‘See the causeway there, Andy?’ Pendel yelled, flinging out a proprietorial arm while he proudly signed his guest into the book with the other. ‘Made from all the rubble dug out of the Canal. Stops the rivers from silting up the navigation channel. Those Yanqui forefathers of ours knew a thing or two,’ he declared, though he must have been identifying with Louisa, for he had no Yanqui fore-fathers. ‘You should have been here when we had our open-air movies. You wouldn’t think it was possible, open-air movies in the wet season. Well it is. Know how often rain falls in Panama between six and eight of an evening, wet or dry? Two days per year average! I see you’re surprised.’
‘Where do we get a drink?’ Osnard asked.
But Pendel still had to show him the Club’s newest, grandest acquisition: a silent, gorgeously panelled lift to raise and lower geriatric heiresses nine feet from floor to floor.
‘It’s for their cards, Andy. Night and day, some of those old ladies play. I suppose they think they can take it with them.’
The bar was in Friday-night fever. At every table revellers waved, beckoned, slapped each other on the shoulders, argued, sprang about and shouted one another down. And some took time off to wave to Pendel, press his hand or make some ribald joke about his suit.
‘Allow me to present my good friend Andy Osnard, one of Her Majesty’s favourite sons recently arrived from England to restore the good name of diplomacy,’ he yelled to a banker called Luis.
‘Just say Andy next time. No one gives a toss,’ Osnard advised when Luis had rejoined the girls. ‘Any heavy hitters out tonight? Who’s all here? No Delgado, that’s for sure. He’s in Japan playing hookey with Pres.’
‘Correct, Andy, Ernie’s in Japan, and giving Louisa a nice rest into the bargain. Well I never! Who have we here? Well, that is a turn-up for the book.’
Gossip is what Panama has instead of culture. Pendel’s eye had fallen on a distinguished-looking, moustachioed gentleman in his mid-fifties in the company of a beautiful young woman. He wore a dark suit and silver tie. She wore tresses of black hair over one naked shoulder and a diamond collar big enough to sink her. They were sitting side by side and upright, like a couple in an old photograph, and they were receiving the congratulatory handshakes of well-wishers.
‘Our gallant top judge, Andy, back among us,’ Pendel replied in answer to Osnard’s prompting, ‘just one week after all charges against him were dropped. Bravo, Miguel.’
‘Customer o’ yours?’
‘Indeed he is, Andy, and a highly valued one. I’ve got four unfinished suits plus a dinner jacket invested in that gentleman, and until last week they were destined for our New Year’s sale.’ He needed no further prodding. ‘My friend Miguel,’ he went on, exercising the kind of pedantry that persuades us that a person is being most particular about the truth, ‘came to the conclusion, a couple of years ago, that a certain lady friend whose welfare he had made his personal responsibility was bestowing her favours on another. The said rival being a fellow lawyer, naturally. In Panama they always are, and mostly US-educated, I regret to say. So Miguel did what any of us would do in the circumstances, he hired an assassin who duly put an end to the nuisance.’
‘Bully for him. How?’
Pendel recalled a phrase of Mark’s culled from a lurid comic that Louisa had confiscated. ‘Lead poisoning, Andy. The professional three shots. One to the head, two to the body, and what was left of him all over the front pages. The assassin was arrested, which in Panama is highly unusual. And he duly confessed which, let’s face it, isn’t.’
He paused, allowing Osnard an appreciative smile and himself an extra moment for artistic inspiration. Picking out the hidden highlights, Benny would have called it. Giving his fluence its head. Juicing up the story for the benefit of your wider audience.
‘The basis of the arrest, Andy – and of the confession – being a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars, drawn by our friend Miguel in favour of the alleged assassin and banked here in Panama on the somewhat risky assumption that banking confidentiality would provide immunity from prying eyes.’