The Laughing Falcon (33 page)

“I’m not waiting until tomorrow!” he yelled.

As she was about to ring down a metal shutter, Slack pulled open his jacket and showed her his Smith .38. “Sign the goddamn paper!”

She did so with a wavering hand, stamped it, and frantically closed the shutter as Slack raced outside to his Honda.

That evening, after some searching, he found Herman Rebozo’s apartment on a nondescript lane in Barrio Mexico, north of the Coca-Cola Station, a neighbourhood of decaying concrete structures scarred with graffiti, narrow sidewalks of broken paving stones.

It was a walk-up, a staircase leading to a small flat. He chained his
moto
to the stair rails, it wouldn’t last five minutes outside.

He wondered if others were hiding here, the young couple who had smuggled Gordo in and out of the San Isidro Hospital. One of them had been identified, a teenaged boy whose parents had finally reported in, concerned that their mixed-up kid might be involved. About the girl, Slack knew nothing.

He knocked lightly on the door and it opened a crack, an eye peeked out, and a chain was released. Gordo quickly ushered him in.

The place was cramped but tidy, some old furniture, doorways leading to a kitchen and a bedroom. The sleeping cot beneath the living-room window appeared to have been in use, Gordo’s two cohorts were sleeping in the bedroom — its door was open a crack and he could hear whispering.

“You were not followed?”

“No one can follow a motorcycle in San José.”

“You have met with them again?”

“Yes. They will give Don Benito his freedom tomorrow.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I have the papers.” He brought out a thick envelope, spread the documents on the dining table.

Gordo had served a dozen years as one of those faceless civil servants under whose dominion Slack had so recently suffered. He would enjoy these documents, he would understand their beauty.

His portly host slipped on his reading glasses and pored over the papers, studying all the hard-earned stamps and signatures. He seemed impressed enough. Slack waved a bundle of bills at him. “This is ten thousand. I will have sixty more like this.”

“Why do they trust you with all this money?”

“This is nothing to them, a piss in the ocean. We have not asked for enough.”

Gordo frowned, the explanation didn’t satisfy him. Slack peeled off a couple of thousand for him, pocketed the rest, his walking-around money.

“Should I bring him here?”

“No, that would not be wise, in case you are followed.”

“All right, you, me, Elmer, we’ll meet somewhere Friday at six. I’ll bring Don Benito on my motorcycle. At rush hour it will be difficult to follow me.”

Gordo took a deep breath. It was a time of decision. He was either running the show here, as Halcón’s trusted deputy, or he was just some two-bit payroll clerk. He had to make a leap of faith in Slack Cardinal.

“I will decide where we meet. I have purchased a truck, a delivery van.” Gordo limped off to fetch some scaled maps, fished through them. The one he spread out showed the Escazú hills, south of San José. “Up here, we can see for kilometres down any road. We will know if you are followed.”

They spent some time working it out, selecting a remote gravelled trail that climbed all the way up the
cerros
before descending to a valley in the south. Gordo recalled a
pulpería
with a Kimby Chicken sign at the entrance to the gravel road, and, about three miles farther, near the top, a turnoff to a viewpoint. That was where they would meet tomorrow at sunset.

Slack didn’t argue, kept saying,
“Claro, claro.”
This was fine, let Gordo demonstrate his leadership capabilities.

A sound came from the bedroom, a rustling. Slack saw an eye peek out.

“Who’s in there, Gordo?”

“It is not important. You will be searched, that is understood? You will also be blindfolded. Those are my orders, however friendly you may be to our cause.”

It was that phony story about the counterfeit felony that prompted all this hostility, the worst nightmare of a payroll clerk.
“Claro
, Gordo.”

The little fellow straightened himself to his full height. “You will be privileged to meet Halcón, who is a great revolutionary. He has fought for the Zapatistas in Mexico and for our comrades in the Colombian struggle. Together with Don Benito, they will form a dynamic partnership.”

“I must warn you that they say Benito has been sick,” Slack said. “You should be prepared for that.”

“The pure air of freedom will cure him.”

Slack moved to the bedroom door and swung it open. “Comrades, I don’t like being spied on.” The room was tiny, basically a bureau and a bed, a young couple lying on it, sitting up quickly now. They were kids, teenagers, how did they get messed up in this?

“How old are you?” They were speechless, sitting stiffly, as if caught in some shameful act. “Sixteen, seventeen, what?”

“They are useless,” Gordo said. “All they do is eat and screw.”

But apparently they also read. Here was an open book, a Chilean collection, Neruda, Mistral. Slack was tempted to sit down and read with them, share this good poetry. They looked so innocent, Slack couldn’t picture them lugging submachine guns through the jungle.

“Both of you should be in school. Pack up and get out of here.” Slack peeled three thousand from his roll, snapped a rubber band around the bills, tossed them to the girl. “Do you
have passports?” Both nodded. “This is the number of an important woman in Havana, a friend.” He scribbled a note on the inner flyleaf of their book. “Go separately, and don’t fly direct, if they’ve identified you they may be watching the Cubana counter. Take the bus to Managua and fly from there.”

Slack couldn’t tell if Gordo was impressed by his high Cuban connections. He still had many friends in Cuba, had slept with this particular important woman. At any event, Gordo seemed relieved to send these youngsters on their way.

“There is a bus that leaves tonight,” Slack said.

Wordlessly, the two of them began to pack, they seemed in a little awe of him.

Gordo didn’t offer tea or cookies, so after studying the map, memorizing it, Slack saluted them with a raised fist and went down to his
moto
.

He had trouble getting to sleep that night, his blood running cold with the fear this was going much too well, there was a nasty glitch lurking out there somewhere. He was equal to handling the likes of Elmer and Gordo, but how would he stand up to Halcón?

On the morning of Friday, January 21, the day of Slack’s rendezvous with Gordo and Elmer, Ham Bakerfield showed up at Slack’s hotel with all his doubts and worries. “How’s this going to work out? You got a raving lunatic on your bike, he could freak out, jump off, do anything.”

Slack was in the washroom, Ham standing by the door, watching him shave. Slack had decided to dress up his act for Maggie Schneider, fool her, she’d be expecting some drunken roué. His hair was much too long, falling over his ears, he would see a barber, too, just a trim, he didn’t want anyone to think he worked for the government.

“Maybe you’re going to have to sedate him.”

“And how does
that
play? You’re on steep roads, you got a drugged-up guy behind you trying to hold on who could fall asleep any moment.” Ham began fiddling with a cigar.

“So fix up a harness, I’ll strap him to me. You’re not lighting that in here, pal.” Slack stepped into the shower.

When he got out, he could smell the fumes. He hauled on his pants and walked past Ham to hurl the balcony doors open.

“How’re the ribs?”

“Bearable.” Below him, in the square, a marimba band was entertaining tourists, their numbers had been increasing, the U.S. advisory had been lifted. “You’re not going to have a fleet of search copters out there, Ham. Elmer made a threat.”

“Yeah, I worry about that guy. Found out he did deep penetration stuff in Vietnam. One of his jobs was to take out community leaders who belonged to the Cong.”

Slack felt a chill; Elmer was a seasoned killer.

“After Vietnam, there’s a big gap. Worked for a security service in Ohio for a few months, then disappeared. Four years later he’s in Costa Rica. It’s almost like a bunch of files on him went missing.”

“Soldier for hire? Nicaragua?”

“Maybe, he seems that type. Be careful, don’t underestimate him.”

“You trace any property to him?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Get a line on this Professor Pablo Esquivel?”

“Yeah, Minister Castillo claims he has something for you, he’s on his way with some character who used to be one of their chief investigators. He quit a few years ago because of some scandal, so be wary of him.”

He warned Slack not to be specific about his route into the hills. The security ministry was a sieve, they didn’t need an army of reporters following them.

Jorge Castillo arrived just after breakfast, looking pleased with himself, announcing there had been a “break in the case.” With him was a pear-shaped fellow in his fifties who was introduced as Frank Sierra, a fastidious look to him, a pencil moustache and darting, dark intelligent eyes. He gave Slack an embossed business card: licensed investigator.

“Mr. Sierra is one of our best minds,” Castillo told Slack. “Sadly, we lost him to private practice.”

“I would prefer to characterize it as voluntary exile from the ministry,” Sierra said in flawless English, giving Castillo a cold look.

“Ah, yes, that’s Frank’s dry sense of humour. A little problem in the past, all forgotten.” No one bothered to elucidate, and Castillo clapped his hands, as if to dismiss this awkward subject, maybe Sierra had been too honest a cop, a sin in Costa Rica. “To the matter at hand. We believe we have learned who Halcón is.”

Bakerfield addressed Sierra, who was obviously here for a reason, he had the dope on Halcón. “What you got, Frank?”

Castillo answered for him, “My ministry may not have the resources of the CIA, but we have our methods.” He was angling for the Liberación Party nomination for Tico president, if they pulled this off, he wouldn’t want his own role to go unnoticed. “It was brought to my attention that Mr. Sierra, when he was in our service, was in charge of a file on a Professor Pablo Esquivel. Naturally, I sought him out. He spent all yesterday burying himself in papers, didn’t you, Frank?”

“I think appropriate credit must go to Mr. Cardinal, who insisted this lead be followed.” Sierra had a curlicue manner of speaking, slightly pontifical, amusing. “Foolishly, or out of vanity — from which he suffers grievously — my old friend Johnny Diego overused an alias.” He pulled several computer printouts from his briefcase, charts and all, he was a paperwork freak. “I have been Inspector Javert to his Jean Valjean. Several times he slipped through my fingers.”

Esquivel, he explained, was one of a myriad of different names the man had used. Juan Santamaria Diego was his real name. “He has never been any kind of communist or revolutionary — that is just his latest guise. His parents are coffee growers from Cartago, honest, sensible people of comfortable means. Of the four siblings, he was the only bad seed. He showed brilliance in school, the only handicap to his studies being a distraction caused by the ladies. He was much pursued.”

He showed Slack a surveillance photo taken a few years ago. A dark, slim, smiling man, dapper in a business suit, entering a building. About forty, long of hair and wide of moustache, piercing black eyes.

“Ten years ago he ran a language school, advertising himself in
The Tico Times
as Professor Pablo Esquivel. He is a man of some charm, and one might even call him charismatic, so it is not unremarkable that he built up a clientele of wealthy gringas eager to improve their Spanish.”

Within a year, Halcón had managed to fleece these lambs for eighty thousand dollars: phony paper, shares in moribund companies, sales of unregistered land, own your own personal acre of teak forest.

Slack told himself not to gloat. A confidence trickster, to use that fine Victorian expression. He remembered the name, Diego, from the newspapers, a complex fraud trial several years ago.

“He lived well, and did much travelling and entertaining until he began to feel the heat we were applying. Then he moved for a while to the Caribbean, then Panama. When he returned, he began running an illegal game here in San José, poker and blackjack. After we broke that up, he began a time-share enterprise at Playa Hermosa, overselling the units several times. One of his most successful exercises in chicanery was later performed from America — for several years he lived in California raising funds for rain-forest preservation. Subsequently, an audit revealed administrative expenses to be over ninety per cent.”