“All of the men who were supposed to be in the sleeper cells, all of the names on the CD you got from your friend on the yacht; there were nearly three hundred of them,” Phil said.
“They were murdered within a week of their training at La Boca,” Choppo said.
“Murdered? But how? Didn’t anyone notice? How can three hundred men just disappear?”
“Because they were expected to disappear, my friend,” Choppo said. “They had taken new identities, new occupations, everything. They were invisible when they left La Boca, and how hard is it for an invisible man to disappear?”
“So the coup was supposed to fail.”
“It was never supposed to have happened.”
“I can’t believe the Colonel knew about this.”
“The Colonel believed the U.S. would rush back in to take over the Canal, and the zone, just like the good old days.”
“But that still leaves the money men, the Boca guests. Where are they?”
Phil rubbed his face with both hands. “We don’t know yet, but there are reports—”
“Unconfirmed,” Choppo said.
“—of a downed helicopter.”
I didn’t think I had a drop left in my body, but at the thought of the entire crew crashing into the jungle, a spike of adrenaline zipped up my spine. “A Black Hawk or a Huey?”
“We don’t know.”
I nearly jumped up, but my leg wouldn’t cooperate. “You warned them, right?”
Phil said, “Yeah, I warned them about an ambush. I didn’t think the bastards would shoot the helicopter down.”
“They shot it down?” Now I was on my feet. “Why didn’t you say that? Do we have rescue teams in the air?”
“Sit down before you hurt yourself, Harp.” Phil wasn’t taking the news any better than I was; he’d just had more time to turn it over and get used to the jagged edge.
“We don’t know what happened. We don’t even know if it was the Huey or not. It could have been the Bell, we don’t know, so don’t get yourself all cranked up, Harp. We did the best we could.”
“I should have thought about them shooting down the Huey when we found those Stingers. Goddammit!” It was my fault. If those boys went home in a box it was because I hadn’t thought it through. “What about the money? Where’s the money?”
Phil glanced at me, just a shift of his eyes. No other muscle moved and yet Choppo caught whatever it was, a spike in the karmic current, a change in the magnetic flux, as it blew across his radar.
“You mean the euros? They’re right here,” Phil said, and pushed the metal strongbox with the toe of his boot.
I tried to cover, but Choppo knew something wasn’t right. “Five million isn’t much money when you consider he killed over three hundred people to get it.”
Choppo shrugged. “More people have been killed for less money.”
I changed the subject, but Choppo still looked at us both with bloodshot eyes and knew he wasn’t being invited to share all of the pie, just the pie that was in this room. “Kelly has a partner,” I said. “A man named Morton.”
“We expect he’s dead, too,” Choppo said. He stretched his fingers wide like a net and said, “Mr. Kelly is eliminating everyone. He has no interest in partners.” Choppo closed a fist and said, “He didn’t think to take care of those who helped him, and that, my friend, is what will bring him down. What is it Bob Dylan says? ‘When you live outside the law you must be honest’?”
I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head. The throbbing bruises were almost a relief compared to the sick feeling I had gnawing away at my stomach. When I thought of all the people who had been murdered, I felt nauseated. And for what? Not justice for what Colombians considered a one-hundred-year-old wrong. Not the misguided patriotism of the Colonel, and his bloody attempt at attracting Washington’s attention. It was all about money, and more money than Kelly could spend in a lifetime. I tried to do the math, wondering just how much money each human life was worth, but I was too tired to add past double digits.
“Where’s the file of the families in Colombia?” I wanted to take that to Smith myself. “Smith’ll make sure that the proper authorities are informed.”
Choppo handed me a manila folder. “Take it. You have earned it. And I want you to take this.” He threw one of the bound packs of euros, more than half a million dollars, on the coffee table.
I stared at it for a long time. I thought of the house I could buy for my father, and the new life I could buy for Kris, and if she’d have me, for myself, and I said, “No, I’d have bad dreams, Choppo.”
Choppo seemed relieved, but not satisfied.
Lauren joined us. “That makes two women you’ve brought here for safety, Mr. Harper. Can we expect any more?”
I shrugged and said, “It’s the life of a musician.”
She pointed at my pant leg, stiff with blood. “Should we look at that?”
Phil jumped up. “Christ, I didn’t even see that.”
“Blinded by the money, huh, amigo,” Choppo said.
“Helizondo shot me,” I said. “It’s okay. Kris patched me up.”
Lauren shook her head. “No. Take off your pants. Choppo, get the first-aid and some towels.”
For the second time that night, I struggled out of my jeans. “Better bring hot water, too, Choppo.”
She unrolled the gauze and said, “This doesn’t look good.”
“Just what every patient wants to hear.”
“The bullet went into the flesh of your thigh in the front, and out the back, causing two wounds, both needing stitches. And I’ll have to clean inside the wound.” She looked up at me and I could see in her eyes that this procedure would be highly unpleasant for both of us.
“I have some Valium upstairs,” she said to Choppo. “And those antibiotics. Get them. Mr. Ramirez, if you would be kind enough to get the cocaine out of that drawer. And bring me that bottle of vodka.”
“Is that for me or you?” I said, and laughed. I was the only one.
“I’m drinking the vodka,” Lauren said. “The coke is for the wound. You do what you must.”
Choppo returned with the Valium. I took three and washed them down with a tumbler of Grey Goose. Lauren knelt between my thighs, in what would ordinarily be an arousing situation, but not when this beautiful woman was concentrating on two bloody holes in my leg. She cleaned the wounds with expensive vodka and sprinkled the cocaine liberally around my thigh.
Choppo, watching over Lauren’s shoulder, tsked and said, “Such a waste.”
When she folded a piece of gauze into the jaws of a hemostat and soaked both in a bowl of peroxide, I looked away. Phil stood over me. I gripped both of his hands and he said, “Hang on.” When Lauren plunged the gauze into the bullet hole, my breath left me and I squeezed as hard as I could. I began to sweat. It seemed to take hours for her to work the gauze around the inside of the wound, but I knew it was only a few seconds. Finally, she was done and I let my muscles relax. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Lauren thread a sewing needle, and I looked up at Phil and said, “Don’t let her cross-stitch a flower on my johnson.”
“We’ll keep it manly. Maybe an eagle,” he said.
I didn’t look back until she was pulling the last suture through. My jaw ached.
“Help him up to bed,” she told Phil and Choppo. “He’ll be a little wobbly for a while.”
Kris was in the shower when they helped me into the bedroom. Unlike the living room, this room had been spared the Rat Pack decor. Oriental rugs softened the polished hardwood, the plaster walls were decorated with art that was both local and good, and the woodwork had the patina of decades-old varnish. The four-poster bed called to me. Phil and Choppo laid me on the mattress. My body, from my eyes down to my toes, was just one big throb of pain. Now that I’d stopped running I wanted to sleep away the new year.
I heard Kris come out of the bathroom. She was wrapped in a towel, and carried with her the nicest aroma of
steam, soap, shampoo, and clean skin.
Phil said, “He’s all yours,” and left, closing the door behind him.
We were alone. She lay down next to me, on her stomach, and traced my bottom lip with her index finger. “You smell like a wet dog,” she said.
“Maybe I should take a bath.”
“Can you?”
“Not by myself.”
Kris started the water and then helped me take off my shirt, socks, and underwear. Naked, my arm around her shoulder, I limped into the bathroom and slowly settled into the shallow water, my wounded leg propped up on the rim of the tub.
Kris started with my face, then lathered up my hair and rinsed it clean, scrubbed my neck and my stomach. She had me lean forward so she could wash my back, and it felt so good I never wanted her to stop. She washed my feet and ankles, my calves, and worked her way up my thighs. Then she washed my tender mercies, the soap, warm water, and her grip bringing one of my few unwounded parts to attention, just to show its gratitude.
“What’s this, John, a scar?”
“Yeah, I was bit by a dog when I was little. Remind me to tell you a better story when I’m conscious.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. It’s kind of cute, like a little grin.”
“That’s because you make him so happy.” Fueled by the vodka and Valium I began singing “All of Me.”
Kris helped me out of the tub, dried me off, led me to bed and eased me onto my back. “Lauren found some clean clothes for us,” she said. “They’re right here.”
Kris dropped her towel, climbed up next to me, her face against my shoulder, and said, “John?”
“Yes, Kris.”
“Tell me everything’s going to be all right.”
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I said, and although I’d been kicked from sea to shining sea and didn’t believe it myself, not for a second, just saying the words made me feel a little better. A little.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The fireworks crackled in my sleep, followed by the boom of cannon. I opened my eyes and saw Kris pulling on her pants.
“John, get up!”
I started to ask why when I heard the answer. Men were in the house. There were gunshots and shouts. There were boots on the stairs.
“Let’s go,” Kris said.
Fear fried off all of the remaining alcohol and Valium. I was moving. “You still have the pistol?”
Kris tossed it on the bed. I scooped it up and checked the magazine. “Go,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you.” I racked a round, stepped into the corridor, and pointed the .45 at the top of the stairs. When I saw the first head come around the corner I fired three times. When it came around again I emptied the magazine.
There’s something about a .45 and the noise it makes, and the brick-sized bullets it fires, and the fist-sized holes it makes in the masonry, that causes a man to rethink his intentions.
I’d bought us a sliver of breathing room and used it to toss a pair of pants out of the window and climb, as naked as a housewife’s backdoor man, down the ivy that clung to the granite wall. Kris was on the lawn. The bay beyond was lit with ships of all kinds going about their peaceful post–New Year’s business.
I joined Kris in the darkness of a feathery mimosa and pulled on the clean pants. I had no shirt, no shoes, and couldn’t expect service in any convenience store in the country, but at least I wouldn’t get arrested. Not for airing my indecency, anyway.
“What now?” Kris said.
I pointed to the wall that separated Choppo’s yard from his neighbor’s. Inside the house we heard more gunshots and saw the muzzle flashes light up windows as if the house were suddenly full of Hollywood paparazzi.
“Come on, we’ll work our way around the front.”
“And do what?” Kris said.
“I don’t know.”
Kris sprinted toward the far wall and I followed, as fast as I could gimp on one good leg. Behind us the French doors burst open. A man shouted for us to stop. Kris made the wall, was up and over, and then it was my turn. I placed my foot on the wall, my hands at the top, but my leg collapsed under me, sending me sprawling on the wet grass. Bullets ripped chunks of stone from the wall and showered me with sand and rock.
Kris came back over the wall and helped me up. The shooter was running toward us. Kris made a stirrup with her hands and hoisted me over the wall and then followed me, the man hard on her heels. I waited. As Kris came up and over, then down onto the grass, her pursuer’s head came over the wall. I cracked him with a stone I’d picked up in the garden. The inscription on the stone read PAZ. The man, peaced out, fell back into Choppo’s yard.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed Kris’s hand and we ran across the neighbor’s lawn, over a gate and out into the dimly lit street. Lights blinked on all across the neighborhood but no one was foolish enough to come outside. Panama City had seen far too much violence for anyone not to know gunfire, even on New Year’s Eve, when they heard it.
We ran across the street toward the water, crouched behind a car and watched the front of Choppo’s house forty meters away. We could look through the gate and see a sedan, its four doors open, parked by the fountain. A pickup truck, its bed topped with a canvas cover, was parked across the entrance to the driveway.
We watched a man drag Choppo out onto the front lawn and force him to his knees. The driver of the truck got out and held an assault rifle on him.
When the men went back into the house, I heard Marilyn scream and then I heard gunshots.
Things were quiet until one of the men came out with Phil and Marilyn, both still alive, both of them with their hands cuffed behind them. Phil staggered and one of the men hit him with a rifle butt. I started to get up, but Kris stopped me. The man pushed Phil and Marilyn into the back seat of the sedan, got in, and the car took off, pausing only for the pickup truck to move aside.
Another man came out the front door, in no apparent hurry. We could see only his silhouette against the house lights as he paused and looked out across the bay, as casually as a homeowner taking in the grand view before going to bed. He turned his back to the bay and lit a cigar. His head was enveloped in smoke for a brief moment before the breeze blew it away. Then he strolled across the lawn to where Choppo was on his knees. He said something to him, too low for us to hear. He pulled a pistol from his belt. Without even a breath he shot Choppo and then shot him three more times as he lay in the damp grass. Four shots that made Kris and I jump with each muzzle flash as if the bullets were entering our own bodies, tearing our flesh, pulverizing our bone, ending our lives.
Again, with no hurry, he pulled a satchel out of the truck cab.
“What is that?”
“It’s a bomb,” I said.
He walked to the front door, pulled a cord that set the satchel smoking, tossed the bag inside and walked out to the truck. Before he got in he hollered into the night, “Harper! You know where to find me. I’ll expect you before sunrise.”
As the truck pulled away the satchel charge blew out the first-floor windows and the house began to burn.
Kris whispered, “That was my father. I just watched my father kill a man in cold blood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I asked Kris if she had her car keys.
Kris shook her head. “They’re in the house.” By this time, the first floor was ablaze with flames licking the window frames.
“Maybe we could steal a car.”
“No,” she said. “I know what to do.”
She opened the Volkswagen and pulled a screwdriver and a pack of cigarettes out of the glove box.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
Kris stopped and stared at me. “Are you going to tell me they’re bad for my health, John?”
I shut up and watched as she stripped away the cellophane and paper from the pack, leaving only the foil. In the dim light from the street Kris popped the hood and stuck her head into the engine compartment
.
The sirens were getting closer.
A Jaguar, long and sleek, cruised past the house, the flames reflected in the waxed finish. The Jaguar slowed.
“It’s Lauren,” I said. I stood up and waved. The car raced up beside us and stopped fast.
Lauren said, “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
“We have to go to La Boca.”
“No, there’s a safe house.” When I didn’t move, she said, “Harper, your work is done. You’ve done more, much more, than anyone expected. Now, get in.”
I thought of Marilyn and Phil and how they’d put their lives in danger to help me. I looked at Kris who was kneeling by the rear of her VW. “You go with her,” I said to Kris. “I’ll take your car.”
“And leave you stranded in the street? No way.”
“Kris, please, go with Lauren.”
Kris took her head out of the back end of the VW and said to Lauren, “Funny, you don’t look like Paul Henreid.”
“What’s she talking about?”
“A movie. Casablanca.”
Whether Lauren got it or not, she didn’t say. But apparently it was enough. She said to Kris, “Can you start that thing?”
Kris said she could. “Good.” Lauren handed me a pistol, a .380. “I think you’re crazy. Both of you.” Lauren let off the brake and said, “I’ll tell Smith where he can find you,” and took off.
“I think I’ve got it,” Kris said. “Get in and make sure it’s not in gear.” A second later, the starter motor turned and the engine rattled to life. Kris jumped into the passenger seat and as we pulled away I said, “Where did you learn that?”
“You’re not my first boyfriend, John.”
“Am I your boyfriend? I like the sound of that.”
We crept through the neighborhood with our headlights off. There were lights in every window as Choppo’s house brightened the black water of the bay. At one street we pulled to the curb and let police cars and a fire engine fly by, their lights flashing in the trees and their sirens cutting through the peaceful façade of this first morning of a brand-new year.
Beneath a Panamanian Moon Page 26