In the meantime was there anyone here she could talk to? Anyone who could help? Who knew who the players were, who could at least give her some advice?
Anyone at all?
[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT]
“Just in time for the sunset,” Charlie said. “And look, I still have most of the tequila.”
She’d stopped at the taquería and loaded up on carne asada and guacamole, which Charlie arranged on a platter and now carried out to his terrace.
“Sit,” he said.
She did, and he poured two shots and sat down in the other chair.
She’d gone back to Hacienda Carmen and dropped off most of her stuff. Split up Gary’s money, putting half back in the safe and carrying the rest, just in case. Had with her only the small purse she’d bought on Basilio Badillo, her wallet, and her phone. If Gary’d put a bug in her Marc Jacobs, she hadn’t been able to find it, but no sense taking chances.
They sat in silence for a while, sipping tequila as the sun stained the surrounding clouds a pale pink that deepened to violet.
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” he finally asked.
She didn’t answer right away.
What did she know about Charlie, really? How could she be sure that she could trust him?
You can’t, she thought. You can’t be sure.
All she had were her instincts, and so far her instincts hadn’t exactly been reliable.
But trying to deal with this alone, she just couldn’t do it anymore.
It was resignation more than anything else that she felt when she said, “I don’t know how to talk about this. I’ve had some things happen to me here, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Why me? I mean, I’m flattered, but …” He laughed, coughing a little at the end of it. “I’m not exactly a model of wisdom and sobriety.”
“Just some things you said the last time we talked. I thought maybe you might … understand this better than I do.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve hooked up with a rent boy.”
“I wish.” She hesitated. “What do you know about Gary?”
“Not much. He’s more a friend of Vicky’s. Someone she knows anyway.”
“If I told you some things about him—about him and Danny …”
“You can tell me.” He grinned. “What’s it gonna hurt?”
She told him. When she finished, Charlie leaned back in his lounge chair and shook his head. “I have to say, that’s not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Oh, just about anything but that.”
“I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of absurd.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Absurd implies a certain existential irony.”
“Great.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you.”
Charlie fiddled with a cigarette, lit it, sucked down a deep draw of tobacco, cheeks concave with the effort. Coughed twice.
“Jesus. You know, I’ve been reading about this kind of thing for years. And I do believe it’s the way the world works. I just never happened to encounter it in person.”
Out in the bay, the pirate ship boomed its cannon.
“What do you think I should do?” Michelle asked.
“I have no idea.”
They sat and drank a while longer. The drinking didn’t make her feel any better, but being in the company of someone else, someone who believed her, helped a little.
“So if this is about drugs, what does that make Danny?” she asked.
“Any number of things.” Charlie steepled his fingers. Like it was some kind of puzzle to figure out. A game. Not something real that had left burned and beheaded bodies only a few miles away.
He lives here, but it hasn’t really touched him, she thought.
“Maybe just a smuggler,” Charlie said. “But with all this other shit floating around … More likely he’s a spook. You know, the CIA’s been running drugs for years.”
She must have looked skeptical. Hell, she was skeptical.
Charlie grinned. “Really. There’s plenty of documentation. Heroin from Laos during Vietnam in the Air America days. Cocaine from South America. That’s how Ollie North financed the Contras. Traded guns for coke. You didn’t know that?”
“I guess I missed it,” she said. She felt angry and tired and hollow.
“There’s a reason they call it ‘the Company.’ ” He tapped a cigarette out of its pack, fumbled around for his lighter. “They sell the drugs in the U.S. Use the money to fund black ops. Like the Contras. Or buying elections, overseas, in the States.” He paused to light the cigarette. Took one deep inhale, coughed, and stubbed it out. “No record. No congressional testimony. They do what they want. It has a kind of elegance, you have to admit.”
“No I don’t. I don’t … I don’t have to admit any of this.” She reached over and poured herself more tequila. She was getting pretty drunk. She knew that wasn’t a good idea, but she drank more anyway.
“Think about it. You’ve heard the names of the drug lords in Mexico. Chapo Guzmán. Beltrán Leyva. Before that, in Colombia, Pablo Escobar. Nobody knows the names of those kinds of men in the United States. When have you ever heard them?”
“Maybe there aren’t any,” she said sullenly.
“Of course there are. How do the drugs get distributed? Who controls the pipelines? How do they end up on the street?”
“I thought it was the Mexicans.”
That sounded dreadful, she realized. Next she’d be saying, “the blacks.”
“Sure, up to a point. The cartels have amazing distribution networks, and they’re expanding all the time. Growing pot in American national forests. Laundering money and kidnapping for ransom in San Diego and Phoenix. But all the corruption that lets them do all that here, in Mexico—you think there isn’t any on the other side of the border? That everyone’s hands are clean?” He sipped his tequila. “Occam’s razor, my dear. The simplest explanation.”
So that’s what it was called.
“What about Gary?”
“Who knows? DEA? ICE? Probably another spook. If Danny’s an asset, people like that get burned all the time. Look at Manuel Noriega.”
“Noriega?”
“CIA asset. Even says so in the papers. And all of a sudden, we’re invading Panama and prosecuting him for drug trafficking. Like no one knew he was dirty before?”
Manuel Noriega. Ollie North. The CIA. Great, she thought.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean … there aren’t any Contras anymore, right? The Cold War’s over. So what’s the excuse? What’s it all for?”
“Well, you’ve still got your leftist movements. Guys like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Or terrorists. You can always blame terrorists.” Charlie shrugged and topped off their tequilas. “Maybe they just like making money.”
They sipped their drinks and watched the fireworks from the pirate ship.
“I should go,” she said eventually.
“Why don’t you stay here tonight? My couch is very comfortable. I’ve passed out many a night on it myself.”
“I appreciate that, but …”
“At least have some coffee.”
She thought about it. Probably a good idea. “Thanks.”
They went inside, and she sat for a while on the couch while Charlie went into the kitchen. When he returned, bearing a tray with coffee, cream, and sugar, he sat down across from her.
“Look,” he said, pouring a shot of tequila into his cup, “I know a fellow at the consulate in Guadalajara. Why don’t you and I just go up there, talk to him? He’s a decent guy.”
“I don’t know.… I mean, I’m sure he is, but …” She nearly laughed. “Gary’s already had me arrested for drugs. At least I think it was Gary. Why would your friend believe anything I have to say?”
“Well, I don’t know that we need to tell him all of it. You�
�ve got a guy who’s threatening you, and you need your passport so you can get home. That’s the main thing.”
“You think it’ll end when I get home? You think it’ll be over?” She’d meant it as sarcasm, but she could hear the pleading in her voice, the need for reassurance, like a little girl wanting to know that someone could make it all okay again.
“I don’t know. The rest of this … I don’t know what you can do about it. But let’s get you home first thing. Away from Gary, whoever he is.”
She thought about what Charlie said. It made as much sense as anything. But if Gary really was watching her, was spying on her, what would he think if she went off someplace with Charlie?
“Okay. But maybe you should just call him, and I’ll go on my own.”
“I don’t mind going with you. There’s some shopping I could do in Guadalajara.”
It was tempting to agree, to have somebody with her, someone on her side. Assuming that Charlie really was on her side.
Don’t go down that rabbit hole, she told herself. He’s a nice old guy who drinks too much and studies conspiracy theories for fun. And he believes you.
What would Gary do if he saw her with Charlie?
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said.
“Why, because of Gary?” Now Charlie laughed. “Darling … I do believe you, don’t get me wrong. But I’m too old and too tired to let that dickhead dictate my behavior.” He poured another slug of tequila into his cup. “Gary can kiss my wrinkled ass.”
“I think I should go by myself,” she said. “That way maybe it’ll look like … like I just came over for drinks. Like you’re not involved. And I don’t think you want to be.”
After that she finished her coffee while Charlie retrieved his friend’s number, writing it down on the back of an envelope. “I’ll call him tomorrow,” he said. “That’s a promise. And I’ll let you know what he said. But you take this so you have it, too.”
She nodded, folded the envelope in half, and put it in the pocket of her shorts. Then she rose to leave.
He stood as well. “Now, you call me when you get there,” he said. “There’s ETN buses going to Guadalajara from the main bus station all day—last one’s not till after midnight. Just go and get on one.”
“That’s what I tried to do when I got off the boat today. It didn’t quite work out.”
“It’ll work out this time.” He gave her a quick hug. “Try ditching him in the Costco.”
Now she did laugh. “Like, hide behind the paper towels?”
“I’d go for the condiments aisle.”
She slung her purse on her shoulder. “Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for listening.”
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
“You, too.” She hesitated. “And … just take care.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, Michelle thought, picking her way down the darkened stairs. If Gary found out she’d been talking to Charlie …
Well, so what? she told herself. She was supposed to be “hanging tight,” wasn’t she? Acting normal. Normal people went and visited friends, didn’t they?
And she’d needed some help. Needed to talk to someone. Charlie wasn’t going to have any problems just because she’d talked to him. Was he?
“Jesus.”
She’d banged her shin on something—the old weight bench. She remembered it now from her first visit. It hadn’t moved. Why would anyone leave a thing like that out on a landing, where it just sat and rotted and rusted? She’d hit her shin hard—that was going to leave a nice bruise.
A burst of laughter and a flicker of color from a television set in the next apartment. She flinched and kept walking. She should have thought more about it, at least, what the consequences of her unburdening herself might be, for Charlie.
When did I get to be so selfish? she wondered. Or maybe “selfish” wasn’t the right word. So self-centered.
So oblivious.
She’d reached the street. It was close to 11:00 P.M., and the night was quiet, the air sullen with clouds.
It was about a twenty-five-minute walk to Hacienda Carmen. She supposed she had to go back there. Anything else would look suspicious. I’ll get an early start in the morning, she thought. Head north. Take just my hobo, the camera, and the money, leave everything else. Maybe even go to Costco first. Who knows, it could work.
She should find a cab. The walk would have been nice, a way to clear her head, but how many people had told her that it wasn’t always safe here at night?
Charlie’s building was on a hill, exiting onto a narrow lane that wound down to a broader avenue, where the taquería and other businesses were. She could probably find a cab down there. Here there was nothing but a few skinny buildings and a cement retaining wall pressed against a cut in the hill, crumbling from an onslaught of knobby roots that seemed to grip it like arthritic fingers.
She’d nearly reached the bottom of the block when something, a darker shape in the dark of a doorway, moved in a blur that caught the corner of her eye. She half turned, and something whirred and slammed into her head, and everything exploded into red and white sparks, and she knew she was falling. Her hip, her shoulder, struck concrete, and she lay there for a moment on her back. She saw darkness above her, darkness that moved, a man crouching over her; she tried to hold the picture together, but it dissolved into sand, into nothing.
[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE]
Bumpity-bumpity-bump.
There goes the train, over the hill.
Bumpity-bumpity-bump.
Here comes the car, out of the drive.
Sleeping in cars, that was the best. When she was little, dozing in the backseat at night, wrapped in her blanket, Maggie next to her, the wheels on the road, the hum and rumble of the engine. Sometimes she wanted to stay there forever, in the dark, always moving. She wished they’d never get home.
The blanket. She’d gotten tangled up in it somehow; it was in her mouth; she couldn’t move. I have to move, I have to get up, she thought. We’re almost there.
Bumpity-bumpity-bump.
Smell of raw gas. Of exhaust. Warm metal. Pressed into her cheek. Dark, all dark. A bump, a jolt. Her skull slammed against the metal. Pain echoed through her head like a struck drum, and there was something in her mouth—a washcloth, maybe. She couldn’t spit it out, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She tried to move, to sit up, to do something. Her hands—her hands were behind her back, tied there, she could feel the rough twine rubbing her wrists raw, and she thrashed around, struggling to draw in a breath, her chest aching from the strain, until finally she lay still.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
A car trunk. She was in a car trunk.
What had happened?
She’d come out of Charlie’s place, and something … someone … Her head hurt. Someone had hit her.
Hit her and tied her up and locked her in the trunk of a car.
She screamed, once, twice, but with the cloth in her mouth it hardly made a sound. She kicked out with her feet, striking metal with her bare toes, and the pain from that was enough to make her stop. Think.
Did she want whoever was driving to hear her?
He was going to kill her.
She was sobbing now, and she told herself, I have to stop. I won’t be able to breathe.
But he was going to kill her. How could there be any doubt? The way he’d hit her … He’d hit her with something. A blow like that, that could have killed her, and he didn’t care.
Where was he taking her?
The car bounced and swerved, moving slowly. There was something else: a smell. What was it? She’d smelled it before.
Think. Think.
Her wrists were tied, but her feet weren’t. She could run if she got the chance.
The car stopped. She lay there in the trunk, waiting. Lie still, she told herself. Don’t move.
Spoiled baby food. That was what it smelled like.
He was opening the trunk—she kn
ew that from the click and creak of metal—and a little light came on inside the trunk. Don’t look, she told herself. The man leaned in and scooped her up, grunting, like he was lifting a heavy sack of flour. She let herself go limp in his arms. Corpse Pose. Don’t resist the pull of the earth.
He walked a few paces. Who was he? The policeman? Dark as it was, with her head purposefully lolling, eyes half-closed, she couldn’t really tell.
Abruptly, he released her, letting her roll off his arms. She cried out a little; she couldn’t help it, the cry muffled by the cloth in her mouth. But the landing wasn’t what she expected: The ground yielded.
Plastic bags. She’d landed on plastic bags. Fast-food wrappers and Styrofoam. Soiled napkins, plastic forks. Banana peels and melon rinds. Animal parts. A flapping of birds.
The dump. They were at the dump.
She lay there and didn’t move.
The man walked away. She heard his footsteps, making soft hissing noises from the exhalation of air trapped in layer upon layer of plastic bags.
Was he leaving? Maybe he thought she was already dead, or dying.
She lifted up her head. She could see him lean over the open trunk of the car, pull something out, and in the light from the trunk she could see what it was. A baseball bat.
Now—move now. She rolled up to a sitting position, got to her knees, managed to stand, took a few staggering steps. He caught up to her easily. Her arm took the first blow, right above the elbow. She stayed on her feet, stumbled forward, and he swung again, and this time the bat smashed against her hip. She fell, landing on her side, but her legs kept moving, scrabbling through the plastic bags and garbage, her chin scraping on a dented can, and the bat struck again, hitting her shoulder, and she rolled onto her back, and she could see him standing over her, resting the bat on his shoulder.
She rolled over again, onto her side, then onto her stomach, too slowly, and the bat slammed against her ribs, and she rolled once more, and suddenly she was falling, falling into space, into nothing again.
There was a rush of birds crying out, beating their wings, feathers and claws brushing against her as she landed. She lay there, stunned. Took in what she lay on: stuffed garbage bags and cracked tires. From above she heard a bird scream, the man give a surprised shout, and then a chorus of barking dogs. She struggled to sit up, crawled on her knees, then half fell off the pile she’d landed on and crawled behind it. Crouched down. Could he see her? The dogs kept barking. A couple men, shouting at them. Then, finally, a car engine starting and the car driving away.
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