Double

30: “Wolf”

My Western Airlines flight on Tuesday morning went north out of San Diego, to L.A. to pick up a bunch of noisy tourists, and then turned around and proceeded on down to Mazatlan. I took that as an omen of things to come. And I wasn’t far wrong.

In Mazatlan it was hot and so humid the air had a wet drippy consistency that made it difficult to breathe. There was no air conditioning in the waiting area for the feeder flight to Los Mochis; I sat there for an hour with my jacket off and my shirt unbuttoned halfway down my belly, simmering in my own sweat. The plane, when I finally boarded it, was small and cramped and even hotter than the waiting area; and the pilot handled it on takeoff, in the air, and on landing with a kind of wild nonchalance that scared the hell out of me. None of the other five passengers, all of whom were Mexican, seemed bothered in the slightest.

Los Mochis was a modern little city in the middle of El Fuerte Valley, surrounded by rice fields and canebrakes and sugar mills. It took me fifteen minutes to recover from the flight, which was all right because it took the airline people fifteen minutes to find my missing bag. The first three taximen I talked to either didn’t speak English or had no interest in driving me all the way to Topolobampo Bay; the fourth guy, whose name was Hernando and who said proudly that he was a Tarahumara Indian, agreed to do the honors. Which was too bad for me, because he drove with the same kind of wild nonchalance exhibited by the feeder pilot — only worse, like somebody who had just escaped from an asylum. I didn’t get to see half the countryside we passed through, on account of I had my eyes shut most of the time.

Near the Bahia Ohuira we entered a stretch of heavy jungle, vivid green and spotted with bright-colored flowers. It was even hotter and more humid in there, which made the interior of the taxi — a twenty-year-old Dodge sans air conditioning — feel like the interior of a stewpot. We couldn’t even open the windows for a breath of air because, Hernando said, the jungle was the home of “oh so many millions of mosquitoes who will gladly suck out every drop of our blood.” The land around the village of Topolobampo, not far ahead, had remained uninhabited until recent years because of the mosquitoes, he said. Malaria, he said. But the disease had been wiped out, he said, except in rare cases, and then only tourists were afflicted.

Topolobampo was an old village with a cluster of new-looking hotels spread out along the narrows where Bahia Ohuira became Bahia Topolobampo and where there was a confusion of mangrove islands and dark estuaries. We went through the town, southwest toward the Sea of Cortez. And a little while later, in midafternoon and in the middle of a hot windstorm, we finally rolled into the town on the water with monkeys in it.

Los Monos was down near the mouth of the bay, tucked in between the water and a series of low jungly hills — maybe fifty buildings in all, most of them old, built around a central plaza with a fountain in its middle and a church at one end. At the other end was the shrimp cannery and a network of little piers and boat moorage, where three or four dozen fishing vessels writhed under the lash of the wind; the bay and the sea beyond were a dazzling blue laced with whitecaps. What looked to be the only hotel was on the west side of the square, a threestory tile-roofed adobe structure painted pink and called El Cabrillo.

The place looked like a ghost town: there wasn’t another human being in sight, nothing moving anywhere except a lot of dust and leaves and things swirled up by the wind. It gave me a vague eerie feeling, until I remembered that the afternoon siesta was practically a second religion in Mexico. That was where everybody was, inside out of the heat and that hammering wind, having themselves a short snooze. It seemed like a pretty good idea. But not as good as a cold cerveza, if they had cold beer in Los Monos, and a bucket of water to douse my head with.

Hernando slammed the Dodge to a quivering stop in front of the hotel. My legs felt a little weak when I got out; it had been some wild ride. I paid him the price we’d agreed on, plus a tip, and asked him to wait. If Carlton Ferguson didn’t live here I wanted a ride straight back to Los Mochis, even if it meant another hour and a half of fear and trembling. And if Ferguson did live here I might need a ride to wherever his house was. Hernando was cheerfully agreeable, and when I left him he was about to attack the contents of a huge straw lunch basket.

The lobby of El Cabrillo was small, hot, strewn with sturdy native furniture, and empty except for a round little man dozing in a desk area about as large as an elevator shaft. He didn’t speak English, it turned out, but he went and got somebody who did — a middle-aged guy with a Pancho Villa mustache, the fierce effect of which was spoiled by a ready smile and pleasant brown eyes.

“I am Pablo Venegas, owner of this first-class hotel,” he said. “You wish a room, señor? Two are available, one on the top floor with a magnificent view of water and jungle—”

“Thanks, but I may not be staying the night. That depends on what you’re able to tell me.”

“Por favor?”

“I’m looking for a man named Carlton Ferguson, an American engineer. Does he live in Los Monos?”

“Ah, Senor Ferguson. Sometimes he comes to have dinner in my first-class restaurant. He is my good friend.”

So far, so good, I thought with some relief. “Can you tell me where he lives?”

“On a hill beyond the village,” Venegas said. “Perhaps two kilometers from here. A fine villa. It was formerly owned by a general in the army, but his family moved away after he was blown up by guerrillas.”

“Would you know if Ferguson is home?”

He shrugged. “I have not seen him.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Perhaps two days ago.”

“Did he have a little boy with him? About seven years old, with light-colored hair?”

“Little boy? No, he has no children I know about.”

“Does he live alone in his villa?”

“Ah, no. With a woman who is not his wife, I think. A very beautiful woman.”

“How do I get there?”

He told me, and the directions seemed simple enough. I wasn’t quite ready to leave when I had them straight — I wanted to ask him a few more questions about Ferguson — but he must have thought I was. He said, “You seem hot and tired, señor. Some food before you go? My wife prepares the finest huachinango — what you call the red snapper — that you have ever eaten.” I started to shake my head, and he said without missing a beat, “A cold cerveza, then? Dos Equis, Tres Equis, Tecate, Carta Blanca?”

“Cold?”

“My first-class hotel is equipped with a gasoline-powered refrigera tor. The cerveza is very cold indeed.”

The inside of my mouth and throat felt like a sandpit; I didn’t need any more persuading. I followed Venegas into a little bar, where a pair of ceiling fans stirred the air with sluggish monotony and gave free rides to a colony of flies as big as bees. The bottle of Dos Equis he sold me was as cold as advertised.

“Tell me, Senor Venegas,” I said, “what sort of man is Carlton Ferguson?”

“You do not know him?”

“No. I’m here to see him on a private matter.”

“Ah, he is a fine man. He gave the padre ten thousand pesos to fix the roof of the church.”

“A generous man, then?”

“Yes. Very generous.”

“How long has he lived here?”

“For almost one year.”

“And what does he do?”

“Do, señor?”

“For a living. How does he make his money?”

“Ah. He is a very great engineer. He works on the government project to improve the port of Topolobampo.”

“Would you say he’s well liked?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone likes him.”

“So there’s been no trouble with him since he came to Los Monos.”

“None,” Venegas said. He was frowning now, so that his mustache bristled and he looked a bit more like a bandit. “Why do you ask these questions, señor? They are very odd questions.”

“A private matter, like I said.”

He lowered his voice, even though there was no one else around. “You are policia?”

“In a way,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “A matter of seriousness, señor?”

“No. It’s nothing for you to concern yourself about. You can just forget I was ever here.”

“Of course,” he said solemnly. He had misunderstood: he thought I was some sort of government official, from the State Department or maybe even from the C.I.A. He was very impressed. He said, “If you desire to have a room later on, I will see to it that you are accommodated to the utmost. The finest room in El Cabrillo — I guarantee it.”

I thanked him and went back outside. Hernando was asleep on the front seat of the Dodge, which he had moved over into the shade of a date palm. I woke him up, climbed into the back seat, repeated Venegas’s directions, and off we went in a screech and a roar.

Beyond the church, an unpaved road climbed up into the low hills that flanked the bay to the north. That road connected with another one, and we climbed higher through lush jungle, an open area dotted with papaya trees, then more jungle, toward the crest of one of the hills. Here and there, high stucco walls with wooden gates marked the location of villas hidden among the vegetation. We passed three of these; the fourth we came to was almost invisible behind a screen of mango trees that had pink-flowered tropical vines climbing through them. This, according to Venegas, was where I would find the villa that belonged to Carlton Ferguson.

Hernando skidded the car over under the mangoes, narrowly missing their trunks, and braked to a stop about an inch from one of the gateposts. I asked him again to wait, and he nodded and smiled and lay down on the seat to continue his siesta. I got out, went over to the gate. It wasn’t nearly so windy up here, but it was just as hot and more humid; the air had that wet drippy feel I was beginning to hate.

You couldn’t see anything through the gates because they were made of solid wood. And you couldn’t see anything over the wall because it was a good eight feet high. I looked for a bell or something for a visitor to announce himself, but there wasn’t anything at all. So now what? I thought. Climb the wall like one of the monos? Beat the gate down? Stand around and wait until somebody comes out? Start yelling? Use my private-eye cunning?

Cunning was what solved the problem for me: I reached down and tried the gate latch, and it wasn’t locked, and I opened it and walked in. Norteamericano mentality. People down here didn’t have to put bolts and locks and chains on their property, like we did up in the civilized world.

A gravel drive led through a jungle garden of palms, banana trees, flowering shrubs, and mosquitoes that kept trying to bite my neck. Behind the screen of vegetation I had glimpses of the villa; then the drive jogged to the left and widened into a clearing, and I could see all of the house. It was perched at the edge of a downslope, no doubt to take advantage of an impressive view of the bay and the Sea of Cortez in the distance. It had three wings, all of them of white stucco with red tile roofs, framing a central courtyard that contained more trees and shrubs and the inevitable mosaic-tile fountain. To one side of the clearing was a carport with two cars parked under it — a dusty black Mercedes and a small Japanese compact.

I went toward the courtyard. When I got close enough, I could see that a tunnel-like passageway led through the villa’s back wing, so that you could go straight from the courtyard onto what appeared to be a large terrace. From the terrace, carried on the dying wind, came the sound of voices. And one of them was the piping voice of a child.

A couple of paces inside the courtyard, I paused to consider how I would handle things with Carlton Ferguson. I was still considering when a door to the wing on my left opened and a woman came out. She saw me and stopped, and we stood there staring at each other for about five seconds before she said in a low anguished voice, “Oh my God.”

She was the woman who had kidnapped Timmy, the woman I knew as Nancy Clark.