just as bad. I’ll tell Fernando to bring you some toast.”
Listening to Garret was a pleasure after enduring close quarters with the Turk. He wasn’t a fan of either man’s. Said that Merlot and the Turk were birds of a feather. They’d worked out a deal; the Turk had told him all about it. The Turk supplied Gamboa with women and drugs, for which Merlot paid cash, plus marketing rights to Gamboa. What did Panama care about women from Colombia? For Merlot and his new club, Colombian women were cheaper, plus there was less red tape.
It essentially confirmed the story that the Turk had told me.
The Aussie added, “I knew the woman was in trouble when I realized that the Turk was stopping in at least once a month to mail her postcards. Understand what I’m saying? They wanted to give someone back in the States the impression that the lady was still here. There’s our little postbox. I peeked at the cards and I ain’t bloody shy, so I asked him about it. Hah! The Turk, he just puts a finger to his lips and grins. ‘Jealous husband,’ he says, or some bullshit like that.
“The fat man musta had her write the cards out in advance, probably thinking the same thing: Someday someone would come looking for her.”
As the Aussie spoke, I began to feel a nonspecific panic. What the hell had I dropped into?
I knew one thing: I had to find Gail Calloway and I had to find her quickly. From what I’d seen and heard, the woman was already so badly damaged that there might not be any way to save her… or any way to spare her good, good daughter, Amanda the sickening truth: Merlot had now violated and, perhaps, damaged beyond redemption the final two branches of a unit that had once been Bobby Richardson’s family.
I said, “Do you think Merlot is in Panama? In his little village there.”
“I know he is. Or was as of this morning. The Turk called him just before you blokes came in.” The man glanced over his shoulder, “We’ve got a phone log and I make folks use it or kick their asses out. The Turk’s got the federales out there waitin’ on him, so he does what I say.”
“Then that’s where I’m going. Gamboa. I’ll pay, I’ve got cash.”
Garret looked at his restaurant-not too busy, everything going smoothly. Then he looked at the clock behind the bar. It’d just turned 7:00 P.M. A nice night with stars, the light of a quarter moon already showing on Cartagena Bay. He thought for a moment before saying, “You can’t drive to Panama, I hope you’re not planning on that.”
No, I knew better. Not on the front end of the rainy season, anyway, which is precisely what April is. The jungled path between Colombia and Panama is an old silver transport foot route called the Darien Trail. This time of year, it would be all mud. There was no road.
“What is today, Friday? Saturdays, the first commercial flight doesn’t leave till one tomorrow, get you into Panama City about one-thirty. Is that quick enough for you?”
“No. Not if I have a better choice.”
“Well… there’s one other way.” His expression asked: Interested?
I nodded. Damn right I was interested.
He said, “I don’t suppose you know how to fly a Cessna? Nice one, a one-eighty-two.”
“Not well enough to make that trip, no. Not alone anyway.”
“But you know how to steer? If I dozed off, got some shut-eye on the way, you’d know how to steer a course, do all the basics? I’m tired as hell. I was up all night last night.”
I tried to remember if I’d ever met an Australian man who didn’t know how to fly a small plane.
I said, “Sure, I can steer. They made us log enough air time to get a private license, but I’ve never really used it”
“I can have you at Paitilla Airport, classiest little airport in Panama, in just under two hours. There’s a landing strip at Gamboa, but no lights. Can’t land there at night.”
“Panama City, that’ll be okay.”
“If you’ve got friends in the City, they can bring you a rental car or drive you, whatever. Gamboa’s only half an hour away. I’ll have to cut you loose, though, and fly back.” He smiled. “My wife and son miss me if I’m gone too long.”
I got the impression that Garret just wanted to get up in the air, get away from the lunacy of running a marina, dealing with the public. Maybe have the chance to talk about things he didn’t normally get a chance to talk about.
As the man had said: We knew some of the same people.
Surprise, surprise: I watched Tucker Gatrell lurch into the bar as I told the Aussie, “You finish up what you need to do. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”
The man looked terrible. He’d lost his cowboy hat. His white sports coat had some kind of purple stain down the front, he’d apparently been sick.
I watched Tucker stumble and knock most the drinks off a nearby table, as I added, “The calls are long distance, but I’ll use a charge card, if that’s okay. The Vegemite, I’ll take it with me. And I need to change clothes.”
I had a light, long-sleeved black turtleneck and jeans that seemed like the thing to wear. I would, after all, be roaming around Gamboa at night. I might even compromise Merlot’s house if I got the chance.
I watched Tucker turn, staggering, as if to acknowledge the mess he’d made, but his boot caught on the leg of one of the tables and he fell backwards, landing hard on his butt. It was pathetic to watch: a bowlegged caricature of an old-time Florida cowboy totally lost and out of control. I said, “And Garret? You mind if the old man bunks here? I’ll pay cash in advance for any damage he does. And for his rack, his drinks, whatever he needs. I just don’t want him with me.”
Garret had watched the exhibition along with the rest of the bar. “Can’t say as I blame you, mate.”
I’d been keeping track of the digital glow of the GPS, hoping Garret would wake up. Had a private little debate about it: Let the man sleep until we were closer to Panama City? Or make him take over the controls now?
Thoughtfulness won out. Let the man sleep. Yeah, I was paying him, but he was still doing me a gigantic favor. Plus, he’d be flying back to Cartagena alone and he’d need all the rest he could get.
I checked the GPS once again before I adjusted my headset, touched the transmit button and said, “Colon tower, this is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel… I’m ten miles south-southeast at two-point-five with information Bravo.”
GPS meaning Global Positioning System. Information Bravo meaning I’d just checked the weather, was completely under control. At least, that was the impression I wanted to give them.
I waited for what seemed a long time before I repeated my previous transmission, adding, “Copy, Colon tower? Do you read?”
Nope, apparently not. Garret had set the radio frequency, but I checked it again: 122.8. That seemed about right. Checked the GPS again. Yep, now nine miles out of Colon and closing.
I touched the transmit button once more and said for anyone to hear, “This is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel and I’ll be passing Colon to the south, bound for Panama City at two-point-five but climbing to four-point-five when I reach the mouth of the canal.” Said it more for any other aircraft in the area rather than the sleeping tower in the nasty little port town of Colon. Felt like adding that everyone should stay the hell out of my way, because I wasn’t much of a pilot and we were roaring into Panamanian airspace at 160 knots but at varying altitudes, and on a course that had more in common with a roller-coaster than with the normal patterns of a plane flown by someone who knew what he was doing.
Years ago, after my first required solo, our instructor had described my touchdown as, “More like a midair collision with earth than what you’d call a landing.”
But I could steer okay. In fact, I was enjoying it, because it took my mind off things I preferred not to think about.
What I preferred not to think about was becoming quite a long list…
Things I preferred not to think about: hearing Amanda’s voice through the telephone, but seeing her as a child again in that heartbreaking photo as she told me that the medical examiner had decided Frank had probably died from a heart attack that may have been catalyzed by slipping in the kitchen, cracking his head open on the counter.
Skipper, the young widow, was taking it pretty well. Maybe not so surprisingly well. She’d lost a soul mate, but gained three maybe four million in assets, not counting her beachfront home in Boca Grande.
Funeral was set for Monday.
