Five minutes later, a battered Nissan pickup pulled into the empty parking space and two women got out. The one from the passenger side nearly tripped over the forgotten sample case, but her irritation turned quickly to excitement as she examined the neatly made box, covered in thick canvas. She moved her purse to her left shoulder and picked it up. Its weight promised something interesting. In fact, it contained Ramon’s tools, a sample Mayan pot, a Rolodex and a ledger. The women looked around, but saw no one in view, and they quickly entered a house two doors down.
As Valentin drove up Cuesta de San Jose his sense of dread grew. He had done many tasks for the Boss in the past, but never before had he asked Valentin to kill someone. Only the thought of the 5,000 pesos (about $450) pushed him on. It would keep him and his family going for more than a month. His wife was just 19 and she had already given him two small sons.
Spaces between the houses grew larger as Valentin negotiated the frequent speed bumps. A sign ahead indicated the road for the reservoir and he turned in. No other cars were in sight. He moved over the potholed road a few hundred feet farther and then pulled over. As he got out of the van his stomach felt knotted and hollow.
He opened the rear doors and pulled Ramon out by the arm. The man was shaking but he said nothing. Valentin forced him to his knees facing the reservoir and pulled the gun from his pocket. He slid back the safety as the Boss had showed him and pointed the gun at the back of Ramon’s head. Involuntarily he crossed himself, then returned the gun to his right hand and pulled the trigger. But Ramon had sensed it coming and wheeled around suddenly at the same instant. The bullet passed through his eye into his head and he collapsed backward onto his bound hands.
Valentin stood motionless as the sharp pop of the pistol faded away into the night. In the thick brush an animal got to its feet and fled. Nothing else moved.
He removed the ropes from Ramon’s hands and feet and brought out a section of old carpet from the back of the van, placing the body at one edge. Now was the part that Valentin disliked the most. He took out the 20 centavo coin the boss had given him and slid it into Ramon’s mouth, pressing his jaws closed again. With a length of the clothes line he tied Ramon’s jaw shut. The Boss had specifically told him to do this, so that the coin would stay in place until the body stiffened. It was another strange idea of the gringos, and Valentin had learned to not question such things.
Then he rolled up the carpet. Blood and brain material still seeped from the wound on the back of Ramon’s head, but there was little on the face. Valentin easily lifted the carpet roll and slid it back into the van. Suddenly he realized that the sample case was not there. He considered for a moment going back to the street where he had parked, but then rejected it. How could he risk being seen there again, especially with a body in his van? He decided not to mention it to the Boss unless he asked. He rubbed the watch again and then looked at it. It was only 9:15.
Valentin spent the night at home worrying about Ramon’s body lying in the back of his truck. Early in the morning he drove the three miles back from his rented five hectare farm into San Miguel, passing the turnoff to the reservoir, but not looking at it. He thought he would never go back there again. He had passed a difficult night, and now he could not wait for his task to be over. As he drove down Santo Domingo toward el centro, he pulled out the key with the paper wrapping the Boss had given him and looked again at the address, then headed for Quebrada. The Boss had said the people who lived there would be leaving sometime in the morning, probably early, and after they had gone, he was to leave the body in the entry and lock the house again.
It was still dark when he pulled into a parking place across the street and down a bit from his destination. He rolled down the windows on both sides of the van to dissipate the odor that was beginning to grow behind him. At a quarter to eight the edges of the hills outside of town were starting to glow when he saw the door open. A man and a woman came out with one suitcase apiece, and both carried a strange bulky coat. He waited for ten minutes after they had flagged down a taxi and then moved the van into position closer to the entrance.
He checked the address for the last time, and went up to the door and unlocked it. Inside everything was quiet. No lights were on. He pulled the door shut again, but stopped short of letting the latch engage, and went back to the van. He fiddled with the handle for a couple of minutes until there was no one in view on the street, and then slid out the carpet roll and swung it over his shoulder. In the entry, he unrolled the carpet and left Ramon’s body at the top of the second step.
Opening the door a crack he surveyed the street. No one looked his way. He locked the door and loaded the carpet back in the van. He hoped the Boss would be proud of him, since he wasn’t very proud of himself.
Chapter 10
Living in México makes the idea of intense cold somewhat abstract. It is a real thing, of course, like world hunger or the AIDS epidemic and global warming, but it exists at a comfortable distance; you can talk about it at cocktail parties (although we rarely do because people who live here don’t want to recall it), express deep feelings about it and you don’t even shudder. Before we left San Miguel I looked up the temperature on the Internet. It was 21 degrees below zero in Minneapolis. Of course, that was an early morning temperature. With any luck at all I was hoping it would be up to maybe eight or even seven below zero when we got there. San Miguel, on the other hand, experiences a light frost once every couple of years, depending on how far up the hillside your house is. We throw another blanket on the bed and Maya pulls out her long nightgown.
It took me a while to remember where I had put my winter coat. When I found it in the armoire in the guest bedroom it resembled a curious bulky thing from another life. I felt like John Glenn coming out of retirement and retrieving a space suit from storage for another trip into orbit. With a sheepskin lining that came all the way up to a tall collar meant to cover your ears, it closed with little solid plastic barrels on cords that went through the button holes. It smelled like something I should have thrown away long ago. It had been high style 12 or 15 years back. A pair of gloves with a hole worn in one finger was jammed in the left pocket. The only hats I could locate were a Panama and a baseball cap. I chose the baseball cap. I wasn’t expecting a sunburn. Maybe Tobey had a lot of old friends who were athletic. Maybe I’d fit right in at the cemetery. Give ‘em a few high fives; what about those Minnesota Vikings! I didn’t own any boots.
Maya had nothing like this of her own, and had only seen such things in movies. Marisol provided her with a long olive-colored coat that came six inches below Maya’s knees and looked like something the Cossacks would have worn skating across the Don River in 1870. If there was a time when this style was popular I had missed it, and I didn’t mind that I had. It had a fox collar that went well with her dark hair as she modeled it for me in the bedroom. I guess we both looked kind of retro. We picked up Marisol on the way. Three rubes from central México going up for the funeral. Maybe retro was in. We wouldn’t know until we got there.
Carrying the coats as we boarded the Continental flight in Leon, which at 60 miles away is our nearest airport, we got some looks of sympathy from the gate attendant who saw our destination. After Customs in Houston we switched to Northwest Airlines and got more sympathy. They knew what we were in for.
Living in México also makes you take the sun for granted. It’s one of thousands of small changes you undergo that you’re not aware of until you leave. We got off the plane in Minneapolis after traveling all day to find a sky the color of dishwater gone bad. Maya and Marisol both gasped as the cold hit us like a wall of spikes, probing every surface of our skin and clothing. “I had forgotten this part,” said Marisol between clenched teeth. “Last time we were here was five years ago and it was summer.”
The airport cab started a long freeway ride, passing the Mall of America, and continued past miles of motels and corporate headquarters. None of it had the friendly worn crumbly look of ol
d México. I saw no buildings with the stucco falling off. Everything was bright, glassy, cutting edge, and above all, cold. I missed the oldness of San Miguel, where every time you place your foot on the ground you touch a place where someone put his foot three or four hundred years ago. It looked as if Minneapolis was dedicated to rushing ahead, and in the process, had chopped off and leveled the past, only two or three paces behind.
Tobey’s parents lived in a near southwestern suburb of Minneapolis called Edina. We checked into the Sofitel Hotel and it wasn’t bad. There was a French restaurant right off the lobby, which was fine with all of us because we were beat from the trip and we would have seized any excuse to avoid going outside again. After a clean up and a change of clothes we met at the bistro. The tables all had wrought iron bases with white marble tops, with banquets below brass luggage racks. It reminded me of a comfy neighborhood place somewhere in the French Antarctic Territories.
“Bon soir,” said the blond waitress, wearing a crisp black uniform with a white apron, something like a French maid’s in the movies, only the skirt was longer. I saw two tired faces across from me, Marisol’s tightened by apprehension of what was to come tomorrow. There seemed to be more lines around her eyes now.
“I never knew it could be so cold,” said Maya. “It’s like hell with ice. How could Tobey live here?”
Of course, he had escaped as soon as he could. Marisol didn’t answer and her shoulders began to shake as she put her face in her hands. “I’ll come back when you’re ready,” said the waitress, and moved off to a more upbeat table.
* * *
The next day came up hard and bright with the glare from fresh snow cutting into our eyes at a low angle. Maya and I pulled out sunglasses simultaneously as we approached the cab in the hotel drive. Marisol had gone ahead to ride with Tobey’s parents to the service. I stuck my baseball cap in my pocket as we pulled away from the hotel.
The service was held at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Edina, across the street from a country club on West 50th St. There were only about 30 people in the church, and judging from their age, they were mostly friends of the parents. The coffin was closed. The minister managed to paint a picture of a cultivated man cut off in his prime. He talked about Tobey’s love for antiques and his respect for the historic past of México. It was clear he had never met Tobey, or if he had, his recollection of a much younger Tobey had faded. He made no reference to the manner of his death.
I looked at the memorial card. The cover showed an effeminate and unthreatening Christ in pink and sky blue robes. Judging from the grooming of his hair and beard, he knew a good barber and tipped well. Crook in hand, he led three sheep toward a misty undefined sort of place. It could have been Heaven, or it might have been a summertime Minnesota pasture in poor focus. Inside, the card read, “Abbott Cross, May 5, 1960 - January 21, 2005.” Abbott Cross? What the hell! No wonder Cody’s background check had come up blank. I thrust the open card in front of Maya, tapping on the word Abbott. My eyebrows were up. She looked at me and shrugged. Several people around me turned and glared at me.
“There will be a gathering at the Cross home following the interment,” said the minister. “I hope to see all of you there.” He gave the address. There was space for us in the second limousine to Lakewood Cemetery.
Lakewood occupies a couple of hills closer to the center of Minneapolis and some of the plots there have a vista toward a frozen lake. Tobey, or Abbott as I was trying to think of him now, had one of these. Although not as cold as the previous day, the wind was vicious and constant on this slope, and I didn’t feel I could put on my baseball cap, so I was miserable. My skin felt seared as if by an iron and it made my eyes tear up, the drops freezing on my lower eyelids before they reached my cheeks. Maya looked like a turtle with her neck pulled into the deep collar. No other Cossacks appeared. Marisol and Tobey’s mother leaned into each other. As they lowered the coffin into the ground Maya whispered to me, “How can they dig up the ground when it’s like this?” I shrugged.
The minister said some final words and we each threw a white rose into the grave, frozen before it could wilt. Marisol sobbed quietly. Tobey’s father was taciturn. People stood and consoled each other, then moved off toward the cars as the mortuary people collected the flower assortments from around the grave. The most desolate part was 10 minutes later when everyone was gone. As I climbed into the car I looked back; it was just a rectangular hole next to a pile of frosty dirt covered with a green cloth. For the first time I understood why we were here.
The Cross home on Browndale Avenue was a sumptuous stucco Tudor from the 1920s, with deep Persian carpets over dark stained floors, and an interesting group of eighteenth century antique furniture in the living room. The woodwork was dark oak, and there was a mahogany highboy chest that looked like the real deal, and splat back chairs in the corners of the room. A good cove molding edged the ceiling, not too wide, and from it delicate plaster tracery reached out to a medallion above the chandelier. From the living room I looked through French doors to see the back yard sloping downward toward a wide frozen creek. The snow was brilliant. Half a dozen mature trees, skeletal without their leaves, framed the view. It would be a sweet place in summer. Now it was mainly a daytime view during the dark half of the year.
A caterer stood at the end of the long table in the dining room and a server was moving back and forth from there to the kitchen. I disposed of our silly coats. When I returned from the closet I found Tobey’s father at my side.
“Brent Cross,” he said, holding out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Like Tobey, Brent Cross was tall, with an aggressive nose. His white hair seemed all there. He appeared to be in his early seventies, wearing a dark suit that was almost black with a subtle maroon thread in the weave. Given his ruddy coloring, a green thread might have been a better choice, but I said nothing about it.
“Paul Zacher,” I said. “I’m very sorry about Tobey.”
“Thank you. Were you close friends?” He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to console me.
“I really didn’t know him well, but Marisol and my girlfriend Maya are close.” There was a small pause. “You have a beautiful place here. Did Tobey help with the furnishings?”
“Actually, some of these are family things from my mother’s house in Connecticut. But the highboy was something Tobey found for us in New York, when he was in graduate school there. We’re not really collectors; it’s just nice to have a few things around with some history. I always wanted to have one of the Mayan pieces that Tobey sold down there, but it’s nearly impossible to get them out of México.”
“I didn’t know Tobey’s name was really Abbott. I probably should have.”
“Well, he never used it. We have a tradition in my family to always use last names as first names. That’s how I ended up as Brent. Funny old habit, I guess, but it goes back four or five generations. Anyway, my mother was an Abbott. Of course Tobey never wanted to use it as a kid. Then in the brokerage business he decided to use it for a while, but stopped after he left Wall Street. When he started dealing antiques, using Tobey seemed to work just fine. What kind of work do you do, Mr. Zacher?” He took a long pull at a glass of white wine.
“I’m a painter,” I said.
He nodded as if this were a noble calling. “Interior? Exterior?”
“Canvas, mostly. I paint pictures.”
“Really! Have you seen this?” Without missing a beat Brent Cross led me over to a small portrait of Tobey in the entry hall. I had walked past it on the way in without noticing it. He looked like he might have been a senior in high school. There was the same prominent nose and narrow face. His hair was parted in the middle and long over the ears, in the style of the late seventies. The brushwork was tentative and all the shadows were in the same warm tones of the highlighted skin, only darker, so that they didn’t recede properly and sometimes looked like bruises or rotten spots, the color design remaining dull and
lifeless. I wondered if the painter had ever heard of terre verte for skin shadows. It was the kind of painting that when the subject was forgotten would end up in an antique shop priced at $30 because the frame was good.
“Local fellow, Roswell Baker, I think his name is. Ever heard of him?”
“No, but I’ve never been in Minneapolis before.”
“This is Edina, really. What do you think?”
“Very chilly. I looked up the temperature before we left México but I still couldn’t believe how it felt when we came in.”
“I meant the portrait.”
“It’s good,” I said. Good is a strong word of approval from me, because not that many things are. I probably shouldn’t have used it this time, but I was on my best behavior and I wanted him to talk.
“We love it,” said Brent Cross. “Of course, we’re especially happy to have it now.”
“I had heard Tobey was in some kind of finance, but I didn’t know it was the brokerage business,” I said, wanting to get away from the subject of the portrait. I did have the vague “banking” guess from Marisol, but I wanted more specifics. I hadn’t eliminated the possibility that the murder was connected to something in the distant past.
“That’s where he made his money. That gave him the capital to get into antiques, which was always his first love. I was a broker myself for quite a few years. Municipal bonds, mainly. Tax exempt, you know.”
“Right.” I nodded. Taxes had never been much of a problem for me. I was OK with paying them when I had to because they meant I’d had income.
“We were down there in San Miguel two years ago to see him and Marisol. Interesting town, with everything so old. He had a wonderful place, fantastic garden. I’d love to have that here. But we’re so limited by the growing season. Imagine being able to sit there and look out on that all the time.”
Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende Page 11