The Dogs of Mexico

by John J. Asher

  “Hey, guy. You can relax now. Get your hands down.” When the fellow didn’t respond, Robert took a ten-peso note, put it in the man’s hand, cupped his fingers around it and guided his hands back to his lap. “Sober up,” he said. “Get yourself something to eat.” Yeah, sure, like he’s going to waste money on food. With an afterthought Robert removed the two melons from the passenger’s footwell and placed them on the ground next to the fellow.

  IF THERE WERE used car lots in Puerto Escondido, he couldn’t find them.

  He parked the Nissan on a narrow street in what appeared to be the center of commerce, if you could call it that. The street ran parallel to the beach only two blocks away. He counted off two thousand dollars from the five—his half of the ten he had split with Mickey. He watched the street. And waited.

  Ten minutes later he saw a Mexican with keys in hand approaching an older Chevy Malibu. The car, parked alongside the street, was a visual patchwork of red and gray primer. Robert got out and walked toward him.

  “English?”

  The man, wearing khakis and a straw hat with a dirty orange braid around the crown, paused, his hand on the Malibu’s door. His gaze lingered on the money, then on Robert.

  “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for that car. Cash. US.”

  The man opened his door, still staring at the money. “No inglés, señor.”

  Robert reached into his pocket and added two more bills to the roll. “Twelve hundred.”

  The man shook his head and lowered himself into the car. Watching Robert, he quickly started the car and drove away.

  Well shit.

  Within minutes an old Ford Fiesta parked in the vacated space. A man got out and removed a white bakery box tied with string from the backseat.

  Robert pushed his door open and got out. “Buenos dias, señor,” he said gently, forcing a smile. “I would like to buy your car.”

  The man looked at him over the box in his arms, shook his head. “Is not for sale.”

  “Ah, English,” Robert said. “What year is your car?”

  “Is not for sale,” said the man, pushing the door closed with his foot.

  “Twelve hundred dollars.”

  The man shook his head.

  “Fifteen, US.” Robert took an aggressive step toward the man.

  The man backed up. “I tell you, is not for sale.”

  “Two thousand, dammit!”

  The man backed away, watching Robert with nervous eyes. Holding the box in one hand, he fished the key out of his pocket and thumbed the door locks. He took his box across the street, watching over his shoulder, pausing once again before hurrying into a lime-green building, the word PANADERÍA lettered in magenta above the door.

  Robert approached two more prospects without results.

  He had been aware of a man standing in front of a leather shop next to the bakery, watching him. “You like to buy my pickup?” said the man, coming across the street. He wore bellbottom pants, a glossy green euro-trash shirt open almost to his navel, and an excess of silver around his neck and wrists. A pair of sunglasses stood perched on his head, riding a wave of raven-black hair. His small eyes shifted to either side as he spoke. “I sell cheap.”

  “Where is this pickup?”

  The man pointed back across the street. “It is the Ford F-150. Very fine condition.”

  “How old is it?” Robert asked, crossing the street after the man, surveying the pickup.

  “Is for you a good buy.”

  “This truck’s got to be ten years old. How many miles on it?”

  “The odometer, it don’ work. But the truck, she is very good.”

  “Let’s have a look under the hood.”

  The engine and its components, including the engine bay itself, were heavily encrusted with gunk. Robert checked the oil. Thick, an opaque bulb on the end of the dipstick. He closed the hood and looked at the marker plate on the front bumper.

  “This license plate says it’s from Chihuahua. That’s a long way north of here.”

  “Is a very good truck. I make you a good buy.”

  “You have a title?”

  The man waved him off. “Is not necessary. I show you where to buy a title, cheap.”

  “Start it up,” Robert said. “Let’s see how she runs.”

  The man hesitated, then got in and pulled the door closed. A couple of metallic clicks sounded from under the hood.

  “Chingar,” the man muttered, getting out, the palms of both hands lifted heavenward. “The battery I think is dead.”

  “Yeah, thanks anyway.” Robert turned back to his Nissan rental.

  “I sell for five hundred,” said the man, following.

  “Not to me you won’t.”

  “I let you have for three maybe. Okay? Three is good, ’ey?”

  “Listen, buddy. I wouldn’t have that truck if you gave it to me. End of discussion. Period.”

  The man started to say something more, but seemed to change his mind. He lifted both hands again, then let them fall in a helpless gesture. He turned and sauntered back across the street and stood again by the door to the leather shop.

  Robert didn’t like the guy standing over there like a cigar-store Indian, watching him. He wondered whether he might be coming unhinged a little, tempted as he was to go flatten the guy’s face.

  He climbed back in the Nissan and drove away.

  18

  Night Sweats

  ROBERT EASED THE Nissan into a sandlot adjoining the office of a casual beachfront hotel and brought it to a stop among a dozen or more cars and pickups. The Vista Del Mar wasn’t a hotel in the usual sense, but a complex of single cabana-like units strung together over the side of a hill facing the Pacific. The sun sank behind the ocean horizon, dragging long red ribbonlike clouds down after it.

  He got out and stood for a moment, breathing in the smell of the ocean, the aroma of seafood sautéing in onions and garlic. From somewhere a hint of wood smoke sharpened the sea air.

  In the fading light, surfers and boogie boarders were returning from the beach, gathering at a half dozen picnic tables on a strip of sand between the office and an open-air restaurant staged on a six-foot-high concrete slab. Both the picnic and the restaurant tables were topped with palm-frond roofs and offered panoramic views of the sea, broken here and there by jetties reaching out from the beach. Overhead strings of incandescent bulbs lit the tables against the coming night.

  He took a room, sight unseen, then a table on the elevated restaurant where he could keep an eye on his car in the lot below. The beach lay just beyond. Across the road, signs in both Spanish and English warned of undertow. In the distance, waves wallowed about in a kind of disorganized fury, then gathered momentum and rolled inward, building to a roar before slamming the jetties in thunderous explosions. Massive plumes of foaming water shot skyward, then fell back onto the rocks, sucking and rattling gravel, hissing in the back-flow. Above the booming breakers and the whine of cicadas, he caught snatches of calypso music from a beer shack down in the far curve of the beach.

  He ordered shrimp cooked with onions and garlic in a sauce of coconut milk with shaved ginger, thin slices of pickled cabbage and green chiles served on a bed of rice, a side of glazed carrots.

  But he hardly knew what he was eating, watching the parking lot below and the sandy road disappearing around the curve. He drank bottled mineral water and had coffee and a brandy with flan for dessert.

  The boogie boarders had grown boisterous at the picnic tables, the young men jostling one another over pitchers of beer, margaritas and Cuba libres. The women in their string bikinis were just as lively—boys and girls parading their goods for one another.

  Hunger sated, he felt his eyes trying to close. He asked for his check—less than fifteen bucks. Since he couldn’t carry both the tire and the two pieces of luggage, and concerned about having to leave the car unguarded while making two trips, he laid a ten and a twenty before the waiter, an older distinguished-looking
gentleman.

  “A five-buck tip,” Robert said, “plus ten more if you’ll help me carry my luggage from my car up to my room.”

  The waiter hesitated, his gaze flickering between Robert, the scar on his forehead, and the money on the table.

  “Bad back,” Robert said, placing one hand behind his hip.

  The waiter barely nodded.

  “You bring the two bags. One trip. Ten bucks.”

  “Un momento, por favor.” The waiter took Robert’s tab and his money to the cashier. They spoke for a moment, the cashier turning to look at him. Then the waiter removed his apron and returned. “It is good, but I must hurry.”

  “You got permission?”

  “Sí.” The waiter smiled. “He take half.”

  Robert gave him a look, wondering whether this was a shakedown for more money.

  The waiter shrugged. “It is the way of things.”

  The waiter followed him down to the parking area. Robert limped a little in respect for his bad back.

  He handed over the aluminum case and carry-on. The waiter smiled as Robert took the tire from the trunk and started up the slope, rolling it through the sand. The waiter wasn’t the only one smiling; tourists turned to watch this American who was so paranoid of having his spare stolen he was taking it to his room.

  The room was simple: tiled floor, double bed, dresser, ceiling fan and a glassless window with wooden shutters. He thanked the waiter, closed the door after him, and watched through the jalousied shutters until he descended to the restaurant and put his apron back on.

  Robert shoved the tire, the aluminum case, and the carry-on under the bed. He was a little concerned about the car, but even if it was bugged, it wasn’t likely anyone would try anything, surrounded as it was by other vehicles in such a public, well-lit place. Anyway, it was the best he could do under the circumstances. That, and he was almost too tired to care. Dangerously so, he warned himself.

  Normally, he would hand-wash the clothes he had had on since the night before, but he was tired and that would have to wait. He did manage a shower and a fresh change.

  He stretched out on the bed, the .380 in its clip-on holster, cocked, on the night table at his side. He was still struggling with how he should proceed from here when he slipped into a dreamy netherworld peopled with orphaned girls in Victorian dress—taunting with their charcoal-black damsel-in-distress eyes, sailing their flower-laden straw hats at him like Frisbees, acting out some silent-movie scenario without subtitles that he was at a loss to follow.

  HE WOKE, the unfamiliar room sliding about in a kind of fluid ether—a fluttering, black-winged beast whipping about his head—a distressed whoop whoop whoop bird-noise flogging his ears. Gasping for breath, struggling to remember who and where he was, he shot out of bed, stumbled and fell into the wall. He scrambled to his feet, staring, seeing for the briefest moment that he was in one of the subterranean cubicles in the depths of one of Cairo’s dark prisons.

  He stood for a moment, paralyzed, the now-familiar curtain of thin black grit falling slowly in the periphery of his vision while he willed his mind to some center of stability.

  Then, in a rush of remembering, he grappled wildly for the .380. Feet planted apart, he stood, gripping the cocked gun in both hands.

  Listening.

  It hit him suddenly—the distant whoop whoop whoop of beating wings was a car alarm. He quickly holstered the .380, clipped it under his shirt, grabbed his passport from the carry-on, snatched the tire up, and hurried down the solar-lit walkway, rolling the tire, leaving the carry-on and the aluminum case behind.

  Lights had come on in other cabanas, a few guests migrating toward the lot where, regardless of the security light, flashlights played about among a small group gathering around his car, its headlights flashing in time with the alarm. His pulse jumped when he realized lights were flashing from a police car as well. It had apparently just arrived, two officers approaching the Nissan. People milled uncertainly around the driver’s window—a big hole in it, blunt cubes of safety glass clinging to the sandwiched membrane around the edges. The group turned as one when he leaned the tire against the car and thumbed the alarm off on the keypad.

  Sudden silence. Only the cicadas, breakers thundering from the beach.

  Then, whispered mumblings among the crowd as the two policemen came toward him. Another man, apparently the manager, had fallen in step with them, talking rapidly. The man was barefoot—jeans, pajama top, an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.

  “No habla español, Robert said in answer to a question from one of the policemen.

  The manager translated as the other policeman took notes on a yellow legal pad. When asked about the tire, Robert explained that the car was a rental and he had carried the tire inside to keep it from being stolen—with justification, apparently. And no, the trunk was locked. And there was nothing in it anyway.

  They asked for his papers. He handed over his passport, then removed his wallet and showed his tourist card.

  They barely glanced at his credentials before handing them back. Clearly they were bored—just one more break-in, some poor local hoping to score a camera or anything else a tourist might be careless enough to leave in his car.

  Robert knew better. He had underestimated their daring—or foolhardiness—breaking into his car in such a public place. They had been scared off by the alarm, yes, but they were still out there somewhere.

  Soon the crowd began to break up, men and women drifting back to their respective units, grousing among themselves.

  The policemen took a few more notes, bellyaching about the inconvenience. Robert slipped a couple of bucks to each, not quite stemming their complaints but encouraging them to wrap up their report and move on. After a few minutes they got back in their car, shut the roof lights off and left.

  The manager, apparently taking a cue from the police, began to protest as well. “The guests, they are here to enjoy themselves, and yet your car has disturbed everyone.” He watched Robert, expectant.

  Robert said nothing, but opened the door and with the bolt cutter began knocking the rest of the glass out. He reached under the front seat and unwrapped the towel from around Soffit’s .45. He left the .45 out of sight, but took the towel and began brushing blunt chunks of glass from the seat.

  “You are getting glass all in the sand,” complained the manager.

  Robert snapped the towel out, spread it over the seat and got in. He scanned the terrain on the other side of the road. A pale night sky glittered on the surf exploding against the jetties, darkly visible beyond the beach. He reached under the seat for Soffit’s .45, cocked it, and placed it in the console at his side. He cocked the .380 and laid it alongside.

  The manager stepped back, silent, remote.

  Robert started the car. “I’m paid up here, so keep your britches on.” He shifted into gear and eased out of the lot with the lights off.

  He scanned the terrain, straining to see into the shadows as he followed the sand track around to the highway. But there was nothing. When he reached the pavement, he was forced to turn either east or west on Highway 200, the only road along the coast—unless you counted the northerly route over the mountains to Oaxaca. He turned east. The terrain to either side looked rugged, spiny black silhouettes against the night sky. He switched the headlights on.

  19

  El Perro Rojo

  UNWILLING TO LEAVE the tire for even a second had left him no opportunity to return to the room for the aluminum case with the Bible and it’s photos. He had also left his one remaining carry-on. The extra cartridges for the .380 were in that carry-on. If there was a bright side, it was that without the Bible he could with a clear conscience forget delivering the photos to the Valdez guy in Oaxaca.

  Okay, he told himself, take one of the dirt tracks off the pavement to the ocean. Park on the beach. Take everything and sleep hidden in the nearby brush where he could keep an eye on the car.

  A few miles east he slowed and
turned onto a sandy road that looked promising. But a quarter of a mile in, instead of a beach the road opened into a clearing where a mercury-vapor lamp on a utility pole cast a pale greenish light over a dozen or so pickups and trucks parked before a sprawling cantina.

  Robert crept the Nissan forward and brought it to a stop.

  Robert sat for a minute, scouting the place. Nearby, a caged dog in the bed of a pickup barked, then went silent, fierce red eyes watching him. The building rose out of a lot trashed with tatters of paper and plastic. The front door stood open, mariachi music seeping through a curtain of beads hung in the entranceway, the words EL PERRO ROJO crudely lettered above. The front and one side of the building were visible from where he sat. Neon beer signs blinked in murky windows recessed in concrete-block walls slashed with graffiti. A few burros stood alongside, tethered to iron rings cemented into cinderblocks scattered among clots of moldy hay and dung. His nose wrinkled, breathing shallow, forced to inhale the warm rancid air through the car’s broken window.

  A roar of noise—shouts of laughter combined with snarling, howling dogs, sounded from a walled courtyard in the rear. Dogfights, he realized. The caged dog in the pickup crouched, tense, silent.

  He considered hot-wiring one of the vehicles. There was a chance of getting caught, but he could probably handle it with two handguns…

  You’re losing your mind, he said to himself. Bad enough having Fowler’s men breathing down your neck, much less the Mexican police on your tail and you in a stolen vehicle.

  While this remote cantina wasn’t what he had had in mind, it was better lit than the beach would be. If he hid back in the brush, he could easily see anyone approaching his car.

  With the towel, he wiped at the sweat trickling down his temples, then draped it around his neck and got out. He stood for a minute as the dog in the pickup bed lunged against the wire cage, snarling furiously.

  Robert let the hammer down on the .45 and tucked it in his belt alongside the .380. He removed the tire from behind the seat and rolled it to the darkened underbrush some twenty yards back near the entrance road. Careful of cacti, he eased into the scrub, picking his way among philodendrons, sumac and palmetto. He wondered if rattlesnakes inhabited this southern coast of Mexico.