Sunday, August 21, 2011

Chapter Six

Been writing a communal novel with my Writer's Guild pals. Here's Chapter Six, my contribution so far. (This is first draft stuff, so don't be too critical.)

CHAPTER SIX
Doc Walton

The shuttle from Panama City to Bocas Del Toro touched down at 10:05 in the morning. Marty deplaned to a sticky hot day and walked leisurely along in a disorderly group of passengers to Bocas Town’s principal street; a long, straight, stretch of road, that parallels its western shoreline and is flanked on either side by hotels, restaurants, marinas, curio shops and all the small enterprises that tourism breathes to life.

Bocas Del Toro is an archipelago that clusters off the northern coast of Panama’s Caribbean side. The islands are home to somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty five thousand people – so many transient that an accurate census is difficult - with the largest chunk of those residing on the main island, Isla Colon, where Marty now walked, oblivious to the town’s waking. He was using his eyes at that moment to avoid collisions, but his real sight, his focus, was directed inward where his thoughts scattered randomly, but returned with annoying frequency to: What an idiot I am! He was unaware of the tinkle and clatter of breakfast being served at street-side, open air restaurants, of vendors hawking fishing and boating tours, and of the crowd around him thinning as people streamed off to one hotel or another. He took scarce note of the Rastafarian, dreadlocked, young man who approached and offered the sweet dreams of his choice, brushing by him with a barely audible, but effective “No.” And, as if to confirm his most recurring contemplation, he also failed to notice the darkly glassed, baseball capped, parasol shaded woman who followed behind, tracing his every step. Had he been aware, awakened to his surroundings like the good detective he once was and wished to be again, he would have known she was there, and further, would have seen through her obvious disguise to the woman beyond. A woman he knew well. On this day though, Marty’s senses were locked on dull, his few intentions merely to retrieve his boat, get some down time and quiet his mind.

He dumped his carry on into a water taxi and climbed in behind it.

His boat, a sleek looking white Catamaran, was moored where he was told, on an island marina, a ten minute skip cross the water from Isla Colon. The marina was home to an eclectic mix of half a hundred boats, a decent restaurant of medium size, a small provisions store, and a watch keeper’s abode, the tallest building in sight. Marty found the Angela docked closest to landside of those on one of the marina’s four long piers. He stepped aboard, dropped his bag on the deck and retrieved the boat’s key ring from a hidden magnetic box under the captain’s chair. After opening the cabin door and hatches fore and aft to allow air into the stuffy interior, Marty took quick inventory of the boat’s food and drink supplies and determined that ice was the only prerequisite. Following a quick questioning of the Marina’s manager and learning only that the boat was checked in by an older man and younger woman, showing passports bearing the name Smith and fitting close enough a description of his father and Shelly, he scored two bags of cubes at the island store and returned to the boat.

Plopping his angular frame onto the soft cushions at the boat’s stern, Bloody Mary in hand – what the hell he had thought, it’s happy hour in Ireland – Marty mentally wrestled his thoughts into focus, his dad the first subject at hand. I’m thirty-six now, which puts Dad right at sixty. Not really old, but no spring chicken either. This thing with Shelly…just seems so…unlikely. She’s almost thirty years his junior… Frank’s most recent arm piece, and sure Dad shined to her looks…we all did, but he’s just not the type. Dad’s steadfast; as loyal to his friends as he is to his family. No way is he running off with his best buddy’s wife. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. If he and Shelly are together, there is some other reason.

Marty pauses a moment as a cloudy thought at the back of his mind tries to take shape. Why have I been so dimwitted? This isn’t like me. My skill is connecting the dots; even when they are as fucked up as this nothing-is-as-it-seems mess. He realizes at that moment that he is rubbing the crook of his left arm with his right hand. He brings the arm near to his eyes and finds a tiny wound, a puncture. His cloudy thought instantly clears. I HAVE been drugged, goddamn it, drugged! But when? He rolls back the tape in his mind through recent events, looking for an unguarded moment. There is only one, his first night in Panama, the night before Nina and Rodrigo and their gun and their bullshit story. My struggle was no dream. I was chloroformed and then I was shot up with something. Something that made me sloggy and slow witted. Well it’s worn off now. My head is clear…I think.

Marty tosses his half full Bloody Mary over the side, puts his glass on the nearest flat surface and drops to the deck. He pumps out forty fast push-ups, rises and monitors how quickly his heart rate returns to normal. It takes but a moment. Yes, he thinks, I am clear. He walks into the boat’s cabin, flicks on the AC and fires up the on board computer. It’s a cliché, he thinks, but it’s one that always works for me. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

He begins to type.

Frank Davidson. My father’s long time best friend and partner in an import/export business. A surprisingly successful business I’ve long suspected had government ties that Dad would never confirm. A business both he and Frank discouraged me from joining. Why? Frank. A man I called Uncle when I was a kid. Lies to me. Tells me his daughter Sarah has gone missing in Panama. Why the lie? Lies again. Says my Dad is being held hostage to force him, Frank, into doing something he doesn’t want to do. Won’t say what. More lies or the truth? Why is he now unavailable?

Nina Aguilar and Rodrigo Guitierrez. Real names? Cock and bull story about an imprisoned Noriega wanting to move a large sum of money and directing his accomplices to do that, but somehow no one knows where the money is. Second part of the story is Dad and Frank’s business, Kaleidoscope, is to move the money…or something it has purchased…through the Canal and then to Malaysia. If that were true, it would have to be drugs or guns, the only two things Dad and Frank refuse to handle. To see that this gets done, Dad is taken hostage. Any truth at all to the story? Rodrigo says he was an associate of Dad and Franks. News to me. When I threaten to forget the whole thing and return to the States, they concoct another story. This time Dad is not a hostage but has run away with Shelly, Frank’s wife, and stolen 4 mil from the office safe to do so. Say that Frank has hired them to retrieve the money and they want me to find it. Say if they get to it first they will likely kill both Dad and Shelly. The only part I believe is that they will kill. These are cold people. Is there truth in any of this and… WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Frank pauses at the keyboard. What if, he thinks, it’s all true? Or pieces of the truth, the whole yet to be revealed. Is there any way to take those pieces and make a coherent picture?

Marty spends the balance of the day tossing the boat’s interior for clues his father might have left; finds nothing. He has a solid meal at the island restaurant in the early eve and then returns to the boat where he pours himself three fingers of Abuelo Rum onto ice and settles in to watch the night drift over the marina. His mind continues to churn, inventing scenarios to match the facts… or the lies, whichever they might be. Nothing in the end makes a wit of sense, so he climbs into the bed located on the boat’s seaside pontoon and watches the stars through a large clear hatch located directly above him for exactly that reason, star gazing. The rum and the boat’s gentle rocking on the dissipating wakes of distant craft, puts him quickly to sleep.

A small sound as of something lightly bumping against the pontoon’s side awakens him several hours later. He lies in the dark, completely alert, senses heightened by adrenaline. Was it just the tap of driftwood or floating debris that woke him? Or was it something else? Something man made. His interior clock tells him it is deep night, perhaps as late as two or two thirty. He lays abed perfectly still, waiting for another sign and gets one. The dark above his hatch grows momentarily denser as a moon shadow drifts over it. Someone is on his boat!

Marty rolls quietly to his left and onto the floor. He reaches under his pillow and grips the revolver he had retrieved from its hiding place earlier in the day. Moving as soundless as possible so as not to alert whoever is above him, he makes his way aft to the cabin’s sole entrance. He sits in deep shadow facing that entrance, waiting for the intruder. He is calm now, his pulse slowed, his breathing normal. He is soldier again, and he’s ready.

A silhouette appears in the cloudy plastic of the cabin door. There is the rustle of a key chain, a moment of stillness and then the door swings quietly open. A figure steps through it.

“Hello Shelly” Marty says. “Long time no see.”
*
Unlike his tightly wired son, Craig Logan was an easy going sixty year old that looked ten years younger and acted fifteen. He was cheerful and optimistic to a flaw and as such was the out-front face of Kaleidoscope Imports. Were his friends to see him now pacing nervously back and forth, his brow etched in furrows, they would instantly know that something was seriously wrong. The porch of the rental house where Craig unconsciously marched to and fro like a trooper on guard duty over looked a rugged, seldom used stretch of beach on Bocas’ north shore far from the nightlife that brightened the sky and shattered the peace of downtown Bocas. During the day the odd surfer or two could be sighted braving the waves, but apart from that, this section of the island was generally occupied by those who preferred a calmer, less hectic atmosphere. Craig’s pacing was muffled almost to silence by the constant hum of insects, invisible in the dark of the surrounding jungle, insistent, but relegated by his unquiet mind and its stream of worries to little more than white noise.

I hope she’s all right. She has to warn him. I should have known he’d find his way here, he’s a detective for christssake. I wonder how much he knows. It’s just plain luck Shelly spotted him at the airport. It wasn’t him we were looking for. He has got to be warned. None of us can stay here much longer. It’s not safe. We can’t be caught. Frank you son-of-a-bitch, I told you this wouldn’t work. You couldn’t be satisfied with a thriving business and a six figure income. No, you’ve got to go for the big score. Fucking Noriega for godssake. The risks we take for our own government is one thing even if moving bribe money and what do they call it? Seeds of Democracy, isn’t strictly legal, at least we were doing it for the right reasons. Patriotic even. Besides, we wouldn’t have a business if it weren’t for the government contacts we made during the Cold War. But moving drugs out and money in, Frank we swore we’d never… How many times were we offered? Why now and why for these people? I told you not to do it, I told you to say no right at the start, but you had to entertain…GODDAMN IT, WHERE THE HELL IS SHE? SHE SHOULD BE BACK BY NOW!

Craig continues pacing. His thoughts in no coherent order, but his ears alert for any sound of Shelly’s return.

We have to get to Sarah before they do. With Shelly, Marty and I safe, Sarah would be their only source of leverage. We have to get her out of harm’s way. We have to ALL get out of harm’s way! Let the government clean up this mess. DAMN IT SHELL, WHERE ARE YOU?

A dark mass appears in the distant water. Craig snatches up his binoculars and adjusts the focus. It’s Shell and she’s got Marty with her in the dinghy. He jumps from the porch steps onto the sand and hurries to the beach.

“They’re close” Shelly hollers to Craig as she and Marty jump overboard in the shallows and pull the dinghy to shore. “I can feel them. We had to paddle through a couple of boats patrolling the marina. Couldn’t use the outboard ‘till we were far enough away. That’s what took us so long.”

Marty and Craig lock in a quick hard embrace and then all three jog to the rental. Inside, Craig pours Abuelo shooters He can see the stress and fatigue on Shelly and Marty’s faces. It’s been a long night and he knows that not much daylight can appear before they need to be gone.

“Okay” Marty says as the heat of the rum begins to spread from his throat to his extremities, “which of you is going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Back at the Marina, Shelly had convinced Marty that they had to leave in haste. She had then been unable to talk above a whisper as they floated out to sea for fear the sound would carry. Later, with the outboard on, it was just too noisy.

“I’ll explain everything…or at least what I know,” Craig answers, “but not right now. We have to get moving. As soon as it’s light, they will know you’re not on the boat and I figure it’s only a matter of time before they discover this rental.”

“Moving to where?” Marty asks. “This island is only so big.”

“I’ve got a Sea Piper tucked in a cove not far from here.”

“You’ve got a plane?” Marty asks incredulously. “Where the hell did you get a plane?”

Craig emits a chuckle. “It’s easy Kiddo” he says, “when you have four million bucks and friends in government. Now let’s get going!”

“As nutso as this may seem” Craig says while leveling the small plane at a cruising altitude, “from what Frank tells me, Noriega is dying and wants to convert all his assets into money. He has a cache of raw cocaine said to be worth half a billion dollars that he needs to move through the canal to a processing plant somewhere in the jungles of Malaysia. His outside contact is a smooth talking but bad-assed character named Rodrigo Gutierrez who works with a woman named Nina Aguilar.”

“Yeah, I know,” Marty says. “We’ve met.”

“Then you know they’re not to be fucked with. What Frank and I guess is that Noriega is trying to put together a bribe that is just too big to pass up. Give himself one last shot outside of stir to do whatever. Party down or maybe take some revenge. Who knows with a sick, crazy old man like that.

“What’s that got to do with us?” Marty asks?”

“We are the only ones who can get the coke through the canal.”

“Yeah, but you’d never do that… would you?”

“No, of course not, but Frank said yes before I had a say. You know Frank, he’s always looking for the big payday. He’s never really liked working all that much.”

“So what went wrong?”

“I wouldn’t go along. Pointed out to Frank what WAS wrong and the harm that would be done. Changed his mind. Trouble is, you can’t just say no to these people. Frank was given an ultimatum. Move the crap through the canal or everybody dies. Simple as that.”

Marty stares at his shoes for moment, putting his thoughts together. “So you and Shelly fled. But why together and why to Panama? And where is Frank now?”

“Frank’s idea. He’s here in Panama too. He’s acting as if he is going to go through with the whole thing. Wants to be sure we are all safe before he aborts the plan and we bring in the Feds.”

“Okay, I get that they wanted to use you and Shel and even Sarah as persuasion, but they, and Frank I might add, have been running me around in circles. What’s the deal with that?”

“I think that they may have seen you… with your skills…as a potential threat to blow up the whole thing and that by keeping you occupied until we were caught…well, you would be out of the way. Once we were caught, there would be nothing you could do without endangering our lives. Frank told me he wanted you in Panama, though, just in case we get to pull off our own plan.

Craig laughs then. “Really Marty, you’re about the only muscle we have.”

“So once we are all safe, we alert the Feds, is that the plan?”

Craig laughs again, “Nah Kiddo, there’s a lot more than that.”