I was forcing myself to read and reread the piece of paper I’d signed; concentrating on it. “Oh yes, lovely. This Gamboa project, the entire presentation … I’m very impressed by what Gamboa has to offer. If the housing’s nice, I’ll buy. You’ve made yourself a commission. Might as well call the head guy—Merlot’s his name?—might as well call him and let him know I’ll need a tour. A personal tour, if he doesn’t mind. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“He can count on it.”
“No … I’m afraid I can’t arrange to fly you to Gamboa for at least two days. Maybe three. Our company plane is busy—”
“I don’t remember asking for your help. I’ll find my own transportation.”
I paused. Had I spoken too sharply? Tomlinson once told me that the truly insane fear only that their madness is transparent to the world. That’s how I felt at that moment. Transparent, out of control. How could the Turk have missed the fury that was cauldroning in me?
I added amiably, “I mean, it’s no big deal, I’m happy to book my own flight. I’ve got nothing better to do” —made myself smile—“and I can’t wait to get to Panama.”
“Your friend will visit Gamboa with you … I say ‘friend,’ but perhaps he is a relative.”
“The old man? He’s a pain in the ass is exactly what he is. You don’t mind, I think I’ll leave him here, let him sleep it off.” I was still fighting the nausea. “I don’t know if you heard me or not, but you can shut down your computer. I’ve seen enough.”
Finally, he did. But the nightmare image lingered: the grotesque lard-white nudity of a much younger Jackie Merlot, his sausage hands violating the innocence of a pretty, copper-haired child … the surprise of what was happening and the pain of it showing on the child’s face and in the depths of her wise and lovely eyes; eyes that I liked, had always liked; one of them slightly off center, a wandering brown eye.
The shock of seeing her with the fat man was like a whiff of ether … and with that came the realization of another stupidity: Tomlinson had immediately realized what I refused to consider. Amanda’s childhood photos hadn’t been misplaced, they’d been stolen. By Merlot, on the chance that those boxes contained innocent photos of the two of them together, the cross-eyed child and the deliberate stranger. All photographs almost certainly taken with the same camera.
I wondered what kind of ruse Merlot had used to send the young mother off on an errand while he “baby-sat” her child. Or maybe he had sufficiently charmed Gail so that, for a time, he was little Amanda’s regular baby-sitter. A nauseating thought. So get the child alone, use the mother’s instant-print camera, hide the prints. What fun!
Merlot had been lucky enough to discover that Amanda’s memory of him had scarred shut. The proof was when she’d surprised Merlot at her mom’s house. Amanda genuinely believed that she’d never seen the fat man before. Even so, he couldn’t risk further association between himself and the daughter … or allow a chance encounter with an old photograph to key the memory electrodes….
17
The man behind the bar said, “Hello there, mate, you must be the Yank that Fernando was tellin’ me about.” I’d taken the bar stool in the far comer, the one nearest the door. Wasn’t feeling very talkative. I listened to him say, “You got a face like Iowa, so it’s not much of a guess … and from that expression, I’d say you either just screwed the pooch or the Turk’s been showing you some of his video toys.”
It was a little before 7:00 P.M. and a jungle breeze came off the water carrying aromatic little pockets of open sea, of jasmine and frangipani blossom … and of the city, too. The Old Walled City was just across the bridge. Narrow alleys of cobblestone, little markets that hadn’t missed a morning in three hundred years.
Even this far away, there was a hint of mangos plus crushed pineapple in the wind … and the odor of water on worn stone.
After my time aboard Moon of Kiz Kulesi, the breeze smelled pure, wonderfully uncontaminated. Can there be virtue in the fragrance of moving air?
“You’re name’s Ford, right, mate? Turns out we’ve got several mutual friends. Here—have a beer on me.”
That was a surprise. Apparently, some of my former associates had been on the telephone.
He’d wrapped the ten ounce bottle of Aquila in a brown napkin to keep it cool. I took it, drank it half down, paused to look at the condensation dripping down the bottleneck, then finished it.
“Must be thirsty.”
“Yeah.”
“Another?”
“Make this one a Polar.”
He used a church key to pop the top. No twist offs down here.
“After an hour or so with the Turk, it’s too bad a man can’t drink soap. Or get his soul pressure-washed. There’s just no quick way to get clean.”
“No. No, there’s not.”
“He try to sell you a membership to their freaky-deeky club?”
“That’s not the way he put it, but, yeah. Sounds pretty nice. I’m going to buy. Sounds like a great place.”
“Bullshit. You don’t need to lie to me. Like I said, we’ve got mutual friends. If the beer’s free, the least you can do is tell me the truth.” The man winked. “Hell, I’d tell the bloody truth all night long for free beer!”
I looked at him a moment and thought, yes, more than likely … he had that look … he’d been some places, seen some things, so we probably did have a lot in common. Maybe it was the same thing when Tucker and Fernando saw each other, members of the same secret club.
The man wore fishing shorts and a white T-shirt. The breast pocket of the shirt read: Walker Wilderness Tours— Northern Territory—Australia.
His hair was cropped short; looked to be in his late thirties maybe early forties. He had a flat, Irish face, a brown push-broom mustache and a nose that had done some traveling. Currently, it was pushed over to the right, just beneath his eye.
When he put the beer in front of me, I said, “Thanks.”
“Not a problem. Get five or six of those down you, I’ll start charging you triple, you won’t even notice.”
“You’re Garret, the guy who owns the place. I’ve heard about you, too.”
He had a good, strong laugh. Actually, it was more like a roar. “Hah! From the bloody Turk, I bet! What’d that nasty little sand nigger say about me? It was a lie, whatever it was. The man wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the arse!” In Colombia it is always the cocktail hour. It was now also the dinner hour, so I was not alone in this open room with its ceiling fans and decorative flags hanging from the palm thatching.
Garret didn’t care. He didn’t care who heard.
“The Turk? Fuckin’ Turk, I don’t know if he wants me to put him in jail or adopt him!”
“He says you let him stay here because you want his vessel.”
“Hah! That’s a bloody good’un! The only thing worth a shit on that piece of garbage is the two or three hundred kilos of hashish he thinks the federales don’t know about. Which is why I won’t touch his boat, because I refuse to deal with the poisonous shit. Not everyone in Colombia runs drugs, you know. But I’ll auction his tub off fast enough when the courts put his ass in jail!” Garret slapped the bar: Hah hah hah!
Down the bar was Raymond, a sixty-some-year-old Irishman I’d met earlier. He was a merchant seaman who’d missed his ship and was now stranded in Cartagena. Used his accent and his stories to charm drinks. Always had a cigarette and glass in his hand, a rummy. There were three or four tables of men and women eating dinner. A table of Brits and a table of Italians, judging from conversations. Nearby was also a German couple, men. They wore T-shirts over their jock-sized bathing suits. Homosexuals sailing the coast, nice people not bothering anybody. Also at the bar were a couple of American men, one middle-aged, the other in his twenties. Regular-looking, but they had some money. They belonged to an absolutely stunning forty-two-foot Hinkley moored just down from the Turk’s ghost freighter. I’d met them
earlier, too. Jim and Chris aboard the Windelblo. From New England, the kind of men you trust right away, the two of them in a customized million-dollar work of art but like it was no big deal.
Garret said, “So I’ll ask you again: tell me you didn’t buy into their freaky sex club.”
I leaned forward. “I need to get to Panama. Right away. Tonight, if I can.”
“Tonight? It’ll be dark. Nothing’ll be open, and you won’t be able to see a damn thing.”
“That’s why I want to get there when it’s still dark.”
The man nodded. “You’re goin’ after the woman. The woman the fat man kept down here on his boat.”
I leaned back and thought about it for a moment. Then I used my index finger to signal him closer. Into his ear I said a single word that implied the accomplishments of two men. Then I asked Garret to fill in the blanks, supply the missing names.
The men I described were two good Australians I’d worked with, both SAS, one from Perth, the other Darwin. If Garret could be trusted, he’d know exactly who I was speaking of.
He knew the names.
Good. It was a good connection to have. I relaxed a little. “That’s right, I’m going after the lady. Damn right I’m going after the lady. How’d you know?”
“Simple. A woman like her throws a big wake. Class and style, it’s worth … well, with a woman like that, let’s just say men don’t give love, they invest it. And there she is running around loose?” Garret’s expression said he knew the ideal comparison. “You see that Hinkley sailboat out there? Finding the lady in this bar was like finding that Hinkley abandoned on the high seas. It just ain’t gonna happen. The only mystery was how she got mixed up with the fat man. After I ran him outta here, I told my wife, ‘Somebody’s gonna show up looking for that woman. And they’d better hurry, before she’s dead.’”
I didn’t like the sound of that, nor the way he said it: Very matter-of-fact, not joking around. “You think he plans to kill her?”
“Naw. Someone doesn’t get her soon, though, she’ll probably do the job herself. Suicide, I mean. You can see it in her eyes. She’s got these sad, sick eyes, but very bright. Beautiful eyes. You’ve met the lady. Or were you hired?”
“Neither. She was the wife of an old friend.”
“Then you’ve missed something. With her face, a body like that, even at her age she could pass for some Latin American fashion model. A Yank accent, but her people are from the Equator, I’d bet on it. Plus she’s got the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen. Almost like they’re two different colors.”
No doubt about it now, he’d definitely seen Gail.
Garret said, “The fat man, one night here in the bar, he was offering her out to the street people, the dock hands, whatever. Like he was proving to everybody he was such a big shot that a woman like her meant nothing to him. Sell her like a whore, what did he care? A big joke, but she wasn’t laughin’. Because he meant it, damn right he did. He offered her to Fernando, ten pesos. About seven dollars U.S.
“It had nothin’ to do with money—bastard’s loaded with cash—the fat man’s just an asshole. Vicious. He likes to hurt people, just like his bodyguard … or a boyfriend, whatever the hell he is. Merlot’s giant boy-toy, a fella they call Acky. You know about him?”
“A little.”
“Well, if you’re goin’ after the fat man, you’d better know more than just a little. Acky came close to killin’ one of our local fellas. Got him down out there on the dock. Used his fists and his feet on him, damn near tore the man’s face right off. He’s a guy who likes to fight and likes to see people hurt. That’s one of the reasons I ran them off. The other is, I caught Merlot trying to talk one of the local kids onto his boat. The cook’s son, just a little shaver. And it weren’t to teach the kid how to kick a bloody soccer ball!”
Garret didn’t mind telling me about it. But first he wanted to know if I’d had supper. He was one of those you-have-to-eat-have-to-drink-guys. Probably a good father, a perfect person to own a restaurant.
I told him I had no appetite, not after the stench of being aboard the wind freighter from Istanbul. But maybe a glass of milk and some toast with Vegemite on it. If the kitchen had Vegemite.
That got a laugh.
“An Aussie without Vegemite? Gotta be kiddin’, mate. Ever notice that every country’s got its own perfect food? And it always tastes like shit to outsiders, but the locals are addicted. Colombia? We’ve got Amazona, the perfect pepper sauce. You know, verde. Blokes here eat the stuff on eggs, crackers, everything. It’s gotten so I’m just as bad. I’ll tell Fernando to bring you some toast.”
Listening to Garret was a pleasure after enduring close quarters with the Turk. He wasn’t a fan of either man’s. Said that Merlot and the Turk were birds of a feather. They’d worked out a deal; the Turk had told him all about it. The Turk supplied Gamboa with women and drugs, for which Merlot paid cash, plus marketing rights to Gamboa. What did Panama care about women from Colombia? For Merlot and his new club, Colombian women were cheaper, plus there was less red tape.
It essentially confirmed the story that the Turk had told me.
The Aussie added, “I knew the woman was in trouble when I realized that the Turk was stopping in at least once a month to mail her postcards. Understand what I’m saying? They wanted to give someone back in the States the impression that the lady was still here. There’s our little postbox. I peeked at the cards and I ain’t bloody shy, so I asked him about it. Hah! The Turk, he just puts a finger to his lips and grins. ‘Jealous husband,’ he says, or some bullshit like that.
“The fat man musta had her write the cards out in advance, probably thinking the same thing: Someday someone would come looking for her.”
As the Aussie spoke, I began to feel a nonspecific panic. What the hell had I dropped into?
I knew one thing: I had to find Gail Calloway and I had to find her quickly. From what I’d seen and heard, the woman was already so badly damaged that there might not be any way to save her … or any way to spare her good, good daughter, Amanda the sickening truth: Merlot had now violated and, perhaps, damaged beyond redemption the final two branches of a unit that had once been Bobby Richardson’s family.
I said, “Do you think Merlot is in Panama? In his little village there.”
“I know he is. Or was as of this morning. The Turk called him just before you blokes came in.” The man glanced over his shoulder, “We’ve got a phone log and I make folks use it or kick their asses out. The Turk’s got the federales out there waitin’ on him, so he does what I say.”
“Then that’s where I’m going. Gamboa. I’ll pay, I’ve got cash.”
Garret looked at his restaurant—not too busy, everything going smoothly. Then he looked at the clock behind the bar. It’d just turned 7:00 P.M. A nice night with stars, the light of a quarter moon already showing on Cartagena Bay. He thought for a moment before saying, “You can’t drive to Panama, I hope you’re not planning on that.”
No, I knew better. Not on the front end of the rainy season, anyway, which is precisely what April is. The jungled path between Colombia and Panama is an old silver transport foot route called the Darien Trail. This time of year, it would be all mud. There was no road.
“What is today, Friday? Saturdays, the first commercial flight doesn’t leave till one tomorrow, get you into Panama City about one-thirty. Is that quick enough for you?”
“No. Not if I have a better choice.”
“Well … there’s one other way.” His expression asked: Interested?
I nodded. Damn right I was interested.
He said, “I don’t suppose you know how to fly a Cessna? Nice one, a one-eighty-two.”
“Not well enough to make that trip, no. Not alone anyway.”
“But you know how to steer? If I dozed off, got some shut-eye on the way, you’d know how to steer a course, do all the basics? I’m tired as hell. I was up all night last night.”
I
tried to remember if I’d ever met an Australian man who didn’t know how to fly a small plane.
I said, “Sure, I can steer. They made us log enough air time to get a private license, but I’ve never really used it”
“I can have you at Paitilla Airport, classiest little airport in Panama, in just under two hours. There’s a landing strip at Gamboa, but no lights. Can’t land there at night.”
“Panama City, that’ll be okay.”
“If you’ve got friends in the City, they can bring you a rental car or drive you, whatever. Gamboa’s only half an hour away. I’ll have to cut you loose, though, and fly back.” He smiled. “My wife and son miss me if I’m gone too long.”
I got the impression that Garret just wanted to get up in the air, get away from the lunacy of running a marina, dealing with the public. Maybe have the chance to talk about things he didn’t normally get a chance to talk about.
As the man had said: We knew some of the same people.
Surprise, surprise: I watched Tucker Gatrell lurch into the bar as I told the Aussie, “You finish up what you need to do. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”
The man looked terrible. He’d lost his cowboy hat. His white sports coat had some kind of purple stain down the front, he’d apparently been sick.
I watched Tucker stumble and knock most the drinks off a nearby table, as I added, “The calls are long distance, but I’ll use a charge card, if that’s okay. The Vegemite, I’ll take it with me. And I need to change clothes.”
I had a light, long-sleeved black turtleneck and jeans that seemed like the thing to wear. I would, after all, be roaming around Gamboa at night. I might even compromise Merlot’s house if I got the chance.
I watched Tucker turn, staggering, as if to acknowledge the mess he’d made, but his boot caught on the leg of one of the tables and he fell backwards, landing hard on his butt. It was pathetic to watch: a bowlegged caricature of an old-time Florida cowboy totally lost and out of control. I said, “And Garret? You mind if the old man bunks here? I’ll pay cash in advance for any damage he does. And for his rack, his drinks, whatever he needs. I just don’t want him with me.”
The Mangrove Coast Page 27
