virtue in the fragrance of moving air?
“You’re name’s Ford, right, mate? Turns out we’ve got several mutual friends. Here-have a beer on me.”
That was a surprise. Apparently, some of my former associates had been on the telephone.
He’d wrapped the ten ounce bottle of Aquila in a brown napkin to keep it cool. I took it, drank it half down, paused to look at the condensation dripping down the bottleneck, then finished it.
“Must be thirsty.”
“Yeah.”
“Another?”
“Make this one a Polar.”
He used a church key to pop the top. No twist offs down here.
“After an hour or so with the Turk, it’s too bad a man can’t drink soap. Or get his soul pressure-washed. There’s just no quick way to get clean.”
“No. No, there’s not.”
“He try to sell you a membership to their freaky-deeky club?”
“That’s not the way he put it, but, yeah. Sounds pretty nice. I’m going to buy. Sounds like a great place.”
“Bullshit. You don’t need to lie to me. Like I said, we’ve got mutual friends. If the beer’s free, the least you can do is tell me the truth.” The man winked. “Hell, I’d tell the bloody truth all night long for free beer!”
I looked at him a moment and thought, yes, more than likely… he had that look… he’d been some places, seen some things, so we probably did have a lot in common. Maybe it was the same thing when Tucker and Fernando saw each other, members of the same secret club.
The man wore fishing shorts and a white T-shirt. The breast pocket of the shirt read: Walker Wilderness Tours- Northern Territory-Australia.
His hair was cropped short; looked to be in his late thirties maybe early forties. He had a flat, Irish face, a brown push-broom mustache and a nose that had done some traveling. Currently, it was pushed over to the right, just beneath his eye.
When he put the beer in front of me, I said, “Thanks.”
“Not a problem. Get five or six of those down you, I’ll start charging you triple, you won’t even notice.”
“You’re Garret, the guy who owns the place. I’ve heard about you, too.”
He had a good, strong laugh. Actually, it was more like a roar. “Hah! From the bloody Turk, I bet! What’d that nasty little sand nigger say about me? It was a lie, whatever it was. The man wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the arse!” In Colombia it is always the cocktail hour. It was now also the dinner hour, so I was not alone in this open room with its ceiling fans and decorative flags hanging from the palm thatching.
Garret didn’t care. He didn’t care who heard.
“The Turk? Fuckin’ Turk, I don’t know if he wants me to put him in jail or adopt him!”
“He says you let him stay here because you want his vessel.”
“Hah! That’s a bloody good’un! The only thing worth a shit on that piece of garbage is the two or three hundred kilos of hashish he thinks the federales don’t know about. Which is why I won’t touch his boat, because I refuse to deal with the poisonous shit. Not everyone in Colombia runs drugs, you know. But I’ll auction his tub off fast enough when the courts put his ass in jail!” Garret slapped the bar: Hah hah hah!
Down the bar was Raymond, a sixty-some-year-old Irishman I’d met earlier. He was a merchant seaman who’d missed his ship and was now stranded in Cartagena. Used his accent and his stories to charm drinks. Always had a cigarette and glass in his hand, a rummy. There were three or four tables of men and women eating dinner. A table of Brits and a table of Italians, judging from conversations. Nearby was also a German couple, men. They wore T-shirts over their jock-sized bathing suits. Homosexuals sailing the coast, nice people not bothering anybody. Also at the bar were a couple of American men, one middle-aged, the other in his twenties. Regular-looking, but they had some money. They belonged to an absolutely stunning forty-two-foot Hinkley moored just down from the Turk’s ghost freighter. I’d met them earlier, too. Jim and Chris aboard the Windelblo. From New England, the kind of men you trust right away, the two of them in a customized million-dollar work of art but like it was no big deal.
Garret said, “So I’ll ask you again: tell me you didn’t buy into their freaky sex club.”
I leaned forward. “I need to get to Panama. Right away. Tonight, if I can.”
“Tonight? It’ll be dark. Nothing’ll be open, and you won’t be able to see a damn thing.”
“That’s why I want to get there when it’s still dark.”
The man nodded. “You’re goin’ after the woman. The woman the fat man kept down here on his boat.”
I leaned back and thought about it for a moment. Then I used my index finger to signal him closer. Into his ear I said a single word that implied the accomplishments of two men. Then I asked Garret to fill in the blanks, supply the missing names.
The men I described were two good Australians I’d worked with, both SAS, one from Perth, the other Darwin. If Garret could be trusted, he’d know exactly who I was speaking of.
He knew the names.
Good. It was a good connection to have. I relaxed a little. “That’s right, I’m going after the lady. Damn right I’m going after the lady. How’d you know?”
“Simple. A woman like her throws a big wake. Class and style, it’s worth… well, with a woman like that, let’s just say men don’t give love, they invest it. And there she is running around loose?” Garret’s expression said he knew the ideal comparison. “You see that Hinkley sailboat out there? Finding the lady in this bar was like finding that Hinkley abandoned on the high seas. It just ain’t gonna happen. The only mystery was how she got mixed up with the fat man. After I ran him outta here, I told my wife, ‘Somebody’s gonna show up looking for that woman. And they’d better hurry, before she’s dead.’”
I didn’t like the sound of that, nor the way he said it: Very matter-of-fact, not joking around. “You think he plans to kill her?”
“Naw. Someone doesn’t get her soon, though, she’ll probably do the job herself. Suicide, I mean. You can see it in her eyes. She’s got these sad, sick eyes, but very bright. Beautiful eyes. You’ve met the lady. Or were you hired?”
“Neither. She was the wife of an old friend.”
“Then you’ve missed something. With her face, a body like that, even at her age she could pass for some Latin American fashion model. A Yank accent, but her people are from the Equator, I’d bet on it. Plus she’s got the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen. Almost like they’re two different colors.”
No doubt about it now, he’d definitely seen Gail.
Garret said, “The fat man, one night here in the bar, he was offering her out to the street people, the dock hands, whatever. Like he was proving to everybody he was such a big shot that a woman like her meant nothing to him. Sell her like a whore, what did he care? A big joke, but she wasn’t laughin’. Because he meant it, damn right he did. He offered her to Fernando, ten pesos. About seven dollars U.S.
“It had nothin’ to do with money-bastard’s loaded with cash-the fat man’s just an asshole. Vicious. He likes to hurt people, just like his bodyguard… or a boyfriend, whatever the hell he is. Merlot’s giant boy-toy, a fella they call Acky. You know about him?”
“A little.”
“Well, if you’re goin’ after the fat man, you’d better know more than just a little. Acky came close to killin’ one of our local fellas. Got him down out there on the dock. Used his fists and his feet on him, damn near tore the man’s face right off. He’s a guy who likes to fight and likes to see people hurt. That’s one of the reasons I ran them off. The other is, I caught Merlot trying to talk one of the local kids onto his boat. The cook’s son, just a little shaver. And it weren’t to teach the kid how to kick a bloody soccer ball!”
Garret didn’t mind telling me about it. But first he wanted to know if I’d had supper. He was one of those you-have-to-eat-have-to-drink-guys. Probably a good father, a perfect person to own a restaurant.
I told him I had no appetite, not after the stench of being aboard the wind freighter from Istanbul. But maybe a glass of milk and some toast with Vegemite on it. If the kitchen had Vegemite.
That got a laugh.
“An Aussie without Vegemite? Gotta be kiddin’, mate. Ever notice that every country’s got its own perfect food? And it always tastes like shit to outsiders, but the locals are addicted. Colombia? We’ve got Amazona, the perfect pepper sauce. You know, verde. Blokes here eat the stuff on eggs, crackers, everything. It’s gotten so I’m
