The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  We head toward the second car in line, followed by the Julio and Herman show, guys with our bags taking up the rear like a safari. These they pile into the back of the last car in line while they huddle to call signals on the best route to wherever it is we are sleeping tonight.

  “You sure you have enough vehicles?” I ask Adam.

  “Never be too careful down here,” he says. “Julio can tell you. He chauffeured me around Mexico City last time I was down. That was about two years ago, wasn’t it?” His voice goes up a notch to be heard over the blast of a jet throttling up off in the distance. He turns to look at Julio, who is too busy at the moment, making arrangements for travel, to hear him.

  So Adam turns back to me. “May as well get in,” he says.

  Oversized tires with lots of aggressive rubber. We could use a ladder to climb up into the backseat of the huge Suburban. We settle in and find the seat belts. Adam closes the door to keep the air-conditioning inside. The engine is still running.

  “Anyway, it was a meeting on gas and oil leases for one of our clients.” Adam’s going on with his story even if nobody is listening. “And son of a bitch if somebody doesn’t try to grab one of our briefcases. Two kids on a motorbike.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what I mean. You’ve got to be careful.”

  “Did they get it?”

  “Hell, no,” he says. “Herman there saw it all in his side-view mirror. He opened the driver’s door just as they were accelerating. Made a real mess. Blood all over the inside of the door, broken bones. Nobody killed, so I guess it could have been worse.”

  “Yeah. They could have run into Herman,” I say.

  Adam laughs, takes off his glasses, and wipes them down with a handkerchief. The car’s air conditioner is working overtime with one of the front doors still open.

  “Beginning to fog up. I hate the humidity down here.” Adam checks his watch, then taps it with a finger. It’s stopped. He takes it off and taps it gently against the metal frame around the inside of the passenger window, then listens to it close to his ear to make sure it’s going again.

  “This old Hamilton’s an antique,” he says. “Like me. It keeps great time, but it doesn’t like humidity. Makes two of us.” He wipes perspiration from his forehead with the handkerchief. “What time have you got?”

  “It’s a little after one-thirty.”

  “Add two hours,” he says. “Central time. We’ll sleep in the morning. Otherwise we’ll be wasted.”

  Herman and Julio finally get everything together and we head for town, Herman behind the wheel and Julio riding shotgun.

  Out of the airport, within two minutes we’re on a dark four-lane highway traveling at high speed for a few minutes before we reach an overpass. We turn off and head toward what looks like open water behind flat terrain covered by low jungle foliage. A few miles on, and we start to see lights, a few pedestrians walking along the sandy shoulder of the road, and small businesses. Another mile, and now there’s a sidewalk and the lights are brighter.

  “You ever been here before?” Julio sitting sideways, looking at me from over the front seat.

  “No.”

  “All jungle, un pantano, in English ah, ‘swamp’ until maybe,” he has to think about this, “twenty years ago. Then the government they decide they want resort. Here.” He smiles, gestures toward the floor in the front seat, as if the government would plant their resorts at that location. “And poof, like that, resorts all over. Meliá Cancún, La Piramides, Royal Solaris Caribe. Like Las Vegas,” he says. “You been there?”

  “Not for a number of years.”

  “Disneyland, huh?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  He starts pointing out the attractions. By now the properties are abutting one another, palatial grounds with manicured lawns to make French aristocracy envious. These are lit up by banks of floodlights, some of them in color with water effects, fountains shooting spray skyward. He tells us that the name of the busy boulevard we are on, two lanes in each direction with traffic lights, is Kukulcan.

  Adam disconnects his seat belt, and slides forward, leaning over the back of the front seat to be heard better. “This is the street where this man Ibarra has his office?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll be coming to that right up here. Beyond Kukulcan Plaza. I will show you.”

  “Anything on the two sons?” asks Adam. “Ibarra brothers.”

  “Ah, yes. Bad people. Very bad,” he says. “Emm, south. They are south, near Tulúm.”

  “What he means, they got property down there,” Herman tries translating as he drives, glancing back over the seat occasionally to make sure he can be heard. “Word around is they trying to develop it. You ask me, I think they doin’ something else.”

  “Drugs?” asks Adam.

  “Could be.”

  “And the father?”

  “Mystery man,” says Herman. “Told he and the boys don’t get along.”

  Adam settles back in the seat again, leans over toward me. “Sounds like confirmation of what we’ve heard. Father and sons not getting along. And drugs.”

  “Metz told me that the brothers wanted heavy equipment to develop a project on the coast, some property they wanted to sell for a resort. It could be true.”

  “Did Metz send any equipment?”

  “No.”

  “There, you have your answer,” says Adam. “But perhaps part of his story was true.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fact that the father and sons are at each other’s throats.”

  “Here it is.” Julio turns and leans over the seat. “This building right here is the plaza. You hotel is here, but we go on to Ibarra’s?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Adam motions for them to keep going. He wants to see where Ibarra’s office is.

  “Dats an indoor mall, you need anything,” says Herman. “Lotta shops, restaurants, air-conditioning. Hangout for the ugly Americans wanna say they been to Mexico but didn’t sweat. This area’s called the Zone. Zona Hotelera.”

  “Zona Hotel-aaaara,” says Julio.

  “Hey, whad I say? Listen, I do the white man talk, you do the spic shit and everything be fine. Stay cool.”

  “Enough, guys. You’re making Mr. Madriani nervous,” says Adam.

  “We just kiddin’,” says Herman. “Hotel-aareeya.”

  “Aaara,” says Julio. He’s packing a bulge under the front of his coat that, when he sits forward and turns, swings open to reveal the metal clip slid into the handle of a heavy semiautomatic, all of which is cinched up high under his armpit in a worn leather shoulder harness.

  Herman turns his head toward us and leans back again. “Ibarra’s office, just up ahead here a ways.”

  We go about a half mile and off to our right is lush greenery the size of a golf course, a carpet of velvet grass rolling into the distance and, beyond it, an immense resort hotel in the shape of a pyramid, ten or twelve stories high, what the pharaohs could have done if they’d had smoked glass and twinkling lights. Out in front a Mexican flag the size of a runway rolls in slow-mo, undulating waves from the top of its pole, animated by the gentle Caribbean breeze.

  “The old man own that?” says Adam. He sounds as if he’d like to pick up Papa Ibarra as a client.

  “Perhaps,” says Julio. “Bet he has partners.”

  “I’d like to be one of them,” says Adam.

  “His office is on the top floor. The penthouse,” says Herman. “And nobody gets up there ’less they have an escort and appointment.” Herman sounds as if he’s tried. “Man’s a regular Mexican Howard Hughes,” he says.

  “Who is this Joward Jewes?” says Julio. “You keep talking Joward Jewes.”

  “Hughes. Hughes.” The sound whistles as air passes over Herman’s chipped front tooth. “Read my lips, you stupid spic. Why don’t you learn how to speak English?”

  “Because we speak Spanish here,” he says. “No black jive.”

  “Jive?”
Herman’s voice goes up an octave. “You never heard no jive from me, cuz I be speakin’ the Queen’s English.”

  “Which queen es that?” says Julio. “The one dances at the queer bar downtown?”

  “Hey, man, now you gettin’ personal.” Julio leans over the seat and smiles at me, taps me on the knee. “Don’t pay attention to us. We do this always,” he says. “Besides, you no have to worry unless I pull this thing out and point it at his head.” He gestures toward the gun under his arm.

  “What? That thing? Last time you try to pull that teeny weeny thing out, got caught in your zipper,” says Herman. “Had to fill his mouth with Kleenex, keep him from screamin’ free willie.”

  “Don’t believe him,” says Julio. “He just jealous cuz I get all the good-looking women.”

  “Right.” Herman ignores this. “Word ’round town is your man Ibarra’s strange. Lots of money but nobody ever sees him. Know what I mean? Just lets his money talk for ’im.”

  Julio is on the small walkie-talkie now, communicating with the other drivers, something in Spanish, then listening, one finger to his ear, holding in the earpiece.

  The lead car suddenly does a U-turn, and we follow, three dark vehicles, like a train in the middle of the boulevard. There’s a cop settled back on a motorcycle half a block up, his arms folded over his chest, one foot on the ground balancing the cycle. He sees us, looks, reaches for the handlebars. Then thinks better of it. He doesn’t move. His arms go back, folded against his chest.

  You get the feeling that vehicles like this, rolling black power with smoked windows, driving on each other’s bumper, might be carrying some high government official, or worse, some patron who owns a chunk of the country. One look and the traffic cop has decided he will get his quota somewhere else tonight.

  We drive back a mile or so and turn into a private driveway that snakes uphill. Finally we come to a stop under a canopied entrance to a small hotel.

  Herman jumps out and opens the door. He can move for a big man. Adam gets out. I slide across the seat and follow him.

  It’s like a blast from a sauna and into a refrigerator, as the automatic doors open and close behind us. Adam and I stand around in the small lobby while Julio introduces himself and does business at the antique, carved-oak desk just inside the door.

  It’s a small European-style hotel. Adam tells me it used to be a private mansion, thirty-nine rooms of marbled luxury. Lost in a sea of glitz, large tourist resorts, their glittering lights with acres of gardens and lawn, no one would notice the Casa Turquesa, its gleaming floors and circular staircase tucked in along the beach and huddled up against the mall.

  A few seconds later, Julio is back with room keys.

  “You both on the top floor. Adjoining rooms. Herman will have the room on one side, I the room on the other. Two of my men will be down here, the others will stay with the cars.

  The manager, accompanied by four bellmen, one for each bag, leads us to the elevator, and we head up.

  Three minutes later, I am alone in my room, door closed with the air conditioner humming.

  I close the curtains. I’m too tired to enjoy the view, and right now the king-sized bed looks more inviting than the pool down below. I take a shower, and a half hour later, I’m asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A few minutes before nine in the morning, the lobby of the Casa Turquesa is empty except for a girl at the small desk by the door.

  “Buenos días.” She smiles and asks me if I want to take breakfast at the restaurant out by the pool deck.

  Instead I order a cab.

  Twenty minutes later, the driver drops me off in an area of old Cancún, on a street called Tankah Calle. Here the shops are not as glitzy as out near the beaches in the hotel zone. The buildings are mostly two and three stories, dingy.

  Cancún is now a city of a million people and has the feel of a quiet, rustic town that may have grown a little too fast. There are modern shops jammed in between stucco buildings that look as if they date to the forties. The streets are crowded with cars, most of them honking horns, the Mexican equivalent of brakes.

  I look for an address along the sidewalk and then realize the number I’m looking for is on the other side of the street. I hustle between cars and take a few honks crossing over, and then I walk half a block.

  I see the name on a sign hanging out over the sidewalk before I see the number. ANTIQUITIES BIBLIOTECA.

  Nick had misspelled it in his little handheld. I had gotten up early and checked the Cancún phone book this morning, suspecting that I would probably find it. The telephone number in the book matched the one in the memo pad of Nick’s device, if you ignored the international code for Mexico.

  From out on the sidewalk I see an “open” sign hanging on the glass door, so I head for it. I can see a woman inside at the counter talking to a gentleman, his back to me.

  My hand is nearly to the doorknob when he turns to give me a profile.

  I pull my hand back in and walk quickly past the door and continue on until I find a newspaper rack three shops down. I drop a few Mexican coins in the slot and grab an edition of a Cancún paper I can’t read. I sit down on a bench and open it.

  Six minutes pass before Nathan Fittipaldi comes out of the front door of the antiquities shop. He comes this way, so I hold the paper up in front of my face until he passes, crosses the street, and then I follow him.

  Two blocks down, he enters a parking garage, walking down the ramp and disappearing into the shadows. I stand across the street from the exit with the newspaper and keep an eye. A minute or so later, a large Lincoln Town Car rolls up the ramp with a driver in the front seat. The back windows are tinted, but the driver has to stop to pay the charges at the exit booth.

  Through the windshield I see Fittipaldi sitting behind the driver in the backseat. Next to him is a woman, blond hair and dark glasses, snuggled up to him. It seems Dana has found the time to vacation in Mexico.

  By ten-thirty I am back at the hotel where I find Adam in the restaurant having breakfast.

  “Where were you? I called your room, but there was no answer.”

  “I decided to take a walk, get a little exercise.”

  “How was it?”

  “Good.”

  “Listen, I’ve thought about our schedule here. We don’t have a lot of time,” he says. “Unless you want to hold over and take a commercial jet back.”

  I have to be back in the office on Monday, I tell him.

  “Then I think it might be best if we use today to scout out the brothers down on the coast. What do you think?”

  “I thought we would talk to the father.”

  Herman and Julio are at a table far enough away so we can talk and not be overheard. The cabana, restaurant, and bar by the pool are empty. Adam is wearing a pair of heavy tan pants and boots with a light nylon slipover shirt.

  “I thought it might be wise to wait until Friday before talking to Pablo Ibarra. I had my office call his and tell him I was coming down on business. I told them to keep it vague. He knows I’m with the same firm as Nick was. We have a tentative appointment for tomorrow evening. Now, if you want to change it, I can.”

  “No. That’s fine.”

  “I suspect that the answers ultimately lie with the old man,” he says. “But I am also afraid that if we hit him dead on, not knowing more, that Pablo Ibarra will stonewall us. He has nothing to gain by talking to us, unless he thinks we know more than we do.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “You read his letter to Nick,” he says. “What do you think he was trying to say?”

  “He was telling Nick to back off.”

  “Right. To leave his sons alone. Nick had something on the sons or they were doing something that the father didn’t like. We have to make Pablo Ibarra suspect that we know what that was.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We need to take a look at their operation. At least have some clue as to what they’re d
oing.”

  Adam’s plan seems to make sense.

  “I had Julio’s people scout the location down on the coast.”

  “When?”

  “When I called and told them I needed them to meet us here. I was trying to figure how to use what little time we had the best way we could. Two of his people took one of the cars yesterday, went down the coast, and checked the place out. They found it.”

  “Then why don’t we go?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  An hour later we’re headed down the coast, back past the airport.

  In the sunlight the terrain looks different. The resorts are like alabaster palaces set against the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

  The water is so clear I am told that divers swear they are peering through air. Through breaks of jungle and rises in the highway, I can see rolling waves, white beaches, the shoreline dotted with coral inlets and reefs of basalt.

  Traffic on the road moves at a clip, in places narrowing to two lanes, then opening again for passing. There are very few vehicles, just an occasional tourist bus, mostly empty, and a chartered van for scuba divers on their way to a remote beach.

  Overhead the sky is clear and bright. But in the distance above the jungle to the south, it is leaden. Every few seconds I can see tiny threads of fire as lightning strikes the jungle floor fifty or sixty miles ahead of us.

  Large land crabs scurry across the road, moving like giant spiders from jungle to jungle, across the strip of pavement separating them from the sea.

  Adam fills me in on the two Ibarra brothers, Arturo and Jaime. He has a thin file compiled by Julio’s firm, pulled together and faxed from the home office in Mexico City this morning.

  “Took a quick look at it this morning when I got up,” he says.

  “Three years apart in age,” he says. “Arturo is the mover, shaker, the businessman, if you want to call it that. Jaime is muscle, all the way to the area between the ears. He has a bad reputation for temper. He killed a man in a fight four years ago in a private club and got off on a theory of self-defense. He has a few minor convictions, but an extensive arrest record.” What Adam is saying is, “What you would expect for the wayward son of a wealthy man?”