by Tom Riggs
“He has gone after the girl.”
“The girl?”
“Yes Adrian, the girl. She must have seen something.”
“So what?” said Hudson. “She doesn’t know anything. If she did she would have talked to someone, and we would know.”
“She is a loose end.”
Hudson continued to hold Hector’s stare. It was difficult and he had to keep reminding himself that Hector could do nothing to him. He did not work for Hector.
“She is your loose end Hector, you’re the one who left a witness. A witness you didn’t know about until yesterday. A witness you didn’t know about until I told you about it.” Adrian smiled, he was starting to enjoy himself. It had not taken Adrian long to find out about the Canadian girl. Not taken him long once he realised what Munro had been up to at the posada. The man at the desk had been only too happy to tell him what the other gringo had wanted.
“To be honest, I am surprised that you managed to miss her in the first place.”
Hector paused and looked at Adrian. Looked at Hudson like he wanted to kill the insolent gringo. There was a long pause. Neither man wanted to be the first to speak. Eventually Hector did.
“If the Englishman has gone after the girl, he must think she knows something. If she knows something she is a loose end. She needs to go, so does the Englishman.”
“As I said, she is your loose end Hector. If you three had noticed at the time that he had a girl with him, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Cesar began to speak but Hector silenced him with a wave of his hand.
“You should have taken out the Englishman in Margarita,” said Hector.
“That was not the order Hector and I am not an assassin. The order was to get him out of the country and I did. And unless the order has changed you can’t go off killing Munro and the girl. People will begin to ask questions. Munro has a lot of friends, some of them in very high places. He turns up dead and those friends will start asking questions. So unless the order has changed, I suggest you leave him well alone.”
“The order has changed amigo,” replied Hector his eyes coming slightly more alive. “There is a new order. The order is they both die.”
15
The Hilton’s restaurant was a large room with no natural light. Concrete beams running along a concrete ceiling. Walls curtained off to hide the lack of decoration. Munro guessed it could easily double as a conference room. The designer had clearly been fond of grey. Grey curtains, grey carpet; even the chairs were light grey. The waiters were dressed head to toe in a particularly drab shade of it. Only the white table clothes gave a flash of brightness. But Munro did not mind, the food was hot and came fast. That night it was almost empty, although staffed for a capacity sitting. Three waiters hovered obsequiously around his table. They filled his water glass every time he took a sip, kept on asking him if there was anything more he needed. Munro had turned down the offer of wine, he preferred water, which seemed to upset the sommelier on duty. He paced around Munro’s table, waiting for a moment to strike with his inch-thick leather-bound wine list.
Munro was beginning to get annoyed when his phone rang. Private number, no caller id. As he stood up to answer it a waiter darted forward to help him with his chair. Munro answered as he walked through a set of double doors and out onto a terrace overlooking the pool.
“Munro.”
“Jack, it’s Ed, how are you?”
“Eduardo my man, very well thanks. Where are you?” It sounded like he was in a wind tunnel.
“I am just getting onto a plane, a Gulfstream. We confiscated it off some narco traffickers. One of the perks of the job. I am on my way to Merida in the Yucatan, my new headquarters.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It’s actually pretty vulgar. The seat covers are leopard print … but anyway. I have a location for those Canadians you are looking for.”
“Excellent Eduardo, all three of them?”
“No, just the two grandparents. The girl, Anna Neuberg, is not listed anywhere.” No matter thought Munro. If she was in Mexico, she was bound to be with her grandparents. If not, then it was time to think again.
“Ok, shoot.”
“They are in a village called Sayulita, forty miles north of Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific coast. It’s a nice place actually, Maria and I went there for the weekend a few years ago. Nice reef break there, a left and a right.” Eduardo then proceeded to give Munro the address, some kind of trailer park.
“Thanks Eduardo, I really appreciate this.”
“Don’t thank me old friend. It wasn’t difficult.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“De nada. I must go now, we are about to take off. But one more thing - be careful in Sayulita. The whole of that part of the coast is controlled by a guy called Felix Salazar - “El Cazon”, the Shark, to his friends. He runs the Sonora drug cartel. If you get into any trouble, I won’t be able to help you. The nearest army base is in Guadalajara, three hundred miles inland and the cartel totally control the local police.”
“I’ll try and stay out of trouble.”
“Try hard Jack, please. I have no power round there. It’s enemy territory.”
And with that Eduardo was gone.
As Eduardo’s private jet took off, Munro stayed out on the terrace. He had finished eating anyway. The semi-circular pool was lit up by underwater lights and most of the hotel was in darkness. The daytime smog of Mexico City had lifted to make the evening air fresher. The terrace was empty so Munro took a chair at the edge of it, looking out onto the pool. Below the pool, the terrace dropped away to a steep hill. The Hilton was sold as having one of the best views in all of Mexico City and from his chair Munro could see the huge colonial buildings of the Distrito Federal. Palaces and museums lit up like display pieces. Beyond that stretched the metropolis, huge avenues streaming with lights. Freeways criss-crossing, seemingly at random, through the huge flat plain of life. Nineteen million people. Nineteen million lives. If New York was the city that never sleeps, Mexico City was the city that never stops moving. With so many people crammed into a high mountain valley, it sometimes seemed that the combination of thin air, Latin spirit and sheer weight of numbers was almost combustible. The volcanoes encircling the city just added to its high altitude intensity. If he had not been working, Munro would have been tempted to dive into it. Take a Beetle taxi to a cantina in one of the barrios. See what happens. But not tonight. Tonight he was happy to stay in and look at the view.
A waiter appeared at his shoulder.
“Señor?”
“Whiskey grande por favor. Scotch. Con mucho hielo.”
Scotch on the rocks. Not totally in keeping with tradition, but Munro was never one to keep with tradition. Whiskey tasted better ice cold.
16
Munro caught an early flight the next morning. Mexicana, Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta. It was a Tuesday, early in the morning, the plane was almost empty. He guessed that most people would be using the flight for weekends away. A weekend away from the smog of Mexico City. A weekend on the sunny Mexican Riviera.
Munro had a seat in cabin class, towards the back. It was a small plane; two seats either side of a narrow aisle. The seats were faded and slightly shabby, they had seen better days. Like the plane had been used by another, bigger, airline before Mexicana. A hand me down from the gringos. A lot south of the Rio Grande was. The public buses in Guatemala were old 1970s US school busses, the airport trolleys in Argentina were ex-JFK.
The plane’s engines started to fire and Munro was treated to a view of Mexico City by morning. Or what would have been a view: although it was only eight am, a thick yellow haze had already settled over the city. Once they had cleared the city, Munro did not look out of the window. He had spent a lot of time in planes and felt that you could never get a true feel for a country at 30,000 feet. That was for air force boys. He preferred to be at one thousand feet, in a chopper, with the side door open. Then you could
really get a feel for a place. Feel the air on your face, smell the country. At one thousand feet you had the advantage of height and perspective, but you could still see what you were flying above. At 30,000 feet nothing looked real. It was like flying above a map. Perhaps that was why the air force found it so easy to drop bombs. They were removed from reality. Easy to drop a bomb if all you can make out is a network of roads and fields. Munro did not buy that. War was not some kind of computer game where you pressed a few buttons and the guy on the screen went down. It was about blood, bone tissue, gouged intestines. There was nothing nice about it, nothing clinical. He closed his eyes and tried to stop his mind, stop himself thinking, but the images were still there. Images from his sleep, images from his past. Planes, bombs, death, burning houses, burning bodies. Images that came into his mind uninvited. Images he thought he had forgotten.
He was relieved when a stewardess shook him slightly for breakfast. He turned it down, having sworn off aeroplane food long ago and instead ordered a coffee to kill the taste of raw whiskey that lingered in his throat from the night before. He pulled out the revised file on Richard Lipakos that Rudd had sent through. He had already read it through twice, trying to find something in the boy’s history that might indicate why he had been murdered. But there was nothing. An average rich kid. The only thing un-average about him was his father. The information that Rudd had added on Constantine Lipakos showed that he was very far from average. Estimates of his wealth varied according to which magazine rich list you read. But they all put him in the top twenty – although none in the top ten. That was reserved for the well-known software billionaires and Russian commodities tycoons. But Lipakos was definitely up there. A fortune based on shipping but since diversified into gold mining, oil trading and most recently environmental entrepreneurship. A man like that made enemies. It was impossible not to. A man like that could have powerful enemies. Enemies powerful enough to have someone killed and then bribe the police to cover it up. Get to the father through the son. Get to the father through the favourite son.
Munro pulled out his Blackberry and turned it on, connecting to the airline’s heavily advertised in-flight Wifi. He tried not to think what it was costing per minute and emailed Rudd:
‘Check out the father, especially recent business deals and known enemies.’
Thirty seconds later a reply came back.
‘Already on it, two steps ahead of you. Let the investigator investigate.’
Munro smiled to himself, Rudd was a good investigator there was no denying it.
After an hour in the air the seat belt lights came on as the plane approached Puerto Vallarta. A quick look out of the window revealed a long low mountain range, green and undulating, that dropped down steep into a flat glistening Pacific. Munro looked at the photocopy of Anna Neuberg’s passport that Harris the mounty had sent through. It was a rough copy and you could not tell much from it. Dark hair, a slightly severe look perhaps. But passport photos never did the subject justice. It was clear enough for Munro to make out her main features. Small face, strong jaw line. Clear cheekbones. He was confident that he would recognise the girl. He noticed from the passport copy that she was 29, three years older than Lipakos had been. Richard had evidently preferred the older woman.
Puerto Vallarta airport could have been any holiday airport anywhere in the world, from the Greek Islands to Hawaii. Munro’s flight arrived at the same time as ones from Houston, San Francisco and Phoenix. From the relative calm of the Mexico City flight he walked into a chaotic arrivals hall. Low ceilinged but clean with white faux-marble floors, it had a clinical air to it. Hundreds of American pensioners were queuing to get through six customs booths. As a non-Mexican, Munro joined them. He was the youngest in the crowd by at least thirty years and a good foot taller than many of them. But he was by no means the most aggressive. For the first twenty minutes, Munro made no headway in the queue as sharp elbowed senior citizens barged past him, taking advantage of the lack of any formal line to get a few places ahead of him. No one seemed to be in a very good mood. Everyone had got up early to catch their flight and the old dears were keen to get to their condos. Make full use of their seven night deals. Munro could not face joining in the jostling. A tiny man who could not have been younger than seventy-five stepped in front of him, pulling his wheelie bag over Munro’s toes. Clearly on purpose. Munro wondered if he had somehow slighted the man, he certainly had not noticed him until then and may have unintentionally stepped in front of him. The man turned to face Munro, looking him straight in the eye, daring him to say something. He looked like an extra from a cheap mafia film, decked out in an old aloha shirt and three gold chains. His wife gave Munro an embarrassed smile. Munro sighed. Military transportation was never comfortable, and certainly never glamorous. But at least you never had to compete with angry septuagenarians. Munro glanced to his left and saw that there were also six customs booths open to Mexican passport holders. All six booths were empty. He stepped over the little mafiosi’s wheelie case and walked towards the Mexican-only booths. He could feel the angry pensioners’ stares as he pulled out his passport. Unnoticed to anyone he slipped a one hundred dollar bill into it and walked towards booth three. The customs officer there had three-day old stubble and was chewing a match; he looked like someone who could use a hundred dollars. Munro was through in two minutes.
Through customs and the generic holiday airport feel continued. Four car hire desks faced him as soon as he came through the gate, hole in the wall operations. Munro walked up to the only empty one.
“Hola señorita.”
The girl at the desk looked up at Munro, about to scowl. But on seeing him she smiled.
“Hello sir, how may I be of assistance?” Perfect English, slight American accent. She had deep dark eyes. Under the heavy foundation, cheap pink lipstick and greasily permed hair she was beautiful.
Munro smiled and concentrated on the deep brown eyes.
“I need a car. Something fast. Just for the day.”
“Of course sir, let me show you what we have,” she said pulling out a laminated card. “Although I am afraid nothing we have is that fast.” She held Munro’s look with a smile. After a second too long he looked away.
The car was some kind of saloon, standard in every way. American, but made to look Japanese. He wondered when they had started doing that. There was a time in the 80s and 90s when the Japanese made their cars to look American. Nissans made to look like slightly bulbous Pontiacs. Now the Americans were doing their best to churn out inconspicuous saloons that looked like Hondas. Personally he did not really care. As long as it got him where he wanted to go. He did not need a muscle car. He turned on his GPS and saw that the drive to Sayulita was short and easy. Follow the coastal highway north for forty miles, turn off just after Punta Mita and you are there. Easy.
The builders of the coastal highway had wisely decided to put it two miles inland, so as to leave the actual coast for the hotels and condominium blocks. As a result Munro did not see the sea until he was twenty miles along and the highway had begun to climb into the forested hills above Puerto Vallarta. Thus far the drive had been uninteresting. The boring but useful buildings had been put along the highway, away from the expensive beachside property. Petrol stations, car show rooms and shopping complexes were spread out along either side of it.
Everything was in good condition, the cars in the showrooms big and American, the shops familiar. WalMart, Burger King, Esso, KFC. The buildings were new and the large malls could have been in North America, were it not for the signs in Spanish. Puerto Vallarta was doing well for itself.
The road was good, the tarmac smooth and new. Freshly laid, crisp new road markings. Munro accelerated the saloon as fast as it would go. It felt good to be behind the wheel again.
As the highway left Puerto Vallarta and its satellite towns, the buildings began to give way to dry yellow fields, interspersed with the odd luminescent green golf course. Eventually, as the road began t
o climb from the coastal plain into the low hills above Puerto Vallarta, the fields turned to forest and then jungle. It was good jungle here, not so thick that you could not see through it but still untamed enough to look natural.
Twenty minutes later and signs began to appear advertising restaurants, cafes and posadas. Faded and flaky, some of them had fallen over. His GPS told him to turn off down a dry bumpy track. Sayulita was close.
Eduardo had been right. Sayulita was a nice place, if a bit quaint for Munro’s tastes. The main square was picture book pretty. Munro almost felt that he had been there before. If you wanted a Mexican village square for a Hollywood romantic comedy, Sayulita was your place. Two storey colonial-style buildings lined the square, interspersed by small palm trees. Baby palms. The buildings were all painted in cute pastel shades. Most of them seemed to be restaurants on the ground floor with bars above. The square itself was pedestrianised, lots of benches, raised flowerbeds and more baby palms. Many of the flowers were in bloom, their pinks and blues adding to the general cuteness of the place.
Munro walked up to a bored looking taxi driver loitering at the rank in the middle of the square.
“Sayulita Trailer Park?”
“No possible, señor,” replied the man with a shrug.
The trailer park was at the other end of town he said, but the road was being resurfaced. Señor would have to walk. He could either go through town or via the beach.
Munro took the beach.
Eleven thirty was prime tanning time in Sayulita. The beach was packed. Packed with gringos – the only Mexicans Munro could see were the ones serving drinks. The town beach was a small sandy bay with a wooded headland to the left and rocks to the right. Those not tanning on the loungers were out surfing or having an early lunch at one of the thatch roofed restaurants on the beach. Eduardo was right about the surfing too. It was a nice break. But crowded. At least thirty people were battling for a wave that could only really hold three at best. It looked like the locals were getting most of the rides.