by George Wier
MEXICO FEVER
A Bill Travis Mystery
George Wier
Copyright © 2016 by George Wier
Published by
Flagstone Books
Austin, Texas
Mexico Fever—A Bill Travis Mystery
First Ebook Edition
May 2016
Cover design by Elizabeth Mackey
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes written in connection with reviews written specifically for a magazine or newspaper.
The Bill Travis Mysteries
(in chronological order):
The Last Call
Capitol Offense
Longnecks and Twisted Hearts
The Devil to Pay
Death On the Pedernales
Slow Falling
Caddo Cold
Arrowmoon
After the Fire
Ghost of the Karankawa
Desperate Crimes
Mexico Fever
DEDICATION
For Sallie, the love of my life.
MODERN MAP OF CHICHEN ITZA
PISTÉ AND ENVIRONS
MEXICO FEVER
CHAPTER ONE
Every once in awhile a fellow has to get his hands dirty. Working and living on this backward Earth, from time to time he may have to bloody them.
I could blame it on Mexico, but there’s no percentage in it.
Let’s just say that people die. Sometimes they don’t so much die as vanish. This is going on all the time behind the scenes. It’s going on everywhere. So when one gets word that it’s happening down in Mexico, far away from where one works and lives and has his being, the tendency is to shrug it off.
But then again, it was Walt Cannon who had disappeared. The guy saved my life once. Sure, I saved his skin once too, so it all should have been in balance. But while there may be two sides to the coin, let me tell you, one side is far heavier than the other.
For background, Walt, a now-retired Texas Ranger, once stepped in and saved my bacon from the clutches of an insurgent Texas secessionist cell operating out of West Texas, and by doing so, he headed off the attempted assassination of the Governor, a man named Richard Sawyer.
Sawyer has been out of office for the last four years. It was Sawyer who called me up and asked me to come see him about something, he wouldn’t say what over the phone. I’d have to drive a hundred and forty miles to find out.
*****
I drove my newly refurbished Mercedes—the engine had been replaced, it’d been rewired electrically, the transmission rebuilt, all the dings and dents have been hammered out, and it had a shiny new paint job that set me back quite a bit—down to River Oaks in Houston to meet with him. One doesn’t shun an elder statesman, especially a former Governor. Also, it’s my philosophy that you never know from what vector an opportunity is going to arrive. No one has a working crystal ball. You have to keep yourself open to life, or life will close you off.
Sawyer’s front door was answered by a young girl—I say young, but she was definitely full grown, although probably not a day over nineteen.
“Mr. Travis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Come in. The Governor has been expecting you.”
Upon stepping inside, the feeling insinuated itself down into my gut that I was going to be in for a mild shock. The light scent of disinfectant was in the air of the front foyer. Twin staircases led upward in the main hall, but the young lady led me aft.
We paused outside of a closed door off a long hallway, and she whispered, “Mr. Travis, are you aware of the Governor’s medical condition?”
I shook my head.
“He’s...not well. He trusts that you are a friend, and won’t let word out to the press.”
“I’m not sure the press would be interested,” I said. “But I promise, I won’t say a word to anyone, not even my wife.”
“Thank you,” she said, and started to reach for the doorknob.
“Wait,” I whispered, and touched her arm. “Are you...family?”
“Yes. I’m Sherry’s and Milo’s daughter.”
It was like a punch in the stomach.
“Then you...know.”
“Yes. You were there when both of them died.”
It meant something that she didn’t say that I had killed them. Truthfully, I didn’t kill Milo Fisher. And while I didn’t outright kill Sherry Euban, I had let go of her hand, and consequently she fell to her death.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know they had a daughter.”
“I was raised by others in the family. I’m the only one that came to grandfather...after. He accepted me.”
“That makes me feel better,” I said.
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said.
“Bill Travis.” I extended my hand out of habit, even though it felt awkward, and she took it.
She opened the door.
A voice boomed at us. “I heard whispering out there! Are you conspiring against me, Bill?”
I laughed. “Governor,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Bullshit.”
And it was good to see him. He sat upright in a hospital bed. One rail was down and a foot trailed from beneath the coverlet out into space. The foot was purple bordering on black. The upper half of his body was as I remembered him, mostly: barrel-chested, broad, although not as solid. He sagged more than the Dick Sawyer I used to know.
His lips were curled around an unlit cigar.
“Are you supposed to be using tobacco?” I asked.
“He’s not,” Elizabeth said. “Honestly, I don’t know where he gets them from. I think he’s a magician or something.”
“Damn right I am,” Sawyer said. “Elizabeth, can you give me and Mr. Travis a few minutes alone.”
“Yes, granddad.”
She turned and left.
“What’s up with the black feet?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing, really. I’m dying, is all.”
I nodded.
“That’s not why I asked you to come. Have a seat.”
I looked, but the only chair was an old hardbacked chair against the wall ten feet away. I shrugged, went and got it and set it down beside Sawyer’s bed.
“Walt Cannon is missing,” he said.
“What?” I asked, taking a seat.
“He’s missing. Gone. Vanished.”
“From where?” I asked.
“Mexico. From the State of Yucatan.”
“What city?”
“Pisté.”
“Wait a minute. That’s right at Chichen Itza.”
“It is.”
“What was he doing down there?” I asked.
“If you know Walt, then you know he loves Mexico as much or more than he loves Texas, and he loves Texas more than any man I’ve ever known, with the possible exception of yourself. The man’s got Mexico Fever. He’s got it bad.”
I had to nod at that. So far he was describing Walt Cannon as if he were his best friend in the whole world.
“So while he had business down there, at first I figured that he was sticking around afterward, soaking in the sun, drinking a little tequila with the Señoritas. But then, he never called.”
“Why are you worried about Walt? He’s one fellow who can take care of himself. True, the man’s got to be approaching eighty.”
“He’s my best friend,” Sawyer said. “I was by his side through his cancer treatment. I wasn’t sure he was going to make it, but then he did. He was the one who broke t
he news to me about the daughter I never knew I had.”
“I remember,” I said.
And then a slow scowl came over Dick Sawyer’s face, or at first I thought it was a scowl, and then I realized it must be something else.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s my fault.” It wasn’t a scowl. It was regret.
“What’s your fault?”
“Why he went down there. I had him chasing after Sunlight.”
“Who...or what, is Sunlight?”
“La Luce del Sol. He is—or maybe it’s was—a Mexican religious leader. The guy was really big back in the 1990s and early 2000s. He had a big following and everything. You might call him a revivalist for the Aztecs—or crap, I don’t know, maybe it’s the Mayans—but somewhere along the line he got into buying American guns and arming rebels for the overthrow of the State of Yucatan and the Mexican government.”
“Huh!” I sniffed. “Where do you come into this?”
“Sunlight’s people killed a whole family down on the border near Eagle Pass, Texas. The son of a bitch thought himself untouchable, so I sent Walt down there to...touch him.”
“Was this before or after you left office?”
“Both. But Walt didn’t catch him the first time around. So, I sent him again.”
“When?”
“Over two months ago.”
I settled back in my chair and regarded Dick Sawyer. What little life the man had left in him resided mostly in his face, and I could read his face as if it was a coffee table picture book. The years and the miles lay heavy on him. His once hard frame was bowed by the gravity of his own sense of obligation. And regret.
“Governor,” I said. “Are you asking me to find Walter Cannon?”
He turned his head slowly. His eyes welled with tears that I prayed I might not be forced to witness streaming down his face.
He nodded slowly.
“Please,” he said. And then the tears came.
CHAPTER TWO
There are four official seasons in Texas. They are: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer and Deer Season. That's the running joke, anyway. All I knew during the long drive home was that it was powerfully hot out, the sun a brutal and glaring orb of nuclear fire in the sky that turned the landscape into a vast kiln. It was wildfire season once more, and there was the almost constant hint of smoke in the air, which made me want to continually scan the horizon. Most Texas counties had burn-bans in effect, and the fines were hefty. Quite often the real fine ended up being the decimation of your own or your neighbors' property. Me, my wife, and kids, live west of Austin right on one of the largest green belts in the county. Anytime I leave the house for more than a few hours during a drought, my thoughts inevitably drift back to the valley of dry cedar, scrub oak, and wild grasses behind my house.
So how was I supposed to get myself down to Mexico?
I couldn't just take off. Or could I?
I had a private pilot's license, I had a one-third interest in an airplane at the San Marcos Municipal Airport, about twenty miles south of Austin. I also had a passport, renewed every six years whether I needed it or not. Apart from one trip to Switzerland shortly after Julie and I met, and one to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I hadn't left the country at all in the past twenty years.
Maybe it was high time.
I called Julie. Jessica had recently rigged a hands-free phone system for me, but I was inept in its use. Somehow I must have held my mouth right when I said the magic words, “Call Julie,” because I heard the distinctive sound of a phone ringing over my stereo speakers.
“How'd it go?” she asked, answering without a hello.
“Governor Sawyer needs a favor from me. He needs me to go to Mexico. Walt Cannon is missing, and long overdue.”
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
“I was thinking about tonight.”
There was one of those pregnant pauses for which she is famous. I waited, knowing better than to say anything.
“Are you flying?”
“I was thinking so.”
“Your co-op airplane?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause, but this one, thankfully, wasn't nearly as long.
“Okay. Come home, first. We'll have dinner together, and you can get packed and go.”
“I still have to make sure it's okay with the guys.”
“How often do they fly?” she asked.
“Almost never,” I replied.
“But when they do, they don't ever consult with you.”
“They leave a message on the community board at the airport.”
“Then that's what you'll do. Don't bother calling them. Just do it.”
I chuckled. “I like how you think, woman. I knew there was a reason I married you.”
“You begged me. For months on end, you begged.”
“I suppose I did.”
“Well, at least I'm not pregnant this time.”
“Maybe we can fool around after dinner.”
“Not on your life. How far are you from home?”
“Not nearly close enough. Another hour or so.”
We exchanged the three words, and hung up.
Quite suddenly, I felt like I was seventeen years old again. I glanced into my rear view mirror and saw the grin on that fifty-one year old face. It was the grin of a kid who'd just been told he could have the family car for the weekend to do whatever he pleased.
“All right, Walt,” I said. “Wherever you are, Bill Travis is coming to get you.”
Looking back on it, maybe I would have been better served not to be so eager. But, we live and learn.
*****
Sometimes I have dreams of Mexico. As I've said, I've been there. But the Mexico of dreams is not necessarily the Mexico those of us who've been there know. I was thinking about that other Mexico—the one that is on the edge of my awareness whenever someone mentions it, or when I'm daydreaming, or perhaps when I'm remembering, only differently—as I prepped the Cessna 182 Commuter for flight. I'd already spent an hour reviewing weather reports for South Texas and the Gulf Coast of Mexico, all the way down to Yucatan, I'd filed a flight plan with the FAA and had forwarded a copy to the Mexican authorities, as well as the Mexico Immigration Authority. Then I'd focused on my legal rudiments. All the maintenance logs seemed to be in order. I purchased and printed an additional Mexican insurance policy after noting we didn't have one of those. I had a copy of my pilot's license and my radio operator's license, just in case I needed to show them. Also, I had a wad of cash, just in case I needed to grease any palms south of the border. It's a funny thing, but when you cross the Rio Grande, you leave the Constitution and the Bill of Rights behind you. And they're waiting there in the middle of the river, in the event you ever make it back.
Then I focused on the aircraft itself. With a flashlight, I went over every square inch of the plane—from propeller to tail section on both sides, and both topside and beneath, looking for any leaks, any popped rivets, any dimples; anything at all that could speak to the possibility of hazard later on. Satisfied, I topped off the tanks, then got back in the cockpit, cleared the prop and powered her up. It was then I noticed someone had put a small green sticker on the dashboard. Lola, it said. Well, I supposed from that moment on, Lola she was.
During the long, ten-hour flight, I would stop in Brownsville for fuel, then stop again at three other airports.
As I made all of these careful, thoughtful preparations, the sounds and the smells of that other, fantastic Mexico came to me: the guitars, the horns, and the voices of a Mariachi Band, the scent of cooking tamales with the heady odor of steeping cumino on the wind, and swatches of color before my vision; the browns of dirt streets and Old World architecture, the greens of hillsides planted with crops of melons, the reds of the swirling skirts of Señoritas, dancing to music, the blues of the waters of the cenotes; and the smiles and laughter of children. And as these images came to me, one by one, I began to understand m
y old friend Walt Cannon's fascination with Mexico. I found myself repeating the phrase, “I'm coming to get you, Walt.”
I took to the air around midnight, having spent an extra hour rechecking everything. My dad's old saying from his years as a carpenter rang in my ears, and it was too damned applicable to everything to dismiss: “Measure twice, cut once.” It was around nine hundred miles, as the crow flies—assuming you could find a crow or any other bird crazy enough to make the direct flight—from Austin to Pisté, Mexico. Most of that distance, however, is over the Gulf of Mexico. A single-engine plane just doesn't have the gas tank for a trip all the way across the Gulf, so I had planned the flight accordingly, with stopovers where there would be available fuel along the coast. All told, it would be a thirteen-hundred mile one-way trip.
I trimmed Lola so that she would require no more than the touch of a fingertip on the yoke. She would fly herself, practically. All I had to do was watch for other air traffic and keep an eye on the altimeter and the compass.
I flew south from San Marcos and followed Interstate 35, with its long, sinuous stream of headlights and taillights (light amber coming up from the south, red going that way), then skirted San Antonio with its airbases and its narrow corridors for non-restricted air traffic. I flew at five thousand feet with a light tailwind, noting that I might make good time.
After the lights of San Antonio were far behind me and the landscape became spectral and dark, absent all the light from the city and the traffic, the moon slowly hove into view from above, bright and full. Soon it would be reflecting off of every lake and pond, every backyard swimming pool below.
Within an hour of Brownsville, I began singing. I went through every song I knew all the words to—which proved to be far too few—and then found myself humming old spirituals. Eventually I was singing the blues, the harmonica going in my head as my only accompaniment. Truth to tell, I can't carry a tune in a bucket.