The Dogs of Mexico

by John J. Asher

  Of course she could have walked out on him back in town, taken a bus and lit out for the States. She could have left him to his own devices and never said a word to the authorities, and nobody would have ever been the wiser. He had half expected she might do just that—and half wished she had.

  24

  Dust to Dust

  ROBERT BENT OVER a shallow excavation directly behind the car, his foot on the shovel’s metal shoulder, the blade worn shiny now from cutting into the soil. Pitching scoopfuls out, he was grateful for the calluses earned doing yard work in Florida.

  Ana stood hunched near the front of the car, her back turned, arms clutched around herself. Mist-shrouded mountains rose above the jungle growth on every side. Birds carried on, chirping and screeching in the foliage. A truck moaned, downshifting on the highway in the distance.

  Already flies had gathered, swarming over the closed trunk.

  When the hole was maybe two feet deep, he hit a shelf of solid rock. He threw the shovel down, then took two washcloths from the bundle he had bought in Pochutla, went to the back of the car and fit the key in the lock.

  A waft of foul air rose with the droning flies as he lifted the trunk lid.

  Mickey lay curled in the trunk, stiff as cardboard. He tried not to look directly at her, but still he saw her—her little-girl freckles, her naked body plump with baby fat, the stupid tattoo with its gold halo missing. Her ear studs were missing as well.

  He stood back for a moment. Then, breathing shallow, he untwisted the coat-hanger wires binding her wrists and ankles. Even after he removed the wires, her limbs remained stiffly in place, like the untrussed legs of a baked chicken. Green flies buzzed, crawling in and out of the dark runnels in her flesh where the wires had been. They formed a shimmering iridescent mat on a dark clot where her briefs were stuck to the bullet hole in her forehead. Thatches of green and orange hair bristled out of each leg opening. Below the waistband her lips were drawn into an oval around her teeth, tongue protruding, flies crawling.

  What he had at first seen as a floral design on the seat of Mickey’s briefs, he saw now were the scrolled words: Spank me!

  With a washcloth in each hand, he took hold of the waistband. Flies swarmed as he lifted the briefs back exposing half-lidded eyes. The whites were going dark, the irises a gelatinous yellow-green. The fabric stuck to the wound in her forehead, and a thick clot pulled out of the cavity like a stopper. He managed to work the briefs back over her head, but they were further imbedded in a congealed mass in back, black and stiff where the bullet had blown out. He let go and stepped back for air.

  When he had collected himself, he tried lifting her again. Her hair made squeaky sounds, tearing loose from the mat as he pulled her upright. He had her up and was trying to work her out over the lip of the trunk when he lost his grip. She tilted toward him. He fumbled, grabbing for her while simultaneously trying to avoid her. Her pudgy hand with its blackened nub slapped him across the face. He fell back wiping at his cheek as she tumbled headfirst into the dirt at his feet. She settled in a heap, arms and legs jutting unnaturally, clouds of flies droning.

  Ana stepped away from the car and bent over the weeds, retching.

  Robert wiped sweat from his forehead on the back of his hand and fought down an urge to be sick himself. He spread one of the beach towels in the hole. Tweety Bird. Then he caught Mickey by both wrists and dragged her in a stiff fetal position into the depression. He covered her with the Sacred Heart of the Virgin Mary, then pulled the mat out of the trunk and spread it over her.

  Ana poured water into a Styrofoam cup and rinsed her mouth. She half turned, watching obliquely as he began to weigh the mat down around the edges with stones. When he had the matt anchored, he took the shovel and began to cover the mound with dirt. Soon he tossed the shovel aside and began to cover the dirt mound again with stones.

  Ana came toward him, zombielike, picked up a rock and placed it on the heap.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do it.” But she continued until they stood before a good-sized mound. Ana stared at the grave, an expression of stoic grief.

  “This is a hell of an end,” Robert said. “Off down here in the middle of nowhere, no identification, no social security card, no nothing. She told so many stories, I don’t even know if she had a family.”

  Ana lifted her gaze to the ragged patch of colorless sky directly overhead. “Where the hell are you?” she whispered.

  Robert glanced at her, at the tears brimming her eyes. If that was a prayer, it was the briefest and angriest he had ever heard.

  He wiped the shovel of prints, then tossed it, clanging among the boulders in the dry creek bed behind a raft of driftwood. They washed their hands and replaced the soap bar in a Ziploc.

  Ana stood back. “I–I don’t know what I’m doing here…”

  Robert saw she was on the verge of breaking. He wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her, but in spite of having scrubbed with soap, his hands still carried the rubbery feel of Mickey’s dead flesh.

  “We’ve done all we can,” he said.

  There was no room for sentiment in the face of danger; that was a given. But this day, he knew, would add one more untenable regret to his list of many.

  25

  Eatery

  ROBERT DROVE THROUGH the smoke-hazed mountains, the back of his throat, his nose, irritated by the smoldering crop stubble—locals hurrying to get another harvest in the ground. Occasionally a lone individual would appear on a shallow slope, struggling behind a primitive plow drawn by an ox.

  The air cooled. The tropical vegetation gave way to scrub oak and pine as they climbed ever higher into the Sierra Madre del Sur. Hand-painted logos proclaiming various political parties popped up on boulders and cliff facings: PRI, PAN, PRD, occasionally a faded hammer and sickle. From time to time they met old trucks and dilapidated buses filled to bursting.

  Constructs of every known material, in every imaginable configuration, and in every degree of completion stood shoulder to shoulder with the road, their backsides sometimes cantilevered, perched on stilts, ravines so far below the trees appeared wooly green in the haze.

  Ana sat rigid, occasionally blotting her eyes with tissues. He could think of nothing to say that wasn’t trite in light of what they had just been through.

  Eventually she broke the silence. “Robert, I need to make a pit stop.”

  He slowed the car, looking for a place to get off the road. “Where’s a McDonald’s john when you need it?” he said, more cheerfully than he felt.

  Ana leaned back over the seat, brought out a roll of toilet paper and placed it in her lap.

  It was another five minutes before he spotted an incline sloping down off the pavement. He slowed and eased down the narrow grade, weeds dragging under the car. An embankment overgrown with foliage rose some ten feet on his left, heavier growth on Ana’s side. Safely out of sight of the highway, he brought the car to a stop. Ana stepped out.

  “Don’t squat in any poison ivy,” he said.

  She gave him a sharp look back through the window.

  “Hey,” he said, forcing some cheer into his voice, “when I was a kid, I peed on an electric fence. One has to be careful.”

  “Thank you,” she said curtly. “I really wanted to know that.”

  “Jarred the little solar system. Shocked me into puberty overnight.”

  He had thought to lighten the mood but judging from her expression it was a bust.

  He opened his door and got out. She turned, looking at him over the top of the car. “What’re you doing?”

  “Same thing you’re doing, only I’m going up the slope here.” He climbed his way up the embankment through vines and creepers while Ana disappeared into the brush on her side of the car. The crest of the slope was dense with growth—palmetto, scrub oak, ferns. He finished and was about to zip up when a car went past on the highway. It took a moment to register—the white Chevy, little more than a flicker through the dense foliag
e—going the same direction as he and Ana. He stood for a moment, thinking it over.

  When he got back to the car Ana was already seated.

  “I was beginning to worry,” she said dryly. “Thought maybe you’d gotten into another electric fence.” She watched him. Then, hesitant: “What’s wrong?”

  He told her about the Chevy.

  Her face darkened. “Was Helmut with them?”

  “I didn’t see him. I can’t even swear it was the same two men.”

  She studied into the distance. “So, what do you think we should do?”

  He took the new map out of the glovebox and opened it out over the steering wheel. “Chances are, Helmut is still behind us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ve checked out every blue car on the road since we left Sybil Delonious this morning. I’m guessing he’s behind.”

  “So if we go back, we could run into Helmut. If we continue on, we could run into the two men.”

  “No question about it, he has a chip somewhere on this car. I wrecked his laptop but he can track us through Fowler. However, that’s a three-way connect, and a little dicey on their part.”

  “You keep bringing up this Fowler.”

  “The guy you call Flax. The guy who hired Helmut to follow me in the first place. Tell me, why did Helmut buy a car? Why not travel with the two men he hired?”

  “They disgust him.”

  “Yeah, that Helmut, he’s a classy guy, all right.”

  “Truthfully? I think he’s afraid of them.”

  He nodded. “Maybe they’ll all kill each other off.”

  “If we go back, what then?”

  “Assuming we don’t run into Helmut, we abandon the car back in Pochutla and buy another one, or take a bus on to Oaxaca.”

  “And if we go ahead?”

  “Same deal. Looks like the next town of any size is Miahuatlán, or however you say it. It doesn’t look like much.”

  “Miahuatlán. I was through there once, but I don’t remember much about it.”

  He pointed on the map. “I’d say we’re along about here somewhere.”

  “Do I get a vote in this?”

  “You get your say. Sure.”

  “I say let’s go on.”

  “You’re afraid of running into Helmut.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think he’s more dangerous than his men? Or, is it something more with him?”

  She shrugged, sullen.

  He studied her a moment, then refolded the map. Ana put it back in the glovebox while he backed the Nissan up the grade and stopped parallel to the highway.

  “Still think we should go ahead?” he said.

  “Why are you even asking? You’re going to do what you want anyway.”

  He took the .45 from under the seat, placed it in the center console and pulled onto the highway.

  “You know,” he said, “I’d hate for the last thing you ever said to me to be ugly and hurtful.”

  She slumped in the seat. “Give me a break.”

  A half hour passed, watching, taking each blind curve in silent vigilance.

  He downshifted as the Nissan whined up through a pass. Near the crest and on the right an older flatbed truck stood on a worn strip of dirt. Directly across the road on the left, an elongated plank shack stood parallel to the road. The white Chevy was parked in front.

  Robert braked, looking back over his shoulder as he slowed past and came to a stop.

  Ana turned with a quick intake of breath, following his gaze. “What’re you doing?”

  As before, a thin curtain of grit began to sift down in his peripheral vision. “We’re no longer running from these people,” he said.

  Ana turned, her wide-eyed gaze flicking between him and the white Chevy. “What? Are you crazy?”

  He eased the Nissan into reverse, backed up and stopped in the middle of the highway, looking the layout over.

  Ana perched forward on the seat. “Robert…” she began.

  He took it all in—the Chevy, the building, the two tanks of bottled gas bracketed to the far end, the trash-dump sloping off into a gorge. An old gasoline powered generator was chained to an iron bracket bolted to the wall, its one-cylinder engine put-putting, its big-wheeled belt wobbling with a whumpa-whumpa-whumpa sound. There were no windows, just the weathered plank walls built up off the ground, open a few inches along the bottom and under the eaves for light and ventilation. A grid of chicken wire had been stretched along the foot-high elevation at the bottom to keep animals out. Other than an empty Pepsi and two empty Squirt bottles standing on a wooden box in front of the Chevy, the only decoration was a rusty Coca-Cola sign nailed to the door—all vividly clear in the high thin light with only the gossamer waves of grit filtering the view like floating metal filings.

  He backed in alongside the Chevy and brought the Nissan to a halt.

  “Robert!” Ana whispered hoarsely. “Are you crazy?”

  “Get in behind the wheel here. Wait for me.” He patted the .45 in the console. “In case you need it.”

  “This is sheer madness,” she whispered.

  He took the .380 from his belt and opened the car door.

  “No!” Ana clambered across the console, grabbing at his arm.

  He caught her wrist and forced her grip loose. “You do what I tell you. Get on over here. Now!”

  “Please don’t! I’m begging you. Please!”

  He let go, took a deep breath, closed the door and turned toward the eatery. Above the putt-putting of the generator with its slapping belt he sensed more than heard the Nissan shift into gear behind. He glanced back to see Ana driving out onto the highway. He paused, watching as she dropped from sight over the pass.

  Well, you’re the smart one in this crowd, he said to himself. Maybe they had been right in admitting me to the state hospital after all. If so, he couldn’t care less. He refused to be chased any farther. He would have this moment—kill the two child murderers, take their car, run Ana down, get his car back, then go after Fowler. If Helmut showed up, good, he’d nail him too.

  He glanced inside the Chevy in passing—Soffit’s aluminum case and his own carry-on in the rear footwell, the one he’d left in the Puerto Escondido, the cartridges in the lining.

  A chicken slunk under the eatery’s wall by way of a large wallowed-out dirt-hole where the wire mesh was bent and useless. A dog barked inside and the chicken shot back out, flapping up a cloud of dust.

  Robert took a deep breath, pushed the door open, then stepped inside and to the right, the .380 at arm’s length in both hands. He blinked, eyes shifting, thinking for a second that the gritty curtain was about to leave him in total darkness. But then his eyes adjusted and he realized it was the lack of light inside the eatery.

  The two men sat at a crude wooden table on his right, eating from soup bowls, large spoons in one hand, tortillas folded in the other. They tensed in surprise, as if to make a break for it. Then, eyes fixed on the gun muzzle, they seemed to think better of it.

  “Hands on your head!” Robert shouted.

  He took in the dirt-floored room at a glance. In addition to three empty tables, a man in a straw hat sat alone near an old-fashioned Coca-Cola box with a cap-catcher on its side. The man was either stoically unperturbed, or too scared to move. Two barefoot Indian women had been tending pots on gas burners at the rear, and had all but disappeared, squatting behind the black-iron stove. The dog lay in a dust hole in the dirt floor, watching the slit of light under the wall for the chicken.

  Robert’s attention remained fixed on the two men, the bigger guy in a bright orange blouse, Capri jeans, green eye shadow, lipstick, roughed cheeks. Around his neck he wore a chain threaded through the gold ring Mickey’s had worn in her navel. Robert was tempted to shoot him in the head on the spot.

  The little guy sported cowboy boots, jeans and a dirty T-shirt.

  Robert eased his way around the two. They watched in turn, their gazes shifti
ng between his eyes and the gun. The big guy was Anglo, soft looking, but that could be a result of the makeup. The little guy was of mixed blood—Spanish, Indian, some Caribbean something. Wiry, a knotty face, a wispy patch of fuzz under his lower lip, arms blotched with India ink tattoos. One tattoo in particular got Robert’s attention—the signature of the Salvadoran MS-13—one of the most criminally psychotic gangs in the world.

  The little guy dropped his spoon on the tabletop with a clatter. Robert jerked the .380 at him, knowing instinctively he was the more dangerous of the two. Taking control aggressively was ninety percent of a takedown, but the little man lifted his hands with slow deliberate arrogance, interlocking his fingers on top of his head.

  The larger man raised both hands, a tortilla clutched in one, spoon in the other. A big black patent-leather purse with beaded trim lay on the table. Robert nudged the pistol toward the transvestite, keeping him aligned with the little guy on the other side. “Up!” he said sharply.

  The big man wallowed his chair back and stood. He wore open-toed blue pumps, toes bunched, warping the shoes out of shape.

  “Turn around,” Robert ordered.

  The man turned, eyes rolling wetly in their sockets, watching Robert over his shoulder. He smelled of cheap floral perfume.

  “Keep your hands up.” Holding the .380 close to the man’s spine, Robert patted him down for weapons. “Move around there with your friend. Come on. Hurry it up!”

  When the man complied, Robert opened the purse with one hand and dumped the contents on the table—loose change, a tire-pressure gauge, makeup in a zippered case, car keys and a nine-millimeter Beretta. Robert stuck the Beretta in his belt. He put the car keys in his pocket.

  “Sit,” he ordered. Then, motioning to the smaller man: “You. Up.”

  As the larger man eased back onto his chair as the little guy stood quickly, knocking his chair over.

  Robert crouched, a reflexive action, the pistol readied. “You want to die right here, that’s fine by me.”