The Dogs of Mexico (27 page)

Ana lifted her hands, palms up, and let them fall back into her lap. “That’s too easy. It can’t possibly work.”

“That’s the beauty of it.”

“I don’t know…”

“Well, I do. That’s the plan.”

“No,” she said, equally firm. “That’s your plan, not mine.”

“Okay. I’m open to suggestions—except leaving without delivering the photos. You can forget that one.”

“Why do I have to go on back to the States now? Why can’t I go to Acuña with you? Then I cross into Texas by taxi, buy the car and come back for you and the money?”

“Because I want you out of here in case those crazies show up again. I want you long gone when I check out this Valdez guy. I want you somewhere safe so I don’t have to worry.”

She darkened. “You want, you want, you want! How about what I want?”

“Which is?”

“I’m going wherever you go.”

“Sorry. Can’t let you do that.”

“You don’t seem to understand. You don’t
let
me do anything.”

He studied her a long hard moment. “You’re wrong there, lady. I can kick your ass out on the pavement right here, right now. Period.”

Her gaze locked on him, eyes large and green, shiny with the unshed tears of anger. “Okay,” she said huskily. “You’re the big man. I suppose you could do that. You can go straight to hell, too!”
 

He sat for a minute, looking across the parking lot at the terminal. His was a solid plan, best for the both of them. However, not only did he not want to put her out, he actually couldn’t afford to—not with all she knew—not when she was showing every symptom of temper-fit vindictiveness.

“Dammit, Ana! Dammit to hell shit!” He twisted the ignition wires together, hit the starter and slammed the shifter into gear.

THE SKY DARKENED
. The rain came quick and hard. Just as suddenly the sun fanned rays down through the clouds breaking up over Oaxaca. The city glittered like wet crystal in the valley before them.
 

They parked before the Hotel Principal, a sand-colored two-story building, sharing a similar facade with other buildings for the entire block, most with ironwork in the windows and pocket balconies overhanging the street. The only parking was parallel, a narrow strip directly in front.
 

The Hotel Camino Real—the hotel with the gift shop and supposedly the mysterious Valdez—was only a couple of blocks up, but much larger; one massive two-story structure covering the entire block.
 

The Principal’s manager, a smallish man in khakis, sat inside the open courtyard in a wooden chair leaning back against the wall next to his office. He roused himself long enough to sign them in, then sat back and watched as Robert and Ana brought their bagged luggage inside. The air was cool and clean as they sidestepped pools of rainwater reflecting a multi-colored patchwork of low clouds. They trudged up the outside stone steps to their second-floor room overlooking the street. Robert went back for the tire. The manager watched, obviously amused, as he carried the tire around the puddles in the courtyard and up to their room. He and Ana had hardly spoken since leaving the airport.

The room was standard Mexican cheap. A high ceiling, tiled floor, a heavy chest-of-drawers and a bed low to the floor. A plaster saint looked down from above the door to the little balcony. The door itself was heavy with narrow panes of beveled glass. The occasional noise from a car or truck on the street below rattled up at the room.

“You go ahead,” Robert said, nodding toward the bathroom.

Wordless, she gathered the soap and shampoo. He waited until he heard the shower running. Then he hung the haversack on his shoulder, stepped outside and quietly pulled the door closed. The tire was another matter—too cumbersome to take on this mission, but also too cumbersome for Ana to make off with.

The Hotel Camino Real was monolithic, two stories of seventeenth century Spanish Baroque elegance, walls of stone and plaster four-feet thick. Dark Spanish paintings hung in arched recesses along the inside corridors. A plaque informed that the hotel originally housed the Convent of Santa Catalina. Opening off the corridors were manicured gardens, pools and patio restaurants. At one end dining tables with white tablecloths were visible under a portico bordering a garden lush with wisteria and flowering bougainvilleas.
 

Robert strolled through the shadowy coolness affecting the casual attitude of a browsing tourist. The gift shop sat back from the entrance. He went past, checking it out, then wandered inside and stood looking over the indigenous weavings, the paintings on bark, the Inca pottery reproductions. A smartly dressed woman and a teenage girl attended to the few customers. There was no sign of a man, no one who looked like he might be a señor Valdez.

The woman, radiating an aura of cosmopolitan luster, glided up as he smoothed his fingers over a fine silk scarf. “These rebozos are hand-woven in San Luis Potosi,” she said, smiling a bright practiced smile. “Aren’t they exquisite, though?”

“Very nice.”
 

“So delicate you can slip them through a wedding ring.” She had blond hair and hazel eyes. Under a sheen of makeup her tanned skin was beginning to web from too much sun.

“I’ll take it,” he said.
 

She folded the scarf into a box lined with tissue and snapped a silver tie over the corners. “Will there be anything else?”

Robert handed over two twenty dollar bills. “Thank you. I’m looking for señor
Valdez.”

The woman’s eyes flickered and locked on the bills in her hand. “Pardon?”

Robert fixed her with a flat, non-expressive gaze. “Valdez. I was told to ask for him here in the gift shop.”

“Valdez. Ah…yes. Valdez. He isn’t here. He has been gone for some time now.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

The woman absently smoothed the bills with her thumbs. “Señor, who told you Valdez is to be found here?”

“Where did he go?”

“He left one day—poof!—like this, and has not been seen since.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s too bad. I have something he wants.”

The woman made change and handed it over the counter with the gift box. There was a stiffness in her bearing now, the timber of her voice changed. “Something for señor Valdez?” she ventured.

“From a Mr. Soffit in Acapulco.”

“Soffit?”

“You know him?”
 

“No, no,” she said, too quickly.

“That’s too bad. This Soffit guy said Valdez was willing to pay twenty thousand dollars to have something delivered to him here. And now you tell me he’s gone. That’s too bad.”

The woman hesitated, glancing tentatively around the shop. “Uh, Valdez has a distant cousin. Perhaps he could be located if it is so important.”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“Are you staying in the hotel?”

“Traveling through.”

“Ah, how do you know this man, Soffit?”

“I didn’t know him. Just met him the one time.”

“I see. Do you have the delivery with you, may I ask?”

“Tell Valdez to get his twenty grand up front by tonight. Cash. US.”

“I will look for the cousin immediately. Where may he find you?”

“I’ll be here this evening. The restaurant, those tables back there by the garden.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The woman followed him out into the corridor.

He stopped near the entrance. “You do know Soffit’s dead, right?”

She pressed both hands flat above her breasts. Her eyes searched his, fearful.
 

“You know anything about that?” he persisted.

“Oh, no. Certainly not.”

“The way I see it, Soffit was killed for the photos, and I don’t know anybody who wants them except this Valdez.”

“Señor—”

“I wouldn’t want to wake up the same as Soffit. Dead.”

“Please, you will speak with Valdez of these things. I am too confused.”

“Tell him to bring money. No money, no photos.”

The woman’s worried eyes searched his face. “I can only tell the cousin—” she began when Ana came barging in through the entrance.
 

Ana stopped, her heated gaze fixing on him. Her shirt was damp, hair plastered to the back of her neck from the shower.

29

Valdez

“D
AMN YOU, ROBERT!”
 

The shopkeeper stepped back in alarm.

Robert held up the gift box. “Hey, I got you a present.” He took Ana by the arm and attempted to steer her back to the entrance but she flung him off.
 

“Señor,” mumbled the saleslady, “what is going on?”

“She’s okay. You know, just a little jealous.” He shifted the strapped document case on his shoulders and headed to the entrance.

Ana paused, looked from one to the other, and then followed him out into the glare. He turned in the opposite direction of the Hotel Principal. Ana limped after him. Ignoring her, he walked for two blocks, then turned right again before flagging a taxi. They climbed inside and he had the cab circle back to the Hotel Principal. All in silence.
 

Once back in their room, he began unpacking. Ana positioned herself in the bathroom doorway, arms folded.

“Jealous, huh?”
 

He looked up, fists on his hips. “That little scene was exactly why I wanted you to go on back to the States. You come barging in there, no idea in hell what was going on.” He took the new shaving kit and pushed past her into the bathroom.
 

“We have to talk. Rationally,” she said.

“You could have gotten us both killed.” He turned the shower on, adjusted the water temperature.
 

“I thought we were in this together.”

“Let’s get this straight. When it comes to those photos, there isn’t any
we
. There’s
me
. Period.”

“I know what,” she said, “lets you be Big Daddy Robert and I’ll be Little Missy Ana in the kitchen.”

“Listen, you don’t seem to get it. This is a tricky situation we’re in here.”

“I’m not sure which of us isn’t getting it.”

“You go on now. I’m going to shower.”

She sighed, softening a little. “When you finish, I’d like to do a little shopping, find a nice outfit to go with that beautiful rebozo.”

“You go on. Here, I’ll get you some money.”

“I had rather wait for you.”

He hesitated, then pulled the door shut, adjusted the water, shucked off his clothes and stepped into the shower.
 

So why did Ana want him to tag along, shopping? Like she was afraid to let him out of her sight. Afraid he might skip out with the goods, the way he had with Mickey? But then, back at the eatery she had a chance to make off with the whole works and instead had come back for him. That still didn’t make sense.

Ana tapped on the door, pushed it open a crack. “Robert?”

He poked his head around the shower curtain.
 

“May I come in?” She stepped inside without waiting for an answer. “So. You like your women singing in the shower?” Flushed with a kind of dewy heat, she began removing her clothes. She stepped out of her panties and into the tub enclosure and pulled the curtain around them. Water sprayed off her body, rivulets trickling down between her breasts into the coppery V between her legs. She took the soap from him and began to rub it over his chest, working her way down, singing softly: “Singing in the rain / Just singing in the rain / I’m happy again…” She put the soap bar in the caddy. She smiled. “I think we should save the shower singing until you’re better able to concentrate.”

ROBERT STOOD ON
the balcony waiting for Ana to finish dressing. The evening sky had softened to lilac, tinting the town of Oaxaca a soft mauve. On the street below, sparrows fluffed and shimmied, rippling the flat, mirrored sheets of rainwater.
 

He wore khaki dress pants and the seersucker jacket over a teal-green T-shirt. He studied his hands. Though scrubbed raw-red in the shower and again in the bathroom sink, they still felt of Mickey’s waxy flesh.
 

Across the street a young boy and girl ran barefoot and shouting through the darkening pools. The birds fluttered into the evening trees and disappeared.

BIBLE IN HAND
, document case hung on one shoulder, Ana on his arm, they entered the Hotel Camino Real. It was the first time he’d seen her dressed up. Stunning in new black slacks, a champagne-colored blouse, a silver lamé belt and black, low-heeled pumps. The new blouse went nicely with the new rebozo. She wore her hair up, strands spiraling down at her temples. The effect was one of elegance, and the few people they met turned for a second look.
 

The maître d’ seated them at a candlelit table beneath an open arch alongside the garden. Blue jacaranda flowered nearby, large and showy, it’s perfume intoxicating on the balmy evening air. Only two other tables were occupied at this early hour, and the three waiters stood at ease back near the entrance to a kitchen. One, a small man with a sharp Mayan face, came forward and presented them with leather-bound menus and a wine list.

“Are you having a drink?” Ana asked.

Robert widened his eyes in phony alarm. “Well, yes. But I don’t get drunk, if
that’s
what you have in mind!”

Ana laughed out loud and while he knew it was partly from nervousness, it sounded nice against all that had happened. She shook her head, sobering again to the occasion. “That was, what, only four nights ago?”

Robert ordered Don Julio Reposado with sangrita for each of them.
 

When the waiter left, Robert gave Ana a slow appraising look. “I like your hair up like that. Zee bare neck, it make me vant to bite you, to suck you bloood.” He affected the wet hiss of a vampire.

“Oooo! Exciiiting!”
 

A waiter approached, but it was a different waiter, an older distinguished looking man with silver hair combed back from a high, aristocratic forehead. Robert’s pulse quickened; it was the man who had checked out just ahead of him in the Acapulco Princes the morning after Soffit’s death, the man with the badge on his belt.