The Geronimo Breach (4 page)

His hands trembled like a crack fiend’s trying to light a midnight rock – the three shots of eighty-proof
Seco
in his morning OJ had barely dented his hangover, and the two
Cuba Libres
at lunch had been like pouring a glass of water on a bonfire. Fortunately, he was able to hide from any public encounters, claiming to be inordinately busy on this muggy Friday afternoon – should anyone have been interested in meeting with him.

Nobody was.

What he really needed was a solid siesta for a few hours. That wasn’t going to happen today. He’d exhausted his funds the prior night betting first on a cockfight, when he’d backed the losing-est rooster in history and then had made matters worse by having a few too many cocktails and doubling down on a soccer game where his team had done nothing but welcome the ball into their net like a long lost relative. By the time he’d paid his tab he was broke – he’d had to borrow a ten spot from the long-suffering bartender to cover some cigarettes and today’s lunch. His bi-weekly pay got deposited into his account by five that evening but much of it was already spoken for. So any chance he had of slipping off to grab a room at the fleabag motel, a few blocks from his shabby satellite consulate station in Colon, had gone down the drain when his soccer call had screwed the pooch.

Al considered locking the door to his small office and lying naked on the floor for maximum cooling, but dismissed the idea. With his luck his chronically absent secretary would take that moment to stop in and claim some sort of sexual harassment, so the nude nap was out of the question. He’d just have to wait. He reached into the top drawer of his scarred desk and extracted a pint bottle of
Seco
with a merenge-ing coconut on the label – he presumed it was dancing because it was shaking maracas in its stick-figure hands.

Strictly for medicinal purposes, he reasoned. He had a delicate system and it couldn’t take the shock of the DTs hitting full force without a chemical buffer. He took a long pull, grimacing as the cloudy fluid seared his throat. Al absently wondered what dirty sock they filtered it through and considered it nothing short of a miracle he hadn’t gone blind drinking it.

He lit his seventeenth cigarette of the day from the ember of the sixteenth, nearly burning his hand when the rotary-dial desk phone rang. Good God almighty. How did they get them to ring so loud? It was worse than an air-raid siren.

Al lifted the handset, primarily to stop the clamoring, and gave a lackluster greeting.

“Al Ross.”

Sam’s voice boomed on the line. “Albert, me boy, how hangs it? Any breaking news in exciting Colon today?”

“Sure, Sam,” Al replied. “I’ve got three teenage nymphomaniacs seeking asylum here. Kinda got my hands full. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. Just cutting out early today. Got to get the Range Rover serviced. Fuckers gave me a three-series Benz as a loaner. What am I supposed to do in a shitbox like that for the whole weekend?”

Al scowled at the handset, his dislike of Sam palpable. He was convinced the man only called to torment him. He glanced through his dingy window at the 1990 Ford Probe he’d been tooling around in. Listening to Sam whine about the Mercedes caused his annoyance with him to spike – just over the course of the few sentences they’d exchanged. “Hey, Sam, I’m sort of swamped here right now. Is there anything urgent?”

“No. Just wanted to touch base, make sure tha wild man is still in the mix.” In other words, he’d called because he was bored and wanted to torture Al with stories of his Benz.

“I’m in da house, big dog,” Al countered. “Maybe tomorrow we can hook up and pound some suds...” There was no chance in hell Sam would go anywhere near the places Al frequented.

“Yeah, uh, maybe I’ll call and we can work it out. Gotta run – the frigging AC in the Benz is stuck at the coldest position and it’s uncomfortable. Take it easy, wild man.”

Al hung up.

Sam called a few times a week, generally to report on some item like attending yet another lavish soiree for diplomats or to complain about his wife spending thousands on some absurd piece of furniture. Al had no doubt that the only reason Sam stayed in touch was so he could feel superior and lord his station in life over him. Al thought Sam was a tool, but a largely harmless one; an annoyance from his past who’d established an orbit around him for unknown purposes other than to piss him off. Sam feigned friendship but the true dynamic of the relationship was one of a spectator being horrified and titillated by the observed. In this case, Al was clearly the observed and his meteoric fall from grace provided endless fodder for Sam’s underdeveloped self-esteem to do victory laps.

They’d been in the service together during Desert Storm and Sam had never been able to get over Al receiving a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Sam’s resentment over them always bubbled below the surface of any conversation they had, which secretly delighted Al as much as Al’s misery seemed to titillate Sam. Al’s greatest pleasure during their discussions was knowing that the medals ate at Sam’s soul like a cancer. If only Sam knew the truth – his head would explode.

The one redeeming moment in Al’s life, when he’d received honors for bravery and merit, had occurred somewhat differently than the official versions documented. When he’d been stationed in Kuwait, in addition to occasionally acting as a quasi-public defender in court-martials, he’d been in charge of the mail – an administrative function that kept him far away from any combat action or danger of anything worse than a paper cut. But his assignment placed him in a unique position over letters and packages to and from home, affording him the opportunity to devise a nice little side business with high income possibilities – namely, helping two of his buddies set up a smuggling operation to get religious icons out of the country and onto the black market in the U.S. – without any annoying paperwork or intrusive inspections.

One fine spring day, they’d set up a meet with a new group of locals whom Al believed were going to become a conduit for the icons – unbeknownst to Al, his buddies were thinking bigger money and had forgotten to tell him they were actually doing a heroin buy for one of the buddy’s cousins, who was active on the West Coast in the pharmaceutical distribution business. Long story short, someone tried to rip off someone else at the meet, guns came out and nervous trigger fingers got the better of the situation. Both his buddies got killed, along with the four natives.

Al took a slug in the upper chest, but survived – barely. The Army concluded that the three brave marines were ambushed by bloodthirsty terrorist insurgents intent on murder, and Al, the survivor of the altercation, was decorated for his bravery. That marked the high point of his career – instead of being a paper-pushing cog in the army postal machine, he became a decorated combat veteran. Sam had never known the details and Al obviously preferred the army version to the actual one, and so the story stuck, there being nobody alive to contradict it. Al certainly had no interest in confessing, so ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ took on a whole new meaning. But Sam, who had endured a completely unremarkable stint in the service with zero opportunities for bravery, had developed a fixation on Al – remaining convinced he was a lowlife shirker.

Which wasn’t far from the truth. Only he was the lowlife with the two medals. And Sam had nothing.

Al idly wondered if he could pawn them and get enough cash to bet on the dog races tonight. Likely more trouble than it was worth – plus, he wasn’t sure where he’d stashed them; one of the last times he’d been indisposed, he’d hidden them to keep himself from doing exactly that. In the end that was probably for the best. He slapped his neck, then studied his hand, where the bloody crushed carcass of a mosquito adhered to his palm. Great. Probably now had malaria or dengue to add to the day’s horrors. Al couldn’t wait for the hemorrhagic fever to start him leaking blood out of every orifice like a giant exsanguinating yogurt machine.

Fidgeting from hangover anxiety, he flipped open his cell phone and placed a call to Carmen; the owner of one of the more upscale brothels in town. Besides being a regular client of her establishment, Al periodically made extra money by running ‘errands’ that she brokered.

It was well over a month since he’d run one and he could really use the cash – he didn’t mind leveraging the wave-through border security checkpoints his diplomatic passport entitled in exchange for some token remuneration. Sure, it may be technically against the rules, and some would label it with pejorative terms like ‘smuggling’ or ‘human trafficking’ or ‘money laundering’, but Al had a broader, more cosmopolitan view. Plus, when he was really in the shit with his bets and drinking, a little trip escorting someone to a rendezvous point could make everything better – at least for a while.

His only rule was no drugs – no way did he want to get involved in the cocaine traffic that claimed so many lives in the region. The groups involved in that were bugfuck crazy and would just as soon kill you as scowl at you. Al had enough excitement in his life without having to worry about some real-life Scarface with an Uzi waiting for him outside his apartment. Even Al had limits and standards – most of which were predicated on survival rather than ethical niceties – but they were still standards. He wasn’t an animal, after all.

Carmen answered, and Al greeted her with enthusiastic affection. His voice cracked several times during the niceties, making him sound somewhat worked and desperate, even to himself.

“Oh,
Amor
, are you coming in tonight?” Carmen cooed, always promoting. “I have a couple of new girls who would love to meet a real gentleman.”

“Not tonight. I’m afraid I can’t afford even a few minutes in paradise right now.” This was his way of indicating he needed a gig.

“Ahhh, your Lady Luck has been unkind to you lately? She can be a bitch, no?” Carmen commiserated.

“Si. She no like my Gringo ass anymore. Anything shaking on your end?”

“No, my love,” Carmen said. “But I’ll keep you in mind. It’s been slow around here without you keeping us company.”

This went on for a few minutes, until his headache forced him to terminate the call, his message delivered – Al was available and anxious to help anyone in need. Carmen was always good for something when he was down. And the last week had been a killer. He really could use a little tax-free kiss on the lips, hopefully over the next few days. Al owed a bookie $500 from a disastrous wager on Tuesday and really didn’t want to have to spend the weekend dodging him. The guy was good natured enough about a little loan, but at 50 percent weekly interest it could get silly quickly, and he’d rather not dig himself any deeper in that particular hole. Allah willing, Carmen would find someone who wanted a package transported to Colombia or back and wanted to avoid customs formalities, or need an escort to or from that fine misunderstood nation but didn’t want to have to wait in line at immigration. Whatever it was, Al was ready for it.

Assuming he could make it through his hangover without passing an organ or stroking out.

He sat, sweating and paranoid, counting the minutes until he could get out of his oppressive little office and make his steady way home for a
Mojito
or five and some badly needed sleep. Al’s Friday night was going to be a calm one.

And this time he meant it.

Really.

Ernesto spent the day as a tourist would. He rarely had free time, so suddenly finding himself with an oversupply of it he decided to take the bus to the waterfront and meander there; have a lunch of seafood washed down with some local Panamanian beer. One led to three and it soon became dusk, so there he was, walking the streets of the big city with some money in his pocket and a bad attitude.

Resolved to make the best of an otherwise negative event, he calculated the cost of a few hours at one of his favorite whorehouses. It would cut into his two week’s pay, which would have to last him a while, but sometimes a long term sacrifice was worth it if there was short term pleasure to be had. He rationalized that this was the first vacation he’d really had, in eight long years, where he didn’t have to be at work any particular day or time. Why not let his hair down and live a little?

He took the bus back towards his
colonia
and stopped about thirty minutes short of his house. There, by the roadside, lurked a number of rough-looking saloons advertising billiards, ‘Showgirls’ and ‘Ladees Bar’. Paintings of cowgirls in chaps, or ponies running wild, adorned the stark hoardings. All had roughly the same layout – a one or two story main building joined to a motel-like structure where rooms could be rented by the hour or the night. Ernesto normally frequented a club closer to home but he’d heard good things about this cluster of bars and had been meaning to stop in to see whether the scenery was any better than at his local place.

He entered a dark watering hole, improbably named
Tres Palomitas
– the three doves – and allowed his eyes to adjust. It was all locals, with groups of two and three men sitting at the small tables and nursing buckets of beer as women in nighties and negligees circulated between the tables, sitting on laps and joking with the customers.

He took a seat. A tall, gangly waiter with a pencil-thin moustache materialized at his side and took his order. A bucket of four beers was $2 for locals – a more than fair deal given the air conditioning and the two big screen televisions broadcasting soccer and ultimate fighting. Latin pop music blared from a sixties-era jukebox on one side of the room – Juanes’
La Camisa Negra
filling the room. Twenty seconds after the waiter appeared with his beer a short girl of no more than twenty came dancing up in impossibly high platform shoes, wearing little more than a couple of cocktail napkins held together with dental floss. It was a compelling look, coupled with obviously artificial breasts and long, curly brown hair with highlights framing her pretty face.

She came from Peru, and had been in Panama for two months. Angel claimed to be nineteen but Ernesto expected that was a lie. It didn’t really matter – after half an hour of ritual flirting he had a good buzz going with this attractive and affectionate girl. Just what the doctor ordered. The place was hardly jumping, so after a starting price of $100 for an hour of pleasure he negotiated a full night with Angel for $60, with an additional $15 for the room until morning.