‘Show a good return, that stuff?’
‘Quite. Oh yes,’
‘Didn’t make me horny.’
‘Sports articles are more what I call my loss leader, Andy. If I don’t sell them, someone else will, and they’ll grab my customers at the same time.’
No wasted body movements, Pendel noticed uneasily. I had a police sergeant like you once. Never fidgeted his hands or scratched his head or shifted his arse about. Just sits and looks at you with these eyes he’s got.
‘Are you measuring me for a suit, Andy?’ he asked facetiously.
But Osnard was not required to answer, for Pendel’s gaze had once more darted away towards a far corner of the room where a dozen or so noisy new arrivals, men and women, were taking their places at a long table.
‘And there’s the other half of the equation, as you might say!’ he declared exchanging over-energetic hand signals with the figure at the head of the table. ‘Rafi Domingo himself, no less. Mickie’s other friend, beat that!’
‘What equation?’ Osnard asked.
Pendel cupped a hand to his mouth for discretion. ‘It’s the lady beside him, Andy.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s Mickie’s wife.’
Osnard’s furtive gaze made a quick raid to the far table while he busied himself with his food.
‘One with the tits?’
‘Correct, Andy. You do wonder how people get married sometimes, don’t you?’
‘Give me Domingo,’ Osnard ordered – like, give me a middle C.
Pendel drew a breath. His head was spinning and his mind was tired but nobody had called intermission so he played on.
‘Flies his own aeroplane,’ he began arbitrarily.
Scraps he had picked up in the shop.
‘What for?’
‘Runs a string of very fine hotels no one stays in.’
Tittle-tattle from more than one country.
‘Why?’
The rest fluence.
‘The hotels belong to a certain consortium which has its headquarters in Madrid, Andy.’
‘So?’
‘So. Rumour has it that this consortium belongs to some Colombian gentlemen not totally unconnected with the cocaine trade, doesn’t it? The consortium is doing nicely, you’ll be pleased to hear. A posh new place in Chitre, another going up in David, two in Bocas del Toro and Rafi Domingo hops between them in his plane like a cricket in a frying-pan.’
‘Hell for?’
A silence of spies while the waiter replenished their water glasses. A chink of ice cubes like tiny church bells. And a rush like genius in Pendel’s ears.
‘We may only guess, Andy. Rafi doesn’t know the hotel business from his elbow, which is not a problem because like I told you the hotels don’t take guests. They don’t advertise and if you try and book a room you’ll be politely told they’re full up.’
‘Don’t get it.’
Rafi wouldn’t mind, Pendel told himself. Rafi’s a Benny. He’d say, Harry boy, you tell that Mr Osnard whatever keeps him happy, just as long as you haven’t got a witness.
‘Each hotel banks five thousand dollars a day cash, right? A financial year or two from now, as soon as the hotels have notched up a healthy set of accounts, they’ll be sold off to the highest bidder who by coincidence will be Rafi Domingo wearing a different company hat. The hotels will be in excellent order throughout, which is not surprising seeing they haven’t been slept in, and there’s not one hamburger been cooked in the kitchen. And they’ll be legitimate businesses because in Panama three-year-old money is more than just respectable, it’s antique.’
‘And he screws Mickie’s wife.’
‘So we are told, Andy,’ said Pendel, wary now, since this part was true.
‘Told by Mickie?’
‘Not as such, Andy. Not in as many words. It’s what the eye doesn’t see in Mickie’s case.’ The fluence again. Why was he doing it? What was driving him? Andy was. A performer is a performer. If your audience isn’t with you it’s against you. Or perhaps, with his own fictions in tatters, he needed to enrich the fictions of others. Perhaps he found renewal in the remaking of his world.
‘Rafi’s one of them, you see, Andy. Rafi’s one of the absolute biggest, frankly.’
‘Biggest what?’
‘The Silent Opposers. Mickie’s boys. Waiters-in-the-wings, I call them. Those that have seen the writing on the wall. Rafi’s a bitser.’