The Tailor of Panama

by John le Carré

  “Can’t wait,” said Osnard pleasantly.

  “Mickie, I’m going to get cross with you in a minute if you don’t sit down. You’re making a spectacle of yourself and embarrassing me.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “You know I do. Now sit yourself down like a good lad.”

  “Where’s Marta?”

  “At home, I expect, Mickie. In El Chorillo, where she lives. Doing her studies, I expect.”

  “I love that woman.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Mickie, and so will Marta be. Now sit down.”

  “You love her too.”

  “We both do, Mickie, in our separate ways, I’m sure,” Pendel replied, not blushing exactly, but suffering an inconvenient clotting of the voice. “Now sit yourself down like a good lad. Please.”

  Grabbing Pendel’s head in both hands, Mickie whispered wetly in his ear. “Dolce Vita for the big race on Sunday, hear me? Rafi Domingo bought the jockeys. All of them, hear me? Tell Marta. Make her rich.”

  “Mickie, I hear you loud and clear, and Rafi was in my shop this morning but you weren’t, which was a pity, because there’s a nice dinner jacket there waiting for you to try it on. Now sit down, please, like a good friend.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Pendel saw two large men with identity tags advancing purposefully towards them along the edge of the room. Pendel reached a protective arm halfway across Mickie’s mountainous shoulders.

  “Mickie, if you make any more trouble I’ll never cut another suit for you,” he said in English. And in Spanish to the men: “We’re all fine, thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Abraxas will be leaving of his own accord. Mickie.”

  “What?”

  “Are you listening to me, Mickie?”

  “No.”

  “Is your nice driver Santos outside with the car?”

  “Who cares?”

  Taking Mickie’s arm, Pendel led him gently through the dining room under a mirrored ceiling to the lobby, where Santos the driver was anxiously waiting for his master.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t see him at his best, Andy,” Pendel said shyly. “Mickie is one of Panama’s few real heroes.”

  With defensive pride, he volunteered a brief history of Mickie’s life till now: father an immigrant Greek shipowner and close chum of General Omar Torrijos, which was why he agreed to neglect his business interests and devote himself full time to Panama’s drug trade, turning it into something everyone could be proud of in the war against Communism.

  “He always talk like that?”

  “Well, it’s not all talk, Andy, I will say. Mickie had a high regard for his old dad, he liked Torrijos and didn’t like We-know-who,” he explained, observing the oppressive local convention of not mentioning Noriega by name. “A fact which Mickie felt obliged to declare from the rooftops to all who had the ears to listen, till We-know-who popped his garters and had him put in prison to shut him up.”

  “Hell was all that about Marta?”

  “Yes, well, you see, that was the old days, Andy, what I’d call a hangover. From when they were both active together in their cause, you see. Marta being a black artisan’s daughter and him a spoiled rich boy, but shoulder to shoulder for democracy, as you might say,” Pendel replied, running ahead of himself in his desire to put the topic behind him as fast as possible. “Unusual friendships were made in those days. Bonds were forged. Like he said. They loved each other. Well they would.”

  “Thought he was talking about you.”

  Pendel rode himself still harder.

  “Only your prison here, Andy, it’s a bit more prison than what it is back home, I’ll put it that way. Which is not to put down the home variety, not by any means. Only what they did, you see, was they banged Mickie up with a large quantity of not very sensitive long-term criminals, twelve to a cell or more, and every now and then they’d move him to another cell, if you follow me, which didn’t do a lot for Mickie’s health, on account of him being what you might call a handsome young man in his day,” he ended awkwardly. And he allowed a moment of silence, which Osnard had the tact not to interrupt, to commemorate Mickie’s lost beauty. “Plus they beat him senseless a few times, for annoying them,” he added.

  “Look him up at all?” Osnard enquired carelessly.

  “In prison, Andy? Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “Must have made a change, being t’other side o’ the bars.”

  Mickie scarecrow thin, face lopsided from a beating, eyes still fresh from hell. Mickie in frayed orange rags, no bespoke tailor available. Wet red blisters round his ankles, more round his wrists. A man in chains must learn not to writhe while he is beaten, but learning this takes time. Mickie mumbling: Harry, I swear to God, give me your hand, Harry as I love you, get me out of here. Pendel whispering: Mickie, listen to me, you’ve got to drucken yourself, lad, don’t look them in the eye. Neither man hearing the other. Nothing to be said except hullo and see you soon.

  “So what’s he up to now?” Osnard asked, as if the subject had already lost its interest for him. “Apart from drinking himself to death and being a bloody nuisance around the place?”

  “Mickie?” Pendel asked.

  “Who d’you think?”

  And suddenly the same imp that had obliged Pendel to make a scallywag of Delgado obliged him also to make a modern hero of Abraxas: If this Osnard thinks he can write Mickie off, then he’s got another think coming, hasn’t he? Mickie’s my friend, my winger, my oppo, my cellmate. Mickie had his fingers broken and his balls crushed. Mickie was gang-banged by bad convicts while you were playing leapfrog in your nice English public school.

  Pendel shot a furtive glance round the dining room in case they were being overheard. At the next table a bullet-headed man was accepting a large white portable telephone from the headwaiter. He spoke, the headwaiter removed the phone, only to bestow it like a loving cup on another needy guest.

  “Mickie’s still at it, Andy,” Pendel murmured under his breath. “What you see isn’t what you get, not with Mickie, not by a long chalk, never was and isn’t now, I’ll put it that way.”

  What was he doing? What was he saying? He hardly knew himself. He was a muddler. Somewhere in his overworked mind was an idea that he could make a gift of love to Mickie, build him into something he could never be, a Mickie redux, dried out, shining bright, militant and courageous.

  “Still at what? Don’t follow you. Talking code again.”

  “He’s in there.”

  “In where?”

  “With the Silent Opposition,” said Pendel, in the manner of a mediaeval warrior who hurls his colours into the enemy ranks before plunging in to win them back.

  “The what?”

  “Silently opposing. Him and his tightly knit group of fellow believers.”

  “Believers in what, Christ’s sake?”

  “The sham, Andy. The veneer. The beneath the surface, put it that way,” Pendel insisted, giddily ascending to hitherto unscaled heights of fantasy. Half-remembered recent dialogues with Marta were speeding to his aid. “The phoney democracy that is the new squeaky-clean Panama, ha ha. It’s all a pretence. That’s what he was telling you. You heard him. Cheat. Conspire. Lie. Pretend. Draw aside the curtain and it’s the same boys that owned We-know-who waiting to take back the reins.”

  Osnard’s pinhole eyes continued to hold Pendel in their black beam. It’s my range, thought Pendel, already protecting himself from the consequences of his rashness. That’s all he wants to hear.

  Not my accuracy; my range. He doesn’t care whether I’m reading notes or playing from memory or improvising. He’s probably not even listening, not as such.

  “Mickie’s in touch with the people the other side of the bridge,” he forged on bravely.

  “Hell are they?”

  The bridge was the Bridge of the Americas. The expression was once more Marta’s.

  “The hidden rank and file, Andy,” said Pendel boldly. “The strivers and believers who would rather see pro
gress than take bribes,” he replied, quoting Marta verbatim. “The farmers and artisans who’ve been betrayed by lousy greedy government. The honourable small professionals. The decent part of Panama you never get to see or hear about. They’re organising themselves. They’ve had enough. So’s Mickie.”

  “Marta in on this?”

  “She could be, Andy. I never ask. It’s not my place to know. I have my thoughts. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Long pause.

  “Had enough of what exactly?”

  Pendel cast a swift, conspiratorial glance round the dining room. He was Robin Hood, bringer of hope to the oppressed, dispenser of justice. At the next table, a noisy party of twelve was tucking into lobster and Dom Pérignon.

  “This,” he replied in a low, emphatic voice. “Them. And all that they entail.”

  Osnard wanted to hear more about the Japanese.

  “Well now, your Japanese, Andy—you met one just now, which I expect is why you asked—are what I call highly present in Panama, and have been for many years now, I would say as many as twenty,” Pendel replied enthusiastically, grateful to be able to put the subject of his only true friend behind him. “There’s your Japanese processions to amuse the crowds, there’s your Japanese brass bands, there’s a Japanese seafood market they presented to the nation, and there’s even a Japanese-funded educational TV channel,” he added, recalling one of the few programmes his children were allowed to watch.

  “Who’s your top Jap?”

  “Customerwise, Andy? Top I don’t know. They’re what I call enigmatic. I’d have to ask Marta probably. It’s one to be measured and six to bow and take his picture, we always say, and we’re not far wrong. There’s a Mr. Yoshio from one of their trade missions, who throws his weight around the shop a bit, and there’s a Toshikazu from the embassy, but whether we’re talking first or second names here, I’d have to look it up.”

  “Or get Marta to.”

  “Correct.”

  Conscious again of Osnard’s blackened stare, Pendel vouchsafed him an endearing smile in an effort to deflect him, but without success.

  “You ever have Ernie Delgado to dinner?” he asked while Pendel was still expecting further questions about the Japanese.

  “Not as such, Andy, no.”

  “Why not? He’s your wife’s boss.”

  “I don’t think Louisa would approve, frankly.”

  “Why not?”

  The imp again. The one that pops up to remind us that nothing goes away; that a moment’s jealousy can spawn a lifetime’s fiction; and that the only thing to do with a good man once you’ve pulled him low is pull him lower.

  “Ernie is what I call of the hard right, Andy. He was the same under We-know-who, although he never let on. All piss and mustard when he was with his liberal friends, if you’ll pardon me, but as soon as their backs were turned it was pop next door to We-know-who and ‘Yes sir, no sir, and how can we be of service, Your Highness?’ ”

  “Not generally known, though, is it, all the same? Still a white man to most of us, Ernie is.”

  “Which is why he’s dangerous, Andy. Ask Mickie. Ernie’s an iceberg. There’s a lot more of him below the water than what there is above, I’ll put it that way.”

  Osnard scrunched a roll, added a spot of butter and ate with slow, ruminative circular movements of the lower jaw. But his chipblack eyes wanted more than bread and butter.

  “That upstairs room you’ve got in the shop—Sportsman’s Corner.”

  “You like it, do you, Andy?”

  “Ever thought o’ turning it into a clubroom for your customers? Somewhere they can let their hair down? Better than a clapped-out sofa and an armchair on the ground floor on a Thursday night, isn’t it?”

  “I have thought along those lines many times, Andy, I’ll admit, and I’m quite impressed you’ve hit on the same idea after just one look. But I always bump up against the same immoveable objection, which is where would I put my Sportsman’s Corner?”

  “Show a good return, that stuff?”

  “Quite. Oh yes.”

  “Didn’t make me horny.”

  “Sports articles are more what I call my loss leader, Andy. If I don’t sell them, someone else will, and they’ll grab my customers at the same time.”

  No wasted body movements, Pendel noticed uneasily. I had a police sergeant like you once. Never fidgeted his hands or scratched his head or shifted his arse about. Just sits and looks at you with these eyes he’s got.

  “Are you measuring me for a suit, Andy?” he asked facetiously.

  But Osnard was not required to answer, for Pendel’s gaze had once more darted away towards a far corner of the room, where a dozen or so noisy new arrivals, men and women, were taking their places at a long table.

  “And there’s the other half of the equation, as you might say!” he declared, exchanging overenergetic hand signals with the figure at the head of the table. “Rafi Domingo himself, no less. Mickie’s other friend, beat that!”

  “What equation?” Osnard asked.

  Pendel cupped a hand to his mouth for discretion. “It’s the lady beside him, Andy.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s Mickie’s wife.”

  Osnard’s furtive gaze made a quick raid to the far table while he busied himself with his food.

  “One with the tits?”

  “Correct, Andy. You do wonder how people get married sometimes, don’t you?”

  “Give me Domingo,” Osnard ordered—like, Give me a middle C.

  Pendel drew a breath. His head was spinning and his mind was tired, but nobody had called intermission, so he played on.

  “Flies his own aeroplane,” he began arbitrarily.

  Scraps he had picked up in the shop.

  “What for?”

  “Runs a string of very fine hotels no one stays in.”

  Tittle-tattle from more than one country.

  “Why?”

  The rest fluence.

  “The hotels belong to a certain consortium, which has its headquarters in Madrid, Andy.”

  “So?”

  “So. Rumour has it that this consortium belongs to some Colombian gentlemen not totally unconnected with the cocaine trade, doesn’t it? The consortium is doing nicely, you’ll be pleased to hear. A posh new place in Chitré, another going up in David, two in Bocas del Toro, and Rafi Domingo hops between them in his plane like a cricket in a frying pan.”

  “Hell for?”

  A silence of spies while the waiter replenished their water glasses. A chink of ice cubes like tiny church bells. And a rush like genius in Pendel’s ears.

  “We may only guess, Andy. Rafi doesn’t know the hotel business from his elbow, which is not a problem because, like I told you, the hotels don’t take guests. They don’t advertise, and if you try and book a room you’ll be politely told they’re full up.”

  “Don’t get it.”

  Rafi wouldn’t mind, Pendel told himself. Rafi’s a Benny. He’d say, Harry boy, you tell that Mister Osnard whatever keeps him happy, just as long as you haven’t got a witness.

  “Each hotel banks five thousand dollars a day cash, right? A financial year or two from now, as soon as the hotels have notched up a healthy set of accounts, they’ll be sold off to the highest bidder, who by coincidence will be Rafi Domingo wearing a different company hat. The hotels will be in excellent order throughout, which is not surprising seeing they haven’t been slept in and there’s not one hamburger been cooked in the kitchen. And they’ll be legitimate businesses, because in Panama three-year-old money is more than just respectable, it’s antique.”

  “And he screws Mickie’s wife.”

  “So we are told, Andy,” said Pendel, wary now, since this part was true.

  “Told by Mickie?”

  “Not as such, Andy. Not in as many words. It’s what the eye doesn’t see, in Mickie’s case.” The fluence again. Why was he doing it? What was driving him? Andy was. A performer i
s a performer. If your audience isn’t with you it’s against you. Or perhaps, with his own fictions in tatters, he needed to enrich the fictions of others. Perhaps he found renewal in the remaking of his world.

  “Rafi’s one of them, you see, Andy. Rafi’s one of the absolute biggest, frankly.”

  “Biggest what?”

  “The Silent Opposers. Mickie’s boys. Waiters-in-the-wings, I call them. Those that have seen the writing on the wall. Rafi’s a bitser.”

  “Hell’s that?”

  “A bitser, Andy. The same as Marta. The same as me. Part Indian, in his case. There’s no racial discrimination in Panama, you’ll be pleased to learn, but they don’t care for Turcos a lot, specially not new ones, and faces do get whiter as you go up the social ladder. What I call altitude sickness.”

  It was a brand-new joke and one that he intended to include in his material, but Osnard didn’t see it. Or if he did, he didn’t find it funny. In fact, to Pendel’s eye, he looked as though he would prefer to be watching a public execution.

  “Payment by results,” Osnard said. “Only way. Agreed?” He had lowered his head into his shoulders, and his voice with it.

  “Andy, that has been a principle of mine ever since we opened shop,” Pendel replied fervently, trying to think when he had last paid anyone by results.

  And feeling light-headed from the drink and a general sense of unreality, his own and everybody else’s, he almost added that it had been a principle of dear old Arthur Braithwaite’s too, but restrained himself on the grounds that he had done enough with his fluence for one evening, and an artist must ration himself even when he feels he could go on all night.

  “Nobody’s ashamed o’ mercenary motive anymore. Only thing that makes anybody tick.”

  “Oh, I do agree, Andy,” said Pendel, assuming that Osnard was now lamenting the parlous state of England.

  Osnard cast round the room in case he was being overheard. And perhaps the sight of so many head-to-head conspirators at nearby tables emboldened him, for his face stiffened in some way Pendel was not at all at ease with, and his voice, though muted, acquired a serrated edge.