The Dogs of Mexico (40 page)

THEY ENTERED THE
restaurant on the top floor at a little after seven. Robert carried the aluminum case. He had flattened the flared edges around the bullet hole so it was hardly noticeable.
 

The maître d’ gave them a second look, then took up a coffee pot and led them through the main dining room into a smaller breakfast room adjacent to an outdoor terrace overlooking the plaza below. A waiter sat at a table near the breakfast room entrance, reading a newspaper.

“Well,” Robert said, “here we are. Back in Mexico City.”
 

“And the sooner we get out the better.”

He smiled, pleased that she was in better spirits. Even so, her gaze drifted from time to time, her expression remote.
 

The waiter put his newspaper down and came to their table. They ordered scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with marmalade. The waiter jotted on his pad and left.
 

Robert eyed Ana, a sly smile. “You know that first morning when we met and you got up and walked out on Helmut? I knew then you were the woman for me.”

She frowned. “You mean at the Hotel Hidalgo?”

“Yep. Over breakfast. I said to myself, Robert, that’s the woman for you.”

She studied him, taking measure. “You can’t love someone for something like that, walking out.”

“Oh, it wasn’t the walking out. It was the walk itself. Like two pigs in a tow sack. That did it. I was a goner.”

A smile touched at the corners of her mouth. “Excuse me? Two pigs in a tow sack?”

He leaned toward her in mock seriousness. “A good eight-and-a-half. Shoot, I don’t know, maybe nine.”

Ana laid her fork down and sat up straight. She looked at him down along her nose, eyes green, aloof. “Eight-and-a-half? Nine?”

“If you can milk cows and slop hogs you might be just the woman I’m looking for.”

Her smile grew a little. “You’re incorrigible. You know that?”

Robert sighed dramatically. “You bring out the romantic in me.”

The waiter brought their breakfast, poured more coffee and left. Noise reached up from the square seven floors below.
 

Ana paused, fork in hand, sobering. “Do you think he killed Helmut?”

Robert was surprised by the abruptness of the question. “You want to know what I think? Or do you want me to say what I think you want to hear?”
 

“I don’t wish him dead,” she said quickly.

“I know that.”
 

She gazed into her plate. “Something happened to him. To his mind.”

The distant sound of car horns had begun to sound from down on the zócalo.
The maître d’ and the waiter went out on the terrace and stood looking down over the parapet.

“What are you thinking about so seriously?” Ana said, leaning back, arms folded under her breasts. He realized she had been watching him, distracted as he was, thinking about the dream again.
 

“I think I may have been less than fair with Tricia,” he said.
 

She looked at him in surprise. “Oh?”

“I wonder if she didn’t get rid of Nick’s things because it was too painful. He was no longer around, and she had to get rid of everything that reminded her of him. Including me.”

“That’s so sad,” Ana said. “Sad and not very good mental health, either.”

He looked at her, quizzical.

“We can’t ignore the tragedies in our lives. We have to face up and go on.” She smiled a little. “We can’t run off to the Peace Corps and we can’t hide out in Florida.”

He was encouraged, abstracted for a moment, taking delight in her presence, the ever-hopeful light in her eyes.

She waved one hand before his face, looking from beneath her brows. “Hello, hello? Anybody in there?”

He laughed self-consciously.
 

She touched his hand across the table. “Let’s go see what’s going on out there,” she said, nodding toward the terrace where more people had gathered, looking down on the zócalo
with its growing noise.
 

“Sure. Then let’s grab our things and haul our butts out of here.” He picked up the aluminum case and followed her toward the terrace. He glanced at the newspaper on the waiter’s table in passing, then stopped, jolted by the front-page photos—six head shots in full color—the same photos he and Ana had delivered to Valdez two nights before.
 

Ana turned, waiting.
 

“Damn,” he muttered.
 

She stepped back to see what had stopped him. “My god,” she whispered, her whole demeanor suddenly altered.

“Valdez must have gotten the photos out before they grabbed him,” Robert said.
 

A moment passed as she studied the paper. “You don’t want to hear this.”
 

“What?”

“The photos. They’re fake.”

Robert stared at the mug shots—disagreeable-looking men staring back. He looked at the headline and while his Spanish was minimal, he got the gist of it:
¡
F
OTOGRAFÍAS DE AL
Q
AEDA
F
ALSIFÍCADAS!
“False? That’s what they’re saying?”

“Worse. The photos have been digitally altered. The eyes, see the eyes? They belong to our President, Vice President, Secretary of State, the National Security Director. They’re saying US Intelligence is the butt of a terrorist joke.”

“But Eduardo smuggled those…” The words died on his lips. He realized Eduardo had been, finally, on the side of the terrorists.
 

“Eye-scan and facial-recognition experts detected the hoax immediately,” Ana said. “It isn’t known who leaked the photos to the press. A joint investigation is underway.”

“Eduardo… Damn, I thought he was a standup guy.”
 

“No, it says here that an Arab terrorist was responsible, Abda Mufti. He was murdered in Colombia, but authorities found documents at his home in Morocco— Wait a minute, you said Eduardo? Yes, apparently Abda Mufti was a double agent—” she read aloud
: “…also known as Eduardo Agustino, he is survived by his father, Juan Ventura Agustino, a prominent Mexican diplomat who resigned last night and could not be reached for comment. Eduardo’s mother is Lebanese and resides with Eduardo’s wife and two children in Morocco
. Oh, listen to this:
According to documents found on the premises, Eduardo regarded his father as a philandering infidel, an instrument of Western decadence.”
 

“Let’s take a quick look then clear out of here,” he said.

Ana followed him out onto the terrace where the maître d’, the waiter, and what appeared to be several college students, stood looking down on the zócalo.

Traffic had slowed around the square. There was nothing to be seen of the military now other than a handful of soldiers holding rank before the stilled flag. The mob, which had grown quite large, pulsed like a single live thing—surged forward, back, forward…

A cloud of birds swept in over the cathedral, then turned up and away as a company of soldiers in riot gear poured out of the palace on the double. The soldiers fanned out before the demonstrators, shields up, visors down.

“Let’s leave here, now,” Ana said.

He set the case between his feet, took out his wallet and shoved a handful of bills into the waiter’s hand.
 

The operator let them off on the third floor. The elevator door closed. They stepped across the hallway. Robert fit the key in the lock and swung the door back. Ana entered. He followed. Noise from the square
resounded through the room’s open casement window. Ana stopped. He stumbled into her. In the same moment the door handle was jerked out of his hand from behind. He whirled around. Froze.

42

Shot

R
OBERT COULD ONLY
watch, dumbfounded, as Helmut punched the door shut with a crutch anchored under his arm. In his other hand he held Soffit’s .45, cocked.
 

Duane Fowler sat across the room in the club chair, a handgun balanced on his knee. Robert and Ana’s belongings were scattered over the bed, on the floor.
 

“Drop the case,” Helmut shouted. “Turn to the wall. Your hands—put your hands on your head and turn to the wall!”
 

Ana stared, slack-jawed-pale.

Robert noted Helmut’s slurred speech, the “turn to der vall,” the crutch, the cast with its metal stirrup under his foot.
 

By contrast, Fowler appeared relaxed, at ease in the chair, his smile enigmatic. “Robert Bohnert, agent extraordinaire,” he said, affecting a note of cheerful camaraderie.

“Yeah, fancy meeting you here.”

“Hands on your head,” Helmut shouted, eyes bloodshot, clothes disheveled.
 

The moment Robert spotted the laptop at Fowler’s side, he realized his mistake: while he had field-stripped the .380, that hadn’t required removing the grips. “The gun,” he said. “That’s how you found us.”
 

Fowler smiled. “I was a bit concerned in case you skinny minnied it.” It wasn’t uncommon in a covert operation to replace regular grips with a thin piece of cardboard wrapped with electrical tape. A fraction thinner, a little easier to conceal—a skinny minnie
.

“What have you done with the container?” Helmut demanded.

“So,” Robert said, ignoring Helmut, “you had Soffit kill our old friend Eduardo rather than split the take with him.”

Fowler shrugged, indifferent. “This
old friend
, as you call him, was a terrorist. He suckered us from the beginning.”

“You didn’t know that at the time.”

“Don’t tell me you’re sympathetic with the son of a bitch?”

“Then you had Soffit killed in turn. Who took care of that for you? Old sausage ass here? The two fruitcakes?”
 

“The container,” Helmut said, brandishing the .45.
 

“Helmut,” Ana whispered hoarsely, “who
are
you?”

Robert addressed Helmut, mocking: “Der container. Ah, yes. Vell Helmut, I’ve got bad news about der little container.”

“What are you saying, bad news?”

“Tell me,” Robert said. “What was in that thing, really?”

Fowler’s smile slipped a little. His pistol tilted up. “Where is it?”

“Safely tucked away in the bosom of mother earth, way off down yonder in the wilds of Mexico.”

“You’re not that big a fool,” Fowler said, his eyes narrowed beyond their normal squint.
 

“If that canister was full of diamonds, then the joke’s on you. If not, well, I guess the joke’s still on you.”
 

Helmut gestured at the aluminum case in Robert’s hand. “Put the case down. Spread your feet. Then lift your shirt and lay your gun on the floor. Slowly!”

“You shoot that thing in here, they're going to hear it all over town.”

Helmut nodded toward the open casement window, a riotous din blaring in from the zócalo
. “
All of the noise? I don’t think anybody vill hear but you.”

Fowler looked on as Robert let the case down. A line had begun to worry its way across his forehead.
 

“The gun. Hand it over. Careful,” Helmut demanded.

Robert lifted his shirttail and picked the .380 from behind his belt with thumb and forefinger.
 

Helmut jerked the .45 at him. “Lay it on the floor.”

Robert did as ordered.
 

“Helmut,” Ana said, “you were never the man I once thought you were.”

“Kick it over here,” Helmut said.
 

With one foot, Robert sent the .380 sliding toward Helmut.
 

“I can’t believe how blind I’ve been,” Ana muttered.

“Kneel behind the case, Helmut ordered. “Turn it to me and open it.”
 

“Helmut, I already told you. We buried that canister along with your old buddy Geraldo off down there in the middle of nowhere Mexico.”

“Open it!”
 

Ana shook her head bitterly. “That was almost us down there, shot dead. I see now that that wouldn’t have mattered to you.”

Helmut turned on her. “Because of you I did not kill dot idiot when I had the opportunity. Because of you he shot me in der foot.”
 

Ana crossed her arms, defiant. “Because of you we were there in the first place.”
 

“So,” Robert said to Fowler, “your boy here hasn’t figured out that you’re going to kill him too?”

Fowler made what passed for a smile. “Mr. Heinrich and I have arrived at a satisfactory arrangement.”

“I bet. You’ve figured out by now that he’s pretty dense, right? How about it, Helmut? How much he pay you to kill Soffit?”

Helmut glanced at Ana. “I had nothing to do with that. I vas with you.”
 

“If you weren’t falling-on-your-ass drunk all the time, you’d see it for yourself. He’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill us all when we’re no longer useful.”

Helmut lifted the .45 toward Robert at arm’s length. “Open it! Now!” he shouted over the din from outside.

Helmut hobbled back a step as Robert laid the case over on the floor, unsnapped the clasps and lifted the lid—wall to wall with hundred-dollar bills. Helmut leaned forward in order to see.
 

Fowler stood out of the chair, his attention on the case. In the same moment, the sharp crack of a gunshot resounded through the window from outside. Instinctively, betraying his fearful mistrust of Fowler, Helmut spun and fired, the noise magnified in the room. Fowler slammed back against the wall, his expression struck with shock. A thin skid of blood followed him down the wall to a sitting position on the floor. The semiautomatic slipped from his hand. Helmut stared, momentarily mesmerized by his own knee-jerk reaction. In the same instant, Robert grabbed Helmut’s gun hand and kicked the crutch from under him. Helmut crumpled under Robert’s weight, struggling to turn the gun as Robert held onto it, simultaneously burying his elbow in Helmut’s neck just below his Adam’s apple. Robert locked his teeth in Helmut’s thumb joint and ground down until gristle popped and his mouth went hot with the brassy taste of blood. With a hoarse grunt, Helmut let go the gun, tore free of Robert’s grasp and tried to roll away. Robert caught him by the hair, jerked his head back and stomped hard on his bandaged foot. Helmut’s glasses flew off as he jackknifed on the floor. Robert scooped up the crutch, swung it over his head and brought it down like an axe, driving the curved shoulder piece into Helmut’s cast. Again and again. Helmut writhed under the blows with strangled cries. His cuff seeped red, pieces of plaster and gauze peppered the floor. Robert was only marginally aware of Ana, an airless choking noise escaping her.