Night of the Jaguar (3 page)

“Marl-burros! My favorite.”

Ajax lit his Zippo with one hand. His other twitched to seize the rifle. Instead he lit himself one, too.

They smoked for a while.

Then Ajax made his first try. “You know I found a great place for you to get some sleep. Good chow, too. Lots of free beer.” Instantly he knew it was a mistake. The soldier sat up alertly, peered over Ajax's shoulder into a corner of the room. Listened intently to something. Someone? When his eyes returned to Ajax, they were full of suspicion. The soldier crushed out the cigarette, leaned close, put a hand behind Ajax's neck and forced their foreheads together.

“Are you a ghost talker? Do you see them? Speak to them?”

“No, compa. I told you.”

Fortunado's eyes turned back to the corner. He listened. Ajax knew they were not alone. He reached slowly for the AK, but the soldier suddenly held it tight and gripped Ajax's neck.

“He says you're a liar. He says you talk to him and he talks to you. He says you're a snake and you brought the crows with you!”

Ajax pushed back, grinding their foreheads together, his neck muscles straining. He laid a hand on the AK. “Well, he's a cock-sucking, motherfucking, bitching, bastard, son of the Great Whore, shit-eating liar.” Ajax poured all of his heart and soul through his eyes into the soldier's bloodshot windows, desperate to reach some final thread of a man. “And so is his mother.”

The soldier flicked a look into the corner and back to Ajax. He released a stale, stinking breath into Ajax's face. “I don't like him either. He's always making trouble. Telling me things. Making my friends angry.” He loosened his grip on Ajax's neck and the AK.

“That's right compa.
He
brought the crows. Look at him. You know he did. Let's leave that sick fuck here.” Ajax slid the AK onto his own lap. “Let's just go. You need to sleep. I'll stand guard over you. No ghosts. No crows.”

“You swear it?”

He raised his right hand.
“Te lo juro.”

The soldier picked up the destroyed cigarette, assessed its salvagability. “Got any more?”

“Sure.”

“I should get in uniform.”

“I'll get you some water.”

The soldier fumbled for his clothes. Ajax stood, took a breath and turned, half expecting to see someone standing in the corner. For a weird moment he knew there would be, but … but what? That would be crazy. He slung the AK over his shoulder, spotted a gourd water jug on a table in the corner, and tried to pour some into a scarred plastic cup. His hands shook too much. As quietly as he could, he panted to catch his breath. His heart raced and his stomach churned. He poured a cup of water, gulped it down then poured one for the soldier. It was then he noticed a bulging pile of wet rags and newspapers heaped under the table.
Damn
. He looked over his shoulder, lifted the rags with his boot. Underneath he could just make out a head, gray hair matted with blood. The priest's rosary still gripped in his hand.
Pobre padre.
The kid might be battle crazed, but the bishop and the antigovernment press would have a field day with this. His poor girlfriend would be forgotten.

“How do I look?”

The soldier had on his fatigue jumper and bush hat.

“You look like a soldier.”

“Got another Marl-burro?”

Ajax shook out a Red, lit it, tucked the pack into the soldier's breast pocket, buttoned it.

“You keep them. I'll get more.”

“You buy them on the black market?”

“Well. Let's say I get them from the black market.”

Ajax gave him the jug of water. He drank it down in great gulps and poured the rest over his head. He took a long drag and slowly blew a trail of smoke to the ceiling, seeming to notice something in the dark. He looked Ajax in the eye, gently touched the red-and-black Policía Sandinista insignia on his shoulder and whispered, “Ajax. I know why you're here. I know what I did.”

Ajax knew it was now or never. He took the soldier by the arm and quickly kicked away the barricade from the door.

“Come on, Fortunado. It'll be all right.
Te lo juro
.”

“I know.”

He stood with the soldier in the doorway. The sunlight blinded him but the soldier hardly blinked at all. Ajax eyeballed Gladys and saw her check her Bulgarian-made watch. He was not sure how long he'd been in there. Gladys turned toward the sharpshooters, now mustered in a line, and said something that made them snap their rifles to the ready. She turned to Ajax and touched her wrists together. Chica's got a thing for standard operating procedure, he thought, but he was damned if he'd handcuff someone already so caged. He adjusted the soldier's AK over his shoulder to show her he had it under control. He signaled Gladys to be at ease. She and the sharpshooters obeyed.

Ajax shaded his eyes, an old habit. Reconnoiter before moving from shade to light. Then he stepped fully outside with his arm around the soldier's shoulder. Slowly they walked out. Gladys frowned when the soldier took a drag on the Red. Ajax nodded at her and walked steadily on. They had cleared out the neighboring houses and the barrio was very quiet. He heard the soldier take another drag, and exhale as quietly as … as quietly as …

He was distracted for a moment, a sound, something. Something changed. The noise didn't register. The soldier stopped, looked up, plucked the Marlboro from his mouth and ground it out. Then Ajax heard it again—a single crow caw. He turned to the soldier, wanted the soldier to look at him one last time. Later, he was sure he could've fixed it if the kid had looked at him. He tried to throw a bear hug on Fortunado, pull him down. But the moment had passed and all Ajax got was a punch—a pile driver to his solar plexus. He dropped like a stone to the dirt.

“Listo!” Gladys yelled.

Ajax heard rifle butts snap to shoulders and saw the soldier's legs pump toward Gladys. And although the breath was knocked out of him, he knew what was happening. The soldier had not gotten himself dressed, but armed. He was drawing the pistol he'd secreted under his jumper and swinging it up at Gladys. He knew that the soldier was not giving himself up, but facing his tormentors one last time. The rifles went off like a single shot. Like a firing squad might. And at that sound a crow leapt out of a tree. Circled once. And was gone.

Ajax writhed in the dirt, suffocating. Drowning. The soldier's fist had created a vacuum in his lungs. Stranded on hands and knees, he could only heave as if trying to vomit air. Boots rushed around. But all was silence, except the blood pounding in his head. And then hands rolled him onto his back. The sun blinded him, caused a small explosion in his lungs, which suddenly filled with air.

“Ajax are you all right? Are you shot?”

He shoved Gladys's hands away. Looked around with swimming eyes and saw the soldier sprawled on his back. He rolled onto hands and knees, crawled to the boy, swatting at the robots' legs. “Get away, you fucking
asesinos
!” Assassins! “Don't touch him!”

Fortunado's arms were flung akimbo. Holes in his chest pooled blood. The sharpshooters would be proud of such a tight grouping. Ajax put a hand over the one hole in the soldier's forehead, to cover the goo that had blossomed there. His face was in repose. His eyes were open, and to Ajax's amazement they were no longer bloodshot. Yes, that's what had alerted him. The soldier's eyes had cleared. He patted the boy's chest affectionately. Felt the little box, and retrieved the bloodstained pack of Reds. A neat hole was drilled between the M and O, like a carnival trick shot. The package now spelled
M ORO
.

Then he heard the cawing of crows. He saw them in the tree. The last thing Fortunado Gavilan had seen. He snatched up the soldier's AK from the dirt. For the first time in years, the blood rage returned. He opened fire on them.

 

2

1.

Ajax lay on the hammock in his tiny, wet garden, looking at the stars, thinking,
It must be Wednesday
. Because the stars were all he could see. His barrio was without electricity on Wednesdays. No water on Mondays and Thursdays. No lights on Wednesdays. But at least he had both on the weekends.

Like that did some good.
When was the last time you had someone here on the weekend? You're a fucking monk.

He noticed that he was spinning the Python's cylinder but wasn't sure how long he'd been doing it, nor how long he'd lain in the hammock talking to his pistol.

He sat up, rubbing his tongue over his lips, saliva building in his mouth. He could kill for a glass of Flor de Caña. Nicaragua exported eighty million pounds of coffee beans a year. Yet the coffee in the mercados was shit. But the rum, the Flower of the Cane, was famous in Latin America for its delectability. As if the poorest province of France produced its finest wine.

Ajax exhaled a breath as long as the day had been. “If those crows hadn't been there I could've saved that kid.”

If you'd put cuffs on him you would have. Gladys knew it and you noticed how she didn't say anything?

Then he had another thought:
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme just the one drink!
He spun the Python's cylinder, pointed it into the air, and pulled the trigger. Click! An empty chamber. “Eighty-six,” he muttered, disappointed. Damn, he'd been sure he'd hit it the eighty-sixth time.

Ajax dropped the Python next to the Makarov 9mm he'd retrieved from the soldier. Then he rose, and walked automatically through the dark. The house was almost the same as when he'd been assigned it in '80 after joining State Security. He hadn't been in it long when he'd moved into Gioconda's house with its yard and pool for all her entertaining. He'd moved back two years ago after the divorce. Horacio, his old mentor and only regular visitor, liked to tell him he lived in a cave, like a bear with furniture. But at least he had furniture. The only major changes to the small house were the wrought-iron bars he'd installed over the windows, and the jagged glass cemented on top of the wall that surrounded his little garden. He'd mixed the cement himself and smashed more bottles than he'd needed. (That they'd been empties from his wedding party had had nothing to do with it. He'd just gotten into a rhythm.)

There was no need of light. Garden to sala to kitchen to bedroom to office, all paths were well worn. He
was
like a monk in his monastery. Or a prisoner. But a monk was not a prisoner, he reasoned. If you willingly went into the monastery you were not a prisoner. Wrongdoers got life sentences. Monks were devoted to a cause. The Knights Templar were monks and warriors and you wouldn't call them dickless, not to their faces anyway, even if they were celibate.

Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme just the one.

Ajax turned left and went into his office. It was really a second bedroom—might have been a child's bedroom. He sat in the comfortable leather chair
she
had given him back when she was mostly a pretty face but he was the great man. He opened a big desk drawer and stared through the darkness into it. He thought of it as the Dead Drawer. There were only four objects in it, like relics that, if laid out just the right way, offered clues to the loss of some bygone tribe. He removed The Needle, wrapped in oil skin to protect the blade, and set it aside with no more thought than you would give an old shoe. Then his fingers touched the finely framed photo she'd given him. A picture of the one perfect moment in his life—the afternoon of July 20, 1979. The day that divided his life into the Before of “All was possible” and the After of “Life is a double-dealing bitch.”

He ran his fingers over the glass, closed his eyes. The image showed Ajax before a wildly cheering throng of people in what was now the Plaza de la Revolución, but was then still the Ogre's Plaza de la Republica. Ajax stood on a platform, front and center, held an American sniper rifle over his head, the ivory handle of the Python visible on his hip. He was surrounded by his smiling compañeros. The look on his face was not one of triumph, but of joy. There was a watch on his wrist. Through a magnifying glass he had once tried to check the exact time. But it was obscured. She who had given him the watch stood at the back of the platform, her face just barely visible through the crowd of scruffy, fatigue-clad men and women. She was the only one not in fatigues. She stared at the Ajax the crowd adored. On her face was a look of hunger, but also of admiration. A look frozen for all time as incontrovertible proof that she had once adored him. No matter what bullshit evidence would later be introduced that
he
was cold, distant, and unable to live in the present.

Ajax dropped the photo carelessly onto the desk and fumbled for the third object, a small makeup case. Through the plastic he could feel the tube of dark red lipstick. The brush still woven with strands of her chestnut hair. The nail file, long like her fingers. And, most precious, the small bottle of perfume. She'd worn the perfume the night of the photograph. His head had swum with the fragrance as she had torn at his clothes. He'd just been able to drag her into the back of a truck before she took him like some ravenous marauder, took him with such intensity, such unhinged abandon that it had been as if the people's delirium at the Ogre's overthrow had been channeled into her, the suffering and sacrifice of the guerrilleros channeled into him, so that when he'd entered her their bodies had become something new, some Adam and Eve, and the long stream of orgasms she had milked out of them both, her nails bloodying his back, had purged the suffering of the past, celebrated the unimaginable triumph of the present, and consecrated an unwritten future.

Ajax had found it a little frightening.

It had been, after all, only his third or fourth time, and he'd been nearly thirty. But she'd shown him, coached him, taught him. As was her way. He had wanted their child to be conceived that night. The very constellations in the sky were new. The Ogre had been overthrown. Decades of merciless dictatorship staked through the heart. Those who had been its slaves were now masters. And they would create a new world without slaves. Or masters.