Day of the Dead

by Lisa Brackman

  ‘Hey,’ Daniel said, rising. ‘Shit, Punch, you trying to get out of buying the next round?’

  ‘No, no. Just stretching my legs.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Marissa?’

  ‘Here I am, sweetie.’ Marissa crossed to the table and gathered Rick up in her muscled arms. Even in this dim light, Michelle could see the puffiness of her eyelids, her reddened nose. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed to Michelle.

  ‘Did you want to talk about something, Danny?’ Rick asked.

  ‘Why don’t we call it a night? I’m kinda tired.’ He slapped Rick on the shoulder. ‘We can talk in the morning. Over some fish.’

  They hired a panga to take them across the bay to their hotel: Daniel, Michelle, and Bagger, who’d gotten a cabin there.

  ‘You wanna get another round?’ Bagger said after they’d clambered up onto the beach, wading through knee-high surf.

  ‘No, buddy. I’m done for the night.’

  ‘Look,’ Bagger said, ‘don’t take me coming in the wrong way. All I’m trying to do is keep you out of the graveyard.’

  Daniel stopped. Turned to him. Gave him a dead-eyed look. ‘Right. Appreciate that.’

  Bagger raised his hand in a mock salute and shuffled up the beach toward the bar.

  ‘Jesus, Danny. The graveyard?’ Michelle said.

  ‘It’s a flying term. Don’t worry about it.’ He turned and headed for the stone path that led to their cabin. Michelle followed.

  ‘So what’s a bus driver?’ she asked him.

  ‘Depends. Airbus pilot, usually. Why?’

  ‘Something Rick said.’

  Daniel stopped. ‘You talked to Rick?’

  ‘Well, yes. What do you expect? You won’t tell me what’s going on. I was hoping he could.’ She was getting angry again, raising her voice. She tried to calm herself. ‘He talked about “the boys.” Some people who recruited you to do … whatever it is you do.’

  ‘He was drunk,’ Daniel said as they passed the saltwater pool. ‘You can’t take anything he said too seriously.’

  ‘He wasn’t just drunk. There’s something wrong with him, I don’t know what. Dementia or Alzheimer’s or—’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Marissa told me there’s a problem. He didn’t want you to know.’

  He didn’t say anything. He flinched and kept walking.

  They’d reached their cabana.

  ‘What if he can’t help you, Danny?’

  His shoulders slumped. ‘I don’t know. Figure something out, I guess.’

  He looked so lost suddenly, and she thought of that first night in the hotel, when she’d wanted to reach out to him and hadn’t.

  He fumbled around in a pocket of his cargo shorts for the key. She watched as he unlocked the door. Opened it for her. She stepped inside.

  There was a man sitting on the bed. Another one standing against the wall. She could just make out their shapes in the dark.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ the man on the bed said. ‘Okay?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘This isn’t the way I wanted us to meet.’ Oscar rose from the bed. ‘But, Danny, we give you hints, and you don’t appreciate them.’

  The man standing against the wall had switched on the light. Daniel and Michelle stood inside the cabana now, with the door closed behind them and a third man whom they hadn’t noticed waiting outside, standing in front of it.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ Daniel said, his voice hoarse.

  ‘Oh. But you know about me,’ Oscar said. ‘Your friend Michelle has met me before.’

  ‘It’s … he’s the man I met with Emma.’

  Headless bodies. Burned bodies. She could see the nose of his pistol nudging out from beneath his hitched-up trouser leg.

  ‘There’s no need for us to talk this way,’ Oscar said. He waved a hand at the man standing by the door. ‘We can sit if you’d like.’

  Daniel hesitated, then nodded.

  The man by the door opened it and stepped outside.

  ‘What about him?’ Daniel said, tilting his head in the direction of the man who stood by the wall. He looked so ordinary, Michelle thought. Short, wiry, and dark, wearing a blue-gray short-sleeved shirt, like one of the Mexicans she’d see around L.A. every day and not even think about. A gardener. A busboy.

  Oscar shrugged. ‘I don’t need him here.’

  He rattled off something in rapid Spanish, and the man nodded and moved past them and out the door. Daniel cocked his ear, as though he understood.

  ‘I sent him to get us something to drink,’ Oscar said, smiling at Michelle.

  ‘She doesn’t need to be here either,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Oh, I think maybe right now it’s better if she stays. Except, Michelle, you will have to sit on the floor. Because there is only one chair, and Danny and I, we need to talk about our business.’

  She sat down on the floor by the door. In case she had a chance to slip away.

  Oscar nodded at Daniel and indicated the room’s lone chair. Daniel pulled it out from under the desk, his eyes fixed on Oscar, the legs scraping on the bare concrete, and sat.

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you should know.’

  ‘I don’t. Look, I think you might have the wrong idea about me. About what I do.’

  Oscar snorted. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence. I know what you do.’

  Daniel crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Okay. Let’s say you have an idea. What is it you want from me?’

  ‘You have the route. You have the connections. On the demand side. We have the product.’ Oscar shrugged again. ‘It is obvious what we want.’

  ‘And what are you offering?’

  ‘A better price. More … efficiency.’

  ‘What about export clearances?’ Daniel stretched out his legs. ‘I don’t know what you were thinking, taking Carlos Aguilar out of the picture. He had that piece wired.’

  ‘He didn’t wish to deal with us. He had his loyalties.’ Oscar shook his head. ‘It’s regretful. But, you know, some people, they don’t like change. They think, because they had the business for a long time, they should always have it. They don’t understand that you must always compete.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Daniel said.

  ‘We can manage this if you give us a little time. We have more and more influence here, every day.’ Oscar smiled. ‘Soon you won’t be able to do business here without us.’

  Michelle stayed where she was, sitting on the floor by the door, thinking that no one was paying any attention to her right now and that this was a good thing. And the way they were talking, it didn’t sound like Oscar planned on killing Daniel. But that didn’t mean she had any value to either of them.

  ‘Look,’ Daniel said, ‘I’m just a driver. This kind of decision, it’s above my pay grade.’

  ‘But your word has some weight, I think.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Daniel gave him that little half smile, the one that Michelle now knew meant absolutely nothing. ‘I guess I’m kind of surprised that you’d go to so much trouble just to talk to me. It’s not like I’m doing that much volume. There’s way bigger accounts out there.’

  At that, Oscar became very still, and suddenly Michelle wondered if she’d read the situation wrong. Maybe Daniel wasn’t safe at all. And if he wasn’t …

  Oscar could draw his pistol and shoot them both, and there wasn’t anything either of them could do about it.

  She felt a moan rise in her throat. She stifled it.

  Then Oscar relaxed, the stillness giving way to amusement.

  ‘It’s what your account represents,’ he said. ‘Securing your business would help our position. And we would reward you for it.’

  From outside she could hear jogging footsteps, and for a moment she thought that maybe it was the police. Or Bagger, come to save the day.

  But no. There was a brief knock on the door. A burst of muttered Spanish.

/>   ‘Our drinks,’ Oscar said.

  They had a round of tequila, at Oscar’s insistence.

  ‘To a new partnership, I hope,’ he said, lifting his shotglass.

  Daniel held his glass level. ‘We still have a lot to work out,’ he said.

  ‘I know. But consider our bid on its merits.’

  ‘Okay,’ Daniel said. ‘We’ll do that.’

  ‘And consider that the terms you get now are maybe better than what we offer in the future.’

  ‘I see.’

  Oscar nodded, and then he drank. After a moment Daniel did, too.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Oscar and his men had left. Michelle sat on the edge of the bed, shaking.

  ‘You’re a good guy, Danny?’ she managed. ‘Really?’

  Daniel’s back was to her. He stood by the dresser, where Oscar had left the tequila. He poured himself another shot.

  ‘You tell him we were coming here?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you kidding? How the fuck can you even think … ?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. Sorry.’ He held out the tequila bottle. ‘You want any?’

  She hardly knew how to react. She just kept her glass steady when he poured more tequila into it.

  ‘He probably had someone watching you,’ Daniel said, sitting down next to her. ‘Once we got on the boat, it was easy to figure out where we were going.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d be that aggressive. Pretty fucking stupid of me.’

  ‘You didn’t? Why not? He kills people!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘What’s so special about your … your account?’

  He shook his head, mutely, and drained his tequila.

  She finally drank. He wouldn’t answer; she knew that.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘Sleep.’

  ‘Sleep?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s done for the night. He got his meeting. That’s what he wanted.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s nothing you need to worry about.’

  She took the shot glass and hurled it against the wall. ‘I’m so sick of people telling me that!’

  Daniel stared at the streak the tequila made on the wall and said, ‘In the morning I’m going to do some fishing. After that …’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She didn’t sleep. Daniel did, his breaths slow and even, with an occasional quiet snore.

  Things fluttered and scrapped in the palm fronds above her head, small bits of leaf and fiber falling on the gauzy web of mosquito net that surrounded them.

  How much more fucked up could this get? Then she told herself not to ask. It could always get worse.

  There’d been some room for doubt about Daniel before. There was none now. Everything was out in the open.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  Cowboys. Spook stuff. Black ops.

  Back in the world of Gary. The world Gary claimed to be in anyway.

  But if that were true, if Daniel worked for some kind of government agency, why would Gary want her to spy on him?

  Maybe Daniel had done something he wasn’t supposed to do.

  Or Gary wasn’t working for the government at all.

  He could be a rival drug runner, for all she knew.

  Fucking Gary, she thought. She’d told him she was going to meet Daniel, and then she’d dropped off his radar. If he’d tried to call her, what would he be thinking? That she’d screwed him over? That she was dead?

  Or maybe he knew exactly where she was.

  Maybe he was the one who’d had her followed here. Hadn’t he been keeping track of her movements all along?

  Her gut hollowed out, like something pulled it from beneath.

  Maybe he and Oscar were working together.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she whispered.

  If there were taxis, if there were a boat, she’d leave right now. But there weren’t. There were no good ways out of here until the morning.

  Maybe in the morning, she thought. Maybe in the morning I’ll leave.

  And then what?

  Just after dawn an alarm beeped softly – Daniel’s watch, maybe. He rose, went into the bathroom. She pretended to sleep.

  He came out wearing swimtrunks and a batik shirt, found his sunglasses on the dresser, put a tube of sunscreen into a worn canvas bag.

  ‘You awake?’ he asked. He knew that she was.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll be back in time for lunch.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe with some fresh ceviche.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He hesitated by the side of the bed, the smile no longer in place. ‘Look, just hang tight. Can you do that? There’s nothing to worry about, and you’re not going to have any problems. Just stay here and try to relax.’

  She almost laughed. ‘Right.’

  ‘Go to the beach. Read a book. Have a margarita.’ He smiled again. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

  She lay there a while after he left, but of course she wasn’t going to sleep, not here, with no air-conditioning, not after last night. She got up, put on shorts and a gauze top, went out to the little coffee stand by the bar, and ordered a double cappuccino. Stood there in the coarse sand, drank it, and ordered another. The sun had just begun to rise above the eastern mountains, bringing with it bird sounds and fresh heat.

  She wasn’t going to get on the water taxi back to Vallarta. She knew that already. All that would do was piss off Daniel and Gary. Gary wanted her here, ‘keeping an eye’ on Daniel.

  But she had to get in touch with Gary somehow. Just to cover her ass, whether he knew where she was or not.

  E-mail, she thought.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman at the reception counter said. ‘We don’t have it.’

  Michelle stood there in disbelief. ‘No e-mail. Really?’ She could see the graying computer sitting on the counter there; they had to have e-mail.

  ‘We can in an emergency,’ the woman told her. ‘But no, no Internet for guests.’ She smiled. ‘Our guests mostly like that. Being out of touch.’

  Was this an emergency?

  ‘There’s an Internet bar in the pueblo. It’s still open in the summer, I think.’

  ‘Okay,’ Michelle said. ‘I’ll try that.’

  She walked across the packed wet sand, along the beach toward the river. The bars were empty at this time of day, not surprisingly. One couple dozed in loungers. A few workers piled empty blue tanks of some sort onto the beach, waiting, Michelle supposed, for a boat to haul them back to Vallarta.

  It was so quiet here after Vallarta, where the bars and hotels played music directed at the beach, where there was the constant noise of cars and horns. No music playing here, no cars. Just the birds and the waves. Riders on horses splashed across the shallows of the river. Farther upstream, women beat clothing on rocks and a group of schoolkids in blue-and-white uniforms headed east, up the river and into the hills. There must be a school up there, Michelle thought. She wondered how far they had to go.

  By the time she reached the pueblo, sweat had soaked her blouse, her hair, the brim of her raffia hat. She found iced tea and a muffin at a tiny café that claimed to be an Internet bar – three aged computers on dial-up, two of which worked. The café was a U-shaped cinder-block building with a tin roof, and even with the front open to the air it was stifling hot inside.

  She logged on to her e-mail account. Several from Maggie, asking how she was, when she was coming home, if she needed a ride from the airport. ‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be home soon.’

  She hesitated, wondering if she should say anything else.

  No. It might not be safe.

  She got out her phone and looked up the contact information for ‘Ted Banks.’

  ‘Hi, Ted,’ she typed. ‘Sorry to be out of touch. Am with a friend, a last-minute getaway. No cell reception. Will contac
t you as soon as I’m back in PV in a day or two. Lots to discuss.’

  Reading it over, she felt a sudden fresh wave of heat and sweat. She’d told him something without telling him everything. Splitting the difference, as usual.

  She hoped it would be enough.

  She hit send, then cleared her browsing history and closed the browser.

  After that she didn’t know what to do.

  Go to the beach. Read a book. Have a margarita.

  Might as well.

  She went back to the hotel, changed into her bathing suit, put a few things in her totebag. She didn’t need her wallet – she could charge anything she wanted to the room – but was it safe to leave it behind? The cabanas didn’t seem very secure.

  She carried her purse to the reception desk. ‘Do you have someplace I can check this?’

  ‘Sure, I can take it for you,’ the woman at the reception counter said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Michelle grabbed a blue beach towel and chose a chair under a palapa at the crest of the rise of sand, so she could look down at the bay.

  ‘Pie? Pie?’

  A stout, middle-aged woman wearing a white peasant dress and a straw hat approached her. On her head she balanced a covered platter, big enough to shade her from the sun. ‘Pie, miss?’ she asked. ‘Best in town.’

  ‘Maybe later, thank you.’

  Pie. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

  She tried to read her British mystery. Her eyes were sore, like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper.

  She closed them. Just for a minute.

  It was so quiet here. She listened to the waves.

  I’m tired, she thought.

  ‘Hey.’

  Michelle opened her eyes. Daniel stood there, a shadow backlit by the sun. ‘Hi,’ she said slowly.

  What time was it?

  ‘How was the fishing?’ she asked.

  ‘Kind of sucked. Nothing out there, and then Rick wasn’t doing too good, so we figured we might as well call it.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was okay. But no ceviche for lunch, I guess.’

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of ceviche around,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a great one here, everybody says.’

  ‘There’s a place up the river I thought we could try. I’ve heard good things about it.’