Beneath a Panamanian Moon (29 page)

Thirty minutes later we were making our way past concrete gun emplacements, abandoned about the time Americans discovered Diz and Bird and bop, a better time for everyone, even musicians. “Where are we?”

“It's France Field,” Phil said. “No one's used it since World War Two.”

“The last good time America ever had.”

“You're a funny guy, Harp. If I laugh any harder, I think it'll kill me.”

There was a group of teenagers, all standing, watching the fire in the harbor. When they saw us staggering toward them, wet and bleeding, they parted to let us pass.

“¿Quién tiene un automóvil?” I said.

“Christ, Harper, are you speaking Spanish?”

“Trying,” I said.

One boy came forward and took Phil's other side. “Venga,” he said, and helped Phil into the back of a Chevy Vega.

“Gracias.”

The boy spoke to me, rapidly, and I told him, “Despacio, despacio, por favor.”

Phil croaked from the shadows of the Vega. “He's saying he'll take us to the hospital.”

“No, no,” I said, and gave him an address. The boy hesitated until Phil pulled a roll of wet bills out of his pocket. The boy nodded and got behind the wheel.

*   *   *

Miss Turando helped Phil remove his shirt. He grunted and, for Phil, that meant he was in serious pain.

She listened to Phil's lungs, her fingers gently probing his ribs. Removing the stethoscope, she said, “There's no pneumothorax, which is good. That means the lungs haven't been punctured. I can't be sure without an X ray, of course, but I believe three ribs have been fractured.”

“So, you tape them up and he'll be good to go?”

Miss Turando smiled and said, “He's good to go now. We found that a rib belt only inhibited breathing and encouraged pneumonia. Now we advise the patient to breathe deeply and stay as active as possible, given the pain. I believe your friend will pull through just fine.”

“Phil, how you doing?”

“I am
so
fine,” he said.

“I've given him some Percocet.”

We put Phil in Miss Turando's Mercedes and headed back toward La Boca.

“I can't thank you enough for everything you've done,” I said.

Miss Turando kept her attention on the road. “I have many visitors, Mr. Harper, and one of them is a Colombian. He's a very superstitious man who tells me things he shouldn't.”

Miss Turando looked at me and I saw sorrow in her eyes. “You need to know something, Mr. Harper. When you were here before?”

“With Marilyn.”

“Yes. She paid me to tell you to leave the country. She tried to save your life. I know you think otherwise, but she is trying to help you. She cares for you, I know.”

Miss Turando dropped us off a mile from the hotel gate. Before she drove away she said, “You'll do the right thing, Mr. Harper.”

“How will I know what that is?”

“You'll know,” she said.

I thanked her again. When she was gone, Phil, still flying on Percocet, said, “If you hadn't been in a such a hurry, I mighta got some of that. You know what they say about nurses.”

“Yeah,” I said, “they marry doctors.”

Phil was hanging on to me, looking up into the dark trees, and said, “What are we doing here? I thought you had the names of the cells.”

I patted the CD in my pocket, the CD Mariposa had given me, and said, “I want the list of the money men, too, and anything that'll help us convince the authorities we're not hallucinating. There's also the name of a goat fucker.”

“A goat fucker?”

“That's just what the Colonel called him. He's a partner in all this, and if we don't find out who he is, he'll slip away and neither one of us will be safe, I know that.”

“Okay, Harp, from here on in, you're driving. I'm just along for the ride.”

I helped Phil through the jungle and around the hotel by way of the firing range. The going was slow and there were several places where Phil stumbled and fell and I had to lift him up.

At the edge of the treeline I stopped to let Phil rest. Not a single light burned in the hotel and it looked as inviting as a prison in the pale light of the quarter moon. We crossed the range, crept through the garden and up into the lobby. I saw the glow of a computer screen in the office. Sitting in front of the screen was Eubanks, his headphones playing loud music, the heavy bass buzzing around the quiet office. I touched his shoulder but Eubanks, the little clerk, wouldn't be hearing any music other than the celestial choir. Eubanks was dead. I felt for a pulse in his neck, and he was warm to the touch. That meant it hadn't been long since someone, obviously not a music lover, had come up behind him and put a .22 bullet just behind his right ear.

I opened Kelly's office and found it empty. Phil went through his desk as I printed out the list of the operation's financial backers. Phil found nothing more interesting than Field Manual 5–13, the army's catalog of homemade booby traps, fun for the whole family. That caused us to search everything with a lot more care.

The Colonel's office was dark, and the door was ajar. Phil pushed it open and I jumped, the shock and surprise so intense I tasted the electrical juice along my jaw. There, sitting at his desk, was the Colonel. He looked sadly surprised that his long career had ended this way. He, too, sported a new .22-caliber hole, this one right in the middle of his forehead.

“They're taking everyone out, down to the last man,” Phil said.

Phil needed help up the stairs. He took one at a time, just as he had the night I'd met him.

As we made the slow climb I asked him how he and Coop had found me on the yacht.

“The party was no secret. We bribed the caterer to get me on the staff and Coop found an invitation in a guy's pocket.”

“Was the guy alive?”

“Sleeping,” Phil said. “So, what do we do now?”

“Get all this to my boss. We need somebody who swings a bigger hammer in this fight.”

“What about Kris?”

“Kris is gone, Phil. Kelly put her on a plane for the States this morning. He told me I was a corrupting influence.”

“Well, the old man's right about some things,” Phil said, and tried to laugh but each jerk of his diaphragm shoved a hot blade of fire between his ribs.

In the dim light I could see his face was wet and I was surprised. He played such a tough guy, I assumed he was immune to physical pain, and way beyond tears. “Are you okay, Phil? You want to sit a while?”

“No,” he said, and wiped his cheeks with the back of his fist. “I was just thinking about Coop.”

“I know,” I said. “What's that you always tell me? It don't mean shit?”

“Yeah, well, this time it does, Harp.”

“All we can do is make the fuckers pay,” I said.

“Then let's see what Kelly has hidden away in his apartment,” Phil said.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

At Kelly's door Phil said, “Work your magic, Monkeyman.”

“I can't. I lost my picks in the harbor.”

“Then we'll have to use my method. Go get a tire iron.”

I ran down the steps, eased through the shadows past Eubanks again, and retrieved the tire iron from the parking lot. Back on the second floor, I did as Phil told me.

“Now, stick it here, and separate the door from the frame.”

The gap between the door and the frame widened as I leveraged the tire iron. The wood began to crumble and snap.

“A little more,” Phil said.

I pushed harder and looked in the space, trying to see how far I had to go for the bolt to clear. I stopped when I saw that there was no bolt. I pulled out the tire iron.

“Why'd you quit?”

I turned the knob and the door swung open. “It wasn't locked.”

“Oh.”

The living room was dark except for the moonlight through the windows. Again, I was struck by the impersonality of the place. Aside from a book here and the occasional picture, the room could have belonged to anyone or no one.

“You know where the files are?”

“No. But Kris said he had a study and I've been all through this place except there, beyond the kitchen.”

We went from the living room and kitchen to a hallway that led to a small office. A desk and filing cabinet had been pushed against the far wall, under the window with a view of the beach. Phil flicked his Zippo and looked at the desk in the firelight. “It's got a lock,” he whispered. “We'll have to break it.”

“Check first,” I said. Phil tugged on the top drawer and it slid open.

“A smart man learns from his mistakes, Phil.”

“Fuck you. Here hold this.” Phil handed the lighter to me. The two of us hunched over the open drawer. Phil ran his thumb across the tabs of the manila files and said, “Looks like nothing but tax shit and insurance and stuff.”

That's when the overhead came on, catching us like deer in the headlights.

“Okay, get up nice and slow.” Meat was standing in the doorway aiming that scattergun at us. At me. “Just keep your hands where I can see them.” Meat gave us a lot of room. He respected Phil, even wounded, and kept out of his reach. “I saw you fuckers sneaking around the parking lot,” he said.

“So, you're the one who killed Eubanks?”

“What? Who killed Eubanks?”

“And the Colonel.”

Meat gaped like a landed fish, trying to suck in the reality of the new world. Yes, he was big and stupid and not capable of doing much more than watching the front gate, but he was still a soldier to his bones and the death of a comrade was hard news. And just as I began to feel sympathy for him, Meat reverted to his old, annoying ways.

“Hey,” he said, “I bet you killed them.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Meat, don't do this.”

He raised his shotgun and aimed at my face. “I want you two to lie down, your hands behind your head, while I figure this out.” I knew better than to question his ability, or his willingness to kill. I dropped to my knees.

“You, too.” He turned the gun on Phil.

Phil grimaced and said, “I'd like to, Meat, I would, but I busted up a few ribs tonight. I can hardly hold my pecker, man. There's no way I can get on the floor.”

“Do it!” Meat stepped forward.

“Okay, but don't stick that goddamn thing up my nose.” Phil held on to the edge of the desk and lowered himself to his knees.

Meat was breathing so quickly I was afraid he'd hyperventilate and fall on me.

“I got you fuckers so good,” he said. “We'll just wait here for Mr. Kelly. He'll know what to do.” A thought, you could see it rise up in his face like a gas bubble, popped into Meat's head. “Hey. Where's your friend? Where's Cooper?”

“He's dead,” I said, and my throat ached just saying the words.

“Why should I believe you?” Meat hollered, “Cooper! Come out or I'm going to waste your friend.”

“He's not here, Meat. He's dead.”

Another light came into Meat's eye, this one a light of suspicion, edged with fear. “He's behind me, isn't he?”

I sighed. Stupidity this intense is a thing of wonder, no less amazing than the density of a star. “Meat, there's no one behind you.”

He smiled, satisfied that no one could fool him, and said, “It's like the movies. If you said there was somebody behind me, then there wouldn't be, but you said there wasn't, so there is.”

“Is what?” Phil said. “I'm starting to get a headache.”

“Someone behind me, right?”

“Well, there wasn't before,” I said, “but now there is.”

“I told you!” Meat wanted to look. He did. His eyes darted back and forth but he was too afraid to turn his head and see. Like so many scared men without imagination, he settled for bravado. He licked his lips, gave a little dry laugh, and said, “If you're back there, Cooper, you might as well shoot me.”

The laughter stuck in his throat when he felt the jab in his lower back. He held the shotgun by the stock and raised his hands. “Shit!” He sounded like he'd fumbled a short pass.

Phil took the shotgun and made Meat sit on the floor.

“Thank you, Kris,” I said. “But why aren't you on that plane?”

Kris twirled the plant mister on her finger and squirted a cool splotch of water over my heart. “I didn't think Ingrid Bergman should have left Bogart, either, John.”

“Who the fuck's John?” Meat said. “And who's Ingrid Bergman?”

Phil advised Meat to shut up and asked Kris to find some duct tape. She did, and soon Meat was trussed to the rolling desk chair, his mouth gagged behind a strip of silver tape.

Kris had her hands on my face, gently soothing the bruises, now an attractive yellow and blue. “What happened?”

“We were on a boat. Someone blew it up.”

“How did you get away?”

“Phil and I were blown off the boat.”

“We jumped,” Phil said, “before the bomb went off.”

I told Kris about the waiter with the detonator and the explosives packed under the deck.

“But how did you know when to jump?”

That was something I'd wondered, too. “Yeah, Phil, how did we know when to jump?”

“The waiter closed his eyes. I watched him close his eyes and I knew.”

“You remember Cooper, the tall guy?”

“He looked like the president of his fraternity?”

“That's him. He was a friend, and he's dead. And downstairs, Eubanks and the Colonel are dead, too, murdered by people working for your father.”

Kris remained rock steady and her eyes never left mine. “You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

Kris sat on the floor, her legs crossed, the plant sprayer still in her hand. “Why do you think my father's involved?”

“There's a lot of evidence. I'm sorry.”