by Ed Teja
“Well, it seems that everyone thought that message was from Ramón and wanted to meet him—you, me, whoever sent the thugs.”
“Pancho, as you call him,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I just figured that it had to be Pancho’s El Bruto brothers or some low rent thugs that the gringo found at the bad guy meat market. There is nothing new about temporary help in the kneecapping game.”
She laughed. “Nothing at all. But those two are Pancho’s regular shooters. He isn’t going to be happy today. He’ll be shorthanded if he needs someone shot.”
We left the hotel to head for the rendezvous with Ramón and, I hoped, some answers. The midday heat hit us hard as we came out of the lobby. One of the disadvantages of having some of our creature comforts, like air conditioning, is that we get wobbly as soon as we have to do without them. Despite the heat, we intended to walk. It wasn’t far, and walking gave us a better than average chance of spotting and losing a tail. In the narrow roads of Cumaná, a car is too easy to follow.
We’d gone only a couple of blocks when Victoria spotted him. “Note the ugly plaid shirt and tan pants,” she said, “across the street.”
We split up, with Victoria going into a store and me continuing up the street pretending to be interested in things in shop windows. The shadow had to make a decision. He stopped in front of the store that Victoria had gone into and looked in. He hesitated then came after me. I went into a panadería and ordered a coffee, standing at the bar, watching as he drifted by and then stopped to admire a window full of overpriced color television sets. When I finished my coffee, I set out again, heading up the street, and he fell into step about half a block behind.
I led him for a distance, walking as slow as I could manage while still moving, to make it harder for him to stay behind without being obvious. It forced him to stay way back. When I turned down an alleyway, he moved fast to close the distance. He appeared worried that I might duck into one of the many shops and he'd have to search them all to find me. Instead, I turned around as if I’d changed my mind, or made a mistake, and walked back the way I’d come, brushing past him close enough to smell the cheap aftershave he used. He had to pretend to keep going, not knowing if I’d made him or not, so as I approached, he looked straight ahead, attempting a casual stride up the alley.
I counted his breaths, synchronized with their rhythm, then, when I was closest to him, I punched him in the stomach just as he began letting out a breath. He dropped like a rock. I left him there and stepped back into the street. Victoria was waiting. We crossed the street and went into a bar, taking seats close to a window that let us watch the street. We had a beer and waited until he stumbled back into the street.
“I think he’s hurt himself,” Victoria said.
“Following people can be hazardous,” I agreed. “So many things to bump into and you can’t always see where you are going.”
As we watched, he grew frantic as he looked up and down the street. He ran off toward the park. We waited. A few minutes later he ran the other way. After he left, we paid for the beer and went up the street, over the bridge to Plaza Miranda.
Victoria was smiling. “I liked that,” she said in my ear, her voice a hoarse whisper. “It was fun.”
“Was it anyone you know?”
She shook her head. “Rent-a-thug, or maybe a cop.”
The cop part hadn’t occurred to me. It might have been that Wilfredo, just to see what we were up to, put him there. What I was up to, I corrected myself.
We split up again at the park, thinking that Ramón might split if he saw I’d brought anyone with me. She sat down on a metal bench that gave her a clear view of the area around the statue on one side and the direction plaid shirt might come from in the other. I drifted slowly over toward the statue, keeping a weather eye out for miscellaneous bad guys as well as Ramón.
I found Ramón alone on a bench on the other side of the statue facing the route taxi stand, where you catch a car to go to El Dique or the bus terminal. He didn’t look good. His skin was pale, his face drawn. It made him uglier than normal, and more pathetic.
“I hope you have good news for me, amigo,” he said as I sat down. “This has not been a good week for Ramón.”
I chuckled. “A sense of humor is useful.”
“An escape from this filthy place would be even more useful.”
“I haven’t been able to reach her yet. She’s somewhere in Ensenada Tigrillo with a charter and hasn’t called in since yesterday. How is the shoulder?”
He winced at the thought of it, and his hand came up automatically to touch it tenderly. “It hurts a great deal. I need to see a doctor, but I can’t go to the hospital. They would report me, my wound.”
“No shit.”
“So, I need some money. For a doctor I know of.”
I had expected that. “How much?”
“About forty gringo dollars.”
For a doctor who practiced outside the confines of the precise letter of the law that was not a bad price. Of course, dollars were hard to come by, and it would be a lot more in Bolívares, but I didn’t want him crawling off and dying in some hole. I took out my wallet and gave him two twenties and a couple of ones.
“Go to the doctor and get something healthy to eat,” I told him. “I am trying to get you out of the country. Maggie will do it. She will hate it, but she will do it. But it will be a few days before we can get things set up to do it. Maybe that’s just as well. It doesn’t look like you should be traveling yet.”
He stuffed the money is his pocket. “Your brother said you were a good man, Señor. For that reason, I want to warn you about the crazy gringo, the one you say killed María, may the Lord have mercy on her soul.” He crossed himself. “That man is crazy. Completely loco. Much more dangerous than the man who tried to have us killed last night. The gringo is a drug buyer.”
“Your buyer?”
He nodded. “I was going to sell the drugs to him, and for a very good price. I wanted to get my money and get away.”
“What happened?”
He gave a sad shake of his head. “In all my life, the things I try go wrong. I don’t know why I thought this would be different. It should have been so simple. But it wasn’t. I hid my drugs, except for a sample, which the police took from Tim. When I went back to get a new sample, the drugs were gone. Someone stole the drugs that I stole.”
“You didn’t hide them in Las Negadas in Isla Caracas, by any chance?”
He looked stunned for a moment and then nodded. “I am not a very smart man,” he said, overcome with self pity.
“Do you know who took your drugs?”
“I think it was the gringo.”
The answer surprised me. “But both he and Pancho, or whatever his name is, are still looking for the drugs.”
Ramón smiled. “In the business of drugs, Señor, when a shipment goes missing, everyone looks very hard for them. The ones who stole them often look the hardest. It would not do to be unconcerned, for then everyone would know who had them—the one person who didn’t need to worry. No, if the gringo stole them, he will want my employer to think he is as angry as anyone. Later, when things calm down, he has one shipment for free and has not angered his contact and can buy more. It would not do if he fouled his source.”
It made sense, in a confused drug lord sort of logic. Ramón put his hand on my knee. “I will leave now. I will be here every day at the same time. Please come tomorrow even if you have nothing new to tell me. And wait a few minutes before you leave. Perhaps I was followed.”
“What do I do if you are?”
He smiled. “I think your brother would say ‘show them your Special Forces shit.’”
“SEALS,” I muttered to myself as he went off. “Goddamn SEALS. Special Forces is part of the fucking Army.”
As I watched, he headed toward the bridge, passing in front of Victoria. He glanced
at her looking no more or less interested than any Latin man looking at a pretty woman. And that answered one question I hadn’t asked. Ramón didn’t know Victoria. I just didn’t know if that was important or not, good news or bad. At least it was information. We returned to the hotel and learned that there was still no word from Maggie.
“I am starting to worry,” I told her. “It is not like Maggie to say she will do something and then not do it. Come tough times, she is a rock.”
Victoria gave me a smile. There wasn’t anything to say.
We grabbed a quick snack and went to the hospital to check on Tim. He was out of surgery and in what passed for intensive care in a public hospital. The doctor swelled up like a peacock as he described his success.
“We saved his eye, Señor. I cannot say that he will see from it all that well. It is impossible to know at this point how much it was damaged, but there is no reason to remove it.”
That sounded good. “So, he is out of danger?”
He shook his head. “No, but he is stable for the moment. It will be some time before we know if he will live.”
So, although they saved the eye, they still weren’t sure he’d live long enough for it to matter. Funny the way doctors see things, being able to contemplate and brag about a successful surgery that allows the patient to die.
We strolled the downtown streets, going nowhere, while I told Victoria everything Ramón told me. “What do you think about his theory about the gringo stealing the drugs?”
She thought for a while. “Ramón might be right. He’s right that if the gringo took off with the drugs the Cumaná organization would view it the same as if he’d stolen them directly and not just from Ramón. And I doubt he’d volunteer payment, even if they offered a finder’s fee.”
“So, it’s possible. How probable is it?”
She fished in her purse and took out her cigarettes. I started to say something, but she cut me off. “I’ve been being good, and not smoking. But my brain is starting to freeze up. Give an addict a break.”
So, I backed off. She lit her cigarette and tucked her arm in mine, and we started walking again.
“I don’t have any concrete idea if Highball stole the drugs, or even if he killed Antonio. And Ramón is little help. He is trying to sound sophisticated about it all, but he doesn’t know much. One part doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Highball kill María if he had the drugs?”
“Loose ends?” she shrugged. “He wouldn’t know who knew what. But the police and you were interrogating her, and Tim might have told her something that could lead the police to him. Or maybe he was trying to find out from her where Ramón was. If Highball killed Antonio and Ramón knew it, then Highball would be trying to find him too.”
They weren’t comforting thoughts. Ramón didn’t know very much, but he thought he knew who killed Antonio, and I didn’t. Or at least I had been operating under that premise.
“I wonder if Ramón really does know who killed Antonio,” I said, more thinking out loud than talking.
“There’s a good chance he hasn’t a clue,” she said, voicing my worst thoughts. “He knows that the name of the killer is what he needs to give you to get out of Venezuela. And he used Tim when he needed help. Why not use you, too? You get him a ride and he names his best guess, which might not be any better than yours right now.”
I didn’t answer. My thoughts were not clear or happy. I saw only walls, no portals to the truth, and I didn’t have any reason to be confident with my prowess as an investigator.
“Where are we going?” Victoria asked. “If anywhere.”
“To the waterfront,” I told her. I hadn’t known it until I said it, but then I realized my steps were taking us toward the water. We walked in the direction of Cumaná’s main pier—to the same area where we’d been last night. Was it only last night?
“Did you want to revisit the scene of the crime?”
“No. Not that.”
“Then?”
“I’m a sailor. I am unhappy. I need to see the water.” She sighed. “When things are going bad it makes me feel better to look out over the water and see the boats, to feel the salt air. It keeps me going when my life starts to feel like I’ve dedicated it to pushing string uphill. I can’t explain it better than that.”
Victoria moved closer, and I wrapped an arm around her. “I don’t think it needs any more explanation than that,” she said, her voice soft.
We walked out on the pier where some small boys cast lines into the water. They fished with small hooks and held the line in their hands, dangling the bare hook in the water and jerking it when a fish came near. Despite the awkwardness of it, they caught quite a few tiny fish, each no bigger than a finger. At the end of the pier, some old men were fishing with bait, but having less luck.
“It’s the moon, does it,” one of the oldest men said. He sat on an upturned plastic bucket, one leg crossed over the other, chewing on something and resting a hand on his rod. “The moon’s just wrong, is all.”
A few ships made sluggish progress through the harbor. A couple of Panamanian-registered freighters swung to the current on their hooks just off the boatyard. A small wooden fishing boat with a noisy Detroit diesel engine popping away made its way from the Arraya Peninsula into the small sheltered fishing anchorage, which was surrounded by a stone seawall. The high-speed ferries shot out from the mouth of the river every so often, tearing across the Golfo de Cariaco as fast as they could manage.
We stood, taking in the scene in silence, drawing strength from it. I don’t know how long we stood there holding each other and feeling the afternoon pass away. Time loses meaning whenever things get serious.
At some point, Victoria pointed at a ship that was moving toward us, changing from an indistinct blur on the late afternoon horizon to something resembling a ship.
“What kind of ship is that?” she asked.
I looked. And I looked. And then I whooped. “That, mí amor, is the most wondrous kind of ship known to man. That is the cavalry. That battered hulk is Irreparable Harm, my very own boat, and one of the most glorious sights seen on the Seven Seas.”
We scurried back down the pier and over to the Port Captain’s office. Nearby was a shipping agent I know who had a VHF radio. A cargo skipper's contacts with shipping agents are part of his stock in trade. We don't send each other Christmas cards, or even stay in touch, but the honest souls in the business never forget each other. He was glad to let me use the radio. It was on channel sixteen—the standard hailing frequency—and raised the unmistakable voice of Ugly Bill.
“What the hell are you doing in Venezuela?”
“Got bored doing nothing in Trinitown while you were engaging in all the heroics,” he said. “You never called to say howdy or tell how it was going. It’s only a couple of days to get here, so...well, I thought you might need some help.”
“Only all I can get. What’s your schedule?”
“The usual,” he said. “Gotta check in with El Capitán del Puerto, customs, and the boys at immigration. You know how that is. We will get stuck for late charges, so they’ll take their time. And I need to find a mechanic to take a look-see at the gearbox while I’m helping you solve the crisis. I’ve Sammy on board to babysit Harm while we chase and cook wild geese. So, I figure to be tied up until first thing in the morning. I’m a bit tuckered, Junior.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
You could almost hear him grin over the radio. “Now I was hoping you’d say something of incredible intelligence, something just like that. My social secretary tells me that I can meet you at about eight. And make that two breakfasts—for me I mean.”
“Got it.” I gave him the address and phone number of the hotel.
“How’s Maggie? Will I see her tomorrow?”
I hesitated. “She’s on a charter. She's been out of touch for a couple of days, but she's supposed to be back soon.” He acce
pted that without pressing for more information and we said good night.
Reality caught up with me as Victoria and I walked back to the hotel. I began to wonder how to best explain her to Ugly Bill. I liked her a lot and wanted Bill to like her, too, but I didn’t even know who she was. Not really. Damn but things were getting complicated. I worried that Bill, who always liked Maggie, might take a dim view of my current relationship with Victoria. But Mama always said to leave the future to worry about itself.
As a necessary change of pace from the dull food at the hotel, we stopped at an Italian restaurant for dinner. They had a nice pasta with meat sauce, and we ordered a bottle of Chianti that made it even better. But here is a safety tip. Do not go to Venezuela for garlic bread. Or, as the Venezuelans around most of the country say, 'maybe in Caracas'.
As we drank coffee, Victoria said, “If it helps, and I think it might, I won’t be able to meet your friend tomorrow.” She had me wondering if lawyers here were trained in mind reading as well as marksmanship.
“Why not?”
“Several good reasons come to mind.”
“Care to share a couple of them? A few little ones will do.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. “One is the most obvious. To make things easier for you. You need time to think of how our relationship affects all the other relationships in your complicated life. Another is that we can be more effective by dividing up our work. I have, as you’ve suggested on numerous occasions, access to some resources that you don’t. I want to run some additional checks on Ramón and on the gringo, Mr. Highball. And the information about current events can be put to good use.”
I called over to the waiter and ordered a scotch. “I need something stronger than wine,” I told Victoria.
She ordered one too, on the flimsy premise that it was unfair to force me to drink alone. When we had our drinks, I said, “You are wise beyond your years, mi amor. I’m not ashamed of our relationship, but I am confused about it, perhaps more than somewhat. And under the circumstances, with Maggie off somewhere unknown, that is, I do find it, or us, rather awkward.”