The Dogs of Mexico (41 page)

Flailing, Helmut lunged up, staggered and fell back against the window. Robert shoved the crutch between Helmut’s forearms, set the curved handle under his chin, and drove his head back into the window’s iron grille with a resounding
clang
. Helmut’s legs buckled and he sank to the floor.

Ana gasped, a muffled scream choked in her throat.
 

Fowler sat, his back against the wall, legs splayed, the semiautomatic on the floor alongside. He watched Robert, one bloody hand clamped to his side, breathing heavily.

Robert scooped up the .380 and cocked it. He leaned to one side and spat out the taste of blood. “Ana,” he said, “get these bags packed.”

She stared dumbly at the carnage. A tremor wracked her body. Then, as if by sheer force of will, she began gathering their things into the carry-ons.

Robert knelt beside Fowler. “How bad are you?”

Fowler squinted at him, an edge of uncertainty. “I–I need a doctor.”

Robert switched hands with the .380 and pulled the lapel of Fowler’s blazer aside. Fowler grunted as Robert pried his fingers from over the wound and undid a couple of shirt buttons.
 

“A doctor,” Fowler breathed.
 

“I’m ready,” Ana said. She set the carry-ons down and snapped the lid shut on the aluminum case.
 

“Make sure you get everything.”
 

“W–what about them?” she said of Helmut and Fowler. “We can’t just—”

“Help me downstairs,” Fowler said. “I–I’ll say the soldiers accidentally shot me through…through the window.”

Robert wiped Fowler’s blood from his own hand onto Fowler’s pant leg, then switched the .380 back to his right hand and pressed the muzzle against Fowler’s forehead. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to need any doctors.”

“Oh God!” Ana dropped her bag and placed both hands over her mouth. “Please, you’re not going to…”

“You go on. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Robert,
please
…”
 

“Bohnert,” Fowler said, “you know I wasn’t going to kill you. I–I could never do that…”

“Ana, take the stairs. I’ll be right down.”
 

She turned away, shoulders hunched, hands clamped over her ears. “Robert!
Please
!” She began to sob brokenly.

Robert looked hard into Fowler’s eyes. “You just saved me the trouble of having to track you down.”

Fowler watched him, fear growing in his eyes.

“You know why I’m killing you? Because, you sorry-ass son of a bitch, you refused to sign off on my leave when my life was falling apart.”

Fowler stared. “Wh–what’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Tricia going to pieces, and you, you refused to sign off on a hardship leave so I could be with her. You cost me everything that ever mattered.”

“You’re crazy…”

“The diamonds, they never meant that much to me. But to take them from you, to ruin you, that meant everything.” He cupped his left hand palm forward just behind the .380
to protect himself from blowback.
 

Fowler’s eyes filled with raw fear. “Listen, Bohnert, th–that was a paperwork glitch…”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword—”

Fowler clenched his teeth, eyes narrowed in dread.

“—but that’s the difference between you and me.” Robert slowly let the hammer down on the .380 and stood up. He himself was surprised…after all his dreams of revenge…

Fowler’s mouth worked, soundless as a fish. His khakis darkened around the crotch, pissing his pants.

“I–I can’t take anymore,” Ana blubbered.

“Grab your bag. I’ll get the other two.

In the same instant, Ana’s eyes focused beyond Robert, widening in sudden alarm.
 

He spun around to see Helmut lifting the .45, his bloodied finger struggling to find its way inside the trigger guard. Robert dropped to one knee and fired, the noise hammering the room as Helmut slammed against the wall. His body tensed with a tremor, then slowly went slack. The .45 slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor.
 

“My God!”
Ana cried.
 

A loud
bam
jarred the room and an immense shock drove Robert backward into a ringing void. Before he could fully comprehend that Fowler had shot him in the head, more gunshots sounded in quick succession—the
bang bang bang
of the .22. Through grainy waves of undulating light and dark, he was conscious of Fowler sprawled against the wall, knees drawn up. Fowler’s fingers went lax, the gun slipped out of his hand to the floor. Fowler stared at Ana in astonishment. “You…killed me…” He broke off with a wet suck of breath. A pink bubble ballooned out of one nostril and popped on his upper lip. The light in his eyes skewed, pupils floating in dreamy delirium. “Susan…she…she…tell her—”

Bang. Bang.
Ana shot him again. Twice.

43

Exit

R
OBERT STRUGGLED TO
his knees. He brought one hand to his forehead—a weld of flesh hanging loose, slick with blood. He took hold of the bedpost and pulled himself up.

Ana stepped back with a catch of breath, her gaze locked on his hairline, wild, as if she might bolt at any moment. She placed a shaky hand on his shoulder and half guided, half followed as he made his way into the bathroom.
 

In the mirror he saw that the little rope of scar was attached by a thin thread of skin. Blood ran down into his eyebrows. He took a washcloth, wet it, wiped his forehead, and held it tight to the wound, grateful now for the bundle of washcloths he and Ana had picked up back in Pochutla.

“Ana,” he said, “get the cuticle scissors from my Dopp kit if you will please.”

“I… I thought…” she began shakily, tears rimming her eyes. Then quickly she regained control and fished out his scissors.
 

He let go the wet compress and with one snip severed the scar. He caught it with a handful of blood and dropped it in the toilet. Holding the compress in place again, he ran water over his free hand, wiped it dry on a towel and took Mickey’s finger from his jacket. Ana turned away, a smothered sob as he dropped it in the bowl and pressed the flush handle. The twist of scar and Mickey’s finger swirled around each other in a final bloody dance and went down with a gurgle.
 

He studied Ana a moment with concern. Not only was she carrying the baggage of her brother’s accidentally death from years before, but she had killed Geraldo, and now she had killed Duane Fowler.
 

“You’re doing great,” he said, not at all sure it was true. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”
 

Robert bent over the sink, washed his face and quickly dried, but the blood was leaking out. Without asking, Ana took the first-aid kit from the carry-on. He managed to staunch the bleeding long enough that she was able to patch a butterfly bandage over it. Even so, blood began to leak around the edges. Trembling, Ana wet a fresh washcloth and folded it. He took it from her and held it in place over the bandage.
 

Ana grabbed one of his T-shirts, took the cuticle scissors in hand, cut through the hem, then ripped it to the neck and then again. She folded the piece lengthwise, fit it around his head, pulled the ends together in back and tied them in a half-knot. He took over, pulled it so tight his eyelids felt stretched, and knotted it.
 

“H–how do you feel?” Ana asked.

“Fine,” he managed, the gray mist hovering in the periphery of his vision.
 

His first thought was to take the bloody washcloth from the sink and mix his blood with both Helmut and Fowler’s to screw up the DNA. But then, forensic labs were able to separate DNA as each had a specific number of markers, thirteen if he remembered correctly. The blood was already thickening, slick on his fingers, the smell like rotting meat.

“Ana,” he said, “take one of the cloths and try to wipe up any blood you think might be ours, yours or mine. Don’t touch Helmut or Fowler.”

He squeezed his bloody washcloth out in the sink, running fresh water over it, squeezing it over and over until it ran clear. With the little soap bars, he scrubbed the sink, the toilet. He put the washcloth in a doubled garbage bag and began again with a fresh one.
 

Ana, the skin drawn white over the bones in her face, worked in steadfast silence, scrubbing random speckles from the floor. She placed the soiled rags in the garbage sack.

Robert dampened a towel with soapy water and scrubbed the sink and the toilet again. Ana followed with her own towel, fluff-scrubbing after him.
 

“Do the best you can,” he said. “No prints, no hair, and no blood. Yours or mine.”

Ana knelt and threw up in the toilet.

Robert paused. “Ana, go sit down. I’ll finish this.”

She lifted one hand without looking at him, shook her head, then stood and rinsed her mouth and went back to work. He ran water in the sink and began again.

They tried to hurry, but it took a while. The noise from outside grew louder, more intense. Robert looked the room over again. He pressed the .22 into Helmut’s bloody hand, then laid it on the floor at his side. Helmut had dropped the .45, his prints already on it. After a moment Robert wiped down his .380 and stuffed it in Fowler’s front pocket.

He removed all identification from both men’s wallets and put them in his own shirt pocket. He took the phony Edmond Haywood credentials from his wallet and put them in Helmut’s. The bloody towels and washcloths went into the
 
doubled trash bag.

“Okay,” he said, washing his hands again. He paused, taking a last look around, the room swimming in his vision. Of course there was no way they had been able to remove every trace of DNA, and if inclined the Mexican forensics might eventually make a connection. But it wasn’t likely. Robert had registered using the phony ID and credit card, and chances were the police would assume what appeared obvious—that the two gringos had killed each other. One body carried no identification at all, and the IDs on the second would prove to be bogus.
 

“You’re leaking through,” Ana said, her anxious gaze fixed on his headband. She opened his bag and snatched out the ripped-up T-shirt and cut another bandage. He stripped off the old blood-sotted one and stuffed it in the garbage along with the towels. Ana removed the old butterfly bandage, wiped his forehead and replaced it with a fresh one. Robert pulled the fresh strip from the T-shirt tight and knotted it in back.

He handed her one of the carry-ons and the trash bag with the towels. He took the second carry-on and the aluminum case with the money. They took the staircase down.

The lobby was empty. The registrar and the bellmen stood with several guests on the sidewalk outside the Majestic’s entrance, watching through a haze of smoke as people raced past in either direction, eyes tearing, choking on the caustic residues of teargas and smoke from a car someone had set afire in the street. A loudspeaker blared. Sirens wailed. Four men hurried from the direction of the zócalo
carrying a fallen man.
 

“Come on,” Robert said, turning back up the street, away from the trouble. More gunshots sounded in quick succession from the plaza behind. They hurried two blocks up Madero on the sidewalk, facing oncoming traffic on the one-way street. Struggling to keep his bearings, he turned right onto Isabel toward Cinco de Mayo, intending to catch a cab, but Cinco de Mayo was also one-way, funneling traffic back toward the plaza. He stopped at the corner near a sewer grate. He took Fowler and Helmut’s IDs from his shirt pocket, dropped them on the sidewalk, placed his foot on each, and, pivoting his weight in a scrubbing motion, mangled the infrared strips. He bent each double and dropped them through the grating. He hurried Ana across the intersection.
 

“Maine,” Ana said through clenched teeth.

“What?”

“You promised me lobster in Maine,” she said, voice quavering. Her mouth dug in a little at the corners, little more than a grimace. Her hand gripped his arm, eyes filled with anxiety.
 

“Hang on,” he said. “One more block, we’ll catch a cab to that north bus station.”

“Or we could just keep walking. The Rio Grande is up there somewhere.”

He gave her a quick look.

“You said a sense of humor, that’s what you admired in a woman. Well, I’m pretty funny.” She barked a laugh that was half sob as he hurried her along Isabel street.
 

“Just a little farther,” he said. Swim-headed, he was talking to himself as much as to her.

At the intersection of Isabel and Calle de Tacuba, he stopped. Finally. A one-way going north. He looked all about, then set his bags down and took the garbage bag from Ana. He looked around again, then stepped to the corner and dropped it into one of the city’s barrel-like trash receptacles.
 

They walked north another block. A taxi coming behind slowed. The driver gave them a look and then speeded up.

“Hey!” Robert shouted.
 

Five minutes later he stopped a second Taxi, the driver watching them, suspicious.
 

“Terminal Central Norte,” Ana said, opening the rear door before the driver had a chance to change his mind.
 

The driver watched them in the rearview mirror until they were settled, luggage in the footwell, the aluminum case on the seat between them. Then he put the car in gear and pulled away.

Robert turned to Ana, but the black grit began closing in, clouding his vision. His headache grew, darkness closing in.
 

“Ana…” he began, intending to tell her to take the money and run. But the blackness overtook him and he never got to finish.

44

Dr. Ayala

F
LICKERS OF LIGHT.
A metallic clatter
of
noise like the crisp shuffling of a new deck of cards. His was the realm of the sensory only. Light. Sound. Then, a smidgen of consciousness and he began to understand that he was in a room, an all-white room—a woman, her back to him, opening the blinds—the metallic shuffling sound, the bright outside light pouring in like molten metal.