Lockestep

by Jack Barnao

  "We can't. We were just borrowing it. The owner will be back on board, an’ he's scared of García."

  "Then how about Maria? Is this sonofabitch liable to go after her?” She was Amadeo's concern, not mine, but he seemed too dazed to do anything but shake.

  He straightened up enough to say, “Naah, she's not in the open, don’ worry about her."

  "Well, that's good, but we skip, anyway. Come with me."

  I took him back to the room and reached into my bag for the survival pack I'd brought along. Nothing fancy, but sensible. It's a little backpack containing a first-aid kit, water-purification tablets, salt pills, a canteen, a compass, and a plastic sheet. With that along we could manage anywhere there was water. I also picked up the rifle and the blanket, and I was ready. “Right. Let's pay our bill and tell the girls we have to go out for the evening. If the heat turns up, they'll question the women for sure."

  Amadeo was still scared. The presence of El Grande had lowered his worry threshold considerably. “There's no place to hide safely, not in this town. Once the word gets out that García is looking for us, someone'll finger us."

  "Then we won't stay anywhere formal. Let's go.” I fastened my jacket so El Grande's .45 didn't show and handed Amadeo the blanket and pack. “Wait by reception. I'll be right there."

  He did as I said, standing by the desk while I went into the dining room and apologized. “Greg has family here. One of his little nephews is sick, and he wants to go visit him. I'm sorry, I was really enjoying the meal, but we'll be back later, maybe I can buy you a nightcap."

  Kelly was the more disappointed of the two. Amadeo had been her lifeline to romance, and now it was snapped. Beth was more involved. She patted my hand. “I hope so,” she said and I squeezed her hand and winked at her. Lying next to her all night would be a major improvement on the prospects I had. I left money for the bill and walked out.

  Amadeo was nervous. He grabbed my arm as I reached him. “There's a cab outside now. Let's get it."

  "Sure. And lighten up, you look suspicious."

  We went out and got into the Volkswagen cab and I asked the driver to take us to Coconuts, the most famous bar in town. Then I started joshing Amadeo, two good buddies out on the town. “Hell, why'd you buy that blanket in the first place? Your girlfriend's gonna think you're crazy taking that back, you should've bought her a bottle of Kahlúa, that's more her speed."

  "I know,” he said. “Yeah, I should've. Maybe I can change it, that's why I brought it along."

  So far so good. For the rest of the trip I leaned over the front seat to bore the driver with a lot of dumb questions, loose as a goose, not the kind of uptight gringo who kneed folk heroes into dreamland. Nobody would suspect us. Smoke and mirrors all the way.

  Coconuts is close to the town beach, and we paid off the cab there among the tourists in their pastel shorts and the Indian vendors, who were doing big business in painted wooden fish and silver jewelry, stamped with the hallmark but made of alpaca, a local metal that costs about one-fiftieth as much. I cut Amadeo's speed back from the nervous pace he was setting to the leisurely stroll of the other tourists. “Are you sure there's no little place that we could slip into?"

  "I'm tellin’ you. García's got a lotta guys on the payroll. It wouldn't take him an hour to find where we were if they started asking around.” He spat disgustedly. “Why'd you have to clobber that guy?"

  "It's called a preemptive strike,” I told him. I didn't give him the other half of the reason. From this moment on, however reluctantly on his part, we were a team. He was unarmed, the rifle I'd given him had no magazine in it, and his enmity for the organization was out in the open. He needed me. I wouldn't have to watch my back against him, not until we found his money and were heading out of town.

  "You know, the best thing we could do, if you want to sleep in a bed instead of under a bush, is to go to Ixtapa and check in there. García may have contacts, but those are big hotels; he couldn't come storming in through a mess of gringos and expect to get away with it like he could in some local hole in the wall."

  "All the people's work there live here,” Amadeo objected, but I waved him down. “You worry too much. This guy's just a hood, he can't walk on water. Trust me."

  "I guess you're right.” He shook his head. “But what'm I gonna do about making my contact in the morning?"

  "We'll know by then if there's any flak,” I said. “García will probably just try to find us himself. He might have gotten mad and called the police right after we had that showdown, but by tomorrow it's going to be different."

  "It'd better be,” Amadeo said. He sighed suddenly and put one hand on his stomach. “Listen, I can't walk any more. You punched me in the gut, remember, an’ then put the knee to me. It hurts to walk."

  "Fine. Let's go back into Coconuts and get a drink. Nobody's going to look for us in the brightest spot in town."

  "You sure?” Thinking was almost as much of an effort for him as walking.

  "Certain. Hide in plain sight. One of the cardinal rules."

  We went back into the bar and asked the pretty American girl who served as maître d’ to get us a table. Then we sat on the far side of the bar, away from the doors, where nobody could sneak in behind us. He ordered a double margarita, and I had a beer. My consumption for the day was going to be high, but it's the safest way to avoid dehydration in Mexico, and the stuff isn't as alcoholic as Canadian beer anyway. It's more like an American light.

  The drinks came, and he took a good glug of his. All around us the crowd was festive. That's another charm of Zihuatanejo. In tourist season it's one big party. I ignored the noise and the interested looks we were getting from a couple of pink gringo ladies with their piña coladas, and talked turkey with Amadeo.

  "The way I see it is, we've got to get your money back and leave here. You've been giving me a line of crap about what's going to happen, and I want that finished with. I need to know the truth, otherwise we're likely to get jumped. So no more fairy stories, give me the straight goods."

  He took another shaky drink from his margarita and bent his head toward me. “Yeah, well, listen. I got a proposition for you."

  I didn't say anything, but he forged ahead anyway.

  "I di'n’ exactly level with the cops, back home, all right?” He waited a heartbeat, as if he genuinely expected that to be a surprise to me, then went on. “See, when I said I wanted to come back here, I had a plan. I got connections here, an’ I figured the best retirement plan I could have was to take over García's operation."

  "You mean grease him and take his place?"

  "Exactly.” A tiny smile came and went on his face, the kind of grimace he would hand out to underlings once the change was made and he was the Main Man for the state of Guerrero. “Canada's out for me. And if I wan'ed to set up in the States, I'd have to come up against the whole organization. An’ they wouldn't trust me anyway, after I've sent the Toronto guys away."

  Honesty at last! Flooring El Grande was paying off.

  "But anyways, I know this end of the business real well. I know the routes that García's been usin’ to move the stuff. I can do good here. Only thing's stoppin’ me is him."

  "If you need me to help, why did you try to run away from me this afternoon?"

  He waved his drink, a practiced move of the hand that looked grand but didn't spill a drop. “I di'n’ know how good you were. I figured you'd get in the way."

  "And you were going to take that itsy-bitsy gun you've got between your knees now and go to war with García? Don't make me laugh."

  "That!” he shook his head. “That was Maria's cute idea. What does she know? She knew I was gonna make a run for it from Cuatro Vientos, an’ she figured I might be able to use a piece. That was the best she could get."

  "And she's the best connection you've got? Listen, Greg, you better get out of the business. Take a new identity from the Mounties and open a pizza parlor in Medicine Hat. Your old buddies won't look for you
there."

  "They'll look until they find me, in Canada,” he said and waved his empty glass at the bartender. “But if I'm the Man down here, they'll do business with me because they've got to."

  It didn't sound likely to me. They'd do business, okay, and then pay him off with a couple of shots in the head and do their usual symbolic knifework on his remains. But he thought he knew them, so I played his game.

  The bartender gave him a refill and looked at me, but I shook my head. The proposition was a problem for me. If I refused, he would try to run again. He had this dream of being the authority here. If I didn't help, he would try it without me. I had to keep him scared and then get him away.

  "What's in it for me?” I asked when he was working on his new drink.

  This pleased him. He didn't answer at once. He pulled out his cigarettes and took the usual ritualistic thirty seconds to light up and puff out the first lungful of smoke. “You work for me, say two thousand a week, U.S."

  "That's more than I make now, but I don't know that I could live here year-round.” Just noise, not refusal, give him something to chew on while he got drunk enough to be manageable.

  "You can take vacations. Colombia's nice. So's California."

  "I'm not the palm-trees type, Greg, but the money sounds good. Tell you what. Why don't you get your cash back and give me a down payment, in good faith, then I'll know you're serious."

  "You already gotta down payment,” he said. He was starting to come unraveled. Not surprising. He'd had six or seven ounces of alcohol over the last half hour. He was sober enough to be cunning but drunk enough to believe I couldn't see through it.

  "That was for the job in hand. I need some real bread, maybe six months in advance before I trust you.” It was just a game I was playing, and as I did it, I was looking around the bar. A couple of corn-fed California girls had sat down across from us and they were weighing us up. Camouflage, just waiting to happen.

  I called the bartender over and told him, “Dele a las señoritas una bebida, por favor, yo pagaré.” Give those ladies a drink, on us, please. He had personally set up more assignations than Cupid, so he grinned and did as I said. It would have been rushing things in frost-bound Toronto, or even in a singles bar in the States, but a whole lot of inhibitions get left at home when girls pack their bikinis for the tropics. They bridled, but they accepted the drinks, piña coladas, naturally, and raised them to us.

  Amadeo waved back, but he spoke to me out of the corner of his mouth. “What's this shit? Why're you tryin'a make time?"

  "I think we've solved our accommodation problem for the night,” I said. “Make like a gigolo, and we could end up in their room."

  He looked at me in half-drunken surprise. “Hey, not a bad idea.” He raised his glass to the girls. “Saludas y pesetas, señoritas.” Health and money, ladies. Cool. He must have cut a swath through high school.

  They were a couple of secretaries from San Francisco, Joan and Angela. They'd flown in the day before and were staying in Ixtapa. This was their first trip into town. Apparently their flight had been heavy on pairs of guys holding hands, and the action at the hotel was disappointing. We allowed that we were from Toronto and our own flight had been equally heavy with blue-rinsed widows. However, the night was young.

  We had dinner together, steering them away from the wine that is universally putrid in Mexico, and making the discovery that Angela had as big a thirst on her as Amadeo. They were very companionable with their margaritas while Joan and I sank another beer and traded highly edited versions of our lives and times. She worked at an advertising agency and wanted to be an account executive. To get there she was taking an advertising course on her own time. It sounded like a living hell to me, but it was her daydream, not mine, I told her that I was working for the Canadian government, and she looked wide-eyed and mouthed the word “Drugs?” I nodded gravely and she was impressed.

  We went on to another bar afterward and listened to the strolling musicians while Amadeo and his turtledove sipped their way closer to oblivion. Then Joan and I made the group decision. Neither pair of us could really take the other with them. It might prove embarrassing. But on the other hand, neutral territory was just fine.

  We poured the others into a cab and went to a spot I'd noticed from our own cab ride into town. It was a cluster of the typical white concrete buildings of the region, surrounded by bush that included the inevitable banana trees. A burro was tethered somewhere fairly close, and it was sawing away at the night with a regular eeee-awww like a giant's snoring. The proprietor turned out of his hammock under the electric light at the front and grinned at us knowingly. I played the part, winking when Joan wasn't looking and telling him we wanted a place with two bedrooms. He probably figured we were going to do some kind of round dance, and grinned again and asked me for twice the going rate, ten thousand pesos. I felt tacky, using the women as a cover, but the relationship was just as casual on Joan's part, so I excused myself as being part of a mutual compromise.

  He let us into what must have been his prize suite, a ground-floor apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a rusty refrigerator and a sink that provided only cold water.

  I was carrying the blanket with the gun in it and I tossed that onto the bed in one room and turned Amadeo and Angela loose in the other. They made a great show of starting to get undressed, and I left them and came back to Joan, who was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hand on the blanket. She was pretty, dark-haired, and Irish looking, with the wide face and wistfulness of Connemara. Now she was frowning. “There's a gun in there,” she said.

  "It belongs to Greg. He loves plinking tin cans. We go up in the hills and and shoot sometimes."

  "I'll bet,” she said. “And you're with the government?"

  "That's not an official gun. It's the farm boy's delight, a .22, no harm to anybody."

  "I don't think you're telling me the truth,” she said.

  "I am about this gun. Forget it.” I sat down next to her and she looked at me for a long moment; then her eyes closed and we kissed.

  I turned off the light, and we undressed quickly and made love, urgently at first but then again, slowly, until she finally fell asleep making little urrmmm noises like a child. In the other room the rubbery flapping of Amadeo and his girl as they tried to cancel out all their margaritas had died away, and the apartment rang with their snores. I lay on my back, my arm under Joan's head, staring at the ceiling. In the faint light from the entrance to the compound I could see a tiny lizard hanging upside down near the light fixture, waiting for flies to blunder within his tongue's reach. The burro was still braying, once a minute, like some metronome ticking away the time until morning. And then, as I drifted toward sleep, I heard a faint rustling outside. Someone was moving around, carefully, close to the door.

  I slipped my arm out from under Joan's head and covered her with the blanket, then picked up my clothes and went to stand in the blind spot beside the window, dressing silently as I listened to the tiny sounds from outside.

  The noise wasn't panicking me. The owner of the place had seemed like the average sensuous male. It might very easily be him, across to eavesdrop at the window to see what excitements the gringos had dreamed up to while away his night. But on the other hand, this was García's town, and he might have been smart enough to track us down here. It needed looking into.

  I put the .45 in my waistband and went out through the kitchen to the front door. I had checked it earlier; it swung freely without squeaking or dragging. I glanced quickly out of the window. There was no sound. The man outside was either being very quiet or he was against one of the bedroom windows, trying to make out what was going on inside. I checked the angle of the light from the entrance. It was parallel to our front wall. That meant the door wouldn't show up like a blacked-out tooth when I opened it. I did so, keeping low, and moved out silently. My shadow flicked over the ground in front of the cabaña, but there was no burst of activity as
I made my way around to the left, away from the bedroom windows, and moved into darkness at the back of the building.

  The bushes grew right up against the rear wall, and I sank to my knees and crawled under their branches until I reached the back corner of the building and peeked around it. A man was looking into the window of Amadeo's bedroom. I could see only his profile, black against the light spill at the front of the building. He was average size, in shirt sleeves, and bareheaded. And he was carrying a pistol.

  I felt around me on the ground and found something loose, an empty can. I straightened up and flicked the can underhanded, out beyond him in front of the building. He pivoted on one foot, his gun trained on the spot, and I bounded up behind him and chopped him on the back of the neck. He stumbled, dropping the gun, but I caught it, and then him, and lowered him to the ground. He was out cold, his eyes open. I knelt on his right hand and waited, his pistol in my hand, checking all around, listening for footsteps. There were none, no sound except for another repetition of the burro's bray. And then he began to blink. I crouched lower and whispered at him, “Como te llamas?” What's your name? Using the familiar pronoun to show I was the boss. He groaned and answered, “You can call me Jesus, Mr. Locke.” He pronounced his name in the English way.

  "And you're my salvation? You'd better spell it out for me, it's been a while since Sunday school."

  "Your friend Martin Cahill of the RCMP in Canada asked me to look out for you."

  I stood up and stuck out my hand to help him up. No friend of García's would have known Martin's name. He hadn't even told Amadeo, so there couldn't have been a leak that way.

  "Sorry about jumping you. I'm a little paranoid. My boy Amadeo has all kinds of enemies and a bunch of friends who don't wish me well."

  He shook hands solemnly, then took his hand away and rubbed his neck. “I've been in this business for eight years, and that's the first time anybody's used karate on me. You're pretty good."

  I nodded politely. “Let's get out of the light and talk; a lot's been happening."