I didn’t mind. I could picture the jungle resort where Kazan and Stallings were holed up. One of those travel-adventure outposts where people were boated in for quick bites of wilderness and prepackaged ecology lessons. For two murderers, it was perfect cover.
For a man painted like a Jivaro warrior, the same was true.
Zarabatana let me borrow his obada and offered me his pucuna, too. I refused the blowgun but promised to return the dugout to him soon.
“It does not matter,” he said, with the easy indifference of his people when it came to material items. “I can always make another.”
Just before I pushed away from the bank, Keesha came trotting down the path, something in her hand. “Would you care to wear this, as your muisak, the avenging soul of your enemy? As a necklace for luck.”
I looked into the tiny, wizened face of Niall McCauley, his eyes sewn closed, head suspended on a leather strap, and said, “No. That guy ran out of luck long ago.”
The jungle hotel was not hard to find. In six hours of paddling through darkness, past the occasional village fire, it was the only human stronghold with a generator and incandescent lights.
The place consisted of a main hut and outdoor Tiki bar, then a series of little bamboo cottages, all set along a dock fronting this broad section of river. A place for the tour boats.
Nor was it difficult to find the cottage where Kazan and Stallings were staying. From the darkness, after peering through half a dozen screened windows, I saw an open bottle of Moet on the kitchenette counter and a carton of Dunhill cigarettes.
All people create a personal spore, and this was the spore of Hassan Atwa Kazan, the man who’d murdered Amelia.
I went inside and searched the two small bedrooms. In one, I found clothing that would fit only a giant. In the other, I found the clothes of a very tall, very thin man, plus several linen kaffiyehs, in several colors, folded atop the chest of drawers.
I turned off all the lights, sat in a chair by the door, and unholstered the SIG Sauer. In my left hand, I held an obsidian knife with a mahogany handle, beautifully polished, that Keesha had given me as a present. I waited, expecting both men to return at the same time, after the little bar had closed.
They did not.
Stallings returned first, and I watched the surprise register in his face when he switched on the overhead light and saw me, a strange, painted vision, a big man wearing only a breechcloth, pointing a gun at his belly.
The bully in him came to the fore. “This better be some kind of joke, asshole!”
I hit him in the face with the heel of my open palm and dropped the full weight of my elbow on the back of his neck. Then I walked him at gunpoint out into the jungle. Once he said, in a tone of dawning realization, “Jesus Christ, it’s you. I know who you are now!”
His last words were “I didn’t kill her. I swear it.”
When Kazan came in, wearing baggy pants and a crooked linen kaffiyeh roped around his head, he was so staggering drunk that his slow-motion reaction was the second disappointment of the day.
The first was the fact that there were no wild hogs nearby to which to feed a wounded man.
He had a surprisingly high voice and a stink about him, like curry, or toads kept in a jar too long. It is one of our oddities that, as humans, we invest in our enemies strengths they do not possess and qualities of evil that elevate them while diminishing us.
Hassan Kazan seemed weasel-like, not evil, and surprisingly frail-though why I was surprised, I do not know. Only weak people take pleasure in imposing on the vulnerability of others and causing them pain.
Out in the jungle, far enough from the camp so no one could hear, I slapped his face, hoping he would fight back. Instead, he began to cry and to chant a repetitive phrase-a prayer, perhaps-in a language I did not understand.
But when I asked, “Why did you kill her?” and he replied, “Because she bit my hand. I had no choice!” the cold fury in me returned.
I dropped both weapons, ducked under his arm, behind him, and locked my fingers beneath his jaw, tilting his head back, my right knee pinned against his spine. With teeth clenched, I said, “I have done this ten times, and each time I whispered something into their ear. I’ve never told another living soul what that was.”
Kazan was crying again. “I’m sorry. Please. I don’t want you to do this. I truly am sorry. ”
His words so surprised me that I heard myself reply, “ Yes. Very close. That’s almost exactly what I’ve told them. But not now. Not to you. This time, it would be a lie.”
Then, with my hands still locked around his neck, I allowed my legs to collapse beneath me, my full body weight plummeting earthward, pulling Hassan Atwa Kazan down as if we’d both been dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.
Epilogue
In what an editorial in the Sanibel Shopper’s Guide would call “a clear conspiracy between the makers of Guinness beer, whiskey, and other strong drink,” Florida’s state legislature showed uncommon foresight and backbone by postponing the implementation of the so-called “manatee protection laws.”
They postponed them, at least, until lawyers of Save All Manatees filed briefs explaining why they had “(allegedly) intentionally perverted and misrepresented certain scientific data to advance their organization politically and economically to the detriment of the economic well-being, and maritime freedoms, of the citizens of Florida.”
The fact that the legislature made its announcement on Thursday, March 16-the day before St. Patrick’s Day-catalyzed the tongue-in-cheek editorial in the Sanibel newspaper.
The article went on to say, “Nowhere on the islands will this evil Celtic conspiracy be more self-evident than at our own Dinkin’s Bay Marina and Fishhouse. Tomorrow, the marina’s traditional Friday pig roast and cotillion-always popular-will reach gala proportions. The fishing guides, liveaboards, sad old hippies, and other misfits who have lived there, unproductively, for years will be celebrating the fact that the government will not be kicking them out of their slovenly, floating homes. Not yet, anyway.”
The article even quoted Mack-and probably accurately. “According to Graeme MacKinley, the marina’s owner, the local package stores have hired extra personnel just to deliver the massive quantity of dyed draft beer and liquor he’s ordered. Hundreds of locals are expected to attend.
“‘There’s only one thing that really scares me,’ MacKinley told this reporter. ‘We all know how marina people are when they get a few beers in them, and it’s dark on the docks, and they have to relieve themselves. I’m afraid we’re going to wake up Saturday and the whole damn Gulf of Mexico will be shamrock green.’”
It was good news. Even to my face, it brought a small smile-and I had not smiled much since returning from Colombia. There were a couple of obvious reasons. For one thing, in the rain forest, I had seen myself in another incarnation, and my name was Curtis Tyner. As much as I’d fought the truth, I’d proven it true. As much as I hated the truth, I now had no choice but to acknowledge it. It was not an easy thing to live with, yet I would have to find a way to do exactly that for the rest of my life.
Mostly, though, I missed my friend, Amelia Gardner. From her mother, I’d asked for and received several nice photographs of her. In my little house, I’d tacked the photos on the wall at eye level, so I could look into her eyes when I felt the need. It was the only way I knew to try to blot out the way her face looked the last time I saw her. I wanted to replace that sad, small image with the face of the person I knew and loved.
Sometimes, it worked.
I know enough about mental illness to have realized I wasn’t doing well, or behaving normally. All people have emotional boundaries, limits beyond which there is no return. I was on the very outer fringes of mine. I recognized in myself certain troubling symptoms of depression-a malady to which I’ve never been prone. So, early on upon my return, I paid a visit to Dr. Dieter Rasmussen aboard his forty-six-foot Grand Banks and asked of him a favor.