Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

Tequila by John C. Boland

The young woman in the black two-piece drank her first tequila before the boat had cleared the harbor. Behind her the shore was lined with gaily painted hotels, like stubby teeth at the mouth of a gray and wilted jungle. The girl was in her early twenties, with a slightly bent nose, short black hair, and a tan that had darkened in months of single-minded idleness. As the boat dipped, she perched on the rail outside a cabin where two men tended a linoleum-topped bar. When she tapped her heel on a window beside the bar, a fat brown man in a red bikini swimsuit slid open the glass pane.

“Tequila,” she said.

“Why doan you drink Manhattans?”

“You don’t serve Manhattans.” She poked a dirty toe at his face.

He poured tequila into a double-shot glass, added warm cola, slammed the glass onto the bar. As it foamed, he handed the drink to the girl.

She chugged it.

“Another, Armando.”

She had gone native, Joe thought; too lazy to move on, too stupid to hide the fact she was American. She had cut her hair, counting on nobody looking hard. Wouldn’t have heard that Wally Macomb felt emasculated.

Her name was Judy Rainey. Joe hitched up on the rail near her. “What do they call those things?”

“Slammers,” she said without looking at him. “Armando! Give it up, Armando! One tequila slammer for whatsisname.”

“Joe.”

“For Joe. Come on, ande!”

“Sí, sí.” The fat man handed out two drinks in quick succession and told a man beside him that the gringa would fall onto the boat propeller if God was just. To the girl, he called, “Doan drink too much tequila before you snorkel.”

“I don’t plan to snorkel.”

“Is very beautiful on the reef.”

Joe took a sip of tequila and grimaced. Knowing he looked sheepish, he grinned at Rainey and said, “I guess it’s an acquired taste.”

Joe had timed his approach well, but now Rainey’s companion was coming back from the head, putting his feet down solidly, keeping a hand on the bar. The boy was big and lightly sunburned, with a low-riding tangle of blond hair and a bright island shirt that was so well pressed he had to be only a day or two off the plane. Last night Joe hadn’t seen him at Rainey’s hotel. This morning here he was, a complication. He looked up the companionway and, seeing Joe shoulder to shoulder with Rainey, didn’t smile.

“Joe doesn’t like slammers.” Her brown eyes turned toward the man in the companionway. “Neither does Nick. Where am I going to find a guy who knows how to drink?”

“Who’s this?” Nick asked as he mounted the steps. He was half a head taller than Joe, maybe six-three, broad shouldered, and thin like a basketball player. The corners of a blond mustache reached the edge of his jaw.

“Joe Scali.” Joe raised his glass instead of offering a hand the blond man could refuse. “Do we snorkel before we get to the island or on the way back?”

“Both, but it’s better on the way out,” the girl said. “Light gets down to the reef early in the day. It isn’t as good as the crew pretends. Lots of dead coral.”

“Is there anywhere better?”

She nodded. “El Garrafon, over at Isla Mujeres, isn’t bad.”

“You sound like you’ve been down here a while.”

She shot him a wary glance, but Joe looked harmless, so she grinned. A couple of her bottom teeth were crooked. She wasn’t particularly pretty, just lean and feral. “Give me sun and tequila and I’m mellow,” she said.

“Tell me about El Garrafon.”

“They have parrot fish as big as Miguel.”

Hearing his name, the smaller man below deck, dressed in a tank top and trunks, stopped sorting snorkel gear and watched the Americans.

The girl put her head close to the open window and shouted, “If you could find a fish as fat as Armando, it would be worth catching.”

The fat man shouted back. “You cannot capture fish on the reef! It is a national treasure protected by our government.”

“Don’t worry, Armando, we won’t catch a guppy.”

“You must not pick coral,” Armando insisted. “That is protected too.”

“Is the beer protected?” Nick asked.

“The beer is not protected,” Armando answered, putting a bottle into the waiting hand.

Joe was among the last of the dozen or so passengers to rent a salt-stained snorkel, mask, and flippers. He kept his T-shirt on because, although he was naturally dark, the sun was intense. The boat was turning on its anchor, and the shade cast by the canopy swung like an hour hand across the rear deck. The swell was gentle. A breeze had died.

“You’re brave, young man,” an elderly woman said. She was tented in white clothing, hat tied under her chin, her eyes hidden behind small, round sunglasses. “Mr. Havens and I saw a shark out here thirty years ago.” She patted the knee of the small man beside her. His white cap engulfed the tops of his ears.

“Probably still out there,” the man said. “Sharks live a long time.”

The boat’s captain, Luis, pulled open the door at the back of the deck and offered a hand to passengers stepping onto the swim platform. Joe waited until a couple of people were in the water. He scanned the hot flat surface for fins.

“The tide is toward the shore,” Luis cautioned. “It is not strong, but it is steady. Can you see the coral? It is the dark area to starboard — this is starboard, señores. It is very sharp. This man knows. He wears a glove.”

Nick held up his left hand. “For fending off,” he said.

Joe entered the water after a dentist from Michigan who churned toward the reef with powerful kicks. Blinking water from his lashes, paddling back from the stern, Joe spat on both sides of the glass before pulling on the mask. As he blew into the snorkel mouthpiece, somebody jumped wide, landing near him, and the stiff edge of a fin grazed the back of his calf. The pain was sharp and unexpected. A bobbing head, half bald and dripping, was pointed away from him, oblivious to everything except its puffing need to stay afloat. As the fins lashed out again, Joe drew away. From the rail, a drink in her brown fist, Judy Rainey watched him wince and laughed.

Joe Scali put his face into the water and kicked off. He thought he might run into the young blond man Nick on the reef.

Isla Contoy broiled under the midday sun. Iguanas sprawled like frozen shadows around the tourist pavilion. Fat snakes rattled out of the brush and baked on the paths. Joe Scali sat at a wooden table in the airless heat, temples hammering, sweat creeping down his side, as Mrs. Havens reviewed the paucity of comforts.

She blamed the captain, who had shouldered an ice-filled chest of beer and soft drinks along the wooden pier and up to the pavilion, then had sent Miguel running back to the boat for tequila. Massive slabs of fish, hauled dripping from an insulated box, were roasted on the beach and served with rice and onions. Mrs. Havens doubted that the food was safe and pushed her plate away after Armando informed her they were eating barracuda.

The dentist from Michigan, whose name was Paulson, tried aloud to recall something about the safety of eating barracuda either above or below a certain latitude, but he couldn’t remember details. He ate anyway. Joe drank dark beer that made his head throb. He rubbed a finger on his scraped calf. He hadn’t been able to find Nick among the group inspecting the coral. The young man was sitting a few tables away with Judy Rainey.

“You seem lost in thought,” Dr. Paulson said. He had a good smile, hair gone gray, liver spots on his cheeks.

“The heat’s gotten to me. I can’t think,” Joe admitted.

“I thrive down here. Wouldn’t expect it, coming from a cold climate. But my skin doesn’t burn, and I don’t sweat much.” His eyes offered a shallow friendliness. “I should move my practice down here. But Phoebe wouldn’t hear of it. Where are you from, and what sort of work do you do?”

It was the blunt inquisitiveness that vacationers permit themselves. “Upstate New York,” Joe responded. “I work for a collection agency.”

Paulson, who appeared to be in his early sixties, inclined his head. “There’s a good-looking pair of blondes at the next table. Why isn’t a young guy like you off collecting them instead of sitting with us geriatrics?”

“Blondes take upkeep,” Joe said. He tried to sound confident. He didn’t want to admit that he had no idea how to approach the two German girls, to whom he seemed to be invisible.

“Brunettes take upkeep too,” Paulson said cheerfully. “And probably redheads, though I haven’t married one of them.”

Mrs. Havens, unhappy with the lunch, found her voice again. “Dr. Paulson’s right, young man. It pays for people our age to be suspicious of young men who want to spend time with us. They may be trying to get their hands on an old person’s estate, which in Mr. Havens’s and my case is substantial.”

Joe wondered if she understood the danger in such a declaration. Without smiling, he said, “Worth getting my hands on?”

The old woman drew back. Her husband, who sat with his elbows on the table watching nothing, turned his head slightly as Mrs. Havens’s voice took on an edge.

“I don’t think I like you,” the woman told Joe. “You’re not as nice as you present yourself as being.”

Havens cleared his throat. “Honeybun...”

“Not at all nice. I can tell.”

Havens sighed. He turned to Joe, apologetic but stern. “Would you sit somewhere else, young man? I don’t like Mrs. Havens to be upset.”

Joe said, “I’m sorry if I’ve troubled you.”

“Just go somewhere else.”

Paulson, the dentist, looked embarrassed. “Didn’t mean to start something.”

As Joe got up from the bench, stretching to make his indifference plain, Mrs. Havens’s dry voice announced, “As soon as he mentioned a collection agency, we should have been warned. Gentle people don’t trade off others’ misfortunes.”

Joe was a few yards away when Dr. Paulson rose and called, “Wait up, young fellow, I’ll join you.”

“This island is supposed to be a bird sanctuary,” Dr. Paulson said, stopping on a path that led to higher ground behind the pavilion. “But I don’t see much except pelicans and frigate birds.”

Joe cupped his hands above his eyes. He wished he had worn a hat; every step higher brought him closer to the sun. The sandy path where his shadow squirmed threw back the heat and light, blinding him when he looked down. Startled lizards dashed for cover, shaking spiky fronds for a dozen yards after they were safely hidden.

“Perhaps if we slog a bit higher,” Paulson suggested.

They reached a spiny crest that twisted along the back of the island. Fifty or sixty yards below, in a half ring of beach enclosed on the south by foam-covered rocks, Judy Rainey balanced on the rocks like a high-wire walker. She still wore the black bikini top but had added a flower-print wrap around her hips. Nick was a few feet behind her.

“Not a lady, I would say,” the dentist remarked. “But this kind are more fun, aren’t they? Wouldn’t dare tell Phoebe that, of course.”

Joe barely listened. Nick was very close to her now. It had been a mistake letting them get this far ahead of him. He wanted the blond young man to know someone was watching. So he put on a grin and called, “Hey down there!”

The girl turned, squinted at the bright sky, and waved. “Hey yourself!”

“Do you know what time the boat leaves?”

“Uh-uh.” She climbed down from the rock, crossed the sand. “Nick and I are talking about sleeping over. Wouldn’t that be great? Just us and the beach.”

The blond man came down to join her. His voice carried over the surf. “Yeah. Sand fleas and scorpions.”

Joe was halfway down the slope now, and he heard her complain, “You’re not as much fun as I thought.”

Dr. Paulson, who had followed Joe, patted him on the shoulder. He spoke softly. “Could be you’ve got a chance with her yourself.”

That was all Joe needed, a chance.

“Nick’s boring,” she said. People had gathered near the pavilion, and the boat was tooting its horn. Rainey had sent Nick ahead with orders to get her a drink. Paulson had returned to the company of the Havenses. Joe and the girl were a hundred feet behind, the path plunging, the sun low enough that it was hitting them in the face, and he could feel his skin burning.

He said, “Wait a minute.” As she turned, he tugged her onto a side path, gently, so she wouldn’t scream.

“Hey!” He let go and she grinned, game for almost anything. “What’s up?”

“Wally Macomb is looking for you,” he said.

She backed away, and he raised a placating hand. “Don’t worry, I don’t work for him.”

“I don’t know any Wally.”

Joe dug a plastic bag from his pocket, fingers clumsy because he had to open the watertight seal before he could reach his billfold. He let the case hang open. The gold and blue enamel badge, which he had worked for years to carry, was so new it didn’t have a scratch. The girl didn’t seem impressed.

“I’m a detective with the Stevensport Police Department,” Joe said. “If you come back, you’ll get immunity. And protection.”

“Forget it.” As her brown face tightened, she looked much older. “I’m going to Belize with Nick. You got no authority down here, so stay away from me.” She started down toward the pavilion.

Joe said, “How do you know Nick isn’t from Stevensport?”

She stopped. “He’s from Chicago.”

“Ask to see a driver’s license or a passport. I found you. So could Wally’s people.”

Joe knew she wasn’t coming back. She wasn’t scared enough — or smart enough, depending on your perspective. He put away the badge. “Give yourself an even chance. Make sure who he is.”

“Drop dead,” she replied.

She headed past the pavilion toward the dock.

The boat left the wooden pier with a couple of final toots and a blast of diesel smoke. Joe Scali tried to find a corner where he could sit alone, but the fat man whose fin had scraped him settled onto a nearby bench and talked about ruins. He had a bright fresh sunburn. His skin was moist, his hands small. He was about Joe’s age, early thirties. He was excited about snorkeling, and after talking about ruins, he mentioned a lagoon farther down the coast where there were supposed to be unusual fish.

Leaning against the rail, an arm around Nick’s waist, Judy Rainey lifted a bare foot and kicked the side window. She had a glass in hand. “Armando, más tequila!”

The companionway was open, and Joe heard the crack of the glass being slammed onto the bar. It sounded like a gunshot. By the time the hotels broke the horizon forty minutes later, the girl’s brown legs were rubbery. Nick eyed her dark skin with a look that was at least half distaste.

A number of people from the boat were staying at the same hotel. The Havenses sat at a tiny round table in the hotel garden and complained about the towels in their suite. Dr. Paulson and the fat man argued Mexican politics. Two middle-aged women sat together and plotted over a map. The German girls had gone wherever there were better prospects — still without noticing Joe. He had blown it with Rainey because of his basic incompetence around women. The Chief of Detectives could have tapped two or three guys from the squad who had a knack for getting young women to buy into them. When Joe tried picking up women at the Front Street bars, the nice ones told him he was too needy.

He spent the late afternoon on the telephone with his boss in Stevensport, trying to put a name to the tall, blond young man who called himself Nick. The detectives chief, Larry Zwick, didn’t recall Wally Macomb having any tall blond enforcers. “He could have farmed the job out to Pittsburgh,” Zwick said. “I’ll call over there. You gotta convince her it’s in her interest to come back.”

“She knows better. She’s drinking tequila and baking in the sun.”

“Did you crowd the blond guy?”

“A little. He knows I’m interested. And she’s probably told him I’m a cop.”

“That might keep her alive awhile.”

“Maybe the guy’s okay.”

“I’ll call you with whatever Pittsburgh’s got.”

Joe went downstairs in the early evening and ate alone. Dr. Paulson and the fat man, whose name was Jimmy something, tried to talk him into joining them cruising the discos along Playa Linda. Joe declined. He felt like enough of a loser without touring hot spots with a sixty-year-old dentist and a fat bald guy named Jimmy.

Judy Rainey and Nick didn’t come down for dinner.

He was in his room, almost asleep, listening to a three-piece band in the park across the street, when Larry Zwick called back. “Pittsburgh’s killers are all short and swarthy, just like Stevensport’s,” he said. “Maybe Wally hasn’t found her. If she won’t budge tomorrow, we’ll see if the Mexican cops will pick her up.”

Joe was sitting in the tiny lobby the next morning when Judy Rainey headed out. She wore a flower-print shift that looked unwashed, as did the girl. He fell into step beside her. “Where’s Nicky boy?”

She ignored him for a minute, then said, “He decided he doesn’t like girls who throw up on him during — you know.”

He thought it was an amazingly delicate expression, you know, coming from someone who had been kept by Wally Macomb before she was seventeen.

“You threw up on him?” He looked at the pavement, trying to hide his smile.

“It was either that or the fact I got a cop hanging on me. Either way, he’s headed for Belize solo.” She stopped, squinting, her whole small face pinched. She was sweating, and her odor was sour. She rubbed her forehead as if she could wipe away a hangover. “How long you gonna pester me?”

“Not long. There are other ways to get Wally.”

“Good, go get him. I’m never going back. Wally had a guy named Iggy try to cut me. If a friend hadn’t tipped me, I’d be at the bottom of the river. Wally sucks. So’s the town.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“He pays a couple of cops, you know. Maybe you’re one of them.”

For some reason, he felt no surprise. “You have names?”

“I need a drink. Over there.”

There was a thatched-roof, open-air place a few steps off the avenue that was open for business. Joe ordered Bloody Marys. The girl slumped on the stool and kept rubbing her face. Her eyes were out of focus. If she kept knocking back the booze, Wally wouldn’t have to send someone.

“You know a vice cop named Starkey?” She spoke past the heel of her hand. “And a woman detective named Brubaker? Those are the ones I know about.”

The first name confirmed a lot of what Joe Scali knew about his hometown. The second name hit him like a knife in the ribs. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I saw Iggy give ’em both their monthly allowances. You don’t look so good. The liquor hits you, don’t it?”

“I’m not much of a drinker,” Joe admitted.

“How long you been a detective?”

“A while.”

“Like a week?”

“Almost three months.”

“Jeez, they send a newbie. You know Starkey? He’s about your age.”

“I know him.”

“A pig even among pigs, right? And Brubaker? I saw the way you looked.”

“She’s a sergeant.”

Judy Rainey squinted at him, then laughed. “You ought to see your face. You got something going with her?”

Joe Scali put down his glass. “She’s my boss’s girlfriend.”

“So you’re out of luck.”

“Maybe we both are,” Joe said. “My boss knows where I am.”

The booze had slowed her down. It took several seconds before her face scrunched up and she snarled, “You idiot!” Then she was off the stool and running before he could stop her.

Nick hadn’t left the hotel. Passing through the lobby, Joe saw him drinking at a tiny two-seat bar next to the reception desk. In his room, Joe sat on the unmade bed and debated calling Larry Zwick. As far as he could figure, there was no percentage in telling Zwick that one of his detectives, in particular one he was sleeping with, was on Wally Macomb’s pad. If Chief Zwick didn’t know, Joe’s secondhand word might not convince him. If he did know...

If Zwick knew, then by now Wally Macomb might know where Rainey was. Or he might not. The chief could want the girl as leverage. You never knew exactly who owned whom in Stevensport.

Joe stared at his suitcase, folded open on the luggage rack. Traveling to Mexico, he hadn’t been able to bring a gun.

He went downstairs, joined Nick at the bar. “I saw Judy this morning. She says you’re off to Belize.”

The blond man nodded, not too friendly. “You really a cop? She wouldn’t tell me what she’d done. Said you’re both from some butt-ugly place in Pennsylvania.”

“I thought you might be from the same place,” Joe said.

He shook his head. “Chicago. So what’d she do? Kill someone?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Joe tried to figure the guy. Zwick said he wasn’t local talent, but Joe couldn’t trust Zwick. He had only his own judgment, and he didn’t have much time. “What do you think of her?”

“Drunk. Not great in the sack. Nice tan. Okay body.” He thought about it, beer bottle to his lip, couldn’t come up with more. He didn’t care.

“Like her enough to take her to Belize?”

“Not really.”

“For five hundred bucks?”

“What else do I have to do?”

“Keep quiet.” He thought about saying, Watch for the next guy they send. If he didn’t bring her back, there would be someone else, no doubt about it. Joe couldn’t do anything about that. If she kept drinking, she might not last long enough for Wally to deal with her. All Joe could take care of was a week, maybe two, maybe a month. “Keep quiet,” Joe said, “and leave today. Five hundred.”

“What’s it about?”

“She needs to be out of sight for a while.”

The young man started to ask something more, then stopped. He looked a little more sympathetic than he had. “There’s some places in Belize not many outsiders get to.”

“Don’t tell me,” Joe said. If it came down to it, he was afraid he would give her up. She wasn’t worth his career, never mind his life. He had to get along with Zwick and Brubaker. He might have to learn to get along with Wally Macomb.

“Five hundred?” Nick said.

Joe counted the money onto the bar. Paying for her chance to get away with the city’s money, he told himself he was doing the right thing.

“So the young lady left,” the dentist from Michigan said. There were three of them at the dinner table. Joe had relented on touring the night spots when Dr. Paulson said it would be good, after a night of carousing, if he had two young men to prop him up. The fat man named Jimmy had found a seafood restaurant attached to a large open-air discothèque that overlooked the bay. He wore a sleeveless shirt that exposed solid pink arms. After consuming two margaritas before his food, he sat glassy eyed as young dancers spun like brown tops above the tide.

“The young lady you had your eye on,” Dr. Paulson elaborated, speaking to Joe. “She left.”

“Really?” Joe met the older man’s gaze. The dentist may have been amused.

“There are still the blondes,” Paulson said. He raised his fork, then lowered it. “The young fellow she’s taken up with asked me to tell you something. He said he might run into you in Stevensport. Does that mean anything?”

Copyright 2006 John C. Boland