Beneath a Panamanian Moon (25 page)

“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.”

“A special assignment, huh? You don't know what it is?”

“Something to do with a big New Year's celebration they have planned, that's all I know.”

“Yeah,” Ice said, “so while you're at a party, we'll be humping the bush for New Year's Eve, ain't that some shit.”

As we all climbed the stairs to the third floor, Thumper said, “I got just one question. What happened to the monkey? I mean, the one that bit your dick?”

“I made him into a hat,” I said. And on the laughter of half a dozen men who were on the cusp of a revolution, we told each other good night.

Phil and I agreed to a few hours' sleep and then, when everything was quiet, we would search the hotel for the student files and whatever else would help us stop the Colonel's big New Year's bash. I stepped into my room, not turning on the light, preferring to undress in the dark.

When I slipped into bed, the sheets were warm, and when I felt her flesh against me I nearly jumped to the ceiling.

Kris laughed. “I take it you don't often come home to find a woman in your bed.”

“Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Let's see if I can jump-start that thing,” she said, and slipped her head under the covers.

I pulled her up and said, “No, Kris, I don't want you to do that,” which was another big fat lie I told that night. “You have to get out of here. If your father catches us—”

“He's out playing soldier,” Kris said, and encouraged that part of me that thinks only of the present.

I stopped her again. It was not an easy thing to do. “Kris, please, I can't. I have things I have to do, things I have to do in a few hours, and I need some sleep.”

Kris sat up in bed as if I'd struck her. She was stunning in moonlight, even more beautiful than at the beach, and if Phil hadn't just given me a lecture on my responsibilities, I would have given in. “You need to go back to your apartment, Kris. Please.”

“It's that girl,” she said, as if just catching on. “You were out fucking that girl.”

“Which girl?”

Kris got out of bed, found her shorts and pulled them on. “The girl on the beach. The one you used to take pictures of the guests—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don't deny it.” She slipped on her shirt. “It's why I came outside. None of the men were looking at her. Christ, John, I've seen boys with better chests. So I gave you a hand.” She slipped on her sandals. “And now you're fucking her.”

“I'm not.”

“I don't care, John. I just don't want an STD. Did you wear a condom, John?”

“Kris, nothing happened.”

“I don't know why I expected you to be different. I just hope you didn't tell her anything secret.”

“What?”

“That girl, what's her name? Marilyn. She works for my father, John.”

That jerked me up. “What?”

“That girl works for my father.” Kris opened the door, and before slipping into the hallway she said, “Well, John, I guess it's you who got fucked for a change. Hope it felt good.” And she closed the door on my spiking paranoia.

*   *   *

Phil came back to the hotel and assured us that Meat was asleep at the guardhouse. “Fucking bastard should be shot.” He looked at me and said, “You look like someone ran over your dog.”

“I'm fine. Now let's do this so I can get the fuck out of this miserable fucking country.”

“Cranky,” Cooper said.

“Someone didn't get enough sleep,” Phil said.

We moved silently through the hotel. I picked up the phone in the office. No tone.

“They're working on the lines,” Cooper said.

“Convenient, isn't it?”

We broke into Kelly's office. I turned on his computer and typed the password “Osama.”

The files opened.

Cooper was amazed. “How did you do that?”

“By staying away from drugs,” I said. I searched everywhere, but just as with his paper files, these held nothing more interesting than how many stuffed quail it took to feed the guests on Thanksgiving.

Phil was getting impatient. “When do we get to break things?”

“Why not start with the Colonel's files? You'll need a crowbar or a bolt cutter.”

Phil went off to find an implement of destruction.

Cooper and I went through a few more of the computer files and found a copy of the guest register with the names blacked out.