I was still moving toward him; wanted to stay close as he brought the pistol down for another try. I caught his wrist in both hands, twisted counterclockwise as I used my knee to bang him hard beneath the ribs… and then I was holding the revolver as he stumbled backward and fell hard on his butt.
“Oww-w-w! You kicked me!”
Merlot was buckled over in pain as I pointed the revolver at his belly. I still felt the intensity, that appetite, but was fighting it. Shoot a man in cold blood? That was something I had never done. Yet the urge, the craving was there. I spoke to diffuse that feeling of want, of need. How could my voice sound so calm? I might have been joking around with a locker-room buddy. I said: “Know what? You really hurt my feelings, Darkrume. One fun night on the computer, then you never call, you never write. I feel downright used.”
Something about the way I was smiling must have frightened him, because he began to cry now. Boo-hoo-hoo, actually making the distinctive noise, the skin on his face jiggling as the head bobbed. He had his hands out, palms toward me — Please stop! — as he said, “That was all a joke! You thought I was serious? I was kidding. It’s one of those on-line E-mail things that everybody does. My God, if I thought you’d actually take the time to come looking for me, I’d have apologized right there!” Crying and shaking. His black eyes looked abandoned in the massive pink face; this gigantic baby with perfect hair and a baggy brown guayabera who had to weigh four hundred pounds but it was like Jell-O.
I turned to Gail. She wore jeans and a navy crewneck pullover. They were wrinkled and splotched as if she hadn’t changed in a week. Her black Latina hair was combed back, heavy on her shoulders. She looked gaunt, badly used, but her face truly was lovely, haunting. That song, “The Twelfth of Never,” it made sense now. For the first time, I understood. I said, “Are you okay?”
Her expression said she didn’t know what to think. Scared, too. If I killed Merlot, was she next? She said, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of your husband’s.”
“My husband? You mean Frank sent you.”
“No. Bobby’s friend. A long time ago, I was Bobby’s friend.”
I watched her sag; watched her exhale, trembling as if just hearing that name had created within her an overwhelming surge of loneliness and regret Very softly, she said, “Bobby’s friend? My Bobby
… “
I said, “Yes. Your Bobby.”
She moved to stand near me, her hand touching my shoulder, saying Amanda? I knew Amanda? For God’s sake, please tell her that Amanda was okay and didn’t hate her, although she had every reason…
I comforted her, dealt with the first concern of a good mother before I said, “You may not want to answer this, but I really have to ask: How’d you get hooked up with a freak like this?”
Merlot was on his feet again, following the conversation. Kept inching back. I knew the wheels were turning, trying to figure a way out.
She still seemed a little dazed. “I… I truly don’t know.” She was shaking her head slowly, as if trying to remember something. “I was so lost… so badly hurt that I must have lost touch with… reality? No. I must have lost touch with my sanity. I’ve spent the last month trying to figure it out thinking of almost nothing else. How did it happen? Why did I end up with him? He was just always there, always… always right in front of me, no matter which way I turned. It got so I didn’t even have to think because he did all the thinking for me, and I didn’t have to cook or clean because he took care of that, too, and he was always saying the nicest things… and the next thing I knew, all my family and old friends were gone and he was selling me to men, to women and men, making me do things that I never thought… never thought-”
She couldn’t continue. More tears, that sound of utter exhaustion.
Merlot didn’t like the direction this was going, his shrill voice interrupting: “It was consensual, I’ll swear to that! Everything this woman did with me or anyone else, it was always always consensual. I have her model release on file! I’ll show you if you want. The pictures, the videos, she consented to everything-”
Merlot stopped abruptly. I was looking at him, looking into his face because he would not meet my eyes, and I could feel it in me stronger than I had ever felt it before, and he knew it. He knew. The voice that spoke did not sound like my own, as I said, “Did she consent to blackmail?”
Gail said, “What?” And then: “I was wondering about that. A second ago, why did you call him Darkrume? That’s the only thing Jackie actually helped me with. I got mixed up with this person, this sick criminal from California. On the Internet, his name was Darkrume. Not-”
I interrupted. Said to Merlot, “Do you want to tell her or should I?” I was still looking at him, wanting to do it, and he could see it in me, how badly I wanted to do it. I said, “A buddy of mine says that the way you worked it was with PIN numbers. Lots of fake accounts and ATM machines. Was he right?”
When Merlot didn’t answer, I cleared my throat and said in a much softer voice. “Last time I’m asking. Was he right?”
I got a quick nod, as he dropped slowly to one knee, then the other. Wanted to let me see the depth of his regret. Submissive, a primal gesture. Said, “Don’t hurt me anymore. Please. I’ll do anything. Anything you say, just tell me. I was wrong. Very wrong! But you have to understand that her husband-Frank I’m talking about-you have to realize that he treated me very badly years ago. I was angry. You don’t think I have a reason? I’m a good person, normally. It was him, the way he treated me. The sonuvabitch had me put in jail and… and you don’t know what they do to people like me in jail!”
In barely more than a whisper, I said, “Oh? I thought he treated you for pedophilia. He did, didn’t he?”
The picture of Merlot and Amanda was there again, just behind my eyes. The revolver felt very light in my hand. Self-control, I was fighting to maintain it, as I heard myself say, “Don’t want to talk about it? Okay, let’s change the subject. Start by telling me how much cash you have in the house.”
“Money? Not much. I really don’t. Maybe a thousand dollars. You can have it all. I’m serious. I’ll give it to you if it means no hard feelings. There’s no reason why we all can’t be friends!”
I used the pistol to motion at his face. “A thousand dollars? You’d better have a lot more than a thousand dollars. What you’re doing here, fat man, is buying your life back. So dig deep.”
The woman had moved close enough to me that our shoulders touched if I turned or gestured. She was watching, listening, maybe figuring things out. After I said, “So dig deep,” she interrupted: “I don’t care about the money. Just take me away from here. Let’s go now. Please.” She put long fingers to my elbow as if to stress her point. “But you need to have him arrested. Have him put away. Or you need to kill him, because he will never let me leave this country. I mean that. Not if he can get to a telephone.”
I drew the hammer back on the revolver.
“Gail! You can leave. Honest! All I want is for you to be happy.” His palms were pressed out again. “Did I say a thousand dollars? I have more. I forgot! Here, follow me. Follow me!”
He had more than $40,000 locked in a metal box behind a desk, plus some gems, some stock certificates and three nice Rolex watches.
I put it all in a pillowcase that I had stripped off the bed.
I said, “What about your video collection. And photographs?”
He was still very nervous, not convinced that I wasn’t going to kill him. As if confused, he said, “Videos? Of who?”
“Of her, Gail… or pictures of anyone else I might know.”
A light seemed to go on behind his eyes. Could see him thinking, Oh dear God, when he realized that I meant Amanda; that I had seen what Gail knew nothing about- the photo of him with her child daughter.
“I keep the pictures in my office,” he said quickly. “I have a large safe there, humidity-controlled. Ask Gail, she’s seen it. I’ll take you there. Des
troy them all, yes-I’ll help! I’ve been meaning to do it, really. To look at them now, it makes me sick. It really does. Ask her!”
For a moment, only a moment, I let down my guard, as I turned to look at Gail for confirmation… and, too late, I heard her scream just before I felt the crushing impact of Merlot on me, his weight compressing my chest, one of his fat hands locked onto the revolver as he pushed me backward, backward toward the French doors of the little office we were in…
I lost control of the pistol; heard it hit the floor.
When his big hand moved from my right wrist to my throat, I ducked under the mass of him and punched him hard in the kidneys… then slapped his face when he turned into me; slapped him with forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand… saw his big nose burst, the blood pouring… and then I hit him chin-high with a heavy right fist that knocked him through the French doors, where he tumbled backward over the railing and disappeared.
I picked up the revolver and went to the railing. He’d hit the ground hard, but was already on his feet. It is a distressing thing to watch fat people struggle to move quickly. They have been reduced by their own excesses, proof that suicide takes many forms. He was limping, but still trying to find cover as fast as he could move. The feverish determination reminded me of something… a wounded animal.
Gail was looking at him, too. What she said then surprised me, because she said it without pause or emotion: “I meant it. You should have killed him.”
I had my arm around Gail; had the money in the pillowcase as I led her down the steps to the driveway, where she waited while I straddled the Harley, got the kickstand up and ready to go.
“You really were a friend of Bobby’s?”
“Ask your daughter. She can show you the letters.”
“Then you’re him. You’re Doc. He wrote about you.”
“Yeah. I’m Doc Ford.”
She slid on behind me, huddled close in the rain. Had her hands meshed together over my stomach, her head resting against my back. As I throttled off, I had to remind myself: hand clutch on the left; the Hailey’s foot gearing was one down, four up.
There was something in the wind. Woodsmoke? Yes, I smelled smoke…
It was the rainy season. Why?
Then I could see flames ahead, not far away on the village street.
I throttled toward the flames. Saw that it was one of the classic old Zonian houses ablaze… then I realized that I knew this place: Jackie Merlot’s office and headquarters for Club Gamboa. No fire engines around as we rumbled past. No sirens in the distance… but a few people out now and watching, their silhouettes backdropped by flames as the place burned to the ground.
Matt Davidson had pointed out this building.
Matt Davidson had insisted on knowing when I was going to nail Merlot.
The man has videos of Taiwanese honchos misbehaving…
Maybe because of that, or maybe something else. I would never be told because I had no need to know.
As I throttled off toward Panama City, Gail pressed her lips against my ear and said, “I was with Merlot for the same reason I was with Frank.” I realized that she was still trying to answer my question: How had she ended up with such a freak? But that made no sense. Frank had been a good man; Merlot was a social anomaly. Or maybe it did make sense. Still talking into my ear, she added, “I was in love once. After that, other men are just a way of passing time.”
20
It is difficult for me to write about what happened next because I remember so little about it. The events of that Saturday afternoon at the Balboa Yacht Club come back to me in little vignettes of memory, small intrusions of nightmare.
Once, weeks after I had been discharged from the hospital in Panama City, I awoke in the arms of a woman who was shaking me, then holding me. I sat bolt upright, looked around to find that I was safe in my little stilthouse on Dinkin’s Bay.
That feeling, of being safe… it was such a relief.
“You were calling out again,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear it anymore.” She touched her mouth to my cheek, then my lips. “It’ll go away. It’ll take time, but it will go away.”
She meant Panama.
What I remember most consistently is a simple thing that Gail Richardson told me while still in Gamboa: You should have killed him.
My brain plays and replays that simple sentence. I can be jogging or preparing slides in the lab or sitting on the porch of my home looking at the lights of the marina, listening to liveaboards crack beers beneath Chinese party lanterns while Jimmy Buffett or Danny Morgan sing about their good, good lives on Captiva or in one particular harbor or Leadville or in Margaritaville.
That sentence will return: You should have killed him. Here is what I remember: I remember checking into the Hotel Panama in downtown Panama City. A classic old hotel decorated with fiftyish chrome and marble and a good-sized pool beneath palms.
I remember Gail crying. The two of us talking, holding each other, as she buried her face in my shoulder and she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
We were in the bar? Yes, the bar. I had requested that the band play a song for her: “The Twelfth of Never.” Something else: the shower… she commented on the shower. About how good it was to be clean. The way she said it, it reminded me of an observation that Garret had made while I was in Colombia, something about the Turk. Something about the difficulties of getting clean. Or was that Tucker?
No… not Tucker. It was Tucker who had said, “You won’t give me a chance to make it up to you!”
Tucker and Gail. Both right.
The rest of it jumps ahead in time. It is all blurry, so jumbled that dredging it up plays through the memory like a badly framed home movie. Here are little snippets of video that remain with me:
Gail holding my hand as we walked down the yacht club’s wooden steps to the bar on a verandah of worn gray marble. Seeing the big water, sailboats out there anchored with their wind fans spinning, the Panama Canal and the volcanic gloom of islands beyond…
Then hearing a familiar voice: “Hello!” Amanda standing topside aboard a large canary yellow racing boat, a Scarab. Waving at us from the cement pier, this huge grin on her face and maybe a little teary-eyed as she called, “I just got here! Haven’t even put the groceries away yet!”
The boat’s name in red letters, Double Haul, I remember reading that, plus a little surge of pleasure at seeing the lines of the Scarab, the implicit speed, and thinking it was going to be fun running a boat so fast and well designed up Panama’s jungle coast.
Then… and then Gail is helped aboard and hugged by her much relieved daughter… the two of them disappearing below deck, each with a bag of groceries in hand… and suddenly, unexpectedly, I hear the shout of a man’s voice: “Get them off that boat!”
I turn to see Tuck and the black bartender from Club Nautico charging down the steps toward me. Fernando? Yes, that was the man’s name.
What the hell were they doing there?
Fernando and Tucker running, their expressions panicked, Tucker’s feet going clump-clump-clump on seagoing wood that had probably never been fouled by a cowboy boot.
It made no sense seeing them. Tucker was in Colombia. I’d left him there at the little marina where his Freemason buddy worked as a bartender. How had they gotten to Panama? And how could Tucker possibly know where to find me?
“Marion! Marion! GET THEM OFF THAT BOAT!”
I was on the finger pier now, about to step aboard. From the galley below deck, I could hear Gail and Amanda laughing. Heard one of them say, “Where’s the power switch?”
I stopped; looked at the open hatch, then looked at Tucker, who was still yelling: “The Turk, he was getting Amanda’s E-mail! You understand?”
No. Nothing made sense. I stepped toward Tucker, my hands held out to stop him, but he charged right past me, almost knocked me into the water, as he jumped aboard the Scarab. Moved pretty good for a man that old. Was still yelling: “Amanda
. Amanda! Don’t touch a damn thing. They know you’re here, that you’re meeting your mama. You told ‘em in your letter.”
I couldn’t hear her, but Amanda must have asked what or why, because Tucker said, “That Ohio woman. What the hell’s her name, Betty? You’ve been writing to a church lady named Betty, but it’s really the fat man!”
Which is when I was blinded by a light so devastatingly bright that it was as if a shard of ice had been driven through my brain…
Then I was in the water. I was in the water and deaf, stone deaf, before a bright and busy inferno, from which tumbled the frantic shapes of people I had once known but could no longer recognize…
A blazing cowboy hat worn by a flailing old man who had been long shadowed by the guilty memory of the very thing that now killed him…
A woman who might have been Gail, but it was difficult to be certain because she had no face…
A third person blasted from the flames who was so badly damaged that I refuse to attempt description. I will not do it.
The Panamanian police asked me about Amanda, saw the look in my eye and did not ask again.
Seventeen days later, when I awoke from what the good doctors described as a “life-threatening concussion,” Fernando had recovered sufficiently to tell me what he had already learned.
Tucker had been shipped back to Florida and buried with full Masonic honors. But not until after word of some lingering trouble in Cartagena. Someone had beaten the Turk senseless, pissed on him (I didn’t ask how that was verified), pick-axed his computer plus all its gear, stolen his hookah and then nosed the Turk’s old junk wind freighter out into Cartagena Bay, where the federales did, indeed, impound the cache of hashish aboard, arrest the injured man and take him to a prison hospital.
“Your uncle was mucho hombre, much man, much man!” Fernando said. “But I would not return to Colombia for a while. Tucker Gatrell became famous there in a very short time. It will be remembered by some small and angry people that you are a relative.”
The Mangrove Coast df-6 Page 30
