by Joe Gannon
The musicians broke into a Mexican norteño, one of Joaquin’s favorites. A paroxysm of Yips! And Ye-Haw’s! rolled out as one and all put on their best Mexican accents and stormed the dance floor around the pool like it was the Bastille.
Ajax watched the dancing, and held down a flank of the bar. The uniformed waiter was from the InterContinental Hotel. It reminded Ajax that the Hunchback had steered him to a don Augustino there; it was his next stop after the funeral. He’d already sent Gladys to stake out his home.
“Ajax! My brother!”
Rhino assaulted him with a sloppy, smelly hug.
“I love you man. I love you!”
Rhino was a few years younger than Ajax, shorter and squatter, a light-skinned pure-bred barrio boy from León. Rhino had joined them in the mountains later in the war, and so always felt like the little brother who had to catch up. Ajax and he had worked State Security in the early days of the Revo. Rhino was another one who adjusted to peace with too much drink.
“Rhino, you smell like a drunken Rhinoceros.”
“Yeah, man, ’cause I drink like one. Hey you! Give us some more here.” Rhino grabbed two glasses from the waiter.
“I’m good, just filled up.”
Rhino drained half the glass. “So, Captain Ajax Montoya, Policía Sandinista. How’s that going, man? You working anything good?”
“No, man. It ain’t like you cowboys in State Security. Working homicide in a country at war is like selling flip-flops to fish.”
Rhino smiled the way drunks did, out of camaraderie more than comprehension.
“Listen, Rhino. You know two Seguridad compas, Major Pissarro and Captain Cortez?”
“I love what you did to El Gordo Sangroso, man, you fucked him up.”
“Couldn’t let him escape twice.”
“Fuck no, bro.” Rhino checked over his shoulder, although Ajax doubted he could see if anyone had been eavesdropping.
“I used to go with one of the girls he killed, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not regular or anything.” Rhino looked into Ajax’s eyes and smiled. “She charged me Nica prices!”
Ajax had learned in chasing down El Gordo Sangroso that Managua’s whores always charged in dollars. It was a true mark of favor to accept the inflation-ravaged córdoba as payment.
“She must’ve liked you, Rhino.”
“She did man, she did.”
“So, you don’t know Cortez or Pissarro?”
Rhino seemed to sober infinitesimally. “You fucked them up, Spooky!”
“Yeah, they rubbed me the wrong way.”
“Fucking Spooky, man. You don’t give a shit about anything!”
Rhino swayed for a moment, his body, like his mind, leaning toward something. “You shouldn’t do that man. Them two…”
“What?”
“These newer guys, man, they ain’t like us. It’s like … they’re like…”
“Squares.”
“Yeah man! Back in the old days they woulda been goin’ to catechism class while we were out gettin’ high! Remember?” Then Rhino did remember. “Well, you were in the States. Boomboomboom. But León in them days, man. Shit. We partied.”
Rhino staggered through his memories of the good old days. “You been to Russia, right? Man, I fucking love Russians! They’re all into the black market, drink more than I do. And sing! I mean who knows what they’re singin’ about but they are some singing motherfuckers! Am I right?”
Rhino shook his head at some inner marvel, and then threw an arm around Ajax’s neck. “Pissarro and Cortez, they’re more like East Germans, man. Boomboomboom!”
“Yeah, I hear you, Rhino. But what do they do?”
Rhino waved his glass around. “Whatta they do? They get fucked up by you!”
He grabbed Ajax in a sloppy hug. Rhino loved him in the way the old veterans were all devoted to each other. But Ajax had seen him pause and decide not to answer the question, reveal more than orders allowed. Not even Rhino ever got that drunk.
“Ajax, my brother. Mi jefe, right? The ‘Prince of Peace,’ wherever we went we made peace, didn’t we? Huh? We did something, didn’t we?”
“Freed the nation.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about! We freed the fucking nation!” He drained his glass so deeply he almost toppled backward off his heels. Ajax grabbed his arm and Rhino lurched forward, his head pounding into Ajax’s chest. He left it there, rotated it against one of Ajax’s shirt buttons, as if drilling a hole.
“It ain’t like it used to be.” He spoke into Ajax’s chest. “We ain’t like we used to be.”
“We’re not the rebels anymore.”
“We are not the fucking rebels anymore, man.”
Ajax patted Rhino’s back. Knowing the drunken sobs would follow.
“The shit we do now, man. The shit we do now.”
But Rhino pulled himself back from tears and bear-hugged Ajax, lifted him off the ground, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered fiercely, “Don’t fuck them up anymore, them two. They watching you, Spooky. I don’t know why. You gotta be cool, man, them two ain’t compas.”
Ajax almost didn’t hear the last part. Gio had caught his eye with a smile that meant she would deign to recognize him now.
“What is it about you boys and homoeroticism?”
“We ain’t homos!” Rhino was the clown again. “We fucking love each other!”
Rhino was still sober enough to know he should move on and went pinballing away. Ajax watched him—Rhino had more to tell him, he was sure. But the news that he was under surveillance brought the Hunchback’s face to his mind.
Gio touched his arm. “How are you Ajax?”
She was flushed from dancing. The beads of sweat on her forehead looked to be made of crystal with the tiniest drops of nectar locked inside. Ajax’s tongue should twitch with the desire to lick them off. But did it?
“This is a great party,” he said. “Joaquin would’ve liked it. Did you see him, before…”
She nodded. “The day before. He’d been in a lot of pain. Very doped up. But near the end he made the doctors stop everything. I think he went back to the mountains, in his mind. He kept asking for powdered milk.”
That made Ajax smile. “Our only luxury all those years.”
“I bet you still keep some in the house.”
“Who’s gonna replace him?”
“He was one of a kind.”
“On the National Directorate, Gio. Who’s gonna take Joaquin’s place?”
“So you do still think politically.”
“I’m not dead, Gio. Just busy. And of the ‘Nine’ on the Directorate, Joaquin was the tiebreaker. So who’ll replace him?”
The band swung seamlessly into a slow song, “El Cantante.” It had been one of their songs.
He was about to ask, or not ask, just take her arm and lead her to the dance floor, when her eyes bolted over his shoulder and she grabbed him by his wrists.
“Ajax, please behave.”
“Hey! I was just gonna ask, you know, request, invite you to…”
But then he saw that she was not speaking of the music, nor the gathering, nor them. There was a snatch of panic in her eyes, or worry. Fear? She took his wrists even more firmly before he could see what she saw.
“You owe me for yesterday so control yourself.”
“What…”
“Please.”
“I will.”
He turned to look, and it felt as if his body did a somersault. At least on the insides. Whereas the moment before his blood had been headed south to the groin region where dancing with his still-sexy ex had held the possibility of a polite boner; now all that same blood reversed and rushed to his head where it already pounded at his temples until the colors of the sky and earth darkened.
Malhora. Sub-comandante Vladimir Malhora swept into the house, with an entourage of bodyguards.
Ajax put his lips to her ear. “You invited th
at shit-eater here?”
“Ajax, he’s head of State Security, he doesn’t have to be invited anywhere.”
“But here? Joaquin hated him!”
“You’re such a boy! Who cares who liked who?”
Ajax looked over her shoulder. Many of the dancers stopped to greet Malhora, who had swept his entourage onto the middle of the dance floor to make sure that they did.
“He’s still playing games, the low-life piece of shit. If Joaquin were alive he’d never show up here.”
“Joaquin is dead, and that is all history. I’ve got to live in the present and deal with his type. That’s politics.”
Ajax felt a sneer cut so deep on his face it might lop his cheeks off. “Politics, all right. He’s here to show he’s the next one, the one to replace Joaquin. Cocksucker.”
“Just let it be.”
His eyes went back to hers. Maybe she was right. He would have reconsidered further, but Malhora’s voice dragged his eyes from hers. Malhora had dragged poor Rhino—too drunk to notice his boss had arrived—sopping wet from the pool he’d gone into since leaving Ajax. Malhora was dressing him down to maximum humiliation.
“You are a goddamned disgrace! You come to the funeral of one of the Revolution’s heroes and act like a fucking clown while in the same uniform I wear!”
Without a word or a glance at Gio, Ajax sprang to Rhino’s defense as if to the sound of gunfire. He strode across the lawn, easily avoiding Horacio’s move to intercept him. Rhino’s mind seemed to have sobered considerably from shame, but his body was still too drunk to right itself from the onslaught of Malhora’s words.
“You don’t have enough respect to keep sober? Is this how you honor El Mejicano!” Malhora was reaching for Rhino’s soaked shirt when Ajax caught his wrist, and held him in a grip one millimeter away from pain.
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
The bodyguards moved in, but Malhora flicked them away with his other hand, like whisking flies.
“What are you doing, Ajax?”
There was a timbre in Malhora’s voice, like a stage actor projecting to the balcony.
“I asked who you’re talking about, ’cause I get confused, see? You say ‘El Mejicano’ and I don’t know who you’re talking about ’cause we used to call you El Mejicano. Did you know that?”
“Ajax, it’s okay, compa.” Rhino was sober now in mind and body. “He’s right. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, Rhino.” Ajax released Malhora’s wrist, the better to get into his face. “We called Joaquin Mejicano because he was born in Mexico. We called you Mejicano because while we were dying in the mountains you spent the whole fucking war sitting in Mexico sucking down Russian vodka and Cuban rum and … well, you know we were never sure what it was you were sucking on up there, comrade.”
Ajax had experienced moments in battle when time slowed down and a second seemed to allow him minutes to reflect on his action. But few times had seemed to slow as much as this moment when he looked around Gio’s crowded lawn and saw that not a single face turned toward him. Not one pair of eyes would meet his, openly or clandestinely. Least of all Rhino’s. Men and women who’d taken on an entire army with only twenty compañeros and eighteen shotguns were subdued by one bureaucrat in a uniform. Ajax felt the walls through which he had so recently passed become impermeable again. And he realized that Gio was right: the joyous camaraderie of only a moment ago was not their present. It was the past, shaken out like old flags, dusted off like the trophies of youth, and borne awkwardly to send off a fallen compañero.
They all lived in the present and Malhora owned that present, which was why in the seconds after Ajax’s insult no one breathed, awaiting their padron’s leave to do so. Malhora stared unflinching into Ajax’s eyes, reveling in the triumph. It was, Ajax knew, why he’d come.
Malhora finally looked away from Ajax. “I think we need another toast to Joaquin.”
Gio took Ajax’s elbow and held him in check as the waiters frantically recharged glasses.
Malhora turned on Rhino. “Get out of my sight, you buffoon.” Rhino slunk away, eyes on the ground. He left unseen, like an exorcised ghost. The guests played busy getting their glasses filled. Ajax looked around; only Horacio and Marta returned his gaze. Gio was right, he knew it. He only owned the past. He gently broke Gio’s grip on his arm and followed Rhino’s wake out the door.
Malhora’s voice trailed him like an ill wind.
“To Joaquin Tinoco. Commander of the Northern Front. Member of the National Directorate. Hero of the revolution. Our beloved El Mejicano. Patria Libre!”
“O Morir!”
As he passed through the entryway, never, he knew, to return, Ajax stopped to look over the map of what had been their lives but was now only hers. He lifted his photo off the wall, the clean white square behind it like a sail that took him over the edge.
* * *
Outside the sun had tilted over enough to spill red over the western horizon. He watched Rhino drive away in his Toyota Land Cruiser.
“Ajax.”
Gladys was waiting by his car.
“Gladys.”
She nodded to the house. “How was it?”
Ajax followed her gaze. “Sad.”
“I’ll bet. I went by his house.”
“Who?”
“Stolen Car King.”
Ajax looked at the photo, and then tossed it into his car onto the pile of newspapers. “Anyone home?”
“No one. What now?”
Ajax looked at the young lieutenant; she was worried.
“What is it, Gladys?”
“Bodies piling up.”
Ajax looked back at Gio’s house. “That they are.”
“Were we the last ones to see the Hunchback and Gypsy alive?”
“It could be said so. But we’ve got to stay on Enrique. His truck. Let’s try for an audience with His Highness the Thief of Automobiles.”
9
1.
The outdoor dining lawn of Managua’s InterContinental Hotel was, Amelia Peck observed, supposed to be a refuge of first-world finery in this most third world of cities. Its high, whitewashed walls were supposed to white-out what its customers wanted an evening’s respite from. Its tables were supposed to be like flowers cast around the pool, which itself was supposed to be an oasis. The waiters in maroon livery with green trim were supposed to move quickly and quietly, like a rumor among the boisterous guests.
But Amelia also noticed that the tables were wobbly, the cloths spread over them—bleached to within an inch of their lives—still held the ghostly contours of stains; even the white of the whitewashed walls seemed to run off into the grass beneath, as if they sweated milk. The pool, if Amelia could guess by the last red-eyed bather to emerge, was over-chlorinated. And the waiters, Amelia noticed from the face of the man setting another round of mojitos down at her table, seemed mostly terrified of making the mistake that would land them back in the street.
The American ambassador, George Lackley—a balding sixtyish academic as frumpy and rumpled on the outside as he was razor witted and hard boiled on the inside—had insisted she and Tony join him for a very public dinner at the Inter. “Let’s take you out and show the flag,” he’d said. “You’re the only non-covert asset to ever actually lay hands on these sons of bitches.”
Lackley raised his sweating glass: “To the slap heard ’round the world.”
Amelia sipped from her half-finished first drink, but Tony gulped his down without taking his eyes off the lithe woman fronting a trio of musicians set up next to the pool.
“It wasn’t as loud as that fat bastard doing all the screaming.” Tony laughed to himself and Amelia recognized the signs—she’d known she should have put some food in him before they’d left the embassy. She stole a glance at the ambassador, who’d noticed, too.
“I don’t know, Senator.” Lackley lifted his glass to Amelia. “It was loud enough to make the front page of the Cleveland Plain
Dealer.”
That turned Tony’s head—the largest daily in his home state. “The Dealer ran it?”
“Above the fold. The Post, too.”
“The Washington Post?” Tony downed the rest of his mojito.
“On page nine, but nevertheless your fact-finding mission has taken on a new meaning. I heard high praise from State this morning.”
“The secretary called you?”
Amelia and Lackley took identical sips to hide their smiles. “No, Senator, the head of the Central American desk, but he always lets me know what’s on the Secretary of State’s mind.”
Tony’s gaze wandered around the grassy dining area, stopped briefly on the costeña woman crooning a Caribbean love song, and then rode what Amelia knew was a stairway of ambition up to the night sky.
“Well, if the secretary is aware, then the White House must be.”
Amelia chewed her lower lip. Lackley passed an amused eye over Tony—they’d decided not to tell him that only Amelia was in both photos.
“Well, Senator.” Lackley raised his glass again. “There’s only two years to the election and the vice-president will need a viable running mate.”
Tony swallowed what was left in his glass and waved too enthusiastically for the waiter.
Lackley raised his glass to Amelia and murmured, “And Ohio might need a new senator.”
Tony grabbed Amelia’s untouched drink. “And all because of that awful fat man and that stupid cop. I don’t know which one was scarier!”
That cop, Amelia thought. That strange cop bent over that enormous man, as if he might choke the life out of him, and whispering in his ear, “Humo de leña.” Wood smoke? Even in the midst of the chaos at the airport, Amelia thought the words sounded like a chant, or a prayer, maybe even an exorcism.
Then he’d stood up. “Welcome to Nicaragua.” As if teasing her. That’s why she’d slapped him, if she was honest. She hadn’t been scared or angry. The way he’d looked directly into her eyes, unapologetic, as if the carefully choreographed diplomatic moment he’d imploded was less important than whatever a lowly cop was doing. She’d felt put in her place. That’s why she’d slapped him.
She’d really belted him, too. The kind of smack she’d used on a Saturday night with the boys back home to transmit through their alcohol haze the knowledge that, no matter how tight her jeans, her ass belonged to her.
