The plane bucked. My heart lodged itself in my throat.
A gentle chime sounded. The PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT sign lit up.
I had never taken my seat belt off to begin with.
The man sitting next to me had put away his work. Now he had little black headphones stuffed inside his ears and plugged into the common armrest between us. Instead of viewing a movie or in-flight CNN, he was tuned into a channel that broadcast the same exact view the pilot had from the cockpit of the 747. If we suddenly nose-dived, we could get an excellent visual of the solid ground as it met our faces at a thousand miles per hour.
I picked the paper back up, kept on reading.
I was at the part of the article that stated Marconi had last been seen exiting the law offices of a Mr. Tony Angelino, formerly of Council 84, now running a private practice on the corner of Pearl and State Streets. When asked the nature of the visit, Angelino stated that never, at this or any other time, would he compromise the client-attorney privilege, even if the worst were to happen and the body discovered in the 4-Runner were to be identified as Marconi. However, Mr. Angelino did state that the visit had been primarily social in nature and that he would be happy to cooperate with the APD to the fullest extent that both the law and ethics provided. He also made a point of extending his hopes and prayers to the loved ones of his good friend and client, Mr. Marconi, in the hopes that he turned up soon. Alive and otherwise unharmed.
Good old Tony.
What a great friend and a gifted liar he was.
I decided to be a good neighbor. I tapped the man beside me on the shoulder with the folded newspaper.
He pulled the headphones out of his ears, looked at me through those horn-rimmed glasses, saying nothing.
I held the paper up. “Interested?”
He shook his head, plugged the Walkman headphones back into his ears, went on watching the view from the cockpit.
Nothing but blue sky.
I tossed the paper onto the cabin floor, just as a stewardess came by with a drink cart. The man beside me ordered a Vichy water. I ordered a small split of champagne. The stewardess poured the drinks for us into small plastic cups. But what the hell was there to celebrate? If the public thought I was dead, then Val thought I was dead. Let’s face it, we hadn’t left each other on the best of terms. On the other hand, what man doesn’t want to trade in his old life for a brand spanking new one?
I picked up my champagne, held it out as if to make a toast.
The man next to me got the message. He lifted up his cup.
“Cheers,” he said, a little too loud since he still had the headphones jammed into his ears.
I tapped the rim of his plastic cup with mine and drank.
“Long life,” I said.
He raised his right hand, pointed to his right ear. “Can’t hear you,” he said.
Chapter 17
This time when the soldier injects her in the arm she doesn’t get sleepy.
This time she doesn’t feel her eyelids getting heavy and the warm concrete floor beneath her turning to mud.
She doesn’t dream.
But she lives a nightmare.
The burn shoots through her muscles like a swarm of stinging bees caught inside her veins desperate for a way out; she feels her brain buzz like it’s swelling to twice its normal size. If her brain gets any bigger, it will start oozing out her ears and nostrils.
Her skin tingles, her synapses vibrate.
She doesn’t want to move.
It’s painful even to be alive.
It doesn’t take her long to realize they’ve knocked her up with some kind of drug that enhances normal pain to the point of excruciating.
It all makes sense too.
Because the mustached man is approaching her.
He’s got something in his hand. A long needle. The longest needle she’s ever seen. Like an ice pick, only thinner, with a wood-grip handle.
She’s in too much pain to be frightened.
The mustached man is smiling. He’s a happy man. Enjoys his work. The soldier who injected her is standing off in the distance, his back pressed up against the iron bars of the cell, hands folded at his crotch.
The sweat runs off his brow, onto his red lips.
He wants the visual effect. She knows the scoop.
Like the Chinese soldiers who used to whip the shit out of bad prisoners with bamboo reeds. The soldiers who stood around in their green uniforms, smiley-faced. She’d been there to write about it not long ago, until the country expelled her for doing what she does best. Writing the truth.
Her hands and feet have been duct-taped together at the ankles, at the wrists.
A piece of tape covers her mouth. She can’t fight back. She can’t run. She can’t even scream.
Her nose is running.
“Are you okay, miss?” she hears Roberto ask from the cell beside hers. “Please do what they tell you, miss. Please tell them what they want.”
What she wants to tell the man is this: What fucking choice do I have now?
She’s going to tell the mustached man anything he wants to know.
Even if she has to make it up.
As he unzips her jumper, pulls off her black lace bra, brings the tip of the needle to her ripe nipple, inserts it, slow, she knows she’s ready to talk.
When the fiery red pain will insist upon it.
Chapter 18
I descended the aluminum staircase on wheels onto the hot, sandy blacktop.
Monterrey International Airport.
More like an airstrip. A ratty collection of three or four buildings surrounded on all sides by desert.
To my right as I got off the plane, an old hangar covered in that wavy dull metal siding with a long, concave roof. Something Howard Hughes would have loved. Bolted to the tin facade just above the wide sliding doors was a faded wood sign depicting the giant wheel and swirling wing of the old Pan Am logo.
Dead ahead, the airport terminal: a two-storied, flat-roofed job with a series of wide picture windows and plenty of plastic that might have had a little color to it once upon a time but that now had faded to a sort of gray-puke in the hot sun. And yet another structure with a second floor made entirely of green tinted glass and a revolving satellite dish mounted to the flat roof surrounded by an array of antennae.
Weather equipment, I guessed.
In a place where the weather was always the same.
Surrounding the buildings on all sides, an assortment of propeller and jet-driven planes. Some commercial liners, some freight jobs that looked as though they’d been hanging around since before World War II.
There were tractors and wagons and dozens of sick-looking men in overalls and the occasional woman dressed in a blue pantsuit with a matching blue cap and white gloves on her hands, Pan Am patches sewed to the breast pocket of her blazer.
They were beautiful.
I hadn’t slept on the flight. Not at all.
My skull felt wired together.
I hauled my carry-on bag over my shoulder toward the terminal, where I was supposed to meet up with my contact and retrieve my gun, which had been packed for the trip belowdecks inside a lockable aluminum case.
Once inside the terminal I waited for the bag, my eyes fixed to both the conveyor belt and the people who never broke their pace when they got off the plane, snatched up their luggage, headed for Customs and on out through the terminal. It went on like that for some time—me standing there in the heat with the mechanical humming of the conveyor belt drowning out the scattered voices of the travelers and my pistol case not making its anticipated entrance.
Then, after a while, the trail of luggage began to thin out in proportion to the passengers who had already grabbed their respective bags and bolted. I hated the feeling of waiting, wishing my bag would appear and it just not happening. At first I thought I might be imagining things. But soon I realized that the young Mexican man who suddenly appeared standing at the conveyor belt se
emed just a little bit too curious, just a little bit too quick to fix his eyes on me.
That is, unless here was my contact.
He was a medium-sized man. Thin, if not wiry. He wore baggy Levi’s jeans, the old stiff kind you could get in the States when I was a kid, and a clean white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the left sleeve. His thick black hair was slicked back in a sort of greasy ducktail, while a pair of cheap, oversize aviator sunglasses covered his eyes.
At first I hadn’t paid any attention to him, what with people coming and going. But then the people stopped coming. So did their bags, the conveyor belt relegated to producing just a few scattered and battered bags left behind or long-ago forgotten.
A hard glare coming from Mr. Sunglasses. Maybe more than just idle curiosity.
Maybe he was the contact, I thought. But if he was the contact, he would have identified himself by now.
Instead of introducing himself, Sunglasses pulled a toothpick out of his jeans pocket, began chewing on it with his front teeth.
On cue I started back-stepping slowly, one careful step after the other, travel bag clutched tightly to my shoulder.
Then Sunglasses opened up his mouth. “I have a gun,” he said, in perfect, plain English.
I stopped, made an about-face.
He held a Colt .45 in his right hand. My Colt .45. Aimed at me.
“The bag,” he said.
He thumbed back the hammer on the .45.
I set the carry-on bag down onto the terrazzo floor.
He started for me then, stepping away from the conveyor belt, not bothering to pick up the bag but stepping right over it.
I turned and ran for it.
When the shot hit the wall above the exit, I hit the floor.
Shards of plaster and cinder block rained down on me.
But it was then, with my chest pressed flat on the floor, that I saw a man coming in through the double doors. He was carrying a revolver. He fired at the hip, in the direction of Mr. Sunglasses. Within a split second of time, he placed three shots at his feet. That did the trick. Sunglasses was so shaken up, he just dropped the .45 and took off through the small, square-shaped conveyor belt opening. Welcome to Mexico.
Some ten seconds later, a policeman arrived on the scene. He was dressed in a brown military uniform and jackboots, sidearm stored in a hip holster, automatic weapon slung over his right shoulder, draped across his belly. He just came walking in, casual as hell, like nothing had happened. No guns pulled, no shots fired.
By now a small crowd had gathered at the doors that led out to Customs.
I brushed the plaster dust off my shirt and pants while our rescuer spoke to the cop. My man smiled, slid the revolver back into the belt on his pants. He said, “Just a schoolboy playing with a toy gun. Nothing to worry about.”
“That was my gun that kid was playing with,” I said. “And it isn’t a toy.”
My rescuer, whoever he was, spoke once more to the cop in what sounded to me like some kind of border Spanish. But what the hell did I know? When he appeared to be finished, the policeman turned, looked directly at me with wide eyes. He shook his head, laughed some more, and left the same way he had come in. Through the double doors, leading out to Customs.
All in that order.
“What did you tell him?” I asked the man as he retrieved my .45 from where Sunglasses had dropped it beside the conveyor belt.
“That the American is easily frightened…like a timid dog.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“Listen,” the man said, handing me back my pistol. “Before you get into it, I think there’s something you should know.”
“What should I know?” I said, slipping the piece back into my shoulder holster.
“First of all, Mr. Marconi,” he said, “I am your contact. Second of all, I just saved your ass.”
Chapter 19
The pain is so great, her brain has no choice but to shut down.
Their plan backfired. She passed out after all. Before she had the chance to talk.
Some people just can’t be tortured.
Now, alone in her cell, she dreams.
She is back inside her Albany apartment. The one her husband rented while their house was being built. She is walking alone, along the center hallway, feeling her cold bare feet on top of the dirty wood floor.
There is a light on in the bathroom. The light spills out onto the hall floor.
The closer she comes to the light, the more she can make out the little voice of a baby.
There is the baby’s laughter and the gentle sound of water being splashed. Bathtub water. The sounds are the sounds of pure love.
But when she comes to the open door and looks inside, the room is suddenly silent.
She sees the back of a man. The man is on his knees, dressed in black suit pants and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled all the way up to the elbows.
His arms are outstretched. He is holding something down in the water.
The baby.
Charlie.
Oh my Christ!
When she wakes up again, her entire cell is filled with soldiers. They stand around in a semicircle, staring at her. In the center of the semicircle stands the mustached man. His arms are crossed at his chest.
“No more games,” he says.
One of the soldiers turns, says, “What do we do now?”
“Get her ready to travel,” says the mustached man.
Chapter 20
Underneath Shaw Hudson’s day-old beard you could find a pleasant-enough face that looked as though it had been no stranger to the sun or the wind. His eyes were blue and his cheeks were hollow, while his hair was cut close to the scalp and choppy, with patches of gray at the temples. He had as much as three or four inches on me but probably weighed in at about the same one hundred sixty-five. As for his voice, it was baritone and rough.
A pack a day smoker maybe.
He wore brown lace-up work boots, tan chinos, a button-down work shirt, and a faded black waist-length leather driving jacket. He carried a revolver. An old, black-plated .38 service revolver like the cops in New York used to pack before they replaced them all with .9-millimeter automatics.
He held out his hand for me.
We shook.
“My apologies back there,” Shaw said.
We were walking past the rows of taxis, cars, motorcycles, trucks, hawkers selling little homemade toys made of wood and paper and string, women dressed in long colorful print dresses standing behind carts filled with fruit and vegetables, kids with round tan faces clutching at their apron strings.
It was hot as hell.
We were on our way to a general parking lot located directly in front of the airport terminal. Me with my travel bag slung over my shoulder and my one small suitcase clutched in my left hand.
“That whole thing back there inside the baggage claim,” Shaw went on while he walked. “You’re the second traveler he’s accosted in as many months. What they do is bribe a baggage handler out of a passenger list. They then search for what is assumed will be a man or woman going it alone. As soon as the plane lands they are quick to scour the luggage.”
We passed a fruit stand set up on the edge of the parking lot. He stopped for a moment, picked out a small orange from the bin, sniffed the skin, then placed it in the pocket of his leather without paying for it.
He moved on, explaining how Mr. Sunglasses must have waited me out at the baggage claim, knowing full well I was going to be the only person left over after all the others had come and gone, because naturally, my bags weren’t about to show up.
“That’s when they decide to mug you for your money and your jewels,” Hudson said, his back to me. “Not a bad system when you think about it.”
I asked him why the little son of a bitch hadn’t been arrested.
“He has been arrested,” he said, squinting his eyes in the hot sun. “Been arrested a whole bunch of times. Problem is, no one wants
to keep a kid like that in jail because of petty theft. Jails are overcrowded as it is, and what space they have left goes almost exclusively to the mules.”
“Mules,” I said like a question, moving past a woman standing behind a cart filled with squash plants.
“Yes,” Shaw said. “Mules, burriers, drugs runners, whatever.”
Then Hudson stopped in his tracks.
He turned.
“There is of course another, more important reason that kid is not in jail,” he said.
“I’m all ears,” I said.
Shaw tucked the thumb on his right hand into the wide, leather holster, while he propped the other on the hammer of his revolver. “No one presses charges.”
“I’ll be happy to press charges,” I said. From out of the near distance, the thunder of a jet taking off.
“You’re sure you want to do that, Mr. Marconi?” he said, a little louder, over the noise of the jet engines. “The Mexican police would be happy to detain you for a few days. After which they won’t hesitate to send you back to the States once they determine your accusations to be wholly unfounded and symptomatic of an American bias toward little old uncivilized Mexico.”
I thought about it. If I made a fuss, any kind of fuss at all, the police would step in and send me home. No job done, no rescue of Renata, no answers about the Bald Man.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, and let it go at that.
The noise of the jet engines had all but disappeared, along with the plane itself.
Hudson raised his hands in the air as if nothing could be done about law and order — or the lack of it—south of the border.
“We’d better get moving,” he said. “We have much to do.”
The guide, guiding.
Chapter 21
Hudson drove a white Land Rover Discovery. Equipped with oversize tires, back and front brush guards, two extra five-gallon cans of gasoline mounted to the rear wells, a short-wave radio, quad stereo, halogen lamps, and a sawed-off twelve-gauge Savage pump set inside thick plastic clips mounted to the dash.
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