The Dogs of Mexico (19 page)

“Back in our room.”

He shifted into gear and drove up the road, hoping the bartender would keep Helmut and his men under wraps until he was well on his way.

But on his way to where?

20

The Uninvitedd

A
T THE HIGHWAY
he tossed the shotgun out into the dark alongside the road. He had considered keeping it. You could do serious damage with a shotgun, but it was cumbersome and impossible to hide.
 

He turned east again, mist collecting now in the lower elevations.

Ana edged forward on the seat. “Where are we going?”

He said nothing but drove in silence.
 

“I’d like to go back to Puerto Escondido,” she ventured. “Get my things and catch a flight out…” She watched him in the light of the instrument panel, then slowly eased back into the seat, arms crossed, gazing down the pavement ahead, stoic.
 

“Listen,” he said, “you’re going to tell me everything. And I mean
everything
. I don’t think you want me putting your ass out here in the middle of nowhere. You wouldn’t like that.”
 

She studied him a moment. “I suppose I owe you that,” she said tightly. “But you don’t have to be such a bastard about it.”

“I’ve missed your endearing charm,” he said, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror.

She pushed her hair back. “He was hired to follow you,” she said, “but I don’t know why. He had never been asked to do that before.”
 

“Who hired him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he does, either. Somebody by the name of Flax.”

“Yeah. That computes. What about the two men in the white Chevy?”

“Those two. Yes, they’re the worst of the worst. And Helmut hired them.”

“Did they kill the guy in the Hotel Acapulco Princess?”

She looked at him, eyes searching. “He’s the man you were seeing, wasn’t he?” When after a minute he didn’t answer, she continued: “I don’t know whether it was those two, but it wasn’t Helmut. I was with him right up until I ran into you and that girl in the elevator.” She narrowed her eyes. “Listen, I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is I’m stuck here in the middle of nowhere, and other than that, I couldn’t care less. I just want out of here, back to the States.”

“You do know Helmut put a transmitter on this car? A bug?”

“No, but I’m not surprised.” She looked at him, eyes searching. “You don’t think I had anything to do with that?”

He gave her a sidelong glance.
 

“Look,” she said gravely, “I’ve been trying to get away from him ever since I last saw you in Acapulco. He has practically held me prisoner. I didn’t want to come tonight, but he forced me.”

“He was tracking me on his computer. If you didn’t know anything about a bug, how did you think he was doing that?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care. I just want to get out of here once and for all.”

“Who were those men you came with tonight?”

“I don’t know that either. He hired them to drive us. I suppose I should tell you; Helmut bought a car from that man this afternoon.”

“What man?”

“The man who owned the truck.”

“If Helmut bought a car, why hire the guy to drive him?”

“The car is being worked on. It wasn’t ready.”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know. Blue. An old Plymouth.”

“Blue. An old Plymouth.”

He realized he was borderline hallucinatory, unable to determine whether she was being truthful, wondering if he had been foolish by letting her tag along.
 

“You mentioned you were in the Peace Corps,” he said. “Tell me about that.”

She let go a sigh. “I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. I got hurt near San José. We had brought in a new tractor. There was a big cotton industry being developed along the coast there. One of the guys accidentally hit the power-lift. The toolbar crushed my knee.”

Robert winced.
 

“They sent a helicopter, flew me to Guatemala City and operated on my knee. Amazing what they can do with a few metal pins and a little Krazy Glue.”
 

“Were you in agriculture?”

“Teaching. English, math, family planning. But I was learning the tractor too, just fooling around for the fun of it.”

Her story had the unhesitating ring of truth.
 

“You didn’t worry down there, politically?”

“Do you know what our government did? Supporting that murderous regime against those poor Mayans?”

He knew well enough.

Fog had settled into the lower elevations making it difficult to watch for domestic animals that often slept on the highways. It was almost two hours before they arrived at Puerto Angel.
 

An occasional word of direction was hand-lettered on small boards on posts, pointing down dirt tracks branching off into the dark. Robert looked at his watch: one in the morning. He turned right onto one of the roads, B
EACH
and L
ODGING
lettered on arrowed planks.
 

Ana sat erect, peering into the shadowy undergrowth along either side as he idled the car seaward through a maze of craggy rock formations overgrown with palmetto, vines, scruffy patches of bamboo and rhododendron. The road branched, indistinct paths disappearing among a scattering of huts and shacks. Somewhere a dog barked. Robert smelled the sea, heard its faint rumble in the distance. He took one of the more obscure trails and within a quarter of a mile the Pacific opened out before them. He parked near a grove of coconut palms, the sea just beyond, wrinkling under the stars like crushed aluminum foil. A few points of yellow light were visible toward either end of the shallow lagoon.

“We’re going to sleep in the brush back there,” he said. “Just in case.”

“I’m too wired for sleep,” she said, cautious.
 

He was asleep on his feet, but he wanted to scout out the location first. They took their shoes off and walked down to the shoreline—a luminous strip in the moonlight, the very grains of sand sparkling faintly. Waves whispered and grumbled before them; coconut palms towered behind, their tops undulating in the balmy air like soft windmills.
 

Some distance up to the right, in the leeward curve of the lagoon, there appeared to be a cluster of shacks and fishing boats. He kept an eye on the car and watched Ana against the sea, wading in the surf. Foam washed over her naked feet and slid back, wiping out her tracks, over and over. Her hair moved gently about her face in the warm breeze, the soft material of her shirt enfolding the little half-globes of her breasts.
 

“Come on,” he said. “We have to get some sleep.”

She followed him back to the tree line in silence. He suspected she was afraid of him. Maybe she should be.

He removed the tire from the backseat, then found a reasonably clear plot nearby where a palm log lay broken into a V, half-buried in the sand. “This should do it,” he said, looking back through a thin sprinkling of brush at the car.

Ana disappeared into the undergrowth. By the time she returned, he had scooped sand into the V and spread the towel over it for her. “Your very own Sealy Posturepedic.”
 

She stood by, observing his handiwork. “You may have trouble finding fitted sheets.”

He grinned in spite of his resolve to remain distant. “A sense of humor,” he said. “Ten points.”

She looked out past the car, seaward. “Such a beautiful place,” she said, her voice suddenly soft with emotion.
 

“It’ll be jammed with condos and tennis courts as soon as it’s discovered by the Carnival cruise lines and the beautiful people.”
 

She fixed him with a grim smile. “I believe you’re a bit of a cynic.”

“The very thing that’ll bring them here is the first thing they’ll ruin. It’ll be solid neon before you can toss off your first margarita.”

Car keys safely in his pocket, he made his own trip into the brush. When he returned he removed the .45 and the .380 from his belt and stuffed one in each front pocket. Ana tensed, watching him. He ignored her and lay on his back near the
 
tire, listening to the cicadas and the eternal sea. A dog barked somewhere. Always a dog barking somewhere in the night.
 

“Not only two guns,” Ana said, “but what’s with the tire?”

He said nothing.

“Not everyone carries their spare tire to bed,” she said.

“So why did you join the Peace Corps?”

Another small silence. Then: “Why do you ask?” A tired wariness had stolen into her voice.

“From my experience, there’re only two reasons people do something like that. They’re either altruistic and want to save the world, or they’re running from something.”

The quiet seemed suddenly intensified. He wondered if maybe she was sleeping.

His mind drifted, ears ringing with exhaustion. He thought about Mickey, wondered where she was at this moment, wondered what may have happened had the two psychos entered the restaurant where he had abandoned her. The guilt he felt over Mickey dredged up other guilt, guilt he had suppressed at the time in deference to the efficient execution of critical operations, first in Afghanistan then in Cairo—clandestine operations requiring questionable methods and techniques. His subsequent psychological profile had found him “psychologically incompatible with certain requirements essential to the efficient implementation of duty,” meaning basically that he had a problem with hurting people; something he believed the Company shrinks should have determined beforehand. His training had been meant to inure him against guilt. And while as a translator he wasn’t an active participant, he was of necessity present. However, they hadn’t trained human empathy out of him. Not entirely.

Then there was the guilt that was his alone: the death of his son, his failed marriage, abandoning his land to Tricia. He wanted relief from guilt and felt guilt for wanting relief from it. A man should stand and take his due punishment.
 

It occurred to him that while he slept, Ana could knock him in the head and take the car back to Helmut. Or, more likely, take the car and just keep on going. It occurred to him, too, that he wasn’t as clever or as cautious as he once was. Other than his unfinished business with Fowler, he hardly cared.
 

He slipped into fitful, hallucinatory sleep.
 

Mickey—her gum-chewing smile—looked down on him from the night sky, one fist cocked on her hip, the other shaking an accusing finger at him…
Shame, shame
.

21

Alleyway Number Seven

D
UANE FOWLER WAS
asleep on his feet, half-dreaming, believing for an instant that he had inadvertently tripped the alarm while on a clandestine mission within the confines of the National Security Agency.
 

With relief he realized one of his own phones was ringing, that the flashing NSA lights were only the LEDs on the electronics in the studio office he kept in the Kensington District of inner-city Philadelphia. He was hallucinatory from lack of sleep, trying to separate dream from reality when he realized it actually
was
the NSA hotline. He needed to piss, prostate acting up again, but a 4:00 a.m. call from the NSA got him on the line instantly. The recorder light came on as he picked up. “Albert P. Ryder,” he said, his code name for communication within the NSA
.

“Andy Divine,” said the voice on the other end. “Alleyway Number Seven, Code Red.”

“What?”
Duane whispered, wide-awake now. “Alleyway
—
Repeat please?”
 

“Small Pox. From North Africa by way of Mexico. Unconfirmed. Do you have anything on it? Anything at all?”

“No,” Duane stammered, wondering whether it was a trick. “Any info on the MO?”

“Rumor says it’s being smuggled in by way of Acapulco, possibly a tourist.”

Duane went shaky inside. “But…you did say, unconfirmed?”

“Roger that. Nevertheless, get in touch with all Southern Cross sources, no matter how obscure. See what you can turn up.”

“Yes sir
.
You’ve notified the CDC, of course…”
 

“Of course. We’re talking Alleyway Seven here.”

“Yes sir. You’ll keep me updated?”

“Will do. Let’s get on it.”
 

“Roger that.”

Duane hung up. Then, mind racing, he sat on the john so as not to dribble on the floor, seeing he had already wet a spot on his pajamas.
 

Son of a bitch… Here he was, house mortgaged out the kazoo, he owed unforgivable amounts of money, career stalled, and now, just when he was seeing his way clear, this had to happen. It occurred to him again that it might be a ploy, that they might have used Eduardo to trap him. If so, he was in the glue—bad. But according to Soffit Eduardo had been terminated, no longer in the picture.
 

By the time he showered and dressed he had figured all the angles and their possible ramifications. Any way he cut it, it was a gamble. First, he would call Helmut. He wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence when it came to Helmut, but Helmut was his only option at the moment. Once he alerted Helmut, he would book a commercial flight. His involvement was risky enough without paper-trailing a company jet.
 

It had been a long time since he was active in the field. As he envisioned working hands-on again, his apprehension slowly dissolved. After all, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to turn an active negative into an active positive, and this was one hell of a negative if there ever was one.
 

He would have to call Susan, let her know he would be away. It wasn’t like the old days when he was regularly absent for long stretches at a time, researching investment potential in foreign countries for Wall Street brokerage firms.
It occurred to him that she might not care that he had to go away. He visualized her enjoying herself in his absence—
because
of his absence.