Getaway

[CHAPTER TWENTY]

She made it to the bathroom in her room at Hacienda Carmen before she threw up. She crouched over the toilet seat, puking up the red snapper she’d had for dinner and the champagne and tequila she’d drunk with Emma until bile burned her throat, and when she was finally done, she lay on the bathroom floor curled on her side, shivering, the glazed tiles cool against her cheek.

Eventually she sat up, then stood, grasping the edge of the sink for support.

She rinsed out her mouth with water from the sink, wet down a washcloth with cold water and washed her face, cleaned up the splatters of vomit on the toilet seat and the floor where she’d missed the bowl. Brushed her teeth.

Then she changed out of her clothes, tossing them on the bathroom floor. Stood there naked for a moment, still shivering in the damp heat.

What clothes to put on?

What should she do now?

Four in the morning, she told herself, it’s four in the morning.

She put on an oversized T-shirt and went and sat on the edge of her bed.

He hadn’t killed her. He wanted her to see… he wanted her to tell…

To tell someone.

Tell your friends.

She wanted to cry, but she was too empty for that. Too exhausted. Instead she stood and got a bottle of water out of her refrigerator, took a few sips of it, then sank back onto the bed.

Daniel. It had to be Daniel. Who of her “friends” here did Emma even know about, except for him?

You can’t be sure, she told herself. You don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain.

But all this had started with Daniel, hadn’t it? Emma had seen the two of them together. It was the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation was usually true. What was that called again? Someone’s razor, something like that.

It couldn’t be Gary. Emma couldn’t know about Gary. Could she?

Whoever Gary worked for, she knew that he wasn’t her friend.

She rested her forehead in her palms for a moment.

Were there buses running this time of night? Buses to anywhere that wasn’t here?

You have to call him, she thought. That wasn’t a request from Oscar. It was a command. If she didn’t…

She got her iPhone out of the little black purse she’d carried with her tonight. Tapped on her contacts and dragged her finger to Daniel.

“Howdy,” his voice said. “Leave a message.”

Fuck.

Well, what did she expect? It was four in the morning.

“It’s Michelle,” she said. “Sorry to call so late. But some things have happened…”

Don’t lose it, she told herself. You can’t.

“Some things have happened. And I have to talk to you. It’s…”

What was she supposed to say?

“Please call me. It’s really important.”

She lay there on the bed staring at the iPhone, at all her apps, at the lie of connection, its blank promises.

Finally she got up and took one of Tom’s Ambiens and a couple of Advils. Drank the rest of her bottle of water. Stretched out on the bed staring at the fan on the ceiling, at its slowly rotating blades.

The phone. She lunged for it. “Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Danny?”

“Yeah.”

Eight A.M. She’d dozed a little. She was wide awake now, her heart thudding hard.

“I…” How could she even begin to explain? “Are you in town?”

“No.” He sounded a little irritated. “What’s up?”

“Something happened last night… with Emma…”

“Emma?” Right away his tone changed. To a sort of wary concern. “Is she… is she okay or…?”

“Yeah. I think so. But… look, I need to see you. I can’t… It’s too hard to explain on the phone.”

And what if someone were listening?

She could hear his harsh sigh on the other end. “I’ve got a lot going on. But I can meet you tomorrow morning. Is that going to work?”

It would have to.

Maybe it was time to go to the consulate. She tried to imagine it, what she would say to them, how they would react.

They’ll think I’m crazy, she decided. Or guilty of something. But as long as they’d help her…

Would they?

Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Michelle. I really wouldn’t.

She showered, dressed, and went downstairs for coffee.

Two men waited at the reception counter. At first she didn’t realize they were waiting for her; the older of the two leaned against the counter chatting up Paloma, the woman with the rose tattoo who worked the front desk. The other hung back, sipping a cup of coffee, smiling and then laughing at something one of them had said.

Michelle approached the counter, where the coffee pot sat surrounded by an assortment of mismatched cups.

The younger of the two men straightened up. “Ms. Mason?”

She recognized him then-the policeman who’d come to her hotel the night of the assault, the one who’d spoken better English. As before, he wore a white polo shirt and khakis; his badge hung around his neck on a lanyard.

“Inspector Morales with the judicial police.”

Her heart started to pound, so hard that for a moment she felt dizzy, cold sweat prickling on her back.

Did they know? That she’d been there, that she’d seen…

They couldn’t, she told herself. Calm down.

Unless someone told them.

“I remember you,” she said. “You came to the hotel.”

He smiled, showing even, white teeth. “Right.” He gestured at his companion. “This is Inspector Dos Santos. Can we speak to you for a few minutes?”

“Of course,” Michelle said.

He gestured toward an empty table behind the fountain, by the wrought-iron fence. Michelle nodded and started to follow him, then stopped. “I’d better have a cup of coffee,” she said, smiling at him.

“Sure,” he said, lifting his mug, and he and Dos Santos went to sit down at the table.

She watched his retreating back. She could see the edge of a tattoo where his neck met his shoulder. A spiderweb, it looked like.

She filled her mug, her hands shaking, topped the coffee off with milk, thinking. What could she say? What would they think?

Never offer information. She remembered reading that somewhere, that you should never give the police information if they suspected you of something, not without a lawyer. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble that way.

But this was Mexico. She wasn’t innocent until proven guilty. It was the other way around.

A spiderweb. Was that a gang tattoo?

Don’t say anything unless you have to, she told herself. Find out what they want first.

She followed the two men over to the table. The yellow dog that hung out in the courtyard trotted over and flopped beneath its shade.

“Is this about what happened at the hotel?” she asked.

Morales shook his head. “No. Unfortunately, we haven’t caught those guys. They probably left town, to be honest.”

“Oh. Then why…?”

“Ned Gardner.”

“Ned?”

For a moment she felt absurdly relieved. She’d only seen Ned’s body in photographs. She hadn’t been there. They couldn’t possibly think she’d had anything to do with what happened to him.

“The American who ran the restaurant. You knew him?”

“I’d met him.” She took a moment to sip her coffee, to think about what she should say. “I heard about what happened. It’s really awful.”

“Yeah. So we want to be very thorough in our investigation. And we understand you talked to him the night he died. At El Tiburón. Is that correct?”

“I talked to him for a couple of minutes.”

“Can you tell us about your conversation?”

“Well, there wasn’t all that much to it.”

Dos Santos leaned back in his chair, smiling, saying nothing. Maybe he didn’t speak much English.

She thought about what she should say, if she should mention Ned’s “business” with Daniel, then realized she didn’t have much choice.

Charlie had heard the whole thing.

“He was trying to drum up business for his restaurant,” Michelle said. “You know, offering two-for-one specials, that kind of thing. I got the impression the place wasn’t doing that well.”

“Was there anything else?”

“He was mostly talking to my friend, to Danny.”

“Oh,” Morales said. “The man from the hotel. Okay.”

The way he said it, so carefully neutral-he found that interesting.

Or he knew something already.

“What about?”

“Trying to get some advice, I think.” She gave a little shrug. “I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”

“Do you know where I can reach him?”

“I think he’s out of town.”

“A phone number?”

She hesitated. “Sure.”

Daniel wasn’t going to like that. But lying didn’t seem like an option.

Underneath the table the yellow dog’s tail beat against the ground, in slow steady time.

She gave Morales the phone number. He made a note in a little pad, the first note he’d taken.

Were they recording the conversation? she wondered.

“I didn’t think you would still be in Vallarta,” he said. “I guess I thought you were only here for a week or so. On vacation.”

“Well, that was my original plan.” She shrugged. “I like it here.”

“In spite of your troubles.”

“Yes. In spite of my troubles. But I’m probably going home next week.”

“I see.” He reached into his pants pocket and extracted a small plastic card case. “If you think of anything else, you can reach me at these numbers. And I still have yours.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking his card. Dos Santos stood as well, still smiling, still saying nothing.

“Did you spend time in the States?” she said. Because it suddenly occurred to her, what was familiar about Morales. It was his accent, the way he carried himself.

“Yeah, I did. In L.A., in Van Nuys.” He grinned. “You know Van Nuys?”

“Of course. I live in L.A.”

“No kidding! Yeah, I was there from when I was a little kid till I was in high school. You can still tell, huh?”

She nodded. “You sound American.”

He shrugged. “I used to think I was.”

By late afternoon it had made the online papers.

¡MASACRE EN VALLARTA! the headline said in huge type. “Calcinaron a una persona y decapitaron a dos más,” read the subhead halfway down, just above the photos.

There were the bodies, posed against the concrete wall, the two headless and bloody, the third burned clear to the bone.

“Beltrán Leyva. It’s got to be.”

“Maybe it’s Sinaloa, Chapo’s boys setting an example.”

“Dumped at the Aguilars’ building? No fucking way. That’s a message to Sinaloa-and to this town.”

Michelle clutched her Perrier, drank, and nodded. Like she had a clue what they were talking about.

She’d gone to El Tiburón early in the evening, before sunset. It wasn’t Friday, but she’d hoped there would be people here she knew, engaging in the town sport of gossip.

She hadn’t been disappointed. Charlie sat at a table by the railing overlooking the sand. With him was the Asian-American man she’d seen here the first time she’d come, who’d gone on about how crime was bad for business. Broad-faced, red-cheeked, and sweating, he tilted back in his chair and drained his beer, rested his hands on his thick thighs. “Fucking craptastic,” he said.

His name was Nate-“Except around here they call me ‘El Chino.’ Nice, huh?”-and he was a structural engineer and contractor. “The Aguilars hired me to fix their sinkhole of a condo project,” he told Michelle. “First they tried building on unstable ground. Then they didn’t grease the right palms when the new mayor came in. Now they’ve got fucking narcos doing some voodoo Santería shit and dumping bodies on the property.”

“Santa Muerte,” Michelle said.

“Huh?”

“That’s what it looked like. The skull. Santa Muerte. The patron saint of the poor. And criminals.”

“Whatever. All I know is the job’s a crime scene now, on top of everything else.”

“Santa Muerte’s always been more of a Gulf cartel icon than a Sinaloa one,” Charlie said thoughtfully. “But supposedly Sinaloa and Gulf are allied these days. I’m not sure what to make of this.”

Oscar had said he was from out of town. Like Santa Muerte. Did that mean he was from Gulf?

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Michelle mumbled.

“Just tell me it’s not the fucking Zetas,” Nate said, pushing his lank hair out of his face. “Because that would just be the shit icing on my crap cupcake.”

“Are you all right?”

“What?”

Charlie was looking at her, his blue eyes bright even after all the beers and tequila.

“You seem kind of shook up.”

She’d been tearing off strips of napkin and twisting them into tight little spirals. Maybe that’s how he could tell she was upset.

“Nothing… just… I went out with this woman named Emma last night. Do you know her?”

“Emma? Emma Dellinger?” Charlie leaned back in his chair and snorted. “Yeah, I’ve met her.”

“Do you know anything about her father?”

“Not really. Just that he’s loaded and she’s daddy’s little girl. I hear the family compound up in San Pancho is something to see. Why do you ask?”

Michelle forced a smile. “It was just a strange evening.”

“I can imagine. She’s not the most stable. Unlike me.” He grinned and lifted his hand to call the waiter. “Join me in a Cazadores?”

They sat and sipped their drinks and watched the inevitable sunset. Michelle had a Bohemia. Cazadores was a tequila, and the thought of drinking tequila made her feel sick.

“This thing everybody’s talking about,” she finally said. “The bodies, the ones they found last night… I thought you said… that it was safe here.”

“Well, if you’re not involved in the drug trade, I stand by what I said.” He sounded annoyed. “I swear, from some of the shit you read, you’d think there were corpses on every street corner in Mexico.”

She thought about Gary’s claim, that they’d found bodies at the dump, which Vicky had known nothing about.

“But they found bodies here,” she said. “At that condo complex. What did Nate mean when he said it was a message?”

Charlie took a long moment, seeming to consider.

“Traditionally this has been Sinaloa territory. The cartel. You’ve heard of it?”

She nodded.

“The most influential cartel in Mexico these days. People like the Aguilars, the local power brokers, many of them have business tied up with Sinaloa. It’s like that in a lot of Mexico. The cartels have to put all that drug money someplace. Around here they invest in real estate, hotels and condos. Clubs. Helps them do their money laundering. That’s how it’s been for years. Overall, pretty quiet and stable. A vacation town. This isn’t where they do their real business.”

He lit a cigarette. The first since she’d arrived. “I’m cutting back, I swear,” he said, taking a long drag. “Anyway, things are changing. For one, the drug market in Vallarta is lucrative enough that it’s worth fighting for, what with all the gringos in town. So there’ve been some incidents. But nothing like what you get up along the border. They’re playing for the big money up there-for the plazas, the smuggling routes into the States.”

“Serapes?” A stocky vendor approached them, arms draped with blankets woven in bands of bright colors.

“No, gracias,” Michelle told him. “So what’s changed?” she asked Charlie.

“Calderón-he’s the current president-he’s gone to war against the cartels. Or so he says. Using Mexican military units to do the fighting, because the local and state cops are too corrupt. The last few years they’ve mostly gone after Gulf-Sinaloa’s main rival. To hear some tell it, the government’s been playing favorites, with the military taking out Sinaloa’s enemies for them.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

Charlie laughed. “Forbes magazine has the head of the Sinaloa cartel as one of the richest men in the world. Do you think that happens without friends in very high places? I don’t.”

He stubbed out his cigarette before it was half smoked. “It’s the butt end that kills you,” he said. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“I think it just kills you faster.”

“Well, in that case…” He lit a fresh cigarette. Coughed a bit. “Every time somebody high up in one of the cartels gets taken out, it puts things in a state of flux,” he said. “Chaos, even. Alliances keep shifting. The last year or so, Sinaloa’s been knocking heads with their old allies Beltrán Leyva. And you ever heard of the Zetas?”

She tried to remember from her reading at the Internet café. There were so many names that she hadn’t come close to understanding who was who, whose side they were on. The Zetas… it was something about an army.

“They’re an armed paramilitary, started out as the Gulf cartel’s enforcers,” Charlie said. “Became the tail that wagged the dog and turned on their former masters. They’re mercenaries-they’ll fight Sinaloa, Gulf, the police, anybody. And they think like a military unit. Complete with military-grade weapons, which, by the way, they get smuggled in from the U.S. They’re so well organized that the big cartels-Sinaloa, Gulf and La Familia-have formed an alliance to wipe them out. Now, supposedly the Zetas are working for Beltrán Leyva, and that’s what’s getting everyone around here so stirred up.”

“Because… they’re coming here? To fight for the drug trade?”

Charlie nodded. “Rumor has it.”

He leaned back in his chair, seeming to watch the sunset. “That’s one story. I got another one for you, if you’re up for it.”

She wasn’t sure that she was. “Why not?” she said anyway.

“The Zetas’ founders were Mexican military officers trained at the School of the Americas, did you know that? Them and half the dictators and torturers in South America over the last couple of decades.” He sipped his tequila. “You can look it up.”

“School of the Americas?”

“The army school at Fort Benning. Which is a CIA front, of course.”

“Of course.”

Calm down, she told herself. This is Charlie talking over tequila. Next thing you know, he’ll be telling me that 9/11 was an inside job.

“So what exactly are you saying?” she asked. “The CIA hired the Zetas to… to take out Sinaloa?”

She knew that she’d sounded sarcastic. Disbelieving.

The last thing she wanted was for all this to be true.

“Not necessarily,” Charlie said, waving his arm, cigarette making an orange trail in the dark. “Sometimes you create something that you can’t control. Blowback. Like Osama. The mujahideen. Religious fanatics that the U.S. government armed to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.” He snorted. “That worked out well.”

He finished off his shot, then raised his hand to call the waiter for another. “But who knows? Look at it this way. A war breaks out between two cartel factions. People get slaughtered. It’s out of control. And who do you think comes in next, to restore the peace?”

“The Mexican military?” she guessed.

“Got it in one. And then ask yourself, who ends up in charge?”

She tried to think it through, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t slept. Her head hurt. She closed her eyes and saw Oscar lifting his shot of tequila, saw the statue of Santa Muerte lit by flickering candles.

“I don’t know, Charlie. I’m pretty confused.”

“If you’re an optimist, the president.”

The president who’d had officials corrupted by Sinaloa. Who’d been accused of favoring them. “And if I’m not?”

“The military itself. Which has been infiltrated by the cartels, too.” Charlie shrugged. “Everything has.”

She walked back toward Hacienda Carmen along the packed sand by the water’s edge. The ocean scent, the kelp and the brine, soothed her a little, though not nearly enough. Nothing really could.

She stepped off the sand onto the cobblestones and headed up the hill to Hacienda Carmen.

A block up from the wrought-iron gate was a late-model white SUV; she could see it glowing under the street lamp.

She froze in place, heart thudding. Stupid, she thought. Many people drove SUVs. Not all of them were interested in her.

She thought some more, about articles she’d read. About people getting kidnapped in Mexico in broad daylight. And it wasn’t even daylight now.

Walk slowly, she told herself, Watch closely. If anything looks off, run like hell.

The SUV was a new Navigator with gold trim, its engine idling, white exhaust wafting from the tailpipe.

She walked up to the gate of Hacienda Carmen, opened it, and went inside.

Just after 9:00 P.M. She’d gone beyond exhaustion to that point where she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep; she was too wired. Now and again her mind would make pictures, like snapshots, of what she’d seen the night before. She tried to push them away, but it didn’t work.

As she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, she heard three short knocks on the door.

Don’t answer it. Just don’t. Hide in the bathroom. Lock the door.

Okay, she told herself. That’s not a rational response. Probably.

It was probably just Paloma, from the front desk.

She went to the door and opened it as far as the door guard would allow. A woman stood there, middle-aged, dark hair and dark eyes.

“Michelle,” the woman said. “Is this Michelle? Danny’s friend?”

“Who is this?”

“María. María Aguilar.” A pause. “You were a guest at my party.”

She’d come alone, as far as Michelle could see; there was no one on the little balcony or on the stairs behind her.

“May I come in? I won’t take up too much of your time.”

Michelle hesitated.

“It’s important,” she said. “And I would be very grateful.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you.” María sat in one of the room’s two chairs, twisting around the chunky ring that she wore on her left hand. Her eyes were red, the lids puffy.

Michelle had met María for all of five minutes. Maybe ten. And now the woman was sitting in her hotel room.

Given the last couple of days, this could not be good.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Michelle asked. She still had the bottle of white in the mini-fridge.

María nodded, twisting the ring on her finger. She wore a black lace shawl over a gray silk blouse this evening, a small gold cross hung on a gold chain around her neck.

“Sorry, I don’t have proper glasses,” Michelle said, handing her a tumbler. She poured her own into a coffee cup and sat down in the other chair.

“Do you know how to reach Danny?” María asked.

“I…” She wasn’t sure how to answer. Should she offer Daniel’s cell number? Wouldn’t María have that already?

“I have his number, of course,” María said with a wave of her hand, as if she’d anticipated the question. “But he does not pick up. And it’s important that I speak to him.”

“Well, if you can’t get a hold of him, I don’t know that I’ll be able to,” Michelle said. “He speaks highly of you. I think he’s just very busy.”

Now María gave her a look, a half-raised eyebrow, head tilted back, the way she’d looked her over at the party. “Really? I had the impression that the two of you are close. That you are… important to him.”

“I’m not sure why you think that.” Which was the truth.

“He brought you to my party,” María said simply. “He introduced you to everyone. He wanted us to know about you. And you are still here, in Vallarta.”

She’d wondered why Daniel had brought her to that party. Now she thought she knew.

She’d been chum, tossed out to attract the sharks.

She felt a surge of rage. She took a sip of wine and swallowed it.

“I should be seeing him soon. I could give him a message for you. If you can’t reach him before then.”

María closed her eyes and rocked back and forth in the chair.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly still. “Yes. Tell him we are loyal. No matter what has been said. Tell him that. Whoever is responsible, we deserve protection.”

She shook her head and gulped some wine. “What’s important is stability. Chaos will only benefit the most wicked.”

“Right,” Michelle said. “I’ll tell him.”

María stood up slowly, her hands shaking. She put the tumbler down on the credenza by the door.

“My husband did not deserve this,” she said. “Tell him that.”