“It’ll be jammed with condos and tennis courts as soon as it’s discovered by the Carnival cruise lines and the beautiful people.”
She fixed him with a grim smile. “I believe you’re a bit of a cynic.”
“The very thing that’ll bring them here is the first thing they’ll ruin. It’ll be solid neon before you can toss off your first margarita.”
Car keys safely in his pocket, he made his own trip into the brush. When he returned he removed the .45 and the .380 from his belt and stuffed one in each front pocket. Ana tensed, watching him. He ignored her and lay on his back near the tire, listening to the cicadas and the eternal sea. A dog barked somewhere. Always a dog barking somewhere in the night.
“Not only two guns,” Ana said, “but what’s with the tire?”
He said nothing.
“Not everyone carries their spare tire to bed,” she said.
“So why did you join the Peace Corps?”
Another small silence. Then: “Why do you ask?” A tired wariness had stolen into her voice.
“From my experience, there’re only two reasons people do something like that. They’re either altruistic and want to save the world, or they’re running from something.”
The quiet seemed suddenly intensified. He wondered if maybe she was sleeping.
His mind drifted, ears ringing with exhaustion. He thought about Mickey, wondered where she was at this moment, wondered what may have happened had the two psychos entered the restaurant where he had abandoned her. The guilt he felt over Mickey dredged up other guilt, guilt he had suppressed at the time in deference to the efficient execution of critical operations, first in Afghanistan then in Cairo—clandestine operations requiring questionable methods and techniques. His subsequent psychological profile had found him “psychologically incompatible with certain requirements essential to the efficient implementation of duty,” meaning basically that he had a problem with hurting people; something he believed the Company shrinks should have determined beforehand. His training had been meant to inure him against guilt. And while as a translator he wasn’t an active participant, he was of necessity present. However, they hadn’t trained human empathy out of him. Not entirely.
Then there was the guilt that was his alone: the death of his son, his failed marriage, abandoning his land to Tricia. He wanted relief from guilt and felt guilt for wanting relief from it. A man should stand and take his due punishment.
It occurred to him that while he slept, Ana could knock him in the head and take the car back to Helmut. Or, more likely, take the car and just keep on going. It occurred to him, too, that he wasn’t as clever or as cautious as he once was. Other than his unfinished business with Fowler, he hardly cared.
He slipped into fitful, hallucinatory sleep.
Mickey—her gum-chewing smile—looked down on him from the night sky, one fist cocked on her hip, the other shaking an accusing finger at him… Shame, shame.
21
Alleyway Number Seven
DUANE FOWLER WAS asleep on his feet, half-dreaming, believing for an instant that he had inadvertently tripped the alarm while on a clandestine mission within the confines of the National Security Agency.
With relief he realized one of his own phones was ringing, that the flashing NSA lights were only the LEDs on the electronics in the studio office he kept in the Kensington District of inner-city Philadelphia. He was hallucinatory from lack of sleep, trying to separate dream from reality when he realized it actually was the NSA hotline. He needed to piss, prostate acting up again, but a 4:00 a.m. call from the NSA got him on the line instantly. The recorder light came on as he picked up. “Albert P. Ryder,” he said, his code name for communication within the NSA.
“Andy Divine,” said the voice on the other end. “Alleyway Number Seven, Code Red.”
“What?” Duane whispered, wide-awake now. “Alleyway— Repeat please?”
“Small Pox. From North Africa by way of Mexico. Unconfirmed. Do you have anything on it? Anything at all?”
“No,” Duane stammered, wondering whether it was a trick. “Any info on the MO?”
“Rumor says it’s being smuggled in by way of Acapulco, possibly a tourist.”
Duane went shaky inside. “But…you did say, unconfirmed?”
“Roger that. Nevertheless, get in touch with all Southern Cross sources, no matter how obscure. See what you can turn up.”
“Yes sir. You’ve notified the CDC, of course…”
“Of course. We’re talking Alleyway Seven here.”
“Yes sir. You’ll keep me updated?”
“Will do. Let’s get on it.”
“Roger that.”
Duane hung up. Then, mind racing, he sat on the john so as not to dribble on the floor, seeing he had already wet a spot on his pajamas.
Son of a bitch… Here he was, house mortgaged out the kazoo, he owed unforgivable amounts of money, career stalled, and now, just when he was seeing his way clear, this had to happen. It occurred to him again that it might be a ploy, that they might have used Eduardo to trap him. If so, he was in the glue—bad. But according to Soffit Eduardo had been terminated, no longer in the picture.
By the time he showered and dressed he had figured all the angles and their possible ramifications. Any way he cut it, it was a gamble. First, he would call Helmut. He wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence when it came to Helmut, but Helmut was his only option at the moment. Once he alerted Helmut, he would book a commercial flight. His involvement was risky enough without paper-trailing a company jet.
It had been a long time since he was active in the field. As he envisioned working hands-on again, his apprehension slowly dissolved. After all, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to turn an active negative into an active positive, and this was one hell of a negative if there ever was one.
He would have to call Susan, let her know he would be away. It wasn’t like the old days when he was regularly absent for long stretches at a time, researching investment potential in foreign countries for Wall Street brokerage firms. It occurred to him that she might not care that he had to go away. He visualized her enjoying herself in his absence—because of his absence.
He put the thought out of his mind, dialed open a safe with a dozen pre-approved packets inside, and selected one labeled James Arlington, International Investments, Ltd. Inside was a passport with Duane’s photo, matching driver’s license, social security card, two credit cards and a voucher for a ten thousand dollar line of credit at Chase Manhattan, all in the name of one James Arlington. Mr. Arlington, Duane mused with growing optimism, you just might be the sonofabitching hero who’s going to save the good old United States of America from a major disaster. Nevertheless, it was tricky business at best.
He tried to get his mind around it—Alleyway Number Seven—but it was almost too big, beyond comprehension.
Smallpox. Biological warfare. Son of a bitch.
22
Mabel
ROBERT WOKE FROM what felt like a coma—sluggish, lethargic, struggling to pull himself together. Lying on his side, and without moving, he opened his eyes, remembering where he was, relieved that neither Helmut nor his two men had caught up with him.
Ana sat on the log in profile, the first light of day behind, changing the night clouds from deep purple to mauve edged with gold. In contrast to the numbness, he began to experience a slow surge of euphoria, his senses keying to a drug-high appreciation of existence itself—the chittering of birds, rumbling surf, squealing seagulls, the distant whine of a two-cycle outboard engine. The anger, the desire for revenge, the bloodlust, it all evaporated in a comfortable blanket of half-awake wellbeing.
Ana looked the worse for wear in her grubby jeans and shirt, her hair having fallen out of the clip. Nevertheless, she had about her an aura of self-possession, radiating an inner dignity he couldn’t define. He felt a stab of sympathy, of compassion. She hadn’t wanted this, only to get away from Helmut and out of Mexico
. On the other hand, he hadn’t wanted her, either. She had done nothing but complicate his life with her presence. Once again he reminded himself to be careful; a woman could bring a man down faster than a heat-seeking missile.
“Morning,” he said, his waking voice gravelly. “I don’t suppose you put the coffee on?”
Ana started, emerging from her own reverie. She watched as he stood and stretched, scanning the terrain through the brush, first checking out the car, which looked to be okay, then the surrounding landscape. While there were no mountains in the immediate vicinity, it was rougher country than he had judged the night before, rockier, hillier.
Beyond the breakers a few fishing boats were visible, little more than silhouettes against the leaden sea, the foam on the breaking surf tinted amber in the first light. Several boogie boarders were already catching waves off the point. To the far right, two boats were tied up at a primitive pier near a cluster of thatched huts on stilts. Several hundred yards to the left, what looked like a cluster of cabanas lay half-hidden in a thicket of palms and jungle undergrowth.
He brushed sand from his clothes. “You get some z’s?
“I did. You?”
He nodded, a little wobbly, muscles stiff from the heavy sleep.
Ana stood and picked up the towel she had slept on and shook it out. In the pale light he saw a troubled look in her eyes that may have been there last night, visible now in the first light.
“Not much longer,” he said. “We get to Oaxaca, you can grab a flight out of here.”
“I have this terrible feeling,” she said, her eyes shifting a little. “Like something bad is about to happen.”
Other than the sense of wellbeing he had so briefly delighted in on waking, he too had been plagued with a sense of impending doom every since leaving Puerto Escondido. He wondered if the diamonds were telegraphing their own warnings of a ruinous end. But no, it was only normal; anybody would be spooked, carrying seven hundred and sixty-some-odd thousand dollars in his spare tire, a fortune in gems in an army surplus pouch, and a bunch of psychos on your tail. Not to mention a woman underfoot that he didn’t know what to do with.
“Breakfast,” he said, shaking off the malevolent unease that had crept over him, that seemed to be working its way into the very marrow of his bones. He gestured toward the little cabanas to their left, clearly visible now in the jungle growth some three-hundred yards to their left. “Looks like some kind of sign down there. Rooms? A restaurant? Let’s check it out. See if we can hustle up some grub. A nice hot shower maybe.”
“Give me a minute.” She turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.
He brushed sand off the tire and placed it behind the front seats. When Ana returned, he made his own trip into the brush, car keys safely in his pocket. Afterward, he drove them the short distance to the cabanas where a hand-lettered sign read: LODGING. CHEAP. He took the tire out and rolled it before him.
“Okay,” Ana said. “That isn’t your everyday spare tire, is it. So, what’s up?”
“Your imagination mostly.”
“I hope you’re not dumb enough to be carrying drugs in that tire.”
He set it against his leg and turned to her, one arm sweeping outward in a broad arc. “Listen, friend, there’s a whole wide world out there. Please. Go. Be my guest.” He took the tire and continued on, following the path toward the cabanas.
A moment passed. Then he heard her padding softly behind.
HALF A DOZEN trails led spokelike from the clearing around Sybil Delonious’s bungalow to as many individual cabanas.
They followed Sybil into one of the units, Ana sullenly bringing up the rear. The roof was palm, the walls organic-looking plaster—organic in the sense that none of the walls, inside or out, were plumb, no true verticals or horizontals, but sweeping curves lavishly imbedded with Mexican tiles, seashells, bits of colored glass.
A warp of mosquito netting sagged from a wooden framework suspended above a bunk bed. A sink hung on an off-kilter wall alongside a tiny shower stall. The plumbing fed from a fifty-five-gallon barrel mounted in the roof above. The only other furnishing consisted of a board laid across cinder blocks, everything crowded into a space one could hardly turn around in. The air was heavy with humidity, the smell of rot and mildew.
“Soap on the saucer there, towels on the pegs,” said Sybil Delonious. A stringy sun-crackled woman in her mid-seventies, she was barefoot in a transparent Indian-print skirt and a lack of underclothes that left little to the imagination. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a bandanna tied Willie Nelson style around a mane of wildly flowing white hair.”Oh. That’s twenty-five pesos,” she added.
“You run this place by yourself?” Ana asked.
“Mostly. Not that I’m overwhelmed with guests.”
“It’s, uh, interesting,” Ana said.
“Yeah, I wandered off down here with my hippie boyfriend when I was seventeen. But then I took up with a local fisherman before I lost my looks.”
Robert handed her a twenty.
“Now hon, you know I don’t have change for that.”
He waved her off. “Forget it.”
“Well, thanks. You’re a sweetheart.”
Robert grinned a little. “This would be a hell of room to wake up in if you’d had a little too much to drink.”
“That’s Huey’s doing. He thought he was an artist.” Sybil laughed, glancing occasionally at the tire propped against Robert’s leg. “When Emilio moved in, Huey went back to San Francisco to find himself. That’s what we did in those days, ran off to other places to find ourselves. That, while trying to leave our old selves behind.” Sybil laughed again, obviously enjoying the telling of her own story.
“Any chance of getting a bite to eat around here?” Robert asked.
“Depends. There are a couple of joints on around the bend toward Puerto Angel. Or, if you’re not particular, I can cut up some fruit. I made chicken tamales last night—if you don’t mind tamales for breakfast, that is.”
“Sounds good. We’ll shower and come back to your place. How’s that?”
Sybil smiled, impish. “Shower? Mm–hmm. Listen, you don’t need to try and fool me. I know what you’re going to do.”
Ana’s color rose a little.
Sybil winked. “You’ll be banging the slats out of that bed before I get out the door good.”
“We’ll try not to wreck the furniture,” Robert said without inflection.
Sybil paused in the doorway. “Tell me, is there something I don’t know?”
Robert studied her, guarded. “Like what?”
“Well, here I’ve been thinking I knew all there was to know about the birds and bees, but, frankly, I can’t imagine what you intend to do with that tire. Just how does that fit in?”
Robert let go a breath. “Fetish. You know.”
“Really?” Sybil brightened with curiosity, looking one to the other. “Which one of you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to embarrass her by saying.”
A further flush tinted Ana’s cheeks.
“Well,” said Sybil, a little satisfied shake of her head, “that’s a new one on me.” She turned and slipped out through the doorway.
Ana gave Robert a long, hard look.
“What?” he said innocently.
She studied him a moment longer, then looked back where Sybil had disappeared. “She’s, uh, interesting.”
“A little repressed, though.”
Ana crossed her arms, her gaze following his to the shower stall. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage this,” she said.
“No? What, you don’t think there’s room in that shower for both of us?”
She watched him levelly, waiting.
He raised one eyebrow. “I bet Sybil could figure it out.”
“Sybil might, but Ana’s ain’t.”
“Okay,” he said in mock disappointment, “I’ll just sit here on the bed and kill time until you’re finished.”
&nb
sp; “How about we toss a coin to see who goes first and who waits outside?”
“Well,” he said, “if you’re going to be unreasonable, then you go ahead.” He ducked out through the misshapen doorway. “Take your time,” he called over his shoulder. “And take it easy with that tire.”
He passed Sybil’s bungalow and came to the clearing where the car was parked.
After checking the oil and water, he stood leaning against the hood in the gathering heat, idly watching the boogie boarders and fishing boats in the distance, sunlight dazzling on the water.
There was no way Ana could leave the cabana without him seeing her—the sea on the other side, he on this. The tire and the money weighed at least forty pounds, so she wasn’t going anywhere with that.
Truth be told, he was torn—sympathetic on one hand, bummed on the other. She was always underfoot, always requiring attention, always assuming she had a say in things. On the other hand, he believed she had leveled with him about Helmut and his two psychos, even mentioning the guy she knew as Flax. Well, she would be out of his hair soon enough. The thought left him a little unsettled.
When he returned, Ana looked rejuvenated. And oddly alluring—something about her wet naked footprints on the tiled floor…a few beads of water still clinging to the fine hairs at her temples. He had an urge to cup his hands around her waist, fingertips in the shower-damp crease darkening the spine of her shirt.
“I’ll see if I can help your hippie girlfriend while you shower,” she said, avoiding eye contact, as if reading his mind. She spread her towel over the bench and went out, chin up, aloof, pulling her hair back, clipping it in place. He felt another stirring, watching her butt in her jeans, the two compact halves shifting against each other as she limped from sight.
He showered in a thin spray of tepid water—a far cry from the raging hot deluge he had envisioned earlier. But better than nothing. Refreshed and freed from the dregs of sleep, he dressed, then carried the tire through the undergrowth to Sybil’s bungalow.
The Dogs of Mexico Page 15
