He gave her arm a little squeeze. “Can I show you something?”
She nodded mutely.
He reached down, hitched up his pants leg. There was a holster strapped just above his ankle. A black gun.
“I think you should let me take you home.”
They drove south—or at least she hoped they did. It felt to her like they were going in the right direction, and finally she glimpsed the ocean over her right shoulder.
We’re going the right way, she thought. We’re going the right way. The gun, it’s for protection. He’s going to take me home.
They drove through city streets, but this time of night there were few cars; between that and the sealed Suburban it was eerily quiet, like being inside a space capsule.
“When Emma told me about you, I knew I wanted to meet you,” Oscar said.
“I’m just a tourist from Los Angeles. I’m really not that interesting.”
“She knows what interests me.” He glanced briefly over his shoulder at Emma, who lay curled on her side in the backseat, asleep. “She is very intelligent. It is too bad, about her weaknesses.”
Get me home, Michelle thought. Just get me home. Or to Hacienda Carmen. Close enough. “She doesn’t really know me. We only met once before tonight.”
“She told me about your friends.”
Michelle thought she recognized the road they were on now, one of the main north-south-running streets that crossed over the river. She couldn’t remember what it was called. Something having to do with a revolution, probably.
“I don’t have many friends here,” she said. “I’m new. The friends I’ve made, I don’t know them very well.”
Almost home, she thought. She’d lie on the hard bed, and it would feel like salvation.
Oscar chuckled. “When I was young, I prayed to Santa Muerte all the time. My family was poor. I think probably you don’t know what being poor this way is like.”
“Probably not.”
“You think all the time about wanting things. Simple things. Food. Shoes. A bed. I could only dream about a car like this. In another world they drove them. I could see this world sometimes, passing me on the streets. So close.”
“You’re doing well now.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Maybe Santa Muerte heard me.”
“Or you’re talented and capable.”
He grinned. He had a gold tooth, just next to his canine. “And lucky.”
He turned the steering wheel left. Away from the ocean, toward the mountains.
“This isn’t the way to my hotel,” she said. Her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed, the sides of her throat sticking together.
“I know. I just want to show you something. Something interesting.”
It must have shown on her face, the fear. Oscar smiled. “Don’t worry. You will be home soon.”
They drove on a narrow road along the river, a rippling shadow that she could now and then glimpse through Oscar’s window, through gaps in the drooping trees.
“Across the river, that place is called Gringo Gulch,” Oscar said. “Very rich people live there. I will have a house there, someday soon.”
“Please,” she said, “could you just take me to my hotel?”
He shook his head. “In a few minutes. I promise. Don’t worry.” He tilted his head toward the backseat. “You are a friend of Emma’s. You’re safe with me.”
She could hear Emma moan and sigh from the backseat, then settle into sleep again.
They drove a while longer.
“Here we are,” Oscar said.
They had reached a rise that Michelle thought might be the first undulations of the mountains that cordoned off Puerto Vallarta from the interior. Nestled here were a series of buildings under construction, gray slabs of concrete studded with rebar that thrust out of half-built walls like bamboo shoots. They looked to be five or six stories high.
Oscar drove along the chain-link fence that that ran from the first building to the second, and then he parked the car, leaving the engine idling, the headlights on, pointing toward the blank gray wall of the next building.
“Get out,” he said, “so you can have a better look.”
I don’t want to get out, she thought.
Or maybe she wanted to get out and run, run fast and far away.
“It will only take a minute,” Oscar said. “Don’t worry.” He opened his door and hopped out.
Michelle stared at the keys in the ignition. Could I do it? she thought. Scramble across the bank of cupholders and storage compartments and into the driver’s seat? Put the car in reverse and pull out of here?
By the time she’d thought it, Oscar had reached the passenger door. He opened it. Extended his hand toward Michelle.
“Let me help you.”
Behind her, Emma giggled, then smacked her lips a few times, her sigh catching on a snore.
It’s a game, Michelle thought, it’s one of Emma’s games. Nothing bad will happen.
She took Oscar’s hand, her own hand trembling, and climbed out.
Their footsteps crunched on gravel, the car’s headlights throwing their shadows ahead of them.
Along the wall were heaps—bundles of clothing.
“Go on,” he said.
She took a stumbling step forward, then another, and she knew that he was going to kill her, no matter what he said, and she didn’t even know why.
“Don’t worry,” he said again from behind her.
It wasn’t clothing; she knew it wasn’t, but it was easier to pretend that it was, just for another moment or two. Like when she was driving and would see a dead animal on the road and she’d tell herself, it’s not that, it’s a plastic sack, it’s someone’s lost sweatshirt. And sometimes it was, and she’d feel a flood of cool relief, that she wasn’t going to see some poor mangled cat or dog with its guts spilled out on the asphalt.
The bundles were bodies, propped against the concrete wall, and she knew that they were; she could already smell the spoiled-meat smell of them; if she drew closer, she’d see the maggots, like on the pig’s head, except she couldn’t see their heads. They didn’t have them anymore.
Just ragged necks, like the stems of hacked-off flowers.
She could see the blood on their shirts, almost black in the beams of the headlamps, their legs kicked out in front of them.
The third body was different. Burned to the point where the charred flesh barely covered the bones. It looked like a prop. Like a horror-movie skeleton. The flesh had been seared away, down to the skull, to a few leathered scraps of skin.
Draped on the skull was a white headdress and veil, like a bride’s.
Behind her, Oscar asked, “Do you want to go home now, Michelle?”
Her stomach twisted and roiled. Don’t get sick, she told herself. Pretend you have your camera and you’re looking through the lens. It’s just an image. It’s not real.
She nodded.
He didn’t say anything. He helped her into the front seat of the Suburban. Emma was still sprawled out in the backseat, snoring softly.
He isn’t going to kill me, she told herself. He isn’t. He would have done it there if he were going to. He wanted to show me those … those things.
Why?
He drove her back to Hacienda Carmen, not saying a word. Neither did she.
When they reached the gates, he said, “I like that you pay attention and that you don’t talk too much.”
Her hand clutched the door latch. Oscar reached across and pressed the button to release her seatbelt.
“Tell your friends,” he said. “Tell them that I’ve come to town.” He smiled. “Tell them that you met me.”
[CHAPTER TWENTY]
She made it to the bathroom in her room at Hacienda Carmen before she threw up. She crouched over the toilet seat, puking up the red snapper she’d had for dinner and the champagne and tequila she’d drunk with Emma until bile burned her throat, and when she was finally done, she lay on the bathroom
floor curled on her side, shivering, the glazed tiles cool against her cheek.
Eventually she sat up, then stood, grasping the edge of the sink for support.
She rinsed out her mouth with water from the sink, wet down a washcloth with cold water and washed her face, cleaned up the splatters of vomit on the toilet seat and the floor where she’d missed the bowl. Brushed her teeth.
Then she changed out of her clothes, tossing them on the bathroom floor. Stood there naked for a moment, still shivering in the damp heat.
What clothes to put on?
What should she do now?
Four in the morning, she told herself, it’s four in the morning.
She put on an oversized T-shirt and went and sat on the edge of her bed.
He hadn’t killed her. He wanted her to see … he wanted her to tell …
To tell someone.
Tell your friends.
She wanted to cry, but she was too empty for that. Too exhausted. Instead she stood and got a bottle of water out of her refrigerator, took a few sips of it, then sank back onto the bed.
Daniel. It had to be Daniel. Who of her “friends” here did Emma even know about, except for him?
You can’t be sure, she told herself. You don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain.
But all this had started with Daniel, hadn’t it? Emma had seen the two of them together. It was the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation was usually true. What was that called again? Someone’s razor, something like that.
It couldn’t be Gary. Emma couldn’t know about Gary. Could she?
Whoever Gary worked for, she knew that he wasn’t her friend.
She rested her forehead in her palms for a moment.
Were there buses running this time of night? Buses to anywhere that wasn’t here?
You have to call him, she thought. That wasn’t a request from Oscar. It was a command. If she didn’t …
She got her iPhone out of the little black purse she’d carried with her tonight. Tapped on her contacts and dragged her finger to Daniel.
“Howdy,” his voice said. “Leave a message.”
Fuck.
Well, what did she expect? It was four in the morning.
“It’s Michelle,” she said. “Sorry to call so late. But some things have happened.…”
Don’t lose it, she told herself. You can’t.
“Some things have happened. And I have to talk to you. It’s …”
What was she supposed to say?
“Please call me. It’s really important.”
She lay there on the bed staring at the iPhone, at all her apps, at the lie of connection, its blank promises.
Finally she got up and took one of Tom’s Ambiens and a couple of Advils. Drank the rest of her bottle of water. Stretched out on the bed staring at the fan on the ceiling, at its slowly rotating blades.
The phone. She lunged for it. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Danny?”
“Yeah.”
Eight A.M. She’d dozed a little. She was wide awake now, her heart thudding hard.
“I …” How could she even begin to explain? “Are you in town?”
“No.” He sounded a little irritated. “What’s up?”
“Something happened last night … with Emma.…”
“Emma?” Right away his tone changed. To a sort of wary concern. “Is she … is she okay or …?”
“Yeah. I think so. But … look, I need to see you. I can’t … It’s too hard to explain on the phone.”
And what if someone were listening?
She could hear his harsh sigh on the other end. “I’ve got a lot going on. But I can meet you tomorrow morning. Is that going to work?”
It would have to.
Maybe it was time to go to the consulate. She tried to imagine it, what she would say to them, how they would react.
They’ll think I’m crazy, she decided. Or guilty of something. But as long as they’d help her …
Would they?
Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Michelle. I really wouldn’t.
She showered, dressed, and went downstairs for coffee.
Two men waited at the reception counter. At first she didn’t realize they were waiting for her; the older of the two leaned against the counter chatting up Paloma, the woman with the rose tattoo who worked the front desk. The other hung back, sipping a cup of coffee, smiling and then laughing at something one of them had said.
Michelle approached the counter, where the coffee pot sat surrounded by an assortment of mismatched cups.
The younger of the two men straightened up. “Ms. Mason?”
She recognized him then—the policeman who’d come to her hotel the night of the assault, the one who’d spoken better English. As before, he wore a white polo shirt and khakis; his badge hung around his neck on a lanyard.
“Inspector Morales with the judicial police.”
Her heart started to pound, so hard that for a moment she felt dizzy, cold sweat prickling on her back.
Did they know? That she’d been there, that she’d seen …
They couldn’t, she told herself. Calm down.
Unless someone told them.
“I remember you,” she said. “You came to the hotel.”
He smiled, showing even, white teeth. “Right.” He gestured at his companion. “This is Inspector Dos Santos. Can we speak to you for a few minutes?”
“Of course,” Michelle said.
He gestured toward an empty table behind the fountain, by the wrought-iron fence. Michelle nodded and started to follow him, then stopped. “I’d better have a cup of coffee,” she said, smiling at him.
“Sure,” he said, lifting his mug, and he and Dos Santos went to sit down at the table.
She watched his retreating back. She could see the edge of a tattoo where his neck met his shoulder. A spiderweb, it looked like.
She filled her mug, her hands shaking, topped the coffee off with milk, thinking. What could she say? What would they think?
Never offer information. She remembered reading that somewhere, that you should never give the police information if they suspected you of something, not without a lawyer. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble that way.
But this was Mexico. She wasn’t innocent until proven guilty. It was the other way around.
A spiderweb. Was that a gang tattoo?
Don’t say anything unless you have to, she told herself. Find out what they want first.
She followed the two men over to the table. The yellow dog that hung out in the courtyard trotted over and flopped beneath its shade.
“Is this about what happened at the hotel?” she asked.
Morales shook his head. “No. Unfortunately, we haven’t caught those guys. They probably left town, to be honest.”
“Oh. Then why …?”
“Ned Gardner.”
“Ned?”
For a moment she felt absurdly relieved. She’d only seen Ned’s body in photographs. She hadn’t been there. They couldn’t possibly think she’d had anything to do with what happened to him.
“The American who ran the restaurant. You knew him?”
“I’d met him.” She took a moment to sip her coffee, to think about what she should say. “I heard about what happened. It’s really awful.”
“Yeah. So we want to be very thorough in our investigation. And we understand you talked to him the night he died. At El Tiburón. Is that correct?”
“I talked to him for a couple of minutes.”
“Can you tell us about your conversation?”
“Well, there wasn’t all that much to it.”
Dos Santos leaned back in his chair, smiling, saying nothing. Maybe he didn’t speak much English.
She thought about what she should say, if she should mention Ned’s “business” with Daniel, then realized she didn’t have much choice.
Charlie had heard the whole thing.
“He
was trying to drum up business for his restaurant,” Michelle said. “You know, offering two-for-one specials, that kind of thing. I got the impression the place wasn’t doing that well.”
“Was there anything else?”
“He was mostly talking to my friend, to Danny.”
“Oh,” Morales said. “The man from the hotel. Okay.”
The way he said it, so carefully neutral—he found that interesting.
Or he knew something already.
“What about?”
“Trying to get some advice, I think.” She gave a little shrug. “I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”
“Do you know where I can reach him?”
“I think he’s out of town.”
“A phone number?”
She hesitated. “Sure.”
Daniel wasn’t going to like that. But lying didn’t seem like an option.
Underneath the table the yellow dog’s tail beat against the ground, in slow steady time.
She gave Morales the phone number. He made a note in a little pad, the first note he’d taken.
Were they recording the conversation? she wondered.
“I didn’t think you would still be in Vallarta,” he said. “I guess I thought you were only here for a week or so. On vacation.”
“Well, that was my original plan.” She shrugged. “I like it here.”
“In spite of your troubles.”
“Yes. In spite of my troubles. But I’m probably going home next week.”
“I see.” He reached into his pants pocket and extracted a small plastic card case. “If you think of anything else, you can reach me at these numbers. And I still have yours.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking his card. Dos Santos stood as well, still smiling, still saying nothing.
“Did you spend time in the States?” she said. Because it suddenly occurred to her, what was familiar about Morales. It was his accent, the way he carried himself.
“Yeah, I did. In L.A., in Van Nuys.” He grinned. “You know Van Nuys?”
“Of course. I live in L.A.”
“No kidding! Yeah, I was there from when I was a little kid till I was in high school. You can still tell, huh?”
She nodded. “You sound American.”
He shrugged. “I used to think I was.”
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