Night of the Jaguar (10 page)

Malhora's cigar had gone out. He regarded the dead ash the same way he studied the Conquistadores, wondering again if he had chosen his instruments well. “So this notorious drunken fool beat the crap out of both of you for everyone to see and left you stranded in some barrio where you had to beg help to get your car back, a car marked DGSE just to make sure everyone knew you two donkeys belonged to me.”

The Conquistadores silently consulted each other for some way to improve their boss's summary, but could find none. “Sí, Comandante.”

Malhora knocked the dead cinders from his cigar but missed the porcelain ashtray, a personal gift from his Chinese counterpart.

“And so you were late getting to the morgue, which is why you did not prevent him from entering and questioning the doctor.”

“Sí, Comandante.”

“Neither did you arrive in time to question the gringo journalist.”

“No, Comandante.”

Malhora fired up his sterling silver Zippo lighter—a personal gift from the Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. He leaned over and lit the visitor's cigar. The visitor seemed bemused by the shameful tale, which only further annoyed Malhora.

He snapped the lighter closed. “Compañeros, you two have shit yourselves pretty well on this. I am closely watching your performance. Put someone on the gringo journalist and milk his phones. Find out who the peasant is. Follow the dyke. You two personally record everything Montoya does.”

“Sí, Comandante!”

“By the way, Captain Cortez…” The visitor spoke as if he'd remembered an unimportant detail. “You drew your weapon on a hero of the revolution. He might be debased now, but had you killed him, all his sins would've been forgiven. Imagine how it would've reflected on your
Comandante
had two of
his agents
done such a thing.”

Malhora had reveled in that part of the tale, had briefly wished Cortez had done just that. Now he saw the horror of it. Goddamn Montoya would win even by dying.

“That's right you shit brains. He ever attacks you again, let him. Do not fight back unless he kills one of you. In fact, let him kill both of you. Now get out!”

Their faces never changed, never quavered. They did not smile when he complimented them, nor frown when he browbeat them. Malhora actually rather liked them. He hoped he had chosen them well. He sat back, smoked, and regarded the visitor. He didn't like him, found his presence an unnerving reminder of the past when Malhora had been the junior partner. Still, he was a deep thinker.

“Comandante,” the visitor began, “about this corpse.”

“We'll make it go away. Have no fear.”

“Oh, I am utterly confident. But if the corpse is to be seen as a simple homicide, mightn't this gringo reporter ask why State Security is involved in it?”

Malhora blew smoke at the portrait of Che Guevara on the other paneled wall, next to the window overlooking the lake. “Well, maybe the Contra
did
kill him.”

“Yes. But the timing is … delicate. The yanqui senators arrive tomorrow. Nothing inflammatory should occur during that visit, or before they vote.”

“Their minds are already made up.”

“True. The $100 million will get to the Contra. But the visit
here
is as much about those who
oppose
them in the gringo Congress. The enemies, or at least, the opponents of our enemies, as it were. Nothing should occur to undermine
them
. Not even the appearance of controversy. The National Directorate is very clear on that.”

With that one comment, the visitor touched Malhora's soul. He stroked his Stalin mustache vigorously, as he always did when the wheels of his ambition turned. Above all else he had to be seen as serving the National Directorate. He did not care a monkey's ass about what the yanqui Congress and their retard-actor president did. They could vote whatever monies they wanted to the Contra. The more war there was, the more his domain grew. But the eight remaining Comandantes of the Directorate would soon have to replace Joaquin Tinoco. Malhora was a breath away from that prize. Only one of the nine could become president.

It had once seemed impossible. Joaquin Tinoco had detested Vladimir Malhora. Unfairly, true, but openly detested him. He was just like Montoya. As if a man's abilities or loyalties could be measured only in how many years he spent creeping around the mountains with little more than bows and arrows. Vladimir Malhora had spent the war in Mexico, true, but in Mexico he cultivated the contacts with the Soviets and Cubans, the Bulgarians and Romanians that had paid off so handsomely in weapons and training. And now El Mejicano was dead. Malhora felt his stars continue to align just as the hairs on his mustache did under the careful grooming of his heavy fingers. Align as they had since the night at Los Nubes when he'd killed that fool Salazar. He had followed the visitor's advice that night, too.

“So…” Malhora trimmed the ash from his cigar.

“So if Captain Montoya is as unstable as he appears to be, then his failure—which we
all
so adamantly hope for—his failure in this matter will just be bad policing by a bad policeman. Not politics. Whereas everything State Security does is political.”

“So who better than Ajax Montoya to fuck up the investigation?”

“If you think so, Comandante.”

Yes, he did. He was sure of it.

 

5

Matthew Connelly—freelance journalist extraordinaire—stood in his bathroom looking at himself in the mirror. The afternoon heat beaded sweat on his forehead while he practiced an acceptance speech for an award he had not yet been nominated for.

He was certain that journalists and writers all over the world began their mornings the same way. But he felt close, so close now. If his full-time war reportage from the mountains didn't put him up for a Pulitzer, then the book he was closing in on must.

“This award is not for me, but for the people of Nicaragua.”

Yeah, that would do it.

Then the doorbell rang.

“Shit.”

“Matthew,
le buscan!”
That was his housekeeper, Graciela.

“Momento, Graciela.
Momento!”

Someone's looking for you!
At this or any time of day—post-siesta—the doorbell could mean bill collectors, panhandlers, vendors of almost anything—last time it had been his errand boy, Jerónimo, with an ocelot cub on a rope. Still, a quiet caller who simply knocked was a blessing compared to the daily street vendors below his window—usually while the sun was still cruelly low—crying, “Mangoooooos! Fruuuuuuutas! Banaaaaaanos! Tomates! Cebooooooooooyas” in that distinctive, ear-splitting, high nasal screech of the street merchant. In fact, it was a kind of extortion. They might as well be screaming, “Buy my pathetic fruit or I will stand here and drive you mad with my screeeeeeeeching.” As often as not, he did.

But whoever it was now would have to wait. He was late sending copy and the afternoon deadline raced toward him. He'd even left Epimenio parked downstairs under the care of Graciela, whose roots in the countryside put Epimenio at his ease. He looked back into the mirror.
What a trip this place is
. He'd gone to bed last night ready to wake up this morning and send copy or tape to every one of his seven major strings. Instead, even before he'd coffeed up, Graciela had called
Matthew, le buscan!
And he'd found Epimenio perched downstairs on the edge of a rattan chair in his Sunday whites like some great egret. Matthew knew Epimenio well from his many visits to Enrique Cuadra's coffee farm, and Epimenio's arrival
sans
Enrique had seemed strange. But nothing could have prepared Matthew for the bombshell Epimenio had dropped:
Don Enrique asks that you help find his murderer.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with a line like that?

“Matthew, le buscan!”

“Momento, Graciela. Momento!”

Matthew turned to the mirror to scrutinize his reflection. He didn't look bad. Blond hair, not prematurely gray; deep blue eyes, neither lined with bags nor bloodshot; white teeth un-rotted; and a pink tongue uncoated with bad news. Even his long nose was still straight, despite having been broken twice diving for cover.

But he felt
tired
.

“I am bushed from all that bush.”

It was a cutesy line he'd coined for dinner parties and cocktails with friends when they inquired after his health.

But that wasn't it either. He was scared.

Matthew Connelly was the only truly full-time war correspondent in a country whose war was a major headline around the world. He had remade himself from an adventure-seeking tourist from Boston Catholic into a freelance journalist whose byline was read in every capitol from Washington to Moscow. Matthew was the only independent witness to the hottest proxy battle between the Cold War superpowers. In Managua, he was a downright luminary: visiting journalists and broadcasters, dignitaries, celebrities, the Managua-based diplomats, and especially the military attachés all wanted briefings from him. It was lucrative, too, kept a staff of four working in a house grander than any he'd known back in Boston, nor was likely ever to know. It was his future, too. If he could gather enough material to finish his book on the war, it would open doors to any newspaper or magazine back home.

All he had to do to remain a big fish in a small pond was to not get killed delivering the goods.

He locked back onto his own eyes in the mirror. That last trip north. He had tape and photos from the biggest firefight yet. An actual
battle
between Contras and the battalion of government troops he was writing a biography on. But six more of the original one hundred and sixty boys he'd been writing about were dead. A total of thirty-one KIA in a year. His editors
should
love it. But the phone messages last night were all about Senator Teal and the death of Joaquin Tinoco. It was a fucking parlor game to them—a game played in Washington, Miami, and Managua. He had to fight every time to get space for the war in the countryside.

Then his white phone rang.

Then his blue phone rang.

He drew himself up in the mirror. He shook off the funk. Matthew Connelly liked this part of the job.

“Showtime!”

By the time he crossed from the bathroom to his desk, he had done his dispatches in his head. He snatched up the blue phone, NBC radio: “Sheila? I'm ready. One second.”

He snatched up the white phone, the
Miami Herald,
“Paul? Pass me to the tone. I'm sending now. Six hundred words on the senators, and four hundred on who'll replace Joaquin Tinoco.”

What a world! Matthew had stayed long enough to see the journalism biz rocket into a new age. For years he'd had to laboriously dictate his stories over the phone and have them read back to him, or, worse, to go down to the international exchange and bang them out on the old Teletype and then hand feed the tape into the machines. But now, these new RadioShack computers let you store 1,200 words and then send over the phone to any newspaper office in the world. (As long as the international operator didn't mistakenly cut in, or the wind wasn't blowing the telephone wires too hard.) Soon they'd be coming out with a model that could store 2,000 words!

He stuck the white phone's handset into the rubber cups and sent his copy to the
Herald
. Then he went back to the blue phone—NBC radio—closed his eyes a moment and composed.

“Sheila? Okay, recording in three, two, one: Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista Front is engaged in their biggest internal crisis in years as different factions fight to place one of their own on the National Directorate, which makes all policy for the beleaguered country. The Nine, as they are known, became eight with the death of Joaquin Tinoco, known as
El Mejicano
. Tinoco was one of the last original founders of the Front to serve on the Directorate, and his replacement represents a generational turnover. The only candidate openly talked about for the position is Vladimir Malhora, the current head of State Security, who is known as a hardliner. The skirmish takes place against the backdrop of tomorrow's arrival of a fact finding mission from the US Senate whose verdict will sway the pending vote in Congress on a one-hundred-million-dollar aid package for the Contra rebels, which will likely pass and instigate a huge escalation of the war. For NBC radio, this is Matthew Connelly in Managua. Three, two, one. Out. How was that?”

Sheila would have a supercilious comment or two, or three, to make. Every editor he'd ever had believed reporters were simpletons sent to the field because they didn't have the brains to be editors.

“I used ‘known' twice? Okay, I'll do another one for another fifty bucks, but then I just used ‘another' twice, too … What? Great. I'll send the profile of Malhora to the mainframe for the commuter rotation.”

He hung up, checked his copy had gone to the
Herald
, and walked to the bathroom, running the abacus in his head. Between Tinoco's departure and the senator's arrival, the radio pieces alone would cover expenses for two months. The newspapers would surely cover his R&R to Belize in September. He flipped open the medicine cabinet and ran his finger along the rows of pills. He chose a Praziquantel for his Olympian battle with intestinal parasites. It would turn his stools rock hard. He hadn't had a satisfying bowel movement since 1984.

He closed the medicine cabinet, had a good look at himself in the mirror, and dry chewed the Praz.

“
Matthew! Le buscan!”

He did not hurry downstairs, but as he went, he picked up the faint murmur of Spanish from his sala. To his surprise, he saw two uniforms, a captain and a lieutenant, seated around his matching rattan rockers and table. Graciela, he noticed, had laid out the good cups and served up the good coffee in the French press. Epimenio sat with them, ramrod straight, his face the stoic blankness of the campesino in the presence of power. And for a campesino, that was pretty much everybody. Matthew's left foot had just touched the marble tile of the sala floor when he recognized the captain's face. For a split second, he was amazed.
Son of a bitch, that's Ajax Montoya!
But then the full memory flooded back.
Ajax Montoya, that son of a bitch!
For a very long moment he stood staring at the captain, who kindly returned the stare.