Night of the Jaguar (11 page)

“Got a cigarette?”

Montoya patted his pockets. “No.”

“Do I know you?”

“I don't think so.”

“And you don't have a
cigarette
?”

Montoya held his hands up. “I don't smoke.”

“You don't smoke.”

Neither of the uniforms had risen, so Matthew looked at the short-haired lieutenant with the crisp uniform. “How about you?”

“She doesn't smoke either.”

“Does she have a
name
?”

She stood up smartly. “Lieutenant Gladys Darío.”

He shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you, compañera. I'm Matthew Connelly. This is my house.”

“Yes, compañero, we know.”

“Do you? How?”

Matthew was sure he saw a flicker of a smile on Montoya's face. But Epimenio remained stock-still, not knowing what part was his in the game. Matthew released Gladys's hand and turned back to the son of a bitch who, seven years ago, had abandoned him under a tree after he'd risked his life to bring back a bag of cigarettes meant to secure his passage all the way to Managua in the company of the most renowned guerrilla leader of the day. It would have been a hell of a story, and now here he was sitting in Matthew's chair, drinking his coffee and pretending not to remember him.

“I'm sure we know each other. Ajax Montoya right?”

Montoya stood and held out his hand. Matthew took it and pumped in a friendly way, but he was sure he detected recognition in Montoya's eyes and felt he was being fucked with.

“I didn't think the Policía Sandinista were of interest to you big-shot international journalists.”

“Well, you weren't always Policía.” Matthew scrutinized his insignia. “Captain now, is it? You used to work State Security, didn't you? As a colonel?”

Montoya's grip seemed to lessen. Matthew gave in to the affront of being fucked with and decided to fuck back: “Weren't you involved in the killing of Jorge Salazar?”

The iron went back into Montoya's grip before he broke the handshake and sat down. The lieutenant sat up straight and almost turned the French press over trying to pour more coffee.

“Lieutenant, you look kind of young, do you remember
l'affaire Salazar
? Cotton grower back in '81 got caught up in a CIA plot to turn the army high command against the National Directorate, staged a coup d'état.” Matthew took the French press from her fumbling hands and poured for her. “Salazar was shot by State Security agents, some say executed, at a gas station up in Los Nubes. They found some weapons in his trunk.” He turned to Montoya: “Or maybe you found the weapons, Colonel. I mean Captain. More coffee?” He overfilled Montoya's cup.

“I only bring it up, Lieutenant, as it was one of my first front-page stories. Graciela!” Graciela hurried into the sala from the kitchen. The look on her face showed Matthew she'd heard every word and disapproved of every one.

“Sí, don Matthew?”

“Bring the Oreos from the Diplo store. Would you like a cookie, Captain Montoya?”

A rueful smile had come over the captain's face. It didn't connect to the look in his eye.

“Lieutenant, cookies?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Matthew was pretty sure she wasn't talking about the cookies.

“So.” He leaned closer to the lieutenant, as if catching her up on old-school stories he and Montoya shared. “After the killing, the MINT put the weapons on display and a photographer friend took close-ups of them, close enough to get the serial numbers, which I was able to track back to an East German weapons shipment that State Security received the previous year. Bingo! Front page!”

Matthew turned to Montoya for help to close their mutual trip down Memory Lane. “And do I remember right? It was never really explained how Salazar got hold of weapons shipped to State Security, assuming, as the government had assured us, the weapons weren't planted there after the fact to justify Salazar's killing.”

Graciela hurried back in and handed off a plate of cookies to Matthew, who held them out in the cold, dead silence he had woven.

“Now, how can I help you, Captain?”

“Enrique Cuadra is dead.”

Matthew was lifted out of his chair by a cold shiver down his spine. He turned to Epimenio, who'd brought the news Matthew had dismissed as foolery. He didn't realize he'd dropped the plate of cookies until it broke at his feet.

“Dead?”

Montoya set his coffee down. “Dead. Deceased. Murdered. Last night. Maybe early this morning. It seems a robbery.”

Matthew cut his eyes surreptitiously at Epimenio. But the campesino was staring at the tiled floor.

“Murdered? But we went to the morgue. They said there weren't any unclaimed bodies.”

“Why did you go to the morgue?”

Matthew shook his head. No matter how long he was in Nicaragua, how much he felt he knew it, the country always made him feel like a child bewildered by the adults.

“Epimenio brought me a message from Enrique's wife, she…” Matthew couldn't finish. How could he without implicating Epimenio?

Epimenio looked briefly into Montoya's eyes, Matthew knew, to signal he was addressing the captain, and then back down at his shoes. It was the manner of the campesinos Matthew often saw. The revolution had changed many things, but not the humble farmer's view of where he stood in relation to the world. Epimenio had not once referred to his dead cousin as anything but
don Enrique
.

“La señora woke me up. She was very upset.…”

“Enrique's wife, you mean?”

“Yes, Captain. Doña Gloria. She said she saw her husband in a dream.” Epimenio spread his hands as if the dream unfolded between them. “Don Enrique said he was lost, that he needed help. That she should ask don Mateo in Managua to help find him.”

Montoya briefly touched Epimenio's knee. “When was this dream?”

Epimenio counted on his fingers. “Night before last? Yes.”

Montoya and his lieutenant, who'd been taking notes, exchanged a look, like a tag, and the lieutenant jumped in. “Enrique Cuadra wasn't dead the night before last.”

Epimenio spread his hands again, as if reviewing the film of his story. “Doña Gloria came to me as soon as she woke up. She was so frightened she didn't even want to wait until dawn to send me, and the roads are full of soldiers at night. She paid a man, a neighbor, to drive me here.”

“That's true, Lieutenant,” Matthew jumped in. “Epimenio called me from Matagalpa yesterday saying he was coming and asking directions to my house. I'd had a message from Enrique, too.”

“When?” Montoya deigned to speak but didn't take his eyes off Epimenio.

“Two nights ago. Said he was coming to Managua and we should talk.”

Montoya's eyes now fell on Matthew, and he was relieved to be the center of attention again. He felt a need to protect Epimenio.

“Talk about what?”

“He didn't say. Enrique and I exchanged hospitality. He stayed with me and I with him. We're friends. I report a lot from the war zone; he was a source. His coffee finca's in El Tuma. Lots of Contra and army around. He kept tabs on a lot of things through a store on his farm. Man knew what was what up there.”

“And what was what?”

“Battles, troop movements. Comings and goings. The price of coffee. Local gossip. Everything. We just talked, mostly. He had no secret knowledge of anything.”

“You ever discuss it on the phone with him?”

“What?”

“Whatever information he was giving you? Did you talk on the phone?”

“There's no phones up there. You know that. The nearest town only got electricity two years ago. Enrique ran a generator for what he needed. He'd call when he got to the Hotel Ideal in Matagalpa. But only to say when he was arriving. And he didn't give me information, per se. He gave me perspective, like how the revolution's going for the average Nica.”

“And how is it going, our revolution, for the ‘average Nica'?”

Matthew leaned forward. “It's a mixed bag, Ajax. Prices for goods are up, but for coffee down. No one's got money and the córdoba ain't worth the price of the toilet paper it's printed on.”

Matthew hoped to prick Ajax's nationalist feelings with that one. “Then there's the war you may've heard of.”

“A lot of Contra up there?”

Matthew smiled. “What're you kidding? You're gonna tell me
you
don't know? The Contra are all over up there. It's the base for the
Jorge Salazar Command
. Your little gas station caper gave them their first patron saint.”

Ajax didn't skip a beat. “Enrique got along with these Contra?”

“You asking me if he was one?”

“No, Connelly, I asked what I asked.”

“Enrique got along with everyone. Frente, Contra, neighbors, workers.”

Ajax turned to Epimenio. “How did don Enrique get to Managua.”

“He drove his pickup.”

“What kind?”

“Toyota.”

“Color?”

“White.”

“What year?”

“Señor?”

“Old or new? In good shape or bad?”

“Not so new, but in good shape. Don Enrique loves that truck.”

Epimenio bowed his head until his chin brushed his chest, as if the burden of the past tense weighed him down.

“He loved it.”

For the second time Montoya patted Epimenio's arm.

“Thank you, señor. I am sorry for your loss. Go back to the morgue today. His body is there. But you might have to wait a day or two until you can take him home.”

Matthew felt his heart beat hot, the old fucking runaround. “We were there yesterday. State Security wouldn't let us in.”

“Thank you for the coffee.” Ajax stood, then his lieutenant. “Epimenio should not take the body home unless he informs me first. Understood?”

Matthew followed Montoya outside.

“Compañero. Ajax.”

“
Captain
Montoya, remember?”

“Okay, sorry about all that. I didn't know why you were here.”

“Now you do.”

“Captain, please. Enrique was a friend of mine. Is there is anything I can do, any help I can give?”

“Help? Are you looking for another front page story? A scoop? An exclusive? The man was killed in a robbery. How are you going to squeeze scandal out of that?”

Montoya turned on his heel and left, but before he had, Matthew had noticed a look on the lieutenant's face when Montoya said robbery.

 

6

1.

The Mercado Oriental—Managua's Eastern Market—was a vast, crowded, smelly chaos of low-rent free-enterprise and black marketeering. Hundreds of women in various states of obesity presided over it. Their flabby arms flouncing in blue, red, yellow, or green rayon blouses. Their skirts hidden behind identical frilled aprons with bulging pockets that served as cash registers.
Bizneras
they were, and
bizness
was their life. They were the backbone of Nicaragua's emaciated economy. Tough as an alligator's back, as volatile as boiling gasoline, these pitiless businesswomen were the bearers of a cutthroat capitalism that would have terrified Adam Smith and left a whimpering J. P. Morgan bleeding out of every orifice.

Ajax loved the place. He coasted his Lada to a stop, fearful of wearing down the last of his brakes—no telling when Moscow would send
that
freighter. He parked behind a chile mate tree, which afforded the view he wanted. If Enrique Cuadra's pickup was not a smoking hulk or sinking into the muck of Lake Managua, then all or part of it was for sale here in the Oriental. Ajax smiled for the first time that day, maybe all week. The sheer dynamism of the place never failed to cheer him.

He needed cheering from the black mood that had settled after Connelly had rubbed his nose in
L'Affaire Salazar
. Rubbed his nose in it like a puppy's in its own piss.

“I hate this fucking place.” Gladys peered through the window like a cat studying Dogville.

“Why?” Ajax drew the Python and rolled its cylinder over his palm.

She pointed out the window. “They hate us here.”

“Who's ‘us,' white man?”

“What?”

“Nothing. American joke. How can you hate a place as lively as this? Look at it—thousands of citizens selling, buying, shopping, swapping. This is good energy.”

Gladys pointed her chin out the windshield. “They're all Contra here.”

“Oh shut up, you big baby. Listen to yourself. ‘They hate us here.'” Ajax flipped open the Python's cylinder and spun it, looking at the Mercado through the five empty chambers, then slapped it closed and holstered it. “Lieutenant, the contra-revolución and the contra-revoluciónarios are an armed insurgency raised and paid for by the imperialist yanqui putos. They are on both our borders
killing
people.” He tapped her playfully in her temple. “I have to explain this to you?”

“Okay, fine, but
these
people
are
anti-Sandinista, and this place is a fucking cesspool of criminality and counterrevolutionary feeling.” She gave the entire market the finger.

“Counterrevolutionary
feeling
? People have to like you? The Revo is a popularity contest? These bizneras hate rules and regulations, not Gladys Darío! Can you blame them? You ever read the government wage and price controls? Have you?”

Gladys just flattened her lips into a long thin line, which meant
no
. Probably no one had, ever.

“Everything you can think of, from a bag of frijoles or an entire crop of coffee to the dingleberries clinging to your butt cheeks has an official price. And out of whose ass did they pull that bright idea? Jesus had a hard-on, Gladys, that's not the revolution, that's an import from the goddamn Soviets as surely as this Lada is, and it works just as well.”