Night of the Jaguar (2 page)

And he had those streets mostly to himself.

The Soviet tanker bringing the month's fuel shipment was late, again. The gas had dried up yesterday. No oil meant no buses, no buses meant few workers, and few workers meant almost no sidewalk vendors or street hawkers. Why bother? Managua could still seem an alien place to Ajax. He hadn't come home to Nicaragua until he was nineteen, and had never set foot in Managua before the revolution had triumphed in '79. He was thirty by then. He'd had seven years to put the city on like a glove, like a skin. Let it in. But he still felt a stranger in it. It was a city of almost a million souls in a country of four million, yet the city center was empty not only of citizens but even of buildings. The terrible earthquake of '72 had toppled a critical mass of the homes and businesses that made the city the city. Much had never been rebuilt—despite the world's generous response—because General Somoza, the last of the Ogres of that name, had hoarded the donations like bones to make his bread. So now Ajax passed through neighborhoods of tidy homes, a hotel or a restaurant, but then block after endless block of empty lots, framed by snaggle-toothed walls overgrown with weeds, where young boys now tended cows.

The horizon, too, as he sped toward the cigarette smugglers, was empty. For a full 360 degrees only four points stood more than a story above his head. The Government House and the InterContinental Hotel in the dead center of “downtown,” were paired in perfect symmetry with the twin cones of Momotombo and Momotombito—the two volcanoes on the far side of Lake Managua that waited patiently like unexploded ordinance. Ajax wiggled his ass, looking for some relief as he pushed the accelerator—and counted the usual six seconds until his Lada actually sped up.

Earthquakes and volcanoes, it sometimes seemed, were two of the few assets his piss-poor country had in abundance. The only stable things in Nicaragua were the stars, and they were too far away to be of any help. He fished a cigarette out of his last pack. He
had
to get to the smugglers. Instead, he got the radio call he'd been waiting two days for.

“Ajax, Ajax, Ajax. Copy?”

“Copy, Darío. Go”

“We got him, Ajax. Positive ID.”

“Where?”

“Barrio Jorge Dimitriov.”

“Any sign of the priest?”

“Neither dead nor alive.”

2.

Fifteen minutes later, Ajax squatted inside one shack, observing another about twenty yards away. He pulled the .357 magnum from its hand-tooled holster and slowly rolled the Python's chrome cylinder over his open palm. With the hammer half-cocked it turned smoothly. He could feel the chambers silently clicking as they rolled past the barrel, like tumblers falling in a big lock. It helped him to think, always had.

The people in Jorge Dimitriov were among the poorest of the poor—barrio kids, farmers displaced by the war in the northern mountains, and decommissioned soldiers. This was why the soldier Ajax had been searching for took refuge there. You could hardly call it hiding, Ajax thought. The shack he was in was as locked down as a wooden hut could be, its flimsy shutters sealed tight, with wisps of incense smoke curling from cracks in the mismatched slats. The soldier inside must be burning piles of it: smoke signals calling Ajax to him.

“Smells like a priest's whorehouse, doesn't it?”

He turned to see his new partner, Lieutenant Gladys Darío, only twenty, crouching next to him. Gladys had missed much of the battle against the Ogre and so sometimes overcompensated with foul-mouthed blasphemy.

“There aren't any whorehouses in Nicaragua, Lieutenant. Don't you read
Barricada
?”

“Oh, right, sorry, Captain.”

New to the homicide squad, and fresh out of a Cuban police academy, Gladys favored clean, crisp uniforms and was an eager Sandinista believer of the stripe Ajax increasingly found a pain in the ass. But she had two great assets: she was a dead shot, which, while not really necessary to the job, was a trait Ajax admired in anyone, and she actually believed being partnered with the “great Ajax Montoya” was a blessing. Ajax figured she had really pissed someone off, or was spying on him. The latter possibility was one reason he'd agreed to sober up. An old friend had warned him that the Frente—the Sandinista Front, both as ruling party and government—had overlooked all the missed assignments, no-shows, and glassy-eyed insubordination it was going to. If the Frente wanted to make a move on him, Ajax had vowed, they could do it for any reason they liked. But
not
because he was drunk on the job—or insane.

Still, he liked Gladys. She had close-cropped hair—kind of butch, he thought—but an unlined face that made him feel good when she smiled, even if she was taking notes.

She wasn't smiling now.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“Seguridad is here.”

Ajax shot up off his haunches and looked out the door. A squad of Russian-trained sharpshooters from State Security took up concealed positions around the soldier's refuge. He froze Gladys in an accusation: “How did they know?”

“We got orders at formation this morning. You weren't there. The major said to notify State Security when we found him.”

“The major is a moron.”

“The perpetrator was from the Seventeenth Light Hunter Battalion. They're a MINT unit.”

The Ministry of the Interior, the MINT, was an octopus with a tentacle in too many tamales, including State Security and its own combat units fighting the Contra.

“Gladys, his name is Fortunado Gavilan.” Ajax returned the Python to its holster and handed the rig over to her, ivory handle first. “Don't ever involve State Security in our business again.”

She looked at the gun. “Captain, are you crazy?”

He regarded her for a moment. Did she know his history with State Security? Did she sense his confusion from the hallucinations he'd been having? Or had he told her and forgotten?

“I won't need the piece, Gladys, he's done killing.”

She seemed to straighten up into a formal pose. “Captain, regulations say no officer is allowed to enter the presence of a dangerous suspect without protection.”

“Jesus, you sound like a condom ad from the Health Ministry.”

He shoved the Python into her hands.

“Ajax, please, he killed his girlfriend. The priest could already be dead, too.”

“Gladys, he's shell-shocked. This is not an arrest. It's a rescue. Give me the wire.” Ajax felt a burst of adrenaline flutter his heart and turn his stomach. My God, how long had it been? “Just sit still until I bring them out.”

Ajax stepped out of the shack. He signaled the sharpshooters, who lowered their rifles. He stole around the back of the soldier's hut. He slid the wire inside the shuttered window, turned the simple wood latch, and slipped soundlessly inside.

He crouched on the floor and covered his shut eyes for a count of five to help them adjust. Opened them in the darkness. The musky incense clogged his nose, so he had to smother a cough. He was in the back of a two-room shack. He made out a few shapes: two simple cots, a packing-crate table, a woman's plastic brush and comb. On the wall was a scrap-wood shelf, holding only a prized bottle of imported Jergens hand cream, looking a saint in its niche.

The hut felt empty. He stood, took a step further inside. The window he'd come through was framed by a halo of sunshine. A few panes of smoky light seemed to hang on invisible wires where the sun bled down from the roof. Ajax moved soundlessly into the other room. The door was barricaded. Piles of incense smoldered on the dirt floor. This room seemed empty, but he could sense, if not see the soldier.

“You came in so quietly I thought you were an angel.”

The soldier materialized out of a corner, as if passing through the wall from outside. Ajax stumbled backward and went down over a table flat onto his back. Fortunado Gavilan stood over him. He was dressed in camouflage pants, bare-chested, a bottle of rum in one hand, an AK-47 in the other. He pointed it at Ajax. “You aren't. Are you?”

Ajax cleared his throat, struggled to control his voice. It had been a long time since police work had involved Ajax in real danger, and madness was the most dangerous of all. “No compa, I'm no angel. Just a soldier like you.”

The soldier leaned toward Ajax, studying him in the gloom. Ajax looked up at a dark, miserable, mestizo face. Close-cropped black hair and heavy brows. He'd seen the face many times before. An old man's exhausted visage on a very young man's body, the pitiful, pitiless look of the combat soldier.

“Sorry about the smell.” He bent down to blow on the embers of incense. “Did you see any crows outside?”

“No.”

The soldier trudged on leaden legs to one of the cots and sat heavily, knocking over an empty bottle of rum. There was a pile of them at his feet. He laid the AK across his lap and raised the bottle as though to drink. Instead, he poured rum over his head and shoulders. Massaged it thoroughly into his arms. He bathed himself again. He didn't even flinch when it cascaded into his eyes.

“Sorry about the smell. The priest said the incense would help. But it does no good. That's how they find me, see? The crows. By the smell. That carrion smell.” He opened another bottle of rum, doused himself. “I can't get that smell out.”

Ajax got up, drifted to the cot, squatted on his haunches in front of the soldier, inches from the rifle. “I can't smell anything but the incense. A friend says it's making the whole barrio smell like a priest's whorehouse.”

The soldier smiled, almost chuckled. “You better watch that. God will get mad.” He rubbed his eyes, but only one hand at a time, the other resting on the rifle. “I need to sleep. But that's when they come. My friends. The crows.” His head drooped then snapped up. “Do you think God sees everything? Everything everyone does? I mean there must be millions of people in the world, right?”

“No. He doesn't see. He's too busy.”

“That's what I told my novia. My girl.
That's
why He sends the crows!” The soldier dropped his head to his chest. He seemed asleep, but his thumbs made small circles on the stock of the AK. “Can ghosts hurt you? I mean can they get mad at you? Even if maybe it's not your fault?” He raised his eyes to Ajax's. “I mean, they were already dead. It was the only way to get them in the same hole. I was gonna bury them. I wanted to, but I lost them in the river. My friends understand that, right?”

Ajax understood the soldier was reliving the torture he'd been put through; he'd read the boy's file. There had been dismemberment, body parts carried on the soldier's back. He touched the soldier for the first time, patting his knee. “Your friends understand everything. And they forgive you. Besides, the dead don't have the same worries as us. Once they're dead, their concerns from life disappear.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I hope so.”

Fortunado's head dropped, then snapped up again, a look of alarm overcoming his tortured features.

“Shhh.” He raised fingers to his lips. The AK was finally free of his grip, Ajax's hand still on his knee. “Listen. Do you hear?” His eyes roved over the soot-dark ceiling. “Did you see any crows outside?”

“No. Nothing.”

His hands dropped to the AK again. “When I escaped the Contra—you heard of Comandante Krill? Real shit-eater. But it was the crows that helped me escape.
They
led me to the river. I would never have found it. That's how I got back.”

“God and Nature are with the Revo, hombre.”

“No! Then they turned on me. Shouting, ‘He's here! He's here!' That's how the ghosts found me. Them fucking crows reported to God and God said,
‘Punish Him! Punish the coward! Punish the traitor!'”
The soldier beat his head with his fists, the moan of an animal in agony rising out of him until Ajax feared it would spook Gladys into rushing the barricaded door. The soldier scratched at his scalp, leaving long red welts. Ajax grabbed his wrists, wrestled his hands down, the rifle no longer his main worry.

“Stop it! Stop it! Look at me!”

But the soldier tore his hands away, attacked his scalp again as if he would rip open his head and tear out his mind. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Get out! Get out, get out, get out!”

Ajax recoiled at the soldier's torment but fought to wrestle his hands away from his head. Fortunado fought him, his eyes roaming madly over the darkened ceiling.

“Get out! Leave me alone! I was trying to help them. Help!”

Ajax took an accidental head butt to the nose. The pain, as always, made him stronger and he grappled with the soldier's hands.

“Compa, God doesn't punish soldiers. Look at me! Look at me. Hombre! Corporal Gavilan look at me!”

Ajax pinioned his hands. The soldier calmed himself, or just gave up. But Ajax could see up close now the black eyes swimming in blood-red pools. The cracked lips and hard-caked spit at the corners of his mouth—Ajax had been told by the psychologist—were symptoms of the dehydration that accompanies sleep deprivation.

Ajax released the soldier's wrists and slowly laid his hands on his cheeks. “Compañero. You did no wrong.” Ajax rubbed the soldier's head, massaged his temples. “Compa, your friends have already forgiven you. You've got to forgive yourself, man. God does not punish soldiers.” He raised the boy's head to look into his eyes. “That's what officers are for, right?”

The soldier's eyes stopped swimming. They finally looked into Ajax's eyes. He let out what seemed a wail of pain, but was really a high-pitched laugh. He dropped his hands back to the AK. “You're funny.”

Fortunado doused himself again with rum. This time Ajax saw him wince as it poured over the new scratches in the boy's scalp.

“You want a cigarette?”

“Sure.”

Ajax shook a Red loose from his pack.