Night of the Jaguar

by Joe Gannon

  They had already gone through all the personal effects they could find. There seemed to be nothing left of Matthew’s or Amelia’s. But the Nicaraguan family’s two enormous vinyl suitcases were still in the back. It was the cheap luggage normally used by black marketeers hauling goods back from Costa Rica or Miami. They proved the family did not expect to return. Gladys had already inventoried them. They held shirts, skirts, sandals, and one set of Sunday bests for each person. There were photographs, crucifixes, and three bedspreads. But they had also packed plastic cups and plates, knives and forks, a small cooking pot, stirring spoon, and even a machete, as if life in Ohio might require them. Their belongings had baffled Gladys at first. But then, how would campesinos such as they calculate traveling to the mythical El Norte? Not in time or miles. How do you prepare to travel to a place where the map in your mind was blank?

  The sight of such common household goods so innocently packed had affected her more deeply than the sight of their bullet-riddled bodies. The map in their minds was blank, she thought, and so is the map in mine. She didn’t know where all this was leading, but she knew she was a part of it now. The sound of Malhora’s voice on the tape had changed something. Ajax had let her listen to it on the ride up. It was not so much what he had confessed to, but how he had said it. He’d had Enrique Cuadra killed, so he was the prime suspect in these killings, too. On the ride to the gas station, Ajax had told her Marta’s opinion: each victim had gunshot wounds all over their body, but each also had an exit wound over the heart—they’d been shot in the back. The other wounds were all postmortem. Marta was certain: they’d all been executed, then ripped with bullets.

  “I count forty-seven holes, Ajax.”

  He was on his knees, searching under the truck’s front seat. He seemed to find something, and pulled his hand out. It was a doll. He held it up to Gladys.

  “A doll?”

  “Recognize it, Gladys? Your friend Ernesto at the crime scene. His little sister had one. He said he found it next to Cuadra’s corpse. I saw several up at the finca. Cuadra’s widow makes them.”

  Ajax looked the truck over.

  “Okay. Other than the cheap suitcases, there’s nothing left in the truck. No papers in the glove box. Amelia’s purse and the backpack she brought with her are gone. No wallets or papers from the men. Connelly’s bag is missing. Everything connected with those three was taken. Everything connected with the Nica family was left behind. Yet, it’s the spoons, plates, and cups the Contra would’ve valued most.”

  “We know it wasn’t the Contra.”

  “Do we, Lieutenant?”

  He seemed to be asking not so much what they knew, but if both of them accepted the same facts—was she with him?

  “We do, Captain. The arithmetic seems to add up to two shooters.”

  She could tell by the look on his face he hadn’t thought of that, and she was glad.

  “How?”

  Gladys walked around the truck, looking at the holes. “Forty-seven holes in the truck. All four tires are flat, so more went into them. A few would’ve missed. There’s thirty rounds in an AK clip, multiply by two shooters is sixty rounds. There’s that many in the truck. Marta counted eight to ten bullet wounds to each body. That also adds up to about sixty.” Gladys held an imaginary AK-47 and acted out the bizarre math. “They execute them, spray the bodies…”

  Ajax turned his head away.

  “Sorry.”

  “Go on.”

  “They reload, spray the truck. Call it a Contra ambush.”

  She watched Ajax take it all in. Strange as it seemed, she’d hoped for a pat on the back. Instead she watched him close his eyes and replay her scenario in his mind.

  “So the Conquistadores took everything connected with the Americans.” He opened his eyes. “Why?”

  Gladys looked at the truck, but had not failed to notice it was the first time she’d heard him use the word American and not gringo.

  “Think like the murderers, Gladys.”

  “Okay. They were looking for something one of the Americans had.”

  “But?”

  “But they weren’t sure what, so they took everything.”

  “Right. So only the doll…”

  Ajax squeezed the doll, idly, but then seemed to find something. He lifted the doll’s skirt and took out a slip of paper, which to Gladys looked haphazardly folded many times and, she assumed, hidden hurriedly against the doll’s corncob body. Ajax fumbled with the paper, unfolded it like he thought it was a treasure map, or maybe, it seemed to her, a final note from Amelia. But as he looked it over, it become clear there was no X marking the spot. He showed it to her—there were only numbers:

  And beneath them the hastily scrawled words: Do the math.

  “What the fuck?” she asked.

  “It’s Connelly’s handwriting, and look, see the perforation at the top of the page? It was torn out from one of his reporter’s notebooks.”

  “What’s it mean? Five hundred over two?”

  “Do the math: that’s five hundred divided by two. And two-fifty divided by two.”

  “Then one hundred twenty-five plus one hundred twenty-five.”

  “No. Look, the one hundred twenty-fives are connected by an ampersand, not a plus sign. So it’s not plus, it’s one hundred twenty-five and one hundred twenty-five.”

  “That makes it clear?”

  “In a way.” Ajax folded the paper and put it in the same shirt pocket where he’d entombed Amelia’s hair. “It makes it clear you’ve got to take Marta back to Managua and I’ve got to go back to the Cuadra finca.”

  “But we know who did it.”

  “But we still don’t know why. When I left Connelly, the last thing he said was he’d figured out who killed Enrique. But I had a hard-on to come back and get Malhora and I didn’t listen. Now ‘do the math’ is all that’s left of them. I’m going back and this time I’m doing the math, all of it.”

  “You’re not leaving me…”

  “I am.…”

  “You got a thing about leaving people behind. I’m sorry, Ajax, but you left Connelly and them behind and that was a mistake.”

  “You can’t…”

  “Just listen!”

  Her voice drove him back a step. And in the small space he created, it all became clear to Gladys Darío.

  “You see this?” She pointed at the ground. “This is as far north as I have ever been. I grew up in Managua, summered in Granada, on the lake. This part of my own country is a blank in my mind. A blank!” Tears sprang to her eyes, and their hotness enraged her. “Look at this!” She flung open one of the suitcases. “They packed plastic cups and plates to go to America!” She flung them as if angry at the owners. “Who the fuck does that? Who the fuck were these people? I don’t even know!”

  “Gladys…”

  “No, goddamnit! They shouldn’t be dead. None of them. I’m going with you. Besides, you can’t drive in your disguise.”

  “Disguise?”

  “Come and see.”

  Gladys led him to the Red Cross Jeep and opened the back hatch. She lifted the floorboard revealing a medical kit; inside was another marked BURN TRAUMA. “They’ve got these big bandages and even mittens for burn victims. You put the mittens on your hands, the bandages around your head. We lay down the backseat and put you in there. I drive. Anyone stops us, you’re a burn victim I’m taking somewhere. When we put the backseat down, we can stash our pistols and AKs underneath it. Plus, I got this.”

  She handed Ajax an ID card from the Red Cross. Marta’s name was on it.

  “There’s no picture.”

  “Marta says the Red Cross does that on purpose in case they need to slip someone an ID to get them out of somewhere dangerous. Or in this case…”

  “Into somewhere dangerous.”

  Ajax smiled at her. The word rueful came to her mind. He kept looking at her a long time after the smile had faded. She knew he was judging her trustworthiness, and no m
atter what she said or did, his decision rested on his judgment alone. She looked right back at him knowing, even fearing, that much of the rest of her life hung on what he said next.

  “It’s not the Contra we have to worry about. Any shooting is likely to be with someone wearing the same uniform as us.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re on our side. I understand that now.”

  He finally gave her a pat on the cheek. “You’re a good man, sister.”

  19

  1.

  The light had gone out of the room, and out of the world. The generator was silenced. Ajax, Gladys, and Epimenio sat in the flattering candlelight over the remnants of their meal while Gloria poured coffee.

  “I don’t know what it means, Captain.”

  Ajax watched her closely. She wore a Spanish-style black shawl over her shoulders. She was handsome in the way worn women were—a beauty tempered by life. Made harder, yes, but stronger, too. Deeper.

  The hush was disturbed only by the sound of wind pushing unseen clouds to who knew where. Gloria sat back down at the head of the table and studied again the doll she had given Matthew Connelly and the clue he had given Ajax Montoya. Gladys studied Gloria, too. Epimenio stared blankly at a candle flame.

  “Connelly said nothing to you about math, numbers? Your husband’s death?”

  “Not to me.”

  “What do you mean ‘not to you’?”

  “The two of you left, and he came back two days later without you. In the afternoon. You came back the next morning. That night he and Father Jerome went to the graveyard. I thought they were paying respects to Enrique. They talked a long time, I heard them arguing. Afterward, Matthew seemed excited, agitated. Jerome, well, he seemed upset but he was very quiet. I thought it was because we all assumed you were dead.”

  “Did he say anything to you, Epimenio?”

  “No, señor. Nothing.”

  “Captain, why was my husband killed?”

  “I thought I knew.” He studied the note Matthew had hidden in the doll. “Now I’m not sure. When your husband and Epimenio hunted that jaguar they saw something, something secret. A dangerous secret. You didn’t tell her, Epimenio?”

  “No, señor.”

  Epimenio sank his head into his hands. “I’m sorry doña Gloria, but when we got back don Enrique made me swear not to tell. He put my hand on the Bible and made me swear!”

  Epimenio’s voice cracked with anguish and the secrets he’d kept. Gloria reached out, and did not pat his hand, but squeezed it, held it as if transferring her strength to him. She has lost much, Ajax thought. But this woman will survive. Epimenio fled the room.

  Gloria adjusted her black shawl. “He’s lost without Enrique. And he’s afraid I’ll lose the farm.” She looked around the room, Ajax, thought, like she was surveying what more might yet be lost. “So this ‘secret’ they found—Enrique wasn’t killed for that?”

  “I’d thought so, yes. I was even told so. But these other murders, Matthew, Father Jerome…” He could not say her name.

  “Amelia.” Gloria said it for him.

  “And the others. None of them knew what Enrique and Epimenio had found. So their deaths make me think it must be something else.” He stabbed the table with his finger. “The answer must be here.”

  Gloria picked up Matthew’s note. Ajax could see her mind working. She shook her head, no. It was more of a tremor even than a motion.

  “Just say it, Gloria.”

  “Could this have anything to do with the killing of Jorge Salazar?”

  And there it was. Salazar’s name struck Ajax like a white-hot needle shot into his brain by a howitzer pressed to his temple. He could almost smell his singed hair. Every atom of his being was screaming, Goddamn, this is it!

  “Why would you say that?”

  Gloria went to a cupboard and took out a file folder. While she did, Gladys tapped his foot and mouthed, Salazar? Ajax nodded, but mouthed back, Malhora.

  “Matthew left this here, I think by accident. I looked through it, but I didn’t see any connection until now. You’re all in here.”

  Ajax took the folder. “All who?”

  “You, Enrique, Salazar, and Evelyn.”

  Ajax looked through the folder. On top was a photo with circles around the heads of then-major Malhora and Enrique in the background. There was another photo of Ajax looking grim as he ducked into the DGSE headquarters. The rest seemed to be news clippings of the case. He scanned them. Then scanned again. None of them had been written by Matthew.

  “You did kill Jorge, didn’t you?”

  “I had orders to arrest him. For treason. He was a traitor. But someone else,” he tapped Malhora’s photo, “had orders to execute him.”

  Gloria smiled ruefully. “And now someone is one of the most powerful men in the country and you are a police captain.”

  “Who is Evelyn?”

  “Evelyn Zuniga. She’s buried out there next to Enrique. She was my sister, well, my cousin but we were raised as sisters. Zuniga’s her maiden name. Her married name was Salazar.”

  He had forgotten. “Your sister—your husband’s sister-in-law—was Salazar’s wife?”

  “And then his widow.” Gloria pulled the black shawl close around her neck.

  “And Enrique owned the gas station where Salazar was killed?”

  “You said murdered.”

  “I said executed.”

  “Enrique had three of them. Gas stations. He lost them all when he got out of El Chipote. One of his sons was held there by Somoza. And that son was later killed. Can you imagine what that did to him? To be held in that prison?”

  “Showing the instruments of his torture.”

  “What?”

  “Jailing him. They were showing him what silence would buy him out of, what disobedience would buy him into.”

  Ajax reached for a Red; Gloria nodded her acceptance.

  “So after they released him?”

  “The government confiscated his gas stations and we moved here.”

  “Did he ever speak about it, tell you why or what they did?”

  “Never.” She ripped the shawl from her shoulders and threw it onto the table, where it knocked over her coffee cup. A dark stain spread. “And now I sound like such a child. No one told me this, no one told me that, no one told me anything!”

  Gladys lifted her shawl off the table and righted her cup. Then she led Gloria back to her chair. “And Evelyn?” Gladys asked.

  “Came to live with us, and no, we never talked about Jorge. She and Enrique did, I think.”

  Gloria suddenly burst into tears, sobs exploding out of her. To Ajax’s great relief, Gladys comforted the widow.

  “I don’t want to end up like Evelyn. It broke her, her grief, up here.” She touched her temple. “During the day she was mostly all right. The dolls helped. She was the one who started making them. She showed me how. There isn’t a child for miles who doesn’t have one of them. But at night, at night I could hear her muttering in her room like she was arguing with someone.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It was nonsense mostly, like a monologue. I don’t want to end up like that!”

  Gloria’s sobs fell like a hard rain. Gladys consoled her with a tenderness Ajax found surprising in his flinty lieutenant. But then he realized he was seeing her as a woman, maybe for the first time. A line of poetry came to his mind, All these abandoned women have wept so the king can rest in his bed.

  Ajax turned the news clips in Matthew’s file. A page from Barricada was folded in the back. The headline leapt out. Blood burned in his face. He turned the page so Gladys could see it: “Salazar had $125,000 in CIA Money.” He held Matthew’s note next to it: 125,000 & 125,000. Do the math!

  “Gloria, when did Evelyn die?” he asked.

  She didn’t even raise her head. “In May. May twenty-sixth.”

  “Think carefully, please. Enrique said nothing about her? After she died. The night she died. Anythi
ng at all?”

  She lifted her head and wiped her face. “The night she died, Father Jerome was here. He gave her last rites. We all left her bedside so he could hear her last confession. We buried her two days later. At the service, I don’t know why I noticed this, but Father Jerome said she’d been buried with all her grief. I thought Enrique looked at him in a certain way. I don’t know why it caught my eye.”

  But Ajax did. He did for sure.

  “Gloria, I have something terrible I must ask of you.”

  2.

  Two hours later, the moon almost at its zenith, Ajax and Gladys wiped mud from their arms, their boots—and from Evelyn Zuniga Salazar’s casket. Epimenio had helped them dig it up, but Ajax had sent him away once they’d hauled it into a shack used to store coffee beans during the harvest. The shack was filled with the reek of decrepitude.

  He gave Gladys a rag soaked in vinegar. “Put it on.” He tied one over his own nose and slid a machete under the coffin lid. “This is gonna get worse.”

  To his surprise, Gladys made the sign of the cross. Then slid her machete under the lid.

  They pried it off. The stench of rot hit them like a gas bomb. Ajax slid the lid over a few inches; he didn’t need to see Evelyn’s rotting corpse. He stood the machete up and measured the coffin’s depth, then laid the machete against the outside of the box—there was a four-inch difference.

  “You want to explain…” Gladys turned away and retched up most of the tamales Gloria had fed them. “Goddamn it.”

  “There’s a false bottom. In it we’ll find money, yanqui dollars.”

  “We have to take her out?”

  “I don’t think so. Help me pry off this side board.”

  It took only a minute to wedge the machetes behind the board and pry the nails out enough to see in: stacks of what had to be money.

  Gladys wedged a stack free and flipped through the bills. All hundreds. “How much do you think there is?”

  “Do the math: Connelly wrote there were two one-hundred-and-twenty-five-thousands, right? The headline in Barricada said they’d found one hundred and twenty-five thousand when they tossed Salazar’s car. This has got to be the other one twenty-five.”