Free Night of the Jaguar by Joe Gannon Page A

nauseating sweet smell of early putrefaction were backed up like traffic. Plastic temporary caskets lined the walls like indolent orderlies. The air stank of formaldehyde—the poor man’s embalming fluid. In a country with only four funeral homes, used almost exclusively by the rich or connected, the dead got buried quickly or pumped full of formaldehyde—which smelled like embalming fluid, only more so. The colossal ice machine stood by the back door leaking tepid water. Ajax’s old friend Marta had let him and Gladys sneak through that door after they had spotted the DGSE car parked out front and the two guards posted there. Marta had assured the guards would not interrupt by inviting them to help wash the corpse and witness the autopsy.
    Now a clandestine school was in session.
    Ajax whispered it: “Touch his penis, Lieutenant.”
    â€œWhat?” she had to whisper back.
    â€œYou heard me, Gladys, touch the stiff’s dick.”
    â€œThat’s not right, Captain.”
    â€œLift his dick and check under it for clues.”
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œI told you to have a look at him in the ditch and you tucked your arms behind your back like you’re studying a pile of fresh shit. Corpses are our playground. Once you can touch a corpse’s genitalia, you can examine the whole thing with ease. Right, Marta?”
    â€œDon’t involve me in your initiation rituals, Montoya. You were always a freak around death.”
    Marta Jimenez was a compa from the old days. An ex-pat from Colombia, still lithe and long haired in handsome middle age, she’d joined the Sandinistas fresh out of medical school in the mid ’60s when their cause made tilting at windmills seem the sport of sages. She’d spent years making miracles in the mountains. And not just with bullet wounds and amputations. She’d saved more limbs than she’d sawed, conjuring penicillin out of moldy bread; kept the compas’ blood strong with iron supplements alchemized from nails in jugs of water. The compas had sometimes called her Doctora Higado Mono—Doctor Monkey Liver—because she made them hunt and eat it for the vitamin A. But her nom de guerre had been Mami. She’d picked lice from their hair, hovered over their nasty feet fighting jungle rot, and wiped asses when dysentery was killing them. Hers was the last face many a compa had seen. She was now the chief pathologist in Managua—meaning the only one in the whole country.
    â€œBut you agree, Marta, that a corpse must become a thing if it is to be studied?”
    In reply, Marta handed Ajax a pair of gloves—not surgical gloves, but the kind the maids of the rich wore while doing dishes.
    â€œWhy don’t you show her, Ajax?”
    Ajax pulled the gloves on.
    â€œHe uses these when he plays with himself, you know.”
    â€œNot this actual pair, Gladys; I keep some at home.”
    Ajax ran his hand expertly over the corpse. Stiffness had crept into the limbs, but he lifted them, running his fingers over the skin, looking closely.
    â€œSome long scratches here on the right forearm.”
    Marta nodded. “Yeah. Mostly healed. Looks like a cat.”
    Ajax rolled the body to look at the back, ran his fingers through its hair.
    â€œHow long he’s been dead, Mami?”
    â€œRectal thermometer’s ready to come out.”
    â€œYou have one of those?”
    â€œUsed to hang on the wall over there.”
    Ajax looked archly at Gladys. “Lieutenant?”
    â€œNo fucking way.”
    Ajax slid it out and handed it to Marta.
    â€œFifty-six Fahrenheit.”
    He finished his examination. Then, because he had to, he lifted the penis and looked under it. He pointed the head at Gladys and wiggled it. “Don’t be afraid of me, Lieutenant!”
    Gladys turned her face away. Ajax saw she was truly embarrassed.
    â€œAjax, have some goddamn respect,” Marta said.
    â€œSorry, Marta.