Spiral (23 page)

This last remark was almost an afterthought of insolence, but it told Haydon that Negrete knew, and it gave him his first glimpse at the way the man's mind worked.

"Do you know if the
tecos
have ever operated in the United States?"

"How would I know something like that?"

The lamps on the desk were at an unfortunate height for Negrete, throwing uncomplimentary shadows on the peculiar proportions of his features. As he drew on his cigarette, his long cheeks sucked in, emphasizing his protruding cheekbones. The mannerism, together with the irregular configuration of shadows, created the effect of rapacity.

"Have you ever heard of Rubio Arizpe?"

"No, senor." The answer was too facile, the tone too flat.

Haydon decided to try a different tack. "How many men do you have working with you? Here in Houston?"

"Six."

"I'll need their names, their addresses, and their visas. If you can't give them to me now, then I'll have someone pick them up in the morning."

Negrete showed neither false nonchalance nor bravado. His face didn't change at all.

"Why would you need these names, Mr. Haydon? Are some of my men suspect?"

Haydon looked at Negrete. He wanted to get beyond the studied facade. "I can appreciate the pressures of your responsibility. It's not an easy task... trying to protect a man like Mr. Gamboa. Perhaps it's not even possible. But my concern is that you keep that responsibility in perspective." He paused for emphasis, then spoke with deliberation. "This is not Lopez Portillo's Mexico. Arturo Durazo does not control Houston. Buffalo Bayou is not the Tula River."

This time Negrete's mask of weariness and mercenary control failed him. His eyes glistened, and the hard gristle of a jaw muscle rippled quickly across his coarse complexion, then relaxed. Haydon actually felt a change, a quickening energy between them. It was a surprising sensation, unlike the simple anger which Haydon had anticipated.

But in a few fleeting seconds Negrete had composed himself, and spoke in the same tone he had so far maintained.

"I am afraid you may have come upon some misleading information, Mr. Haydon. I think, perhaps, you should reconsider your sources."

"My sources are good."

Negrete tilted his head in acquiescence. "I don't know what you may have heard, senor, but I can assure you my only concern here is protecting the life of Mr. Gamboa. I have no desire to make myself unwelcome." He looked at the cigarette in his fingers, studying the rising smoke. Watching him, Haydon was startled to see something new. Negrete's eyes, which Haydon had noticed only for their swollen redness when he first came in, were actually the only features on his strange face that possessed an evenness of symmetry. They were, in fact, handsome, or, rather, beautiful, the cliched almond eyes of beautiful women.

As Haydon stared at this phenomenon, Negrete suddenly looked up from the burning cigarette and met his stare. There was a moment when they simply looked at each other, and then Negrete said, "However, I hope you yourself realize that Mr. Gamboa is not without influence in the United States, as well as in Mexico."

Haydon did not respond immediately. He looked at Negrete steadily, unhurried, letting silence emphasize in advance what he was about to say.

"In this case, Mr. Negrete, I can promise you that will not make the slightest difference. In fact, it's totally irrelevant. I'm here to tell you, you're going to be watched. Your record in Mexico is documented. If I decide your presence here is 'inconsistent with the public welfare,' I'll pull your file. I'll have you deported within twenty-four hours."

Negrete stood abruptly, his long face sunken as he held his hand to his mouth, and sucked on the cigarette. When he took it away he asked, "Do you have any further questions?" Smoke seeped around his lips, obscuring them. His beautiful eyes seemed to swim in oil.

Haydon felt a hot flare in the pit of his stomach. He was suddenly infuriated, not at Negrete's imperious gesture of dismissal, not at his cat-and-mouse evasiveness, nor his insolence. Haydon was enraged by the Mexican's impatience, as if Haydon's investigation did not warrant his full attention, or his genuine respect, as if the killings of the previous twenty-four hours could be disregarded with a haughty gesture of brusk intolerance.

He stood slowly, thinking as he rose that he did not know what he was going to do or say when he finally was standing, his own eyes locked on the lovely shape of Negrete's, the beauty of which seemed a sick thing in such a man. When he was at his full height he stretched out his arm until he brought a pointing finger to within an inch of the bridge of Negrete's nose.

"My partner was killed by these people." He spoke in a carefully measured cadence, but his voice was tight, his throat was dry, seared by anger. "You have an involvement with them . . . which means you have an involvement with the killings . . . which means you have an involvement with me. I own a piece of you, Mr. Negrete, and when the time comes I'm going to come and get it."

He kept his finger in front of Negrete's nose as the Mexican's soft eyes stared past it to meet Haydon's glare. The longer they stood there the angrier Haydon got, but Negrete didn't speak. They were stone men, the only movement around them being the smoke from Negrete's cigarette, which rose in a thin wavering current between them.

Suddenly Haydon turned and stalked out of the bungalow, the smoke trailing behind him into the torpid night. The escort who had brought him stood up from where he had been squatting, talking to another guard. He saw something was wrong at once, glanced back at the door of the bungalow, then hurried to catch up with Haydon, who did not wait but strode ahead alone between the borders of pin-lights and banana trees. He hurried past the cabana and the pool again, the terrace tinted green from the landscaping lights high in the trees, through the dark tunnel of shrubbery to the front drive.

The escort ran ahead and opened the door of the Yanden Plas. Haydon started the engine and flipped on the headlights. He was out of the drive before Gamboa's men had a chance to play their parts.

As he drove away he took several deep breaths and tried to calm himself. Jesus Christ, what did he think he was doing? His first impulse was to castigate himself: it had been a stupid stunt; he hadn't been rational. He knew better. Then in a fleeting moment he saw that none of the old arguments seemed valid. What had he done, after all? He'd lost his temper. Mooney had been
killed
, for God's sake, and he was berating himself for loosing his temper. Which extremity of his reality would be the first to fracture? Which end would snap, dropping him into the endless fall?

Chapter 23

H
E
was still a block from the entrance to his drive when he saw the cars parked along the curb on either side of the gates. There were three of them, and his headlights caught the large, bright call letters of their stations on the sides. They recognized the Vanden Plas, and he saw the doors fling open as cameramen and reporters piled out into the street. He pushed the remote control for the gates, and without slowing any more than necessary to make the turn, swung in between the opening wrought-iron grilles, scattering the newsmen, who shouted questions at him through the closed windows and lighted the car in the bright flare of their strobes. The gates closed behind him without his having to hear a single question. He had resolutely kept his eyes in the path of the headlights, not wanting to see their faces, the ghoulish black holes of their gaping mouths.

The front of the house and the porte cochere were far enough from the gates to make the cameras useless, and by the time Haydon got out of the car, he heard them starting their cars in the street. They knew that had been their only shot. There was no use in hanging around.

The house was dark except for the light in the porte cochere and in the entry hall. He let himself in and turned off the outside light as he locked in the security system for the night. It felt good to be home. As he walked across the entryway, he looked up along the curving stairs for the lamplight in the hall outside their bedroom door. There was none. Nina was either not in bed yet or had uncharacteristically left it off. Gabriela was long since asleep in her wing of the house.

He noticed there was no mail on the small Italian table in the hall as he walked past it, and then he saw the pale change of color on the marble floor, the timid light of a single lamp. She must have heard him, for as he walked into the room her eyes were already focused on the doorway.

She smiled slightly and raised her face to him as he came across the room and bent down to kiss her. She sat in one of the leather wing chairs, her feet pulled up under her and a copy of Marguerite Duras's
The Lover
in her lap.

"I'm sorry there was no way to warn you about them," she said.

"Have they been out there long?"

"All night."

"You should have gone to bed," he said, stepping over to his desk and turning on the lamps with green glass shades.

"I assumed there would be a lot to do," she said. "But I wasn't expecting you to be this late."

Haydon pulled off his jacket, hung it on the back of his desk chair, and loosened his tie as he walked over and sat in one of the other chairs near her.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have called."

"You want something to drink?"

He shook his head and leaned back and looked at her, crossing one long leg over the other. Even before he said anything, he saw that subtle transformation in her face. Every time he saw this, he couldn't decide what had happened. Not a single muscle flinched, nothing moved, but something communicated the essence of what she was thinking.

"There have been some changes," he said, feeling the concern in her eyes which did not leave him as she slowly closed her book.

He told her everything, starting at the beginning as he had the night before, but this time he structured the framework of the investigation for her. He gave her background about the major characters, went into detail—as he had not the previous night—about the killings, told her what he knew about the
tecos,
and about Renata Islas. He spoke unhurriedly, taking time for elaboration, clarification, background. The more he talked, the more he found to tell, confiding hunches and suspicions, wondering'at possibilities, his mind ranging through the obscurities of every fact he knew, every osmotic exchange between himself and what he had seen and heard and felt during the last forty-eight hours. He even told her of the thoughts and emotions that had led to his decision to pursue the investigation independently only hours before.

When he finished, he was staring at the spines of the books across from him. He couldn't think of anything else to say. Not about the case.

Nina didn't speak immediately. She studied him quietly, and then laid her book on the lamp table beside her chair.

"You have no doubts about this?" she asked.

He looked at her. "You know I do."

"But you're going to do it anyway."

"Yes," he said. "I have to."

"You have to?"

He realized immediately how inane that must have sounded. It told her nothing at all about what he was really feeling.

Almost apologetically he said, "He was standing right behind me, Nina, holding his hand over the gate hinges so they wouldn't squeak. He was hungry, for Christ's sake.... We ..." Haydon fought to control his voice. "Within all reason, logically, it should have been me. I was in
front
of him. He may have been shooting at me .. . Valverde. I know he saw me, decided to fire. ... I bent down, but it seemed like I'd been down, I don't know, ten, fifteen seconds. It couldn't haven't been the timing."

Haydon stopped, waited a moment. His heart was hammering, and he tried to take a deep breath without letting Nina see it, an absurd deception. Why was he doing that?

"Even while my ears were still ringing from the gunfire I knew I'd fired, but I didn't remember actually doing it—I was staring right into the darkness and thinking: God—I'm alive! I'm alive! A flood of thoughts, emotions, very clear, very distinct, but disordered. Incredible . . . Unabashed relief, euphoria, at being alive. I don't remember fear so much as horror. Then immediately guilt, enormous guilt. As if I had been responsible for whatever the hell had just happened. For Mooney dying. Him! Yes, Christ, not me. Him!" Haydon clamped his hands into fists. "As if his death instantly became my talisman.
Surely
it couldn't happen to both of us." He paused. "Then, the bald, undeniable truth of it hit me: it meant nothing, the euphoria, the guilt, the sorcery. None of it meant anything at all. It just as easily could have been me. There was no reason why he was dead— already I knew he was dead—and I was alive. I mean, it was ... pure ... random chance."

Haydon was sitting forward in the chair, his forearms resting on his knees as he looked at the long fingers of his hands, palms down, spread open in front of him. He looked at the plain gold wedding band on his left hand. Thirteen years. On his right, the gold signet ring he had purchased during a trip to Italy, alone, when he was eighteen. Its face was still unengraved, blank, a youthful concession to magical thinking that he never had brought himself to resolve. Twenty-two years. He felt Nina's eyes on him, and knowing that he was going to be talking at cross-purposes, he continued anyway.