“Will it be safe?” Brett said.
“Safe as we can make it,” Jim Bob said. “We got something Juan Miguel wants.”
Jim Bob stopped at a phone booth on the way into Playa del Carmen. He didn’t want to chance César’s home phone or cell phone number. If the number could be traced, Juan Miguel might have the contacts to trace it.
César had somehow gotten Juan Miguel’s number, either through research or from Ileana. I hoped he had not done anything bad to her to get it.
Jim Bob called and talked while I stood outside the old rickety phone booth. As he talked, three young Mexican men wandered over in our direction.
I knew their intent. I had seen it many times. Thugs come in all colors and sizes, but they all walk just alike. I figured a phone booth that worked, located in a dark place, this time of night, was a great spot for them to pull off a mugging.
By the time Jim Bob finished talking and came out of the booth, they were about ten feet away. He reached in his coat and pulled out one of the nine millimeters, said something in Spanish while he waved it around.
The three thugs bolted away into the darkness.
“You have such a way with words,” I said.
“Ain’t that the goddamn truth,” Jim Bob said.
“How’d it go?”
“They’re expecting us.”
“Jim Bob.”
“Yeah.”
“Ileana. You didn’t really hurt her, did you?”
“I think that sap shot hurt pretty good.”
“I mean beyond that.”
“No … You planning on dating her?”
“I merely meant I don’t want to see her hurt. I feel scummy. She’s an innocent bystander.”
“In a manner, but in another, she knows who Juan Miguel is. She knows what kinds of things he does. She profits from this, Hap. Don’t get too fuckin’ sentimental just because she’s a looker. She got in bed with this mangy, flea-bitten dog, and she’s got his fleas on her now. That’s the long and the short of it.”
We drove along the beach toward the great house that belonged to Juan Miguel. It was full of light up on the rise, stood there like a gem growing out of the ground.
We came around on its back side, stopped at a wide metal gate. There was a box you talked into, and Jim Bob did that. The gate opened. Jim Bob took the nine millimeter out from under his coat and pushed it under the car seat.
“They’re gonna search us anyway, take it away,” he said. “You got anything?”
“A wallet.”
“Put it under the seat. That’s what I’m doing.”
I did that. He said, “Anything else?”
“Nothing that isn’t attached.”
“Let’s hope they let us keep that stuff,” Jim Bob said.
We drove through the gate, down the drive, up to the house. Juan Miguel’s home was even more awesome close up, like something I thought the movies made up. Three stories high, lots of glass, the rest of it pink stone with a red tile roof and a front porch big enough to build a tennis court on. The porch was made of stone too, but snow white, as if it were bleached daily and polished. The house and porch gleamed fairy-tale-like in the soft glow of the night lights that poked out of the shrubs and palm trees, but the tall tinted windows deadened the light like cataracts.
Surrounded by low-cut shrubbery was a well-lit pool. It was to the right of the house, the color of a sapphire, the shape of a kidney. A diving board perched above it like an extended tongue. It was a big pool, and I knew from my telescopic eavesdropping it was smaller than the one at the rear of the house, which had through the looking glass appeared big enough and deep enough to provide Shamu the Killer Whale with a vacation home.
“Damn sure beats a double-wide, don’t it?” Jim Bob said.
“I once knew a fella fastened two double-wides together,” I said. “That was pretty nice.”
Jim Bob chuckled.
The door opened and two guys in tan suits came out on the stone porch. From where we sat, they looked like two fleas standing on canvas, about to go through their act. They were the two guys we had beat and tied up at the hotel in Mexico City.
As we got out of the car, Jim Bob said, “At least there are two people here who know us.”
“They are sweet,” I said, “but my guess is neither of them will be bringing pot luck lunches to Mensa’s next Christmas party.”
The air was stuffed with the smell of fresh-mowed grass and recently manicured shrubs. There was a touch of chlorine from the pool. If it had been daylight I’m sure a butterfly and bluebird would have lit on my shoulder.
The two came down the great steps carefully, as if they were afraid their pants might rip. It seemed to take them forever to cross the green, clipped lawn, make their way over to meet us. First thing they did was clobber the both of us. I took an uppercut in the belly and went down. I wanted to fight back, but didn’t. I took another clip to the side of the head, was yanked up and kicked in the ass. I made a note to remember that kick in the ass. Not to mention the fact I had a headache about the size of Alaska.
A moment later we were searched and four pesos I had in my front pocket were taken and Jim Bob lost a pocketknife out of the deal. We should have put those under the seat.
Next Jim Bob and I were hustled in front of them, toward the pool. Jim Bob had lost his hat in the beating, and it had been stepped on before he recovered it. As he walked along he was at work straightening it.
“They took it personal,” he said.
“Looks like.”
“I didn’t take the beating personal myself,” Jim Bob said. “But stepping on my hat was just mean, and I won’t forget it.”
“You’re like Leonard about his hats,” I said.
“I’ve never seen him in a hat.”
“They get stepped on.”
We went through a gap in the wall of shrubbery, between palm trees with lights on them, out to the side pool, which was bordered by copper-colored tile and on the far side there were plenty of bushes and trees and a fountain in the shape of an angel with wings spread wide. There was plenty of light on the sapphire pool and someone was in it, swimming. We were taken to a glass table, pushed down into white plastic chairs, spoken to in Spanish.
“They want us to stay,” Jim Bob said.
“I figured that much. Goddamn, my gut hurts. That fucker has quite a punch.”
“My guy hit like a sissy,” Jim Bob said.
“You’re lucky,” I said. “He hit any harder than he did, you’d look like E.T. on that side of your face.”
The person in the pool was obviously Juan Miguel. He swam a couple more laps just for show, then climbed out. He was butt-naked. One of the buffaloes gave him a long white towel and he went to drying himself.
He came over, flipping his dick and balls with the end of the towel. I didn’t know if he were merely drying himself, or if it was some kind of greeting.
Up close I could see Juan Miguel was older than he had appeared through the telescope. He was in good shape, with a slightly protruding belly, but solid muscle tone. He had all his own hair and certainly dyed it. He was probably about five ten, one ninety and proud of himself.
“Qué pasa,” Juan Miguel said, and he smiled so big the light bouncing off his teeth nearly put my eyes out.
“How’s it hanging?” Jim Bob said.
Juan Miguel thought about that, then slowly he laughed. “How is it hanging. That is good. How is it hanging. As you can see, my man, it hangs quite well.”
“Yeah. It almost looks like a real dick.”
Juan Miguel said something in Spanish. One of the buffaloes stepped forward, slapped Jim Bob so hard he was knocked out of the chair and the chair went spinning. He lost his hat again. It rolled backward all the way to the shrubbery.
Juan Miguel looked at me. “Do you have a comment, sir?”
“I’m cool,” I said.
Jim Bob got up, straightened his chair, recovered his hat, sat back down
. “Where do you get these guys? A girls school?”
Juan Miguel made a movement with his mouth that wasn’t quite a frown or a smile, but was certainly unpleasant. I thought Jim Bob was due for another slapping, or worse, but Juan Miguel took a breath, looked down at his package and continued drying it as if he were polishing a precious stone.
“Do you find nudity unpleasant?” Juan Miguel asked us.
“Yours, yes,” Jim Bob said. “But your woman, hey, I think she looks pretty good.”
Juan Miguel snapped something in Spanish, and this time both buffaloes jumped on Jim Bob. I wanted to help him, but I knew that wasn’t our game. Jim Bob took a short but rapid beating from their fists, then lay on his side and was kicked for a while.
I said, “You do that much longer, I can assure you, you’ll never see your mistress again, unless it’s in a ditch with a zucchini stuffed up her snatch.”
“Alto,” Juan Miguel said.
Jim Bob lay awhile longer this time, but finally he got up, brushed himself off, righted his chair, recovered his hat, which was the shape of a paper wad, and sat down. “The two of them together, working hard, are almost a man,” he said.
“You are crazy,” Juan Miguel said. “You want to die. And you will.”
Jim Bob spat blood on the stones. “Not unless you want that mistress to end up like my partner said. Only I’ll make sure she gets a zucchini in every hole. Maybe even a melon. No more beatings. No more bullshit. You listen to us. We don’t come back soon, call in, your girlfriend, she’s gonna end up in a bad way. You hear me, you cheap-ass Mexican Godfather wannabe. We’re just hired help, and it don’t mean a thing to us one way or another, except we want to come out of this alive and happy, and if things work out, you get your bitch back alive and happy, and we come out of it with some money. And let me tell you, I’m gonna talk to you, you get some drawers on, or wrap that towel around that limp piece of spaghetti, sit down and listen.”
“You are on my turf, you American turd. Nudity is healthy. I am sixty years old, and I know I do not look it. It is the nudity. The fresh air, the sun. I swim nude every night in this pool, and it has done wonders for me. Man was meant to have fresh air, sunlight, and exercise.”
“It’s dark,” I said.
“Yes, but there is the night air,” Juan Miguel said.
“We’re on your turf,” Jim Bob said, straightening his hat, “but we’ve got your muff. Let me tell you about nudity for health, Zorro. Tried it when I was twelve. Stripped off and played Tarzan. Climbed up in a tree and got a sunburn, damn near fried my pecker off, turned my ass the color of a Washington apple. I didn’t find it so healthy. You get a good sunburn on your general and it starts to peel, let me tell you, it’s highly uncomfortable.”
“You idiot,” Juan Miguel said.
“You gonna sit and deal, or you gonna bore me with your lifestyle choices?”
“You fool,” Juan Miguel said. “You think I am losing true love here? My wife, she is my true love. Ileana, she is a dalliance. A hobby. A pastime. She is one of many.”
I felt my stomach go sour. What if Ileana didn’t matter to him? What if he had women all over Mexico?
Then I thought: Like Ileana? Not likely. Who the hell was he fooling?
“I think we’re wasting time,” I said. “You want her, we best get to talking, and talking now.”
Juan Miguel studied us, as if to be certain we weren’t mirages, some stupid dream. He wrapped the towel around his waist, pulled out a chair and sat down. No sooner had he done that, as if on cue, out of the darkness near the pool, on the far side, something moved.
At first I thought one of the palm trees had come loose of its roots and was about to topple, but the base was much larger than the palms, and as it stepped into the light, I saw it was tall, but shorter than a tree. It looked like someone had stacked some brown tires in a pile, put sumo wrestler legs and arms on it, fastened a vague facsimile of a human head to the top, and tied an anaconda between its legs. It was, of course, our living Michelin Man, in the nude.
Juan Miguel saw our gaze had shifted from him to somewhere over his shoulder. He grinned. “Hammerhead, we call him.”
Hammerhead leaped into the pool with a splash that almost started a tidal wave. He swam across the pool with a couple of strokes, climbed out dripping on our side. He ambled toward us. Moby-Dick gone bipedal.
“What do you think?” Juan Miguel said, as proud as if he was showing us a pet, and I suppose he was. “Is he not something?”
Jim Bob, naturally endearing, said, “An ambulatory shit pile. But I wouldn’t want him to fall on me.”
As Hammerhead grew closer, he became even more frightening. Through the telescope I had not been able to see how strange his head was. The front of it protruded, then sunk toward the nose, which lay flat against his face like a splattered man who had jumped from a great height. He had more scars than a Gurkha division and there were little pale scars like road map lines against the darkness of his body. It was hard to tell his nationality. He was dark, but his features were almost blank. He had Asian eyes and a little mouth that held tiny white childlike teeth. When he moved, water trapped beneath the rolls of his flesh squished out. He came to stand next to Juan Miguel’s chair.
“You’re a cute couple,” Jim Bob said.
I thought, that’s it. Jim Bob’s gonna be dead so fast Juan Miguel will forget why we’re here. But nothing happened. He just stared at Jim Bob for a while. Then at me. He said, “You listen to me. You hurt Ileana, Hammerhead here, he will beat you to death.”
“He could probably do that with that sausage between his legs,” Jim Bob said. “Considering that peanut you carry, I’m surprised you keep this guy around. Seems like it would remind you of your shortcomings.”
Juan Miguel leaped to his feet, his fist crashed down on the table and the glass split and splattered into thousands of fragments that caught the light and ricocheted images of trees and shrubs at us.
When the glass fallout was over, Jim Bob, in a bored voice, said, “You broke your table.”
“Enough!” Juan Miguel said. “It is enough!”
“I guess he’s had enough,” Jim Bob said to me.
“Reckon so,” I said.
Juan Miguel was panting. “What is … How do you say it? The deal? What is it? Tell me now, or I have you killed.”
Juan Miguel’s hand was bleeding. He pressed it to the towel at his waist.
“The deal is this,” Jim Bob said. “We want half a million dollars for your little doll, and we want to tell you why we want the money.”
“I know why you want the money,” Juan Miguel said. “I know why anyone wants the money.”
“No,” I said. “No, you don’t. We want the money because of Beatrice and Charlie.”
“Who?”
“We want the money because you wanted to kill me and the old man. I even want it for Billy, and I didn’t even like that sonofabitch.”
“What is it that you are talking about?” Juan Miguel said, his words becoming more accented and purposeful. “What is the fuck you want?”
“That’s what the fuck,” Jim Bob said. “That’s the way you say it. No slight there, just thought you might like to know that for future reference.”
“You do have half a million?” I said. “We’d hate to think you don’t. ’Cause you don’t, we got to take less, well, you get her back, but without a little finger or a thumb. You know what I’m saying?”
“Let me tell you a little thing you have not thought of,” Juan Miguel said. “I get her back with any part missing, her hair cut, a scar on her thigh, I do not want her back. She must come back as she is supposed to be. She does not, she is of no use to me, understand?”
Definitely not true love, I thought. And, unlike us, he wasn’t bluffing.
“Very well,” I said. “She comes back pretty quick if you act pretty quick.”
“How dare you threaten me.”
I knew we were beginning to
play it pretty close. Maybe Juan Miguel was thinking now he could let Ileana go, shop for another. Then again, she was special. Unique. And she was his, and he liked to own things, and once owned, he didn’t like giving them up.
I said, “Here are our demands. And we want you to know our reasons. So just listen. And tell Gorgo here to go play somewhere. He makes me nervous.”
Juan Miguel spoke something in Spanish. Hammerhead’s face stayed just the same. Not a flick of an eyelash. He went to the pool, dove in, began to swim.
“Because of his size, the way he looks,” Juan Miguel said, “you might think he is a fool. He is not. He is very strong. And very loyal. He would do anything I ask. I want you to keep that in mind as you deal with me. You must prove to me that Ileana is alive. That she is okay. That she is unharmed merchandise.”
“We can do that,” Jim Bob said. “That’s how we’ll begin the down payment, with proof she’s okay?”
“What kind of proof?”
“A phone call. She can speak to you to let you know she’s all right. We come back here, you give us half the money.”
“How much is this half?”
“This half is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The other half, well, obviously we’re talking half a million here. But you try to be smart. You try to get by not paying the money, I’ll send her head home to you in a box. Comprende?”
Juan Miguel said, “Very well. But what has this to do with the people you named?”
“You’re making me mad,” I said.
“That bothers me so greatly,” Juan Miguel said.
Jim Bob looked at his watch. “We’re not back in half an hour, they kill the girl. So you had best listen and cut with the shit. Tell him, Hap.”
I gave him a brief outline of the events I thought he needed to know, and when I was finished, Juan Miguel said: “That was a personal matter. She had it coming. She lied to me. She did not do as she said. That I cannot allow. I will not allow it with you. Do you understand?”
“What about Charlie, the man you killed because you thought it was me?”
“I thought you had helped her to try and con me. I did not like that. The same with this Billy. Mistakes. I can see that now. I was angry. I like to make a clean sweep, as you Americans say. I have her killed. She gives your name. They find this other man’s name on a card. I send Hammerhead to the States. He does the job. He comes home.”