Free Saffire by Sigmund Brouwer Page B

“White-skinned get paid in gold. Did you notice as we passed by the dining room below how it was sweltering and filled with laborers? They get paid in silver. You don’t see signs for ‘white’ or ‘black,’ but gold and silver accomplish the same thing.”
    He scratched an ear. A waiter misinterpreted the signal and glided over, but Harry waved him away.
    “Been to Cristóbal and Colón?” Harry asked.
    “Through. On the way here.”
    “You get a chance, next time there stop at the Washington Hotel so you know I’m not lying. Look for the sign at the swimming pool. It says it’s only for gold employees of the ICC or PRR and guests of the Washington Hotel. That makes the pool a whites-only pool. Then beyond the hotel are the great hospitals, where gold men stay in wards built out over the sea, and behind them the silvers have to be content with secondhand breezes. You’ll notice it’s white men in the wards built over the sea and not-so-white in the smaller, cramped wards.”
    He put up his hands to stop any comment I might make. “Just stating facts, not making judgment about how Goethals runs all fifty-thousand employees. In fact, the way he has set it is akin to socialism, and in a way, maybe there’s nothing better. But it takes a man like him, a benevolent dictator, sitting in judgment on his subjects in his castle office on Sunday mornings to keep it benevolent.”
    This point I well understood.
    “I think of the colonel as the three omnis,” Harry said.
    “Uh-huh.” I added encouragement to my tone. I’d stopped at the office to learn anything I could about Goethals and Miskimon and Cromwell without looking like that was my intent, which limited any direct questions that might tip my hand.
    “Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omnipresent. In the matter of omnipresence, it would be pretty hard to find a hole in the Canal Zone where you could pull off a stunt of any length or importance without the ICC having a weather eye on you. Omnipotent? You need to be careful around him. Those who cross him or his system have landed in the States a week later, much less joyous but far wiser. Omniscient? Goethals has spies everywhere. They have even Chinese secret-service men on the isthmus, and soldiers and marines not infrequently go out in civilian clothes, under sealed orders. There’s not a reporter on the isthmus that works unobserved. Even women working for him. And that doesn’t cover anything that might be said about the colonel’s private gumshoe.”
    Ah, so that’s where this was going. Thank goodness.
    “Miskimon,” I said. “I find him to be a curious man.”
    “Well, you’re going to end up curious for a while. Nobody knows anything about him. Not even me, and that’s saying something. When you going to report for work? Tomorrow, I suppose.”
    I nodded.
    “And headed to Panama City tonight? Been there before?”
    I shook my head. No point in wasting breath trying to talk around him.
    “I was just describing that in my notebook yesterday, what it’s like going from the Zone to Panama City. Our town, Ancón, is on one sidewalk of the Zone, with policemen like you and me in khaki on patrol, and across the other side of the street, their cops in dark blue and helmets marked the Republic of Panama, ruling their domain of Panama City. Not patrolling though, lounging. I mean, you step across the street you become a foreigner, and plenty try to take advantage of it. Your police badge is worthless tin in Panama, no protection at all. Want maybe that I go with you tonight? As a guide. Sunday nights in Panama City, they are crazy, what with no liquor sales in the Zone.”
    “I’ll be good.”
    “You sure? Seems like you don’t speak a lick of Spanish.”
    “If I get lost, I’ll find someone who speaks English.”
    He gave me a doubtful look. “Well then, I hope I see you tomorrow.”

W hen I stepped back onto the southbound train from Corozal, the passenger car was half-full, with a wide range of