Beneath a Panamanian Moon (3 page)

“I'm allergic to sharks, sir. Unless they're broiled and served with lemon butter.”

“So you're saying you won't go?”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“Fine,” he said, in a tone that told me it was anything but fine. He sat back in the seat, looked out the window, and muttered, “Goddamn sunshine patriot. Let a little thing like a shark come between him and his duty.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me, Harper, who was it helped you become the man you are today? Who believed in you when no one else did?”

“Mr. Rogers, sir.”

Smith leaned forward and held on to the front seat, getting as close as he could, his voice in my ear all joshing and pal-like. “I'll tell you what. I'll give you twenty-four hours.”

“Thanks, but I don't need twenty-four hours.”

“Just in case you change your mind.”

“I won't.”

He sat back and smiled. “Just in case,” he said, “something happens.”

The threat just steeled my resolve. There comes a time when a man has to break from his mentor and stand on his own two pedal extremities. Sure, Smith had recruited me and trained me, but he'd also sent me into some very bad places, and after a few years of that, I'd quit. Retired. Turned in my time card.

Since I'd left Smith's service, I'd set myself up in the capital and made all the right connections, a point that just made it all the more ridiculous for me to leave D.C. to poke around some Panamanian banana ranch. I had a life here. In Panama, I could barely order a Cuba libre. With my mind set firmly against the tropics, I went home, showered, and dressed for the only job I was interested in: playing the piano.

I made nine hundred dollars a night playing for parties, dinners, and government get-togethers. I was in so much demand that I owned three tuxedoes—two Versaces and an Armani. Very nice. Not that you have to be wealthy to dress well. Every four years, Washington's pawnshops are packed with formal wear, dry-cleaned to remove the stink of failure.

Smith had not taken my retirement well, and every three or four months he would ask me to freelance, which I usually agreed to do if it was something that didn't take me too far from Washington. But this time I wanted a complete break. I wanted to be free from memorizing party chatter and free from entertaining women whose husbands talked too much.

I took a cab over to State and when I got out I had the feeling someone was watching me, but the hedges looked clear of skulking hit men, and my step soon regained the bounce of the newly liberated. I assumed a little paranoia was natural in someone who'd just stepped in from the cold.

The American ambassador to Honduras was throwing a party and several hundred people were invited, enough to fill the Franklin dining room. I knew Mariposa would be there along with her husband, the Major, and that, if my luck held, I'd be able to deliver on one last assignment. It would be my parting gift to Smith, a consolation prize for his losing a part-time spy.

I liked Mariposa. She was a sweet girl, blinded by romance and trapped in a horrid marriage to a man twenty years her senior. The Major sported a thin mustache, no lips, and a pistol he probably wore with his pajamas. I'd met him twice, didn't like him either time, and I got the feeling he didn't like me much, either.

The glass, black marble, and chrome lobby of the State Department is large enough to hold groups of tourists until they are checked, rechecked, patted down, and passed through metal detectors to their tour guides. But I was a regular, so I stepped into the express lane.

Jameson, the guard, said, “Hell of a shindig tonight, Mr. Harper. Word is, even the president might drop by.” I showed him my ID and he checked it against his computer screen and, as he'd done a dozen times before, he asked for my Social Security number. I gave it to him, he nodded, handed back my ID, and waved me through the metal detector. On the other side, Shaneequa wanded me, asked me about my father's health, and then escorted me to the elevator and waited until the doors closed. God help me if I punched the button for any floor other than the one I'd been cleared for. A visitor did that once and half a dozen men with bad attitudes were waiting for him when the doors slid open.

The elevator dropped me off in the hallway that ran from the men's lounge down to the Jefferson reception hall. The men's lounge, for some reason, is decorated in the cowboy decor of Teddy Roosevelt and has been for some time. I passed through displays of pistoleros, chaps, and ten-gallon hats on my way to the lavatory, which was empty, so I bounced a Bob Wills tune off the white tile as I relieved myself.

Still flying high on my newfound freedom, I walked into the Jefferson reception hall, an exceptionally great room in a city full of great rooms. It's a hushed place, even in daylight, with ceilings as high as the National Gallery. A statue of Jefferson dominates one end of the room and the walls are lined with historic paintings, including the original
Spirit of '76.

One painting in particular always caught my eye and, if I could have, I would have tucked it under my jacket and taken it home. In it, the Capitol Building stands high up on a grass-covered hill. In the foreground a boy is pulling a cow through a gate. It's such a quiet picture of such an easier time that I like to think of myself as that boy, herding bovines in the shadow of the Capitol, as aware of world events as the cow.

The reception hall led to the Franklin dining room where waiters were arranging silver and putting a final polish on the stemware. A string quartet tuned up in the corner as nervous young interns from Protocol scurried about the room double-checking place cards.

The windows from the top floors of the State Department offer a view few citizens get to see, and it is a pity, because it stirs a patriotism in my heart that is genuine and jingo-free. Looking out across the treetops to the Lincoln Memorial, as white as a wedding cake in the spotlights, I felt privileged to be an American.

I loved this city, and it was my love for Washington that made me turn down Smith's assignment. Washington had spoiled me. I was no longer capable of wading through a shark-infested backwater just to play “Auld Lang Syne” in a bug-infested jungle hotel where the guests most likely ate with their hands.

And if I kept rationalizing like this, I'd be free of guilt by New Year's.

Behind me, people began to drift into the reception hall. It was showtime.

I was set up in a cozier room opposite the dining room, where the light from half a dozen fireplaces refracted into rainbows in the low-hanging crystal chandeliers. A Baldwin baby grand was set up next to the Christmas tree in the corner. I sat down and began to play. By the time I was into my Irving Berlin medley, the room was crowded and buzzing with happy holiday conversation. The men wore black tie, and the women wore variations of red, accented with green, or green accented with red. Everyone except Mariposa, who wore an off-white gown, a scandal in tradition-bound Washington, where white after Labor Day was considered a social faux pas on par with dissing Texas. But this ivory-colored gown was the perfect foil for Mariposa's dark skin and black hair. We made eye contact twice. Once, when I played the Honduran national anthem and all other eyes were on the flag, and once when her husband, the Major, left the room with his boss, an overweight general who managed to live extremely well on an army officer's salary.

By nine the crowd was having one last glass of wine before hurrying off to be seen at midnight services. The women of Washington knew how stunning they looked by candlelight and they didn't want to waste an opportunity to be seen twice in the same night in such a pious glow.

Mariposa greeted me and said, “You play so beautifully, Mr. Harper. Thank you.”

I gave her a small bow and said, “
Feliz Navidad,
Mrs. Cruz. How are you this evening?”

“I have a slight headache,” she said, pressing the back of her wrist to her forehead to demonstrate to everyone, even those at the far end of the room, just how much she was suffering.

“I am so sorry.”

“You are too kind,” she said. She leaned over the keyboard and whispered, “Meet me in the cloakroom. Five minutes.”

I nodded and covered our conversation with a blizzard of high notes that drifted into “Here Comes Santa Claus.” She smiled and the lights on the tree sparkled in her eyes.

I looked past her and saw the Major watching us as an army officer in dress blues, his back to us, whispered in his ear. The Major did not look happy. He stared at me and I saw suspicion march across his face and set up camp on his forehead. His mouth quivered and I could guess by the look in his eye that his Christmas wishes involved me, and it wasn't something I'd see on a Hallmark card.

The officer turned, and for the first time I saw his face. It was Smith, and he was filling the Major's ear with news meant to ruin a festive mood.

CHAPTER THREE

“I think the Major suspects something.”

“How could he?” Mariposa said. “With his nose buried so deeply in the General's
culo
.”

“Where's the coat-check girl?”

“She went away for a smoke. So we must hurry.” Mariposa pulled up the hem of her dress, revealing stockings, a flash of naked thigh, and a pair of jade-green panties.

“Mariposa, please, we've talked about this.”

She looked up from her work and in the close darkness her eyes danced. “You know, John, if you said the word, I would kill him, you know that.”

I swallowed and shook my head. “Mariposa, I'm flattered, but…”

She straightened and smoothed her dress with her hands. “I am a Catholic, John, and I take my vows seriously, so our love must remain tragic and unfulfilled, like your songs, so sad, you know? That is, unless something terrible happened that left me a widow.” She held up a small piece of paper and smiled.

“What is that?”

“It is the list of the men my husband will meet tonight in Baltimore. There is something bad happening here, John.”

“I don't know if this will help,” I said, taking the slip of paper. “But I'll pass it along.”

Mariposa placed her hand on my jaw, her nails pressing into the soft flesh of my cheek. “When were you going to tell me, John?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you were leaving for Panama.”

As a professional spy, I used to spend hours in front of the mirror practicing my look of bored nonchalance, but Mariposa's question caught me gaping like a fish.

“Did you think I wouldn't know?”

I found my voice and said, “But I'm not. There was some talk, yes…”

Mariposa pressed her breasts against my chest and breathed champagne in my face. “Every woman who has ever heard you play and wished she was your instrument—and that is almost every wife in Washington—has heard this rumor. John Harper is leaving the city. The whispers as to why are quite interesting, even for this place. There are the usual pregnancies, one even suggests a mother-daughter doubleheader.”

Mariposa was a great fan of the Baltimore Orioles.

She pushed me against the wall and into a distant corner, surrounded by the soft folds of fur and cashmere.

“Mariposa, these rumors are just that. Rumors.”

She ran a nail around my ear and said, “What I find interesting, John, is how did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I would be in Panama for New Year's. Honestly, Mr. Harper, I thought our relationship was one of business.” Mariposa's lips were so close to mine that with another coat of lipstick we'd have committed a cardinal sin.

“You're going to be in Panama?” I began to sweat in that overheated cloakroom. Someone's cell phone went off, the tone dampened by layers of expensive outerwear.

“I am,” she said. “My husband is to meet people there.” She suddenly froze and put her finger against my lower lip.

“What is it?”

“Sssh,” she said, as tense as a deer.

I listened for Wanda, the coat-check woman, telling us she was back, but the voice I heard belonged to a man. And he was agitated, speaking in Spanish, too quickly for me to pick up all but a few words. He was looking for Wanda, that much was clear, and was calling her a cow, an idler, or an economic slump, I wasn't sure which.

It was the Major.

Mariposa and I held our breaths.

After a brief discussion, the Major started pawing through the coats himself, all the while ranting about something that had ruined his Christmas.

“He does not like you,” Mariposa whispered.

I caught the words
piano
and
pistola,
words I could translate without Mariposa's help.

General Cruz made soothing sounds, calming his aide. He mentioned Renaldo and Luis, two of the no-neck bodyguards the General traveled with, which didn't do much to improve my holiday spirit.

The Major answered that a husband should clean his own house.

The General, his tone philosophical, said some things about
matrimonio,
and young brides, and then he used the word
piano
again with something that sounded uncomfortably like eviscerate. Mariposa's wide-eyed look of panic translated all I really needed to know.

The cloakroom had four long rows of coats, with Mariposa and I at the very end of the fourth row. That gave me some comfort until Mariposa touched the shoulder of an overcoat and whispered, terror sharpening her voice, “This is my husband's.”

The Major found the general's coat and continued looking for his. I heard him moving down the first row, pushing overcoats back and forth on their hangers. At the top of the second row, the Major said something that made General Cruz laugh. I caught something uncomfortable about a
musico's pinga
and hungry dogs. Or, it might have been hungry hair. My Spanish needs work.

Mariposa's eyes, so expressive, nearly vibrated in panic.