by Moulton, CD
“They found something. A perfume bottle. It was for a very expensive perfume. Miss Lum has brought it and the report (he waved some legal-looking papers) to me at just before noon.” Judi had a stern look. She nodded and said, “We have authenticated this find as well as such evidence can be authenticated. The chain of evidence is unbroken from the finding of that evidence to this moment. It will remain unbroken. It is damning evidence against which no one can escape.
“Continue, please, Dr. Geraldo. I will not interrupt again unless it becomes necessary.”
“The police know how to handle what may be evidence. The bottle had not been touched except with tongs to place it into the evidence container. As I am equipped for study of evidence better than are they I would perform various tests, though they found a fingerprint on the bottle. (Ann gasped).
“I found venom of a water snake found only in certain restricted Australian waters. It is a unique toxin. It is easy to trace if one knows what to look for. I was engaged in looking for exactly that poison produced by Pelamis platurus at the time. It was found in trace amounts inside that bottle. Combined with the fact that only one of you would use that perfume – only one of you – and that one with a matching print, well you know the obvious conclusion that must be reached.”
Ann sank down to the wharf and groaned.
“Would you care to tell me why?” Romero asked.
“She found an article in a magazine that said I was suspected of killing my husband. I could claim I wasn’t the one it referred to except the reporter had a picture of me that was taken when I was changing wigs. It was taken on a hotel surveillance camera and showed the patch of missing hair I got at that fire. I’ve been traveling ever since. The Australian police will be very quiet about it until I’m back in their jurisdiction, then will arrest me. I hoped to be able to have a graft that would hide the spot, but there was never a place I could do it.
“I went to a doctor in Acapulco. He said he could do the operation for ten thousand dollars. I was to leave the tour at Nicaragua on a pretense and go there.
“Sandy found the article and said the picture looked just like me. She and Ed were together. I said it definitely wasn’t me, although my husband did die in a fire and the picture looked like me in some ways. I wore wigs because of chemotherapy that left several patches of hair that never grew back. It would be easy to show them the patches weren’t at all like that picture and that it was easy to tell when hair just fell out and when it wasn’t growing on a scar.
“We agreed that I would do that, but I said I was humiliated enough that anyone would think I would kill anyone. I would show them my hair loss in private.
“Ed was with Bob and Ell so we agreed that I would come to their room later, when he went back. I got the things together – I carried the venom because ... because you never know when you might need something like that. I never realized you could trace venom to the exact snake. When I learned that I knew I’d be caught unless I could direct attention elsewhere. I thought I had. I hadn’t. It’s all over.
“I do love you, Chet. I would never ever do anything to hurt you. Ever. Did you know about my husband?”
“No. I suspected there was something, but I didn’t know what it was.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,” Romero said. “It’s a sad affair.”
She stood up, sighed, then suddenly ran to the edge of the wharf, but Judi grabbed her before she got there.
“Not this time. They’ll just send you back to Australia so they won’t have to go to the expense of housing you for the next twenty years, then send you back,” Judi said. “Clint always arranges that sort of thing. Panamá has enough to pay for without millions of dollars for foreigners to be incarcerated. We don’t want to be bothered in Costa Rica, either. (She rolled her eyes at Clint where the others couldn’t see. She had almost forgotten she was supposed to be from Costa Rica.)”
“Okay. It was stupid. I would end up in the water and I’m a good swimmer. I just didn’t think.”
“Romero, why not arrange for her deportation to Australia and arrest her in the morning?” Clint asked. “She can’t go anywhere here. Might as well stay at the party and at the hotel at her own expense tonight. It’s all out in the open so maybe the rest of us can have a good night.”
“You’re a really decent person, aren’t you?” she asked. “I won’t run anymore. It’s almost a relief to know I won’t have to anymore. Maybe I’ll enjoy the party, too.”
It turned into a good night.
Back to Bocas
“Well, back to Bocas, I guess,” Judi said. “It’s been a very good week for me. I really do like Puerto Armuelles.”
“I liked it so much I moved here,” Hank, who had returned the day before, said. “It’s too quiet for a lot of people, but it’s a good place to be.”
“I was surprised at how that bunch accepted Ann so much better after they knew than they did before,” Judi said. “She was here, not even arrested, for almost two days. Chet turned out to be a nice enough guy. I’ll bet he never marries for a free ride again!”
“Surfers are like that,” Dave said. “You don’t try to hide something and they’ll get along. Wade and Marty spent a lot of their time at El Critico. Ell and Nan are fun people. Regular surfer girls. All of them like to party.”
“Well, they’re going to stay the final week here, then finish the tour. Ann insisted that Chet stay with them. She said she had him so cornered for so long she’s surprised he didn’t kill her! She just didn’t know what else to do. She was on the run and no one there knew it. She was acting like a fool. She was terrified he’d find another woman,” Clint noted. “She talked with me for a couple of hours. Unloading.
“Her first husband was for money and station so she couldn’t fault Chet for doing the same thing to her. She’s going to try to file a self-defense rendering in court. Her first husband did beat her up once, but it was because he caught her with another younger man. It won’t float.
“I suppose I ought to go back to Bocas, but there’ll be something else. I’m getting lazy.”
“I’m going back to Cusapín for a week or so. Come along,” Dave suggested.
Clint thought about it. It sounded good to him!
“Okay. Coming along, Jude?”
“Why not? It’s the only place I like on the order of here and Bocas.”
“There’s always David,” Hank suggested.
“It’s a city. I’m getting spoiled ... but it’s not like a city. It’s a big city that’s like a puebla.”
They chatted awhile, then decided to decide where to go tomorrow.
Clint Faraday
#19
A Moving Target
© 2011 & 2013 by C. D. Moulton
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental unless otherwise stated.
Light planes are being shot down over the comarca. Clint is called because he can get information others can’t. What’s behind it? What do the Indios have that can shoot down a plane three kilometers away? What is it about?
Contents
A Call
Method
Questions
How?
Who?
What?
Cooperation
Home Again
A Moving Target
A Call
Clint Faraday, retired PI from Florida, USA, tied his boat to the deck of his Isla Colón home and helped his attractive next door neighbor, Judi Lum, step onto the deck. They just arrived back from a visit to Cusapín, a paradise puebla on a peninsula into the Caribbean to the southeast of Isla Colón. They unloaded the gifts and special foods, then their gear. Judi said she needed a long shower, then was going to loaf around for the rest of the day. Clint said that sounded like a plan to him!
He cleaned the boat, then went in to take the shower he’d promised himself. That done, he checked his new e-mail to find fifty some-odd ad
vertisements he deleted and four messages he answered. He then got a cold Balboa from the ‘fridge and laid in his hammock to enjoy it.
The phone rang. He ignored it.
His cellular buzzed. He sighed and looked at the caller ID. Capt. Genio Morales, Panamá City Policía Nacional?
“Yo, Genius! Como esta?”
“Bien, gracias, Clint. I have a bit of a problem here that you might be able to help with.
“A light plane landed at Albrook yesterday with four bullet holes in it. About an hour ago a plane was shot down – the pilot radioed that he was under fire – in Darien.
“It’s been awhile since we had anything like this. The only thing we can connect is that they were both blue and white and both were pontoon planes. It’s not a terrorist thing. We don’t have that here. I want to request, officially, that you aid us in this. Most of the people there are Indigenos. They won’t talk with the police since the trouble about their land. They’ll talk to you.”
Clint thought a minute, then said he’d call back in about an hour. He rang off and called Manolo, an undercover agent for Interpol et al. He said it wasn’t anything to do with drugs or art theft that he’d received any information about.
Clint thanked him, sat back to think, then called Genio to say he’d be in Panamá City early in the morning.
Method
It was a bit drizzly when he landed at Albrook in Panamá City, but would clear up soon. This time of the year had some rain, but the really wet season was a month away. Genio was waiting to take him to a briefing at the station. He was filled in on what they knew to this point, which wasn’t much more than he’d reported on the phone. Clint would be given transportation anywhere he wanted to go. At the briefing, he was told that there were suggestions that it was about some big European company wanting to dispossess the Indios from a part of the comarca in Darien. The present rumor was that there were some corrupt politicians – something that Panamá has more than its share of – wanting to grab the land on a ruse, but no one knew what was behind it. Other than the fact it was beautiful land, which is also something Panamá has in vast quantity, no one knew what was found there. Those were no developers, they were a company or two.
“So. Why call me? – the truth. I don’t play games.”
“You can get those people to talk. We can’t,” Genio explained. “The Indios, if they know, will tell you anything you want to know. After all, you are declared a Ngobe!”
Clint had the great honor of two chiefs in the comarcas in Bocas del Toro declaring him a Ngobe. By law, he was now a native Panamanian Indio.
“You don’t have a clue? Can’t you trace who owns those planes and find out?”
“The first one is privately owned by a man in the timber business, from Brasil. The second one was a tourist from France who isn’t associated with any company. The Brasilian has no business interest here, other than using the canal – which isn’t something he’s directly involved in.”
“Then I don’t get it. Is someone shooting down any blue and white light plane that flies over?”
“That’s more or less what we’re afraid of. Someone who shoots down any light plane until he gets the one he wants. There are enough nuts here without something like this.”
“All I can do is try, which I will. You can take me to the place they were shot at. We’ll have that much!”
“Except they were a hundred four kilometers apart, give or take ten.”
“Crap!”
“Uh-huh. I won’t blame you if you tell us to stick it.”
“Not my nature! I’m curious. I like the Indios. It’s a place I know very little about. I’ll go.”
The chopper dropped Clint and his baggage off in a little village called Las Piedras. It was named after several large boulders, almost stone hills, near a small river. It was lush rain forests, at that altitude. He could expect a lot of rain.
One of his favorite gripes was tourists who came to a tropical rain forest and complained because it rained so much. People can be unbelievably stupid. He was apt to tell them they could go back to wherever they came from and it wouldn’t be a problem.
He was greeted a bit formally. No one here knew him, so he spoke in Ngobere. It wasn’t the same dialect as these, but some of them knew the language. He said his name was Clint Faraday and that he was Ngobe. A woman said she had heard of him. He would be welcomed here – and did he know a man called Obilio Acosta?
“Jon. (Yes. Pronounced ‘Hone’)”
“He is a cousin on my mother’s side. He is second chief in a place in the comarca.”
“Yes, I know. Cusapín. I know him and Silvio very well. Silvio is one who declared me Ngobe. Cusapín is paradise.”
“Much of Panamá is paradise. I am Nilsa. This is Armando, this is Elena and this is my man, William. You wish to stay here?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m trying to find some information about the planes being shot down and that may be elsewhere.”
She nodded. “That information is known only by rumor and is here as much as anywhere else in the comarca. You are welcome in my house.”
Clint thanked her and took his pack to the house, which looked like a hut from outside, but was comfortable and clean inside. They had running water because they piped it from the mountain with PVC pipe. People were often surprised to find the Indios had running water in their houses. They had it before the white man came. Where the PVC was laid now had once had bamboo split down the middle and made into a trough that delivered the waters, though now it was in all the houses by direct pipeline and before they carried it in buckets from a central container.
Clint was full of such facts and was constantly impressed by the practical intelligence of the people.
Clint then went with Armando to walk around the village, meeting everyone. Several knew about him from friends when they went into the cities to sell vegetables and products from the comarca. They chatted about anything that came up, mostly about friends and distant family members in other places that Clint had visited. He got a little information, mostly, as Nilsa said, rumor. He did learn that two city-type men came several times, but they didn’t have much to discuss here. That meant it was somewhere else. Clint learned that most of the talk about those idiots trying to steal the land was from a village to the east.
Clint stayed there for two nights, then called Genio to have the chopper take him farther east. He didn’t know anything more than that it was located east of the village where he was staying. It wasn’t close, or these people would know more.
He went on, having made twenty six more friends.
About sixty kilometers farther east, they came to another village about the same size as Las Piedras. This one was called The Green Water (in translation). There was a small lake with alga that made the water green. It was almost a kilometer away and the people didn’t go there. It was simply a landmark. Still water was usually full of parasites, so they would avoid it.
They were met with open suspicion by some. That told Clint he was close to where he would find information. These were not a suspicious people, generally. If there was any suspicion of strangers it would be with damned good reason.
Clint mentioned Nilsa and William. Most knew them knew of them and their village. If Clint came because they sent him they knew he was a good man.
Clint said, “They did not send me. They only said that the information I seek is to the east. This is to the east of Las Piedras.” He wouldn’t lie to these people. Ever. Not even by omission.
“You know them well?” Generoso, an old man, asked.
“I stayed in their home the past two nights.”
“Then it is the same.
“Do you know a man called Silvio?”
“Several. Cusapín?”
“Yes.”
“He declared me Ngobe, much to my pride.”
He nodded. “Then you will stay with me. I have room. Come.”
Clint took his pack from the chopper, it left a
nd he went with Roso to a comfortable house, much like William’s. He had Genio send some things on the chopper he presented to Roso. Practical things for the house. Knives and spoons and coffee mugs and some stainless steel pans and one silly gift for friendship. A Panamá hat. It would be placed on a peg on the wall. If Roso ever went to another village or a city, he would wear it. There was absolutely no other use for such a thing.
That is a strange custom among several groups of Indios. Roso was delighted with the gift for the idea it conveyed. Clint was totally accepted. If he didn’t fully accept Roso as a friend he wouldn’t have presented the hat, just the useful objects.
They spent the rest of the day with Clint getting acquainted with the people. There were forty three people, he met them all. He told them frankly why he was there. They would meet tomorrow with the ones who knew anything about it to discuss what Clint would do with any information they gave. Clint understood that the law of the cities and most of Panamá was not the law on the comarca. They would want to be sure no officials from outside would come there to cause trouble. That was less than no problem with Clint Faraday. He was among the first who didn’t want intrusion by government on the comarcas.
Ronaldo, a young man, came to Roso’s with several others. He had a guitar that looked familiar. Clint asked about it.
“I was north at Las Cañas. There was a gringo there to study plants. He had it and learned that I played some, so I played some songs. He was once a rock guitarist and said I have the touch. I must practice a lot to be so good. I told him I couldn’t practice much because four of us had one guitar to use. He gave it to me.
“He is a crazy gringo, but crazy in a good way.”
“Dave?”
“Yes! You know him?”
“He is a close friend. He lives in Bocas some and in David some. He goes all over the country, studying orchids.”