to interrupt his every thought. “Yes, yes, Connie I’m here. Please show in the good Captain Flores,” he answered with defeat registered in his voice.
“Welcome, Manuel,” he gushed with politician’s polish, meeting him at the door and grasping the captain’s upper
arm with his left as they shook hands enthusiastically. “How is the future director of the OIJ, this fine evening?” They remained thus for several minutes, complimenting each other on their assignments, amid assurances that the public could not be better served.
Eventually, they assumed their respective seats, Gordon upon his throne (which he would dearly miss) and Manuel
in the lower chair, from where he reported that Michael Henderson, with two uniformed officers as his escort, waited in the outer office. He had been found barricaded in his residence and, when they approached, attempted escape on horseback but, as the valley he fled into was surrounded by jungle with the highway its only outlet, it was poorly contrived. Even after apprehension, he continued to behave most uncooperatively, despite being told repeatedly that he was not being arrested, merely brought to the office of Gordon Edward to answer several questions.
“As I’m sure you remember,” he said, “Michael is an alias. His name is Shannon Henderson. According to a report from the Boston Police Department, Shannon is wanted for the drive-by murder of a boy.” Gordon’s eyes widened in surprise. “That is not all. The bloody fingerprints on Lt. Vargas’ journal are not from the Nicaraguan embassy employee as we expected – they are his: Shannon Henderson’s.”
This was craziness: could Sylvia’s son be a multiple murderer and part of the Tweety-Bird gang? “Show him in
then, Manuel. I want to have a word with this Shannon Henderson.”
“Yes, certainly, in a moment, but I have something else…”
“There’s more? You have been busy, haven’t you? Go ahead, then.”
“I think there is something you ought to know concerning your associate, Truman Herrera.”
“Truman? Yes, what is that?” Gordon asked in surprise.
“When I looked at the identity card of the Nicaraguan embassy employee, I began to ask myself if perhaps sharing a surname might not be more than mere coincidence. The thought was highly speculative and the family name common but, considering the situation, I did some checking. According to the personnel file from the embassy, the social worker was born in Jinotega, the same place as Truman. The home addresses turned out to be one number apart on the same street, they attended university together, and an additional check with authorities in Managua confirmed my suspicion: they are first cousins, there’s no doubt about it. However, in the war, the social worker fought as a Sandinista colonel so, considering Truman’s military history, I thought perhaps not much connection remained between them. Nevertheless, I felt it a rather uncomfortable coincidence.”
“What the hell are you trying to tell me?” Gordon retorted. A strange crawling sensation gnawed at the pit of his stomach. Truman and the social worker, cousins? It couldn’t mean that Truman too was part of the Tweety-Bird gang. No, of course not – impossible! But, what? It wasn’t like Truman not to mention a cousin, if he had one around. “Well, go on, damn it. I want to hear the rest.”
“When this came to my attention, naturally I wanted to speak with Truman. I thought it a remote possibility, but perhaps this relationship explained Truman’s lack of enthusiastic support for your pursuit of the Tweety-Bird gang and, if questioned directly, he could provide valuable insight. I called repeatedly, but each time, I was told he was not in. He once was reported to be in the shower yet, when I called again fifteen minutes later, a different person claimed that he was away on a fishing trip. I checked and the boat is tied up in Limon so, last evening, I had a Guardia Rural officer stop at his hotel. He
found Truman’s apartment vacant although the staff claimed to know nothing. They said he rarely spoke to them and they knew nothing of his comings and goings. His office had been emptied, with the computer torn free of its connections, and the file cabinet stripped. Elsewhere, drawers and closets had been emptied and his remaining personal effects folded and packed into boxes. An interesting observation was that a significant number of female articles were among his personal items, including toiletries. The hotel staff refused to acknowledge the presence of a woman, but it seems apparent that one lived with him and they left together.”
So he’d lied: his girlfriend (who Sylvia claimed was a thief) hadn’t left – and his cousin was part of the Tweety-Bird gang! He didn’t know what was up, but Truman, sure as hell, wasn’t going to get away with anything! “Damn! Damn and double damn!” Gordon shouted at full volume, visibly reducing Flores’ already shaky confidence. The captain’s lower jaw began quivering. “Find him!” Gordon demanded. “Find him and bring him here. I want that woman, too: both of them. She is an American by the name of Beth Tierney. I don’t want this goddamn little box scaring the shit out of me again, telling me you’re here with another urgent message, unless that message is that you have both of them with you! Have I made myself clear, Captain?” he shouted, shaking the intercom in his hand, and boring holes in the captain with his gaze.
The meeting with Mike was worse.
He entered and slouched into the chair, crossed his arms over his chest, slid his backside to the seat’s forward edge, extended his legs and tapped the toe of his boot against the desk. Rancid body odor wafted the air.
Gordon crossed to the air conditioning control panel, behind the bar and set it on high, in ventilate mode. “You are Mike Henderson?” he asked in obvious surprise.
“Yeah, Gordy, that’s me, Mike Henderson!”
“Very well, Shannon,” Gordon said returning to his throne. “Let’s get a couple of things straight before we begin, okay? First of all, you address me as Mr. Edward, or sir, if you prefer, and never will you use that tone of voice in this office.” Gordon withdrew from his desk the .38 he had once fired into the wall to impress Leon, and laid it before him, cringing inwardly that he soon might be inflicting costly damage to his expensive paneling – again. “I’m going to be very blunt with you, Shannon. If I’m not one hundred percent satisfied that you are speaking with total honesty – and respect –
you will leave here in a body bag! The officers outside will be quite content to deliver you to the morgue without a question asked. Your mother is a very good friend and I fear that would cause her discomfort. For that reason only, you are, at this moment, still alive. But, do not misunderstand: I will not hesitate, because the subject I wish to discuss with you means more to me than her friendship. Are we understanding one another so far?”
“Yeah, okay, I got it,” he answered as he assumed a position slightly less resembling a dog sprawled in the center of the road.
“Very well then, without further ado I want you to begin by telling me exactly – with every detail included – how you learned about my privately conducted business.” He related basically the same story as Sylvia, regarding a prostitute’s theft of their tuna cans and the subsequent ‘questioning’. It was painful to hear that the source of his problems had once again been Leon. They were brothers and he did love him – hadn’t he always provided for him? But this was it – Leon’s days were over. It was an unpleasant decision he had avoided countless times, but it was now glaringly apparent that if he hoped to continue it was an unpleasant matter that must be attended to. “Who other than your mother and yourself has knowledge of my affairs?” he asked abruptly.
“Uhm, ah, nobody. Nope, nobody at all.” He swallowed and glanced awkwardly about the room.
There was a lie in that hesitation. Gordon picked up his pistol and worked a round into the chamber. “I’ll ask only once more,” he spoke calmly while studying the pistol, then aimed directly at him and shouted: “Who other than your mother has knowledge of my affairs?”
Mike sat bolt upright and held his hands up defensively. “Just two’a my friends and the cop know about it, but we killed him, and one’a my friends is dead, too. The other one won’t say nutting to nobody, I promise,” he stammered.
Gordon was taken aback. Was he referring to the person found adrift in the harbor? “You say, one of them is dead.
How did that happen?”
“He drownded. He got thrown in the bay and he never come swimming in, so we figgered he drownded.” He
shrugged his head towards one shoulder and opened a palm in hopelessness at his friend’s fate.
“Just a minute! Did this friend who drowned have any tattoos?”
“Yeah, he had a roach. A cockroach on his cheek, why?”
“Wait. Let me try to understand this. You, your two friends, the two police officers, Vargas and Segovia, and the Nicaraguan embassy employee were all members of the Tweety-Bird gang. Who else was there?”
“Say what? ‘Tweety-Bird gang’? Sounds like a bunch’a fags! I don’t know nutting about it, and I sure as hell ain’t never run around wit no fags.”
Gordon fixed him with a fiery glare and lifted the pistol again.
“Easy man, easy” Mike said. “It’s the truth. I don’t know these fucking bird guys. All’s we did was try to rip off a load’a your cocaine from the ugly fuck wit the scarred up face and the American broad. We would’a got it too,” he said with a meek smile, “’cept these other two pricks showed up: maybe they’re your bird guys, I dunno, but when they got there, everything turned to shit. My pal knifed the cop, but then the fucking boat took off, I fell in the water and Dougie – he’s the guy wit the tattoo – got dumped way out in the bay and never come back, that’s why we guess he drownded. That’s it, end of story.”
Gordon was speechless. Truman had been assaulted? So why had he not mentioned it? Indeed, why had he also
lied about sending away his lady-friend, hidden the existence of his cousin and run off? There was no sense to any of it.
“No, that is not the end of the story, Shannon. You are going to tell me everything that happened that night.”
Sentence by sentence, the scene of theft, treachery, murder and bedlam on the fateful night in Limon harbor
unfolded. It became apparent that Truman together with his cousin and girlfriend conspired to steal the same shipment of cocaine that had Mike, and the two groups of thieves clashed aboard the boat. Then Truman and his girlfriend (the one who had robbed Sylvia) had escaped – with his cocaine! He spun his Rolodex to Carlos, and dialed the Bluefields home number.
Yes, Truman had appeared on schedule, he was told, but without a package, rather with the news that it was all over and there would never be another. His rage was out of control. Gordon could never have imagined Truman doing anything worse than walk out of the organization: this, this bold theft and betrayal spun his head and brought his blood to boil. His only comfort would come when he and his girlfriend were thrown from the same cliff his cousin had gone over, although a bullet through the brain would do. An idea also began to take shape in his mind of what could be done with this surly beast seated before him, that wouldn’t be perceived by Sylvia as coming from him and thereby alienate her. Michael had a shipment arriving in Puerto Viejo this Sunday night, he recalled Sylvia saying. Also, his Port Authority Police had humiliated the OIJ; perhaps to mend intradepartmental fences, he could offer Captain Flores, as the new OIJ director, the opportunity to arrest Michael when he arrived, keeping him completely out of the picture.
“Well, we got through that, all right,” he said, hopping to sit on the corner of his desk closest to Mike and, despite the smell, leaned towards him as he spoke. “It wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, to show that there are no hard feelings, allow me to offer you a drink. What would you like?”
Mike turned in his chair to face Gordon: his face was blanched and his breath coming in difficult gasps. “Yeah man, I could go for a whiskey,” he replied, attempting to smile.
Gordon filled a cocktail glass and offered it. “Your mother and I are both retiring from this business,” he said in a tone of confidentiality. “However, she and I worked out an arrangement for you, which I think you will find most agreeable.
I intended to offer it only if you came here in a spirit of complete honesty and, although we had a rough start, it looks like you have been open with me. Here’s the deal: you are to take over your mother’s operation in its entirety. Its profit and all decisions shall be yours alone.”
Mike looked up from his emptied glass with a tentative smile.
Gordon refilled it. “So, you see how valuable maintaining honesty has been for you?”
“Yeah, oh yeah man. We gott’a be honest with each other, that’s for damn sure,” he answered, continuing to smile weakly.
“I want you to know my truths too, so you and I don’t have any other misunderstandings. This second friend of
yours, who was with you that night in the harbor and knows about my business, is going to have to be silenced.”
“Oh, you got no problem wit Patty-boy. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
“Listen, as a fellow in this business, I’m sure you know that there are those who know how to open closed mouths.
Just give me his name and address, and I will make the appropriate arrangements: your hands will be clean and if, in the future, the situation becomes reversed, I would provide you with the same information. I know turning on a friend is a difficult thing to do because I’m facing the same situation: a man I have been close with for years, my former associate, the one with the scarred face, and the woman who was with him, must also be eliminated. If you happen across them – kill them on sight. I am in a position to offer you a considerable reward and complete immunity if you do just that. As the director of the Port Authority, I have complete control of the Port Authority Police and also considerable influence within the OIJ.
Should any investigation of you for eliminating those two ever be initiated, you can rest assured that it would fail. Now, give me the name.”
“There ain’t much I would rather do than snuff those two,” Mike huffed through a deep laugh. “Yeah, okay.” He
drained his glass in one swallow, leaned across the desk and jotted the name and address of Patrick Crowley on a pad.
* * *
They pulled to the curb around the corner from the dazzling brightness of the casino, beside the domed green canopy bearing the lettering BAR CLUB HOLLYWOOD. Truman was angry because of the risk she insisted upon taking andbecause his scared face was such a beacon that he dared not enter first to ensure Mike wasn’t there.
“I’m sorry, but I have to do this,” Beth said, kissing him before departing. “Don’t worry so, my love: I’ll be
extremely careful and, you know, I can run like the wind.”
“Five minutes, that’s all, or I’m coming in,” he said, looking into her eyes.
She nodded, giving him one last peck and noting, as she did, the pistol stuffed into his waistband. Beth worried that, with Brian Walston in jail, Caroline might find it difficult to free any time to speak with her. As it turned out, she was wrong: she had floor managers that allowed her to mingle with her patrons. She greeted Beth like a long-lost friend, and led her to a
pair of stools in the bar. “There’s a game in progress in my back room, so it’s best to talk in here,” she said above the din of music. “There is always someone watching and trying to overhear conversations in the casino. In here, you can’t hear anything that’s said more than two feet from you, and nobody gives a damn what you say anyhow: all these guys want to do is jerk off or run in the back room.
“Let me buy you a drink, it’s the least I can do. After all, if it wasn’t for you, all of this,” she crowed “wouldn’t be mine.”
“What do you mean by that?” Beth questioned in frank surprise.
“It’s all up there,” Caroline answered. Her red enameled finger pointed to a picture frame hanging above the
entrance and bathed in the beam of a mini-spotlight. “Read it.”
Beth stepped close and scanned a two-column newspaper clipping. The substance of the item was that Brian
Walston had been remanded to San Sebastian prison pending trial on charges of conspiracy to murder George Dearling. A sentence near its end stated that a disinterested third party, Beth Tierney, an American tourist, had corroborated critical information. She was stunned and instantly incensed. The article was bad enough, but to have her name appear on a whorehouse wall, was a hundred-fold worse. Yet, if she hoped to win Caroline’s cooperation, tearing it from the wall was not an option: she gritted her teeth. “There was no reason for my name to be included in that article,” she said with as close to a normal tone as she could produce. “I’m sure the police paid little attention to what I said.”
“No, you’re wrong. Your statements to the cops were the frosting on the cake that put Brian away, and with him
gone, this is mine. Welcome to Club Hollywood , where dreams really do come true!” She held a drink before her lips, offering a toast. “For you tonight, everything is on the house. I’ll have the cashier give you a complementary thousand dollars in chips. Play and have a good time. Any winnings are yours to keep.” She held her glass high, completing her salute with a flourish.
“That’s very generous of you, but I only wanted an opportunity to talk for a while. Could we continue in one minute please? I have a friend waiting outside and, so he doesn’t worry, I should tell him that I’ll be a little longer, okay?”
Caroline stepped to the window, pulled back a curtain and peered out. “Who would that be out there,
Frankenstein?”
“Frankenstein?” Beth couldn’t help but giggle.
“Yeah, him. Go on out and tell him to wait if you want, but don’t bring him in here. If he wants to know why tell him that I don’t like people who have secret conversations with my fiancé that turn him into an absolute bear.”
As Truman advised, Beth got immediately to the point upon returning, stating that she had come to speak about
certain information Caroline had provided to the police.
“What?” snapped Caroline. “How did you find out about that? That was a protected secret guaranteed by a federal judge!”
“Caroline, your secret is safe with me.”
“Safe? You told Frankenstein about it! That’s why he went to see Brian, isn’t it?” She had turned to face her, and her angry words were spoken but inches from her ear.
“Please, his name is Truman and he didn’t say anything about it to Brian, in fact, at the time, he didn’t know.”
“I’m not telling you a thing, and tell Frankenstein to stay away from Brian!”
“May I just ask you why you went to Officer Vargas in the first place?”
“Vargas… the Indian?… Oh my god, I thought… But, you’re referring to what I told him about Mike!” Caroline
pushed into the backrest of the stool and appraised her. She had been curious about Beth from the first time they met: a new face who knew many of the people in her own social circle. The first time she had seen her was on the arm of George Dearling. Then she showed up one fine morning in Sylvia’s stable as a personally invited guest, free to ride any horse she chose, and at her formal dinner party, mingling with all the worst of her cronies and assigned the seat beside George. He was devoted to his wife, a man women couldn’t get close to, and he had tried to say that he really didn’t know her, nevertheless, there she had been, chatting and laughing merrily away with him, as though they had been intimate for years. Later, she had seen her huddled in the shadows on the balcony with Gene Frazer, talking with him too as though they were old chums, and Sylvia told of her lunch in Limon with the politician Gordon Edward, appearing there as his friend’s date. The last time she had heard Beth’s name mentioned had been a disparaging remark made by Sylvia. Something had happened between them, but Sylvia had refused to go into it. “Why don’t you tell me exactly who you are?”
“I’m nobody,” she replied. “Just a geologist from Green Bay, Wisconsin – really. But, Mike Henderson is a terrible man who belongs in prison. I thought you might feel the same way and be willing to share what you know about his cocaine trafficking.”
“You want to know about Mike Henderson, I suggest you ask him yourself. I never got along with the little Indian, but I always knew he was honest, and his word was as good as gold. Him I trusted, you I don’t and, in particular, I don’t like the people you associate with. What good would it do anyhow? Since you seem to know so much, you must already know that I gave the Indian enough to put Mike away, still he was released almost as soon as they picked him up. The cops came for him again this morning (I know because I was in the stable, and saw it happen), but he was out again this afternoon. If I told you anything it would just get back to him that I ratted, and I’d have to deal with that. No thanks.”
“Well, if you refuse to help, then the next time he rapes someone let it be on your conscience, that you could have done something to prevent it, but refused.”
“Rapes someone? You said trafficking cocaine.”
“Yes, I said trafficking cocaine because that’s what he does, as you full well know. That can send him to prison, where he belongs and where at least he can’t rape any women.” Caroline seemed to be waiting for more, staring without speaking. “He raped me,” Beth said, and related the story of her own kidnapping and violation, and the mutilation suffered by Herminia. “I gave back the money my friend stole, but he mistakenly thought we knew something about cocaine
trafficking. Now, some even worse things have happened, and I can’t stay around to testify against him. But then, if I just walk away, he’ll rape someone else: you know it’s true, I can see in your eyes that you do. Won’t you, please, reconsider?”
While Caroline studied Beth, her emotionless soul developed a fissure, allowing a sense of sympathy to enter, and suddenly, she was anxious to help. “But you keep me out of it. If anyone comes around asking questions, I won’t know a thing about it,” she insisted, then related what she knew or suspected.
When finished, the only item that Beth didn’t already know was that Sylvia had purchased a boat that became
Caroline’s namesake. “I’d so hoped and prayed that you would have something earth-shattering, and the OIJ would just have to arrest him, but I don’t think this is going to do it,” Beth responded dejectedly. “I mean, who in this country are you going to get to do anything about his using an alias? And maybe he uses this boat for drug trafficking, but again, who is going to pay attention to a maybe? The son-of-a-bitch wins again!”
“If you want, I could listen in on some of his phone calls. I’m the one who arranged the installation of telephone service in La Hacienda, and the phone company ran the lines through the stables. They put in one of those push-button
phones out there so, if I choose, I can listen in when his line lights up. I’m there almost every morning riding and grooming my horse. Do you want me to do it?”
Later in the car, listening to Beth describe the plan she and Caroline had come up with Truman’s face, with furrowed brow and pursed lips, was betraying his disapproval.
“I’m going to sneak in past the guardhouse hidden in Caroline’s car,” Beth continued, “and listen…”
“Oh no, you’re not! Absolutely not! That’s enough of you sticking your neck out!” He twisted the key in the
ignition and pulled out into traffic.
“What’s this? Where are we going?”
“To see a friend of mine. He’s an electronic engineer who has done a lot of work for Gordy: bugging, wiretapping, that sort of thing. I’m positive that he has a wiretap recorder Caroline can install herself, then, all we have to do is collect the tapes from her – a little easier than riding, curled up in the trunk of a car, on a road fit only for four wheel drive vehicles, don’t you think?”
* * *
They awoke early Friday morning, left Herminia to enjoy her sleep and took off for Puriscal, so as to be inCaroline’s driveway when she returned from riding. Waiting was a nerve-wracking experience spent by Beth chewing the miniscule remnants of fingernails and, by Truman, fuming that it made much more sense to walk right up the entrance to La Hacienda, grab the hairy bastard by the throat and stomp the living shit out of him. The arrival of Caroline’s car broke their pleasant pastimes, especially as she walked by the car with a conniving grin, waving a mini cassette victoriously above her head. Her delight came from the third recorded phone call, in which, she claimed, Mike negotiated to purchase broken-down horses for more than double their value. However, of interest to Beth and Truman, there was nothing, though they listened intently to each message which treated them only to a rogue’s gallery of prostitutes and alcoholics.
The possibility of hearing anything different had been an extreme long shot; nevertheless, listening to the
foolishness they had gone to such great lengths to get, left them feeling bitter. It was a bad start to an already dark day. Not only was there a cold rain, driven horizontal by the wind, but this was also the day to say good-bye to Herminia. Somehow she sensed that something terrible had happened beyond the killing of Raul, but it had been decided that, for her own safety, she should be told as little as possible; as a result, Beth had been avoiding confidentiality with her in their final days together.
It was nine-thirty in the morning and Herminia entered the convalescent home at two: not much time to make up for so thoughtless a slight.
They returned to Curridabat as quickly as crossing San José would allow and found that in their little guesthouse, nobody waited. Herminia was gone. They searched the grounds, combed the neighborhood, checked every store and
bathroom in the mall, returned to the house then drove to San Francisco de Dos Rios to do the same in her future neighborhood: nothing. They found their way to the barrio where she had grown up and her family still lived. They knew not where to look, so they cruised the streets of wretched poverty and questioned a few whose misfortune it was to call this place home if they knew of Herminia, her ‘mother’ or her three children, to no avail. Beth then remembered the brick wall in the side of an alley Herminia had pointed out on Calle Ocho: a certain loosened brick, when it was removed, yielded crack cocaine if the correct amount of money was placed in the opening and covered over again with the brick. Rail-thin addicts
queued on a nearby corner and trailed into the alley one after the other, but Herminia was not among them, nor was there one willing to be questioned.
Returning in abject disappointment, they entered the neighborhood of San Francisco de Dos Rios for another check of Herminia’s new home. The moment she opened the kitchen door from the garage, Beth knew from the scent of now familiar crack cocaine fumes that they had found her. She sat on the floor in the corner of the living room, smiling dully, her smoking tube limply in her hand, nose running over her upper lip, eyes cherry-red and focused upon another world. “Here she is!” Beth called out. He joined her in the doorway where Beth stood, staring down in hopeless confusion. “She smoked a lot, but I think I’ve seen her do as much before; she’ll be okay,” Beth said, not altogether certain that she spoke the truth.
Herminia’s eyes returned to the here and now, and she smiled. “Jus theese one last time, Beth, I promise,” she said, then laughed uproariously, abruptly stopped, sprang to her feet and in an instant was before them. “So sorry,” she said meekly, sniffed and wiped her running nose across her forearm, “but theese, she is the last time, really. What time is it?”
“It’s a couple of minutes past twelve,” answered Truman.
“Two hours!” she whimpered in a little girl’s voice. “Herminia is very scare!” Tears sprang from her eyes as if a tap had been opened, she sat on the floor again with her back to the wall, dropped her head onto arms crossed over her knees, and cried.
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