Manana Page 3

  Splashing cold lake water on my face cleared away the bad dreams. I pumped up the Coleman stove and started a pot of coffee. While it perked, I unfolded the card table and a wooden chair. More water heated for shaving in a saucepan on the other burner. The first cup of hot black java felt like a Benzedrine hit.

  I unsheathed the death knife, a Randall Model 11 Alaskan Skinner, and diced a last hunk of cheese from the cooler. My father ordered the knife in 1952, when the blade first appeared in Bo Randall’s catalog out of Orlando, Florida. The price tag was twenty dollars. Dad had some fantasy about going big-game hunting in Alaska or Montana or someplace. He imagined skinning trophy elk and bear with his hand-forged knife. I was twelve and dreamed of going with him into the wilderness. Six months later, in November, he died without warning from a massive heart attack before the coveted Randall arrived. Mom gift-wrapped the knife and put it under the Christmas tree for me with his name on the card.

  The Skinner had a broad five-inch carbon steel blade sharp enough for surgery, holding an edge even after cutting into bone. Chopping cheddar was a breeze. A shudder of revulsion ran through me. How easily did the Randall slice Frankie’s throat? Distracted, I slipped and slashed open my thumb. I ignored the immediate pain, staring at my blood as it dripped all over the cheese. A fitting meal for a murderer.

  After stanching my wound with a Band-Aid from the medicine kit, I considered tossing the gory cheddar but couldn’t afford to waste food and rinsed it clean in the lake. Linda had stored some leftover rice and beans in a Tupperware container. I heated them in the skillet topped with the cheddar and fried a couple eggs. A hot breakfast didn’t change anything. I still felt trapped in the lowest reaches of hell.

  Unable to shake a pervading sense of doom, I shaved my two-day stubble and washed the kitchen stuff lakeside with Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap. After pulling the Nido can from its hiding place, I mechanically filled plastic sandwich bags with mota, weighing each bag on the postal scale. Twenty-eight grams equaled an ounce. I didn’t try for perfection. Anything around thirty grams did the trick.

  The work grew tedious after the first twenty bags. Setting fire to a dorf took the edge off the dull assembly-line routine. Fill and weigh; fill and weigh; twist the flap around, sealing the baggie in a neat bundle. The process became mechanical. I drifted back to the start of Semana Santa, looking for missing pieces in the fucking puzzle.

  The approach of Holy Week turned Barra de Navidad from a sleepy backwater into a boomtown. A carnival set up its rickety Ferris wheel and whirling nausea-inducing spin rides on the dusty plaza in front of the scaffold-enclosed church. Crowds started rolling in by the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Barra’s population increased tenfold. These weren’t gringo tourists but lower middle-class Mexicans. Guadalajara cab drivers bringing their wives and girlfriends down for a frolic on the beach.

  Crepe-paper decorated taco stands competed with women frying churros on every street corner. Oyster sellers shucked succulent bivalves out of ice-filled buckets in a movable feast, weaving through the joyous throng. Other ice-bucket entrepreneurs sold beer and soft drinks and cold slices of watermelon. Rasparadores hawking shaved ice snow cones in paper cups, pushed wheeled carts, shouting, “¡Nieves! ¡Nieves!”

  Caught up in the frenzy, Linda and I rode the carnival rides and danced to mariachi bands under the strands of colored lights strung about the plaza. The gangsters went at it like they’d never partied before. With all the booze and drugs, no one crashed until after four in the morning. I had to drop a red to get any sleep. By Holy Tuesday, the insanity reached a fever pitch. The insistent clatter of matracas, a satanic castanet concerto, got us all jumpy. Everyone went nuts.

  I caught Linda making out with a stranger on the dilapidated merry-go-round. When she saw me watching, she laughed hysterically, shrill and raucous, some wild jungle creature. She said she owed me one. Frankie started a flirtation with a fisherman at a third-rate cantina down by the lagoon. Nick and Shank dragged her out, holding off the drunken crowd at knifepoint.

  Later, Shank showed me his weapon, a wicked curve-bladed linoleum cutter, recounting the dramatic showdown. “Wasn’t my kind of play at all,” he said, exposing all his teeth in something between a sneer and a grimace. “Had to back up my buddy. If we’d done it my way, we’d of got us a couple two-by-fours and waited outside that shit-hole until the son-of-a-bitch come staggering out. Tell you what. Beat a man right and he’ll never forget you.”

  Wednesday night of Holy Week, we all stayed home. Frankie was grounded. The party roared on around her. Four crazed nights, fueled by narcotics and alcohol, had led us into the land of the walking dead. Staggering zombies, our eyes revealed a shared paranoia. You could see the cogwheels turning. Everyone was so wired you didn’t want to catch their glance for more than a fleeting second. In a room full of lunatics, keep your gaze fixed on the floor.

  We had all the booze, smoke, and pills any six deadbeats might desire. If we wanted food or sweets, we could open the front window and order from the vendors passing outside. Except we didn’t. A fog of marijuana smoke obscured the room. We feared open shutters might betray our hazy asylum to the festive world outside and kept the private party to ourselves, manic, bottled-up, claustrophobic, a sextet of neurotics pretending to have fun, going through the motions, sleepwalkers on a treadmill. If tacos or slices of melon were desired, a delegate, usually me, was dispatched out into the throng.

  After an hour, I twisted the final baggie tight, one hundred in all. A nice stash remained at the bottom of the Nido can. I poured the oregano out of a quart-size Tupperware container and refilled it most of the way with mota. Packed the sealed plastic bags in the five-gallon can, layering them like sardines. Tamping down the lid, I returned the can to its hiding place in the van and rolled a day’s smoke. I lined the joints up in an old Between the Acts cigar tin I used as a “cigarette” case.

  Past midnight early in Holy Thursday, Nick unveiled his surprise. A folded-paper packet of heroin had arrived in an Easter card that morning at the post office via Lista de Correos. “Who’s up for a little nightcap?” he laughed. The other smackers crowded around in disbelief, wondering why he’d left anything for them.

  I watched Nick cook the junk in a teaspoon over a candle flame. When it liquefied and bubbled, he siphoned the spoonful up with an eyedropper and attached a hypodermic needle. “Let’s take a ride on a horse,” he grinned.

  I’d always been a conscientious objector to hard drugs. Four days of straight partying lowered my resistance. “Not in my vein,” I said. Nick stuck me with the needle, and I felt a warm rush run like honey ants up inside my arm, exploding into my brain with a skyrocket burst of serene, secure contentment. I lay back on the unmade bed watching in a dreamy haze as the others lined up for their fix. I can’t remember if Linda shot up or ever seeing Nick fixing for that matter. I was lost in the lush gardens of Xanadu.

  It took under an hour to drive to Guadalajara, past Jocotepec at the western end of the lake, enough time to light up and forget about dead whores. The first sign of civilization came after fin del pavimento. Federal jurisdiction over the highway ended, and colorful commercial advertising blossomed among the garbage dump slums scarring the outskirts of town. Nailed to every tree, tin tome coke and carta blanca signs were the only bright spots amid acres of corrugated shanties. Whitewashed stone walls bore faded slogans from the last presidential election: progresso y paz con díaz-ordaz. The political acronyms, PRI and PAN, blighted backyard auto-repair shops and the small neighborhood stores known as tiendas. Five stenciled interlinking Olympic circles appeared almost everywhere to celebrate the summer games coming to Mexico City in October.

  I had only been in Guad three times before and retraced the route taken on my last couple visits, following the highway into the city to Avenida Adolfo López Mateos Sur. It was called Avenida de los Ingenieros back in 1964 on my first trip with Linda. Turned right onto Avenida Niños Héroes. Took a left at the great glass slab of the Hilton and drove a few blocks along Avenida 16 de Septiembre toward the historic district. The twin spires of the domed cathedral looked to be a single tower as I turned right onto Madero and left on Corona, parking across from the Hotel Fenix.

  I’d been here twice this year. In the middle of February, when our 180-day tourist cards had only three weeks left to run, Linda and I confronted the daunting prospect of driving north to the border and crossing back into the States in order to gain an additional six months. The other option was to see a guy Nick knew in Guad. He called him “Freddy of the Fenix.” Playing it straight and doing things legal meant an uncomfortable thousand-mile round-trip drive and maybe four hundred bucks out of pocket. The crooked path involved a quick Guadalajara trip to buy black-market tourist cards for half that price from this character known only as Freddy.

  Easy choice. Right after Valentine’s Day, I drove to Guad on my first visit to the Hotel Fenix. Nick said to ask the doorman for Freddy. I did and was told to go into the lobby and wait. It seemed like some pulp magazine fantasy. I sat in a wide brightly lit room tiled in slabs of frozen butterscotch. All that gleaming onyx made me dizzy. I shut my eyes and dozed off.

  A gentle tapping brought me instantly alert. An hour had passed. A plump middle-aged Mexican businessman loomed over me, his skin pink and smooth like he’d been sculpted from Spam. Well-trimmed mustache. Slicked-back hair, black as polished obsidian. Freddy had the pampered look of the little man on top of the wedding cake. He wore an impeccably tailored gray mohair suit and a maroon silk Sulka tie. His gold-and-lapis cufflinks matched the ring gleaming on his little finger. I felt out of place. A tramp invading the palace.

  “I am Freddy,” he said in a soft me
lodic voice. “How may I be of service to you?” He spoke with the polite formality of a diplomat.

  I told him about our soon-to-expire tourist cards.

  “This is not the place to discuss such matters,” Freddy purred. “Why not join me for some refreshment at my home?” He turned on calfskin-shod feet, agile as a dancer.

  I followed him out of the hotel. A burly goon in a pink leisure suit with bellbottom trousers stood by a sleek black Mercedes sedan, his shirt open to reveal a thick gold chain glittering among his bristling black chest hair. He held the rear door open for Mr. Freddy, not giving me a second glance as he went around and got in on the driver’s side. I didn’t know if I was supposed to sit up front next to him. Fuck it, I thought, stepping out on the street and climbing into the back beside the boss. This big guy was no mere chauffeur. He was Freddie’s muscle.

  The luxurious car slid through the crowded streets of Guadalajara, sounds of traffic silenced by tinted windows. Freddy wasn’t much for small talk. He stared straight ahead, humming “Malagueña Salerosa” under his breath as if I wasn’t even there. Playing it cool, I ignored him, concentrating on the back of the bodyguard’s thick neck.

  Freddy lived on a sloping hillside in Zapopan, a northwestern suburb. We drove along various unfamiliar streets impossible to remember. Freddy’s house was a modern single-story glass-and-concrete box. The monotonous terrazzo floors were brightened by handwoven Oaxacan rugs. Bold Huichol yarn paintings hung on the walls. The furniture was all chrome with leather upholstery and slabs of polished black marble. Grimacing Zapotec funeral urns lined a bookshelf like a demonic rogues gallery.

  We sat on opposite sides of a thick rectangle of midnight flecked with mica constellations. Smelling sickly sweet as a funeral parlor, three white gardenia blossoms floated in a water-filled crystal bowl at the center of the table. The somber thug lurked somewhere behind me, his menacing presence an unseen reminder of my vulnerability. Freddy asked to see some identification. I passed over my California driver’s license, Linda’s expired passport, and our nearly defunct tourist cards.

  While Freddy jotted notes, an old Indian woman dressed in black brought a silver tray holding two cups of steaming coffee along with a small pitcher of scalded milk and brown sugar cubes in a bowl. I sipped coffee and watched the plump criminal wield his cigar-size fountain pen. “Bueno,” he said when done, capping the Mont Blanc with fussy precision. “The cost for you will be two thousand pesos.”

  I peeled the money out of my wallet and slid it across the table, wondering if I’d ever get what I was paying for. Freddy thumbed through the cash like a bank teller and slipped it into a slim Cartier billfold. Nothing more was said about our transaction. We finished the coffee. Freddy asked if I was enjoying my stay in his country. “So much,” I told him, “that I’m willing to pay for the privilege of not having to leave.” Freddy cracked a thin, mirthless smile and told me to return in two weeks. My new papers would be ready.

  The muscleman drove me alone back into town by a different route. I knew this because we went past the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Zapopan, something we hadn’t done on the way out. Freddy obviously didn’t want me to know how to get to his house on my own. The silent goon dropped me off in front of the Hotel Fenix. He hadn’t spoken a single word the entire time.

  Toward the end of the first week in March, I did the whole thing all over again. Drove up to Guad, met Freddy and his bodyguard at the Fenix, went with them out to his house and back, each way by a route we hadn’t taken before. To brighten the day, the big thug wore a lime-green polyester leisure suit. I wondered where the hell he bought his wardrobe. Freddy and I drank coffee in his living room. He presented me with two brand-new single-entry tourist cards, dated four days earlier. Hulking in a far corner, the glowering bodyguard never took his eyes off me.

  Returning this time, I sat in Bitter Lemon with the window rolled down, staring at the entrance of the Hotel Fenix. Traffic noise and black bus fumes provided an unpleasant contrast to the pristine seaside tranquillity of Barra. I figured Nick and his pals needed to meet with Freddy. They had watches to sell. He was a man who was buying.

  I let an hour drift past, watching the Fenix doorman hail an occasional cab. I waited for something not likely to happen. Impossible good luck to spot Nick out of the blue, on his way to see Freddy. Why hang around waiting for a miracle? I locked the car, dropped a dos décimos, a copper twenty-centavo coin, into the meter, buying fifteen minutes of parking time, and crossed the street. The doorman maintained a distant air in his braided cap and magenta uniform, haughty as a comic opera generalissimo. I told him I wanted to see Freddy.

  He gave me a look of utter disdain, saying Freddy would not be back until Monday. It was Viernes Santo. Mr. Freddy attended services today and would again on Easter Sunday.

  “Y mañana?” I asked.

  The doorman regarded me like something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. In Spanish slow and simple enough for a three-year-old to understand, he explained that Freddy was a very pious man who did not conduct business during Semana Santa.

  I went into the lobby and forked over a couple pesos for copies of the Mexico City News and El Occidental, Guadalajara’s daily paper. I took them into the public toilet off the lobby and settled into a pristine stall. Traveling third-class in Mexico taught me to take full advantage of my gringo status at every opportunity. I leafed through the News first. It was printed in English. No mention of Barra de Navidad. I went over El Occidental more carefully, figuring news of a murder in Jalisco would show up first in the local rag. I read enough Spanish to get the gist of things but saw nothing about Frankie in the latest edition. They probably hadn’t found her body yet. That couldn’t last long. Dead meat grows rank fast in the tropics.

  I walked back to the van. Sticking around was a losing proposition. Maybe Nick and the gang might show up looking for Freddy. More likely, they’d already come by yesterday and got the word way before me. If they wanted to do business, they’d have to wait until Monday like everybody else. Time wasn’t on my side. I was nearly flat broke and living in my van like a bum. Somebody might discover Frankie’s body anytime. What if I got arrested before I located Linda? What if she was already dead? Feeling sick with my own impotence, I drove away and cruised the neighborhood until I found a street without meters. I parked, locked the VW, and strolled off with the Between the Acts tin tucked in my shirt pocket.

  A long walk on a beautiful spring day. The clear blue sky free from the persistent gray exhaust pall. The holiday exodus had reduced traffic to a minimum. Jacaranda trees bloomed along the sidewalks. Masses of blue blossoms billowed overhead. Magenta bursts of bougainvillea spilled over stucco walls crowned with broken bottles, jagged shards glinting in the sunlight. All that color took my mind off the shit-pit I’d fallen into.

  I strolled under rows of poinciana trees past the Teatro Degollado at the western end of the Plaza de la Liberación toward the rear of the Catedral Metropolitana, staring up at those scarlet flowers flaming against an azure sky. They promised absolution. The plaza looked deserted. An old man swept fallen leaves with a bundle of twigs. Band music played in the distance.

  A procession was under way by the cathedral’s front entrance. I edged into the crowd watching a Passion Play from across the Calle Alcalde. A red-cloaked Roman centurion lashed an Indian Christ stooping under the weight of an enormous wooden cross. Most of the spectators standing along the edge of the main square were local residents, holding parasols. Shoeshine boys toting elaborate brass-studded boxes prowled for customers.

  I saw several middle-aged American tourists, cameras slung around their necks. Moving between them, I spotted a clean-cut young couple holding hands. They looked to be college age. His blond hair was cropped short. He sported crisp chinos and a short-sleeved white Safari shirt fresh from the laundry, showcasing his powerful arms. She was pretty in a well-scrubbed farm girl way, pink cotton summer dress, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I considered avoiding them, but even straight arrows smoked weed.