The Dogs of Mexico (39 page)

Dusk had crept over the countryside, the landscape changed. Thousands of cacti rose, skylighted above barren hills, arms flailed up in black silhouette against the last red light, as if aghast at what was beheld of the world.
 

She slipped back into the dreamy underworld, falsely soothed—she thought, briefly reconsidering—by Robert’s arm around her; even babies found momentary comfort in the arms of strangers.

40

Reentry

R
OBERT ROUSED
HIMSELF
from the half-conscious world of fitful dreams. A few crumbling shacks rose up out of the night along either side of the highway and multiplied—mile upon mile—hovels of scrap tin, plastic sheeting, cardboard. Countless fires guttered among unfinished cinderblock walls. Dump dwellers scrabbled in the refuse. The stink of poverty seeped through the air conditioning as the bus rolled down out of the mountains into the outskirts of Mexico City.
 

He touched Ana’s arm. “Hey,” he said softly.
 

She snatched her hand back, waking with a start.

“We’re coming into the city. You might want to wake up.”

“Yes…thank you.” She looked out at the slums gliding past, shook her head, massaged her temples with her fingertips.
 

In another half hour the bus pulled into
TAPO
, the Central Camionera de Oriente on Calle Zaragoza with its smell of diesel fuel and sweating humanity. They watched through the windows for any police who might be standing by to intercept them. A couple of uniformed officers idled among the crowds, but they didn’t appear to be looking for anyone in particular. A clock on the wall read 10:10
p.m
.

They got off with their luggage and stood for a moment, disoriented in the pulsing mob.
 

“I think we have to go to the north station for the bus to Acuña,” Ana said.

“Think you can handle another twenty-four hours on a bus?”

She hesitated. “Maybe we should stay here tonight. Leave in the morning?”

“I buy that. Get some food. A hot shower. A little sleep.”
 

“We have to pass through the historic district to get to the north station. We could stay at the Hotel Hidalgo, where we met?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“Never enter by the same door you leave.”

“Okay, how about the Majestic? It’s an old hotel, right on the zócalo. Actually, it’s less than a dozen blocks from the Hidalgo. Is that too close for you?”

“You ever stayed there?”

“No, but it’s supposed to be old-world nice.”

“I don’t want to stay any place Helmut might consider.”

She looked at him, quizzical.
 

“Truthfully,” he said, “I doubt he’s still alive, but we’re not taking any chances.”

She seemed to think that over. “We could go ahead and make reservations for tomorrow, get our tickets now?”

“If they start looking for us, I’d rather not have any paper trails.”

She watched him, a touch of sadness in her smile. “The good spook.”

Outside, a vendor wrapped pork tamales and two ears of steamed corn in foil, placed them in a plastic bag and then in a brown paper bag. Robert ordered a second bag of cubed melon.
 

A Toyota taxi with a silhouette of an airliner on the door let them out at the Hotel Majestic on the corner of Madero and the city’s historic main square. The Majestic stood directly across from the National Palace and at a right angle to the Great Metropolitan Cathedral on the left.
 

The Majestic’s lobby was small and old-world elegant—glass, bronze, carved wood. A couple of brass-tacked leather sofas nestled among leafy plants in big terracotta pots. A gurgling stone fountain built into the rear wall.
 

He checked them in using the Edmond Haywood credentials. The elevator operator rose from her bench and took them up to the third floor, to a room facing the National Palace across the plaza. The rooms were laid out in a horseshoe configuration around an atrium, open from the second floor mezzanine to the sixth. The walkway around the mezzanine was fairly wide, cordoned off with an ornate parapet dripping with vines and flowers.
 

The bed covers were neatly turned, a chocolate mint on each pillow alongside cheerful table lamps. He sat in a club chair, lay his head back and closed his eyes while Ana showered.
 

He roused himself when she came out of the bathroom in her pajamas.
 

“The melon looks good,” she said.

“You go ahead and eat. Don’t wait for me.” He pulled the bathroom door closed and opened his shaving kit. He looked at Mickey’s finger, at the toilet. Again he told himself it was only a bit of inert matter. But Mickey ballooned in his mental vision, her big, open-mouthed gum-chewing smile, watching, seeing what he would do. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not like the old days. He had gone soft all right.
 

He showered and shaved, brushed his teeth and put on pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.

Ana waited in the chair at the foot of the bed, the clothes she planned to wash folded on her lap.
 

“You didn’t eat much,” he said.
 

“I did. It was good, too.”
 

While Ana rinsed clothes in the sink, he ate a little, then went in and took over the laundry from her. He wrung the excess water out and hung the clothes over the shower rod.
 

Ana followed him back in and sat on the bed, one of the pillows across her lap. He sat across from her in the upholstered chair. “Tired?”
 

“Exhausted. You are too, aren’t you?”

“What a day. All this is going to take some time.”
 

“Time?”

“To get over. To digest and then get over.”

“A little time,” she repeated vaguely. She lay down on the bed, curled around the pillow in a fetal position.

“That’s a lovely gown,” he said of her T-shirt.
 

She looked back over her shoulder at him.

“Victoria’s Secret, eat your heart out.” For a moment, he wondered whether she was about to smile. Or about to cry. She lay down again and closed her eyes.
 

“You want to know what I think?” she said after a moment, opening her eyes again, looking at him.

He braced himself. “Probably not. But you’re going to tell me anyway. Right?”

“I think we should find some nice little Mexican town. Stay down here for a while.”

He studied her, waiting.

“Just for a while,” she said. “San Miguel de Allende. I know people there.”

“Stay down here a while?”

“I like your story about winning the money in a poker game.”

“So?”

“So I’m not crazy about walking it back across the border. What if we invest it in good, solid stocks here in Mexico?”

“You’re serious.”

“It might not even be something we want to do. I’m just saying we’ve been through a lot, and we don’t want to make any foolish decisions on the rebound. Why don’t we take a few days, relax and think it out?”

He smiled a little. “You want to know what I think?”

She drew her shoulders up. “Probably not. But you’re going to tell me anyway. Right?”

“I think that’s a pretty good idea.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little. She closed her eyes again, a faint smile. “You know, you may be nicer than you let on.”
 

He watched her, curled around the pillow, falling childlike into sleep. He was moved in some way he couldn’t explain. Nevertheless, while he might be moved to some tenderness of feeling, that in itself was laden with vulnerability. It was susceptibility to emotion that did a person in. Emotion, the root of all his pain: Tricia, Nick, even the affection he had developed for Mickey… He shook the feeling off. Screw it. He still intended to get Duane Fowler. He just had to figure out how.
 

Obviously Helmut had received the smallpox news from Fowler, so Fowler wouldn’t be expecting the diamonds. Neither Fowler or Helmut—if Helmut was still alive—knew Geraldo was dead, or had any idea as to his and Ana’s whereabouts, or that of the canister. If Helmut was dead, then Fowler would be in the dark on everything.
 

Robert calculated that he and Ana still had roughly seven hundred and eighty thousand in cash, including the twenty grand from Valdez, give or take a grand or two. No one knew about that money. He and Ana could get a new start. If that’s what he decided to do.

His gaze wandered to the painting above the headboard. Rather large, it was a painting of their room, representational except for a dead flower in a terracotta pot suspended in space against a colorless sky in the open window. Unnoticed in the painting until now was a thin, black-snouted dog, his head visible just above the foot of the bed, looking back over the coverlet.

Robert shifted his gaze back to Ana. She lay on the bed, silent, watching him over her shoulder.

41

Civil Disobedience

R
OBERT MINGLED WITH
a crowd in some large cavernous room. He felt over his pockets. I’ve lost my wallet, he said. Then, attempting to make light of it: Don’t leave without me or I’ll be homeless. He went out, trying to recall where he had been that day, where he might have left the wallet. He entered an establishment, something like a restaurant, where several people were gathered around a large table. He saw that Tricia and Stanford were at the table. You’ve lost your wallet, haven’t you, Stanford said smugly. Before Robert could answer, Tricia laid it on the table near her purse. He recalled that he had quite a bit of money in the wallet—close to a thousand dollars. He checked and saw that the money was still there. He hesitated, trying to determine what would be an appropriate reward. He picked out a ten-dollar bill. I hope you’ll accept this as a token of appreciation, he said. Everyone began to laugh, everyone but Tricia. She looked at him, solemn, an expression of profound sadness.
 

HE WOKE TO
the sounds of drums beating up from the zócalo outside their window
.
It was a military beat, a mono
dum dum—de-dum de-dum
repeated over and over, then trumpets screaming in.
 

Ana raised herself on one elbow as he got up and went to the bathroom. He returned to the window, drew back the shutters and cranked open the casement window.
 

Across the way a hundred or more soldiers stood at attention in front of the National Palace. The drum corps beat out the repetitive
dum dum—de-dum-de-dum,
louder with the window open, as ten soldiers in white helmets stepped forward in a side-slipping goose-step shuffle, moving to the beat while carrying the national flag of Mexico rolled under their arm like a snake. The first soldier climbed a short set of steps and snapped the flag to the line on the flagpole. The men let go as the flag unfurled, trumpets screaming as it leaped upward, its emblem of an eagle on a cactus with a serpent in its mouth billowing out on the sodden air.
 

The plaza had filled with venders—Indians laying out their wares on the sidewalk and along the iron fence before the Great Cathedral, its towering facade black against the dawn. Early morning devotees drifted through the gate and disappeared inside. Taxis roared counterclockwise around the square, headlights trailing comet streaks.

Ana stepped over, took a quick look and then carried her things into the bathroom.

The dream kept playing in his mind. He couldn’t shake it. Why had he been so cheap? Ten dollars? It was only a dream but he felt shamed.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
, the prospect of getting out of Mexico City had them in good spirits. They had showered again. The swelling around Ana’s eyes had gone down, though the bruises were darker. He put a fresh bandage on her bite-wound and a band-aid on the little gash in her hairline. Again she fixed the scarf on her head do-rag style.
 

She paused, leaning against the door facing into the bathroom, watching him shave.

“What?” he said, being careful of his own tender bruises.

“Something sexy about watching a man shave,” she said.

“Cheap entertainment.” He rinsed the razor, washed his face and dried carefully on the towel. “Ready?”

“I travel light.”

“I was thinking, when we get back to the states let’s take a few days, go up to the Maine Coast. What do you say?”

“Maine?”

“Some place where they never heard of tortillas.”

She brightened a little. “Lobsters and fishing boats? Yes, I’d like that.” She gave him a quizzical look. “You no longer want to look into investing the money?”

“Sure. We’ll get all of that out of the way, take our time. There’s no rush on getting to Maine.”

She smiled, relaxing again.

“Give me a minute in here,” he said. “Then we’ll grab some breakfast.”

She stepped out and pulled the door closed. He took Mickey’s finger from his shaving kit. He had made up his mind to drop it in one of the trash receptacles on the street and forget it. Not great but better than the toilet. He put the Ziploc in his jacket pocket, flushed the john and washed his hands.

When he came out, Ana was standing before the casement window, frowning out on the plaza. “Something’s going on out there,” she said.

He stepped over for a look. The plaza was a soft misty gray
,
the globes of the ornate streetlights like full moons against the dark silhouettes of the cathedral and the National Palace against the dawn. Soldiers stood in file on the plaza, white helmets luminous in the cheerless light.
 

A small crowd had gathered nearby. A few individuals carried hand-lettered placards.

“Street vendors,” Ana said. “The government has been trying to clear the streets here in the historic district.”

The soldiers held rank. The great flag of Mexico hung limp in the air. Pedestrians stopped to watch the demonstrators. A few trickled across the plaza and fell in with them.