Jungle of Glass

by Gerald J. Davis

  I didn't leave any prints. That would just confuse them.

  The sirens sounded in the distance. They were coming from a couple of directions. I slammed the car door shut and double-timed it over to Second.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  According to the ID in his wallet, the dead man was a colonel in the Atlacatl Brigade of the Salvadoran army. Everybody was a colonel in that goddamn country.

  His name was Luis Eduardo Navarette. He was forty-eight. Or he would have been in another month and a half, on February sixteenth. The card gave an address in the Escalon district of San Salvador. He had a platinum American Express card and a membership in one of those clubs called Flashdancers where big-breasted girls dance right in your face.

  There was three hundred and fifty-six dollars in his wallet. That was the exquisite dilemma. I ruminated on it for a couple of minutes. Then I decided to send a check for three hundred and fifty-six dollars to the American Prostate Association, just in case.

  I leaned back on my sofa and put my feet up on the coffee table. It was almost one in the morning. My stomach was starting to growl. I hadn't eaten anything since that pizza and beer for lunch. It was a question of eating something or hitting the sack.

  It was too late to call Mrs. Roderick. I'd call her in the morning, but not too early. I got up and walked into the kitchen. I knew it was going to be slim pickings. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone shopping. I took a look inside the refrigerator. There was a six-pack of Budweiser, or rather a five-pack. There was some out-dated yogurt and a jar of pickles. That was about it except for a plastic container of something I couldn't recognize. I tossed that out because I didn't know what the hell it was.

  The freezer had a better selection. There were a couple of frozen pizzas and three frozen hot dogs. I didn't remember why or when I froze the hot dogs, because they keep for a long time in the refrigerator, but that's what I decided to eat.

  There's an old unwritten law that says you shouldn't have pizza for two meals in a row. Besides, you should vary your diet because diversification is healthier. If I had pickles and beer with the hot dogs, that would be three food groups right there. Vegetables, meat and grains, if you consider the malt and hops and barley.

  The next question was whether to boil or microwave the hot dogs. Microwaving was faster so that's what I did.

  I ate the three hot dogs on a fork and washed them down with a couple of beers. After that I felt a lot better.

  The registration had nothing to do with Colonel Navarette. The car was registered in the name of one Francisco Aviles who lived at One Seventeen East Fifty-seventh Street. The colonel was driving a car that belonged to somebody else. This Mister Aviles was going to be very irritated when he found out what a major cleaning job his car was going to require.

  I put the ID and the car registration on the kitchen table side by side next to the can of beer. Where was the connection? What was the relationship between Atlacatl and anything else? Who were these people and what the hell did anything mean? Where was the satchel full of cash? Where was the fedora guy? It seemed like I was dealing with a gallery of ghosts. At least, on the Formica table in front of me, there were two pieces of paper that identified two specific human beings, one with a color photo of a man who was now officially a ghost. It was good to have something tangible at last, even if I had no idea where it would lead.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  "Who's handling that homicide on Twenty-fourth Street last night?" I said.

  Gene Black looked up from the papers on his desk. He didn't seem overjoyed to see me. "I am, Rogan," he said. "What's it to you?"

  I grinned at him. "Well, I'm going to make your day a whole lot brighter. In fact, I'm going to illuminate your day like the fourth of July."

  "That's good because I can use some light."

  He was right. He looked like he needed it. His eyes were more tired than I remembered them. They were flat, emotionless, as if he'd seen every kind of evil that man could perpetrate, and then some. He must have been an innocent kid once, innocent and full of youthful energy, but all that had been beaten out of him a long time ago. His eyes said more than that. They said every expectation that something good might happen had been reduced to odds that were as long as winning the lottery.

  His beer belly had gotten a little bigger and a little lower. He was wearing a pink shirt, something a man should never do. And he had on the wrong suspenders, the kind that clip on. He was one of those guys whose five o'clock shadow shows up at noon.

  But he was the best cop I ever knew.

  "I can ID the shooter for you," I said.

  His eyebrows went way up. "You just happened to be passing by the scene of the crime and now you're going to give me the guy that did it?" His voice was more raspy than ever from the relentless progression of cigarettes and booze.

  "Even better than that," I said. I dropped the fedora on his desk. "This is his hat."

  He pushed his swivel chair back from the metal desk. "Jesus, don't do that. It's bad luck." He picked up the hat carefully by the crown and put it on a chair next to him.

  I shook my head. "It's only bad luck if you put it on a bed. You don't have any beds in this precinct house, do you?"

  He squinted at me. "And how did you happen to be in that neighborhood at that time of night?"

  "I was taking a constitutional," I said. "For my health."

  He was skeptical. "In the middle of a snowstorm?"

  "To each his own."

  He shrugged. He knew he wasn't going to get much more than that.

  "Any other eyewitnesses around there?" he asked.

  "Just a hooker, that I saw. But I doubt you'll find her and, even if you did, she was so far gone she wouldn't have been able to recognize Bill Clinton with his pants down."

  He turned back to his desk and started writing notes on a yellow legal pad.

  "Bring me that good-looking girl with the Ident-I-Kit and the big tits and I'll give you a picture of him," I said.

  He shook his head. "You're a dinosaur. We don't use that anymore. Everything is computerized now."

  "Is that right? Then what happened to that cutie?"

  "She got wise, stopped working, got married and had a baby."

  "Smart girl," I said. "Traditional values, and all that."

  "It sure beats taking endless sexual comments from these creeps," he nodded. "Now, I'll give you Moore. He'll work with you on the computer. When you get a likeness, come back here and see me."

  "Why is that?"

  "So you can tell me what you want."

  "What makes you think I want anything?"

  He squinted at me again. "When did you ever do anything for me without asking for a favor?"

  "I'll save you some time," I said. "I want to know who the killer was."

  "Any particular reason for wanting to know?"

  I gave him a big grin. "I have a highly developed sense of curiosity."

  He scrutinized me. "Is that all you want to know?"

  "That's all I want from you."

  It was his turn to grin. "And you don't even want to know who the dead guy was?"

  The sonofabitch had me there. Caught me flatfooted. Was he guessing I knew who the stiff was because his wallet was missing or was he just playing that good old hard-nosed cop tune?

  I shrugged. “That’s what happens when you get old. Some parts get hard and some parts get soft.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The apartment house where Francisco Aviles lived on East Fifty-seventh Street was a large expensive modern condo building. It was named the Galleria and it had every amenity known to man in the closing years of the twentieth century. There was a lot of glass and a lot of stone.

  This was the kind of building that foreigners liked. They could buy an apartment without having to be approved by a co-op board. They could come and go without requiring approval from anybody and they could rent to whoever they chose. And the appearance was just flashy enough to appeal to them.


  It was almost eight in the evening when I got there. Aviles had said over the phone he'd see me when I told him I was a friend of Colonel Navarette. Maybe he wanted to get some information on the Colonel's untimely check-out or maybe he just wondered who the hell I was.

  Aviles' apartment was on the thirtieth floor. He opened the door to his apartment a couple of inches and looked out at me. Then he opened the door wide and said, "Please come in."

  I stepped inside. Aviles was a tall man, almost as tall as me. He had fine features and cold blue eyes. His hair was short, neatly cut and graying. He wore glasses with round tortoise-shell frames. He was a distinguished- looking man, with the air of a senator who might have lent his name to reams of socially-progressive legislation.

  "How do you come to know Colonel Navarette?" he said.

  We stood in the vestibule of his apartment. His accent was thick, but his command of English was good.

  "I was an American military advisor in El Salvador from nineteen eighty-one to eighty-three," I bluffed. It was impossible to be contradicted by a dead man unless Aviles had a direct line to Hell. "I was liaison officer to the Atlacatl brigade. That's where we met."

  Aviles nodded.

  He waved his hand back toward the living room.

  "Come this way," he said. "Let me offer you a drink."

  The apartment appeared to have been decorated by a professional. All the furniture and the decor and the colors seemed to match. It looked like it cost big bucks and it was in good taste. It wasn't the kind of decorating a guy would do by himself, and Aviles didn't seem to have a female in residence.

  He looked at me. "May I offer you a Chivas Regal?"

  Who was I to turn down such an offer? "On the rocks," I said.

  He brought me the drink and held up his glass. "Health, love, money and the time to enjoy them," he said in Spanish.

  "Cheers," I said. I took a drink. It was good.

  He was wearing a cashmere jacket and a starched white shirt with a paisley ascot, something men stopped wearing here in the sixties. There was a disagreeable scent of cologne about him.

  "I admired you and your compadres," he said. He sat down in what was obviously his favorite armchair facing the picture window displaying the lights of the Manhattan night. "Please have a seat."

  I sat on the sofa in front of him.

  "You were brave men," he said. "I remember you weren't allowed to carry M-16s, only sidearms. It was a foolish rule imposed on you by your civilian leaders. Simply a fig leaf in order to pretend you weren't engaged in combat. You were in harm's way with no means of defending yourself against the terrorists."

  It was easy to see which side he was on. I wanted to ask him what his occupation was, but Colonel Navarette would

  have told me about Aviles before sending me to him, so I couldn't.

  He must have read my thoughts, because he said, "I too was in the military for many years, retiring with the rank of colonel. But I was involuntarily demobilized and pensioned off, like some discarded piece of trash."

  He took a deep swallow of his drink and let out a loud sigh. "If I sound bitter, you must forgive me. It's not often that I get the chance to complain to a fellow military officer."

  "I understand how you feel," I said.

  "We won that war and this is how we were rewarded." He raised his glass to me. "That is to say, your president, the great Ronald Reagan, won the war. He defeated the Soviet Union and, with that victory, he saved El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala from the communists. When the flow of arms and funds from the communist bloc was cut off, the local insurgents had to rely on the Cuban supply and that was not enough to sustain them."

  He raised his glass again to make a toast. "Here's to the great Ronald Reagan and to the valiant men who defeated the communist menace." He'd probably downed more than a couple before I showed up.

  I held up my glass and took a big swig of scotch.

  "Tell me, Mister Rogan, are you still in the military?"

  I shook my head. "I decided to seek gainful employment in the civilian sector."

  "Very commendable," he said. "And what is your civilian work?"

  "I'm a private investigator."

  "I see. And what are you presently investigating?"

  "That's why I'm here, Senor Aviles."

  He nodded. "I suspected as much. You require some information or assistance."

  "That's right. I'm investigating the kidnapping of James Roderick in El Salvador. He was taken..."

  He waved his hand. "I know the circumstances. An unfortunate occurrence. I didn't know the gentleman but I knew of him. He had a great reputation."

  I finished my drink. Aviles refilled my glass in one smooth motion. "I'm here to find out if you know anything about the kidnapping or if you know someone who might."

  He poured himself another one and stared out the window. He didn't say anything for a long time. Finally he turned to look at me.

  "I have some sad news for you, Mister Rogan," he said. "Our mutual friend, Colonel Navarette, was murdered yesterday. He was shot to death on the streets of New York. The official police version is that this was a common crime of robbery but I do not believe it."

  I tried to look surprised. "Christ almighty," I said, for want of any more profound words. "Yesterday, you say?"

  He nodded, then pointed at me. "Since you are a private investigator and a friend of Colonel Navarette, I would like to engage you to investigate his murder and bring the killer to justice, in any way you must." He pointed at me again. "You understand what I'm saying, do you not?"

  "Yeah, I understand, but as much as I'd like to help you, I can't. I already have a client and I'm working on that case full-time. I never work on more than one case at a time." He didn't know that was hogwash. I'd take as many cases as a hooker could take johns, or even more, since I didn't have to worry about running out of lubricating jelly.

  He bought that. "I see."

  "Let me ask you a question," I said with the proper amount of righteous indignation. "Who do you think killed Navarette?"

  He thought for a minute. While he sat there silently, the smell of his foul cologne hit me again. It was musk.

  A very musky musk. What kind of furry rodent would be sexually attracted by the scent of this musk? Maybe a capybara or maybe a muskrat. Certainly not a female of the human species.

  "I have an idea of who did it," he said. "But at this moment I would prefer not to say. I believe it is someone who does not wish us well."

  "What about Roderick, then?"

  He nodded. "Yes," he said. "Don Jaime Roderick..." He turned his gaze out the window to the horizon and the lights of a cold night in December. The street noises were muffled and far below. "There is an American reporter in El Salvador by the name of McInerny."

  "He's dead," I said.

  He seemed surprised. "He was working on a story about the kidnapping. It is too bad he died. An accident, was it?"

  "Sort of. He got in the way of a bullet."

  "Most unfortunate," Aviles said.

  What Aviles had just said put a new color in my paint box. I could try to locate McInerny’s notes and see if they contained anything that would be useful to me.

  I got up. "Thanks for the information. And for the scotch."

  "Sorry I could not give you more."

  Did he mean the information or the scotch? I took one last look around the place and left. It sure was a luxurious setting for an ex-officer pensioned off by a third-world army. Too luxurious. Did this boy have another more unsavory source of income? Even old American soldiers didn't fade away in this lavish style.

  Now for the enjoyable part of the case. I had to head south and locate a broad whose mission in life was to punch my ticket.

  CHAPTER XIX

  I called Senora Roderick the next morning and brought her up to date, more or less. I didn't let her know that her money had gone into that giant sinkhole that's filled on a regular basis by PI's who aren't a
s smart as they think they are. I told her the case was progressing well, which was more than a slight exaggeration, since I didn't know where the hell it was going. And I told her I was going back to El Salvador to get her husband before it was too late and I hoped I sounded more convincing than I felt.

  Then I called Broadbent at the U. S. embassy in Salvador and gave him a brief sketch of what had happened since we spoke. He didn't sound too confident either.

  "I'm going to be taking a .38 and I don't want any problems," I said. "Get me clearance from customs."

  "I'll do better than that. I'll meet your flight at the airport."

  "And what about the widow McInerny? Did you get a fix on her?"

  Broadbent misunderstood. He thought I was worried about getting ventilated. "We finally located the bitch. She's staying at a small hotel called Casa Austria. As far as we can tell, she's been quiet since you left Salvador. Don't sweat. We'll keep her out of your hair."

  "Much obliged," I said. "I'll see you before the sun sets."

  ***

  Broadbent met me at the airport in El Salvador and ushered me double-time through customs with his diplomatic pull. Nobody even checked my underwear. There was a black embassy Ford waiting at the curb with the engine running and the air-conditioning blasting.

  I climbed into the car. Lightener was sitting in the back seat. It was a stretch job, so Lightener moved over to the jump seat to give Broadbent and me a chance to straighten out our legs.

  On the way into San Salvador I filled them in on the details. Lightener had a little black notebook and he scribbled in it while I talked. Once a Company man, always a Company man. The Agency really trained their people well. Lightener was as methodical as he must have been when he was a spook. Broadbent was sweating like he had just finished running the marathon. He kept wiping his shaved head with his handkerchief even though the air-conditioning was working fine. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. Lightener, on the other hand, looked cool and comfortable and impeccable in his three-piece suit. From time to time he would smooth his thick black mustache as he listened. Finally I finished and we rode in silence the rest of the way into town.