Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (19 page)

This is a place, Harry thought, where reason wasn’t just asleep. Somebody had killed it off and buried it in an unmarked grave.

The three creatures were still behind them. One was way over to their left, another to their right, and one just sort of hovered about, always careful to maintain a respectable distance. Even in the tumult of the market, with its narrow lanes strewn with crushed vegetables and over-rippened fruit, they could not succeed in throwing them off their path. And actually Harry recognized the futility of trying to do so. In Carangas it was impossible to escape attention for long, especially if you stuck out as Harry and Slater did, even if that had been their objective.

Emerging from the market, their shadows following them out along with the rancid smell, Harry and Slater discovered that they had now come upon the plaza, in this case, the Plaza del Sol. It wasn’t much of a sight to see though. There was a small park dead in the middle of it and a crumbling fountain that failed to jettison any water into the air and a cluster of vendors and shoeshine boys who appeared too stunned by the intensity of the heat to bother selling their wares even to these gringos.

Perhaps it was not the heat after all. Perhaps it was the presence of the three freaks who dogged their tracks and in that way made it clear to the demoralized citizenry of Carangas that neither Harry nor Slater were to be disturbed.

This second possibility seemed to be borne out within minutes when a bespectacled man, wearing a white jacket and white slacks, stepped into their path and with deferential reserve addressed them both. “You are Americans, yes?”

He appeared to be enjoying the last years of his seventh decade. His skin was leathery and dark but there was a strange shimmer to it, a gloss, as though he’d been baked in a kiln for half his life. His frame was small, and his hands had smooth long fingers with nails that had obviously been manicured.

“That’s what we are all right,” Slater answered. “True-blood Americans.”

“My name is Ignacio Mendoza, and since we so seldom find visitors in our town I would be delighted to invite you to have a drink with me.”

“We’d be honored,” Harry said.

Ignacio reached out to grip his hand, then Slater’s. Harry declared that his name was Peter Williams which was the first thing that came to mind. Slater looked momentarily confused, then understanding the need for an alias assumed one of his own: “Mac Watson.”

“It is a great pleasure, Mr. Williams, Mr. Watson.”

Ignacio’s voice betrayed his suspicion that these were not their true names, but it was also evident that true names were not what was expected in a place like Carangas.

Ignacio insisted that they all have whiskey, being under the impression that all gringos preferred whiskey to anything else. He did not want to be disillusioned in this respect.

The café where they were sitting fronted out on the plaza. The café was called Mixteca, and it seemed to be inhabited chiefly by dissolute-looking characters who busied themselves smoothing their bristling mustaches with their hands.

Out on the plaza, in the shade of a palm whose fronds had been fried to a crisp by the unrelenting sun, stood the three sideshow escapees, each one indolently watching Harry and Slater as Ignacio maneuvered the conversation away from comments on the weather and the tortured state of Mexico City politics to a subject of far more reaching importance—at least to Ignacio.

“Tell me, gentlemen,” he said, his voice crisp as an autumn day in New England and just barely touched by an accent, “would you be interested in discussing a business venture?”

“What kind of business venture you got in mind?” Slater took his cue automatically.

“A venture that could make you a considerable amount of money and one that entails minimal risk.”

“I expect you would be profiting from it,” said Harry.

Ignacio laughed. “Naturally. Myself and my partners. You have, I expect, brought an interesting sum of money to Carangas.”

“Interesting?” Harry pressed.

“Well, gentlemen, we do deal only in certain minimum quantities. It would not make sense to consider business transactions that are not tied to interesting sums of money.” He liked that phrase and was going to stick firmly to it.

“We understand completely,” Harry assured him. “I assume you take American Express.”

Perhaps because Harry kept a straight face, Ignacio failed for a moment to realize that this was a joke. Then, suddenly understanding, he broke into laughter, nearly doubling over. “You gringos!” he said. “What a strange sense of humor you have. American Express! I think this is madness on your part.” Wiping his eyes free of tears, he regained his composure. “So then you will come along and meet my partner.” It was not a question.

“Is he far from here?”

“Not so far. But we must go by a jeep. The road is a difficult one.”

Ignacio stood up and motioned to the hunchbacked man who waited beneath the burnt-out palm. He quickly disappeared from sight but more quickly reappeared, navigating a Land Rover onto the plaza.

Slater drew Harry off to the side, taking advantage of Ignacio’s distraction. “Tell me something, you have all that much money to make a buy if you have to?”

“Frankly, all I’ve got on me is about thirty dollars.”

“More than I have. You don’t generally get very much for money like that. Especially if what you’re buying is a large quantity of high-grade heroin.”

“You have a point there,” Harry said thoughtfully.

Slater wondered at his calmness. “You thinking we can stall them? Convince them we’ll get the money to them later?”

Ignacio turned toward them, curious to see whether they were coming or not. Slater gave him a wide smile. “Be right there!” he called.

“Let’s hope we can,” Harry said.

“Otherwise?”

“Otherwise . . . otherwise we’re in big trouble.”

The little boy who offered Booth and Vincent directions to a local cantina seemed infinitely resourceful. Not only did he inform the two insolent Americans where they could acquire a prostitute, or several if they preferred, a virgin (who was, naturally, reputed to be his sister), but he also recommended a local pusher to him—an “amigo”—who could supply them with every conceivable drug—uppers, downers, heroin, cocaine, hashish, marijuana, etc. “One day I go to America!” he proudly proclaimed to them, though he neglected to say whether he would bring all his illicit wares with him when he went.

While Vincent responded favorably to the idea of experimenting with one of the local ladies, Booth was far less enthusiastic, recalling the many times he’d contracted the clap from whores in similar ports. But the prospect of throwing some intriguing chemical down their throats (or inhaling or injecting it, however they had to do it) inspired them both.

Los Cocos was the name of the cantina to which the kid guided them, always keeping a few steps ahead, repeatedly urging them on as though he expected at any moment to lose his customers.

Los Cocos was a dreary establishment. Even at midday it was half-occupied, mostly by the unemployed and unemployables of the town, but also by foreigners, Americans among them, who all called themselves importers without necessarily adding that it was heroin they imported. They had an air of self-importance about them, but they were obviously bored. There was no action, only mescal, pulque, and tequila, and the maddening monotonous songs that emerged from an old Zenith portable radio. A part of the wall-length mirror behind the bar was pockmarked and cracked. You would not have to be an expert to see that the damage had been done by bullets, probably fired by someone who’d gotten too loaded or too tired of waiting for a connection.

The boy even felt compelled to shepherd them to a particular table. No one paid the new arrivals much attention. They were too used to new arrivals in this cantina. “Mescal yes, you wish mescal?” The boy would have been displeased had the men wished anything else. But in fact mescal was what they were both looking forward to.

Accommodatingly, the boy brought them mescal, then vanished with the speed of a poltergeist off to do more mischief.

“Where did the fucker go?” Booth asked.

“To get his fucking amigo, I suppose.”

Vincent was on target. Within five minutes, the amigo in question arrived. He looked quite stoned on whatever it was he was plying; his eyes were dilated, but he barely appeared to be seeing anything with them. A handlebar mustache virtually hid his lips from view. A cowlick dropped down over his brow and a big white theatrical sombrero submerged his whole face in shadow.

“What a winner we got,” Booth noted, staring at the man who came up to their table, nodding his head deferentially while he introduced himself as Garcia something—neither Booth nor Vincent could catch his Christian name.

The boy of course wouldn’t go away until he’d been adequately compensated for his many services of the day. Vincent stuffed a few pesetas in his hand. The boy glanced down to see just how much it was and looked back up, gazing miserably at his benefactor. “Not enough!” he protested.

“Plenty enough!” shouted Garcia, who didn’t want his business dealings disrupted. He slapped his open hand against the boy’s face, turning half of it bright scarlet. The boy was flung back by the force of the blow. In Spanish he screamed an imprecation at the three of them and scampered from the cantina before he incurred further injury.

“Now we talk business!” Garcia said happily. Leaning toward the two gringos with a conspiratorial glimmer in his otherwise deadened eyes, he said, “You come on the boat this morning?”

Vincent owned that they had.

“You go back soon?”

Vincent said he was sure their stay wouldn’t be very long.

“You wish to make mucho money for yourselves?”

Vincent slugged down his glass of mescal. Booth replied for the two of them. “That’s always an interesting proposition.”

“You would like to transport something for me? You bring it to California, to maybe San Francisco?”

Neither man saw fit to question him as to how he had surmised their ultimate destination.

“Could be,” Booth muttered, warily regarding the man. He too needed additional mescal if he were to cope with this situation.

More mescal was then brought to them.

“You could, I think, take back for me three, maybe four kilos of shit?” He used shit not as a scatalogical curse, but as a word upon which he conferred great respect. It was just that he was so accustomed to employing it in this context that no other synonym jumped readily to mind.

“Nice try, baby,” Vincent said, “but you’re out of our league. We ain’t got that kind of bread.”

Garcia knitted his brow. “What do you mean talking like this? What do you need bread for?”

Vincent and Booth exchanged a puzzled glance. They concluded that Garcia was quite obviously deranged and that there was no sense in listening to him further.

But Garcia had an entirely plausible explanation. “We will pay you for delivering a consignment.”

“Oh?” Vincent believed that he, much more than Booth, was capable of conducting these negotiations. “And why should you trust us?”

Garcia’s smile was appropriately enigmatic. “We do not make such offers lightly. We are well aware of who you are and why you are here.”

“That’s more than anyone’s told us,” Booth noted bitterly.

“And, as you can imagine, if you do not make the delivery your lives would be worthless.”

Without needing to inquire who was behind Garcia, the two gringos recognized the truth of his words.

“How much money would we be getting?” Vincent asked, hastening to specify, “each?”

“Ah, then you are interested.” Garcia clapped Vincent on the shoulder as though he’d made a very wise decision. “Before we begin such talk, señors, why don’t we go to my house? It is not far from here, and there you can also have a taste of what you will be bringing to America. Unless that does not suit you.”

“No, no,” Booth assured him, “that suits the fuck out of us.”

C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n

H
idden by organ cacti, by cacti too obscure to have ever been named by humankind, by soapweed and lantana, by passion flowers, marigolds, by banana and date trees and by palms, the Villa Corona could barely be seen, just the glimmer of a high white stucco wall emerging from all this lush and hideous vegetation.

The rutted, dusty road that led fifteen kilometers from Carangas now narrowed so much so that it could barely accommodate the Land Rover. Then it wound down into a declivity, through the dense foliage which gave off a scent so ripely sweet that it was almost cloying, coming at last to a gate that looked to be unguarded. It was not, however, as Harry discerned. There were two palm trees on either side of the gate and protruding inconspicuously from each was the eye of a video camera which swung slowly from side to side, scanning the immediate area. There was no question in his mind that there were other monitors close by.

Patiently, and without offering any explanation, Ignacio waited, and beside him the hunchbacked creature clung to the wheel, his eyes bright with the anticipation of getting the durable jeep in motion again.

At length a man appeared—no freak but someone in excellent health and full command of his faculties. He wore no uniform but he was armed, an AKS hugged to his chest, a .45 on his hip. With a nod of recognition he drew open the gate and allowed the Land Rover to pass through.

The villa, like a mirage, kept appearing through the trees, but because of the way in which the road wound, looping circuitously, it never seemed quite attainable.

Birds squawked, perhaps to signal the coming of the men in the Land Rover, but otherwise there was no sign of sentient life, human or otherwise. Of the sky there was practically nothing to see because of the way the forest grew, roofing them over with leaves and fronds, blotting out all but an occasional burst of light when the afternoon sun could penetrate.

Finally, they arrived at the Villa Corona. It was not nearly so big or impressive as Harry had imagined it. Nonetheless, it was a lovely structure, all of white but trimmed along its sides and around its several square windows with a subdued orange. At the door, also orange in color, stood a second guard, shooing away preying mosquitoes with his hands. Seeing Ignacio, he shot up to attention, then unlatched the door so the party could enter.