The Dogs of Mexico (20 page)

He put the thought out of his mind, dialed open a safe with a dozen pre-approved packets inside, and selected one labeled
James Arlington, International Investments, Ltd.
Inside was a passport with Duane’s photo, matching driver’s license, social security card, two credit cards and a voucher for a ten thousand dollar line of credit at Chase Manhattan, all in the name of one James Arlington. Mr. Arlington, Duane mused with growing optimism, you just might be the sonofabitching hero who’s going to save the good old United States of America from a major disaster. Nevertheless, it was tricky business at best.
 

He tried to get his mind around it—
Alleyway Number Seven
—but it was almost too big, beyond comprehension.

Smallpox
.
Biological warfare. Son of a bitch.

22

Mabel

R
OBERT WOKE FROM
what felt like a coma—sluggish, lethargic, struggling to pull himself together. Lying on his side, and without moving, he opened his eyes, remembering where he was, relieved that neither Helmut nor his two men had caught up with him.
 

Ana sat on the log in profile, the first light of day behind, changing the night clouds from deep purple to mauve edged with gold. In contrast to the numbness, he began to experience a slow surge of euphoria, his senses keying to a drug-high appreciation of existence itself—the chittering of birds, rumbling surf, squealing seagulls, the distant whine of a two-cycle outboard engine. The anger, the desire for revenge, the bloodlust, it all evaporated in a comfortable blanket of half-awake wellbeing.
 

Ana looked the worse for wear in her grubby jeans and shirt, her hair having fallen out of the clip. Nevertheless, she had about her an aura of self-possession, radiating an inner dignity he couldn’t define. He felt a stab of sympathy, of compassion. She hadn’t wanted this, only to get away from Helmut and out of Mexico. On the other hand, he hadn’t wanted her, either. She had done nothing but complicate his life with her presence. Once again he reminded himself to be careful; a woman could bring a man down faster than a heat-seeking missile.
 

“Morning,” he said, his waking voice gravelly. “I don’t suppose you put the coffee on?”

Ana started, emerging from her own reverie. She watched as he stood and stretched, scanning the terrain through the brush, first checking out the car, which looked to be okay, then the surrounding landscape. While there were no mountains in the immediate vicinity, it was rougher country than he had judged the night before, rockier, hillier.
 

Beyond the breakers a few fishing boats were visible, little more than silhouettes against the leaden sea, the foam on the breaking surf tinted amber in the first light. Several boogie boarders were already catching waves off the point. To the far right, two boats were tied up at a primitive pier near a cluster of thatched huts on stilts. Several hundred yards to the left, what looked like a cluster of cabanas lay half-hidden in a thicket of palms and jungle undergrowth.
 

He brushed sand from his clothes. “You get some
z’
s?
 

“I did. You?”

He nodded, a little wobbly, muscles stiff from the heavy sleep.

Ana stood and picked up the towel she had slept on and shook it out. In the pale light he saw a troubled look in her eyes that may have been there last night, visible now in the first light.

“Not much longer,” he said. “We get to Oaxaca, you can grab a flight out of here.”

“I have this terrible feeling,” she said, her eyes shifting a little. “Like something bad is about to happen.”

Other than the sense of wellbeing he had so briefly delighted in on waking, he too had been plagued with a sense of impending doom every since leaving Puerto Escondido. He wondered if the diamonds were telegraphing their own warnings of a ruinous end. But no, it was only normal; anybody would be spooked, carrying seven hundred and sixty-some-odd thousand dollars in his spare tire, a fortune in gems in an army surplus pouch, and a bunch of psychos on your tail. Not to mention a woman underfoot that he didn’t know what to do with.
 

“Breakfast,” he said, shaking off the malevolent unease that had crept over him, that seemed to be working its way into the very marrow of his bones. He gestured toward the little cabanas to their left, clearly visible now in the jungle growth some three-hundred yards to their left. “Looks like some kind of sign down there. Rooms? A restaurant? Let’s check it out. See if we can hustle up some grub. A nice hot shower maybe.”
 

“Give me a minute.” She turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

He brushed sand off the tire and placed it behind the front seats. When Ana returned, he made his own trip into the brush, car keys safely in his pocket. Afterward, he drove them the short distance to the cabanas where a hand-lettered sign read: L
ODGING
. C
HEAP
. He took the tire out and rolled it before him.
 

“Okay,” Ana said. “That isn’t your everyday spare tire, is it. So, what’s up?”

“Your imagination mostly.”

“I hope you’re not dumb enough to be carrying drugs in that tire.”

He set it against his leg and turned to her, one arm sweeping outward in a broad arc. “Listen, friend, there’s a whole wide world out there. Please. Go. Be my guest.” He took the tire and continued on, following the path toward the cabanas.
 

A moment passed. Then he heard her padding softly behind.

HALF A DOZEN
trails led spokelike from the clearing around Sybil Delonious’s bungalow to as many individual cabanas.
 

They followed Sybil into one of the units, Ana sullenly bringing up the rear. The roof was palm, the walls organic-looking plaster—organic in the sense that none of the walls, inside or out, were plumb, no true verticals or horizontals, but sweeping curves lavishly imbedded with Mexican tiles, seashells, bits of colored glass.
 

A warp of mosquito netting sagged from a wooden framework suspended above a bunk bed. A sink hung on an off-kilter wall alongside a tiny shower stall. The plumbing fed from a fifty-five-gallon barrel mounted in the roof above. The only other furnishing consisted of a board laid across cinder blocks, everything crowded into a space one could hardly turn around in. The air was heavy with humidity, the smell of rot and mildew.

“Soap on the saucer there, towels on the pegs,” said Sybil Delonious. A stringy sun-crackled woman in her mid-seventies, she was barefoot in a transparent Indian-print skirt and a lack of underclothes that left little to the imagination. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a bandanna tied Willie Nelson style around a mane of wildly flowing white hair.”Oh. That’s twenty-five pesos,” she added.

“You run this place by yourself?” Ana asked.

“Mostly. Not that I’m overwhelmed with guests.”

“It’s, uh, interesting,” Ana said.

“Yeah, I wandered off down here with my hippie boyfriend when I was seventeen. But then I took up with a local fisherman before I lost my looks.”
 

Robert handed her a twenty.

“Now hon, you know I don’t have change for that.”

He waved her off. “Forget it.”

“Well, thanks. You’re a sweetheart.”

Robert grinned a little. “This would be a hell of room to wake up in if you’d had a little too much to drink.”

“That’s Huey’s doing. He thought he was an artist.” Sybil laughed, glancing occasionally at the tire propped against Robert’s leg. “When Emilio moved in, Huey went back to San Francisco to find himself. That’s what we did in those days, ran off to other places to find ourselves. That, while trying to leave our old selves behind.” Sybil laughed again, obviously enjoying the telling of her own story.

“Any chance of getting a bite to eat around here?” Robert asked.

“Depends. There are a couple of joints on around the bend toward Puerto Angel. Or, if you’re not particular, I can cut up some fruit. I made chicken tamales last night—if you don’t mind tamales for breakfast, that is.”

“Sounds good. We’ll shower and come back to your place. How’s that?”

Sybil smiled, impish. “Shower? Mm–hmm. Listen, you don’t need to try and fool me. I know what you’re going to do.”

Ana’s color rose a little.

Sybil winked. “You’ll be banging the slats out of that bed before I get out the door good.”

“We’ll try not to wreck the furniture,” Robert said without inflection.

Sybil paused in the doorway. “Tell me, is there something I don’t know?”

Robert studied her, guarded. “Like what?”
 

“Well, here I’ve been thinking I knew all there was to know about the birds and bees, but, frankly, I can’t imagine what you intend to do with that tire. Just how does that fit in?”

Robert let go a breath. “Fetish. You know.”

“Really?” Sybil brightened with curiosity, looking one to the other. “Which one of you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to embarrass her by saying.”

A further flush tinted Ana’s cheeks.

“Well,” said Sybil, a little satisfied shake of her head, “that’s a new one on me.” She turned and slipped out through the doorway.

Ana gave Robert a long, hard look.

“What?” he said innocently.
 

She studied him a moment longer, then looked back where Sybil had disappeared. “She’s, uh, interesting.”
 

“A little repressed, though.”

Ana crossed her arms, her gaze following his to the shower stall. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage this,” she said.

“No? What, you don’t think there’s room in that shower for both of us?”

She watched him levelly, waiting.

He raised one eyebrow. “I bet Sybil could figure it out.”

“Sybil might, but Ana’s ain’t.”

“Okay,” he said in mock disappointment, “I’ll just sit here on the bed and kill time until you’re finished.”

“How about we toss a coin to see who goes first and who waits outside?”
 

“Well,” he said, “if you’re going to be unreasonable, then you go ahead.” He ducked out through the misshapen doorway. “Take your time,” he called over his shoulder. “And take it easy with that tire.”
 

He passed Sybil’s bungalow and came to the clearing where the car was parked.
 

After checking the oil and water, he stood leaning against the hood in the gathering heat, idly watching the boogie boarders and fishing boats in the distance, sunlight dazzling on the water.

There was no way Ana could leave the cabana without him seeing her—the sea on the other side, he on this. The tire and the money weighed at least forty pounds, so she wasn’t going anywhere with that.

Truth be told, he was torn—sympathetic on one hand, bummed on the other. She was always underfoot, always requiring attention, always assuming she had a say in things. On the other hand, he believed she had leveled with him about Helmut and his two psychos, even mentioning the guy she knew as Flax. Well, she would be out of his hair soon enough. The thought left him a little unsettled.

When he returned, Ana looked rejuvenated. And oddly alluring—something about her wet naked footprints on the tiled floor…a few beads of water still clinging to the fine hairs at her temples. He had an urge to cup his hands around her waist, fingertips in the shower-damp crease darkening the spine of her shirt.
 

“I’ll see if I can help your hippie girlfriend while you shower,” she said, avoiding eye contact, as if reading his mind. She spread her towel over the bench and went out, chin up, aloof, pulling her hair back, clipping it in place. He felt another stirring, watching her butt in her jeans, the two compact halves shifting against each other as she limped from sight.
 

He showered in a thin spray of tepid water—a far cry from the raging hot deluge he had envisioned earlier. But better than nothing. Refreshed and freed from the dregs of sleep, he dressed, then carried the tire through the undergrowth to Sybil’s bungalow.
 

Near Sybil’s cabana stood a ramshackle corrugated-tin roof, similar to a standalone carport. Bunches of onions and garlic hung from the underside. A six-foot-high pile of coconut shells stood out to one side. Sybil had a bed of coals going inside a stove made from the bottom half of a metal barrel resting on cinderblocks, a small opening cut out of its front, its open top overlaid with a piece of sheet metal. She turned leaf-wrapped tamales and sliced plantains on the surface with a metal spatula. Nearby, a goat nosed an old dish-shaped hubcap through the sand. A few chickens pecked about.
 

Pointedly ignoring him, Ana cut slices of mango into a bowl on an enameled tabletop advertising Corona beer. Two mismatched plastic plates and flatware waited near a bowl of limes and plantains.
 

“Anything I can do here?” he asked.

“You can eat.” Sybil took one of the plates, shoveled three packets onto it, then three on the other for Ana.

Robert drew one of the four chairs out for Ana, then took a seat himself.

“Looks like you got yourself a gentleman here,” said Sybil with her knowing smile.

“Smells good,” Ana said curtly, ignoring Robert.
 

“Those tamales are wrapped in corn shucks,” Sybil said, “and no, you don’t eat them.”

“This is very good of you,” Robert said.

“We used to have eggs, but those prissy-ass chickens went on strike. It’s that damn rooster, you know? The chickens, they’re not happy with him.” She gave Robert a mischievous look. “You’ve got to keep your chickens happy if you want to get your eggs.” She lifted an old-fashioned coffeepot off the sheet iron and poured into blue-enameled tin cups. “That’s hot,” she warned.
 

They drank the coffee with the tamales, fried plantains and sliced mangos squeezed over with lime juice.
 

When they finished, Ana raked their scraps into the hubcap for the goat.