Geraldo swung the Uzi toward her. “Stop! Give me the pistola!” Still he didn’t fire.
Ana tried desperately to pull the trigger—but the safety was on.
Geraldo visibly relaxed. “Ah. Sí, sí. You don’ have no more bullets, eh?” He took a step toward Ana, dragging his leg, sloshing through the water. “Give me the pistola, then you and me, we finish the little forkey-diddle-diddle.”
A faint tick sounded as Ana thumbed the safety off. Geraldo’s wheezing laughter failed as he realized his mistake. In the same moment, the .380 kicked up with a sharp bam. One side of Geraldo’s face erupted, his head jerking sideways. Birds beat up from the trees and whirred into the distance. Ana fired two more slugs into Geraldo as he floundered, collapsing face down in the water. She fired until the slider locked, and still she crouched, arms jerking as she tried to fire the empty gun.
38
Disposables
“OH, GOD,” Ana whispered in the sudden after-silence before the insects resumed their tuneless music. “Oh, God… Oh, God!” Robert caught his arms around her as her knees buckled and she dropped the gun. She began to wail, her face contorted, tears running down her cheeks. With a chill he realized she wasn’t crying, but laughing—a shrill humorless keening. “See what we did?” she gurgled. “See what we did?”
“Ana!” he shouted. “Stop it!” He guided her down, helping her sit on one of the boulders, then knelt and held her as she rocked back and forth, the manic laughter turning to broken sobs as she began to regain control.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. He placed one hand on her forehead, touched the arterial vein in her neck. “Let me know if you start feeling cold. We don’t want you going into shock.”
She looked at him, vague, eyes glimmering, small convulsive sobs.
He lifted her hair back from her face, thumbed wet streaks from her cheek. “Ana, we need to clear out of here. I’ll help you carry your things over there behind the brush if you want to change.” He nodded toward Geraldo. “I’ve got to get him out of there.”
She said nothing, but stared past him into the brush.
He slowly let go his hold on her, then reloaded the .380 and tucked it and the .22 in his belt. “Come on now. Let’s get you dressed.” He gentled her to her feet, took her bag and walked her around an outcrop of rock and brush. When he felt she was reasonably stable, he went back for the Ziploc containing his wet shorts. “Get some dry clothes on. Wring the water out of those and put them in here with mine. I’ll be back as soon as I get this other business out of the way.”
With a vague, detached expression, she knelt and opened her bag.
“You get dressed, then lie down on my jacket. Prop your feet up, higher than your head.”
She stood by, mute, waiting for him to leave.
On a rise up to the left of the pond, he inspected a cluster of boulders half hidden in a thicket of brush. When he came back down, Ana had dressed and smoothed a band-aid over the gash on her forehead. He admired her presence of mind as she looked into a compact mirror, thinning a little makeup over her bruises to avoid attention once they were among people again.
Robert dug his dirty jeans out of the garbage bag, changed back into them, then rolled the cuffs up and waded barefoot into the pool. Minnows made concentric rings on the surface, striking at bits of organic matter in the syrupy stain ebbing from Geraldo’s slack, little-boy body. Robert took Geraldo’s belt off and looped it in a figure eight around his boots at his ankles; then he caught the belt where it crisscrossed and dragged him out. Blood leaked through the sandy gravel back into the pond.
Robert dried his feet on his soiled shirt, slipped his shoes on without socks, and dragged Geraldo up the hill by the crisscrossed belt. Geraldo’s ruptured head knocked through the weeds behind, his tattooed and cigarette-scarred arms trailed loosely. Insects rose clicking from the weeds in their path and dropped at a distance.
When Robert reached the thicket, he went through Geraldo’s pockets and reclaimed his watch. Still keeping time—eleven a.m. He stuffed it and the keys to the Plymouth in his pocket. There was little else—Jinx’s gold chain with Mickey’s halo, a prescription bottle with a dozen pills, a few Mexican coins and a hand-tooled wallet with leather-laced edges. In the wallet he found Geraldo’s Mexican drivers license, a single hundred-peso note and a Telmex phone card worth eighty pesos. Robert put Mickey’s navel ring in his pocket, then replaced everything but Geraldo’s license.
He maneuvered Geraldo’s body into the brush and wedged it into an alcove where the bases of two large boulders came together. He stood back, sticky hands held out at either side. Sunlight dappled down through the foliage playing on Geraldo and on the weeds equally.
A short distance down the slope, Robert scuffed each side of Geraldo’s license on an abrasive rock until the card was illegible. He hammered it with a second rock, making sure the infrared strip was destroyed. Then he turned the stone up and placed the license among the grubs underneath.
He met Ana coming up the hill. She had changed into clean jeans and shirt. He was pleased at how quickly she had composed herself, surprised at how well she had done with a little makeup. She wore the silk rebozo he had bought her in Oaxaca, do-rag style, low over her forehead, pulled back and tied under her hair at the base of her neck. Anyone would have to look twice to notice anything at all—face a little swollen, lips thickened. It was the distracted look in her eyes that concerned him.
“I’ll get my jacket for you,” he said. “You need to keep warm.”
“I–I came to help.”
He started to take her hand, but the lines in his own palms were black with blood. “I’m finished here. But I have to get that canister out of the pool.”
She gave him an uneasy look.
“Helmut might have been lying and he might not, but he made a believer out of me. And no, I’m not going to keep it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The water had cleared of blood but for a brown edge along the near bank. The Uzi was visible on the sandy bottom where Geraldo dropped it. Robert kicked his shoes off again and waded in. He picked the Uzi out of the pond and pulled the magazine out.
“Well, that explains that.”
Ana gave him a vague, questioning look.
“Empty. That’s why he didn’t shoot us.”
“You mean…he…he was bluffing?”
“If we had handed over the guns, he’d have killed us with them.”
Ana laughed, a short bark verging on hysteria.
“You okay?”
She took a tremulous breath. “There’s still Helmut.”
He nodded. “There’s still him.”
“Two people,” Ana said, gazing vacantly into the distance. “I’ve killed two people…”
“You did what had to be done. If you hadn’t shot him, we would be the ones dead.”
She tilted her head, watching him with heated eyes. “I wanted to kill him. We both did…didn’t we…?”
“You bet we did. He was a mad dog.” He wondered at how quickly he had once again become inured to violence and death—not merely inured, for it was with a kind of euphoric longing he had imagined killing Geraldo himself. He was only mildly alarmed, knowing that his desire to destroy Geraldo in the most violent way possible made them in some way similar—as if the evil fermenting Geraldo’s psyche had breathed its malignant breath into the marrow of his own bones.
Ana registered another look at him. “He saved our lives. You saw that. Didn’t you see that?”
“Helmut? It looked like it. Yes.”
“He was afraid of shooting me. He ran instead.”
“Ana, he’s probably dead. You do know that, don’t you?”
She lowered her gaze.
“He’s the one got us into this mess in the first place. You know that, too, right?”
She nodded, remote.
Robert threw the Uzi high out over the pond. It hit with a ka-sloosh and sank. “I have to get tha
t canister out of there,” he said. Not only did he not know whether the canister was loaded with smallpox, he didn’t know how long it would take titanium to deteriorate in water. A year? A hundred years? A thousand? In another thousand years this whole countryside might be wall to wall with condos and town houses, and then some poor peon might find a canister full of extremely rare diamonds in his vegetable garden. That would be a kick. More likely the peon would find it in his employer’s vegetable garden, a wealthy Chinaman, probably.
And how long might a virus like smallpox last? Did viruses starve to death? Lie dormant? He had no idea. Well, the whole world might not make it through the week anyway. But you just couldn’t chance something like that. Smallpox.
Again he took the soap and a clean change of clothes and walked around the pond, upstream from where Geraldo had lain dead, leaking blood into the water. He placed the .380 on his clean clothes on the bank alongside the soap, then stripped off the bloodied pants again and waded naked into the water.
Ana stood across the pond, her back to him, shoulders drawn.
The projector containing the canister was easily visible on the gravel bottom. The Uzi lay nearby. He took the canister ashore then carried rocks back in and covered the Uzi. It would soon be too corroded to function anyway.
He swept excess water off with his hands, put on the clean clothes, and then took the canister, the gun and his dirty clothes back to where Ana waited. He stuffed the soiled clothes back in the garbage bag, then knelt and washed his hands again with the soap.
“I’m taking these up the hill,” he said of the garbage bag and the canister. “Get your purse. We need to check it over, see if he put a bug on it.”
She dumped the purse’s contents out on a bandanna spread on the ground and handed it to him. He looked it over. “I don’t see anything.”
She checked through her personal items, put them back in her purse, and put the purse in her bag. She followed him up the slope, but stood back while he worked the garbage bag into the crevice alongside Geraldo in the thicket. He covered both Geraldo and the bag with rocks and brush.
“We don’t want to bury that with him,” Robert said of the canister. “Just in case animals or whatever manage to drag him out where his body might be discovered.”
He was scouting possible hiding places for the canister on the slope when Ana pointed out a hole in the ground—a badger hole, or a hedgehog or a porcupine, or whatever might live here in the wilds of Mexico—a burrow of some sort.
“Good,” he said. He placed the projector in the hole and punched it down with the dry stalk of a century plant. They gathered rocks and filled the hole and piled more rocks on top. They stood a moment, looking over their handiwork.
“Seems we’re always burying something under rocks,” Ana said dismally.
“Be ironic if it was full of diamonds after all.”
“I’d just as soon not know.”
“I was tempted to take a chance on it, you know, shoot the top off that sucker without breaking the vials inside. If that’s what is inside.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
“Tempted. But not that tempted.” It occurred to him that he might come back and get it some day, have it X-rayed.
They went back to the pond and repacked. He took the money from the cigarillo box and put it in Soffit’s aluminum case with the rest of the money. Without the video camera, the tapes and discarded clothing, there was room in his new carry-on for the few items still in his older, newly retrieved bag. He took the old empty bag into the nearby thicket, opened it out on the ground, filled it with rocks and covered it with brush.
He took a look around at the pond and surrounding terrain, marking the location in memory, thinking he might notify the CIA. Someday. Maybe. Unless he decided to have it X-rayed after all. But for now, it was just where it should be.
“Okay,” he said. “We’d better get on with it.”
“I’ll be so glad to leave here.”
He took the .22 from his belt and handed it to her. “You hang onto this?”
She looked at him briefly, then took it and put it in her pocket.
With the carry-on and the aluminum case in hand, he backtracked along the brushy creek. Ana followed, carrying her own bag.
They came upon the Plymouth not far from the stone culvert where they had crossed earlier. He took Geraldo’s duffle bag out of the car and unzipped it—soiled clothing, two empty clips for the Uzi, an old issue of Soldier of Fortune. He carried the bag into the brush and left it. They stowed their own luggage in the backseat, then he got in behind the wheel, inserted the key he had taken from Geraldo’s pocket, started the car and drove back up the road.
They passed the dirt track sloping up and over the hill through the cane field to the old woman’s house. No sign of human presence, but a dozen vultures circled, slow-riding the thermals above the compound, telegraphing its dark secrets.
39
Nick
IN LESS THAN twenty minutes he drove them into the Oaxaca city limits. He slowed at the first major intersection and made a left onto Periferico.
Ana looked at him. “You know where you’re going?”
“Not the slightest. Just getting off the main drag from Coyotepec.”
The road curved to the right, and after a mile what looked like a huge gypsy camp appeared, sprawled over several acres on their left. Stalls, sheds and lean-tos fused together in a maze among larger barnlike buildings. Dozens of old buses and trucks stood parked at random around the outside perimeter.
“Saturday market,” Ana said.
“Good place to dump the car.”
He slowed and turned onto the first road adjacent to the complex, then idled the Plymouth, slowly passing among the trucks and buses toward the backside. He drove past a roped off area where several burros were hobbled. Nearby, two policemen stood at a vendor’s cart eating melon slices from paper cones. A couple of taxis stood idle a short distance away. Robert eased the car around to the rear of the market and stopped on a worn strip of dirt where several Indians were mucking about among old buses, trucks and pickups loaded with everything from produce and dry goods to squealing pigs, goats and chickens.
Robert took one of the washcloths from his bag and wiped the Plymouth free of fingerprints. He left the key in the ignition. They sauntered into the market, easing through the crowds. In spaces between the booths and bins, locals had spread their wares on blankets and tarps—pottery, woven baskets, fruits, tooled leather goods, rugs, weavings and jewelry—under sun-bleached canopies no more than five feet off the ground. The air was ripe with the steamy smell of animals, rotted produce, new leather, wet wool, a prevailing odor of things soured.
The indigenous people sat on blankets among their goods, stoic, surreptitious eyes on the tourists. Robert imagined it from their viewpoint—these pale invaders, the women in their pastel blouses and denim wraparounds; the men—their hairy white legs in shorts and clunky Nikes—stooping beneath the low canopies, gawking, clogging the passageways with their intrusive cameras and their fat pockets full of Yankee dólares.
They emerged from the market opposite of where they left the car, not far from where the two policemen idled with the vendor. One of the taxis picked up two elderly white women and drove away. The other taxi, a big green Chevrolet, was parked nearby, the driver behind the wheel, head back, eyes closed.
Ana stepped up and spoke to him in Spanish. He sat up, looking one to the other, taking in their bruised faces. He shook his head, mumbling in Spanish.
“He says he’s waiting for someone.”
Robert took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. The man looked at the money, at Robert, at Ana, uneasy.
“The bus station,” Robert said. “The one with the first-class buses.”
Ana translated.
The man glanced toward the market. He gave them another once-over, each in turn. Then he took the twenty, leaned back over the seat and opened the rear door.
> SEVERAL ULTRA-MODERN buses idled before the equally modern station some dozen blocks northeast of the zócalo in Oaxaca. A few tourists and locals milled about, checking schedules, reading, talking, snacking from the carts and vending machines.
Ana studied the electronic boards. Then Robert followed her to the Deluxe UNO window where she bought two tickets to Mexico City. “They leave every hour on the hour,” she said. “The next bus is in ten minutes.”
“What time do we get there?
She looked at the board. “Ten o’clock. We can board now.”
The driver stood alongside the open baggage compartment at the side of the bus. He gave them a second look, then checked their tickets and offered to stow their luggage, but they carried their bags aboard into the air-conditioned interior. They found their assigned seats midway back. Robert let Ana in first. He put the carry-ons in the overhead and parked the aluminum case on the floor, the bulk of it under his seat. He settled in alongside Ana. Flat-screen TVs hung from the ceiling, staggered every five seats up either side of the isle.
“There's even a toilet back there,” he said.
The bus was only half full when the driver closed the baggage doors and stepped aboard. He turned to the passengers with a big friendly smile. “Buenas tardes!”
“Buenas tardes!” the passengers replied in unison. Robert looked at Ana. “So, where’s your party spirit?”
The bus shifted into gear and eased out into the traffic. It felt too big, too wide for the narrow streets. They left Oaxaca behind and climbed into the mountains. An occasional truck whoomed past inches from the windows. Ana tilted her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. He sensed her withdrawing now into her own inner world.
He rested his head back as well, rolling a little side-to-side as the bus negotiated the mountain curves. He tried to think of anything that might connect them to the carnage in their wake, but as best he could recall they had covered themselves pretty well.
The Dogs of Mexico Page 28