by Moulton, CD
David and Robinson weren’t known to mingle much, though they sometimes met people from Colón and Panamá (When we say Panamá with an extra stress on the final á we mean Panamá City). The people they met ranged from as scruffy as they were to a couple who seemed to be rather wealthy and out of place in such places. One was some kind of big lawyer or something. Geraldo Demerbens or something. They called him Mr. D.
They might be out of place because of the wealth, but not because of the type, Clint thought.
He went to the Palacio Imperial for the night. A palace it ain’t, as the saying goes. He went around David for another day, but didn’t learn anything new. He went to the Park Vista that night and met the owner, Peter, and some friend from Bocas who were in David on business or to buy things because the prices were so much better and more variety is available in David.
Next day was a short trip to Las Tablas. Neither was welcomed there and it was rare for them to come.
Panamá City. Clint learned that they hung around a couple of places down past the end of Via España from the police reports. They also were seen a lot in certain suburbs. Robinson sometimes met someone in a high-end restaurant and whorehouse out a few miles. Clint got an idea from that and called a Russian semi-friend who was often in the place. He said he’d noted Robinson because he always met Juan Marinni, a Colombian who worked for some rather unsavory syndicates in Cali and Medillin. There was a connection with some wannabe gangster in Chiriqui somewhere. Not so much drugs – though that tended to be a part of anything from Colombia – as kidnaping and such. “Protection” rackets were a large part of it. It was called “Private Insurance” (Seguros Privado) there. It was the old mob thing from the states. They ran casinos and whorehouses. That kind of thing.
Clint had another name to work with. Maybe a connection with something. He’d heard of something that could finally connect something. A little something that connected Isla Popa and other places. It could explain why Carlos was tortured. It was a matter of finding how a scheme went wrong from the wrong end. It could tie all these people together – and Clint had been right when he said the drug runner had nothing to do with it at all. All that happened where he was concerned was that he exposed Robinson and David by accident.
Clint headed back to Bocas on the bus. He stopped for the night in Chiriqui Grande, but little was known there. There were the usual stories about who was trying to steal whose land and how they were going about it. One story caught his attention a little. It would fit what he suspected, but was the wrong person and wrong location. Almirante wasn’t much different.
He got back to his place late enough that he went to dinner with Judi and Ben to be caught up on the latest gossip. Not much new. Both of them knew what to try to learn if they didn’t know why. He would go to Popa in the morning. The answers were there if he could find the right questions.
Neighborly Visit
It was a little rough on the bays, but Clint got to Isla Popa around eight o’clock. Most of the men were at work that late. Many of the women were at home. Clint stopped to talk with Dona and Yajaira and have a cup of coffee. They didn’t know much about any of the things happening off the island and knew of things that had happened on the island only from what they saw and heard. They did know that a body was found up toward the southeastern tip. There was some problem about that whole mess because of the way those people from Colón were trying to force people off their land there. The Martín family had started a big row about it, but had suddenly become silent. Paulo used to come to the little store/bar at least twice a week with his wife and young daughter, but hadn’t come in at all for more than two weeks.
Those people trying to buy the land for a fourth of what it was worth were nothing but gangsters and cheap thugs. The body found was working with someone that had something to do with that and so were two or three others.
Clint thanked them and headed for his boat. It was a little rough on the tip, but he went around and found the dock to Martín’s place in a little indentation in the shoreline. He went in to see a bright shiny new sign that said to keep out. Privado. He went in and tied to the dock. A man Clint had seen a few times around Bocas and Almirante came from the house with a big obvious thug type. Clint waved and the thug said, “Hey, gringo stupido! Can’t you read?”
“Yeah, fuckhead. What do you want me to read to you?
“Hi, Paulo. Haven’t seen you around town for a few days and was wondering if the storm did any damage here. Some places were hit pretty hard by the winds.”
The thug grabbed at Clint, who spun and came up under his chin to knock him into the water. He grabbed for the pistol in his belt when he came up, but Clint was over him with a pole that had been laying on the dock. He very calmly said to bring his hands up empty or he would suddenly be fish food.
The thug brought his hands into view and began swimming toward the rocky shore at the dock base when Clint waved him that way. Clint walked along above him with the pole at the ready. When the hood got to where he could stand he moved on in with his hands held at head level. Clint reached out and took the revolver from his belt when he was in knee deep water and told him to come on out onto the shore. He turned around on the bank and swung at Clint, throwing his other arm up to ward off the pole – which Clint had already dropped as he slipped to the side. The thug expected him to come up like before and was ready for an attack from that direction.
Clint didn’t come up like before. He came in from the side to where the thug had to twist toward him just in time to have a jarring right hook knock him to his knees. Martín cried for Clint to stop! He was making everything worse!
Clint saw the fear in Martín’s eyes. He put a couple of things together right then and knocked the thug over his ear with the pistol butt. The thug dropped and was sprawled on the ground.
“Tell me about it,” Clint demanded. “What’s it about?”
“I don’t know!” he wailed. “They want this land for some reason. I won’t sell so they took my wife and daughter somewhere and say they will kill them if I don’t sell. They will pay me less than half of what it’s worth if I did want to sell it. If I get money they have all the legal papers and things to say it is theirs because they paid the money!”
“The one who was killed here night before last was one of them?”
“Killed? I don’t know about anyone being killed. The police came yesterday morning and asked Paco some questions, but he made me stay in the house. I don’t know what it was about. He said it was just checking about the storm, but it wouldn’t be that because they never come out this far for that kind of thing.”
“Was this shithead here night before last?”
“No. He tied me up in the afternoon and left and didn’t come back until early sunrise yesterday morning. The police came about an hour later.
“If they know about this they will kill my wife and daughter. We have to do something!”
“I think I’ve heard a couple of things that will make it a bit easier to get them back. Let’s get this punk conscious again,” Clint said as he took a small pail and filled it with water from the bay. He threw it in the thug’s face.
Paco, as Martín had named him, came to, sat up, then suddenly lunged hard for Clint’s legs with a long switchblade in his right hand. Clint stepped aside and brought a booted foot down hard on the hand with the knife in it. The thug squealed.
Clint said, in a very calm but icy voice, “I’m going to ask you a few questions that you will answer and maybe live or refuse to answer and die. I’ll use the methods on you that you used on Carlos, capich?”
Paco grunted. He was holding his broken hand tight against his stomach with the other hand.
“Capich?” Clint said, even colder.
“They’ll kill me if I say anything!”
“And I will if you don’t. Hell of a position to be in, isn’t it?
“What’s this crap about?”
He looked like he would cry. His eyes darted aro
und, but his position was hopeless and he knew it. Clint might actually torture him to death for all he knew. It was something he had done a few times.
“I don’t know. Some kind of map or code or something.”
Clint thought. There were some maps from when they discovered a pirate’s chest full of gold and jewels. It was on a case where they were looking for a chest of money. Millions. They found two, one of which was a pirate’s chest that some drug cartel people from Colombia had put a few million dollars in cash in fifty years ago. Those maps were checked and accounted for to the least detail. Someone was running a scam against a mob boss with phony maps? Was anyone that stupid?
Clint asked what Carlos had done to make him get the treatment Rauz got. That missed in a surprising way.
“I don’t know who Rauz is supposed to be. The police told me about Carlos Mendez.”
“Rauz is the one you tortured and killed by Solarte.”
Paco looked like a trapped animal. “No. That was Santamaria. Rosendo Santamaria. He tried to steal something from some people in David and we sent a message with the way he was handled. You can’t let that start or every two-bit creep in town will be stealing from you.
“Okay. You know about that so you know I did the same thing to this Carlos character. Him, I caught sneaking around here when I came back. I found out he was working for somebody else who was interested in the maps and were trying to find a way to cut themselves in before he became incapable of saying anything.”
“You mean someone is so stupid they’d try a stupid scam on TWO gangster bosses?” Clint said, unbelieving. “I thought it was beyond phenomenally stupid to try to con one!”
“Scam?” The hood was very interested all of a sudden.
“I want to talk to your boss now, but first get Martín’s family back here. This is a stupid way to handle this kind of thing. I’ll make a deal where your boss gets to do all the treasure hunting he wants, but he’s NOT to involve innocent people or I’ll call my Russian friends in Panamá and your boss and everyone associated with him will become statistics in a couple of hours, at most. You only think you know how to cause pain. It was how some of the Ruskies made their living for years before they came here.”
Almost anyone in organized (or, as seemed too apparent in this case, disorganized) crime in Panamá is terrified of the Russian mob. They have the reputation of being totally merciless and more than a little crazy.
“Get the family released. Now!”
“I can’t get them to do anything! I just take orders! I ain’t no boss! Fuck!”
“Just tell them that Clint Faraday says he’ll get his Russian friends to act if they don’t cooperate. They’ll know I’m not the type to bluff. I have a small bit of a reputation myself.”
“I can call them and try. It wasn’t my idea to grab the woman and kid. I told them that was stupid because it would get too many others after their asses. You keep this stuff in the family. Somebody else, you don’t know what’s going to happen! THIS kind of stuff can happen!
“I ain’t got a cel.”
Clint handed him his cell, then had to punch the number and put the phone on speaker because Paco couldn’t hold onto the phone and punch the number with one hand broken. He got someone he called “Juan” and argued a minute. He said to put the boss on the phone. It was an emergency. Juan refused.
“Mira, estupido! Diga Ger ... el es urgencia muy muy mal!” (Listen, stupid! Tell ? it’s a bad and urgent thing!)
Clint caught that and quickly added two and two. He remembered what he heard in David. “Tell him we know who all of you are and we don’t bluff! Maybe Geraldo, better known as Mr. D, has more sense than you, Juan Marinni! Clear enough?”
There was a silence, then another voice came on. Paco gave him the message, then passed the phone to Clint.
“What is this about a scam?”
“First, the Martín family gets sent back home and are unharmed in any way.”
There was a short silence. “That was a very large mistake. I will grant that Paco was correct in that. They are not harmed and will be returned immediately if you will but guarantee that no action will be taken for our detaining them.”
“IF they are unharmed, you have my guarantee – where they are concerned.”
“You say I may seek the treasure you claim is not there without the application of pressure?”
“That was the stupidest part of this. I know it’s the way your group handles things, but it’s time you move into the real world. You may use any of the methods the police and I used to find the treasure. You will simply give Mr. Martín or anyone else whose land the stuff’s found on ten percent of the net. Nobody gets hurt, there’s not a bunch of silly plots and plans and your kids won’t be ashamed of what their Pop was. Maybe you’ll live and stay out of the pen long enough to have kids if you don’t already. I didn’t check on that.”
“He will agree to that?” Paulo looked surprised, shrugged and nodded.
“Certainly! You wouldn’t if it was on your land and you wouldn’t have to do a single thing yourself to find it?”
“Probably not. I’m not the sharing type. I see your point, however, and will agree.
“What is this about a scam?”
“If your map is from that deal where we dug up those two chests, every map Miss Halverson had was checked thoroughly. One of the chests was there. The other two had been found as much as ninety years ago. There weren’t any maps secretly hidden or any other cache of maps found. The other pirate wasn’t nearly successful enough to have much hidden and the Canos would handle anyone who got any map to what they consider as their property. Despite it all there’s still a lot of power with some people in that. There are no Canos alive who were involved. There are several people alive who are not Canos or not known to be Canos. Don’t forget how many people here have two families that don’t know diddly about each other.”
“So I have heard. Very well. May I again speak with Paco?”
Clint passed the phone back. Paco talked a moment. He told Geraldo about Carlos. He then passed the phone back to Clint.
“Mr. Faraday, do you know who this Carlos person was working with?”
“No. I also have to find Rauz. Paco says he wasn’t the one who he hit over by Solarte. That leaves some interesting possibilities open. That leaves questions I’ll get answers to.”
“If you will be so kind as to inform me should you learn that name?”
Clint thought about it. “I’ll give a conditional yes to that. No one else not directly involved will be bothered.”
“Thank you. The people will be back home within the hour. Paco will leave the area. I’m certain that you will describe his part in this to your police associates. As a favor, please wait until you can report that the family is home safely and see that Paco has means and opportunity to escape the area..”
“For this, they can pick him up anywhere they find him.”
“Only in Panamá. I will assure you that he will not too long remain in Panamá.”
Clint agreed. It would be better for these type to handle it themselves. So long as they only killed and tortured others of the same type in the same business it was saving the police time and money.
Clint waited at the dock after taking Paco there until a taxi brought the Martíns to Tierra Oscura. He took them home and headed back to Bocas.
He really did want to know what happened to Rauz. Was he tied up in it? Carlos was. It was likely. What was the connection with Rosendo Santamaria? Who was Rosendo Santamaria?
WHO was trying to run a scam on those kinds of people? Were they crazy, stupid or both? If Paco was the one on the boat with Robinson, what is David’s connection to this, if any?
There was Geraldo. David figured in it somewhere. He was seen talking with ... so that’s part of it. He was checking to see what Geraldo knew and what he was doing.
Was whoever he was working for running the scam?
Finding out would be a good w
ay to pass the time. He would have to go back to David in the morning. Rauz would be there or in Panamá City. Clint could find him.
He got in to his dock, cleaned up the boat, refueled it, called Judi and cleaned up. He would spend tonight doing little or nothing. He and Judi would try the 9 Degrees. Rick was a gourmand. The food would be exceptional, if expensive.
It was a very good night. Clint caught Judi up to date on things. She would always be invaluable in finding certain kinds of information. She would hold down the Bocas end and he would spend a few days in the David area.
In the morning he got the early water taxi to Almirante and headed on to David. He met a friend, Santo Guerra, from Tierra Oscura when he boarded the bus at the 46KM marker. They talked most of the way to Chiriqui Grande. Clint decided to spend the day in Punta Peña because Santo said there was some kind of problem in that area or in Mali. It sounded too much like someone was looking for a spot on a map in that area. That was too far inland for any pirate chest. What was going on now?
Stupid Treasure Hunters
Elena, the waitress at the little restaurante past the school, had heard some people talking who were looking for something. They had a map on the table and had asked her if she knew where there was a big rock shaped like a turtle on the side of a mountain near the river. She had told them she didn’t know of any such rock. She hadn’t paid much attention to the map. It was a computer copy or something. It wasn’t like a plano. It was mostly lines with notations in some foreign language.
Interesting. That river wasn’t navigable. It never had been. Whenever the water was deep enough to go in with a small cayuga the water was too swift that far up and was too filled with rapids. There were a lot of smaller stretches that could be used, but the usable connection with the Caribbean wasn’t there. This wasn’t connected.