Down Among the Dead Men

72

The day of the Dead festival didn’t officially begin until tomorrow, but that didn’t keep the tourists from starting early.

The streets and bars were packed shoulder to shoulder with people dressed in black, some of them wearing skull masks, others sporting hoods, almost all of them half-drunk and getting drunker.

By nightfall, a good portion of them would be back in their hotel rooms or on board their ship, decorating the carpet with the contents of their stomachs.

Pushing his way through the crowd, Vargas saw no sign of Beth, but he hadn’t really expected to. Instead, he narrowed his focus on finding the restaurant she’d told him about. Where she’d last seen her sister.

Problem was, he knew there were at least a half-dozen outdoor cafes along the main drag and finding the right one, especially in this crowd, could prove to be difficult. And even if he did find it, there was no guarantee Beth would be in the vicinity.

Maybe he was concerned for no reason. Maybe she had simply gotten bored and decided to go for a walk, hoping to jar some of the memories that evaded her. For all he knew, she could be back at the hotel by now, climbing the steps to her room.

But Vargas didn’t think so. He’d spent enough time with Manny over the years to know that something was up and that Beth’s headache could well have been a sign of worse things to come.

Cursing himself for leaving her alone, he continued moving, pushing through the crowd until he came upon his first outdoor cafe and knew immediately that this wasn’t the one.

No leather-goods shop in sight.

Moving on, he went a block and a half and found another one with umbrellaed tables taking up most of the sidewalk, tourists lined up nearby, waiting to be seated.

They were young and loud and Vargas marveled at how Americans seemed to lose all sense of decorum when they were drunk and on vacation, coming into a foreign country as if they owned it and had the right to be served, screw anyone who got in their way.

Vargas himself tried to blend in whenever possible, no matter what country he might visit. And he was sure there were many Americans just like him. But the loud ones always got the attention and helped generate the anti-American sentiment that pervaded so many countries.

Stalled on the sidewalk, waiting for a crowd of oncoming tourists to pass, Vargas felt a tap on his shoulder and turned, hoping it was Beth.

Instead, he found a couple of glassy-eyed twenty-year-olds staring up at him, both wearing tight black dresses, their faces painted white, with smudges of black around the eye sockets.

“Aren’t you that guy?” one of them said.

Vargas was at a loss. “Guy?”

“The one from that Desperado movie.”

“Antonio Banderas,” the other one said, running a finger suggestively along the line of her cleavage. “You’re him, aren’t you? Is it true Salma Hayek is only like five feet tall?”

“No habla ingles,” Vargas told her, then turned and continued up the street.

Two blocks later, he saw it. A leather-goods shop directly across from an enclosed oblong structure jutting out from the curb, crowded with diners.

Vargas searched their faces, saw no sign of Beth, then crossed to the leather-goods shop and went inside.

The place was jammed with tourists looking at handmade jackets and belts and handbags and luggage. Vargas worked his way to the register, told the woman behind the counter who he was looking for, and did his best to describe Beth.

The women eyed him as if he were a crazy man and gestured to the half-dozen Beth look-alikes who crowded her store.

Nodding, Vargas went back outside.

Next stop: Armando’s.