by Sean Black
After dinner she went back to her room, changed and freshened her makeup. Around ten o’clock she left again, slipping out of the resort by a side entrance. Walking down the street, she was glad of the break from her parents. She loved them, and she knew that they were clinging to the last few precious times when they would have her to themselves, but sometimes, like this vacation, it got too much.
The bar was almost empty and all the drinkers were old and local. No Americans. No one under the age of forty. She could feel male eyes on her, which creeped her out. The bartender took pity on her and suggested somewhere else. It wasn’t far and it might be more her style. There was live music, although he didn’t know on which nights. She shouldn’t walk alone under any circumstances. He called her a cab and gave her the firm’s number: she should use them to get back to her hotel. They were a local company, reliable and safe.
The cab ride took ten minutes and she was glad she had the phone number because now she had no idea where she was in relation to the hotel. She was just starting to regret her adventure when she noticed him sitting at the bar. American. Bearded, tanned and slim. He was older but not too old — and he was handsome. Like, really handsome.
Sitting next to her at the bar, Charlie Mendez had been wary at first. There had been no Americans in the place when he had arrived and definitely no young American women, never mind one who was on her own. When she had walked in and hopped up on a barstool, looking slightly uncomfortable and out of place, he had taken it as a sign of good fortune, but at the back of his mind he was worried.
Buying her a drink, he had searched her face for a sign that she had recognized him. But since he had fled the United States, he had grown the beard, and his already tanned skin had darkened under the fierce Mexican sun. He had dyed his hair too. He looked different, more like a man coming to terms with his age than the Peter Pan figure he had cut back in Santa Barbara.
‘Do you want another beer?’ she asked. She had short blonde hair and had on one of those bras that flat-chested chicks wore to make themselves look like they had a rack, but she was pretty.
He dug into his pocket. ‘No, I got this. Same again?’
She chewed her bottom lip, then scooted off her stool. ‘No, something different.’
‘Like what?’ he asked, with a smile.
‘I gotta go visit the little girls’ room. Why don’t you surprise me?’
He watched her leave. As she disappeared through the door marked Senoras, he leaned over to the bartender and ordered a beer for himself and a margarita for his new friend, Julia. When the drinks came, he slid an extra twenty dollars across the bar and asked the bartender if they had a room upstairs he could rent for a few hours.
The bartender left him, and Mendez went to work on Julia’s margarita. A few moments later, she was back, hopping on to the stool and taking a sip of the drink.
‘I love margaritas. How did you know?’
Mendez flashed the wide-eyed, puppyish grin that had served him so well back in Santa Barbara. ‘Wild guess,’ he said, as she took another sip.
Twenty-five
In the car, Hector realized that his anger towards Charlie Mendez had faded. It was the emotion he should have felt rather than the one he did. Inside, he was happy that Charlie had screwed up and gone AWOL without telling anyone. For starters, it gave him something to do. He had a mission — finally. He had to find Charlie and bring him back.
Yes, even if he couldn’t find him, or if he was picked up by someone before Hector got to him, that meant the end of the babysitting. It was what his young charge liked to call a win-win situation, a phrase, Hector reflected, that only an American could use with a straight face. In America things might be win-win. In Mexico they were more likely lose-lose.
He pressed down a little harder on the gas pedal as traffic cleared out of his way, the flashing lights on the roof of the car easing his passage. As he drove, he made one more call. Not to the boss, who would only be told about Charlie after Hector knew more, but to the bartender who had called him when word had got out that Hector was looking for the American. There would be good money for the man, a heavier tip than he was used to.
‘He’s with a girl,’ the bartender had told him. ‘We have a room upstairs. He’s there with her but maybe you should get here soon.’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’ Hector pressed, but he had lost the signal, and in any case it didn’t sound like the bartender could do anything about whatever the problem was. Hector flicked the switch on the console that turned on the sirens and picked up his speed.
He left the car down the street and walked to the bar. The parking lot was full. It was a busy place all week round, trade helped by the protection Hector’s boss offered. Although neither the boss nor Hector nor anyone they knew drank here often, it was considered safe for locals and tourists so it was often full.
Inside, the bartender nodded for Hector to follow him to a narrow wooden stairway. Hector grabbed his arm and stared at him, his gaze reminding the bartender of who he was before he asked, ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The girl. I’ve never seen her before.’
He was talking in riddles — and the smell of whisky was tantalizing. ‘So what?’
The bartender lowered his voice. ‘She came in on her own and sat down next to him.’
The only girls who did that were working girls so Hector didn’t see why the man was so anxious, standing there in the narrow hallway, sweating. He shrugged. Then he wondered if maybe Charlie had done something to her. Hurt her. Killed her even. Surely only that would make the bartender so twitchy.
Hector squeezed the man’s arm. ‘Come on. Spit it out. What’s the problem?’
The bartender leaned in towards him and whispered, ‘She’s American.’
Hector pushed past him, his feet hammering up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the tiny wooden postcard of a landing and threw open the only door.
What confronted him inside told him he had been right. Win-win was for asshole gringos, like Charlie Mendez. For a man like Hector there was only ever lose-lose.
Twenty-six
Contrary to its carefully cultivated image as a hotbed of decadence and debauchery, Los Angeles was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise city. There was too much money out there and up for grabs for it not to be. It wasn’t even seven in the morning but the diner on the corner of Melrose and Lankershim already had half a dozen people waiting for a table.
In a corner booth, Lock took a sip of coffee and pushed a half-eaten Western omelette around his plate while Ty continued to shovel up a mountain of food. They had walked there from the hotel, Lock wanting to make doubly sure that the surveillance they had been under had ceased. Not that it mattered. A new security team had already moved in to take over the coat-holding and car-door-opening duties demanded by Triple-C, but when it came to Mendez they were still at square one. Despite contacting everyone who might be able to lead them to him, there had been no new sightings, no fresh intelligence of any description.
Ty wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and belched. ‘So what’s the plan, Senor Lock?
‘Apart from you maybe getting some table manners?’
‘Sorry about that, just came out.’
‘So what do you mean, “What’s the plan?”’
‘Well, we going to go down there and get this asshole or what?’
Lock eyed him over the table. ‘Slight hitch, Senor Johnson.’
Ty smiled and scooped up some more food. Lock swore that his partner had hollow legs. Ty could eat all day every day and not put on a pound. It was irritating in the extreme.
‘Like we don’t have a goddamn clue where he is?’ Ty said.
Lock cleared his throat. ‘There’s that. But what if he never surfaces? Do we just let it go?’
‘Can’t do that either, can we?’
‘Okay. Let’s set ourselves a deadline. If we knew right now where he was, how long do you think we’d need to put everythin
g together for a hostile extraction?’ Lock asked.
‘Day, maybe two.’
Lock signalled to the waitress for the check. ‘Two days’ time we head down there. If we don’t know where he is, maybe we can flush him out.’
‘Or get ourselves killed,’ said Ty.
Lock lifted his coffee mug and clinked it against Ty’s glass of orange juice. ‘That’s always an option too.’
The waitress dropped by with the check. Ty gave her his patented never-fails smile. She ignored him but took Lock’s credit card and came back with her phone number, which she had written on the back of the receipt.
Ty stared at it as she walked away. ‘You gonna call her? I mean the girl’s eyesight’s clearly not the best, but she is kind of cute.’
‘Don’t go there.’
‘What? You gonna be a monk the rest of your life? You gonna give yourself a bad case of DSB?’
Lock grimaced, knowing he would regret asking the obvious question. ‘DSB?’
‘Deadly Sperm Back-up, brother. Messes up a dude’s mind if he holds on to that dirty water too long.’
Lock pushed away his plate. ‘Can’t understand why you don’t get yourself more dates, Ty. Real old-school charmer such as yourself.’
Ty open-palmed an apology. ‘Hey, I’m just sayin’.’
‘Well, don’t.’
Ty’s BlackBerry chimed. He picked it up and took a look at the screen, then clicked the read button to open the email that had just dropped into his inbox.
‘Something?’ Lock asked him.
‘That break we needed?’ Ty said. ‘American guy I’ve been talking to down there who’s plugged into one or two of the local crews. He thinks he spotted Mendez in a bar.’
‘When?’
‘Last night,’ smiled Ty.
‘Where?’
‘Little town outside Santa Maria called Diablo.’
Lock tried to think back to his map. He was sure he’d registered that name. ‘Wasn’t that close to where Brady found him the last time?’
‘Think so.’ Ty thumbed further down the email. ‘Looks like he wasn’t alone either.’
‘Security?’ Lock asked.
Ty’s expression clouded. ‘Doesn’t mention it here but there was an American girl.’
Lock was already at the door. ‘Think we’d better move that departure date up.’
‘A day?’
‘No,’ said Lock. ‘We leave now.’
‘I can be good to go in an hour.’
‘Make it thirty minutes,’ said Lock, shouldering out on to the sidewalk.
Twenty-seven
The Audi would stay where it was. Lock gave the valet who had seen it in its blood-drenched condition a hefty tip to take it out of the garage and drive it around Los Angeles on a pre-determined schedule that broadly correlated to his previous movements over the past week: a car that didn’t move would alert the suspicion of anyone still monitoring the tracking device.
In his hotel room, he gathered some of his belongings. He left some clothes on hangers in the wardrobes in case someone decided to take a closer look. He also left his toothbrush and razor. The toothbrush he would replace; the razor could go unused. He hadn’t shaved for the past week, figuring that if Mendez had changed his appearance to deflect attention then so would he.
The hotel was paid for until the end of the following week. That was the time-frame Lock had allowed to locate, kidnap and repatriate Mendez. If it took any longer than ten days they could keep the rest of his stuff or throw it away: the chances were that he wasn’t coming back.
He pulled a pre-packed duffel bag on to his shoulders and took one last look at the room, then left. In the corridor, Ty was waiting for him. They walked in silence to the elevator and rode it down to the parking garage. They got out and went to a white Ford Ranger double-cab pick-up truck.
They slung their bags into the back. The Ranger would take them over the border where they would switch vehicles. Ty got behind the wheel and drove out of the garage, both men on the lookout for someone following them.
Lock pulled a picture of Charlie Mendez from his jacket pocket and clipped it to the sun visor as a reminder. Mendez stared back at him with a broad grin. If Lock had his way, he wouldn’t be smiling for much longer.
They took Interstate 5 as far south as San Diego, then picked up the Kumeyaay Highway and began to head east through the Cleveland National Forest. Finally, Ty broached the subject that had been preying on their minds. ‘He was seen with a girl. You think he was…?’
Lock stared out of the window at the dry, scrubby desert, as the road flirted with the Rio Grande only to switch north again. ‘A leopard doesn’t change its spots.’
Twenty-eight
Towering roadside crosses, painted pink and entwined with dried flowers, greeted Lock and Ty as they crested the hill, the border area of Mexico laid out beneath them. Lock counted six of the twenty-foot-high wooden structures. A hundred yards down the road they came to four more, one after another, high desert stretching off into the distance on either side of the highway. He waved for Ty to pull the white Ranger into the side of the road.
‘What’s up?’ Ty asked.
Lock looked towards the crosses stony-faced but said nothing. ‘Just want to take a look.’
Ty pumped the brakes and the car slid to a halt on the gravel.
Lock got out and walked towards the base of the first cross. A photograph, wrapped in clear plastic, was fastened to it. He hunkered down in the dust and studied it.
A young Mexican woman looked back at him. She had long dark hair, soft brown eyes, and the hesitant self-aware smile of someone unused to posing for the camera. She was wearing a black high-school graduation gown over her clothes and clutching a mortarboard in her right hand, her whole life ahead of her. At the bottom of the photograph was a name: Rosa Perez. Beneath that, in the same neat handwriting, were the dates of her birth and death. Rosa had been nineteen when she died.
Lock straightened up and, shielding his eyes from the strengthening mid-morning sun, took in the vista below. Santa Maria lay before him. Official estimates put its population at 1.5 million but that was almost certainly out by at least half a million. Like the other border cities along the Rio Grande, the city had drawn in hundreds of thousands of people from the poorer south of the country to work in its maquiladoras. Free trade between the countries had allowed American companies to shift jobs a few miles across the border and save themselves tens of millions of dollars in lower wage costs and taxes.
The workers in the maquiladoras were mostly young women. They were considered more dextrous when it came to the assembly line, and the factory owners could pay them less than they would men. They were also the ones who had been turning up dead for more than a decade. Thousands of them, spirited off the streets, raped, murdered and dumped, often mutilated or dismembered, like trash, all over the city.
The roadside crosses were one part memorial and one part caution. No one in Santa Maria was safe from the ravages of a crime rate that had made it the most dangerous city in the world. But young poor women were the most at risk. It was the same the world over, but here, in Mexico, it had taken on new depths of depravity. Worst of all, no one knew who was behind it. There were theories and whispers, but no answers. Only more killings.
Lock reached out to touch the picture of the girl and his mind forced him back to Melissa. He rose, packing away his feelings. He and Ty had a job to do. A job that wouldn’t afford them any distractions. There would be time to mourn the dead when they were done. First they had to find Mendez.
He walked back to the car, opened the trunk and pulled out two large black canvas duffel bags. Staying on the roadside and shielded by the car, he deposited the first bag, marked with a red and white tag, on the back seat. He dropped the second bag, which had no tag, next to it. It was the second that he unzipped. He pulled two hard plastic black gun cases and two side holsters from it.
He opened the first and too
k out a SIG Sauer 226. He clicked a fresh twelve-round clip into it and checked it over. He repeated the same procedure with the second 226. Then he closed the cases, zipped up the bag, shut the rear door and got back into the front passenger seat.
The guns had been purchased from a contact Ty had in El Paso, a dealer who didn’t care whom he sold to as long as the money was good. No paperwork had changed hands, aside from a thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills. If they had to use them, the only way the weapons would be traced back to them was if they left their fingerprints on them. On the other hand, to venture into Mexico looking for Mendez unarmed would have been guaranteed suicide.
The most nerve-racking part had been passing through Customs Control on the US side of the border. Tourists generally didn’t use the US/Santa Maria crossing because of what lay on the Mexican side. But gun runners did, although not usually in regular cars. Illegal traffic across the border was a two-way process. Drugs went north, and firearms went south to the cartels.
When they had been questioned, Lock had shown two carry permits and informed the guard that they were private security contractors going south to guard a fictional American executive and his family, who were living in Santa Maria. As cover stories went, it was plenty plausible and they had been waved through.
He handed the second weapon to Ty, who checked it over, put on the holster and slid the gun into it. ‘What happens if we get pulled over by the Federales?’ Ty asked.
