by M. S. Karl
“But who could that be?”
“I heard a name yesterday, at your mother’s. A girl named Vivian who lived with LaCour and apparently took off when he was killed. My hunch is that she’s the third woman in the pictures.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never saw her.”
“But you may be able to help me find her.”
“I think whoever killed him should get a medal.”
“That may be. But if they have the negatives …”
“Yes, I know. What do you want me to do?”
“Ask around. You probably know some young people who know young people, students and the like. Somewhere along, the school, the consulate, somewhere, there must be information on this Vivian and where she’s gone.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I stopped in front of my hotel. “I’ll keep this,” I said, sticking the gun under my shirt. “And I’ll be expecting your call.”
Chapter Nine
I was dreaming when the knocking on the door came. I had come in and lain down with the intention of getting up in a few minutes for lunch, but images had begun to run through my head, as if a camera had been switched on. They danced before my closed eyes like wraiths, hypnotizing me, and I forgot about food. I saw Laurie and LaCour obscenely coupling, and as I watched, LaCour turned into a huge boar, rutting with a creature I did not recognize except for the face. The face changed and I saw Gloria and she was screaming and the hog kept up its jerky movements, a smile on its face. Then I heard a whistle and Lieutenant Obregon was running down the street with a nightstick, an absurd little man fleeing ahead of him. Obregon wore a blue helmet and the little man’s pants kept falling down. Somehow the policeman never seemed to catch him. He rounded a corner and saw a woman on a park bench. Before her, traffic swirled and over it all hovered the monument to the Nines Heroes of Mexico. It was Chapultepec Park. The air was chill. The woman smiled as the little man sat down. He began to tell her about his life. And as he spoke the scene became real, the kind of neighborhood he had lived in as a child, and the games he had played and the school he had attended. It was real and I was thirsty for it and I was smelling the grass on the lawns and the baking in the kitchen and the hot tar streets of summer. And then the knocking came.
I opened the door and looked into the face of the slightly bored clerk from downstairs. “Teléfono,” he said.
I picked up the receiver and heard Laurie’s voice. “I found her,” she said.
“Here?”
“No. She’s on the east coast of Yucatán. At least from what I was told.”
“Where exactly?”
“Nothing doing. You might leave without me.”
“You don’t mean you’re coming?”
“You’re damned right.”
Actually, I was a little relieved. I looked outside. It was dark.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nine-fifteen. It took me all day but I found a student who had a girlfriend who—you know the sort of thing. Have you been asleep?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a little voice.
“About what.”
“Hitting you so hard.”
“Thanks. How do we get to the east coast?”
“Aeromexico has flights. I’ve booked us for tomorrow morning. Will you be ready at nine?”
“I hope so.”
“Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight.”
I went back upstairs, but this time I couldn’t sleep. There was too much to think about and, besides, the hunger was beginning to gnaw inside me. I went down to a taco stand and filled up on tacos and panuchos, and returned to the room.
But there was still no sleep. I kept thinking about him, the little man alone in the cell, and the supplicating look on his face. I thought about the men who would be arriving tonight or tomorrow or the next day, from Mexico City, and I thought about the wires they would tape to his genitals. And I thought about the questions they would ask that he would never, in a million years, know how to answer. I could call Kestering, tell him that there was nothing to it, that the killing had been an accident, from the point of view of the agency: that LaCour had been a bastard, probably milking the agency for everything it was worth and sending people like Bassett off on useless missions to the highlands for butterflies so that LaCour could later point to them as his contacts with a guerrilla band which, for all I knew, consisted of a couple of stickup artists, hiding out. Meanwhile, LaCour enjoyed the good life, sent in a report when it pleased him, and, when questioned, invented a new development among the guerrillas he “controlled.” It was all a fake; LaCour was a fake. And if someone had killed him it was a good thing.
I could report all that, walk away, and leave it. I didn’t even like Bassett. Then I thought about a woman looking down into a swimming pool as the sun went down, and her pleas in a hotel room—this hotel room—a few hours later. I even imagined that I could still smell some of her perfume. And finally I thought about tail lights on a lonely road and the night suddenly bursting into an inferno of flames and smoke.
I would be on the plane tomorrow.
It was a nice day, warm but springish, and a breeze had swept in from the Gulf a hundred miles away. Laurie pulled into a space in the airport parking lot and started to get out.
I grabbed her handbag. “Wait a minute.” A small automatic pistol fell out onto the seat. “What’s this for?”
“You never know.”
“Well, we can’t do anybody any good if we go to jail for carrying weapons on an aircraft.”
“Have it your way.” She watched me place the little gun under the seat. “But they aren’t so particular down here.”
We went in and I paid the clerk for our tickets. A little later we were being seated on the plane, a turboprop that had seen better days. The seats were half empty. Two rows behind us was a couple who looked like Americans, the man in a tanktop showing the bulges of his muscles and the girl in a T-shirt with JAIL printed over her breasts. Across the aisle was what was evidently a businessman with an attache case on his lap, perhaps an auditor for the hotels that marred the once-tranquil coast of the new state of Quintana Roo. I wiped my face.
“You need some time to get back in shape,” Laurie said critically and saw me flush. “I just mean that you look like you’ve been sick for a long time. Pale. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I was in an accident a while back. It took time to get over it.”
The motors started with a whine and we began to taxi. Moments later I was looking down at swamps and rivers and the wrinkles in the earth that were the highlands.
“It’s just that I’m kind of a fitness nut,” the girl said. “All my life I spent here in Tabasco. It was a good time, being here with my father, especially. He used to take me out into the selva lacandona, the Lacandon jungle. He showed me how to survive, how to backpack, how to paddle a chem, a Lacandon canoe. I guess he wanted a son, really, so he tried to make do with me. We were happy. Then he died.” Her pixie face clouded. “I was lost for a while. What happened with—” She did not want to say the name and I saw gooseflesh on her arms. “Well, it just made things worse.”
The Yucatán passed under us, its base a green, cloud-mottled plain, broken only by the thin line of the lonely highway that ran for nearly two hundred miles from Escarcega to Chetumal. Then the green Caribbean was under us and we were beginning a descent toward the ocean surface when the island appeared and we banked.
We came down the steps into the hot Caribbean sun and I donned my sunglasses. The sun lover’s paradise, the ads said. The vacation home of the wealthy.
“The first time I came here was fifteen years ago with my parents,” Laurie said, as we hurried across the hot asphalt. “I don’t even remember it. I was only five years old then.”
“Your father must have been quite a person.” It was all I could think to say. She nodded, a wistful little smile on her face.<
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“I thought the world had ended when he died.”
“How did it happen?”
“His plane went down in Chiapas. He was flying some medicine from one of his ranches to an Indian village.”
We came to a hangar on the edge of the field, and Laurie led me around the wing of a Beechcraft that sat shimmering white in the sun. When we got on the other side of it, we saw that a man had the cowl open and was working on the engine.
“¿Está el Capitán Moreno?” Laurie asked.
The mechanic turned around and wiped a perspiring face with his arm. “Adentro,” he said. “Pasen adelante.”
Laurie thanked him, and I followed her into the hangar, past another plane, a white Cessna with blue trim. There was an office to one side and a pair of men sat in it, drinking coffee. Laurie opened the door, and the man at the table rose as he saw her, his face exploding into a smile.
“Señorita Laurie, what a pleasure!” He wiped his hands on his gray slacks and took her hand in both of his.
The other man stood and backed out of the way as Laurie turned to include me. “David, this is Capitán Pedro Moreno, the best pilot in the Southeast.”
Capitán Moreno, a little barrel of a man whose belly slopped over his belt buckle, smiled with pleasure. “She is very kind,” he said, going into English in case I did not understand. “She says I am the best pilot in the Southeast. But she knows it is not true. I am the best in the world.”
We laughed, including the man who had backed away to give the pilot the stage, but now Moreno introduced him, putting an arm around his shoulder, “And this is the second best mechanic in the world. I am the best because I taught him.”
“Rudolfo Ramos,” the mechanic said with a slight bow.
“Now,” Pedro said, reaching to the cluttered filing cabinet for a pair of coffee cups, “tell me how it has been with you since your father … pohrecito.” He shook his head, his dark hair falling over his broad forehead. “He was a good man. And a first-rate flyer. You knew him?”
“Unfortunately not,” I said.
Moreno shook his head again, and handed Laurie the cup his mechanic had just filled from the pot on the table.
“He was a very special man,” Moreno handed me the second cup, and pushed a bowl of sugar toward us.
The little office was warm and the fan in the corner blew air already dead with the heat, but I tasted my coffee anyway.
For a few minutes longer Moreno and Laurie talked old times until finally a silence broke over the memories and the only sound was the metallic whining of the little fan.
Laurie twisted the handle of the cup and said, “I don’t suppose you have room for another charter today.”
“Are you asking me?” the captain countered.
“Is it possible?”
“Todo es posible,” he answered. “All things are possible.” He took out a pack of cigarettes, offered them around, and gave a faint scowl when his mechanic took one.
Laurie shook her head. “They’re too strong for me.”
Moreno smiled and lit for the three of us, and then lounged back in his chair, his stomach showing where his T-shirt failed to meet his belt. “When did you want it?” he asked.
“Now,” Laurie said, looking him in the eye. He did not look away, just took another drag off his cigarette.
“Where to?”
“Tulum.”
“Two people?”
“Yes.”
He began to tap on a tooth with a fingernail. “I have to take some people to Can Cum in an hour. Party of gringo tourists. I was going to use the Cessna.” He turned to the mechanic. “Corre, preguntale a Juan cuando va terminar con el Beech.” He turned back to us. “If Juan can finish the Beech in time, I can put you all in it. Go to Tulum first, then to Can Cum. The Beech is bigger. When do you want to come back?”
“Tomorrow,” Laurie said, and he nodded. “But early.”
“Muy bien. Let us see.”
The mechanic came back in. “Juan says it will be another hour and a half. He said you told him you wouldn’t be using it until afternoon.”
“Tell Juan I changed my mind. Tell him an hour. And go see if you can help him.”
It was an hour and twenty minutes later that the plane was ready. The others, a New Jersey delicatessen owner and his fat wife, had been waiting for fifteen minutes, the woman threatening to call the tourist commission and find another pilot and plane. “I mean, no offense to you people,” she said in what was clearly meant to be an offense, “but we asked first, and we were supposed to meet the Simonses at the Playa Azul at noon. It’s already twenty minutes after.”
Her husband, Harry, who wore a multicolored shirt and a look of mild anxiety, told her the Simonses wouldn’t go anywhere. But she told him that wasn’t the point. She had looked at her watch for the thirtieth time when the mechanic, Rudolfo, came in, wiping his greasy hands on his blue jeans.
The fat woman sat in the number two seat, and I wondered what we would do if we crashed; we would all drown before she got out.
“Are you sure the thing is fixed?” she kept asking, but Rudolfo had on his earphones, and was listening to the tower. Laurie sat in the rear, close up against me, and I wanted to tell the fat woman to shut up because I could feel Laurie quiver as the motors began to race for the takeoff. It suddenly occurred to me that she must go through that every time she flew.
“It’s okay,” I said, shouting into her ear against the motor, and I caught a faint nod in reply.
Then the plane was roaring down the runway and the earth was falling away and the sea was all around us. Laurie closed her eyes and I could see she was breathing deeply. The jets were probably easier on her. Her father had died in a little job. This one had two motors, though—if the right one had been fixed properly. If not … I looked down at the corrugated green of the channel. As if in reply, she gave my hand a squeeze and I saw she was smiling.
“Touché,” I said.
We came in low over the Mayan ruin of Tulum, a walled jumble of stone palaces that had flourished half a millennium ago, and now was a favorite new tourist spot with the east coast crowd. Further inland, in the tropical forest, there were other ruins, some yet undiscovered. We tipped one wing up and the fat woman gave a gasp. Then the dirt field was reaching for us, and we were skimming in. The gravel runway jolted the wheels and the pilot cut power. The fat woman was unable to move, so Pedro got out, holding open the cabin door.
“Mañana,” he said.
“Noon,” I confirmed.
“Whenever.” He shrugged.
I shook his hand, and he climbed back in and shut the cabin door. We watched the plane vanish into the sky, then walked over to the little house that served refreshments.
“He’s a good man, Pedro is,” Laurie said as we sat down with our beers. “He used to be a bush pilot in Chiapas. That’s how we got to know him.”
I took a long swallow of the Superior and set the empty glass on the table. A fly landed on the rim of the glass and cleaned its legs.
“What about your mother?” I asked.
“What about her? I told her I was going skindiving at Xel-Ha. That’s close enough to the truth. It’s a little late for her to be a watchdog.”
There was hurt underneath so I said nothing. I poured the rest of the beer into the glass and drained it, feeling little bubbles of ice go down. Or was it just that the beer was cool and everything else here was so hot? We got up from the table, and Laurie found a cab driver. He would take us to Palmul, he said, and quoted an outrageous amount. Laurie beat him down to two-thirds, and he sighed wearily, put on a straw hat, and led us to an old Chrysler.
“The road’s only been paved a couple of years,” Laurie said. “Before that it was bad. I mean really bad. And ten years before that, there wasn’t any road at all.”
But this was the new Quintana Roo, Mexico’s newest state, where a multimillion-dollar tourist complex had been built on a little island called Can Cum, and a
sleepy Mayan fishing coast had been transformed overnight. There were still little camps in the palms as we went north along the coast, but there were also signs promising new developments. To the left was the jungle, but one wondered how long it had left.
It was thirty-five minutes to Palmul. The driver turned into the gravel driveway and went down the shell surface to where the bungalows looked out over the green sea.
“We’ll be back in a little while,” I told him, and gave him a five-dollar bill. He tucked it into his shirt pocket and nodded.
We left the cab and walked toward the hut that seemed to be the headquarters. The breeze from the sea was feathering through the coconut palms over our heads, making a sound like propellers. Down on the beach, water was slapping against the rocks. A chicken pecked determinedly at a grain in the yard. An unshaven man came out of the hut and stood rubbing his eyes.
“We’re looking for a girl named Vivian,” I said.
The man shrugged. “I don’t know the names. You can ask in the cabanas.”
We left him and walked across the shell drive to the first bungalow, a two-roomed plaster building with hammocks slung on the front porch. A man was sleeping in one of the hammocks, a paperback book open across his stomach. The breeze rippled his blond hair and a fly lit on his nose without awakening him. I tiptoed over to the open doorway and looked in. The room was empty though a couple of valises were against one wall. I felt Laurie nudge me then and turned around. There was a figure down on the beach, perhaps two hundred yards away, walking away from us. I could just see the dark hair and the bikini. Laurie nodded.
“It has to be her,” she whispered. We went down onto the sand and followed the footprints that led alongside the shore. The figure had disappeared into a cove, and we hurried to catch up. In ten minutes we had come into the cove and saw her on the far side, walking slowly, bag slung over her shoulder, stopping now and again to pick up something. We were fifty yards from her when she saw us. She was a pretty girl, perhaps too pretty, in a way that Laurie never would be, and conscious of her superiority. She gave us a plastic, over-the-shoulder smile, letting the wind line her hair. It was a model’s pose, and I could sense Laurie’s disgust. She had a good body, this girl in front of us, and I knew she was exaggerating the swing of her buttocks because she knew we were behind her. It was an act she was used to doing for the world, and it continued until I called her name. She stopped and turned slowly, her brows rising quizzically over the sunglasses.