The Sand Trap (38 page)

Mary and Richard continued to stand at the
end of the hospital bed, saying nothing.

“What’s the job?”

They were both visibly relieved. “We’ll let
you know later. It will be six months or so before you need to do
anything. You’ll need that time to get healthy again and to
internalize your new identity. As usual, we’ll get you the target
details and leave the method to you.”

“I lost all of my materials in the
fire.”

“There is a new set of golf clubs being
shipped to your suite at the golf course right now. We were able to
save most things and you’ll find them hidden in various ways in the
clubs and bag.”

Gord looked doubtful but had learned to
trust Mary over the years. “Anything else?”

Richard put on his coat to leave. “Gord,
from this point on we will never meet unless in secret, but if you
ever need us there is a contact in your iPhone, ‘Muddy Waters’. If
you auto dial the number you will get either me or Mary.” He paused
as he turned around to look at Gord. “I’ll miss you buddy.” And he
came over and gave Gord a hug. Mary actually had tears in her eyes
as she did the same. “Take care Gord.” And they were both walking
out the door and out of Gord Salmy’s life.

“Wait a moment!” Gord yelled and they paused
at the door. “What is my new name?”

The bump of the wheels on the runway dragged
Burt away from his thoughts and he sighed as he turned his mind
away from the events that put him here to the thoughts of a new
life for Burt Van Royan in Mexico.

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The morning of the staff meeting offered
Maria a typical scorched sky sunrise over the Sea of Cortez. Her
home was really just a fisherman’s cabin that clung to a hunk of
grassy desert on the edge of a small arroyo. While she had been
told by some of the fishermen that in a heavy rain a flash flood
could come down the arroyo and wash the cabin into the sea, there
had never been such a rain since she arrived. In fact it rained
less than five days a year in the area so she figured she was safe
for a while. She imagined that if this did ever happened there
would be quite a waterfall, since the arroyo ran down a cliff from
the desert above and fell into the centre of a small cove
surrounded on all sides by cliffs of sand and rock. The beach was
only fifty metres from the end of the arroyo and her cabin so she
could also imagine everything in the path of the unlikely flood
being quickly washed away into the sea of Cortez.

On this particular morning the sun crept up
the sides of the cliffs and entered her cabin while she slept,
gently nudging her awake and welcoming her to another perfect day
in the Baja. The cabin was only fifteen kilometers north of San
Jose del Cabo, the nearest town, and only forty or so kilometers
from the busy tourist centre of Cabo San Lucas, but for Maria it
was another world. The first four kilometers of the road from San
Jose Del Cabo were well paved since it led to the new Puertos Los
Barillas Golf Resort. From there to her casita it was a very bumpy
gravel road that at places hung precipitously from the edge of
cliffs that hid coves, beaches and a few fishermen’s casitas such
as the one Maria lived in. The road was tough on the occasional
rental car that attempted the drive up what was known as the East
Coast Road, but perfect for Maria’s Honda XL250 trail bike that she
used to get back and forth from work at the golf course. The
coastline property was mostly owned by wealthy developers from
Mexico City and foreigners could not own ocean front property in
Mexico except through a trust arrangement. While there was the
occasional mansion perched on a cliff over the sea, most owners
were waiting for more prosperous times to develop the area. A large
hotel, golf course and condo development was approved and planned
for the town just north of where Maria lived, but it was
temporarily on hold while sub-prime mortgages and national debt
problems were brought into submission. In the meantime Maria’s
cabin was quiet, private and perfect for someone who just wanted to
be left alone.

Maria rolled out of bed and spent a half
hour doing a series of unusual exercises that no one would
recognize, and if they did they would wonder why a Mexican gardener
at a golf course in San Jose was practicing an ancient and extinct
form of Korean martial arts. Her explanation was simple, although
Maria preferred not to ever have to provide it. So she sought
private places for her morning ritual and she never had a better
place than this casita and cove. She didn’t even have to get
dressed since the beach and the cove were hidden from the road
above. After a half hour of stretching and twirling, poking at
imaginary enemies with imaginary weapons, she went for her morning
swim. The cove had a small beach, maybe forty yards wide, and a
rock reef a hundred yards off shore helped create a calm lagoon,
perfect for both swimming and, later in the day, a snorkeling
adventure. The water was cool this early in the morning and she ran
dripping up the beach to a towel hanging from the clothesline
rigged up on the cabin porch. At fifty-two years old it was getting
harder and harder to stay in great shape; she didn’t need a mirror
to know that so far she had been very successful. Good genes to
start with didn’t hurt. Unlike most of her Mexican female
counterparts, she had genes that promoted a slender figure rather
than a full one. At just under six feet, she was also taller than
most Mexican women and it was joked at the house in Puebla that her
ancestors were more the product of a randy conquistador than a
righteous Mayan. She did not have the classic beauty of a Spanish
noblewoman, but she knew that with her combination of blue eyes,
long black hair, handsome, not beautiful, face, and lithe, athletic
figure she could appeal to any man she wanted.

Like her figure, she worked at maintaining
her hair. This morning it hung in long wet ringlets down her bare
back, but later she would curl it up in a bun for work. The
intense, rich black was becoming easier to maintain now that she
was actually turning grey. Touching up grey roots was easier to
explain than touching up auburn roots. After one last glance at the
ocean and wrapping herself in a sarong, she went into the cabin to
prepare some breakfast. The cabin had only generator-provided
electricity so she preferred to cook on either the small propane
stove inside or the small barbecue on the deck. More often than
not, she preferred to light a driftwood fire on the beach to grill
a fish but in the morning it was easier to just light the indoor
stove and soon a plate of huervos rancheros was ready to be washed
down with a mug of strong black coffee. The 600 sq. ft. cabin
consisted of a small bedroom and a combination kitchen, dining and
living room, the latter facing a small adobe fireplace on one wall
for cool evenings. A large porch stretched across the complete
front of the building and contained two hammocks and a small
plastic table with two matching chairs. That is where Maria had her
breakfast, watching the pelicans swoop down into the lagoon for
their own breakfast.

The original cabin had been built by a
fisherman to take advantage of both the exceptional fishing at this
spot in the Sea of Cortez and the natural harbour provided by the
lagoon. He never owned the land, and when Jose had purchased a
large tract of land for future development, he acquired the cabin
and the fisherman as well. Since development was slow, he let the
fisherman stay on the land and in the cabin. When the fisherman
died a couple of years ago, Jose turned the cabin into his own
private retreat, renovating the building and acquiring the
furniture to be a modern hideaway. He did not bother with hydro
since a generator and propane took care of most lighting and
heating needs and his goal was to get more away from these things
rather than to take them with him. When Maria had to get out of
Puebla, he got her a new name, the job at the golf course and gave
her the cabin to live in. Even the X1came with the cabin. Now she
wondered how long he would let her stay there. Or for that matter
what he would do with her, period.

Their last meeting had not gone well.

“People do not say no to me,” he had
quietly, but firmly, informed her as she served him a piece of
freshly grilled sea bass and refilled his wine. They were sitting
at the same table where Maria was now sitting with her breakfast.
It was the first time he had visited her at the cabin since she had
started the job at the golf course and moved into the cabin. He had
arrived unannounced in three Hummers each holding a squad of
heavily armed “consultants,” as he called them. His consultants
took up watchful positions along the dirt road, the path leading
down to the cabin, and one was patrolling back and forth along the
beach.

He had come expecting sex with Maria.

“I thought we agreed that part of our
relationship was over, if it was ever there. That is why I am here
in the Baja, and you are still in Puebla,” and she added, “and
still married.”

He used his fork to play with the fish, put
it down and took a sip of wine.

“Maria, we have known each other for over
thirty years. We have been friends, we have worked together, we
have been enemies and we have been lovers. You know my history, my
ambitions and my flaws better than anyone alive. ”

Maria put her own glass down and looked at
him. She spoke quietly but firmly. “We were never ‘lovers’. We just
had some spontaneous sex on occasions thirty years apart. I know
you better than most because you just kill anyone who starts to
know too much about you. You have killed all the people from the
old days who know you are just a kid from the barrio, not a high
Mexican family. All of those who know that Jose Gorges is not your
real name. All of those who know you do not have a university
degree from CETYS University. All of those who know you lose money
as a maquiladora and make more in the drug trade. And you only
married to get a name and respectability, not love. Those who are
left know that you are incapable of love, only cruelty.” She paused
and looked into his eyes. "And you still kill – even young
children."

“If that is so, why are you still alive?”
His tone was cruel and his face showed no sign that her comments
had any effect on his emotion.

“I don’t know,” she offered. “Maybe it is
some weird Oedipus complex. Your mother is dead. I’m six years
older than you. I saved your life. I was your first fuck, maybe
your last? Maybe there are even boundaries to your sadism? Maybe if
you kill me you totally erase a past that you actually don’t want
to totally forget? Maybe you just need to have power over someone
you can’t have power over? Maybe if you kill the last person on
earth who says no to you and you can’t control with fear you will
be bored?” She paused and took a sip of your own wine. “Jose. I am
indeed grateful you did not have me dumped in the middle of the
road without my head like the last twenty-seven unfortunates who
showed up on a Guadalajara turnpike, or had my house sprayed with
bullets like those poor students, and I truly thank you for the job
and the cabin. In a weird way I still feel sorry for that confident
immature seventeen-year-old who prematurely ejaculated all over my
new dress. Neither of us are who we once were Jose. It was a
mistake to have sex that last time and it will never happen again.
If you do actually care for me you will make sure no one ever knows
of our connection. As far as your wife and family are concerned I
have left the country for good. I know you found me this job, and
you let me stay here, because you think I will be your little
secret, tucked away on the Baja for your pleasure whenever you feel
the need for a golf game. But if so, get me fired, throw me out of
the cabin or get one of your goons to cut off my head and leave me
in a ditch because that is a fantasy that will never transpire. You
should know me better than that.”

“You weren’t my first fuck. It was with a
Theresa Gonzales when I was 14 and she was better than you.” He
reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a paper and slid it
across the table to her. She cautiously picked it up and read
it.

“I know all of what you say,” he agreed.
“Except for the octopus, or whatever it was, thing. I’m sorry for
tonight. I only meant to see you one last time to give you this. We
will go in different directions now and maybe, or maybe not, our
paths will cross again. I do not want your memories of me to be all
bad.”

Maria was astonished. The paper was the deed
to the cabin and the land surrounding the cabin, 700 acres and over
a mile of beachfront.

“The taxes have been taken care of for ten
years. After that the recession should be over and you could raise
some capital to do whatever you want. This area will prosper I’m
sure. It can be your future.”