The Silent Blade (Harry Bauer Book 6), page 11
Up at the bar there were younger guys with dangerous eyes that said they didn’t like strangers, and they especially didn’t like Yankee strangers. I ignored them and walked to the counter. The barman, bald, with a big moustache and mean black eyes, jerked his head at me.
I said, “Whisky, Johnny Walker, sin hielo.” Without ice.
As he poured it, under the hostile gaze of the men beside me, I pulled out Fedora’s wallet, checked the money inside it and extracted the credit cards, the ID card and the driver’s license. I did it so that anyone watching could see it wasn’t mine.
I paid, then took my drink and the wallet to a table in the corner. I sat sipping and thinking for a long time. Finally I took Fedora’s cell and dialed a number I had memorized in Puerto Rico: Don Francisco Cejudo.
A voice answered immediately in Spanish.
“¿Quien llama?”
“My name is Harry Bauer. I want to talk to Don Francisco Cejudo. You can find me on this number.”
There was a long pause. “’Arry Bauer? You say you are ’Arry Bauer?”
“That’s what I said. I believe you’ve been looking for me. I am willing to come in and talk to you. Tell your boss to call me.”
I hung up, then disabled the GPS and finished my drink.
I stepped out into the seedy gloom of Bocas del Toro and walked east with some vague idea of finding a cheap hostel, and hoping that some of the guys from the bar might follow me. I crossed 25 Oeste and paused in the light of a streetlamp, trying to decide which way to go. The only cars were parked, with blind windshields and depressed orange light reflected off dull paint. There were no people walking. This was an empty world populated by hidden, frightened people.
The scuff of a footfall behind me made me turn and look. There were three of them. Their features were dimly visible in the dull light. The one in the middle, with tightly curled hair and a pencil moustache, had been standing next to me at the bar, and he had seen Fedora’s wallet. The guy on his left was tall and skinny and had a rollup hanging from the corner of his mouth. His right hand was in his pocket. The guy on his right was heavy built, with the dark skin and angular features of an Indian. His hair was long and black, pulled back in a ponytail. I waited for them and, as they crossed the road, they fanned out. They stopped six feet from me, forming a rough semicircle. The one in the middle spoke.
“The wallet you got, it ain’t yours.”
I shrugged. “Is it yours?” He didn’t answer. I went on, “So what’s your problem?”
“You give it to me, and the money, we don’t kill you.”
I smiled. I took the wallet from my back pocket and carefully removed half the money. It looked like about two thousand bucks. I showed it to him. He began to look mad. I put the wallet back in my pocket and said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You can have this if you can give me the information I need. And if the information is good, you can have the wallet, and ten times what’s inside it.”
He jerked his chin in the direction of my back pocket. “How much inside?”
“A thousand dollars.”
He cleared his throat and spat at my feet. “You, desgraciado, you got ten thousand dollars?”
A desgraciado was somewhere between a loser and a piece of shit. I figured the way I looked right then, he had a point. I pulled the wallet again and held it up. “Who are you going to sell this to?”
“Tu puta madre!”
My whoring mother. Nice. I put the money back in the wallet and slipped it back in my pocket. I smiled at Moustache. “I was with yours last night. There was a family resemblance, especially the moustache.”
They didn’t like that. The three of them came at me together, reaching for me to grab me and take me down. A small step to my right put me outside Skinny’s guard, while my left hand grabbed his left wrist. I gave a tug to help him along and smashed the heel of my right boot into his ribs. His face said he was astonished that anything could hurt that much. I had news for him. As he went down I twisted savagely on his arm and pulled his shoulder out of its socket. He would have screamed, but he had no breath.
He was lying between me and Moustache. The Indian was behind him and trying to get around him, with a big, ugly blade in his hand.
I stepped across the whimpering, prone, skinny form and corkscrewed a straight lead right through Moustache’s guard and knocked him cold. He fell on his whimpering pal who started to panic and suffocate.
The Indian slashed at me and I pulled back. He jumped over his pals and slashed again, at my face, then came back with a low cut at my leg. Before he’d finished he was stepping into a lunge at my gut. I twisted away, leaned back and smashed a side kick into his knee. I heard it snap. His teeth bared into an ugly expression of agony.
I won’t take a knife from a live man. It’s too dangerous. I will only use disarming techniques in moments of extreme need. It is much smarter to kill your opponent before you disarm him. As he staggered, trying to hold his weight on his left leg, I delivered a cruel front kick to his solar plexus. He went down retching spasmodically. If the kick didn’t kill him, the heel to the back of his neck did. I took his knife and cut Skinny’s carotid artery and jugular vein. He gave a small spasm, his feet kicked, and then all his worries were behind him.
I rolled Moustache over and slapped his face a few times. When he opened his eyes his pupils were huge. He groaned and gasped for air. I slapped him a few more times until he focused on me.
“Your friends are dead.” He gaped and I showed him the wallet. “This, who were you going to sell it to?” He licked his lips and swallowed. I sighed. “Give me your telephone.”
He glanced at the breast pocket of his jacket. I reached in and pulled out his cell. He scrambled backward to the wall and came up on his elbows. I showed his face to the screen and it opened. I went to his address book, showed it to him and said, “Who? Who were you going to sell it to?”
He licked his lips again and his frightened eyes darted to the screen. I was getting mad. I put the point of the knife on his thigh and counted elaborately, “One…two…”
He stretched out his hands, his leg jumping and quivering. “Nononono…! I tell, I tell…”
“Name!”
“Omar! Omar Fuentes!”
“I want to talk to him. Where?”
“Casco Antiguo, Calle 14 Oeste! Number fifty-five! He buy, good dollar!”
“Who do I tell him sent me?”
“You tell him José Menendez send you.” He hesitated. “You give me thousand bucks now?”
I followed the dictum, do unto others as you would be done by, and did to him what he was going to do to me. I made it as quick and painless as I could. Then I pulled out his ID card and his wallet. His ID said he was, indeed, José Menendez. He had two hundred dollars, which I took. From the other two I scavenged another couple of hundred. I was going to need everything I could get.
I made my way back to the BMW on El Chorillo and drove slowly through the empty, shadowy streets to the Casco Antiguo district, the Old Town. I followed Avenida A headed east and soon came to Calle 14 Oeste. I turned in and found number fifty-five. It was a ramshackle place with a corrugated roof and a peeling, green wooden door. I parked out front and dialed the number I’d got from Menendez’s cell.
A voice answered, “¿José, que pasa amigo?” He was asking José what was up. I could hear a TV in the background. I said in my faltering Spanish, “Soy amigo de José. El me da su numero. Necesito ayuda. Poder pagar.” There was a long silence. Eventually I asked, “Do you speak English?”
“Yes, I am speak English. José give my number?”
“Yeah. I had to pay him a thousand bucks, but he gave me your number. If you can do the job, I have to give him another thousand bucks.”
“What do you want?”
“I have some documents for you. And you name your price, I’ll pay. I need a passport and a driver’s license.”
“American?”
“Yeah, American.”
“Five thousand dollars, and the documents you have…?”
“I found them in Colon.”
“Uh-huh… OK, when you need them?”
“Tonight.”
“Impossible.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow afternoon. The sooner you get them, the less perfect they are.”
“They need to be good. If they’re not good I don’t pay.”
“Tomorrow evening.”
“OK. You get started now.”
“I need to see you, take photos…”
“I’m outside your place now.”
A heavy sigh. He wasn’t going to get to watch his TV show. “OK, you come in.”
I climbed out of the car and went to the green, peeling door. After a couple of minutes it opened. I was looking down at a small man with balding, gray hair. He looked like he was in his late sixties, in baggy brown corduroy pants and a threadbare gray cardigan.
“You are José’s friend?”
“Yeah. Can I come in? I don’t want to be seen.”
He stood back and closed the door behind me, then led the way in silence to a back room. Like Yoyo’s basement, it had several computers along a bench against the back wall, and there was a camera, with a stool and a backdrop, and a couple of spots. But there was none of the high security. That told me he had an arrangement with the cops, and that was good news.
He pointed at the stool. “Sit.”
I sat and he took several photographs of me. “What name you want?”
“Harry Bauer.”
I watched his face for any reaction. There was none. The grapevine had not reached him.
“Spell for me the letters.”
I spelled it out and he made a note. We went through date of birth, height, birthmarks and all the other details he needed. When we were done I said, “There are two things I need to tell you.” He frowned at me. I went on. “I am a pro, Omar. I know when a document is good, and I know when it isn’t. If you can give me a good document tomorrow morning, I will double your fee. Forget the TV, work through the night. Drink a lot of coffee. I need this. OK?”
He nodded. “OK.”
“Second, your friend Menendez and his two pals,” I raised my hand to indicate height, “tall skinny guy and an Indian. They tried to steal my money. I killed them.”
He went pale and swallowed. I pulled the wallet from my pocket, extracted the money and dropped it on the table. “As promised. I always keep my promises, Omar. Do this job and tomorrow I’ll pay you ten thousand bucks.” He nodded. “I’ll be here at ten thirty AM. Will that give you enough time?”
He nodded again. “Yes.”
I left, stepped out into the dingy alley, and climbed back in the BMW. I made my way back to Avenida A and drove east for a couple of blocks. There I turned left and pulled into the parking lot of the hotel Casa Antigua. It was a dive where you went if you didn’t want to hand over your passport for some reason. No questions were asked, and payment was in cash.
The doors were closed, but when I knocked a portly man with heavy glasses and balding hair opened for me.
“I need a room for the night. Cash. My documents were stolen.”
He nodded, let me in and closed the door behind me. “We are closed,” he said, as he led me to the reception desk. “But I make exception for you tonight.” He shrugged and spread his hands. “I must charge more, of course. Fifty bucks for the night.”
I handed him fifty bucks and he handed me a key. I took hold of his wrist instead of the key. “I need to go out. I need to buy some cocaine or some H, you understand me? I can pay you a couple of Cs on top of that fifty, if you can tell me where to go.”
He smiled. “Of course, señor, just on the corner, the Maraka Club, there you will find music, girls, everything an American gentleman can require.”
I smiled. Now I had my ten grand for Omar the next morning, and there would be a little less trash in Panama.
Fourteen
I spent two or three hours that night pursuing my favorite sport, Hunt the Dealer. They are easy prey. They are weak parasites who are easy to lure. They come looking for you if you’re in the right area, and they take you to quiet, lonely places to take your money and sell you death. They are cowards, and if you hurt them, they tell you whatever you want to know—and they give you whatever you demand. Most times you don’t even need a weapon. You can use theirs. I finished that night twenty grand better off, with two dealers in the bag.
There was no word from Don Francisco Cejudo. It had been a long shot. At the time, finding somebody to make a fake passport had seemed like a still longer shot, and Cejudo had looked like my easiest option. But the way things were playing out, it looked like I might be out of Panama and on my way home by the next day, if I wanted.
At ten the next morning I was at the Albrook Mall when it opened. I bought a pair of Levis, an expensive white shirt and an expensive linen jacket. I dressed in the john and made my way back to Calle 14 Oeste. I got there at twenty minutes to eleven and he opened the door to me looking worried. He took in my new aspect at a glance, nodded and stepped aside to let me in. As I entered he closed the door and said, “Is ready. Is good. Nobody can tell.” He gestured at me with both hands as he set off down the corridor. “And like this, you not attract so much attention. Your face…” He shrugged. “But what can you do?”
He showed me the documents. They were good. I wasn’t sure they’d stand up to a minute inspection with electronic equipment, but they would get me onto a plane and through passport control at JFK.
I paid him his money and stepped out onto the street. As I opened the door of the bimmer and climbed in Fedora’s cell rang. I swore softly under my breath and answered.
“Yeah?”
“Mister Harry Bauer?” The voice was rich and melodious.
“Yeah.”
“I am very curious that you have called me. I can explain it only one of three ways: you are deeply stupid, you have huge cojones or you are lying and you represent the DEA.”
“I’m not really interested in your analysis of the situation, Mr. Cejudo. I have a big problem. I need you to solve it and in exchange I can offer you something of real value to you. We need to talk.”
He gave a rich, comfortable laugh. “You need to talk. I might be interested to talk. Tell me where you are, I will send my chauffer to collect you.”
“That’s the kind of stupid suggestion that is going to make me walk away. I figure you would like to have a man inside the CIA’s Special Activities Center. If you’re not interested in that, that’s fine. I’ll be on my way.”
There was a few seconds’ silence. When he spoke again he sounded curious.
“This is who you work for?”
“You want to talk or you want to waste time? I have the airport fifteen minutes away. Either I go there or I go to meet your representative. You decide.”
“You are not a respectful man, Mr. Bauer. I don’t like your tone.”
“Yeah? That’s too bad. You want to talk, Mr. Cejudo, or do I go on my way?”
He grunted. “Panama Hilton, Balboa and La Guardia, in the Marbella district. Go to the Bar Blue at five thirty PM and sit by the window.”
“I’ll be there.”
I hung up and sat for a while thinking. The smart thing to do was get the hell out of there and go back to New York. On the face of it, that was the smart thing to do. But there are some things you can’t run from. I had exposed Cobra to the prying curiosity of the CIA and Bloque Meta, as well as others. There was a chance I had assuaged, at least partly, the curiosity of the Company. But after what I had done on St. George, I knew Bloque Meta would not stop coming until they either knew who I worked for—or had worked for—or until I was dead.
I fired up the German Dope Mobile and drove to the Vista Hermosa district and the Avenida Simon Bolivar. Since working for Cobra, and enjoying the brigadier’s “spoils of war” policy, I’d had to open a couple of offshore accounts with banks that were more interested in banking than in policing. All of them had numbered accounts, one of them had an office on Simon Bolivar. After half an hour in an oak-paneled office drinking coffee and chatting about the deplorable rise in crime, I emerged with an attaché case containing fifty thousand dollars and a promise that a replacement credit card would be couriered to me at the Hilton.
After that I went and had some lunch, bought some more clothes and then went to the Hilton and booked a room, advising them that a credit card was being couriered to me from the Panama International Finance Bank at that address. They were suitably impressed and gave me a room with a view of the bay. I went up, showered, changed and finally, at five PM, when the Bar Blue opened, I went down and ordered a martini dry, shaken, not stirred, and sat reading the New York Times for half an hour. It seemed the Republicans were still getting it all wrong.
At five thirty-five three men in blue suits walked in. They all looked like they’d been licked clean by mommy cat and then brushed with cologne. One of them had an attaché case like mine, the other two had discrete bulges under their arms. Those two sat at the bar and the third one walked briskly across the room and stood in front of me. He gave a small bow and said, “Mr. Bauer?”
I nodded and folded my paper. “Are you Mr. Cejudo’s representative?”
“Indeed. My name is Alejandro Vargas. May I sit down?”
I gestured to the chair opposite me. He sat and set his attaché case by his side.
“Mr. Bauer, before we begin, Mr. Cejudo has asked me to explain a few things to you which he is anxious for you to understand.”
I shrugged with my eyebrows and signaled the waiter. “Go ahead,” I said.
“Things have changed a lot in Colombia since the days of the cocaine cartels. The way people talk about it,” he pulled down the corners of his mouth and shrugged with his shoulders, “you might think it was last week. But really, it was thirty years ago.”
