Marder went through the cool and echoing house to the room he had chosen. It was white-walled and full of light, with windows looking out at the sea. The bed was similarly huge, a brass item that looked antique, and the rest of the furnishings were Mexican provincial: light-colored, carved, painted, and distressed with dents and wormholes. It was the bedroom of a great patrón, or someone who wanted to be one. Marder felt that strange ambivalence once again: I shouldn’t be here, but here I am, the lord of a mansion and a village. He felt something working behind the scenes in his life, as if he were on a ship captained by a hidden stranger.
He unpacked his scant clothing and put his weapons in a wardrobe that locked with an antique brass key the size of a can opener. As he finished this task, he heard the sound of a car on the gravel road, coming closer. He left the room, walked around the gallery until he came to a window that looked down on the drive. A white SUV was pulling up in front of the house. He watched three men get out, walked back to his room, grabbed the Kimber pistol, stuck it uncomfortably in the small of his back, pulled on his linen jacket, and went downstairs.
He waited in the living room, leaning casually against the back of a couch. He wondered where Skelly was and wished that he were here for the coming interview with whoever had just arrived in the SUV. Someone pounded on the door, then flung it open. Through the open archway, Marder could see the three men, all as neat as Mormon missionaries: dark suits over open-necked shirts, short haircuts, shined shoes. They came toward him, one man in front, the others a little to the rear. They were looking around the room as if they wanted to buy the place, or had already bought it.
The leading man stopped in front of Marder, a little too close. He was dark skinned, shorter than Marder by almost a foot, but bulky. His face was pitted with old scars, and he had two blue teardrops tattooed at the corner of one eye. He folded his arms and glared at Marder.
Marder said, “Welcome to my house. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
The man said, “You can tell me who the fuck you are and what you’re doing here.”
“My name is Marder and I own this house. I intend to live here. And who are you?”
The man was shaking his head. “No, you don’t want to live here, man. This is not a healthy place for you to live. Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, that’s where you should live, with the other gringos.”
“I’m a gringo, true, but I’m also a citizen of Mexico. My wife was a Mexican and my whole family has joint citizenship. So thank you for the health warning, but I believe I’ll stay.”
The man smiled and shook his head again. “No, pendejo, you don’t understand. There is too much lead in the environment here. If you stay you will definitely die.” With that he reached into his belt and pulled out a Glock pistol. He waved it under Marder’s nose. “You understand now, coño?”
“Yes,” said Marder. “You make yourself perfectly clear. You want me to leave.”
The man ran the muzzle of the pistol across Marder’s cheek and tapped it a couple of times. “Good,” he said. “You’re a sensible man.” He returned the pistol to his waistband. “I don’t want to see you around here again. If I do—”
But Marder did not find out what he would do, because from up above came the unmistakable and ever-interesting sound of a shell being jacked into the chamber of a shotgun.
They all looked up. Skelly was standing on the gallery, pointing a Browning BPS 12-gauge shotgun at the three visitors. He said in Spanish, “Sit down on the floor, gentlemen, and fold your hands on your heads.”
After a moment’s hesitation they did so, and Marder disarmed them of three identical Glock pistols. He felt as if he had been propelled out of his ordinary existence for sure now and forced down what would have become an hysterical giggle. Somehow he had been translated into Skelly’s life, and it was as unreal as Skelly would have felt had he been translated into a quiet room and given galleys to edit. And—this was the strangest part—Marder found it wonderful! He was cool, unfrightened. A thousand thrillers on the page and on the screen had taught him exactly how to act, what to say; the garment had been tailored by squadrons of hacks, and he slipped into it easily.
He stuck the three pistols in various pockets and said, “Gentlemen, we seem to have started out on the wrong foot. I didn’t realize you were so interested in pistol shooting. As a matter of fact, my colleague and I were just talking about having a little target practice. If you please, follow me.”
With that, he pointed toward the terrace doorway of the great room, Skelly came down from the balcony with his shotgun steady on the trio of gun thugs, and all of them marched out into the sunlight, past the pool, and down to the lower terrace. Marder dumped the Glocks on one of the metal umbrella tables, pulled their magazines, and cleared the chambers of each. He turned to the three men.
“I’ve given you my name,” he said. “Permit me to know yours.”
Pock-face was Santiago Crusellas. His associates were Tomas Gasco, a light heavyweight, sand-colored, with the brutal face of a Toltec idol, and Angel d’Ariés, a thin, boyish-looking man of about forty, with a sad, defeated look. Marder studied the face of this one for a good minute: high cheekbones, large tilted hazel eyes, a paler complexion than the other two. The man shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Marder asked, “Are you related to Don Esteban de Haro d’Ariés?”
A pause. “My father.”
“A man known for his probity and generosity, I believe.”
“Did you know him?” said d’Ariés, a small light appearing in the dull eyes.
“A long time ago and not as well as I should have,” said Marder, and then clapped his hands. “Well, let us begin!” he said, and pulled the Kimber out. Skelly had arranged the four sevens from his deck on the wire. Marder took up a stance at a convenient crack in the pavement, twenty feet or so from the target, and with seven spaced shots blew the pips out of the seven of hearts. He put his pistol down on the table and handed Crusellas a Glock and a magazine. Behind them, Skelly raised his Browning.
Crusellas loaded his pistol and blasted away, missing entirely several times, but, having fifteen bullets to play with, he managed to shred the bottom of the seven of clubs, leaving the upper two pips unharmed. Marder went to the wire and removed the two targets. He looked at the seven of clubs and shook his head, then pulled out a pen and scribbled on the seven of hearts. He dropped both cards into Crusellas’s breast pocket.
“You need to practice more, my friend, unless you confine your shooting to assassination at very short range,” Marder said. “Tell me, who is the chief of the plaza these days?”
“Servando Gomez,” answered Crusellas.
“Well, you can tell Señor Gomez that we’ve had a meeting. Tell him, if you would, that you didn’t find another stupid gringo you could frighten away or perhaps dispose of as you disposed of the unfortunate Guzmán. Tell him I’m a dangerous fellow. And tell him I mean him no harm—I’m not a rival of any sort but perhaps an ally. Tell him also that I have dangerous friends, like, for example, the gentleman with the shotgun. Also tell him that I would be happy to visit him at any time, to discuss matters of mutual interest. My number is on my card, so to speak. And I believe I’ll take that pistol back from you now. I’m sure you have others.”
Crusellas handed over his empty Glock, a look of dull hatred on his face. Marder took his Kimber and tapped the man lightly on the cheek with it, then made a shooing motion, and after a moment the three men turned and walked away. They heard the front door slam and a car start up and drive off.
“That was very impressive, Marder,” said Skelly. “A dangerous man. And here all the time I thought you were a candy-ass book editor. You know, those guys’ll be back.”
“I’m sure. That’s why it’s good that I have dangerous friends.” He smiled at Skelly and then they both laughed.
7
Returning to the house, Marder heard a sound that he had not heard in a long while, a delicate clapping, like the applause of
a single child: a woman making tortillas in the traditional way. Instantly, twenty years slipped away and he was back in his office at home, listening to the pat-pat-pat from the kitchen. A ridiculous activity in New York, where there were abundant Mexican groceries and very good tortillas available in plastic packages, but sometimes Chole had to slip back into what she called “deep Mexico” and make tortillas from corn masa she mixed herself, to be eaten with a mole of thirty ingredients, also made from scratch. Not always a pleasant time for Marder, these sojourns into México profundo. Sometimes it would be fiesta, sometimes a breakdown, tears and recriminations directed at him, the author of her long exile. Tears dropping into the masa.
And now as he listened, the same noise: sobs, barely stifled. Marder went into the kitchen, half-fearing that there would be no one there, that his brain was starting to go and he was hearing things.
He was delighted to see it was only Amparo, standing at the long wooden table, making tortillas, and sobbing. A small television was affixed to the wall, showing a telenovela with the sound off.
“What’s wrong, Señora? Why are you crying?”
She stared at him, openmouthed, then wiped her streaming eyes with her apron.
“I heard the shooting. I thought they had killed you like—” She stopped, wild-eyed.
“Like they killed Guzmán?”
She nodded.
“These were the same men?”
Another nod. “It was Crusellas. Señor wouldn’t pay them, so they killed him.”
“In the garage.”
“Yes. They said they would kill everyone if we told.”
“Well, I think they will find it harder to kill people around here from now on. Tell me something, Amparo. How come this house is so orderly? Nothing has been stolen and you keep the place beautifully, as if someone is still living here. I was surprised.”
“They use it. Or they used to use it. It is a great prize and no one knows who will have it. I mean los otros, los malosos. They say El Jabalí was going to give it to his son, but El Gordo objected and that is the reason they are fighting now. Or so they say.”
El Jabalí—the Boar. And the Fat Man. Marder didn’t know who these were, but he expected he would find out. He said, “So La Familia is having a war with itself?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know anything about such things, Señor. I’m only a housekeeper. Some say if only they would all kill themselves off, things would be better, but others say the important thing is to have peace and no bullets flying around, and for that to happen one must win, because there will always be ni-nis to deal in the drugs for El Norte.”
“Ni-nis?”
“What we call them, like those who came here. The boys: ni trabajo, ni estudiar. They’re like weeds, and if they don’t have a jefe who makes them behave, then life is hell for everyone. At least La Familia made them behave. Now, who knows?”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do to make them behave,” said Marder. “I intend to stay here, and I wanted to talk to you about arrangements. I want to put you in charge of the whole house. Hire staff, a cook, someone to clean, people to care for the grounds, and so on. I’ll pay you a flat amount each month and then you can take a salary for yourself out of that, pay the staff and the bills, buy food, and so on. Can you use a computer?”
The woman stared at him. “Yes … no, not very well, but the children can. They have one at the school.”
“Good. Epifania can be the accountant, and Ariel can be her assistant. I’ll get them a computer and show them how to work an accounting program. I’ll set up a bank account for you too—” He stopped in the face of her obvious distress. She looked as if she might start crying again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Señor! Why would you trust me with tens of thousands of pesos each month? How do you know I won’t cheat you? You don’t even know me.”
“I know you enough. You have books on the shelf in the kitchen, which shows you have had some education, but you make corn tortillas by hand instead of buying them wrapped in plastic, which shows good character and suggests to me that you are not fool enough to risk everything for some scam. Am I correct? Good. Now, here’s what I want you to do.”
They spoke of business matters for half an hour, the woman contributing in a manner that only confirmed Marder’s judgment that there were no flies on Amparo Montez. When this concluded, he said, “Two more things—no, three. First, that little community we have squatting here—do they have a leader? I mean someone who everyone respects and comes to for advice and help.”
She thought for a moment and came up with some names, which Marder wrote down in his notebook. One of them was Rosita Morales, the woman he’d spoken with earlier. “Next,” he said, “do we have any ni-nis on the property? Young men who might join La Familia or some other narco group?”
“A few. I’m sure Rosita would know who they are.”
“Okay, I’ll ask her. Could you send word that I’d like to see the people on this list after the evening meal, say eight o’clock? And you’ll need to get yourself a notebook and a cell phone. I’ll be throwing a lot of stuff at you soon, and you won’t want to forget things.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and then paused attentively. “And what is the third thing?”
“Right. I think we should talk about Lourdes.”
“Oh, my Jesus! Has she done something again?”
“No, but I perceive a problem that I would like to forestall. The child has a certain form and face, which she can’t help, of course, but she also seems unhappy. Sulky, even. That’s not an atmosphere I wish to cultivate in my house. Besides that, there will soon be men shooting one another over her, and given the unfortunate situation in Playa Diamante, that is not merely a figure of speech. I caught her with a man ten years older than her just this morning. No, not that—she was merely playing with him, but such play tends to get out of control very quickly. What is her story, if I may ask?”
“She’s my niece, my youngest sister’s only daughter. Her father is dead, a narcoviolencia thing, now many years ago. My sister went to El Norte when Lourdes was five. At first she wrote, she sent money, but now, for five or six years we haven’t heard from her. That usually means something bad. But after you shed your tears, there is still a child to raise.” She sighed, shrugged. “No importa madre,” she said, using the general Mexican expression for things that can’t ever be fixed, of which that nation had, oh, so many. “I have thought of sending her to my brother in Guerrero, to the rancho, you know? But she swears she will run away if I do, and she will. The girl is a mule. She won’t work, she is failing school, and she is starting to sneak out, as you saw. All she thinks about is money and things and how to get things, all the things she sees on the television and reads about in the magazines. She thinks she will be a model or a movie star and have cars and jewels and fine clothes. But I think some guapo will take her and give her drugs and that will be the end of her, poor little thing!”
“Perhaps not,” said Marder. He was looking up at the television, which had attracted his attention when the program changed to the spangled opening of a news show. Marder saw that they were leading with the incident in the square, with the torso. He saw again the pretty woman with the tan suit. He reached up and turned the volume on. He watched and listened, enjoying the fresa accent in the throaty voice, until the segment ended.
He turned back to the housekeeper. “Let me talk to her. Sometimes a young girl will listen to an older man.”
He was watching Amparo’s face when he said this and observed a variable display there: fear perhaps, doubt, then resignation. The animation that had appeared in her eyes while they were talking of the business of the house faded, and the servant’s polite mask reappeared.
“Yes, Señor. I will tell her. May I get on with my work now?”
Marder nodded and went up the stairs to have his siesta. As he closed the blinds and lay down on the cool sheets, he thought, She thinks I want to h
ave the girl myself and thinks it might be the best thing for her, a rich old American instead of a thuggy kid who’ll get her pregnant. She read me wrong, he thought; I already had that life.
He stared at the ceiling, a flawless pale-cream field, and entered, as he often did when exhausted, a hypnagogic state, in which the past seemed more available. Was he more prone to this since the diagnosis? Perhaps he was running back through his life, as people are supposed to do at the moment of death, but more slowly, consideringly, as befitted an editor of encyclopedic works. In any case, now in his half-sleeping mind, he was on a different bed, narrower, harder, and the ceiling above was mustard yellow and cracked in a peculiar circular pattern, like the outline of a cat’s head. He was in his room at the Las Palmas Floridas Hotel, after a motorcycle journey of several thousand miles. He had not planned to come to Playa Diamante, had never heard of the place, it was just where a series of spontaneous decisions had led him, not toward anything but away from a life he thought he had screwed up beyond repair. He was twenty-four.
He had left his wife, a perfectly nice woman he did not love. Like so many of his brothers-in-arms, he had married her on the rebound from Vietnam, seeking life, seeking warm human shelter from what had happened to him over there. Janice Serebic: he could hardly recall her face at a remove of over thirty years. Yet even back then, lying on that other, narrower bed, guilt had washed her features, her voice, from his memory. She’d been the cashier in the place where he’d worked as a cook, both before and after the service, a student place up on Amsterdam Avenue near the university. He was sad beyond words; she was funny and plump and made him laugh and steered him like a salvaged vessel into marriage’s dry dock. He’d lost his caring machinery up there in the rainy mountains, and subsequently whatever happened, whatever someone else wanted, was okay with him, because he’d found out what making decisions and volunteering and wanting stuff came to: nothing good.
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