 Chapter 7 of Zone Policemen 88, read by Mickey Lee Rich. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Zone Policemen 88, a close-range study of the Panama Canal and its workers by Harry A. Frank. Chapter 7. It might be worth the ink to say a word about socialism in the canal zone. To begin with, there isn't any, of course. No man would dream of looking for socialism in the undertaking set in motion by the Republican Party and kept on the move by the regular army. But there are a number of little points in the management of this private government strip of Earth that savers more or less faintly of the socialist program. And the zone offers perhaps as good a chance as we shall ever have to study some phases of those theories in practice. Few of us now deny the socialists main criticisms of existing society. Most of us question his remedies. Some of us go so far as to feel a sneaking curiosity to see railroads and similar purely public utilities government-owned just to find out how it would work. Down on the canal zone, they have a sort of modified socialism where one can watch much of this under a bell jar. There, one quickly discovers that a locomotive with the brief and sufficient information U.S. on her tender flanks or, more properly, the flanks of her tender, give one a swelling of the chest. No other combination of letters could inspire. Thus far, two theories seems to work well. The service could hardly be better. And recalling that under the old private system, the fare for the 47 miles across the Ethmus was $25 with a charge of 10 cents for every pound of baggage. The $2.40 of today does not seem particularly exorbitant. The official machinery of this private government ship also seems to run like clockwork. To be sure, the wheels even of a clock grind a bit with friction at times. But the clock goes on keeping time for all that. The canal zone is the best governed district in the United States. It is worth any American's time and seasickness to run down there. If only to ensure himself that Americans really can govern. Until he does, he will not have a very clear notion of just what good American government means. But before we go any further, be it noted that the socialism of the canal zone is under a benevolent dispo. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent ruler, which is perhaps the one way that socialism would work, at least in this present stage of human progress. The three omnis are combined into an inconspicuous, white-haired American popularly known in the zone as the colonel. So popularly, in fact, that an attempt to replace him would probably start something among the classes and races of the zoners. That he is omnipotent on the zone, not many will deny. A few have questioned and landed in the states a week later much less joyous but far wiser. Omniscient, well, they have even Chinese secret servicemen on the Isthmus and soldiers and marines not infrequently go out in civilian clothes under sealed orders to say nothing of the colonel's private gumshoe and probably a lot of other underground sources of information neither you nor I shall ever hear of. But you must get used to spies under socialism, you know, until we all wear one of Saint Peter's halos. Look at the elaborate system of the Incas, even with their docile and uninitiative subjects. In the matter of omnipresence, it would be pretty hard to find a hole on the canal zone where you could pull off a stunt of any length or importance without the ICC having a weather eye on you. When it comes to the no less indispensable ingredient of benevolence, one glimpse of those mild blue eyes would probably reassure you in that point, even without the pleasure of watching the despot sit in judgment on his subjects in the castle office on Sunday mornings like old St. Louis under his oak, though with a tennis cigarettes behind him that old Louis had to worry along without. This all-powerful government insists on and enforces many things which Americans as a whole stand for. Sunday closing, suppression of resorts, forbidding of gambling. But the zone is no test whether these laws could be genuinely enforced in a whole nation. For down there, Panama and Cullen serve as a sort of safety valve where a man can run down in an hour or so on mileage or monthly pass and blow off steam. Get rid of the bad internal vapors that might cause explosion in eventless society. This we should not lose sight of when we boast that there are few crimes and no real resorts on the zone. The colonel himself will tell you there's no gambling. Yet it's curious how many of the weekly prizes of the Panama lottery find their way into the pockets of American canal builders and in any zone gathering of whatever hour or sex you're almost certain to hear flitting back and forth mysterious whispers of have a sex at a fort this week. The zone system is a work coupons for all, much as the socialists would have it. Only the legitimate members of the community, the workers, can live in it long. You should see the nonchalant way a clerk at the government's Tavali hotel charges a tourist a quarter for a cigar the government sells for six cents in its commissaries. Mere money does not rank high in zone society, it's the labor coupon that counts. They sell cigarettes at the YMCA. You are in that state where you would give your ticket home for a smoke. Yet when you throw down good gold or silver, Black Sam behind the counter looks at you with that pity and cold eye, kept in stock for newcomers and says weirdly, Can't take no money here boss. That surely is a sort of socialism where a slip of paper showing merely you have done your appointed tasks gets you the same meal wherever you may drop in. A total stranger. Yet without being identified, without a word from anyone, but merely thrusting your coupon book at the yellow West Indian at the door as you enter and he may snatch out so many minutes of labor. Drop in anywhere there's a vacant bed and you're perfectly at home. There is the shower bath, the ice water, the veranda rocker. You knew exactly what was coming to you. Just what kind of bad just what vegetables you would be served at dinner. It reminds one of the Inca system of providing a home for every citizen and tambos along the way if he must travel. But it is the same meal. That is just the point. There is where you begin to furrow your brow and look more closely at this splendid system and fall to wondering if the publication of socialism would not become in time an awful bore. There are some things in which we want variety and originality and above all personality. A meal is a meal I suppose as a cat as a cat. Yet there are many subtle little things that make the same things distinctly different. When it comes to dinner you want a rosy fat German or a bulky French madame putting thought and pride and attention into it which they will do only if they get good coin of the realm or similar material mulliment out of it in proportion. No one will ever fancy he has a mission to serve good meals to the public. In the ICC hotels we have a government steward who draws a good salary and wears a nice white collar but though he is sometimes a bit different and succeeds in making his hotel so it is only a degree. He's not a great frequenter of the dining room at time one wonders just what his activities are. Certainly it's not the planning of meals for the ICC menu is as fixed and automatic as if it had been taken from a stone slab in the pyramids. A poor meal neither turns his hair white nor cuts down his income. Frequently, especially if he is English and certainly if he has been a ship steward the Negro waiter seemed to run his establishment without interference. Dinner hours for example are from 11 to 1 but beware the glare of the waiter at whose table you sit down at 12.50. He slams cold rubbish at you from the discard and snatches it away again before you have time to find you can't eat it. You have your choice of enduring this male treatment or of unauthentaciously slipping him a coin and a hint to go cook you the best he can himself. You know that as the closing hour approaches the cooks will not have their private plans interfered with by accepting your order. Here again is where the fat German or the French madame is needed with an ox code. In other words the tip system invented by Pharaoh and vitiated by quick rich Americans rages as fiercely in government hotels on the zone as in any lobster palace bordering Broadway. Worse for here the non-tipper has no living being to advocate his cause. All food is government property. Yet I have sat down opposite a man who gave the government at the door a work coupon identical with mine but who furthermore dropped into the waiter's hand 35 cents big which is half as bad as to do it in U.S. currency and while I was gazing tearfully at a misshapen lump of vernacular gristle there was set before him steaming hot from the government kitchen a porterhouse steak which a dollar bill would not have brought him with incenting distance of in New York. Do not blame the waiter. If he does not slip an occasional coin to the cook he will invariably draw the gristle and even occasional coins do not grow on his waistband. It would be as absurd to charge it to the cook. He probably has a large family to support as he would under socialism. There runs this story on the zone vouched for by several. A zoner called an ICC steward and complained that his waiter did not serve him reasonably. Well sneered the steward I guess you didn't come across. Come across? Why damn you I suppose you're getting your break off too. I certainly am replied the steward. What do you think I'm down here for me health? Surely we can't blame it all on the steward or to any other individual. Lay it rather to human nature. That stumbling block of so many varnished and upholstered systems. I hope I am not giving the impression that the ICC hotels are unendurable. Stay home. Which on the zone means always eat at the same hotel table. Subsidize your waiter and you do moderately well. But to move fitter on yawn as any plain clothes man must is unfortunate. The only difference then is that the next is worse than the last. Whatever their convictions upon arrival almost all Americans have come down to paying their waiter the regular blackmail of a dollar a month and setting it down as one of the unavoidable evils of life. One or two I knew who insisted on sticking to principles and they grew leaner and lanker day by day. Because of these things many an American employee will be found eating in private restaurants of the ubiquitous Chinaman or the occasional Spaniard. Though here he must often pay in cash instead of in futures on his labor which are so much cheaper the world over. It is sad enough to dine on the same old identical round for months. But how if you were one of those who blew in on the heels of the last Frenchman and have been eating it ever since. By this time even rat tails would be a welcome change. And with genuine socialism there would not even be that escape. It is said to be this hotel problem as much as the perpetual springtime of the zone that so frequently reduces with the open connivance of the government a building housing 48 quiet harmless bachelors to a four family residence housing eight and gradually upwards. That wreaks such matrimonious havoc among the white frog stenographers who come down to type and remain to cook. Besides the hotel there is the PRR commissary the government department stores. It is likewise laundry, bakery, ice factory. It makes ice cream, roast coffee, sends out refrigerator cars and morning supply train to bring your orders right to your door. Oh yes, it strongly resembles what Bellamy dreamed years ago. Only as in the case of the hotel there seems to be a flyer too in the amber. The laundry is tolerable. Fancy turning your soiled linen over to a railroad company. All machine done of course, as everything would be under socialism and no comeback for the government that is not hardly enough of constitution to stand the system. And the stores is little or no shoddy material. In general, the stock is the best available. If a biscuit or a bolt of khaki is better made in England than in the United States the commissary stocks with the English goods which is unexpected broad-mindedness for government management. But while prices are lower than in Panama or Cologne they are every wit as high as in American stores. And most of us know something of the exorbitant profit our private merchants exact particularly on manufactured goods. The government claims to run the commissary only to cover cost. Either that is a crude government joke or there is a colored gentleman ensconced in the coal bin. Moreover, if the commissary hasn't the stuff you want you would better give up wanting for it has no object in laying in the supply of it just to oblige customers. Its clerks work in the most languid, unexcited manner. They have no object whatever in holding your trade and you can wait until they are quite ready to serve you or go home without. True, most of them are merely negroes and a few Americans at the head of the departments are chiefly provincial little fellows from small towns whose notions of business are rather those of Poe-Dunk Massachusetts than of New York. But lolling about the commissary a half hour hoping to buy a box of matches one cannot shake off the conviction that it is a system more than the clerks. Poets and novelists and politicians may work for glory but no man is going to show calico and fit slippers for such remuneration. Nor are all the old evils of the competitive method banished from the zone. In the canal record, the government organ, the government commissary advertises a sale of excellent $7 raincoats at $1 each, the record. It is like reading it in the Bible. Witness the rush of the bargain hunters who it proves are by no means of one gender. Yet those splendid raincoats as managers, clerks and negro sweepers well new and could not refrain from snickering to themselves at the thought of were just as rainproof as a poor grade of cheesecloth. I do not speak from here safe or I was numbered among the garden hunters. Recruits are the natural victims and there arrive enough of them each year to get rid of worthless stock. Ten minutes after making the purchase I set out to walk the Corazole through the first mile shower of the rainy season and arrived there I went and laid the bargain gently in the wastebasket where the Corazole police station. All small things to be sure but it is the sum of small things that make up that great complex thing, life. Few of us would object to living in an ideal dream world but could it ever be? I have anxiously asked this question and hinted at these little weaknesses suggested by zone experiences to several zone socialists who are not hard to find. They merely answer that these things have nothing to do with the case and not one of them has ever went so far as to demonstrate and though I was born a long way north of Missouri I once passed through the corner of the state. As to the other side of the ledger, equal pay for all? Nowhere is manned further from socialism than on the canal zone. Cast lines are sharply drawn as in India which should not be unexpected and an enterprise largely in charge of graduates of our chief training school for caste. The Brahmins are the gold employees, white American citizens with all the advantages and privileges there too are pertaining but and herein we out Hindu the Hindus. The Brahmin caste itself is divided and subdivided into infinitimal gradations. Every rank and shade of man has a different salary and exactly in accordance with that salary is he housed, furnished and treated down to the least item. Number of electric lights, candle power, style of bed, size of bookcase. His Brahmin highness, the colonel has a palace relatively and all that goes with it. The high priest, the members of the Ismian canal commissions have less regal palaces. Heads of big departments have merely palatial residences. Bosses live in well furnished dwellings, conductors are assigned a furnished house or quarter of a house, policemen, artisans and the common garden variety of bachelors have a good place to sleep. It is doubtful to be sure whether one fourth of the zoners of any class ever lived as well before or since. The shovelman's wife who gives five o'clock teas and keeps two servants will find life different when the canal is open and she moves back to the smoky little factory cottage and learns again to do her own washing. At work on the job there is a genuine American freedom of where will you please and a general habit of going where you choose and working clothes. That is one of the incomprehensible zone things to the little vineyard Panamanian. He cannot rid himself of his racial conviction that a man in an old khaki jacket who is building a canal must be of inferior clay to a hotel loafer in a frock coat and a tall hat. The real spig could never do any real work for fear of soiling his clothes. He cannot get used to the plain brusk American type without embroidery who just does things in one efficient way without wasting time on little exterior courtesies. None of these childish countries is man enough to see through the rough surface. Even with seven years of American example about him the Panamanian has not yet grasped the divinity of labor. Perhaps he will eons hence when he has grown nearer true civilization. But among Americans off the job reminiscences of East India flock in again. D, who is a quartermaster at $225 may be on how our old man terms with G who is a station agent and draws $175. But Mrs. D never thinks of calling on Mrs. G socially. H and J, who are engineers and cranes men respectively on the same steve shovel are probably Hank and Jim to each other. But Mrs. H would be horrified to find herself at the same dance with Mrs. J. Mrs. X, whose husband is a foreman at $165 and whose dining table is a full six inches longer and whose ice box will hold one more cold storage chicken would not think of sitting in a bridge with Mrs. Y whose husband gets $150. As for being black or any tent but pure white even an Englishman though he may eat in the same hotel if his skin is not too tanned is accepted on staring sufferances. As for the man whose skin is a bit dull he might sit on the steps of that ICC hotel with dollars dribbling out of his pockets until he starved to death and he would be duly buried in the particular grave to which his color entitled him. A real American place is the zone with outward democracy and inward caste and unenthusiastic and afraid to break the convention's place in play and the opposite at work. Yet with it all it is a good place in which to live. There you always have summer jungle hills to look on by day and moonlight and to roam in on Sunday unless you are a policeman seven days a week it is possible that perpetual summer would soon breed quite a different type of American. The isthmus is nearly always in boyish or girlish good temper. Zone women and girls are noted for plump figures and carefree faces and there is a contentment that is more than climatic. There are no hard times on the zone no hurried worried faces no famished wolfish eyes. The zoner has his little troubles of course the servant problem for instance for the Jamaican house maid is a thorn in any side. Now and then we hear someone wailing oh it gets so tiresome everybody's shoveling dirt talking about the other fellow but he knows it isn't strictly true when he says it and that he is kicking chiefly to keep in practice. Everyone is free from worries as to job, pay, house, provisions and even hospital fees and the smoothness of it all perhaps gets on his nerves at times. I question whether the Colonel himself loses much sleep when a chunk of hill that bears up his resident lets go and pitches into the canal. A sets one to musing at times whether the rock bounce system of the Incas was not best after all a place for every man and every man in his place each has allotted work which he was fully able to do and getting hail Columbia if he failed to do it. Which brings up the question of results and labor under the pseudo socialist stone system. Most American employees work steadily and take their work seriously. It is as if each were individually proud of being one of the chosen people and builders of the greatest work of modern times. Yet the far famed American rush is not especially prevalent. The zone point of view seems to be that no shoveling is so important even that of digging a ditch half the ships of the world are waiting to cross and should bring upon himself a premature funeral. The common laborers, not Americans, almost doddle. There are no contractors, Irish straw bosses to keep them on the move. The answer to the socialist scheme of having the government run all big building enterprises is to go out and watch any city street gang for an hour. The bringing together into close contact of Americans from every section of our broad land is tending to make a new amalgamated type. Even New Englanders grow almost human here among their broader mind fellow countrymen. Any northerner can say nigger is glibly as a Carolinian and growl if one of them steps on a shadow. It is not easy to say just how much effect all this will have when the canal is done and this handful of amalgamated and humanized Americans is sprinkled back all over the states as 11 to the whole. They tell on the zone of a man from Maine who sat four high school years on the same bench with two Negro boys and returning home after three years on the Isthmus was so horrified to find one of those boys and alderman that he packed his traps and moved to Alabama where a nigger is a nigger and if there isn't the makings of a story in that I'll leave it to the postmaster of Mira Flores. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org There is much in this police business said the captain with a slow deliberate enunciation that must lead to a blank wall. Out of ten cases to investigate it is quite possible nine will result in nothing. This percentage could not of course be true of a thousand cases and a man's services still be considered satisfactory but of ten it is quite possible. As for knowing how to do detective work all I bring to the department myself is some ordinary common sense and a little knowledge of human nature and with these I tried to work things out best I can. This peeping through the keyhole please work I know nothing whatever about and don't want to nor do I expect a man to. I had been discussing with the captain my dissatisfaction at my failure to get result in an important case. A few weeks on the force had changed many of preconceived notion of police life. It had gradually become evident for instance that the profession of detective is adventurous absorbing hard stopping chiefly between the covers of popular fiction. That real detective work like almost any other vocation is made up largely of the little unimportant everyday details with only a rare assignment bulking over the mass. As the captain said it was just plain everyday work carried on by the application of ordinary common sense. Such best seller artifices as disguise were absurd not only would disguise in all but the rarest cases be impossible but useless. The ABC of plain clothes work is to learn to know a man by his face rather than by his clothing and at the outset one will be astonished to find out how much he has hitherto been depending on the latter. It must be the same with criminals too unless your criminal is an amateur or a fool in which event you will land him without the trouble of disguising. A detective furthermore should not be a handsome man or a man of striking appearance in any way. The ideal plain clothes man is the little insignificant snipe whom even the ladies will not notice. Since April 10th I have been settled in notorious house 111 Ancon. A sort of frontiersman resort or smuggler's retreat have there been anything to smuggle where to have fallen through the veranda screening would have been to fall into a foreign land. As payday approached there came the duty of standing a half hour at the station gate before the departure of each train to watch and discuss with the ponderous smiling dark-skinned chief of Panama's plain clothes squad or with a vigilante the suspicious characters and known crooks of all colors going out along the line. On the 12th, 13th and 14th the ICC Paycar that bank on wheels guarded by a squad of ZP sprinkled its half million a day along the zone. Then plain clothes duty was not merely to scan the embarking passengers but to ride out with each train to one of the busy towns. There scores upon scores of soil smeared workmen swarmed over all the landscape with long paper wrapped rolls of Panamanian silver in their hands while flashily dressed tauts and crooks of both sexes drifted out from Panama with every train to worm their insidious way into wherever the scent of coin promised another month free from labor. To add to those crowded times the chief dissipation of the West Indian during the few days following payday that his earnings last is to ride aimlessly and joyously back and forth on the trains. There is one advantage though some policemen call it by quite the opposite name in being stationed at Aincan. When crime takes a holiday and do nothing threats tropical dementia or a man tires of his native land and people a short stroll down the asphalt takes him into the city of Panama. Barely across the street where his badge becomes mere metal and he must take care not to address absentmindedly the first violator of his own laws whom he is sure to come upon within the first block he notes that the English tongue had suddenly almost disappeared. On every hand lightly sprinkled with many other dialects sound Spanish, the slovenly Spanish of Panama in which Bueno is Hueno and Calle is K. As he swings languidly to the right into Avenida Central he grows gradually aware that there has settled down about him a cold indifference and atmosphere quite different from that on his own side of the line. Those he addresses in the tongue of the land replied to his questions with their customary gestures and fixed phrases of courtesy, but no more. And a cold dead silence falls sharply upon the last word and at times if the experience be comparatively new there seems to hover in the air something that reminds him that way back 56 years ago there was a massacre of Americans in Panama City. For the Panamanian has little love for the United States or its people which as the customary thinks any man or nation gets for lifting a dirty half-breed gammon from the gutter. Often the vortex of the city lulls Panama's public market where Chinaman are the chief sellers and flies the chief consumers. Marriads of fruits in every state of development and disintegration haggled bits of meat. The hundred sights and sounds and smells one hurries past suggests that Panama may even have outdone Central America before Uncle Sam came with his garbage cans and his switch. Further on down of the old harbor lingers a hint of picturesqueness of Panama and pre-canal days. Clumsy boats empty or deep laden with fruit from or freight to the several islands that sprinkle the bay splash and bump against the little cement wharf. Age wooden wind jammers doze at their moorings everywhere are jabbering natives with that shifty half-cast eye and frequent evidence of deep-rooted disease. Almost every known race mingles in Panama City even to Chinese coolies in their umbrella hats and rolled up cotton trousers delving in rich market gardens on the edges of the town or dog trotting through the streets under two baskets dancing on the ends of a bamboo pole till one fancies oneself at times in Singapore or Shanghai. The black zone laborer too often prefers to live in Panama for the greater freedom it affords. There he doesn't have to clean his sink so often, marry his wife and friends from the bedroom. Policemen with their clubs swarm everywhere for no particular reason than that the little republic is forbidden to play at army and with the presidential election approaching political henchmen must be kept good-humored. Not a few of these officers are West Indians who speak not a word of Spanish or any other tongue strictly speaking. Rubber-tired carriages roll constantly by along Uncle Sam's Macadam amid the jingling of their music bells. Everyone takes a carriage in Panama. Any man can afford 10 cents even if he has no expense account besides he runs no risk of being overcharged which is a greater advantage than the cost. All this may be different when Panama's electric line all the way from the Balboa docks to Los Sabanas is open, but that's another year. Meanwhile, the bowling in the carriages comes to be quite second nature but like any tropical Spanish town Panama cedes only by night especially Saturday and Sunday nights when the paternal zone government allows its children to spend the evening in town. Then, frequent trains unknown during the week begin with the setting of the sun to disgorge Americans of all grades and sizes through the clicking turnstiles into the arms of gesticulating hack men some to squirm away a foot between the carriages all to be swallowed up within 10 minutes in the great sea of color people. So that larges may be each train load white American faces are so rare on Panama streets that one involuntarily glances at each that passes in the throng. It is the gumshoes duty to know and be known in as many places as possible wherefore on such nights whatever his choice he drifts early down by the Normandy and on into the Panazon to see who is out and why. In the Latter Emporium he adds a bottle of beer to his expense account and doors for a few moments the balling above the scream of the piano of two Americans of Palestinian antecedents admire some local hero like Baldi for instance who is credited with doing what Napoleon could not do and floats on perhaps to screw up his courage and venture into the thinly clad Teatro Apollo he who knows where to look or was born under a lucky star may even see on these merry evenings a big marine from Bassabispo or a burly soldier of the 10th howling some joyful song with six or seven little spig policemen climbing about on his frame. At such times everything but real blood flows in Panama. Her history runs that way. On the day she won her independence from Spain it is said that the general-in-chief cut his finger on a wine glass. The day she won it from Columbia there was a China man killed but everyone agrees that was due to the Celestial's criminal carelessness. Down at the quieter end of the city are Las Bovedas. That curving sea wall Philip of Spain tried to make out from his palace walls as many other regal and otherwise trained his eyes in vain to see where his good coin is gone. But the walls are there alright though Philip never saw them crumbling a bit yet still a sturdy barrier to the sea. A broad cement and grass promenade runs atop why it is an American street. 30 or 40 feet below the low parapet sounds the deep time-melod voice of the Pacific as their rules higher and higher up the rock ledges that great tide so different from the scarcely noticeable one at Colen. The summer breeze never dies down never grows boisterous. On the landward side Panama lies mumbling to itself down in the hollow between squats Cherokee prison with its American warden once his own policemen while in the round stone watchtowers on the curving parapets lean prison guards with fixed bayonats and incessantly blow the shrill 10 whistles that is the universal Latin American artifice for keeping policemen awake. On the way back to the city the elite or befriended may drop in at the university club at the end of the wall for a cooling libation on Sunday night comes the band concert in the palm ringed cathedral Plaza there is one on Thursday to in Plaza Santa Ana but that is packed with all colors and considered rather vulgar in the square by the cathedral the aggregate color is far lighter pure African blood hangs chiefly in the outskirts then haughty aristocrats of Panama proud of their own individual shade of color may be seen in the same promenade with American ladies even a garrison widow or two from out along the line. Panamanian girls godly dressed and suggesting to the nostrils perambulating drugstores shuttle back and forth with their perfumed dandies above the throng past the heads and shoulders of unemotional self-possessed Americans erect and soldierly in the con station was sure to be there in his faultless civilian garb a figure neat but not gaudy an even busy lieutenant long was known to break away from his stacked up duties and his black stenographer and come to overtop all else in the square save the palm trees was bring together in the evening breeze between the numbers. There is no favoritism in zone police work every crime reported receives full investigation be it only a Greek laborer losing a pair or there was this case that fell to me early in May for instance a box built from New York to Peru had been broken open on Balboa court and one bottle of cognac stolen unfortunately the matter was turned over to me so long after the perpetration of the dastardly crime that the possible culprits among the dock hands had wholly recovered from the probable consumption of the evidence but I succeeded in gathering material for a splendid typewritten report of all I had not been able to unearth to file away among the priceless headquarters archives not that the ZP has not its big jobs the force to a man distinctly remembers that absorbing two months between the escape of while black Felix Paul and the day they dragged him back into the penitentiary no less fresh in memory are the expeditions against Maurice Polot or Francois Barduch the murderers of Mira Flores Paul Martinique Negros be it noted and of all things on this earth including grease pigs the hardest thing to catch is a Martinique criminal after all four or five murders on the zone in three years is no startling record in such a swarm of nationalities cases large and small which it would be neither of interest nor politic to detail poured in during the following weeks among them was a counterfeit case on earth by Shylock Holmes of the Panamanian force that called for a long perspiring hunt for the plant in odd corners of the zone then there was an egg ZP who lost his three year savings on the train for which reason I shattered a well-known American for it is a ZP rule that no one is above suspicion above Panama a foot in carriages nearly all night in true dime novel fashion there was the day I was given a dangerous convict to deliver a Culebra penitentiary the criminal was about three feet long jet black his worldly possessions comprising two more or less garments one reaching as far down as his knees and the other as far up as the base of his neck he had long been a familiar sight to zoners among the swarms of boot blacks that infest the corner of the PRR station he claimed to be 11 and looked it a having already served time for burglary and horse stealing his conviction for stealing a gold necklace from a Negro washerwoman of San Miguel left the chief justice no choice but to send him to mediate a half a year at Culebra there's no reform school on the zone the few American minors who have been found guilty of misdoing have been banished to their native land when the deputy warden had sufficiently recovered from the shock brought upon him by the side of his new charge to give me a receipt for him I raced for the noon train back to the city thereon I sat down beside Paul first-class policeman X surprised to find him off duty and in civilian clothes there was a dreamy far away look in his eyes and not until the train was racing past Rio Grande Reservoir did he turn to confide to me the following extraordinary occurrence last night I dreamed old judge had my father and my mother up before him on the stand he asked my mother her age and the funny part of it is that my mother has been dead for over 10 years she turned around and rode on the wall with a piece of chalk 1859 the year she was born then my father was called and he wrote in 1853 that's all there was to the dream but take it from me I know what it means just add them together multiply them by 5 because I could see 5 people in the courtroom divide by 2 father and mother and I get he drew out a crumpled arrest form covered with penciled figures 9280 and there his voice dropped low is your winning number for next Sunday so certain of this that first-class X had bribed another policeman to take his 8 hour shift dressed in his vacation vest bought a ticket to Panama and return with real money at tourist prices and would spend the blazing afternoon seeking among the scores of vendors in the city for lottery ticket 9280 and if he did not find it there he certainly paid his fare all the way to colon and back to continuous search I believe he at length found and acquired the whole ticket for the customary sum of $2.50 to open the arithmetic or mother's chalk for the winning number that Sunday was 8895 frequent as are these melancholy errors scores of zoners cling faithfully to their erythmetical superstitions many a man spends his recreation hours working out the winning numbers by some secret recipe of his own there are men on the ZP who if you can get them started on the subject of lottery tickets will keep it up until you run away showing you the infallibility of their own systems believing the drawing to be honest yet oblivious to the fact that both the one and the other cannot be true dreams are held in special favor it is probably safe to assert that one half the numbers are over 1000 and under 10,000 that appear in zone dreams are snapped up next day in lottery tickets many have systems of figuring out the all important number from the figures on engines and cars more than one zone house wife has slipped into the kitchen to find the roast burning and her West Indian cook hiding hastily behind her ample skirt a long fist of the figures on every freight car that has passed that morning from which by some antelion miscalculation in the murmuring of certain indications she was to find the magic number that would bring her cooking days to an end yet there is sometimes method in their madness did not Joe who slept in the next room to me a cartoon hit Duke for two pieces which is to say he had 3000 dollars to sprinkle along with his police salary yet personally the only really appealing system was that of crystal ball upon his arrival on this miss four years ago he picked out a number at random took out a yearly subscription to it and thought no more about it than one does of a newspaper delivered at the door each morning until one morning during this month of May after he had squandered something over 500 dollars on worthless bits of paper he strolled into the lottery office and was handed an inconspicuous little bag containing 7500 dollars in yellow gold like all ZP rookies recruits I had been warned early to be where the sympathy dodge but experience is the only real teacher one afternoon I be straddled a crazy still leg jamaican horse to go out into the bush beyond the Panama line to fetch and deliver a citizen of that sovereign republic who was wanted on the zone for horse stealing at the town of Sabanas where those of Panamanians who have bagged the most loot since American occupation have their summer homes giddy brick painted monstrosities among the great trees deep green foliage and brilliant flower beds pause a moment and think of brilliant red houses in the tropics it will make you better acquainted with the spig I dropped in at the police station for ice water and information I found it in charge of a Negro policeman who knew nothing and had forgotten that when therefore it also chance that an officer of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals stop before the gate with a coachman of Panama fell upon me to assume command the horse with the usual emaciated route of an animal indigenous to Panama City when overhauled the driver was beating the animal uphill on his way to old Panama to bring back a party of tourists visiting the ruins how he expected the decrepit beast to carry four more persons was a mystery when the harness was lifted there was disclose the expected half dozen large raw sores we tied the animal in the shade near hay and water and adjourned to the station the coachman a weary unshaving Spaniard whose red eyelids showed lack of sleep was weeping copiously he claimed to be a medri lino which was evident that he had been a coachman in Spain and Panama all his life without ever before having been arrested which was possible he was merely one of the many drivers for a livery stable owner in Panama ordered to go for the tourists he had called his employers attention to the danger of crossing zone territory with a horse in that condition but the owner had ordered him to cover up the sores with pads and harness and drive along it was a very sad case here was a poor honest coachman struggling to support a wife and I don't recall how many children but any number sounds quite reasonable in Panama who was about to be punished for the fault of another and did not strike me until later he was certainly telling the truth you come to recognize it readily in all ordinary cases after a few weeks in plain clothes the real culprit was of course the employer my righteous wrath demanded that he and not his poor surf be punished I could not release the driver but I would see that the truth was brought out in court next morning and a warrant sworn out against the owner was showing tears and rib shaking sobs the coachman promised to tell the judge the whole story I went through him and locking him up with assurances of my deepest sympathy and full assistance stilted on toward the little village of Shacks scattered out of sight among the hills and valleys across the border coachman, witnesses and arresting officer to say nothing of horse carriage and sores were on hand when court opened next morning as I expected the judge failed to ask the poor fellow a single question that would bring out the complicity of his employer did not in fact ever there was an employer I asked to be sworn and gave the true version of the case the judge listened earnestly when I had ended he recalled the coachman the latter expressed his astonishment that I should have made any such statements he denied them in total his employer had nothing whatever to do with the case the fault was entirely his and no one else in the remotest degree connected with the matter five dollars snapped the judge coachman paid hitched up the route of a horse and wobbled away into Panama police business taking me down into the grove that night I found the driver clean shaven and better dressed waiting for fairs before the principal house of that section what kind of a game I began senior he cried and tears again seemed on the point of falling every word I told you was true but of course I couldn't testify against the patron he discharged me and blackmailed me and you know I have a wife and a new girl children to support come on over and have a drink end of chapter eight part one recorded by mckaylee rich chapter eight part two of zone policeman 88 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Kay Hand zone policeman 88 a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers by Harry A. Frank chapter eight part two this justice business one soon learned is of the same infallible stuff as the rest of life after all it is only the personal opinion of the judge between two persons swearing on oath to diametrically opposed statements and for all the impressiveness of a deep furrowed I did not find that the average judge had any more power of reading human nature than the average of the rest of us I well remember the morning when a meek little Panamanian was testifying in his own behalf in Spanish of course when the judge broke in without even asking for a translation of the testimony that'll do because of your gestures I believe you are trying to bunco this court you are lying tell him that this to the negro interpreter any therewith sentence the witness to jail as if any Panamanian could talk earnestly of anything without waving his arms about him the telephone bell rang one afternoon it was always doing that 24 hours a day but this time it sounded especially sharp and insistent in the adjoining room over the blotter snapped the brusque stereotyped nasally reply I'm calm Bingham talking the instrument buzzed a moment and the desk men looked up to say Andy and a nigger just fell over into Pedro Miguel locks they're sending in his body the nigger lit his head and hurt his leg his body how uncanny it sounded Andy that bunch of muscles who had made such short work of the circus wrestler in Gatun and whom I had seen not 24 hours before bubbling with life was now a body things happen quickly on the zone and he whom the fates have picked to go generally shows no hesitation in his exit but at least a man who dies for the ICC has the affairs he left behind him attended to in a thorough manner in 10 minutes to half an hour one of the ZP is on the ground taking note of every detail of the accident a special train or engine rushes the body to the morgue in Ancon hospital grounds a coroner's jury is soon meeting under the chairmanship of a policeman long reports of everything concerning the victim or the accident are soon a flowing administration word the police accident report is detailed and in triplicate there is sure to be in the personal files at Kulebra a history of the deceased and the names of his nearest relative or friend both on the isthmus and in the states for every employee must make out his biography at the time of his engagement there are men whose regular duty it is to list and take care of his possessions down to the last lead pencil and to forward them to the legal heirs a year's pay goes to his family were as much required of every employer and his the burden of proving the accident to the fault of the employee how the safety appliances in factories would multiply there is a man attached to Ancon hospital whose unenviable duty it is to write a letter of condolence to the relatives in the states and so the kangaroos or the red men or whatever his lodge was filed behind the ICC caskets to the church in Ancon and Andy was laid away under another of the simple white iron crosses that thickly populate many his own hillside and he was charged up to the big debit column of the costs of the canal on the cross is his new number for officially a zoner is always a number that of the brass check he wears as a watch charm alive that at the head of his grave when his canal digging is over late when unoccupied afternoon I picked up the path behind the administration building and skirting a zone residence began to climb that famous oblong mound that dominates the pacific end of the landscape for every direction hill for a way a fairly steep and stony path led through thick undergrowth then this ceased and a far steeper trail zigzagged up the face of the bare mountain covered only with thin dead grass the setting sun cast its shadow obliquely across the summit when I reached it a long ridge with groves of trees running off abruptly toward the sea on the opposite side uncle Sam was cutting away a whole side of the hill but the five o'clock whistle had blown and whole armies of little workmen swarmed across all the landscape far below and silence soon settled down safe for the dredges at Balboa that chug on through the night but for myself the hill was wholly unpeopled a sturdy ocean breeze swept steadily across it the sinking sun set the jungle of fire in a spot that would have startled those who do not know that it rises in the pacific at Panama crude glaring colors glowed fading to gentler and more delicate tints than the evening shadow that had climbed to the hill with me spread like a great black veil over all the world but the moon nearing its full followed almost on the heels of the setting sun and casting its half day over a scene rich in nature and history invited the eye to swing clear around the hazy circle below lay Panama dolly rumbling with night traffic silent and cone still better lighted cuddled up in the lower skirts of the hill itself then beyond the curving bay half seen half guessed with its long promontory dying away into the hazy moonlit distance lighted up here and there by bushfires in the jungle hills some way out winked the cluster of lights that marked Las Sabanas in front the placid pacific the south sea of the spaniards spread dimly away into the void of night its several islands seen only by the darker darkness that marked where they lay on the other side of the hill the rumble of cranes and night labor came up from Balboa dock there began the canal which the eye could follow away into the dim hilly inland distance and come upon a great cluster of lights that was Corazal then another group that was Miraflores close followed by those of Pedro Miguel and yet further rising to such a height as to be almost indistinguishable from the lower stars the lights of the negro cabins of Upper Paraiso twinkled dimly above a broad glow that was Paraiso itself there the vista ended for at Paraiso the canal turns to the left for its plunge through Culabra hill and all that follows Empire Cascadas and Fargatun was visible only in the imagination if only the film of time might roll back and there pass again before our eyes all that has come to pass within sight to vancone hilltop across the bay there where now our only jungle tangled ruins Pizarro set out with his handful of vagabonds to conquer South America their old buccaneer Morgan laid his bloody hand back in the hills their men died by scores trying to carry a ship across the isthmus the Spanish viceroys passed with their rich trains there on some unknown knoll Balboa reached 400 years ago the climax of a career that began was stowing away in a casque ended under the headsman's axe no end of it down to the 49ers going hopefully out and returning filled with gold or disease were leaving their bones here in the jungle before they really were 49ers on down to the railroad days with men waiting in swamps with survey kits and frequently lying down to die then if a bit of the future too could for a moment be unveiled and one might watch the first ship glide majestically and silently into the canal and away into the jungle like some amphibious monster it was along in those days that we were looking for a murderous assaulter at a Saturday night dance in a native shack back in Mira Flores bush the usual riot had broken out about midnight and a revolver had come into play as a result there was a Peruvian mulatto up in Ancon hospital who had been shot through the mouth the bullet being somewhere in his neck became my frequent duty among other zps to take suspects up the hill for possible identification one morning I strolled into the station and fell to laughing the early train had brought in on suspicion a Spanish laborer of 21 or 22 a pretty girlish chap with huge blue eyes over which hung long black lashes like those painted on Nernberg dolls no one with a shadow of faith in human nature left would believed him capable of any crime anyone at all equated to a Spaniard must have known he could not shoot a hair would in fact be afraid to fire off a gun the fear in his big blue eyes struggled with his ingenuous girlish smile as I marched him through the long hall full of white beds and darker inmates the Peruvian sat bolstered up in his cot a stoical revenge full glare on his reddish brown swollen face he gazed a long minute at the boy's face across which flitted the flush of fear and embarrassment at the big doll's eyes then shook a raised forefinger slowly back and forth before his nose the negative of Spanish speaking peoples then he groaned spat at a tin can beside him and called for paper and pencil in the notebook I handed him he wrote in atrociously spelled Spanish that man came to the dance with this man is the man that shot me with a bullet the blue-eyed boy promised to point out his companion of that night we took the 1055 and reached Pedro Miguel during the noon hour down in a boxcar camp between the railroad and the canal the boy called for Jose and there presented himself immediately a tall studious solemn faced spanured of spare frame about 40 dressed in overalls and working shirt here was even a less criminal type than the boy senior I asked did you go to the dance and mirror flores last Saturday night with this youth see senior we will place you under arrest we will take the one o'clock train he opened his mouth to protest but closed it again without having uttered a sound he opened it a second time then sat suddenly down on the low edge of the boxcar porch a more genuinely astonished man have I never seen no actor could have approached it still whatever my own conviction it was my business to bring him before his accuser after a time he recovered sufficiently to ask permission to change his clothes and disappeared in one of the resident boxcars the boy was already being fed in another had my prisoners been of almost anyone of the other 71 nationalities I should not have thought of letting them out of my sight but the zone spanured's respect for law is proverbial Jose, pinched Jose cried his American boss when I explained that he would find himself a man short to that afternoon you people are sure barking at the wrong tree this time why Jose has been my engineer for over two years and the steadiest man on the zone he writes for some Spanish paper and tells him the truth over there so straight that the rest of him down here, the anarchists and all that bunch are aching to get him into trouble but they'll never get anything on Jose have him tell you about it in Spanish if you sabed the lingo but Jose was a Gallego when instead of the voluble flood of protesting words one expects from a spanured on such an occasion he wrapped himself in a stoical silence not until we were on our way to the railroad station did I get him to talk then he explained in quiet unflowery, gestureless language he had come to the canal zone chiefly together literary material not being a man of wealth however nor one satisfied with superficial observation he had sought employment at his trade as a stationery engineer besides laying in a stock for more important writing he hoped to do in the future he was the zone correspondent of El Liberal of Madrid and other Spanish cities in the social life of his fellow countrymen on the isthmus he had taken no part whatever he was too busy he did not drink, he could not dance he was no sense in squandering time in such frivolities but ever since his arrival he had been promising himself to attend one of these wild Saturday night debauches in the edge of the jungle that he might use a description of it in some later work so he had coaxed his one personal friend the boy to go with him it was virtually the one thing besides work he had ever done on the zone they had stayed two hours and had left the moment the trouble began yet here he was, arrested I bade him cheer up to consider the trip to Angkoland merely an afternoon excursion on a government pass he remained downcast but think of the experience I cried now you could tell exactly how it feels to be arrested first hand literary material but he was not philosopher enough to look at it from that point of view to his Spanish mind at first even in innocence was a disgrace for which no amount of material could compensate it is a common failing how many of us set out into the world for experience yet growl with rage or sit downcast and silent all the way from Pedro Miguel to Panama if one such experience gives us a rough half hour or robbs us of ten minutes of sleep at the hospital the Peruvian gurgled and spat beckoned for paper and wrote this is the man what man? the man who came with that man he scribbled nodding his heavy face toward the blue eyed boy but is this the man who shot you? I demanded the man who came with that man is the one he scrawled well then this is the man that shot you I cried but he would not enter definitely to that but set a long time glaring out of his swollen vindictive countenance propped up in his pillows at the tall solemn correspondence by and by he motioned again for the paper I think so I am not sure he miswrote I did not think so and as the sum total of his descriptions of his assailant during the past several days amounted to a tall man rather short with a face into eyes he was very insistent about the eyes which is the reason the dull eyed boy had fallen into the dragnet I permitted myself to accept my own opinion as evidence the Peruvian was in all likelihood in no condition to recognize a man from a loop guru at the time the frocus started much ardent water had flowed that night I took the suspects down to Ancolin station and let them cool off in porch rocking chairs then I gave them passes back to Pedro Miguel for the evening train the dull eyed boy smiled grilishly upon me as he descended the steps but the correspondent strode slowly away with the downcast cheerless countenance of a man who has been hurt beyond recovery there were strangely contrasted days in the gum shoes calendar the locals taken almost at random will give the idea on May 20th I lulled all day in a porch rocker at Ancolin station reading a novel along in the afternoon corporal Castillo drifted in for a time he stood leaning against the desk rail his felt hat pushed far back on his head his eyes fixed on some point in the interior of China then suddenly he snatched up a sheet of ICC stationery dropped down at a typewriter and wrote an express speed a letter in Spanish he grasped the telephone and, in the words of the desk man, spit, spig into the foam for several minutes that over he caught up an envelope sealed the letter and addressed it an instant later the station was in an uproar looking for a stamp one was found the corporal stuck it on the letter fell suddenly motionless and stared for a long time at vacancy then a new thought struck him he jerked open the drawer of the gum shoe desk flung the letter inside where I found it accidentally one day afterward and dropping into the swivel chair laid his feet on the gum shoe blotter and a moment later seemed to have fallen asleep by all of which signs those of us knew him began to suspect that the corporal had something on his mind not a few considered him the best detective on the force at least he was different enough from a printer's ink detective to be a real one but naturally the strain of heading a detective bureau for weeks was beginning to wear upon him damn it, said the corporal I can't be in six places at once you'll have to handle these cases and he drew from a pocket and handed me three typewritten sheets then drifted away into the dusk I looked them over and returned to the porch rocker and the last chapters of the novel a meek touch on the leg awoke me at four next morning I looked up to see dimly a black face under a khaki helmet bent over me whispering it to time saw and fade noiselessly away it was the frontier policeman carrying out his orders of the night before for once there was not a carriage in sight I stumbled sleepily down into Panama and for some distance along Avenida Central before I was able to hail an all-night hawk chasing a worn little wreck of a horse along the madicum I spread my lanky form over the worn cushions and we spevened along the gravel boundary line past the Chinese cemetery where John can preserve and burn Joss to his ancestors to the end of time out through East Balboa just awakening to life and reached Balboa Docks as day was breaking I was not long there an equine caricature ambled the three miles back to town in what seemed reasonable time considering as we turned again into Avenida Central my watch told me there was time and to spare to catch the morning passenger I was not a little surprised therefore to hear just then the two sharp rings on the station gong I dived headlong into the station to lock the gate caught a glimpse of two or three ladies weeping and the tale of the passenger disappearing under the bridge Americans have introduced the untropical idea of starting their trains on time to the disgust of the spig in general and the occasional disconverture of Americans I dashed wildly out through the station across Panama's main street down a rugged lane to the first steps descending to the track and tumbled joyously onto a slowly moving train to discover that it was the Balboa labor train that the Cologne passenger was already halfway to Diablo Hill a Panama policeman of Dusky Hewley against a gate post I made drowsily as I slowly climbed to the steps mopping my brow and staring at my watch what time does that 635 train leave I demanded yo señor he said with ministerial dignity shifting slowly to the other shoulder no tengo conocimiento de esas cosas I have no knowledge of those things he probably did not know there is a railroad from Panama to Cologne it has only been in operation since 1855 later I found the fault lay with my brass watch with a perspiration up for all day I set out along the track hounding Diablo Hill the realization that I was hungry came upon me simultaneously with the thought that unless I got through the door of Corazol by 730 I was likely to remain so breakfast over I caught the morning supply train to Mira Flores there to dash through the locks for a 5 minute interview I walked to Pedro Miguel and descending from the embankment of the main line nailed a dirt train returning empty and stood up for a breezy ride down through the cut it was the same old smoky, toilsome place a perceptible bit lower as in the case of a small boy only those can see its growth who have been away for a time the train stopped with a jerk at the foot of Culebra I walked a half a mile, caught a loaded dirt train to Cascadas the matter there to be investigated required 10 minutes that over I got in touch at the nearest telephone and the corporals voice called for my immediate presence at headquarters their chance to be passing through Cascadas at that moment a Panama bound freight the caboose of which caught me up on the fly and 40 minutes later I was racing up the long stairs there I learned that among other things that a man to have a word with was coming in on the noon train but would be unavailable after arrival I sprang into a cab and was soon rolling away again past the Chinese cemetery at the commissary crossing in East Balboa we were held up by an empty dirt train returning from the dump I tossed a coin at the cabman and scrambled aboard the train raced through Corazal down the grade and around the curve at unslacking speed I dropped off in front of Miraflores police station keeping my feet thanks to practicing good luck and dashing up through the village dragged myself breathlessly aboard the passenger train as its head and shoulders had already disappeared in the tunnel the ticket collector pointed out my man to me in the first passenger coach the ladies car he is a school teacher and tobacco smoke distresses him and by the time we pulled into Panama I had the desired information dinner was not to be thought of I had barely time to dash through the second class gate and back along the track to Balboa labor train from the docks a sand train carried me to Pedro Miguel there was a crane man in Basavispo cut whose testimony was wanted I reached him by two short walks and a ride his statement suggested the advisability of questioning his roommate a tower man in Miraflores freight yard luck would have it that my chauffeur friend blank was just then passing with an ICC motor car and only a photographer for a New York weekly aboard I found a room to squeeze in placed away through the cut of the declivity and dropped me at the foot of the tower the roommate referred me to a locomotive engineer and being a tower man gave me the exact location of his engine I found it at the foot of the Cougaracha slide with a train nearly loaded by the time the engineer had added his width of information we were swinging around toward the Pacific dump I dropped off and climbing up the flank of Ancon Hill descended through the hospital grounds where the Royal Palms are finest and there opens out the view of Panama, Ancon and the bay I gave myself five minutes pause after which a carriage bore me to a shop near Cathedral Plaza where second hand goods are bought and no questions asked on the way back to Ancon station I visited two similar establishments I had been lauling in the swivel chair a full ten minutes perhaps when the telephone rang it was the captain calling for me when I reached the third story back he handed me extra edition papers to the secretary of foreign affairs in Panama after wholly outstripping the mañana idea I had signed a receipt for the JAP in question and transferred him from Panama to Ancon Gel whereupon I descended to the evening passenger and rode to Pedro Miguel for five minutes conversation and caught the labor train Panama word at Corazal I stepped off for a word with the officer on the platform and the labor train plunged on again after the fashion of labor trains spilling the last half of its disemparking passengers on the way ten minutes later the headlight of the last passenger train swung the curve and carried me away to Panama that might have done for the day but I had gathered momentum it was hard to check not long after returning from the police mess to the swivel chair a slight omission in the days program occurred to me I called up Corazal police station what said a mashed potato voice at the other end of the wire who's talking policeman green sir station commander there no sir station commander he gone just over to the ym day one big match on tonight of course I could have got him there but on second thoughts it would be better to see him in person and clear up at the same time a little matter in one of the labor camps and not run the risk of causing the loss of billiard championships besides Corazal is cooler to sleep in than an cone in a black starry night I set out along the invisible railroad for the first station an hour later everything settled to my satisfaction I had discovered a vacant bed in Corazal botch alert quarters and was pulling off my coat preparatory to the shower bath and a well-earned night's repose suddenly I heard a peculiar noise in the adjoining room much like that of a seal coming to the surface after being long underwater my curiosity awakened I sauntered a few feet along the veranda beside one of the cots stood a short roly-poly little man the lower third of whom showed rosy pink below his bell shaped white nighty as he turned his face toward the light to switch it off I swallowed the roof of my mouth and clawed at the clap boarding for support it was the sloth he had been transferred I slipped hastily into my coat and turning up the collar plunged out into the rain and the night and stumbled blindly away on weary legs toward Panama End of Chapter 8 Part 2 Chapter 9 Part 1 of Zone Policeman 88 This is a LibraVox recording All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Zone Policeman 88 A close-range study of the Panama Canal and its workers by Harry A. Frank Chapter 9 Part 1 There were four of us that Sunday Bish and I always went for an afternoon swim unless police or mess duties forbade then there was Bridgely who had also once displayed his swelled form in a zippy uniform to admiring tourists but was now a pursuer of soldiering Hindus on Naus Island I wish I could describe Bridgely for you but if you never knew him 10 pages would give you no clear idea and if you ever did the mere mention of the name Bridgely would be full and ample description still if you must have some sort of a lay figure to hang your imaginings on give a man who always reminds you of a slender delicate porcelain phase of great antiquity that you know a strong wind would smash to fragments yet when you accidentally swatted off the mantelpiece to the floor it bobs up without a crack then you grow bolder and more curious and jump on it with both feet in your hob-nailed boots astonishment it not only does not break but well Bridgely was one of us that Sunday afternoon and then there was the admiral well dressed as always who turned up at the last moment for which we were glad as anyone would be to have the admiral along so we descended into Panama by the train-guard shortcut and across the bridge that humps its back over the PRR like a cat in un-social mood and on through Caledonia out along the beach sands past the old iron halls about which Panamanian laborers are always tinkering under the impression that they are working this time we walked I don't recall the cracks or the lieutenant hadn't slept well no it couldn't have been that for the lieutenant never let his personal mishaps trample on his good nature or whether Bish had decided to reduce weight at any rate we were afoot and thereby hangs the tail or as much of a tail as there is to tell we tramped absolutely on along the hard curving beach past the disheveled bath houses before which ladies from the zone gather in some force of a Sunday afternoon for this time we were really out for a swim rather than to display our figures on past the light brown bathers and the chocolate colored bathers and the jet black bathers who seemed to consider that color covering enough till we came to the big silent sawmill at the edge of the coconut grove that we had been invited long since to make a ZP dressing room before us spread the reposing powerful sun shimmering pacific along the bay clear as an etching lay Panama backed by Ancon Hill in regular cadence the ocean swept in with a horse resist this role on the sands we dived in keeping an eye out for the sharks we knew never come so far in and probably won't bite if they did the sun blaze down white hot from the cloudless sky this time the lieutenant and sergeant Jack had not come but we arranged the races and jumps on the sand for all that and went into them with a whale and a raindrop fell nor was it long lonesome before we had finished the hundred-yard dash we were in the midst of it was undeniably raining half a moment later buckets full would have been a week similarly all the pent up four months of an extra long lazy season seem to have been loosed without warning the blanket of water blotted out Panama and Ancon Hill across the bay blotted out the distant American bathers then the light brown ones then the chocolate tinted then even the jet black ones close to the sand we remained under water for a time to keep dry but the rain whipped our faces as with thousands of stinging lashes we crawled out and dash blindly up the bank toward the sawmill the rain beating on our all but bare skins feeling as it might to stand naked in darkness from 60 feet above when at last we stumbled under cover and up the stairs to where our clothing hung it was as if a weight of many tons have been lifted from our shoulders the sawmill was without sidewalls consisted only of a sheet iron roof and floors on the former of which the storm pounded with only the sign language feasible it was now as if we were surrounded on all sides by solid walls of water and forever shut off from the outer world if indeed that had survived sheets of water slashed in further and further across the floor we took to huddling behind beams and under saw benches the militant storm directed us out and wedded us bit by bit the admiral and I tucked ourselves away on the 45 degree I beams up under the roaring roof the angry water gathered together in columns and swept in and up to socus at the end of an hour the downpour had increased some hundred percent it was as if an express train going at full speed had gradually doubled its rapidity that was the day when the little harmless streams tore themselves apart into great gorges and left their pathetic little bridges alone and deserted out in the middle of the gulf that was the famous May 12th 1912 when Ancon recorded the greatest rainfall in her history 7.23 inches virtually all within three hours three of us were ready to surrender and swim home through it but there was the admiral to consider he was dressed clear to his scarf pin and Panama Taylor's tear horrible holes in a police salary squirmed into closer holes for another hour and grew steadily wetter then at length dusk began to fall and instead of slacking with the day the fury of the storm increased it was then that the admiral capitulated seeing fate plainly in league with his Taylor and wig wagging the decision to us beside him he let the way down the stairs and dived into the world awash wet? we had not taken the third step before we were streaming like fire hose there was nearly an hour of it splashing knee deep through what had been when we came out little dry sandy hollows steering by gas for the eye could make out nothing fifty yards ahead even before the cheese thick darkness fell bowed like non-Ogarians under the burden of water staggering back and forth as the storm caught us crosswise or the earth gave way under us the admiral's patent leather shoes but why go into painful details those who were in Panama on that summerable afternoon can picture it all for themselves and the others will never know the wall of water was as thick as ever when we fought our bowed and weary way up over the railroad bridge and summoning up the last strength splurge tottering into Angelini's when our streaming had so far subsided recognized us for solvent human beings encouraging concoctions were set before us bridgedly fearing the after effects acquired a further quart bottle of protection and when we had gathered force for the last dash we plunged out one more toward our several goals as the door of 111 slammed behind me the downpour suddenly slackened as I paused before my room to drain, it stopped raining I sucked on bread beer and cheese from over the frontier we had arrived 30 seconds too late for ancon police mess then when I saved what was salvable from the wreckage and reclad in such wardrobe as had luckily remained at home I strolled over toward the police station to put in a serene and quiet evening but it has long since been established that troubles flock together as I crunched up the gravel walk between the hedge rows while riot broke on my ear ancon police station was in eruption from the lieutenant to the newest uniformless rookie every member of the force was swarming in and out of the building the zone and panama telephones were ringing in their two opposing dialects the desk men was shouting his own peculiar brand of Spanish into one receiver and bawling English at the other all hands were diving into old clothes apathetic of the force were girding up their loins with the adventurous fire of the old moral hunting days in their eyes and all some a horse more afoot were dashing one by one out into the night and the jungle it was several minutes before I could catch the news at last it was shouted at me over a telephone murder a white greek whoever heard of a coloured greek with a white shirt on had shot a man at Pedro Miguel at 635 every road and bypass of escape to panama was already blocked our men would meet the assassin whatever way he might take I went down to meet the evening train resolved after that to strike out into the night in the random hope of having my share in the chase it had begun to rain again but only moderately as if it realized it could never again equal the afternoon record then suddenly the excitement exploded it was only a near murder two columbians had been shot would in all probability recover the news reached me as I stood at the second class gate scanning the faces of the great multicolored river of passengers that poured out into the city for two hours one by one with crestfallen mean the man hunters leaked back into an con station and the case having dwindled to one of regular daily routine by eleven we were all a bed in the morning the great chase fell to me more detailed description of the culprit had come in during the night including the bit of information that he was a bad man from the isle of crete the belt straining number thirty eight oiled and loaded I set off on an assignment that was at least a relief after pursuing stolen necklaces for negro women or trobars lost by the ICC by nine I was climbing to Pedro Miguel police station on its knoll with the young Greek who had exchanged hats with the assassin after the crime that afternoon a volunteer joined me he was a friend of the wounded men a Peruvian black as jade but without a suggestion of the negro in anything but his outward appearance he was of the size and build of a Samson in his prime spoke a Spanish so clear cut it seemed to be lie his African blood and had the restless vigor acquired in a youth of trapping over the endine ranges I applied him into a cab and we rolled away to East Balboa to climb upon an empty dirt train and drop off as it raced through Mara Flores the sturdy legs of the Peruvian saving him where his practice would not have up in the bush between Pedro Miguel and Perizio we found a hut where the Greek had stopped for water and gone on up a gully we set out to follow mounting partly on hands and knees partly dragging ourselves by grass and bushes up what had been and would soon be again a torrential mountain stream for hours we tore through the jungle uphill steeper the path of righteousness following now a few faint footprints or trampled bushes now a hint from some native bush dweller the rain outside vied with the sweat within as to which would first soak us through to make things merrier I had not only to wear an arsenal but a coat atop to conceal it from the general public to mention the holes I crawled into and the clues I followed during the next few days would be more tiresome than a Puritan prayer by day I was dashing back and forth through all Ancon District by night prowling about the grimeer sections of Panama City almost daily I got near enough to sniff the tree now it was a great confectioner on Avenida Central who admitted that the fugitive had called on him during the night now a Panamanian Pesquia whose stool pigeon had sent him out in the bush then the information that he had stopped to shave and otherwise alter his appearance in some shack halfway across the zone and afterwards struck off for Panama by an unused route the clues were pendulum like they took me half a dozen times at least out of the winding highway to Corazal on to Merrill Flores and even further the rainy season and the rain of umbrellas had come it had been formally opened on that memorial day afternoon there was still sunshine at times but always a wet season heaviness to the atmosphere and the rains were already giving the rolling jungle hills a tinge of new green there was nothing to be gained by hurrying the fugitive was as likely to crawl forth from one place as another along the rambling road here I pause to kill a lizard or to watch the clumsy march of one of the huge purple and many colored land crabs there to gaze away across a jungle valley soft and fuzzy in the humid air like some carot painting I even sailed for San Francisco in the quest for of course each outgoing ship must be searched one day I had word that a windjammer was about to sail and racing out to Balboa I was soon set on board the four an aft schooner meteor far out in the bay when I plunged down into the cabin the peeled headed German captain was seated at a table before a heap of spig paying off his black shore hens he solemnly asserted he had no Greek aboard and still more solemnly swore that if he found one stowed away he would turn him over to the police in San Francisco which was kind of him but would not have help matters there are several men running gaily about San Francisco who would be very welcome in certain quarters of the zone and sure of lodging and food for a long time to come end of chapter nine part one recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver B.C. chapter nine part two of the zone policeman eighty-eight this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver B.C. zone policeman eighty-eight a close range study of the Panama Canal and its workers by Harry A. Frank chapter nine part two by this time the tug Bolivar had us in tow the captain went racing over his ship like any of his crew tugging at the ropes and we were gliding out across Panama Bay past the little greening islands the curving panorama of the city and Ann Con Hill growing smaller and smaller behind bound for Frisco what ho the Mary wind jammer with her stowed sales and smell of tar awakened within me old memories hungry and grimy for the most part but this was no independent self-respecting member of the wind wafted sister good far out in the offing lay a steamer of the same line that was to tow the meteor to the golden gate how is the breed of sailors fallen the few laborers aboard would take an occasional wheel pick and yarn their adventurous yarns as we drew near a boat was lowered to set me aboard the steamer to the rail crowding surprise of her passengers who fancy they had ours since seen the last zone and zoners the captain asserted he had nothing aboard grown nearer grease than three Irishman any one of whom fictitiousness seem to be one of the captain's characteristics I might have and welcome a few moments later I was back aboard the tug waving farewell to steamer and wind jammer as they pushed away into the twilight sea and the boulevard turned shoreward I received a straight tip one evening that the fugitive Greek was hiding in a hovel on the cruises trail what part of the cruises trail the informant did not hint but he described the hut in some detail so next morning as the thick grey dawn of this tropical land was moving into day I descended at Bass Opiso through the canal to Gamboa and struck off into the dense dripping jungle the rainy season had green things up and gone temporarily of course for in a day or two it would be on us again in all tropical fury in the few days since the first rain the landscape had changed like a theater decoration agreeing not even to be imagined in the temperate zone it turned out that the ancient village of cruises was a mere two mile stroll from the canal a thatched roofed native town of some 30 dwellings on the rocky shore of an inner curve of the chagras where travelers from Balboa to the Niner disembarked from their 36 mile ride up the river and struck on along the 10 mile road through the jungle to Panama the famous cruises trail except for its associations the village was without interest except some personal greek interest sourd looks were chiefly my portion for the villagers have never kindly to Americans I soon sought out the trail here a mere path undulating through rank wet hot locus singing jungle here in the tangled somber mystery of the wilderness grew every tropical thing countless giant ferns draping tangles of vines the mango tree with its rounded dome of leaves like the mosque of Omar done in greenery the humble pineapple with its un proportionate fruit everywhere the banana king of vegetables clothed in its own immense leaves the frondies apote now and then in a hollow a clump of yellowish green bamboo though not numerous or nearly so large as in many other tropical land above all else the symmetrical gothic fronds of the palm knotting in a breeze the more humble vegetation could not know the constant music of insect life sounded in my ears everywhere were flowers of brilliant hue masses of bush blossoms not unlike the lilac in appearance but like all down the isthmus odorless or rather with a pungent scent like strong catsup four months earlier I should have been chari of diving back into the panamanium bush alone above all on a criminal hunt but it needs only a little time on the zone to make one laugh at the absurd stories of danger from the bush native are even yet appearing in many US papers they are not over friendly to whites it is true but they were all of that familiar language Central American type blinking at me apathetically out of the shade of their huts crowding to one edge of the trail as I passed eyeing me silently closely somewhat frightened because their experience of Americans is of a discourteous creature who shouts at them in a strange tongue and swears at them because they do not understand it the moment they heard their own customary greetings they changed to children delighted to do anything to oblige even to the extent of dragging their indolent forms erect to lead the way a quarter mile through the bush to some isolated shack far from contemplating any injury all these wayward children of the jungle ask is to be left alone to drift through life in their own way still more absurd is the notion of danger from wild beasts other than the tiny wild beast that burrows its painful way under the skin so I pushed on halting at many huts to make covert inquiries it was a joyous brilliant day overhead down in the dense rampant singing jungle I sweated profusely and enjoyed it choking for a drink in a hutless section I took one of the crooked like trails to the left in the direction of the shagers but it squirmed off through thick jungle through banana grows and untended pineapple gardens to come out at last at an astonished hut on a knoll from which was not to be seen a sign of the river I crawled through another struggling side trail further on and this time reached the stream but at a bank too sheer and bush matted to descend the third attempt brought me to where the river made a graceful bend at my feet and I descended an abrupt jungle bank to drink and stroll a bit along the stony shore then plunged in for a swim it was just the right temperature with dense jungle banks on either side like great green unscalable walls the water clear and a bit over waist deep in the middle of the stream now and then around the one or the other bend came a coyua the native dugout made of the hollow trunk of a tree usually the cedro though to a jungle native any tree is a cedro if he does not happen to think of its right name 20 to 30 feet long sometimes piled high with vegetables sometimes with several natives seeded indian fiel in the bottom the gunwales abair 2 or 3 inches above the water they needed nice management especially in the rapids below cruces the locomotive power generally naked to the waist stood up in the craft and climbed his pole anchor or long pike pole hand over hand every naked brown muscle in play moving in perfect rhythm and apparent ease even upstream against the powerful current soon after chagras and trail parted company the former to wind up the jungle hills to its birthplace in the land of Darien and wild Indians the ladder to strike for the pacific over a mildly rough country it led down into tango ravines up over dense forest hillocks where the jungle have been fought back by Uncle Sam and on the browse of which I halted to drink of the fresh breeze sweeping across from the Atlantic at this time not a suggestion of anything Greek though I managed by some simple strategy to cast a sweeping glance into every hovel along the way then came the real cruces trail the rest only follows the general direction I fell upon it unexpectedly it is still there as it was when the Peruvian visceroids and their glittering trains clattered along it surprisingly well preserved a cobbled way some three feet wide of that rough and bumpy variety the Spaniard even today fancies a real road broken in places but still while embarked leading away southward through the wilderness head were tall spreading trees laden with blossomous orchids under some of them was broad grassy shade but the surrounding wall of vegetation cut off all breeze the way was intersected by many roads of leaf cutting ants at level wide and well built in their proportion as the old Roman highways with such an industrious strong going and coming upon them as one could find nowhere equaled unless it be on the Grand Trunk Road of India then suddenly there appeared the hut that have been described to me I surrounded it and hand upon the butt of my number thirty eight closed in upon the place then rushed it with all there was not a sign of human life in the vicinity the door was tied shut with a single strand of old rope but there was no question that the fugitive might have been hiding inside for the reed walls had holes in them large enough to drive a sheep through and there was nothing within to hide behind I thrust an arm through like the large and heavy earthenware water jar to me for a drink and pushed on squatters cabins were now appearing as contrasted with the native bushmen's peat hut sleeping places thrown together of tin cans boxes and jungle rubbish many negro shanties built of ICC scraps all of which announced the vicinity of the canal any hut might be a hiding place I made ostensibly casual inquiries interlarded between stories at several of them and at length established that the greek had been there not long before but was elsewhere now then about four of the afternoon I burst out suddenly in sight of a broad modern highway and leaving the ancient route as it headed away toward old Panama I turned aside to the modern city then I was called off the greek chase and a couple of evenings later along with the evening train and the evening fog the inspector blew in from his 42 days vacation in the states like a breath from far off broadway buffalo bill had been duly opened and started on his seasons way the absent returned and corporal castillo suddenly dwindled again to a mere corporal as everything must have its flaws perhaps the chief one that might be charged against the zp is red tape strictly speaking it is no zp fault at all but a weakness of all government one example will suffice during the month of may I was assigned the investigation of a certain alleged conditions in Panama's restricted district the then head of the plainclothes division gave me carte blanche but suggested that I need don't spare my expense account in libating the various establishments until I got acquainted sufficiently with the inmates to pick up indirectly the information desired which general line I followed and the information having been gathered and the report made up I proceeded to make out my expenditures of $45 for the month to forward to empire for reimbursement now it needs no deep detective experience to know that in such cases you naturally begin with well what you going to drink girls and end by paying the bill in a lump sum a large lump sum and go your way in peace what more then could I do than set down such items as May 12th liquor, investigation Panama 650 but here I began to feel the tangling strands was it not stated that all applications for reimbursement require an exact itemized account of each separate expenditure with the price of each it did but in the first place no half the beverages consumed in the investigation by site, smell, or name in the second place I came ostentably as a rounder it would perhaps have been advisable at the close of each evening's entertainment to draw out notebook and pencil as starting the round of the table announced now girls I'm a detective so keep your places I ain't going to pinch nobody anyhow I'm only a zone detective but I just want to ask you a few questions now Mammy what's that you're drinking ah, gin Ricky and just how much does that cost here? and you flossy an absinthe frappy ah, very good and what is the retail price of that particular drink and so on ad nauseam very true replied authority that would of course be impossible but to be reimbursed you must sit down in detail every item of expenditure and its price reason and government red tape move in two parallel lines with the usual meeting place nor was that all while the black Peruvian was on my staff I gave him money for food it was not merely expected it was definitely so ordered yet when I sat down May 27th two Peruvian for food fifty cents authority threw up its hands in horror did I not know that reimbursements were only for liquor and cigars cab or boat hire and meals away from home I did but I also knew that superiors had ordered me to feed the Peruvian to be sure astounded authority but you sit down such an expenditure as follows May 27th two bottles of beer Panama investigation fifty cents and as you are allowed cab fare only for yourself when you take the Peruvian or anyone else out to baboa in a cab you set down the item May 26th cab and con to baboa and return investigation one dollar the upshot of all which was not feeling able with all my patronism to set up 45 dollars worth of mixed drinks for Uncle Sam I was forced to open another investigation and gather from all the ZP authorities on the subject from now Island to Parizio the name and price of every known beverage then when I had fitted a single of these that summed up to the amount I had actually spent I was called upon to sign a statement there under that this is a true and exact account of expenditures during the month of May so help me God but then as I have said before these things are not ZP's faults it had become evident soon after the inspectors return that unless crime began to pick up down at the pacific end of the zone I should find myself again banished to the foreign land of Gatun for there had been a distinct rise in the criminal commodity at that end during the past weeks the premonition soon fell true take the 1055 to Gatun said the inspector one morning without looking up from his filing case Corporal Macy will tell you about it when you get there end of chapter 9 part 2 recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver BC