Spiral (13 page)

Bias looked at the professor, whose cheeks were glowing after his pompous little outburst. Bias could dredge up no sympathy for the professor's dogmas. He felt no real passion for Benigo Gamboa, or for Lopez Portillo, or any of them. The old man had done nothing the men who wanted him dead hadn't done. His crime was not that he had sinned, but that he had sinned so egregiously. It was not that he had stolen, but that he had marauded; not that he had seduced, but that he had raped; not that he had killed, but that he had decimated. Though Bias understood the distinctions, recognized the disparity in degree, he simply wasn't offended by it. Rather, he saw offense in the justice as well as in the crimes. But it didn't matter. Years ago he had chosen his course, and though he no longer believed in it, it was too late to change. Too late now to protest in fastidious indignation.

But the professor's excitement was understandable, for he was riding a wave of enthusiasm. He had sat on the council that had conceived this stratagem, and had been influential in drawing up the list. Though he was a Chicano and not a Mexican national, he was much admired by the radical right in Mexico, and had lent his political expertise to their causes. He fervently believed in the domino theory, and felt that the extreme situation in Nicaragua called for extreme situations farther up the line. Although he wrote papers expanding on these views and published them in academic and private-foundation journals all over the world, he was cautious never to attract personal media attention. He had no desire to be seen or to become a public figure. In his mind the real shapers of history were the unseen ideologists, the men who moved in the strong, unobservable undercurrents of political thought, influencing the course of nations from their small, overcrowded offices, whence they were summoned in secret by the media-vain politicians for consultation and advice.

In the politics of Latin America, the professor could see a more immediate result of this kind of influence than was possible in the United States, where the process was more sclerotic. And in Mexico in particular, he could sense changes in the wind. A skillful hand could make history there by defending democracy and freedom in a clear-cut way. It was certain that Marxism was a living, breathing threat in the Americas. It had to be stopped, then driven out. Extraordinary means were justified.

"Do what you have to do," he said suddenly. "There's more money if you need it. The importance of this is incalculable."

"I don't need any more money," Bias said.

The professor was sweating profusely now. He took off his glasses and wiped the brow of his nose with the tail of his
guayabera.

"I won't be back unless you send for me," he said, returning the boxy frames to his small nose. His magnified eyes looked across the table.

"Fine." Bias nodded. "We're leaving tonight. When it happens, you'll know it."

"Good, but you've got to leave a message at the dead drop—the new one we've agreed on—when you leave for Mexico. I've got to know that."

Bias tipped his head.

"And check the drop twice a day so I can get word to you in an emergency. Otherwise we won't use the drop at all."

They stood.

"Buena fortuna,"
Professor Ferretis said. Rubio led him out of the dingy room, down the stairs, and out onto the porch, where he was escorted through the tangles of the unkempt grounds to the tall gate that opened to the street at the back of the estate.

Bias walked out onto the upstairs veranda and looked toward the sparkling monuments in the city to the west. He smelled the dust from Chicon that hung in the barrio air, and thought again of home. There was very little he could do about the way he felt.

Chapter 13

HAYDON
left Gamboa's and drove to Shepherd, changed his mind about going back to the police station, and turned south. He thought about Gamboa, the siege atmosphere around his place, and the fact that he really hadn't learned much from the old man. It had been a long day, and, as with all new cases, the files on this one consisted mostly of questions and they didn't even have nearly enough of those. But something bothered him. At the back of his mind he had already stored some information that could be helpful, but it was buried beneath the quick-paced events of the last five or six hours. He let his mind roam, hoping that eventually it would close in on something.

While he was waiting at a traffic light he remembered that Nina wasn't home. He looked around to see where he was, and remembered a little steak house not far from the Southwest Freeway. He started looking for it, spotted it, and cut across traffic into the parking lot. The place was gloomy in the black-and-red tradition of tavern design, but he had eaten there before and the steaks were good. He chose a corner table and ordered a thick filet, medium well with baked potato. He passed up the salad bar, and sat at the table, staring at the tablecloth.

Starting at the beginning of the day, he reviewed the events methodically, running the film a second time, trying to see the little things he'd missed before. By the time the waitress brought his food, a moth had gotten under the copper sheathing of the miniature English inn lamp sitting in the center of the table and had begun to incinerate. Haydon blew out the candle, which made his corner even gloomier, but he didn't mind. He could tell the difference between the baked potato and the steak and he could see the cup of coffee.

He ate without enthusiasm, his thoughts returning once again to the day's events as he chewed the steak and gazed at the tablecloth, which had a ragged thread in the weave of its herringbone pattern.

Suddenly he stopped chewing. He remembered what had been buried at the back of his mind, or he thought he remembered. He reached out and touched the ragged thread, and stared at the herringbone pattern. He would have to check it out. Definitely, he would have to check it out.

He got up from his chair and went out to the pay phone in the lobby to call Mooney.

"Steak, shit!" Mooney said. "You know what I'm eating? A submarine sandwich stuffed with mayonnaise and shredded lettuce. Watts went out and got them for us. His idea of a great meal. I don't even believe I'm eatin' this for dinner, for Christ's sake."

"I'll bring you the bacon they wrap around the filet," Haydon said. "I've got some interesting information about Gamboa. Anything there?"

"Naw," Mooney sounded bored. "Everything's outgoing right now."

"Will you be at a stopping place in about forty-five minutes?"

"I'm always at a stopping place."

"I've got an idea I think we ought to check out."

"I'm ready. Maybe we could drop by a quickie seafood place."

Haydon hurriedly finished the filet. It would sit like a stone in his stomach, and if by some odd chance he actually got home by twelve as he had agreed with Nina, he would not be able to sleep for hours. The waitress had disappeared, so Haydon decided to forgo the second cup of coffee. He quickly sipped the last of the original cup, put two dollars on the table—a generous tip, considering—and walked to the register near the front door. The waitress was there, talking with the young man behind the register, who had showy white teeth and heavy black eyebrows that had grown together.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," she said when she saw Haydon, and began fishing in her apron pockets for the check.

"It's all right," he said. "I should have told you I was in a hurry."

She quickly calculated the total with her ballpoint pen, and took the time to turn the ticket over and write: "Have a nice day! Candi," in a rounded script that went all the way across the back.

Outside, Haydon unlocked the car and ran the air conditioner a minute before he pulled onto Kirby. He drove to Shepherd, where he jogged over to Memorial Drive and followed it all the way to the police station.

The homicide division looked as if it were working two full shifts at the same time. Haydon and Mooney were back on the street in fifteen minutes. By the time they got to the edge of Chinatown on Preston, they saw a ghostly jet of vapor pouring out of the air-conditioner vents. There was now no cool air, only a kind of heatless exhalation. It was leaking Freon.

"Well I'll be goddamned," Mooney said, his voice rising. "This is the shits." He angrily slapped off the air conditioner and rolled down his window, as Haydon did the same. Mooney took off his tie, which hadn't been tightened around his neck since five minutes after he had gotten to the office early that morning, and stared through the streaked windshield, sulking. No steak, and now no air conditioning.

"You know," he said, after stewing a few minutes, "there are few enough goddam amenities on this chicken-shit job without having the air conditioner crap out. I mean, an
air
conditioner. In this goddam sump of a city it's an absolute necessity! Like public utilities, for Christ's sake." He reached down between his legs and pushed the seat lever. His side of the seat slammed back as far as it would go. "And I'm surprised they don't have us running around in some kind of little Chink-shit cars, too," he said, apropos of nothing.
"That's
when I'd tell 'em to kiss my ass, and take early retirement."

Haydon had been hearing a lot about early retirement from Mooney lately. Quite a few of the detectives were discouraged by the new, stringent policies imposed on the department, and Mooney was no exception. Haydon agreed with their reasons for discontent and was a little embarrassed that the new austerity measures obviously posed no hardships for him.

But aside from that, Haydon had been concerned for a good while that Mooney didn't seem particularly happy. In a fast-paced city that placed a premium on youth and health-spa physiques, a paunchy, red-nosed cop pushing forty-five was not exactly in the mainstream of the A crowd. Mooney was facing the lonely middle age of a lifelong bachelor, and his social life was quickly loosing altitude. He was watching a lot of television at night, alone.

"See if there's a flashlight in here anywhere," Haydon said. Mooney reached under his seat and felt around. He turned with a groan and looked in the backseat.

"There's a little one back here," he said. "I doubt if it's got batteries. If it does, the bulb'll be broken."

They followed Harrisburg into the East End, past a monstrous coffee packaging and distribution plant that produced odors that always reminded Haydon of the smoldering fires of a jungle village in the Yucatan, past Eastwood Park, a used-furniture store darkened and ripe for burglary, a meat-processing plant, the railroad tracks, a thrift store, a dance hall called Latin World with palm trees along its sidewalk and a painting on its wall of a pair of dancers in thirties-style tuxedo and slinky dress leaning into a sweeping tango.

Turning into the darker streets, they entered Chicon two blocks from the Belgrano estate. The neighborhood cantinas offered them bouncing Mexican music with wheezy accordion rhythms and the simple chords of amateur guitarists. They crept past Los Cuates and La Perla, seeing the men and women lounging in the night shadows outside, cigarettes glowing in parked cars. The sweet smoke of marijuana drifted to them from the hot, murky evening like the heavy perfume of a sad and indifferent woman.

Haydon continued past the cantinas and stopped across the street from the empty barber shop of Ernesto Herrera. From where they were sitting they could see a faint glow of amber light in the second floor of the old house.

"Somebody's there," Haydon said, his voice low.

"You don't want to go up and knock on any doors, do you?" Mooney asked.

Haydon smiled. "No. There's a gate at the back, like a door in the wall. I want to double-check it. That's all." He turned, stretched over the back of the seat, and grabbed the flashlight. He held it under the dash and flipped it on. A yellow beam lit Mooney's shoes in the floor of the car.

"Well, whattaya know," Mooney said sourly. "Not exactly high-performance, though."

"It's good enough," Haydon said. "This will take only a minute."

He put the car in gear and eased away from the curb, around the corner and down the street on the east side of the house. The top of the high wall was darkened with cloudy branches of trees growing on the other side. Haydon went to the end of the block and crossed the intersection into the next block. He cut the lights and parked in front of a little shotgun house with its windows thrown open. There were no lights on inside, but they heard a radio.

"Okay," Haydon said. "Let's walk back and cross the street to the rear wall. The gate's right in the middle. All I want to do is check the ground just inside."

They locked the car and took the hand radio with them, the volume turned down. Haydon carried the flashlight and Mooney followed with the radio. They rounded the corner on the opposite side of the street, staying in the shadows of the banana trees growing next to the fences inside the yards. When they were opposite the gate they paused, then crossed.

The streetlight that should have been at the corner of the block was out, so they were in a prolonged half-light when they stepped up on the sidewalk next to the wall. Mooney turned his attention to the street as Haydon cupped his hands over the lens of the battered flashlight and guided a dull beam along the edge of the wrought-iron gate. When he found the latch where the lock was supposed to be, he was surprised.

He straightened up and put his mouth close to Mooney's ear. "It's not locked," he said. "I'm going to ease it open."

Mooney turned to the gate and put his hands on the hinges to help deaden the squeak they anticipated. Haydon inched it open. It squeaked sharply once, and Haydon crouched to the ground, directing the flashlight beam on the few feet of open ground between the gate and the dense stand of bamboo. He saw the powdery dust he had remembered, and then he saw the other thing, the narrow herringbone pattern of tread marks, clear and precise in the fine dust. Instinctively, he followed them with the beam to the bamboo. The rear end of a motorcycle glimmered through the stalks.