Malone and Sienna rented a self-storage unit and stuffed it with old tables and bureaus, the furniture in such poor condition that anyone who broke in would curse and go on to other targets. In back was an old chest, in which Malone hid the suitcase containing the million dollars.
He locked the pull-down metal door, gave Sienna one key, and pocketed the other. With the twenty thousand dollars they kept, they went to various banks, avoiding attention by never exchanging more than two thousand at any one place. Where they were going, twenty thousand in pesos would last them quite a while.
They loaded up on things they might need, then headed south, reaching the Mexican border in forty minutes. The crossing was at a city called San Luis, where the Mexican guards barely looked at the Explorer. It was the same casual attitude Malone recalled from when he had crossed the border years earlier while on leave from military exercises in Yuma. Normally, visitors driving a vehicle into Mexico needed a tourist card and a temporary vehicle import permit, but Malone’s destination was part of an area called the Sonoran Free Trade Zone, and such documents weren’t necessary. The length of visits was unrestricted. Even if these guards had decided to stop and search the Explorer, Malone wouldn’t have cared. He had nothing incriminating. The handgun he had taken from Dale Perry’s body was down a sewer in Yuma.
The city gave way to small farms. Then the farms became sporadic until there was only sand and tufts of grass.
“Smell it?” Malone asked.
“What?”
The Gulf of California separated mainland Mexico from its western peninsula, Baja California. In his youth, Malone had been surprised to learn how close the Pacific Ocean was to southern Arizona — less than two hours away — and had never forgotten driving down to it.
“The moist air. The salt smell. We ought to have a glimpse of the sea over the next rise.”
Instead, they faced a military roadblock.
Sienna tensed.
“Take it easy,” Malone said. “They’re looking for drugs smuggled in by boat. They’re interested in vehicles coming from the sea, not toward it.”
Each side of the barricade had three armed soldiers. On the opposite side of the road, a battered pickup truck was being searched. The officer in charge, a mustached, lean-faced captain, watched from behind mirrored sunglasses.
Sienna wore sunglasses also. A droopy straw hat. No makeup. She’d done everything practical to conceal her features without being conspicuous about it. Nonetheless, Malone worried that the guards would sense how attractive she was and want to take a look. His worry turned out to be groundless. The soldiers were so interested in what was going on with the pickup truck that they waved him on.
Looking in the rearview mirror, Malone saw the captain watching the Explorer drive away.
“There,” he told Sienna. “No problem.”
8
“I see it!” Sienna pointed to the right, where a distant sheet of blue glinted from reflected sunlight.
The road paralleled the water, gradually narrowing the space between. In a couple of miles, buildings appeared, then palm trees, the outskirts of a town. Malone drove past a convenience store and a car-repair shop. A sand-colored two-story house had a red-tiled roof. The house beside it was made from cinder blocks. Next came a refuse-littered lot, and after that, a shack. That was the pattern: expensive houses next to poor ones in a seaside community that didn’t have the pretensions of a beach resort. Farther into town, the pavement ended, the wide road turning to sand. On the right was an open square with benches underneath shade trees, flanked by a police station and a small grocery store. On the left, past a chain-link fence, was a row of one-room school buildings, each well maintained, the grounds immaculate, as were the children playing at recess.
“This is Santa Clara,” Malone said. “It’s a fishing village that got discovered by Americans with motor homes who were looking for a place to take cheap vacations. So many Americans come and go down here, we won’t look out of place. In fact, as long as we stay to ourselves and contribute to the local economy, we’ll be welcome.”
“Staying to ourselves is definitely what I want to do.”
A few streets veered to the left, but most led to the right toward palm trees and clapboard bars and restaurants along the sea. Malone ignored these turnoffs, driving straight ahead, passing a row of RV parks, finally stopping when there were no further buildings, only sand. And the sea.
“This is the end of the road,” he said.
“So we’re going to drive back to town and find a place to stay?” Sienna asked.
“Not exactly. Why don’t we get out and stretch our legs.”
Baffled, Sienna followed him across the sand until they reached where the waves lapped at their shoes. Seagulls glided overhead. In the distance, the specks of low motorized fishing boats bobbed in the water. The sun was hot, the sky as blue as the sea.
Malone savored the salt smell. “God, I love living near water.” For a moment, he was reminded of what Bellasar had done to his home on Cozumel.
He calmed himself. “Up this far, near the tip of the gulf, we’re close to Baja California. If you look real hard, you can see the opposite shore. It’s kind of hazy today, but you should be able to see the rocky cliffs. They’re about five miles away. Farther south, the gulf’s a lot wider — as much as a hundred miles.”
Malone pivoted to study the northern shoreline, where pickup trucks hooked cables to fishing boats and pulled them onto the sand. “The town’s bigger than when I was here twelve years ago. Two of those RV parks weren’t here, or that restaurant with the outdoor dining area. But that’s to be expected.”
What he hadn’t expected was that the seaside part of town would look run-down. Sun shelters made of poles supporting palm fronds had toppled, as had a concrete retaining wall. Chain-link fences leaned. Carports had collapsed. What on earth had happened? Then he realized. “They had a hurricane last year. I remember how powerful the newspapers said it was. They’re still digging out from the wreckage. I imagine it’ll take a while.”
But Sienna didn’t look anywhere he pointed. She just stared at him. “What do you mean we’re not going back into town to find a place to stay?”
“We’re going somewhere else.”
“Didn’t you say this was the end of the road?”
“Yes.”
“Then … ”
Malone hesitated. He’d prepared her for everything except this. “We agreed that the only way to get away from your husband and Laster is to go to the end of the earth and pull the edges in after us.”
She nodded.
“Down here, American drifters are part of the economy. If somebody wonders where you came from, you can tell whatever lie you want, and nobody’ll think twice or be the wiser. The locals don’t care where your money comes from, and they don’t ask for Social Security numbers. But just to be extra safe … ” Malone turned toward the southern shore and the widening gulf. “I wonder if there isn’t an even better edge of the world. When I was here the last time, a villager was renting out dune buggies. One of my buddies and I drove along this shore. There’s nothing for fifteen miles. Then just before the beach runs out, there’s a fishing camp.”
“You mean a village.”
“Smaller. Maybe a dozen trailers. It’s simple. The scenery’s spectacular. The people who live there are loners. There’ll be no one to account to or to bother us.”
For a moment, the only sound was the distant drone of a motorboat.
“That’s where you’d like to go?” Sienna asked.
Malone couldn’t decide if her tone was dismay. “It’s as perfect a place to disappear as I can think of. Then we’ll figure out our next move.”
She seemed lost.
“It’s not forever. A man in your husband’s line of work, there’s a good chance the authorities or one of his competitors will get to him. We just have to survive long enough for that to happen.”
“Surviving is Derek’s specia
lty.”
A sober moment lengthened. Sienna looked at him. Looked at the sea. Looked east past the sand dunes. “What’s on that hill?”
“A lighthouse. The locals told me it was abandoned.”
“Can we climb to it?”
“Of course, but it’ll take us the rest of the day to get there and back.”
“Not today.”
It was Malone’s turn to look puzzled.
“Later,” she said. “After we get settled.”
“… You’re willing to stay?”
“My life’s been too complicated for a very long time. I kept telling myself I had to simplify.” She took his hand.
“It won’t be like we’re hermits.” Malone squeezed her fingers. “If we want some nightlife, we can go into town. The last time I was here, the restaurants were good. The town has fiestas. People do come here for vacations, after all. Let’s try it. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll find somewhere else.”
9
The four-wheel-drive Explorer had no trouble on the hard-packed sand. With the windows open and the breeze ruffling her hair, Sienna smiled as they drove along the unmarked beach. “I feel like we’re the first ones to do this.”
“Lewis and Clark.”
She chuckled. “Captain Kirk. ‘Where no one has gone before.’”
To keep the tires from digging into the sand, they didn’t drive faster than twenty miles an hour. The slow, smooth, almost hypnotic ride took forty minutes before they came around a final dune and stopped where a rocky outcrop blocked the way farther south.
The camp didn’t look the way Malone remembered it. The dozen or so trailers he had seen twelve years earlier had been reduced to two, one of which was tilted, partially buried by sand. The other had an awning extending from it. A fishing net hung on a wall, faded shorts, jeans, and other laundry dangling from it. In front, a char-filled fire pit was surrounded by blackened rocks. A motorboat had been hauled up onto the beach. A sun-wizened Mexican man worked on its engine while two children stopped scampering in the waves and looked warily toward Malone and Sienna as they got out of the Explorer. A pensive woman appeared in the trailer’s doorway, assessing the new arrivals.
Malone gestured reassuringly to her and walked with Sienna to the motorboat.
The man’s face was so sun-creased, he might have been anywhere from forty to sixty. His hands were gnarled from years of working with fishing lines. The logo on his baseball hat had faded so much, it was impossible to read.
In Spanish, Malone introduced themselves as Dale and Beatrice Perry. He offered his hand.
The man looked suspiciously at it, then shook it, his calluses palpable. His name was Fernando, he said.
“The last time I came here, twelve years ago, there were more people,” Malone said. “What happened?”
Malone listened, then told Sienna, “He says the hurricane last summer was very bad. The Americans with trailers got away before it arrived. They never came back. It killed one fisherman and scared the others enough to leave. They never came back, either. The hurricane season will soon start again. The other fishermen don’t want to be around when it does.”
“So we’ve pretty much got the place to ourselves?”
“Yes, better than we hoped.” Malone turned toward Fernando. “My wife and I were thinking about camping here for a while. Would you object?”
Fernando seemed pleased that Malone had used usted, the formal word for “you.” People could come and go as they liked, he said.
“But we want to be good neighbors. Maybe you could use some help with the boat. Maybe we could contribute something in exchange for being here.” Malone reached into his shirt pocket and removed a pack of cigarettes. Although he didn’t smoke, he knew they could be handy as gifts.
As Fernando smoked one, they discussed the weather, the boat, and other seemingly casual subjects.
When Fernando finished the cigarette, he pinched off the end and pocketed the remnant of tobacco. Pointing toward the tilted trailer partially buried in the sand, he explained something.
“What did he tell you?” Sienna asked.
“That the trailer isn’t as damaged as it looks. He says that with the four-wheel-drive vehicle we have, we can pull the trailer upright, repair it, and live in it.”
“Gracias,” she told Fernando.
10
It was as near to paradise as Malone had ever come: swimming, sailing, fishing, hiking, or merely lying in a hammock, reading. But most of all, it was painting, trying to capture something in Sienna’s eyes that had become his single goal to depict.
Beatrice indeed.
Sometimes, Fernando’s ten-year-old boy came over and looked spellbound at Malone’s images of her.
“Would you like to learn to do this?”
The boy nodded solemnly. One lesson turned into several. The boy went around with a sketch pad, drawing everything he saw, as if he’d discovered magic.
At night, as Malone and Sienna lay in bed together, she whispered, “You have a way with children.”
“With one child, anyhow,” he joked.
“Be serious. It’s a nice thing you’re doing.”
“Well, he’s a good kid.”
“But what you’re teaching him isn’t simple. You know how to get a child to listen. You’d make a good father.”
“Make a … Wait a minute. Are you telling me you want to have a child?”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“With all the trouble we’re in …”
“I didn’t say right now. But if we weren’t in trouble, how would you feel about … ”
“Having a child with you?”
“Yes.”
“If it would make you happy.”
“Happier.”
In the night, they held each other, not doing anything else, just holding.
11
At his table on the château’s terrace, his coffee and croissant untasted, Potter listened to the roar of the machine gun. His face felt tight. His eyes were gritty. To be expected. After all, the machine gun had wakened him before dawn, as it had on the previous morning and the morning before that. On occasion, it was interrupted by explosions and handgun fire, but mostly it was the machine gun. All day. Every day. Potter’s nerves weren’t the only ones affected. The guards looked on edge, interrupting their patrols to stare toward the shooting range and frown at one another.
Potter didn’t understand how Derek’s body, his hands, arms, and shoulders, could withstand the relentless punishment he subjected them to. The machine gun itself couldn’t sustain it. Derek had already broken one tripod, destroyed two feeding mechanisms, and burned out a dozen barrels. In contrast, Derek’s body showed no signs of wearing down, his fury so great that only if he didn’t vent it would he suffer physically.
Derek’s emotions were another matter. Potter had never seen him so distraught. From the day Sienna had escaped with Malone, Derek had been unable to concentrate on anything except revenge. Important business matters went unattended. He haunted the weapons-testing range, firing every weapon he could get his hands on, reducing the mock village to rubble, ordering his men to rebuild it, then reducing it to rubble again, not a wall or a house remaining. When overuse broke the weapons, he screamed at his engineers to design them better and to bring him others to test. When he tired of firearms, he changed to grenades and rocket launchers, the enraged expression on his face demonstrating the schemes of revenge he imagined.
Potter finally couldn’t bear it. He rose from the table and made his way along a path to the testing range. He saw Derek bent over the machine gun, cursing as he yanked at its firing mechanism but couldn’t get it to eject a jammed shell. Derek wore earplugs, so he didn’t know Potter was in the area until Potter stepped in front of him.
Rage swelled Derek’s body, giving him an even more imposing presence than usual. His huge eyes were dark with fury. “Have you found them?”
“No. We’re still looking. You have t
o stop this, Derek. You’re due in Miami tomorrow.”
“Find them, damn it!” Derek freed the jammed cartridge and fired at a mannequin that moved along a track, blowing it to pieces. “Find them!”
12
The restaurant was called El Delfin — the Dolphin. It was a couple of blocks from the beach, on a sandy street: a dingy one-story building with an orange shingled roof and an air conditioner braced in a window. An utterly unassuming place, with the exception that it served the best food in Santa Clara.
At dusk, Malone and Sienna opened the restaurant’s screen door and stepped onto the faded linoleum floor. For a moment, all the tables seemed occupied. Then Malone noticed an empty one in back on the right-hand side. He noticed something else: a Mexican military captain talking with three male civilians. The captain had a lean, sallow, mustached face that reminded Malone of a hawk. He had a pair of mirrored sunglasses, folded, hanging from a shirt pocket by one of the bows.
“Behind you,” Sienna said as she and Malone sat across from each other.
“Yes,” Malone said. “The officer from the roadblock. No big deal. Everybody’s got to eat.”
When the waitress came, they each ordered a beer, then studied the wrinkled single-sheet menu.
Malone reached across the table and grasped her hand. “Hungry?”
“Famished. This shrimp dish sounds good.”
“I recommend it,” a voice said.
They turned.
The captain stood next to their table.
“Then I’ll have it,” Malone said.
“Captain Ramirez.” The man smiled pleasantly as he held out his hand.
Burnt Sienna Page 21
