Day of the Dead (14 page)

‘Oh?'

‘Yeah. Something's come up. Work.'

‘Oh.' She hesitated. ‘That's … that's too bad.'

‘Yeah. It is.'

He fell silent.

They'd almost reached Hacienda Carmen when he said, ‘I'm sorry how things worked out tonight.'

‘Me, too,' she said. And she meant it. She was sorry that the party had raised more questions about him than it answered. Sorry that she couldn't trust him. Sorry that for whatever reason she had the distinct impression she was getting dumped.

What the fuck was she going to say to Gary?

‘Do you want to have drinks Friday night?' he asked abruptly. ‘Maybe meet at El Tiburón?'

It was stupid, the relief that washed over her like cool water.

‘I'd like that,' she said.

She'd turned off her phone.

More than anything else, she'd needed to sleep. That was the best thing about having her night with Daniel end early – she could just brush her teeth, wash her face, change into her nightclothes, and go to sleep.

She didn't need Gary waking her up at the crack of dawn playing one of his games, and the iPhone needed to be recharged anyway. She wasn't getting the battery life out of it that she should.

She still woke up earlier than she would have liked. It was the donkeys again, and an old woman, one of the hotel guests, yelling out to someone that she'd take her coffee in the patio, should she bring up a Danish?

Michelle sighed and lay in bed a while longer. Eventually she would have to get up. Do something.

Turn on her phone. Call Gary.

She didn't know what she was going to say to him.

Maybe things weren't the way they seemed to be at the party. Maybe Daniel's business was completely legitimate.

It sure didn't look like it.

Even so, she wondered if it still might not have been better to take the risk, to tell him what was going on.

I need more time with him, she thought. More time to decide.

She wasn't seeing Daniel until tomorrow night. What was she supposed to do in the meantime? Play tourist? Or, more accurately, play ‘woman who was trying to figure out her next step in life,' since that seemed to be the role she'd adopted now.

‘Oh, fuck,' she muttered. She could feel the pull of despair, like a physical weight dragging her down, and she just wanted to surrender to it.

Not an option, she told herself.

Maybe go to the beach. Call Gary from there. The beach felt more private than Hacienda Carmen.

She did some yoga. Took a shower. Put on a pair of shorts and a blouse over her bathing suit and went downstairs. Paused at the gate, looking up and down the street, in case the policeman was waiting for her there.

No police car in sight.

She went to a restaurant on the beach, one that was unattached to a hotel. The Beach Club, it was called. You could have a drink and a snack and sit there all day if you wanted.

She had her choice of the beige beach chairs. She picked a lounger under an umbrella that sat at the edge of the rise of soft sand, so she could look at the ocean unimpeded.

She ordered a coffee, some yogurt and fruit, and a bottle of water, then got out her book and pretended to read. She'd swapped her bread-baking book at the front desk of Hacienda Carmen for this one, a British mystery set in Cornwall. Better that than the romance novel featuring vampires.

She couldn't read it. There was no point even pretending to try.

You have to call him, she told herself.

Finally she powered up her phone.

Three messages from ‘Ted Banks,' her fake attorney. One from her actual attorney. A couple from friends. And a string of messages from her sister.

Call Gary, she told herself. Get it over with.

Instead she watched the waves and sipped her coffee.

Five minutes later her phone rang.

Ted Banks. Of course.

‘Hey there, Michelle! I was getting a little worried.'

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I forgot to charge my phone.'

‘Look, it's real important that you stay in close contact. Guys like Danny, I told you, you don't want to take any chances.'

‘I thought you told me I didn't have anything to worry about. That it was safe.'

‘That's right. If you do exactly what I tell you to do.' A pause. ‘Have you been doing what I told you to do, Michelle?'

‘I …' She closed her eyes. ‘I'm trying. I'm spending time with him. Isn't that what you want?'

‘So tell me about it.'

‘We went to a cocktail party downtown. I met a bunch of people.'

‘Did you get pictures?'

‘No, it wasn't—'

‘You have some problem with the camera?'

She swallowed. ‘No, I just didn't … I didn't have a chance to use it.'

She heard him sigh. Once. Then again.

‘I think we need to have a talk.'

A talk. What did that mean? He'd just hung up after he said it. Hadn't set a time or a place to meet.

She stayed at the beach a while longer. The beach felt safe. Away from Hacienda Carmen, where Gary had installed her, where there might be people watching her. Away from the streets, where the police car was.

‘Señorita? Jewelry?'

A vendor had approached her chair – a young man a with a wooden display case.

‘No,' she said, ‘no, thank you.'

‘You sure? I have silver. Turquoise. Good price.'

‘Sorry. I'm not interested.'

He squatted down next to her. He wore an oversize white T-shirt and a Dodgers cap and a thick gold chain around his neck. ‘Something else maybe?' He grinned, keeping his voice low. ‘Something for maybe to party?'

Drugs. He wanted to sell her drugs.

‘I'm really not interested.'

‘You sure?'

‘I'm sure.' She fought to keep her voice steady. ‘Why do you think I'd be interested in something like that?'

He lifted up his hands. ‘Hey, you just look like you like to have fun, that's all.' He rose to leave. ‘You change your mind, I am on this beach all the time.'

After that the beach didn't feel so safe. She settled the bill, gathered up her things, put on her blouse and shorts, and headed up the beach, to where the street, Púlpito, ran into the sand.

Waiting there at the curb, next to the entrance of El Dorado restaurant, was a white minivan. Gustavo, Gary's driver, leaned against it reading a paper.

‘Hello, señora,' he said with a friendly grin. ‘I'm here to take you to Gary.'

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, adhoc 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 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.