CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kelly’s patience had run out. I knew that. There was no way he would let me off the isthmus alive and that meant I had to stay as far away from him as possible. The first opportunity he got, he’d pinch my head off like a grape.

I like to think of that as motivation.

After reshaping my nose in the mirror, I went down to the second floor and listened at the door. Not a creature was stirring, not even an agouti. I picked the doorknob lock in under thirty seconds, a personal best, and stepped inside. I figured that maybe, just maybe, the student files were somewhere in Kelly’s apartment.

There was sunlight pouring in from the balcony, so bright it hurt my eyes. I found Kelly’s bedroom, as spartan as his office, and searched his drawers, one by one. In the nightstand I found a Russian Makarov and wondered where he found the uncommon ammunition for the pistol in this part of the world. I looked behind the one picture, a Kmart print of The Last Supper, but there was no convenient safe—not that I had any great skill in safecracking. The floors were hardwood and I crawled around on my hands and knees looking for a trapdoor or loose board or maybe a box of handy info filed neatly under the bed. I searched until my face started throbbing and I had to stand up.

Kris’s room was a little pinker than her father’s, but even her room was as impersonal as a bus station. She had arrived on Christmas Eve, the same day I’d first heard about La Boca, a day devoid of any joy, peace, or goodwill, and hadn’t taken the time to unpack. Her things fell out of an open suitcase and were strewn across the floor. I wasn’t enough of a pervert to finger through her underthings, although I was enough of a pervert to think about it. There wasn’t any hiding place for papers I could see, so I headed toward the kitchen. I was halfway across the living room when I heard someone on the balcony. I froze, held my breath, and hoped that whoever was out there couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart.

The balcony doors were open and a hot breeze blew through the apartment. I smelled honeysuckle. I quickly tiptoed to the front door and slowly turned the knob. With a quick glance into the hall, I started out.

“Harper?”

Kris was standing with her back toward the ocean, the breeze fluttering the hem of her shirt.

“Hi, Kris.”

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, the door was open.”

“And you just came inside?” She tilted her head and looked at me. Her stare reminded me of her father. It was not pleasant.

“Uh, the truth is, I wanted to surprise you.”

She crossed the room and examined my eye, her fingertips barely touching the cheek. “Christ, Harper, you’re more likely to scare me to death. What the hell happened to your face?”

“I ran into a tree,” I said.

“You need to be more careful around trees. Does it hurt?”

“No, but the way you’re looking at me does.”

She laughed and said, “I’m sorry, but you look like something a bear ate and shit in the woods.”

“Thanks for that lovely simile.”

We stood for a moment, the topic of my face exhausted and any other logical topic of conversation way out of bounds.

“Hey, I was just about to go swimming. Want to come?”

“If your father found out, he’d kill me.”

“Daddy would what?” She waved that thought away as being completely ridiculous. “Harper, he’s like the biggest pushover. You just have to know how to handle him. Besides, he’s not here. He’s off on one of his ‘missions.’”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “But I don’t think so.”

Kris pulled on my arm. “Come on, don’t be a jerk. It’ll be fun.”

A few minutes later we climbed into her car and I said, “Maybe I should hide in the back. You know, for when we go through the gate.”

“Don’t worry. I know a secret way out of this place.”

We drove toward the back of the compound, and down a rutted road that led to a gate in the chain-link fence. Kris got out and opened it, then got back in the car. “I cut the lock off days ago and no one’s noticed,” she said. “I think we’re safe.”

The road was so narrow that branches swept both sides of the open car. I ducked to avoid a branch at the same time Kris ducked and we bumped heads. My head, already beaten like a tambourine, felt like the top was going to explode. Kris giggled and rubbed the bump. I didn’t stop her.

The trail broke onto a larger dirt road and Kris turned left. We followed the road through the deep green shade of the high-canopy rain forest. Kris turned down another rutted trail and came up a rise that overlooked a quiet lagoon, protected from the waves by a coral reef seventy yards out. She stopped and we got out and looked over the water. Tall palms rattled against a powder-blue sky. I said, “I thought places like this existed only in postcards.”

“Postcards don’t have sand fleas. Can you swim with your nose like that?”

“I’m not going to swim,” I said, “I don’t have a suit.”

“Neither do I.” Kris pulled her hair back into a ponytail and fastened it with a rubber band. “Well, you gonna take off your pants, or what?”

“No, I’ll stay up here.”

“Whatever.” She stripped off her shirt and shorts, ran down to the sand and waded into the water.

There wasn’t much point in my standing by the car with my thoughts in my head so I turned my back and peeled off my clothes.

When I turned around, she was treading water, watching me. She smiled and swam off toward the reef. By the time I was in, dog-paddling to keep my busted nose in the air, Kris was thirty yards out, her skin glistening wet, shiny as a seal.

I paddled out toward her. The water was vodka clear and sunlight rippled across the bottom. A small school of fish swept under me, darting one way, then another. I saw a manta, black as a manhole, glide across the bottom. Its edges stirred up tiny sand devils that swirled in the eddy.

Kris touched my shoulder. Her wet hair framed her face and water drops sparkled on her eyelashes. “I just wanted to tell you about the sharks in the lagoon.”

“You mean there are sharks here?” I didn’t want to be the second piano player eaten by a shark. Nobody wants to be second at anything.

“Sometimes a sand shark, but nothing that’s going to eat you. I’ve only seen one great white and I came out here almost every day last summer.”

“Alone?”

Kris smiled. “Yeah, most of the time. Let’s swim out by the reef. There’s more to see.” Kris went under, her feet giving a graceful little kick at the surface that propelled her out toward the white chop.

I went after her. I watched my own shadow glide as gracefully as the manta over the sand. Bits of rock and coral poked through the smooth bottom and everywhere I looked there were fish in brilliant motion. The wall of coral rose up in front of me and I watched a shadow move smoothly next to my own. Kris said, “You having fun?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“I’m glad you came. Just be careful of the sea urchins. They burn like fire. And don’t get too close to the coral because it’ll cut you.”

“Okay.”

“And you don’t want to bleed in the water.”

“You really know how to put a guy at ease.”

“Just stuff you should know.” Then she was gone again, smooth and sleek and shiny. I swam after her, watching her long legs kick, and thought that with all of the fish and coral and bright fronds of sea flora, Kris was easily the prettiest creature in the pool.

A large school of yellow and black fish engulfed us, hundreds of them, thin and fast and ticklish. Kris grabbed my arm. “We need to get out.”

“Why?”

“Just get out!” And then she was gone, kicking fast toward the beach.

When I climbed up onto the sand she said, “Those are tiger fish. They only run like that because of sharks.”

“But you said—”

“I said they rarely come past the reef. But when they do, they’re usually hungry and they push a school of tigers in front of them. It’s best to be safe.” Kris sat up and pointed. “Look.”

I couldn’t see anything at first, just the sunlight on the water. Then I saw the delta of the shark fin, cutting through the waves like a bayonet. It was moving fast, following the tiger fish across the open bowl of the lagoon.

“I’ve had enough swimming for today, how about you?” Kris said.

“It’s going to be a long time before I get into the tub.”

Kris brushed the sand from between her toes. “So, what do you think? You like it here?”

“Yeah, I mean, apart from the shark.”

“I meant Panama.”

“I’ve been in better places.”

Kris curled up on her side, resting her head on the back of her hand. “Tell me what you’re doing here, or is that some big government secret?”

“I’m a piano player. The Colonel needed a piano player for his big party. That’s all.”

“Okay. So don’t tell me. You have a girlfriend? Back home, I mean.”

“No.” For the first time, I was ashamed to think that of all the women I’d known in Washington, not one of them was single. “No, no girlfriends.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Not today.”

Kris laughed. I liked the sound of it. She rolled over onto her back and watched the clouds. “I’m serious,” she said. “Meat thinks you’re some kind of secret agent.”

“That’s not true. Meat does not think.”

Kris laughed again. It was even nicer the second time.

“What’d you do in high school? Any sports?”

“I’ve always played the piano. I had a steady gig at the veterans’ home. Oh, and I was a disc jockey for a few months at an oldies station. The hits of the sixties, over and over and over. They call it ‘oldies’ because it gets so old.”

I rolled over to my side so I could see Kris stretched out next to me, her eyes closed, her hands behind her head. Her breasts pointed up at the tinted sky and my eyes followed her flat stomach down to the tangle of reddish-blond hair where beads of salt water glistened in the sun.

“So why didn’t you play something else?”

“The station manager. She was the wife of the local real estate tycoon. She had two toy poodles who left turds in the break room and pee in the hall.”

“Very nice.”

“And she had a voice like a truck rolling over broken typewriters.”

Kris laughed again. Her stomach fluttered and her breasts jiggled in a way that inspired a physical response hardwired deep inside the primal roots of my lizard brain.

“So what happened?”

“When?” I was having a hard time keeping my mind on the story.

“Why’d you quit?”

“I played Otis Redding.”

“What’s wrong with Otis Redding?”

“Nothing. But this woman stuck her face in the control room door and said, in that voice that could grind steel, ‘Johneeee, isn’t that a little too Negroid for our sound?’”

“She actually said ‘Negroid’?”

“Yeah. Pretty progressive, huh? So I apologized and she went away. Then I put on James Brown, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.’”

“Right on, brother.”

“I was fired.”

“Uh-oh.”

“So I broke into the studio, barricaded the doors, put on a two-hour tape of NWA and Run DMC, you know, Old School, and climbed out the back window. It took them forty-five minutes to bust in and stop the tape.”

“Ever think you’d be stuck in a place like Panama?”

“Never. What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve grown up with this shit. The Philippines, mostly. Now that’s a place that’s truly fucked up. You want a recipe for ruining paradise, start with the Spanish, hand off to the Catholic church, and then, when they’re through with it, send in the Marines.”

I tried to think of a place where that had happened that wasn’t fucked up and couldn’t. “This place wouldn’t be half bad without all the politics,” I said.

“That’s what my mother said about Washington.”

It was my turn to laugh. “I think your mother and I would have gotten along.”

“How’d you get here, John, I mean here, at the hotel? Were you in the service?”

“Yeah. I was. Never saw combat. Too busy playing elevator music at the officers’ club.”

“Why’d you join?”

“My father always said we were obligated to serve our country. But when my brother didn’t come home, we lost heart in that patriotic stuff.”

“Your brother was killed?”

“His helicopter went down in the first gulf war. I was twelve and I remember it like it was yesterday. Guy comes to the door. I was watching a Pirates game. I heard my mother scream and my father say, over and over, ‘No, it’s not true, it’s someone else’s boy. You’ve made a mistake. It’s someone else’s boy.’

“I tried hard to be the perfect son after that, to make up for the one they lost, you know? I learned all that music my parents loved. It didn’t help, though. My mother died a few years later.”

“What happened?”

I swallowed hard, trying to find a reason not to tell her. Finally, I said it out loud, the thing I’d never said to anyone. “She killed herself.”

We were quiet for a long time.

“Parents sure can fuck up their kids.” Her voice sounded hard, and cold, and I knew we weren’t talking about my parents anymore. “I think it’s why they come in twos, just to make sure the kids get good and fucked up.”

White clouds sailed over blue water. Palm fronds rattled in the breeze.

“I miss her,” Kris whispered. “She was so soft. Like a TV mom. That’s how I remember her. Like a TV mom. You remind me of her, in a way.”

“Just what every guy wants to hear, I remind you of your mother.”

Her laughter was soft and easy and the sunlight colored her skin. “It’s just that she liked all the music you like and she believed all the words.”

“You don’t?”

“It’s all horse shit, in my opinion.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Kris rolled over on her side and faced me and I saw the bruise on her ribs. It was large, and purple, and the exact size of a fist. I reached toward her. She thought I was reaching for her breast, and she smiled, but when I put my fingers against her ribs her face clouded over and she covered the bruise with her arm.

“How’d that happen?”

“What?”

“There, right there.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It looks like someone hit you.”

“It’s nothing,” Kris said. The light changed in her eyes and she said, “And what’s this?”

“What?”

“This,” she said, and gripped my penis. Then she kissed me, her leg over me, and then she was on top and I ran my hands over her back, feeling the sand and the smooth warm skin and her heat pressed against me.

She broke away and ran up the beach to the car. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.”

Like I was going anywhere.

Then Kris was standing over me, as naked as a Polynesian. She carried a blanket and a bag and she spread the blanket on the sand. Then she took a towel out of the bag.

“Stand up,” she said. I stood up. Kris brushed the sand from my back. Then she brushed my chest and arms. Then she brushed the sand from my legs, starting at the ankles, working her way up.

She took me by the hand and led me like a lamb to that blanket. She pulled me down to her and I forgot about everything but this girl, her warm skin, the sun-bleached hair on her stomach, and how her muscles fluttered when I kissed her there. She helped me roll on a condom, giggling, and then she opened to me and I forgot everything but that warmth, her hands in my hair, and finally her voice as she scattered the birds with my name.

As we lay on that blanket, her head on my chest, her hand rubbing my stomach, she began to talk, not about anything in particular, but about where she was in her life, and how much she didn’t understand, and how at twenty-four things seemed so hard and she had no idea what she wanted to do except fall in love, and even then she couldn’t imagine loving anyone who could possibly love her.

“Groucho Marx said, ‘I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.’”

That made her laugh again, which was all I wanted.

“Come on, I have to show you something,” she said.

We dressed, gathered up our stuff, and Kris aimed the car up the road, along the coast, until it turned inland. We went through an abandoned site of low, stucco buildings, their red tile roofs crumbling and chain link rusting in the salt air.

“What is this place?”

“It used to be a leper colony. A boy I met last summer said he lost his virginity here.”

“I hope that’s all he lost.”

“Probably put him off sex for a while,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

“Not any boy I know.”

The ten minutes became thirty minutes and we were crossing the bridge that spanned the Canal. At the Avenue of Martyrs Kris turned left, under the shadow of Ancon Hill.

“Kris, where are we going?”

“There’s something you have to see.”

We entered Balboa, what had been the administrative headquarters for the zone, the strip of Yanqui colonialism that straddled the Canal for nearly a century.

“How much do you know about the Canal?” Kris asked me.

“Not much. Yellow fever, Teddy Roosevelt, that sort of thing.”

“You need to see the locks.”

“Kris, I’ve seen them.”

“When?”

“In pictures. In school. I don’t know.”

“You need to see them for real,” she said. “The locks and sex are two of the things in life that aren’t overrated.”

We drove through a town circle straight out of an Andy Hardy movie, had Andy been raised in the tropics. The town radiated from this center with military precision. “This is Balboa,” Kris said. “The people who run the Canal still live here. When the first President Bush invaded, rumors are that the American soldiers brought a bunch of Panamanian politicos associated with Noriega, you know, labor leaders and people like that, up to the high school and shot them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“That’s what the Panamanians say. Down there’s the Balboa Yacht Club. I bet it’ll be hopping tomorrow night, as much as a bunch of tightasses can hop without spilling their Cosmopolitans.

“All this”—she waved her hand at the Hollywood ideal of a small town, now faded and tattered by tropical neglect—“used to be a paradise for American workers. Servants to do everything and zero social problems. Never. If you bitched about something in public, they’d deport you. If you didn’t have a job, they’d deport you. Leftist politics? They’d deport you. Crumbling marriage? Adios. Criminal tendencies? Later, pal. It was all so neat and controlled and everyone was oh so happy.

“Then Jimmy Carter fucked up and gave it all away. Now most of the zone is abandoned.” Right on cue, we passed a ghost town of crumbling barracks, weed-choked parade fields, and an empty PX, the sign faded and barely hanging on by a rusted bolt.

The first set of locks was just ahead and Kris stopped so we could watch a freighter ease inside the long box and a set of massive doors close behind it. “Pretty cool, huh? Those are the Miraflores locks,” Kris said. “We’re heading up to the next set, Pedro Miguel, to get a better view.”

Blue lights flashed behind us and Kris looked in the rearview mirror. “You’re not holding, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“And I know you’re not carrying a gun. I think I would have seen that.”

“I’m clean, ma’am.”

A uniformed Asian cop, his hand on his pistol grip, approached the car. His partner, another Asian, approached the car from the other side. He was armed with a short AK on a folding stock.

Kris felt me tense and said, “Relax.”

The cop touched his cap. “Hi, Kris.”

“Hi, Huang.”

Huang leaned in and looked at me. “This the piano player?”

“This is him.”

“You heading up to Gold Hill?”

“I thought I’d give him the full tour.”

Huang nodded, touched his cap again, and said, “There’s a party tomorrow night at Fat’s house. You’re invited.” He said to me, “You can sit in with the band if you want.”

“Maybe,” Kris said. “You guys take it easy, and happy new year.”

Huang laughed. “Not for another couple weeks. Year of the monkey,” he said.

Kris said, “Later,” put the car in gear, rolled away. She watched in the rearview until the security guards did a U-turn and said, “The Canal hired a Chinese security firm. Lowest bid, you know, the glories of capitalism. It’s got everybody’s tail in a knot. Nice guys, though, even if they are commies.”

Kris turned off the main road and onto a narrow track cut through the scrub jungle. We stopped and Kris said, “Grab that blanket. We hoof it from here.”

I followed her up a steep hill, through low jungle that nearly covered the trail. Near the top, the jungle gave way to grass and a stiff wind blew away the mosquitoes. On the crest we could see straight down to the Canal a hundred feet below. A quarter mile away the locks were busy with ships lined up on either side, coming or going.

“This is Gold Hill,” Kris said, “and those are the Pedro Miguel locks over there. Those little locomotives are called mules, and they pull the ship through.”

“Amazing,” I said. “That freighter looks too big.”

“The locks can handle everything but oil tankers and aircraft carriers. I watched a sub go through once, that was pretty cool. And once, a Chinese ship full of rice ran aground on the other side of the Miraflores. Water got into the holds and they had to pump the rice out to keep it from expanding and busting the ship apart at the seams. That whole field was covered in rice, stinking in the sun, a real feast for the rats, which brought out the snakes, which bit the workers trying to clear the field.”

“Kris, why are we up here?”

“Did you ever wonder about the hotel’s name? La Culebra Boca?”

“It means the mouth of a snake, right?”

“It’s my father’s idea of a joke,” Kris said, “and it’s not even correct Spanish. But Daddy says he can swallow Panama from there.”

“Ah,” I said, and wondered just how much of Panama Kelly thought he could digest.

“Now look down at those locks. That’s why everyone’s so worried,” Kris said. “Those locks hold back this entire lake. All it would take is one terrorist with one boatfull of explosives, because if the locks go, everything goes. And once you’ve pulled the plug, it takes a long time to fill up the tub.”

“Why tell me this, Kris?”

“Because I think my father has something planned for tomorrow night.” She shook her head no, as if she were trying not to believe her own words. “I think he may be planning to blow up one of the locks.”

“And you think I can stop him?”

“You’re the only hope I’ve got,” she said.

I could see the light in her eyes, and we kissed for a long time. When we parted, she said, “I’m so glad you broke into my apartment.”

“I am, too, Kris.”

Kris pulled off my shirt and pushed me back on the blanket.

“The bag is in the car,” I said.

“I don’t care, John.”

*   *   *

Eubanks was at Ren’s desk going through paperwork.

“Man,” he said, “where you been? Everybody wants to buy you a drink.”

“Why?”

“Nobody’s ever squared off against the old man before. You got some balls, Harper.”

“Is Kelly around?” I looked toward his office door, afraid to see a light.

“Nah, he’s off playing soldier. By the way, nice look there with the bandage. It really sets off the black around your eyes.”

“Thanks. It’s the fashion back home.”

“Oh, and a woman called for you, said her name was Marilyn. She left her number.” He handed me a slip of paper.

“You mind if I use your phone?”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” Eubanks went back to sorting papers by size and color.

Marilyn answered on the first ring. “Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I wanted to say I am sorry for the other night. I had no right to be angry with you.”

“That’s okay.”

“I wanted to apologize to you. In person.”

“You don’t have to, Marilyn, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I was very rude to you and I want to make it up. Can you come in to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“No monkey business, I promise.”

“I’ve had a long day, Marilyn. Maybe tomorrow.”

“And I wanted to give you a message,” she said. “You know, from that man.”

“Which man?”

“You know, I sent him those pictures of myself, in the bathing suit. He gave me a message to give to you.”

The room went cold. Smith had contacted Marilyn?

“I’ll just buy you a drink,” Marilyn said. “It is considered bad luck in Panama to start off the new year without making apologies for the old. Wait for me at the gate and I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Meat was back at the front gate. “Hey, what happened to your face, monkey shit?”

“Meat, I am in no mood for this. I’ll tell you what, I’ll just stand here and you can get all your witticisms out and I promise I’ll be offended later, when I have the energy, okay?”

Meat blinked a few times and said, “Yeah, well…”

“That’s what I thought.”

Marilyn pulled up and around in that jangling Hillman. I climbed in.

Meat leaned over and pointed a meaty finger at me. “One of these days Kelly is going to let me kick your ass, and then it’ll be crying time, monkey pussy.”

“That’s my boy. See you later, Meat.”

Meat grumbled and said, “Yeah, later, monkey turd.”

So Kelly hadn’t unleashed the dogs on me yet. That was a relief. He probably wanted the pleasure of skinning me himself.

I asked Marilyn about Smith. She didn’t say anything. I asked again. “Marilyn? You said you had a message for me.”

Marilyn chewed the end of her thumb. “I know. I lied. I’m so sorry. I just had to see you and you didn’t want to come, so I made that up about that man.”

I tried to be angry, but couldn’t get out more than a squeak. “Marilyn, you can’t go around doing this kind of stuff. If the wrong person heard you, you could get hurt, or worse.”

“And what about you, Monkeyboy? You can’t just go around making girls feel good about you and then act like you don’t know them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, shit.” Marilyn stopped the car. Stretched across the road was a boa constrictor, its body as big around as Marilyn’s thigh. She got out.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hurrying him along, what does it look like?” She kicked at the snake with her pointed toe. It was a big snake, and apparently in no hurry.

I got out of the car. “Man, that is a big snake,” I said.

“If you’re afraid, you can get back in the car, big pussy.”

“I’m okay,” I said, although I was sure the snake would snap back and swallow Marilyn whole, leaving nothing but her fake Jimmy Choos in the road. “Look, we can get around it now,” I said, pointing to the tail.

Marilyn left the snake, turned to face me and kissed me. There, standing by the grill of a ’54 Hillman, with a snake big enough to eat Grandma at our feet, she planted one on me and put her hand on my crotch.

“Marilyn, I don’t think—”

“Get in the car,” she said.

I did.

Marilyn drove around the snake and headed toward the highway. “Harper? Where you come from, girls can be anything,” she said. “They can be nurses and teachers and mothers. It’s not like that here.”

“I know.”

She braked hard and the Hillman slid to a stop and stalled, shuddering, on the highway. A truck blew by us, rocking the car, its horn Dopplering down from a B- to an E-flat.

“Marilyn, you’ll get us killed out here.”

She faced me, gripping my arm, her fingernails in my flesh. “You think you know something but you don’t.” She looked into my eyes, searching for some sign of wisdom, and I could see her disappointment. She let go and wiped her face. “Now, tell me, who hit you?” She touched the tape across my nose. “Do you have another girlfriend somewhere, huh, gringo boy? Someone not as sweet as me?”

“It was about politics,” I said.

“Never argue politics in Panama.” She smiled.

“I’m learning,” I said.

“Does it hurt?” She touched my cheeks, first the left, then the right. Her fingers lightly touched my eyebrows and moved along my face.

“Not anymore,” I lied.

“Good,” she said. She restarted the car and headed toward Panama City. “’Cause I am going to show you something. You think because of New York maybe and Hollywood, you know how to party, but you better hold on, because you’ve never seen what it means to have a good time like the good time you have in Panama.”

“I can’t, Marilyn, I have to get back to the hotel.”

“Then I guess you walk,” she said, and drove off toward the city’s glow.