Puerto Vallarta Squeeze

by Robert James Waller

  The shooter smiled, Danny smiled, and the Buick moved south toward little beach towns and whatever else lay farther down in the belly of Mexico.

  Relentless heat. Sun melting the highway tar patches and beating on the earth and reflecting off big water to the left, some kind of estuary or lake. A few miles farther on, Danny had to pee and swung across the highway onto a graveled turnout, parking Vito on the crest of a high bluff dropping off to the water below.

  Danny went into the bushes, and when he came out the shooter was standing near the edge of the bluff. Luz was sitting on the ground, leaning against the Bronco’s front bumper, long-billed fishing cap shading her eyes.

  The shooter pointed out and down to the water, putting his other hand to his face, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped. It had.

  “They’re using nets,” he said.

  Half a dozen small boats were working the estuary stretching a mile either side of them and as far as they could see in the direction of the Pacific. One of the boats, the color of faded turquoise, was about a hundred yards from the cliff. A man in the bow cast a net out in front while another sat in the rear, tending a small motor. Water clinging to the net caught sparkles of sunlight when it fanned out.

  “Fishing would be a good thing to do for a living,” the shooter said. He said only that and watched the fisherman tossing the net and retrieving it in the old, old rhythms of fishermen everywhere.

  Gravel crunched behind them, big-tire kind of crunch. The truck was a red Chevy Suburban, and Danny goddamn near fainted. Federates drove those vehicles after they’d confiscated them from dope dealers. That was his first thought, and he was right. Three of them got out. Two had .45’s hanging from shoulder holsters outside their shirts; the other carried an automatic weapon of some kind on a strap over his right shoulder. Danny didn’t know much about those things, but later the shooter said it was an Uzi, vicious little Israeli machine gun.

  The federates looked mean and arrogant swaggering toward them, wearing Stetsons and expensive cowboy boots with a thin layer of dust over the shines. The one carrying the Uzi had a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, ash dangling. Big one on the left, fat one, was hitching up his pants.

  Danny was thinking fast, thinking about excuses and explanations:

  “We’re just traveling around looking at your beautiful country.”

  Or: “My friend had his papers stolen in San Bias, but we’re going to stop in Mazatlan and clear that up, get him some new documents.”

  Or: “The woman is our guide.”

  All of it weak, pathetic. Panic wrenching his gut, Danny was remembering how right his ex-wife had been about drinking and making decisions. Only he didn’t know how absolutely right she was until much later, such as that very moment.

  The shooter, still wearing his ball cap and sunglasses, lit a cigarette and watched the federates come on. Danny was thinking about the shooter’s knapsack in the Bronco and was glad it was there, out of reach.

  This would take some explaining, some interpreting to make sure the language was just right. Danny looked at Luz. She moved over to stand beside him.

  The federates stopped twenty feet away. All three of them looking at the shooter, watching him hard, as if they knew something. Maybe interested in the cut on his face. A tiny drop of sweat hung on the tip of his nose and he was tossing his silver lighter up and down in his left hand. That level of nonchalance seemed a little strange to Danny. The very act of tossing and catching would subtract from the way he must be concentrating. Later on, Danny would recall how lazy the shooter had looked at that moment, almost sluggish, like he was passing time, waiting for a bus or for a woman to get dressed and go out. Clayton Price, going into his bubble.

  Inside Danny’s head was a sound he couldn’t identify, like something scratching at a door and wanting to be let in.

  One of the federates, big handsome hombre with a thin mustache, said, “Papers,” and held out his hand, palm up. He resembled the old film actor Gilbert Roland.

  Danny understood that much Spanish and turned to Luz. “Tell them you’re a Mexican citizen, my papers are in the Bronco, and Mr. Schumann had his stolen in San Bias, but we’re going to fix it up when we get to Mazatlán.”

  They were hesitating, and the federales could see that. The one who’d been doing the talking reached over to his left shoulder and unsnapped his holster. His .45 automatic had a pearl handgrip with little diamonds, or something that passed for diamonds, embedded in it. The diamonds reflected the sun, sending out bounces of light whenever the man shifted his body. Christ, what a cliché—diamond-studded pistol handgrip—something right out of a grade-C drive-in movie. Danny was drifting, the whole affair switching from what had seemed at the start like a controllable melodrama to something immeasurably real and nasty. He started thinking about Mexican jails and everything he’d heard about them: bad things, perdition on earth, maybe worse.

  Luz said what Danny had told her to say, sweet voice, trying her best. The federales were not convinced, not even close to it. The fat man looked at the one who’d asked for papers and shook his head slowly back and forth. It wasn’t going to work, Danny could see that, and he could almost smell the urine and rotting food in a Mexico City jail or the gray-stone prison just south of Mazatlán. God, set me free, get me out of this.

  The shooter was still tossing his lighter up and down, relaxed and untroubled as far as anyone could tell. He stared at the federales while speaking quietly to Danny. “Will money do it?”

  Luz looked at Danny, then at the shooter, then at the federales. She was terrified, her eyes showed it.

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll try.”

  Danny told Luz to ask them if there was some nice way they could settle this business right there on the road. Maybe buy them some cold beer for their troubles. In a lot of situations that would have worked. Not this day. Danny could see the nasty expressions on their faces while Luz was making the offer. They were looking for someone, there was that sense of it, and one of the gringos before them didn’t have any papers. Reason enough to haul all three of them in. Even though the federates operated as a law unto themselves most of the time, they’d be in deep trouble if they let somebody important, such as a hit man, get by them for the price of a case of beer. They weren’t taking any chances.

  Luz translated, “He says no, we must go with them and any more attempts to bribe an officer of the state will make things worse for us.” Her voice was shaky, and Danny didn’t blame her for being scared. Jail would be insufferable for him, much worse for a juicy seiiorita who was obviously loose in her ways just by virtue of her traveling with two gringos. A fly crawled up the sleeve of her white blouse and onto her shoulder. A few strands of long black hair were sticking to the perspiration on her neck, a few others blowing in a light wind off the estuary. She didn’t move.

  Break in the highway traffic… silence… then the sound of a boat motor far out in the estuary and birds singing in trees across the road.

  Danny had no idea what to do next. He was absolutely stone-dead dumb, rooted there in repulsive spaces, as if some force had nailed his entire being to the ground and shrouded him in curious languor. He could sense his entire system shutting down, becoming indifferent, preparing for surrender.

  Gilbert Roland pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “This way. Leave your car here. It will be sent for.”

  Danny understood the words, but Luz translated anyway, sounding a long way off, like a frightened little girl who’d fallen down an abandoned well.

  The shooter tossed his lighter, dropped it, and squatted down to pick it up. While he was squatting, he decided to tie one of his desert boots and pulled up his right pant leg a little in the process.

  The heavyset federate started walking back to the truck, while the one who’d been doing the talking barked, “Now.” He was out of patience and not about to acquire a new supply of it. The man with the Uzi swung it up, holding it easylike in his hands, watchi
ng Luz and Danny, disinterested in a man tending to shoelaces.

  He got it first, the man with the Uzi. In the face. Blood exploding from a place two inches left of his nose.

  Shooter yelling, “Down!” and running in a low crouch. Man with .45 reaching for pearl and diamonds. Didn’t make it—two shots in the chest while his hand was on the way. Falling backward. Lying there… not dead, hands oaring the dust.

  “Oh, sweet Lord, no… no… no.” Danny was half thinking that, half saying it. All the time rolling-crawling toward the Bronco, dragging Luz with him. She was making little sounds equivalent to the ones Danny was making. Hanging on to him. Him on to her.

  Fat hombre who went behind the Suburban—where’d he go? He came out fast. Double-barreled shotgun leveled and ready. Came out fast, but too slow, much too slow. No target he could see. The shooter was already behind the Suburban on the other side. Single shot from rear of truck. Shotgun man crumpled, crimson spray coming out of his ear. Over… over that fast. The federates did not get a shot off.

  The shooter was breathing hard, but he never stopped moving. Danny was amazed at his strength and efficiency, particularly for an older guy. He walked quickly back to where the main federate was flopping around and holding on to his chest with one hand, trying to get his still-holstered pistol out with the other. The shooter stood over him, pointed the gun at the mans forehead and hesitated for a moment, then squeezed the trigger. The federate jerked once and lay still.

  “Pastor,” he shouted. “Get out from under the Bronco and get over here. Help me load these shitheads into the Suburban.”

  Danny crawled out and half stumbled over to where the shooter was standing over what had once been a Gilbert Roland lookalike but now had a dark hole in the forehead. They loaded all three of the federates into the rear of the Chevy and slammed the back doors, hearing the whine of a big diesel coming up the hill and around the curve north of them. The shooter jammed the gun in his belt, underneath his shirt, and scuffled dust over bloodstains on the ground. He finished and leaned against the Suburban just as the semi came around the curve. The driver waved to the tourists, the shooter waved back, grinning the grin of friendly American tourists everywhere, watching the truck go on down the road.

  He stopped grinning and looked at Danny. “Where’s the nearest Pemex station? Quick, think now.”

  Danny was having trouble thinking, except for his random and chaotic images of what had just happened and what it could lead to. Finally he said, “If I remember right, there’s one up ahead, just south of Mazatlán, near the Durango turnoff.”

  The shooter nodded, “You drive the Suburban. Luz and I’ll take the Bronco. When you get to the station, park around in back, as if you’re leaving it there to be serviced. Then walk real slow over to the Bronco and get in the driver’s side.”

  All at once and somehow they were heading up the highway toward Mazatlán, the shooter grinding gears, Luz’s cap lying behind them along the road, where it had fallen off while Danny was dragging her under the Bronco. The shooter, one hand on the steering wheel, leaned over and reached in his knapsack, brought out an ammunition clip, and palmed it into the small black automatic with “Beretta” stamped on the barrel. He shoved the pistol back in his leg holster and, while he drove, began reloading the clip he’d used on the federates, all the while watching the tail of the Chevy up ahead.

  It had been strange before, now it was getting chimerical in Danny’s mind. The little caravan moved on toward Mazatlán, Danny watching his mirrors, seeing the Bronco a half mile back and smelling the sweat on the dead men in the space behind him. Dead men don’t sweat—it sounded like a bad novel he might have read years before— but they sweat before they’re dead, and ten minutes ago they weren’t dead. It had come down to survival, now. All that bullshit about writing a profile of a hit man seemed distant and, in that distance, naive. Tough reporter, hard-nosed journalist… Christ, what a joke. Compared with the man who was following him in Vito, the street punks of Chicago were still riding night buses from Dubuque to Peoria in the class D league.

  South of Mazatlán, Danny pulled slowly into the big gas station complex and did as the shooter had told him. It was getting on in the afternoon, rush time at the Pemex, long lines of vehicles waiting for fuel and attendants hurrying. After parking the Suburban, he pretended a casual walk to the Bronco and got in behind the wheel.

  Looking up from the map, the shooter said, “Take the Durango turnoff we just passed, head east into the mountains. Luz, you keep watching out the rear, anything strange looking comes up, say so.” He turned back toward her to make sure she’d heard him. She bobbed her head up and down in acquiescence, hesitant and uncertain but swinging around to watch the road falling away behind them.

  The shooter was a long way from home and in trouble. Danny had the feeling Peter Schumann or whoever he was had been in that kind of place before—in trouble and a long way from home. Now he and Luz were in that place, and they’d never been there, ever, not like this, anyway. Danny was trying to think clearly but couldn’t. Instead, he focused on the road and listened to the rubber tires humming down the pavement and kept repeating to himself, “No… no… no.” He said it over and over in his mind until it took on the slow, persistent drone of a mantra.

  FELIPE

  Nothing from the field, from the roadblocks around Puerto Vallarta, or from farther out. Nothing from the car rental agencies or bus depots or airport. Walter McGrane sighed and knew it was coming down to the streets, to old-time detective work. He and the police chief in Puerto Vallarta mapped it out, starting with the bars and restaurants.

  Confronted by hostile police and a young, hard-looking gringo in a windbreaker who did most of the talking in competent Spanish, the proprietor of El Rondo told what he knew. Felipe looked at the picture of Clayton Price and nodded. Yes, the tall gringo with the gray hair had stopped by for a drink two nights ago. Yes, he’d left with another gringo and a Mexican woman, both of whom he thought he’d seen before but whose names he didn’t know. He described the gringo who’d been with the woman and started to tell how she’d sucked on her ice cream, but the men weren’t interested in the woman’s eating habits. So Felipe simply said she was very pretty and could speak English.

  A THING ON THE MANTEL

  Danny made the Durango turnoff and headed east through the late afternoon. The shooter looked straight ahead, chain-smoking Marlboros, his khaki shirt dark gray from sweat. Luz and Danny were a mess, sweat and red brown dust mixed together and sticking to their clothes and skin and hair. Luz had peeled her elbow in the scramble for safety while the shooter was taking down three federates, and she was pouring water on the abrasion, using a rag to wipe off the blood. The shooter glanced back, saw what she was doing, and handed his tube of ointment over the seat to her.

  Danny, thinking. Decisions again and a single yardstick by which the choice set would be measured: survival. The old choice of stay or go, abandon or dig in. He and Luz could try to escape or somehow let the police know what was happening, maybe plead they’d been kidnapped. If the cops looked into things, however, and tracked them back to Las Brisas, plenty of people could testify there hadn’t seemed to be any hint of them being captive. They might recall the separate rooms, the shooter swimming in the pool while he and Luz sat nearby, the easy talk over drinks and dinner. His other option was to help the shooter get out of Mexico and pretend he and Luz had never been part of anything other than a little trip north to visit her parents’ graves.

  What did anyone know so far? Danny ran the totals. In Puerto Vallarta, one man dead for sure and another wounded or dead. Crazy gringo and his girlfriend took off in the middle of the night, headed for somewhere. Nothing too unusual there, since crazy gringos did that sort of thing all the time. Three federates missing; the estuary fishermen might have heard the shots and maybe saw part or all of what happened on the bluff. If they had, chances were they’d look the other way and wouldn’t report it, knowing they’d p
robably get in trouble of some kind just for being good citizens. They’d talk about it among themselves, though, and word eventually would get to the law. But in spite of what had occurred so far, the upside was nobody really had a fix on the three of them at the moment. Back to options, back to survival. Where did that leave him and Luz?

  The shooter took over, closing down the choice set. “Here’s the drill, padre. You get me to the border or otherwise out of trouble, and I keep my mouth shut just like you’re going to do, now and forever after, no matter what happens. No stories about this little adventure, Danny-the-sometime-writer, if that’s what you’re thinking. First Amendment rights have their limits, and I’m the limit right now and as far as you can imagine into the future.

  “And let me tell you something else: We’re not going to play the old movie game where I try to stay up nights and watch the two of you. That’s the one where the bad guy eventually dozes off and everybody jumps him. This isn’t make-believe. I’ll sleep when I have to sleep, You’ll do what you have to do. But if you’re going to do something, get it right the first time; there won’t be a second chance. ’You saw what happened back there. I’m looking for salvage now, don’t care much about anything except getting out of Mexico. Got it?”

  Danny glanced over at him. “Yes, I’ve got it.” And he remembered again the wiseguys he’d dealt with back in Chicago. They were city tough and talked like it, dressed like it in flashy clothes, behaved that way—the Vitos and Sals and Vinnies. The shooter was different somehow. He seemed rather ordinary most of the time, quiet and pleasant, maybe lonely, almost pensive. But he could transform himself instantly into something else, something shadowlike and feral, something swift and implacable. As if you’d stepped into a dark room and were feeling your way through it, not seeing the fer-de-lance coiled on the mantel just at the level of your jugular, watching and waiting for your neck to come within range. The man who seemed lonely and quiet had been tying his shoe one moment, twenty seconds later three men who had stepped into a dark room on a sunlit road were dead.