by Moulton, CD
“Oh, Mr. Faraday, we’re just all upset by all this horrible turmoil and that lovely young girl being dead,” Florence gushed. “Of course we’ll answer your questions. We just want this ordeal to be over!”
“Er, yes,” Emile put in. “We were at the Playa Mango all afternoon. We came back by the Rhumba Room and then here at, oh, eleven thirty. Police all over the place. We didn’t kill anybody!”
“Thanks,” Clint replied. “That about ties it.”
“It DOES?!” Verity cried.
“Yes. It’s down to two possibilities. Both of you killed her, actually. Gilda with the poison and you with a knife. I don’t suppose you knew she would be dead within a few minutes from the poison, so you stabbed her.”
“But ... but ..!” she whined. “I was with Spike!”
“At the beach below the Playa Mango? Where Emile and Florence would have had to see you?”
“Maybe ... it wasn’t the Playa Mango! It was farther out!”
“No. You said, ‘Playa something by the hotel.’ That’s the only one with a beach that close.”
“Why me?” Gilda asked.
“No one else here when or where they could have poisoned her,” Clint answered. She nodded and sighed. “She was a bitch. She could be charming when anyone was around, then would turn into a totally evil little bitch when you were alone with her. She was trying to get into Liam and was blackmailing me for some things that happened a long time ago. I’m not going to deny anything. I’m not sorry about it.”
“You’ve got that right!” Verity said hotly. “She was a scheming evil blackmailing bitch!”
“But she was always so nice!” Rita said. “She told me she had a crush on Liam, but he didn’t know it. She said she’d get him one way or another because she really liked him and she would get anything she wanted when ... oh!”
“Well, I guess that means Mark will be home in ten minutes like he said!” Kathi said with a smirk. “Shows how much you know! What if he decides to have you fired? What will you say about THAT?!”
“What if I tell you he stays in that cell until the corregidor gets back unless I say he can go?” Clint replied. “I’ll guarantee he spends tonight locked up. He needs the lesson. As to having me fired, from what? I’m here at the request of the Bocas police department. I don’t get paid anything I do for them.”
“Nobody in this bunch is going to believe you’d solve their cases for nothing,” Liam said. “Life is about money. No money, no action, no life.”
“Sad,” Clint said. “Life must be hell for most of you.”
“Can I take anything with me?” Gilda asked.
“Oh, just gather a few things you’ll need and go in tomorrow to confess,” Clint advised. “I think they’ll just deport you. You were being blackmailed and that’s the same as robbed. You’re allowed to defend yourself here.”
“WHAT?!” Florence screeched. “Mark sits in JAIL and the MURDERER gets to wait until tomorrow?!”
“Well, this IS Panamá!” Clint answered. That got a hearty laugh from Liam. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.
Saturday Blues
“What do I wear tonight?” Clint Faraday asked of no one. He looked around the room as the computer dinged to tell him there was an e-mail. He sighed and read: Clint. I’m in big trouble. Changuinola. Ed. Freddy’s.
Ed? Ed Samuels? Ed Hoppe? Ed Kemp? Ed Arsson? He sighed again and replied, Ed who?
Arsson came back.
He wrote, Two hours. That would just give him time to make the water taxi. He would have to stay in Changuinola tonight. Crap. The blue shirt and blue jeans. Saturday blues. It fit.
Wait a minute! Freddy’s was a place only Indios stayed. Ed was a blue-eyed blond Swede. Could be interesting. He had stayed at Freddy’s once with Miguel, an Indio friend. The Indios didn’t seem to be interested in Ed that he knew about. Ed tended to be a bit intimidating at the best of times.
What the hell. He threw a couple of pairs of pants and shirts into his maleta, some clean underwear, socks and whatever he might need and got to the taxi just in time to go to Almirante. He knew several people on the bus and chatted with them on the way to Changuinola. He went directly to Freddy’s where Ignacio, who ran the place, told him Ed had asked for a room and secrecy in Clint’s name, so he gave it to him. Third on the back side.
Clint knocked on the door. There was no answer and not a sound, so he said, “Ed? Clint here.” Ed opened the door with a pistol in his hand.
“What do you need that for?” Clint asked.
“Got the Ruskies after my ass.”
“Oh, shit!” Clint said – with feeling.
“Let’s get some of this straightened out,” Clint said as they sat in the Restaurante Jose’ across from the bus terminal. “How did you manage to get the Ruskies after you?”
“It was an accident, I swear! I’m not so stupid I’d get that bunch after me! I was in David at the Fiesta and won some good money at blackjack. There was this dude there who said he knew where there was a private game. Texas Hold ‘Em. A friend’s house. I knew it would be crooked, but you know how I can handle that kind of stuff. I can always spot what they’re doing and use it against them.
“Anyhow, there were six people there. Three were Ruskies, but I thought they were Czeks. There are a bunch there lately.
“To shorten it, they were using a buddy-system routine to make me always have a hand that was a card from a big payoff after I won a couple small hands. I can pit a card as well as anyone, so skidded on two kings for the next hand when we were down to three. They’d said it would be the big one because it was late and nobody was doing anything tonight. The cards were cold.
“I said, ‘What the hell. I brought five grand to gamble with so make it cutthroat and call it a night.’
“I was delt a king and two twos. I skidded a three and a five and played the full house kings over. Twenty grand. They couldn’t believe they’d screwed up like that on the deal and started going through the cards. I dropped back the five and three and everything was kosher so far as they could see.
“I left. They came to the National where I was staying later and told the desk clerk they’d caught me on camera cheating at cards. I saw them coming in and got behind the drapes by the desk. They said they represented a group in Panamá City that no one fooled with. A Russian group.
“I got a bus and came here. My stuff’s still in the National, but it was only dirty clothes and like that.”
“Twenty grand? They would just consider it a lesson,” Clint protested.
“Not if I tried to buy some stuff with a hundred and it’s phony. They reeaally want their funny money back for some reason.”
“Have you handled it – other than a few?” Clint asked.
“No. I figured I didn’t want my prints all over it. Why? They could just say it was money that someone else passed to them.”
“Depends on whose prints are on it, I’d say. Let’s go to Rio Sereno in the morning. You can go to Costa Rica on foot there and avoid the guardia. Call me every day at six and I’ll let you know if I can do anything. Stay out of sight.”
He nodded. Clint took the money in a plastic bag and went back to Bocas. A dark-haired big man with a bushy moustache took the bus to David and then to Rio Sereno.
Clint had the police print all the money. They got seven sets to check besides Ed’s. They would be discreet when they ran them through the system and wouldn’t tell anyone it was more than a routine passport check.
Danskie Chekov and Brendt Kreniev had to be the ones he wanted, but who were they? Were they using their real names here or were they known as someone else? What were they up to that meant they would kill to avoid being identified?
As Ed said, they could claim the money was passed to them so what was so special about this batch?
Clint took the cash and had Manny contact the mob in Panamá City to say he had it and it would be returned – this time. Ed wanted his five grand back in good bills and they’d be
tter think twice about using that crooked scam anywhere other than Panamá City.
He had an answer in ten minutes. Give the money to a man called Hank E. Panque in the parque and get the five grand plus a grand for trying the game on someone who knew more about cheating than they did. They just didn’t want the money that they didn’t know was phony until he tried to pass a bill left out there where it would have to cause a bunch of soooo innocent people trouble. They’d take care of the ones who paid for their services with the phony geetus.
Yeah. Right!
Clint was in the parque fifteen minutes later when a well-dressed trim tall man approached him and said he was Hank and thanks for not making a big stir about it. Nobody was innocent on either side and Clint was smart enough to know they were just trying to dump the stuff. It was just plain stupid to not mix it with good money so they would have a legitimate-sounding reason to have the stuff. Clint agreed and took the five grand, handed “Hank” the phony and called Manny to say the deal was done and over and thanks.
The camera got a couple of very good pictures of “Hank” while that was going on. Clint shook his hand and said to be careful in Bocas with the stuff because they’d recently raided two places because of marked and phony money.
Clint called Ed at six to tell him he was now out of it. Marko had made it plain that he simply outcrooked some crooks and wasn’t involved past that.
Then he went home to relax for the rest of Sunday evening. In the morning he would have a long talk with Manny about whether or not to pursue it. He wanted to know who “Hank” actually was and what his connection with the racket was. He was very definitely not just some runner or thug. Something smelled in a northern European country.
“We can’t find much, but it will come in an hour or two,” Manny reported. “It’s to do with the Ruskies, but you could see that isn’t all. It doesn’t make any sense to me to go to all that trouble over a lousy twenty grand in phony money. Those people are as much as untouchable for that crap anyhow. Spend another five grand of it with certain officials and their investigation will come to nothing because the stuff keeps right on coming in while they’re under constant surveillance or something on that order.
“This character who calls himself ‘Hank’ doesn’t fit in with that bunch. At all.
“Clint, that little deal is going to lead into a big deal. Are you sure you want to be involved? I can’t do much to help with those cruds.”
“I want to know what it’s about. If it’s something over my head I’ll drop it. I would have already if that Hank character hadn’t come here. As you said, he doesn’t fit with that bunch of cheap thugs in Panamá City. I think he flew in on a private plane. One was landing just before I talked to you. Several people saw it, but the airport says they have no records of any private flights landing at that time.
“It was a Cessna two engine job. White and dark green.”
Manny grunted and called a number to ask for some information about the green and white Cessna that landed there yesterday afternoon. It was not the plane that was supposed to deliver a friend, but it did. He only wanted to know if it was the same concern who sent that one. He waited a minute, then said he’d have to check with another agency to learn why there was no record of a plane several friends noted – and one took a picture of while it was being directed by an official there at the airport. He waited another minute, then said, “Mil gracias!” and hung up.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he mused. “Why would Jim Blanchard get involved with that bunch?
“Jim is into land development scams all over the whole damned world. He doesn’t need to get involved with this kind of penny-ante crap! What the HELL is going on here?
“I think you should back off. Now I want to know what’s up. I’ll handle it.
“Oh, Jesus! I hope he doesn’t recognize me!”
Clint turned to see “Hank” coming in the door and toward their table. He greeted him, “Hi, Jim! Miss something?”
“Hello, Clint, Marko,” he returned. “It was far too fast for you to have handled from someplace in the Greek Isles.”
“Another one!” Clint said to Manny. “You manage to take one hell of a lot of heat off of Marko by being here. I don’t think there are two hoods in the states who don’t think you’re him.”
Jim looked just a little confused. “How could you handle something like this from the Med? It won’t work!”
“Ever heard of telephones?” Manny asked. “It doesn’t make one iota of difference where you are. Hell, it could be done as quickly through e-mail!”
“No! I’ve met you before! The disguise is good, but not perfect. It’s you!” he said positively, but his body language told Clint he was very unsure.
“Sit, Jim!” Clint invited. “Let me tell you how this was done.
“For people to actually believe it’s a disguise and trick to hide you have to get someone with the same general look as you. You train them to act in certain ways. It took Marko a month to get Manny to do that thing with the eyes and lips. When he says something important he will raise the left eyebrow a tiny bit (Clint noted how Jim was watching Manny’s face) and put his tongue tip on his lip. That kind of thing was my suggestion. It’s the kind of unconscious thing people note and detectives look for.
“Do you know how hard it was to get him to use that solid gait ... you haven’t seen him walk. That’s another one.
“Now you won’t ever be sure I’m not making this up, so it really could be Marko.
“One thing: can you actually even picture Marko talking like Manny? Actually?”
Sylvia, his wife, was spending a lot of time teaching him to NOT sound like a cheap hood. He’d come across beautifully already.
“Yeah. I can talk like I got some education, huh?” Manny said in a growl that was a small bit higher than when he was Marko. “I got what you call high-class yap when I consciously concentrate ... think about it.”
Jim grinned. “Christ! You almost pulled it off! ‘Consciously concentrate?’ Now, THAT I can’t picture from Marko for a picosecond!”
“What the hell’s a pico-whatever? Jeez!” Manny said.
“Sheesh, not jeez,” Clint corrected.
“Oh, yeah. Got to get the more sophis ... lingo down.”
“And you’re not completely sure, even now,” Clint said, smirking. “You WILL continue to waste your time and resources in watching Manny. You can’t afford not to.”
“Clint knows the most effective methods for use in any number of areas,” Manny said. “Marko – or I – have the greatest good fortune in his being a friend.
“So! Marko found out who you were in seconds. At least you will understand that he hasn’t yet ceased his involvement with friends here. He won’t. He is rather more loyal to his friends than most.
“So what’s it about? It’s not a handful of funny-money.”
“It’s about me wanting to get uninvolved with that bunch. They suckered me in and will use me for a goat. The money had some people’s prints on it that would get them in too deep with ... certain others. Arsson mentioned Clint here several times during the game – which was noted by the cameras.
“By the way, he is a VERY expert cheater. I wish he worked for me! He made fools out of the clowns ... but that’s neither here nor there.
“Someone panicked. He said you’d probably check it if it was spotted and they’d be in it. If it was grabbed it would be routine to check it. Two people at that game are no longer of importance to him. Their bodies will be found soon enough when the car in the canal is found. They dumped it on me to get the stuff back before it was printed. You had it, so it was printed. I know that, but they don’t, so I got it and burned it so their prints won’t be found. I told them to not be so stupid as to handle the stuff. They said they only wanted to see how good it was. I said that’s why they make latex gloves. They agreed it was stupid and wouldn’t ever happen again.
“I still want out. I don’t like their methods.
My own scams don’t hurt anyone who can’t afford it. It’s high-end and is set up to where the investors are in it because they think it’s just a bit crooked is why we can get it so cheap. Same as those things on the net where you can get part of an inheritance or something if you let them use your bank account to launder the money. If you’re that stupid and crooked you deserve to get cleaned out. You KNOW you’re dealing with crooks from the start.
“It occurred to me that Clint here is probably my best bet to get out of it. You can set something up that will make them want me out. I’ll go to a lot of places later, but never again here. If you can set something up for Marko that’s this good you can scare them with having association with me.
“Damn it! You’re right! I STILL don’t know for sure that this isn’t Marko! It’s a BRILLIANT ploy either way!”
“Five million cash – the good stuff – if you can work something out.”
“I’ll think about it,” Clint promised. “Five million to a fund to educate the indigenos. I don’t want anymore money.”
Jim studied him a minute, then shook his head. “I don’t believe this!”
“Because you’re into greed,” Manny said. “You never seriously asked, ‘What’s it for?’ – have you?”
“No – and I’m not about to now.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Clint promised.
“Got any ideas for Jim?” Manny asked next day. Jim had gone back to Changuinola and his plane. He had stopped for fuel there when he decided to see if Clint could get him out of the Russian mob bit.
“We have to find out who the two are with the damning prints on that money, then I can find something to make them think Jim will be better-off somewhere else.”
“Danskie Chekov is Danskie Chekov. Kreniev is most probably Kreniev. I suppose they’re trying to be inconspicuous is all. Conspicuous among that crowd can be dead if you’re big enough to threaten the real biggies. I think what they’re afraid of is being found. They probably are very big in one gang and it’s not time for that to be known until they’ve built the power base to ensure they don’t end up in a car in the canal.”