Mercer gave him an exhausted smile. “Let’s just say that Parisian toilets have one hell of a flush.”
After improvising a story about being mugged earlier in the day and dumped down a manhole, Mercer convinced the work crew to take him back to the surface, allow him to use their locker room for a long, long shower and even lend him some clothes. Mercer had no intention of fulfilling his promise to go to the police with his tale. The last thing he needed was an official investigation into what had happened outside the catacombs. He recalled that he hadn’t given the taxi driver the name of his hotel and there was nothing in his abandoned luggage that gave away his identity. If the police did manage to connect him to what had happened, he’d be halfway to Panama.
Instinct told Mercer to lay low until his flight the next day, but he needed fast medical attention, and knew how to get it without raising too many questions. After buying more appropriate clothes from a trendy store that catered to a late-night crowd, he checked into the Hotel de Crillon at Place de la Concorde. He asked the concierge to get him a doctor with a bag full of antibiotics and an undeveloped sense of curiosity.
An hour later, with massive doses of drugs coursing through his veins and a second shower, Mercer called Jean-Paul Derosier and wasn’t surprised to find he wasn’t home. He spoke to Derosier’s wife, Camille.
“He called, Mercer,” she said, “and said that he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“No,” Camille admitted. “He said that this might happen.”
“You do know that he set me up, right?”
“I swear he didn’t tell me a thing.”
Mercer wanted to vent his anger, but knew that targeting Camille wasn’t fair. This was something her husband had done. “When he finally shows up, give him a message for me. Tell him that when I’m done in Panama I’m coming back and I’m going to kick his pampered ass across every arrondissement in Paris.”
“Mercer, if it helps, he said that it wasn’t his fault. And he said that he was sorry.”
“Just tell him.” Mercer cut the connection.
A bellman knocked at his door and waited while Mercer slipped the Lepinay journal in an envelope the young man had brought and wrote out an address on the outside. Getting the journal to the States in twenty-four hours cost well over a hundred dollars, but Mercer could think of no better way to keep it secure. He tipped the bellman as he left and dialed an international operator. He heard four rings and was about to try Tiny’s Bar when the phone was answered.
“Mercer’s house. What do you want?” Harry White’s voice hit like a wrecking ball against an old building and resonated like the debris falling away.
“For you to not drink all my booze when you house sit and to answer the goddamned phone like a human being.”
Whether intentional or not, Mercer had built a life with very few anchors. His home was one, a comfortable base that allowed him to recharge between trips. But more important was his friendship with the eighty-year-old Harry White. In the years since they’d met at Tiny’s, they’d forged a bond that was stronger than that of most natural families. Despite what others who knew them thought, it wasn’t one of father and son, or even grandson, since Harry was more than twice Mercer’s age. They were more like brothers born four decades apart, each willing to do anything for the other without thought to cost or consequence. Because the emotional bond between them was understood and needed no further nourishment, their rapport tended to sound downright nasty to the uninitiated.
“Hold on a second,” Harry said, “I forgot to mail your bills a few weeks ago and the bank’s appraisers are here to sell your furniture. They said I could have your big-screen TV for a hundred bucks.”
“Sometimes I think that when you lost your leg, you also lost whatever sense of humor you might have had.” Harry’s left leg was gone below the knee. He told people that it was the result of an accident during his years in the merchant marine. Only Mercer and a handful of others knew the truth.
“Everyone knows the funny bone’s in your elbow,” Harry snorted. “Hey, I thought you were coming home for a few days. I had this whole thing set up for when you got here. I hired this knockout stripper to dress like a cop. We were going to be waiting for you with me in handcuffs on a charge of cat burglary.”
“I got stuck in Utah and flew straight on to Paris. Sorry to frustrate your plans.”
Harry gave a lecherous chuckle. “I wouldn’t exactly use the word frustrate. Before she left, the stripper gave me the handcuffs in appreciation.”
Mercer didn’t doubt Harry’s story, or at least part of it. It was something the octogenarian would pull. The idea of the stringy old man and his sagging pectorals and small potbelly with some hot stripper was an ugly picture that he quickly purged from his mind. “That was pity, my friend. She gave you the handcuffs out of pity.”
“Don’t get snippy with me just because you haven’t been laid for a few months.”
“And you haven’t since they put fins on cars.”
Harry allowed him that final shot. “So are you coming home?”
“No. In fact, I want you out of my place for a few days.” Mercer explained what he’d been through in the past hours. “I mailed the journal to Tiny at the bar, but just in case these Chinese, or whoever the hell they are, figure out who I am and send people to the house, I don’t think you should be there.”
“Screw that. You think I want to give up your three-story town house for my one-bedroom apartment so you can read some old book? Give them the damned journal.”
“I knew you’d understand. You going to Tiny’s tonight?”
“No, Doobie Lapointe is covering the bar. Tiny, me, John Pigeon and Rick Halak are going to a Georgetown basketball game.”
“Tell Paul”-Tiny’s real name was Paul Gordon, and the nickname certainly fit the former jockey-“about the book that’s coming. Have him put it someplace safe. I may need him to send it to me when I get to Panama.”
“You got it.” Harry’s tone matched the gravity he heard in Mercer’s voice. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, don’t steal my booze when you go home.”
“Sorry, Mercer.” Harry raised his voice as if the clear connection had suddenly become static-filled. “You’re breaking up. Did you say you wanted me to take your booze? Okay. I’ll guard it with my liver, I mean life.”
“I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“Hello? Hello? Come in, Tokyo. I can’t hear you. Hello?”
Mercer never doubted that Harry could lift his spirits following his sewer swim. He was still chuckling when he dialed his third call, the one he feared making. His smile faded when he began to comprehend what Maria was saying, even if she didn’t understand the significance.
“Gary hasn’t answered his radio for hours,” she said over the sound of Latin pop music blaring from a stereo. “You know he never buys new equipment. It’s probably broken again.”
“Are you sure?” Mercer managed to keep concern from his voice. He didn’t believe that Gary was coincidentally out of reach at the same time three trained gunmen tried to steal the journal he needed to conclude his treasure hunt.
“
“Can you keep trying for me? I will call again just before my flight.”
“Well, sometimes it takes a day or two to fix. But I will try.”
Mercer finished off the second of three vodka gimlets that room service had brought up and started on the last. A couple more might dull the thoughts churning in his mind, but he wasn’t looking for release. He wanted answers. He assumed the mystery bidder at Jean-Paul’s auction had sent the assassins. They in turn had hired a street thief to steal the case in order to insulate themselves from the crime. But who had shot the kid just a few paces from his escape car? He doubted Jean-Paul knew. Camille had said he’d been forced to give the journal to Mercer. By whom?
Whatever was at stake, Mercer was sure the answers weren’t what he was expecting. He still didn’t believe that Gary Barber had found buried treasure. There was something else hidden in the jungle that people seemed more than willing to kill for, something on the banks of a tributary of the Rio Tuira that Gary had named the River of Ruin.
On the Rio Tuira, Panama
