TWO YEARS LATER: MEXICO CITY RETURN
Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the progress of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetic to geometric progression seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal.
A smog of bum kicks hangs over Panama in the wet heat. Everyone here is telepathic on the paranoid level. I walked around with my camera and saw a wood and corrugated iron shack on a limestone cliff in Old Panama, like a penthouse. I wanted a picture of this excrescence, with the albatrosses and vultures wheeling over it against the hot gray sky. My hands holding the camera were slippery with sweat, and my shirt stuck to my body like a wet condom.
An old hag in the shack saw me taking the picture. They always know when you are taking their picture, especially in Panama. She went into an angry consultation with some other ratty-looking people I could not see clearly. Then she walked to the edge of a perilous balcony and made an ambiguous gesture of hostility. I walked on and shot some boys—young, alive, unconscious—playing baseball. They never glanced in my direction.
Down by the waterfront I saw a dark young Indian on a fishing boat. He knew I wanted to take his picture, and every time I swung the camera into position he would look up with young male sulkiness. I finally caught him leaning against the bow of the boat, idly scratching one shoulder. A long white scar across right shoulder and collarbone. Such languid animal grace. I put away my camera and leaned over the hot concrete wall, looking at him. I was running a finger along the scar, down across his naked copper chest and stomach, every cell aching with deprivation. I pushed away from the wall, muttering “Oh Jesus,” and walked away, looking around for something to photograph. Many so-called primitives are afraid of cameras. They think it can capture their soul and take it away. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.
A Negro with a felt hat was leaning on the porch rail of a wooden house built on a dirty limestone foundation. I was across the street under a movie marquee. Every time I prepared my camera he would lift his hat and look at me, muttering insane imprecations. I finally snapped him from behind a pillar. On a balcony over this character a shirtless young man was washing. Negro and Near Eastern blood, rounded face, café-au-lait mulatto skin, smooth body of undifferentiated flesh with not a muscle showing. He looked up from his washing like an animal scenting danger. I caught him when the five o’clock whistle blew. Old photographer trick: wait for distraction.
I went into Chico’s Bar for a rum Coke. I never liked this place, nor any other bar in Panama, but it used to be endurable and had some good numbers on the jukebox. Now nothing but this awful Oklahoma honky-tonk music, like the bellowing of an anxious cow: “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin,” “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”
The servicemen in the joint all had that light-concussion Canal Zone look: cow-like and blunted, as if they had undergone special G.I. processing and were immunized against contact on the intuition level, telepathic sender and receiver excised. You ask them a question, they answer without friendliness or hostility. No warmth, no contact. Conversation is impossible. They just have nothing to say. They sit around buying drinks for the B-girls and make lifeless passes, which the girls brush off like flies, and play that whining music on the jukebox. One young man with a pimply adenoidal face kept trying to touch a girl’s breast. She would brush his hand away, then it would creep back as if endowed with autonomous insect life.
A B-girl sat next to me, and I bought her one drink. She ordered good Scotch, yet. “Panama, how I hate your cheatin’ guts,” I thought. She had a shallow bird brain and perfect stateside English, like a recording. Stupid people can learn a language quick and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out.
She wanted another drink. I said, “No.”
She said, “Why are you so mean?”
I said, “Look, if I run out of money, who is going to buy my drinks? Will you?”
She looked surprised, and said slowly, “Yes. You are right. Excuse me.”
I walked down the main drag. A pimp seized my arm. “I gotta fourteen-year-old girl, Jack. Puerto Rican. How’s about it?”
“She’s middle-aged already,” I told him. “I want a six-year-old virgin and none of that sealed-while-you-wait shit. Don’t try palming your fourteen-year-old bats off on me.” I left him there with his mouth open.
I went into a store to price Panama hats. The young man behind the counter started singing: “Making friends, making money.”
“This spic bastard is strictly on the chisel,” I decided.
He showed me some two-dollar hats. “Fifteen dollar,” he said.
“Your prices are way out of line,” I told him, and turned and walked out.
He followed me onto the street. “Just a minute, Mister.” I walked on.
Flew up to Tapachula just over the Mexican border. Met an old tourist from Texas in the airport—we had arrived on the same plane—and took a taxi with him and checked into the same hotel. I felt better in Mexico. Went into a cantina and ordered rum. A beggar came through with a withered hand. His hand looked something like Allerton’s, so I gave him twenty centavos.
That night I had a recurrent dream: I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art Gonzalez, a former roommate of Allerton’s. I asked him where Allerton was, and he said, “In Agua Diente.” This was somewhere south of Mexico City, and I was inquiring about a bus connection. I have dreamed many times I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art or Allerton’s best friend, Johnny White, and asking where he was. Dream about Allerton continually. Usually we are on good terms, but sometimes he is inexplicably hostile, and when I ask why, what is the matter, his answer is muffled. I never find out why.
Flew up to Mexico City. I was a little nervous going through the airport that some cop or immigration inspector might spot me. I decided to stick close to my tourist. I had packed my hat, and when I got off the plane I took off my glasses. I slung my camera over my shoulder.
“Let’s take a cab into town. Split the fare. Cheaper that way,” I said to the tourist. We walked through the airport like father and son. “Yes,” I was saying, “that old boy in Guatemala wanted to charge me two dollars from the Palace Hotel out to the airport. I told him uno.” I held up one finger. No one looked at us. Two tourists.
We got into a taxi. The driver said twelve pesos for both to the center of town.
“Wait a minute,” the tourist said in English. “No meter. Where your meter? You got to have a meter.”
The driver asked me to explain they were authorized to carry airline passengers to town without a meter.
“No!” the tourist shouted. “I not tourist. I live in Mexico City. ¿Sabe Hotel Colmena? I live in Hotel Colmena. Take me to town but I pay what is on meter. I call police. Policía. You’re required by law to have a meter.”
“Oh God,” I thought. “That’s all I need, this old jerk should call the law.” I could see cops accumulating around the cab, not knowing what to do and calling other cops. The tourist got out of the cab with his suitcase. He was taking down the number.
“I call policía plenty quick,” he said.
I said, “Well, I think I’ll take this cab anyway. Won’t get into town much cheaper. . . . Vámonos,” I said to the driver.
I checked into an eight-peso hotel near Sears, and walked over to Lola’s, my stomach cold with excitement. “Easy now. Cool. Cool.” The bar was in a different place, redecorated, with new furniture. But there was Pepe behind the bar, with his gold tooth and his moustache.
“¿Cómo está?” he said. We shook hands. He asked where I had been, and I told him South America. I sat down with a Delaware Punch. The place was empty, but someone I knew was sure to come in sooner or later.
The Major walked in. A retired army man, gray-haired, vigorous, stocky. I ran through the list crisply with the Major:
“Johnny White, Russ Morton, Pete Crowly, Ike Scranton?”
“Los Angeles, Alaska, Idaho, don’t know, still around. He’s always around.”
“And oh, uh, whatever happened to Allerton?”
“Allerton? Don’t believe I know him.”
“See you.”
“Right, Lee. Take it easy.”
I walked over to Sears and looked through the magazines. In one called Balls: For Real Men, I was looking at a photo of a Negro hanging from a tree: “I Saw Them Swing Sonny Goons.” A hand fell on my shoulder. I turned, and there was Gale, another retired army man. He had the subdued air of the reformed drunk. I ran through the list.
“Most everybody is gone,” he said. “I never see those guys anyway, never hang around Lola’s anymore.”
I asked about Allerton.
“Allerton?”
“Tall skinny kid. Friend of Johnny White and Art Gonzalez.”
“He’s gone too.”
“How long ago?” No need to play it cool and casual with Gale. He wouldn’t notice anything.
“I saw him about a month ago on the other side of the street.” A wave of pain and desolation hit me like a main-line shot settling in the lungs and around the heart.
“See you.”
“See you.”
I put the magazine away slowly and walked outside and leaned against a post. “He must have gotten my letters. Why didn’t he answer? Why?”
“Hardly anybody around. Johnny White and Tex and Crosswheel are in Los Angeles.”
I was looking at his hand.
“Did you hear about Allerton?” he asked.
I said, “No.”
“He went down to South America or some place. With an army colonel. Allerton went along as guide.”
“So? How long has he been gone?”
“About six months.”
“Must have been right after I left.”
“Yeah. Just about then.”
I could feel the pain ease up a bit. I got Art Gonzalez’s address from Burns and went over to see him. He was drinking a beer in a shop across from his hotel and called me over. Yes, Allerton left about five months ago and went along as guide to a colonel and his wife.
“They were going to sell the car in Guatemala. A ’48 Cadillac. I felt there was something not quite right about the deal. But Allerton never told me anything definite. You know how he is.” Art seemed surprised I had not heard from Allerton. “Nobody has heard anything from him since he left. It worries me.”
I wondered what he could be doing, and where. Guatemala is expensive, San Salvador expensive and jerkwater. Costa Rica? I regretted not having stopped off in San José on the way up.
“He said something about joining you down there.”
Gonzalez and I went through the where-is-so-and-so routine. Mexico City is a terminal of space-time travel, a waiting room where you grab a quick drink while you wait for your train. That is why I can stand to be in Mexico City or New York. You are not stuck; by the fact of being there at all, you are traveling. But in Panama, crossroads of the world, you are exactly so much aging tissue. You have to make arrangements with Pan Am or the Dutch Line for removal of your body. Otherwise, it would stay there and rot in the muggy heat, under a galvanized iron roof.
Dream that night: I was in Peru-Mexico-N.Y., the City, eating in a restaurant with booths. Restaurant opened onto the backyards and red brick houses of St. Louis 1918. I was wondering where Allerton was. A beggar came to the table and held up a withered hand. Then another beggar selling Colombian lottery tickets. Someone pointed out this was not Colombia. The beggar looked hurt and puzzled. He never thought of that. Allerton has the same puzzled and slightly hurt look when I point out that we are not using the same currency.
That night I dreamed I finally found Allerton, hiding out someplace. He seemed surprised to see me after all this time. In the dream I was a finder of missing persons.
“Mr. Allerton, I represent the Friendly Finance Company. Haven’t you forgotten something, Gene? You’re supposed to come and see us every third Tuesday. We’ve been lonely for you in the office. We don’t like to say ‘Pay up or else.’ It’s not a friendly thing to say. I wonder if you ever read the contract all the way through? I have particular reference to Clause 6(x), which can only be deciphered with an electron microscope and a virus filter. I wonder if you know just what ‘or else’ means, Gene?
“Aw, I know how it is with you young kids. You get chasing after some floozie and forget all about Friendly Finance, don’t you? But Friendly Finance doesn’t forget you. Like the song say, ‘No hiding place down there.’ Not when the old Skip Tracer goes out on a job.”
The Skip Tracer’s face goes blank and dreamy. His mouth falls open, showing teeth hard and yellow as old ivory. Slowly his body slides down in the leather armchair until the back of the chair pushes his hat down over his eyes. The eyes gleam in the hat’s shade, catching points of light like an opal. He begins humming “Johnny’s So Long at the Fair” over and over. The humming stops abruptly, in the middle of a phrase.
The Skip Tracer is talking in a voice languid and intermittent, like music down a windy street. “You meet all kinds on this job, kid. Every now and then some popcorn citizen walks in the office and tries to pay Friendly Finance with this shit.”
He lets one arm swing out, palm up, over the side of the chair. Slowly he opens a thin brown hand, with purple-blue fingertips, to reveal a roll of yellow thousand-dollar bills. The hand turns over, palm down, and falls back against the chair. His eyes close.
Imperceptibly the Skip Tracer straightens up, and a slit of light goes on behind each eye.
“Keep that in case you’re caught short, kid,” he says. “You know how it is in these spic hotels. You gotta carry your own paper.”
The Skip Tracer leans forward, his elbows on his knees. Suddenly he is standing up, as if tilted out of the chair, and in the same upward movement he pushes the hat back from his eyes with one finger. He walks to the door and turns, with his right hand on the knob. He polishes the nails of his left hand on the lapel of his worn glen plaid suit. The suit gives out an odor of mold when he moves. There is mildew under the lapels and in the trouser cuffs. He looks at his nails.
“Oh, uh . . . about your, uh . . . account. I’ll be around soon. That is, within the next few . . .” The Skip Tracer’s voice is muffled.
“We’ll come to some kind of an agreement.” Now the voice is loud and clear. The door opens and wind blows through the room. The door closes and the curtains settle back, one curtain trailing inside the window as if someone had taken it off and tossed it there.