Ringer (2 page)

My epiphany was such that I could hardly breathe. I croaked, “Why do you honor me with this task?”

“You are a wealthy American. He is a wealthy American. I do not speak English well enough. Also, your ‘letter’ to me”—yes, the white-haired brown fireplug actually made air quotes with his fingers before continuing—“about that money you generously donated to the orphanage gave me the impression that you are blessed with resourceful ways.”

“I should have Robert Tyson Grant arrested for the theft is what I should do.”

Father Gomez waved his hands in the air. “No, Señor. If you appeal to Robert Tyson Grant’s conscience and tell him the story of the ring, God will touch his heart and he will do the right thing. Have faith in God to guide him. We have no idea how Robert Tyson Grant came upon this ring. He likely bought it, or it was given to him, legitimately.”

“I see.” My chest swelled. “I am to be the instrument of God, the hand of the Holy See. I am to brandish the sword of the Almighty to return this holy relic to La Paz and restore the honor of my birthright.”

“Eh, something like that. Señor Martinez, I just ask that you go to Robert Tyson Grant and ask for the ring. As a favor to the orphanage, and as a favor to Nuestra Señora de Cortez.”

I cinched my Panama on my head and pointed my walking stick at the priest. “Father Gomez, I am all over this, like butter on a bagel.”

“Take the finger with you.” His palm held the gold humidor. “It will help authenticate your story.”

I exited through the vaulted chapel of Nuestra Señora de Cortez, the finger of Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra under my arm, into a blue June day. My boots clacked across the sunlit cobbled plaza, my heart full of purpose and without doubt of my success in recovering the Caravaca-Martinez ring.

God was on my side.

Unfortunately, Satan himself was on the other.

CHAPTER

TWO

YES, SATAN. PERHAPS YOU THINK
I am exaggerating? That I am engaged in hyperbole? I am a deeply spiritual person, let me tell you. I embraced a religious quest for the ring, and I do not talk about God or any of His angels, in heaven or in hell, as though they do not exist, as though they aren’t right here with us. Because even if they do not exist for you, they do for me. As they did for Hermes Pacifico Diego Ramirez. His mother called him Paco. His friends called him El Cabezador. The Headhunter.

Now, to discuss Paco, I must help you direct your film. You have to turn away from me and Father Gomez in La Paz and point the camera lens at the Mexican town of Juárez. Perhaps you have heard of it? It is across the border from El Paso, Texas, and it was a very dangerous place. Drug cartels had wars there, and then the Federales—that’s the Mexican army—had to sweep in to calm everybody down. When the Federales departed, the wars started again, and there was much killing as the two leading drug gangs fought for supremacy over the flow of money and drugs across the border. Killing and killers were like hot dogs at a baseball game, everywhere you looked. In fact, the gangs stocked up so heavily on killers that there sometimes wasn’t enough killing to go around. Having more killers than they needed, they began to export them also, along with the drugs, to the United States. They even advertised in newspapers and online so Americans could shop for them.

We have all read about how Americans try to find someone local to kill their wife or girlfriend or husband, and each time we read about it, the newspapers tell us the same story. The murderous spouse contacts cheap hoods looking for a reference for a hit man. These local crooks inform the police about the murderous spouse in return for favorable treatment the next time they are pinched. The cops then pose as hit men, meet the spouse, and record the clumsy conspirator’s proposition. In court, this recording makes the prosecutor’s job easy. Really a very sad thing, when you think about it, for all concerned.

So here we are in Juarez, a sweltering, dusty, fading tourist town that had become too dangerous for the gringos. Restaurants once bustling with tortilla-munching Americans soaked in margaritas: shuttered. Pharmacies that once sold sex pills and tranquilizers by the sack:
cerrado.
The trinket markets jammed with piñatas, statuary, sombreros, and switchblades:
nada.
Things like food markets and auto repair shops were still open, but the streets teemed with groups of dark men of dark purpose going this way and that, eyes darting. Nobody but these types went out after dark unless they had a death wish.

Here our camera turns on Paco. He was a small man with a big head, a thin mustache, and green eyes, almost yellow, like a cat’s. His black hair was crinkled and carefully plastered to his head, a part in the middle. He wore only black.

Our camera finds him kneeling in his small, sparse room, where he has finished his preparations to carry out an assignment across the border. He was to be ferried by the drug gang across the border at night and be driven to Houston, where he would take a bus to New York City. His duffel bag was packed with clothing and a number of aging pistols, ammunition, and his trusty axe, all of which was easy to carry on a bus but only an idiot would carry into an airport.

The hot desert wind blew the curtains into the room. Between the two windows was a foot-high statue surrounded by flickering gold candles. Paco was kneeling in front of the statue. You would maybe imagine that this was a statue of Mary? Our Mother of Guadalupe? You would be wrong. He was praying to Santa Muerte.

Saint of Death.

You may think I am joking when I tell you this, but the drug gangs had their own religion, and they prayed to this shrouded skull monster, a grim reaper, that was at once Death and Satan. I suppose they figured that they needed a protecting saint to be involved in such a dangerous line of work as killing and drug smuggling. One could hardly imagine God helping them with such activities, much less that they could have had the balls to seek His protection. These murderous scoundrels had no hope of ever going to heaven. The way they had it figured, it was Satan in the form of Death who would come for you in the end, so why not pray to the cloven-hooved reaper himself and ask him to cut you a break?

So Paco had his yellow catlike eyes on the evil skull head of the satanic Santa Muerte. A miniature scythe was in the statue’s right hand, a tiny globe in the left. Paco’s palms were pressed tightly together in reverence, and the lips under the thin mustache uttered a prayer:

“Oh, Santa Muerte, I call upon you so that through your image, you may free me from failure in my mission. Do not abandon me from your protection, and I ask your blessing upon your devotee Paco, and that I am blessed with wealth for accomplishing what has been denied me. I go without fear, but if they direct that I should die and you do not protect me from failure, come and take me. So be it.”

Paco lifted a chain around his neck and kissed a gold amulet of Santa Muerte three times before dropping it back down his black shirt.

Paco was a killer who had not yet killed. His history was humble, the son of a Honduran pineapple farmer who joined the army. Lured by the promise of wealth, he, like many Honduran soldiers, deserted his post and went to Mexico to become a contract killer for the wealthy cartels. Like most sparkling opportunities that twinkle on the horizon, the rewards were elusive, and the Mexicans considered Hondurans cannon fodder in the cartel wars. Most of his friends had gone home or been killed. Even so, Paco persisted in the face of bad odds, and was given chances to improve his station. Unfortunately, something always went wrong. One time he was late for a gun battle and everybody was dead when he got there. Another time his partner killed the target while Paco was in the bathroom. Another time he was sent to kill someone who had died. Not killed, just died from a bad heart. His troop of killers had begun to joke. This was why he was relegated to reaping necessary trophies.

You see, when there is so much killing, it is necessary to take credit for your kills so that your kills are not confused with someone else’s, or that someone else does not take credit for your kill. After all, killing in this way was intended to intimidate the opposition.

Paco’s gang cut off the heads of their victims. Not all, just the most notable ones. Cell phone photos of the heads or the heads themselves were then delivered to the opposition.

I do not pretend to be some kind of expert in beheading, but I once read a book about some New York gangs on the West Side of Manhattan, and they gave details. I could go find that book and supply details, but I won’t because I do not think a film audience would sit through this part of our movie without throwing up their cheese nachos, popcorn, and Mr. Pibb on the person seated in front of them, and then the poor ushers would have to clean up a tremendous mess. As a wise man once said—perhaps it was Abraham Lincoln—some things are best left to the imagination. I do not think anybody, much less old Abe, would imagine that cutting off someone’s head is a pleasant undertaking. Which is why this task was left to Paco, the one who hadn’t killed, the one they jokingly called the Headhunter. El Cabezador. His experience with harvesting pineapples was not lost on this new skill. His tool for both was the same: a rustic hatchet. The blade was curved in from use, the gnarled handle worn smooth from work, dark with sweat.

Paco’s lowly station was not his making. He practiced, and was a good shot with the guns. He had good eyesight and good hearing and was smart enough, certainly as smart as many of those around him. He prayed and made offerings to Santa Muerte constantly. In his black clothes and with his yellow cat eyes, he looked dangerous.

Like an unloving parent, Fate had not rewarded his talent.

So it had come to pass that one of the American jobs had been assigned to him, one that had come in through the classifieds, a job reserved for beginners and those the gang wished to weed out. The gang got money up front, and then more money when the job was successful. If a new killer failed, no loss, the gang at least got something. If the killer actually succeeded, all the better. The cartels sent some killers to practice on Americans before graduating them to full soldier status. Or to weed out the losers.

El Cabezador knew this was his last chance.

He stood. Grim and determined, he wiped a tear from his eye and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. The zipper on the cheap bag split, and the contents tumbled out onto the floor behind him.

Paco’s sad eyes looked at his broken bag, at his scattered black clothes and guns, and then fixed on Santa Muerte.

“Por qué, Madre?”

CHAPTER

THREE

THE FILM AUDIENCE MUST WAIT
to know how Satan fits into my story, because I think it best to turn the cameras on a girl in a bikini. Why? Because every movie needs the promise of sex, and you do not want to keep the audience waiting too long or they will text their friends to pass the time until things get more interesting.

While the Baja peninsula is a commanding finger pointing into the Pacific, Long Island is a hand waving vaguely at Europe. Long Island is the eastern part of the same land mass as Brooklyn, where I used to live, which is sort of the ball of the thumb of the hand that waves at Europe. Yet as close as East Hampton was to Coney Island, it might as well have been on the moon. They do not eat hot dogs and french fries there, or drink canned beer. They do not live in apartments and ride the subway.

East Hampton is where the smart set owned big houses on the beach, with cars in the driveways that cost what many condos do on Mermaid Avenue. On Friday evenings in the summer, the tycoons, rock stars, and celebs fly out of Manhattan over the evening traffic jams in their helicopters or seaplanes. You get the picture. Hollywood on the Atlantic.

If you think about it, rich people are not often ugly. So it was with Purity Grant. She was draped on a lounger by a pool in East Hampton, June’s ocean waves crashing just beyond the dune. Behind her were a pool house and cabanas, and behind that a large gray mansion.

Purity’s hair, as seen in the tabloids, was always worn with long pigtails. On this day it was in a ponytail to stay out of the way of the sun’s rays. Her five-hundred-dollar thong bikini was not wasted on this body. There are many such women strewn about poolsides next to mansions, yes? My answer is no. The eyes were limpid pools of aquamarine, blue yet green at the same time, like the Sea of Cortez, and when these eyes beheld you, it was as if they were asking a question, searching. These eyes wanted to see
more.
Yet the sea green eyes seemed to quickly settle for less, turning mischievous, looking for fun. Just the same, the eyes had a dark flicker, and it was the icy flame of revenge.

Of course, what is fun to some is trouble to others. (That sounds like something Lincoln might have said, too.) This was why a helicopter swooped low over the beach, twirled, and settled onto the helipad next to the tennis courts in a storm of sand.

Purity took a deep breath and wished she had not left her cigarettes in the Bentley GT, which was not in the driveway but with the police. In Westhampton, it wasn’t like there was a deli on the corner where she could buy some more smokes. She wondered if she could borrow the helicopter to go get more cigarettes.

Footsteps clomped across the patio. Purity knew those angry footsteps anywhere. She could almost hear the steam whistling out of Bobbie’s brain.

A folded newspaper landed on her navel, and the tycoon Robert Tyson Grant loomed over her. “Did you see the papers, you little cunt?”

“How do you know it’s little?”

“Did you see the papers?”

She pushed the newspaper off her stomach. “I read
Easy Rider
.”

“Well, the rest of the planet read about your escapade last night. It is going to cost a fortune to keep you out of prison, if we can even keep you out of prison.”

The headline on the newspaper next to the lounger read:
PURR-SUIT
. Below that was a flash picture of mischief-eyed Purity flanked by police, captioned:
CATTY HEIRESS LEADS HI-SPEED CHASE.