Davidson said, “After that, I’ll show you where the Club Gamboa office is and where Merlot lives. It’s the old golf clubhouse, a place called The Ridge. Then you’re on your own. But be careful. His office and his house have first-rate security systems. The same security company that does our bid work did his place. That’s how I know.”
“They’ve got cops out here?”
I could see the look he gave me in the dash lights: I was joking, right? “If you get caught, the cops coming would be the luckiest thing that could happen to you. But they won’t. His alarm system will notify Panama City police and they’ll call and check to make sure he’s okay. But it would take them an hour to get out here.”
“You’ve seen Merlot.”
“I know he’s there. And I know Commander Richardson’s widow is there. Which is why I’m now going to tell you something important: Play it very, very cool. Merlot really does have a lot of juice in this country. Why? Because he’s got blackmail video of top-level Taiwanese honchos misbehaving. Take a guess at what they’re doing. All Merlot has to do is make a phone call or two and he can have you arrested, shot blown up, you name it. Welcome to the new Panama.”
“You think I’ll have any trouble getting the commander’s wife out?”
“That’s my point. If you piss him off, my advice is don’t try to use public transportation out of here. I’m talking about the main airports.” He handed me a slip of paper. “We have a boat all fueled and ready for you at the Balboa Yacht Club. You know where that is?”
I did.
“The name of the boat is Double Haul, in great big letters. Don’t ask me why. It’s one of the big ocean racer Scarab boats. The hull’s canary yellow with red trim, easy to find down there with all those sailboats. It’ll do seventy, eighty miles an hour. My advice is head south-west to the Azuero Peninsula. Do you know the area I’m talking about?”
“I know it. Not well. It’s that big foot of jungle that sticks out into the Pacific.”
He was nodding. “There’s a little town there called Chitre. You’ll be able to see it from the water. It has a pretty nice paved airstrip that our people built. We have a friend there, ask for Vern. Everyone knows him. He’ll fly you to Costa Rica. By water, the trip should take you an hour, hour and a half tops. With your sea time, no big deal.”
“What should I do with the boat?”
“I couldn’t care less. The DEA confiscated it in some drug bust, so we truly don’t give a shit what happens to it. When you get to Chitre, cut it loose, make some local happy. Or tell Vern where it is. If there’s not a lot of heat on, someone will pick it up. One other thing: In the garage of the safe house, on the motorcycle’s seat, someone’s put a little bag of goodies there. Stuff you might need but don’t have.”
“Someone.”
“That’s right. And it’s all nice and clean.”
Davidson seemed to be telling me that if I wanted to kill Merlot, it was fine with them. They were happy to provide the tools if I was willing to provide the labor. “All I ask,” he added, “is that you let me know in advance when you plan to take Merlot down.”
That was easy. I said, “What time is it now?”
“Eleven-fifteen or so.”
“Then give me an hour after we get there.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”
“You want time to get out of the area, right? Plausible deniability, make sure you’re seen by neutrals while I’m grabbing the woman. So I’m telling you, it’s not going to take me long. If I’m in Gamboa for more than two hours, it was a bust. Merlot got me, I didn’t get him.”
Davidson seemed to be smiling a little as he said, “In that case, I’ll make sure I’m long gone.”
Something very odd about the way he said that. But why else would he want to know?
There were lights of a village ahead, Paraiso. A little bend in the road with a grocery store that was still open. I told Davidson I wanted to stop in, use the phone.
When Amanda answered, I told her everything was set, to go ahead and take the Miami-to-Panama City flight.
She said, “I’ve got a confirmed seat on American at eight-fifty that will put me into Panama at twelve-forty-eight… no, eleven-forty-eight. I didn’t figure in the time difference. Or I can try standby later in the afternoon if you want.”
I told her the flight she had booked was fine, but come prepared to travel. Carry-on bag only, comfortable dress and boat shoes.
“Boat shoes?” she said.
“Yeah, I’m going to take you for a cruise, then we’re going to tour the rain forest by small plane.”
I described the yellow Scarab; told her that when she arrived in Panama, have her cab stop so she could buy food and drinks-some champagne to celebrate if she wanted- and to stow it aboard the boat when she got there. Her mother and I would meet her at the Balboa Yacht Club at one and absolutely no later than one-thirty, unless I called the bar and left word.
She was getting excited. “You’ve got my mom? Can I speak with her?”
I told her, “No. But I’m going to get her tonight.”
That dropped her intensity down a notch, but she still sounded happy. “Doc, you know what I’m going to do right now? This friend of mine, Betty, she’s big in the Unity Church up in Ohio and she’s organized what they call a prayer chain for my mom. I’m going to write her the second I hang up and tell her our prayers have been answered.”
A religious side-the first I’d seen of that. But nice. After what Amanda had gone through as a child, perhaps it explained her stability now.
I remember reminding myself that for every Jackie Merlot in the world, there were unnoticed thousands, tens of thousands, of genuinely decent and thoughtful people. These were people like Betty.
Nice, yeah, very nice.
Jackie Merlot had commandeered the old Gamboa golf clubhouse. No surprise there. A board-and-batten classic with a pitched copper roof that was barely visible through the trees from the road. The house was built on a hill, with a long screen porch looking out. Nothing but banana trees and ficus between it and the water. Because the lower level was enclosed with white trellis, the house looked even bigger than it actually was. For the last, what? seventy-some years, Zonian families had lived in this place. Lots of babies, school plays, graduations, retirements within those walls. Now Merlot had it.
A hydraulic lift, I noticed, had been installed next to the back stairs. I’d never seen anything like that in Central America. Apparently the fat man was too lazy to walk up and down the steps on his own. I could picture him waddling from the Mercedes diesel parked beneath the house to his own little elevator.
I’d made sure the motorcycle would start while still inside the sealed garage of the safe house. It was a Harley Sportster with a black teardrop fuel tank, saddlebags tossed over the rump as if the thing were a horse. No papers with it, no serial numbers that I could find.
Clearly, the boys in blue shirts didn’t want to risk being linked to this business in any way.
I walked the Harley the half mile or so to The Ridge and the entrance of Merlot’s drive. My second nocturnal tour of Gamboa. This time, though, the little village seemed deserted. No lights on in the houses, but lots of construction happening, lots of signs of remodeling. Something else: What I remembered best about Gamboa was that it sat within a cavern of shadows and dense forest
Not now. The landscape around the houses was a pock-work of yellow stumps. A chainsaw’s whine is the national anthem of every Third World country that still has rain forest standing. The loggers had been busy here. So check the price of rare tropical hardwood, multiply it by board feet and tally the small fortune that Merlot and company had already made. Developers and resource hogs are discovering what the sexual predators discovered long ago: Life is free and easy outside the U.S.