Beneath a Panamanian Moon (34 page)

I heard Kris come out of the bathroom. She was wrapped in a towel, and carried with her the nicest aroma of steam, soap, shampoo, and clean skin.

Phil said, “He's all yours,” and left, closing the door behind him.

We were alone. She lay down next to me, on her stomach, and traced my bottom lip with her index finger. “You smell like a wet dog,” she said.

“Maybe I should take a bath.”

“Can you?”

“Not by myself.”

Kris started the water and then helped me take off my shirt, socks, and underwear. Naked, my arm around her shoulder, I limped into the bathroom and slowly settled into the shallow water, my wounded leg propped up on the rim of the tub.

Kris started with my face, then lathered up my hair and rinsed it clean, scrubbed my neck and my stomach. She had me lean forward so she could wash my back, and it felt so good I never wanted her to stop. She washed my feet and ankles, my calves, and worked her way up my thighs. Then she washed my tender mercies, the soap, warm water, and her grip bringing one of my few unwounded parts to attention, just to show its gratitude.

“What's this, John, a scar?”

“Yeah, I was bit by a dog when I was little. Remind me to tell you a better story when I'm conscious.”

“I'm surprised I didn't notice it before. It's kind of cute, like a little grin.”

“That's because you make him so happy.” Fueled by the vodka and Valium I began singing “All of Me.”

Kris helped me out of the tub, dried me off, led me to bed and eased me onto my back. “Lauren found some clean clothes for us,” she said. “They're right here.”

Kris dropped her towel, climbed up next to me, her face against my shoulder, and said, “John?”

“Yes, Kris.”

“Tell me everything's going to be all right.”

“Everything's going to be all right,” I said, and although I'd been kicked from sea to shining sea and didn't believe it myself, not for a second, just saying the words made me feel a little better. A little.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The fireworks crackled in my sleep, followed by the boom of cannon. I opened my eyes and saw Kris pulling on her pants.

“John, get up!”

I started to ask why when I heard the answer. Men were in the house. There were gunshots and shouts. There were boots on the stairs.

“Let's go,” Kris said.

Fear fried off all of the remaining alcohol and Valium. I was moving. “You still have the pistol?”

Kris tossed it on the bed. I scooped it up and checked the magazine. “Go,” I said. “I'll be right behind you.” I racked a round, stepped into the corridor, and pointed the .45 at the top of the stairs. When I saw the first head come around the corner I fired three times. When it came around again I emptied the magazine.

There's something about a .45 and the noise it makes, and the brick-sized bullets it fires, and the fist-sized holes it makes in the masonry, that causes a man to rethink his intentions.

I'd bought us a sliver of breathing room and used it to toss a pair of pants out of the window and climb, as naked as a housewife's backdoor man, down the ivy that clung to the granite wall. Kris was on the lawn. The bay beyond was lit with ships of all kinds going about their peaceful post–New Year's business.

I joined Kris in the darkness of a feathery mimosa and pulled on the clean pants. I had no shirt, no shoes, and couldn't expect service in any convenience store in the country, but at least I wouldn't get arrested. Not for airing my indecency, anyway.

“What now?” Kris said.

I pointed to the wall that separated Choppo's yard from his neighbor's. Inside the house we heard more gunshots and saw the muzzle flashes light up windows as if the house were suddenly full of Hollywood paparazzi.

“Come on, we'll work our way around the front.”

“And do what?” Kris said.

“I don't know.”

Kris sprinted toward the far wall and I followed, as fast as I could gimp on one good leg. Behind us the French doors burst open. A man shouted for us to stop. Kris made the wall, was up and over, and then it was my turn. I placed my foot on the wall, my hands at the top, but my leg collapsed under me, sending me sprawling on the wet grass. Bullets ripped chunks of stone from the wall and showered me with sand and rock.

Kris came back over the wall and helped me up. The shooter was running toward us. Kris made a stirrup with her hands and hoisted me over the wall and then followed me, the man hard on her heels. I waited. As Kris came up and over, then down onto the grass, her pursuer's head came over the wall. I cracked him with a stone I'd picked up in the garden. The inscription on the stone read
PAZ
. The man, peaced out, fell back into Choppo's yard.

“Let's go.” I grabbed Kris's hand and we ran across the neighbor's lawn, over a gate and out into the dimly lit street. Lights blinked on all across the neighborhood but no one was foolish enough to come outside. Panama City had seen far too much violence for anyone not to know gunfire, even on New Year's Eve, when they heard it.

We ran across the street toward the water, crouched behind a car and watched the front of Choppo's house forty meters away. We could look through the gate and see a sedan, its four doors open, parked by the fountain. A pickup truck, its bed topped with a canvas cover, was parked across the entrance to the driveway.

We watched a man drag Choppo out onto the front lawn and force him to his knees. The driver of the truck got out and held an assault rifle on him.

When the men went back into the house, I heard Marilyn scream and then I heard gunshots.

Things were quiet until one of the men came out with Phil and Marilyn, both still alive, both of them with their hands cuffed behind them. Phil staggered and one of the men hit him with a rifle butt. I started to get up, but Kris stopped me. The man pushed Phil and Marilyn into the back seat of the sedan, got in, and the car took off, pausing only for the pickup truck to move aside.

Another man came out the front door, in no apparent hurry. We could see only his silhouette against the house lights as he paused and looked out across the bay, as casually as a homeowner taking in the grand view before going to bed. He turned his back to the bay and lit a cigar. His head was enveloped in smoke for a brief moment before the breeze blew it away. Then he strolled across the lawn to where Choppo was on his knees. He said something to him, too low for us to hear. He pulled a pistol from his belt. Without even a breath he shot Choppo and then shot him three more times as he lay in the damp grass. Four shots that made Kris and I jump with each muzzle flash as if the bullets were entering our own bodies, tearing our flesh, pulverizing our bone, ending our lives.

Again, with no hurry, he pulled a satchel out of the truck cab.

“What is that?”

“It's a bomb,” I said.

He walked to the front door, pulled a cord that set the satchel smoking, tossed the bag inside and walked out to the truck. Before he got in he hollered into the night, “Harper! You know where to find me. I'll expect you before sunrise.”

As the truck pulled away the satchel charge blew out the first-floor windows and the house began to burn.

Kris whispered, “That was my father. I just watched my father kill a man in cold blood.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I asked Kris if she had her car keys.

Kris shook her head. “They're in the house.” By this time, the first floor was ablaze with flames licking the window frames.

“Maybe we could steal a car.”

“No,” she said. “I know what to do.”

She opened the Volkswagen and pulled a screwdriver and a pack of cigarettes out of the glove box.

“I didn't know you smoked.”

Kris stopped and stared at me. “Are you going to tell me they're bad for my health, John?”

I shut up and watched as she stripped away the cellophane and paper from the pack, leaving only the foil. In the dim light from the street Kris popped the hood and stuck her head into the engine compartment.

The sirens were getting closer.

A Jaguar, long and sleek, cruised past the house, the flames reflected in the waxed finish. The Jaguar slowed.

“It's Lauren,” I said. I stood up and waved. The car raced up beside us and stopped fast.

Lauren said, “Come on. We don't have much time.”

“We have to go to La Boca.”

“No, there's a safe house.” When I didn't move, she said, “Harper, your work is done. You've done more, much more, than anyone expected. Now, get in.”

I thought of Marilyn and Phil and how they'd put their lives in danger to help me. I looked at Kris who was kneeling by the rear of her VW. “You go with her,” I said to Kris. “I'll take your car.”

“And leave you stranded in the street? No way.”

“Kris, please, go with Lauren.”

Kris took her head out of the back end of the VW and said to Lauren, “Funny, you don't look like Paul Henreid.”

“What's she talking about?”

“A movie.
Casablanca
.”

Whether Lauren got it or not, she didn't say. But apparently it was enough. She said to Kris, “Can you start that thing?”

Kris said she could. “Good.” Lauren handed me a pistol, a .380. “I think you're crazy. Both of you.” Lauren let off the brake and said, “I'll tell Smith where he can find you,” and took off.

“I think I've got it,” Kris said. “Get in and make sure it's not in gear.” A second later, the starter motor turned and the engine rattled to life. Kris jumped into the passenger seat and as we pulled away I said, “Where did you learn that?”

“You're not my first boyfriend, John.”

“Am I your boyfriend? I like the sound of that.”

We crept through the neighborhood with our headlights off. There were lights in every window as Choppo's house brightened the black water of the bay. At one street we pulled to the curb and let police cars and a fire engine fly by, their lights flashing in the trees and their sirens cutting through the peaceful façade of this first morning of a brand-new year.

When we pulled onto the main road, Kris said, “I think I've got a shirt in this beach bag back here.”

She reached into the back and helped me slither into a T-shirt. It was as tight as a wet suit and covered the top part of my chest, leaving my navel exposed.

“You look like a Backstreet Boy,” Kris said, and laughed, unable, or unwilling, to spare me.

“Is this it? Don't you have a sweatshirt or something in there?”

“Let me look,” she said. She pulled out a tropical shirt of flowered rayon. “How's this?”

“Better.”

She held the wheel as I peeled off the Backstreet Boy T-shirt and put on the Beach Boy shirt of tropical wonder.

“That's much better,” Kris said.

I was once again decent enough to be seen in a certain low society.

“We're going in the back way,” Kris said. We crossed the bridge and a few miles in we turned and sped down the single lane that ran through the abandoned leper colony. Once we reached the beach road, the asphalt ended and the little car bucked and rolled in the ruts of washed-out sand. I was driving so fast I was afraid we'd careen off into the brush. I slowed the car and it was as the engine quieted that I heard her sob. I stopped the car and put my hand on her shoulder. I knew this had to come, and when she collapsed against me I held her and sang the first song that came into my head, soft as a lullaby:

In time the Rockies may tumble,

Gibraltar may crumble,

They're only made of clay, but,

Our love is here to stay.

I let her cry it out as the water sliced up the silver reflections of the quarter moon. The trees and wild places around us filled with creatures mystified by our smells. Eventually, her crying quieted to sniffles, and Kris wiped her face with the backs of her hands, looked up at me again, and said, “I'm sorry about that.”

“Don't be.”

“I'm okay now.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “So let's go get them, okay?”

“There was never another thought in my head.”

I started the car, this time leaving the headlights off, and we crawled through the jungle, hugging the coast on a road long forgotten by everyone except lovers, surfers, and smugglers.

We parked near the chain-link fence and walked through Kris's gate, keeping to the shadows. My feet found every sharp blade, every thorn, every prickle and sting on the ground. Insects alerted their friends and we became a feast for every six-legged bloodsucking beast with wings. Soon, we were overlooking the hotel compound. We stopped and watched for any light or movement. The hotel was completely dark, but over the rhythmic rush of waves against the sand, I heard something else in the wind.

I pointed to my left and Kris melted into the shadows, a real soldier's daughter. She was gone so quickly I thought maybe she'd been a hallucination.

I listened again for what might have been an animal or what might have been a boot settling into dry leaves. A click, followed by a
tink
of metal, sounds so small they were almost lost in the wind and the whir of insect song.

I'll give him this; Meat knew his craft. He sprang up as if he'd sprouted full-grown from the earth. He aimed a pistol at my head and said, “You know, monkey shit, you really should have shot me when you had the chance.” He took the .380 from my hand and tossed it into the jungle.

“But I didn't, Meat. And I don't think you'll shoot me, either.”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“Because Kelly wants me alive. That's why he hasn't killed his prisoners.”

Meat smiled, and in the moonlight all I could see was teeth in the big shadow of his head. “Maybe, but wait till you see 'em. Hell, I'd rather be dead.”