Beneath a Panamanian Moon

by David Terrenoire

  “I loved that big head, man, you could swing from those ears all fucking day. But what I really wanted was a crack at Snow White.”

  “Why Snow White?”

  Phil looked at me and said, “Living with those dwarves, you know she’s got pussy that ain’t never been touched.”

  He made me laugh, he did, and then the picture of Ren sitting behind the wheel of his car jumped into my head.

  Phil put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s done. It don’t mean shit.”

  A 1959 red Cadillac convertible, top down, fins up, pulled to the curb and Phil opened the door. I got into the back seat and Phil sat up front.

  The man behind the wheel was easily in his sixties, maybe older, his face lined by a lifetime in the sun. His hair was as black and shiny as the leather seats and his white shirt was open at the collar, revealing a small gold crucifix at his throat.

  “¿Choppo, qué pasa?”

  “It’s been a long time, my friend. I thought you were dead.”

  “I was. But I came back just to sleep with your woman.”

  “Lauren will eat you alive. It takes a macho hombre to ride her. Not a Chicano pendejo with a pinga like dis.” The man laughed and waggled his little finger.

  “I need a favor, Choppo.”

  “Last time I did you a favor I pissed blood for a week.”

  “You ever figure out which one of those quecos hit you with a bat?”

  “No,” he said with a philosophical wave of his hand. “So I had to kill them both. Who’s your friend?”

  “A piano player.”

  “Bueno. The world can always use more music.” Choppo turned on the radio and a Panamanian folk song boomed from the Cadillac’s speakers. As close as I could figure out the lyrics, the song was about a fisherman who shot his wife. That’s what passes for a love song in Panama.

  In minutes the Cadillac had cruised out of the crowded streets and into the wide, tree-lined boulevards of the old-money neighborhoods. A lot of new wealth, from drugs and international banking, poured into Panama every year and some of it washed up here, on the old estates. And like aging divas, their baroque charms were in need of constant cash and attention. Through the gates of the high walls I glimpsed armies of Panamanian men scurrying across the yards, wrapping up a day of attending to mansions that were as old and corrupt as the country itself.

  Choppo stopped the Cadillac and we waited while an armed man nodded and let us pass. Once through the gates we circled a stone fountain and parked in front of the house. Inside, stairways curved around the foyer and up to the second floor. Double doors in the center opened onto a large living room with windows that looked out across the water. Boats, their running lights sparks against the gray, decorated the bay.

  Phil and Choppo talked old times and I wandered the room taking in the artwork. Tiny pre-Colombian men with enormous erections were carefully displayed in a long glass case. Above the case was a painting of J.F.K., Martin Luther King, Jr., and Elvis. The three men looked off toward some brighter, less-dead future just out of frame.

  The furniture—leather, chrome, and glass—was gathered around a massive ebony table and every seat had a view of the bay and the emptiness beyond.

  I wandered over to look at a framed photograph on the far wall. A very young Choppo stood smiling for the camera with another man. Both men were dressed in army fatigues and both were smoking hand-rolled cigars.

  Choppo came up behind me. “You recognize him?”

  “It looks like Fidel.”

  “It is Fidel. He and I were good friends once, before he got involved in politics. Politics will ruin a man faster than a cheating woman.”

  “I might not have recognized him without the cigar.”

  “That is not a cigar, amigo.”

  “Oh.”

  “It gets boring in the jungle. A little smoke makes it easier to change history, no?”

  A young woman came in with a tray. She set the tray on the table and handed each of us a drink before perching herself on the edge of an Eames chair.

  Choppo took a seat in the center of the sofa, on stage, and said, “Ah, it is very nice to have you both in my home. Now, what can I do for you, Felipe?”

  Phil said, “A friend of ours was blown up today.”

  Choppo shrugged. “Ah. I see. But grief is an excellent reason to drink. Please.”

  Phil and I both sipped our drinks. It was straight vodka, as cold as the Arctic, and it went down like ice water.

  Choppo drank his off in one swallow and settled back on the couch, his arms spread out over the back, a big smile across his face. Even death didn’t seem to dent Choppo’s good humor. “Dígame,” he said.

  “I followed a truck from La Boca to the warehouse district,” Phil said.

  “And what was in the truck, my friend?”

  “Weapons. Plastic explosives.”

  “A nasty cargo.”

  “I also found bags of nieve blanca.”

  “It could have been rice flour, as it was with my friend Manuel.”

  “You know it wasn’t.”

  “Perhaps if you give me the exact location of this warehouse, I could tell you more.”

  Phil gave him the address. Choppo got up from the sofa and said, “Let me make a phone call, I’ll see what I can find out.”

  When Choppo had gone, the woman opened the patio doors and let the night breeze fill the room. She also let the breeze billow her skirt, and blow through her hair; she was an actress on a very small stage letting us enjoy the silent performance. When it was over, she said to me, “See me before you leave,” and walked onto the patio.

  I whispered to Phil, “What did you just do?”

  “I traded a warehouse full of cocaine for help with the locals. Why? You got something better?”

  Choppo returned to the living room and sat down. “I found out some very interesting things. First, the Guardia Nacional is looking for both of you. I told them you were with me and I assured them you had nothing to do with the explosion. They believed me. They know me as a man of integrity in a country where integrity is a rare commodity.”

  “What about the cocaine?”

  Choppo tilted his head and shrugged wearily. “Your innocence has its price.”

  “And the warehouse will be empty before morning,” I said.

  “One way or the other.” He was too weary to smile, yes, but he could still be amused. “Influence also has its price,” he said, “even in Washington.”

  “Yes, it does,” I said.

  “It’s best not to go through life with your head in the clouds, young man. In Panama, you could trip and fall.”

  Choppo called for a taxi to pick us up, and while we waited, I went outside where the woman sat casually in a butterfly chair, smoking a cigarette.

  “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. She looked toward the water. “Would you like to see our view, Mr. Harper?”

  I said I would, and followed her into the yard, a thick carpet of Bermuda grass that stretched to a far seawall. We walked out to where the view broadened and we could see beyond the bay where freighters and cruise ships moved leisurely in that space between water and sky, and a black curtain full of lightning drew across the stars.

  “You’ll help us stop them,” she said.

  “Stop who?”

  “The men at La Boca.”

  “From doing what? That’s what I don’t know. What are they trying to do?”

  She turned her face to me, the distant lightning reflected in her eyes. The wind blew back her hair and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. “They are trying to steal my country,” she said.

  “But how, how am I going to stop them?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t think we have much time.”

  Phil called me from the house.

  Her words stirred up a deep green fear, and where I looked for encouragement, all I saw was sharp dark
ness littered with hard questions. Now, it wasn’t enough for me to know who the guests were; now I had to know the students. And it wasn’t enough for me to deliver information, now I had to stop an army.

  “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Harper. I had heard so much about you from our mutual friend, Mr. Smith. He was very complimentary, but he did not do your bravery justice.” She allowed me to take her hand and I was surprised by the strength of her grip.

  “So you made the recordings.”

  She nodded. “And I will continue to help in any way I can,” she said, “but I’m being watched and I must be careful.”

  Phil called me again and said the taxi was here. I told Lauren that I would do my best and she assured me that would be enough. I did not share her confidence.

  We took the taxi back to where Phil had parked the car he’d stolen from La Boca, an old beetle-backed Volvo sedan whose paint had dulled from years in the salt air. Panama has a way of taking the shine off everything. We got in and buckled up just as the nine o’clock rain swept over us, turning the streets into fast-moving rivers. Phil turned on the wipers and they whapped away the water in thick waves.

  “Hey, Phil?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you get your nickname? Mad Dog?”

  Phil took his hand off the wheel and turned his arm over so I could see the tattoo at the soft crook of the elbow. The tattoo was of a bulldog holding a human skull in its jaws.

  “See that?”

  “Yeah. How come the eyes look like that?”

  “I shot off part of the tat with a needle. Makes him look a little crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “You mean like drugs?”

  “Yeah, like drugs.”

  “You were a junkie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met a junkie before.”

  “Fucking figures.” Phil reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a joint the size of a Cuban Monte Cristo.

  “What’s this for?”

  “It’s from Choppo. He said it was a gift for the man who would change history.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The rain stopped by the time Phil dropped me off at the hotel. I crept past the lobby and up to the third floor. The corridor was empty, and I unlocked my door and fell across my bed. When a knock woke me up, it was morning and I was still in my damp clothes, unshaven, with a sore jaw and the stink of burned hair. It was Tuesday, one day before New Year’s Eve.

  Eubanks, the little clerk, stuck his head in the door and said, “Kelly wants to see you. He got a phone call from the State Department wondering where the fuck you were.”

  “Okay.” I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. Part of it was extra crispy. “How do I look?”

  The kid squinted at me. “You know,” he said, turning his head this way and that, “nobody’s face is symmetrical.”

  “Thanks.” He was about to go when I said, “Eubanks, you like to get high?”

  Eubanks raised his eyebrows in appreciation and gave me his best surfer, “Yah.”

  I pulled the cigar-sized doobie from my shirt pocket and said, “I need a favor.”

  Eubanks was transfixed. “Sure, dude.”

  “I need the password to Kelly’s computer.”

  Eubanks blinked. “But that’s classified.”

  “I have a clearance,” I said. “Hell, I’ve played for the president.”

  Eubanks took the joint, put it into his pocket, and whispered, “It’s ‘Osama.’”

  “Osama?”

  “Yeah. Osama. Weird, huh?”

  I thanked Eubanks and went downstairs to Kelly’s office. The door was open and I found him standing at his window, watching the whitecaps on the black water. “Ah, Harper, our newest star,” he said, way too friendly for my comfort. “I was just discussing today’s continuing adventure with the State Department. Have a seat.”

  I sat on the edge of his visitor’s chair.

  Kelly stayed at the window. “Seems like every place you show up, someone gets killed. Not a good way to keep friends, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Let’s talk.” Kelly sat on the edge of his desk, trying to look like my uncle, trying to help out this fine young man who just seemed to draw mayhem the way shit draws flies. Kelly steepled his fingers, and held them to his chin, as if he’d just had an epiphany. “You know, Harper, the Panamanian authorities don’t like it when North Americans get killed on their watch. It makes them look slack. It tarnishes their machismo. And when they start looking for someone to blame, they particularly like to blame other North Americans. They find solace in the circularity of the thing, and it gives them closure. Do you comprende?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, the sticky part of all this is, I have to give them someone. So I was thinking of your friend. What do you think?”

  “Phil didn’t have anything to do with Ren’s murder.”

  “Now, why would you mention Phil Ramirez? I was under the impression he’d been here all day yesterday. Why, the man Cooper swears to it.”

  I tried backing away, hoping to cover. “I just assumed, when you said friend—”

  “Don’t lie!” Kelly was up and standing over me, forcing me against the chair.

  “I’m not.”

  “Would you know the truth if you heard it, you little shit?”

  “I know the truth when I see it, and Ren was murdered by your men, Kelly, your men at that warehouse. I know because I recognized them.”

  Again, I was too slow and too stupid to jump out of the way. His fist came across time zones, catching me square at twelve o’clock. I felt the snap more than I heard it, as my nose broke and I went backward, heels up, taking the chair with me, novas exploding inside my skull. When I could see, Kelly was standing over me, his fists ready to hit me again. I got even by bleeding all over his buffed parquet.

  “Get up,” he said.

  I did.

  “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a Panamanian prison, I suggest you give up your friend. You and I both know he was there. Wasn’t he, Harper?”

  “Doe. I wuz alode.”

  This time I stepped out of the way of Kelly’s fist. When it went by my ear I turned into his exposed gut and drove my elbow hard into his solar plexus. He rewarded me with a satisfying “oof.”

  But he recovered too quickly and before I could spin out of reach he closed his forearm around my neck and squeezed. I pushed and we stumbled backward against his desk. The phone, a jar of sharpened pencils, and a stapler crashed to the floor. I clawed at his forearm as my vision collapsed. I was on my way to blacking out, and I knew if I did, I’d never regain consciousness.

  In a move of sheer animal desperation, I drove my thumb backward, aiming for his eye. I missed, but hit him hard enough to cripple my thumb and close enough to his eye for him to loosen his grip. When he did, I dropped to the floor and rolled under his desk.

  He fell across the top of the desk, reaching for me, his face red as a ripe tomato, and I hit him with the first thing I could pick up. Swinging the Swingline like a hammer, I drove a staple cleanly into Kelly’s forehead. His face squinched in pain and shock, and then he came at me again, blind with rage, and I drove another staple between his eyes, this time smacking the stapler with the heel of my hand. He bellowed like a stuck bull and pulled away far enough for me to back against the wall, the desk still between us, and when he reached across the desk to grab me again, I rolled over to the window and sprang to my feet, my fists up, ready for round two. I’d had enough.

  Kelly came at me, blocked several of my best jabs with his forearms, and then barreled into my chest with his shoulder, raising me off my feet. I grabbed his head and held on, twisting like a rodeo rider trying to bring down a running calf. We fell to the floor. I tried to roll away but he pounced on me, my back to the floor. He gripped one of the sharpened pencils in his fist and was driving the point toward the center of my eye.

 
I held his wrist, but he was stronger, much stronger, and as he put his weight behind the graphite tip, it quivered closer to my eyeball. We hung like that, each grunting with exertion. My arms shook, but I refused to die by a number 2 Ticonderoga. It would be too much like my SATs.

  Blood from Kelly’s forehead dripped onto my face and I began to pray that he’d stroke out before he could kill me. Just as the equilibrium changed and Kelly’s weight began to overcome the stamina of my arms, Eubanks knocked on the office door frame. He looked from me to Kelly, saw the murder in Kelly’s eyes, the blood on my face, and the pencil. Eubanks gulped.

  Kelly was remarkably cool, considering. He looked at Eubanks and said, “Well?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Kelly, sir, but there’s a Panamanian here, says he’s with the Department of Tourism.”

  “What the hell does he want?”

  “He wants to see Mr. Harper, sir.”

  Kelly straightened and rolled off me. I stood up, my rage evaporating, but not my caution. He had hit me twice by surprise and it wasn’t going to happen again.

  Kelly pulled the staple from his forehead and said, “This isn’t finished, Harper. Not by a long shot.”

  “Any time, old man.”

  “Get the fuck out of my sight. You make me want to puke.”

  I left the office. Eubanks handed me a wet paper towel and I held it to my nose. I pictured my face with a busted beak and thought it might give me a little character. I try to look on the bright side.

  Outside, waiting by his car, was Marquez, the man who had talked to me the night Zorro was murdered. “Good afternoon, Señor Harper. Can you come with me?”

  We walked into the garden, away from the buildings and anyone who might want to listen in on the conversation.

  “Looks like you’re running out of friends, señor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you all right?” He examined my nose the way another man might examine a painting. “That looks like it hurts.”

  “I’m okay. What’s this about?”

  “About yesterday afternoon at the warehouses.”

  “The explosion?”

  “Yes, the explosion. For some reason, the police seem to have lost interest in talking to you, an eyewitness. Do you have any idea why that would be?”