Angels in Heaven (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  Anyway, we nipped through both Immigration and Customs speedily and without problems, waited ten minutes slouched in Naugahyde and chrome chairs in the modern-looking terminal, and then one of the stewards in his pretty blue uniform herded all of us who were continuing on to Mérida back on board.

  As soon as we were airborne again, we were treated to a tasty snack of chicken and mushroom soup on rice, beside which lay several large chunks of that mother-in-law of vegetables, squash.

  "Remind me to ask the chef for the recipe," I remarked in an aside to Doris.

  "Remind me to tell you to stop complaining about everything," said she, who had devoured every morsel on her tray including the green marzipan cake-thing with the desiccated coconut on it, as she brushed a few errant crumbs off the skirt of her incredibly expensive innocent-office-girl-on-vacation outfit Evonne had helped her shop for.

  "Well, excuse me," I said. Hell, if you can't complain about airline food, what can you complain about? Houston, I thought to myself. In some bland metropolis like Houston, I bet there's a cooking school that all airline catering personnel have to attend where they teach you how to make fresh rolls go stale in seconds and how to glue down the little end bit on those packets of nondairy creamers and salad dressings so passengers have to use their knives to open them and how to pack crackers in cellophane so tightly that you can't open them without crumbling the crackers into microscopic bits. I could go on about those antediluvian, cast-iron wagons the poor stewies have to haul up and down the aisles and which have been brilliantly designed so as to fill up the whole aisle so you can't get by to go to the bathroom until your whole section has been served, but why bother? Who would listen to one plaintive voice emerging from just another face in the milling throng? Above the milling throng, actually, and while I'm at it, how about a section for tall people that you only get to sit in if you're six foot two or over (which happens to be the same height requirement as the Sacramento Tall Club, which I might modestly mention here I was once invited to join)?

  About then the captain was kind enough to let us know how many feet in thousands it was straight down to earth. I once flew with Evonne on an airline that actually had a sense of humor, albeit slightly black. The chief steward or whoever it was would say things like, "It looks like Magellan managed to find the airport for once, so welcome to Portland," when we were landing in Las Vegas. Or he'd say, "In case of emergencies, parents of small children should put their own oxygen masks on first and then assist the child with his, but only if he's been good."

  Well, time passed, as it loves to do, even at thirty-two thousand feet, and eventually we managed to somehow land safely at Mérida, where long ago the Indian village of Tho once lay, you may be interested in learning. I don't really care one way or the other—Tho what? it is tempting to say—but it seems the least I can do is to insert from time to time a spot of local color and history, gleaned from various tourist brochures and the like. For example, amongst other things, Mérida is famous for Panama hats, which are woven in dark caves where the damp coolness gives the fiber a supple texture. What precisely the darkness and the damp coolness do to the hat makers aside from turning them into blind albinos my brochure did not say.

  And speaking of Panama hats, guess who was wearing one, waiting for me and Doris when we finally struggled out of the baggage retrieval section loaded down like Tibetan porters on their way to establish a base camp at the foot of Everest—Señor Benny the Boy himself. I politely introduced him to Doris in case he hadn't recognized her, and then after fond embraces all round in the Latino style, we loaded up the last year's Chevy Benny had hired and headed demurely eastward into town, which turned out to be no more than ten minutes or so away.

  The tremendous charm and appeal of this "Old Mexico" village, I discovered later while idly leafing through the local yellow pages, reside in its picturesque Colonial homes, horse-drawn carriages, beautiful parks, and old marketplaces, which all create the atmosphere of a Mexico almost gone. True, true, all too true, but it also unfortunately gives the sad impression of a people who are not only broke—and I mean on the tortilla line—but from what Benny said, only too likely to remain so. He mentioned to Doris on the drive in that the day before, he'd read in the English-language newspaper printed in Mexico City that the basic daily minimum wage had just been increased to a whopping $3.75 U.S. a day, and it was even being rumored some lucky workers were actually getting that much.

  Our hotel, the San Carlos, was in the southwest corner of a small square called Plaza Hidalgo, on the corners of 60th and 49th streets, and it was a proud example of Mexican Colonial, which basically means your tiles, your dark woods and greenery, and your heavy, even darker wooden furniture. I signed in as Sr. John R. Wood, and Doris as Doris Jameson, as per instructions. I left a hundred-buck deposit with the pretty receptionist to obviate the necessity of giving her the number of a credit card as security, which item I did not have, at least not in the name of John R. Wood. There was a real John R. Wood somewhere—at least there was once, because John R. Wood used to play fullback on the mighty Parker High Panthers with me and Billy Baker, aka Gray Wolf, presently aka a name that was all numbers. Then we toiled up two wide flights of stairs to our rooms. We were all on the top floor in a row right next to the tiny pool, rooms 333, 332, and—you guessed it—331.

  It was late in the afternoon but it was still hot, so I turned on the overhead fan, unpacked and hung up what had to be hung up to get the creases out, washed up, took some diarrhea medicine preventatively—and there's wishful thinking for you—carefully combed my curls, then rejoined the others out on the tiled patio next to the pool where Benny had already managed to produce six bottles of ice-cold local beer. We were not alone al fresco—there were two elderly ladies in the water doing timid breaststrokes and a young blond couple who, we found out later, were students from Lund in Sveden, so we kept the chatter away from serious topics and generally tried to look and behave like ordinary Yankee tourists, which we did by complaining loudly about the prices, the weather, the exchange rate, the water, the cupidity of the local tradespeople (waiters, taxi drivers, and such like), and the impossibility of finding an edible hamburger anywhere in the country south of the Mexico City McDucks.

  One had a good view of Mérida from where we were, even though we were only three floors up. Almost without exception, the whole city was—and needless to say, still is—laid out in a symmetrical grid, and thus it was that all even-numbered streets ran north and south and all odd-numbered ones east and west. All were one way, with every other street running in an opposite direction—all other cities in the world please copy. Looming up one block to the west of us was the enormous Cathedral of San Ildefonso, circa 1598, which made it even older than the pretzels at the Two-Two-Two, but not by much; next to it a brick-red museum; and in front of them the main square, the Jardín de los Compositores. I do find travel broadening—there's so much darn culture in other countries.

  After a half-hour or so, when we'd finished up the last of the beers (me, three and a half out of the six), we moved into Benny's room for a more private conclave. He spread out on one of the two beds the local version of a Rand-McNally (Asorva Ediciones) map of Mérida and its surroundings, as well as a bunch of Polaroids he'd taken, and pointed out to me and Doris the items of particular interest to us, but not before Doris had reminded me I'd better put my specs on, even though she could see I was already fumbling for them.

  "If you strain your eyes, they'll only get worse," she said with a solicitude that wasn't even skin-deep. I didn't give her the satisfaction of an answer, naturally. Benny showed us where the road that ran westward to the prison was; he said the clink itself was in a stretch of barren sand and old sisal plantations between the bustling metropolises of Tesip and Molas, combined population roughly thirty, counting the cucarachas and scorpions.

  "Right there," he said, putting one well-manicured finger on the map, "at the crossroads where the road, if you can call it a road,
that goes to the prison starts, are a rundown collection of cafés, a sort of restaurant, old grannies selling tacos and oranges, and kids hustling what they can hustle. Anyway, right there is where I heard something that might be of interest."

  "The only thing of interest I want to hear," said Doris, shaking out her new coif in that way women have, "is the supper bell."

  Benny, always the gentleman, or a lot more of the time than me, anyway, immediately leapt up, went to the small table in the corner, and came back with a tin of green salty things that might have been dried pumpkin seeds or might not, took a modest handful himself, then passed them on to Doris Jr. By the time the tin got to me, you can imagine how many were left.

  "What I heard were the words one old man sitting at the table next to me right there at the crossroads café said to the other old man he was sitting with," Benny said.

  "Fascinating," I said. I made a lightning grab at the pile of pumpkin seeds Doris was holding in one cupped hand, but she was too quick for me for once. "And what was this scintillating dialogue you overheard, something about the Mexican team's chances in the next World Cup?"

  "No," said Benny, "it was about the commandante of the prison's chances with the delectable young daughter of his wife's new cook."

  I arched one eyebrow at Doris, who looked away disgustedly.

  "The point being," said Benny, "that this dialogue occurred just after the commandante's car turned out of the prison road and headed off in an easterly direction. And what the commandante was doing was being driven to his home for lunch, to be followed by a lengthy siesta—a daily event, I inferred."

  "Interesting," I said. "What else have you got for us?"

  "A safe phone there," he said, pointing to an intersection on the map a few blocks southwest of our hotel, his pal Jorge's shop, it turned out, about which more later. "American consulate," he said, pointing again, "at the end of Paseo Montejo. The nearest pharmacy. My Panama hat connection."

  "That should be useful," I said.

  "How about a dope connection," Doris said. "I don't see a picture of that anywhere."

  "So, Supremo," Benny said, folding up the map neatly, "what is the master plan to be this time? I presume you have one."

  "I presume so too," said Doris, bestirring herself to go over to the control for the overhead fan and turning it to a faster setting. "Otherwise, what are we doing down here in this steam bath."

  "I do have the beginnings of an idea," I admitted modestly. "The merest modicum. I'll know more anon when I can get a look at the consulate and that other U.S. concern in town that Benny found."

  "The U.S. Cultural Association," Benny said. "It's not far from here, we can take a look tonight if you like."

  "I like," I said.

  "I don't," said Doris. "What the heck has the U.S. Cultural Ass. got to do with anything?"

  "Patience, Doris, patience," I said. "Soon all will be revealed. As we can't really get started until tomorow, except for giving the Cultural Ass. the once-over, I propose that tonight we relax, we stroll, we absorb the charm of Old Mexico, we wine and dine moderately and then betake ourselves early to bed."

  "I dunno if I can take all that excitement," said Doris.

  We relaxed downstairs in the little outdoor café next to the hotel entrance, although it is not particularly easy to relax when constantly fending off a small but voracious army of hammock vendors, hat peddlers, grubby urchins thrusting cardboard boxes of caramelos and Chiclets in your face, to say nothing of ancient females in traditional Mayan costume—loose-fitting white dress with brightly embroidered hem and neckline—who'd stop at the table and hold their hands out politely but insistently. To my surprise, Benny knew several of the hammock sellers by name, and vice versa, and they were constantly greeting each other with energetic handshakes and abrazos and floods of Spanish spoken far too rapidly for me to be able to pick up more than the occasional word.

  We strolled the one block westward to the cathedral and the main square, passing on the way Benny's Panama hat connection, then a souvenir shop next to it, in the window of which, among various cheap artifacts, was a large sign reading Broken English Spoke Perfectly, also a money changer, where an amiable gent handed over 2,200 pesos for every dollar I handed him. I was rich at last. We strolled around the four sides of the tree-lined and bandstanded square. Then we strolled back to a restaurant across the Plaza Hidalgo from our hotel and leisurely wined and dined at a table set just off the street, where we had a good view of the passing parade.

  The passing parade was predominantly Mayan, with touches of Hispano-American, also touches of Teutons, Scandinavians, Yanks, and Canucks, mostly in shorts. The Mayans are short, dark-brown folks with typically wide cheekbones, slightly hooked hooters, and often slightly receding foreheads or chins or both. All trustworthy observers, me included, have remarked on their polite, quiet, one might say poker-faced demeanor, as well as their honesty and industry.

  The theory is that they are one of the many Amerind tribes descended from Mongols who way back in the long ago, even before TV dinners, walked from Russia to Alaska when there must have been a bridge or a tunnel there, and then they turned right and kept walking until their vodka unfroze and stayed unfrozen. A Swede called Thor not long ago had another theory, and to prove it, he built a boat out of reeds and matchsticks and sailed it from Peru to Polynesia. But as what he was trying to prove was that it was the mighty and fearless Norsemen who long ago had brought civilization to the Andes and then inspired the poor locals, who only wanted to stay at home and snort a little coke in the evening, to head west across the Pacific in leaky balsa rafts, no one took his theories too seriously, although you had to admire his nerve.

  The men in the passing parade were all lithe, damn their insolence, also handsome, but also short, of course. The babies were beautiful and the old folks likewise. One small child who passed wore a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it; Benny informed us Mickey was known as "Miguel el ratón" in Mexico. He didn't know what Bugs Bunny was known as. One more thing I noticed while trying to chew a bit of charred gristle euphemistically referred to as "steak prime" on the restaurant menu: only 1 of every 7.4 natives wore glasses.

  In the remote possibility anyone is interested, Doris wined and dined on two "sonwich club" and two Pepsi-Colas, while my friend Benjamin slowly but steadily worked his way through innumerable tamales wrapped in banana leaves and then for dessert had the banana part of the bananas, broiled.

  As it was still early, just after nine, Benny took us off on another short stroll, along a couple of blocks and up a couple and stopped in front of a four-story office building that housed the U.S. Cultural Ass, as I immediately deduced from a large brass plaque beside the front door that read U.S. Cultural Ass. Under it was another sign, this one reading FEL-MEXCO, Segundo Piso (which means "second floor," though Doris humorously translated it as, "I'll take a leak after you").

  We enjoyed, as nightcaps, small Nescafés at the café next to our hotel; then I purchased us copies of one of the local papers, the Yucatán Novedades, from yet another one-legged vendor who chanced by, and we all retired to our homes away from home after agreeing to rendezvous back at the café at nine the following morning. Doris, typically, muttered that she hadn't been to bed that early since she was six.

  Climb the stairs. Unlock door. Fan on. Shower on. Water hot! Me in shower. Anoint locks with special preparation purporting to combat hair loss. TV on. A lot of people being funny in a hospital in a foreign language. TV off. Climb into bed. Set traveling alarm clock (birthday present from Mom many eons ago). Open Novedades. Bruce Lee was starring in El Gran Jefe at the Olympia. Richard Chamberlain was Allan Quartermain in En Busca de la Cuidad Perdida. The Los Harlem Globetrotters contra Los Generales de Washington, La Plaza de Toros, Jueves, Viernes, y Sábado. El Famoso Trupo Argentino de Tango hoy al Teatro José Peon de Camara.

  The tango . . . now there was a dance. If I could dance at all I'd choose the tango. Someone once said something mea
ningful about the tango; I know it was Valentino but I cannot remember what it was. . . . Was it something about a tango being a sad thought that is danced?

  Buenas noches, amigos.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Ambrose Bierce," said Benny.

  "I beg your pardon?" said V. Daniel.

  "Ambrose Bierce once wrote something to the effect that a consul is a person who can't get a job in the U.S. but who is finally given one by the administration on condition that he leave the country."

  "Screamingly amusing," said Doris Jr. around a yawn.

  It was the following morning. Benny was in the front seat, me and Doris in the back, of a Mérida taxicab, an ancient Impala that had been decorated with an attractive slice of a thickly napped orange carpet which was spread over and dangling down from the ledge on top of the instrument panel, as featured in a recent issue of the Mexican Home & Garden. A small plastic chap in a red Santa outfit, with a long gray beard and green sunglasses, swung merrily from the rearview mirror.

  It was nine forty-five A.M. We had breakfasted on toast, marmalade, and Nescafé. (Marmalade in Mexican means "jam," not "marmalade." I don't know what means marmalade.) We had just turned left off 47th onto the main drag, the Paseo Montejo.

  The paseo boasted two one-way highways separated by some wilting greenery, and it contained branches of the major banks, cafés, a movie house or two, old mansions, the local offices of Xerox and the like, and the new Consulado de América, which we drove slowly past, eyes agog. It was a low white structure, well fenced, with a pair of guards out front and a couple more around the back. To one side of it was a large private home and on the other a traffic circle. A block or two farther along, the paseo ended at something called the Memorial de la Patria, a stone wall bas-reliefed with various incomprehensible Mayan symbols.