Getaway

[CHAPTER FOURTEEN]

He’d already opened the back door of the van for her when she said, “This isn’t a good time.”

“Oh, but Gary says it’s very important.”

“I’ve been at the beach-I’m not even really dressed.”

“I think that’s okay.”

“Well, it’s not okay with me,” she said, and she was glad that she sounded more angry than afraid.

“Look, señora… I think maybe it’s better if you do what Gary says.” His smile faltered. “Because if he sends someone else to pick you up, maybe that won’t be so good. You know?”

Just like that. The anger was gone, and she was afraid again.

She thought about running, but how far could she get?

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Gary just wants to talk to you.”

“Vallarta, it’s too hot now,” Gustavo said. “Too hot for the beach. Too hot at home. So for me, driving is the best thing right now. With the air-conditioning.” He patted the dash. “Nice and cool in here, no matter what it’s like outside.”

Michelle nodded, though he probably couldn’t see that. She sat in the backseat clutching the armrest.

“Where are we going?” she’d asked when they’d first started driving.

“Just to see Gary.” And then he’d smiled and continued talking about the weather, about various tourist destinations, about his cousins who lived in Los Angeles.

They headed north and east, away from the ocean. The neighborhoods they drove through reminded Michelle a little of the place where the jail was. She couldn’t be sure if the jail was actually around here; there were no landmarks she recognized, just the sense that these were not the tourist districts, no sushi bars or Senior Frog’s or Starbucks, just local businesses run down at the heels-appliance-repair stores, printers, a Mexican version of a 99¢ store called Todo de 25.

He just wants to talk, she told herself, that’s all.

“You don’t look so good,” Gustavo said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “You want a Coke? I have one in the cooler, on the floor.”

Now the streets were unpaved, the buildings whitewashed brick and gray cinderblock. Newer cinder-block buildings competed with older wood and tin-roofed structures on the verge of collapse, seemingly held together by tarps and vegetation.

They drove on a broader dirt road, following a large truck kicking up clouds of dust, its bed piled high with garbage bags and mattresses and a doorless refrigerator. The truck pulled up to a guard shack at some kind of compound that was surrounded by a cinder-block wall. Big, whatever it was. Not a prison; the security hardly seemed adequate for that-no armed guards with machine guns, and the gate was wide and unbarricaded. Leading up to it and clustered by the wall were shacks, ad hoc shelters made from whatever materials were at hand-cardboard, plastic sheeting, wooden pallets.

Gustavo stopped at the gate and climbed out of the minivan. “Just a moment, señora,” he said before he slammed the door shut.

Michelle sat in the backseat and waited while Gustavo talked to the guards. I could get out of the car, she thought. I could run. Instead she sat. It didn’t make sense to run, did it? Not really. Running would make things worse.

Gary just wanted to talk.

After a few minutes, Gustavo returned. “Okay,” he said. “No problem.” He started the car.

“Where are we?” Michelle asked.

“El basurero.” He smiled. “The dump.”

At the base of what looked like a mountain, workers sprayed brown liquid from huge green hoses into a black-rubber-lined pit. Gustavo steered the minivan on a path that circled the hill. The lower levels were covered with grass, but as they wound their way up, the grass yielded to endless mounds of plastic bags, faded and bleached by the sun, the path at times partially blocked by baby carriages and cracked tires and rusting hunks of old appliances.

Headless bodies in oil barrels. Heads in garbage bags. If a body were dumped here, would anyone ever find it?

Finally they reached the summit-a flat, man-made mesa.

Gustavo parked the van by a shack someone had set up, under a salvaged beach umbrella. A few workers, older women, sat beneath it taking a break. A slightly battered 4Runner was parked close by.

Gary stood in the shade of the 4Runner’s open hatchback, red-faced and sweating, drinking from a bottle of water.

Michelle got out of the minivan.

When he saw her, he smiled. “Well, Michelle. Glad you could make it.”

“Did I have a choice?”

“Now, come on. I figured you’d find this interesting.” He rummaged around in a cooler and retrieved another bottle of water. “You look a little pale,” he said, holding it out to her. “Better drink something. You don’t want to get dehydrated up here.”

She took the water. She wanted to throw it at him.

“How about you give me a hand with these?”

Inside the hatchback was a crate of oranges. Gary slung a canvas shopping bag half full with them over his shoulder. “Maybe put some in your tote?”

“What for?”

“I’m helping out a friend. She’s part of a charity that comes up here. Brings things to the workers. The jóvenes.” He chuckled. “Don’t know why they call them that. Most of them aren’t very young.”

He gestured for her to follow. “Watch your step. There’s some nasty stuff around.”

She followed him. All the intimidation, the threats, hauling her off the beach in a near kidnapping, and he wanted her to hand out oranges, like he was some kind of demented social worker?

Crazy.

The surface of the mountain felt spongy. Michelle could feel it tremble through the soles of her feet as a bulldozer pushed a pile of trash from one place to another. The smell… it wasn’t what she expected. It was nothing she could describe. Rancid meat, rotting fruit, spoiled baby food, shit-it was all of that and none of it.

“Used to be kids working up here. Can you imagine that?”

The top was a broad plateau, a plain of trash, heaped with garbage bags and stacks of cardboard. Workers sorted through the piles by hand. And there were birds everywhere. Michelle had never seen so many birds in one place. Flocks of buzzards and white herons, countless gulls, all come to feast on the dump’s riches.

“They’ve found bodies up here before,” Gary said. “Stuffed inside some garbage bags and dumped in the pile with everything else. Not the kind of thing you want to find when you’re looking for soda cans.”

They approached a knot of workers dismantling a refrigerator. Gary greeted them, tossed out oranges, rattling off Spanish that she couldn’t understand. The men and women smiled, nodded, took the fruit. Two stopped what they were doing to peel theirs and eat.

She continued to follow Gary as they picked their way among the refuse. Here were cow parts. Skulls. Lips and noses. Random hooves. A vulture perched on a withered cow’s head, tearing at the hide.

“Look at that,” Gary said. “Too bad you don’t have your camera.”

Fucking Gary, she thought, hearing Daniel’s voice in her head. He was trying to freak her out, she guessed. To shock the privileged lady from Los Angeles-well, the formerly privileged lady anyway. And okay, she’d been pretty scared on the ride over.

But now? She was giving oranges to workers. To people who’d seen her with Gary-to witnesses.

Here was a donkey hitched to a splintered wooden cart heaped with flattened cardboard boxes, a dog dozing in the shade beneath it. Next to it an old man wearing a tall straw cowboy hat and a young man in a grimy Dodgers cap broke down the boxes.

“Well, come on, Michelle.” Gary’s voice was loud in her ear. “Give the boys some oranges.”

She went over to the two men. “Hola,” she said, trying to smile. “Quieren, um… oranges?”

They smiled back and nodded, the younger of the two springing up to take an orange, giving it a celebratory toss before digging into the skin.

The old man moved more slowly, extending a hand for an orange. She gave him one, felt the hard, cracked surface of his palm. “Take another,” she said.

They had reached the edge of the mesa. “Check this out,” Gary said, gesturing ahead of him.

Below them was Vallarta, the old city to the left, the marina and the ocean, then newer developments, the new university, condos, creeping toward the mountain’s northern flank.

“Some view, isn’t it?”

Michelle nodded. It really was.

Was he done with his little show? she wondered. It was a horrible place, but it was a place where people worked, did their jobs, and here the two of them were, playing at charity like some sort of poverty tourists.

“I really should’ve had you bring your camera. I bet you could take some great photos up here. Of the workers and the trash and whatnot.”

“It’s been done,” she said.

“Yeah, but I think you have a terrific eye, Michelle. You’ve got some talent. Which is why I’m really disappointed you didn’t do what I asked you to do last night.”

“I told you I didn’t feel comfortable-”

“And I told you to suck it up. What do you think this is anyway? You think you can blow me off? Is that what you think?”

“No, I-”

“People end up in trouble here when they don’t do what they’re told.” He took an orange out of the bag, tossed it at a flock of birds that had gathered close by. They rose up, screeching, then quickly settled back in place, a few gulls stabbing at the fruit.

“One time they didn’t find a body till the next day,” Gary said. “Guess it was at the bottom of the pile. You should’ve seen that after the buzzards got after it. Between that and the heat-”

“I get it, Gary.” You asshole, she added silently.

“I don’t think you do.” He rested his hand flat between her shoulder blades. “You think there’s plenty of people around. Nothing’s gonna happen to you in broad daylight. You think you’re someplace safe.”

He pressed harder. Not exactly a shove. Just pressure. Urging her forward, toward the edge of the mountain. “But what you don’t get is, everything’s for sale here. And everybody. And if somebody wants something bad to happen to you, it will.”

She could feel his palm’s moist heat through the thin gauze of her blouse.

“All kinds of people end up dead. People with money. People with power. You? Nobody’d even blink.”

She stared over the edge, down the slope of bleaching plastic and cracked rubber, at the flocks of resting birds.

“Look-” Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard. But maybe it was better to sound afraid. That was what he wanted, right? “It was a cocktail party. I wore a little black dress. The watch would’ve looked ridiculous.”

She took in a deep breath and regretted it.

“You want me to do this, and I’m trying. You want me to… to play this part, and I’m trying to do it right.”

A long silence. She didn’t try to fill it. Instead she stood there and stared at the view, at the birds, listened to the rumble of the bulldozers, to the thudding of her heart, the solid pressure of Gary’s hand on her back.

“Michelle, what am I going to do with you?” he said at last.

He gave her back a little pat. Then he grabbed her wrist with his other hand and shoved her hard, where his hand had been.

She stumbled forward, started to fall, over the edge, and he hauled her up with a vicious twist, wrenching her wrist and shoulder.

She cried out, but no one could hear them here, where any sound would be masked by the birds and the bulldozers.

“See how easy?” he said in her ear.

He let go of her wrist.

She stood there shaking.

Gary guided her away from the edge, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. “I know you think I’m pretty much an asshole, but I’m doing this for your own good. You’re around people who won’t hesitate, and you need to understand that. They’ll throw you over the side without a second thought.”

He got a bottle of water from his bag, opened it, and held it out to her. She took it, trying to control the trembling in her hands.

“Tell me about the party.”

She told him everything she could remember, the names she’d written down, the faces she could recall. She told him about Daniel going off with Carlos. About her conversation with María. And then about Emma and how Daniel had reacted to her.

Gary listened. Nodded occasionally.

Was he taking any of this seriously? Was any of it important? Michelle couldn’t tell.

“And Danny, how’d he seem?” Gary asked when she’d finished.

She thought about it. “Tired. Kind of disgusted. He said he wanted to make some changes.”

“Oh, did he? He say anything else along those lines? Anything specific?”

“No. Just that it wasn’t his kind of thing. The party. That he needed to show face and then we could leave.”

“So you left. After that what did you do?”

She hesitated.

“Now, come on, Michelle. Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened. He said something had come up. Some work. He dropped me off, and that was that.”

Gary sighed. “Well, that’s disappointing. I’d’ve thought you could hold his interest a little longer.”

She felt a flush of anger. “He wants to get together on Friday,” she said. “Is that enough interest for you?”

He chuckled and gave her shoulder a quick rub. “You’re a hoot, you know that?”

A stocky blond woman waited for them back at the 4Runner. Vicky. Wearing another Hawaiian shirt. This one featured palm trees and pink flamingos.

“Oh, Michelle, hi!” she said, beaming. “I’m so glad you made it!”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Michelle said.

“I told Michelle all about your charitable work,” Gary said. “And of course she wanted to come and see it for herself.”

“Next time you’ll have to visit the school. That’s where you can really see the difference we’re making in the neighborhood. This…” Vicky spread her hands. “Well, it’s a tough environment. We just try to make things a little nicer for the workers when we can.”

“I loved coming up here to help,” Gary said. “And I knew that Michelle would really appreciate it.”

He gave her a little smile, like they were sharing a joke, and though she didn’t want to share anything with him, she knew that she was in on it.

“Well, I’m ready to go get a drink,” Vicky said. “We have plenty of time to catch the sunset. What do you think? Maybe Daiquiri Dick’s?”

“As much as I’d love to, I’ve got another appointment,” Gary said. “Michelle, why don’t you go with Vicky? I’ll get a ride with Gustavo.”

“I can take a cab-” Michelle began.

“Oh, honey, that’ll cost, what? A hundred fifty pesos? If you don’t feel like getting a drink, I can drop you off in Old Town. I live down there anyway.”

“You okay, hon? You look… I don’t know, a little shaky.”

Sometimes we just want to keep tabs on somebody… Just in case.

“Just the heat. And… that place.”

Vicky turned up the 4Runner’s air conditioner.

“Yeah. It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? It’s hard to understand why people have to live that way.”

This was the third time she’d encountered Vicky. Twice when Vicky had been in the company of Gary. Once when she’d just happened to be in Michelle’s neighborhood.

“Things have been really tough for the workers lately-nobody’s paying good prices for recyclables with the economy in such bad shape. And they’re closing that dump soon. Moving to a new state-of-the-art facility outside the city. I don’t know what will happen to everyone then. There’s just no work.”

She said she lives down there, Michelle reminded herself. And this is a small town. Wasn’t that more plausible than, say, Vicky as a CIA assassin? In a Hawaiian shirt and fanny pack?

Bad enough she had to accept Gary as some sort of spy.

“So you know Gary pretty well,” Michelle said as they approached Old Town.

“Oh, just the way that you tend to know other expats here,” Vicky said. “He’s really been great, though. Just rolled up his sleeves and got involved with the community, and, you know, he’s pretty new.”

“Oh, really? How long has he been here?”

“Well, let’s see. I think I met him about five months ago. He comes and goes, like a lot of the expats.”

“I see.”

“So…” Vicky hesitated. “How is it the two of you…? I mean, I don’t want to pry.”

Great, Michelle thought. The last thing she wanted was a rumor spread around that she and Gary had hooked up.

What would Daniel think, if he heard it?

That would not be good.

If you’re gonna lie, keep it simple.

“You know that problem I told you I had, with the police? Gary helped me out.”

“Oh, right,” Vicky said with a little gasp. “Gary’s great about things like that, isn’t he? He really knows his way around.”

“He really does.” Michelle forced a smile. “It’s just that… well, the whole thing is pretty embarrassing for me. I wouldn’t want people here to think… you know… that I’m the kind of person who gets into trouble with the police.”

“Oh, sweetie, everybody would understand! Sometimes the legal system here is just awful.” Vicky gave her shoulder a little pat. “But don’t worry, I’ll keep it to myself.”

Daiquiri Dick’s was more upscale than most of the restaurants on the sand south of the river, stuccoed cement painted the color of a ripened peach. They found a table next to the wall that bordered the beach.

“The margaritas are really good here,” Vicky said.

“I think I’ll just have a glass of white wine.”

Vicky raised her hand to flag down the waiter, then studied Michelle, her expression concerned and slightly puzzled.

“Did you hurt your arm?” she asked.

Michelle flinched. She’d been rubbing her wrist, she realized, and it did hurt, and there were bruises coming up where Gary had grabbed her.

“Oh. I… I just tweaked it doing yoga.”

“Maybe you should put some ice on it.”

“Good idea,” she said.

“So did you ever get Danny’s things back to him?” Vicky asked, a little tentatively, after their drinks arrived.

“I did.”

“And he’s doing okay?”

“He’s fine. Just some stitches.”

“I’m really glad to hear that. I like Danny, I really do.”

The unspoken “but” hung in the air.

“I mean, he’s just… exciting!” Vicky nearly giggled. “And so cute. Not the kind of American you usually see living here. Mostly it’s, you know, people like me and Keith-Keith’s my husband. Pretty boring.”

“Come on, you’re not boring,” Michelle said, because that was what was expected.

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Vicky leaned back in her chair, and the look she gave Michelle was unexpectedly shrewd. “You’re a little unusual, too.”

“I’m really not.” Michelle managed a smile. “I’m just a housewife from Los Angeles.”

Stupid, she told herself as soon as she’d said it. Now she sounded like a married woman screwing around on her husband, having a fling on a Mexican beach.

“I mean, I was,” she amended. “Now I’m… at loose ends, I guess.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Vicky said. Sure you do, Michelle thought.

“I’m a widow,” she said. “My husband passed away a few months ago. We were supposed to take this vacation together. I decided to come on my own. To just… I don’t know, figure out my next step. I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone.” She shrugged. “I know that a lot of people would probably think it’s too soon.”

Now I’m making it sound like the thing with Daniel is something real, she thought. Well, probably better to pretend that with a person like Vicky than to pass it off as some meaningless drunken fuck.

“Oh, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

Vicky seemed genuinely embarrassed. She probably was, Michelle thought. Most people weren’t very good actors when it came right down to it. They might put on a show, but it was rarely convincing.

Vicky ducked her head, sipped her margarita, and then looked up, her cheeks pink. “You know, I just want to say… I don’t think it’s up to me or anyone else to judge what’s too soon.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Michelle stared out over the beach. The parasails and banana boats had finished for the day. She wondered how much business they would do now that tourist season was over, in the coming summer’s heat and rain.

“I’m really glad you came out today, Michelle,” Vicky said. “If you’re interested, you’re welcome to visit anytime. I find that volunteering helps take my mind off things,” she added, almost shyly. “And we have services on Sunday if you’re interested in attending, close to the marina.”

“Oh, is your group a church group?”

She must not have hidden her skepticism well enough. Vicky hesitated. “It’s a part of our ministry. But we don’t focus on that. Jesus said you give them something to eat. So that’s what we do.”

“Sarong, señoras? Dresses? ¿Vestidos?” A beach vendor, a stocky Indian woman, with dresses and bolts of batik-dyed fabric draped over her arms, came up to the low, peach-painted wall.

“Ahora no,” Vicky said. “Gracias.”

“Look,” the vendor said, holding up a tiny tie-dyed dress. “For a little girl.”

“No, thank you.”

The vendor kept the same expression-the polite smile, the neutral eyes-and continued down the beach, in search of nonexistent customers.

“It’s sad,” Vicky said, staring after her.

There was a chime from Michelle’s iPhone-a text. She retrieved it from her Fred Segal tote.

chck yr cc accounts tomorrow. ted.

Michelle stared at it.

She felt a number of things at once. Violated that he knew these things about her, that he had access to her private life. Ashamed that she hadn’t objected when he’d made the offer at lunch, that she’d just acquiesced. She could tell herself that she hadn’t taken him seriously then, but that wasn’t really true.

And curious.

What had he paid for?

“I heard they found bodies,” Michelle said. “I mean, up at the dump.”

Vicky frowned. “Bodies? Not that I know of. I guess it’s possible, though.” She rolled her eyes and raised her glass. “Honey, they find all kinds of things up at that dump!”