Night of the Jaguar (33 page)

He put the Python to his temple and pulled the trigger. Click. And again. Click.

“No!”

Click. Click. Click. Click.

He'd emptied it into the ghost he could no longer see, blinded as he was by the muzzle flashes.

“Ajax!”

Then Ajax understood. The Needle. He scrambled on the ground until he found it.

“Is this it?” He shucked the blade from its sheath and pressed it to his neck. “You want me to die like you did?”

“Ajax!”

Gladys tackled him and they wrestled, his blood aflame again with the killer's rage.

“Ajax, stop!”

She rolled him onto his back and pinned his hands. It was the heat from the fire that brought him to his senses. The heat, as his body extinguished the last of his bonfire, brought him back to earth. He opened his hand and The Needle rolled away.

“Stop moving!” Gladys sat on his chest. “Stop!”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Gladys?”

“Yes, it's Gladys. What are you doing?”

“I think I'm on fire.”

She rolled him over and brushed the embers and burnt paper from his back.

“What's happening over there?” A voice as annoyed as frightened called from the other side of Ajax's wall, which now bore six holes in it.

“Everything's fine, señor,” Gladys called back. “Police business. Everyone okay?”

“Except for the fucking firefight over there.”

Ajax rolled onto his belly and tried to push himself upright. He got as far as his knees and stayed there, not sure if he would rise again. He heaved once and puked, the recent rocket fuel coming back up like acid. He laid his hot forehead on the cool earth.

“Puke. Hurl. Retch.”

Gladys knelt next to him.

“You're drunk.”

He heaved and puked again. “Deduced that, did you?” He dry heaved; the convulsion made his body feel like a bag of sand being beat with a bat.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler.'”

“What?”

“Proverbs.”

“What were you shooting at?”

Ajax managed to sit up. “What'd I hit?”

“The wall, on the other side of which people live, Jesus Christ.”

“They all right?”

“Nice of you to care after you shot the place up!”

His dry heaves passed, but his limbs trembled and the bat being used on his body moved to his head.

“Why are you here?”

“Because you're not answering your phone.”

Gladys squatted down in front of him. Put a hand on his shoulder. She gave it an imperceptible shake, as if trying to wake something very small and fragile.

“I just had to work some shit out, Gladys. Okay? Everything's fine.”

“No. It's not.”

She shook him again, like one of the many tiny tremblers Managua had—so slight you'd call out to someone, or no one,
Did you just feel that?

He'd felt it.

“Ajax. I got a call. Six bodies were brought into Matagalpa. An ambush on the road from El Tuma. A bloodbath.”

The bat banging his head was joined by a hammer in his heart in a race to see which could pound fastest.

“No, no. They were a few hours behind me. Can't be.” He grabbed Gladys's shirt and used it like a rope to help pull himself to his feet. “She's here, she's back. She's got to be.”

“Three Nicas and three foreigners.”

“No! No. Call her. Call Connelly, get the phone.” He let go of Gladys—the phone was … where? He couldn't recall the layout of his own home. The earth undulated like a full-on quake, so he had to put his hands out to steady his balance like a drunken tightrope walker. He reached for the wall to steady himself, but it was miles away and he fell, but there was no net and he hit the ground, hard.

“Ajax, I'm sorry. But the foreigners were two men and a woman. No IDs yet, but … I'm sorry.”

“No. No it's not her. It can't be!”

“We've got an hour before the ministry informs the embassy; if we want to get there before the media circus we've got to go
now
.”

“No! No. The Contra wouldn't…”

And then it all stopped: the earthquake under his feet, the bat against his head, and the hammer in his heart. Ajax stood up, flat footed, steady. He looked into the corner where the ghost had squatted. He counted the bullet holes, sloppily placed like slurred graffiti—six of them, so that one didn't go into his head.

“Maybe you're right, Ajax. Maybe even the Contra wouldn't dare.…”

“It wasn't the Contra. Get in the car.”

 

18

1.

Gladys stood in the entrance of Saint Peter's Cathedral. There was no morgue in Matagalpa. Not even a proper hospital. Saint Peter's was the heart of the town—a whitewashed colonial church that soared above the rest of the city. Most of the town's tragedies ended up here. The church faced west, so it was still dark in the dawn light.

People buzzed around like the flies trying to settle on the six corpses laid out in the nave. She'd tried to keep them out, to give Ajax a private moment, but the church was too public and the news was too big. They'd arrived just before dawn in a Red Cross Jeep Marta had conjured up. Having the “chief medical examiner” with them had given Gladys and Ajax some control over the scene, but as the sun rose the street filled with government officials and journalists, most of whom outranked two city cops. Still, most of them held back while Marta examined the dead.

Gladys had watched Ajax for several minutes now. He stood over the covered body of the redheaded gringa as Marta examined the others. She'd never seen him stand so still, frozen. Only the fingers of his left hand flexed, like an irregular pulse. His stillness and that small twitching made Gladys think of a broken mechanical man. He'd joked often enough about the things that made his trigger finger itch. But if the guns he'd stashed in the back of Marta's Jeep were a clue, Gladys was sure he wasn't joking now.

The Jeep had been Marta's idea when she'd called her last night. From the moment Gladys had broken the news—and, she saw now, Ajax's heart—it had taken twenty minutes for the three of them to be on the road, him driving, Gladys next to him, both of them dressed in civvies, and Marta in the backseat crowded with her medical bag and the weapons.

Marta pulled a bloody sheet over the dead priest, who was so long it reached only to his calves. The three Nicas in the nave, on the other hand, were short enough so that their improvised shrouds covered them entirely. Gladys had stood over Marta while she examined them. From their ages, Gladys figured they were the middle-aged sister, her teenage son, and younger sister, or maybe daughter, of the man in Ohio Amelia had been taking them to meet. Their dark mestizo skin had taken on a gray pallor in death. All the bodies had multiple gunshots, but it seemed to her the Nicas had been dressed in their Sunday best. The women wore colorful shirts—one a deep red, the other lime green—and black skirts to their knees, which made Gladys think it more likely they were sisters than mother and daughter. The boy wore khaki pants and a T-shirt with
VAN
HALEN
printed on the front.

Marta knelt next to Amelia. She looked at Ajax. Gladys laid a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to see this?”

Ajax nodded and then changed his mind. “No, wait.”

He knelt next to the body. Gladys was surprised when he drew a knife like a knitting needle from his boot. He clasped a sprig of red hair, sliced it off, and slid the blade back into his boot. He looked at the lock of hair for several moments, then closed it in his palm. Whatever Gladys's confused loyalties had been up to this moment, she knew now whose side she was on. Where she belonged.

“Go ahead, Marta,” he said.

Gladys watched Ajax's face. When Marta drew the sheet back, he looked for the quickest of moments, then turned his head as if slapped. The gringa's body was riddled with bloody holes, like the others.

He turned away. Gladys watched him take a pack of Reds out of his pocket, slip the cellophane wrapper off the box, and place Amelia Peck's hair inside. He rolled it up and slid it into his breast pocket.

A sound of brakes and the quiet commotion of people arriving drew Gladys back to the cathedral's huge doors, big enough for a Goliath to enter. Outside she saw only small people, but the big shots had arrived. Gioconda Targa was there with Senator Teal, Cardinal Obando, and a man she was pretty certain was the American ambassador. She intercepted them on the cathedral steps.

“Senator Teal, I'm Lieutenant Darío. I'm so sorry for your loss.”

“Amelia is in there?”

“Yes, sir.” Gladys tried to send a discreet signal to Gioconda. “So is Dr. Marta Jimenez. If she might have one minute to finish examining the body.”

“No.” The ambassador stepped forward, all fight. “We want to see them now.”

Gladys could see she'd get no help from Gioconda, so she led them all inside. She was surprised that Ajax was gone. A discreet nod from Marta signaled the door he'd left by.

2.

“Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five.”

Gladys counted bullet holes while Ajax searched the priest's vehicle. The Jeep had been hauled in a few hours after the bodies and dropped at a gas station just outside of town. As far as they could tell, no one else had been here yet.

They had already gone through all the personal effects they could find. There seemed to be nothing left of Matthew's or Amelia's. But the Nicaraguan family's two enormous vinyl suitcases were still in the back. It was the cheap luggage normally used by black marketeers hauling goods back from Costa Rica or Miami. They proved the family did not expect to return. Gladys had already inventoried them. They held shirts, skirts, sandals, and one set of Sunday bests for each person. There were photographs, crucifixes, and three bedspreads. But they had also packed plastic cups and plates, knives and forks, a small cooking pot, stirring spoon, and even a machete, as if life in Ohio might require them. Their belongings had baffled Gladys at first. But then, how would campesinos such as they calculate traveling to the mythical El Norte? Not in time or miles. How do you prepare to travel to a place where the map in your mind was blank?

The sight of such common household goods so innocently packed had affected her more deeply than the sight of their bullet-riddled bodies.
The map in their minds was blank,
she thought,
and so is the map in mine.
She didn't know where all this was leading, but she knew she was a part of it now. The sound of Malhora's voice on the tape had changed something. Ajax had let her listen to it on the ride up. It was not so much what he had confessed to, but how he had said it. He'd had Enrique Cuadra killed, so he was the prime suspect in these killings, too. On the ride to the gas station, Ajax had told her Marta's opinion: each victim had gunshot wounds all over their body, but each also had an exit wound over the heart—they'd been shot in the back. The other wounds were all postmortem. Marta was certain: they'd all been executed, then ripped with bullets.

“I count forty-seven holes, Ajax.”

He was on his knees, searching under the truck's front seat. He seemed to find something, and pulled his hand out. It was a doll. He held it up to Gladys.

“A doll?”

“Recognize it, Gladys? Your friend Ernesto at the crime scene. His little sister had one. He said he found it next to Cuadra's corpse. I saw several up at the finca. Cuadra's widow makes them.”

Ajax looked the truck over.

“Okay. Other than the cheap suitcases, there's nothing left in the truck. No papers in the glove box. Amelia's purse and the backpack she brought with her are gone. No wallets or papers from the men. Connelly's bag is missing. Everything connected with those three was taken. Everything connected with the Nica family was left behind. Yet, it's the spoons, plates, and cups the Contra would've valued most.”

“We know it wasn't the Contra.”

“Do we, Lieutenant?”

He seemed to be asking not so much what they knew, but if both of them accepted the same facts—was she with him?

“We do, Captain. The arithmetic seems to add up to two shooters.”

She could tell by the look on his face he hadn't thought of that, and she was glad.

“How?”

Gladys walked around the truck, looking at the holes. “Forty-seven holes in the truck. All four tires are flat, so more went into them. A few would've missed. There's thirty rounds in an AK clip, multiply by two shooters is sixty rounds. There's that many in the truck. Marta counted eight to ten bullet wounds to each body. That also adds up to about sixty.” Gladys held an imaginary AK-47 and acted out the bizarre math. “They execute them, spray the bodies…”

Ajax turned his head away.

“Sorry.”

“Go on.”

“They reload, spray the truck. Call it a Contra ambush.”

She watched Ajax take it all in. Strange as it seemed, she'd hoped for a pat on the back. Instead she watched him close his eyes and replay her scenario in his mind.

“So the Conquistadores took everything connected with the Americans.” He opened his eyes. “Why?”

Gladys looked at the truck, but had not failed to notice it was the first time she'd heard him use the word American and not gringo.

“Think like the murderers, Gladys.”

“Okay. They were looking for something one of the Americans had.”

“But?”

“But they weren't sure what, so they took everything.”

“Right. So only the doll…”

Ajax squeezed the doll, idly, but then seemed to find something. He lifted the doll's skirt and took out a slip of paper, which to Gladys looked haphazardly folded many times and, she assumed, hidden hurriedly against the doll's corncob body. Ajax fumbled with the paper, unfolded it like he thought it was a treasure map, or maybe, it seemed to her, a final note from Amelia. But as he looked it over, it become clear there was no X marking the spot. He showed it to her—there were only numbers: