Night of the Jaguar

by Joe Gannon

  Malhora smiled a serpent’s smile and took his time relighting his cigar, the pride of the worldwide communist movement. “There is always a third way, Ajax. Morality is not arithmetic where this and that will always equal something else. Morality is like an industry. If you have certain resources, you make one thing. If you lack those resources, you use something else to make something else. Just like in war. You use what you have.”

  “If you’re trying to buy time until someone comes to rescue you, don’t. If that door opens, I’ll have you dead before they touch me. What happens after will not matter to you.” And that was true. He would carry out his threat to the letter, he was ready for that. But he sensed that Malhora had an ace facedown behind that door. What Ajax could not fathom was why Malhora had sent the Conquistadores out in the first place.

  “You would kill me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not asking. I’m telling you, you would kill me. But would you kill the enemy?”

  “Define enemy.”

  “American Imperialism! The colossus to the north. Ronald Reagan and the entire shit-eating evil empire that sucks the life out of us, all of us! That puts its boot on our neck and pushes our face into the mud until we suffocate. That screams we are a threat to them while they kill us. Literally kill us. The enemy, goddamn you, the fucking enemy!”

  “And the murder of Enrique Cuadra served how, exactly, to kill the enemy?”

  “We cannot attack the United States from outside. Only from within. Their decadence is our greatest ally. Their love of the coca is an undefended flank we can attack. We can feed the Giant poison. Right now there are tens of thousands of Americans going to jail for drug sales. In ten or fifteen years these narcos will have become hardened criminals to be released back into their communities to wreak more havoc. Millions of children born to drug-addicted mothers. Their Negro inner cities are like war zones. The impact on public policy, resources, the very politics of the whole country change as we make them fight the war on drugs, which they will lose. The cocaine is a weapon, a bomb we can explode now, and again fifteen years from now! Do you see?”

  “The poor man’s weapon of mass destruction.”

  “Yes! Yes! My God, you do get it. Those shit-eating gringos never, ever have to pay for what they do. Look at Vietnam, the millions dead, the forests agent-oranged to death—and who paid for that? The Vietnamese. You know what they have done to us: Guatemala, Chile, the Dominican Republic. And El Salvador worst of all, seventy thousand dead already. Do you think we would have this Contra war were it not for them?”

  Malhora ground out the cigar in the ashtray like it was Reagan’s own face. “And how many thousands have we already lost? And yet every time the Americans get to walk away complaining that they could not do more. Walk away clean. And they will do that here. No one will ever pay for the misery and death—no one. Ever! They never do. But this way, this way we can infect them with a disease. ‘The poor man’s weapon of mass destruction’ indeed! But unlike a nuclear bomb it does not kill all at once, but slowly, over time. As hatred should kill.”

  Ajax finally sat down, relieved that he was not the craziest son of a bitch in the country, as he’d feared. “I’ll take that Marlboro now.”

  Malhora offered the red leather box of cigarettes and lit it for Ajax.

  “And you are going to accomplish all this with one little airstrip hanging to the side of a mountain in Matagalpa?”

  Malhora laughed. “Admittedly, the means of production are not yet sufficient to our purposes.”

  “Why not use the airports if you had to move bulk?”

  “Our airports? Ajax, even you have heard of satellite surveillance. No. An airstrip in Contra country would have to do, and, yes, if in a few months we decided to ‘raid’ the airstrip, capture it with its evidence of drug smuggling, then who else would the world blame but the Contra? Surely the government could not run an airstrip in such a place.”

  Ajax took a drag on the red. It was American-made, he had to admit. “So it was a setup against the Contra. Okay. We’ve done that before. But why kill Enrique Cuadra? Didn’t he think it was a Contra airstrip?”

  “Cuadra was not the great citizen you think. He was Contra. Did you know he was involved with Jorge Salazar? Yes, our old friend Jorge. It was Cuadra’s gas station Salazar used. Why? Because he felt safe there to plan his treachery.”

  “There weren’t any traitors. That was a setup. We lured Salazar into it.”

  “Yes, but Salazar chose where to meet. And that revealed his network of traitors. Salazar and Cuadra were related by marriage. Did you know that?”

  Ajax did not, but he did not reveal it.

  “Salazar’s widow and Cuadra’s wife are cousins, raised together. She is buried on Cuadra’s farm.”

  Ajax had noticed the fresh grave, but had not thought to ask about it. And now the urgency in Connelly’s voice came back to him. I know who killed Enrique. But Ajax had had too big a hard-on to listen. Doubt began to creep in.

  “Do you begin to see the method in my madness, Captain Montoya?”

  “What about the money?”

  There it was, a flicker in his eye. Malhora had blinked. He’d shied. He’d flinched.

  “Money?”

  “There are no profits from the drugs? No one is getting paid?”

  “You think I am enriching myself?”

  Now Malhora had answered two questions with questions. In an interrogation, this was classic avoidance behavior. He’d learned that first in the mountains. It had been a rule among the guerrilleros: when you got to a campesino shack, you began by making small talk and then got quickly to questions about the Guardia. If three questions were answered by questions you assumed the farmers had been compromised and ran for it. Malhora shifted in the high-back leather chair that was not quite as big as a church door. He toyed with the extinguished cigar like he might put flame to it again. He shook his head as if deeply saddened by Ajax’s lack of faith. Ajax did not know precisely what it meant, but he did know the money was the key to the mystery.

  “Answer me. You think I am enriching myself?”

  “I think I don’t trust you as far as I could throw Enrique Cuadra’s rotting corpse.”

  “There is money, of course there is. A lot of it. We use it to fund certain black operations, which you will forgive me if I don’t share with you.” Malhora allowed himself a chuckle as if from some private joke. “You don’t think I came up with all this on my own, do you?”

  “I don’t think you’ve got the brains or the balls.” Ajax drew himself up out of the chair, dropped the handcuffs on Malhora’s desk, and let his hands dangle loosely at his sides. He threw the inner switch of fight-or-flight into fight. It was time to see Malhora’s whole card. “What I do think is that you will now put those handcuffs on or I am likely to break a bone doing it for you.”

  “Interesting isn’t it?” Malhora lifted the handcuffs as if he would put them on. “In Spanish our word for handcuffs is esposos. The same as spouse.” Then he tossed the handcuffs at Ajax’s face. “Come in!”

  Ajax ducked the handcuffs, went over the desk, and had Malhora in a choke hold so fast he had time to relish Malhora’s stiffening with fear. Yes, that was what Ajax wanted, to feel his fear. The desk was enough of an obstacle that he could get to The Needle if he needed to.

  But through Malhora’s door came not henchmen, but Gioconda Targa and Horacio de la Vega.

  Esposos.

  Or the enemy?

  Ajax released Malhora, who sunk back into his chair. The looks on the faces of his best friend and ex-wife foretold what they had come to propose.

  The three of them just looked at each other in silence. Ajax thought, Here we are, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  Then he had another thought, and spoke it: “‘Each Judas a friend of every Cain.’”

  Horacio looked away, but Gio reacted as if struck. “What did you say?”

  “‘Each Judas a friend
of every Cain.’ It’s a quote from Rubén Darío.”

  “I know what it is! How dare you quote that to me!”

  Horacio stepped between them. “Ajax, we must talk. Comandante, would you mind?”

  “If he tries to leave the room, he’s a dead man.”

  “No, he’s not, Ajax.” Horacio signaled for Malhora to leave. “And it is unhelpful to even talk that way.”

  “It’s quite all right, Horacio. I will wait right in the outer office. I believe Lieutenant Darío is there?”

  Horacio nodded.

  “Then I will leave myself in the ‘custody’ of compañera Darío. Ajax, if, after the three of you talk, you still want to arrest me, I will be waiting for you.”

  Malhora opened the door to show Ajax that Gladys was, indeed, there. Ajax looked at her. She nodded, but he was not sure what that meant. His eyes went to her sidearm, then back to her eyes. She shifted her right hand to the Makarov. But he did not know what that meant, either. He felt as if the boards and concrete of Casa Fifty had dropped away and he was falling through the foundation, through the dirt and rocks and bones of the Earth into an abiding void. And the fear which flopped his belly was not of his death upon hitting bottom, but that he would never stop falling.

  The few seconds it took Malhora to vacate the room and click the door shut were the worst moments of Ajax’s recent life. He stood looking at the shut door, the sealed portal which might have led to another world, another life.

  Horacio, at last, walked around the desk and draped a hand on his shoulder. “Thank God you’re safe, Ajax. Malhora told us about Krill.”

  “Why would you even go there?” Gio sat down, folded her arms over her bosom. “Do you have some kind of death wish?”

  Ajax faced them. It was like having a blindfold removed, and, blinking in the weak dawn light, discovering that his two best friends would command his firing squad.

  “Did you know about this?” he asked.

  Gio shook her head. Her chestnut-brown ringlets shuddered like vines hanging from a tree, vines he had once wanted climb. But now they seemed like the vines in Paradise that shook as the snake slithered up the tree of knowledge. “Of course not.”

  “You, Horacio?”

  “This is not about Malhora. It’s not about airstrips or cocaine. And it’s not about Enrique Cuadra.”

  “And it’s not about your gringa lover either,” Gio added.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Don’t be a child. This is politics. What I care about is Senator Teal and the deal we are trying to make with him while you are off fucking his aide de camp! Do you think we let Teal come here for his reasons? We have worked this out, I have worked this out so carefully. And now you…”

  “Gio, that is also not what this is about.” Horacio eased Ajax into Malhora’s chair and then sat himself down, taking a moment to massage his crippled leg. “Ajax, this is about Joaquin.”

  “Tinoco?”

  “Yes, and his seat on the National Directorate. Since it became clear that he was dying, and dying quickly, everything has been about who would replace him. In very, very private meetings many things have come out. It was decided weeks ago that this ludicrous cocaine operation would cease. If anything, Cuadra probably stumbled on the last flight. It is over, the airstrip destroyed, and any connections between us and it have been erased…”

  “Or killed off.”

  “Or killed off. I am sorry for the death of Enrique, but everything is at stake right now. Everything!”

  “Except bringing a murderer to justice.”

  “Oh please.” Gio sat down as if exhausted. “What is justice to you but getting your own way?”

  “Gio.” Horacio leaned on his cane and struggled to his feet. “I asked you to come with me to help.”

  “Help with what, Horacio?” Ajax rose to his feet. “Why are the two of you here?” He gestured to the room.

  “To adjust your gaze.”

  “What?”

  Horacio hobbled to the big picture window overlooking the city all the way down to the lake. “Our war with America … is not a war between civilizations. Capitalism versus Communism. North versus South. Like all wars, it is between the civilized and the uncivilized. In both countries, in all countries, there exist only those two camps. The uncivilized in each country wish to make war on the uncivilized in other countries. And the civilized in each want to make peace with the civilized in other nations. We are the same. The uncivilized in America want to invade us, crush, kill, and destroy us. We have our barbarians, too. They, too, want to war with America. They want to provoke an invasion so that Nicaragua can be another, the final, Vietnam that brings America down. They are the ones who planned and launched this drug business, ‘poor man’s weapon of mass destruction.’ Malhora is a barbarian. My job is to keep him off the National Directorate where he will be the deciding vote in favor of all-out war.”

  “Then let me arrest him and your problem is solved.”

  Horacio smiled, but Ajax could see there was no mirth in his eyes.

  “No, it is not. It will be infinitely worse. We—you and I and Gioconda—are among the civilized; we want peace and prosperity through coexistence and we have our counterparts in America. We need to make peace with them, through them. If you arrest Malhora, if one more goddamned person knows about that goddamned airstrip, it will explode! If word of this gets out, the civilized in both countries will be defeated, utterly, and the barbarians will get their war. Do you know what that will mean?”

  Ajax got that falling feeling again. “Of course I know.” He looked at Gio. “Better than most.” He had to throw that line in, had to push back on something, someone.

  Gio ignored the barb. She stood in front of Ajax. Close to him. Her hands behind her back. “Then what will you do?”

  “He murdered Enrique Cuadra. Isn’t that enough to keep him off the Directorate?”

  “No.” Horacio moved subtly so that he and Gio were now side by side facing Ajax. “He no more killed Cuadra on his own than he dug the airstrip with his own hands. He’s close to the Directorate, but there is still a chance to have someone else take his place. Malhora’s masters are a minority; they are reeling from the near disaster of Cuadra’s death revealing the cocaine plot. Meaning they are frightened that instead of botching this case, you have uncovered the truth. You may have wanted to move away from politics, but you are now the fulcrum on which all is balanced. How it tips is up to you.”

  Ajax smiled; now the big picture was getting clearer. “I see. So Horacio de la Vega will finally mount the steps of destiny to the National Directorate. Or maybe Gio is to be the first woman to join the boys’ club.”

  Gio shook her head, it seemed to Ajax, with genuine regret.

  “No, Ajax, not Gio. Gio is not eligible. You have to be a comandante guerrillero to be nominated for the post.”

  “And you are one, Horacio.”

  “And so are you.”

  “Is that what this is? You’ve come to bribe me? Let Malhora go and you’ll nominate me for the Directorate?”

  Gio shook her head, but Ajax could not tell if it was in disgust or defeat. “I would move to Washington and become a Republican blow-job queen before that would ever happen.”

  So it was in disgust. “You don’t think I’d make a good comandante?”

  “No. I mean before I would bribe you. You will do what is right, what is necessary because you have to do it! We will not offer you anything. We are not asking for your kind consideration or indulgence. You will do it, Ajax, because it is the right thing to do, because we have come here to tell you what to do!”

  “Ajax.” Horacio slid his body between them. “We need to replace Joaquin with someone popular with the masses. Someone with credibility from the old days. And you are Spooky, el Terrorifico. The Prince of Peace. And your name has come up. Not everyone is…”

  “Is?”

  “Apprised of your … unorthodoxies. You’re a long shot, Ajax, but I
am not here to bribe or pander to you.”

  “So Malhora goes free? That piece of rotten shit will just walk, or get promoted?”

  “It is not about Malhora. It’s not about you. It’s not about Enrique Cuadra. It’s about more war or less war. And you have to decide right now. You, right this moment.”

  Ajax knew he had lost. The knot in his stomach told him that. Every opposing idea he could not reconcile was tied there. How had it come to this?

  “How has it come to this, Horacio? Is this what we fought for? If you kill someone, you go down for taking that life. We aren’t supposed to measure lives for their value. Listen to yourselves: Knight takes Rook, Bishop takes Queen, Queen takes King.”

  “Yes. And you want to ask about the Pawns.”

  “I didn’t fight all those years just to be a pawn, anyone’s pawn in some Cold War chess game.”

  “Then what did you fight for Ajax?”

  “Flu shots and flush toilets.” He picked up the handcuffs. “Equality before the law.”

  Gio sat down again. “Well, what you got was superpower Cold War chess games. You still haven’t said what you’re going to do.”

  Ajax knew what he was going to do. Knew the moment these two had come in.

  Esposos.

  He turned his gaze away from the tawdry scene in Malhora’s office and out the big picture window. He looked at the piss-poor, crazy ass city filled with a million pawns and knew he would not sacrifice a one of them—not to take a bishop, a queen, or even a king. But he also knew he could not win by playing defense. He could only delay the inevitable—eventually the other side would take the pawns first.

  He strode across the room and threw open the door. The outer office was empty.

  As he knew it would be.

  He reached into his pocket and clicked off Connelly’s tape recorder.

  17

  1.

  Ajax drove the pickup to Matthew’s house in Barrio Bolonia. There was a light on, but he left the keys under the seat and decided to walk home. He headed south until he passed the Ministry of Culture and reached the Pista de la Resistencia which he could follow home to barrio Bello Horizonte. He had passed the Plaza 19 de Julio when the smell of food cooking stirred his belly to life. He stopped at the China Palace for a plate of chop suey and mystery meat. As he wolfed down what tasted more like chop suet, he tried to recall the last time he’d eaten. It must’ve been with Krill, whom he was now certain he also hadn’t managed to get rid of. When was that? It seemed ages ago now. He knew that during combat time seemed to slow down because the mind sped up, as in a movie. To create the illusion of slow motion you increased the camera speed. But now time seemed to be coming to an end. The camera of his mind was not speeding up nor slowing down. It was running out of film.