by Steven Gore
“Maybe he needs the tapes as much as Sherwyn does.” Donnally accepted the inevitable, but didn’t know whether that would include the release of Janie. “Tell the boys what we need them to do.”
“Why don’t I make two tapes,” Corazon said. “One on which the boys say that they are recanting only because Sherwyn has kidnapped Janie. And then the other will contain the recant—”
“We can’t take a chance. Sherwyn may want to talk to the boys before he releases her, and they’ll be afraid to lie to him.”
“How do you know he’ll let her go?”
“I don’t. But we have no choice but to act as if he will.”
Donnally disconnected, then turned toward the hotel room door and signaled for Lalo to follow. He couldn’t take a chance that the police had snuck in when he was at Corazon’s office and bugged the room.
They took the elevator down to the lobby, then walked through the restaurant and out of the service entrance into the trash-littered alley. Donnally caught his breath when he was hit with the stench of rotting garbage and overused lard. He pointed at an open back door. They worked their way through the semidarkness of a locals’ bar, then across the next street and down the sidewalk. They slipped between two fruit carts and into the recessed entry of an empty storefront.
“Necesito una pistola,” Donnally whispered to Lalo.
Lalo rolled his eyes upward and rocked his head side to side as if imagining a route from where they were to where they needed to be.
“Nobody will sell to you.”
“How about a go-between?”
Lalo frowned in puzzlement at the idiom.
“Un intermediario.”
Lalo thought for a moment then smiled and said. “Mi tío.” My uncle. He extended his hand, but shook his head when Donnally reached for his wallet, and said, “Telephone.”
Chapter 58
Uncle Beto’s hands rested on the mound of his belly as he inspected Donnally’s face. They were sitting at the rough-hewn kitchen table in his adobe bungalow at the western edge of Cancun.
Lalo had just told him that Sherwyn had orchestrated Janie’s kidnapping in order to prevent the release of the recordings.
Donnally felt Beto trying to read his character from his manner and through the loyalty of his nephew.
“Quién es el oficial de policía que ayuda a Sherwyn?” Beto asked. Who is the police officer helping Sherwyn?
Donnally answered. “Jago Cruz.”
Beto’s jaw clenched and his face darkened. He slammed the tabletop with this fist. “Chingaso.” Fucker. “A man with no shame. The only one worse than him is his brother, Gregorio.”
“Not anymore.”
Beto stared up at Donnally. “Por qué?”
“Sherwyn sent him to San Francisco to kill me,” Donnally said, “but I got him first.”
Beto’s eyes widened, then he smiled. He held up his hand to say that he’d heard enough, and then reached into the breast pocket of his bus driver’s uniform and removed an address book. He opened the worn leather cover, then licked his forefinger and flicked through the pages. He squinted at an entry, frowned, then moved on. Finally he nodded and stood up.
“Espere aquí,” he said. Wait here.
Donnally rose after Beto left and paced the small room, furious at Sherwyn, and at himself for bringing Janie with him. He felt Lalo’s eyes tracking him, maybe even reading his thoughts.
His phone beeped with an incoming text message. It was from Margaret Perkins:
Press conference in a couple of hours. Barton knows you’re in Mexico. He’ll claim you fled the country when the police tried to question you about whether you framed Sherwyn. He’ll demand they issue a warrant for your arrest.
Donnally looked at his watch. Twenty-one hours left.
But then he realized that the press conference was irrelevant and the police were irrelevant and a warrant was irrelevant.
Jago was aiming to kill him, or die trying.
The only relevant thing was whether he could get Janie out of White Sands first.
Donnally stopped pacing and looked out of the kitchen window. A birdcage hung from a porch rafter. The parrot, pressed against the bars, glanced over at Donnally, then down at the dirt floor below. The bird’s unblinking eyes locked on a lizard standing poised to strike an ant crawling into its range.
“I need to know whether Janie is still inside White Sands,” Donnally said, turning back toward Lalo. “And I need to know the layout of the place.”
Lalo stared down for a moment, then rose and stuck out his hand. Donnally reached out with his phone. Lalo waved it away, then rubbed his thumb against his fingers.
“It is not for me,” Lalo said. “I know a boy at White Sands.”
“Tell him not to ask directly, but see if he can find out whether Janie is still there.”
Donnally handed his wallet to Lalo, who took out the pesos, leaving the dollars behind. He returned it and ran out the door.
Turning again toward the parrot, Donnally imagined what the lizard saw, looking up at the caged bird watching him.
The parrot fluttered its wings and then grabbed the bars with its beak and claws and spun itself upside down as if preparing to dive. The lizard darted away.
Donnally reached for his phone and called the West Hollywood telephone number of someone who had connections he didn’t have. His father’s groggy voice answered on the third ring.
“I need your help.”
Donnally described where things stood.
“What can I do?”
“The only way Janie is getting out alive is if we shine a spotlight on White Sands, but the Mexican press won’t touch it. Can you get a U.S. news network down here?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally his father said, “Hold on.”
Donnally heard his father get out of bed, then the sounds of fumbling.
“I know somebody at NBC in New York,” his father said. “Let me give you his number. You’d be better at explaining everything than I would.”
“That won’t work. The press already thinks I’m a lunatic, and Sherwyn’s lawyer is about to go on the attack. Even if they sent someone down here, they’d yank him back as soon as they heard what the lawyer’s got to say about me.”
“I’ll take care of it. I didn’t spend my life becoming a legend for nothing. If they move fast, they might be able to get down there by late this afternoon.”
Chapter 59
“Any luck?” Donnally asked Lalo after he got back to Uncle Beto’s house from White Sands.
Beto still hadn’t returned with the gun, and Donnally was worried that he’d sold them out, either to Sherwyn for money or to Jago for a future favor.
Donnally glanced out the kitchen window toward the back gate, then looked at Lalo.
“Don’t worry,” Lalo said, pointing toward the yard. “Mi tío won’t let you down. He hates men like Señor William and the police who protect them. The problem is that only the narco traffickers have good weapons, but to get to them he needs to use un intermediario, too. So it takes time.”
Donnally nodded.
“I talked to a boy who lives at White Sands,” Lalo said, handing Donnally a crude diagram of the hacienda. “There is tension. He heard a rumor that a woman is there, but he hasn’t seen her. The foreign men have all left and moved into hotels along with the boys, but Jago has brought in more police. Señor William is still there, in his office on the top floor. Not eating. Just drinking. He stands at his window looking down at the front gate and street and out over the city. A few times, he has telephoned someone the boys only know as El Mandamas.”
Donnally knew the phrase from a Mexican gang seminar he’d taken years earlier. It was a colloquial expression meaning The Man with the Last Word.
A squeak of the gate drew their attention to Uncle Beto striding toward them, carrying a backpack in his hand.
Beto laid it on the table and removed six items wrapped in oily c
loth. Two were small Smith & Wesson revolvers. Two were large Beretta semiautomatics. Two were boxes of ammunition, .32 cal and 9mm.
Donnally picked up one of the pistols and asked the price.
Beto grinned. “Alquilar o comprar?” Rent or buy?
Donnally knew that he meant, Va a vivir o va a morir? Will you live or will you die?
“I think I had better buy,” Donnally said. “I don’t want you getting into trouble with your source.”
“Trescientos cincuenta dólares para la Beretta, dos cientos cincuenta para la Smith & Wesson.” Three hundred fifty dollars for the Beretta and two-fifty for the Smith & Wesson.
Beto smiled. “Las balas son gratis. Una oración que usted mata a Jago.” The bullets are free. A prayer that you will kill Jago.
Donnally selected one of each type of gun, loaded both, then wrapped them in separate cloths with a box of bullets. He withdrew his wallet and gave Beto six hundred dollars.
Beto took the money and then placed the two weapons into a paper bag and handed it to Donnally.
“Vaya con Dios.”
“Tell me about the boy you talked to,” Donnally asked Lalo as they walked the unpaved street toward the center of town.
“We were in school together. I think maybe he was molested by his father. That’s why he went to White Sands.” Lalo giggled. “He likes girls, but there’s no money in it.”
“Can he come and go as he pleases?”
Lalo nodded. “He’s a carterista.”
“A what?”
“A wallet boy. A pickpocket. He spends most of the day at the beach in the Zona Hotelera stealing from tourists.”
Donnally stopped and withdrew the diagram from his back pocket and examined it. He pointed at the box marked office.
“Did he say how this room was laid out?”
“He said it was like a biblioteca. Shelves on all the walls. Señor William always warns the boys not to touch his books. Many are very old.”
“Can you trust him to go into Sherwyn’s office and steal something for me?” Donnally asked.
“Trust him? No. Can I buy him for a day? Sí. What do you need?”
“A book from Sherwyn’s library. Any one, as long as it’s this big.” Donnally framed his hands in the size of a hardcover, then held a thumb and forefinger four inches apart.
Lalo nodded.
“And I’ll need a more detailed drawing of his office.”
“No hay problema.”
Donnally glanced back the way they’d come.
“Would your uncle be willing to help?”
The spot between Lalo’s eyebrows wrinkled. Donnally couldn’t tell whether it was caused by concern for his uncle or by some internal conflict.
“If he can’t, that’s fine,” Donnally said. “He’s done enough.”
“He is a good man, mi tío, but he has to live here after this is over. So do his wife and their daughters. If he can help without looking like he’s helping, then he will.”
Donnally thought for a moment, his mind drifting over the deadly game of snakes and ladders that was about to begin, then nodded.
“That may be good enough.”
Chapter 60
Donnally slid down in the driver’s seat of his rental car as he watched Brother Melvin and a flak-jacketed immigration agent step out of the entrance to terminal one of the Cancun airport. The agent gripped Melvin’s elbow and steered him to the edge of the sidewalk.
Melvin shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun setting behind wind-combed clouds and scanned the parking area. He looked dead-on at Donnally’s car, then over at the agent, shaking his head, seeming to say, He’s not here.
As they turned away, Donnally reached for his phone.
“What happened?”
“Bad luck,” his father said. “I just talked to the producer. NBC screwed up and sent the Dateline reporter who did all of those predator investigations. An American tourist recognized him while he was waiting with the camera guy at baggage claim. She made a big deal about it. Next thing they knew, they were surrounded by immigration officers.”
Donnally felt a rush of targetless anger, unable to lock on to an insubstantial coincidence.
“The producer told me that the White House just announced that the U.S. and Mexican presidents are meeting next week. His guess is that they don’t want a sex-trafficking story breaking just beforehand.”
“Where’s the crew now?” Donnally asked.
“In a room with a bunch of illegal Chinese immigrants. The producer introduced Brother Melvin and is trying to convince immigration that they’re doing a story on the church, not on sex trafficking.”
“Sometimes that’s the same thing,” Donnally said, “and they know it. He should have picked a better story.”
“It’s too late now.” His father hesitated for a moment, then said, “Have you heard anything about, uh …”
“Nothing. No contact from her at all.”
“Hold on a second,” his father said. “They’re calling again.”
Donnally looked at his watch. The new tapes with the boys were done and Corazon was driving back from Merida to deliver them.
His father came back on the line.
“The producer is talking about catching a flight to Houston, filing a report that they were blocked by Mexican immigration from covering a story, then heading back down again.”
“Too late. The element of surprise would be lost. They’ll have to say what it’s about and Sherwyn will move Janie somewhere I can’t find her. There’s a balance right now between Jago and Sherwyn that keeps her there. Sherwyn wants the tapes and Jago wants me. I don’t want to tip it. Ask them to keep quiet for another twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll try, but they’re pissed. They sense something big.”
“If they’ll just hold on, I’ll give it to them.”
Donnally paused, accepting his failure in his attempt to use the press to expose Sherwyn and the kidnapping and to force him to cave in.
“Unfortunately,” Donnally finally said, “it’ll be history by the time they find out about it.”
“What time do they want to do the exchange?” his father asked.
“Seven A.M.. My time. Twelve hours from now.”
Donnally called Brother Melvin and told him to go with the NBC crew back to the States, then drove from the airport parking lot. He checked for police surveillance by driving along the coast, then circled inland.
A light rain began as he turned south toward the beach town of Playa del Carmen. He parked in the Wal-Mart lot and followed some Hawaiian-shirted U.S. ex-pats inside. He overheard one warn of a storm from the Caribbean that was expected to hit land overnight. The other looked heavenward and said, “Good thing it’s not hurricane season.”
At least not for you, Donnally said to himself, then skirted around them and headed toward the electronics department, where he selected a sound-activated recorder and batteries. After paying for them, he drove to the Ace Hardware in Cancun and purchased fine wire, a soldering iron, a box cutter, and fast-drying paper glue.
Lalo was waiting for him on the sidewalk in front of the hotel when he arrived. He didn’t wait for Donnally to ask whether he’d heard any news from his friend at White Sands about Janie before shaking his head. He handed Donnally an object wrapped in a paper bag. Donnally looked inside and nodded. The book was the right size and the new drawing had the details he needed.
Donnally brought Lalo up to the room and ordered dinner for him, then sat down at the table and spread out his purchases.
Lalo took the seat across from him. His eyes remained fixed on Donnally’s hands as he opened the book and cut out an inside compartment. He then bored a tiny hole in the spine of the book.
As Donnally pried open the recorder, Lalo said, “I see. You want my friend to hide this in Señor William’s office.” He smiled. “Very smart.”
Lalo thought for a moment and his smiled faded. “I don’t understand why it’s neede
d. You can tell the American police what happened.” Then he understood why Donnally needed it recorded: He might not live to tell the tale. Lalo crossed himself. “I swear I will find a way to get it back and take it to Corazon.”
Donnally reached for the diagram Lalo’s friend had drawn and made an X where he wanted the book shelved, then pointed toward the door.
“Go find your pal while I finish this up and glue the pages together. It’ll be ready in an hour.”
Lalo nodded and headed toward the door.
Chapter 61
The burst of laughter from drunks leaving a cantina a block away sounded sharp against the low rumble of thunder as Donnally climbed Uncle Beto’s hand-made ladder at 2 A.M. It was leaning against the bougainvillea-topped back wall of the White Sands compound.
Donnally worried about Lalo standing below, steadying the ladder. The worn pine sagged with each step and his shoes had uncertain purchase on rungs that were slick with wear and humidity.
The image of the satellite photograph of the property he had looked at on Corazon’s computer remained fixed in his mind as he neared the top. Once he cut through the thorned branches intertwined into the heavy latticework, he’d drop down into a geometric garden surrounding a swimming pool.
A blast of low lightning lit up the alley and reflected off the stained glass windows of the church behind him. It gave him a moment of illumination, and just enough time to reach in with the saw toward the thickest branches. Uncle Beto’s leather gloves protected his hands as he sawed, but the barbs tore at his forearms.
After he cut each branch, he hung it by a rope from the latticework. When he opened a large enough space, he gritted his teeth against the bite he’d feel in his hip, then climbed onto the top and grabbed the ropes. He waited for a round of thunder, then lowered himself to the ground in the space between the bougainvillea and the wall. As he did so, he pulled the branches back up and into place. He then slipped off his backpack and dug out the 9mm.
In the silence that followed, Donnally heard scraping as Lalo lowered the ladder to the ground and then his footsteps in the mud as he carried it away.