by Moulton, CD
“I have to get the motherfucking motor off and try to dry it out if it’s any of your goddamned business!”
“Well, I could offer to help you. I could take my boat alongside and lift one side to dump some of the water, then it would float to where you could get the motor off – if there was a chance in hell you could handle a three hundred pound engine by yourself.”
“Let’s do that.”
“Or I could treat you the way you’ve already treated me and decide to do one of two things,” Clint continued. “I could tell you to fuck off and enjoy watching your shit ruin in the salt water or I could say I’d help for a hundred bucks.”
McDonald grinned. “You, I could like. You aren’t wimpy like these shitheads here.”
“They aren’t wimpy. They simply treat people with respect until they get to know them well enough to know if they want anything to do with them. They’ve solidly decided they don’t want anything to do with you. Push it and you’ll end up learning how wimpy they are right quick!”
“I could take any three of them without working up a sweat!” he snarled.
“Maybe before you turned into a fat out-of-shape pig you could’ve taken one of them. They’re small people. Right now, I’d say there isn’t one of them who couldn’t take you down pretty fast.”
He laughed. “OK. A hundred bucks. I got money up the ass.”
“So do I,” Clint replied. He went alongside the sunken 18 footer and dropped the grapple anchor under the front, caught the molded seat underneath and lifted. It slowly began to rise, then sluggishly dumped water over the motor in the rear. After about three minutes about a third of the boat front was above the water. Clint let go and stepped hard on the front. The water leveled until the gunnel had about four inches above the water. He dropped his bail line into it and threw a five gallon bucket to McDonald and took one himself to throw water out. In a few minutes it would remain afloat without any further hand bailing. Clint let the high-flow bailer from his boat draw a lot more of the water out. McDonald invited him to have some coffee or booze or whatever so they left it running and went to the somewhat overdone stilt house where Benson McDonald introduced his ladyfriend, Shirley LeGrande. They talked awhile. Clint brought up the drug boat and murder.
“I’m here because of drugs coming in through Nassau,” Benson said. “I got into trouble with a bunch at a casino there. I had a little restaurant and beer bar and they started trading right there. I threw them out, then the place burned down. I caught two of them one night in a dark alley and almost killed them. Their buddies have been after me ever since.”
“Not the same group, I hope?”
“I wouldn’t know. I doubt it.”
Shirley seemed to be a lot more friendly. They chatted, then Clint left. Benson had a tripod to take the motor off and into his bodega (shed) to dry it out. Clint told him to meet the people halfway and they would gladly go the other half. They were NOT going three quarters of the way.
He said he didn’t want friends. He wanted to be left alone. Clint told Shirley that they wouldn’t hold him against her. If she wanted friends she could have them. She nodded.
Well, McDonald was out as a suspect.
Clint visited with another Indio family. He helped them put a couple of sheets of zinc on the roof that had been blown off. This time it was anchored. Before, it had a couple of heavy rocks holding it in place. The Indios noted years ago that the zinc-plated panels would rust where the nails went through very quickly. If the zinc wasn’t scratched through or holed it would last for twenty years or more – so they didn’t drive nails through it. Clint said they had kilometers of polypropylene rope, so why not tie it down? They did that. They would have to replace the rope about every five years. The sunlight broke it down.
The wind was picking up and it was getting darker than Clint liked. He turned on the weather channel on his boat and learned this last storm front had intensified and would be a lot worse than the first two. The bay was getting pretty rough before Clint got home. He was protected from the worst of it where he was, but people on the Caribbean side would get hit hard this time.
Sergio had called several times, but Clint’s cell was on the boat while he was working and he hadn’t heard it. He called to learn that another tortured body had been found. This one on Isla Popa.
Assumptions
“It would seem you were correct in assuming that the body found between Solarte and Bastimentos was nothing to do with the drug runner,” Sergio admitted when Clint went to the station in the morning. “It perhaps has to do with drugs, but who knows?
“Have you anything new to report?”
“Other than that McDonald is a total ass, but has nothing to do with it, no. I’m going calling on Quiroz and Larienze in a bit.”
“That’s nice. So. Who are Quiroz and Larienze? Those unpopular people on Bastimentos?”
“Yeah. I want to see what their stories are.”
Sergio nodded and told what they knew about body #2. Except that he could be a man who was around every once in awhile they called Carlos they didn’t have anything. It was pretty exactly the same kind of torture body #1 showed. It didn’t mean too much in itself.
“It means someone wants information that they didn’t get from the first one,” Clint pointed out. Sergio agreed. They didn’t know if whoever got the information from #2.
Clint went to the regular places for gossip, then took his boat to Bastimentos. Quiroz had the much easier place to get to so he went there first. Quiroz was an arrogant snob. He first called that his dock was a private one, so get out. Clint called out that he could return with a police boat or he could talk to Quiroz now. His choice.
He said to come on in, but make it damned brief. He didn’t have time to waste with anything to do with Bocas del Toro and its cheap tourist-trap atmosphere.
Clint said he doubted very much that Xavier Quiroz had time for much of anything to with anyone else.
“I’ll say what my close Indigeno friends said about the last person I talked to about this. If you don’t like Bocas go the hell back where you came from – or are you in the same situation? Where he COULDN’T go back there because he was even more unpopular where he knew people than he was here where he made it a point not to know anyone.”
“I resent your attitude!” Quiroz snapped.
“Oh? Am I supposed to care or simply say I’m matching your own?”
“Say what you have to say, then get out! I’m much to busy to spend time chatting with riff-raff!”
“I see. A real legend in your own mind,” Clint countered. “You want it short, so that’s how you get it.
“What’s your connection to the drug shipment deterred yesterday in the bay?”
Quiroz sputtered and stared a minute, yelled that he didn’t have anything to do with it. He wasn’t in any way ever even suspected of having anything to do with drugs. He deeply resented the implication.
“Better get used to it. You place yourself under suspicion with your attitude. Do you think we don’t know you don’t have anything to keep you so, as you claimed, busy you don’t have time to waste on riff-raff like me?”
He looked like he would explode. He sputtered a bit more, then turned around and stormed toward the house, yelling for Clint to get off his property and to stay off.
He was up to something, but it wasn’t to do with drugs. Clint would damned well see that he was investigated carefully. Clint suspected he was only a deluded idiot who was being used by someone else as a distraction.
Which made it interesting. A distraction from what?
That would have to wait.
Larienze tried to be polite, but couldn’t pull it off. He had a very grating personality. He was another self-absorbed type who tried to act like one of the boys, but was condescending in almost everything he said. He didn’t have a clue to what other people were thinking. He wouldn’t be involved. He pictured himself as some kind of genius. He wouldn’t fall for any line from a
nyone in this backwater. He kept within his regular group of friends. He was sure he was way ahead of the game.
Clint looked around at his location and the house he had built and grinned to himself. He had probably paid at least three times what it was worth when he was told about the super-great deal available by one of those “friends.”
Trouble now was that Clint was out of suspects. He went out toward the end of the island where it was pretty isolated to talk with some of his friends there. They didn’t know much about any of it. They might have seen the dead guy around somewhere, but how would they know? They didn’t even know what he looked like. The police had asked them about it, but didn’t have a picture or even a good description. “Have you ever seen the dead guy we found?” and not even be able to say what he looked like, whether he was a black, Indio, gringo, or what? How old was he? 17 or 70?
Clint had to agree that would be pointless, but he knew Sergio’s methods. That stuff would be covered later. If he got anyone to say the wrong thing he would know that one knew more than he was telling. It could save weeks of investigating to have someone make that one little slip.
The eight or nine year old kids saw things that would open other things up a bit. He did learn that a boat had come to sit in a little cove when the police boats went in. It stayed there until the watcher boat at the mouth of the bay went to search more back inside, then left. That led to the father saying he saw it, but didn’t want to get involved. That could be dangerous to his family. Clint said he would never be mentioned in any way.
It was a 22 foot white and green boat with a center console and had a canopy that was taken down when it was in the cove. It was a blue plastic cover that would show. There were three people in the boat. All men. It went around the end of the island and headed more or less straight in. It didn’t go toward Bocas. One of the men had a gun. It may have been an AK-47, but they didn’t see it close and weren’t really concerned or they would have found out more. They didn’t tell the police. That would be dangerous. Clint would never let it be known who told him anything. The police; they could trust Sergio, but if Sergio knew soon everyone would know and they would know who Sergio talked to. Sergio had to file reports that others could read.
Clint gave all the kids cookies he kept in his boat for that reason, thanked all of them, then headed back to Bocas. This was a break. The drug runner wasn’t picked up by anyone on either of the islands. They went straight toward the mainland so could have been heading to Popa. The one who tortured and killed #1 was on that boat. That meant the boat was out there to kill #1 and got an opportunity to make something with the drug boat. Maybe the runner was body #2. He would have offered them something valuable for their taking him to shore away from Bocas or observation.
Then he would be stupid not to have made whatever he promised unavailable before he was on the mainland and safe. He wasn’t body #2. Unless.... No. Someone known as Carlos was body #2, not some drug runner who had probably never been there before. Definitely not to the mainland.
Clint headed in. The runner would have been taken to Tierra Oscura. It was the only way to get him near a road with that storm making everyone be home. He would have been seen and noted if they went ashore anywhere else where their passenger could get to a road. Everyone was watching the bay. The tone of the light and the direction and power of the wind told them a lot more facts about an approaching storm than any weatherman on TV possibly could.
He took care of what he had waiting, e-mail and such at home, then fueled his boat from the tank he kept at his place and headed to Tierra Oscura.
No one knew who might have come in the night to Tierra Oscura. They were all inside or working to secure things for the next wave to come through. A couple heard the boat come in and heard what seemed like a small argument, then whoever it was left by the road. He got a taxi that was there from taking Lydia home. Clint said that would help. He talked to Lydia. She said the man who took the taxi called to it from down the road. She did hear him ask how much to take him to a bank and bring him back.
That meant he was from Panamá. He had to get to a bank to use the ATM. That would be in Almirante – if it had ever been fixed. It had sat since Christmas with a brick thrown through it. He might have to go to Changuinola.
Clint asked if she heard the answer. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it was more than sixty dollars. The man had yelled something about sixty dollars like he didn’t believe it, but he did take the taxi.
Changuinola and back, barring obstructions or something. Two hours. Double the regular rate because of the storm. Half the time if he went by boat to Bocas. He didn’t want to do that. That meant the carrier came back in about two hours to collect.
He was a Latin man, about 5'10", strong, had longish hair. That was all she noticed. He wore a lot of flashy rings and gold chains. She remembered that because he left them with somebody at the dock before he got the taxi. Maybe he was wearing those camouflage pants and a dark shirt.
Clint had found, years ago, to ask the minimum and let them remember the rest without a lot of pressure. The pressure would make them forget. We all notice a lot more about things than we realize.
How to find the taxi?
Simple! Very few would be running around that time of night. Only one would have gone to Tierra Oscura, then to Changuinola, then back to Tierra Oscura. It would be a regular Almirante taxi.
He headed back to his boat and to Almirante. It took four hours to find the taxi used. The driver said the guy stayed quiet both ways. He took him to the machines at the Banco National, then brought him back. He left him in Tierra Oscura and came back home. He couldn’t add much except the guy used two or three different cards. He had over a thousand dollars when he got back in the taxi. He paid sixty five dollars.
He was about what Lydia described. He spoke very good Panamanian Spanish. He used a cell phone at the bank, but not in the taxi. He seemed upset about something on the way back to Tierra Oscura.
The driver hadn’t seen anyone else around when he took the guy back to Tierra Oscura. There was no boat at the dock. The guy did use his phone again, but that was after they got to the dock and he was outside of the taxi. The taxi didn’t hang around. It was late and he was tired.
Clint went back to his boat. He could ask a few questions now.
Back out to Bocas.
“We identified the person on Popa who was killed. Carlos Menendez. He and a man called Eduord Rauz hung around together sometimes and seemed to have money at times and be broke other times. I think perhaps Rauz will prove to be the first body. We have reports that they hung around Santiago and David more than here. There are reports concerning an Eduord David from Panamá and Las Tablas. He has connections that caused him to be watched in Colón.”
Clint told him about finding the route their runner had taken and described the boat as best he could. Sergio said Quenten Robinson had come in early in the morning. He claimed that he had stayed in Renaciamento with friends for the night and had come home when it was calm enough and light enough.
“Friend have a name?”
“Roberto David. He’s bad news. We’ve run across him before. Two-bit thug and sneak thief.”
“If he was with Robinson last night he’s the torturer. Him or Robinson.”
“I would tend to agree. If we can get him to admit that they were, indeed, together, we can get them both with little or no problem. There will be no way to explain why they were the only ones in the area of both killings. The MO was the same on both.
“You are not going to tell me how you obtained the information, are you?”
“Part of it. I went out to Tierra Oscura on an anonymous tip that a boat as described called at the dock twice. It has proven to be the Robinson boat. You have enough to tag them. I’ll find someone who saw that boat in there before the runner and that it was not seen leaving, but was seen at the appropriate time with three people in it very close to Solarte. While the police were there, in fact.”
“Protect your friends, Clint. That particular branch of the Robinsons are known to intimidate people and worse.”
“I’ll do that. You know it.”
“Are you out of it now?”
Clint thought for a moment. “No. There was a reason for that extreme torture – at least in the mind of the killer.”
Sergio nodded.
Clint left and headed for home. He would find his answers in Panamá City or David or Las Tablas. He wasn’t about to go to Colón.
He got a flight to David. He would check out places, closest first. He had the pictures of David and Robinson from the police files. He had seen both at times in Bocas, but hadn’t met or spoken to them. Robinson was black and David was mestizo. Robinson was bullish and a bit fat. David was thinner and sported a few tatoos. Both tended to too much flashy jewelry. David wore gang earrings on the left ear and had a small diamond in a pierce on the nose.
Clint went to the Top Place billiard halls in David first, then to the lesser known pool halls. He found that David hung around a little place near the feria. They didn’t think much of him one way or another, but it was the kind of place where a big part of the business was with the type. It was the kind of place where Clint always kept a close watch behind – as well as in front, the sides and above. An altercation started while he was there over a pool game. One punk hit another over the head with a pool cue. The other patrons broke it up and told them to sit down and cool off. They didn’t find it at all unusual for one person to smack another with a cue stick. The tough looking women ignored the whole scene.
Clint used his little special digital camera to take pictures of everyone without them knowing. He drank one beer and left.
He found another place out toward Pedrigal David went at times. He was with Robinson most of the time he went there. Robinson came in a few times by himself to meet someone named Enrique Castille. Castille was known as a mafia hood. People were scared of him.
Everyone was suspicious why Clint wanted to know anything. He said it wasn’t any of their business, but he didn’t mind saying his sister and her best friend might have a little something to do with it. They were minors. In Panamá it wasn’t considered as odd that a fifty something man had sisters that were minors. They were your sisters if your father was fifteen when you were born and seventy five when your sisters were born. It wasn’t ever questioned if your parents were married or you were the result of a one night encounter.
