The registrar took him up the elevator and let him into the room. When the registrar left, Robert threw the bolt, switched the light off, made his way in semidarkness to the window opposite and opened the blinds. Night pressed down on the city beyond, black and starless. On a rooftop below, a barefoot woman in a red wrapper stood alongside a tin shed in the thin light of a single bulb. She lit a cigarette and began taking wet laundry from a plastic bucket, hanging items on makeshift lines strung across the roof.
He closed the blinds and turned the light on again. He hung up his clothes, then dumped the contents from the maroon carry-on onto the bed. He cut a slit in each end of the bag’s liner under the two-inch expansion flap. He then cut a series of parallel one-inch slits in four eight-by-eight-inch rectangles of shirt cardboard he had brought along for this purpose. He inserted cartridges in the slots like a bandolier, alternating, one on one side and one on the other so the cardboard remained relatively flat. He placed the loaded cards in Ziplocs and inserted them into the slits in either end of the liner between the metal reinforcing bars. He taped the Ziplocs to the reinforced wall, then taped the slit in the lining shut and pulled the expansion flaps down so it didn’t show. Finally, he rolled the holstered gun in the face towel and stowed it in the carry-on with the other hardware.
Tired from the bus trip down, he poured himself a brandy and sank back in the club chair. He had flown into Laredo, Texas. From there he had taken the bus across the Rio Grande because of the lax entry into Mexico. American Customs seldom checked buses leaving the US; they were mostly interested in those entering. As for entering Mexico, in this particular case, no one checked anything, not even his tourist card. The “official inspection” consisted of two men in street clothes boarding the bus at the ten-mile checkpoint. They came down the isle, baseball caps proffered, collecting a dollar from each passenger—commonly known as “hurrying the process.” Fail to cooperate, and the jefes find reason to detain not only you, but everyone.
His thoughts returned to the beggar, the stick-thin child draped over his shoulder. Against his will, he was once again transported back in time to Nick’s room. He took a deep breath, then went into the bathroom and took another Vibramycin with a slug of mineral water. Probably running a fever. A touch of the bug. He wet a washcloth with cold water, pressed it to his temples and tried not to look in the mirror.
9
Sojourner
ROBERT WAS UP early. He showered and dressed, then packed his bags and went down for breakfast.
The dining room was empty but for an older couple lingering over coffee. Robert took a table. The waiter appeared.
A second couple entered and seated themselves nearby. The woman looked to be in her early thirties, hair the color of terracotta, intelligent almond-shaped green eyes set like jade in the bronzed tan of her face. She wore a blue cotton shirt and white jeans with a colorful Mexican sash. She exuded an air of contained elegance, as though she had just stepped out of a European travel poster—a bit upscale for the Hidalgo and its meager dining room.
The man swung a leather satchel off his shoulder, seated himself and lit a cigarette. He looked solid, a square face with even features, blondish hair wet-combed straight back from a rather high forehead. He held the cigarette backward, between thumb and forefinger so that he cupped his chin in his palm when he took a drag—like a character in one of those old 1930s movies—dashing except for the surly expression behind small, metal-rimmed glasses. He grumbled to the woman in an undertone. She looked away with pursed lips. The man took a newspaper from his satchel and began to read.
The waiter poured Robert’s coffee then poured for the newly arrived couple. The woman ordered for herself and the man. Robert ordered in turn and the waiter left.
The woman glanced up unexpectedly and caught him looking at her. “You’re from the States?” she said. Her eyes held his. Intelligent. Aloof.
He smiled briefly. “Right. And you?”
“Ana Farrington. This is Helmut Heinrich.”
Her fingers were long and nicely tapered. No engagement ring, no wedding ring.
“Robert,” he said, realizing that in the heat of the moment he had given his real name—grown careless in the last three years.
The man, Helmut, sipped his coffee with barely a nod in Robert’s direction. Robert supposed he would be considered handsome in most circles.
Ana smiled. Sunlight reflected off the white tablecloth, filled her eyes, her hair. “Vacationing?”
“Actually, I’m here on business. You?”
“Yes. Business. But we live here.”
“In the hotel?”
“Oh, no. The city. I broker arts and crafts to some of the better tourist shops.”
“The real stuff, umm?”
“Indigenous arts and crafts, yes, from throughout Mexico.”
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”
She shrugged. “It could be. We’re careful.”
Helmut paid little attention to the exchange. He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, took his glasses off, polished them on the tablecloth and went back to his paper.
“Your first time in Mexico?” she asked.
“Except for a couple of border towns. What brings you to the Hidalgo?”
“Oh, it is a nice enough old hotel. But we only stopped in for breakfast. We’re on our way to Acapulco, perhaps down to Tapachula.”
The Hidalgo’s breakfast didn’t impress Robert as worth going out of your way for.
“Tapa-what?” he said. “Where’s that?”
“Down near Guatemala.”
“Whoa. Speaking of dangerous. You driving?”
Helmut threw a casual glance in his direction, a disk of light reflecting off one lens.
“Oh, yes,” Ana replied. “And you, are you traveling outside the city?”
“I may be going to Acapulco too. That is if my client comes through.”
Helmut took a flask from the document case and dribbled a shot into his coffee cup. Ana stiffened and said something to him under her breath.
The waiter brought their food. They ate in silence. Helmut finished and poured himself another drink. Ana laid her hand on his in gentle restraint. He shoved her hand aside and tossed the drink down. She placed her knife and fork on her plate in a precise manner, touched her napkin to her lips, then stood and strode toward the entrance.
Robert saw now that she had a limp, favoring one leg as her body swung in slight counterbalance. But those legs were long, the first sign of the truly aristocratic woman to his way of thinking. There was something sensual about the rhythm of her stride. Something haughty in her bearing. He wanted to take the starch out of her. What he really wanted was to take her to his room, climb her like a tree and eat the bark off. But it was more than that. He watched her swing out through the doorway and disappear. A vague longing overtook him. Something he couldn’t quite identify.
He looked back at Helmut. Helmut poured another drink. Lit another cigarette. Ignored him.
ROBERT SQUINTED AT the young woman across the counter at the Avis car rental. “What do you mean, the insurance doesn’t include the accessories?”
The agent shook her head. “No accessories, señor.”
“And just what are the accessories?”
She picked up the printout. “The tires, the wheels, the radio, the—”
“Okay, okay.” He laid out the credentials Fowler had provided under the name, Otis T. Baker.
When she finished the paperwork, Robert took his bags and tagged after her across the lower level of a parking garage to an elevator. The air was still, heat collecting. They rode up to the top floor, the agent facing the door, arms crossed over her clipboard. She led him from the elevator to a lone red Nissan Sentra sitting unwashed against the far wall.
She briefly went over the car, showed him it was in good condition—five-speed manual transmission, no dents, all tires and wheels accounted for. She handed over the keys. “The door locks are on th
e keypad,” she said.
“Hold on a sec,” he said. She stood by as he popped the hood and checked the oil and water. He opened the trunk and dragged his finger over the mat and held it up for her to see—a charcoal smudge on the ball of his finger. The agent lowered her gaze, clipboard clasped to her breasts. Robert only shook his head; it was always this way with rental cars in these developing countries. He placed his bags on the rear seat then got in and checked out the air conditioning.
“Ride down?”
“Thank you. I will take the elevator.”
He drove into the exit tunnel, down and around for four floors, then emerged alongside the Avis office just as she was coming out of the elevator. He parked next to the curb and followed her inside. “Wash my hands,” he said, and proceeded on into the bathroom. She was entering information into a computer when he returned. “Buenos días, señorita,” he said cheerfully, strolling back through the office. She smiled officially and returned to her work.
He drove into the manic traffic, doubled back onto Reforma and then onto Insurgentes South, the highway leading out of Mexico City toward Highway 95-D and Acapulco.
He unclipped the holstered gun from inside his belt and slipped it down between the seat and the rocker panel on his left, below the door pocket. He stuffed his handkerchief over it so it couldn’t be seen with the door open.
The Nissan, supposedly new, showed only seven thousand kilometers on the odometer, and while the engine sounded okay, the car felt loose, worn out.
He drove down Insurgentes, washed along in a sea of traffic, fender to fender in a roar of vehicles running on low octane fuel. Vendors, beggars, and fire-eaters prowled the intersections. Mongrel dogs scavenged the alleys and nosed through the gutters.
In spite of the colorful yellow, green, and magenta buildings, the overall impression was of an unfinished trashy cityscape. Piles of sand and gravel stood alongside incomplete concrete-block walls with rusting rebar jutting from their tops. A variety of foliage flowed out of nooks and crannies competing with endless walls of graffiti. Utility poles in alleyways were webbed with incomprehensible tangles of electrical wiring.
In half an hour he was climbing, leaving the city behind under a gray blanket of smog. The air thinned and cooled. He drove through the orderly town of Cuernavaca where the houses were nicer, farther apart, set back from the road under the shade of tall pines. He soon came to the Autopista del Sol where 95-D split—the old highway and the newer toll road, though both were still named 95-D. He had decided beforehand to take the old highway for its more scenic possibilities.
The pines disappeared. The grass turned brown and the hills went bald. Now and then an old man or a boy grazed a few goats on the dusty shoulder. An occasional Madonna or bleeding Jesus rose up by the roadside to peer out from grottos decorated with plastic flowers, bits of colored glass, cheap trinkets. Many of the trucks and buses were old and boxy, painted magenta, green, yellow.
Cars were few and far between, but at one point a white Chevy eased up behind and stayed with him for a mile or so. His first thought was of cartels and kidnappers. But while light reflecting off the windshield made it hard to see inside, it looked like a large platinum blond behind the wheel and a young boy in the passenger seat. Then the car fell back and disappeared.
In his active days paranoia had been central to his every-day existence and now he felt it surfacing again. He recalled Duane Fowler back in Miami, stealing a look out his window, absent-mindedly reconnoitering the premises. There was an old axiom within the Company: “Paranoia is a healthy thing when you have real enemies.”
A little before three in the afternoon, he rounded a series of switchbacks and the town of Taxco sprawled up the inside bowl of the mountains before him like the tiered layers of a wedding cake—sunlight on white plaster walls and orange-tiled roofs. Dazzling.
HIS ROOM IN the Hotel Rancho Victoria, a long motel-like structure hugging the mountainside in the upper reaches of Taxco, was located on the end, shuttered windows on three sides. The late-afternoon sun glowed in bright orange squares on the Saltillo tile floor. The room had a double and a single bed, the single tucked into a shallow alcove between the bathroom and a set of French doors opening onto a patio with a vine-laden baluster overlooking a steep slope to the town below.
He took the video camera outside. All around the inside curve of the mountain, windows and terraces spilled over with flowers, lush with bougainvillea, hibiscus, geraniums, marigolds, the smell intoxicating. Bells began to ring from the twin towers of the Templo de Santa Prisca church, its spires visible in the mid-distance below, the sound quavering up the hillside. This is a good place, he thought. A good place. Without warning, an empty feeling settled through him, a vague longing. Surely this moment was meant to be shared. He thought of Tricia, but he could no longer conjure up the closeness they once enjoyed. The isolation he felt was similar to what he’s felt when the woman, Ana, walked out of the restaurant back in Mexico City.
Feeling sorry for myself, he said with a touch of self-derision.
He went inside and tried to nap. But then Nick kept playing around in the periphery of his waking dreams. Finally he got up and took another Vibramycin.
10
Guests
PACO’S SECOND-FLOOR bar was open to the evening air on two sides, the interior lit yellow against the night stealing in over the rooftops. Half a dozen mariachis wearing sombreros and pants with silver conchos down the outseams stood against the back wall. For a few pesos they sang sad, off-key Mexican ballads accompanied by big-bellied guitars and mournful trumpets.
Robert sat at a small table alongside the railing overlooking the sidewalk below. The Templo de Santa Prisca rose cater-cornered across the zócalo, its baroque towers black against the last light of evening. Vendors spilled over the yellow-lit stone steps in front, hawking silver jewelry, primitive dolls, indigenous paintings on bark paper. They pushed carts of foodstuff in paper cones—pineapple, lemons, mangos, sliced cucumbers, jicama drenched in lime juice and dusted with chili powder. A vendor stood dwarfed under a cloud of balloons. Children with packs of gum in cigar boxes hustled after the tourists. Traffic from the side streets circled counterclockwise around the tiny square with its little gazebo. Grackles swooped in, swarming the trees. Underneath, men pulled on ropes, banging clappers in oil drums high in the branches overhead. In great shimmering clouds the grackles turned back and resettled on the surrounding rooftops. Again and again.
Robert ordered another drink and gave the waiter a few pesos for the mariachis. They strummed their guitars, blew their trumpets, sang their heartrending songs.
He became aware of a commotion down on the street. Glancing over the railing, he saw several men rushing along, shouting after someone disappearing into the doorway below. Almost immediately the couple from the Hidalgo’s restaurant back in Mexico City burst into the bar. Ana and Helmut.
Helmut staggered, suitcase banging his knees. Ana wrestled with her own bag, its under-wheels clacking on the concrete floor. She pleaded urgently, first with Helmut, then in Spanish with the angry Mexicans close behind. Helmut dropped his bag, made a spitting noise and shot his middle finger at the nearest Mexican. The Mexican whipped out a knife. Waiters rushed between them. The music fizzled for a second, then the mariachis picked it up louder than ever.
The waiters argued, first with the Mexican, then with Helmut. Ana took several bills from a small leather purse on a strap around her neck and gave them to one of the waiters who in turn pressed them on the furious Mexican.
“Gringo hijo de puta!” the Mexican shouted as he and the others backed down the stairway. “Gringo hijo de puta!”
Helmut made the belligerent spitting noise after them before Ana steered him to a rear table and he slumped into a chair. The crowd had paused to watch, but Helmut crossed his arms on the tabletop and lay his head down, the show over.
Robert watched as Ana’s distracted gaze moved around the bar and came to rest on hi
m with a jolt of recognition.
His pulse had quickened at this unlikely coincidence—Helmut and Ana popping into a bar where he just happened to be? halfway between Mexico City and Acapulco? The moment he saw them he knew Fowler was having him followed. That would be Fowler all right, covering his bases.
Robert took another look at Ana. It was no secret that women were the most effective tools in the book when it came to separating a man from his senses: God gave man two heads but only enough blood to use one at a time. He tipped his glass to her.
She lifted her chin, barely acknowledging him while ignoring entirely the inquisitive glances from the other patrons.
A waiter approached her, one eye on Helmut. She shook her head and the waiter went to attend another table.
Robert hesitated only briefly before taking his drink to her table. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.
Small world, he said.
She stiffened as he slid into the chair opposite. “What are you doing here?” Her tone was cool, remote.
“I was about to ask you. I thought you were going to Acapulco?”
She lifted her chin. “Helmut wrecked the car. Then we were thrown off the bus.” Her tone dared him to suggest there was anything unusual about wrecking cars and getting thrown off buses. She removed Helmut’s glasses and put them in her purse.
“Looks like you could use a drink yourself,” Robert said.
She shook her head. “I’m going to let him sleep it off a bit, then find a hotel.”
“I’m staying at the Victoria. They might have a room.”
Her gaze flickered over him with studied suspicion. Mariachis wailed, trumpets trilled.
Robert stopped the waiter. “Patrón Reposado, por favor,” he said. He looked at Ana, one eyebrow raised. “You sure?”
She frowned briefly, weighing it. “Yes, perhaps I will. Cerveza, del Pacifica.” When the waiter left she unzipped her purse and laid several pesos on the table.
The Dogs of Mexico Page 6
