The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Gary Alexander Charlie and the Pirates from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

Call him Juan Gama. That’s what he goes by. He isn’t Latino, but he’s dark, thanks to Syrian blood on his mother’s side. He can pass, at least with a nosy gringo tourist like this Charlie dude at the next table.

“Campeche has an amazing history,” Charlie Peashooter is saying, guidebook open beside his sweet roll and orange juice. “The only city in the Americas other than Cartagena, Colombia, to be walled to thwart pirates. You surely know that, señor. My apologies if I am boring you.”

Juan smiles blankly and nods, holding to the image that English to him is a foreign language. They are in La Parroquia, an open-air café on Calle 55. Morning eggs and coffee here is a homey routine Juan has fallen into. He knows that routines and patterns can be deadly, but six months in Campeche has slackened him.

Located on the Yucatan Gulf Coast, Campeche City is the size of Tacoma and Shreveport. It is tropical and picturesque, and nobody goes there. Juan Gama guesstimates a maximum of five hundred foreign visitors are in town at any one time, and that includes the Eurogringo variety. If they’ve determined that he fled south of the border, they would be scouring hot spots like Acapulco and Cancun, where one can debauch in style.

Juan Gama just turned twenty-four. Although he is nearly naked in shorts and T-shirt, he still manages to appear rumpled. His rimless glasses are smudged and his wavy black hair has a mind of its own. He is lanky and a bit awkward, and has accumulated fifteen pounds, much of it around the midsection. He hasn’t been so relaxed in years.

“Pirate,” he replies, pretending to struggle with the word.

“I should say so,” Charlie says, consulting his guidebook. “Listen to this. English, Dutch, and French pirates regularly plundered Campeche after its founding in the 1500s. On February 9, 1663, they combined forces and killed every man, woman, and child. After the attack, Spanish colonial authorities decided to wall the city. The project was completed over the following half century and eliminated the pirate menace. Any subsequent foray was driven off.”

Not every woman was killed, not if you believe Teresa, Juan’s lady, who can get cuckoo on the subject. Teresa just knows that a female ancestor of hers survived, a beauty, ravaged by a pirate captain. She’s conflicted because of her pirate blood and what they did to her forebears.

Juan continues nodding, smiling.

Charlie initiated the conversation and introduced himself. He has a decade on Juan Gama. Slim and muscular and tanned, natty in slacks and pullover, his teeth are straight and white. The part in his sandy hair is as precise as a laser beam.

His appearance is agreeable and post preppy, though his nose is too long and his features are too bunched to qualify him as Hollywood handsome. He smiles easily and his blue eyes never quite make contact. He is a baritone with perfect diction who wears heavy cologne.

Charlie has an aura of relentless congeniality. He looks to Juan like a game show host.

“Yes. Very hard times,” Juan says, returning to his eggs.

“Indeed. The definition of piracy is more varied and complex these days. One dictionary defines it as unauthorized use of another’s invention, production, or conception. They’re referring primarily to copyright infringement. Those software companies are having fits, aren’t they? Of course, the scope of piracy is even broader. For instance, the methodical manipulation of games of chance in three states. To the tune of two million dollars.”

Juan Gama drops his fork and looks up.

Charlie Peashooter’s smile is glorious. “Juan, you were thinking they would send a no-neck creature named Joe Knuckles?”

Juan Gama is genuinely speechless.

“Relax. That was the old way, in the old days. Please, finish your meal. Then we’ll talk.”

“I am a consultant,” Charlie explains as they stroll the malecon, the boulevard that skirts the Gulf of Mexico. “Understand this, Juan. I was sent to negotiate, to resolve this difficulty. I am a reasonable person. My employers are reasonable people. That is my context.”

They are walking beneath a fiery cloudless sky. The water is a vivid and murky green, like lime sherbet. “How’d you find me?”

“I’ll continue addressing you as Juan if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

“You trained and operated a brigade of card counters on a scale heretofore unseen. You went on a whirlwind tour and made your money before the casinos realized what had happened. Were they frat rats from your college, old chums?”

“No. Dormies, some still in school,” Juan says.

“Compensation?”

“Fifty percent, less airfare and meals and hotel rooms.”

“Hit and run, you were. A veritable blitzkrieg. You trained and rotated them so fast they were long gone before their photos circulated. Your system was devastatingly simple and effective. Blackjack dealers who thought they’d seen everything never knew what hit them. Hats off to you, sir.”

“Uh, thanks. But, like, how’d you find me?”

“Resources. Everybody passed the hat and brainstormed. Your whereabouts was a challenge, sir.”

“Card counting isn’t a crime, you know. Having an idea what cards are left in the shoe shifts the advantage from the house to the player, that’s all.”

“It’s a question of ethics.”

Juan Gama laughs out loud.

“Oh, I admit it’s hypocritical, but that’s how it is. Nonetheless, my people want their money.”

Juan is on the verge of losing his breakfast. He pauses, takes a deep breath.

Charlie places a hand on his shoulder and smiles genially. “Juan, please do try to relax. It’s going to be all right. Bugsy and Moe and Icepick Willie haven’t inundated that environment for decades.”

Juan inwardly flinches. “You said negotiate?”

“That I did. The folks who run casinos nowadays have corporate bloodlines. They are cut from the entertainment conglomerates and tribal hierarchies. They understand that broken kneecaps don’t enhance the bottom line. They understand compromise, they understand business decisions.”

Juan nods grimly.

“A fifty-fifty split netted you in the neighborhood of one million smackeroos. You obviously live conservatively. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t expect you to have every last penny squirreled away.”

“You’re right.”

“We’ve written off your kiddy cohorts. I’m authorized to leave you ten percent free and clear. You give us ninety percent of the one million and keep the change. Down here, you’re set for life. They look at the swindle as tuition for the education you gave them. Whadduya say, guy?”

“Uh. Yeah. Okay.”

“When?”

Juan gazes out at the water. “Well, like I don’t have it in a suitcase under my bed.”

Charlie chuckles. “Ah. Offshore banks?”

“Grand Cayman,” Juan improvises.

“You were a statistics major before leaving academia without your degree, Juan. A brilliant albeit indifferent student. I’m pleased to be part of bringing peace of mind and stability to your life.”

“I appreciate that, Charlie.”

“When do you think?”

“Tomorrow maybe.”

“Let’s say tomorrow, definitely. Thanks to the miracle of electronics, we can do the transaction at the speed of light. All we require is the will. La Parroquia for breakfast. I’m buying.” Charlie gives him a slip of paper. “This is a wire transfer number. You say it’s done. I make a confirmation call. You live happily ever after.”

“Okay.”

Charlie gestures to the water. “Today’s the ninth of February. Quite a coincidence.”

“Huh?”

“The anniversary of the massacre, the ultimate plundering.” Charlie swings his arm inland, to the land gate, a manmade stone monolith. The attaching walls on this side are long gone. They are standing on land filled in the 1950s. “We’re at sea level. Before the fortifications, they simply moored and marched right in. No natural defenses. Tragic, tragic, tragic.”

Juan thinks of Teresa’s pirates. There must be a moral to Charlie’s story, but he doesn’t ask what it is.

“Translated, Juan Gama is Spanish for John Doe,” Charlie says. “Simplistic, yes, but you do have an engaging, impish quality.”

Juan replies by staring at his feet.

Charlie says, “Alas, we live in a grown-up world, Juan.”

Charlie sits on the edge of his bed. It is early evening, and he is watching the darkening horizon and the sea that is growing livelier by the minute. Charlie is five floors high, perhaps directly above where the pirates tied up. This hotel was the place to stay in Campeche during the go-go oil boom era, the late seventies and early eighties. Now it’s frayed, not entirely clean, and almost empty.

That’s just hunky-dory with Charlie. He doesn’t particularly like people and he enjoys the privacy.

He assembles his Colt .25 automatic, disassembles it, and repeats the process until the finest film of oil coats every moving surface. He wipes the excess and admires the machined creation that fits in the palm of his hand.

Smuggling the weapon into the country was no problema. Charlie’s clients flew him to Monterrey by private jet. From there he went charter to here.

He goes to the window and holds a round up to the fading light. In his home workshop, Charlie hollows his store-bought hollowpoints until the lead walls are nearly translucent.

Nobody can operate at my proximity, he thinks proudly. Nobody. And he’s right. Charlie’s affability permits him point-blank range. Everybody likes Charlie. Not even the most paranoid assignment knows what hits him.

Cold steel against the ear. An instantaneous recognition of betrayal. One low-velocity shot, no louder than a handclap, the auditory canal serving as nature’s silencer. A gurgle, eyeballs rolling up like blinds, then nothingness. No muss, no fuss.

Medical examiners who have removed Charlie’s slugs from brains of assignments he has turned into porridge comment that they resemble spiders. This is only one component in the legend of Charlie Peashooter, who uses a sissy gun and never misses.

Charlie slips the Colt into a pocket holster, mesmerized by what has become a spectacular display of lightning and howling wind and horizontal rain. Palm trees are bent like bows and there are whitecaps on the hotel’s pool. He has never before been to the tropics and is amazed. The weather seems to be changing as fast as it does on the TV news where the talking haircuts speed up the satellite photos.

He worries about this Juan Gama assignment. His clients were so anxious that they dispatched him as soon as they isolated Juan and his breakfast ritual. Charlie hasn’t the foggiest where Juan lives, though they did discover that he resides in the area with a woman named Teresa and her brother Perez.

Juan is a flighty young man who lacks graces. But he seems sensible. He should show tomorrow. After Juan Gama provides the magic number and the transaction is accomplished, Charlie will steer him someplace where he can complete his assignment. It isn’t, after all, all about money. It’s the principle of the thing.

Charlie shuts off the light. Early to bed, early to rise. That’s his motto.

He stares at the flyspecked ceiling, again finding it peculiar that his clients often prioritize retribution above financial recovery. He puzzles over them as he does serial killers. He’s never understood the breed. Why not kill for fun and profit?

He yawns, deciding that it takes all kinds.

Juan Gama stares at a ceiling that is not flyspecked. Teresa is an immaculate housekeeper.

“Your trouble, has it come for you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“How you were when you come home late from breakfast.” Teresa hesitates. “How you are now, how you hold me after we make love tonight. You never hold me afterward.”

Teresa is older than Juan. She is a kind, passionate woman with glossy black hair and trusting eyes. She has ample hips and comes up to his shoulders. She works as a travel agent at the hotels. Juan and she met on a day trip she led to the Maya ruin of Edzna. Juan was the odd man out in a group of French tourists.

Juan took her to dinner afterward. They ate broiled grouper and drank wine. They drank more wine and held hands. Teresa said he looked like he was lost. Not any longer, he said.

Teresa took Juan to her home in the old walled city. He has been there ever since, sharing the house with her worthless brother, Perez, who is Juan’s age. Teresa is lover, mother, and best friend to him, all that and more.

The walled city is in the throes of urban renewal. Lining narrow streets of flat, smooth blocks are row upon row of one- and two-story dwellings with ornate doors, wrought-iron balconies, and pastel stucco. Those that aren’t already spiffed up are getting the treatment, buckets of paint dangling from precarious bamboo scaffolding. The town’s being daubed in every jelly bean color except licorice.

Teresa’s is tangerine. Her front room is a mini museum. Descended from a longtime Campechano family — some great-great-greats of hers helped fight off the pirates, so she claims — she has old-timey portraits of them and bad dudes like Pegleg Pete and Blackbeard. In an armoire and mounted on a wall are a flintlock pistol, a cannonball, a blunderbuss, and a crossbow.

A gust from the storm has the wooden shutters clattering like drumsticks. Juan gets out of bed and secures them.

“I felt you were running from something, but you would never confide in me.”

She is on her side, her back to him.

“I don’t want to burden you,” he says, not completely lying.

“You can, Juan.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Your name. Juan Gama. I know it is not real.”

“Would you like my real—”

“No. I want to know you as I know you.”

Juan Gama-John Doe, he thinks. He must have been out of his mind. Totally clueless. But he has gone through life treating life like a game.

He thinks she is asleep when she asks, “Have you seen Perez today?”

“No,” he lies.

“I did not hear him come in. El Norte, this awful storm, I hope he is not caught in it.”

Northers, the winter storms that occasionally blast through, the locals call them El Norte. “He’ll be okay. He’s a big boy.”

“He is not a big boy, Juan. He is a child.”

Juan pretends that he is dropping off.

“Sometimes, Juan, you remind me of Perez.”

Juan does not drop off. He does not sleep a wink. He knows that as good a dude as Charlie seems to be, there are limits to his good nature.

If only I had money to give him, Juan laments.

Charlie Peashooter sips coffee at La Parroquia well past Juan Gama’s breakfast time. He is disappointed in Juan, although not surprised. He cannot imagine greed clouding one’s survival instincts, but that’s human nature.

The storm has abated slightly. It is no longer curling eyelids inside out and raising tsunamis on mud puddles. It is not ideal flying weather. However, this is a blessing. Charlie overhears a taxi driver at the next table complaining to a waiter that nothing is landing at the airport because of high crosswinds and water on the runway.

The airport, Charlie thinks. On a hunch, he asks a waiter where Juan is and learns that Juan had told him that he was flying out of town this morning for a short trip.

Perez gazes out rain-streaked glass at the airstrip. A plane accelerates along the runway, its tires raising roostertails. It lifts off the ground just fine. His airliner from Mexico City could lift off just fine too to fly him to the capital on its return flight, but it isn’t here. You can take off in this stuff, but you cannot land, so it has been diverted.

Perez doesn’t understand flying, how you can go up but not down in foul weather. He orders another glass of whiskey from the bar. It would be just his luck if El Norte pours and blows for the three solid days. He feels at times like a big, black cloud hovers above him.

The gringo, his sister’s boyfriend, who has never offered him a peso, had given him an airline ticket to cash in and meals and barhopping and a hotel room he had reserved in Mexico City. The gringo said he had business that was cancelled, so why waste the trip?

The gringo has no business that Perez knows of and has not gone anywhere since he moved into Teresa’s bed, but Perez did not argue with him.

Perez drinks and he smiles. He suspects that Teresa is behind this. She wants her brother out of the way for a few days so she can be alone with the gringo and extract a marriage proposal. While Juan isn’t a terrible fellow for an Anglo, Teresa seems to like him more than he likes her.

Whether Juan stays or he goes, Perez has no strong opinion. He is rich like any gringo is rich, but no big money has materialized until this travel gift. The home belongs to Perez also, and Teresa is a hard worker. Due to a combination of bad luck and bad bosses, Perez has had no success holding a job, but thanks to Teresa, there will always be beans and tortillas on the table.

“Are we in for forty days and forty nights of this? If you see a boat floating by loaded with animals, head for the hills.”

Perez laughs at the corny joke by the gringo with the broken Spanish who is standing beside him.

“Of all the rotten luck,” the gringo goes on. “My girlfriend is waiting at the Mexico City airport for me.”

“Man, I know what you mean about bad luck,” Perez says.

“Two weeks in Campeche on a consultancy assignment, she is as ready to see me as I am her. If you catch my drift.”

Perez catches his drift. He is smiling broadly and winking. He is so suave and his voice is so perfect he should be a master of ceremonies on American television.

“You got my sympathy, man. I was going there on holiday. If you got money and I got money, you can find yourself a party anywhere.”

The gringo sighs. “Too bad about our plane. My girl’s sister is visiting us. She’s your age and is hot as a firecracker.”

Perez looks at him.

The gringo makes an hourglass gesture with his hands. Perez resumes observing airplanes spray water as they taxi. His last job was peddling wooden pirate ships on the street to tourists who did not want to buy them. Now that he finally has a wad of pesos in his wallet, the fates are depriving him of his fun.

The gringo snaps his fingers. “I have an idea. They say Mérida is clearing up. There must be outgoing flights. How far is it?”

Mérida, capital of Yucatan State, is an easy three-hour drive. Perez answers him and adds, “On account of the weather, it could take longer, but not much.”

“I have a car, but I don’t know the roads.”

“I know the roads,” Perez says.

“You’d be doing me a favor, taking the sister off my hands. You strike me as being capable of pulling that duty.”

Another grin and wink. He is a nice, friendly man and they have a mutual problem.

“Why not?” Perez says. “What do I have to lose?”

Next day, Sunday, is as bright and hot as Juan Gama’s mood is cool and gloomy. Teresa suggests that they take food and drink to the central plaza. There is a concert and big crowds. They can watch the people and listen to the music.

“You are troubled with the demons in your head and I worry about Perez. It will take our minds off these things,” she says.

Juan shrugs. “He met a woman. That’s all.”

“He packed clothes before he went out yesterday and did not say a word to me.”

“He’s a grown man, Teresa.”

“Only in years.”

Juan lets it ride. Despite his offer to buy their food and drink from vendors, frugal Teresa packs bread, cheese, and sodas. For the eight blocks to the plaza, he carries their picnic sack in one hand and holds hers with his other. Since this is the end of him and her, this moment is incredibly bittersweet.

Juan is certain that Perez is in Mexico City, eating and drinking and living it up. When he stood Charlie up at La Parroquia, there were bound to be repercussions. Juan pictures Charlie beelining it to the airport to cajole Juan Gama’s Mexico City itinerary from airline people.

If Charlie knew where he lived, he’d have come for him at Teresa’s, not the café. Juan estimates that he has a one-day window to escape. Today.

On a bench in the plaza, he looks at the people and the band. He sees and hears nothing. His thoughts wander to roulette, the purest of the casino games.

The wheel itself, rich inlaid wood, spinning on precision bearings, is a work of beauty. At rest or in motion, it is mesmerizing. No participation whatsoever is required of the player. You lay your money on the felt and the dealer rakes it off.

Juan Gama, a statistics major with a mathematical brain; of all people, he should have known better. He could not stop himself any more than a heroin addict could keep a needle out of his arm. Like one of those degenerate gamblers, he lost the card-counting proceeds almost as fast as they came in.

He has enough money stashed for another year. Then what? He can worry about that then. Charlie is today’s headache.

Easygoing Charlie, wouldn’t he sympathize if Juan could convince him of his staggering roulette losses? What is that old saying? You’re only a temporary custodian of the house’s money. Wouldn’t Charlie take back word to his bosses that they’ve had their money all along?

Yeah, right. And pigs can fly.

“Are you not feeling well?” Teresa asks.

“What?”

“You won’t talk to me. You have been in a trance.”

“Sorry.”

She gets up. “Since you are not having any fun, I cannot have any either. Anyway, I am anxious to see if Perez is home.”

Why not? Juan thinks, rising slowly. He puts his arm around her and, setting a slow pace, begins to tell her everything.

Charlie Peashooter is impressed. This little abode is as neat as a pin and the living room is like an antique store with a military theme, including a rogue’s gallery of buccaneer and colonial potentate portraiture. The feminine touch is apparent, with doilies and the scent of waxes. The decorator presumably is the sister of that unfortunate lad with the drinking problem.

In order to gain access to the airport terminal’s interior, Charlie had purchased a ticket to Cancun. When he did not see Juan, it was logical that he utilized someone in this misdirection play. Another element in the logic: Why would Juan blab to that waiter if he were skipping town? It had been easy enough to grease a ticket agent’s palm to learn if a man named Perez had likewise purchased a ticket and to identify him.

Juan Gama’s ill-gotten gains may not be in an offshore account, Charlie theorizes. Perhaps, he thinks, Juan is oldfashioned, preferring to squirrel it in a mattress. His guess is close. In a shoebox in a cubbyhole behind a closet, perhaps unbeknownst to the lady of the house, is a shoebox containing fifteen thousand dollars in greenbacks and pesos.

Juan is teasing him with petty cash. They will have their chitchat concerning that Grand Cayman numbered account.

Charlie peeks between curtains. The stinker, there he is, home early from their picnic. His pleasantly plump lady friend is red eyed, squeezing her hankie for all it’s worth. Charlie steps out of the light.

“How could you do this to Perez?” a sniffling Teresa is saying not for the first time. “To make a hunting decoy of him.”

“Hey, like he’s having a ball,” Juan says. “Charlie’s looking for me, not Perez. Nothing will happen to him.”

“Something already has. I can feel it. How could you lie to me for these months?”

“I wasn’t lying. I, uh, withheld. I was planning to tell you everything soon.”

“Liar. When are you leaving me?”

“I have to go right away. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”

“Liar. What do I smell?”

They are inside. Juan is about to close the door, but he freezes. He smells it too.

“A man’s perfume. You do not wear any.”

“I do,” Charlie says, stepping out of a shadow. “Forgive me. The door was unlocked.”

“Liar,” Teresa says, backing into Juan.

Juan steps protectively in front of her. “Charlie, I need an extra day or two.”

Charlie sighs and exhibits a compassionate frown. “Juan, Juan, Juan. You should have been upfront. That hurts. I’d have worked with you.”

Juan hangs his head.

Teresa demands, “Where is my brother?”

“A fine young man. Dissipating himself in Mexico City, I’ll betcha. Oops, sorry, sis,” Charlie replies with a wink.

“Liar. Liars. Both of you.”

Charlie looks at Juan, his eyes widening playfully. “Well, I know where the term ‘Mexican spitfire’ originates, you lucky dog. Juan, now, this situation of ours?”

“One more day, Charlie. There’s a mix-up on the account numbers—”

“You stop lying to him, maybe he will stop lying to me.”

“Excuse me?” Charlie says to her.

Teresa looks at Charlie and his dead, but cordial, eyes. She has no expectation of prizes behind curtains.

“There is not any money except for what this man hides in my house he thinks I do not know about. Answer me where my brother is and you can take that money and go.”

“No money?” Charlie says to him. “There has to be money.”

“There is. Honestly, Charlie, there is.”

Juan says “honestly” as car dealers in TV commercials do. Charlie realizes now that there is no money. An unsatisfactory development, yes, but the denouement will be the same.

He sidles to Juan, pats his arm, and says, “Money. If you say so. Splendid. Heck, we should go out to a telephone right now and resolve this. Let’s get it out of our hair, okay?”

Juan’s feet won’t move.

Charlie gives him a winning smile and a nudge that is more than a nudge. “C’mon, big guy, one call does it all.”

“No,” Teresa says in a hoarse whisper.

But she is not speaking from where she was, behind Juan’s slumped shoulders. She has shifted to the hallway shadows. Charlie may have to do her also. Three assignments for the price of one. Life is so unfair.

He has already edged Juan outside. Hand firmly clamped to a wrist of his prey, Charlie reenters. He blinks, eyes adjusting to the darkness, and turns toward Teresa, igniting his smile. He glances at the wall with the pirate memorabilia. Something is missing.

Charlie reaches into his pocket when it dawns on him what it is. He reaches too late. The arrow pierces his throat as he draws his pistol.

“We drove your kind away once. We can do it again,” Teresa says.

She is not talking to Charlie Peashooter, who is on the floor and cannot hear her. She is talking to Juan, who stumbles out the door and breaks into a run as she reloads the crossbow.