Caravan of Thieves (30 page)

Done with my inquiries, I was on my way to the motel to shave and ditch the suit when I saw the shiny black Dodge with California plates for the second time that day. I crossed the street to a taco stand and waited in line and watched, even though I knew who was going to get out of that car. Junior looked like a guy who lost track of what planet he landed on. He stretched his legs and gazed all around and shook his head. He didn’t try to hide, so he had not spotted me. Two fishermen walked past him and Junior accosted them. One of them bothered to shrug his shoulders, but they never broke stride. Junior did not speak Spanish. I made a quick decision to let his arrogance go to work, set up barriers for him, and hope
that gave me the time I needed to work out my plans for Shaw and Teresa.

They were living in a hacienda on the bluff between Guaymas and San Carlos. Before dawn, I was in the woods behind the house, Dan chuckling on my shoulder: “
This is going to be fun.
” I agreed. It was fun already. The soft acacia scent mixed with something sweeter, a small red flower with yellow fruit and the dirt moist with dew. The sun drew up behind me, pierced through the trees, and tore the darkness to shreds.

Shaw left with his golf clubs at seven. “
Wait here,
” I said to Dan.

“
You’re selfish.”

“I’ll tell you all about it.”

I did my cop act for the servants and gave them two thousand pesos each to take the rest of the day off. They pointed the way to the bedroom.

“Coffee for you, and a mango.”

Her eyes were still closed. The blanket pulled high. She mumbled, “I thought you were playing golf.”

“Cream, no sugar. Right?”

She didn’t need even one sip to be wide awake. I put a finger to her mouth and handed her a cup. As she straightened herself, the blanket fell forward. She was wearing a T-shirt. Her blond hair, tousled a bit, made my fingers itch to run through it. “He is playing golf. I waited until he left. It’s taken me two weeks to find you. Have you been here all the time?”

“No. I mean yes. It took a few days…”

“Don’t be afraid. Just the opposite. I…I…Well, I’ll just come out and say it. I got away with the money. All of it, except what Shaw took, but I realized immediately there was something missing. Not something, someone.”

She had heard it all before, probably since she was ten. And she was a quick thinker. “I didn’t want to leave you there.”

I sat next to her. “I know that. If I weren’t sure of that, I would not be here now. I have the money with me. Let him keep what he took. I don’t know if he’ll even look for you. I know he won’t look as hard as I did.”

“You’re lovely,” she said, and stroked my cheek. “But this is a little sudden.”

“As sudden as it is, that’s how strong my feelings are for you.” I kissed her and she responded.

“Give me until tomorrow.”

“It’s hard to leave you right now.” I’m sure I’m the first guy to say this: I did not want to make love to her. But I had to. I did not want to do it, but that is not the same as saying I didn’t enjoy it, or that I regret doing it. And I admit that the delight went deeper than just the physical exploration of the delightful Teresa Boyle. She was Shaw’s woman.

She quizzed me gently about how I got away with the money and moved on to where I was staying in Guaymas. I avoided answering that. She said, “It’s got to be dangerous traveling around Mexico with all that money.”

“I have someplace for us to go where we’ll be safe and happy. What time tomorrow? Should I come up here to pick you up? You might have to dye your hair.”

“You think of funny details. I thought that the first night we
met at the ranch.” She kissed me. We talked about how to make the getaway, eventually settling on a dirt road that ran to a beach at San Carlos. She would tell Shaw she needed the car to go shopping, drop him at the golf course, then meet up with me.

I did not want to go back to my hotel room on the chance that Junior might find it and did not want to check in to another room for the same reason, so I settled on a house for sale in San Carlos, not far from Shaw’s, and broke in to spend the night. It was partially furnished and the water was running, so I was comfortable. Though I had done this kind of thing plenty of times before, it had been many years, and it gave me a good feeling, probably because I knew I didn’t have to do it. I spent a little time sussing out how necessity negates pleasure and what that means, but I couldn’t reach any conclusions worth sticking with. It couldn’t be nostalgia: my days of homelessness were bad. I would be the worst kind of liar to romanticize them. The thing I liked, at least that night, was doing something I was not supposed to, something wrong and illegal. Doing something wrong and illegal should not have been a big deal to me, and should not have given me the sense of relief and release the way this did. I studied a lot of flickering lights before I admitted the cause: Major Hensel’s orders were weighing on me.

I relaxed on the terrace for a while, watching the flat bay and the lights of the resort below me. Then I sat in full lotus and brought up my vision, complete with Dan sticking his head out the window. He wanted to review the plans for the next morning with Shaw and Teresa, but I wanted my mind blank so I closed the window on him.

Later, on the couch, I let Dan calculate the full matrix of possibilities. Whenever my mind drifted to Junior, I could hear Major Hensel saying, “Don’t go after him.”

S
haw knelt behind bushes on the sand dune, peeking out at the dirt road where Teresa stood beside the car, waiting for me. A small blue nylon duffel sat beside him. “Hey…” I said it softly, but he heard despite the noisy wind. He held a small automatic in his right hand. My gun was in my belt behind me. I left it there.

“I knew. I knew it…” He was shaking his head like a guy whose putt broke the wrong way. “You don’t have the money, do you?”

“You walked away from it before. I didn’t think you could do it twice.”

“It’s too much.” I wasn’t sure if he meant it the way Dan did: too much to do anything with, or too much to resist? “Did you have to nail her?”

“You wouldn’t have trusted me if I hadn’t. It was a matter of credibility.” The wind blew his curly hair around and rippled our shirts. The sun had us squinting. The high dunes blocked the
view of the beach and the ocean, but I could smell it and hear the waves.

“How did you find me?”

“Teresa told me where you were going.” He knew it was a lie and it was all he would get. “But I don’t know when you took the what? Three million nine?”

“When you and Teresa went into the store to buy the recorder.”

“You were the inside man from the start. You were there when Dan was killed. It was your idea to give me the jeep and the money and to turn me loose.”

“That’s right, pal. You can thank me for that. McColl had different ideas for you.”

“But you let them kill Dan.”

“Not even Dan wanted to stop that. There was nothing I could do.”

He was right. The only thing he could have done was not played the game, and that wouldn’t have saved Dan, either. “You were good. You took the punch. Stayed out of my way, let me do the work. I got rid of all the barnacles. Except Junior. I can’t figure how he fit with you.”

Shaw smiled. He wasn’t going to tell me that and I felt foolish for asking. It was probably as simple as Junior sniffing around the money and Jessica drawing him off the scent.

“And then once I had the money, you set me up to get killed by General Remington.”

“I was just giving you what you wanted. You kept bringing him up. I sure didn’t. Every sucker wants something. C’mon, you’re Dan’s son, you know how it goes.”

“What do you know about Dan?”

“I knew him in Iraq. Great guy. We worked some projects together. Dan knew his stuff. He talked about you, too. Very proud father.”

I let that one pass. “Here’s what I think you should do. Take about one hundred thousand out of the duffel, then join your girlfriend, get in the car, and go anywhere you want. Stay around here if you want.”

“I’m holding the gun.”

“Then use it. You’re not stupid enough to do that. My offer is the best one you’ll get. I found you. Kill me and someone else will find you and they won’t be as generous. You’ll spend all the money hiding and it won’t work anyway. This way, you walk away with a little working capital, plenty of suckers to fleece, and no one on your tail.” His shoulders sagged. He knew he should accept, but no one likes being outmaneuvered. His phone rang. He ignored it while he tried to find a winning angle.

Behind him, Teresa came over the dune. She yelled, “You bastard.” Shaw turned. With my left hand, I pulled his right wrist forward, around my left side, and slid my right arm around his elbow. Maybe his arm didn’t break. The gun fell and he fell. I picked up the gun and then the duffel.

From the ground, he looked at Teresa moving toward us, and for a moment, he looked like a guy checking out a babe at the beach. What a gift. He got up and used his left hand to brush sand from his shirt. “For Gladden? Remington? Who you doing this for? I figured Dan’s son would be looking out for himself.”

I took out a handful of bundles of bills and tossed them on the sand. “That’s enough to keep you going.” He did not bend down for
them. I knew it disgusted him to be on the receiving end of that move: the cheap payoff to mollify the mark. “It’ll blow away,” I said.

“You bastard,” Teresa said. I think she was talking to Shaw.

I had only taken about ten steps when I heard the shouts: “Dammit!” Both of them were yelling. I didn’t have to turn. Hundred-dollar bills were swirling in the air all around me.

S
uddenly Guaymas looked like a wonderland to me. Every cliff was a perfect spot from which to launch a body. The ravines were just natural, impenetrable graves. The desert was filled with nooks and crannies, dining rooms for carnivorous vermin. The harbor was deep with potential; even the garbage in the alleys sent my imagination on fire. I felt no shame at this exercise because I knew I was just one in a long line of Junior’s acquaintances to fantasize about dumping his dead body somewhere. How many had explicit orders not to go after him?

The duffel of money went into my American car, parked in the hotel lot. I took five thousand dollars to the bank near the plaza where I had seen Junior and changed it into pesos. It didn’t seem that Junior had located me so I went to my hotel, hoping he had staked it out. I didn’t spot him outside and he wasn’t waiting in my room. I showered and took a nap, telling myself that if, when I woke up, Junior was not to be seen, I would start back to Pendleton; if Junior was around, I would have to deal with him. When I went
outside, around six p.m., the black Dodge was parked at the far end of the lot.

I tried out a small lie:
It would be useless to run; he’ll just keep tracking me; I must deal with him immediately.
But that always ended with:
But he came after me; I had to kill him; it was essential, defensive, prudent.

If Major Hensel bought that story, it would mean he was either corrupt or stupid and I would have to quit SHADE before I started because, either way, it would mean failed missions and wasted effort, at best. For the story of Junior’s demise to pass Major Hensel, I would have to be left out. Completely.