The Lonely Silver Rain

by John D. MacDonald

  • • •

  We parked at Tulum a little before eleven. The parking lot was across the road from the Mayan ruins. There were a dozen big tour buses and about fifty cars. Two sides of the parking lot were lined with ramshackle shops strung with bright flags and plastic gadgetry. The shops were selling clothing, jewelry, junk, fake Mayan carvings, T-shirts, souvenirs, tacos, enchiladas, beer, soft drinks, seashells and paper flowers. The shops and small restaurants extended down both sides of the approach to the ruins from the main highway.

  We locked the little blue station wagon and walked diagonally across the lot and back along the way we had come, to the sign Browder had spotted on the way in. Restaurante Tía Juanita. It was dim inside, out of the white glare of sunlight. There were six crude wooden tables on a dirt floor, mismatched chairs, a counter along the back with a heavy woman behind it. The place smelled of fried grease, beer and urine. One table was occupied by two Mexican kids drinking Coca-Cola out of oversized bottles.

  We took the table on the left just inside the door. An electric fan on the counter top turned back and forth, giving us a brief blast of warm moving air every twenty seconds. Browder went to the counter and brought back two bottles of León Negra dark beer. We were halfway through the beer when a man came in, paused to let his eyes adjust to the diminished light and then sat down with us. He was big and he looked fit. He had a full beard, ponytail, cotton pullover shirt with narrow red and white horizontal stripes, cutoff jeans and, as I noticed later, old army boots worn without laces or socks. He was a relic from the past, a time traveler from San Francisco in the sixties. Mexico is full of them. Aging hippies, last survivors, drifting down toward the Mayan ruins, burned-out cases, languid and ragged in the heat, traveling with dirty duffel bags, listlessly thumbing the sparse traffic.

  He looked at me and said, “Heard of you. I thought it was going to be somebody after the good Oaxaca bush. Very heavy and clean. But you’d be looking for the white lady out of Belize.”

  “And for that we’d see the Brujo?” Browder asked.

  “He’s hard to see lately. He’s just set up a new market to handle all he brings in.”

  “Out of Bogotá to Belize, then by boat to Chetumal, sure. But where from here? I don’t get it, this new market. If it’s coming into the States, our people get it anyway.”

  “Maybe the Brujo is a little pissed at your people. Maybe he’s got a Canadian outlet.”

  “We’ve never given him a bad deal.”

  “That isn’t what he says. And that isn’t what I know.”

  “Who are you?” Browder asked.

  “How much were you thinking to buy?”

  “Enough.”

  “You know what happens sometimes,” the man said. “Sometimes people who deal in it, they use a little. Then they begin to think they are smarter than anybody. So they try a little angle here, a little angle there, and then they crap in their own nest.”

  “No chance of seeing the Brujo?”

  “I don’t know. He might want to tell you some kind of a message. He’s still hot about it.”

  “Tell me about it,” Browder said.

  “That’s up to him. A man gets taken, he doesn’t want other people telling people about it.”

  “How would we get to see him?”

  “I can take a shot at it. But you could be wasting your time.”

  “Now?”

  “Let’s go. We’ll have to use my truck.”

  We followed him to where he had parked an old red Ford pickup. The fenders were gone to provide space for the huge tires which lifted the chassis so high we had to climb up into it. Going through the crowd I attracted the same awed attention as before. Take my six four and add another twelve inches of heels plus hat and it made the children’s eyes bug. I realized what it would feel like to be in a carnival.

  We went down an old road that followed the shore, down past a fish camp at Boca de Paila, and at last the road petered out to a mere rocky trace which he crawled over in low gear, avoiding rocks big enough to hit the underside of the battered truck. He pulled into the dirt yard of a typical Mayan hut, though bigger than most, scattering turkeys, dogs and ducks. He told us to wait beside the truck. The hut was round, made of wattle and sticks plastered with a lime mix and heavily thatched with old brown palm fronds. The man brushed against copper bells strung by the entrance as he entered the dark interior. Dogs stretched out again in the shade. Turkeys and ducks were pecking around.

  The man came out and said, “They sent somebody after him. They’ll come back with him or with a message from him.”

  “Take long?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Then he lives near?”

  “I’ve never seen where he lives, friend.” He gestured. “Somewhere beyond all that jungle stuff.”

  Finally a man appeared in the doorway of the hut and beckoned to us. He stood there as we approached and then stepped aside to let us enter. He was Mayan, maybe fifty years old, with the broad impassive face of a Siberian peasant, and the great hooked nose of Egyptian wall paintings. His skin color was a deep golden brown. A young man in black shorts and a white shirt stood in the narrow rear doorway of the hut, holding an automatic weapon at ready, aimed at our ankles. He gave us his total attention all the time we were there.

  The Brujo wore white trousers and a long white shirt with four pockets and with broad stripes of blue embroidery down the front of it. There were hammocks strung inside the hut, and several heavy wooden boxes.

  He sat on a carved chest, and motioned us toward the boxes.

  As I was wondering if he spoke English, he said, “When I get the seventy-five thousand American dollars you tricky bastards owe me, maybe we can start doing business again.”

  Twelve

  “We haven’t tricked anyone,” Browder said. “Believe me.”

  “So why are you coming here with a man trying to look like the Estanciero? The real Estanciero, Bucky, had a girl’s face. Not this one here.”

  “Now I can take this damn thing off,” I said, and removed the hat with the tall crown and huge brim so I could slip the eye patch off. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the gun barrel in the doorway moved up to give me some individual attention, then sagged as I replaced the hat and put the patch in my pocket.

  “Jesus Christ, McGee!” Browder said angrily.

  I looked at the impassive man sitting on the chest and said, “Sir, your honor, señor or El Brujo, or whatever …”

  “Señor is fine.”

  “Señor, I would be very grateful if you would tell me who cheated you and how. I do not deal drugs. I do not use drugs. I prevailed upon this fine fellow here, Mr. Scott Ellis Browder, to bring me along with him. He does deal drugs. I dressed up like Bucky at his request, so I would maybe be recognized as him, and that would make us more believable. We know something went wrong down here but we don’t know what. Back home in Florida, people are trying to kill me, and I don’t know why, but it has something to do with what happened down here, I think.”

  “But my main mission is to make a buy,” Browder said hurriedly.

  “For how much?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Where is the money?”

  “In a lock box at the hotel,” I said.

  El Brujo stared into my eyes. I tried to look earnest, troubled and sincere. “A man named Ruffino Marino has been buying from me for a year and a half. Italian-American,” he said.

  Browder grunted with surprise and El Brujo stared at him and said, “You have a problem with that?”

  “Big heavy man about sixty, with a limp?”

  “No, indeed. A handsome young man about twenty-eight. Slender. Mustache.”

  “Thank you. You have very good English, señor.”

  “I have a degree in business administration from Stanford,” he said, so flatly I knew he was trying to hide his pride in it.

  El Brujo turned back to me. “Marino flew t
he product out of the Tulum airstrip to an airstrip on a Florida ranch near Fort Myers. He made four trips. He complained about increasing surveillance. He flew over the last time in early August. He did not fly the product back. He brought here a young man with red hair. John Rogers. He said Rogers would take the product back by boat. I said it was more risky by water than by air. He said they had worked out something. John Rogers’ boat was docked at Cozumel. I sent a man up there to help him find safe anchorage down here. You have to know the waters, and know the reefs. The boat anchored in good protected water in the Bahia de la Ascensión. Rogers had a young woman with him. I had to wait for more product to fill the order. We loaned them a jeep. Marino had flown back. Rogers and the woman explored the area. When I supplied the product, they left. They came back in September. Again I had to wait for product. They paid me and left. They left with a young woman who had been traveling here with relatives. Apparently she wanted to go with them and see the United States. I would have stopped them taking her had I known she was an important person. This was big police business, big rewards. She was a reckless young woman. The family in Lima had sent her traveling with relatives to get her mind off an unsuitable young man. She was to have been married to a lawyer. We heard here that she had been killed in the United States, in Florida. I receive the International Edition of the Miami Herald every afternoon. And I watch your television. I have a twelve-foot dish antenna. I was careless about the money. After all, it came from Marino, who had been doing business with me for over a year. I didn’t notice it was counterfeit until I was just about to send it by courier to my bank on Grand Cayman.” He took two fifties out of his pocket and held them out toward Browder, who jumped up and walked over and got them, the gun muzzle following him. He examined them and handed them to me. They looked crisp but felt damp. Same familiar serial number. F38865729D.

  “If you get the paper,” I said, “then you know the redhead and his girl were killed too.”

  “Of course. And Rogers wasn’t his name. All I know is that Marino owes me seventy-five thousand dollars. If you and your people want to do any business here for any kind of product, they have to clear that matter up first.” He frowned. “I can’t understand why it hasn’t been cleared up. I know the mathematics as well as they do. What costs you people seventy-five thousand, you wholesale for two hundred thousand. The wholesaler sells it to the distributor for four hundred thousand. The distributor sells it to the area dealers and they sell it to the street dealers and they sell it to the consumers after adulteration for a million dollars.”

  “Maybe,” Browder said, “we’ve been pinching down on supply to hold the price.”

  “Why would you come to me to make a buy knowing I was cheated?”

  “I didn’t know you’d been cheated.”

  “I’m not a fool! You don’t have any independent importers anymore.”

  “Maybe Marino was the very last.”

  “And so I am out of luck? Is that it?”

  “That could be it, Mr. Brujo.”

  “There will be no sales until I am reimbursed.”

  “I’m in no position to decide that. I’m not high enough up the ladder. But I will go back and report. I have the feeling enough product is coming in from other directions. But it’s good policy to keep all the channels open.”

  “Martin, you can drive these men back, please.”

  As we stood up, Browder said, “What was it they worked out to cut down the risk of taking it in by boat, sir?”

  “Didn’t you look into that, Martin?” Brujo asked.

  “Yes, sir. The product would go into one of those aluminum Haliburton cases with a good watertight seal, with enough lead to make negative buoyancy. The case had two eyes welded onto the two corners on one end, and there was a wire cable, thin, fastened to the eyes, making a Y like a ski towline. They had about fifty feet of cable and the other end was fastened to a large eye bolt screwed into the keel amidships. They kept the case on the transom. Oh, the case had two little fins welded or brazed onto the sides so that if they had to tow the case at cruising speed it would come up near the surface but wouldn’t broach. The fins were adjustable so they could take some practice runs with the case full to see how it behaved. If there was any chance of being boarded and searched, they would just shove the case overboard. If they traveled, it stayed below the surface. If they stopped, it hung straight down toward the bottom. After the danger was over, they could get up to speed, pick up the cable with a boat hook and bring the case back aboard. Unless someone sent a diver over to look at the hull, they were safe, and even then he might not see the cable.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said to El Brujo.

  After we had climbed into the red truck I asked Browder what brujo meant. Martin answered for him. “Wizard or magician. More like magician.”

  “I wonder if he contributes to the alumni fund,” I said.

  “Probably,” said Martin. “He uses his education. He has commercial ventures in Cancún, Mérida, Valladolid, Chetumal and Villahermosa. He’s got a radio-telephone back in there somewhere. He’s a very serious man. It wasn’t smart to cheat him.”

  As we rode, I looked sidelong at Martin. There were flecks of gray in that beard. Deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. The hippie look was a perfect disguise for the environment in which he worked. He lacked the dazed vapid manner of the strung-out homeless ones, but I guessed that he could assume the role whenever it seemed useful.

  I wondered how Martin felt about the business he was in. But I knew Browder wouldn’t like it if I asked him. And I probably wouldn’t understand the answer.

  Browder held it all in until we were back inside the little blue Renault and heading north. Then he hit the top of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Wowee!” yelled Browder. “Hey ho!” yelled Browder. “Gottum!” yelled Browder.

  “Got who?”

  “Whoever falls out of the tree when we shake it. Like this, McGee. Mr. Ruffino Marino, who lives in a million-dollar condo at Sailfish Lagoon, is a respected investment adviser. He fought his way up through one of the families. He invests mob money in restaurants and hotels and dry cleaning and car washes and liquor stores. And he probably has a little sitdown dinner once in a while with old friends and they make policy about who to be friends with and what to buy next. Ruffi Junior has always been a wild-ass kid. Not exactly a kid any longer, but his habits haven’t changed. Stock cars, speedboats, airplanes, actresses. So it was the kid had the deal with Brujo, and that is crazy because the last thing the old man would want for his sons and daughters would be anything illegal. He bought respectability and he wants to keep it. Nothing should mar the Marino name, so it is dead-ass certain he didn’t know about this until it had been going on for a while.”

  “How would Ruffi Junior dispose of the product?”

  “Use the Marino name to get to a wholesaler, and then sell it to him for a little bit under the going price to keep the man’s mouth shut. A personal deal. There could be other ways. I’m just brainstorming it. The thing to know is that the old man would blow a gasket if he knew any of his kids, especially the oldest son, was dealing.”

  “Why would he deal?”

  “I heard a rumor he wanted to be a movie star like Stallone. He financed a movie using a tax shelter plan and it was a bomb, a dead loss. He could make a million a year buying from Brujo. Maybe he wants to make another movie.”

  “What about the dead people?”

  “I can make up a scenario for you. Ruffi Junior is contacted by Howard Cannon by phone once he is back safe in the Keys with the product. So they arrange a pickup by Ruffi, by fast runabout or float plane, back there where you found the boat. I think Ruffi Junior would come alone. He doesn’t want to be very public about what he’s doing. So he goes down and boards the boat to pick up the product and give the redhead his cut. The redhead is proud of how cute he was. He’d probably bought that funny money for fifteen cents on the dollar. Eleven thousand two hu
ndred fifty for seventy-five. But he probably bought a round hundred. He wants to buy into the action. He still has the seventy-five in good money Ruffi gave him. So he tells Ruffi what he did and shows him the rest of the funny money.

  “Okay. So Ruffi is known for having a temper. He beat up on a girl once a couple of years ago. It was in the papers. But he got off. There he is looking in horror at that dumb turd redhead telling him how smart he is. Ruffi knows it is a stolen boat. He knows that he can never make the redhead understand what an idiot he’s been. Then maybe the redhead tells him he has the seventy-five thousand hidden, just in case Ruffi doesn’t want to deal him in. I think that’s in character. Do you?”

  “Please watch the road, Browder. This is a very narrow road. Those oil trucks are doing eighty-five.”

  “Would you say that would be in character?”

  “Yes. I noticed some broken mangrove. He probably hid the money ashore. Sealed it in a plastic bag and tied it to a mangrove knee. The way the boat was moored, you could jump into the shallows and wade into the mangroves.”

  “Okay, so he faked the redhead out of position, cold-cocked him, then turned and busted the skull on the blonde girl, knocking her back onto the bunk. Then he tied up the redhead the way you found him, and then he went in and had his fun and games with the little lady from Peru until he heard the redhead start bellowing. He knew the blonde girl was dead. He cut the throat of the little brunette. Why shouldn’t he? He thought they were just three pieces of garbage, a half step ahead of the law. The redhead had closed off Ruffi’s source, and Ruffi didn’t think he should be walking around talking about how cute he had been.

  “So he came out and sat down beside the redhead and put a clothespin on his nose and then clamped a hand over his mouth. When the redhead began to pass out, Ruffi would let him breathe again, and each time he would ask where the redhead had hidden the product and hidden the money. He let the redhead know both the women were dead. When he had answers he liked, he went looking, and when he found the goods and knew the answers had been on target, he went back and took those fifties and made a roll that would just fit into the redhead’s mouth, pried his jaws open, jammed the bills in and hammered them home. Then he probably sat and watched the redhead asphyxiate. It would have taken a while because he could probably suck in a little bit of air around the wad of money. And while he was on the way to dying, Ruffi was probably telling him what a horse’s ass he had been. Then he picked up his goods and his money and got into his boat or airplane and left the area in a hurry. From Ruffi’s point of view, a reasonable solution. Brujo had no good way to contact him and probably wouldn’t try. Ruffi took his goods to market before the murder story broke, and there was no way to connect him to it anyway.”