Spiral (24 page)

"I read an article," he said. "It must have been a year ago, or more, about a group of physicists studying the mechanics of turbulence and disorder. Chaos." Still looking at his hands, he moved his right one as if placing something on a surface. "If you put a cigarette in an ashtray in a closed room, the smoke will rise in a straight unwavering column. Up to a point. Who knows what point, but suddenly the column of smoke will break up into swirls and eddies, for no 'reason' at all. No principle of physics explains this phenomenon. It simply happens. It's the same with storm clouds, turbulent winds impossible to predict, incapable of being understood."

The long face of Lucas Negrete, his solemn, almond eyes studying the smoke from his own cigarette, sprang into Haydon's mind. He was startled, momentarily caught off balance. Then he pushed the image aside and talked past it.

"These physicists," he said, "have a theory that chaos is not totally random, that it, too, operates within a system of laws, though they are as yet unrecognized, undefined. For instance, they can't tell you
why
the smooth column of smoke suddenly begins boiling and churning and falling apart, but they
can
tell you that it won't suddenly shoot out in a straight line to the side and travel horizontally. It will never do that. The reason it won't is that it is constrained, limited, by a certain physical law, a constraining element. They call that element the 'strange attractor,' and it represents the boundary of the randomness of chaos."

He looked at her, but she said nothing. He didn't really expect her to. He took his opened hands and rubbed them over his face. When he continued, he spoke as much to himself as to her, as if he were audibly thinking through the problem.

"Reason has such an enormous density for us," he said, "that we can't imagine living without the unfaltering pull of its gravity. Traditionally, disorder has been the outer limit—where chaos begins, reason stops. In a very real sense these men are trying to exorcise the idea of the irrational. It's a way of conquering the fear that accompanies the inexplicable." He hesitated. "I'm not sure I believe there's an answer to every question, a 'reason' at the core of every act, or thought. But I can understand why they want to believe there is.

You've got to seek the answers, or you find yourself at the mercy of the questions."

Nina stared at him. He saw her nostrils working, a potent signal that she was having difficulty controlling her temper.

"I don't understand that," she said.

"I just want to get to the bottom of it."

"Don't tell me you really think the odds are in your favor."

"No. But then, this isn't something where the odds enter into the decision."

"Not for you maybe."

The reprimand stung. He knew she was right, and he knew that wouldn't be the end of it.

"You know how I feel about your work," she said. "I'd like to see you get out of it, but not like this. Not discharged at the end of this investigation because you were a rogue cop."

"It's not going to come to that," he said. "I've lived too many years with that incident in the cemetery to repeat it."

"Have you, Stuart?" Nina shot back. "Did it really change you that much? Do you really think you can let the system handle the justice—this time?"

Haydon felt the full force of her words. Nina had never been one to dance around the hard questions, but neither was she given to vindictiveness. She had been hurt, and she was hurting in return. It wasn't typical of her, and he hated to see it. He saw how much pain he had caused her and it shamed him; and, paradoxically, it showed him how much she wanted to protect him.

"I'm not going to do something like that again," he said. "I'm not even sure I
could
do it again. You know me better than that."

Nina kept her eyes on him.

"Look," Haydon said. "I've worked within the system long enough to know you don't get a free hand in these things. There are bureaucratic procedures. They're necessary to prevent abuses, but they're not expedient. Sometimes they encumber an investigation. I just don't want to play the games this time. I've told Dystal I'll keep in touch. And I will."

"You'll be running greater risks," Nina said. "You won't have backups, you won't have support systems. No one will know where you are."

"I've thought of that," Haydon said. He looked at her.

"And what do you think about it?"

"I'm going to have to ask you to help me. I'll let you know where I'm going, what I'm doing. If anything goes wrong you can get in touch with Dystal."

Nina stared at him.

"I don't believe you," she said. But she did believe him.

Then neither of them spoke. They simply looked at one another, Nina trying to see something that wasn't there, Haydon unrepentant, having no reason to do otherwise.

Then Nina turned away, looking across the room toward the refectory table. He wished he knew what was going through her mind, exactly what she was thinking. Her eyes moved back to him, and then she stood and wiped a strand of hair at her temple and crossed her arms. She walked across the room, around the end of the refectory table, and to the French doors that looked out onto the terrace. She peered out the glass, her back to him. Her gown of pearl silk fit close above her hips, then fell like a thin sheet of water past her thighs. Turning, she came back around, slowly passing a decanter of brandy on a table, reaching out a bare arm to touch its crystal top in a gesture of nervous preoccupation. Then she stopped squarely in front of him, challengingly.

"I don't know what you think you're going to do," she said angrily. "I don't see how any of this is going to make any difference. It's bigger than you think. The politics of Mexico, you know what that's like . . . you don't. . . It's insane to believe you could do any-ing, alone." She searched for the right words, frustrated. "If it's . . . for God's sake, you killed the man who shot Ed. What do you
want?"

Her voice cracked a little. They both heard it, and he saw her face tighten, angry at herself for letting it happen. She jerked around with her back to him and walked to the fireplace, wiped at another strand of hair, rubbed a bare arm, and came back toward him. He knew what she was feeling, that he had stepped out of character, had made the extra effort to bare his feelings to her about his work, something he had attempted rarely and had never done satisfactorily in all the years of their marriage, and she had come back at him with a total lack of understanding of what he had been trying to say. But she was wrong. She hadn't let him down, not now, not ever, not in any way at any time.

Still facing him, she started to say something else, but changed her mind. For a moment she stood like a wax figure, her features empty of expression. Then her eyes softened, and he saw her shoulders

slowly relax. She stepped toward him, lifting her arms to him, the lamplight behind her penetrating the silk as if it were spun of something finer, rarer than fabric. He saw the swell of the sides of her breasts, the exact lines of the space between her slightly parted thighs.

"If ever I come to the point that I think I understand you," she said, taking his face in her hands, "it will be the end of us. I don't believe I could bear it."

He put his arms around her hips and held her, his head cradled against the flat of her stomach as he inhaled her special fragrance, felt the slow movement of her breathing, the shape and texture of her body.

Chapter 24

WHAT
did he have to say?" Benigo Gamboa sat behind a baroque seventeenth-century French desk with gilded sphinxes facing outward from its corners. The two men were in a small private office off the formal library, and Gamboa was dressed for bed in white shadow-striped silk pajamas and a burgundy silk robe that sagged on the left side from the weight of a family crest braided of heavy gold thread. Muted light, falling from a fixture recessed in the ceiling above him, illuminated only the desk and the front half of his body in the otherwise dark room. His wavy gray hair was immaculately groomed, as always, but was in stark contrast to his weary expression and the unattractive bruises his tinted glasses cast around his sagging eyes. The ornate desk was clean. There was not a single piece of paper on it, not even a letter opener, or a small decorative tray, or pen set. It had been a long time since Benigo Gamboa had needed such utilitarian items to conduct his business. Now he worked only with his voice. His words and his wealth were sufficient.

"To tell you the truth, I think he was fishing for something," Negrete said. He sat in an armchair in the twilight margin of the darkness, his cigarette burning bright as he sucked on it, then fading as he blew the smoke into the circle of jaundiced light where Gamboa glowered back at him.

"Fishing?"

"And warning."

"I don't need any fucking riddles," Gamboa said.

"He told me that this was not Portillo's Mexico. That Durazo did not control Houston." Negrete chose not to mention Haydon's reference to the Tula River.

"Son of a bitch." Gamboa snorted. "What the hell does he think he is doing?" He fell silent, brooding.From the darkness a whorl of smoke wandered into the light. Negrete said, "He knows something about the
tecos."

Gamboa, who had slumped in his chair as he thought, now lifted his head and fixed his glare on the faint form of Negrete.

"He said the
tecos de choque
were implicated in the assassination attempt," Negrete said.

"He
said
that?"

Negrete nodded in the darkness. It was doubtful that Gamboa could see him. "He asked me if I had ever heard of Rubio Arizpe."

The old man showed no emotion, but Negrete knew that for Gamboa, hearing Arizpe's name was like getting bad news from his doctor. Suddenly, life no longer could be taken for granted.

"This Haydon, he knows something," Negrete said. "He was warning me off. He was very pissed about his friend who was killed."

Gamboa stared grimly across the desk. Negrete thought he looked drawn. Old and drawn. This
teco
business was scaring the hell out of him. As it should. Fanatics had to be feared like devils and madmen. The normal addictions of other men didn't have any hold on them; they couldn't be bribed with pesos, or pussy, or power; they couldn't be bought. Beyond a certain point, they didn't even think like other men. You couldn't reason with a fanatic. For his part, Negrete too was nervous. Protecting Gamboa in Mexico, where everybody ignored the rules equally, and most of the police and
federates
understood the practicality of the
mordida
, and let you handle such business in your own way—that was one thing. But trying to keep the old man alive on this side of the border, where you had to keep glancing over your shoulder for the police as well as for the
tecos
, that was something else.

"Arizpe." Gamboa said the name softly, almost as if he had been pronouncing the name of his beloved mistress. He studied the darkness in front of his desk, staring like a sullen old dog.

Negrete could not determine if his boss actually was looking at him or simply looking in the direction of his voice. Gamboa was asking the questions. It seemed an odd reversal of setting: the spotlight on the inquisitor, while the questioned sat in the protection of the darkness.

"That little pussy-lipped
chingon
," Gamboa said, with no particular enthusiasm. "Those fucking maniacs have sent their best boys, anyway, huh?" He found a grim pride in the fact that he had warranted the very best, even in assassins. "He said nothing about Medrano?"

"No."

"How did he get Arizpe's name without Medrano's?" A faint smile of amusement. "That's funny, huh? He doesn't know too much, this smart cop. You don't have to worry about him."

Negrete bridled inwardly. Good. Very good, Senor Gamboa. He wouldn't have to worry about this detective, just as he wouldn't have to worry about the limousine routes. Gamboa had been impatient with Negrete's elaborate precautions, but Negrete had insisted. It was only a gut feeling that had made him switch Gamboa to another car when they left Charlie T's. The old man hadn't wanted to, had gotten huffy in the parking lot when Negrete decided on the last-minute switch, had almost refused to do it. Then the
tecos
blew the limousine to hell. Gamboa had never said anything about it. He just threw a tantrum about losing Sosa, that was all. No "Thank you, Lucas, for saving my life once again." Nothing. So now, Negrete didn't have to worry about this detective. Thank you, Benigo, for this very good advice. In these matters, Gamboa had made only one good decision: to hire Lucas Negrete.

"Those shit
tapatios
." Gamboa's mind had shifted to the enemy. "Their dog-shit pride. Their fucking honor. They don't know the meaning of the word 'pragmatism.' " He turned his head aside in disgust. "Fucking romantics." His shoulders were hunched as he placed his forearms on the shiny burled surface of the desk and with the thumbnail of one hand absently traced the swirls of wood grain, pressing occasionally, making shallow crescent dents in the finish. Then he looked again to Negrete's darkness.

"So what are you doing?"

"We're still trying to find—"

Gamboa's hand shot up. "No names," he snapped.

"The guy with the explosives, the name we got out of Ireno. The boys found his house and they're watching it, but he's not coming around. Not yet."

Gamboa looked at the top of the desk and slowly swept an open hand back and forth across its smooth, burnished surface as if relishing the feel of its glossy finish. Negrete watched him. This was the side of Gamboa that only Negrete saw, the side Gamboa hid from the rest of the world, from his family, his associates. It was the side of him closest to his soul, the true Benigo, the side Jesus Christ would lay bare on the Judgment Day before Satan sucked him down to hell. At least that's what those owly Catholics believed. The
tecos
believed in justice. Negrete saw it differently. He saw Benigo living a very nice and comfortable life and it didn't make a shit what happened to him after he died. The truth was, being a badass had been a wonderful thing for Gamboa. It had gotten him everything he ever wanted, and for the past five years Negrete had clung to him like a pilot fish. When the good things came to Benigo, they came to Lucas too. Being this man's security guard was a hell of a lot better than being a Jaguar for Durazo. This work was more respectable, not so dirty, not so dangerous. At least it hadn't been until the
tecos
came into it. Now it was as dangerous as anything he had done for Durazo in Mexico City. The
tecos
were threatening not only Gamboa, but a very comfortable living that Negrete didn't want to see come to an end.