The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  He kept us from getting our asses shot off, and Adam knows it.

  A few seconds later, we pull into the sunlight, a big open area. From here the clearing is much larger than it appeared from the jungle road up above. Herman and the driver in front instinctively swing off to the left in a wide arc that ends up skidding to a stop in front of the trailer.

  “Un momento.” Julio is out of the car before it can stop, his hands in the air again, talking to the man in the yellow shirt, who has climbed out of the passenger seat of the Toyota. The two gunmen from the back jump out and train their weapons on our vehicle. They are soon joined by three more who seem to materialize from out of nowhere. One of these, the closest to the window on my side of the car, is pimple-faced, a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old.

  The man in the yellow shirt holds up a hand, palm out, the universal gesture to stay put, talking to Julio.

  He calls to the trailer, and a couple of seconds later the door opens. My vision doesn’t penetrate the shadows inside. Whoever it is talks from there.

  “Por favor, señor.” Julio is now interceding, his hands still raised. I can make out a few words. “Norteamericanos, hombres de negocios.”

  Questions from inside.

  “Sí.” Julio nodding his head. “Sí.”

  Then silence. Julio stands there, sweating in the sun.

  The kid outside keeps waving the muzzle of his assault rifle past my head.

  More conversation between Julio and whoever is inside, Spanish too fast for me to comprehend much of anything, though I make out the words: pueden entrar.

  Julio comes back to the car. He opens Adam’s door and sticks his head in. “Both of you can go in,” he says. “We must remain here. They will want to search you. You have no weapons?”

  Adam shakes his head.

  “No,” I tell him.

  Julio holds the door while we get out. I slide across the seat and follow Adam out his side to avoid Pimples with his cannon standing beside my door.

  They do a thorough frisk on both of us, all the way down to the ankles, smalls of our backs, and crotches. They take the folder notebook out of Adam’s hand and check to see if anything is in it besides paper and a pen. They give it back to him, then one of them moves us toward the door, pushing with the rifle in my back. We step up onto the plywood platform and toward the door.

  As Adam walks inside, I can feel a rush of cool air escaping from the rooftop air conditioner running at full bore.

  The second I clear the doorway, it slams closed behind me. I feel another set of hands checking from under my arms down to my belt, another quick check for weapons.

  Instinctively, my hands go up. Then whoever it is pulls the wallet from my back pocket.

  Inside the trailer it is dark as a cave, small windows with venetian blinds pulled closed. One small floor lamp in the corner. Coming in from the brightness, I can’t see much of anything for several seconds.

  The guy behind me moves around to the front. He is older, harder, an edge to his face that the kids outside have not yet earned. Even in the shadows, I can see that his face is pocked by acne.

  Across the room in the corner a man sits behind a desk, slick dark hair, shirtsleeves, and a tie. I am guessing in his mid-thirties. He is leaning back in an old wooden swivel desk chair that groans as he moves. His hands are coupled behind his neck, feet planted in the middle of the desk, on top of the blotter with papers and ripped-off slips from an adding machine underneath his alligator loafers.

  There is a tumbler of what looks like whiskey and ice at the edge of the desk.

  He watches with cool disinterest as his man finishes checking Adam, pushing hard enough that Tolt is wobbling around with his hands in the air. He finally finds what he is looking for, Adam’s wallet. Then he steps away.

  The guy behind the desk says: “You can put your hands down now.” Perfect English. “So you’re American businessmen. You have business cards?” Acne flips him both wallets and he catches them on the bounce off his desk, one of them landing in his lap.

  He opens one wallet and looks inside. “Paul Madriani.” He looks. I nod. Then the other wallet. “And Adam Tolt.”

  My eyes are on the large blanket laid over the object lying on the floor against the wall two or three feet from where I’m standing.

  He starts fishing inside the wallets and comes up with business cards. “Both of you are lawyers. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

  “May I ask who you are?” says Adam.

  “You can. You may.” But he doesn’t offer a name.

  “We, ah, we’re down here scouting properties for development,” says Adam. “Real estate along the coast. The Riviera between Cancún and Tulúm. Looking for opportunities.”

  “I see. What everybody wants, a good opportunity. Have a seat. Where are your manners, Jorge? Get the gentlemen a drink.” He is still picking through our wallets as he chides his subordinate for his lack of hospitality.

  Adam takes a seat on a hard wooden chair across from his desk. I try the couch a few feet away, nearer the window. Through a crack in the blinds, I can see Julio outside chatting it up with one of their guards. Herman has lifted the rear door of the Suburban and is sitting in the back with his legs dangling over the bumper, his arms folded, sweating with his jacket on, one hand not too far from the automatic under his coat, assuming they haven’t lifted it from him.

  From here I can also see a small corner of the item on the floor where the blanket is folded back. It is white and looks like gypsum, rough edges like stone.

  “What would you like to drink? We have bourbon.” He pulls a few more items from our wallets, what look like driver’s licenses, and checks these against the business cards already out.

  “Sounds like it’ll be bourbon,” says Adam.

  “And you?” He looks up at me.

  “The same.”

  Jorge leaves to get the drinks.

  The man behind the desk fixes Adam with a stare. “You gonna stick with this bullshit?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The real estate bullshit?”

  “I assure you . . .”

  “You can keep your fucking assurances,” he tells Adam. “What I wanna know is what you’re doing here.”

  “I’m telling you we’re looking for property.” Adam is holding a leather folder with a pen and paper for effect.

  “Fine. You want to talk about property. We got property. We got a nice cliff over here, goes way out over the ocean. Maybe you like to see it? Lot of rocks at the bottom.”

  “We were thinking perhaps a nice beach,” says Adam.

  “I’ll bet you were.”

  “I’m telling you we represent investors, a consortium up north.”

  “That’s right. A company called Jamaile Enterprises,” I say.

  I can feel a palpable wince from Adam as I say the words. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t have to worry about the man behind the desk. But I figure we have nothing to lose. I want to see if I get a rise, but he doesn’t seem to recognize the name.

  I’m guessing this is the business side of the brothers Ibarra, Arturo, who is threatening to drop us off a cliff, which leaves me to wonder about Jaime, the one Metz called the Neanderthal.

  “To buy land down here, you need a Mexican partner.”

  “We know that,” says Adam.

  “I have had enough American partners to last me a lifetime,” he says. “They never seem to work out. Last ones got cold feet. Left us high and dry.”

  “How did you deal with it?” I ask.

  He looks at me, makes a face, and glances at Jorge who has now rejoined us holding two glasses, bourbon on the rocks. “We had to sever the relations, you might say.” He smiles, thin lips, tight and sinister.

  “Well, I can assure you that that would not happen here,” says Adam.

  Jorge deposits one of the tumblers with iced bourbon on the desk in front of Adam and hands the other one to me. Then he takes a
seat at the other end of the couch, staring at the back of Adam’s head through dark, dead eyes. Occasionally he glances over at me with the affability of someone measuring you for a coffin.

  “I told them you might want to take them over and show them the cliff.” Ibarra is talking to Jorge. “Of course, we let them finish their drinks first.”

  “I’m telling you we’re just exploring for property.” I can hear the strain in Adam’s voice as he tries to convince him. A man of influence, suddenly without any.

  “Esploring,” he says. “That’s a good word. It looks like you are esploring all right. You come here with men who are armed.” He nods out toward the cars, toward Julio and Herman, leaving us to wonder whether Ibarra’s men outside have taken their weapons.

  Someone raps on the door from outside.

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  One of guards comes in. It’s the man in the yellow shirt, a rifle slung over his back. He crosses the room to the desk and leans over, whispering something into Ibarra’s ear.

  The loafers come off the desk and Ibarra sits up straight. There’s a quick conversation in Spanish, whispered and hushed tones. Then Ibarra waves the man away with the back of his hand. The guard leaves.

  “I am told you have other cars with more men out there somewhere. You say you come looking for property, but it sounds like you don’t trust me. That’s not good for business.”

  “One can’t be too careful,” says Adam.

  “No. You want to call these people, tell them to come in here so we can all sit down and talk?”

  “I don’t think so.” Tolt smiles at him.

  “I didn’t think so.” Ibarra is left to figure his next move.

  “Salud.” Adam lifts his glass and takes a drink.

  The Mexican joins him and I follow. The whiskey is smooth, something expensive, just warm enough to give that amber glow as it spills down my insides, anything to keep the joints at my knees from clattering against each other.

  Ibarra continues to finger our wallets, pulling every scrap of paper out. He takes his time. My eyes wander to the slab of stone, with its gypsum edge exposed, leaning against the wall across the room. Then something hits the window outside near where I’m sitting.

  Jorge hears it and pulls one of the blinds with a finger to look outside.

  “Qué es?” says Ibarra.

  “Nada.” Jorge lets the blind close, then looks at me.

  I shrug.

  As he turns to look at his boss, I sneak a peek over my shoulder out toward the cars.

  Julio, who sees my eyes through the slit of the blinds, gives me a furtive gesture, head nodding and a thumb below his waist, pointing vigorously in the direction of the cars.

  An old model Buick is stopped in a cloud of dust just this side of the black Suburban. Two men get out. One is Hector Saldado.

  “If you’re finished with us, we’re gonna go.”

  “You’re gonna go when I tell you,” says Ibarra.

  I look at my watch. “You’ve got less than a minute and our people are gonna be in here. Make up your mind.”

  Adam is looking at me, wondering what I’m talking about.

  I walk over to the desk and pick up the two wallets along with our licenses and papers Ibarra has spread around on top of it. He doesn’t try to stop me.

  “Come on, we’re leaving.” I head for the door. Tolt gets off the chair and follows me. I hear footsteps on the plywood platform outside, the voices of two men speaking in Spanish just beyond the door. Another second and Saldado will be inside with us.

  Jorge is off the couch. When I look up, he has planted himself like a boulder between us and the door. He looks at Ibarra for direction. Arturo hesitates for a second, looks at us, little slits, then nods to Jorge. He steps out of the way and opens the door.

  In the time it takes him to do this, I reach behind me like a relay runner grabbing for a baton and take the folder out of Adam’s hand. I raise it to my face just as Jorge opens the door, shielding my eyes from the sun, and my face from Saldado’s view.

  “Jaime, cómo esta?” Arturo Ibarra is greeting the other half.

  As I step out onto the platform, I glance down and see two feet in pointed cowboy boots directly in front of me. I step around them.

  “Excuse me.”

  Adam follows along.

  By the time we step off the platform, Julio already has the car door open. Herman is inside behind the wheel with the engine running.

  Without looking back, I duck my head inside and scurry across the seat. Adam is right behind me as Julio slams the door closed and jumps into the front passenger seat.

  None of us says a word until we’ve covered at least a mile on the dirt road, and then Adam explodes: “What the hell happened? We could have been killed. Why didn’t your men stop Saldado out on the road?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The best that Julio’s people can figure is that Saldado returned to the trailer by a different route. Besides, they were looking for a van, not the Buick he returned in.

  “Son of a bitch,” says Adam. “Why the hell do you people think I hired you? So I could get my ass shot off?”

  “We thought we had it covered,” says Julio. He is looking straight ahead, out through the windshield, avoiding eye contact with Adam, who is furious. Tolt is bouncing up and down on the backseat, leaning forward, his face six inches from the back of Herman’s head.

  “You thought. Did any of you think to scout the road? To see who’s in the vehicles as they go by? No. Your man up there on the other road with us. He got a good look at Saldado through the glasses. He knew what he looked like.”

  “How they supposed to look in all the cars come on that road?” says Herman.

  “That’s their job,” says Adam. “That’s what it means to be a professional. You can’t do the job, then you ought to find another one.”

  “I do my job just fine,” says Herman.

  “Don’t you talk back to me.”

  Julio reaches over with one hand just above the seat and nudges Herman to shut up.

  “If I wanted to get my ass shot off, I could have tied myself to a tree and let you take shots at me with that blunderbuss under your arm. Not that you could hit anything. Damn near got us shot out on the road going in, pulling that thing out.”

  “Calm down, Adam. Nothing happened,” I tell him.

  “Nothing happened,” he says. “Where the fuck were you? And what was that crap about Jamaile Enterprises?”

  “We didn’t get a rise on Jamaile,” I tell him.

  “You sure as hell got one out of me. Son of a bitch. You could have gotten us killed.”

  “They would have killed us no matter what we said if it hadn’t been for the other car out on the road.”

  “He’s right,” says Julio. “They wouldn’t believe us until I permitted their man to talk to my driver on the radio.”

  “You screwed up,” says Tolt. “Admit it.”

  “If it makes you feel better, fine,” says Julio.

  “It’s not his fault,” I tell him.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Adam.”

  “What?”

  “If Julio hadn’t recognized Saldado when he did, you and I would have been sitting there sipping bourbon when the Mexican walked in and started peeing in my glass.”

  “That’s true,” says Herman.

  “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Adam tells him. “And as for Julio, if he’d done his job right, we wouldn’t have had to worry about Saldado. I have a half a mind to call the office in Mexico City and have them send somebody who knows their job.”

  “And as for you.” He looks at me. “How the hell did you know he’d let us go? Forcing the issue like that. He could just as easily have had that muscle-bound idiot shoot us. We could be lying back there dead right now.”

  “If Saldado had come in and seen me, we would be dead,” I tell him.

  I can see the chip in Herman’s tooth
through tight lips in the rearview mirror as he grips the wheel with both hands and looks at me, thankful that there’s someone else to share Adam’s tongue-lashing.

  “Take me to Cancún. I’m paying a fortune for these two idiots,” he says.

  He sits back, quietly steaming for several seconds, arms folded, his face turned away from me, looking out the side window. Then the second rush. Adam starts doing what every angry lawyer does best, cross-examining everybody around him, demanding answers that don’t exist.

  “Where did he go when he left? Tell me that.”

  “Who?” Julio turns to look at him. He shouldn’t have asked.

  “Who? Who the hell do you think I mean? Saldado.”

  “How would we know that?” Julio turns to the front again.

  “Of course not. That would be too fucking easy. Have one of your men follow him.”

  “Adam, give it up. We didn’t even know he was going to be there,” I tell him.

  “Why didn’t you watch him?” Adam ignores me. “What did he do, just reappear? Apparition out of thin air?” This is addressed to the back of Julio’s head as the Mexican sits there silent, his face increasingly red until it looks like a beet. The veins along the side of his neck resemble surgical tubing. “If you worked for me, I’d fire your ass.”

  Adam’s executive style splashes all over the inside of the car as we drive, anger and ugly insults.

  As I sit and listen, I wonder whether Nick had ever been treated to this. It is one of those watershed moments that tell you more about someone than you ever wanted to know. Julio is sitting there taking the worst of it, Herman gripping the steering wheel, looking straight ahead, gritting his teeth and trying to project himself into some other dimension.

  It may be far too charitable, but Adam’s anger is motivated in large part by the afterglow of fear, the sudden realization that, but for the fates, the world could at this very moment be without one of its favorite sons: himself.

  “Take us back to Cancún,” he says. “Now.” Adam slams his back into the seat again and folds his arms across his chest, his steely gaze again out the side window.

  The trip back is like a ride in a deep freeze. Herman and Julio sit up front like two stone idols, trying not to breathe so Adam won’t notice them.