Death at the Isthmus

the long version

Jim Russell had always known that some day he would have to pay off the debt he owed Max Darrow. That this obligation, incurred on the island of Luzon in 1945, should take him to Panama City nine years later didn't seem particularly strange. Yet once there, Darrow seemed reluctant to talk, and by the time he changed his mind, things had broken wide open. First there was the slim girl with the high-cheekboned face and the suntanned legs. Then the man with the tinted glasses and his friend with the gun. Finally there was the indestructible Max Darrow, indestructible no longer, sprawled on the floor of his apartment in front of his rifled safe. Jim's promise to Darrow was hard to explain to the police, but he was most concerned about the girl. Emeralds, gunrunning and jealousy mixed together make a dangerous brew, and too many people seemed to have sampled it.