The Dogs of Mexico (28 page)

“Señor,” the man said, gesturing at the Bible. “You are a child of God?” He removed their drinks from a round metal tray and set them on the table.
 

Robert casually hung one arm over the back of his chair, his hand near the .380 under his blazer. “A child of God, yes, in the sense that we all are.”

The waiter straightened, holding the tray against his chest. He had quick eyes and pronounced laugh lines fanning out over high cheekbones. “I believe it was Karl Marx who said Religion is the opiate of the people.”

“Karl Marx. Mm–hmm. And you, you’re a communist?”

The man bowed slightly. “I am your waiter, señor Valdez.”

Robert nodded. “Please, sit down.”

“Señor, waiters do not sit with the guests. It is not done.”

“Very well. But before we make any trade-offs here, I have a few questions.”

Ana stared, shifted in her chair.

Valdez nodded. “We cannot talk here. Please, if you will follow me?”

“Follow you where?”

“The kitchen. There we may talk freely.”

Robert considered only a moment, then stood and scooped up the Bible. It was a considered risk, but he had his .380, and Valdez wasn’t likely to pull anything in such a public place.

Valdez bowed to Ana. “Señorita?
If you would be so kind?”
 

She glanced at Robert, a glimmer of fear. They left their drinks. The other waiters watched as they followed Valdez back, entering the kitchen against a wave of humid heat smelling of spices, grilled meat, and something he couldn’t identify.
 

Two women bent over tubs of sudsy water. A chef and two assistants tended copper skillets and cast-iron pots on a very long and very old black-iron range. An endless assortment of cookware hung from overhead racks. A dozen headless chickens lay sprawled along a stone countertop. Their curled yellow feet reminded Robert of the beggar’s uplifted hand back in Mexico City.
 

Clasping the serving tray to his chest, Valdez seated them at an old Formica-and-chrome table some distance from the kitchen workers. On the table were a rubber-banded deck of playing cards and a jar lid of stubbed-out cigarette butts. Bible in hand, Robert seated Ana then himself.

Their original waiter appeared with a bottle of Don Julio Añejo, a pitcher of sangrita and six small liqueur glasses on a tray. They waited in silence as he poured three glasses of each, cleared the cigarette butts and cards from the table, and left.
 

Valdez held the serving tray flat to his chest with one hand and lifted his drink to Ana with the other.
 

“Señorita,” he said, “to your great beauty and eternal good health.” Valdez took a sip of tequila and then a sip of sangrita—a fifty-fifty mix of orange and tomato juice with a shot of hot chili sauce. Robert sipped his in turn. Ana barely touched hers, but set the glass back on the table and locked her hands in her lap.
 

A boy of around twelve entered the kitchen. He gave Robert and Ana a cursory glance, then took a butcher knife and began to sharpen it, turning the crank on an old-fashioned sandstone wheel mounted in a wooden frame.

Valdez eyed Robert across the table. “So. If I may ask, how is it you have the photos?”

“A guy by the name of Soffit said you were willing to pay twenty grand for them. Seems he didn’t have time to deliver them himself.”

A hint of humor gathered in the pronounced lines around Valdez’s eyes. “Ah, yes. I think he is in a big hurry to get out of Dodge, eh?”
 

Robert allowed himself a small smile. From Valdez’s adept English and his casual use of the ‘get out of Dodge’ cliché, he had clearly spent time in the States.
 

“This Soffit of yours,” said Valdez, “he gets more than he bargained for. Eduardo was to deliver the photographs to me. Soffit did not know this when he killed him and assumed his identity.”

Valdez was baiting him, seeing what he knew, and while Robert tried not to show surprise, his mind was churning: if Soffit had killed the original courier, then of course Fowler was behind it. And the name itself—
Eduardo
—led to disturbing conclusions as both Robert and Fowler had been associated with an Eduardo Agustino in their early days. If Robert remembered correctly, Eduardo was somewhere in the Mideast.
 

Robert was aware of Ana, her gaze burning on him.

“I’m not interested in your circle of friends,” Robert said. “But now that you bring it up, who’re you working for?”

“Working for? I am in the import-export business, much as you are in the boat business.”

Robert studied him. “You’re not regular police or military. So let me guess. Interpol?”
 

Valdez shrugged. “The photos are of high-ranking al Qaeda members and will be turned over to the proper authorities.”

“Good. I can live with that.”

The boy began opening up the chickens with the knife, digging the intestines out of the body cavities. He cut away the hearts, livers, and gizzards and pitched them into a cauldron of water. He slopped the entrails into a galvanized tub.

Valdez watched Robert, his smile humorless now. “You have been inactive for quite a long time. Either that, or flying well below the international radar.”

“Inactive?”

“Come, now. The question is, are you here in an official capacity, or are you freelancing?”
 

The air filled with the smell of scalded feathers as the boy, catching the chickens by their feet, plunged their carcasses up and down in a tub of boiling water and then laid them steaming back on the countertop.

 
“You were acquainted with this Eduardo Agustino,” Valdez continued. “Or perhaps you knew him as Abda Mufti?”

Again, Robert kept his surprise in check.

Valdez turned to Ana. “And you, señorita, you were traveling with Helmut Heinrich at the time of Soffit’s death.”
 

She looked at Valdez, her own surprise plainly visible.
 

“You know Helmut?” Robert said. “How about the two guys in a white Chevy? Who’re they?”

Valdez frowned. “Perhaps you are not a professional after all.”

“A professional?”

“A professional knows who wants to kill him. And why.”

“I told you. I sell boats. This other crap, that’s between you and your boys, or whoever.”

“So. We are back to that.” Valdez peeled the tray away from his chest. Ana sat back, a thin breathy noise escaping her as Valdez took a small-caliber pistol from a breakaway holster attached to the underside. Valdez scooped the Bible from the table with his free hand. “Please forgive me, but I must take the photos.”
 

Robert looked at the pistol. “You know what? I’ve got one of those. Bigger than that little pooty-popper, too. I bet we could shoot this place to pieces. Probably kill each other in the process. Yes, sir. Right here in the most elegant hotel in Oaxaca. Boy, oh, boy. That’d make the evening news, wouldn’t it?”
 

Ana went pale.
 

Valdez spoke to the boy in Spanish. The boy rinsed his hands, dried them on a towel, then took a rubber-banded cigarillo box from a bin and brought it to Valdez.
 

“The money, as agreed,” Valdez said. He glanced at Ana. “I hope you will forgive this inhospitality, señorita but, please, I cannot take chances with the situation so uncertain.”

“Robert,” she mumbled, “p–please, let’s just go.”

Robert glanced around the humid kitchen. Everyone seemed to be ignoring the fact that Valdez was holding a pistol on him.
 

“Soffit was a stringer,” Valdez continued. “Perhaps someone knew Eduardo had the diamonds and sent Soffit to take them? What do you think of this scenario?”

“Wait a minute,” Ana interrupted, looking from one to the other. “What’s this about diamonds?”

Valdez shrugged. “Surely you know Eduardo and the terrorists robbed a De Beers courier? They got away with millions of dollars in diamonds.”

Robert sighed. “And you think Soffit murdered Eduardo for the diamonds. Yeah. We get it.”

“But—” Valdez lifted one finger in admonition— “unknown to Soffit, the terrorists sold the diamonds. This I think you do not know.”

Again Robert struggled not to react.

“Yes. You are surprised. Eh?”

“So? What does that have to do with me?”
 

Ana’s entire demeanor had altered. She sat tensely erect, looking at one, then the other.
 

“Perhaps nothing,” said Valdez by reply. “Perhaps this is merely rumor. It is a mystery how, if the terrorists sold the diamonds, another rumor suggest they are being smuggled into the US. This is the mystery, eh? I had hoped you might tell me?”

“All I’m sure of is that I brought you the photos. That, and I can use twenty grand.”

Valdez slid the cigarillo box across the table to Robert. “I thought you should know.”

Robert looked at the box, then at Valdez. “Open it,” he said.

Valdez paused, a hint of merriment tweaking the laugh lines around his eyes. “The good spy, he is always suspicious.” Valdez snapped the rubber band off and flipped the lid back to expose two packets of paper-banded hundred-dollar bills.
 

“Turn it over. Dump the money on the table.”

Valdez smiled openly, at ease now as he emptied the money out.

“I guess I can trust that there’s twenty grand here,” Robert said. “An honest man like yourself.”

“Yes. I am…what you call? A square shooter.”

Robert replaced the bills and stuffed the cigarillo box in the document case alongside the
DVD
projector.
 

He smiled. “One can’t be too careful when dealing with spies and rumormongers, can one.” Valdez snapped to attention with the pistol as Robert reached inside his jacket. Robert paused, then slowly removed an envelope. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he placed it on the table before Valdez. “Me too. A square shooter.”

Valdez’s gaze shifted from the envelope to the Bible and back to Robert.
 

“Like you say, a professional shouldn’t make assumptions,” Robert said.

Valdez laughed aloud, flushed but obviously a good sport as he dumped the Ektachromes out and held them up to the light, at ease again. “Ah, yes, he breathed softly. Good. Very good.”

The boy hung the chickens up by their feet on hooks. He plucked steamy feathers into the tub along with the guts, and then tossed the clean-picked carcasses into a second tub, seemingly oblivious as Valdez tucked the pistol inside his vest and stood up from the table.
 

“Come,” Valdez said. “We shall celebrate. A nice chicken mole perhaps?”

Robert took his handkerchief out and wiped his forehead. He picked up the Bible and the document case. “I think we’ll call it a night if you don’t mind.”

“Understandably. Another time perhaps.”

“Señor Valdez,” Ana said tersely, “what do you know of Helmut, the man I was traveling with?”

Valdez observed her closely, critically perhaps. “Very little, señorita.
Very little. It seems he was once a benefactor of many people.”

“But there must be something. Otherwise, why do you know of him at all?”

“Ah, as they say, we are a small community.”

“Helmut kept an eye on the political climate here in Mexico and Central America,” she said, “but he’s hardly a James Bond.”

“I’m told he did much good for the people before…” Valdez trailed off, lifted his hands and let them fall with a sigh.

“Before what?” Ana persisted.

“We do not know about señor Helmut. It is as if he has devoted himself to the spirits of alcohol rather than the spirits of humanity. Ah, señorita, who knows of these things if not you, eh?”

Valdez bowed, gesturing outward with a sweep of his hand, suggesting they were free to leave.
 

The boy poured a cupful of salt on the countertop and began scrubbing it down. Killing bacteria. Purifying.

30

A Difference of Opinion

R
OBERT LED ANA
to a taxi in front of the Hotel Camino Real. “Downtown, Hotel Señoral,” he said to the driver, ushering Ana into the backseat. She jerked her arm free, glaring as he slid in after.
 

He ignored her, watching through the rear window to make sure they weren’t being followed.
 

Ana stared straight ahead, eyes smoldering.
 

“How about that,” he said when they were safely underway. “We’ve struck a blow for the free world. You and me. Maybe we should eat something. Celebrate. Except chicken. I can do without chicken for a while.”

Ana leaned forward. “Take me back to the Hotel Principal,” she said to the driver.

“Oh no you don’t,” Robert said.
 

“Oh yes I do! I’m getting away from you once and for all!”

“Not just yet you’re not. Hotel Señoral,” he said again to the driver.
 

 
They rode in silence until the taxi pulled to a stop in front of the Señoral.
Robert paid and they got out and stood among the crowds milling about on the sidewalks. He carried the document case containing the canister, the Bible, and the cigarillo box slung over his shoulder.
 

Ana glared. “What’re we doing here?”

“Making sure no one is following us back to our hotel,” he said, looking up and down the street.
 

A group of children in grotesque masks hovered nearby. They carried cardboard skeletons on sticks with strings that made their arms and legs dance. Three adult figures in black shrouds stood a short distance back. They wore skull-masks, tiny lights winking in black eye sockets.

 
“The problem with you,” Ana said, “is you can’t open your mouth without a lie jumping out.”

“Excuse me?”

A ragged little girl of seven or eight, carrying a few packs of gum in a shoebox, appeared at Robert’s side, her paper mask tilted to the top of her head, watching him with big imploring eyes. “Chicle? Fifty cent?” More beggar children hovered nearby. The three death figures lurked in the background.