“Arabic.” He repeated it in English, then again in Arabic.
She studied him, frowning. “You’re not a terrorist, are you?”
“I’m a DEA who speaks Arabic but no Spanish.”
She sighed. “Okay, chill. Forget the dope. Gimme my half of the money and I’ll split.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, I’m turning that money in.”
“Sure you are.” She had begun putting her nail polish away, but paused to wipe at her eyes.
“What’s this? You crying over the money? Forget it.”
“It’s that officer. He looked like my brother.”
“So? You’re brother looks like a Mexican?”
“My brother, he’s dead.”
“Sure he is.”
“He died with my mom and dad in a plane crash.”
“Right.”
“Of course right. Whadda you think? Like, I’m lying?”
“You? Lying? Perish the thought! You know, you should be in a foster home.”
“Yeah? What do you know about it? You ever been in a foster home?”
A LITTLE BEFORE eleven, they pulled into the costal town of Santiago Pinotepa Nacional. Robert drove along the narrow street, sandwiched between multicolored two-story buildings, trucks and cars crowding either side. He turned in under a stone arch, HOTEL and RESTAURANT lettered across in English.
“It’s not McDonald’s,” he said, “but you’ll have to make do.”
A pickup and a truck were parked on the cobblestones inside the high, mud-walled lot. A set of wide steps ascended to a second-floor restaurant, cool and spacious, open arches across front and back. The restaurant was empty but for an older couple smoking cigarettes with their coffee. They looked on in amusement as Robert led Mickey to a table alongside a balustrade at the rear overlooking a swimming pool of yellow water.
“You can order me a beer,” Robert said. “I’m going to the john.”
The toilet was only so-so clean. A small roll of brown toilet paper. The sink ran cold water. A stack of brown paper towels on a shelf.
He took an envelope from his pocket and counted ten hundred-dollar bills into it. This plus the seven grand he had given her earlier—two in the hotel and five back up the road—brought the total to eight thousand. It was just possible that her family really had died in a plane crash.
When he returned, she was giving her order to the waiter: Chiles rellenos de picadillo—poblano peppers stuffed with shredded pork, goat cheese, pinion nuts, onions and spices slathered in a tomatillo sauce.
“Make that two,” Robert said. “And dos cerveza. Negro Modelo.” He frowned at Mickey. “I shouldn’t be buying you beer.”
The waiter stole a second look at Mickey before taking their orders to the kitchen.
“I’m going for a laugh at the carpet,” she said. “You know, the john.”
He watched as she jangled across the restaurant in her black Converse sneakers with the retro stars on the ankles, pink socks, chopped hair. The waiter watched too, exchanging discreet smiles with the elderly couple and the woman behind the cash register. Robert felt a stab of protective anger—these people making fun of Mickey behind her back. But then, she brought it on herself, intentionally, her chosen audience. And besides, he was lowballing her worse than any of them ever were. He placed the envelope on the table alongside her plate, then stepped past the waiter who stood alongside the woman at the cash register.
“I’m going to the car for something,” he said. “Be right back.”
He hurried down the outside steps, then quickly took Mickey’s backpack out and stood it against the stone banister at the foot of the staircase. He backed the Nissan around and drove out just as another car turned in. It took only a second to register—the same white Chevy that had followed him to Taxco, the same platinum wig glowing behind the windshield, the same little guy with the tattoos—none of which he might have noticed but for the Chevy braking to a quick stop, the pair gawking at him through the windshield.
Robert gunned the Nissan straight past the Chevy, burned out onto the pavement, and was almost hit by a brake-squalling truck before losing sight of the white car behind the wall. He made a hard right into the next side street. Dirt yards and drab huts blurred past behind crude stockade fencing of cacti, brush and scrap tin. He dodged rubble and potholes, looped around two long blocks, then back toward the highway. He brought the car to a stop behind a wagon with a palm-frond canopy, the bed filled with fruits and vegetables. An old man sat on a box in the shade alongside. From where Robert sat, he had a fairly good view of the highway beyond.
He took Soffit’s .45 from under the seat, unwrapped it from the towel and placed it at his side under Mickey’s newspaper. He glanced at his watch. And waited. His heartbeat had picked up considerably.
The old man got up and plodded toward him, a mango in each hand. He lifted them to Robert’s window and said something in Spanish. Robert shook his head, his attention on the highway beyond the wagon and on the road in his rearview mirror. The man trudged back to the wagon and returned with two sugar melons. Robert grabbed the melons and dropped them in the front passenger’s footwell. Then, eyes on the road, he took his tip stash from his pocket and shoved a five-dollar bill into the old man’s hand.
The man looked at the money. Shook his head. “Yo no tengo cambio.”
Robert handed him another dollar.
The man moved into Robert’s line of vision, shaking his head. “Esto es mucha plata.”
Robert lifted the .45 from under the newspaper. The man’s expression went flat. Robert shoved another five-dollar bill at him. The man stood still, looking at Robert, at the gun, the money. With a sigh, he took the bills, hobbled back to the wagon and sat down in the shade.
After a few minutes there was still no sign of the Chevy.
The old man looked on as Robert eased the Nissan around the wagon. Robert watched behind, to either side and down the road ahead as he drove out of town and down the coast toward Puerto Escondido.
This left a bad taste in his mouth, this abandoning kids in restaurants, yelling at old people in their own country, pointing guns in their faces.
At least there was no longer any doubt—the two men were tailing him. Which meant Fowler had planted more than one transmitter in the video equipment. Or Helmut and Ana had put a plant on the car.
The terrain became more rugged. The occasional huts had palm-thatch roofs, some with big piles of coconut shells alongside.
The Chevy was almost on him before he saw it in the rearview mirror. Coming on fast, the smaller man in the passenger seat reaching out the window with what looked like a machine-pistol.
Instinctively, Robert hunkered down, stomped the brake and cut the wheel hard into the Chevy’s path. The Chevy braked, but too late. Robert’s front fender slammed into the Chevy’s rear as it skimmed past. The Chevy, thrown into a skid, leaned heavily to the driver’s side, squalling across the highway, flashing past the Nissan’s windshield, the machine-pistol firing pop pop pop straight up from the passenger’s window as the shooter struggled to keep his balance. In the same instant, Robert’s car began to swap ends, reversing direction before he could bring it to a stop. In the moment it took to do a rubber-burning K-turn, he saw the Chevy had gone off the pavement backward, wedged into a ditch alongside the road, dust roiling.
Robert floored the accelerator. In the rearview mirror he saw the gunman climbing out of the window. In another instant he realized the man was firing again—the distant pop pop pop of the automatic. Robert crouched down, though he reasoned he was pretty well out of range.
He began to tremble, heart knocking like a jackhammer. He drove on, watching the road behind even more than the road ahead.
His mouth was dry, a cold emptiness in his stomach. At the same time, he felt a sudden sense of invincibility. He recognized the rush for what it was—an adrenaline high, the chemical surge that got men killed with overconfidence.
17
Puerto Escondido
ROBERT DROVE INTO the outskirts of Puerto Escondido. Through the brushy terrain on his right, he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean. Then, on his left—with surprise and a glimmer of optimism—a small airport. He made a hurried turn down a short road toward the whitewashed radio tower, blinding in the sunlight. The parking lot was empty but for two old rust-bucket pickups. Robert parked and got out, engulfed in an oven of heat. The tarmac smelled of hot asphalt, soft underfoot. A few listless palms surrounded the little terminal. An unmanned van taxi stood at the curb near the entrance. The runway shimmered, wrinkling into a watery mirage in the distance. Robert felt dreamy, dazed with exhaustion and lack of sleep, amplified now in the sweltering heat and humidity.
He couldn’t very well carry the tire into the terminal, so he left it in the trunk. He took the carry-on in hand. If push came to shove the money in the tire was peanuts compared to the De Beers diamonds.
A lone security guard watched as he entered. Otherwise, the terminal was empty but for a uniformed man behind the information desk. The man, thick-bodied with a wide Indian face, looked up from a soccer game on a small black-and-white TV on the counter. An oscillating fan stirred the air alongside. The terminal smelled like a locker room doused with floral-scented disinfectant.
“English?” Robert asked.
“Sí. How do I help you?”
“Good. You have a flight out of here? Oaxaca? Mexico City?”
“Tomorrow. Nine in the morning to Oaxaca. You can get your ticket at departure…” The attendant paused, his gaze fixed on the TV as someone made a rousing play. He returned his attention to Robert: “You may like to call first. Sometime the schedule can vary.” He handed a pamphlet over the counter.
Robert frowned. “Vary?”
The attendant lifted one shoulder in a mildly apologetic shrug. “Sometime the flight it is cancel.”
Robert thanked him. He nodded to the security guard on his way out.
He sat for a moment in the car, the air conditioner on, thinking. He looked at his watch. Four in the afternoon. Seventeen hours before a flight out. Maybe. The question was: could he avoid the men who were after him that long?
The second question, and equally important: if he transferred the money from the tire back to Soffit’s case, would the Mexican authorities go through it when he tried to board a plane? Then there were the two handguns, his .380 and Soffit’s .45. He could toss the guns, but not knowing what he might run into later, that was iffy.
They had him bugged. That was a given. The transmitter had to be either on the car or the video equipment.
He started the car and drove out of the airport.
Like most Mexican villages, Puerto Escondido was a maze of narrow broken streets, stucco buildings painted in multi-shades of green, orange, blue. Rebar jutted from atop unfinished concrete-block walls, the usual piles of sand and gravel heaped alongside. And always, a mange-ridden dog slinking about.
He came across an outdoor market—a dozen open-air stalls and as many tables displaying everything from CDs to indigenous arts and crafts—cheap jewelry, clothes, leather goods, tools, old tape payers. A bin of hair clips reminded him of Ana—the silver clip she so often wore, drawing her hair back at the base of her neck.
In Ana’s case, he had let his feelings get in the way of his judgment. He of all people knew women were the most effective bait when it came to separating a man from his senses. He told himself he had to be deranged—thinking with fond regret of a woman who was very likely trying to kill him.
In addition to a pack of three Fruit of the Loom shorts, two guayabera shirts, and two pairs of jeans, he picked up an eighteen-inch bolt cutter and a six-volt flashlight. He didn’t care for the guayabera style in shirts, but they were ideal for hiding the holstered .380.
He drove around until he found a vacant lot next to a vacant building with a collapsing roof. He backed the car through knee-high weeds alongside. Glass cracked and popped under the tires. Just what he needed, a flat, and his spare packed with close to eight hundred thousand dollars in cash. He hit the brakes and got out. Rubble cluttered the ground beneath the canopy of weeds. On close inspection the tires looked okay.
He searched beneath both front seats and in the console and side pockets, looked under the dash and under the mats. No transmitter. In spite of the heat, and in spite of the fact that Helmut hadn’t had an opportunity to get under the car, he put on his wash-and-wear jacket to protect his shirt and his own skin, then lay on his back, worked his head and shoulders under the car, and carefully inched his way along, pushing though the weeds, removing bits of glass and debris from his path while searching under the frame with the flashlight. Nothing. He double-checked the tires for imbedded glass while he was at it.
Occasionally someone walked or drove past, but paid him little or no attention; it wasn’t unusual to see vehicles in all stages of dismantlement on the highways and byways of Mexico.
He took the jacket off, shook it out, and put it back in the aluminum case with the Bible and his new underwear. He pulled the rear seat out on the ground. He was about to dismantle the video camera when a tripod mount attached to its base caught his eye. It looked like an ordinary mount. But why would Fowler leave it on the camera when there was no tripod? He unsnapped it, looked it over and replaced it.
He needed the DVD with its sales pitch to justify the projector, but took the camera to the empty building and set it just inside the doorway. In the gloom beyond, a large black dog nursing puppies on an old blanket growled and bared her teeth. Robert backed out and returned to the car.
He pried the rear seat loose, pulled it out, flipped it upside down in the weeds, and cut away a section of webbing from the underside. With the bolt cutter, he snipped a rectangle from the metal springs. He placed the document case with the projector in the hollow. It seemed a serviceable solution, though when he replaced the seat and sat on it, he could feel the projector through the padding. He placed his carry-on and the aluminum case on the backseat and slid in behind the wheel.
He jumped alert when a man suddenly materialized, swaying against the passenger window, the palms of both hands flat against the glass, peering in. Robert grabbed the .380 under his shirt, but held it, tense, in its holster. The man trailed his fingers down the glass, motioning for him to lower the window. Robert jumped out, hand still on the gun, heart racing.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The man, a Caucasian wearing an old tattered fedora, watched him from beneath the floppy brim, grinning stupidly.
Drunk, Robert realized.
Robert motioned with a sweep of his hand. “Go on, get your ass out of here.”
The drunk started around the back of the car. Robert met him halfway, lifting his shirttail to reveal his right hand clamped on the .380.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
The drunk focused on the .380. The grin faded from his sweat-shined face as he slowly lifted his hands and stepped back.
Robert dropped his shirttail. “Move it! Pronto!”
The man stumbled backward until he neared the road. He turned then, hands above his head, and went shambling off. Robert stepped forward and watched until the guy was a block away. Hands still raised, the drunk walked full into a palm tree and sat down. He turned over and leaned back against the tree trunk. Then, as if suddenly recalling, raised both hands again.
Robert got back in the car.
He sat. Tried to think.
Okay. Practically speaking, he should forget Fowler. And the photos as well. Open a bank account in Mexico. Maybe fence the diamonds in Brazil. That would be the sensible thing.
But he couldn’t forget Fowler, what Fowler had cost him. No amount of money could make up for that.
And now there was something else: He didn’t know at exactly what point he had decided to deliver the photos to Oaxaca, to this Valdez said to be in intelligence. It pissed him off to think that in spite of what
he had said to Soffit to the contrary, he might be something of a Boy Scout after all; that is, if the men in the photos really were terrorist.
It wasn’t that he was a goody-goody-two-shoes, but once he nailed Fowler, he didn’t want some prissy-ass conscience rearing its snarky head at him in the dark hours for what he hadn’t done that he should have. He had enough of that already, thank you.
According to the guidebook, it was only 150 miles to Oaxaca, but a seven-and-a-half-hour drive. He read: The road winds treacherously over the Sierra Madre del Sur with little, if any, shoulder. He was vulnerable where he was, but no one drove those roads at night. On the other hand, that might be his best bet, what they would least expect him to do. However, if the bug was on the car, it wouldn’t matter, day or night.
His mouth was dry and his eyes burned. He hadn’t slept since leaving Taxco with Ana and Helmut two days before. Lack of sleep and the stress of trying to dodge psycho killers when they had all the advantages was telling on him and he knew it—little shadowlike flickers glimpsed from the corners of his vision where in fact there was nothing; plus the fact that he would even consider driving those mountain roads at night caused him to rethink his mental state.
Or, maybe that wasn’t so foolish. Now that he had begun to question his stability, he wondered again whether his resolve to deliver the photos to this Valdez might be what was foolish—all that Boy Scout crap. He tried to think…all of it a little hazy, indistinct. From time to time, he was made anxious by the fine grit that materialized in his peripheral vision, floating, sifting down, seeming to close in on him. He wondered whether he might have an aneurism from the hairline skull fracture that the Hardwater cops had bequeathed him with the marble-based desk lamp.
Regardless, the only safe thing at the moment was to dump the car. He got out, carefully inspected the flattened weeds where he had backed in, removed a few pieces of broken glass and drove out of the lot.
The drunk was still sitting against the palm tree with his hands up. Robert slowed to a stop and got out.
The Dogs of Mexico Page 12
