Day of the Dead (28 page)

Gary took a moment to swirl the ice around in his tumbler. ‘Well now, it's complicated. But I can tell you this much, okay? Danny's gone off the reservation. That's what's motivated a lot of this. That's why it's so important for us to know what he's up to.'

Of course he wasn't going to tell her. Why had she even bothered to ask?

Just to let him know that she wasn't stupid enough to believe all his lies.

‘You're going to have to find someone else to do it,' she said. ‘I'm done.'

‘Now, we've been over this before, Michelle. You're done when I say you're done.' He smiled, the smile that pushed up his cheeks but didn't reach his eyes. ‘And haven't I been making it worth your time?'

She might as well tell him the truth. A lie wasn't going to help.

‘You don't understand. He found the watch, Gary.'

For a long moment, Gary sat there staring, a puffy-eyed predator making his evaluation of her from across the bar table.

‘Well, shoot,' he said. He took a long sip of his whiskey. ‘So how'd he react?'

‘How do you
think
he reacted? He was furious! I thought he was going to kill me. Jesus.'

‘Now, now.' He reached across the table and patted her hand. ‘I don't blame you for being upset. I warned you, Danny's a dangerous guy. Just tell me what happened.'

She jerked her hand away. ‘Why don't you ask him yourself?'

‘Because I'm asking you.'

He didn't have to say anything else. She knew that it was a threat.

You have to calm down, she told herself. You have to play this right.

‘Start from the beginning,' he said. ‘Where you went, who you saw, and what you did.'

She told him. How Danny wanted to meet a friend of his for fishing and for advice. How he'd invited her to go along. She didn't mention Oscar. It was too late for that, she thought. Too hard to explain without admitting that she'd kept it from him before.

Then the watch.

‘I don't know what set him off,' she said. ‘Just that I kept turning up everywhere, that's all he said. I don't know, maybe that's why he wanted to go out with me in the first place. So he'd have a better chance to check me out.'

‘You tell him about me?'

‘I had to, Gary. I had to tell him something. What else was I supposed to do?'

He let out a huge sigh. ‘Fair enough, I guess. What'd he say when you told him?'

‘That it was a dick move. That he'd had it with you and your bullshit and the job. That you never should have involved me in the first place.'

Daniel's words, but they could have been her own.

Fucking Gary.

‘He said all that, did he?'

Gary leaned back in his chair and appeared to consider.

‘Well, I guess that's that,' he said. ‘Give me a couple of days to sort things out, get you your passport. In the meantime you just hang tight, okay? Don't go running off anywhere. You're safer if you just stay put.'

He clinked the ice against the side of the tumbler and chuckled. ‘Guess you were right about that watch. Not such a good idea.'

She couldn't believe that he would just let her go. It couldn't be so easy. Could it?

What to do now?

Maybe exactly what she'd planned to do. Okay, she could believe that Gary had people spying on her, who'd maybe even followed her down the coast. Paid some local kid who needed the money to keep an eye on her. Easy enough to do.

But there was simply no way Gary could find her wherever she went. Was there? If she just started walking north along the Malecón, caught a taxi somewhere on the way, and went to the bus station, how could Gary possibly find out?

Unless he'd put something – one of his stupid spy toys, some kind of bug or tracker – in her things. Maybe she hadn't looked carefully enough.

She stood there on the corner of Olas Altas and Basilio Badillo, sweat running down her forehead, dripping down her back. The sun was setting, but it wasn't taking the heat with it.

I won't try to run again, not tonight, she thought. Gary was already on the alert. She'd have to wait awhile, a day at least, pretend she was going along with him.

In the meantime was there anyone here she could talk to? Anyone who could help? Who knew who the players were, who could at least give her some advice?

Anyone at all?

‘Just in time for the sunset,' Charlie said. ‘And look, I still have most of the tequila.'

She'd stopped at the taquería and loaded up on carne asada and guacamole, which Charlie arranged on a platter and now carried out to his terrace.

‘Sit,' he said.

She did, and he poured two shots and sat down in the other chair.

She'd gone back to Hacienda Carmen and dropped off most of her stuff. Split up Gary's money, putting half back in the safe and carrying the rest, just in case. Had with her only the small purse she'd bought on Basilio Badillo, her wallet, and her phone. If Gary'd put a bug in her Marc Jacobs, she hadn't been able to find it, but no sense taking chances.

They sat in silence for a while, sipping tequila as the sun stained the surrounding clouds a pale pink that deepened to violet.

‘What is it you wanted to talk to me about?' he finally asked.

She didn't answer right away.

What did she know about Charlie, really? How could she be sure that she could trust him?

You can't, she thought. You can't be sure.

All she had were her instincts, and so far her instincts hadn't exactly been reliable.

But trying to deal with this alone, she just couldn't do it anymore.

It was resignation more than anything else that she felt when she said, ‘I don't know how to talk about this. I've had some things happen to me here, and I don't know what to do.'

‘Why me? I mean, I'm flattered, but …' He laughed, coughing a little at the end of it. ‘I'm not exactly a model of wisdom and sobriety.'

‘Just some things you said the last time we talked. I thought maybe you might … understand this better than I do.'

‘Don't tell me you've hooked up with a rent boy.'

‘I wish.' She hesitated. ‘What do you know about Gary?'

‘Not much. He's more a friend of Vicky's. Someone she knows anyway.'

‘If I told you some things about him – about him and Danny …'

‘You can tell me.' He grinned. ‘What's it gonna hurt?'

She told him. When she finished, Charlie leaned back in his lounge chair and shook his head. ‘I have to say, that's not what I was expecting.'

‘What
were
you expecting?'

‘Oh, just about anything but that.'

‘I know it sounds ridiculous.'

‘I was thinking more along the lines of absurd.'

‘There's a difference?'

‘Absurd implies a certain existential irony.'

‘Great.'

‘I'm not saying I don't believe you.'

Charlie fiddled with a cigarette, lit it, sucked down a deep draw of tobacco, cheeks concave with the effort. Coughed twice.

‘Jesus. You know, I've been reading about this kind of thing for years. And I do believe it's the way the world works. I just never happened to encounter it in person.'

Out in the bay, the pirate ship boomed its cannon.

‘What do you think I should do?' Michelle asked.

‘I have no idea.'

They sat and drank a while longer. The drinking didn't make her feel any better, but being in the company of someone else, someone who believed her, helped a little.

‘So if this is about drugs, what does that make Danny?' she asked.

‘Any number of things.' Charlie steepled his fingers. Like it was some kind of puzzle to figure out. A game. Not something real that had left burned and beheaded bodies only a few miles away.

He lives here, but it hasn't really touched him, she thought.

‘Maybe just a smuggler,' Charlie said. ‘But with all this other shit floating around … More likely he's a spook. You know, the CIA's been running drugs for years.'

She must have looked skeptical. Hell, she
was
skeptical.

Charlie grinned. ‘Really. There's plenty of documentation. Heroin from Laos during Vietnam in the Air America days.Cocaine from South America. That's how Ollie North financed the Contras. Traded guns for coke. You didn't know that?'

‘I guess I missed it,' she said. She felt angry and tired and hollow.

‘There's a reason they call it “the Company.”' He tapped a cigarette out of its pack, fumbled around for his lighter. ‘They sell the drugs in the U.S. Use the money to fund black ops. Like the Contras. Or buying elections, overseas, in the States.' He paused to light the cigarette. Took one deep inhale, coughed, and stubbed it out. ‘No record. No congressional testimony. They do what they want. It has a kind of elegance, you have to admit.'

‘No I don't. I don't … I don't have to admit any of this.' She reached over and poured herself more tequila. She was getting pretty drunk. She knew that wasn't a good idea, but she drank more anyway.

‘Think about it. You've heard the names of the drug lords in Mexico. Chapo Guzmán. Beltrán Leyva. Before that, in Colombia, Pablo Escobar. Nobody knows the names of those kinds of men in the United States. When have you ever heard them?'

‘Maybe there aren't any,' she said sullenly.

‘Of course there are. How do the drugs get distributed? Who controls the pipelines? How do they end up on the street?'

‘I thought it was the Mexicans.'

That sounded dreadful, she realized. Next she'd be saying, ‘the blacks.'

‘Sure, up to a point. The cartels have amazing distribution networks, and they're expanding all the time. Growing pot in American national forests. Laundering money and kidnapping for ransom in San Diego and Phoenix. But all the corruption that lets them do all that here, in Mexico – you think there isn't any on the other side of the border? That everyone's hands are clean?' He sipped his tequila. ‘Occam's razor, my dear. The simplest explanation.'

So that's what it was called.

‘What about Gary?'

‘Who knows? DEA? ICE? Probably another spook. If Danny's an asset, people like that get burned all the time. Look at Manuel Noriega.'

‘Noriega?'

‘CIA asset. Even says so in the papers. And all of a sudden, we're invading Panama and prosecuting him for drug trafficking. Like no one knew he was dirty before?'

Manuel Noriega. Ollie North. The CIA. Great, she thought.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I mean … there aren't any Contras anymore, right? The Cold War's over. So what's the excuse? What's it all for?'

‘Well, you've still got your leftist movements. Guys like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Or terrorists. You can always blame terrorists.' Charlie shrugged and topped off their tequilas. ‘Maybe they just like making money.'

They sipped their drinks and watched the fireworks from the pirate ship.

‘I should go,' she said eventually.

‘Why don't you stay here tonight? My couch is very comfortable. I've passed out many a night on it myself.'

‘I appreciate that, but …'

‘At least have some coffee.'

She thought about it. Probably a good idea. ‘Thanks.'

They went inside, and she sat for a while on the couch while Charlie went into the kitchen. When he returned, bearing a tray with coffee, cream, and sugar, he sat down across from her.

‘Look,' he said, pouring a shot of tequila into his cup, ‘I know a fellow at the consulate in Guadalajara. Why don't you and I just go up there, talk to him? He's a decent guy.'

‘I don't know. … I mean, I'm sure he is, but …' She nearly laughed. ‘Gary's already had me arrested for drugs. At least I think it was Gary. Why would your friend believe anything I have to say?'

‘Well, I don't know that we need to tell him all of it. You've got a guy who's threatening you, and you need your passport so you can get home. That's the main thing.'

‘You think it'll end when I get home? You think it'll be over?' She'd meant it as sarcasm, but she could hear the pleading in her voice, the need for reassurance, like a little girl wanting to know that someone could make it all okay again.

‘I don't know. The rest of this … I don't know what you can do about it. But let's get you home first thing. Away from Gary, whoever he is.'

She thought about what Charlie said. It made as much sense as anything. But if Gary really was watching her, was spying on her, what would he think if she went off someplace with Charlie?

‘Okay. But maybe you should just call him, and I'll go on my own.'

‘I don't mind going with you. There's some shopping I could do in Guadalajara.'

It was tempting to agree, to have somebody with her, someone on her side. Assuming that Charlie really
was
on her side.

Don't go down that rabbit hole, she told herself. He's a nice old guy who drinks too much and studies conspiracy theories for fun. And he believes you.

What would Gary do if he saw her with Charlie?

‘I don't think it's a good idea,' she said.

‘Why, because of Gary?' Now Charlie laughed. ‘Darling … I do believe you, don't get me wrong. But I'm too old and too tired to let that dickhead dictate my behavior.' He poured another slug of tequila into his cup. ‘Gary can kiss my wrinkled ass.'

‘I think I should go by myself,' she said. ‘That way maybe it'll look like … like I just came over for drinks. Like you're not involved. And I don't think you want to be.'

After that she finished her coffee while Charlie retrieved his friend's number, writing it down on the back of an envelope. ‘I'll call him tomorrow,' he said. ‘That's a promise. And I'll let you know what he said. But you take this so you have it, too.'