Down Among the Dead Men

1

They found the bodies in the desert, about twenty miles southwest of Tolentino.

Two Texas dirt bikers, father and son, had come down from El Paso to ride the dunes and discovered a dead woman lying in the scrub, her throat slit, her body half-drained of blood.

It didn’t stop there.

Vargas had to give the two men credit for calling the local policia rather than packing up their bikes and hightailing it back across the border. Most Americans thought of this part of Mexico as some lawless dirtwater hellhole full of corrupt huta who would toss you into jail at the slightest provocation. And taking ownership of a house full of corpses was always risky business for anyone, let alone a couple of gabachos.

But it seemed that the two had been genuinely concerned about doing the right thing, and Vargas admired that. Their willingness to walk him through the crime scene didn’t hurt, either.

The father, Jim Ainsworth, was a lean, sunbaked cowboy who reminded him of that guy from the Lord of the Rings movies. Viggo something. They met on a Friday afternoon at the Cafe Tacuba, a hole-in-the-wall just off the 45, where they shared a booth near a window that hadn’t been washed in a decade, if ever.

The accordion-laced songs of Julieta Venegas played quietly on a jukebox in the corner, an ancient, mule-faced waitress swaying to the beat as she dragged a damp rag across a tabletop.

They were just finishing their meal when Ainsworth said, “You still haven’t told me which one of the shit catchers you work for.”

Vargas raised his eyebrows. “Shit catchers?”

“Newspapers. That’s about all I use ’em for. Line my rabbit cages.”

There was a bit of a twinkle in Ainsworth’s eyes and Vargas wasn’t sure if this was a pointed jab or just a piss-poor joke.

“No paper,” he said.

Ainsworth frowned. “I thought you were a reporter?”

“Used to be. Now I’m freelance. I write books.”

That was stretching it a bit. Truth be told, this was Vargas’s first stab at writing long form and he wasn’t completely sure he had it in him. After fifteen years of turning in concise thousand-word stories to the Los Angeles Tribune — and the San Jose Reader before that-the idea of pumping out four or five hundred pages of who-what-where-when-and-why seemed like a slow, uphill trudge. This book would either make him or break him.

Ainsworth nodded as he scraped the last of his beans off his plate. Vargas had sprung for the meal, mentally counting every peso as he’d scanned the menu, wondering how much more spending he could get away with before his advance money was gone.

“I’ve never had much use for books, either,” Ainsworth said. “My wife, God bless her, used to go through about every half-baked paperback she could get her hands on, but I never saw much point to it.”

Vargas said nothing. He wasn’t interested in getting into a debate with this guy about the merits of literature.

“I’ve gotta admit,” Ainsworth went on, “I didn’t mind her reading the spicy ones.” He flashed a conspiratorial grin. “She was a helluva woman.”

“I’m sure she was,” Vargas said, smiling politely. Then he nodded to Ainsworth’s empty plate. “You want anything else?”

Ainsworth leaned back and sighed, rubbing his stomach. “I think that’ll about do her.”

Vargas gestured to the plate next to Ainsworth’s. Tacos and beans and Mexican rice that had barely been touched. The seat behind it was vacant.

“What about your son?”

“He’s never been much of an eater,” Ainsworth said. “He ever gets his ass back from the bano, I think we’re good to go.”