Saffire by Sigmund Brouwer Read Free Book Online Page A

Goethals. “If he had any degree of intelligence, he would be asking questions. It should have occurred to him I don’t need to find the jewelry if the search risks triggering more scandal. He should be asking what scandal I don’t need. And why there’s a threat if neither the Panamanian police nor Zone police are going to look for the missing woman.”
    “Someone on the ship put together a report for us about Mr. Holt,” Goethals answered. “Apparently he’s a decent poker player. He reveals little about what he’s thinking.”
    I liked Goethals. I didn’t like Cromwell. Much as I wanted to tell Cromwell I wouldn’t take the job, I wouldn’t embarrass Goethals by saying so now. Goethals could find a way to tell Cromwell later, in a way that suited him.
    “If he’s not going to ask, someone has to spell it out for him and explain.” Cromwell was positively peevish.
    “If you ask me nicely,” Goethals said.
    This, I thought, was a fine response.
    “Could you please explain to him?” Cromwell said, after another silence that showed Goethals was not bluffing.
    Goethals turned to me. “In the waiting room was a mulatto girl who comes here every Sunday, and every Sunday I turn her away because I know why she’s here. It’s her mother who has gone missing. She believes I can order the Zone policemen to look into it or influence the Panamanians to investigate. But circumstances dictate I refuse to interfere. First, she is a child, and finding the truth will eventually show her that her mother was a thief who abandoned her. And second, I can’t let it be perceived that I am taking an interest in matters that should be local. There is already enough resentment about American control of the Panamanian people. Third, there is a letter to the girl from her mother clearly explaining where she is going and why. Yet this is a persistent girl, and from what I understand, not without influence despite her station in life. Last Sunday, she sent me a note threatening to take her case to an American reporter if I don’t help.”
    “Little blackmailer,” Cromwell said. “It would be very convenient if she disappeared too. Easy enough to arrange, except for the risk that more embarrassing questions would be asked. And for some reason, Ezequiel Sandoval is fond of the urchin.”
    That’s when I first glimpsed the absolute steel in Goethals, because he spoke with the quietness of supreme authority.
    “If she disappears, embarrassing questions are not a risk”—Goethals skewered Cromwell with a hard look—“but a certainty. And I would be the one asking those questions. Anyone who harmed the child would pay full price. You may well have the borrowed power of the governor of Panama, but I have the full backing of the United States and complete authority in all matters within the Zone until the canal is complete.”
    Another inch of ash had grown on Cromwell’s cigar, but he left it there, as if briefly paralyzed by the clear threat in Goethals’s statement.
    “If you want to help me,” Goethals told me, “you’ll be helping the girl. Three or four days, I would guess, is all it might take. Start a search for her mother and appease the child, without letting her know that her mother abandoned her.”
    I sighed. If only Mrs. Penny hadn’t used the word
mulatto
and if only I hadn’t seen the pain on the girl’s face that she’d tried to hide upon hearing that word, I would be walking out the door right now, into the tropical heat, headed for Panama Railroad train No. 2 and the steamship ready to depart Colón at nightfall.
    Yet calves could be born without my help, and as much as my daughter might need me or miss me, Winona would be deeply disappointed in me if she ever learned I had walked away from helping a girl close to her own age.
    One more day here, then. Maybe two. At most. “What do you need me to do?”
    “My secretary tells me you were already talking to the girl,” Goethals said. “Help her as if