Night of the Jaguar Read Online Free PDF Page A

orgasms she had milked out of them both, her nails bloodying his back, had purged the suffering of the past, celebrated the unimaginable triumph of the present, and consecrated an unwritten future.
    Ajax had found it a little frightening.
    It had been, after all, only his third or fourth time, and he’d been nearly thirty. But she’d shown him, coached him, taught him. As was her way. He had wanted their child to be conceived that night. The very constellations in the sky were new. The Ogre had been overthrown. Decades of merciless dictatorship staked through the heart. Those who had been its slaves were now masters. And they would create a new world without slaves. Or masters.
    But the clock had already struck. Ajax did not know it then, but the day and the moment were gone. The constellations were not new. They were the same ones Ajax had looked at this very night. Only the Ogre would not come back (would be denied even exile, and sent to welcoming Hell on the nose of a rocket-propelled grenade).
    Ajax held the makeup bag to his face. He inhaled the perfume, the first time he’d done it sober in years, and the scent evaporated all those shame-filled nights when he’d tried to use it to awaken his pickled manhood. Now the scent inflamed his senses, sent a zing of electricity up his spine, caressed his old wound into silence and turned the handle on a rusted faucet he could not bear opened. Not now, not here alone with only the last object left in the drawer.
    He fingered the outline of the perfume bottle, set the makeup bag down, and lifted out the fourth object: the bottle of Flor de Caña, extra seco. Only foreigners drank the honey-gold dark rum. Like all Nicaraguans, Ajax preferred the water-clear extra dry. He ran his fingers over the unbroken seal. He’d written out the date of his last drink, June 28, 1986. What he hoped, prayed, wished to be the last. His turning, his redemption, his rescue.
    He wrapped his hand around the neck of the bottle. Wanted more than anything to wring its neck. Break the seal. Let go. He’d had a taste of letting go when he’d opened fire with the soldier’s AK. If had felt good. Very good. He’d even killed three crows—one of them in flight.
    Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme just the one drink!
    Burning off those rounds, he now realized, were the only moments when the thirsty voice had been quiet these past days. It seemed as if all the rum he would now not drink was rioting in his head. He fished out a Marlboro, stuck it into his lips, and flipped the Zippo into fire. It was almost lit when he saw the bloody stain running right down the seam of the cigarette paper.
    He wasn’t done killing, was he, you clever-stupid hero?
    â€œSituational awareness” was what the Cuban Special Forces colonel who had trained him outside Moscow had called it. When the sum of all you knew was greater than what the five senses could take in. Ajax had once been so famous for his situational awareness that his old commander, Horacio, had christened him, “Spooky.” But Fortunado Gavilan was not done killing, and Ajax had missed that situation. He seemed to miss a lot these days. Maybe the drink had rotted his once watertight instincts.
    Suddenly he was tired—exhausted and sleepy. He swept the icons of his life off the desk and back into the darkened drawer, lit the bloodstained cigarette, and dragged his ass to bed. On the way he picked up the thesaurus, just in case.
    2.
    Gladys Darío parked her Lada between two broken streetlamps, in a closet-sized pool of darkness, got out, and hung her heavy purse over her left shoulder. She checked the street—traffic in front of the Metro Centro was light for a Saturday night, but then the Soviet oil tanker had still not arrived. She stepped to the curb and walked unhurriedly, as if she had no real destination. The new cowboy boots, a gift from her sister in Miami, were just a little too snug, and she