'What does she do with it?'

'With the work? Work on it. Type it,'

'The lolly. Jack. Pay.'

'It all goes into the joint account, Andy, which is what she considers right and proper, being a very high-minded woman and mother,' Pendel replied primly.

And to his surprise he felt himself blush scarlet, and his eyes filled with hot tears until he somehow persuaded them to go back to where they had come from. But Osnard wasn't blushing and no tears flooded his boot-b.u.t.ton black eyes.

'Poor girl's working to pay off Ramon,' he said relentlessly. 'And doesn't even know it,'

But if Pendel was mortified by this cruel statement of hard fact, his expression no longer showed it. He was peering excitedly down the room, his face a mixture of joy and apprehension.

'Harry! My friend! Harry! I swear to G.o.d. I love you!'

An enormous figure in a magenta smoking jacket was lumbering towards them, crashing against tables, draw-ing cries of anger and turning over drinks along his path. He was a young man still and the vestiges of good looks clung to him despite the ravages of pain and dissipation.

Seeing him approach, Pendel had already risen to his feet.

'Senor Mickie, sir, I love you back, and how are you today?' he enquired anxiously. 'Meet Andy Osnard, chum of mine. Andy, this is Mickie Abraxas. Mickie, I think you're a touch refreshed. Why don't we both sit down?'

But Mickie needed to show off his jacket and he couldn't do it sitting down. Knuckles to his hips, finger-tips outward, he executed a grotesque rendering of a fashion-model's pirouette before grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself. The table rocked and a couple of plates crashed to the floor.

'You like it, Harry? You proud of it?' He was speaking North American English very loud.

'Mickie, it's truly beautiful,' said Pendel earnestly. 'I was just saying to Andy here, I never cut a better pair of shoulders and you show them off a treat, didn't I, Andy? Now why don't we sit down and have a natter?'

But Mickie had focused on Osnard.

'What do you think, Mister?'

Osnard gave an easy smile. 'Congratulations. P&B at their best. Centre runs right down the middle.'

'Who the f.u.c.k are you?'

'He's a customer, Mickie,' said Pendel, working hard for peace, which with Mickie he always did. 'Name of Andy. I told you but you wouldn't listen. Mickie was at Oxford, weren't you, Mickie? Tell Andy which college you were at. He's also a very big fan of our English way of life and sometime president of our Anglo-Panamanian Society of Culture, right, Mickie? Andy's a highly important diplomat, right, Andy? He works at the British Emba.s.sy. Arthur Braithwaite made suits for his old dad.'

Mickie Abraxas digested this, but not with any great pleasure, for he was eyeing Osnard darkly, not much liking what he saw.

'Know what I would do if I was President of Panama, Mr Andy?'

'Why don't you sit down, Mickie, and we'll hear all about it?'

'I'd kill the lot of us. There's no hope for us. We're screwed. We've got everything G.o.d needed to make paradise. Great farming, beaches, mountains, wildlife you wouldn't believe, put a stick in the ground you get a fruit tree, people so beautiful you could cry. What do we do? Cheat. Conspire. Lie. Pretend. Steal. Starve each other. Behave like there's nothing left for anyone except me. We're so stupid and corrupt and blind I don't know why the earth doesn't swallow us up right now. Yes, I do. We sold the earth to the f.u.c.king Arabs in Colon. You gonna tell that to the Queen?'

'Can't wait,' said Osnard pleasantly.

'Mickie, I'm going to get cross with you in a minute if you don't sit down. You're making a spectacle of yourself and embarra.s.sing me.'

'Don't you love me?'

'You know I do. Now sit yourself down like a good lad.'

'Where's Marta?'

'At home, I expect, Mickie. In El Chorrillo where she lives. Doing her studies, I expect.'

'I love that woman.'

'I'm glad to hear it, Mickie, and so will Marta be. Now sit down.'

'You love her too.'

'We both do, Mickie, in our separate ways, I'm sure,' Pendel replied, not blushing exactly, but suffering an inconvenient clotting of the voice. 'Now sit yourself down like a good lad. Please.'

Grabbing Pendel's head in both hands, Mickie whispered wetly in his ear. 'Dolce Vita for the big race on Sunday, hear me? Rafi Domingo bought the jockeys. All of them, hear me? Tell Marta. Make her rich.'

'Mickie, I hear you loud and clear, and Rafi was in my shop this morning but you weren't, which was a pity, because there's a nice dinner jacket there waiting for you to try it on. Now sit down, please, like a good friend.'

Out of the corner of his eye Pendel saw two large men with ident.i.ty tags advancing purposefully towards them along the edge of the room. Pendel reached a protective arm halfway across Mickie's mountainous shoulders.

'Mickie, if you make any more trouble I'll never cut another suit for you,' he said in English. And in Spanish to the men: 'We're all fine, thank you, gentlemen. Mr Abraxas will be leaving of his own accord. Mickie.'

'What?'

'Are you listening to me, Mickie?'

'No.'

'Is your nice driver Santos outside with the car?'

'Who cares?'

Taking Mickie's arm, Pendel led him gently through the dining room under a mirrored ceiling to the lobby, where Santos the driver was anxiously waiting for his master.

'I'm sorry you didn't see him at his best, Andy,' Pendel said shyly. 'Mickie is one of Panama's few real heroes.'

With defensive pride, he volunteered a brief history of Mickie's life till now: father an immigrant Greek ship-owner and close chum of General Omar Torrijos, which was why he agreed to neglect his business interests and devote himself full time to Panama's drug trade, turning it into something everyone could be proud of in the war against Communism.

'He always talk like that?'

'Well, it's not all talk, Andy, I will say. Mickie had a high regard for his old dad, he liked Torrijos and didn't like We-Know-Who,' he explained, observing the oppressive local convention of not mentioning Noriega by name. 'A fact which Mickie felt obliged to declare from the rooftops to all who had ears to listen, till We-Know-Who popped his garters and had him put in prison to shut him up.'

'h.e.l.l was all that about Marta?'

'Yes, well you see, that was the old days, Andy, what I'd call a hangover. From when they were both active together in their cause, you see. Marta being a black artisan's daughter and him a spoiled rich boy, but shoulder to shoulder for democracy, as you might say,' Pendel replied, running ahead of himself in his desire to put the topic behind him as fast as possible. 'Unusual friendships were made in those days. Bonds were forged. Like he said. They loved each other. Well they would.'

'Thought he was talking about you.'

Pendel rode himself still harder.

'Only, your prison here, Andy, it's a bit more prison than what it is back home, I'll put it that way. Which is not to put down the home variety, not by any means. Only what they did, you see, was they banged Mickie up with a large quant.i.ty of not very sensitive long-term criminals, twelve to a cell or more, and every now and then they'd move him to another cell, if you follow me, which didn't do a lot for Mickie's health, on account of him being what you might call a handsome young man in his day,' he ended awkwardly. And he allowed a moment of silence, which Osnard had the tact not to interrupt, to commemorate Mickie's lost beauty. 'Plus they beat him senseless a few times, for annoying them,' he added.

'Look him up at all?' Osnard enquired carelessly.

'In prison, Andy? Yes. Yes, I did.'

'Must have made a change, being t'other side o' the bars.'

Mickie scarecrow thin, face lopsided from a beating, eyes still fresh from h.e.l.l. Mickie in frayed orange rags, no bespoke tailor available. Wet red blisters round his ankles, more round his wrists. A man in chains must learn not to writhe while he is beaten but learning this takes time. Mickie mumbling: 'Harry, I swear to G.o.d, give me your hand, Harry, as I love you, get me out of here.' Pendel whispering: 'Mickie, listen to me, you've got to drucken yourself, lad, don't look them in the eye.' Neither man hearing the other. Nothing to be said except hullo and see you soon.

'So What's he up to now?' Osnard asked, as if the subject had already lost its interest for him. 'Apart from drinking himself to death and being a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance around the place?'

'Mickie?' Pendel asked.

'Who d'you think?'

And suddenly the same imp that had obliged Pendel to make a scallywag of Delgado obliged him also to make a modern hero of Abraxas: If this Osnard thinks he can write Mickie off, then he's got another think coming, hasn't he? Mickie's my friend, my winger, my oppo, my cellmate. Mickie had his fingers broken and his b.a.l.l.s crushed. Mickie was g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ged by bad convicts while you were playing leapfrog in your nice English public school.

Pendel shot a furtive glance round the dining room in case they were being overheard. At the next table a bullet-headed man was accepting a large white portable telephone from the head waiter. He spoke, the head waiter removed the phone, only to bestow it like a loving cup on another needy guest.

'Mickie's still at it, Andy,' Pendel murmured under his breath. 'What you see isn't what you get, not with Mickie, not by a long chalk, never was and isn't now, I'll put it that way.'

What was he doing? What was he saying? He hardly knew himself. He was a muddler. Somewhere in his over-worked mind was an idea that he could make a gift of love to Mickie, build him into something he could never be, a Mickie redux, dried out, shining bright, militant and courageous.

'Still at what? Don't follow you. Talking code again.'

'He's in there.'

'In where?'

'With the Silent Opposition,' said Pendel, in the manner of a mediaeval warrior who hurls his colours into the enemy ranks before plunging in to win them back.

'The what?'

'Silently opposing. Him and his tightly-knit group of fellow believers.'

'Believers in what, Christ's sake?'

'The sham, Andy. The veneer. The beneath the surface, put it that way,' Pendel insisted, giddily ascending to hitherto unsealed heights of fantasy. Half-remembered recent dialogues with Marta were speeding to his aid. 'The phoney democracy that is the new squeaky-clean Panama, ha ha. It's all a pretence. That's what he was telling you. You heard him. Cheat. Conspire. Lie. Pretend. Draw aside the curtain and it's the same boys that owned We-Know-Who waiting to take back the reins.'

Osnard's pinhole eyes continued to hold Pendel in their black beam. It's my range, thought Pendel, already protecting himself from the consequences of his rashness. That's all he wants to hear. Not my accuracy, my range. He doesn't care whether I'm reading notes or playing from memory or improvising. He's probably not even listening, not as such.

'Mickie's in touch with the people the other side of the bridge,' he forged on bravely.

'h.e.l.l are they?'

The bridge was the Bridge of the Americas. The expression was once more Marta's.

'The hidden rank and file, Andy,' said Pendel boldly. 'The strivers and believers who would rather see progress than take bribes,' he replied, quoting Marta verbatim. 'The farmers and artisans who've been betrayed by lousy greedy government. The honourable small professionals. The decent part of Panama you never get to see or hear about. They're organising themselves. They've had enough. So's Mickie.'

'Marta in on this?'

'She could be, Andy. I never ask. It's not my place to know. I have my thoughts. That's all I'm saying.'

Long pause.

'Had enough of what exactly?'

Pendel cast a swift, conspiratorial glance round the dining room. He was Robin Hood, bringer of hope to the oppressed, dispenser of justice. At the next table, a noisy party of twelve was tucking into lobster and Dom Perignon.

'This,' he replied in a low, emphatic voice. 'Them. And all that they entail.'

Osnard wanted to hear more about the j.a.panese.

'Well now, your j.a.panese, Andy - you met one just now, which I expect is why you asked - are what I call highly present in Panama, and have been for many years now, I would say as many as twenty,' Pendel replied enthusiastically, grateful to be able to put the subject of his only true friend behind him. 'There's your j.a.panese processions to-amuse the crowds, there's your j.a.panese bra.s.s bands, there's a j.a.panese seafood market they presented to the nation, and there's even a j.a.panese-funded educational TV channel,' he added, recalling one of the few programmes his children were allowed to watch.

'Who's your top j.a.p?'

'Customerwise, Andy? Top I don't know. They're what I call enigmatic. I'd have to ask Marta probably. It's one to be measured and six to bow and take his picture, we always say, and we're not far wrong. There's a Mr Yoshio from one of their trade missions who throws his weight around the shop a bit, and there's a Toshikazu from the Emba.s.sy, but whether we're talking first or second names here, I'd have to look it up.'

'Or get Marta to.'

'Correct.'

Conscious again of Osnard's blackened stare, Pendel vouchsafed him an endearing smile in an effort to deflect him, but without success.

'You ever have Ernie Delgado to dinner?' he asked while Pendel was still expecting further questions about the j.a.panese.

'Not as such, Andy, no.'

'Why not? He's your wife's boss.'

'I don't think Louisa would approve, frankly.'

'Why not?'

The imp again. The one that pops up to remind us that nothing goes away; that a moment's jealousy can sp.a.w.n a lifetime's fiction; and that the only thing to do with a good man once you've pulled him low is pull him lower.

'Ernie is what I call of the hard right, Andy. He was the same under We-Know-Who, although he never let on. All p.i.s.s and mustard when he was with his liberal friends, if you'll pardon me, but as soon as their backs were turned it was pop next door to We-Know-Who and "Yes sir, no sir, and how can we be of service, Your Highness?'"

'Not generally known, though, is it, all the same? Still a white man to most of us, Ernie is.'

'Which is why he's dangerous, Andy. Ask Mickie. Ernie's an iceberg. There's a lot more of him below the water than what there is above, I'll put it that way.'

Osnard scrunched a roll, added a spot of b.u.t.ter and ate with slow, ruminative circular movements of the lower jaw. But his chip-black eyes wanted more than bread and b.u.t.ter.

'That upstairs room you've got in the shop - Sportsman's Corner.'