Part 6 (2/2)
”Such as?”
”He couldn't have stayed in the trailer park after the permit and cards ran out. You have to show your car papers when you check into any trailer park. They put the date and so forth on their records. The police are very fussy about car permits. They check the books. So then their papers were still good on July twenty-three... which means this first date is wrong, when they came in.”
”No, Enelio. It was pretty well checked.”
”Okay. Then sometime before April twenty-four, they went up to the border and got everything new again. New car papers, new tourist cards. I think... maybe seven days from the border down here to Oaxaca. So the date on everything could be April seventeen, eh? Good until October sixteen. You can look in the office at Los Pajaros. They will have the permit number and the place of entry. It is not so necessary to go to the border to get the tourist card new. It is not supposed to be done, but it can be newed... renewed in Mexico City, if there is a little gift to the right clerk. But not for a vehicle. One must go to the border. Where were they? Culiacan? Shortest way is up to Nogales.” He grinned at us. ”And I know why they went there. Pretty stupid thing to do.”
”How could you know?” Meyer asked.
He tapped the side of his head. ”Very smart fellow, this Enelio Fuentes. Sessions died from drugs. Okay. Sonora has a lot of poppies growing. The crude opium-it's called goma-is sold in one ton lots to the little factories where they reduce it to heroin. I think the biggest operations are in Sinaloa. And some very rich men there in fine houses, you believe me. What was stupid was having money sent to Culiac-In. But maybe not. How was it sent?”
”Bank draft.”
”Dumb stupid, man! A few years ago, okay. Now the Mexican Narcotics Bureau is pretty smart. They find out who is making a deal. Then they tip their people on our side of the line. So they get searched and, okay, suppose there's four kilos of heroin. Tell them they are going to be tossed into a Mexican jail for ninety-nine years. Scare them all to h.e.l.l. Then take three kilos, and a big bribe to let them keep one, then tip the customs men on your side of the line. They get... what's the d.a.m.ned word... sawhammered?”
”Whipsawed.”
”So a bank draft is like hanging out a sign. I wonder what the h.e.l.l happened.”
Meyer said, ”I can't see Bix Bowie as a smuggler of narcotics.”
”So? That sister probably couldn't see little brother Carl stone cold dead in the market, man, full of old needle holes.”
I asked him, ”Could anybody go to Culiacan and buy heroin?”
He shrugged. ”For double the going price, and never seeing the face you buy it from. Why not? Double the going price is maybe one tenth the wholesale price in the States. One hondred and thirty thousand dollars, U.S., is... one million, six hondred twenty-five thousand pesos.”
”In a very dirty business,” Meyer said.
Enelio laughed. ”Sure. But don't you know how the whole world thinks about dirty business? Everybody says, 'Oh, I know it is a bad, bad thing. But it is going to happen anyway. I can't stop it all by myself. So as long as somebody is going to do it, it might as well be me.' Meyer, I like you. You could not do bad things. Me, I do terrible things, believe me.”
”Oh, so do I, Enelio. Unspeakable things.”
Enelio made a sad face. ”But for me, instead of involving money, always it involves women. That is my burden.”
He looked at his watch. He said he had to go and change and go out. We thanked him for everything. He said he would phone us tomorrow, and maybe we could find something amusing to do.
The pool was shadowed, and most of the birds had flown. A batch of American youngsters in their late teens came whooping down from the hotel, smack-diving into the pool. Brown little girls, rangy boys, firm young flesh.
”You have to understand that all these kids are in revolt against the establishment,” Meyer said in earnest imitation of Wally McLeen.
”Oh for chrissake, Meyer!”
”I found Wally quite touchingly simplistic. And that is a very funny tourist hat he wears.”
I yawned. ”And they translate ancient tablets inscribed three thousand years before Christ and find out that way back then the young were disobedient, had no respect for the old ways, and everything was going to h.e.l.l in a handbasket.”
”Spoken like a true member of the establishment.”
”Old friend, there are people-young and old-that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from the scripture by an old one. We are, all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a n.o.ble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore h.e.l.l out of me.”
”You're snarling, McGee. So it is either the effects of the alt.i.tude, or postcoital depression. Or nervousness at round two coming up.”
”Or frustration. I want to know where Rocko is. I want to know who was up on that mountain with Bix. I want to find Jerry Nesta. I want to talk to Minda McLeen. I want to talk to Mrs. Vitrier. I can scratch Carl Sessions. Thin blond guitarists shouldn't live in cardboard boxes and use dirty needles. And I want to bounce the rest of Brucey's story out of him.”
”And you should be busy prettying yourself up for Lady Rebecca.”
”I keep thinking of all the other people who would have been so happy to come to Mexico with me. You're getting so nervous about my date, I better make a phone call. Don't move.”
I walked down and put the call through from our cottage.
”Darling McGee person!” she said, breathy and husky. ”G.o.d, I feel so overall delicious! I'm humming and tingling and I hardly touch the floor when I walk. I ache for you so terribly I feel hollow. Hurry, hurry, hurry! Please!”
”Becky I'm afraid there has to be a change of plans.”
”You monster! I can't endure it!”
”A chance has come up to move ahead a little, to get some more questions asked and answered. And I realize it was unfair of me to try to get you to tell me things told you in confidence by a friend. That was the wrong way to go about it. I won't pester you that way any more.”
After a pause she said, ”You are precisely what I need, you know. The young, young men would come to me at a dead run. Maybe that's what cloys. Having such total control over them. One gets so accustomed to getting exactly what one wants, right on schedule. Darling, I bow to your sense of responsibily. I shall wait here very, very patiently, if I must. And when you are finished with your ch.o.r.es, come to me no matter what hour it is.”
”If its possible at all.”
”What are you trying to do to me? Could it be that! was just a bit too mischievous last night? Darling, you were a challenge, you know. What is that silly thing they shout when great trees fall? Timber! Then they stand aside, smiling. Suppose I make a solemn vow not to be aggressive, and even teach you some special ways to absolutely destroy me? Fair is fair. Now will you promise to come here?”
”If I knew exactly what was going to happen, I'd promise. But I don't know how long it will take me to do the things I have to do.”
”Could another woman be involved in all this work, dear?”
”It might turn out that way.”
”If it does, kindly do not bother to come here. Is that quite clear?”
”From the tone of voice, Becky, abundantly.”
”You're trying to spoil things. I'm not accustomed to that.”
”All change is beneficial, honey. Take care.”
I heard her start to say something as I hung up; I felt slightly weak in the knee. Say you are driving through on a green light and out of the corner of your eye you see a crazy running the red, about to hit you broadside. So you step on it hard and your car jumps ahead far enough so there is just a little click as he ticks the rear b.u.mper on his way past. So you drive three blocks and park carefully and get out. And the knees feel strange.
So we drove down into the center of the city. The military band was playing marches on the ornate stand in the center of the plaza, and people were walking slowly around and around the perimeter walkways. The traffic sounds, roar of conversations on the veranda, motor scooters, and vendors hawking everything salable overpowered the band, reducing it to an occasional cymbal-clash, an oompah now and then.
It was so crowded we had to take a table at the far end, near the jewelry-store corner. By the time we'd put a drink order in, and I was about to bounce my Bundy-plan off Meyer's more temperate outlook, the Backspin redhead came out of nowhere and plumped down at Meyer's left and glowered across the square table at me.
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