8
Bell was unable to reach Marion when he returned to the hotel but managed to talk with Joseph Van Dorn and brief him on the situation. The veteran detective assured Bell that following the trail down to Panama was the right call, though he wasn’t certain the clients would want to continue paying for his services.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bell fired back. “There are too many inconsistencies for me to ignore. Plus, there’s the personal component for me.”
“I know, I know. Our contract with the Republicans expires shortly, but we must still protect the man. The agency has a history with him, after all.”
“I’ll work on my own time, if necessary. We both know this attack won’t dissuade him from going to Panama, right?”
“You know him better than I do. He’s a close friend of your father, is he not?”
“Very close. He taught me how to shoot a rifle on his ranch in Dakota.”
“He’s not one to be intimidated, so we’ll have to assume his travel plans will remain intact.”
“Then tell the Republicans I’ll act as an advance man for a security detail.”
“Of course,” Van Dorn said. “One would hope they’ll want to ensure the safety of their candidate.”
“I’m heading to Panama on the first boat out of San Diego. The hotel’s booking agent is securing passage for me right now.”
“Not to pry, old friend, but aren’t you supposed to be enjoying a vacation with Marion?”
“Yeaaah,” Bell said, drawing out the word and indicating his discomfort. “She’s arriving within the hour. With any luck, I’ll have a day or two with her before I leave.”
“Good luck there.”
“Thanks.” Bell hung up the phone and stepped out of the glass and brass booth. Across the lobby, The Del’s booking agent saw him and waved him over. He was on the phone with another guest and kept a finger in the air to indicate it would be a short conversation.
“Yes, Mrs. Blandon, you’re all set. You have a starboard cabin for your journey, and your reservation at the Hotel Sorrento in Seattle has been confirmed.” A pause. “Yes, ma’am, it has been our pleasure having you with us. Enjoy your last day here, and bon voyage tomorrow.”
He settled the receiver on its cradle. Bell felt someone get in line behind him but didn’t turn around.
The agent beamed. “Mr. Bell, you are a most fortunate man. There’s a cabin available on a steamship heading for New York. It normally doesn’t call in on Panama as a regular port of call, but there are more than fifty workers needing passage to the canal so the ship’s owners agreed to a detour.”
“That’s terrific. When does the ship arrive?”
“She’s more than a day out of San Francisco, so she’ll put in late this afternoon and be gone as soon as her coal bunkers are topped off.”
Bell’s stomach sank. Marion had always been the most understanding and accommodating woman in the world but abandoning her without warning on the first day of a vacation was a line he shouldn’t cross. No one had that much forbearance.
“Is there any chance there’s another ship leaving tomorrow or the next day?”
The agent seemed genuinely hurt that his customer wasn’t overjoyed at getting exactly what he wanted. “Is there a problem? You said you needed to be in Panama as soon as possible.”
“It’s just that my wife . . .”
A sultry voice behind him finished, “. . . was promised a week’s holiday at The Del and hopefully she’ll forgive me if I stick around for at least a day.”
Bell whirled around and was met by an amused and mocking smile. Marion was wearing all white, the only splash of color being a green band around her large hat that perfectly matched the emerald hue of her eyes. Her blond hair cascaded around her shoulders. She was as slender as a teen, willow-waisted but curvy elsewhere, and she always was the most beautiful woman in any room she entered. When asked what she did for a living and she said she was in pictures, everyone assumed she was a starlet and not a director.
She cocked her head, her mouth shifting into a little moue at Bell’s stunned surprise.
“Or am I wrong?” She batted her eyes playfully.
“Marion,” Bell finally said and took her hands. He leaned in to give her a kiss and she turned her head at the last second so all he got was her silk-soft cheek. “You’re here earlier than I expected.”
“The train from L.A. caught a tailwind or something. Surprise.”
“So—” Bell cut himself off. He saw it then, shining in the back of her eyes. She wasn’t mad at all, just having fun at making him think she was. “You minx.”
She started to laugh and wrapped her arms around his neck and raised herself up on tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips that made the travel agent blush.
“I read a newspaper on the ferry on the way over from the mainland. Lead story was about how Panamanian anarchists tried to murder a Senator here at The Del and how an unnamed individual—you, I can only surmise—saved said Senator and dispatched two of the said Panamanian anarchists here and four more following a boat chase across San Diego Bay. The reporter was quite breathless about the whole thing. Me? That’s about a five on the Isaac Bell scale of chaos and mayhem.”
Marion looked past Bell’s shoulder so she could address the agent. “We will be taking that cabin. And could you let the front desk know that we’re canceling our stay here? If there is a fee for such late notice, we understand completely.”
“What are you doing?” Bell asked his wife.
“As soon as I read that article, I knew you’d want to follow up, and that meant going to Panama. I just want time alone with you. I don’t care if it’s here at The Del or on a ship heading south. It’s us being together that I care about, not where we are.”
“I cannot love you more,” he said solemnly. “I also can’t take you with me.”
A storm started brewing in her eyes. “Think very carefully. Are you sure those are what you want your dying words to be?”
Bell had to force himself not to chuckle. “It’s dangerous, Marion. There’s an insurgency growing in Panama, and the attack last night might be the trigger for a lot more violence.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she offered. “I come with you, and once we’re there if you deem it too unsafe, I’ll come home, no argument.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. Besides which, you need me.”
“How so, more than normal?”
“You don’t speak any Spanish, and I speak it practically con fluidez.”
Senator Densmore had used his office to get a tour of the USS Maryland for him and his extended family, so Bell couldn’t introduce Marion to Elizabeth. He left a note with the front desk for the Senator and his niece, and he and Marion went up to his room so he could pack. He’d been told earlier that Court Talbot had checked out of the hotel while he was working with Chief Wilson. While he packed, Bell told Marion all the details of the attack and the discrepancies that tugged at his subconscious. Renny Hart came by as he was finishing up. He introduced Hart to his wife.
“I knocked on your door earlier,” Bell told him.
The young agent smiled embarrassedly. “The house doc came to my room every hour all night to make sure I didn’t have a brain bleed. I finally got some real sleep sometime after five in the morning and just woke up a few minutes ago.”
“You feeling okay?” There was a puce knot the size of an egg over his right eye with threads of green and purple around it. He also had a black eye that looked like it was going to linger for weeks.
“Still a little woozy, and the bump hurts like the devil,” Hart admitted.
“You on the three o’clock train for L.A.?” Renny nodded. “Marion and I have a ship to catch this evening, but we’ll head over early and see that you make your train. I’ll cable the L.A. office to make sure someone is there to bring you home.”
“You don’t need to do all that, Mr. Bell.”
Marion piped in, “He does and he did. You saved all those lives.”
“She’s not exaggerating, Renny. Your warning gave me enough time to flip the table and give us some cover. Without that, they would have killed us all.”
The young man blushed and couldn’t meet Bell’s eye.
Bell zipped up his bag. “Let’s enjoy lunch by the pool and then make our way along to the pier.”
Hours later, Bell and Marion were in their cabin, unpacking their things, for the six-day cruise to Panama. The SS Valencia had once been a luxurious express liner plying the North Atlantic route between New York and Europe, but that had been two decades and four name changes ago. While she was clean and the cabin spacious, her age was really starting to show. The carpets in the common areas were so faded that any pattern they’d once had were now muted smears of indistinct color, and a great deal of the veneer for the paneling was becoming delaminated and curled at the edges.
And when she finally hit the open ocean and her speed began to build, she produced a rhythmic shudder that wasn’t quite as bothersome as the clack of a railway carriage, but it was a constant reminder that somewhere deep in her engine room some vital piece of equipment was out of alignment. Also, the smoke from her twin funnels was especially thick because of her inefficient boilers and was so filled with cinders of unburnt coal that standing at the fantail was all but impossible.
Bell and his wife had been apart long enough for them to have other considerations than dressing for dinner and meeting fellow travelers, so it wasn’t until breakfast the following day that Bell learned Court Talbot was also a passenger aboard the Valencia. He spotted the retired Major at one of the tables along the starboard wall of the main dining salon and wended his way over. Talbot was engrossed in a book.
“Mind some company?” Bell asked as they neared.
“Isaac. Hello. Sit down, please.” He then noticed Marion and quickly wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and sprang to his feet. “Ma’am.”
“Court, this is my wife, Marion. Marion, this is Court Talbot, expert on the Panamanian insurgency known as the Red Vipers.”
“Viboras Rojas,” Marion said.
Talbot said something in Spanish, and Marion replied in kind. They conversed for a moment more and ended with a little laughter.
“Your accent is more Madrid than Central America, Mrs. Bell, but you speak Spanish very well,” Talbot said as they all sat down.
A moment later, a waiter in a white jacket with a red sash around his waist poured coffee as black as ink into their cups. Marion added milk and some sugar while Bell drank the potent brew as is.
“We didn’t get a chance to see the Senator this morning,” Bell told Talbot. “How did it end up between you two?”
“He sent a telegram to Goethals right from the hotel and penned a more detailed letter for me to present to the Canal Administrator once I’m back in Panama. Hopefully, it will be enough to persuade him to let me and my men try to stop this thing before it gets out of hand.”
“That’s good,” Bell said.
Marion asked, “How is it you even have troops in Panama, Major Talbot?”
“Please call me Court, Mrs. Bell.”
“Of course, and I’m Marion.”
“It goes back to the founding of the Panamanian Republic and the people’s revolt against Colombia. There was talk of coups and counter-coups at the time. Everyone suspected everyone else’s loyalty. U.S. Marines were sent in. Sharpshooters arrived from Colombia. It was a chaotic and very precarious situation, and nobody knew how it would turn out. The first President of Panama was Manuel Amador Guerrero, a friend of mine who knew of my military background. He asked that I establish a small force loyal only to his office. Not him, mind you, but to the Office of the President. I was honored to do so, though we were never called to arms.
“Since then, I have kept regular contact with my men. We drill a few weekends each month for the fun of it. Really, it was more social than anything else. But when Viboras Rojas began to make their presence known, we knew we were in the best position to help. Panama has no army to speak of and can’t operate within the Canal Zone anyway while Colonel Goethals purposely keeps the number of American troops to a minimum so the local politicians don’t think they are militarizing the canal.”
“And you believe you and your men are enough?”
“I do currently, but if the insurgency isn’t crushed soon, it will attract more recruits, and then we’ll have a slow-boil war on America’s doorstep with the most ambitious project in human history caught in the cross fire.”
After breakfast, Marion excused herself and headed back to the cabin. Bell and Talbot moved off to one of the liner’s lounges. Talbot produced a well-used pack of playing cards, and he and Bell settled into the new, faster version of rummy, called gin.
After dealing the first hand and going through a couple pickups and discards, Talbot said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you hoping to accomplish in Panama?”
Bell grabbed the queen Talbot had put down. He now had all four and only needed either the four or seven of clubs. “I have no interest in tramping about in the jungle with you and your men, if that’s what you’re thinking. I guess I want to get a sense of the situation. There are aspects of the assassination attempt that bother me, and I believe the answers are in Panama.”
“‘Aspects’? What aspects?”
Bell pulled the seven. “Gin.”
“That was fast.”
“You dealt me three queens, so . . .” Bell scooped up the cards and began shuffling. “It’s too big of a leap for the Red Vipers being a small-scale indigenous insurgency to attempting an international assassination without some sort of outside influence.”
“I believe I mentioned they’re inspired by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.”
“Inspiration doesn’t explain it. There’s something else at play.”
“I hate to disagree, but if there was some international plot under way in Panama, the local police or the Authority’s security squad would have picked up on it.”
“I’m sure Panama City has a fine police force, and the Authority have plenty of capable guards, but I’m betting that neither has much in the way of investigators.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Bell. The Red Vipers are a nest of snakes, but they are a local nest of snakes. I will grant you that they almost got lucky against Senator Densmore. Consider this, though. You alone held off and ultimately killed all six gunmen. You’re pretty good in a fight, but are you that good? Or were they in over their heads?”
Bell looked him in the eye. “They pulled off the first successful invasion of American territory since the War of 1812. That means something.”
With the exception of one eight-hour storm, the trip southward was pleasant. The food was decent enough, and staff were all first-rate. Marion found several ladies to socialize with during the day. Bell and Talbot spent a great deal of time together over countless hands of gin. And when the ship rounded the newly constructed breakwater at the Pacific terminus of the canal, they had developed a mutual respect, though both were too restrained to call it a friendship just yet.
Isaac and Marion got their first taste of Panama’s notorious rain while the ship was coming into its berth along a pier as busy as any they’d seen in New York City. Cranes were unloading massive pieces of equipment from the holds of freighters twice the size of their ship. Talbot had told him the Atlantic’s Port of Colón was even busier, as most of the machinery for the canal came from America’s Eastern Seaboard.
The air was oppressively humid, and Bell’s linen suit hung on his frame damp and clammy. His hatband was already stained through. Each breath supplied enough oxygen, but somehow it felt like the moisture-laden air was too thick to breathe. Next to him, the fan Marion waved under her chin looked like the wing of a bird flapping to gain elevation. It did little to dispel the sweat dewing her throat.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” Bell said.
The sky suddenly darkened, and an ominous charcoal shimmer, like some nightmare optical illusion, raced across the harbor’s surface. The effect swept over the steamer, and it was as if the heavens had flooded and were spilling over onto the world. The rain seemed to come down in waves rather than drops. The harbor looked like it had started to boil. Rain pounded the freighter’s deck so fiercely that conversation had to be conducted at a yell, and anyone caught out in the downpour was soon soaked to the skin. The docks were made of concrete or wood, but Bell imagined any dirt street beyond in the coastal city would soon be a river of ankle-deep mud.
He had never seen anything like it. The rain was so voluminous that he couldn’t see more than a few dozen feet, and any thought of turning his face skyward would risk accidental drowning. Thunder rumbled over the roaring rain, a deeper bass note that he felt in his chest.
Bell and Marion were standing in the doorway of the lounge, looking out over the ship’s covered promenade and rail. Talbot came up behind him, peered around Bell’s shoulder, and shrugged.
“This is just a light sprinkle,” he said and clasped Bell’s upper arm. “Wait until the real rain hits. I could have told you about this on the way down, but you need to see it to believe it. And you’re going to want to buy a straw hat. That blocked wool thing of yours will be moldy mush inside of a week.”
“Thanks,” Bell said sarcastically.
“Also, keep an eye on your feet. They won’t be dry again until you leave and can develop all sorts of issues.” Talbot smiled broadly, enjoying the discomfort of people newly arrived on the isthmus. “Welcome to Panama, Mr. and Mrs. Bell.”
There was only one upscale place to stay in the city and that was the Central Hotel Panama on Independence Plaza, not far from the Presidential Palace. There was the Tivoli Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt had stayed in 1906, but it was within the Canal Zone, for all intents and purposes a separate country, and there was confusion as to whether people who weren’t employees could stay there. The Central was located in the Old Quarter of the city and it retained some colonial charm. The small peninsula jutting into the Pacific was actually the second Panama City. The first had been five miles south but it had been sacked and burned by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671.
Bell had expected heavy Spanish influence on the architecture but noted a lot of French provincial. He realized it dated to their ill-fated attempt to dig a sea level canal some forty years earlier. The three-story hotel had been built at that time and looked faintly Parisian, with dormers along the roof and wrought iron balconies ringing the upper floors.
An associate of Talbot’s, Rinaldo Morales, had met them at the dock and given them a lift to their hotel. Despite the heat, the man wore his shirt buttoned to the throat and had on a pair of kid driving gloves. Talbot reminded Bell that he could join in his meeting the following morning with the Canal Administrator, George Goethals. Morales drove the former Army Major away to his house at the base of Ancon Hill, the jungle-shrouded hillock between the city and the canal.
Inside the Central Hotel was an atrium painted a smart, clean white. The floors, however, were muddy despite the staff’s efforts. As Bell had thought, the streets of the Casco Viejo district were a mixture of pavement and dirt, and the dirt sections were like quicksand, viscous and impassable, following the storm. The lobby buzzed with a crowd, and Bell noted English was being spoken more than Spanish.
He could just imagine the unprecedented upheaval the country was experiencing thanks to the American effort to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific.
His room was ready, as he’d reserved it while still in San Diego, and the receptionist handed him an envelope with a half dozen telegraph messages in it. To Bell, it was a ritual. At nearly every hotel he visited, upon check-in there were always a number of dispatches waiting that needed his urgent attention.
He turned over their luggage to a bellhop, and they followed the man up to the third floor to their room overlooking the plaza. The décor was spartan, just a bed and dresser with a wash basin, but Marion delighted at the need for mosquito netting. He was aware of the effort during the early years of the canal’s construction to tame malaria and yellow fever. Newspapers across America wrote weekly about Dr. Gorgas and his theory that these dread diseases were carried by mosquitoes and how he and his staff had gone about eradicating them by draining the swamps in which they bred and bringing proper drainage and sanitation to the region.
Panama saw its last case of yellow fever in 1906, and malaria grew rarer and rarer, though the threat persisted.
Marion opened the floor-to-ceiling door to the balcony, and they stepped outside. They both marveled at the lawn across the street. Thanks to the tremendous amount of rain the country received each year, the grass covering Independence Plaza was a vibrant green and lusher than any either had ever seen.
While another squall passed over the city, and Marion busied herself unpacking their bags, Bell went through the telegrams. Chief Wilson cabled to tell him that a subsequent dive had discovered the boat’s ownership papers in an oilskin pouch. The cabin cruiser had belonged to a couple from Huntington Beach. A check with the local police found that they had been missing almost a week.
Bell didn’t need Chief Wilson’s speculation that they were dead. He was sure they’d been murdered for their boat and their bodies weighted down and dumped somewhere off the coast of Orange County.
The other telegrams were from Van Dorn about ongoing investigations unrelated to his current mission.
Bell and Marion ate dinner in the hotel and then went strolling through Casco Viejo. He was surprised by the number of bars. It seemed every other business was a saloon of some sort. Some seemed respectable enough, while others were no more than a scrap of canvas strung over the back corner of an alley with a couple stools pulled up to a sawhorse bar. The streets were filled with men in various states of inebriation. Some were out having some fun with their friends and swayed from place to place, others were passed out in gutters and against walls. The second-floor windows of many establishments were adorned with red curtains. In the doorways leading to the stairs up were heavily rouged women making suggestive gestures.
It all reminded Bell of the tales of the Old West. Panama City indeed was a frontier town on the edge of a jungle so thick that very little of it had ever been mapped. Bring in a labor force of some thirty thousand men and they’d seek the same distractions that slaked the appetites of the men who’d built the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Colosseum in Rome.
As if to reinforce the image of the city Bell was constructing, two men tossed a third out the open door of one of the rougher-looking establishments. He hit the muddy road with a smack but quickly got to his feet, his anger fueled by plenty of drink. He rushed back toward the bouncers, arms flailing. The larger of the bar employees stepped forward, nimbly ducked a floppy haymaker, and put the sot down with a straight right that caused his nose to erupt with blood.
The bouncer shook out his hand and slapped his partner on the shoulder as if to say the next turn was his laying out an overly intoxicated patron. From inside the bar, Bell could hear a pianist pounding out a quick-tempo rag.
He managed to find a clothing store that was still open and bought himself a straw hat that, while made in Ecuador, was called a panama. He also bought a pair of shin-high, well-fitted rubber boots. They were as comfortable as loafers and had a clever venting tube on the inside so his feet wouldn’t overheat. His current shoes were already waterlogged, and his feet were white and dimpled from being wet. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any boots small enough for Marion, but she assured her husband that she had no intention of traipsing around in the mud.
The last few minutes of their walk was in a downpour every bit as powerful as the afternoon deluge. Bell’s head and feet stayed dry, and he realized he was already becoming accustomed to the tropics.