The Mordida Man

15

The Boeing 727 from which the man called Felix had fallen a little more than a mile into the sea landed at Newark International Airport at 7:04 P.M. — approximately the same time that the apartment of Faraj Abedsaid, the Libyan Embassy’s Attaché (Cultural Section), was being burgled in South Kensington.

The 727 landed at Newark rather than at Kennedy International because harassment of the plane’s passengers and crew was only pro forma at the New Jersey airport. Some time back its officials, both municipal and federal, had discovered that if they merely fumbled through the motions of carrying out their duties after the plane landed, a plain white envelope would arrive in the mail at each of their homes three days later — or sometimes four — depending on the postal service. In each envelope would be five hundred-dollar bills.

So now when the 727 flew in from the island Democratic People’s Republic, the plane’s crew and passengers were almost feted. In fact, one U.S. customs officer had been overheard saying to a colleague, “Get out of the way, nigger. Here comes Mr. Keeling. Lemme at him.” And Franklin Keeling, the ex-CIA man, had been taken into the search room, given a perfunctory pat or two, and a nip from the customs officer’s half pint of vodka. Similar treatment was also awarded Jack Spiceman, the ex-FBI agent, and the plane’s sixty-three-year-old pilot and sixty-five-year-old co-pilot who once had flown for Pan Am and TWA respectively.

When the 727 had flown into Newark International that first time nearly two years ago, the U.S. government had tried to seize it on the presumption that it would help pay up at least some of the $22 million in back federal taxes, which was the IRS’s mysterious estimate of what was owed by Leland Timble, the exiled bank robber and computer genius.

Timble had bought the 727 for cash in 1979 from the estate of an overdosed rock star. What the U.S. government hadn’t then known was that Timble had quickly sold the plane for one dollar to the island Democratic People’s Republic and immediately leased it back for a million dollars a year.

The plane now composed one-fourth of the island Democratic People’s Republic’s air force, the other three-fourths consisting of a DC-3 with clapped-out engines and two small Cessnas. Seventy-five percent of the annual million-dollar leasing fee went into the Republic’s coffers. The other 25 percent was spread around among the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of National Security, and the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law, who had resigned his bartending job to become Minister of Air and Space.

While pondering the legality of the transaction, the U.S. government had detained Keeling and Spiceman, as well as the two superannuated pilots, in a cheap motel near the airport. Keeling and Spiceman had used the time to ingratiate themselves with the airport’s key personnel, both federal and municipal. Five days later the U.S. Attorney General himself had ruled — reluctantly, it was said — that the buy and lease-back transaction was perfectly legal. Spiceman, Keeling, and the two pilots were released. By then the ingratiation process had cost Keeling $9,769. He itemized it on his expense account as “hospitality for others.”

As was their usual practice, the elderly pilot and co-pilot went through customs and immigration first. Later that evening the pilot would bowl a few lanes while the co-pilot sought out the nearest meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Afterwards, they would meet for a late dinner, go back to the airport, and sleep on the plane. Both were divorced — the pilot thrice, the co-pilot four times. Their combined monthly alimony payments came to nearly four thousand dollars, and neither had much to do with women any more.

It took Keeling and Spiceman longer to get through the airport because they had to butter up various officials and inquire about their families. Once outside, they climbed into the rear of a waiting rented stretched Cadillac limousine.

As the limousine pulled away, Keeling pressed the button that lowered the dividing glass and said, “How are you, Henry?”

“Just fine, Mr. Keeling,” the driver said.

“You bring the dry ice?”

“It’s up here in the Styrofoam thing.”

Keeling reached into his breast pocket, brought out two metal tubes, the kind that cigars sometimes come in, and handed them to the driver.

“Jesus, they’re cold!”

“They’re frozen,” Spiceman said. “We want to keep ’em that way.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said, opened the Styrofoam container, and carefully placed the two metal tubes on the steaming dry ice. After making sure that Henry refastened the lid securely, Keeling pressed the button that raised the dividing window, and leaned back in his seat to enjoy the ride.

The co-pilot arrived ten minutes early at the AA meeting, which was being held that night in the basement auditorium of the nearby Sinai Temple. He poured himself a cup of coffee, picked out two sugar cookies that looked home-baked, and went in search of a pay phone, which he found in the hall.

He ate one of the cookies first, took a sip of the coffee, looked at his watch, put the coffee and the remaining cookie down on a chair, dropped some coins into the telephone, and dialed a number, which was answered with a hello halfway through the first ring.

“Room 542,” the co-pilot said. “The Gotham, ten P.M., Mr. Minder.”

“Minder?” the voice that had said hello asked.

“Minder.”

“Thank you,” the voice said, and the phone went dead.

The co-pilot picked up his coffee and the cookie, which he ate as he wandered back into the auditorium. It was beginning to fill up. The co-pilot’s practiced eye spotted the fresh fish coming through the door. The fish was a shaky forty-two-year-old male who looked pale and sick and terribly frightened. The co-pilot guessed that the fish was less than a week off a six-month drunk.

The co-pilot’s mouth spread itself into a wide, warm smile as he moved over to the fish, stuck out his hand, and said, “Hi. I’m Don. How’s it going, pal — a little rough?”

The man who had taken the telephone call from the co-pilot was Gambia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Dr. Joseph Mapangou, who lived far above his means in a $2,150-a-month one-bedroom-with-den apartment on East 60th, which almost, but not quite, commanded a view of Central Park.

During his nine years in New York, Dr. Mapangou had built the reputation of being one of the UN’s most charming and lavish hosts. There was some small argument over whether he actually spent more than the Kuwait delegation, but there was no argument at all over his ranking as the UN’s most delightfully wicked gossip.

As the principal representative of Africa’s smallest nation, Dr. Mapangou’s official duties and obligations were minimal, almost non-existent, and he had spent his first two years at the UN simply making friends, which he did with remarkable ease. For Dr. Mapangou was a naturally gregarious man, totally without pretense, who found everyone equally fascinating. He also was a true democrat, perhaps the only one accredited to the UN, and certainly the only delegate who still believed that the organization was really the parliament of the world.

It was perhaps because of his innocence that others confided in Dr. Mapangou. They told him their most awful secrets even though they knew he simply could not keep his mouth shut. And because he revealed everything he knew to others, they, in turn, confided in him even darker secrets, which he cheerfully recounted to anyone who would listen.

The Italians, of course, had been the first to recognize Dr. Mapangou’s true value. The Italians were having a minor but irritating problem with a stubborn delegate from Somalia. Over an expensive lunch at Lutèce, the Italians had whispered to Dr. Mapangou about the Somalian delegate’s shocking peculations. By nightfall it was all over the UN. By the next morning it had reached Mogadishu, and by that afternoon the Somalian delegate had been ordered home, much to the Italians’ immense satisfaction.

Indeed, so grateful were they to Dr. Mapangou for his small favor that the Italians sent him an expensive silver coffee service. Dr. Mapangou immediately pawned it for four hundred dollars, which he needed to help pay the rent on the third-floor walk-up in the East Village where he then lived.

During the next few years, Dr. Mapangou became the UN’s unofficial clearinghouse for rumor and innuendo of the base, vicious, and scurrilous kind. He was valued and even respected for two qualities: first, his meticulous accuracy, and second, his refusal ever to reveal his sources. Because of all this, he was not only tolerated but indeed encouraged by the spies and rumor-mongers who made extensive use of his services and rewarded him with expensive and easily pawnable gifts that Dr. Mapangou used to help finance his increasing social responsibilities.

On the anniversary of his seventh year at the UN, Dr. Mapangou found himself immensely popular and nearly ninety thousand dollars in debt — all because of his lavish hospitality. The exact figure of his debts was $89,831.19, and it stared up at him in red from the Litronix pocket calculator that rested on his desk next to the stack of bills and nasty letters from assorted collection agencies.

It was the morning after the party he had given himself in observance of his seventh anniversary with the UN and he was still in his pajamas. Around him in his East Village living room was all the depressing evidence of the previous night’s party. During the party he had gleaned one delicious item that he knew would be worth at least a thousand dollars to the East Germans. But what good would a thousand dollars do? Dr. Mapangou pressed the C button on the calculator, which erased the hateful $89,831.19 figure. Three tears began to roll down his plump cheeks as he picked up his breakfast, which consisted of a piece of stale toast that he dipped into the remains of last night’s caviar. He was still sniffing back his tears and chewing on the toast and caviar when the pounding began at his door.

Dr. Mapangou didn’t bother to put on a robe. Instead, he wiped away the tears with a used cocktail napkin and went to the door in his pajamas. He knew who it was. It was the police. They had come to seize him, to clap him into some kind of debtors’ prison. He opened the door. A big man with a rubbery face stood there. In his hand was an attaché case.

“You Dr. Joseph Mapangou?”

Dr. Mapangou tried to smile but couldn’t. “I will get dressed,” he said and turned away.

“What for?” said the man as he came in and closed the door.

“I cannot go like this.”

“Go where?” the man said and moved over to the switch on the television set. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Dr. Mapangou pointed. The rubbery-faced man went in and turned on all the taps in both the bath and the basin. He then lifted the top off the toilet and did something to the float bulb inside that made the toilet run and gurgle.

After that he came back into the living room, looked around, and moved to the desk, where he shoved the stack of bills and the Litronix calculator to one side. He placed the attaché case on the desk and glared at Dr. Mapangou.

“My name’s Arnold,” lied Franklin Keeling, the ex-CIA agent. “You’re going to work for me.”

“Work? I? Well, I mean, doing what?”

Keeling opened the attaché case. “What do you care?”

The case was packed with greenish pieces of paper. But then Dr. Mapangou fumbled his glasses from the pocket of his pajamas, put them on, blinked a few times, and discovered that the greenish pieces of paper were actually hundred-dollar bills. There seemed to be a simply enormous number of them.

All that had happened two years ago. The hundred-dollar bills in the attaché case had enabled Dr. Mapangou to erase his debts and to lease the apartment on East 60th, which he dearly loved, and to continue and even increase both the number and quality of his social engagements.

And every Friday morning at nine o’clock Dr. Mapangou would sit down at his new custom-made pecan desk, take pen in hand, and report in careful detail every item of gossip and rumor that he had heard during the week. When the report was done, he would seal it in a plain envelope, take the subway to East 12th Street, and drop it off with a blind man who ran a candy store. On the first Friday of every month the blind man would hand Dr. Mapangou an envelope. Sometimes it would contain instructions from the man called Arnold. Sometimes not. But it always contained fifty hundred-dollar bills.

After the call came from the co-pilot, Dr. Mapangou canceled the dinner for eight that he had scheduled at the Four Seasons, soaked for an hour in his tub, dressed carefully in a dark blue worsted suit, and resolved to walk to the Gotham Hotel to save money. Dr. Mapangou was often guilty of such small, mindless false economies, and he often twitted himself about them.

Nevertheless, he walked, arriving at the Gotham promptly at 10 P.M. He failed to notice the black Mercury sedan that crept along behind him. The car trailed Dr. Mapangou all the way to the Gotham. When Dr. Mapangou entered the hotel, the driver got out and gave the doorman a twenty-dollar bill to let him park the Mercury on 55th Street just past the hotel’s entrance.

Dr. Mapangou took the elevator up to room 542, which was registered to a Mr. Minder, but actually occupied by Franklin Keeling, formerly of the CIA, and Jack Spiceman, formerly of the FBI. The meeting of the three men lasted thirty-two minutes.

After Dr. Mapangou left room 542, he rode the elevator down, left the hotel, and — still seized by his fit of economy — decided to walk back to his apartment. In his left hand he carried an insulated paper sack, the kind that is used to get ice cream home before it melts.

It wasn’t until he had reached 60th Street that the Mercury sedan pulled up beside him and the big man with the bald head got out. The big man was Alex Reese, who intended to become the CIA’s chief of station in London, if everything worked out just right.

“Dr. Mapangou,” Reese said in his harsh bass voice.

Dr. Mapangou turned.

“What’ve you got in the bag, Doc?”

“It... it is ice cream. Yes, ice cream. Chocolate.”

Reese reached over and took the bag away from Dr. Mapangou. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

“I... I really would prefer to walk.”

“Come on,” Reese said, managing to turn the two words of invitation into a threat.

Dr. Mapangou climbed into the front seat of the sedan. Reese got behind the wheel. The car pulled away. “Let’s take a little drive,” Reese said.

Driving with one hand, Reese opened the insulated ice cream bag and then switched on the sedan’s map light. He reached into the bag and took out a frozen metal cylinder, the kind that cigars sometimes come in. The cylinder was sealed with Scotch tape. At a stop sign, Reese peeled it off.

“Ice cream, huh?” he said to Dr. Mapangou. Dr. Mapangou said nothing.

Reese twisted the cap from the metal cylinder and shook its contents out into the palm of his left hand. The contents consisted of a single human forefinger, frozen solid.

Reese stared at it for a long moment, then looked at Dr. Mapangou and smiled. “You and me, Doc — you and me’d better have a little talk.”

Dr. Mapangou licked his lips nervously, nodded slightly, and was surprised to discover that, despite everything, he was quite looking forward to it.