Caught (26 page)

Slaney had been polite to him. The boy gave the impression of a good upbringing. Patterson wanted to throw the kid back in jail, but he’d never wanted him to drown.

We’ve placed a few calls, O’Neill said. This operation is still a go. But we have to do it without the satellite now. Clearly it was destroyed by the storm. We need a little human contact. We need you to go down there, check out the situation.

Absolutely, sir, Patterson said.

The authorities picked all three of them up on the beach. Somebody went out there in a rowboat. Brought them to shore. We’ve asked our counterparts down there to stamp their passports, let them out. O’Neill had his hands in his pockets and he was jiggling his change, an erratic, nervous percussion.

But they can’t go anywhere without repairs to the boat.

Patterson tugged at the cuffs of his shirt so about half an inch of each sleeve was visible under the suit jacket. He smoothed his hands over the sides of his head. His hair was longer than he was used to for the purposes of the undercover work. It felt unruly.

Here’s the thinking, O’Neill said. Patterson, I want you to make contact with Hearn. Tell him you’ve heard; say you have an inside source down in Mexico. Say you made inquiries after the hurricane. You were concerned about your investment, about the crew. Tell him not to give up yet.

You offer more financing. They get the sails repaired. Tell Hearn. Say they can bribe their way home.

We’ve got a guy down there in the military we can work with. The Mexican military is onside.

You fly down there saying you have the money available. Hearn knows you. All you’ve got to do is sell him on this contact. The fellow, Enrique Hernandez, whom you’ll meet up with, inspects the sailboat, gives them the go-ahead in exchange for what appears to be a bribe.

We want you down there to make sure this thing goes smoothly. You talk to them, see what their thinking is, make sure they’re on course. We don’t have the surveillance now, but you can get a bead on them, if you go down in person. Ask some questions. Appear to be helping them out.

Tequila Sunrise

They’d gone into
a crowded bar on top of a hill mostly undamaged by flooding. They could see the lower streets where the water had risen above the verandas and into the front door of an abandoned house. Walls had been torn off some of the buildings and they could see an exposed bedroom, wallpaper peeling in long strips, the mirror catching passing headlights as a few cars rolled by.

They sat near the entrance of the bar so Slaney could keep his eye on the road. There was a woman wiping the glasses with a red rag in the darkest corner of the bar. Slaney could see the rag prick the shadows as she snapped it between glasses.

Out on the cobblestones, a hen was testing the pool of light under the street lamp, touching it once and then again with its claw, jerking the inert lump of its blazingly white body forward by the neck, taking teensy steps. The hen froze in the centre of the light, full of trembling.

A motorcycle puttered through the strolling couples on the street. The driver had a black girl in a yellow dress sitting sideways between his outstretched arms.

The hen stopped thrusting its neck forward and assumed an outer-space stillness before it burst up like a thing shot, zigzagging into the restaurant, lifting off the ground with ungraceful leaps and crashes, veering toward a group of men who stood in a circle clinking their beer bottles, spilling froth.

A waiter brought over a bottle of tequila and three shot glasses and he poured for them and left the bottle on the table.

Carter lifted his glass immediately and held it close as if he expected someone to snatch it away from him.

Ada brought hers to her nose and sniffed. Slaney raised his glass to them and they did the same and they drank at the same time and touched the glasses back down on the table carefully and Slaney filled them again.

It sure goes down, Ada said. She laid her fist on her chest. Then she thumped her chest twice.

You’re shivering, Slaney said. What did you tell the immigration officers?

I said it seemed like our last visit was a million years ago. They saw the stamp on my passport and asked what I was doing back here again. I said I was sorry for the devastation. I said it had seemed like such a pretty country a couple of weeks ago and now everything is different. I said I was here by accident.

There was a man with a white gym bag and a white shirt with a glittering appliqué Elvis on the front. The man unzipped the gym bag at the table next to them and there was a small commotion, people getting up to see, gathering around.

Slaney’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and he saw, on the far wall, a giant turtle’s head and its two claws mounted on a varnished plaque, the turtle floating in the murky shadows, covered in dust.

What happened in that office? Ada said. They kept us for hours and then they just let us go.

Carter showed all his teeth; it was the opposite of a smile. It was a naked wince Carter had no idea he was making.

What did you tell them, Carter? Slaney said. They’d lost Carter to some netherworld of spirits, or it was self-regard. He had decided to save his own skin. Slaney was sure of it.

Did you tell them about the dope? Slaney asked.

Of course not, Carter said.

Did they make you some kind of promise? Slaney asked. He poured Carter another drink.

Leave him alone, Ada said.

Your poor wife, Slaney said. Your kids. The bloody sailboat. They had moored the boat in a quiet cove away from the main beach, out of the surf.

David, stop it, Ada said.

What did they promise you, Carter? Slaney asked. You’re going to have a rough time explaining Ada to your wife. You think they’ll cut you a deal. They won’t cut you a deal. It doesn’t work that way down here. Did they say you could keep the sailboat? They won’t let you keep her, Carter. We’ll all rot together in a Mexican hole.

Why had Hearn trusted Carter? His height might have had something to do with it, Slaney thought. Not his height — his bearing. He was short and arrowlike. Everything he wore fit him properly. That might have been part of it. Or it was his voice. He was sonorous and slow-spoken when he needed to be. He had a deep voice that someone like Hearn might mistake for spiritual gravity.

Ada was tipping her tiny shot glass between her finger and thumb before drinking down the tequila in two swallows.

The guy with Elvis on his shirt turned out to be a magician. Slaney had thought it would be a gun in the white gym bag but it was a top hat and a white dove. It flew out from a red silk scarf and circled above their heads, perching in the rafters. They had come through the hurricane and here was a reward.

A magic show, Carter said, how perfectly quaint.

Are you drunk again? Slaney asked him.

There are men, Carter said, who build up a resistance, gradually, over years and years of drinking. Those men are visionaries.

And you’re one of those men, Slaney said.

I am indeed, he said.

Cyril, it’s going to be okay, Ada said. They let us go, didn’t they? The hen had moved under a nearby table; they could see it now and then, through the legs of the crowd. It had lifted a claw and was standing on the other one, frozen mid-step, unable to move. Ada downed the third shot and she took up the menu. The crowd was clapping for the magician.

What a funny thing to happen, Ada said. Why did they let us walk?

I don’t think it’s funny, Slaney said. He could tell she was frightened. A woman came out from the bar and put a saucer with lime wedges on their table and she waited while they read the menus. She gazed out the entrance to the street. It had begun to rain again and there was a low, loud rumble of thunder. Several men were carrying a large sheet of corrugated tin down the road. It wobbled and boomed out a hollow metal twang.

Solo pollo, the waitress said. She gathered the menus and hugged them to her chest.

I think I’ll try the chicken, Slaney said. The woman took a box of matches from her apron and struck one. She lit the candle on the table and Carter’s shadow stretched from his chair legs to the wall behind him and up to the ceiling and rocked like a punching clown, though he hadn’t moved. Ada picked up the bottle from the table and held the bottom of it near the flame and she said there was a worm.

Just rotting away in there, aren’t you, little worm, she said.

The worm is lucky, Cyril said. Whoever drinks the worm, you’re set for life. It contains everything.

I don’t need luck, Ada said. I have you.

The waitress brought them rice and beans and chicken.

Slaney watched Ada eat. She crunched the bones and sucked the marrow. She was ravenous. He saw her glance toward the table the hen had run under. The hen was gone. She dropped the bone onto her plate and took up a napkin and patted her lips.

They had to get out, but Slaney wasn’t leaving without the weed. He wasn’t going back without it. He expected the military to roll through the doorway at any moment. He imagined Ada jittering and bouncing in her chair, arms flailing, as some Mexican soldier emptied a machine gun into her.

He would fall face down in his refried beans. Carter would be blown backwards, crashing onto the floor, chair and all. He could see it as surely as he could see Ada sucking on the bones, candlelight on her greasy chin. It came to him slowly but he was absolutely certain: there are worse things than dying.

Going back without the weed would be worse.

The sensible thing to do would be to get the hell out. Travel inland; keep going. Leave Ada with Carter and the yacht. He thought of Jennifer saying she would take him back.

But he wasn’t going to do the sensible thing. They might know about the pot, but why hadn’t they seized it? They had allowed the three of them to walk. It may be the authorities had a plan, but if they did, Slaney would wait them out. See what they had in mind. Slaney could be patient too.

The man with the Elvis shirt had a crowd now and he suddenly turned to Slaney’s table and, leaning in, he cupped Ada’s chin. He smoothed her hair behind her ear. She glanced up and her eyes were big. Believing. This must be what Carter had fallen in love with: a willingness to believe.

The magician showed the bar his empty hand and he rubbed it over her ear and pulled out a large gold coin.

Everyone in the bar laughing, applauding. Ada touched her burning ear.

They’d rented rooms in a hostel overlooking the water but they drank in the bar until light leaked up from the horizon a furious red. They could see the sailboat as they walked back to their rooms. The mast in silhouette, a needle swaying gently like a metronome. And the soldiers lounging on the deck, black against the orange and azure sky.

Dirty Laundry

He was walking
by her bedroom door in the hostel, and he glanced in because she was raising her voice. She had a nasty edge. She was speaking to the maid.

Ada ripped down the top bedsheet. The maid was dark with high cheekbones and big eyes and a taut body. She wore a fitted black skirt and a white cotton blouse. She looked to be about their age.

Ada told her the sheets were dirty. The maid had her hands on her hips. The sun behind her punched through under her arms and between her legs. Carter was sprawled in a wicker chair, snoring. Every breath he drew caused the wicker to squeak.

These sheets aren’t clean, Ada said. Her voice climbing notch after notch. He could hear the privileged childhood, her enunciation icy and clipped. An echo of a British accent she must have picked up from her parents, something he heard when she was tipsy or enraged.

What do you mean? the maid said. This might have been her only English sentence. Slaney thought it might be the only sentence anyone ever needed.

Look there, Ada said. She pointed and made a small circle with her finger over the sheet. And farther down another small circle. Slaney and the maid leaned in too. And then Slaney could see it. Two stains. For a brief moment the three of them were frozen over the bed, leaning in, scrutinizing, and then they leaned back.

The maid tore the sheet off and bunched it in her arms and strode out of the room. Ada turned her back on Slaney and looked out the window at the water.

I’m not sleeping in someone else’s filth, she said. So you can get that look off your face.

Cyril has a wife and three children, Slaney said. She didn’t answer.

He’s a dirty old man, Slaney said.

I’m not interested in you, she said.

What do you mean? he said.

Hello, Stranger

The next morning
Slaney realized he was proud of coming through the storm alive. He felt he had been judged by it and punished accordingly and he had endured. He wanted Hearn to understand what had been overcome. It was time to place the call.

He sat on the wooden chair watching for the red blinking lights over the phone booths that indicated a call had been placed. He’d bought some peanuts and he tore the package with his teeth. A speck of plastic stuck to his bottom lip. He blew it away, a hard
pfft
.

Slaney tilted back his head, tipped the peanuts in.

He was overcome with the phantom thrust and fall of the sailboat battered by the hurricane. How it had shuddered against each blow. The rhythm of the storm was a violent sensation that visited him, swished in his blood and made the solid world sway.

The operator called his name: Douglas Knight. Numero ocho. It took him a moment to know they were talking about him. Douglas Knight. Numero ocho. Slaney was used to the name but he could forget about it. He jumped up and headed for booth eight with the blinking red light and inside the phone was ringing loud and shrill and he picked it up and he could not believe how much he wanted to hear the voice of somebody he knew.

Hearn’s voice.

Listen, Hearn said. I’m sending a guy down there. I’m sending Roy Brophy. You met him at the party. The Mexicans know about the cargo but they can be bought off.

What do you know about Brophy? Slaney said. Where did he come from? You don’t know shit about Brophy, do you.