Saffire (15 page)

A few hours passed. Although I wasn't hungry, I wanted to pass time. I entered the restaurant through the lobby of the National, enjoying a faint scent of cinnamon wafting on a breeze sweeping through the dining room. The windows, though open, were screened for mosquitoes.

Stefan gave me a courtly nod. I removed my hat and allowed him to take it to the coatroom. This time I had no immediate plans after lunch and wouldn't mind waiting for the hat's return when the meal was finished.

Stefan led me to a table near the windows overlooking a wide veranda. The veranda reminded me of the one and only hotel in Medora—a hotel built when I was a boy, before the Dakotas had been granted statehood. Same type of overhang, same width of veranda. It was now called the Rough Riders, in honor of Teddy Roosevelt, who made a stop there as president in 1903, all those years after he'd played at being a deputy sheriff during his ranching days.

In Medora, the view from the Rough Riders was restricted to a stable across the street and a backdrop of the hills of the Badlands formed by the Little Missouri River. Depending on the time of year, those hills would be lush green, dusty brown, or mottled with snow.

Here, the view was dominated by the palm trees ringing the plaza, where the concert had played the night before. The squat stone buildings on the other side blocked a view of the Pacific. The plaza was empty during the heat of the day, and I remembered Saffire telling me that the coloreds had their own concerts on a different night of the week.

Stefan maintained his silent gravitas until I was seated and had placed a napkin across my lap. The first time I'd dined in a formal restaurant, I'd tucked the top of the napkin into the gap between my shirt and collar. The waiter had been aghast, and the older woman opposite me had giggled and then schooled me for the remainder of the meal and the evening.

Stefan opened the menu.

“Sir,” he said, “it may appear as if I am discussing your lunch selection, but that is not so. I intend to have a conversation with you.”

“I'm fine if you sit across the table from me.”

“I am not.” His accent was a rich, dignified mixture of West Indies and British. “Speaking in a direct manner like this to you would lead to my unemployment if you complained, but I would not have this conversation unless it was important.”

“Please continue.”

“Saffire is a remarkable girl. Even though she has a bodyguard, she—”

“Bodyguard?”

“A well-known secret that she is under the protection of Ezequiel Sandoval. Neither he, nor I, would like to see her come to any harm.”

Bodyguard. I liked that. It let her move through the city as if she owned it.

“Neither would I,” I said.

“You say that like a man who agrees merely so the conversation will end.” Stefan lowered the menu slightly. “So let me tell you a story about her. This is a girl who saw children her age scavenging in the garbage each night behind the hotel, looking for the food scraped off the plates of those who dine in the hotel. She found a way to organize these children to each pay her a tiny amount from what they beg. This bounty she pools to pay our kitchen staff to put the waste food in separate bags so she can distribute it to the children so they no longer have to fight rats to eat.”

I thought of the money I'd given Saffire the night before. I nodded. “A remarkable girl. Forgive me if I seemed insincere. I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Of course you didn't. I can see that on your ears. We call it the bite of the alligator. Those clamps leave an unmistakable pattern. Sometimes we see it on the dead. You were lucky.”

I took a deep breath.
“The bite of the alligator.”

“National Police. Ears first. Then downward.”

I thought of the change in Miskimon's body language after he'd looked closely at my face.

“But I didn't need to see the bite to know you faced the National Police,” Stefan said. “Saffire told me where Raquel found you. And the circumstances in which she found you. This is why I fear for Saffire.”

I managed to smile. “I might point out that she's the one who rescued me.”

“A remarkable girl, and it will do her no good to be involved with someone who felt the bite of the alligator. She will be here, within reach of the National Police, long after you are gone. Do you understand?”

I understood the depth of his affection for her.

“Tomorrow I will be on the noon sailing of a steamer bound from Colón to New York,” I told Stefan. “There is nothing to fear from me.”

My steak had been set in front of me, but before I could cut into it, Robert Waldschmidt swept through the restaurant and pulled out a chair to sit at my table.

“Tell me a Buffalo Bill story, yah?”

I sliced off a corner of the steak and popped it into my mouth and chewed. Very tender and flavorful. I swallowed and cut another piece.

“Just one story, yah?”

I assumed that sooner or later, as I enjoyed this steak, Waldschmidt would realize I would tell no stories.

He didn't appear to take it as an insult. “Very well, I have a story for you. About the first and only person to die in the first revolution for the country of Panama. It was a Chinaman. He was the unfortunate victim of a stray cannonball. Here, on the Pacific side. Other than that, no real fighting. Imagine, Panama the province leaves Colombia to become Panama the country and no fighting because the Americans have chosen to protect it.”

I chewed slowly. Perhaps if I made my silence last long enough, he would leave.

“Of course, some might say the Americans made a choice to
steal
it, rather than protect it,” Waldschmidt continued.

I cut yet another piece of steak and looked past him as I chewed.

Waldschmidt considered me. “If that doesn't interest you, perhaps if you tell me a Buffalo Bill story, I will tell you about my eye. People always ask.”

I shifted my gaze as he pointed at his eye patch. “Yesterday, the patch was on the other eye, yes?”

Waldschmidt made a move to touch it and frowned.

I raised an eyebrow. All I'd been doing was testing him to see if the eye patch was necessary or for show.

“Very good then.” Waldschmidt nodded. “You caught me in a small deception. But I am sure to always put it on the same eye.”

I resumed my methodical attack on the fine piece of steak.

“We shall keep this our secret, yah? I am doing my best, after all, to pretend I am living a different kind of life here. I do hope you have heard the rumors that people think I am a spy. Such a rumor adds to the spice of life, and women find such imagined danger attractive.”

“I imagine your money helps with the attraction,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me. I have no one to tell and I'll be gone tomorrow.”

“What if I am a spy pretending to be a man pretending to be a spy?”

“And what if I tell you that I truly don't care?” I cut another piece of steak.

“You Americans are a remarkable people. Although you are upstarts in the world, there is no longer any doubt that you will accomplish what the French failed. But have you considered that if the Americans left Panama today, another country could finish the project? A country, perhaps, like Germany?”

“Have you considered that I truly have no interest in a conversation like this?”

“When the province of Panama revolted against Colombia, the only value of this land was a treaty to allow the Americans a canal zone. But now that you Americans have proven the canal is a certainty, the entire world sees the value of a way to save weeks of travel by ship. Of more value is the fact that it establishes your country as a military power controlling this entire side of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Imagine if Colombia, with help from a naval power like Germany, could take possession of her former province. Or perhaps Panama could switch allegiance to Germany? Another revolution would accomplish that.”

“That's between you and the kaiser,” I said.

“I tell you all this because perhaps you should wonder more about the events of last evening.”

What game was this man playing? “Or not. I'm just a cowboy headed out of town.”

“A cowboy who greatly interests Raquel Sandoval, if I may be so bold as to pass this along. After our conversation here last night, she did send Odalis after you, did she not?”

I was down to a final piece of steak, which I cut with slow, precise movements.

“Would it surprise you to learn that Raquel is a major supporter of Odalis in his run for mayor?”

“I wish them both the best.” I speared the piece of meat. “Please pass that along.”

“Watch the mayoral candidate closely, and see if you can figure out his secret.” Waldschmidt leaned his elbows on the table. “He is not much of a man. Some secrets are delicious, and it is all I can do to keep that one to myself.”

“I wish them both the best,” I repeated. “Please pass that along.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that Raquel Sandoval is a widow of her own doing? That she shot her first husband dead?”

“As I have no intent of remaining long in Panama, I'm not that interested.”

“How could a man not be interested in a woman of such beauty? By happy coincidence, she will be arriving soon for lunch with me, along with Odalis and the venerable T. B. Miskimon. If you stay, you can join us.”

“I have an appointment.”

“Does this appointment have anything to do with matters in regard to the building of the canal?”

“It surely has nothing to do with anything that is of your business.”

Waldschmidt lost his jocularity and leaned close. “I would be remiss not to warn you that it might be very dangerous to your health if you continue to be involved in the types of questions you were asking last night. Much is at stake, yah?”

I departed before his guests arrived.

M
y appointment was with a pillow in my suite several floors above the restaurant. The truth was that I did not have any plans except to avoid Miskimon and recuperate from the night before. My muscles ached from the violent contractions brought on by the electric shocks. I wanted to blame my malaise on the broken sleep rhythm, but I knew better.

In regard to my emotional state, seething was too strong a word. Irritated, not strong enough. Humiliation—I didn't want to think about it. I closed my eyes.

Stop. Thinking. About. It.

Better at this point not to feel. Or think.

I let myself into the room. Too bad I didn't have my valise. After a nap I could have added some journal entries to share with Winona. Or lost myself in one of the novels.

But as I stepped to the window to look down on palm trees, the thoughts of books led me back to thoughts of Saffire. And to the night before…

And to the helplessness and rage against the men who had tortured me.

Was I a coward? Would I have broken and divulged the name of the man who'd sent me if Saffire hadn't rescued me?

I wasn't sure I wanted to explore those questions too fully.

No books. No friends. And too much time on my hands.

I snorted. Here I was in a luxury suite that Roosevelt himself might have used during his visit to Panama, and yet there was no joy. Which led me back to thoughts of Roosevelt…

Would I have told them it was Roosevelt who sent me?

As I relived the torture, I couldn't accurately recall the jolts of electricity, only my emotional response. Pain like that couldn't be comprehended on an intellectual level. It was too abstract. Yet dread washed through me—the dread I'd felt waiting for the third jolt that did not arrive.

That's what was so insidious about the bite of the alligator. The first prolonged jolt came with no warning of how horrible it would be, and therefore, I'd been innocent to its arrival. I'd just begun to recover from the first jolt, exhausted with relief that it stopped, when the second jolt hit. Then, innocence replaced by the realization that at any moment a third jolt could arrive, I'd been weak with dread all through the conversation that followed. And when my captor removed the clips from my ears and exposed my chest for the clips to be applied where the electricity's venom would have exponential effect, I'd wanted to beg for mercy. That I'd managed to clamp my jaws shut instead gave me little solace, for I suspected I would have screamed for mercy after one more jolt.

That residue of shame left me…grimy.

Maybe that explained my rage at Miskimon this morning—a need to shove aside shame and find another emotion strong enough to mask it.

And now?

Here it was. I could not escape the truth that I'd been violated by other men.

With this realization came another, that I'd been pacing the length of the suite. I needed to be outside. Walking. That would do it. A couple of hours in the heat, with nothing to do but wander and leave my mind blank.

No.

I needed to admit to myself what I was trying to avoid.

I'd been ten the last time I'd felt this shame. My father had been down at the neighbor's corrals during a summer afternoon, in idle conversation with his fellow rancher. I wandered to a small, dry creek bed with no particular destination in mind, when two of the neighbor's dogs charged from a curve ahead.

Their silence unnerved me the most. It signaled a deadly intent, and I scrambled to a tree, barely getting to a safe height as they reached me, jumping and scratching at the tree base.

My father was within earshot, and I could have screamed for help. I did not. The shame of running from the dogs was compounded by the shame that I had wet my pants, leaving a visible large wet patch. I remained in the safety of the tree for another half hour, hoping my pants would dry in the heat.

But my father came looking for me before the stain had disappeared. I had no choice but to call out to him when he began to yell for me. That's when he marched up to the dogs at the base of the tree and kicked them aside.

When I climbed to the ground, he glanced at the stain down the inside of my pants legs.

“Know why those dogs ran from me?”

Shame turned into resentment. “You're bigger.”

“From their perspective, they have to look up at you, same as they did to me.” He spit to the side. “Size has nothing to do with it. Difference is, while they have to look up
at
me, I also made them look up
to
me. They ran because they knew I wasn't afraid of a fight and I'd keep kicking no matter what they did.”

He looked at the stain on my pants again. “If you don't forget what they did to you, it's going to tear you up just as surely as if they got their teeth into you. And that kind of damage doesn't heal. We're coming back tomorrow, and you're going to walk around until either you find the dogs or you let the dogs find you. When they come running, if you end up climbing another tree, you're going to be there until you figure out a way down. I suggest you make them look up
to
you instead of up
at
you. And no, I'm not giving you a rifle.”

This close to the ocean, the streets were set in grids, and finding the National Police headquarters had been as simple as asking for directions, then strolling beneath the palm leaves waving in the breeze.

I pushed through the main entrance, removing my hat as I stepped inside. There was a front counter, almost like a bank counter, but without a protective grill. The policeman behind the counter had a build that fit his sedentary role. Flecks of gray in his thick hair showed him to be well past his first years on the force. His wide face was remarkable only for the upside-down horseshoe mustache, ragged ends drooping well beneath his chin.

I walked up to the counter, hat in my hands. Cowboy hats were not usual in Panama, and I caught a flicker of comprehension in his face.

Señor Vaquero Americano.

He gave an involuntary glance at my ears. Then a few rapid blinks.

As I'd suspected, it was not a large police force. Rank-and-file cops, like soldiers, thrived on gossip. If Harding knew about the events of the previous night, it was no surprise that the man at the front desk knew.

“Is there something with which I can help you?” he asked.

His recognition of me had probably elicited the deference of heavily accented English instead of Spanish.

“Last night, away from here, I was having a conversation with someone who is probably now somewhere in this building,” I said. “The conversation was interrupted. I'd like to continue it with that person.”

The day my father forced me to face the dogs, I learned something. Fear can stoke rage. Cold rage.

“Such a conversation is, of course, a matter of privacy,” he said. “Please forgive me, however, for suggesting that rumors have made it clear that the need for any more conversation has ended and there is no longer official interest in your activities. You might want to consider this a matter of good fortune.”

“I have not finished with my end of the conversation.”

There was a long hesitation. “For the record, señor, it is our policy not to allow weapons in our building.”

Impressive. He had struck me as clerical, but to raise the issue, alone as he was behind the counter, he must have been prepared to enforce it. I half expected him to raise a pistol.

“I am unarmed,” I said. “I am simply looking for a man-to-man conversation. There would be no honor in hiding behind a weapon.”

Another long hesitation. Perhaps he was reevaluating me. Or sensing my buildup of rage.

“And the policeman's name?” he asked. “There are many of us here.”

“I hope he might remember my name. I'll write it down if you want.”

More thought from across the counter as he considered the options. He then folded a yellow piece of paper in half, in half again, and in half again. He tore a small square of paper where it had been folded and handed me a pencil and the piece of yellow paper.