Harry's Nemesis

Harry's Nemesis

         "You were the only one in the cantina who knew the dead man, Senor MacKinnon. If you were not involved, how did you happen to be..." the policeman paused and looked around the crummy bar, "...in this place...when the murder occurred?"

         Even behind his mirrored sunglasses, I could see the distaste-or was it disbelief-showing on the policeman's face. No, I reminded myself, Lt. Hernandez is not a policeman. He's with the Judiciales, you've gotta be careful.

         The Judiciales, are Mexico's answer to our F.B.I, the C.I.A. and the Texas Rangers all wrapped into one agency. They operate without any real oversight by the Mexican government. So Lt. Hernandez had no limits on what he could do to me during an interrogation. One of their favorite interrogation tricks is to shake up a Coca Cola, and then shoot it up a suspect's nose. It sounds pretty juvenile, but I'm told the pain will make you confess to next week's murder.

         And here I was, the last of the people in the bar to be questioned about this week's murder. All the 'homies' had already laid out their stories first with the Judiciales. As a gringo, I was guilty until I proved myself innocent.

         "It was strictly by chance," I said. "I was hot and tired of standing around while my wife Julie shopped for pottery, so I told her I'd duck into this bar, the Cantina Destino, and have a couple of drinks . . ."

****

         The cantina had no door, only a shadowy opening in the two-foot thick adobe, but it promised some relief from the grueling Mexican sun, so I went inside. Going from the white-hot glare outside to the semi-dark interior blinded me for a moment. As my eyes adjusted, I looked around to see what I'd stepped into.

         The walls and concrete floor were painted that royal blue that you sometimes see on Mexican houses.  It was windowless and not aire-condicionado. The smell, a miasma of stale beer, urine, bleach and insecticide, branded it as one of Mexico's old-style men-only cantinas. To my left, the long bar had a trough with drains along the bottom for any urgent call of nature for the few customers huddled over their drinks. No need to stop drinking to go to the 'Caballeros.'

         The bar's front consisted of alternating panels of glass bricks and ceramic tiles. Pink neon lights behind the bricks gave a weird, pink, almost feminine, glow to the room. White, enameled-tin tables were scattered to the right, but in the dark I couldn't see if they were occupied.

         At the back, several men shot pool at a table. An overhead light pierced the gloom through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Somewhere behind the bar, a radio played a plaintive Mexican song about love gone bad from a mariachi band.

         It was my kind of joint.

          The bartender, a skinny Gilbert Roland look-alike, swiped the bar with his cloth like a magician about to produce a rabbit, gave an expansive wave of his hand, and said, "Bienvenidos, Senor. Welcome my fran'. Sit anywhere you like."

         I hesitated, figuring that sitting at a table might mark me as a conspicuous gringo, looking for privileges. So I started for the bar, when a lone figure silhouetted at a table in the corner waved a laconic hand and said, "Well, well! Sam MacKinnon. Long time no see."

         I should have turned around and walked out. But the voice was familiar, even though I couldn't place it at first, so I walked over to see who I knew that was in this hell-hole. By the time I realized it was Harry Markham, it was too late to leave. I've always been too damn polite. While I stood there, paralyzed with indecision, Harry kicked a chair into my shins and said, "Siddown, MacKinnon! Have a drink."

         I ignored the pain, sat down, and said, "Hello Harry. Been a long time."

         "Not long enough for you, I bet. Bwahahahah"

         Harry had a raucous laugh that could set Mother Theresa's teeth on edge. I simply gritted mine. I looked him over. Harry never seemed to age. His body still retained the muscular torso, tiny waist and massive arms and legs of a much younger man. He'd accumulated a few more scars, notably one from a knife or broken bottle that wound its way from his left cheek past the eye into the stubble of dark hair on his shaven skull.

         Since I didn't reply to his sally, he continued, "Where was it? Singapore, twelve years ago? Nah, it was Bangkok." His face lit up "I wonder what became of that little twat on the Ambassador's staff you were banging. What was her name..."

         "Julie," I answered. "As a matter of fact, when I retired, we got..."

         "Julie, that's it," he interrupted. "Boy, did she play you for a sucker. All the time you were dating her, I had her begging for it. Remember that birthmark on her spine, looked like an arrow pointing down to her ass. Haw! Well, you know me..."

         I interrupted before I heard something I didn't want to hear. "Well, it was nice seeing you again, Harry..." I started to get up, but Markham grabbed my forearm in a grip of steel.

         He said, "I told you to have a drink."

         He glared at me with those crazy eyes of his that scared everyone--from his Agency handlers to Columbian drug lords to Dyak headhunters in Borneo for all I knew. I suddenly realized he was very drunk, and when Harry was drunk, he was dangerous. I sat down.

         Harry was one of the special operators you send in when you needed a little applied violence in a situation where diplomacy won't do. Want a third-world politician eliminated? Harry Markham will find a way, up to and including assassination if necessary. Need to foment a revolution? Send in Harry Markham. The only problem was that Harry was just as likely to cause a mutiny among your own allies. He was that kind of guy. I decided that caution was better than valor.

         "OK, Harry, just one." I said.

         "Pedro!" Harry shouted to the bartender. "Give us two cervezas, bien frias and another bottle of Tequila-and I don't mean manana, sabe?" He turned his attention back to me. "All these bastards are lazy. Ya gotta give 'em a kick in the ass to get anything done, right?"

         "Oh, I don't know. They're pretty good folks by and large." I looked around the seedy bar. "Of course, there are some pretty rough folks in places like this."

         "Hah!" He glared around the room. "Nothing in this joint but putas and maricons! Bwahahahaha!"

         His voice and laughter were way too loud. I winced when I saw a couple of the men at the bar straighten up and turn around. The men playing pool stopped their game and looked at us. Harry either didn't see their hard stares or simply ignored them.

         The drinks arrived, delivered by a young, pretty, and very pregnant, Mexican girl, wearing what had once been a form-fitting, pink sheath dress. Now, her thickening body stretched the material, leaving gaps at the seams and threatening to pull the buttons loose at her bosom.

         You could tell she was scared of Markham by the way she sidled up to the table to put down her metal drink tray. Her careful positioning did her no good because Harry is very fast for a big burly guy. He grabbed her and pulled her down on his lap where she sat stiffly, shuddering in fear. Casually, Harry scooped out one brown breast, carrying an ugly purple bruise, into his hairy hand, and said, "This here's Juana. She's Pedro's sister." I noticed the bartender shoot a deadly look at Harry. "Not bad for Mex nookie-if ya like 'em pregnant and barefoot. Bwaahahaha."

         She might be a whore, but I was uncomfortable with the look on the girl's face. I poured some salt on the pocket between my thumb and forefinger, licked it, and downed my shot. The tequila was cheap and nasty. I picked a sliced lime from the tray and took a bite to keep the tequila down.

         Harry did his shot, and then took a gulp of beer. His eyes were staring, vacant, as though he was remembering something horrifying.

         I knew I didn't want to talk about anything Harry Markham thought was horrifying.

         I tried to change the subject off the girl, and said, "What are you doing in Matamoros? Seems a bit out of your territory."

         "Ah, I'm waiting for a guy. Bwaahahhaaha!"

         "This is a pretty small town, not many gringos. Anyone I might know?"

         He looked at me with a contemptuous sneer. "You? Not a chance. I've been chasing this guy for years."

         This seemed like a safe topic. And knowing Harry, it might be an interesting story to while away an hour or so until I could get away from him. Anything to get him talking about something else but Mexico and the Mexicans in this cantina. "So, what's the story?" I said.

         "Man, I've looked for this guy through a hundred dives like this one, all over, from waterfront bars in Zanzibar and Galveston to whorehouses in Pat Pong road in Bangkok and Tu Do street in Saigon." He took a swig of beer and tipped the bottle in mock-salute. "Excuse me, Ho Chi Minh City now."

         "Sounds like you got a real hard-on for him." I downed my tequila, licked some salt off my fist and bit into another lime.

         I admit to some curiosity. Whoever the guy was, he had to be some kind of bad boy to have Harry on his trail for years without getting caught. And if Harry was that mad and focused, the chances of at least one of them going down for the count was pretty good. It sounded like a great bar fight in the making.

         Accordingly, I shifted my chair to make sure my own back was to the wall, and so I could see anyone coming in through the open door and take cover if necessary. "You ever get close to him?"

         Harry was zoned out, but he came up for air. "Whaa? Oh. Yeah. I followed him out of a gambling den in Macao once, but two damned Lascars with those wavy knives..." He paused, groping for the word.

         "Krises," I said.

         "Who?" he said.

         "Not who, Harry. What." I said patiently. "The knives are called a kris."

         "Yeah, them things." He shuddered and that surprised me. "I don't like 'em. Anyway, by the time I finished off the Lascars, he'd got away down an alley."

         He poured another shot and threw it off. I joined him. The tequila tasted better this time.

         "Too bad ya missed him," I said. The thought of Markham being afraid of a little cold steel encouraged me to have another drink. I was beginning to like this unknown guy already. I raised my shot-glass, not to Harry, but to his unknown antagonist and said, "Salud!"

         Harry didn't bother to use the shot glass. He simply raised the bottle and chug-a-lugged a couple of swallows down as if the clear fiery liquor were water. Personally, my eyes were watering, and I grabbed the beer chaser.

         I sensed some movement on my right side and glanced up. A hard-looking Mexican about forty years old, wearing pleated black pants, a white shirt open to the belly, a straw cowboy hat, fancy tooled leather boots and a nasty look loomed over me. Fortunately, he was looking at Harry, who uncharacteristically was not as alert as usual. It probably had something to do with him pawing Juana under her dress hem.

         I took the initiative. "Er...Harry, I think this gentleman wants a word with you."

         Like I said, Harry was unbelievably fast when he wanted, or needed, to be. Almost before I realized he'd moved, Harry had dumped Juana on her rump on the floor. Juana cursed Harry in Spanish, consigning him to an eternity as a towel boy in whorehouse Hell, but Harry ignored her.

         Cat-like, he was on his feet, perfectly balanced and ready to rumble--just like they'd taught us at Camp Peary.

         Harry stared at the Mexican, but I noticed he kept his eyes on the Mexican's hands. Which I now realized held a switch-blade he was using to clean his fingernails. As Juana and I eased back away from the table, I heard Juana whisper "El Tigre" to herself in a voice that didn't inspire me to glad-hand the man and introduce myself.

         The man looked up from his nails at Harry. "I hear you don' like Mexicans,gringo," he said, and then gave a nasty smile full of contempt. "Except for our women."

         The room went dead quiet, and people froze. I jumped into the breach. For some reason, a line from a Monty Python movie kept running through my head: "Blessed are the cheesemakers."

         "No, no," I said, "Harry was just telling me how much he admired..."

         "Shuddup!" Harry said at the same time as El Tigre said, "Callate' la boca!"

         It doesn't take me long to inspect a red-hot horseshoe. I "callate'd"

         As the two men faced each other, I decided Harry had an advantage in a fair fight. He stood several inches taller than the Mexican, outweighed him by at least thirty pounds and was much more muscular. On the other hand, the Mexican's wiry body spoke of lots of hard work in the hot sun--and he had the knife as an equalizer. I suddenly remembered that Harry didn't like cold steel.

          But Harry smiled lazily, like a lion that's had a dik-dik gazelle feed right up to his lair and ask 'what's for din-din?' He said, "Yep, I ain't got much use for Meskins, and that's a fact." He paused. "This is a private party. You got any business with me, Amigo?"

         The Mexican seemed disconcerted by Harry's response. I think he was used to intimidating people; probably had a reputation as a knife-man, and expected Harry to react like any ordinary gringo tourist would have when braced by a man with a knife. Yet here was Harry, standing his ground, smiling, and obviously waiting for him to make the first move with some relish. It made the Mexican doubt himself for a second...and the face-off was over. That one second of doubt is all it takes in a bar confrontation to make the difference between 'fight or flight.'

         Harry sensed it and pushed--hard. "You better go back to your pool game, Amigo. Unless you think you can take me."

         "I thought you were someone else, Senor," the 'tiger' said in a strangled voice. He turned to go.

Harry wasn't about to let the Mexican off with any of his pride left. "And while you're at it, leave the knife on the table...or I'm gonna take it away and shove it up your ass."

         The Mexican looked at the switchblade as if he'd never seen it before. Slowly, his fingers uncurled from around the handle, and the knife fell on the tin table with a flat metallic clang. Juana's short bark of laughter as she picked up the knife brought a flush of hatred to his face. Then he spun around and retreated to the back room with the pool table. None of the players said a word to him.

         People began to move again, out of their suspended animation, and a muted hubbub of talk filled the hush. There was no doubt in my mind that the legend of the confrontation between El Tigre and Harry Markham would be the subject of arguments in Cantina Destino for months, if not years, to come.

         Harry sat back down and took a swig of tequila. Morosely, as though nothing had happened, he said, "Now where were we?"

         He had that vacant look on his face again.

         "You were telling me about the guy you were looking for. Any other close encounters?"

         "Huh?" He came back to earth. "Oh, a couple of times over the years. There was this biker chick in Bakersfield a few years ago who belonged to him, and I started banging her, figured to set a trap. But nothing much happened." He rubbed the scar on his cheek reflexively. "I finally had a little run in with her boyfriend and some of his buddies in a biker bar. But it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Hahaha!" He gave that grating laugh again, then paused wonderingly, and said, "He wasn't the one after all."

         I felt the urge and said, "I gotta go pee."

         With exaggerated care, I pushed the chair away from the table, the metal legs screeching on the concrete floor. I got to my feet and staggered a little as I made my way to the back of the bar. As I went past the pool players, I felt the hate radiating out of them, but I ignored their stares.

         I made it to the filthy Caballeros, and started taking care of business. My head spun while I was thinking how remarkable it was that Harry hooked up with this guy in all these remote places. Then the answer--about the guy Harry was seeking, the one he'd looked for all those years--came to me all at once. I was about to rush back into the barroom when I heard a yell and a gunshot...

****

         The voice of Lt. Hernandez broke in on my reverie. "Ah, yes. That toilet must have been very crowded," he said dryly. "So far, all twelve people in the bar, including the bartender and the puta Juana, claim to have been in there with you at the time of the murder."

         "Well, I wasn't taking names," I mumbled.

         "You heard a shot? That's all?" He was nearly shouting, but took control of himself. "If you look closely, Senor,..." he pointed at Harry's body, lying in a pool of blood on the concrete floor of the cantina. "...you will see that he was also stabbed, clubbed and had his throat cut."

         "Harry was a very tough hombre, Teniente," I said ernestly. "I guess the murderer wanted to be sure."

         "So it would seem." Lt. Hernandez gave a short derisive laugh and then brought his face very close to my ear. The scent of his English Leather cologne overrode the brassy odor of Harry Markham's blood. He whispered into my ear. "It's been a very interesting little tale, Senor MacKinnon. But now you must give us the name of the man Markham was waiting for, the man whose identity you suddenly realized as you were 'taking care of business' as you put it. Or it will go very hard with you, entiendes?"

         "His name? I didn't say I knew his name, Teniente."

         "But you said..."

         "I said I knew Harry's secret about the man he'd been looking for all those years."

         "And what secret was that?"

         "You haven't guessed? Harry Markham hated himself and made everyone else hate him too. You could say he spent all his life in bars like this one, looking for his Nemesis--the guy who was gonna kill him. Harry Markham was a suicide."