Greasing the Piñata

by Tim Maleeny

  If a single gunshot said freeze to the primordial brain, a second shot was a hot poker up the ass. Men and women screamed and ran in whatever direction they happened to be facing. The two men in the karate stances practically leap-frogged over the other guests as they tried to escape. The mob of turistas turned into a starting line for the Puerto Vallarta marathon.

  Fernando braced himself against the embankment to push anyone running toward the water away from the alligators and back toward the hotel. Juan yelled at the top of his lungs.

  “Señors y Señoras. Go back to your rooms. It is safe in your room. Vamanos!”

  In less than ten seconds, Oscar Garcia had managed to secure the crime scene.

  He waved lazily at the ambulance idling at the far end of the fairway. The driver flashed his lights in acknowledgment and slowly drove toward them over the uneven ground.

  Garcia nodded toward Fernando. “More men coming?”

  Fernando shook his head. “There’s a game, remember?”

  Garcia felt embarrassed at his own forgetfulness, his unhealthy obsession with his job. Mexico was playing Italy in a soccer match today, an event on par with a sighting of the Virgin Mary. No wonder only Americans had rushed to see the body. The Germans, Italians, and French guests of the hotel were in the bar placing bets. To Americans soccer was a game played by little girls in plaid skirts attending private schools that cost more each semester than Garcia made in a year. Soccer was not a serious sport, and it certainly couldn’t compare to the thrill of seeing a mutilated corpse.

  Garcia sighed and gestured vaguely at the trampled green, the muddy embankment, the water, and the three semi-submerged reptiles.

  “Help the ambulance crew.”

  “Of course, Inspector.”

  “Take pictures. Measure things. Put body parts in a bag.”

  Fernando nodded. He wanted to go home and watch the game but had lost the raffle the local cops held during the World Cup to determine duty rosters. “Yes, Inspector.”

  “I will meet you at the morgue later.”

  Garcia secured his pistol in the shoulder holster with a small strap, then turned to face Juan, who was wearing an expression that blended admiration and exasperation in equal parts.

  “You know how many complaints I’m going to get?” said Juan.

  “About the alligators on the golf course?”

  “No, they’ve been here all season. We tried to chase them away but they came back. The guests were warned.”

  “You think I was wrong to scare your guests to safety.”

  “You won’t get the angry phone calls,” said Juan. “I will.”

  “I could have started arresting them.”

  Juan made a face. “Get off my resort, Inspector pendejo.”

  Garcia gave him a mock salute. “Not yet, old friend. I have one more stop to make, and I fear it concerns someone staying at your hotel.”

  “The detective?”

  “Sí,” said Garcia. “I must tell the gringo private investigator that his client is dead.”

  Chapter Four

  Cape Weathers already knew about the floating corpse. He wondered if he still had a client but had to smile when Garcia fired into the air and the tourists scattered like cockroaches.

  Watching from his balcony through a pair of Nikon binoculars, Cape could tell Garcia angled his shots toward the ocean. A cop would know those bullets had to come down eventually. Unlike private investigators, gravity never gave up.

  Maybe one of the shots will take out a jetski.

  The thought almost cheered him up.

  After spending almost a week in Mexico, Cape was pleased to discover that he wasn’t the least bit prejudiced—he held all tourists in equal disdain regardless of their race, religion, or country of origin. There was something about Mexico that brought out the worst in those who came to visit. People sitting quietly on the plane became loud and obnoxious the moment they stepped on Mexican soil. Reasonable men became bumbling Lotharios ogling anything in a skirt, while demure women transformed into tawdry sirens coaxing anyone with a penis to crash upon their shores.

  Cape had never seen anything like it, even in Vegas.

  The locals took it all in stride, having long since abandoned any effort to fight off the invasion. They put their culture and pride up for sale along with the sombreros and stuffed alligators. Cape had begun to think of Puerto Vallarta as a stripper, totally sanguine about having her ass slapped and her tits squeezed as long as her g-string was full of crumpled bills by the end of the night.

  The cops had spread a blanket over the corpse as they waited for the ambulance to work its way down the course, which struck Cape as odd now that the tourists had fled. He focused the binoculars on the duty officer’s face and tried to read his lips but it was no use. Cape’s Spanish consisted mostly of menu items and swear words, maybe a few animals, numbers, and primary colors half-remembered from high school.

  He figured at least an hour before he could visit the morgue, assuming he could wrangle a guest pass.

  Time enough to have a drink.

  Cape wasn’t much of a drinker, but he wanted to be sure about the body, which meant he had time to kill. He tossed the binoculars onto his bed as he stepped through the sliding glass doors, then crossed his room. The bedspread and walls were rust and ochre with accents in black and brown, the same colors as the tile mural in the lobby designed to make tourists feel they had been transported to another time and place, even though they had passed a Hard Rock Café on their way into town.

  Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he turned and met his own gaze. A reasonably fit man looked back at him, maybe six feet tall, blue eyes almost gray in the yellow light of the room. Crow’s feet around the eyes and smile lines around a mouth that wasn’t smiling. Sandy hair in need of a comb, a complexion that suggested sunscreen might have been a good idea three days ago. Cape leaned close to the mirror and pretended he was looking into his client’s eyes instead of his own.

  “Hi Rebecca, it’s me. Yeah, I might have found your brother. Is he OK? Well, not exactly—”

  Try again.

  “Miss Lowry, I’m afraid I have some bad news…”

  Pitiful.

  “Your brother is dead.”

  Cape broke eye contact and turned away from the mirror, disgusted. He wasn’t sure who blinked first.

  He looked at the phone beside the bed for a long minute but lost that staring contest, too. Stepping into the hallway, he let the door swing shut behind him and headed for the bar. Just one drink, followed by a visit to the morgue.

  Then he could deliver the news that would surely get him fired.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m gonna nail this fucker, you just wait.”

  Cecil rubbed his bloodshot eyes and squinted at the man across the pool. As he tried to focus, his tongue crept slowly between his sunburned lips like a malignant eel.

  “Explorer!” He slapped the table. “Four door, automatic.”

  “OK…ok.” Bud twirled the little paper umbrella bobbing in his drink. He pointed toward a woman in a yellow sun hat and black bikini heading for the bar. He leaned close to his brother and whispered.

  “Mustang.” Bud put a lascivious emphasis on the second half of the word.

  Cecil and Bud high-fived as the woman felt their eyes on her. She gave them a look but the brothers stared back, oblivious. Realizing she would remain the sole object of their attention as long as she stood there, she scowled and moved past the poolside bar into the hotel.

  “I think she likes you,” said Cecil.

  “She was looking at you, bro’.”

  “You’re probably right. My turn?”

  Bud nodded, secretly pleased he and his brother weren’t fighting for a change. This game was probably the only thing that pushed aside their petty squabbles. It put life in perspective, because the game was a natural extension of the business partnership that had made them rich. Car dealers for over twenty year
s, Bud and Cecil fervently believed that only two things in life were certain. Forget death and taxes—for every person there was a perfect car, and the perfect car was always a Ford.

  Bud and Cecil were an auto company’s dream team. Too lazy to jump to the competition and too stupid to question the sales propaganda from the national office. Why let issues like product quality interfere with a perfectly good sale—they were true believers. Now they were among the top ten dealers in the country, this trip to Mexico only a small part of a year-end bonus package. Give a customer a firm handshake, a pat on the back, throw in the floormats, and next thing you know you’re sitting by a pool with a drink in your hand. Not bad.

  No matter who walked by, the brothers knew they could match them to the car of their dreams. “What do you think of this one?” Cecil was shielding his eyes, trying to get a better look at the figure walking toward them.

  “Hard to say,” said Bud. “Confident stride. Maybe another Explorer?”

  “Too obvious,” said Cecil dismissively. The guy wore a loose-fitting white shirt, tan pants, and sandals—those fancy kind that wrapped around your ankles. Might be a fag.

  Cecil was about to go out on a limb, tell Bud this guy was minivan material, maybe a Subaru owner, when he realized the guy wasn’t just headed in their general direction. He moved past the bar and kept coming. Without asking, the man grabbed an empty lounge chair and sat down next to them.

  “Can I buy you boys a drink?”

  Despite the offer, something in the guy’s tone dispelled any suspicion that he was cruising for a threesome. In fact, now that the guy’s silhouette blocked the sun, Cecil decided the minivan was a bad call. This fella looked like he might shake your hand one minute, then knock you on your ass the next. A friendly face with eyes as hard as the cement around the pool.

  Bud, who amassed a higher umbrella count than Cecil, dove right in.

  “Who the fuck’re you?”

  The man nodded, smiled. Cecil felt himself relax instantly. Damn, this fella was good. Cecil briefly wondered if the guy was a fellow car dealer.

  “Cape Weathers.”

  Handshakes all around. After the brothers introduced themselves, Bud frowned and said, “Cape…kind of name is that?”

  “One that’s easy to spell,” said Cape. “Like Bud—that a nickname?”

  Bud gave it some thought. “Never thought to ask.”

  “Well, what’s it say on your driver’s license?”

  “Bud—what else would it say?”

  Cape kept his mouth shut.

  Cecil asked, “What kind of car you drive?”

  “Convertible,” said Cape.

  Bud leaned forward on his chair. “Mustang?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

  “’65?” asked Cecil.

  Cape shook his head. “Close—67.”

  Bud nodded knowingly. “Figured you for a vintage man.”

  “The guy at the bar inside told me you were car dealers.”

  “Ford dealers,” Bud corrected.

  “Right.” Cape nodded in acknowledgment of the distinction. “How long you guys been down here?”

  “Almost two weeks,” said Cecil.

  “All expenses paid,” added Bud with a self-satisfied grin.

  “That right?” Cape gestured to the waitress navigating the maze of lounge chairs. When he caught her eye, he held up three fingers. “Mind if I ask you some questions about your golf game?”

  “Cecil’s got a wicked slice,” said Bud.

  “I was more interested in your last golf game. This morning—when you found the body.”

  “Oh, that golf game,” said Bud. “I won.”

  “Bullshit,” snapped Cecil. “I was about to turn it around.”

  Bud snorted and drained his glass. Cape counted nine little paper umbrellas on the table and wondered if he was wasting his time. Before he could ask another question, Cecil narrowed his eyes and said, “Wait a minute—you said the bartender told you we were car dealers.”

  “So?”

  “You checking up on us?” Cecil blinked and his pupils contracted, then dilated again. “You a cop or something?”

  Cape shook his head. “Definitely not a cop.”

  “Reporter?” asked Bud.

  “Used to be—” Cape began, but Cecil cut him off.

  “—for CNN?”

  “You know Ted Turner?” asked Bud.

  “What kind of car does he drive?”

  Cape was about to raise his hands in surrender when the waitress arrived. As soon as her shadow fell across the table, Bud and Cecil sighed. When Cape gave the waitress his room number and told her to put the drinks on his tab, the brothers seemed to forget all about the inquisition. Nor did they notice that Cape’s drink was a slightly different color. Before he’d come to their table he’d asked the waitress to serve him the virgin equivalent of whatever they were drinking. He knew a pair of functional alcoholics when he saw them and what would happen if he tried to keep up.

  After everyone took a sip, Cape tried again.

  “So tell me about your golf game.”

  One hour and six little umbrellas later, the brothers were still talking and Cape had no idea what they were talking about. As a demonstration of the effects of alcohol on stream of consciousness, it was an impressive display. The brothers finished each other’s sentences—sometimes they even finished Cape’s, even if they didn’t know what he was about to say. By the time the brothers started to feel the drinks, all Cape had learned was that Cecil was a poor loser, Bud cheated on his score if you didn’t watch him, and all the good looking women in Puerto Vallarta had an unnatural aversion to car dealers.

  Cape was about to give up and return to his room when Cecil slurred, “And that’s when I saw the bodies.”

  Cape leaned forward. “The body—you said the body was in the water hazard.”

  “Ain’t you listening to my brother?” asked Bud. “He said bod—eeeze.”

  “As in plural?”

  Cecil nodded. “As in more than one.”

  Cape looked from Bud to Cecil, then back again. “You sure?”

  Cecil shrugged. “Guess I only saw one body, now that you mention it. But there was two down there—must’ve been. Either that or the dead bastard was some kinda mutant.”

  Cape felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “Why do you say that?”

  Cecil looked at him like he was an idiot.

  “The legs,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “There was three,” said Cecil. “When I looked in the water, I saw three legs.”

  “Three legs, that means two bodies,” said Bud. “Do the math.”

  “Yeah,” said Cecil. “Do the math.”

  Chapter Six

  Frank Alessi snorted derisively as the tall man wearing the clerical collar was shown into his office. Frank sat behind his desk and spread his hands across the considerable girth of his stomach, making no move to stand or shake hands.

  His guest didn’t seem offended. In fact, the pale man with the shock of white hair didn’t seem to care one way or the other, his gray eyes bottomless and unreadable. He took a seat and unfurled his legs, placing his feet only inches from Frank’s double chin.

  “Get your feet off my desk.”

  The Priest ran his long fingers through his hair, pulling it back from a sharp widow’s peak, and tugged at his collar, displacing the white square slightly, but he kept his feet where they were. His smug expression almost sent Frank into a blind rage.

  This was Frank’s office, his town. Nobody else called the shots in San Francisco, not even the big boys in New York. That was the arrangement. Besides, if they really had a problem with how he ran things, they should just have him killed. Have a little respect for tradition. That last thought gave Frank pause, made him reassess the sociopath sitting across from him. He ran through a mental checklist of what he remembered hearing over the years.

  The guy wasn’t
even a real priest—never had been as far as Frank knew—just had a fetish for wearing the getup. Had some history with the Church that sounded more like rumor than truth to Frank, the kind of urban legend designed to scare the superstitious. And though the guy never carried a gun, he’d been doing contract work for the families since before Frank made capo. Was older than he looked. Had connections that went right to the top. It was said that if the Priest showed up at your door, that could only mean one thing—somebody high up in the organization was royally pissed.

  That was about it, except for one thing Frank wouldn’t admit to anyone. This guy gave him the heebie-jeebies. He suppressed a chill and glanced reflexively over his shoulder for reassurance.

  On Frank’s left stood Bruno Carcetti. Weighing in at two hundred and sixty pounds, Bruno had an impressive capacity for violence and a desperate need to belong, which made him a perfect candidate for mob muscle. To the right of the desk stood Alex Torratzo, tall and lean, mean as a snake and twice as fast. Both men were packing and had no compunction about shooting first and asking questions later. Frank smiled inwardly at the knowledge his guest didn’t have a weapon. Like any career criminal, he hated a level playing field.

  Priest smiled without warmth as his eyes roamed from one bodyguard to the other. “I see you have matching bookends, Frank. Too bad you’re not much of a reader.” Before his apoplectic host could respond, Priest cut him off with an upraised hand. “Because if you did, you might have read the headlines in the papers. The ones about the Senator’s son—the Senator himself—gone missing. Did you miss those when you were in the can?”

  Frank worked his mouth as if he had something stuck in his teeth. “Was that a trick question? Because I just suck at those game shows.” He made a vague gesture that encompassed Priest from head to toe. “And now that I think of it, you kinda remind me of that guy used to host The Price Is Right. White hair, beady eyes.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor, Frank.”

  “But he always had a hottie on each arm, didn’t he? And you—well, based on your outfit—my guess is you prefer the company of young boys, am I right?”