The Dogs of Mexico (16 page)

The terrain became more rugged. The occasional huts had palm-thatch roofs, some with big piles of coconut shells alongside.

The Chevy was almost on him before he saw it in the rearview mirror. Coming on fast, the smaller man in the passenger seat reaching out the window with what looked like a machine-pistol.

Instinctively, Robert hunkered down, stomped the brake and cut the wheel hard into the Chevy’s path. The Chevy braked, but too late. Robert’s front fender slammed into the Chevy’s rear as it skimmed past. The Chevy, thrown into a skid, leaned heavily to the driver’s side, squalling across the highway, flashing past the Nissan’s windshield, the machine-pistol firing pop pop pop straight up from the passenger’s window as the shooter struggled to keep his balance. In the same instant, Robert’s car began to swap ends, reversing direction before he could bring it to a stop. In the moment it took to do a rubber-burning K-turn, he saw the Chevy had gone off the pavement backward, wedged into a ditch alongside the road, dust roiling.
 

Robert floored the accelerator. In the rearview mirror he saw the gunman climbing out of the window. In another instant he realized the man was firing again—the distant pop pop pop of the automatic. Robert crouched down, though he reasoned he was pretty well out of range.
 

He began to tremble, heart knocking like a jackhammer. He drove on, watching the road behind even more than the road ahead.
 

His mouth was dry, a cold emptiness in his stomach. At the same time, he felt a sudden sense of invincibility. He recognized the rush for what it was—an adrenaline high, the chemical surge that got men killed with overconfidence.

17

Puerto Escondido

R
OBERT DROVE INTO
the outskirts of Puerto Escondido. Through the brushy terrain on his right, he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean. Then, on his left—with surprise and a glimmer of optimism—a small airport. He made a hurried turn down a short road toward the whitewashed radio tower, blinding in the sunlight. The parking lot was empty but for two old rust-bucket pickups. Robert parked and got out, engulfed in an oven of heat. The tarmac smelled of hot asphalt, soft underfoot. A few listless palms surrounded the little terminal. An unmanned van taxi stood at the curb near the entrance. The runway shimmered, wrinkling into a watery mirage in the distance. Robert felt dreamy, dazed with exhaustion and lack of sleep, amplified now in the sweltering heat and humidity.

He couldn’t very well carry the tire into the terminal, so he left it in the trunk. He took the carry-on in hand. If push came to shove the money in the tire was peanuts compared to the De Beers diamonds.
 

A lone security guard watched as he entered. Otherwise, the terminal was empty but for a uniformed man behind the information desk. The man, thick-bodied with a wide Indian face, looked up from a soccer game on a small black-and-white
TV
on the counter. An oscillating fan stirred the air alongside. The terminal smelled like a locker room doused with floral-scented disinfectant.

“English?” Robert asked.

“Sí. How do I help you?”

“Good. You have a flight out of here? Oaxaca? Mexico City?”

“Tomorrow. Nine in the morning to Oaxaca. You can get your ticket at departure…” The attendant paused, his gaze fixed on the TV as someone made a rousing play. He returned his attention to Robert: “You may like to call first. Sometime the schedule can vary.” He handed a pamphlet over the counter.
 

Robert frowned. “Vary?”

The attendant lifted one shoulder in a mildly apologetic shrug. “Sometime the flight it is cancel.”
 

Robert thanked him. He nodded to the security guard on his way out.
 

He sat for a moment in the car, the air conditioner on, thinking. He looked at his watch. Four in the afternoon. Seventeen hours before a flight out. Maybe. The question was: could he avoid the men who were after him that long?
 

The second question, and equally important: if he transferred the money from the tire back to Soffit’s case, would the Mexican authorities go through it when he tried to board a plane? Then there were the two handguns, his .380 and Soffit’s .45. He could toss the guns, but not knowing what he might run into later, that was iffy.
 

They had him bugged. That was a given. The transmitter had to be either on the car or the video equipment.

He started the car and drove out of the airport.

Like most Mexican villages, Puerto Escondido was a maze of narrow broken streets, stucco buildings painted in multi-shades of green, orange, blue. Rebar jutted from atop unfinished concrete-block walls, the usual piles of sand and gravel heaped alongside. And always, a mange-ridden dog slinking about.
 

He came across an outdoor market—a dozen open-air stalls and as many tables displaying everything from CDs to indigenous arts and crafts—cheap jewelry, clothes, leather goods, tools, old tape payers. A bin of hair clips reminded him of Ana—the silver clip she so often wore, drawing her hair back at the base of her neck.
 

In Ana’s case, he had let his feelings get in the way of his judgment. He of all people knew women were the most effective bait when it came to separating a man from his senses. He told himself he had to be deranged—thinking with fond regret of a woman who was very likely trying to kill him.

In addition to a pack of three Fruit of the Loom shorts, two guayabera shirts, and two pairs of jeans, he picked up an eighteen-inch bolt cutter and a six-volt flashlight. He didn’t care for the guayabera style in shirts, but they were ideal for hiding the holstered .380.

He drove around until he found a vacant lot next to a vacant building with a collapsing roof. He backed the car through knee-high weeds alongside. Glass cracked and popped under the tires. Just what he needed, a flat, and his spare packed with close to eight hundred thousand dollars in cash. He hit the brakes and got out. Rubble cluttered the ground beneath the canopy of weeds. On close inspection the tires looked okay.

He searched beneath both front seats and in the console and side pockets, looked under the dash and under the mats. No transmitter. In spite of the heat, and in spite of the fact that Helmut hadn’t had an opportunity to get under the car, he put on his wash-and-wear jacket to protect his shirt and his own skin, then lay on his back, worked his head and shoulders under the car, and carefully inched his way along, pushing though the weeds, removing bits of glass and debris from his path while searching under the frame with the flashlight. Nothing. He double-checked the tires for imbedded glass while he was at it.
 

Occasionally someone walked or drove past, but paid him little or no attention; it wasn’t unusual to see vehicles in all stages of dismantlement on the highways and byways of Mexico.
 

He took the jacket off, shook it out, and put it back in the aluminum case with the Bible and his new underwear. He pulled the rear seat out on the ground. He was about to dismantle the video camera when a tripod mount attached to its base caught his eye. It looked like an ordinary mount. But why would Fowler leave it on the camera when there was no tripod? He unsnapped it, looked it over and replaced it.
 

He needed the DVD with its sales pitch to justify the projector, but took the camera to the empty building and set it just inside the doorway. In the gloom beyond, a large black dog nursing puppies on an old blanket growled and bared her teeth. Robert backed out and returned to the car.

He pried the rear seat loose, pulled it out, flipped it upside down in the weeds, and cut away a section of webbing from the underside. With the bolt cutter, he snipped a rectangle from the metal springs. He placed the document case with the projector in the hollow. It seemed a serviceable solution, though when he replaced the seat and sat on it, he could feel the projector through the padding. He placed his carry-on and the aluminum case on the backseat and slid in behind the wheel.
 

He jumped alert when a man suddenly materialized, swaying against the passenger window, the palms of both hands flat against the glass, peering in. Robert grabbed the .380 under his shirt, but held it, tense, in its holster. The man trailed his fingers down the glass, motioning for him to lower the window. Robert jumped out, hand still on the gun, heart racing.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
 

The man, a Caucasian wearing an old tattered fedora, watched him from beneath the floppy brim, grinning stupidly.
 

Drunk, Robert realized.

Robert motioned with a sweep of his hand. “Go on, get your ass out of here.”

The drunk started around the back of the car. Robert met him halfway, lifting his shirttail to reveal his right hand clamped on the .380.
 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

The drunk focused on the .380. The grin faded from his sweat-shined face as he slowly lifted his hands and stepped back.
 

Robert dropped his shirttail. “Move it! Pronto!”
 

The man stumbled backward until he neared the road. He turned then, hands above his head, and went shambling off. Robert stepped forward and watched until the guy was a block away. Hands still raised, the drunk walked full into a palm tree and sat down. He turned over and leaned back against the tree trunk. Then, as if suddenly recalling, raised both hands again.
 

Robert got back in the car.

He sat. Tried to think.

Okay. Practically speaking, he should forget Fowler. And the photos as well. Open a bank account in Mexico. Maybe fence the diamonds in Brazil. That would be the sensible thing.

But he couldn’t forget Fowler, what Fowler had cost him. No amount of money could make up for that.
 

And now there was something else: He didn’t know at exactly what point he had decided to deliver the photos to Oaxaca, to this Valdez said to be in intelligence. It pissed him off to think that in spite of what he had said to Soffit to the contrary, he might be something of a Boy Scout after all; that is, if the men in the photos really
were terrorist.

It wasn’t that he was a goody-goody-two-shoes, but once he nailed Fowler, he didn’t want some prissy-ass conscience rearing its snarky head at him in the dark hours for what he hadn’t done that he should have. He had enough of that already, thank you.

According to the guidebook, it was only 150 miles to Oaxaca, but a seven-and-a-half-hour drive. He read:
The road winds treacherously over the Sierra Madre del Sur with little, if any, shoulder.
He was vulnerable where he was, but no one drove those roads at night. On the other hand, that might be his best bet, what they would least expect him to do. However, if the bug was on the car, it wouldn’t matter, day
or
night.
 

His mouth was dry and his eyes burned. He hadn’t slept since leaving Taxco with Ana and Helmut two days before. Lack of sleep and the stress of trying to dodge psycho killers when they had all the advantages was telling on him and he knew it—little shadowlike flickers glimpsed from the corners of his vision where in fact there was nothing; plus the fact that he would even consider driving those mountain roads at night caused him to rethink his mental state.

Or, maybe that wasn’t so foolish. Now that he had begun to question his stability, he wondered again whether his resolve to deliver the photos to this Valdez might be what was foolish—all that Boy Scout crap. He tried to think…all of it a little hazy, indistinct. From time to time, he was made anxious by the fine grit that materialized in his peripheral vision, floating, sifting down, seeming to close in on him. He wondered whether he might have an aneurism from the hairline skull fracture that the Hardwater cops had bequeathed him with the marble-based desk lamp.
 

Regardless, the only safe thing at the moment was to dump the car. He got out, carefully inspected the flattened weeds where he had backed in, removed a few pieces of broken glass and drove out of the lot.

The drunk was still sitting against the palm tree with his hands up. Robert slowed to a stop and got out.
 

“Hey, guy. You can relax now. Get your hands down.” When the fellow didn’t respond, Robert took a ten-peso note, put it in the man’s hand, cupped his fingers around it and guided his hands back to his lap. “Sober up,” he said. “Get yourself something to eat.”
Yeah, sure
,
like he’s going to waste money on food
. With an afterthought Robert removed the two melons from the passenger’s footwell and placed them on the ground next to the fellow.
 

IF THERE WERE
used car lots in Puerto Escondido, he couldn’t find them.
 

He parked the Nissan on a narrow street in what appeared to be the center of commerce, if you could call it that. The street ran parallel to the beach only two blocks away. He counted off two thousand dollars from the five—his half of the ten he had split with Mickey. He watched the street. And waited.
 

Ten minutes later he saw a Mexican with keys in hand approaching an older Chevy Malibu. The car, parked alongside the street, was a visual patchwork of red and gray primer. Robert got out and walked toward him.
 

“English?”
 

The man, wearing khakis and a straw hat with a dirty orange braid around the crown, paused, his hand on the Malibu’s door. His gaze lingered on the money, then on Robert.
 

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for that car. Cash.
US
.”

The man opened his door, still staring at the money. “No inglés, señor.”
 

Robert reached into his pocket and added two more bills to the roll. “Twelve hundred.”
 

The man shook his head and lowered himself into the car. Watching Robert, he quickly started the car and drove away.