Mickie Abraxas digested this, but not with any great pleasure, for he was eyeing Osnard darkly, not much liking what he saw.
‘Know what I would do if I was President of Panama, Mr Andy?’
‘Why don’t you sit down, Mickie, and we’ll hear all about it?’
‘I’d kill the lot of us. There’s no hope for us. We’re screwed. We’ve got everything God needed to make paradise. Great farming, beaches, mountains, wildlife you wouldn’t believe, put a stick in the ground you get a fruit tree, people so beautiful you could cry. What do we do? Cheat. Conspire. Lie. Pretend. Steal. Starve each other. Behave like there’s nothing left for anyone except me. We’re so stupid and corrupt and blind I don’t know why the earth doesn’t swallow us up right now. Yes, I do. We sold the earth to the fucking Arabs in Colón. You gonna tell that to the Queen?’
‘Can’t wait,’ said Osnard pleasantly.
‘Mickie, I’m going to get cross with you in a minute if you don’t sit down. You’re making a spectacle of yourself and embarrassing me.’
‘Don’t you love me?’
‘You know I do. Now sit yourself down like a good lad.’
‘Where’s Marta?’
‘At home, I expect, Mickie. In El Chorrillo where she lives. Doing her studies, I expect.’
‘I love that woman.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Mickie, and so will Marta be. Now sit down.’
‘You love her too.’
‘We both do, Mickie, in our separate ways, I’m sure,’ Pendel replied, not blushing exactly, but suffering an inconvenient clotting of the voice. ‘Now sit yourself down like a good lad. Please.’
Grabbing Pendel’s head in both hands, Mickie whispered wetly in his ear. ‘Dolce Vita for the big race on Sunday, hear me? Rafi Domingo bought the jockeys. All of them, hear me? Tell Marta. Make her rich.’
‘Mickie, I hear you loud and clear, and Rafi was in my shop this morning but you weren’t, which was a pity, because there’s a nice dinner jacket there waiting for you to try it on. Now sit down, please, like a good friend.’
Out of the corner of his eye Pendel saw two large men with identity tags advancing purposefully towards them along the edge of the room. Pendel reached a protective arm halfway across Mickie’s mountainous shoulders.
‘Mickie, if you make any more trouble I’ll never cut another suit for you,’ he said in English. And in Spanish to the men: ‘We’re all fine, thank you, gentlemen. Mr Abraxas will be leaving of his own accord. Mickie.’
‘What?’
‘Are you listening to me, Mickie?’
‘No.’
‘Is your nice driver Santos outside with the car?’
‘Who cares?’
Taking Mickie’s arm, Pendel led him gently through the dining room under a mirrored ceiling to the lobby, where Santos the driver was anxiously waiting for his master.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t see him at his best, Andy,’ Pendel said shyly. ‘Mickie is one of Panama’s few real heroes.’
With defensive pride, he volunteered a brief history of Mickie’s life till now: father an immigrant Greek ship-owner and close chum of General Omar Torrijos, which was why he agreed to neglect his business interests and devote himself full time to Panama’s drug trade, turning it into something everyone could be proud of in the war against Communism.
‘He always talk like that?’
‘Well, it’s not all talk, Andy, I will say. Mickie had a high regard for his old dad, he liked Torrijos and didn’t like We-Know-Who,’ he explained, observing the oppressive local convention of not mentioning Noriega by name. ‘A fact which Mickie felt obliged to declare from the rooftops to all who had ears to listen, till We-Know-Who popped his garters and had him put in prison to shut him up.’
‘Hell was all that about Marta?’
‘Yes, well you see, that was the old days, Andy, what I’d call a hangover. From when they were both active together in their cause, you see. Marta being a black artisan’s daughter and him a spoiled rich boy, but shoulder to shoulder for democracy, as you might say,’ Pendel replied, running ahead of himself in his desire to put the topic behind him as fast as possible. ‘Unusual friendships were made in those days. Bonds were forged. Like he said. They loved each other. Well they would.’