Night of the Jaguar by Joe Gannon

for you! At this or any time of day—post-siesta—the doorbell could mean bill collectors, panhandlers, vendors of almost anything—last time it had been his errand boy, Jerónimo, with an ocelot cub on a rope. Still, a quiet caller who simply knocked was a blessing compared to the daily street vendors below his window—usually while the sun was still cruelly low—crying, “Mangoooooos! Fruuuuuuutas! Banaaaaaanos! Tomates! Cebooooooooooyas” in that distinctive, ear-splitting, high nasal screech of the street merchant. In fact, it was a kind of extortion. They might as well be screaming, “Buy my pathetic fruit or I will stand here and drive you mad with my screeeeeeeeching.” As often as not, he did.
    But whoever it was now would have to wait. He was late sending copy and the afternoon deadline raced toward him. He’d even left Epimenio parked downstairs under the care of Graciela, whose roots in the countryside put Epimenio at his ease. He looked back into the mirror. What a trip this place is . He’d gone to bed last night ready to wake up this morning and send copy or tape to every one of his seven major strings. Instead, even before he’d coffeed up, Graciela had called Matthew, le buscan! And he’d found Epimenio perched downstairs on the edge of a rattan chair in his Sunday whites like some great egret. Matthew knew Epimenio well from his many visits to Enrique Cuadra’s coffee farm, and Epimenio’s arrival sans Enrique had seemed strange. But nothing could have prepared Matthew for the bombshell Epimenio had dropped: Don Enrique asks that you help find his murderer.
    What the fuck was he supposed to do with a line like that?
    â€œMatthew, le buscan!”
    â€œMomento, Graciela. Momento!”
    Matthew turned to the mirror to scrutinize his reflection. He didn’t look bad. Blond hair, not prematurely gray; deep blue eyes, neither lined with bags nor bloodshot; white teeth un-rotted; and a pink tongue uncoated with bad news. Even his long nose was still straight, despite having been broken twice diving for cover.
    But he felt tired .
    â€œI am bushed from all that bush.”
    It was a cutesy line he’d coined for dinner parties and cocktails with friends when they inquired after his health.
    But that wasn’t it either. He was scared.
    Matthew Connelly was the only truly full-time war correspondent in a country whose war was a major headline around the world. He had remade himself from an adventure-seeking tourist from Boston Catholic into a freelance journalist whose byline was read in every capitol from Washington to Moscow. Matthew was the only independent witness to the hottest proxy battle between the Cold War superpowers. In Managua, he was a downright luminary: visiting journalists and broadcasters, dignitaries, celebrities, the Managua-based diplomats, and especially the military attachés all wanted briefings from him. It was lucrative, too, kept a staff of four working in a house grander than any he’d known back in Boston, nor was likely ever to know. It was his future, too. If he could gather enough material to finish his book on the war, it would open doors to any newspaper or magazine back home.
    All he had to do to remain a big fish in a small pond was to not get killed delivering the goods.
    He locked back onto his own eyes in the mirror. That last trip north. He had tape and photos from the biggest firefight yet. An actual battle between Contras and the battalion of government troops he was writing a biography on. But six more of the original one hundred and sixty boys he’d been writing about were dead. A total of thirty-one KIA in a year. His editors should love it. But the phone messages last night were all about Senator Teal and the death of Joaquin Tinoco. It was a fucking parlor game to them—a game played in Washington, Miami, and Managua. He had to fight every time to get space for the war in the