The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

me.”
    â€œDon’t you love me?”
    â€œYou know I do. Now sit yourself down like a good lad.”
    â€œWhere’s Marta?”
    â€œAt home, I expect, Mickie. In El Chorillo, where she lives. Doing her studies, I expect.”
    â€œI love that woman.”
    â€œI’m glad to hear it, Mickie, and so will Marta be. Now sit down.”
    â€œYou love her too.”
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œMickie, 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 identity tags advancing purposefully towards them along the edge of the room. Pendel reached a protective arm halfway across Mickie’s mountainous shoulders.
    â€œMickie, 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.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre you listening to me, Mickie?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIs your nice driver Santos outside with the car?”
    â€œWho 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.
    â€œI’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 shipowner 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.
    â€œHe always talk like that?”
    â€œWell, 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 the ears to listen, till We-know-who popped his garters and had him put in prison to shut him up.”
    â€œHell was all that about Marta?”
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œThought he was talking about you.”
    Pendel rode himself still harder.
    â€œOnly 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, yousee, was they banged Mickie up with a large quantity 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