Night of the Jaguar

by Joe Gannon

  “The greatest show on earth.”

  Amelia stood over him dressed in hiking boots, khaki pants, and a floral print T-shirt under the kind of many-pocketed safari vest photographers often wore to hold rolls of film. She held a wide-brimmed sun hat in her freckled hand, and had her mad tangle of orange hair tied down like the sails of a schooner. Her freckles seemed to climb up out of her shirt like tiny footprints, track along her white neck, across her ears, and disappear in her scalp.

  Ajax thought she seemed dressed for gardening, or a lion hunt. He chose gardening. It made him smile.

  She sat down opposite him, pointed at a waiter, then at Ajax’s coffee.

  “Café con leche, por favor.”

  She gave the Hula Hoop Queen the once-over, and smiled into Ajax’s face.

  “Breakfast and a floor show, quite a hotel.”

  “Circus is in town.”

  “So I saw. You seemed engrossed.”

  “Engrossed?”

  “It means to be held in the grip of…”

  “I know what it means. I espeaky Englishy berry goodee.”

  She nodded to the doorway. “I was standing there watching you watch her. You seemed held in a grip of…”

  The waiter set a menu in front of Amelia.

  Ajax looked over at the Hula Hoop Queen, who let the ring fall to her feet, grasped it with the toes of her left foot, flipped it into the air, and caught it with her right index finger. Ajax applauded quietly and she rewarded him with a bow before sashaying off to her room, chamber, boudoir.

  The waiter set Amelia’s coffee down.

  “To eat, señorita?”

  “What do you recommend, Martin?”

  Ajax snapped his head around. No, he realized, it was a lion hunt.

  Amelia leaned over the table, whispered like a conspirator. “I met Matthew outside, he said his ‘driver Martin’ was in here. I’d thought I’d play along.”

  Fucking Connelly, Ajax thought. Stupid goddamn gringo. Ajax could’ve covered Captain Montoya’s presence in Matagalpa with the thinnest of lies. But not the subterfuge of Martin Garcia. Ajax shot the waiter a look.

  “Okay, I come back.” The waiter disappeared.

  “Where is Connelly?” he asked her.

  “He went to the gas station to see if he could get them to expedite repairs on my Toyota. I hit a pothole.…”

  “I saw.”

  “You saw? Thanks for the lift.”

  “You seemed to be doing fine with the oxen. You asked me what I recommend. I recommend you get back to Managua unless you have valid, written permission to be outside the capital.”

  “Permission? I don’t need permission. There are no restrictions on my visa.”

  “But there are. You can’t go traipsing around our country dressed in your safari outfit like you’re on the Serengeti. You’re an agent for an enemy state.”

  As he’d hoped, the color rose in her face, darkening it like a cloud over the sun.

  “Our countries are not at war.”

  “Really? We have been at war for years, and once Senator Teal makes his report and you vote another hundred million to the Contra, we will still be, only more so.”

  The fire in her face cooled, her skin went from red to white. The freckles now looked more like rose petals on white marble, or maybe alabaster.

  “When Senator Teal’s mission is complete, he will make a report.…”

  “Miss Peck, spare me your fact-finding mission bullshit. You’re here to air the senator out, get him some experience in the field; maybe he’ll bag a lion for the newspapers back home, that’s why you dress like you’re on safari isn’t it?”

  He’d hoped she’d take the bait. He needed to distract her from his mission in Matagalpa and why he was traveling incognito. But she didn’t. Ajax watched her spoon hover between two bowls on the table. She dipped it into one and dropped two dollops of white granules into her coffee. Ajax waited as she stirred thoroughly and sipped it. The bitterness made her spit it back out, but she seemed aware of his gaze, so she tried to reverse the action, like a batter’s checked swing. Some of it dribbled down her chin.

  Ajax smiled. “Well, at least you didn’t spit it on me.”

  Amelia dabbed a napkin to her chin. “Or slap you.”

  Ajax pointed at the two bowls. “Here’s some fact-finding for you—in the wilds of Nicaragua, the salt is white, the sugar is brown. Now get in a taxi and go home!”

  He said it more violently than he’d meant to. He’d got up faster than he’d meant to. He’d embarrassed her more than he’d meant to. And as he stormed out he felt worse about it than he’d meant to.

  2.

  The Conquistadores enjoyed Matagalpa. Their Toyota Land Cruiser had working AC, a new radio, and smoked-black windows. But mostly they enjoyed the abundance of the town. Managua was far from the fecund mountains, and often the best of the harvest never made it to the capital, or at least not to the government-approved markets, where even they were sometimes forced to shop. (The definition of a black market economy was many a slip between cup and lip. So it was no secret that most landowners had perfected a sleight-of-hand by which they sold some of their harvest to the government buyers and the rest to the highest bidder.) Matagalpa sat at the foot of the mountains, so by a kind of economic gravity it collected the abundance of meats and grains, fruits and vegetables that filled its shop stalls and restaurants. And the Conquistadores’ bellies. The black market was driven by dollars, which few in the countryside had, so Nicaraguans mostly bartered. Imported manufactured goods were also in greater abundance here, to be traded for the scarce foodstuffs. The Conquistadores already had stocked up on four cartons of Mexican cigarettes, a case of Russian vodka, a pound of Cuban sweets, three Romanian wristwatches, and they even split a sack of potatoes they’d bought from a house just around the block from the American’s casita. Potatoes! It was the biggest luxury of all and cost them dollars. But why not?

  The only drawback was that in order to enjoy the abundance of Matagalpa you had to live here as well. But they were only visiting. And as soon as their orders came to kill someone, they’d be heading home.

  3.

  Amelia Peck went back to her room in the Ideal, grabbed a fresh bottle of water, and wrung the cap off like it was the neck of that smug, Communist, son of a bitch. Damned if she had grown up with five brothers, the only girl, in the testosterone tempest of East Cleveland to be bullied by the likes of him. She’d carried a wire cord up her sleeve all four years of high school and had used it more than once on boys who’d tried to paint a bull’s-eye on her ass.

  She used the bottle of water to rinse her toothbrush over the plastic basin that served as a sink, and gave her teeth a quick wash. She looked into her own eyes in the mirror and practiced: “A la mierda hijo de puta!”

  Her hair seemed to spring out angrily in response to her mood. She grabbed the spritzer bottle Targa had given her and sprayed some on. It was like Jesus calming the seas. She had to shake it to mix the seltzer and oil and apply it instantly, but her hair obeyed and there was little or no greasy residue. It was an ingenious innovation. She applied it and felt again the pang of guilt for not having turned it over to the embassy security staff. She didn’t believe you could bug a bottle of liquid, but she’d failed to report it. It had not been her only violation of protocol. She brushed her hair out. The concoction put it under control and left a fine shine.

  She finished combing and pulled the loose red strands from the brush. “‘Enemy agent on safari,’ you smug son of a bitch.”

  Arrogance and machismo made him speak that way to her, play games with the salt and sugar. Well, she would show him exactly what she was hunting on safari. Amelia smiled, and her reflection smiled back in approval of the plan she’d made weeks ago that now would be all the sweeter once that shit-heel Ajax Montoya realized what she had been up to all along.

  Sweat trickled down from her temples and under her arms. She pulled her shirt off and tugg
ed at her bra. Why was the damn thing so tight? She allowed herself a brief paranoid trip of Sandinista agent-provocateur baggage handlers going through her luggage and exchanging her bras for identical but smaller ones. Just to mess with her. She slipped out of the bra, pulled on a T-shirt from Ohio State, and debated whether or not to use the last of her water for an in-room bath.

  She set the hotel’s bath towel on the floor so the word “Ideal” was right side up. It was pronounced “Ih-de-al” in Spanish, and the hotel seemed anything but. The rooms smelled of mildew and the sheets were a bit sour. She had been warned about drinking the local water. Sandino’s revenge seemed to preoccupy her briefers at the embassy as much as Marxism-Leninism’s hold on the country did. She’d brought her own water for the trip, but had wrongly assumed she could buy more on the road. She had about two liters left for drinking before she’d have to go native, or ask the hotel staff to boil some for her. That would be rude, she feared, and she didn’t want to appear the Ugly American no matter what Montoya thought of her.

  So she’d have to pass on the birdbath. Instead, she retrieved her folder on the family she’d come to take out, and flipped through the pages once more before her contact arrived. Henri Rodriguez and his fifteen-year-old son had arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1983 from Nicaragua, and moved into where all new immigrants moved into—a tough neighborhood. A few months ago the son had been killed in one of those random acts of violence that was making war zones of many inner cities. It was the street sale of cocaine, and a new witches’ brew known as “crack,” fueling the carnage. But once the Nicaragua trip was on Tony’s schedule, Amelia had conceived the plan to locate Henri’s remaining immediate family in Nicaragua, and have Tony “bring them out.” The Catholic Church had been most helpful in the finding, and the Sandinista government wanted very little in exchange for what Amelia knew would be a great humanitarian gesture and even better photo op.

  The whole plan was so high level she couldn’t wait to rub Montoya’s nose in it.

  Someone knocked lightly at her door, and she leapt off the bed, fearing it was Ajax and he might barge in on her. The bastard! “Just you wait a minute!”

  “Señorita Peck?”

  “Espera momentito!” She pulled her T-shirt down, checked her reflection in the mirror, and went to the door, heart pounding. “Who is it?”

  “Father Jerome.”

  Her contact had arrived.

  She pulled on fresh jeans and opened the door. The American priest standing there was so tall the top of his head was hidden above the doorjamb. They had corresponded for several weeks, and for some reason she’d created an image of a roly-poly priest in a brown cassock. Sort of a Sancho Panza or Friar Tuck. Father Jerome wore jeans and a blue cotton shirt. He must’ve stood six foot eight, was rail thin, sallow skinned, sad-eyed, and looked tired beyond what she knew were his fifty-plus years. He hardly seemed to blink at all. The first word that came to Amelia’s mind was “Lurch.” She stuck out her hand.

  “How do you do, Father, I’m Amelia Peck. Sorry to make you wait, I was cleaning up. Please come in.”

  She moved aside to let him pass, but Father Jerome took a step backward. Amelia got a look at the top of his head and was surprised to see that his hair, which must have been dyed jet black, was combed in what could only be called a pompadour straight out of the early 1950s.

  “Perhaps we could talk in the restaurant, Miss Peck.”

  “Oh. Okay. I thought we would have more privacy here. There’s a journalist in town.…” She opened the door wider.

  Father Jerome took another half step backward. “If you mean Matthew Connelly, he and I are acquainted. He is trustworthy. And I don’t think the appearance of deliberate secrecy will help, Miss Peck. Few actual secrets are kept in Nicaragua, and after all, you have assured me this is all on the up and up.”

  “Absolutely, Father. The senator insisted as well. May I buy you a meal?”

  “That would be generous of you. The hotel does very nice frijoles con crema.”

  Father Jerome led the way, Amelia fell in behind him. She noticed that his arms—which dangled to his knees—moved almost not at all. She thought this might be because his huge hands, only one of which could cover her entire skull, acted as weights to hold the arms in place. She felt her heart beat a little faster. Her special assignment had begun. She walked with an extra bounce in her step.

  It was the bounce that made her realize she’d not put her bra back on.

  4.

  Connelly’s little blue house sat at the top of a hill on the north side of Matagalpa, its back to the mountains that crowded, shoulder to shoulder, as far as the eye could see. Ajax was in the dirt driveway bent over the gringo’s yellow motorcycle fixing the gas line back to the carburetor. He’d been tinkering with the bike all afternoon, both to avoid talking to Matthew about breaking confidence with Amelia, and to avoid thinking about her. He stopped when the sunlight bent toward dusk. He looked west toward the far ocean beyond the curve of the earth. The sky was layered in clouds tinged a rosy purple where the last of the sun’s rays touched their bottoms. But they seemed to lack the density to make rain. Now was a good time to take the bike for a ride. He put the Suzuki 500 into neutral, hopped on and off the kick start, and stepped back as it came to life.

  “Fuckin’ gringo.”

  Last night, when Ajax had commented on the bike tucked into a corner, Connelly had claimed it was unfixable. Ajax had correctly assumed Connelly meant there were no spare parts, which in Nicaragua did not mean unfixable, but in need of immediate repair or your whole family walks. Ajax squatted, closed his eyes, and laid his hands on the gas tank. The vibration was regular and smooth. He straddled the bike and gently popped it into first gear. He’d done some riding before in Managua, so he knew what to expect in the narrow streets of the darkening neighborhoods—dogs. But he didn’t mind. Despite his run-in with Amelia, Ajax felt, somehow, free these past hours in Matagalpa. The confusion of Managua seemed far behind to the south, the very real dangers of the war still lay ahead to the north. For a few hours he was free of both, and something stirred in him—something animal. But purr or growl he wasn’t sure, yet.

  5.

  Matthew heard his Suzuki get fired up and fade away down the street.

  “Son of a bitch. He fixed it to spite me.”

  He peeked out the window and saw the red taillight disappear around a corner. A Toyota Land Cruiser with smoke-blacked windows rolled down the street behind Ajax, and Matthew wondered which of his neighbors could now afford such a luxury.

  He went back to his desk and finished the plate of pico de gallo doña Estrella had left him. He kept the house here as a place to rest between tours in the mountains. Here he could rejuvenate without making the trip all the way home to Managua.

  Home. It was a little word, but to Matthew a big idea. He felt at home in Managua, but knew it was not home, or at least would not always be. Like all the journos, he’d move on one day—a stateside newspaper, graduate school, a book contract. Hell, he was already working on the book. The Boys in the BLI: Life and Death Among the Davids. It was his first-hand account of traveling with the BLIs—the Batallónes de Luchar Irregular, or specialized warfare troops. They were the counterinsurgency troops the former insurgents had trained to fight the current insurgents. All that irony had first attracted him to the idea. How would an army led by revolutionaries who were all ex-guerrillas fight a guerrilla army led by counterrevolutionaries? It had seemed so clever. Mostly what he had learned was that war sucked. Big time. It was either backbreakingly strenuous, mind-numbingly tedious, or nightmarishly terrifying. And all any of the soldiers ever wanted was to go the fuck home. But he rarely wrote that story. No one wanted to read or know that story. The Sandinista revolution had lit a fuse, and everyone wanted to know if it was gonna blow. Nicaragua was a proxy battle in the Great Game between the Superpowers. And every battle between America and the Soviet Union bore the whiff of nuclear war. Their proxy fig
hts menaced the very survival of the planet. Nicaragua was, as his editor never tired of telling him, the great existential conflict of the last decades of the twentieth century! It was, in a word, sexy.

  Matthew’s editors did not want to read about tedium, scarcity, or boredom. But terror? That sold newspapers. And books. How it would all end, Matthew was not sure. But he did know that one day it would end, and when it did he and his kind would pack up and move on—taking a lifetime’s worth of war stories with them. And what would Nicaragua be then? Just another dull banana republic full to the treetops with poor bastards’ ghosts.

  What would he have given for all he had taken? Maybe that’s why he was so keen to play detective with Enrique’s killing. He spread out the file he’d made for the Salazar killing and looked it over. He kept going back to that photograph—the one with Malhora at the gas station and Enrique just behind him. The gas station where they’d done in Salazar. The gas station where he and Ajax had stopped to talk to the troops. The gas station the caption said Enrique had owned. Owned? How was it that Matthew did not know this? Or better, how was it that in all the nights Matthew had sat up talking with Enrique he had never mentioned it? All journalists worth their salt knew that what someone least wanted to talk about was the one thing you most had to hear about.

  Sure, the Salazar killing had been overshadowed by the widening war. But never to have mentioned it? That was more than peculiar. Ajax clearly had not wanted to stop at the gas station, even seemed spooked by it. Nor had he mentioned that the body in the truck bed had been the owner of the gas station. He acted like he didn’t know who Enrique was, so Matthew hadn’t mentioned it either.

  12

  1.

  Ajax cruised through Matagalpa’s dark streets, the motorcycle humming between his legs. He was on his fourth circuit of the town, going downhill toward the Ideal, when he saw Amelia Peck emerge into a pool of light and shake hands with some gringo giant. The giant headed uphill toward Ajax. Amelia Peck strolled toward Morazán Park, where the Soviet circus had set up. Ajax waited for the giant to pass by him. As he did, he drew out of his belt, like a sword, a three-foot-long switch he’d cut. On his first circuit around the town in the gathering dark he’d been ambushed by a pack of scrawny, vicious dogs—the poor man’s burglar alarm. They were a necessity to the poor, but a dangerous plague to someone on a bike. The dogs seemed frenzied by the whine of the Suzuki’s engine. At first he’d just wanted to drive them off. But then he’d sought them out and made a game out of it, staying just enough ahead of their snarling teeth to keep them charging, and occasionally counting coup on their heads with a light blow from the switch.