people in Guatemala.”

  “You’re crazy if you go back.” Melissa slipped into her raincoat. “What’s with Angelica Newton, I thought you were living with her?”

  “We couldn’t stand each other.”

  “Drug-dealing murderer throws over famous rock star for woman doctor in darkest Amazon – that’s the kind of story the media loves.” Her cool small hand caressed his face. “Don’t be down – we’re making progress. Tomorrow I’ll interview some Syndicate people, talk to my editors about an investigation of the Congregation Ranch...” She wrote two telephone numbers on a piece of paper. “The first is another number at work, a better one. Just ask for me. The other’s my home number.” She put ten dollars on the table, “Just hold tight. We’ll move on this, fast as we can.”

  They walked to her red Colt. “You have some place to stay?” she said.

  “Thanks. I’m fine.”

  “Don’t take chances.” She smiled up. “Take care.”

  He kissed her again and it was different this time, just a lovely kiss with the promise of more, someday, if there ever were a someday, if he ever wanted. He had a quick sense of how badly he’d wasted the first time he’d met her. How you have to be in pain to sense good. But even though he was the one in danger, she seemed the one needing reassurance, proof that the conventional order is not corrupt, that justice can survive, that evil does not invariably conquer good. Her kiss was salty, her grip against him strong, her body almost offered − yes, offered, unknowingly, in the guise of needing reassurance. I’ve hurt everyone I get near, he thought, and pushed away.

  Her car turned the corner toward Van Ness and the Golden Gate. A passing taxi stirred the curbside puddles. Across Larkin he saw the building where an hour ago he’d run down the fire escape and fallen to the sidewalk, and felt fear again.

  He walked through waning rain over Russian Hill, the city lights spread out in the mist below like the answer, the gift, of something at last found and understood.

  “I once w
as lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” The Syndicate and the Agency, hand in glove, in San Francisco and in Guatemala, tied to the people that had run the United States ever since John Kennedy was killed in Dallas and his brother in LA − why should that surprise him? If they could kill the Kennedys with total impunity, what could he do against them?

  Watching for cops, he walked to Chinatown and let himself into Ray Lin’s, and fell warm asleep on the couch in Ray’s blue sleeping bag.

  Ray shook him awake at eight, pointing at the television where someone was saying that Joseph Murphy, already wanted for the murder of a man yesterday on Mount Tamalpais, was now sought in a second gruesome killing in Pacifica of a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Melissa Maslow, last seen alive with Murphy in a San Francisco bar. The camera closed in on Melissa’s red Colt, found deserted at three a.m. on the coast highway south of San Francisco. The camera switched to a silver Porsche owned by Joseph Murphy that had been found an hour later in Pacifica, Melissa inside it with three bullets in her brain.

  43

  “THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU.” Ray went to the stove, picked up the coffee pot, came to the table and started to pour it then realized there were no cups. Still holding the pot he got two mugs from a shelf and put them on the table. “They want you so bad, how they’re doing this −”

  He put the pot on the stove, sat down, picked up his mug, shook his head. “Out of my fuckin mind.” He went back to the stove and got the pot, filled the mugs. You was back here long before she got killed.”

  “She was...” He tried but he couldn’t talk about her. “I’ve never known anything to keep happening. Like this.”

  “Thinking like that don’t get you nothing, man,” Ray said.

  “She had this cocky way of acting like she was cute but not really believing it. Trying to be tough, but you could tell she cared.” He walked down the hall, boards creaking, came back and sat. “What am I going to do?”