Beneath a Panamanian Moon (7 page)

Ren pointed to one of two office doors behind him. I went through the little wooden gate in the railing and knocked on the door that read “
COL. J. PEPE
(
USA-RET
.),
MANAGING DIRECTOR
.”

“Come in.”

I opened the door to a small office paneled in polished rosewood, and everything was very neat, very precise, very right-angled, just as I expected it to be. The only sound was the shifting drone of the oscillating fan as it swept the room. The Colonel had his head down, concentrating on fitting tiny batteries into a new digital camera, its instruction sheet unfolded across the desktop. The Colonel's gray hair was cut close and thinning near the crown. I wondered if he knew.

I had read his file and knew about his commands, and how he had been denied promotion and forced into retirement when he shot a reporter.

The Colonel didn't look up, so I looked around the office. On the walls were dozens of photos, almost identical in composition. In each, the Colonel stood smiling, the center of attention in a small group of other smiling officers, some American, some Vietnamese, some Arab, some Latin. In every picture, it was the same stiff pose and the same stiff smile. Like a fashion model who has just one look, but that's the look that gets work. Row after row, uniformed men smiling. A friendly bunch of officers saying, We could shoot you right now.

I waited and I watched as he went back and forth, staring at the tiny print of the instructions and then back to his fumbling fingers.

He had the West Point ring, like Snelling and Smith, and wore a white guayabera, starched, even in the heat. He looked to be in his fifties and tall, even sitting down. A Cuban Monte Cristo sat unlit in the ashtray, its end chewed ragged.

I wondered how the Latino name came with the Anglo face. This guy looked as much like a “Pepe” as I looked like Little Richard.

Without looking up, he said, “Is that how you report for duty, soldier?”

I glanced around the office. He was talking to me. “No, sir,” I said, and saluted his thinning hair. “John Harper, civilian, reporting as ordered, Colonel Pepe, sir.”

He rotated his face upward as if his head were powered by servos installed in his neck. “Peep,” he said.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“PEEP,” he said again. “PEEP.”

I stared at him.

“PEEP!” he repeated. “Not Peppy. Tell me, troop, do I look like a taco-bender to you?”

“No, sir.”

“Good.” The Colonel went back to his camera and batteries, muttering, “Damn family comes over on the goddamn
Mayflower
and every goddamn asshole with a week's worth of Spanish thinks I'm some kind of border-hopping wetback.” He looked up at me and said, “You're our piano player, is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me about your service.”

“There's not much to tell, sir. I enlisted when I was seventeen. Special Services, the USO—”

“I know what Special Services is.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, I worked the Officers' Club and staff functions.”

“You've also spent time at Benning, Huachuca, Bragg. I see some time in New York with the Tenth Mountain—”

“The division band, sir.”

“—and there is this list of security clearances, hardly what you would expect for an entertainer.”

“I've played for the president, sir. They like to clear people who play at the White House.”

He gave me a smile so sharp I could have shaved with it. “Of course. I also saw that you earned some sort of commendation for valor.”

I shrugged. “It wasn't a big thing.”

“Your superiors thought otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

His face scrunched up and he bobbled his head, pleased. “That's good. First off, you need to know your way around a firearm.”

“I'm a little rusty, sir.”

“No problem. We'll have one of our men give you a refresher.”

“And my ability to play piano, sir?”

“That's for a party we're throwing. Don't worry, there'll be a nice bonus for you.” The Colonel smiled again, lots of teeth. “A little surprise, if you will.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what we do here, son?”

“No, sir.”

“We provide a secure place for influential and well-connected people to relax, away from prying eyes, while we train their security people. Now, considering your résumé, and the fact that you come with high recommendations, I would assume you know something about security.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

He gave me the big smile, like in the photos. “Do you consider yourself a badass, Harper?”

“A badass? No, sir. But I did qualify as marksman in basic, sir.”

He chuckled. “You ever hear of Colombia, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Honduras?”

“Yes, sir, I've even played for the ambassador, sir.”

“Outstanding.” The Colonel studied me, perhaps for the first time. After a long moment, where the only sounds were the shush of the ocean beyond his window, he said, “Oh, and you might want to keep in mind, son, that if you give us any reason to terminate your contract, we do not use lawyers.” He went back to his camera and said, “See Kelly. He'll get you squared away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don't listen to anything Kelly says. He won't like you, so get used to it. No appreciation of the finer things. Not a man of culture. He didn't want me to hire you and he'd send you home if he was the boss.” The Colonel looked up and smiled. “But he isn't the boss.”

“No, sir.”

“I'm the boss.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Colonel stopped smiling. He'd apparently used up his shine quota for the day.

“Now, you're excused. And close the door on your way out.”

I went back to see Ren. “Thanks for warning me about his name.”

“I like to get you off to a good start, you know. But don't worry; he's not the real boss. Now I'll show you where to sleep, okay? Get your shit.”

I followed him across the lobby and up the staircase to the second floor.

“We got a couple other new guys. One, Ramirez, is a Chicano like me. The other's Anglo, like you. Most of the Latinos here are Cubans or PRs. Don't get 'em mixed up, okay?”

Ren still had that dime in his ear. “Okay.”

“There's a big difference. All Cubans want to do is kill communists and Democrats, which to them is the same thing. You could trust a Cuban with your sister. Serious, man, because they only get a hard-on for Fidel. But don't take showers with the Ricans. They like the white boys.”

“What about Chicanos?”

“Hey, you can trust us with everything but your car, man.” Ren laughed and his teeth were perfect.

We walked to the end of the corridor and up a smaller stairway that ran to the top floor. Here, Ren unlocked room 303, pushed open the door, and said, “This is your room. There's a bathroom down the hall.”

The air was hot enough to bake a ham.

“It's the low ceiling. Traps the heat,” Ren said. “You can open the window, but then the mosquitoes get in.”

“What about screens?”

“I'll see if I can find one tomorrow.”

“Are all the rooms like this?”

“Just the third floor. For us peons, man. But you got a phone hookup here, so you can plug into the Internet, you know, for the porn.”

“Dial-up? I have to use dial-up?”

Ren shrugged. “Hey, it's the third world.”

“Where do the guests sleep?”

“Second floor. The rooms there, man, are”—Ren smoothed the air with a gliding palm—“
rico
. And with the guests, the rule is, just so you understand, you never look directly at any of them. Never make eye contact. And you don't say anything unless they ask you something. OK?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I got it.”

“One more thing. Close the window when you leave your room, 'cause the Panamanians will climb up here and steal all your shit. You got anything nice you want to keep, we got a safe in the office. Fucking people steal your mother's picture just for the frame, no lie.”

“Where do the Panamanians sleep?”

“In town.”

“Have there ever been, like, regular guests staying here, ones that don't mind being looked at?”

Ren laughed. “Once, some English dude had a guidebook printed like a hundred fucking years ago. He tried to check in but the Colonel chased him away with a shotgun.”

“Oh,” I said, turning this over.

“I'll get you some sheets and a towel and some clean shit to wear, then maybe I show you around town, huh?”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, Ren?”

“Yeah?”

“I've always wondered, how come you've got a dime in your ear?”

“My father gave it to me,” he said.

I waited, but Ren didn't offer anything more than a blank stare, as if he'd explained everything he was going to explain. I didn't push it.

Ren left and I opened the window to the ocean air. I closed the corridor door and unpacked my satchel. I placed my autographed eight-by-ten of Duke Ellington on the dresser and set my laptop on the bed. I took out my MP3 player and unscrewed the back. Inside were several bugs. I pocketed one and taped the others to the bottom of the desk drawer. Hidden inside the earpieces of my sunglasses were three different lock picks and a small torque wrench. Most sets come with seven or more picks, plus the wrench, but I've found that you rarely use more than three. People who carry more than three are either inexperienced or show-offs.

I heard people moving around the other rooms and music from a distant radio blew in on the breeze. There was something else on the breeze, too, but it took me a minute to place it. It was gun oil.

Someone knocked and I said, “Come in.”

A thin man with sandy hair that curled in the humidity pushed open the door and said, “You the other FNG?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Welcome to Panama,” he said. “My name's Cooper. Call me Coop.”

He shifted a volume of Joseph Conrad to his left hand so he could shake with his right.

“You reading
Heart of Darkness
?”

“What else?” Coop walked around the room, picking things up and laying them back down as if he were browsing through a souvenir shop. “Did you fly in?”

“Yes.”

“Some view, huh? I mean from the plane.” Coop sat on my bed and bounced on the springs.

“Yeah. But what's an FNG?”

“Fucking New Guy,” Cooper said. He looked into my shaving kit. “I didn't know what it was, either, until Ren told me. It's a grunt thing.”

“Oh.”

He picked up my sunglasses and turned them around in the light. “As far as I know, there are three of us. Me, a guy they call Mad Dog, and you. You must be the piano player.”

“I am,” I said.

“I heard the last piano player got eaten by a snake.”

“A shark,” I said.

Cooper shrugged. “Just as long as it doesn't eat me.” He put on the sunglasses, stood, and crossed back to the dresser where he picked up the MP3 player. “I'm replacing the guy who got shot downtown.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“Whoa, and he uses big words, too.” Cooper put on the earphones and punched the button. When he didn't hear anything he scowled and said, “Battery must be dead.” He picked up the picture of Ellington and said, “Is this real?”

I carefully took it from him and placed it back on the dresser. “Yes. It's real.”

“Cool,” he said, and raised his eyebrows in appreciation. “You meet the Colonel?”

“Just now. I think we hit it off.”

Cooper took off the earphones, walked over to the window, and sat against the sill. “You'll like the men here. I know some of them from the army,” he said. “You know Zorro?”

“He picked me up.”

“How about Ice? Meat?”

“No, and what's with the names?”

Cooper laughed. “Apparently, it comes in handy when dealing with the Latins. They put great importance on a nom de guerre.” Coop opened my laptop.

I pointed with my chin and said, “You'll tell me when you see something you like.”

Coop looked surprised to find himself with my laptop in his lap, as if someone had put it there in his sleep. “Oh, sorry. Just restless, I guess.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I got in last week, but like I said, I know some of these guys from Iraq. So what's your specialty? Small arms, demolitions?”

“Gershwin,” I said. “Among other things.”

Cooper laughed again.

“What do you know about this other guy?”

“They call him Mad Dog. Real deal, I've heard. Been in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places we're not supposed to know about. I'm sure he has some good qualities; I just haven't seen them yet. So you really do play piano, I mean, not just as a hobby?”

I shook my head. “No, it's not just a hobby.”

“Have you met Kelly?”

“Not yet. I understand he's the man around here.”

“Yeah, and his wife ran off with a USO singer. That's the story, anyway. Personally, I think he killed them both and buried their bodies in the jungle.”

“This just gets better and better,” I said.

“And wait until you see his daughter. She was out on the beach today and she is so fine.” Cooper bit his bottom lip and slowly moved his head side to side in appreciation of the young Ms. Kelly's brief appearance. “But anyone who gets near that's got a death wish.” Cooper laughed again. He laughed easily, and I liked that, but his eyes turned down at the corners, making him look perpetually saddened by his situation, even when he was smiling, and I didn't like the way he was checking out my gear. “Well, listen, nice meeting you and I'll see ya tomorrow. We FNGs have to stick together, right?”