The Mordida Man

17

Up in Dr. Joseph Mapangou’s dearly beloved apartment on East 60th Street, Alex Reese lowered himself into the chair behind the custom pecan desk, put the ice cream bag down on the leather-edged blotter, and stared balefully at Dr. Mapangou, who stood nervously before him, not at all sure whether he needed permission to sit.

“What’ve you got to drink?” Reese demanded.

Dr. Mapangou smiled. Now he could be host — a familiar and comfortable role. “Some very nice whisky perhaps? Or some excellent brandy?”

“Whisky,” Reese said. “About that much.” He held his thumb and middle finger about two inches apart.

Dr. Mapangou poured the drinks quickly, the whisky for Reese and a smaller measure of brandy for himself. “May I sit?” he said as he put the drinks down on the desk.

“Sit,” Reese said, drank off half of the whisky, and took the metal cylinders out of the ice cream bag. He opened both cylinders and shook their contents out on the blotter. Two frozen severed fingers pointed accusingly at Dr. Mapangou, who shuddered.

Reese bent forward slightly to examine the fingers more carefully. “Bit his nails, didn’t he?” he said and again turned his baleful stare on Dr. Mapangou.

Dr. Mapangou seemed to feel that the question required an answer, so he bent forward, gave the fingers a quick inspection, nodded slightly, and hastily drank some of his brandy.

“You got an ink pad?” Reese said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“An ink pad. You know.” Reese pounded a fist from side to side on the desk as though demonstrating how documents should be stamped to someone who had never heard of documents.

“In the second drawer on the left,” Dr. Mapangou said, suddenly convinced that Reese would have made a perfect district officer in some repressive African colonial regime.

Reese found the ink pad as well as two sheets of smooth white paper. Dr. Mapangou watched as Reese inked the severed fingers carefully and then rolled each one onto a separate sheet. Reese tenderly put the sheets away in a used manila envelope that he had found in the desk’s middle drawer.

“Wash ’em off,” he said and used his own middle finger and thumb to flick the two severed fingers across the desk toward Dr. Mapangou.

Again, Dr. Mapangou said, “I beg your pardon?”

“You know,” Reese said, dry-washing his own hands. “Washee, washee.”

Dr. Mapangou gingerly picked up the two fingers and moved to his wet bar, where he washed the ink off them with a bar of lavender-scented soap. After that he dried them with a paper towel and turned back to Reese.

“They’re beginning to thaw, I believe,” Dr. Mapangou said.

“You got any aluminum foil?”

Dr. Mapangou nodded.

“Wrap ’em up good in that and pop ’em into your freezer.”

After finishing his chores in the kitchen, Dr. Mapangou returned to the living room and sat back down in front of the desk. He watched as Reese drank more whisky, looked around the room, and nodded appreciatively at what he saw.

“You got a real nice place here,” Reese said. “How much does it run you?”

“Twenty-one-fifty a month.”

“No kidding? That much. Tell me about the fingers, Doc.”

“I did not know what they were.”

“You didn’t, huh?”

“No.”

“Let’s see now. You left here about a quarter to ten, walked to the Gotham, went in, stayed about half an hour, and came out with a couple of frozen fingers in cigar tubes all nice and insulated in an ice cream bag — except you didn’t know what they were, right?”

“That is correct.”

“What’d you think they were?”

“I was not told.”

Reese nodded. “What room did you go up to? Remember, I’m gonna check it all out.”

“Room 542.”

“And whose room was that?”

“I was told that it was a Mr. Minder’s.”

“Is that who you saw?”

“No.”

Reese sighed. “Okay. Who did you see up there in room 542?”

“Mr. Arnold,” Dr. Mapangou said. “And Mr. Benedict.”

“Arnold and Benedict.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about Arnold and Benedict. They white folks?”

“Americans.”

“What’re their first names?”

“I do not know. The only names they ever gave me were Arnold and Benedict.”

“All right, we’ll let that slide. What did Arnold and Benedict want you to do?”

“They wanted me to deliver the two... cigar tubes.”

“They did, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Who did they want you to deliver them to?”

Dr. Mapangou picked up his brandy and took a swallow, thinking, Now it’s going to become unpleasant. He sighed and put the brandy glass back down on the desk.

“They wanted me to deliver the cigar tubes to certain members of the Libyan and Israeli delegations. One each.”

“Which members?”

“To Fathi Ashour, who is Libyan, and to Gad Efrati. He, of course, is Israeli.”

“And what were you supposed to tell Brother Ashour and Brother Efrati after you delivered them the sliced-off fingers?”

“I did not know about the fingers.”

“Okay. You didn’t know. But what were you supposed to tell them?”

“The same thing.”

“Which was what?”

“I had to memorize it.”

“You mean Arnold and Benedict made you memorize it?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“I was to tell both Ashour and Efrati this, exactly: ‘If you want the rest of the merchandise, the price will be ten million dollars. Upon receipt of the money, the merchandise will be returned undamaged within twenty-four hours. Dr. Mapangou will serve as intermediary.’ That is the end of the message I had to memorize.” Dr. Mapangou quickly gulped down the remainder of his brandy.

Reese nodded his big head thoughtfully. He leaned across the desk toward Dr. Mapangou and dropped his big bass voice to a confidential rumble. “Tell me something. What do you think the ‘rest of the merchandise’ is?”

Dr. Mapangou swallowed noisily. “I do not know.”

“Come on, Doc. You deliver them each a finger. Now what do you think belongs to a finger?”

“A person?” Dr. Mapangou whispered.

“A person!” Reese said, trying to sound surprised and not succeeding too well. “That’s very good. In fact, for a jungle bunny, that’s damn good. Now why didn’t I think of that? A person!”

Dr. Mapangou tried to smile. “Perhaps a little more whisky?”

“Sure. Why not.” Dr. Mapangou rose as Reese locked his hands behind his big bald head and stared up at the ceiling. “A person. Now what person would both the Israelis and Libyans be willing to pay ten million bucks for, providing he was returned in good condition?”

“Perhaps the person is a she?” Dr. Mapangou said, setting the whisky down in front of Reese.

“A she, huh? Well, that’s an idea, except I don’t think a she would have thick, stubby fingers like that with the nails chewed down to the quick and the cuticles all shot to hell. No, I think it’s a he. That’s what I think.”

He’s playing with me, Dr. Mapangou thought sadly. He thinks I am a fool and now he is going to make me do something awful. For the first time, Dr. Mapangou found himself wishing he had never come to New York.

“You know what I’m gonna do with those two pieces of paper that I’ve got in this envelope,” Reese said, smacking the manila envelope with his left hand.

Dr. Mapangou shook his head no.

“I’m gonna take these down to Washington and then I’m gonna compare ’em with a set of fingerprints that the French got out of a hotel room in Paris and I’ll bet you six boxes of fig newtons that they match up exactly. And you know who those fingerprints that the French got out of that certain hotel room in Paris belong to?”

Again, Dr. Mapangou shook his head no, dreading what Reese would say next.

“Why, they belong to Gustavo Berrio-Brito, that’s who. The well-known freedom fighter. The guy everybody calls Felix. You’ve heard of Felix, haven’t you, Doc?”

“Yes,” Dr. Mapangou whispered. “I’ve heard of him.”

Reese stared at Dr. Mapangou for several moments. When he finally spoke, his deep voice was soft and curiously gentle. “You better tell me the rest of it, Doc. All of it. You know I’m going to get it out of you one way or another.”

Dr. Mapangou stared down at the blotter on his pecan desk. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. A moment later he began to talk in an indistinct, choked voice. It was so low that Reese had to lean forward to hear.

Dr. Mapangou began at the beginning, back when he was $89,831.19 in debt and his creditors were closing in and the man called Arnold appeared suddenly, as if by magic, like some rubbery-faced good fairy, bearing the attaché case full of greenish pieces of paper that turned out to be hundred-dollar bills once Dr. Mapangou had slipped his glasses on.

“This guy Arnold,” Reese said. “What did he look like?”

Dr. Mapangou gave a detailed description of Franklin Keeling, the ex-CIA man, and his constantly exasperated expression, and his sometimes tortured syntax.

“Did he do this a lot?” Reese said and wiped his right hand hard across the bottom half of his face.

“Yes, he does that frequently.”

“And when he talks do his hands move around a lot like this?” Reese made his hands flutter about above the desk blotter.

“Like fat butterflies,” said Dr. Mapangou, a closet poet who prided himself on his imagery, but kept his efforts locked away in the bottom drawer of the pecan desk.

“The other guy, Benedict. What’s he look like?”

Dr. Mapangou’s description of Jack Spiceman, the ex-FBI special agent, was equally exact and equally detailed. “He has very still eyes,” Dr. Mapangou said. “Very... remote, like lost lakes.”

“How much money was in the attaché case?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

“For what?”

“It was a... retainer.”

“A retainer, huh? They retained you to do what?”

“Furnish information.”

“To them?”

“And to others.”

Reese rose and moved over to Dr. Mapangou’s wet bar. He picked up a bottle of whisky and examined its label. Still examining it, he said, “About three months ago, in the delegates’ lounge at the UN, a rumor started. The rumor was about Libyan oil and U.S. arms. A trade. Maybe you heard it?”

Dr. Mapangou cleared his throat. “I may have done.”

Reese walked back to the pecan desk and planted the whisky bottle squarely in the center of the blotter. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe you even started it.”

Dr. Mapangou said nothing.

“Well?”

“They... supplied me with the information.”

“Arnold and Benedict?”

Dr. Mapangou nodded.

“And you just dropped a hint here and there.”

Again Dr. Mapangou nodded.

“Maybe to the Nigerians, huh?”

Another nod from Dr. Mapangou — a wretched nod.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Reese said, sitting back down in the chair behind the pecan desk. “You’re a diplomat. You heard some information. You passed it on. That’s what diplomats do, right?”

“Yes,” Dr. Mapangou murmured. “That’s what they do.”

Reese poured two more inches of whisky into his glass. “You mentioned back there a ways that you furnished Arnold and Benedict with information. Was that on a regular basis?”

“Fairly regular, yes.”

“What’s fairly regular?”

“Once a week.”

“Written reports?”

“Yes.”

“You keep copies?”

Dr. Mapangou didn’t answer.

Reese let his eyes wander around the room. “I could rip this place inside out in twenty minutes — or have it done.”

“Yes, I kept copies.”

“What was in the reports — just general gossip?”

“Mostly.”

“And I suppose they sweetened the pot a little.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Reese rubbed his thumb against the insides of his fingers in the ancient gesture signifying money.

“Yes... yes, they did compensate me with a little extra.”

“How much is a little extra?”

Dr. Mapangou closed his eyes because he didn’t want to see the expression on Reese’s face when he answered. He whispered the reply. “Five thousand dollars.”

Reese’s tone was incredulous. “A month!”

Dr. Mapangou nodded, his eyes still tightly closed. “A month.”

“Jesus Christ. How’d you work it?”

“There is a candy store in Twelfth Street in the Village. The proprietor is blind. I dropped my reports off there every Friday. On the first Friday of every month he would give me my compensation.”

“How’d he know it was you if he was blind?”

“A simple code. I would always ask him if he carried Fatimas, a cigarette, I believe, that is no longer manufactured. If he had no instructions for me, he would simply say no. But if he had a message from Mr. Arnold or Mr. Benedict, he would say no, he had no Fatimas, but he did have Murads. Then I would go to a certain phone booth at a certain time and receive my instructions verbally.”

Reese nodded slowly with either approval or understanding, or perhaps both. “So what did you do to earn your five thousand a month, Doc?”

“I’ve just told you.”

“No,” Reese said, shaking his head. “That might be worth, say, maybe five hundred bucks a month, but not five thousand. What was the big ticket item they had you working on?”

I will not answer, Dr. Mapangou thought, closing his eyes again. Tomorrow I will go to the airport and get on the plane and fly to Dakar and take the bus down to Banjul and then go for bush and never come out. They cannot find me there. Never.

He opened his eyes, and Reese’s cold stare hit him like a hard slap. “Felix,” Dr. Mapangou said. “They wanted me to locate the man Felix for them.”

A big smile spread itself across Reese’s face. “Well, now,” he said and grabbed his drink and drained it. “Well, now, by God.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, but the smile refused to go away. “You fingered him. You fingered Felix.”

Dr. Mapangou closed his eyes again and thought about Ban-Jul.

“How’d you do it?” Reese said, and for the first time there was nothing but admiration in his tone.

Something flickered in Dr. Mapangou’s thoughts, then died, and flickered again. He tried to smother it, but it refused to die. It does, he thought, after all, spring eternal.

“It was complicated,” he said, the pride creeping into his voice.

“I bet.”

“I have many friends at the UN. They tell me things. Sometimes they don’t quite know what they’re really telling me. I mean by that that one friend will tell me one thing, and I will tell him something, then another friend will tell me something, and then I put it all together — like a puzzle. In this instance, a PLO friend mentioned something, and a member of the Irish delegation said something else, and then one of my colleagues from Libya let drop a rather careless remark, and the Israelis, of course, are really terrible gossips, and one of them — I won’t say which one — gave me, unknowingly, of course, the last item I needed.”

“What was the key piece?” Reese asked with naked curiosity.

“It was the name of a doctor — an Indian doctor in London. He was not licensed to practice, but still he did. Or does. He was treating a woman and her child. The woman had tuberculosis. The woman had been sent to him by someone in the IRA. He was, or is, I suppose, the unofficial IRA doctor. Perhaps a specialist in gunshot wounds?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, I heard about the doctor from one person and about the woman and her child from another, and from yet another source I heard that Felix was worried about a woman member of his organization who had tuberculosis. So you see I simply put the various pieces together and then reported my findings to Mr. Arnold and Mr. Benedict.”

Reese leaned back in the chair and stared thoughtfully at Dr. Mapangou. For the first time, there was a measure of respect in the look that he gave the small neat man with the graying hair.

“Mr. Benedict and Mr. Arnold,” Reese said finally in a musing voice.

“Yes.”

“They want to sell Felix to both the Libyans and the Israelis for ten million bucks, right?”

“Yes.”

“But there can’t be two Felixes, can there?”

“No.”

“So what they really plan to do, Mr. Benedict and Mr. Arnold, is run a shitty, right?”

“A shitty? Yes, a shitty, as you say.”

Reese leaned forward across the desk and dropped his voice back down to the register where it turned into a confidential rumble. “What was your cut gonna be, Doc — out of the twenty million?”

Dr. Mapangou licked his lips. “Five hundred thousand?” He made it a tentative question.

Reese nodded his big head as if the amount were reasonable, but not overly so. He paused and chose his next words carefully. “How would you like to make, say... two million instead?”

The hope that had been flickering somewhere down in Dr. Mapangou’s breast burst into a roaring blast. But he kept his voice calm and casual, except for a small squeak at the very end.

“I would like that very much,” he said. “Very much indeed.”