by Moulton, CD
Silvio, a close Indio friend, says it is an omen. If the colors remain for one minute as they are, it is an omen of good fortune. If the pink intensifies to red, it is an omen of blood. Lots of blood.
Contents
Sky Signs
Omen
Who?
What?
Plots Within Plots
The Thot Plickens
Port Call
Strike Two!
Strike Three and You’re Out!
Omen
Sky Signs
Clint Faraday, retired detective from the states, strolled along the beach near Cusapín. The town on a peninsula into the Caribbean in Panamá was nearby. He was in the comarca visiting friends. He counted Indios as a majority of his friends. He loved the people and he loved their culture.
It was getting into the later afternoon. He was going to the mountaintop to watch the sunset with a couple of his friends. It was a special night for some reason. One of the friends, Silvio, was a sort of medicine man for the people.
Clint didn’t know – or much care – about the reasons this was a special night. He knew he was one of the very few non-Indios who were ever included in this kind of thing. He felt deeply about his acceptance by these people. Very deeply.
He had never felt the attractions and repulsions of people in the states to a noticeable extent. Here, it was part of his life. He cared. He had learned to care his first couple of months in Panamá. That was part of the major changes in his life. His cynicism about lifestyle and people in the states was unchanged. His acceptance of the lifestyle and culture of the Indios was fairly complete. It was an inclusive philosophy where the states and the Latinos and Blacks her lived in an exclusive society – “exclusive” meaning “to exclude.”
He realized there were some Indios as low and sleazy as many gringos and others he must deal with day to day. His experience was that the Indios would go more than halfway in human relationships. They were almost never arrogant or judgmental of others. They made decisions and judgements about individuals, not groups.
Silvio and three young men from the town came out to meet him and strolled along the pristine beach for a few minutes chatting. As the sun approached the mountaintop Silvio said it was time. They headed to the road and got on horses. It would be dark down here while the sun was still bright on the mountaintop. It would be just at sunset when they reached the top.
This was the east side of the mountains. It was light here before the dawn broke on the west side of the mountains. It was dark a bit longer in the valleys than on the top, of course.
Clint felt the reverence of the people he was with. They were not religious in any real sense and this was not about a god of any sort. It was something that centuries of observing nature and cycles had taught them. It was not about, as many estrañeros believed, voodoo and magic. It was the nature of the earth telling them those things people who lived close to, among, nature needed to know. Conditions that indicated weather changes and such things in nature were shown plainly to the people who lived with that nature, not to those who fought it. The fighters had their science that was slowly revealing to them the secrets the people living with it had known since the beginnings of their evolution. It was a matter of knowing the language of nature and how to read and hear it.
Clint didn’t really understand it. He accepted it.
They went silently, almost ceremoniously, to the trail and up the mountain.
Omen
The sun was just at the horizon, a huge blinding ball of silver light. There were clouds above and almost to where the sun shone so brightly, but there were none right on the horizon line. They watched as it sank below the horizon and the sky began to glow in strange colors. It was a bluish-white that quickly became pale pink, then more and more pink. The sky above and to the sides of where they were standing took on very strange aquamarine colors Clint had never seen.
Silvio shook his head and said this was not good. Clint asked why.
“The color gets darker and there is too much green. There is far too much pink and it is not turning more purple. It is turning red. That is bad. Very bad.”
“How so?”
“Red means blood. Much red means much blood. It is not good! It must not be red in one minute. If it stays pink things are normal for that. If it becomes red it is bad. If it gets very red it is terrible.
“I do not like the green overhead. That is not good. It tells me there is much confusion ahead. It is not good, though it is not terrible. It is ... uncertain.”
They watched for the minute and a bit more. The sky stayed a darker pink, but there were a few blotches of intense red almost overhead but toward the east and a bit south. Silvio discussed that with the others. Clint spoke the dialect, but didn’t join the discussion of matters he didn’t pretend to understand. He did catch that it was the uncertainty that was bothering them. It was because some few of the features needed interpretation. They were portents that only long experience gave indication of meaning.
Finally, Silvio said, “We do not know why there is red only there. We do not know why it is only small spots of red. Mario believes it means there is much serious trouble, but only for a few. Jorge believes it is a few here, because there is no red behind or ahead. It is not, most fortunately, over Cusapín. It is to the east. There is much jungle there and very few people. It is not something we can understand.
“I interpret the green and blue mix of colors over this place to mean the blood will not be here, but the trouble will be. In any interpretation, it is bad.”
They watched the colors quickly fade to grey. The return to the beach was more silent than the ascent had been. Silvio refused to give an interpretation to the waiting people. He said it was not good for someone, but perhaps the signs were not for the people there in Cusapín at that moment. It was very bad for people close to the east and south. It was a terrible omen for some, but he could not guess who. He could find no direct good in the signs. It was not directed in any way to Cusapín and the people there. It had connections, but no one could guess what those connections were.
A woman asked if the bad was to the gringo. Was he the one in danger of a bad omen.
“No. He was there with us. The signs of bad were to the south and east, not here. It is possible the connection here is through our good friend, Clint.”
They accepted that. They were as fatalistic about it as about most things. The woman said she could not give a protective spell or amulet unless she knew what it was for. She said Clint must take very careful care. She was the local medicine/witch woman. Her opinion was greatly respected. She was not feared in any way as in most cultures. She was sought for help in a variety of situations. She was not known as an evil woman, but as a good one, what would be called a white witch in the US. The dark or evil witch was a negress on the edge of the comarca. That one was the reason of what little magic used was used. Counterspells.
Silvio had explained the system to Clint long ago. Their medicine woman knew that spells worked well if those involved believed. All that was necessary for countering most things was a belief as strong or stronger that she could counter the evil.
One could not counter poisons with spells. The dark witch was known to use many poisons and hallucinogens so they were very wary of anything from her or people who she used. She had no real power on the comarca.
This left Clint with a lot of serious questions. Unfortunately, they were not questions that could be answered here. He wasn’t going to let it destroy his vacation among the people he loved. He didn’t think there was any connection with him. He didn’t know anyone south and east of Cusapín closer than the mouth of the canal, and few there. Apparently, that was a great distance farther than the signs indicated.
What was there? The coast, certainly, and miles and miles of rain forests. It was as much as uninhabited. A few Indios had fincas along the shore, but very few and not close past the couple of miles with fast (relatively) access to Cusapín.
Silvio said the trouble could be as close as the farthest of those fincas, but he thought it was past them.
Clint knew that the omens were often based in logical happenings that had been observed over the ages, such as the red sky in morning one. That meant, in most places, that storms were just at the horizon to the east, the prevailing path of storms was from east to west, thus red sky meant heavy clouds to the east that would move toward you. Red sky at night meant the storms were already west of you so weren’t likely to affect you. He knew that a flash of green at sunset meant exceptionally good luck in Florida. It seemed the local lore was that too much green was exactly the opposite. Science had shown that the green flash was due to the prism effect of clouds at a certain angle with a certain configuration. The earth is turning at a thousand miles per hour, so the prism band passes in a flash to the observer.
Clint didn’t believe the magical properties of omens like the natives did, but didn’t ignore them for that reason. These people were right in far too many of their beliefs for one reason or another. The red blotches didn’t seem to him to have any basis, but that odd aquamarine color in the sky didn’t make sense, either. The colors were from the overall prism effect from the angle the sunlight reflected off the clouds. That meant almost any primary color could show up – but aquamarine was far from a primary color. Scientifically, the clouds were curved in an odd way to make the effect longer than the flash to allow mixing of two bands – but blue and green?
He would worry about it some other time if anything happened. Tonight was to be spent with his friends and was NOT going to be a downer!
The night was very pleasant. The group talked and told stories until after midnight, then Clint got a very good rest to meet the day. He was going to ride into the mountains on a horse with a bunch of friends. Some of them would drop out on the way to go to where they were working. A couple were going home because they had stayed the night in Cusapín solely because he was there. He had helped any number of them at one time or another and was highly respected among them.
It was almost noon when he was high enough on the mountain that his cell phone could get a signal. Ralph Goins, a man from Manchester, England, living in Puerto Armuelles said he had been trying to reach Clint most of yesterday and into the night. Clint had turned his phone off in the afternoon so as not to be bothered by these people who always wanted him to do them a “favor” that consisted of him wasting hours on some problem that they brought on themselves.
Sure enough! “Clint, I would really appreciate it if you could do something to locate some people who said they were going to that side to buy a large parcel of land where there’s supposed to be some kind of mineral or something.”
Everyone knew about that kind of scam and had warned them, but they were insistent that it was a solid investment. They were so sure that he had sold them a big parcel just inland from Las Olivas dirt cheap, with a part being in a sort of stock deal where he would receive five percent. He would make a profit on the land he sold them, even though he sold it for about half what it could bring.
“So? What’s the problem?”
“The, er, the check they gave me for the land bounced. I don’t think they know their account was as much as, uh, raided. I checked and the money was there when I took the check, but was gone two days later, which is yesterday.”
“What makes you think they don’t know about it?”
“It was, uh, more that I’m a good judge of people, if I do say so myself. They aren’t the type to run a scam.”
“If you could tell the type by looking at them or talking to them there wouldn’t be any successful scams. I’m here in Cusapín, so can’t do anything about it anyway.”
“I KNOW you’re in Cusapín, Clint! That’s where they were going!”
“I’ll be back in town tonight and can check to see if they ever got here. What are their names?”
“Ida and Harry Nesmith and Gina and John Littleton. They’re middle-aged, but are traveling with a man called Frederico Valdez and a woman named Guila Zacharia. Valdez is from Argentina and Zacharia is from Brazil.”
“And the check, of course, was drawn on an Argentina bank?”
There was a long pause, then, “So it’s a scam?”
“More than ninety percent.”
“But ... but what do they gain? I simply won’t allow the title transfer.”
“At which time they’ll make an agreement to pay, because they had no IDEA the money wasn’t there!” Clint said dryly. “They’ll then check with the bank and give you another check that you’ll have to wait thirty more days on. It’ll bounce higher than this one. Meanwhile, they use the fact that you’re in business with them to work their schemes on other gringos.”
“I won’t take another check from them. I’m glad you warned me. Is there anything I can do to stop them?”
“Uh-huh.ABad checks are illegal here. Put their asses in jail.”
“I guess that’s my only real recourse.”
“You can run it back on them. Put them in jail until you have the cash money in your hands. If they actually have it they can get it to you by direct transfer, not a check. If you get it they won’t have the backing to run the scheme against anybody else. You’ll be a partner in some kind of scheme they plan to run here. There’s no land not on the comarca between here and Colón and not much in Colón.”
“Then ... I don’t get it.”
“We can root out the bunch who’re running the schemes. If they try some crooked deal here it’s the business of the Indigenos. They can handle the penalties.”
There was a short pause, then, “And their ideas of justice are somewhat different than the corrupt courts here, eh?”
“It would seem so. Watch your back. I’ll be in touch when I can get to a place like this where there’s a signal.”
They soon broke it off. Clint looked thoughtful, then grinned. Maybe they could put the tails of a few of that type in a crack! He was willing to try. It didn’t seem the kind of thing the omen was about, but who knew? If they were south and east and fairly close it could be them. The part where they would be in serious trouble might be that they would have to face the charges in Puerto Armuelles or charges on the comarca. Maybe both. They might buy their way out of the charges in Puerto Armuelles. They damned well couldn’t buy their way out of charges on the comarca.
This might get interesting. Clint didn’t see any way it could ruin his vacation or negatively affect his friends.
Who?
Okay. This was a typical scam, but who was it being run on? That the Argentinian and Brazillian were running it Clint didn’t doubt. What he didn’t know was if the Nesmiths and Littletons were part of it or if it was being run on them as well as anyone else they could get involved.
He would wait awhile to see what developed. The only way it figured was a scheme to rope more gringos into it. Get them to invest cash, not barter of any type. That meant money gringos – who would be damned wary of any deal that sounded too good to be true. Those things were what they sounded like.
How would they work it? The comarca land couldn’t be sold. A person could get permission from the ruling council to use the land or enter it for a specific reason, but there could be no sale. It was Indio land in general and didn’t have any individual owners. Simply because someone had a house and farm on the land didn’t mean they owned anything. The culture was different. It would make it possible, even easy, to work a scam on people who didn’t have a prayer of understanding it.
A lot of people came to Cusapín for a variety of reasons, mostly for the clear water, beaches and surfing. Not a lot of them had much money. Clint still didn’t see how anything would work.
He would think about it later. All he would do today was call Manolo, a friend/Interpol agent using a cover of a shady maybe-drug-middleman persona. Manolo could find out about Valdez and Zacharia as quickly as anyone.
He decided to spend the day riding into the mountains
to places no white person had ever stepped foot – well, Dave. His weird friend was a botanist orchid specialist, who got along with the Indios as well as Clint. He came to these places with their blessings to do his private research and classification. Clint saw him spend days and well into the night pouring over pictures and matching them to scribbled notes when he returned from the trips.
He stopped at the few houses along the way to chat with friends and make new ones. It was a very pleasant time. He got back into town just at dusk, had a good meal and spent into the night talking with people. No one knew of any recent strangers from the states or Argentina or anywhere else. Dave had come there the day before and was wandering in the mountains somewhere, according to reports. His ladyfriend was staying at Elena’s and he would come in at odd hours to unload his camera into his laptop, then be gone again. He would be there in the morning. Maybe Clint would like to go on an excursion with him. It was usually fun. When he was going and the guys didn’t have anything to do they would go along with him. He was 72 years old and they had a hard time keeping up with him.
It was a bit after eleven when he came in. Clint told him about the scam he suspected.
“I’m planning to walk the beaches for about ten kilometers in the morning down that way. I heard there were a couple of people here two or three weeks ago who were asking about the area down there. I’d like to see what’s up.”
“Want company? Maybe I’ll tag along. Never know. Might find something new and different.”
“I damned well know I will! I found no less than nine varieties of orchids that aren’t listed as being in Panamá and three that are probably not listed anywhere! These are fairly close to where people’ve looked. Down there has probably never been explored by any botanist.”
Clint listened to how he found the new species, but wouldn’t file for names if they actually were new species. He would let the kids (Kids? They were in their twenties!) file through the comarca. They could name them after themselves or each other, their families, or whatever.