Beneath a Panamanian Moon

by David Terrenoire

  Later, as we walked along a quiet street far from the raucous bars, Marilyn kissed me so hard it hurt. “You would make a great Panamanian,” she said.

  “Hey, gringo!” Marilyn and I broke apart. We faced six Panamanian men, drunk and sweaty and looking for trouble.

  “Hey, Yanqui! Go home and leave our women!” One of the boys grabbed Marilyn’s arm and jerked her away from me. The others formed a tight circle and started pushing, bouncing me around the circle.

  “Go jerk your pinga, Yanqui. Whatsa matter, you can’t get no chucha at home?”

  One of the boys hit me in the head. Another punched my ribs. Another gave me a Saturday-morning kung fu kick that knocked me against the wall.

  “Come on, queco!” One man moved in closer. He taunted me, urging me to fight. “¡Venga!” He had a knife in his hand and made wide swings at me. On one pass I grabbed his arm, twisted it, then shoved him into another man. Another came in from my right. He had a box cutter and he slashed at me, the blade coming closer with each swing.

  In a blink, the man behind the box cutter crumpled to the pavement. I saw the arc of a tire iron sweep over the heads of the rubbernecking crowd. I knew from the sound that someone would not be dancing in the new year. The crowd scattered. The tire iron swung again and caught one of the men in the ribs. The man whooshed and went down on his knees keening like a rabbit. The other men backed away, their eyes surprised and frightened.

  It was Phil, swinging for the fences. One man, braver than the others or just plain stupid, jabbed at Phil with a knife and Phil spun to the side, a matador before the bull, and brought the tire iron down hard on the boy’s extended forearm. The knife clattered to the street. The man screamed like a girl and staggered back, holding his shattered arm against his chest.

  Marilyn helped me up while Phil held back the crowd. The curious were gone, and in their place were serious men gathering for a new attack. They circled us like wolves in the firelight. The man with the cracked ribs fumbled in his pocket. I saw the white grip of a nickel pistol. Marilyn saw it, too. She calmly stepped into the street and kicked the man in the crotch. He folded in on himself and fell to his knees.

  Phil grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into a stairwell. He sailed the tire iron, end over end, into the center of the mob.

  The three of us sprinted up the steps. At the top Phil picked up a trash can and threw it down the stairwell, slowing the men surging up from the street.

  We were at the top of a hallway that ran straight back to an open corridor. The corridor looked out over a small inner courtyard lit by a single forty-watt bulb. From the edge of the shadows, chained beneath the giant leaves of a banana tree, a dog snapped and snarled and jerked his chain taut as piano wire.

  “Up here,” said Marilyn. She stood on the wooden railing, swung out on a drainpipe and shinnied her way up. At the top she pulled herself over the eave and into darkness.

  “Go,” Phil said. “Go!”

  The crowd flooded out of the hallway. “¡Aquí!” they shouted. I climbed the drainpipe. Marilyn grabbed my arms and pulled me onto the roof.

  I turned to help Phil. I saw his hands appear, then his face. “Damn,” he said, with wonder, “I think someone’s biting my leg.”

  Marilyn picked up an empty wine bottle and looked over the roof’s edge, past Phil. She aimed, dropped the bottle, and brightened when she hit her target with a satisfying bonk. Phil’s legs came up over the side. Another man was behind him. Marilyn kicked him in the ear and he dropped out of sight.

  I helped Phil to his feet and the three of us ran. We jumped over the narrow gaps between two buildings and sprinted to the edge. We had reached the end of the block. There was no place left to go.

  The man falling two floors down to the snarling dog threw a discouraging pall over the crowd and most of them decided there were things they would rather do than spend the night in the hospital with the gunshot drunks. Only four men pursued us. Four determined men who looked surprisingly sober.

  In front of us was gravity and its hard landing on an unforgiving sidewalk. Behind us were four very human men. This was where we would make a stand. Without saying a word, Phil and Marilyn understood. Together we turned to face our attackers.

  The four men closed in.

  Phil looked at me and smiled. “You ready for some fun?” He pushed up his sleeves. Marilyn produced a blade, from where I did not want to guess. I took a stance that I hoped looked discouraging but the four men advanced, their arms wide, moving in for the big body-slamming finale.

  I rubbed my hands against my jeans. My hand found the baseball in my back pocket and I pulled it out. As the men drew closer, I rubbed the ball against my thigh like a pitcher facing an oh-and-three. DiMaggio’s signature smeared. I reared back in the windup dance American boys have watched a million times on the tube.

  The men hesitated, surprised at this ballet of sport in the middle of a mugging. I followed through, my right arm whipped forward, and I prayed it would hit somewhere near the strike zone.

  With the crack of a corked bat, my man bunted the ball with his forehead. His eyes rolled up and he fell out for the inning. The other men stopped. Phil smiled and said, “You just gotta love this shit.” He took a step forward and the men stepped back. The fastball seemed to have dampened their morale. They came to a swift and silent conclusion. The puta had a knife, the big man looked like he was having way too much fun, and the boy, this gringo boy, had just given their compadre a concussion with an all-American dustoff. They turned and ran back the way they came. Marilyn called them names and threw stones at their backs.

  “Man, that was in-fucking-credible! Crack! I didn’t know you played ball.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I never played baseball in my life.” I looked at my hands and they were shaking.

  While Marilyn rifled the man’s pockets, Phil and I found a fire escape. The three of us climbed down into the dark and half an hour later we were sitting in Marilyn’s room, drinking cold beer.

  “Don’t ever take up nursing,” I said, wincing as Marilyn cleaned my wounds with rum.

  “Be still, you big baby.”

  “Man, I’ve never seen anything like that. David and Goliath, man. You dropped him faster than sweatpants in July.”

  “You think he’ll be okay?”

  “Fuck him,” said Marilyn. She reached down into her blouse and came up with the picture of Marilyn Monroe and a small fistful of damp and dirty bills. “All he had was twelve dollars.”

  “Nothing else?” asked Phil.

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even some identification?” Phil said. “I thought I saw a card.”

  “Oh, you mean this?” Marilyn held out a laminated ID.

  Phil took it and turned it over in his hand. “This is interesting, Harp.”

  “What?”

  “He’s one of the trainees at La Boca. I recognize him from the Claymore class.” Phil sat back in the chair and slowly, unconsciously, rubbed his head. “Marilyn?”

  “Yes?” Marilyn listened intently, her concentration so focused it could set kindling on fire.

  “Do you have someone you can stay with?”

  “Yes, I can stay with a friend.”

  “Then go there, and don’t come back here until we know more about this guy and why he was so ready to kill my boy.”

  Marilyn nodded, then got up and began to pack her things into a shopping bag.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Phil and I rode back to La Boca, Phil wheeling the Volvo in and out of traffic like he was at Daytona.

  “Something wrong? You’re driving like you’re pissed off about something.”

  “You mean besides people trying to kill us?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  “Yeah. I’m pissed off. I’m pissed at you.”

  “What for?”

  Phil dodged a bus, a truck full of chickens, and a Toyota filled with an extended family and their three dogs. “We’v
e got twenty-four hours to find out what the fuck is going on here,” he said, “and you’re playing house with a girl you don’t even know.” Phil tried to light a cigarette in the hurricane of the open car but the lighter wouldn’t catch. “Take the wheel,” he said, and without waiting he ducked into the lee of the dashboard, flicking the Zippo as if our lives depended on it sparking flame. “Fucking windproof, my fucking ass,” he said, and tossed both the cigarette and his lighter into the street.

  “Okay,” I said, “you’re right, but Marilyn said she had a message from Smith, that’s the only reason I went.”

  “And the drinking and dancing, that was all part of the mission, right?”

  I didn’t even try to float an excuse.

  “And what’s really fucked up is you’re putting that girl in some serious shit. Have you thought about that?”

  I nodded and said, “Yes. I have.”

  “What was that?” He cupped his hand to his ear. “What did you say?”

  “I said I had. I put her in danger. I know that.”

  “Do you use women like this a lot?”

  I said no, which was a fat lie that stunk up the car.

  “I been thinking about this,” Phil said. “I mean, look at you. It’s not like you’re good-looking or anything, and God knows you don’t have any money.”

  “And your point?”

  “Did you ever think that Marilyn is using you?”

  I laughed. “Right, Marilyn’s using me. What for?”

  Phil said slowly, “I want you to think about this: That guy from La Boca, the guy who jumped you tonight, how did he and his friends know where to find you?”

  “They followed me.”

  “Bullshit. I think it was Marilyn.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “You’ve known her for how long?”

  “Since Friday.”

  Phil laughed and I felt scalded by my own stupidity. “C’mon, man, did you see the way she palmed that dude’s ID, like she didn’t want us to see it?”

  “She forgot about it, that’s all.”

  “Goddamn, Harper, you’re supposed to be the smart one. So you better start being smart or you’ll get my ass killed. And if that happens, my mother will come down here and kick your monkey ass all the way to Peru.”

  I had nothing to say. I was ashamed, and felt like I’d let everyone down. Again.

  “Are you done thinking with your little head now? Can we get back to work?”

  “Okay, Phil,” I said.

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  “Back to the hotel,” I said, “and this time I think we’re going to have to break some stuff.”

  The sheer delight in destruction, the joy in the forward velocity of brutal movement, the happiness of demolition, lit up Phil’s face like a kid at Christmas. “That’s my boy,” he said. “That’s my fucking Monkeyman.” As we approached the hotel, Phil said, “We’ll stash the car and walk in through the bush.”

  “You know a back way inside the compound?”

  “Shit, yeah, I been using it all day. Meat couldn’t guard his ass with a company of Marines and a pair of Kevlar pants.”

  I followed Phil across a sharp field of elephant grass and into the treeline where it was so completely black that I had to keep my hand on Phil’s back so I wouldn’t get lost and stumble about in the darkness, unable to see my own feet. We reached the perimeter of the firing range and from there it was a short walk to the hotel. The lights were on in the office and in the bar at the far end of the hotel by the beach. The sounds of drinking and laughter mixed with the shush of the surf.

  Hamster stopped us halfway through the lobby. “Hey, Monkeyman, we been looking all over for you.” After the past few days, I didn’t think this was good news but Hamster put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Let the guys buy you a drink, for going a round with Mr. Kelly, the son of a bitch.”

  Phil said, “Where is Kelly?”

  “He’s off on some night-training exercise with his handpicked team of Latino assassins,” Hamster said, “and the Colonel’s off kissing some Panamanian official’s chocolate-brown ass. That means we have the whole place to ourselves.”

  “Where are the guests?”

  “Gone,” Hamster said. “Home for New Year’s. Maybe out fucking little brown campesinos. Who gives a rat’s ass? The bar is open!”

  I let Hamster guide me into the bar, with Phil following close behind. When they saw me, the men cheered, beat me on the back, and argued about who was going to pour me my first drink. I was handed a lit Cuban cigar and Dutch asked if I’d play something while Cooper and Hog pushed the upright into the crowded room. I sat down at the piano and played a little blues run, just warming up my fingers. They were all there, all the American trainers: Ice, Hog, Hamster, Dutch, Eubanks, Coop, and a new man they introduced as Thumper.

  Thumper, Ice told me, got his name by being a master with a grenade launcher. Some earn a ridiculous name, others have a ridiculous name thrust upon them. “Tell Thump how you got your name, Monk, go ahead.”

  “Because of his ears,” said Hamster, and everyone laughed, loosened up by free alcohol.

  “Don’t listen to them. They don’t know.” And of course, they did know. I looked at these men who, in less than twenty-four hours, could be overthrowing Panama, men who for one reason or another had joined in a criminal enterprise, and men who had been there the day that I, in Phil’s words, had jumped on a grenade like a monkey jumping on a coconut, but they sensed a story coming and Hog gave me the nod, just to see where it would go.

  “So you tell us, Monkeyman, tell us how you got that name,” he said.

  I played some accompaniment, good background to bullshit, and told Thumper about a woman I knew in D.C., an ambassador’s wife, who wanted to learn how to play the piano. “One night, the wife asked me to stay after, so I did.”

  Ice leaned forward, suddenly interested. I had added sex, a good part of any story, and thrown in the hot conflict of adultery at the same time. “After a few drinks she took off her clothes and said, ‘Play me, John, play me like a Steinway.’”

  “Oh, man,” Thumper said, “‘like a Steinway,’ I like that.”

  Phil tossed back a shot of the Colonel’s sixteen-year-old single malt and said, “Where’s the monkey, man?”

  “Yeah, where’s the monkey?”

  “Here’s the monkey,” I said. “See, the ambassador had a little spider monkey that he treated like his little boy. Dressed it up in little pants, took it to the movies.”

  “No shit,” said Thumper.

  “No shit. And that monkey hated everybody but his daddy. He’d bite you any chance he got. This monkey not only hated strangers,” I said, “he hated music—”

  “All music, Harper, or just yours?” The men laughed, sucked into the story of the man, the music, and the monkey.

  “He hated all music, Ice, but the good thing was, that monkey hid when anyone played the piano so I never saw the little banana-snatcher. Except this one night, when we stopped playing the piano—”

  “And started playing each other,” Hog said.

  “When the monkey came out.” Ominous chords.

  “Oh, no,” said Thumper. “Here it is.”

  “I was naked, standing at attention, so to speak, and this ambassador’s wife is smokin’ hot, crawling around on the bed, begging like a dog for a bone.”

  “Beggin’ for a bone,” said Hamster.

  “And the monkey springs out from under the bed and latches on to the one thing that looks most like lunch—”

  “No,” said Thumper, horrified.

  “Yes.”

  Thumper squealed. “You mean the monkey bit your johnson?

  “And that’s how I got my name,” I said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  I went back to playing idle melodies. “I’ve got the scar to prove it,” I said.

  The bar was silent. Each man who knew the true story passed
a look between them, wondering who was going to ask. It came down to Hamster. He shook his head, sad to be the one to tap an unhappy ending onto such a fine tale, and said, “I’m afraid we gotta call you on that.”

  “It’s not like we want to look at your dick,” said Hog.

  “But we do need some proof,” said Cooper.

  The men, as a unit, agreed. “We need to see it.”

  So I unzipped my pants and pulled out the evidence. There it was, a crescent-shaped, bite-sized scar.

  “Amazing,” said Thumper.

  “Yeah,” said Ice. “A-fucking-mazing. What do you think, Phil?”

  Phil looked at me and said in disgust, “That is some shit.”

  “Are you saying it’s not true?” I tucked the evidence back inside my pants.

  “No,” Phil said, “I’m just wondering how many times you’re going to tell that story just so you can pull out your dick.”

  The men roared, Hamster held his ribs, and Ice nearly fell off his bar stool.

  Hog gave me the nod, telling me the story was now official history, because as any soldier knows, a good story always beats a true story.

  True story: I was a kid playing with my aunt’s dog and I took his toy. He bit me. To this day I have trouble seeing the punishment fit the crime, but the dog saw a hard justice in it. It happened so long ago that, mercifully, I have no memory of the actual bite, but I’ve heard the story a thousand times.

  My mother would tell company, “I looked down and his little shorts were all covered in blood. I thought, oh my God, he’s a eunuch.” Then she’d smile and hug me and say, “But everything works now, doesn’t it, little man?” I hated that story.

  “A piano player with a monkey bite on his dick,” said Thumper, pleased.

  Hog looked at his watch and said, “I hate to break this up, guys, but tomorrow’s a busy day. Time to hit the rack.”

  “What are we doing tomorrow?” Phil asked.

  “We’re off on some sort of sweep through the boonies,” Hamster said. “I don’t know about you guys. Kelly said you, Monk, and Cooper have a special assignment.”