by Jack Du Brul
“I’d say of the three of us, only you, Lauren, managed to come out of our cocoon looking as good as a butterfly.”
She smiled at his sweet attempt at a compliment. “I’ll give you moth, but not butterfly.”
For a few minutes, each took care of their body’s needs in the first measure of privacy they’d enjoyed in eleven hours and then met back at the skiff for the long row to shore.
The descent to the River of Ruin went much quicker than their trip up to the lake because Mercer carried Miguel for most of the way. Lauren felt that Mercer was trying to make up for the time they’d lost trapped on the island.
She could understand his motivation. The bulk of her military career had been spent in duties that had no set end or beginning. Peacekeeping in the Balkans had taken a year of her life and given back nothing. No sense of accomplishment, no sense of closure. And as a drug liaison in Panama, she felt her job was even more pointless. The Balkans could settle into some sort of peaceful coexistence eventually, but as long as there was despair on America’s streets, drugs would flow north to temporarily dull the pain.
The burned-out liaison officer she’d replaced at the embassy had used the Dutch boy and dike analogy when she’d taken the billet. After her first months on the job she realized that what she did was even more futile than that because no one really wanted the drug problem to end. It kept the disenfranchised medicated, it swelled the budgets of police forces and it gave the government a legitimate excuse to funnel billions of dollars into shaky Third World countries.
Seeing the way Mercer bound down the mountain with Miguel clinging to his back, Lauren could tell that whatever challenge he faced now would have an end. God knew what was really behind the helicopter attack or the attempted mugging in Paris, and yet he eagerly ran down a mountain to face it. That kind of confidence only came from a long record of successes. His victories cost him-she heard that in his voice when he talked about his parents-and still he did not balk from the fight. Her measure of him continued to go up.
She decided right then that she would help Mercer learn what was going on. This was far beyond the scope of her mission, but with such a small American presence in Panama, she felt she had a higher duty to discover the truth. Her instincts, like his, told her that Ruben’s murder and the mutilations were the beginning of something much larger. The drug-related homicides in La Palma she’d been investigating were one more spoke on a wheel of violence without end. Finding that killer would change nothing. In Mercer she saw the chance to end a mission with the kind of fulfillment the rest of her career had always denied her.
Half an hour after reaching the base of the waterfall, they were under way again. Mercer drove Ruben’s cousin’s motorboat down the river at full throttle, barely giving Gary’s camp a glance as they thundered past. He drove in a tight-lipped silence that Miguel and Lauren respected. When they reached El Real at noon, he avoided talking with any of the locals who came down to the wooden pier to meet them. The burial of so many people in the village had raised questions that he didn’t seem willing to answer. Again, Lauren and Miguel followed quietly as he led them to the airstrip where the plane he’d rented for Maria Barber had returned. The pilot was leaning on the wing.
“Give me a second alone,” Mercer asked his companions and climbed onto the plane. Once he and the pilot were in the cockpit, Mercer asked him to have a radio call patched into the phone system so he could call the United States. It took ten minutes and three calls to track down Harry White at Tiny’s Bar.
“Harry, I can’t talk long. Did Tiny get the package I sent to the bar from France?”
“He was hoping you’d include some good European pornography. Imagine his disappointment.”
“Funny. Listen, I don’t have time to go into it now, but I need you to fly down here with that journal.”
“Now you’re the one who’s being funny.”
“No bullshit, Harry. I need that journal and I can’t risk it getting lost by some shipping company. There’s a spare credit card in the center drawer of my desk. Take it and get yourself a plane ticket.” Mercer asked the pilot to name the best hotel in Panama City. “Book a room at the Hotel Caesar Park under your name in case I can’t meet you at the airport.”
“Why can’t you meet me at the airport?”
“Please, Harry, don’t ask me any questions. Just get down here with that journal.”
The seriousness in Mercer’s voice dried up whatever quip Harry had been planning. “You in trouble?”
“Yeah, buddy. I am.”
“I’ll stop by my place for my passport and will be there as quick as I can. For your sake, I’ll even fly coach.”
Mercer crawled out of the plane. The immeasurable relief that Harry would help sapped the last of his resolve. He’d been fighting his body since last night and could do so no longer. He allowed himself to tumble from the aircraft’s wing and barely had time to turn his head before he became violently ill. Lauren was fifty yards away buying Miguel some bananas from a fruit vendor who’d followed them from town. The retching sound drew her attention and she raced to Mercer’s side. His face was streaked with sweat and his lips had gone pale. His hands shook, and when he allowed the muscles in his face to go slack, his teeth chattered as if he were freezing. Lauren placed a hand on his forehead. His fever seemed to scald her hand.
“Jesus, are you okay? What’s the matter?”
“One second,” Mercer said weakly. He turned his head again and vomited even more copiously. His whole body shook with the fever. He tried to stand but couldn’t straighten because of the cramps. “A few days ago I went swimming in the Paris sewer. I think I picked up a few swim buddies. Dysentery’s my guess.”
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“We’ve got an hour before my lower G.I. lets loose, so let’s go.”
Miguel sat next to the pilot on the six-passenger plane but the excitement of his first flight couldn’t overcome his worry for Mercer, who sat in the rearmost seat with his face buried in a plastic trash bag. Very soon the smell made him sick too, leaving Lauren to care for two patients, one of whom was dehydrating before her eyes as his body fought the bacterial infection. Mercer shook as if palsied, his skin already appearing desiccated and his eyes haunted.
For him, the flight was both instantaneous and longer than a nonstop from L.A. to Sydney. His misery was like a black hole that warped time. In the moments between his wrenching heaves and the spikes in abdominal agony, he did manage to tell Lauren about Harry White’s arrival in Panama. Other than that the trip was a blur.
The pilot stopped his grumbling about ruined upholstery long enough to radio ahead so an ambulance was parked at the General Aviation ramp when they landed.
Mercer’s struggle to keep his bowels from voiding ended as a pair of orderlies maneuvered him onto the waiting gurney. Too wasted to care he’d fouled himself, he wasn’t even aware that Lauren and Miguel climbed into the ambulance with him, nor did he realize a saline drip was inserted to replace the fluids his body evacuated at an alarming rate. The only thing he held on to as he slid toward the darkness was that a previous bout of dysentery had taught him the worst was yet to come.
Panama City, Panama
It was the alien feeling of crisp sheets that Mercer first noticed when he regained consciousness. He hadn’t lain on a bed since. . he thought it was Utah. . no, Paris. . but how many days ago? The question remained unanswered as sensations overloaded his body again. He slept.
The next time he came awake, he felt a presence nearby but couldn’t turn his head or even open his eyes. He smelled something pleasant, a combination of flowers and a sweet odor like mint, before the darkness overwhelmed him.
It wasn’t until the third time he remembered coming awake that he could crank open his eyes. From the fog, he saw a square of light to his left. He thought it might be a window, but he couldn’t make out details. A noise drew his attention to his right. A shape. A figure. He tried to w
et his mouth with his tongue.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling weaker than he could ever remember. When he opened them again, the shape had moved closer and resolved into a man wearing a dazzling white suit, with a solid red tie and elegant straw Panama hat. The eyes were kindly blue and his skin glowed from the light streaming into the room. Mercer’s vision was too blurry for him to tell if he knew the man. It was only when the mysterious person spoke that Mercer felt the jolt of recognition.
“How’s it going, Mercer?” Normally the voice was like gravel pouring through a rusted steel chute, but Harry White asked the question so gently that Mercer wasn’t sure it was him.
“That you, Harry?”
“In the flesh, so to speak,” Harry replied, lighting a cigarette from the tip of the one he was just finishing.
“You aren’t supposed to smoke in a hospital,” Mercer said after Harry gave him a sip of water through a straw. In the dim background, he could hear the sound of harps being played.
“We’re not in a hospital, but I’ll put it out.” Harry nonchalantly ground his Chesterfield into the palm of his hand.
“Jesus,” Mercer rasped when White dropped the crushed cigarette on the floor.
Harry looked at his watch. “Not for a few minutes.”
Confused by that statement, Mercer tried to shake the fuzziness from his mind. His body seemed to be floating freely under the sheets. “Did you use my credit card to buy the suit? You look like a million bucks.”
At eighty years old, Harry White was in better shape than he had any right to expect considering his daily alcohol and nicotine intake. He held himself ramrod straight and Mercer saw no sign of the walnut sword cane he’d given his friend for his last birthday. Regarding him through eyes that refused to focus, it appeared to Mercer that Harry’s face was unlined and the silver razor stubble that normally blurred his strong jawline had been shaved clean. Harry took off his hat and the backlighting looked like a halo around his head.
“This place tends to make you look good.” Harry took a long breath, then reached for his cigarette pack before remembering where he was.
“This place? Where are we?”
“Oh, God. Listen, pal, there’s no easy way to do this so I’ll come right out and say it.” Harry fiddled with his hat, procrastinating for another second. “On the cab ride to the airport to come meet you, an eighteen-wheeler jackknifed on the Dulles access road. My taxi hit the truck doing about seventy miles an hour. The cabbie just couldn’t avoid it. He, ah, he made it out okay, but I didn’t.”
Muzzily, Mercer said, “What the hell are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me you’re dead?”
“I’m trying to tell you we’re both dead, Mercer. Whatever you picked up in the Paris sewer was a lot worse than dysentery. The doctors did everything they could for you, but they just couldn’t save you. It’s funny. Considering all the crap you’ve faced in your life I thought you’d go before me. Now I’m glad I could be here for you. When I woke up from the car crash and realized where I was, my guide was a twenty-year-old kid who blamed me for getting him killed in World War Two.”
Mercer couldn’t comprehend what Harry was telling him. He heard the words, but they made no sense. Dead? He was dead. He felt like shit. Wasn’t pain a sign that he was very much alive? His confusion was written across his face and Harry spoke again as if he could read Mercer’s mind. “It doesn’t work the way you think it does. You’ll feel woozy for a while longer. Jesus or Saint Peter will be here in a while to explain everything. I’ll let you get some rest.”
Harry opened a door at the head of Mercer’s bed. A dark streak brushed by him and leapt onto the bed. It was Miguel. He hugged Mercer fiercely. What the. .?
Harry’s saintly demeanor changed in an instant and his voice thundered, “Goddamnit, you little pipsqueak! You were supposed to wait for a few minutes.”
“But he is awake, Mr. Harry!” Miguel squealed, burrowing into Mercer’s arms. “You said I could come in when he was awake.”
“I said you could come in after I was finished talking to him. Oh, well, it’s blown now.” Harry used a handkerchief to wipe pancake makeup from his face. The skin below showed his eight decades of hard living. He moved to the window to open the gauzy curtain that had given the hospital room its heavenly glow. He also shut off a portable tape player that had provided the harp music. Lauren Vanik entered a second later wearing baggy shorts and an oversized Oxford shirt.
“What the hell’s going on?” Mercer looked from one to the other.
“Your friend Harry conned us into letting him pull a practical joke. He said if I didn’t help he’d burn that journal he brought.”
Mercer’s stare fell on Harry, noting the flash of merriment in his old friend’s eyes. “How did you do that thing with the cigarette?”
Harry suddenly looked hurt. “I pull the best joke of my life and you ask me about that old gag? I snubbed the cigarette against a coin I’d palmed.”
“I should have known this was a scam from the very beginning,” Mercer said as the full force of what Harry had just done struck home. This indeed was a caper to beat them all. “If I’d come to in a pool of fire with snakes on my bed and you were wearing a red cape and horns, then I would have believed we were both dead.”
“I thought about that but this building has sprinklers. How are you feeling?”
Mercer ignored Harry’s genuine concern. “I am going to get you for this, you bastard.”
The door opened again and in stepped a man of about forty. Medium height and trim, he had a full dark beard and a bush of thick hair. He wore a white robe and sandals.
“You’re too late, Roddy,” Harry greeted the newcomer. “Miguel already ruined it.”
This time, Mercer couldn’t stop the laughter. Harry had really outdone himself, going so far as to find someone to play a Latin Jesus Christ.
“Good, I feel ridiculous.” The ersatz Jesus pulled the robe over his head. Beneath he wore slacks and a colorful open-necked shirt. He smiled at Mercer. “Welcome back to the living. I am Rodrigo Herrara.”
“Roddy’s father served with me for a time as an engineer,” Harry explained. Before the incident that had claimed his leg in the 1950s, Harry White had been a ship’s captain, first for the U.S. Navy and then on tramp steamers in Asia. “After I got to Panama and learned that you were in the hospital from Captain Vanik, who I might add had the courtesy to meet me at the airport, I looked him up. Roddy’s dad died a few years ago, but he knew about me from his old man. Roddy’s a canal pilot. Or was until recently. He has three kids around Miguel’s age so he and his wife have been looking after him.”
Mercer shook the Panamanian’s hand. “I bet now you’re questioning your father’s choice of friends.”
“Si.” Roddy Herrara smiled.
“Where am I and how long have I been here?”
“You’re in a private room at the Centro Medico Paitilla, Panama’s best hospital,” Lauren answered, giving Mercer more water. “You’ve been here four days. The doctors decided to keep you drugged while they pumped you full of antibiotics because your reactions to the infection were pretty violent. How do you feel?”
“Weak, but not as bad as I should.”
“Because they kept you hydrated they said you’d come out of it in decent shape. Also, you only vomited for eighteen hours, which I guess is pretty short for bacillary dysentery.”
“Considering Paris is the City of Love, why couldn’t you have gotten VD like normal people?” Harry quipped.
Like any child, Miguel intuitively knew he’d heard a bad word. “What is VD?”
Roddy gave a stern answer in Spanish and Miguel fell silent. “They grow up fast enough without your jokes, Harry,” he admonished mildly.
“What do I know about kids?” Harry said, mussing Miguel’s hair. He whispered down to him, “We’ll talk about it later.”
A nurse came in, snapping a terse order to let Mercer sleep. Everyone left
after giving a few words of encouragement until only Lauren remained. She placed her hand over Mercer’s. That’s when he recalled the pleasant aromas from one of his moments of lucidity. Flowers and mint. The floral smell was her perfume. The mint was her toothpaste. For those scents to linger, he guessed she’d spent a great deal of time at his side.
She brushed aside a lock of his fever-brittled hair. “How long did you have symptoms before you got sick?”
“I started fighting it when we were in the tent. That’s why I raced to reach the plane. If I’d collapsed at the lake it would have taken too much time for you and Miguel to go get help.” He looked into her eyes. “But you getting me to a hospital was what really saved my life. Thank you.”
Lauren leaned in to kiss his forehead, her hair like a wave of silk that brushed his cheek. Her skin was flawlessly smooth and her neck so slender it appeared that it couldn’t support her head. Again he found himself fascinated by her bicolored eyes.
“From what Harry’s told me about you, I think you’d have made it without me.” She paused at the door. “When you’re feeling better, we have a lot to talk about. Roddy knows who owns that helicopter.”
Against his doctor’s orders, Mercer checked himself out of the hospital thirty-six hours later. He’d kept down his bland meals and felt his strength return remarkably fast. Because Lauren refused to tell him more of her findings until he was recovered, his desire to get to the truth more than overcame his shaky limbs. She and Harry accompanied him in the short cab ride from the hospital to Harry’s hotel.
The high-rise Caesar Park was located on the beach south of Panama City, a combination executive hotel and tourist destination. Mercer got stares from both groups as his friends led him across the tiled lobby. He could walk all right; it was his pallor that drew attention. True to form, Harry had used Mercer’s credit card to book a three-room suite near the top floor. A maid was cleaning up the countless room service trays when they arrived. Another attendant was restocking the depleted mini-bar.