The Arraignment (39 page)

The conversation between Adam and my partner hasn’t been entirely about the history of flight.

“He told me what happened this afternoon.” Harry spreads a little butter on a hot flour tortilla as he talks. The empty margarita reservoir is on the table where he left it. Harry is feeling no pain.

“What is it, best two out of three falls, you and this guy Saldado?” he says. “How many chances are you gonna give him?”

“It wasn’t my idea to go visiting this time.”

“You know, Adam, I assumed when you told me you were coming down here, and that with security and all, everything would be covered.”

I look at him. Harry keeps talking.

“But I guess even with that, things go wrong.”

“Let me get this straight. You talked with Adam before we came down here?”

Harry looks at me. “Did I say that?”

“Yeah, you did.”

He gives me a sheepish look, then turns to Adam. “Knew I shouldn’ta had that drink,” he says.

“Paul, it’s no big thing. Harry was worried about you,” says Tolt. “And he had good reason, after what happened at Saldado’s apartment.”

“And so you called for lunch, and it just so happened you were taking some vacation time.”

“Well, all right, so we conspired a little.”

“A little.”

“We weren’t going to let you come down here alone,” says Harry.

Now I understand how Harry got here. Empty plane, my ass. Adam sent it back to get him since one of us had to be in the office on Thursday.

“He has a point,” says Adam.

“And look what happened,” says Harry. “Even with the precautions. Security and all. You know what I think? I think maybe we should all take a nice swim, lay in the sun tomorrow morning, have a nice lunch, and then hop on Adam’s plane, say
adiós,
and fly on home.”

“I’ll vote for that,” says Adam.

“Haven’t you forgotten? We have a meeting with Pablo Ibarra tomorrow evening.”

“Forget the meeting with Ibarra,” says Harry. “You met with the son today, the one who talks and whose knuckles don’t drag on the ground, and what did you find out? Nothing.”

“Not exactly.”

“What? Tell me what you found out that you didn’t know before,” says Harry.

“We found out that the sons are connected to Saldado.”

“Excuse me. I stand corrected,” says Harry. “Besides that revelation, which they nearly engraved on your headstone, what else?”

“We know Saldado killed Espinoza and that Espinoza was the link to Gerald Metz. We also know that the brothers had American partners in a prior deal and that the arrangement didn’t work out. What were the words he used? They had to sever the relationship?”

Adam nods. “Something like that.”

“You knew that before you came down here,” says Harry. “When people kill their partners, it’s usually due to some dissatisfaction in the arrangement.”

“No. What we had before was conjecture, guesses. Now we have Arturo Ibarra in his own words telling us, filling in
the gaps. If you want to go home, go. As for me, I’m going to talk to Pablo Ibarra, then I’ll go home.”

“Listen to him,” says Harry. “You haven’t had enough of these people? You talk to him.” He turns to Adam and lays his linen napkin on the table next to his plate.

Adam takes a deep sigh, picks up his wineglass, and takes a sip. “First, I should apologize. I admit I lost it this afternoon. I’ve had all the excitement I want for a while. Julio, Herman, I want you to understand I didn’t mean what I said today. And Paul. Well, I think you know. I’ve never been quite that close to a near-death experience before, and it unnerved me. I didn’t handle it with much grace.”

“You got up and followed me out the door,” I tell him. “That’s all the grace required, given the circumstances.”

“I don’t mind telling you I nearly tossed everything on his desk when I turned around and saw him holding the wallets. I thought he knew for sure we were lying.”

“I suspect he did. What he didn’t know was where the other cars were, how many men were in them, and how they were armed. You don’t go to war unless you know where the enemy is.”

“That was Julio’s idea,” says Adam. He raises his glass in a toast to the Mexican, and Julio smiles, looks down, embarrassed. He is starting to lighten up.

I ask him what he threw at the window to get our attention.

“A coin,” he says. “I think it mighta been a ten-peso piece. I don’t know.” The value of this is less than a U.S. dollar.

“Who’s counting?” says Adam. “Put it on the tab.”

We all laugh.

“Damn.” Adam’s looking at his watch again, takes it off, and taps it on the edge of his plate. “Thing keeps stopping.”

“It’s all that cold sweat,” says Harry. “It’s probably frozen.”

“What time is it?”

I look at my watch. “Seven-twenty.”

Adam sets it, winds it, and listens with the crystal up to
his ear. “I want to collect my messages. See if anybody called.”

“That reminds me. I almost forgot,” says Harry. “You had some messages, voice and e-mail. I had Marta listen and make up a list off the phone and print out the e-mails. I’ve got them in my briefcase upstairs.”

“Anything important?”

“Oh. I almost forgot. Grace Gimble.”

“What about her?”

“I talked to her. It’s what we thought. She did the corporate papers for Nick on Jamaile, but she doesn’t know what it was for. She said that Nick just asked her to put ’em together. She signed as an officer just to get them filed.”

Another dead end.

“And Joyce from Carlton called. Left her home number, said to call her back. And your friend Blakley from New York. He sent you an e-mail on Wednesday. He checked the address from Nick’s little handheld. It was a vacant office building, just like . . .”

I cut him off with a look.

“The other one . . .” he says. “What? What did I say?”

“What’s this about Nick?” Adam is looking up at him, strapping the watch back on his wrist.

“Nothing,” says Harry.

“Nick had a handheld PDA?”

Harry has already stepped in it.

“Yeah. What did they call it?” I look at Harry.

“A Handspring. I think that’s it,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“Actually, Nick left it behind at the coffee shop the morning we talked, on his way to see Metz.”

“What, and you found it?”

“Paul saw it on the seat and tried to catch up with him,” says Harry. “But he couldn’t get there in time.”

“So he had already been shot?” says Adam.

“No.”

Adam stares at me, one of those acid-like analytic gazes, a Tolt mind probe.

“I have been wondering all this time why,” he says. “The death of a friend, sudden and violent, I understand that. But that’s it, isn’t it?”

“What?” Harry looks at him, wondering what he has missed.

“Forget the PDA,” Adam tells him. “What your partner is saying is that if he’d been able to catch Nick, to stop him out on the street, Nick wouldn’t have been standing there when they drove by to get Metz. That is it, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s no maybe about it. I can see it. It’s written in your eyes. What stopped you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the reason you’re down here, looking for answers,” he says.

“Now you’re starting to sound like Harry.”

“What is it?” he says.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I tell him.

“Fine. Then let’s talk about Nick’s electronic address book. Did you turn it over to the police?”

“No.” Harry gives Adam one of those looks that pass between lawyers whenever they discuss the stupid things clients do. “He wanted to see what was in it first.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Surely you’ve had enough time to do that?”

“I don’t think Nick had it that long. He was just beginning to play with it. Trying to figure out how it worked.”

“So there was nothing in it?”

“Just a few items. Some names, addresses, a few dates. Nothing of significance.”

“This address in New York?”

“A dead end.”

“I see.” Adam is miffed, another secret I didn’t share. But there is something else I haven’t considered until now.

“Let me ask you, did you bring this thing of Nick’s with you?” says Adam.

I shake my head. “It’s back at the office.”

“That’s too bad. You know, if you’d let me take a look at it, there might have been something in it I might have recognized. After all, Nick did work for the firm.”

Touché.

Adam is tired. He wants to get some sleep. “We can relax around the pool tomorrow, during the day, meet with Ibarra in the evening, find out what he knows. I’ll get the plane fueled and we can leave tomorrow night, as soon as we’re finished. Sack out on the Gulfstream and be home early Saturday, be fresh for work on Monday morning. How does that sound?” Adam looks at the two of us.

“Agreed.”

Julio smiles. Almost done.

T
he sun at this latitude starts to bake concrete at sunrise, so by the time we arrive on the patio behind the Casa Turquesa, Harry is hopping across the pool deck in bare feet before he slips into the water.

“How is it?” says Adam.

“It’ll be fine as soon as the skin grows back on my feet.”

“I mean the water.”

“Feels good.” Harry ducks under, comes back up, and shakes some of it out of his hair. Then he starts doing laps underwater. For a man who once smoked, Harry defies all the odds. He has the lung capacity of a blacksmith’s bellows.

Adam has already made arrangements so that a table is set under one of the two large canvas cabanas near this end of the pool.

He has given Julio and Herman the morning off, letting them sleep in after the long drive up the coast last night. One of Julio’s lieutenants is watching the cars, and another is sitting in the lobby, reading the paper and keeping an eye.

“It’s hardly worth staying open,” says Adam. “The place is empty.”

He is right. Harry is alone, swimming in a pool the size of a lake. According to the clerk, the only other guest besides our party checked out this morning. Larger groups are clustered at the big resorts down the road where they cater to tour groups and trade conventions. But any way you cut it, it’s definitely not the high season in Cancún.

Tiny ultralights, their engines buzzing like lawn mowers, fly by every few minutes, heading north up the beach trailing banners trying to peddle anything that the few tourists might be willing to buy. This one has a sign that reads:
PAT O
’
BRIEN
’
S
—
CARIBBEAN LOBSTER TAIL
.

Harry climbs out of the pool, but not before he splashes some water on the concrete. He grabs a towel from a stack on one of the chaise longues, then toe-dances over the hot pavement to the island of shade under the cabana. He puts one foot up on the chair, drying himself off and looking out toward the ocean.

“You know, I been thinking.” Harry is trying to clear water out of an ear with one finger, using a corner of the towel. “If the three of us were able to piece this together—Espinoza, Saldado, the Ibarras—why haven’t the cops?”

“It could have to do with the fact that we’re palming some of their cards,” I tell him.

“Like Nick’s PDA,” says Adam.

“And the letter from Pablo Ibarra,” I say.

Adam smiles. “Point taken.”

“I know that,” says Harry. “But you gotta figure there’s only three of us. The cops have an army, a ton of resources, computerized crime histories, forensics lab, snitches on the municipal payroll. By now they’ve gotta have Saldado’s fingerprints from his apartment.”

“Which means?” says Adam.

“Which means they probably know more than we do—his real name, for starters. It couldn’t take that long to check with the Mexican authorities.”

“So what’s your point?” says Adam.

“So if Saldado has a record in Mexico, it would show associations, people he ran with. You’d think the cops could connect the dots.”

“Maybe they’re just a little slower off the ball,” says Adam.

“That and a lack of motivation,” says Harry.

“What do you mean?”

“Paul and I have talked about it. Nick wasn’t the kind of crime victim that brings on waves of passion in the breast of law enforcement.”

“You don’t really think they’re sitting on the case?” says Tolt.

“One thing we know they don’t have is a Gulfstream to wing their way south,” I tell him.

Adam’s eyebrows arch as he looks at me.

“Not that I’m unappreciative. It’s a fact. Unless they’re flying down here to pick up a suspect, or question one already in custody, that kind of travel takes time to work its way through the bureaucracy.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” says Adam. “Then you think they might be on the trail?”

“I don’t know how they could miss it,” says Harry. “The trail to the Ibarras couldn’t be more clear unless we hung signs. You gave the cops their names at the hospital.”

Adam’s expression is one of approval, nodding as his eyes gaze down at the table, some restoration of faith in the system.

“And they’ll have the letter from Ibarra by now. I know because my ears have been burning for the last day,” says Adam. “That lieutenant, what’s his name?”

“Ortiz,” I say.

“He’s gonna be on the warpath when I get back. Wanting to know how long I had Ibarra’s letter. It’s why I haven’t called the office. I don’t want anybody there to have to say they talked to me, or that they know where I am. Better if I’m able to say I was out of touch until I got back.”

“Then what are you gonna do?” says Harry.

“Hunker down, take some official abuse I suppose. What can they do?”

“If they can prove you were sitting on the letter, plenty,” says Harry. “If it’s all the same with you, I’d just as soon be back in San Diego tonight, watching the Dodgers kick the crap out of the Padres on the tube. Instead we’re goin’ to see some guy, who if he’s anything like his kids, is probably gonna have his people kick the crap out of us. That’s if we’re lucky.”

“We’ll be home tomorrow,” I tell him. “You can read the box scores in the paper.”