by Moulton, CD
“Food is unimportant? You want to screw the locals out of what little they have so you can make a bunch of money building something that will turn into a slum in less than three years and do I want in?
“No, I don’t. And the Indios aren’t interested in a lot of money, which is what gringos can’t seem to understand.
“Okay, give me the thou and I’ll see what I can find out about Lariez and if he’s really going to have you knocked over because you don’t buy his brand of respect. I’m dead serious about watching your back. Don’t go anywhere alone.”
Batty stared at him for a few seconds, then reached into a desk drawer and handed him ten hundred dollar bills. He inspected the bills.
“Where did you get this?”
“What? At the fancy whorehouse. El Critico. Why?”
“Okay. This starts to explain a thing or two. Why did they give it to you? Cash a check?”
“Yes. We all get checks cashed there when we need money after the BNP is closed.” He looked quizzical.
“This is printed in Colombia and distributed by the Mexican mafia. You can get the thou at the bank in twenties. Hand them one of these and ask them to change it. If they do there’s someone there in on it. If they don’t you don’t remember where you got it. Maybe in Panamá City.”
“You expect me to take a lot of counterfeit money and not report it?!”
“If you want to go on living, I very strongly recommend it.”
Batty really looked sick, at that.
“Oh, and tell your friends, VERY QUIETLY, to stop cashing checks at the whorehouse. No stink or you’re doing exactly what a powerful mafia don told you not to do. You’re interfering in his business.”
Batty looked very sick now. “I think I have business in Panamá City that I ... but that’s where he usually is! Oh, God!”
“I don’t think he’ll be in a place like Las Tablas for a while yet. Do NOT make waves. This has to be quiet and fast.”
“I have to go to Texas at the end of the month. Would now be a better time?”
Clint nodded. “Might be a good idea to take a Nature Air flight to San Jose’ tomorrow and go to Texas from there. Announce you have to go to San Jose’ for business for three days and have an emergency come up when you’re in San Jose’. Don’t book a flight to Texas from here.
“Maybe book a flight to Mexico City in San Jose’ and go from there to Texas.”
“I don’t think I like this socalled international intrigue one little bit!”
Batty went to a little safe under a cabinet and got a thousand dollars in old twenties to hand to Clint, who inspected them and took out two. “Those are probably just stuff passing around, but the original source will be the same. These would probably pass the bank, unless they’re specifically looking for them – which will be starting today.
“Do try to get the bank to change one of the hundreds, just so I’ll know if they’re part of it.”
“They do change them every once in awhile. Not many will change hundreds out here. The China.”
“Ah! But the frente wasn’t here a couple of days ago. They came here when Lariez came here. Now you’re here and are on record talking to him in Panamá City and again here. One bill, you’re innocent. More, you’re suspect. If the frente wants to check out whatever bills you have around try to not let them find more than a couple – and tell them you were suspicious is why you hired me. I told you to hang on to them while I tried to find where they’re coming from. If they come call me and say something came up and you have to go to San Jose’ and that you gave them the bills I told you to hold. They’ll check with me and I’ll tell them I’ve been working with a person I know in Panamá City. He’s a big pol and will tell them he’s investigating the system and plans to turn over whatever evidence I can get to the frente.
“Let’s hope they don’t. I don’t want Lariez suspicious of you. He’ll know I’m onto it and will think he can buy out. It’s better if he thinks you’re deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. Got it?”
Batty nodded and looked desperately sick. Clint left.
Okay. Lariez was into dropping paper in a place that wouldn’t be suspected for awhile. He would know Clint would find that in minutes and would think he could buy out fairly easily.
Bullshit! That wasn’t nearly enough to get him into the intimidation bit! Something else – something big – was going down here and it had to do with the expected refinery. For the standard paper exchange thing he wouldn’t draw attention to himself with a nobody like Bathner.
Of course, he wouldn’t know Bathner knew Clint.
Yes, he would. It wouldn’t take him more than ten minutes in Puerto Armuelles to learn that. If he knew anything about Clint Faraday in the first place? Did he?
Unlikely, but certainly not impossible.
Clint went to several places to talk with the locals. A few gringos were around town and he met Sally and Vern Wallace, but only mentioned in passing that he knew Batty. She was the good-looking uppity type, but he was a much more human type. He was the college jock type and seemed genuinely friendly. The way she seemed to be the one in control made Clint think she had the money and married him as a trophy husband. Any mention of business and it was plain who held the authority there. He was a laid-back easy man who just wanted to live an uncomplicated pleasant life and she was the greedbag money-oriented type.
Clint liked Vern. He did NOT like Sally. She would be better situated to be the one married to Batty. They could spend their days scheming to screw everyone around them out of what little they had. She was the type who felt she could scheme or buy her way out of anything. It was all about money.
Sally talked too much. She had tried to get a hundred dollar bill changed in David and the bank said it was counterfeit and seized it! She was glad she had been able to pass the other four off at different merchants! SHE was certainly not going to take a bath like that because some place gave her funny-money when they cashed a check for her! That was just the day before yesterday and yesterday. She was telling everyone she knew in Puerto Armuelles and in Frontera to check any hundreds.
“I’d make a tiny suggestion, but it’s probably too late for that already. Don’t go around announcing that you’re the one who started an investigation into counterfeit money in Puerto Armuelles.”
“What? Why in the world not? If you think I’m going to lose that much you’ve got another think coming!”
“You said you already passed the other bills off in the same way they were passed to you, so you are now a distributor of counterfeit bills. You are exactly what you’re accusing others of being so get off the high horse. You probably were passed the crap by someone who had it passed to them the same way.
“On the other hand, there may be someone who has a big stash of phoney money around here – which means you have to be shut up. This isn’t some stupid TV show. If someone hacks you apart with a machete they aren’t going to rinse off the fake blood and give you a check so you can go home and watch your performance on CSI or something as stupid. They’ll bury you in a real cemetery. I’d think you’d seen enough TV to know you aren’t going to get in your Porsch and do a car chase where you end up a hero. You don’t have a Porsch here and they aren’t working from some script you get to do the final Okay on.”
She was in a huff that reminded Clint of Gerald. Maybe she should be married to him. She was better at the greedy bitch bit than Sylvia would ever be. Clint said things would probably work out, but she’d better get out of some silly fantasy world where she was immune to danger. She did seem a little nervous and admitted it probably wasn’t smart to go off half-cocked about it. Clint was right that it might get dangerous. Vern kept telling her to think before she spoke. Clint was right that she’d admitted to several people that she was passing off money that she knew was counterfeit. That made her an accomplice.
“You don’t want to get tangled in the criminal system here,” Clint warned. “You will NOT find it in the least amusing
, I promise.”
They said their goodbyes than and Clint went to check into the Hotel Central. His room was across the hall from the Cartworthy’s. He had a balcony with a view of the Pacific. It was a room that was reserved when they got there, but the reservation cancelled just after the Cartworthys were put into the alley room.
Pity. If they’d been more agreeable they might have gotten the better room for less than half of what they paid for the alley room. Why the hell didn’t that type stay in Panamá City or on the tourist islands where they were the typical assholes who went around the world thinking they were royalty?
Clint was getting into the local way of thinking more and more. He certainly understood the deep resentment most felt. There was plenty of reason for it to go around. The Panamanians didn’t make huge generalities about people to a great extent. They would always give a person the benefit of the doubt. Too often, there wasn’t any doubt.
Batty Steps in it
Clint asked around the town for awhile about local issues and such. Not much was new except that there were getting to be far too many of the Cartworthy types anymore. The real estate people were descending in droves and not one of them was worth the powder to blow them to hell. It generally took the natives about three days to learn who the worst were. They were accepted at face value until they started the standard “screw everyone in sight” routine, then didn’t ever find themselves believed about anything again.
He waited until seven and went to the restaurant in the Hotel Central. Lariez and four others were sitting at a back table discussing things in an intense manner. Lariez pointed at Clint and one hanger-on came to ask him to join them. Clint said he appreciated the offer, but was waiting for a lady friend.
Karen Johns, a popular older woman who had been around Puerto Armuelles for several years and was popular with the locals came in and he asked her to join him. They talked about a lot of things, then she said he was probably there because Batty had stepped in it with the bad boys.
“What’s going on?” Clint asked. “I know it’s not about that phoney money. Not that crowd. They’d just write it off and lay low for awhile.”
“They’re spending a lot of time looking at land just to the east and north of where the refinery’s going in. Orlando says they’ve offered him a lot of money for one section of his finca. He doesn’t want to sell, but the pressure’s getting pretty heavy. That bunch will get what they want, one way or another. I really don’t know what it’s about. I do know they’re trying to get that Wallace woman to shut up about the money, but it’s not about that. It’s probably about who might come to investigate the money and worry about what else they’ll find. I did hear they’ve found something on the mountain there. I know it’s not gold or anything like that, but there’s something.”
“Is there any pegmatite in the area? I know lodes around those old volcanos will sometimes come up with emeralds or opals.”
“Hmm. That’s the whitish clay. I doubt it’s that because too many people have been in and out. When Harry was alive he went around the land. He would have found anything like that. I know he once found something in a little cave that he thought was unusual. If I remember he said something about platinum. Maybe it’s that. I know whatever it was was hard and heavy.”
“That would definitely have been noted. Maybe it’s something in the heavy metal groups. I’ll check it out. A lot of things that weren’t worth much a few years ago are worth a bunch now. Dave found something around here he mentioned.”
They chatted, had a good meal and she left. Clint got a beer and went out on the porch. Soon Lariez came to ask if he could speak with him. He nodded.
“I have heard of you. A detective? I’m Paulo Lariez, but you will already know that. You are Clint Faraday.
“May I ask if I’m the object of your concern here?”
“In a way. You scare some of the new gringos and a few of the locals. They don’t know why you’re so interested in the place and you come across like a movie thug to them. You know your reputation better than I do.”
He smirked. “But I don’t scare you.”
“No, you don’t scare me. I’ve been around this crap too long to worry about it.”
“And Marko Boccini will put a fast end to anything that he sees as threatening to you, no?”
Clint shrugged. “I don’t depend on others to handle my affairs. I can take care of myself in most situations. I’ve been around long enough to know when to back off and when I won’t.”
“The word is out that nobody bothers your friends,” he replied, nodding sagely. “The word is also out as to whom you consider your friends – the local gringos generally not among that elite group.”
“Orlando Ruiz is a friend.”
“I hope to avoid any trouble there, but I want his land. I’ve offered more than it’s worth.”
“No, you’ve offered more than the going rate, but nowhere near what it’s worth.”
He sighed. “Maybe we can come to an agreement. I really don’t want anymore problems. It’s legitimate.”
Clint shrugged again.
“Mr. Faraday, that’s not my money that is being circulated. Your friends – or whatever – are playing a dangerous game because they are dealing with amateurs who live in a fantasy world. I swear to you. I’m not involved in that. I want to do things in my later life that will make me gain respect and I go too far, at times. I realize Bathner is afraid because I thought he had insulted me. I do understand that I have to earn respect, as he put it. I think I’ve gotten quite a bit of respect from most people. I will not bother such as him. I also understand that WHO respects you is more important than how many.”
“Yeah. Your reputation makes people fear you. People will pretend respect for those they fear, but what they feel is more often contempt. You’ve established that so solidly that it may prove difficult to overcome it.”
“Sadly true. We pay long and very dearly for our more youthful stupidities, but I thought money and power would bring respect.”
“You still do. Otherwise you’d be doing things very differently than you are with Orlando. Try just being straightforward about whatever it is. You might come out ‘way ahead.”
“Do you know what it’s about?” Lariez asked. Clint remembered something his eccentric writer friend had mentioned and some rocks that were very heavy. Not far from Puerto Armuelles. Silica rocks with large streaks of a heavy hard metal inside.
“Oh, I’d say zinc. It’s getting to be in demand more and more and there’s some in the area. There might be a pretty large lode of fairly pure ore there.”
Lariez looked surprised, then nodded. “You never fail to amaze me. What should I do where we will all come out ahead?”
“I’ll talk with Orlando. He’s a simple person and doesn’t want money or power beyond a certain point. Just get a use agreement and pay him a tonnage fee and agree to restore the land when it’s mined out. We’ve taught them about ownership to a certain point and he wants his land to always be his land. Money’s usually gone in a month, even millions, but the land is always there. I don’t know how much of a lode there is. I’d think enough that it won’t hurt you to do an honest business deal for a change.”
“We estimate there is something between three and four million metric tons of rich ore. What would be fair?”
“One dollar a ton removed and you restore the land. If it’s a compact lode it won’t do much damage. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than all this bullshit where you steal the Indios’ land and get your reputation reinforced again.”
“Yes. It is fairly compact. I think no more than a hectare of surface land and it’s solid rock, so will not too much affect anything there. The land will remain the property of your friend.
“You are an amazing person. I’d like to call you a friend.”
“So long as you don’t bother innocent people, I see no reason why not. You’re a lot different than I expected, too.”
“Then we wil
l see if your friend will agree to a mutual advantage legitimate business – and one might even garner a bit of honest respect from such a venture. Perhaps this will be enough over projections that I will build a new school here for the locals.
“If you will speak with Orlando, my friend?”
“I’ll do that, amigo. Can you possibly do anything to stop the funny-money crowd from getting in too deep here?”
“Alas, but that I could. Any association of any type with them would put me into an impossible position. I will try to get the word out that it would be an inordinately stupid thing to do anything that might bring negative publicity to them.”
Clint nodded. They shook hands and Lariez waved for his thugs to come along.
Clint tended to believe Lariez. He’d have to try to do something about the counterfeit paper.
“Clint! That Wallace woman is in the hospital!” Anita called up from the street under Clint’s little balcony at daybreak. “She and Batty.”
“What?” he replied. He had just come out to sip his first cup of coffee. Here, he was at least partially dressed.
“I don’t know. I was talking with Naldo and he said they were in hospital.”
