I looked at my watch. “How about lunch instead?”
“Lunch is good.”
We left the museum and walked until we came to an interesting restaurant. It wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t exactly a hole in the wall either. No one spoke English there, so we pointed at the menu a lot, not sure of what we were getting.
It turned out to be something the waiter called mole de quajalote, and it was good. It tasted like some kind of bird, maybe turkey, in a very sweet sauce. We also had a dish called cochinita pibil, which I could tell was made from pork.
When we finished with the meal, they brought out a sweet bread and a kind of pudding made of milk, fruit, sugar, and stuff I couldn’t identify. It was too sweet for me.
Feeling like funnel-fed geese, we decided to walk off the meal. Outside the air was rawer than before. It had a stench, like gasoline mixed with sewage, tortillas, and frying meat. The last two smells came from the large number of vendors who cooked you meals on the spot. Chances were, you ate the stuff in the square, you could get a case of the squirts that would make a mud slide seem tame.
We looked at huge and beautiful churches, took a short walking tour that was guided by a man that almost spoke English, though it was certainly better than my Spanish, and finally we ended up at the Mexico City zoo. It was a huge zoo, well tended, but as always, like circuses, it made me sad. Polar bears housed in southern regions do not consider themselves on a tropical vacation. They just look lost.
About three in the afternoon we caught a taxi, found out our first experience had not been a fluke. This taxi ride was just as scary, and by the time we arrived back at the hotel, the sweet sauce I had eaten was nestled in the back of my throat.
We went up to our room, brushed our teeth, looked at our watches. We were about fifteen minutes early. We checked to make sure both our watches said the same thing. They did. Finally, we said fuck it, walked over to César’s room, knocked on the door.
Ferdinand let us in. About five minutes later, Leonard showed up.
“You sightsee?” I said.
“Just the back of my eyelids,” Leonard said. “I slept in. Jim Bob snores like a goddamn bear. I didn’t sleep good last night. I’m sort of pissed off, actually. I don’t like it when I don’t sleep well.”
“Where’s Jim Bob?” Brett said.
“He was gone when I got up. I grabbed some lunch, read a Western Jim Bob had brought with him, went to the bathroom a lot, blew my nose, looked out the window, and here I am.”
“Quite a prosperous day,” I said.
There was a knock on the door. I looked through the peephole. Jim Bob was shooting me the finger.
I opened the door, said, “What an adolescent.”
“I drop these pants, boy, you’ll think adolescent. Calling me a child is like calling—”
“Oh, just come in and shut up,” Brett said.
There were two suitcases setting on either side of Jim Bob. He picked them up, carried them into the room. He put them on the bed.
“What you got there?” Brett asked. “Sex toys?”
“You wish,” Jim Bob said. “César’s contacts. They’re bad boys.”
Inside one suitcase was something wrapped in a white towel. Jim Bob removed that, laid it carefully on the bed. It was a bottle of chloroform.
He removed a folded duffel bag from the suitcase and unfolded it. It was about six feet in length. Beneath it were a couple of blackjacks, a slapjack, and four nine-millimeter automatics. The other case contained ammo clips and several pieces that went together to make a rifle and a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The rifle had a scope and a silencer. There was ammunition for both guns.
“I still think shooting him from a distance is the way to go,” I said.
“He must know who it is that kills him,” Ferdinand said.
“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “It’s a grace note. Five seconds of knowing you’re about to die, for whatever reason, is a long goddamn time. Shooting him from a distance is just doing the motherfucker a favor.”
“All right,” I said. “Outline it.”
“For what we’re doing here,” Jim Bob said, “the guns are out. We take the blackjacks, or the slapjack, our hands, whatever. We use the chloroform. We get these two guys down quick, we nab the woman, put her out of commission, and we’re out of here.”
“How are we out of here?” Brett asked.
“We stick the woman in the duffel bag, we check out, we get in the black van out front that César will have waiting, we go to the airport, and he drives the woman back to his place. We meet there.”
“Why don’t we just put her in our pocket and walk out?” Leonard said. “A duffel bag? That’s it? A fuckin’ duffel bag?”
“It’ll work,” Jim Bob said. “Trust me.”
“So we’re supposed to meet them as they come up the elevator,” I said. “What if someone rides up the elevator with them?”
“They won’t,” Jim Bob said. “César says they never ride up or down with anyone. They wait until they have it to themselves. Safety precautions.”
“Don’t these guys know what César looks like?” Brett said. “I mean, hell, they cut the tip of his finger off and slapped his ear silly.”
“These men may or may not,” Jim Bob said. “But they won’t see him if he doesn’t want to be seen. César’s good. Almost as good as me.”
“Why so much protection?” Brett said. “Is she made of gold?”
“She’s protected because of people like us,” Jim Bob said. “Juan Miguel protects his property, and to him, she’s property.”
“So the elevator opens on this floor,” Leonard said. “What’s to prevent someone else being in the hallway, seeing us go at these guys?”
“Nothing,” Jim Bob said. “We deal with that if it happens.”
Just before six the phone rang. Jim Bob answered, listened, hung up. He turned to us.
“Yippie ki ‘eah.”
I put the slapjack in my back pocket, Leonard took a blackjack, and Jim Bob brought only himself. Ferdinand said, “And me?”
“You’re going to have to wait in the room,” Jim Bob said. “When we knock, you be right by the door and let us in. Got me?”
Ferdinand nodded.
Brett opened the door for us and tagged along behind carrying a towel. She had poured it full of chloroform, and the stench of it was strong in the hall.
“This is so fucked,” she said.
“I’m about to swoon here,” Leonard said. “Brett, you think maybe you got enough of that crap on the towel?”
“Too much and you’ll kill her,” Jim Bob said. “Hit her with it quick, then get it off her face.”
No one was in the hallway. We stopped at the elevator. The numbers on the elevator light were racing toward our floor. Then the other elevator started moving up.
“Which elevator are they in?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jim Bob said.
“Oh, shit. That’s good.”
We tried to stand casual, just a wad of folks waiting to get on the elevator. The door opened. A short, stocky woman just shy of three thousand years old with sparse hair dyed shoe polish black and at least twenty-five whisker hairs to match, also dyed, stepped out of the elevator carrying a white poodle with a leash.
Brett leaned close to my ear, spoke softly. “Maybe we should sap her once for not getting rid of that mustache.”
“Twice,” I said. “She also has a poodle.”
The woman moved slowly, putting the dog down, leading it on its leash. She had just turned the corner away from the elevator, out of sight, when the other elevator’s light hit our floor and the door opened, and there was one of the most astoundingly beautiful women I have ever seen.
She was probably five seven, a little over a hundred pounds, well built, face like an angel, large black eyes and soft black hair that flowed to the middle of her back. She wore a short blue dress and matching high heels. Her legs were fashioned from a dream. She l
ooked very elegant.
The guys on either side of her were well dressed, but not so elegant. They would have looked the same in thousand-dollar suits or tablecloths. They looked about as casual as meat gravy stains on a white shirt.
As they stepped out of the elevator, Jim Bob said something pleasant in Spanish, stepped aside. As they passed, the guard on the left eyed Jim Bob. Brett took hold of her skirt, pulled it up and scratched her leg, causing the skirt to ride almost to her hip.
The guy looked.
Jim Bob sapped him. It was a good lick. The guy stumbled, Jim Bob leaped on him, started beating him like a hamburger steak.
The other guy was on the move now, his hand going inside his coat. Leonard grabbed that hand with his left, poked the man in the eyes with his right. The big bastard grunted, his hand came out of his coat, he tried to reach for his face, but Leonard had that hand. Leonard twisted slightly, and the dude flipped, hit the floor hard, banging the side of his head. I kicked the poor bastard hard as I could. He didn’t go out, but he didn’t act as if he was in any hurry to get up.
Leonard bent down over him and went to work with the sap. It sounded like a carpenter driving a pesky nail. Even after I thought the guy was out, I heard the sap ring a half dozen more times.
Brett had wrestled the woman to the floor and was trying to push the chloroform-filled towel over her face, but no luck. The woman started to scream.
Jim Bob pulled Brett off the mistress, brought his palm down swift, but not too hard on the woman’s forehead, just above the eyebrow at the left corner.
She went out.
I was standing, panting. The place stank of chloroform. I had moved away from the elevator wall, and now I could see down the hall. The woman with the poodle had stopped, listening to those screams.
Brett stepped into the hallway. “A bug. A spider. It frightened me.”
The woman looked puzzled.
Jim Bob stepped into view, he spoke Spanish. The woman grinned, said something in Spanish. She and her dog went on down the hallway.
“What did you say?” Brett asked.
“Just what you did. I told her you saw a spider.”
“What did she say?”
“What a sissy. Words to that effect.”
“I’m not sure I like that.”
When the old woman was out of sight, Leonard removed the guns from the bodyguards, got one of the guys by the leg and started dragging him down the corridor toward Jim Bob’s room. Jim Bob got the other guard by the leg, and I picked up the woman. She was as small as a child.
I looked down at her. A small purple bruise was forming at the corner of her eye. She was so gorgeous I felt as if her beauty were sucking out my soul. I could see why Juan Miguel would leave his wife. It’s a hard thing to admit beauty alone can make you crazy, but a woman like this, good God, she could make you crazy.
“When we get her to the room,” Brett said, “maybe you could tuck her in, give her a bottle.”
I made a snorting sound. “I hope you’re not jealous of someone we just tried to chloroform and hit on the head.”
“I’m jealous of someone who looks like a magazine cover, that’s what I’m jealous of,” Brett said.
Jim Bob knocked, Ferdinand opened the door. Jim Bob and Leonard dragged the guards inside. I carried the woman and put her on the bed. She had begun to stir. She opened her eyes. Brett, smiling, leaned forward and pushed the chloroform-filled towel over her nose. The woman struggled briefly, went out.
Brett pulled the towel away.
“Tie up and gag these mooses,” Jim Bob said. “And quick before they wake up. Tie her up too, and pull her dress down. I don’t need to see that. I like it, but I don’t need to see it. I better not see it. Damn, those panties are sheer …”
“We get the picture,” Brett said.
31
WE BOUND THEM and gagged them with strips of sheets. We poured the chloroform down the sink, put the towel in the tub. The air was still fairly stout with it. We opened a window. We turned on the TV set, sat the bodyguards on the floor with their backs against the bed.
We found a Spanish game show. Jim Bob patted them on the head and we left out of there, the woman in the duffel bag, slung over Leonard’s shoulder.
We rode the elevator down. As Jim Bob and Brett stopped at the desk with our keys, prepared to check us out, Leonard and I walked outside to the curb. There was a black van there. César got out of it, nodded at us. He opened the side of the van. Leonard put the duffel bag on the seat, closed the door.
“We will see you in Playa del Carmen in a while,” César said. “We must drive the whole way. Where is Jim Bob?”
“Coming,” Leonard said.
Jim Bob and Brett came out. Jim Bob got in the van. Before he closed the door I looked at the duffel bag on the seat. “She’s moving,” I said.
Jim Bob reached inside his coat, pulled out the blackjack. With a motion a ballet dancer would have appreciated, he shifted in his seat and smacked the bag where the head was. The bag quit moving.
“Goddamn, Jim Bob,” I said. “It’s not her we want to hurt.”
“You want I should take her to a bullfight?” Jim Bob said. “A bump on her head is better than us in a Mexican jail. You should know.”
I closed the door, César drove them away.
We had a slightly better ride to the airport than from it. I was able to get out of the taxi without feeling faint. Our life had only been in danger maybe half a dozen times.
We caught our flight out without incident, arrived that night in Cancun, took our rental back to Playa del Carmen. We didn’t have reservations, but we got our same hotel without trouble. Leonard got a room. Brett and I shared a room.
That night, when she finished brushing her teeth, Brett said, “Do you think that woman is beautiful?”
I was stepping out of the shower. “Ravishing,” I said.
“She was very pretty.”
“Ravishing.”
“Don’t overdo it if you want Mr. Happy to actually be happy tonight.”
“But with that knot on her head from the blackjack, not so beautiful. And you know what? Jim Bob may have hit her again. Maybe a lot of times. She could be real ugly by now.”
“That’s better. And dry under your balls. I hate it when they’re sticky on my ass.”
“You say the most exciting things,” I said.
“Do you know what they’re planning to do?”
“About as much as you do. They’ll drive her to César’s, taking their time. Maybe stop along the way a couple of nights. Tomorrow, a couple of us go to see the man, tell him we have her, and then we lay the trap.”
Brett had slipped out of her clothes, and I was enjoying watching her pull on a nightie with no underwear. No underwear was always a good sign.
32
THREE NIGHTS LATER, about three A.M., we got a call.
“Come over.” It was Jim Bob.
“On our way.”
I woke Brett up. Called Leonard’s room, fifteen minutes later we were in the rental, wheeling our way to César’s house.
César let us in. He was colorful as usual, a purple shirt with red and green parrots on it, white slacks and slip-on white shoes without socks.
Jim Bob looked his usual self, but for the moment, he was without his hat. I was surprised to discover he had hair.
Ferdinand was sitting quietly in a chair, hands rested in his lap. He looked calm, as if he were waiting to drop the lever on a guillotine. He smiled thinly at us, nodded his head.
Hermonie sat on one end of the couch, looking pretty and inscrutable in a pale yellow pants suit. When we came in, she didn’t speak, didn’t change her expression. There was nothing about her to acknowledge we had entered the room except a lifting of her eyes.
On the other end of the couch, her hands cuffed in front of her, a chain fastened to the center of the cuffs on her ankles, was the mistress. She looked like a goddess, except for a faint blue bruise ab
ove her right eye. I assumed, under that luxurious mane of black hair, would be at least one blackjack knot. She was smoldering. I half expected the couch to burst into flames.
On the coffee table in front of the mistress was a plate of food, untouched from the looks of it.
“More bastards!” she said. “You are all bastards!”
“Actually,” Brett said, “technically, I’m a bitch.”
“Bastards! All bastards!”
“Her English,” Jim Bob said, “is quite good, especially when it comes to cuss words. We took our time getting here, and we’ve had her here awhile, doing a bit of interrogation.”
“Juan Miguel will kill you,” she said. “He will have you skinned. He will nail your skins to walls and he will piss on them.”
“Do you want to be gagged?” Jim Bob said. “I’ll use my dirty underwear again.”
The mistress went silent, but the looks she gave Jim Bob were almost enough to skin him without Juan Miguel’s help.
“Her name is Ileana,” Jim Bob said.
“Fuck you, you pig,” Ileana said. “Fuck you. Fuck you.”
“Dirty underwear, dear,” Jim Bob said. “Ones with the Hershey stains in the seat.”
“Jesus,” Brett said. “You’re not even threatening to gag me and I’m scared.”
Ileana went silent again, but she wasn’t happy about it.
“What’s next?” I said.
“We have already contacted Juan Miguel,” Jim Bob said. “Told him we had his woman. He really wants her back,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t know he cares for her so much—”
“He loves me,” Ileana said. “He loves me much. He will hate you much.”
Jim Bob put a finger to his lips. “You be quiet now. As I was saying, I don’t know how much he cares for her, but he wants her back, talks like he’s lost a wallet or something and wants it back. He doesn’t talk like she’s a person.”
“Neither do you,” Brett said.
“No, I don’t, lady. It makes things easier not to. He wants her back, so I arranged a meeting. You and me, Hap. We’ll do it.”