The Dogs of Mexico (22 page)

One eye on the cops across the street, he set the bags in behind the tire.

“I saw a drugstore back there around the block,” Ana said, returning several bills and change. “I really need a toothbrush.”
 

“Good. Keep the money. You’re going in.”

Ana stiffened with a sudden intake of breath. “Oh, my god!” she mumbled, staring at the police car parked alongside.

“They’re across the street,” he said, smiling artificially. “Just get in. Shut your mouth and act natural.”
 

He went around and opened his door and slid in behind the wheel. The cops paid no attention as he backed out and drove around the block.
 

“I can’t do this,” Ana said when he double-parked in front of the pharmacia
. “
Not with them just around the corner.”

“You can and you will.”
 

She hesitated, then got out. He wondered if he was losing it, letting her go in alone like this. But she soon returned with soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
 

What with watching for the cops, the white Chevy and a blue Plymouth, it seemed like forever, but in less than half an hour they had purchased two carry-ons from a vendor on the sidewalk—cheap, discolored by the sun, but functional. Four beach towels decorated with Tweety Bird, Wile E. Coyote, Elvis, and a Sacred Heart of the Virgin Mary. A bundle of twenty-four washcloths. A vinyl Dopp kit complete with razor, blades, nail file and clippers. Ziplocs, a box of tissues, two rolls of toilet paper, and a box of ten thirty-gallon garbage bags. He zipped Mickey’s finger rolled in his handkerchief into the new Dopp kit.

They were on the way out of town when he spotted a dozen or more tables shaded under canvas awnings on a vacant lot—old electric motors, refrigerators, washing machines, air compressors, dented and rusted window air-conditioning units. Ana stood by the car while he took the keys and went in among the tables. She stared, grim, as he returned with a rusted short-handled shovel and fit it in the back seat with the other purchases.

He drove past graffitied walls, muffler shops, and tire outlets displaying chromed wheels with spinners in the baroque style, then banana and cashew stands on the outskirts.
 

They began a gradual climb, winding slowly into the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur, leaving the beaches, the tropical grasses, the eucalyptus and coconut palms behind.
 

Ana busied herself removing price tags and stickers, placing items in their respective bags—his a black carry-on much like the one he had left behind, hers identical but with tan trim.
 

“I got each of us two pairs of jeans and two shirts,” she said. “Underwear and socks. I hope yours fit.”

“You did well. Thanks.”

She seemed to have settled some. But that could be a ploy, lulling him into relaxing so she could make a run for it.

Of course she could have walked out on him back in town, taken a bus and lit out for the States. She could have left him to his own devices and never said a word to the authorities, and nobody would have ever been the wiser. He had half expected she might do just that—and half wished she had.

24

Dust to Dust

R
OBERT BENT OVER
a shallow excavation directly behind the car, his foot on the shovel’s metal shoulder, the blade worn shiny now from cutting into the soil. Pitching scoopfuls out, he was grateful for the calluses earned doing yard work in Florida.

Ana stood hunched near the front of the car, her back turned, arms clutched around herself. Mist-shrouded mountains rose above the jungle growth on every side. Birds carried on, chirping and screeching in the foliage. A truck moaned, downshifting on the highway in the distance.
 

Already flies had gathered, swarming over the closed trunk.

When the hole was maybe two feet deep, he hit a shelf of solid rock. He threw the shovel down, then took two washcloths from the bundle he had bought in Pochutla, went to the back of the car and fit the key in the lock.
 

A waft of foul air rose with the droning flies as he lifted the trunk lid.
 

Mickey lay curled in the trunk, stiff as cardboard. He tried not to look directly at her, but still he saw her—her little-girl freckles, her naked body plump with baby fat, the stupid tattoo with its gold halo missing. Her ear studs were missing as well.
 

He stood back for a moment. Then, breathing shallow, he untwisted the coat-hanger wires binding her wrists and ankles. Even after he removed the wires, her limbs remained stiffly in place, like the untrussed legs of a baked chicken. Green flies buzzed, crawling in and out of the dark runnels in her flesh where the wires had been. They formed a shimmering iridescent mat on a dark clot where her briefs were stuck to the bullet hole in her forehead. Thatches of green and orange hair bristled out of each leg opening. Below the waistband her lips were drawn into an oval around her teeth, tongue protruding, flies crawling.

What he had at first seen as a floral design on the seat of Mickey’s briefs, he saw now were the scrolled words:
Spank me!

With a washcloth in each hand, he took hold of the waistband. Flies swarmed as he lifted the briefs back exposing half-lidded eyes. The whites were going dark, the irises a gelatinous yellow-green. The fabric stuck to the wound in her forehead, and a thick clot pulled out of the cavity like a stopper. He managed to work the briefs back over her head, but they were further imbedded in a congealed mass in back, black and stiff where the bullet had blown out. He let go and stepped back for air.

When he had collected himself, he tried lifting her again. Her hair made squeaky sounds, tearing loose from the mat as he pulled her upright. He had her up and was trying to work her out over the lip of the trunk when he lost his grip. She tilted toward him. He fumbled, grabbing for her while simultaneously trying to avoid her. Her pudgy hand with its blackened nub slapped him across the face. He fell back wiping at his cheek as she tumbled headfirst into the dirt at his feet. She settled in a heap, arms and legs jutting unnaturally, clouds of flies droning.
 

Ana stepped away from the car and bent over the weeds, retching.

Robert wiped sweat from his forehead on the back of his hand and fought down an urge to be sick himself. He spread one of the beach towels in the hole. Tweety Bird. Then he caught Mickey by both wrists and dragged her in a stiff fetal position into the depression. He covered her with the Sacred Heart of the Virgin Mary, then pulled the mat out of the trunk and spread it over her.
 

Ana poured water into a Styrofoam cup and rinsed her mouth. She half turned, watching obliquely as he began to weigh the mat down around the edges with stones. When he had the matt anchored, he took the shovel and began to cover the mound with dirt. Soon he tossed the shovel aside and began to cover the dirt mound again with stones.

Ana came toward him, zombielike, picked up a rock and placed it on the heap.
 

“No,” he said. “I’ll do it.” But she continued until they stood before a good-sized mound. Ana stared at the grave, an expression of stoic grief.
 

“This is a hell of an end,” Robert said. “Off down here in the middle of nowhere, no identification, no social security card, no nothing. She told so many stories, I don’t even know if she had a family.”

Ana lifted her gaze to the ragged patch of colorless sky directly overhead. “Where the hell
are
you?” she whispered.

Robert glanced at her, at the tears brimming her eyes. If that was a prayer, it was the briefest and angriest he had ever heard.
 

He wiped the shovel of prints, then tossed it, clanging among the boulders in the dry creek bed behind a raft of driftwood. They washed their hands and replaced the soap bar in a Ziploc.
 

Ana stood back. “I–I don’t know what I’m doing here…”
 

Robert saw she was on the verge of breaking. He wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her, but in spite of having scrubbed with soap, his hands still carried the rubbery feel of Mickey’s dead flesh.

“We’ve done all we can,” he said.
 

There was no room for sentiment in the face of danger; that was a given. But this day, he knew, would add one more untenable regret to his list of many.

25

Eatery

R
OBERT DROVE THROUGH
the smoke-hazed mountains, the back of his throat, his nose, irritated by the smoldering crop stubble—locals hurrying to get another harvest in the ground. Occasionally a lone individual would appear on a shallow slope, struggling behind a primitive plow drawn by an ox.
 

The air cooled. The tropical vegetation gave way to scrub oak and pine as they climbed ever higher into the Sierra Madre del Sur. Hand-painted logos proclaiming various political parties popped up on boulders and cliff facings: PRI, PAN, PRD, occasionally a faded hammer and sickle. From time to time they met old trucks and dilapidated buses filled to bursting.
 

 
Constructs of every known material, in every imaginable configuration, and in every degree of completion stood shoulder to shoulder with the road, their backsides sometimes cantilevered, perched on stilts, ravines so far below the trees appeared wooly green in the haze.
 

Ana sat rigid, occasionally blotting her eyes with tissues. He could think of nothing to say that wasn’t trite in light of what they had just been through.

Eventually she broke the silence. “Robert, I need to make a pit stop.”

He slowed the car, looking for a place to get off the road. “Where’s a McDonald’s john when you need it?” he said, more cheerfully than he felt.

Ana leaned back over the seat, brought out a roll of toilet paper and placed it in her lap.

It was another five minutes before he spotted an incline sloping down off the pavement. He slowed and eased down the narrow grade, weeds dragging under the car. An embankment overgrown with foliage rose some ten feet on his left, heavier growth on Ana’s side. Safely out of sight of the highway, he brought the car to a stop. Ana stepped out.

“Don’t squat in any poison ivy,” he said.

She gave him a sharp look back through the window.

“Hey,” he said, forcing some cheer into his voice, “when I was a kid, I peed on an electric fence. One has to be careful.”

“Thank you,” she said curtly. “I really wanted to know that.”

“Jarred the little solar system. Shocked me into puberty overnight.”

He had thought to lighten the mood but judging from her expression it was a bust.

He opened his door and got out. She turned, looking at him over the top of the car. “What’re you doing?”

“Same thing you’re doing, only I’m going up the slope here.” He climbed his way up the embankment through vines and creepers while Ana disappeared into the brush on her side of the car. The crest of the slope was dense with growth—palmetto, scrub oak, ferns. He finished and was about to zip up when a car went past on the highway. It took a moment to register—the white Chevy, little more than a flicker through the dense foliage—going the same direction as he and Ana. He stood for a moment, thinking it over.

When he got back to the car Ana was already seated.
 

“I was beginning to worry,” she said dryly. “Thought maybe you’d gotten into another electric fence.” She watched him. Then, hesitant: “What’s wrong?”

He told her about the Chevy.
 

Her face darkened. “Was Helmut with them?”

“I didn’t see him. I can’t even swear it was the same two men.”

She studied into the distance. “So, what do you think we should do?”

He took the new map out of the glovebox and opened it out over the steering wheel. “Chances are, Helmut is still behind us.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’ve checked out every blue car on the road since we left Sybil Delonious this morning. I’m guessing he’s behind.”

“So if we go back, we could run into Helmut. If we continue on, we could run into the two men.”

“No question about it, he has a chip somewhere on this car. I wrecked his laptop but he can track us through Fowler. However, that’s a three-way connect, and a little dicey on their part.”

“You keep bringing up this Fowler.”

“The guy you call Flax. The guy who hired Helmut to follow me in the first place. Tell me, why did Helmut buy a car? Why not travel with the two men he hired?”

“They disgust him.”

“Yeah, that Helmut, he’s a classy guy, all right.”

“Truthfully? I think he’s afraid of them.”

He nodded. “Maybe they’ll all kill each other off.”

“If we go back, what then?”

“Assuming we don’t run into Helmut, we abandon the car back in Pochutla and buy another one, or take a bus on to Oaxaca.”
 

“And if we go ahead?”

“Same deal. Looks like the next town of any size is Miahuatlán, or however you say it. It doesn’t look like much.”

“Miahuatlán. I was through there once, but I don’t remember much about it.”

He pointed on the map. “I’d say we’re along about here somewhere.”
 

“Do I get a vote in this?”

“You get your say. Sure.”
 

“I say let’s go on.”

“You’re afraid of running into Helmut.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think he’s more dangerous than his men? Or, is it something more with him?”

She shrugged, sullen.

He studied her a moment, then refolded the map. Ana put it back in the glovebox while he backed the Nissan up the grade and stopped parallel to the highway.
 

“Still think we should go ahead?” he said.

“Why are you even asking? You’re going to do what you want anyway.”

He took the .45 from under the seat, placed it in the center console and pulled onto the highway.
 

“You know,” he said, “I’d hate for the last thing you ever said to me to be ugly and hurtful.”