The Dogs of Mexico (5 page)

On the other hand, you couldn’t go so quickly from mowing yards to smuggling diamonds without a few bumps in your mental get-along.

5

The Big Book

N
INE IN THE
morning and forty-year-old Helmut Heinrich
was on his second vodka and orange juice, musing over the Twelve Step Program in the
Big Book
Ana had given him. He had only gotten to Step Two—
Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity—
when the phone rang.
 

The landline phone hung on a support post between the kitchen and dining area in the studio apartment he and Ana Farrington kept behind a bicycle repair shop just off Reforma in Mexico City.
 

Helmut put the book down and stood up with his drink. “Agra Resources,” he said into the phone, pronouncing it with just a hint of a German inflection,
Rezourzes
, the
z’
s barely detectable. As a young man he had emigrated from a rural area near Eufurt in East Germany where few people spoke English. Consequently he occasionally suffered a prick of humiliation at an escaped
z
, or a
v
in place of a
w
, aware always of the covert smiles of others.

“Flax,” said the voice on the other end.
 

Helmut set his drink down. “Flax is big in Canada,” he replied, sobering over the code word. In his peripheral vision he saw Ana look up from her laptop at the dining table.

“We secure?”
 

“Yes.” Helmut frowned at Ana, touched a finger to his lips for silence. She folded her hands in her lap and sat back.

“Been awhile,” Flax said.

Helmut steadied himself. “Awhile, yes,” he agreed, trying to minimize his accent, trying to keep the boozy slur out of his voice.
 

As if reading his mind, Flax said, “I hear you have a drinking problem.”

“What?”

“I don’t have to tell you, the Company isn’t big on juiceheads. Even for stringers.”
 

Helmut struggled with the accusation, anger flaring. He spoke slowly, precisely. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m saying I may have something for you. I’m saying this is important. I’m saying I don’t want any fuckups because you can’t stay sober.”
 

Helmut remained silent, trying not to lose it.

“Where’s your partner?”
 

“Partner?”

“The woman. Ana Farrington.”

Ana sat at the table, looking on.
 

“She is here,” Helmut said. “Why do you ask?”

A small silence.
 

“Don’t concern yourself,” Helmut said. “She is okay.”

“Of course. Otherwise we wouldn’t be talking at all.”

“So? Who’s talking? If you have something to say, I’m listening.”

“Here’s the skinny. I’m sending a man to Acapulco by way of Mexico City. I’d like you to keep an eye on him.”

“This is it? Keep an eye on him?”

“He’s a small-timer, picking up intelligence in Acapulco.”

“What are we looking for?”

“The fellow he’s meeting has information relevant to our national security.”

“Very well. I am still listening.”

“This man, the one I’m sending, I don’t know whether we can trust him. He may be a bit unstable. I want you to keep an eye on him. Keep him honest. You handle that?”

“How do you mean, ‘unstable’?”

“I mean not entirely trustworthy. Unpredictable. In any case, I’ve planted a couple of GPS transmitters in his luggage. I’m sending you a tracking app to install on your laptop.”

“And all you want me to do is report to you where he is? What he is doing?”

“I’ll know where he is. But I’ll want to know what he’s doing. That’s your job. I’ll send you his
MO
and if he deviates one inch, you let me know immediately.”

“That is simple enough.”

“Make a business trip of it. You and your partner.”

“I can do this alone.

“Helmut, you’re a good man. But take the woman. She’s good cover. Listen, I know I can count on you, but this is big. I want to impress that on you.”

“Very well. It is your show—as you Americans like to say.”

“This shouldn’t take more than four or five days, tops. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars. Then, say it takes more than a week, I’ll compensate you further.”

“That is satisfactory.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.”

After Flax hung up, Helmut sat for a minute, thinking.
 

Something wasn’t kosher here. First, Flax says the man is a small-timer, unstable. Then he says this is really big. If the pickup is all that important, why send a mental case? And—though Helmut is reluctant to admit it—why hire him when Flax practically accused him to his face of being unreliable, a drunk? Then telling him in the next breath he is a good man? Saying he knows he can count on him? Yes, this has the smell of illegitimacy. Something fishy in Denmark—as the Americans liked to say.
 

“Well?” Ana said.
 

“We may go to Acapulco.”
 

“They want you to follow someone? Who?”

“Some gringo. I do not yet know.”
 

“Well,” Ana said, brightening, “this could be good. I’d like to check in with a family of silversmiths in Taxco.”
 

Helmut watched as she got up and took her cup to the sink. At thirty-eight she looked closer to twenty-eight. Trim. Energetic. Bambi-like in spite of a barely discernible limp—a faint shifting of her hips that he used to find sexy when they were still intimate. Her hair, the color of terracotta, usually gathered on top or caught up behind with a silver clip, complemented her olive complexion and jade-green eyes. More than once he had tried giving up the booze in hopes of winning her affections again.
 

“I do not know whether I have time for a side trip,” he said. “We have to see.”

Normally he contracted with fruit and vegetable growers in the US for migrant workers out of Mexico and Central America, but the entire business had become all but impossible with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. It was a schizophrenic situation at best:
We want your cheap labor, but we do not want you in our country.
While he kept an eye on the political climate in these regions for Flax and a few others by extension, he had never been asked to tail anyone.

He looked at his watch. Nine thirty-five. He topped off his vodka and picked up the
Big Book
again, aware of Ana’s big green eyes. Tigerlike. Silently accusing.
 

It occurred to him that Flax had insisted she tag along in the expectation that she would keep him sober.
 

If I ever meet that arrogant bastard, I am going to punch his lights out
.
He settled a little with the vodka.
I will make a call or two of my own. See what is afoot—as the Americans like to say.

6

Downsize

R
OBERT TOOK THE
Trish photo out of its frame. Carefully, he scissored a rectangle around Nick and removed his likeness from between Tricia and himself. He inserted the clipped image into one of the plastic windows in his wallet. One last time he looked at what was left of the photo—a remnant of Trish and himself, separated by Nick’s absence as they had been separated by it in life. He dropped the butchered remains in a bag of trash.
 

He would give the frame to Carmella the cook.
 

In the meantime he had bought two expandable carry-ons—one maroon, one black. The black was neatly packed with newly purchased clothing: one pair of wrinkle-free khakis, two pairs of jeans, four wrinkle-free Hawaiian shirts, T-shirts, shorts, socks and one wash-and-wear seersucker jacket. Seersucker got a bad rap in some circles, but you couldn’t beat it for rough travel.

He placed the maroon bag on the bed. This second bag would of necessity have to be checked with the airline, for it contained, in addition to the camcorder, a Swiss army knife, shaving kit, mini first-aid kit, duct tape, a bar of Ivory, Ziplocs, a box of ten thirty-gallon garbage bags, face towel and a roll of toilet paper—niceties which he knew from experience often came in handy when traveling in developing countries—except, of course, for those who, like Tricia, spent their days by the pool at the Ritz Carlton and then went home claiming to have visited a foreign country. He added four cardboard shirt stiffeners in the carry-on for use later.
 

He fit the gutted projector into a military haversack of army-tan canvas ducking he had picked up at an army surplus.

He took a final look around the empty room. Unexpectedly he relived for a moment the airless sensation from three years earlier when he entered Nick’s room and found it empty, he himself trapped in the hermetically sealed space—no entry, no exit. He suffered a moment of lost equilibrium, unsure whether he was experiencing a moment from the past, or something darkly unpleasant portending the future.
 

He shook off the feeling and picked up the room phone.
 

Jill answered. “H’lo?”

“It’s me. I’m coming over.”

Silence. Then, in a small, defensive voice: “Just like that, huh?”

“I need to see you. Just for a minute or two.”

“Well, I don’t need to see you.”

“Yes you do,” he said and hung up.

Twenty minutes later he drove his pickup into her trailer park. At the entrance a time-faded billboard depicting a radiantly smiling family read: S
UNRISE
M
OBILE
H
OMES
– F
LORIDA
L
IVING AT ITS
B
EST!

He parked behind Jill’s Ford Escort, its body rusting off the frame. He spotted her behind the screen door to her old Airstream, watching as he drove up. A trim brunet in worn jeans and a T-shirt, Jill was beginning to show her age. Not so long ago she had been a flight attendant with American Airlines, but then she was caught using. He had stayed with her through that one, but when a few months later she had again tested positive for drugs and was fired from her waitressing job at the International House of Pancakes, he had walked. She hadn’t forgiven him.

“What do you want?” Her eyes were shiny-bright. He wasn’t sure whether it was dope or emotion.

“I’m leaving town. Just stopped in to say good-bye.”

She paused. Big amber eyes shifting, unsure.
 

He studied her through the screen. “You still using?”

Those same amber eyes shimmered and teared up. “Fuck you, Charlie.”
 

“You going to invite me in?”

“What for? What do you want?”

“I want to see inside your house.”

“You what? See inside…?”

He pulled the screen door open and pushed past her.
 

“Hey! Who the hell do you think you are!”

The TV and the sound system were still in place. She hadn’t hocked anything that he could see. There were no tracks on her arms, and though she was gaunt, her eyes looked alert enough.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m giving you that pickup out there. If you want it.”

She slanted a look at him, the little crow’s feet around her eyes deepening. She glanced through the screen at the pickup, then back. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t want it, you can sell it. Keep the money.”

Her eyes shifted with uncertainty. “You’re going back to Texas…back to her, aren’t you.”

“I’ll get my luggage out, then it’s all yours.”
 

She hesitated. “You’re serious?”

“That pickup, it’s old but it’s in good shape.” He didn’t tell her that three years ago he not only had a new driver’s license and social security card made up in Miami’s Little Havana, but also a matching title and registration for the Toyota, all under the name Charles Edwin Lockerman. His small circle of acquaintances in Miami, including Jill, knew him by that name. He had been getting registrations, inspections and liability insurance without a hitch every year since. Those Cuban boys were good. Jill wouldn’t have any trouble.

She frowned. “Why’re you doing this? You don’t even like me.”

“Yes I do. Come on now. I have to get out of here.”

She opened the screen door, tentative, then followed him out to the pickup. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“You know you won’t get much if you sell it.”

“Sell it hell. That old Junker of mine’s on its last leg.”

He grinned. “Good. You’re sounding like your old self again.”

She glanced inside the cab, brightening. He had had it detailed. It looked good. The pickup’s bed was packed with his belongings—TV, kitchen utensils, sound system—covered with bedding and lashed down with bungee cords.
 

He took his two bags out. “Sell whatever you want, but no drugs. Okay?”

“I’m sorry if I was rude,” she said, staring at the stuff in the pickup’s bed. “I quit smoking a week now and I’m climbing the walls.”
 

“Smoking? You mean cigarettes?”

“Yeah. Nicotine. Fuckin stuff. I figured if I was going to give up dope, I might as well give it all up.”
 

He felt a rush of affection for her. For the good times they had shared. He cared for her, but in his heart-of-hearts he had failed to substitute her for Tricia. Nevertheless, you couldn’t sleep with a woman you cared about for that long and then just walk off without a lot of frayed tendrils in your wake.
 

“I got a job at the Iron Grill Steakhouse,” she said, following him back to her trailer. “I start Monday. A hostess. I get to dress up.” She opened the door for him and stood back.

“Good,” he said, stepping inside. “I’m proud of you. Really.”

She looked at him. Her chin quivered.
 

He knew he could have her. Stir up all the old passions. Reconnect. Good times again. It was tempting. But that would be misleading and could only end badly. Love was sometimes easier with a stranger than someone you had a history with.

Instead, he placed the title and a bill of sale on the dinette. “I already signed it and had a friend witness and notarize it.”