he right?”
I got a quick nod, as he dropped slowly to one knee, then the other. Wanted to let me see the depth of his regret. Submissive, a primal gesture. Said, “Don’t hurt me anymore. Please. I’ll do anything. Anything you say, just tell me. I was wrong. Very wrong! But you have to understand that her husband-Frank I’m talking about-you have to realize that he treated me very badly years ago. I was angry. You don’t think I have a reason? I’m a good person, normally. It was him, the way he treated me. The sonuvabitch had me put in jail and… and you don’t know what they do to people like me in jail!”
In barely more than a whisper, I said, “Oh? I thought he treated you for pedophilia. He did, didn’t he?”
The picture of Merlot and Amanda was there again, just behind my eyes. The revolver felt very light in my hand. Self-control, I was fighting to maintain it, as I heard myself say, “Don’t want to talk about it? Okay, let’s change the subject. Start by telling me how much cash you have in the house.”
“Money? Not much. I really don’t. Maybe a thousand dollars. You can have it all. I’m serious. I’ll give it to you if it means no hard feelings. There’s no reason why we all can’t be friends!”
I used the pistol to motion at his face. “A thousand dollars? You’d better have a lot more than a thousand dollars. What you’re doing here, fat man, is buying your life back. So dig deep.”
The woman had moved close enough to me that our shoulders touched if I turned or gestured. She was watching, listening, maybe figuring things out. After I said, “So dig deep,” she interrupted: “I don’t care about the money. Just take me away from here. Let’s go now. Please.” She put long fingers to my elbow as if to stress her point. “But you need to have him arrested. Have him put away. Or you need to kill him, because he will never let me leave this country. I mean that. Not if he can get to a telephone.”
I drew the hammer back on the revolver.
“Gail! You can leave. Honest! All I want is for you to be happy.” His palms were pressed out again. “Did I say a thousand dollars? I have more. I forgot! Here, follow me. Follow me!”
He had more than $40,000 locked in a metal box behind a desk, plus some gems, some stock certificates and three nice Rolex watches.
I put it all in a pillowcase that I had stripped off the bed.
I said, “What about your video collection. And photographs?”
He was still very nervous, not convinced that I wasn’t going to kill him. As if confused, he said, “Videos? Of who?”
“Of her, Gail… or pictures of anyone else I might know.”
A light seemed to go on behind his eyes. Could see him thinking, Oh dear God, when he realized that I meant Amanda; that I had seen what Gail knew nothing about- the photo of him with her child daughter.
“I keep the pictures in my office,” he said quickly. “I have a large safe there, humidity-controlled. Ask Gail, she’s seen it. I’ll take you there. Destroy them all, yes-I’ll help! I’ve been meaning to do it, really. To look at them now, it makes me sick. It really does. Ask her!”
For a moment, only a moment, I let down my guard, as I turned to look at Gail for confirmation… and, too late, I heard her scream just before I felt the crushing impact of Merlot on me, his weight compressing my chest, one of his fat hands locked onto the revolver as he pushed me backward, backward toward the French doors of the little office we were in…
I lost control of the pistol; heard it hit the floor.
When his big hand moved from my right wrist to my throat, I ducked under the mass of him and punched him hard in the kidneys… then slapped his face when he turned into me; slapped him with forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand… saw his big nose burst, the blood pouring… and then I hit him chin-high with a heavy right fist that knocked him through the French doors, where he tumbled backward over the railing and disappeared.
I picked up the revolver and went to the railing. He’d hit the ground hard, but was already on his feet. It is a distressing thing to watch fat people struggle to move quickly. They have been reduced by their own excesses, proof that suicide takes many forms. He was limping, but still trying to find cover as fast as he could move. The feverish determination reminded me of something… a wounded animal.
Gail was looking at him, too. What she said then surprised me, because she said it without pause or emotion: “I meant it. You should have killed him.”
I had my arm around Gail; had the money in the pillowcase as I led her down the steps to the driveway, where she waited while I straddled the Harley, got the kickstand up and ready to go.
“You really were a friend of Bobby’s?”
“Ask your daughter. She can show you the letters.”
“Then you’re him. You’re Doc. He wrote about you.”
“Yeah. I’m Doc Ford.”
She slid on behind me, huddled close in the rain. Had her hands meshed together over my stomach, her head resting against my back. As I throttled off, I had to remind myself: hand clutch on the left; the Hailey’s foot gearing was one down, four up.
There was something in the wind. Woodsmoke? Yes, I smelled smoke…
It was the rainy season. Why?
Then I could see flames ahead, not far away on the village street.
I throttled toward the flames. Saw that it was one of the classic old Zonian houses ablaze… then I realized that I knew this place: Jackie Merlot’s office and headquarters for Club Gamboa. No fire engines around as we rumbled past. No sirens in the distance… but a few people out now and watching, their silhouettes backdropped by flames as the place burned to the ground.
Matt Davidson had pointed out this building.
Matt Davidson had insisted on knowing when I was going to nail Merlot.
The man has videos of Taiwanese honchos misbehaving…
Maybe because of that, or maybe something else. I would never be told because I had no need to know.
As I throttled off toward Panama City, Gail pressed her lips against my ear and said, “I was with Merlot for the same reason I was with Frank.” I realized that she was still trying to answer my question: How had she ended up with such a freak? But that made no sense. Frank had been a good man; Merlot was a social anomaly. Or maybe it did make sense. Still talking into my ear, she added, “I was in love once. After that, other men are just a way of passing time.”
20
It is difficult for me to write about what happened next because I remember so little about it. The events of that Saturday afternoon at the Balboa Yacht Club come back to me in little vignettes of memory, small intrusions of nightmare.
Once, weeks after I had been discharged from the hospital in Panama City, I awoke in the arms of a woman who was shaking me, then holding me. I sat bolt upright, looked around to find that I was safe in my little stilthouse on Dinkin’s Bay.
That feeling, of being safe… it was such a relief.
“You were calling out again,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear it anymore.” She touched her mouth to my cheek, then my lips. “It’ll go away. It’ll take time, but it will go away.”
She meant Panama.
What I remember most consistently is a simple thing that Gail Richardson told me while still in Gamboa: You should have killed him.
My brain plays and replays that simple sentence. I can be jogging or preparing slides in the lab or sitting on the porch of my home looking at the lights of the marina, listening to liveaboards crack beers beneath Chinese party lanterns while Jimmy Buffett or Danny Morgan sing about their good, good lives on Captiva or in one particular harbor or Leadville or in Margaritaville.
That sentence will return: You should have killed him. Here is what I remember: I remember checking into the Hotel Panama in downtown Panama City. A classic old hotel decorated with fiftyish chrome and marble and a good-sized pool beneath palms.
