Brett opened the door for us and tagged along behind carrying a towel. She had poured it full of chloroform, and the stench of it was strong in the hall.
“This is so fucked,” she said.
“I’m about to swoon here,” Leonard said. “Brett, you think maybe you got enough of that crap on the towel?”
“Too much and you’ll kill her,” Jim Bob said. “Hit her with it quick, then get it off her face.”
No one was in the hallway. We stopped at the elevator. The numbers on the elevator light were racing toward our floor. Then the other elevator started moving up.
“Which elevator are they in?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jim Bob said.
“Oh, shit. That’s good.”
We tried to stand casual, just a wad of folks waiting to get on the elevator. The door opened. A short, stocky woman just shy of three thousand years old with sparse hair dyed shoe polish black and at least twenty-five whisker hairs to match, also dyed, stepped out of the elevator carrying a white poodle with a leash.
Brett leaned close to my ear, spoke softly. “Maybe we should sap her once for not getting rid of that mustache.”
“Twice,” I said. “She also has a poodle.”
The woman moved slowly, putting the dog down, leading it on its leash. She had just turned the corner away from the elevator, out of sight, when the other elevator’s light hit our floor and the door opened, and there was one of the most astoundingly beautiful women I have ever seen.
She was probably five seven, a little over a hundred pounds, well built, face like an angel, large black eyes and soft black hair that flowed to the middle of her back. She wore a short blue dress and matching high heels. Her legs were fashioned from a dream. She looked very elegant.
The guys on either side of her were well dressed, but not so elegant. They would have looked the same in thousand-dollar suits or tablecloths. They looked about as casual as meat gravy stains on a white shirt.
As they stepped out of the elevator, Jim Bob said something pleasant in Spanish, stepped aside. As they passed, the guard on the left eyed Jim Bob. Brett took hold of her skirt, pulled it up and scratched her leg, causing the skirt to ride almost to her hip.
The guy looked.
Jim Bob sapped him. It was a good lick. The guy stumbled, Jim Bob leaped on him, started beating him like a hamburger steak.
The other guy was on the move now, his hand going inside his coat. Leonard grabbed that hand with his left, poked the man in the eyes with his right. The big bastard grunted, his hand came out of his coat, he tried to reach for his face, but Leonard had that hand. Leonard twisted slightly, and the dude flipped, hit the floor hard, banging the side of his head. I kicked the poor bastard hard as I could. He didn’t go out, but he didn’t act as if he was in any hurry to get up.
Leonard bent down over him and went to work with the sap. It sounded like a carpenter driving a pesky nail. Even after I thought the guy was out, I heard the sap ring a half dozen more times.
Brett had wrestled the woman to the floor and was trying to push the chloroform-filled towel over her face, but no luck. The woman started to scream.
Jim Bob pulled Brett off the mistress, brought his palm down swift, but not too hard on the woman’s forehead, just above the eyebrow at the left corner.
She went out.
I was standing, panting. The place stank of chloroform. I had moved away from the elevator wall, and now I could see down the hall. The woman with the poodle had stopped, listening to those screams.
Brett stepped into the hallway. “A bug. A spider. It frightened me.”
The woman looked puzzled.
Jim Bob stepped into view, he spoke Spanish. The woman grinned, said something in Spanish. She and her dog went on down the hallway.
“What did you say?” Brett asked.
“Just what you did. I told her you saw a spider.”
“What did she say?”
“What a sissy. Words to that effect.”
“I’m not sure I like that.”
When the old woman was out of sight, Leonard removed the guns from the bodyguards, got one of the guys by the leg and started dragging him down the corridor toward Jim Bob’s room. Jim Bob got the other guard by the leg, and I picked up the woman. She was as small as a child.
I looked down at her. A small purple bruise was forming at the corner of her eye. She was so gorgeous I felt as if her beauty were sucking out my soul. I could see why Juan Miguel would leave his wife. It’s a hard thing to admit beauty alone can make you crazy, but a woman like this, good God, she could make you crazy.
“When we get her to the room,” Brett said, “maybe you could tuck her in, give her a bottle.”
I made a snorting sound. “I hope you’re not jealous of someone we just tried to chloroform and hit on the head.”
“I’m jealous of someone who looks like a magazine cover, that’s what I’m jealous of,” Brett said.
Jim Bob knocked, Ferdinand opened the door. Jim Bob and Leonard dragged the guards inside. I carried the woman and put her on the bed. She had begun to stir. She opened her eyes. Brett, smiling, leaned forward and pushed the chloroform-filled towel over her nose. The woman struggled briefly, went out.
Brett pulled the towel away.
“Tie up and gag these mooses,” Jim Bob said. “And quick before they wake up. Tie her up too, and pull her dress down. I don’t need to see that. I like it, but I don’t need to see it. I better not see it. Damn, those panties are sheer…”
“We get the picture,” Brett said.
31
We bound them and gagged them with strips of sheets. We poured the chloroform down the sink, put the towel in the tub. The air was still fairly stout with it. We opened a window. We turned on the TV set, sat the bodyguards on the floor with their backs against the bed.
We found a Spanish game show. Jim Bob patted them on the head and we left out of there, the woman in the duffel bag, slung over Leonard’s shoulder.
We rode the elevator down. As Jim Bob and Brett stopped at the desk with our keys, prepared to check us out, Leonard and I walked outside to the curb. There was a black van there. Cesar got out of it, nodded at us. He opened the side of the van. Leonard put the duffel bag on the seat, closed the door.
“We will see you in Playa del Carmen in a while,” Cesar said. “We must drive the whole way. Where is Jim Bob?”
“Coming,” Leonard said.
Jim Bob and Brett came out. Jim Bob got in the van. Before he closed the door I looked at the duffel bag on the seat. “She’s moving,” I said.
Jim Bob reached inside his coat, pulled out the blackjack. With a motion a ballet dancer would have appreciated, he shifted in his seat and smacked the bag where the head was. The bag quit moving.
“Goddamn, Jim Bob,” I said. “It’s not her we want to hurt.”
“You want I should take her to a bullfight?” Jim Bob said. “A bump on her head is better than us in a Mexican jail. You should know.”
I closed the door, Cesar drove them away.
We had a slightly better ride to the airport than from it. I was able to get out of the taxi without feeling faint. Our life had only been in danger maybe half a dozen times.
We caught our flight out without incident, arrived that night in Cancun, took our rental back to Playa del Carmen. We didn’t have reservations, but we got our same hotel without trouble. Leonard got a room. Brett and I shared a room.
That night, when she finished brushing her teeth, Brett said, “Do you think that woman is beautiful?”
I was stepping out of the shower. “Ravishing,” I said.
“She was very pretty.”
“Ravishing.”
“Don’t overdo it if you want Mr. Happy to actually be happy tonight.”
“But with that knot on her head from the blackjack, not so beautiful. And you know what? Jim Bob may have hit her again. Maybe a lot of times. She could be real ugly by now.”
“That’s better. And dry under your balls. I hate it when they’re sticky on my ass.”
“You say the most exciting things,” I said.
“Do you know what they’re planning to do?”
“About as much as you do. They’ll drive her to Cesar’s, taking their time. Maybe stop along the way a couple of nights. Tomorrow, a couple of us go to see the man, tell him we have her, and then we lay the trap.”
Brett had slipped out of her clothes, and I was enjoying watching her pull on a nightie with no underwear. No underwear was always a good sign.
32
Three nights later, about three A.M., we got a call.
“Come over.” It was Jim Bob.
“On our way.”
I woke Brett up. Called Leonard’s room, fifteen minutes later we were in the rental, wheeling our way to Cesar’s house.
Cesar let us in. He was colorful as usual, a purple shirt with red and green parrots on it, white slacks and slip-on white shoes without socks.
Jim Bob looked his usual self, but for the moment, he was without his hat. I was surprised to discover he had hair.
Ferdinand was sitting quietly in a chair, hands rested in his lap. He looked calm, as if he were waiting to drop the lever on a guillotine. He smiled thinly at us, nodded his head.
Hermonie sat on one end of the couch, looking pretty and inscrutable in a pale yellow pants suit. When we came in, she didn’t speak, didn’t change her expression. There was nothing about her to acknowledge we had entered the room except a lifting of her eyes.
On the other end of the couch, her hands cuffed in front of her, a chain fastened to the center of the cuffs on her ankles, was the mistress. She looked like a goddess, except for a faint blue bruise above her right eye. I assumed, under that luxurious mane of black hair, would be at least one blackjack knot. She was smoldering. I half expected the couch to burst into flames.
On the coffee table in front of the mistress was a plate of food, untouched from the looks of it.
“More bastards!” she said. “You are all bastards!”
“Actually,” Brett said, “technically, I’m a bitch.”
“Bastards! All bastards!”
“Her English,” Jim Bob said, “is quite good, especially when it comes to cuss words. We took our time getting here, and we’ve had her here awhile, doing a bit of interrogation.”
“Juan Miguel will kill you,” she said. “He will have you skinned. He will nail your skins to walls and he will piss on them.”
“Do you want to be gagged?” Jim Bob said. “I’ll use my dirty underwear again.”
The mistress went silent, but the looks she gave Jim Bob were almost enough to skin him without Juan Miguel’s help.
“Her name is Ileana,” Jim Bob said.
“Fuck you, you pig,” Ileana said. “Fuck you. Fuck you.”
“Dirty underwear, dear,” Jim Bob said. “Ones with the Hershey stains in the seat.”
“Jesus,” Brett said. “You’re not even threatening to gag me and I’m scared.”
Ileana went silent again, but she wasn’t happy about it.
“What’s next?” I said.
“We have already contacted Juan Miguel,” Jim Bob said. “Told him we had his woman. He really wants her back,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t know he cares for her so much-”
“He loves me,” Ileana said. “He loves me much. He will hate you much.”
Jim Bob put a finger to his lips. “You be quiet now. As I was saying, I don’t know how much he cares for her, but he wants her back, talks like he’s lost a wallet or something and wants it back. He doesn’t talk like she’s a person.”
“Neither do you,” Brett said.
“No, I don’t, lady. It makes things easier not to. He wants her back, so I arranged a meeting. You and me, Hap. We’ll do it.”
“Will it be safe?” Brett said.
“Safe as we can make it,” Jim Bob said. “We got something Juan Miguel wants.”
Jim Bob stopped at a phone booth on the way into Playa del Carmen. He didn’t want to chance Cesar’s home phone or cell phone number. If the number could be traced, Juan Miguel might have the contacts to trace it.
Cesar had somehow gotten Juan Miguel’s number, either through research or from Ileana. I hoped he had not done anything bad to her to get it.
Jim Bob called and talked while I stood outside the old rickety phone booth. As he talked, three young Mexican men wandered over in our direction.
I knew their intent. I had seen it many times. Thugs come in all colors and sizes, but they all walk just alike. I figured a phone booth that worked, located in a dark place, this time of night, was a great spot for them to pull off a mugging.
By the time Jim Bob finished talking and came out of the booth, they were about ten feet away. He reached in his coat and pulled out one of the nine millimeters, said something in Spanish while he waved it around.
The three thugs bolted away into the darkness.
“You have such a way with words,” I said.
“Ain’t that the goddamn truth,” Jim Bob said.
“How’d it go?”
“They’re expecting us.”
“Jim Bob.”
“Yeah.”
“Ileana. You didn’t really hurt her, did you?”
“I think that sap shot hurt pretty good.”
“I mean beyond that.”
“No… You planning on dating her?”
“I merely meant I don’t want to see her hurt. I feel scummy. She’s an innocent bystander.”
“In a manner, but in another, she knows who Juan Miguel is. She knows what kinds of things he does. She profits from this, Hap. Don’t get too fuckin’ sentimental just because she’s a looker. She got in bed with this mangy, flea-bitten dog, and she’s got his fleas on her now. That’s the long and the short of it.”
We drove along the beach toward the great house that belonged to Juan Miguel. It was full of light up on the rise, stood there like a gem growing out of the ground.
We came around on its back side, stopped at a wide metal gate. There was a box you talked into, and Jim Bob did that. The gate opened. Jim Bob took the nine millimeter out from under his coat and pushed it under the car seat.
“They’re gonna search us anyway, take it away,” he said. “You got anything?”
“A wallet.”
“Put it under the seat. That’s what I’m doing.”
I did that. He said, “Anything else?”
“Nothing that isn’t attached.”
“Let’s hope they let us keep that stuff,” Jim Bob said.
We drove through the gate, down the drive, up to the house. Juan Miguel’s home was even more awesome close up, like something I thought the movies made up. Three stories high, lots of glass, the rest of it pink stone with a red tile roof and a front porch big enough to build a tennis court on. The porch was made of stone too, but snow white, as if it were bleached daily and polished. The house and porch gleamed fairy-tale-like in the soft glow of the night lights that poked out of the shrubs and palm trees, but the tall tinted windows deadened the light like cataracts.
Surrounded by low-cut shrubbery was a well-lit pool. It was to the right of the house, the color of a sapphire, the shape of a kidney. A diving board perched above it like an extended tongue. It was a big pool, and I knew from my telescopic eavesdropping it was smaller than the one at the rear of the house, which had through the looking glass appeared big enough and deep enough to provide Shamu the Killer Whale with a vacation home.
“Damn sure beats a double-wide, don’t it?” Jim Bob said.
“I once knew a fella fastened two double-wides together,” I said. “That was pretty nice.”
Jim Bob chuckled.
The door opened and two guys in tan suits came out on the stone porch. From where we sat, they looked like two fleas standing on canvas, about to go through their act. They were the two guys we had beat and tied up at the hotel in Mexico City.
As we got out of the car, Jim Bob said, “At least there are two people here who know us.”
“They are sweet,” I said, “but my guess is neither of them will be bringing pot luck lunches to Mensa’s next Christmas party.”
The air was stuffed with the smell of fresh-mowed grass and recently manicured shrubs. There was a touch of chlorine from the pool. If it had been daylight I’m sure a butterfly and bluebird would have lit on my shoulder.
The two came down the great steps carefully, as if they were afraid their pants might rip. It seemed to take them forever to cross the green, clipped lawn, make their way over to meet us. First thing they did was clobber the both of us. I took an uppercut in the belly and went down. I wanted to fight back, but didn’t. I took another clip to the side of the head, was yanked up and kicked in the ass. I made a note to remember that kick in the ass. Not to mention the fact I had a headache about the size of Alaska.
A moment later we were searched and four pesos I had in my front pocket were taken and Jim Bob lost a pocketknife out of the deal. We should have put those under the seat.
Next Jim Bob and I were hustled in front of them, toward the pool. Jim Bob had lost his hat in the beating, and it had been stepped on before he recovered it. As he walked along he was at work straightening it.
“They took it personal,” he said.
“Looks like.”
“I didn’t take the beating personal myself,” Jim Bob said. “But stepping on my hat was just mean, and I won’t forget it.”
“You’re like Leonard about his hats,” I said.
“I’ve never seen him in a hat.”
“They get stepped on.”
We went through a gap in the wall of shrubbery, between palm trees with lights on them, out to the side pool, which was bordered by copper-colored tile and on the far side there were plenty of bushes and trees and a fountain in the shape of an angel with wings spread wide. There was plenty of light on the sapphire pool and someone was in it, swimming. We were taken to a glass table, pushed down into white plastic chairs, spoken to in Spanish.
“They want us to stay,” Jim Bob said.
“I figured that much. Goddamn, my gut hurts. That fucker has quite a punch.”
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