Getaway (18 page)

“Of course, I remember. What can I do for you?”

“Well … I’m thinking about moving here, and I have a few questions. I was just wondering … if I could talk to you about it.”

Charlie coughed a few times in her ear.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m not busy. Come on over for the sunset if you’d like. I have a good view.”

She hesitated. He didn’t seem dangerous, but how could she be sure? “I don’t want to impose. We could meet someplace for drinks if you’d like. On me.”

“You wouldn’t be imposing. I like having people over.”

Charlie lived
north and east of La Zona Romántica and Los Muertos Beach. A Mexican neighborhood, it looked like, without a lot of gringos, the buildings blocks of irregular whitewashed rectangles with tile and tin roofs, trimmed with wrought iron and hand-painted signs. Leafy plants in red ceramic pots dotted the balconies; palm trees and a few ginkgoes and
parotas
thrust up from planters on the sidewalk: places where the earth broke through the thin crust of cement trying to hold it in bondage. The curbs cracked and staggered, wires crisscrossing the street and catching on the window bars, among the bougainvillea.

She’d stopped and bought a fancy bottle of tequila, feeling like she needed to bring something, and anyway, she liked spending Gary’s money.

She passed a taco stand that overlapped sidewalk and street, a Formica box with a tin roof ringed by barstools, half occupied. She almost sat down herself, the sizzle of meat fat and onions and chilies reminding her that she’d hardly eaten today.

Maybe I should have brought tacos instead of tequila, she thought.

Here was Charlie’s building: a typical concrete block trimmed with rusting iron, perhaps three stories high.

She started climbing up the stairs that ran along the outside.
Charlie’s apartment was on the top floor. The building looked like a dive—the steep, uneven steps; the smears of green-black mold and trickles of rust; the dismantled gym equipment with dried, cracked vinyl; the abandoned kid’s bike, its once-gaudy pinks and purples faded by sun and damp. In the rooms she passed, she could hear televisions, kids playing, someone practicing, of all things, a tuba.

She reached the top of the stairs on the third floor and paused for a moment in front of the metal security screen.

Was this really a good idea?

You’re here, she told herself. Suck it up.

She knocked on the door.

“Well, we
will have to open this.” Charlie cradled in both hands the bottle of tequila that Michelle had brought.

“Oh, is it good? I wasn’t sure.”

“It is excellent, my dear. Thank you.”

Charlie’s place wasn’t what she’d expected. The apartment was a series of rooms—two bedrooms, big kitchen, a living room that bordered on a terrace. The walls were carefully painted, washes of color alternating with white—apricot in one bedroom, a red wall in the other—with framed prints hung here and there. The furniture—Michelle supposed you could call it rustic, or “Mexican country”—was simple, but it worked. There were a couple of bookcases. An old-fashioned stereo with turntable.

“This is lovely,” she said.

“I like to think the best part is outside.” He gestured toward the terrace.

Outside, on the roof of the apartment below, he’d set up a table and chairs, shaded by market umbrellas, a broad bench, almost a daybed, surrounded on three sides by gauze curtains. Plants in tubs lined the perimeter. The view was mostly rooftops, but beyond them was the ocean and, if you turned your head, the mountains.

“I live out here a lot of the time.”

On the table were a platter of quesadillas, a bowl of guacamole, and small dishes of salsa and spicy peanuts.

They sat down, and he poured out two tequilas into blue-rimmed shot glasses.

“Cheers!”

They both sipped.

“Thanks for seeing me.”

“My dear, anyone who brings tequila of this quality is more than welcome in my house.”

The sun had begun its descent into the bay, staining the surrounding clouds a pale pink that deepened to violet.

Charlie sighed in seeming contentment and stretched his legs out into the spare chair. “I never get tired of this.”

“Is that what everyone does here? Watch the sunsets?”

“If they have any sense.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Party too much, usually. Sleep with people they’d be better off avoiding. Get involved in a whole excess of drama.”

A flush rose on her cheeks. Hadn’t she done exactly all that?

Maybe he hadn’t been referring to her specifically. It hadn’t sounded like a dig or a reprimand. The only thing Charlie knew about her for sure was that she’d been with Daniel.

And he didn’t know a fraction of the drama.

At least she didn’t think he did.

“What about Ned?”

Charlie sat very still. “You heard what happened.”

“I did.”

“Why do you ask?”

Michelle took a sip of her tequila and thought about what she should say. “Everybody tells me how safe it is here. But I’ve had some strange things happen to me. And I don’t know …”

Who to trust, she almost said, but she stopped herself.

“You told me Ned was always in over his head,” she said. “And that you had to go looking for trouble here. I just want to know, if I decide to stay … what kind of trouble are you talking about?”

“Ah.” He poured himself more tequila. “Look, you’re safer here, probably, than you’d be in Los Angeles. I mean, you’ve got your theft and your robbery, but most of it’s like I said. It’s getting involved with the wrong kind of people.”

“Like Danny?”

There. She’d said it.

Charlie drew in another lungful of smoke as the last crescent slice of sun dipped into the bay.

“I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression of him,” he said. “I don’t really know him that well, but he seems like a decent guy.”

Did he mean it? She couldn’t tell. He sounded reluctant, as if he were afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Like he didn’t want to go looking for trouble.

“I don’t know Danny that well either,” she said. “I like him, and we’ve been seeing each other, and I’d like to see him more. But … what you said … I just got the impression … It worried me a little.”

Charlie let out a long, smoke-filled sigh. Sipped his tequila. “I don’t really know his business. He doesn’t discuss it much. But the people who hire private jets around here … well, not all of them are going to have the most savory connections.”

“You mean they’re involved with drugs?”

“Do you have reason to think that?”

“I … just …” She wasn’t going to tell him about the coke. “I don’t know. I just know it’s a real problem here. I mean, isn’t it?”

A silence. “Look, the people Danny works for, I don’t really know any of them personally,” he finally said. “But drug money in this country … it’s everywhere, and if you have any kind of large business, it’s tough to avoid. So maybe they aren’t involved directly. But they’ll do business with people who are.”

She’d hoped for something else. A defense of Daniel, testimony that he was a good guy, so that she could have some measure of trust in her own perceptions.

Failing that, definitive proof that what Gary said was true.

That was the worst part of this situation in a way, that she didn’t think she could accurately read anyone or anything around her.

She used to think she was good at that.

“So what about Ned?” she asked.

“It might have been a robbery.”

“Do you really think it was? That robbers would go to all the trouble to do … that?”

“Probably not.” Charlie sighed. “That restaurant of his never did great business, but somehow he kept it going. A lot of people guessed he was selling drugs on the side. You know, to the gringos who didn’t want to deal with the locals. There’s all kinds of ways that can go bad.” He paused to refill her tequila. “But that’s just a rumor.”

[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN]

The last year with Tom
, she’d promised herself that she was going to make some changes. It wasn’t enough, the way she’d been living; she wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t truly engaged in anything. She’d go back to school, maybe. Get more serious about the photography again. Or go in a completely different direction. Adopt a kid—someone who needed her, whom she could care for. Volunteer to do something, something hard and meaningful. Dig wells in Africa. Build orphanages in Peru. She’d drag Tom into counseling, and if he wouldn’t go or it didn’t help, maybe she’d leave him. What was even keeping them together anymore?

She was going to make some changes, she really was. As soon as things calmed down a little. When Tom’s business had improved.

When she figured out what it was she really wanted to be when she grew up.

Then Tom had died, and the changes weren’t choices anymore.

“Hey there
, Michelle.”

“Hi, Ted.”

“Just wanted to touch base,” he said. “It’s been a couple days since we’ve talked.”

As usual, he’d called her early in the morning, six-thirty Vallarta time. He probably did it to keep her off balance, get to her before she’d had a chance to talk to anyone else, when she was still unused to speaking.

“I haven’t seen Danny, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Well, aren’t we cranky this morning?”

“You better fucking believe I’m cranky,” she spit out before she could stop herself. “Did you hear about Ned? Somebody lit him on
fire
. Like … like a fucking birthday candle.”

“Yeah, I heard about it. Listen, we don’t know who did it. It might not have anything to do with—”

“Oh, come on, Gary. He talks to Danny. I tell you. And the next day he’s dead.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, then a raspy breath. “See, this is why we do the things we do, Michelle. I know you’ve felt … well, pretty put out by all this. But this is what’s at stake. The people we’re up against, this is what they do. You need to understand that.”

Michelle lay on her bed, holding her iPhone at arm’s length. “I do understand,” she finally said. “But you can’t expect me to go up against people who do this kind of thing. I’m not a cop or a spy. I’m just …”

A housewife, she almost said. That wasn’t really who she was, was it?

“Sure, Michelle. I hear what you’re saying. But you’re not going to be in any danger as long as you keep doing exactly what I tell you to do. Just give me another week, okay? Can you do that? I promise you, that’ll be the end of it. And you’ll be compensated for it. Trust me on that.” A snorted laugh. “Check your accounts in a couple of hours.”

After Tom
died, she’d figured it out. How he’d used a credit card to put money into the household account. How he’d used another
card to pay the first one off. Frantically moved money from one account to the other. Kept up appearances, while the mortgage went into default.

It was, on a much larger scale, what he’d done with his business.

Some of what Tom had told her was true. Financing on a project had fallen through, like he said, and he’d made some bad investments. A hedge fund was involved, the assets of which were “rehypothecated,” whatever that meant.

He hadn’t told her the rest. That he’d counted on the housing market’s continuing to rise to make up the difference, and when the bubble had started to deflate, how he’d taken clients’ money that was supposed to be reinvested into other real estate and instead used it to pay off clients he already owed.

Her lawyer had tried to explain it to her. How what Tom had done was something between a Ponzi scheme and a shell game. He’d started drawing a diagram, with various investment funds and projects, holding companies, warehouse lenders, brokers, “holders in due course,” “asset-backed pass-throughs,” “tranches.”

“Do you actually understand all this?” she’d finally asked him.

“Are you kidding?” he’d said. “No one does. Not even the guys who invented this stuff.”

The beach
was brutally hot. She’d already gone into the water twice to cool off. The second time she stayed in awhile. Bobbed up and down in the surf, thoughts circling in her head like they were caught in some kind of whirlpool.

A week. Would that really be the end of it? How did she know that Gary wouldn’t just bury the evidence when he was done with her, like he’d threatened to do?

They find all kinds of things up at that dump!

When she retrieved her bag with her wallet and cell phone from behind the bar, she saw that she’d missed a call.

Unknown caller. A U.S. number, area code 561. No message.

Wrong number?

Her finger hovered over the touchscreen.

She tapped the number.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice. Unfamiliar. American, she thought.

“You called me?”

A throaty giggle. “I did.”

“Who is this?”

“Emma. We met at María’s party.”

“Oh.” Michelle remembered her now, the pretty woman with the forties pinup look.

The one whose father Daniel worked for.

“Right,” Michelle said. “How nice of you to call.”

“Are you busy tonight? I thought we could get together for drinks. And conversation.”

Michelle hesitated.

It was one thing, she thought, to risk going over to Charlie’s. Charlie, whom she’d had no real reason to suspect of any involvement in the craziness that had somehow taken over her life.

Emma, however, she’d encountered in the thick of it, at María’s party.

“I’m not sure if—”

“Oh, come on,” Emma said. “Just meet me for a drink. It’ll be fun. Besides …”

There was a burst of music on the other end of the line, then silence, like someone had turned down a radio.

“I can tell you some things you need to know.”

[CHAPTER NINETEEN]

The place Emma wanted to meet
was a club north of downtown, past the marine terminal. “It’s new,” she said. “Close to the Walmart.”

The name was El Pirata, which, if Michelle had to guess, she figured meant “The Pirate.” She really hoped it wasn’t a theme bar.