The Dogs of Mexico

by John J. Asher

  “You hit him,” Ana cried. “You hit him!”

  “Shh.”

  “You hit him!”

  “Shh. Keep it down!”

  “You think he’s badly hurt?” she whispered eagerly.

  “Dammit! I told you not to shoot—”

  Holding a duffel bag up alongside his body, Geraldo came plunging out through the gate and ran hobbling to the car. Robert aimed high again and emptied the Beretta’s ten-round single-stack clip. A puff of dust kicked up just short of the Plymouth. The rear side-window spider-webbed as Geraldo slid in behind the wheel and shoved the duffel bag up in the passenger seat as a shield. He backed the car around and gunned out toward the tree line along the creek on the far side of the compound. Robert jerked out the .380, but at over two hundred yards, the distance was far too great and he didn’t want to use all of his ammo before he could get back inside the yard and reload.

  The Plymouth hit through the creek throwing out a sheet of water on either side, and then trailed dust up the hill through the cane field, over the ridge and out of sight.

  “I told you not to shoot!”

  “I wanted to kill him!” she said, a fierce wildness ringing her eyes.

  “Well, hell. He’s gone now.”

  He wasn’t sure how much damage a nine-millimeter bullet might do at such a distance, but he doubted the bullet would seriously penetrate. A bad bruise maybe. However it had spider-webbed the rear window so maybe it had done some damage after all.

  There was still Helmut to consider, though he was probably dead. But then Geraldo could just as likely have been shooting butterflies.

  “Let’s get going,” Robert said.

  “Where?”

  “We’ll hoof it back to the highway, see if we can flag a ride. Catch a bus maybe.”

  He paused as they neared the shot-up bus, the old woman inside. He didn’t want to look, but if she was still alive…well, you couldn’t just go off and leave somebody like that. On the other hand, there would be little he could do if…

  “You go on. I’ll catch up.” He held his breath, opened the door and then quickly closed it.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go.” It wasn’t something anybody would want to know about.

  “There’s somebody in there…”

  “Come on. Let’s get a move on.”

  “N–not Helmut?”

  “No, no. Come on now.”

  They hurried to the compound. “You stay here by the gate,” he said. “I’ll get our stuff.”

  “You’re not going back in there…”

  “There’s been a lot of shooting here and we don’t know how far it is to the nearest house. Wait here. Keep your eye on the road and yell bloody murder if you see anything.”

  He set the aluminum case down, held his breath and plunged inside, hurrying past the bodies already swarming with flies. He placed his carry-on on the table, stripped the cartridges from the last two rectangles of cardboard Helmut had left on the table and stuffed them in his pocket.

  He entered the room opposite the chicken roost. A dirty mattress of cornhusks and a soiled blanket lay on the floor under shelves of empty canning jars gray with dust. On the wall, cheap religious prints were grouped around a plastic crucifix.

  Robert unzipped Helmut’s bag and upended it on the floor. Clothing, shaving kit and the rubber-banded cigarillo box fell out along with Helmut’s new laptop. Robert collected his fake passports and other identification. He placed the laptop on the ground, angled against the wall, and stomped it, crushing it into a V. He pried the hard drive out and mangled it with a broken chunk of cinderblock. He found a box of .22 long-rifle cartridges in Helmut’s shaving kit and stuffed them loose in his other front pocket.

  In a duffel bag, he found a Mexican police uniform, a red leather miniskirt, yellow caftan, an old issue of Playgirl, a pair of oversized panties, black fishnet stockings and a pair of worn sneakers. Otherwise, there were only a few toilet articles—makeup, false eyelashes, and a medical booklet with illustrations depicting the procedures required of a sex change operation.

  Valdez’s clothes had been carelessly tossed in a corner, his wallet emptied of money. But his Mexican drivers license was still in its plastic sleeve; at least the authorities could make a positive ID. Robert wiped it clean of his own prints and put it back.

  He took Helmut’s wrecked laptop and the cigar box out to the yard. Ana was on the job at the gate, anxiously watching the road and watching him. He saw now how bedraggled she was, channels of dirty sweat trailing down her temples and neck, hair matted and falling down, a feral cast in her eyes. He picked her purse out of the dirt, put the cigarillo box in it and then put the purse in her new carry-on. He hurried into the other room and gathered her wrecked bra, panties and shirt into two garbage bags, one inside the other for strength.

  Back under the tin roof, he stuffed the mangled laptop and its hard drive into the same garbage bag, added the linings from his carry-ons and the scraps of cardboard. As there were no more cartridges for the Beretta, he tossed it in the bag also. Geraldo’s yellow-handled knife lay in the dirt where Ana had dropped it. He folded it into the garbage bags and secured the openings with a twist tie.

  Last, he picked his and Ana’s good clothes out of the dirt near the table, shook them out and repacked them in their respective carry-ons.

  He took a hurried look around for any other evidence linking them to the carnage. There was the mangled tire but there wasn’t much chance of anyone tracing that. He had lost his clip-on holster but that too would be hard to trace.

  He hustled the doubled garbage bags and Ana’s bag past the bodies to where Ana stood at the gate nervously fingering the buttons on her shirt. He took the .22 from her, reloaded it and flicked the safety on. She put it in her pocket without hesitation. He hurried back for his own carry-ons.

  He replaced the canister in the projector, the projector in the haversack, and hung it over his shoulder. He picked up one of his carry-on’s and the aluminum case. Ana carried her bag and the garbage bag. They left Jinx’s and Helmut’s luggage. Ana followed Robert along the wall in the opposite direction of the bus. He stopped at the corner and scouted the terrain.

  “We’ll get down to the creek, then follow it back to the road.”

  They ran as best they could, awkward, with their respective loads, bending low until they broke through the undergrowth along the graveled creek bank. Ana dropped her baggage and sat for a moment, breathing hard. He looked back toward the compound but there was nothing other than a whir of insects they had stirred up from the weeds.

  The undergrowth along the creek was dense, but if they stayed with it they would come to the road where it intersected the creek and then to the asphalt road farther down. Ana followed, pushing doggedly through the brush with her luggage.

  “We could cut through this cane field,” he said, ”but that’s wicked stuff. Snakes over the ground every which way then turns straight up. A real tangle.”

  The dirt road was almost within sight when the underbrush rustled up ahead. They melted down behind the luggage under a canopy of palmettos. Robert took the .22 from Ana and placed it on the case before her. “No shooting until I do,” he whispered. “I mean it, okay?” He held the .380 ready.

  37

  Cleansing

  SUNLIGHT SLANTED THROUGH the trees. Insects trilled their mono songs in surround-sound. The brush crackled again and the wounded dog from the courtyard limped out of the undergrowth and dragged itself into the cane field. The tops of the stalks shook, leaves rattled.

  “Damn,” Robert mumbled, letting go a breath.

  Ana lowered her forehead on her arm. “That poor, poor dog.”

  “Try not to think about it. Here, I’ll cut us a few joints of that cane. It’ll help your thirst.”

  “Yes. Thank you, I—” The Uzi opened up on the ridge above the field, a staccato pop pop pop. Cane around the dog clattered and folded in a boil of d
ust. Robert threw himself across Ana and hugged her to the ground beneath the palmettos. The shooting stopped. The dog dragged itself out of the settling dust onto the road. It circled, shivering, tentatively inspecting the viscera entangling its hind legs.

  Geraldo rose above an outcrop of rock at the top of the ridge. He crouched, peering toward the dog, jerking the Uzi about with quick nervous motions. Just as quickly he dropped back behind the ridge from sight. Robert heard the car start up. It stopped at the blacktop and then the engine revved and faded into the distance.

  Ana pressed her fingertips to her temples. “H–he thought it was us.”

  Robert set the safety on the .380 and tucked it and the .22 in his belt. Wordless, they took up the luggage and hurried past the whimpering dog into the undergrowth across the road.

  “You go on. I’ll catch up.” He set his luggage down. “You don’t need to look.” He went back to where the dog stood shivering in the road. He took aim with the .22. A sharp bang and the dog dropped without a sound. Ana waited, her back to him, shoulders hunched as he took a replacement cartridge from his pocket and thumbed it into the clip.

  She followed him along the creek until they came to the blacktop. A stone culvert trailed a thin stream of mossy water underneath. They dropped the luggage and sank down among the ferns in the shade of wild philodendron and sumac. Ana pinched her shirtfront and fanned it in and out for the little breeze it made.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he said. “If it’s a bus I’ll flag it down.”

  Ana pulled a mat of hair away from her face. “We can’t get on a bus like this.”

  The Plymouth rose over the crest of the hill and cruised down the blacktop toward them.

  “Aw, shit.” Robert cocked both guns and handed the .22 to Ana. They flattened themselves among the ferns.

  When the car was a hundred yards away, it slowed and stopped. The top of Geraldo’s head was just visible behind the steering wheel. Then the car backed up, made a K-turn and moved up the road in the opposite direction.

  “He must be stoned out of his gourd to expose himself like that.” Robert took the .22 from Ana again, set the safety and put it in his belt.

  She stayed close as they hurried the luggage over the narrow blacktop and slid down into the ditch on the other side.

  They pushed through the underbrush for fifteen minutes, following the creek until they came to a spot where it broadened into a pool among a copse of trees. Robert let his bags down near an outcrop of boulders along the water’s edge. Surrounding the pool were the ever-present palmettos, philodendron, sumac, ferns, vines, creepers. Narrow trails dotted with animal scat fanned cut through the brush—cloven tracks belonging to goats, deer, pigs and other tracks he couldn’t identify. The water was clear and cool looking, the gravel bottom visible for some distance before surface reflections interfered.

  Ana sat on the aluminum case, elbows on her knees, forehead cupped in her hands.

  Robert could only guess at how badly Geraldo was wounded but from the way he limped Robert doubted he would attempt this terrain on foot. Geraldo was able to drive, yes, but the Plymouth had an automatic shift and a one-legged man could manage that. Again he wondered at the effectiveness of the Beretta at such a distance. It had been a miracle that he hit Geraldo at all.

  He attempted to affirm directions, recalling that moss grew on the north side of trees. But apparently these trees never heard that, one side looking about as mossy as the other. He studied the light again. Midmorning maybe.

  “Let’s wash up,” he said. “Get some of this muck off. Then we’ll see about getting out of here.”

  Ana stared into the pool, a vague distracted cast in her eyes.

  “I don’t know how long he’s going to run up and down that road, but if he’s hurt as bad as I hope, he’s going to have to get that leg looked at. We might stay here tonight, let him clear out, then go back to the road in the morning, see if we can catch a bus out of here.”

  Ana looked about at the surrounding wilderness. “Out here? All night?”

  “We’ll go on up the creek, maybe find another truck. But like you say, we can’t go knocking around out there looking like this.”

  Ana touched her swollen lips, felt gingerly over her face, picked her fingers through her hair.

  Robert checked the safeties on the .22 and the .380, and placed them on a rock ledge near the water. He opened the maroon carry-on and took out the shampoo and the Ivory bar. “Come on, that water looks good. We’re going to give ourselves a little beauty treatment.”

  Ana slanted a look at him. He tried to offer up a reassuring smile but he wasn’t sure what his face was doing. She turned away as he took his shirt off and stepped out of his pants. Soap and shampoo in hand, he waded into the water in his boxers. The pool was little more than waist-deep. Schools of minnows could be seen darting in formation over the pebbled bottom. Sunlight filtered through the trees and sparkled on the surface. He experienced a sudden rush of euphoria—thrilled even by the burning sensation of water on the raw flesh around his ankles and wrists, amazed that they were still alive. He pitched the soap bar upstream. It plunked in the water, popped up and floated slowly toward him.

  “Ivory, it floats.” He glanced about in mock bewilderment. “This a commercial? Where’s that hidden camera?”

  Ana looked at him, uncertain, then lowered her gaze.

  “Come on. Get on down here in this old hot tub.”

  She stared into the water.

  “You’ve got to get cleaned up. You’ll feel better.”

  She looked about again, then methodically took a change of clothes from her bag and began unbuttoning her shirt. “Don’t look.”

  He caught the soap as it drifted near and tossed it back upstream, ducked his head under, resurfaced, fingered a squeeze of shampoo into his hair and worked up a frothy lather. His broken lips and the split over his eye stung, as well as his wrists and ankles. He let his head under again and scrubbed the suds out until he felt clean. He recalled Mickey in Acapulco, coming out of the bathroom freshly showered, her little-girl gum-chewing smile—Hey chill, soap and hot water, the all-time great invention of mankind.

  In his peripheral vision he was aware of Ana pulling on clean underpants. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  She waded in, her back to him, and knelt, water lapping at her chin.

  “Here, I’ll bring you the shampoo.”

  She took it over her shoulder and then let her head under. She resurfaced, blowing air. The bite wound on her neck had swollen, a circle of purple indents in an inflamed mound of reddish flesh.

  “It burns,” she said.

  “Don’t get water in your mouth.”

  She squeezed shampoo into her palm and gingerly worked it into her hair. When she had a good lather, she took a breath, pinched her nostrils shut and let her head under again. She worked the fingers of her free hand through her hair. Reddish-brown suds floated free and drifted downstream. She surfaced, blowing bursts of air through compressed lips. She lathered and rinsed again—over and over until the suds floated free and clean.

  “I’m so thirsty,” she said.

  “Don‘t. Make you sick as a dog. Here, here’s the soap.”

  She lowered her gaze to the mirror of water under her chin, turned her back, scrubbed the bar over her body underwater.

  He gave her a few moments. Then, “Time to get out now and get dressed.”

  “I’m not clean.”

  “Sure you are.”

  She let go the soap, cupped her face in her hands. “I’ll never be clean again…ever…”

  Robert recalled the beating he had taken from the cops in Hardwater, how it had done something to him. There were all kinds of ways to hurt and be hurt and the worst didn’t always show. The work he had been a part of in Cairo came to mind.

  He stepped out of the water in his wet shorts and took a clean shirt from Ana’s things. He went back in, holding it aloft. He chose to pre
tend that nakedness was natural between them, though that was no longer true. He averted his eyes in deference as she waded toward him, trying to cover herself with arms and hands. Still, he saw her, slippery-wet and glistening in the dappled light, her panties wet and transparent. She turned her back while he held the shirt and guided her arms into the sleeves. She held the shirttail out of the water with first one hand then the other.

  “Get yourself some dry undies,” he said. He changed into dry shorts himself, wrung water from the wet ones and put them in a Ziploc. “Put your wet stuff in here with mine.”

  When he had changed, he stuffed his soiled clothes in the garbage bag. “I’m going to bury this under rocks. This too,” he added, taking the projector from it’s case. He turned it in his hands. “Ana, we’re leaving things here. Both of us. Understand?”

  She gave him a searching look. “Yes…leaving things here. I—”

  “Ayee–yi–yi–yi! I am not too late for the skinny-dip, ’ey?”

  Robert spun around. Geraldo came thrashing out of the brush, one pant leg blotched with blood, crippling, waving the Uzi at them, wildly exuberant.

  Bracing for the shock of certain death, Robert turned and threw the projector high over the pond. It hit the water with a ka-sloosh. For a moment it looked as if it might float, but then it sank, bubbling beneath the surface.

  Geraldo stopped, a whimper of pain as his damaged leg gave way and he fumbled to regain his balance. “Hijo de la gran puta!” he shouted. Still he didn’t shoot, but kept up a little shimmying in-place dance that visibly pained him, but which he seemed to have no control over.

  Robert started to reach for his .380, but it lay with the .22 on the rock ledge on the other side of Ana.

  Geraldo took a few wobbling steps into the water, craning his neck, staring at the spot where the canister had gone under. “Estúpido!” He jerked the Uzi around and again Robert thought he was done for. “Give me the guns or I kill you!”

  An incoherent sound escaped Ana. Robert saw she was on her feet, that she had the .380 and was fumbling, trying to cock and fire it.