Night of the Jaguar

by Joe Gannon

  “Until he gets home.”

  “Should I question him?”

  “No, just tail him.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why am I just going to follow a gringo reporter?”

  “You’re not just following a gringo reporter. You’re following orders. Now get going, Lieutenant. When you make his house, come back and get me.”

  Ajax turned back to the corpse. As Gladys exited, sunshine flooded through the door into the dark morgue and the dead man briefly flared a ghostly white.

  Ajax shook his head in wonder. “A la gran puta.”

  “What is it?”

  “You first.”

  “What?

  “You know.”

  “You want me to say it?” Marta touched the corpse’s wounds. “Okay. I led some medical brigades up north back in ’81…”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve seen it before, up in Pantasma and El Cua. Once in the throat, twice in the heart. This is a Contra execution.”

  “Could it be an accident? Just lucky?”

  “No. Not just lucky. The heart wounds are clean. You tilt the blade so it’s vertical, it’ll hit bone, gets deflected, especially by the breast bone. Tilt it horizontally and it’ll slide right between the ribs, which is what your killer did.” She looked down at the corpse. “Whoever wielded the knife knew what he was doing.”

  “Hijueputa.”

  “So someone read about it or…”

  “No, Marta. We never told anyone. Kept it real quiet. The National Directorate was sending thousands up north—literacy, immunization, the coffee harvest. Shit, who would’ve answered the call up knowing that fate awaited them in a shallow grave?”

  Ajax laid his hand on the corpse’s chest. “I’m sorry señor. I misjudged you. I saw you in the ditch and thought ‘this could be interesting.’ But now…” Ajax lightly touched the telltale wounds. “This is interesting, exciting, fascinating.”

  He drew a clean but sadly stained sheet over the body. “Or not. Depending.”

  “On?”

  “On whether this is murder or war.”

  “Don’t make me point out the thin line between those two.”

  “Thin and porous. You know…”

  “Look, if you’re gonna stick around, fine. I gotta get this guy ready before he turns.”

  Marta went to a stainless steel sink surrounded by open cupboards crowded with unmarked bottles. She mixed chemicals from several smaller bottles into a gallon jug and shook the concoction vigorously. The motion jiggled her hips and breasts and brought a smile to Ajax.

  “Can I help you with anything?”

  “Grab that pump up there.” She nodded at a high shelf over the sink.

  Ajax got it down.

  “We have to pump this guy dry and fill him with that,” she said.

  “Which is what?”

  “My witch’s brew—two parts formaldehyde to one part urine. The poor man’s embalming fluid.”

  “Puta!” Ajax held the jug away from his body as if its nastiness might seep through the glass.

  “You want the real stuff, go to Miami. Embalming is not even in my job description. Besides, the enzymes in urine have almost miraculous properties, you might remember.”

  “I remember you had us pissing on ourselves almost as much as in the woods.”

  “Cured your jungle rot.”

  She laid out the pump, her jug of brew, and a scalpel. “You pump out his blood and I’ll listen.” Marta inserted a needle almost as large as her pinky into the rubbery blood vessel. She connected it to a translucent tube attached to a device that looked to Ajax like it was made to siphon gas from a car. “By the way, you should cut Gladys some slack. She’s all right. Now pump, slow and steady.”

  Ajax did as told, and on the third stroke blood drained into a bucket on the floor.

  “Good,” she said. “Keep pumping. You were saying: murder or war?”

  “If this is a simple murder, why was it done? Despair. Passion. Power. Money. I’ll figure that out.”

  “Very modest of you.”

  Ajax ignored or hadn’t heard the barb. “But what if it is war, a military tactic? What’s the Contra’s great weakness?”

  “They’re the hired thugs of the yanqui sons of bitches?”

  Ajax chuckled. “Well said. And mostly true. But their problem, their embarrassment, is that they’re stuck on the margins, near the borders, sneaking up from Costa Rica”—he pulled the plunger up—“and down from Honduras”—he pushed the plunger down. “In our day, when we were so few, all we needed was one volunteer in every city to fire one bullet into the air every night. The Guardia had to occupy the whole country. The Contra have no presence in the cities, but only the countryside, which is mostly empty. You gotta drive twelve hours to find them, if you’re lucky.”

  “How’s the bucket?”

  “Not even half full.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Okay. So the Contra can’t open an urban front. They’re getting pressure from the paymaster in Washington to expand the war to the cities, but they can’t. What’s the cheap way to do that? Smuggle in a murder squad, start killing civilians like our friend here, your morgue starts to fill, the civilian population gets real nervous. Serial killer? Ritual murder? A cult? You can see the headlines. Is he deflating?”

  The corpse’s cheeks had puckered so its lips pouted.

  Marta patted the corpse’s cheek. “Pretty much. Means you’ve emptied the veins close to the skin, a good sign. He’ll refill once we pump him back up. Let’s switch.”

  Marta removed the needle. Taped the corpse’s scrotum and penis to his belly and opened his groin to reveal the artery. “What’s your point, Ajax?”

  “My point, Mami, is—what’s the point?” He shook his head like a baseball coach watching the opposing team take the infield. “It’s too labor intensive. If you infiltrate troops, open an urban front, why cut throats? Why not throw grenades in the market? That’d cause a panic. If this is not simple murder but a message, who’s the message for?”

  Marta plucked a newspaper from her lab coat pocket, laid it on the corpse, and unfolded a copy of the government’s hot-headed newspaper, Barricada. “What about this?” She inserted the pinky-needle into the groin artery. “Keep pumping.”

  The banner headline yelled, “Yanqui Senators Arrive To ‘Find Facts.’” Underneath it, “Senator Teal Leads Imperialism’s Delegation.”

  “You suggest the Contra are putting on a show for these gringo senators?”

  “I only deal in dead certainties, Ajax. It’s why I like my job.” She checked the tube running into the bucket. “I think we’re ready to fill him back up. So what’s your point?”

  “It does not add up. The M.O. doesn’t coincide with robbery-homicide. The anonymity of the act does not coincide with a military strike for propaganda purposes.”

  “And so?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just got a feeling.”

  “One of Spooky’s feelings? They never steered you wrong in the mountains.” She laid her hand on his arm. “You never steered us wrong.”

  “That’s because none of us knew what the fuck we were doing. How hard was it to look good? Bunch of blind blundering bastards.”

  “Blundered all the way to Managua.”

  “Yeah, how about that? Got the two things we never expected—to win, and live to see it.” Suddenly Ajax was tired. His chest seemed to fill with exhaustion. He set down the pump, rubbed his face, felt the still-tender bump behind his ear where Pissarro had hit him.

  “What is it, Spooky?”

  Only the old veterans used that name. No one else knew it, or dared if they did.

  “Been a lot of dying lately, Mami. That soldier yesterday in Jorge Dimitriov.”

  She tapped the paper on the corpse’s belly. “I read about that.”

  “Now this guy shows up here bearing Contra wounds that make no sen
se.” He nodded at the black banner surrounding Barricada’s masthead. “El Mejicano.”

  “Poor Joaquin. That was a long time coming.”

  “You knew he was dying?”

  “Hey, I’m still in the loop.”

  He ignored the gentle barb.

  “Ajax, there’ll be a gathering of the old veterans after the funeral. At Gioconda’s.”

  Ajax winced like she had picked a painful scab. “Why her house? She’s not one of us.”

  “Who cares? The old guard will be there. You should come.”

  Ajax shook his head no, but said, “Yeah. I should go.”

  Marta tapped him gently on the shoulder. When he turned, she cupped her hands around his face, something she’d done when tending the wounded in the mountains. “She’s your ex now. Move on.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t know what it is. Been a lot of dying.…”

  “No.” She poked him three times in the forehead. “That’s all up here. What’s down here?” And she poked three times on the chest.

  “Vos sos gitana, Marta.” You’re a gypsy.

  “I don’t need a crystal ball to see into you, Montoya.” She took the pump from his hands, looked into his eyes, awaiting a revelation he could not offer.

  “I don’t know Marta. I really don’t know what’s going on.”

  She leaned her nose in close to his lips. “You look good, Ajax. Real good. Your eyes aren’t bloodshot”—she sniffed at his lips—“and your breath doesn’t smell of that swill you used to cover up the booze. How many days?”

  “Six.”

  “How’re you sleeping?”

  “A bad night’s sleep would be a good night’s sleep.”

  “Here.” She went over to the far wall, to a cabinet streaked with rust where the roof had leaked on it. “What made you go cold turkey?”

  “Only way to silence Horacio, quiet him, make him shut up.”

  She took out a vial of pills. “That man loves you.”

  “That would explain the not shutting up.”

  She held up the vial. “Valium. Take two before bed each night for the next five nights. Your system should settle after that.”

  “Many of your patients need Valium?”

  “Sometimes I go through their belongings. Just for the meds.”

  Ajax took the pills. Kissed her cheek. “Take care of my corpse, Marta. He’s a VIP.”

  Marta spread her hands, taking in her dingy domain. “It’s an exclusive club.”

  2.

  Sub-comandante Vladimir Malhora was Commander of the Directorate General for State Security, Chief Protector of the Revolution, and Guardian of the People’s Will.

  The J. Edgar Hoover of Nicaragua.

  Secretly, he liked that one best. He admired Hoover, even if he was an anti-Communist hijo de puta. Malhora had read up on him. On Beria, too. Joe Stalin’s head of state security had had even more power than Hoover—the absolute power of life or death. But the first order of business after Stalin’s demise had been to execute Beria. It was the only thing Papa Joe’s inheritors had agreed on. Hoover, however, had survived seven presidents. Fifty years in power! Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, no one had dared to mess with Hoover. That was power! Even if he was a fag.

  Of course, Hoover had built himself a palace for a headquarters and Malhora only had the humble Casa Cincuenta, House Fifty, tucked up behind the InterContinental Hotel as his. And Hoover perhaps had not had so many incompetents to carry out his will. Malhora lit a lovely Cuban cigar as he listened with mixed emotions to the report from Cortez and Pissarro. He took his time firing the end and then blew a long trail of smoke while he considered the portrait of Sandino hanging on his wood-paneled wall.

  Augusto César Sandino was the idol of the Revo who’d given his name to the Sandinista Front for National Liberation. The diminutive freedom fighter, two parts George Washington to one part Joan of Arc, had done the unimaginable when he’d fought ten thousand US Marines to a standstill after they’d invaded Nicaragua in the 1920s to make the country safe for banana lovers everywhere. The Marines, like the US Cavalry before them hunting Crazy Horse, couldn’t beat Sandino, so they invited him to a peace conference where the very first Somoza had him assassinated.

  The portrait, now bathed in Malhora’s cigar smoke, depicted Sandino as he was—a pint-size man in a ten-gallon hat. But that hat had become an icon around the world.

  Malhora liked the portrait because it reminded him that Sandino had been short, too. Like Hoover. Like himself.

  Malhora didn’t want this corpse to call attention to itself. He didn’t like what he was hearing from the Conquistadores (he had borrowed the quip from Montoya). Nor did he like the frown of disapproval that spread over the visitor’s face as they unfolded their tale. He didn’t like the visitor still presuming to judge him at all. He didn’t even like hearing the name “Ajax Montoya.” He had first heard and read the name in Mexico during the final months of the insurrection. Glowing accounts of Montoya’s column rolling over Somoza’s National Guard as he swept down from the northern mountains, leaving peace in his wake. The press had dubbed him El Príncipe de la Paz—The Prince of Peace. Newspapers and television, with their need to weave naïve narratives with crude heroes spun from simpleton soldiers! None of them knew of the secret work Malhora had done for years all over the world. And continued to do now. The clandestine meetings, shape-shifting bank accounts, ghostly merchant ships, and magical manifests that had nurtured and nourished an insurrection weren’t “sexy” in the way a bearded grunt with a chrome-plated pistol was. As if this month’s centerfold had no bones and gristle holding up her tits!

  It had begun as envy, Malhora knew it. But it had transformed into something else that May Day party at the Cuban embassy when he’d felt compelled not only to lie about knowing Montoya, but to regale one and all with tales of their friendship. And he had pursued a friendship with the ungrateful son of a bitch—had teamed up with him in State Security in the early days of the Revo, only to discover the “great man” was a wild-eyed dreamer, the worst kind of romantic bourgeois. And then that night. That fateful night in Los Nubes when Malhora had killed for the first time. Montoya had come running out of the darkness and struck him! Not even a manly blow but backhanded him like a servant who’d broken a family heirloom. Malhora’s feeling had hardened into cold hate, and he had filled a file with Montoya’s drunken fall since. And who was the great man now?

  Malhora’s cigar had gone out. He regarded the dead ash the same way he studied the Conquistadores, wondering again if he had chosen his instruments well. “So this notorious drunken fool beat the crap out of both of you for everyone to see and left you stranded in some barrio where you had to beg help to get your car back, a car marked DGSE just to make sure everyone knew you two donkeys belonged to me.”

  The Conquistadores silently consulted each other for some way to improve their boss’s summary, but could find none. “Sí, Comandante.”

  Malhora knocked the dead cinders from his cigar but missed the porcelain ashtray, a personal gift from his Chinese counterpart.

  “And so you were late getting to the morgue, which is why you did not prevent him from entering and questioning the doctor.”

  “Sí, Comandante.”

  “Neither did you arrive in time to question the gringo journalist.”

  “No, Comandante.”

  Malhora fired up his sterling silver Zippo lighter—a personal gift from the Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. He leaned over and lit the visitor’s cigar. The visitor seemed bemused by the shameful tale, which only further annoyed Malhora.

  He snapped the lighter closed. “Compañeros, you two have shit yourselves pretty well on this. I am closely watching your performance. Put someone on the gringo journalist and milk his phones. Find out who the peasant is. Follow the dyke. You two personally record everything Montoya does.”

  “Sí, Comandante!”

  “By the way, Captai
n Cortez…” The visitor spoke as if he’d remembered an unimportant detail. “You drew your weapon on a hero of the revolution. He might be debased now, but had you killed him, all his sins would’ve been forgiven. Imagine how it would’ve reflected on your Comandante had two of his agents done such a thing.”

  Malhora had reveled in that part of the tale, had briefly wished Cortez had done just that. Now he saw the horror of it. Goddamn Montoya would win even by dying.

  “That’s right you shit brains. He ever attacks you again, let him. Do not fight back unless he kills one of you. In fact, let him kill both of you. Now get out!”

  Their faces never changed, never quavered. They did not smile when he complimented them, nor frown when he browbeat them. Malhora actually rather liked them. He hoped he had chosen them well. He sat back, smoked, and regarded the visitor. He didn’t like him, found his presence an unnerving reminder of the past when Malhora had been the junior partner. Still, he was a deep thinker.

  “Comandante,” the visitor began, “about this corpse.”

  “We’ll make it go away. Have no fear.”

  “Oh, I am utterly confident. But if the corpse is to be seen as a simple homicide, mightn’t this gringo reporter ask why State Security is involved in it?”

  Malhora blew smoke at the portrait of Che Guevara on the other paneled wall, next to the window overlooking the lake. “Well, maybe the Contra did kill him.”

  “Yes. But the timing is … delicate. The yanqui senators arrive tomorrow. Nothing inflammatory should occur during that visit, or before they vote.”

  “Their minds are already made up.”

  “True. The $100 million will get to the Contra. But the visit here is as much about those who oppose them in the gringo Congress. The enemies, or at least, the opponents of our enemies, as it were. Nothing should occur to undermine them. Not even the appearance of controversy. The National Directorate is very clear on that.”

  With that one comment, the visitor touched Malhora’s soul. He stroked his Stalin mustache vigorously, as he always did when the wheels of his ambition turned. Above all else he had to be seen as serving the National Directorate. He did not care a monkey’s ass about what the yanqui Congress and their retard-actor president did. They could vote whatever monies they wanted to the Contra. The more war there was, the more his domain grew. But the eight remaining Comandantes of the Directorate would soon have to replace Joaquin Tinoco. Malhora was a breath away from that prize. Only one of the nine could become president.