Clint Faraday Mysteries
Collection #4
4 books
© 2011 - 2012
by C. D. Moulton
Smashwords edition © 2012
all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, either electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Clint Faraday is a retired PI from Florida. He moved to Panama’ and became a neighbor with Judi Lum, an attractive Oriental woman he knew in Florida. She has become a great help in his cases. Though he was retired, he soon began to be called by the police in Panama’ for murder cases.
I base the characters and places in the series upon people I meet, places I travel, newspaper stories, personal experiences and just wondering why certain people acts as they do. I have lived in the Indigeno culture and find they are truly a wonderful society. There are flaws, of course, but that is true of any culture anywhere. There are certainly flaws in the material/capital oriented society in the states!
First three years I lived in Bocas del Toro Province on the Caribbean, though I traveled extensively. I now reside in David in Chiriqui Province. I find the Panamanian people to be among the most friendly and warmest people in the world. The four semi-separate cultures are the Caribbean Blacks, the Latinos, the Chinese and the Indios. In these times there are mixes of all types. most get along very well and respect the different cultures. It takes the influx of us gringos (it is not a derogatory word here) and Europeans to come here to criticize the cultures. The unpopularity of many are brought about by their arrogance and condescension. I find it inexcusable that so many come here with the attitude that the people will automatically be stupid and ignorant. they display their own stupidity and ignorance of cultural differences daily. There is no excuse for a person to come from the USA or England etc. and whine that these people won’t learn English. After all, they are spending their MONEY here!
This is not a money-oriented society. The language of Panama’ is Spanish. If you are going to live here, learn Spanish. If you are too good for that, go back where you came from. Luckily, for the most part the people here do not make group judgements. They form opinions on an individual basis. I don’t have to live with what you are.
So much for a private gripe. The fact is that there is far more individual freedom here than most places and they are a far more accepting people than I’ve encountered elsewhere. I was 68 years old when I came here and had never really felt at home anywhere. I wasn’t here two hours before I knew I was, at last, home.
Here are four shorter Clint Faraday books combined into one long one – more or less. I started with #5 because the first four were quite long in themselves.
C. D. Moulton, David, Chiriqui, Rep. de Panama’– February, 2012
About the author
CD was born in Lakeland, Florida. His education is in genetics and botany. He has traveled over much of the world, particularly when he was in music as a rock rhythm guitarist with some well-known bands in the late sixties and early seventies. He has worked as a high steel worker and as a longshoreman, clerk, orchidist, bar owner, salvage yard manager and landscaper – among other things.
CD began writing fiction in 1984 and has more than 115 books published as of this time in SciFi, murder, orchid culture and various other fields.
He now resides in Bocas del Toro and David, Panamá, where he continues research into epiphytic plants. He loves the culture of the indigenous people and counts a majority of his closer friends among that group. Several have “adopted” him as their father. He funds those he can afford through the universities where they have all excelled. “The Indios are very intelligent people, they are simply too poor (in material things and money. Culturally, they are very wealthy) to pursue higher education.”
CD loves Panamá and the people. He plans to spend the rest of his life in the paradise that is Panamá
- Estrelita Suarez V.
Clint Faraday Mysteries #13
© 2011 by C. D. Moulton
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, or events is purely incidental unless otherwise indicated.
Contents
Book 13: The Body In the Bay
The Body In the Bay
Clint Faraday, retired PI from Florida, brought his boat into his deck. He and Judi Lum, the attractive Taiwanese nextdoor neighbor, climbed out and tied the boat. Clint handed her the gear and smaller items, then he put the chest of fish on the deck, followed by the other paraphernalia they took on their fishing jaunts.
“It was nice all day today,” Judi said. “We got enough for both our freezers and a few for Ben. It was too bad he couldn’t come.”
Ben was Ben Longstreet, a neighbor. He was gay, which was a big “So what?” in Bocas del Toro, Panamá.
Silvio Lopez, an Indio friend, came by in his cayuca and greeted them, “Coin dere!” They returned the greeting. Both of them spoke some of the Ngobe Bugle language (Guayme). Clint was becoming fluent. Most of his closer friends were Indios.
Judi brought a deep pan from the kitchen and sorted the fish. She left two large ones in the chest and told Clint she’d borrowed the chest from Ben so he could carry it back with the fish.
Clint grinned and helped her take her gear and fish home, then returned and cleaned the fish. He put Ben’s in the ice and carried the chest to Ben’s house. Earl, his newest love, took the fish inside and said Ben would be home from work in half an hour. He’d cook up one of the fish for dinner. He was a gourmet chef so the meal would be between great and fantastic.
“They’re big so I’ll expect you and Jude around six thirty. No excuses. I have a good almondine sauce I make, old-fashioned hush-puppies, garden salad and mustard greens from Volcan. We were in Cerro Punta last week and I brought a lot of them back. They’re a weed up there and nobody eats them. I cooked up enough for a month or two and froze them for your freezer. I know you like them as much as we do. There’s nothing better with fish.”
Clint said he’d be there. He called Judi and she said that would be perfect. She was planning to cook fish herself, but she couldn’t hope to compete with Earl in the cooking area.
Clint went back home to check out his comp and calls, answered a few e-mails and deleted twenty some-odd spam messages, then cleaned up and laid around until a few minutes after six. He took a bottle of good Chianti, called Judi to say, “Let’s go!” and went to meet her at his gate and to walk the two blocks (if they’d had blocks there) to Ben’s. They spent a pleasant evening there and went home at about eleven. Judi decided to go to a friend’s house, but Clint was tired. He sacked out.
In the morning Clint went into town and talked with the regulars at the Golden Grill, then to the market for a few things, then back to his house. He got a call from a friend at Punta Robalo and took his boat around to his place, about an hour and a half by boat. They solved the problem, a non-issue type of thing about who owned what. The Indios have no ownership in that sense in their culture. It was a misunderstanding that could have grown into something more, but probably wouldn’t have.
Clint went back home at three o’clock and was tying the boat to the dock when his celular buzzed. He answered to find it was Sergio, head of the police in Bocas Town. Some snorkelers had found a body in the bay. It looked like a woman had been snorkeling near the mangroves and had gotten entangled in the roots and had drowned.
“Why tell me?” Clint asked.
“It doesn’t feel right. No one has been reported missing. She was a tourist, I think, so wouldn’t have been there alone.”
“Yeah. That smells – and I haven’t even been out there yet. Where was it?”
“About a quarter of the way from the mainland to Dolfin Point. We’ve brought the body in. There’s nothing to see there.”
“I’ll come to the station in the morning.”
“Anything new since you called?” Clint asked Sergio in the morning.
“Except that there were no signs of violence on the body more than would be natural for that kind of thing, no.”
Clint didn’t know where to go with no more information. “Who was she?”
“We don’t know yet. I’m having her prints identified. They’ll have that from her passport, I hope. Nobody’s been asking about a misper or anything.”
“No ID of any type on the body?”
“A small tattoo on her left ankle. A four-leafed clover.”
“Irish.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I’ll talk with Doc, then check around. Judi can find information faster than we can a lot of the time so I’ll get her on it.”
They discussed fishing a moment, then Clint headed for the Golden Grill. None of the regulars had heard anything about anyone going out and not coming back.
This wasn’t getting anywhere. Clint went home and asked Judi to ask around when she was in Bocas Town and elsewhere.
“I’m going to Changuinola with Ana and Yveth. Maybe they’ll know something there.”
There wasn’t much to do. Clint decided to paint his fence. He would have to know more to decide if he even wanted to bother with it. It did intrigue him because it was an obvious murder.
“... that there was a woman there with two men, sort of reddish auburn hair and green eyes, good figure, maybe five six or so. They went somewhere and nobody came back. Nilsa, at the hotel, said they were from Canada and had Canadian passports. She gave me the numbers and names, James Besford, Charles Dennis and Shannon O’Brien. I gave Serg the passport information. He said the woman fit the description. They were all staying in San Juan, Costa Rica, for a short while, O’Brien for several months.
“That’s about it for what I could find,” Judi finished.
“Which was a heck of a lot more than Sergio or I could find in the time. It gives us a starting place other than a body in the bay.”
They chatted awhile about the people she ran across in Changuinola, then she went home to clean up for a dinner date. Clint cleaned up and walked into town to stop at the Toro Loco before going to El Ultimo Refugio for a good meal. He met a girl from Canada, they hit it off, she was on vacation to learn about life and she was not a virgin, but not very experienced either.
Besford and Dennis were from Canada. She had stopped for two days in San Jose’ Costa Rica. Clint managed to mention them in the way Judi taught him. She had met them once in a bar and had talked with them about Canada. They were with some people by the name of Boucher, from France. There was some hood who came in and they left with him. That was all she knew.
It was a very good night. In the morning, after Eileen had gone to meet her traveling mates, Clint went to the police station to see what Sergio had learned. There was an alert out for the two men. They hadn’t left the country, according to immigration. Their passports had not been used or stamped at exit. They were being checked in Canada, information from which would come in about eleven.
Clint said he would ask around about it. He had a lot of friends in that part of the archipelago who might have seen something. He went back, got his boat and headed for Tierra Oscura, Isla Popa, Isla Pastore, Shark Hole and the Crawl Cay end of Bastimentos. One Indio family who were out between Dolfin Point and Isla Pastore saw who might have been them. They had a white and green fiberglass boat, 16', with a 50 horse four stroke Yamaha. There was one woman with dark reddish hair with two men, one blond and one dark-haired. The dark man’s hair was a little long and the blond might have had a pony tail. The men were in their early twenties or so and were tall and strong. The dark-haired one had a tattoo on his left shoulder of a tiger and on the right just a pattern in red, green and blue.
The Indios can give excellent descriptions if you know what – and how – to ask. This was a combination of the father, who noticed the woman particularly, the mother, who noticed much about the men and the three children in their early teens who noticed little points here and there. The oldest son was gay and noticed everything about the men. They were built like body-builders, but maybe a little bit slimmer. They were attractive in a way. (The Indios take that as a matter of course, also.)
They passed about six meters just at the point. The boat was headed into the bay. The Indios were headed out around the point. The whole family worked the finca there. The mother said she thought she’d seen the boat before on the mainland-facing side of Isla San Cristobal.
Clint went to the little marina on San Cristobal and found that a woman named Shannon O’Brien had rented the boat for the day two days ago. He had her passport number and so forth. It was the same as Sergio had. An Indio brought the boat back just before dark and said the people in it paid him to bring it back because they had to hurry to get to the Panamá City bus that took on passengers in Almirante. The Indio was Daniel Santana, who Clint knew.
Clint went to Almirante and found Daniel, who said there were two surfer-type men in the boat. They said they had to get their bags and so forth from the Hotel San Francisco and back to the station to get the bus and couldn’t depend on getting back in time so they gave him ten dollars to take the boat back.
“What did they have in the boat? Surfboards or fishing tackle or what?”
“Just some snorkeling stuff and two box ice chests. The chests were heavy and the men were strong, but it took both of them to take the boxes from the boat. They put them in the back of one of the small-truck taxis and went toward the hotel. I took the boat. I usually only get six dollars so it was a good day!”
“Did you notice which taxi it was?”
“I think from Changuinola. It wasn’t from here. I only saw it once or twice before. They had a lot of money. Hundred dollar bills. I told them I couldn’t change a twenty, much less a hundred. They had a ten and gave it to me to take the boat back for them.”
He didn’t know anything else.
Now Clint was curious. A woman was dead and her two companions had gone off with two large boxes. Clint went to the bus terminal. The two didn’t take a bus from there to anywhere. They didn’t take the David bus, either. The passenger manager would have definitely noticed them. The boxes would have cost extra if they were that heavy.
So. They had a taxi from Changuinola waiting – or did they call one? Did they take a taxi to David or elsewhere?
That would be between eighty and a hundred dollars. They had a lot of hundred dollar bills. Clint was suspicious about those boxes. He had a sneaky suspicion they were packed with hundred dollar bills. There was a lot of drug money in cash around that was in transit for laundering. Had they found a couple of boxes with millions in cash and one of them ended up dead while the other two escaped with the money?
Whatever, this was definitely the kind of thing he liked to investigate.
He headed back to Bocas Town to report on what he’d found and what he suspected to Sergio. Sergio said they were watching four people who they suspected were involved in drugs right there in town. Vincento Salares, Georgio Mendez, Samuel D’Alesandro and Noko Itumi. Itumi was, of course, Japanese. Clint had seen them around.
Clint went back to his house to work with the computer to check on all the names he had so far. Very little came up, except Itumi. He was in and out of trouble in Colombia and Mexico before he moved to Venezuela, where he stayed reasonably clean. His contacts and crimes were mostly petite. Vincente Salares had one conviction of carrying an illegal weapon, a switchblade with a twelve centimeter blade. He was fined and spent three days in jail in Santa Marta, Colombia. It was looking like a drug money case, more and more.
Clint went into town, but the four were out in a boat for the day. Enrique had taken them out. They were scuba diving the inner reefs. They went out two or three times a week to the same area. They said they were studying the fish on that kind of reef to write a book about them to sell to tourists who wanted to know about the different blah, blah, blah. Put that together with the rest. They had stashed some boxes of cash under a little reef in an area almost nobody visited. The Canadians visited. They found the money and took it. The reason the boxes were so heavy was because they were weighted.
That fit, but why not dump the weights when they moved it? That didn’t fit.
Maybe it did! Maybe the weights were worth more than the money! Gold or silver bars.
So? Why was Shannon dead? If it had been the foursome they would have made it obvious she was “executed” for screwing around with their money. The two Canadians would be acting very differently than they were. They wouldn’t be leaving a trail.
Clint went back to Almirante to ask about the taxi. No one knew much. It wasn’t a local. Maybe Changuinola.
Clint took a bus to Changuinola. A couple of people had noted the truck. One said he saw the woman in it two times and one of the men, the blond one, once. It wasn’t a local taxi.
Clint had an idea and went to the police station. They knew him and would cooperate. The taxi had been noted and checked on because the driver made local pick-ups and was overcharging. The locals knew the legal fares, but the tourists, particularly gringos, didn’t. Two locals made complaints and the driver was forced to return their money and was warned that he was breaking national law and would end his crooked ass in jail for thirty days the next complaint they received. They didn’t receive any more.
Clint had the taxi number and checked it on the computer. Veraguas? That was a long way and on the Pacific side. Now there was a good reason for suspicion!
Bigshots sometimes rented a taxi to take them anywhere. The taxi would take the fare where they wanted to go for un-regulated prices. They charged a lot for such trips because they too often didn’t find a return fare and had to take short-hop fares all the way back. They didn’t hang around a town hundreds of kilometers from their base. They got back as fast as they could.
That was one big question. It might give him a starting point for investigation, more than a little strange.
Clint decided to have Sergio put out a quiet information request about the movements of that taxi. It would be noted at any checkpoints along the way. They had plenty of time to go to Veraguas or anywhere else, but he could hope they were being careful not to be noticed – which generally meant they were noted everywhere. He then went to his house to check his e-mail and such, then took his boat out to the area where the body was found. It wasn’t the kind of place where people often went diving. The water was deep there, but it was in a sort of cove that didn’t flush well so the bottom was mud, if deep, and there were just too many jellyfish in that kind of place. Some of them could give a painful and dangerous sting. There were no reefs in there. The reefs were outside of the cove and around the end of the peninsula. The mangroves there had plenty of roots hanging in the water, but they were generally not attached to anything below because of the steep drop of the bank. If a person were to get tangled in them he or she could easily get to the surface by simply pushing them aside.
Clint went out to the area of the coral reefs. The woman’s body was found with her snorkeling paraphernalia in place. She wouldn’t be in there unless she was looking for something specific. That could well mean the body was brought into the bay after she was killed. Doc said she died of drowning, which could have occurred anywhere.
He could use the working assumption that she and her friends were snorkeling around one of the small coral heads or along the reef around the end of the peninsula, found the money or whatever, were taking it out and were discovered.
Crap! She wouldn’t be the one killed and she would show some signs of resistance. A stranger couldn’t have done it. That meant her two friends. The fact they were at that spot had to mean something.
Okay. Hook on that unexplained taxi. They were here to find that money. It was probably put there by them some time ago. When the heat died down they came after it – which didn’t work, either. They wouldn’t have brought her along in that case.
This was the kind of puzzle Clint claimed to hate, but he actually liked the challenge.
He went back to Bocas Town. Judi had nosed around a bit and had found that Shannon O’Brien had come to Changuinola in the taxi to meet Besford and Dennis. Marta, whose sister worked at the Estranjero Hotel in Changuinola, said the two men booked a room for her the day before she arrived. They had the taxi driver staying in the Pension Grande Vista. Marta had Susana check on that.
There was nobody like Judi Lum for getting information!
An interesting note: the taxi driver, a large black man they called Gordo, seemed to be far more in charge at times than the others, though Shannon was also sometimes in charge, it seemed.
Gordo, in a small-truck taxi from Santiago. That should make him easy enough to find!
Clint thought about it for a few minutes, then packed a few things and told Judi he was headed for Santiago. There were answers there – something he had damned little of at the moment. Nothing made any sense in this one. He took his boat to Chiriqui Grande and caught the bus to David, stayed the night at the Pension Costa Rica in David and caught an early bus for Santiago.
Santiago is a rather sleepy town in an area that specializes in cattle ranching. It’s hot much of the year and reminded Clint of south central Texas, though it tended to more greenery. He always stayed at the Bocas del Toro Hotel there and frequented the bar and restaurant across the carretera. He knew a number of people in the area so was able to find that Gordo was David (Gordo) Silverano. He had gone somewhere a week or so before and hadn’t returned. He lived part of the time in Veraguas where he had a house. Yes, he was often taking the Irish lady places and she was even staying at his apartment for several days before they left. The two surfer types weren’t known there at all.
Shannon used the internet café by The Pyramid, where the bus station was. She spent a lot of time there.
Clint found where the apartment was and spoke with the landlady. She said Gordo was usually quiet and wasn’t ever any trouble except he had women there. That wasn’t at issue if it was just one or two for long periods, but he had different ones every week, it seemed. He was sometimes too bossy around his women and they sometimes got loud.
Clint got the taxi registration number from her and went to the registro to make a computer check on it. Gordo had a few minor tickets, one only days ago at the Rambala checkpoint for not having the left turn signal light working.
Big deal! Taxis almost never used anything but the horn, anyhow!
Clint checked with the police checkpoint at La Mina, in the mountains. The taxis are noted when they pass, though they are seldom stopped. Gordo had come in the direction of David two days before. He had two passengers, but they weren’t checked because there was no alert out for any gringos.
Clint called Jose’, a friend who drove a taxi in David, and asked if he knew Gordo. He had met him a couple of times, but didn’t think he was in David now. He hadn’t been there in a month or so.
Clint called the more important checkpoint near Tole’. Gordo and friends had not passed there. They had an alert to note if he came through and to get ID from any passengers, but not to delay him unless new orders came through.
They came through La Mina, but didn’t come through Tole’. That meant somewhere between.
Clint caught a bus to David and got off in Chiriqui. Gordo and company hadn’t stopped there and hadn’t been seen there.
Clint went to Gualaca. Gordo and passengers, three men, had come through and had stayed an afternoon, then left. They asked about Boquete and points between.
Boquete. They didn’t go there.
Calderas? No. Clint was going all over the place to no advantage and was getting tired of spending his day in a bus. There was a nice, fairly new Honda XL for sale at a very good price just outside of Gualaca. Clint swore he would never own another car, but it had become necessary. He had plenty of money in the bank from some jobs, more than he had any use for, so he sighed and bought the thing and insurance and such. He had a license for Panamá so sighed and swore again and headed toward the carretera from that end. He stopped in Dolega, Anastasia and Concepcion – where he found they had stayed last night, then drove off toward Panamá City about two hours ago. There were three. They stayed at the hotel just about a mile toward David.
Clint went to the hotel and learned that Dennis and Besford were now accompanied by a Carlos Samosa, Panamanian, from Veraguas. They were headed in that direction. Santiago again. Clint was learning he could get as tired of driving as he did of buses.
Santiago, and they might have passed through. Wanda thought she saw Gordos’s taxi at The Pyramid half an hour or so ago. The girl at the cash drawer at the restaurant in The Pyramid said they stopped for about ten minutes. One of them jumped on the bus for Panamá City that was just leaving. The other two, a dark man and a blond man, left with the taxi. She didn’t see which way they went.
The Latino man was the one who caught the bus. He was carrying a suitcase and a maleta. She noted that because people seldom used both. One or the other, usually only a maleta for the Panamanians. Clint decided that most probably meant Veraguas, but why did the Veragueno go toward Panamá City?
Only way to find out was to go to Veraguas. Clint had a decent meal at The Pyramid, spoke with several friends en route from David to Panamá City, then got in his car and headed for Veraguas. This kind of legwork (okay, bus and car-work) was what ninety percent of detective work amounted to. At least he was learning something this time. That wasn’t always the case.
Clint parked at the little La Tipica Restaurant in Veraguas, got out of the car, stretched, swore and went inside. There were only two patrons this time of the afternoon, so he was able to talk with the owner for a bit. He knew who Gordo was and that he came there a lot, but he didn’t know why, other than fares. The businessmen in Santiago would take a taxi instead of the bus. It wasn’t that much and was faster and more pleasant.
Clint was not going to drive anymore today! He asked about the best hotel in the moderate price range and was told the owner, Samuel Amorosa, had three rooms he rented right there. Air conditioning and cable TV, though the hot water was turned off this time of the year. The water came from the tank at a reasonably comfortable temperature and electricity for commercial was very expensive.
Clint preferred a cool shower so took the $21.00 room. It was surprisingly comfortable and was close to everything. There was a popular night club about two blocks away and shopping was from there on into the centro.
Clint cleaned up and rested for an hour, then went to the bar. It seemed to be the most popular one in this part of Veraguas. Gordo and the two Canadians were sitting at the bar. The taxi was outside. There wasn’t anything in it.
Confront them? Call in the police? Wait and watch?
He decided to wait and watch. He’d try to start a conversation. He took a stool next to Gordo and nodded to the three, then said, “I think I saw you in Almirante at the dock near the water taxi a few days ago. You were with a girl from Ireland?”
“Uh! Er, that is, we went to Bocas for a night,” Besford answered. “We weren’t much impressed. Shannon, the girl, stayed. We decided we’d see the rest of Panamá.”
“Yeah. Bocas is the kind of place you either like or don’t. It’s a party town, what with the surfers and backpackers,” Clint said. “I kind of like it for a few days at the time, then want to go elsewhere.
“You just left her there? You weren’t traveling together?”
“Oh, no! We met her in Changuinola. She said she came to Panamá via Sixola and that was her first stop. She was going to Bocas the next day, we were going to Bocas the next day so we sort of went together. She was a sort of strange one!” Dennis said. It sounded rehearsed to Clint. They’d made up a story to tell. They’d stick to it. Gordo even said she’d ridden in his taxi from Changuinola to David with them and she did seem a little strange. She promised to pay her part of the ride, then stuck it to the guys. They ended up paying for her.
“She was really a bitch on wheels!” Besford said sourly. “She’d be your best friend, then stick you in the ass! She, uh, used us to find a place to stay and get meals cheap and all that, then takes off with some black dude she met in that little bar by the bus station in Almirante!”
“Taxi? You say you drove a taxi from here to Changuinola? I’ll bet that was some fare!” Clint said to Gordo.
“I, er, that is, took a couple of people in the development business there. Two hundred twenty dollars! I was going to ask two hundred, one of them said they would pay that and not a penny more so I acted like I might or might not, then agreed. These people were coming here anyway and I didn’t have a return fare so I only charged them fifty. It was found money for me.
“As a driver, never tell anyone what you’ll pay. Ask the cuenta, then bargain a bit for that kind of trip.
“I saw you drive in so I know I’m not giving the stick to another taxi.”
Clint laughed and said he’d learned that a long time ago. He chatted with them a bit, then talked to a pretty girl who accompanied him back to his room. It was a great night!
In the morning Clint went to the restaurant downtown near the bus terminal. It was the only place open at five thirty. He had hojaldres, bolitas and coffee and chatted with the woman running the place. There were only a few Indios there that early and she was suspicious of them. Clint said they were the only people he trusted as a group. There were a few rotten apples, but that was true of any group of people. He managed to sound like he was just chatting, but she got the point. Clint didn’t have patience with bigots.
He soon went to the table where four of the Indios were sitting and said, “Coin dega! Tica Clint.” (Good morning. I am Clint)
One of them grinned and said, in excellent English, “That is Guayme. We speak a different dialect here. Good morning. I am Solbiero, this is Tomas, this is Sandros and this is Fredrico.”
“I’m a detective,” Clint said, knowing the best way to get along with anyone is to be up-front and yourself. “I’m interested in some people who came in yesterday. Gordo, the taxi driver, and two Canadians with him.”
“Gordo is a shithead and a ladron,” Sandros said in not-as-good English. “If they came with him they are not to be trusted.”
“I figured as much. I just want to know what they’re up to here. I think they killed a woman in Bocas.
“Do you know what may have been the reason Gordo went to Bocas with the woman?”
“The red-haired lady? She lived with him a week or so. They had some kind of plan about something. She is the dead woman?”
Clint nodded. “We’ll speak Spanish if any of you don’t speak English. Do you know anything at all about her?”
“She met with a man in Santiago a lot and with Juan Ysalas, the lawyer. They had some kind of thing. The man from Santiago came twice to see her. The lawyer brought some papers,” Sandros answered.
“She met with Aldo once. He went to the house and she was the only one there. He stayed an hour,” Fredrico said. “We work in the finca that is all the way around the place he stays if you wonder why we know so much about them.”
They chatted awhile. Clint ordered a large plate of hojaldres and large coffees for everyone. They seemed very good people, not unlike the Ngobe, but different in some ways. They were intelligent, as most of the Indigenos were.
Clint had another few things to research when they left for work. He knew where Gordo’s house was and that the finca all around grew crops and pastured cows in rotation of the fields. The four were the managers of the whole finca, which was something over 500 hectares in size. The barns and storage sheds were behind and to one side of Gordo’s place.
Clint went back to the restaurant/inn where he was staying for a second light breakfast and to chat with the one couple who were staying in the rooms. They were from Germany and came every year. They were partners in a small ranch they had financed with an Indio family. It was doing very well for the area. It paid for their yearly vacation and the Indio family were very well-off by local standards. It was so very seldom things worked out well for everyone in a deal anymore. Very sad world we live in.
After the breakfast he asked Amoroso if he knew the lawyer, Ysalas.
He shrugged. “He’s a lawyer. What can I say?”
“One of those?”
Samuel grinned. “They’re all ‘one of those.’ It’s what a lawyer is. I don’t suppose he’s worse than the rest, but he’s not better, either. If his lips are moving, he’s lying.”
Clint found where his office was and strolled around town awhile. He dropped into the office about eleven, but the girl said he was working on a case where he must be in Panamá City for two more days.
He ran into Besford at the hardware store and said “Hello.” Besford was buying welding rod and plate steel. He said he had to make a security door or everything they had there would end up disappearing a little at the time. Clint said that was a problem in any of the Latin American countries. The people didn’t have much and would take anything that wasn’t welded down – even that, at times. Locks didn’t mean much when the more practiced thieves were in the area, though he didn’t think many of them were here. More in parts of Panamá City and Colon. Costa Rica was getting bad, but Panamá was very much safer, both from violence and theft.
Besford agreed that Costa Rica was impossible anymore. San Juan was now as bad as Limon always had been.
They parted. Clint grinned. So this one had spent time in Costa Rica. Sergio could get any information they might have on him and his friend. Shannon was supposed to have come from Costa Rica, according to what had been said – but she did not come through Sixola. That probably meant Frontera. Sergio could check that. He probably already had. Clint called him to find they had all been reported about in Costa Rica. Dennis had been in some trouble when some thugs tried to rob him and he’d put two of them in the hospital with various broken bones. It had been determined that he was merely defending himself from robbery and he was released.
Clint went to a little tienda on the corner of the road into the finca where Gordo was staying. After about an hour and a half the taxi went by toward Veraguas. The three were together. Clint decided it might be a good time to snoop around. He had left the car at the inn and taken a taxi to the tienda. It was about a kilometer and a half to the house. Fifteen minutes. If he had half an hour he could be in and look around, then go to chat with his four friends of this morning if it looked like he may be found there.
The place was between just livable and semi-Okay. It wasn’t clean and there was trash in the yard. Clint watched for a few minutes, then went to the door to knock and call out “Buenas!” No one answered.
He could see Fredrico and Sandros working on a fence on the far side of a shed. He managed not to be seen by them as he went to the side of the house and into a small attached bodega. There was a door from the bodega into the house that was left open (if you used a little device often seen on TV detective shows).
The inside was dark, There were heavy cloths and flattened cardboard cartons covering the windows. There was still enough light that he didn’t need more than the light from his celular now and then.
They had built a steel safe with three large padlocks holding the heavy lid down. It was tightly welded along all seams. Clint estimated it would weigh about eighty pounds empty and it was more than he could do to lift one corner an inch off the floor. He didn’t find anything else except some letter from Ysalas and a lawyer in Panamá City.
He heard the taxi coming along the rough road and waited until it was parked in front to leave through the bodega, climb the fence onto the finca and stroll over to the entrance road to call out to Sandros and Fredrico. He said he wanted to see the place and to see where Gordo lived in case he needed to come there. The taxi was parked out front so he supposed that was the place.
Sandros winked at him. He had seen him. Fredrico said that was the place.
They chatted as the two went to the shed with their tools and Solbiero and Tomas joined them with their own tools. They locked everything up and went out front where a rusty old GMC truck took them all into Veraguas.