Day of the Dead (11 page)

What would happen if she ended it here?

She felt his body against hers, the stubble of his beard brush her cheek, the scent of him that filled her intake of breath.

She thought about the jail. The airless heat, the hard cement, the reeking toilet.

Silver or lead?

‘Do you want to come up?' she asked. ‘Just for a while?'

It wasn't really dangerous, she told herself. He couldn't actually hurt her, not here, in her own hotel. People would see him. People would know.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘That sounds good.'

The lights were off in the little office behind the counter, the courtyard was deserted. There has to be someone up, she thought. It's only … What time was it?

A sudden blur of movement at her feet – the cat, racing up the stairs that led to her room.

‘Cute place,' he said in a low voice.

‘Yes.' Her voice caught. ‘It's … it's quiet, mostly.'

I shouldn't have said that, she thought. He'll think we're alone here. That he can do what he wants and no one will know.

‘There's usually people in the courtyard. It's not the most private. You can hear people in the next room.'

‘I'll be vewwwwy quiet,' he said with a grin.

They climbed up the stairs. The cat waited there, on the low wall. Arched its back and then stretched down like it was doing yoga. Downward-Facing Cat.

‘Hey, cat,' Daniel said, holding out his hand for it to sniff.

Her hand shook as she fumbled for the key.

It was hot inside.

She turned on the fans, the air conditioner that didn't exactly work. ‘There's wine in the fridge,' she said. ‘A white. Do you want some? Or … ?'

He crossed the room in a few steps, put his hands on her shoulders, and pressed up against her back. She flinched.

‘Hey,' he said, stepping away. His hands guided her, gently, to face him. ‘Are you okay?'

‘I …' She swallowed hard. ‘Yeah. I'm just …'

‘Look.' He stood there, hands at his sides. ‘We don't have to do this.'

Was that true? Did she still have a choice?

She'd thought she'd already crossed that line.

She had to get a hold of herself, right now. Take control. Or … or what?

She didn't know.

Fake it, she thought. You know how to do that.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I just had, you know …' She touched her forehead and tried to smile. ‘I thought about that night we met, and those guys, and …' She shuddered. ‘It's stupid.'

He stared at her, his eyes narrowed, and then he seemed to relax. She could see the change in his face.

‘It's not stupid. That was pretty messed up.'

He went over to the fridge and retrieved the bottle of wine. ‘So how do we open this?'

‘There's a corkscrew by the sink. In the drawer.'

‘Sit,' he said.

She did, on the side of the bed, her legs trembling.

He came back with a couple of tumblers and the open bottle, and sat down next to her.

‘Not like I need any more wine,' he said, pouring them each a glass.

‘Me neither.' She clutched the tumbler he gave her and smiled shakily.

He lifted up his glass, and after a moment she raised hers.

‘What are we toasting?' she asked.

‘I don't know.' He gave her that half a grin, the one where she wasn't sure what he was really thinking, that crinkled the crow's-feet around his blue eyes and sharpened the lines of his cheekbones. ‘Why don't you tell me?'

Her move, then.

‘I'm not good at toasts.' You can do this, she told herself. She clinked her glass against his, took a swallow, and then put her tumbler down on the nightstand, her mouth dry, her heart pounding.

He took a sip of his wine and watched her.

She leaned in, her lips grazing his. Softly. A taste. He held back, still holding his glass, still watching her. Looking for something, some sign of her real intentions, maybe.

Fuck it, she thought. So show him. Pretend you mean it.

He let her kiss him. Let her straddle him. Her heart was still racing, but that could be from desire, couldn't it? That's what he'd think, probably. She wasn't sure herself by now.

‘Guess I'd better put this down,' he said, stretching out his arm, setting the tumbler on the nightstand. He slid his other hand up her thigh.

It wasn't so hard to pretend.

Daniel slept for a while. She lay there listening to his deep, even breaths. At least he didn't snore.

Not that she'd been able to sleep.

Though it really had been okay. If she'd been able to forget the circumstances, it might even have been fun. She'd almost forgotten, once or twice.

Even so, she wasn't about to fall asleep with him in her bed.

I just need to find out who cursed me.

She lay there – muscles knotting in her shoulders, acid in her gut like a weight – and watched him sleep.

Shortly after dawn Daniel yawned, stretched, and sat up.

The rooster that had started up around 3:00
A.M.
began another round of crowing. And was that a donkey?

‘Hey,' Daniel said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

‘Hey.'

‘I should go. Got some stuff I got to do today.'

She watched him find his clothes, put them on, check his pockets for his keys, like it was all some jerky, stop-motion movie, her eyes closing now and then despite her best intentions to stay awake.

He came back to the bed and kissed her again, on the lips this time.

‘I'll call you,' he said.

‘I'd like that.'

She smiled at him, lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers as he paused by the door and gave her a mock salute.

Maybe he didn't mean it any more than she did – maybe it was just something to say after a one-night stand that he had no intention of repeating. Well, two nights, she amended, but the first night had hardly counted. This was just finishing what they'd started.

She managed to sleep for a little while after that, until her phone rang. The default tone for known callers. She fumbled around on the nightstand for the phone. By the time she found it, the ringing had stopped.

Two minutes later it started again.

She grabbed the iPhone and hit
ANSWER
.

‘Hey, Michelle. Ted Banks.' A chuckle. ‘You have a nice night?'

She stared at the phone. How could he know?

‘You know,
Ted,
if you were really in Los Angeles, it'd be six
A.M.
Kind of early for office hours.'

Gary wheezed out another chuckle. ‘Oh, I knew you were good, Michelle. Look, let's meet for lunch. I got a little something for you. And we can talk about your date. Call me when you wake up, and I'll let you know where.'

He disconnected.

Did he still have people spying on her? Was that how he knew?

She thought about that night in his condo, how he'd known the next morning that she'd put a chair in front of the door.

Some kind of hidden camera? A bug?

What if he'd been watching?

She bolted out of bed.

She tried to remember movies and TV shows she'd seen where rooms had been bugged. Radios, she thought, they put bugs in radios, but there wasn't a radio here. In the television? She crouched down in front of the blank gray picture tube and saw only her dim reflection. She unplugged the television anyway. Jiggled the remote, opened it, plucked out the double-A batteries.

In the overhead light? She climbed up on top of her bed. Stretched out her arm to try to touch the dusty fixture. No use.

Electrical outlets, she thought. She'd seen some show where they planted bugs behind the switch plates.

She crouched down in front of the outlet by her bed, examined the screws, ran her finger over the heads to see if they stuck out, before it occurred to her that this was pointless.

If there
was
a bug in here, how would she even recognize it?

She fell back onto the bed, pulled the sheet over her head. She felt like shit. She hadn't had a decent night's sleep in days. Don't think about anything, she told herself. Try to sleep.

She tried. But there were the donkeys. The rooster. The kids, laughing, on their way to school.

When the gas truck rumbled up the street, with its recorded racing fanfare and distorted shout of
‘Global Gas!'
broadcast through a bullhorn (and she heard it three times while the truck apparently waited in traffic), Michelle gave up.

She decided to do some yoga. Nothing complicated; the tile floor wasn't ideal. I could buy a mat, she thought, if I'm going to be here awhile. Use some of Gary's money. There was a Walmart here, and a Costco; they'd have things like yoga mats.

It was another one of those thoughts that, even as she had it, seemed like further evidence that Gary's insanity was contagious and she'd been infected. How can I even be thinking this way? she wondered. I need to come up with a plan. What I'm going to do. How I'm going to get out of this. Not think about what to buy with Gary's money.

But she had no idea what to do, none at all.

Yoga first. Quiet the monkey mind, the constant chatter of normal human concerns. Wasn't that what the instructors always said? She did fine with that as long as she was moving, doing poses. But at the end, Savasana, the Corpse Pose, when you're supposed to just let go, do nothing – that's when her monkey mind would come roaring back, the second the instructor started telling the class to relax, to think of nothing.

Stop it, she told herself. She went through the poses, lost herself for a while in the familiar movements, working up a sweat before she'd even started. It was already hot, so humid she couldn't tell if she was sweating or just taking on the water in the air.

After that she showered, dressed, and went down to the courtyard for coffee.

It was early yet, the sunlight still diffuse behind the hills east of town. Only two other guests were out, a heavy woman some years older than Michelle who sat in one of the loungers reading a novel, and an even older man puttering around the yard, his bony pelvis jutting against the waist of his shorts.

Michelle took her cup of coffee to a chair by the fountain and sipped, watching the cat chase leaves around the courtyard.

Gary wanted to meet for lunch at the Outback Steakhouse. ‘In the Zona Hotelera – that's the Hotel Zone.'

‘Okay,' Michelle said. ‘I got the “hotel” part, but where is it?'

‘North of downtown, just before the marina. In front of the Krystal hotel. Ask any cab driver, he'll get you there.'

An Outback Steakhouse, Michelle thought. Great. She wouldn't think of going to a chain like that at home – hardly ever anyway. Now here she was in
Mexico,
where she should be eating … well,
Mexican
food, heading to the home of Bloomin' Onions and giant hot-fudge pecan brownies.

To meet with a crazy man.

I really should just leave, she thought, sitting in the back of the cab. Get out now. Go to Tijuana, seriously, and figure out a way home from there. All she had to do was get across the border; then she could take the trolley to downtown San Diego.

A story she'd read in the Internet café flashed into her mind unbidden. Something about headless bodies, in oil barrels, in Tijuana. Kids on their way to school finding them. Was that right? Or was she confusing two stories?

Corpses in vats of lye. A hit man called ‘The Soup Maker.' Because that's how his victims ended up. Stewed in barrels of chemical soup.

If Gary was connected with people like that …

Staring out the window at the condominiums and Sheratons and Starbucks that populated the Hotel Zone, she thought, It seems so normal. So safe.

Things like that don't happen here.

She felt better physically at least. The yoga had helped, and that had been a pretty good workout last night, she thought, feeling the pleasant soreness between her thighs. She hadn't felt that in a while.

She caught herself smiling.

Don't make this into something it isn't, she told herself. Just because he's good in bed, that doesn't make him a good guy.

She thought of how he'd treated her at dinner. With real understanding, or a very good impression of it. How he'd been patient with her when they'd gone back to her room. Had let her decide what she wanted to do.

He
seemed
like a good guy.

If he found out the truth …

Maybe I should tell him, she thought.

She already knew that she couldn't trust Gary. He'd set her up, hadn't he? Had blackmailed her into this. Whoever he was, whoever he worked for, she had only his word that Daniel was some kind of criminal.

I'll see what Gary wants, she thought. Have the lunch. Decide after that.

Gary waited for her at a booth in the back of the restaurant. ‘Hey there, Michelle,' he called out, patting the banquette next to him. ‘I ordered us a Bloomin' Onion.'

She sat. ‘Do you know how many calories are in one of those?'

‘Well, that's why you look the way you do and I look how I do,' he said, grinning. ‘I don't think enough about things like that. What can I get you to drink?'

‘Just an iced tea.'

For lunch she ordered the steak salad, with olive oil and vinegar instead of the Danish blue cheese dressing and without the Aussie Crunch, whatever that was. After some hesitation she kept the cinnamon pecans. Fattening, but she liked pecans.

Gary ordered the prime rib.

‘So tell me about your date,' he said after their drinks arrived.

‘There's not much to tell. We went out to dinner.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘Small talk mostly.'

‘The whole night?'

‘Well, no.'

She told him about the lie she'd made up to explain why she was still in Vallarta.