Entering the stately Avenida Balboa he has the sen-sation of becoming airborne. To his right the United States Embassy rolls by, larger than the Presidential Palace, larger even than his bank. But not, at this moment, larger than Louisa. I’m too grandiose, he explains to her as he descends into the bank’s forecourt. If I wasn’t so grandiose in my head I’d never be in the mess I’m in now, I’d never have seen myself as a landed baron and I’d never be owing a mint I haven’t got and I’d stop sniping at Ernie Delgado and anybody else you happen to regard as Mister Morally Impeccable. Reluctantly he switches off his Mozart, reaches into the back of the car, removes his jacket from its hanger – he has selected dark blue – slips it on and adjusts his Denman & Goddard tie in the driving mirror. A stern boy in uniform guards the great glass entrance. He nurses a pump-action shotgun and salutes everyone who wears a suit.
‘Don Eduardo, Monseñor, how are we today, sir?’ Pendel cries in English, flinging up an arm. The boy beams in delight.
‘Good morning, Mr Pendel,’ he replies. It’s all the English he knows.
For a tailor Harry Pendel is unexpectedly physical. Perhaps he is aware of this because he walks with an air of power restrained. He is broad as well as tall with grizzled hair cropped short. He has a heavy chest and the thick sloped shoulders of a boxer. Yet his walk is statesmanlike and disciplined. His hands, at first curled lightly at his sides, link themselves primly behind the sturdy back. It is a walk to inspect a guard of honour or face assassination with dignity. In his imagination Pendel has done both. One vent in the back of the jacket is all he allows. He calls it Braithwaite’s Law.
But it was in the face which at forty he deserved that the zest and pleasure of the man were most apparent. An unrepentant innocence shone from his baby-blue eyes. His mouth, even in repose, gave out a warm and unobstructed smile. To catch sight of it unexpectedly was to feel a little better.
Great Men in Panama have gorgeous black secretaries in prim blue bus-conductress uniforms. They have panelled, steel-lined bulletproof doors of rainforest teak with brass handles you can’t turn because the doors are worked on buzzers from within so that Great Men can’t be kidnapped. Ramón Rudd’s room was huge and modern and sixteen floors up with tinted windows from floor to ceiling looking onto the bay and a desk the size of a tennis court and Ramón Rudd clinging to the far end of it like a very small rat clinging to a very big raft. He was chubby as well as short, with a dark blue jaw and slicked dark hair with blue-black sideburns and greedy bright eyes. For practice he insisted on speaking English, mainly through the nose. He had paid large sums to research his genealogy and claimed to be descended from Scottish adventurers left stranded by the Darién disaster. Six weeks ago he had ordered a kilt in the Rudd tartan so that he could take part in Scottish dancing at the Club Unión. Ramón Rudd owed Pendel ten thousand dollars for five suits. Pendel owed Rudd a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. As a gesture Ramón was adding the unpaid interest to the capital which was why the capital was growing.
‘Peppermint?’ Rudd enquired, pushing at a brass tray of wrapped green sweets.
‘Thank you, Ramón,’ Pendel said, but didn’t take one. Ramón helped himself.
‘Why are you paying a lawyer so much money?’ Rudd asked after a two-minute silence in which he sucked his peppermint and they separately grieved over the rice farm’s latest account sheets.
‘He said he was going to bribe the judge, Ramón,’ Pendel explained with the humility of a culprit giving evidence. ‘He said they were friends. He said he’d rather keep me out of it.’
‘But why did the judge postpone the hearing if your lawyer bribed him?’ Rudd reasoned. ‘Why did he not award the water to you as he promised?’
‘It was a different judge by then, Ramón. A new judge was appointed after the election and the bribe wasn’t transferable from the old one to the new one, you see. Now the new judge is marking time to see which side comes up with the best offer. The clerk says the new judge has got more integrity than the old one, so naturally he’s more expensive. Scruples are expensive in Panama, he says. And it’s getting worse.’