The Arraignment (34 page)

“Yes. I suppose that’s always the best approach,” he says. “The truth. So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Know anything about it?” He picks the letter up from the table in front of me, this time carefully handling it from the edges, and gently folds it, putting it back in the envelope. All the while looking at me, waiting for a response.

“The letter, no. I’ve never seen it before.”

“I assumed that much,” he says. “Otherwise you would have told me, right?” What he means is just like I told him about Espinoza.

I dodge the question by taking a healthy swallow of ale, filling my mouth.

Adam is shrewd. Whether he’d thought about my prints on the letter or not, he is determined to screen every piece of information that comes his way so that none of the dirt flies up and hits the firm. He also guesses that I am holding back, as I assume he is.

“Have you ever heard of the guy before? This Pablo Ibarra?”

Now it would require an affirmative lie. “I’ve heard the name. Tell me, how long have you had the letter? Really?”

Adam smiles. “What difference does it make?”

“The cops will want to know.”

“I got it this morning,” he says.

“Tell me you didn’t go down and sweep the mail room the night Nick was killed?”

“Who’s asking, you or the police?”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“Trust me, you don’t,” he says. “Where did you hear the name? This man, Ibarra?”

“Gerald Metz gave it to me.”

“Metz?” He thought I was going to say Nick. Now it comes out of left field.

“During my initial interview with him. He’d done some work with the sons. Said it was a construction job.”

“Right. Did he ever mention the father?”

“In passing.”

“Did Metz know him?”

“It depends on whether you believe Metz. According to him, he only knew the name. He’d never met him.”

“You didn’t tell me this before.”

“I didn’t tell the police, either. Like you with the letter.” Touché. “Piece of advice,” I tell him.

“What’s that?”

“If you’re going to take it to the cops with your story, I suppose your secretary will verify it?”

“Absolutely.”

“You might want to make sure she touches the envelope at least.”

He smiles. Adam’s already made a mental note.

“What else did Metz say about them?”

“He also said the father was upset about something. That’s why his deal fell through. If anything Metz said was credible.”

“Go on,” he says.

“That’s it.”

“If the papers get their hands on this, they’ll crucify us. They’ll be crawling all over the firm, demanding to know what Nick was involved in. Wanting to know if we’re being investigated, whether we’ve been shredding documents. Legalgate,” he says.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking the answer
lies in Mexico. I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow, the earliest I could get there. I want some information. I’m not going to wait for it to come to me.”

“If you want to talk to Ibarra, you could just call him on the phone.”

“I thought about that. The problem is, for all we know, he may have killed Nick himself. I don’t mean pull the trigger. But he might have hired somebody. If he didn’t, he may come to the same conclusion we did, that his boys are involved. You think he’s going to talk to me about something like that over the phone?”

“Probably not.”

“I don’t think so either. Besides, if I call him, even if he’s willing to talk to me, he’s going to want me to come down there, and he’s going to want to set the terms and conditions, no doubt a meeting on his turf.”

“I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. When people start asking questions, I want to be able to tell them Rocker, Dusha and De Wine were not involved in anything illegal. If anyone says we were, they’re going to be looking at an action for business disparagement that will take their house, their dog, their wife, and their retirement, not necessarily in that order.

“I’m coming with you. The Gulfstream is already fueled, at the airport,” he continues. “It would take us about four, four and a half hours flight time. We can leave tonight. In fact, there’s a firm we do business with down in Mexico City, security and investigations. I’ve used them before. I could arrange to have their services available. One of the biggest drug rings in the world operates out of the Yucatán Peninsula. Hell, I’ve read that half the resorts in Cancún were built with drug money. Given the kind of people we are dealing with, I think it would be wise to have some extra ‘insurance.’ ”

This sounds good but incredibly expensive. “I don’t want to cost the firm a ton of money.”

“Nonsense. I may not be as adventuresome as you are, but I like to have an edge before I go sticking my nose in.”

He looks at his watch. “I think Cancún is Central time zone. We wouldn’t be able to do anything down there until tomorrow anyway. Say we meet at the airport in Carlsbad at nine o’clock tonight. McClellan-Palomar, that’s where we keep the plane. Do you know where the field is?”

“I’ll find it.”

The waiter brings our lunch. Adam picks up the envelope with Ibarra’s letter so it doesn’t get splattered with soup.

“In the meantime, I’ll have the secretary touch this a few times and have it delivered to the police by courier in the morning, after we’re gone.”

T
hree hours in and the sleek Gulfstream is knifing through the night sky on its way south. I gaze out the tiny oval window and listen to the drone of the twin jet engines as we skim above humid thunderheads, wondering where we are and what is beneath us.

Adam is asleep on the couch across from me, a seat belt loosely draped over his midsection and buckled on the outside of a blanket that covers him. Shoes off, his stocking feet are sticking out beyond the end of the blanket.

He is a man grown accustomed to the finer things. It’s what a life of privilege can do. He has no sense of airport security lines that look like a scene from
Gandhi.
If I told him they stopped serving meals on trays with real silverware, I don’t think he would believe me. If you suggested that security now prevents even the use of plastic utensils on airliners, his first question would be, “How are you supposed cut your steak?” Man out of touch with the world.

His mouth is open, sleeping like a baby. I suspect he is
snoring, though with the sound of the engines, I can’t hear it.

I look at the stars, holes in the dark sky, and finally doze off.

The next thing I know, Adam is shaking me by my good arm. Fully dressed, his shoes back on, he is straightening his tie.

“We’re descending toward the airport in Cancún. You might want to freshen up.”

Twenty minutes later we’re on the ground, rolling down one of the taxiways toward a hangar with its yawning door open, all lit up inside. The pilot pulls right in and shuts the engines down.

As he does, three large SUVs, dark and gleaming under the bright lights, drive up and park in an arc around the wing on Adam’s side. I start to get my bags from the back.

“You can go ahead and leave the bag,” says Adam. “They’ll get ’em for us.”

I follow him to the door. Adam slaps the pilot on the arm. “Good flight. Very comfortable. Now, you guys are heading back to San Diego, as I understand it, tonight.”

“Right. Be back here tomorrow night. Then we’ll be on the ground here ’til Sunday evening.”

“Great,” says Adam, and he heads down the stairs with me right behind him. Before I get to the ground, he is already shaking hands, smiling at two men who have gotten out of one of the cars. He motions me over.

“Julio. Like you to meet Paul Madriani. Paul. This is Julio Paloma. Julio’ll be our guide while we’re down here. I hope you don’t mind. Our firm has used Julio’s company for security on trips down here before. I took the liberty.”

“Not at all.” We shake hands. Julio is a big man, I’d say six-foot-five, a broad grin, white even teeth, and a hand that swallows my own. Neck like a bull, shoulders like an NFL lineman, he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen except for the one standing next to him.

Adam introduces me to Herman Diggs, an African-American mountain who I am told is from Detroit. I look up
at him. His top front tooth is chipped like a jagged piece of ice. I don’t ask how it got that way. I’d like to have my hand back. Both of them are decked out in slacks and dark blazers, enough cloth to sail a good-sized ship, each with a patch sporting a company logo over the breast pocket.

Adam tells me they are specialists in corporate security. They conduct some small talk with Adam while their minions gather our luggage.

We head toward the second car in line, followed by the Julio and Herman show, guys with our bags taking up the rear like a safari. These they pile into the back of the last car in line while they huddle to call signals on the best route to wherever it is we are sleeping tonight.

“You sure you have enough vehicles?” I ask Adam.

“Never be too careful down here,” he says. “Julio can tell you. He chauffeured me around Mexico City last time I was down. That was about two years ago, wasn’t it?” His voice goes up a notch to be heard over the blast of a jet throttling up off in the distance. He turns to look at Julio, who is too busy at the moment, making arrangements for travel, to hear him.

So Adam turns back to me. “May as well get in,” he says.

Oversized tires with lots of aggressive rubber. We could use a ladder to climb up into the backseat of the huge Suburban. We settle in and find the seat belts. Adam closes the door to keep the air-conditioning inside. The engine is still running.

“Anyway, it was a meeting on gas and oil leases for one of our clients.” Adam’s going on with his story even if nobody is listening. “And son of a bitch if somebody doesn’t try to grab one of our briefcases. Two kids on a motorbike.”

“Really?”

“That’s what I mean. You’ve got to be careful.”

“Did they get it?”

“Hell, no,” he says. “Herman there saw it all in his side-view mirror. He opened the driver’s door just as they were accelerating. Made a real mess. Blood all over the inside of
the door, broken bones. Nobody killed, so I guess it could have been worse.”

“Yeah. They could have run into Herman,” I say.

Adam laughs, takes off his glasses, and wipes them down with a handkerchief. The car’s air conditioner is working overtime with one of the front doors still open.

“Beginning to fog up. I hate the humidity down here.” Adam checks his watch, then taps it with a finger. It’s stopped. He takes it off and taps it gently against the metal frame around the inside of the passenger window, then listens to it close to his ear to make sure it’s going again.

“This old Hamilton’s an antique,” he says. “Like me. It keeps great time, but it doesn’t like humidity. Makes two of us.” He wipes perspiration from his forehead with the handkerchief. “What time have you got?”

“It’s a little after one-thirty.”

“Add two hours,” he says. “Central time. We’ll sleep in the morning. Otherwise we’ll be wasted.”

Herman and Julio finally get everything together and we head for town, Herman behind the wheel and Julio riding shotgun.

Out of the airport, within two minutes we’re on a dark four-lane highway traveling at high speed for a few minutes before we reach an overpass. We turn off and head toward what looks like open water behind flat terrain covered by low jungle foliage. A few miles on, and we start to see lights, a few pedestrians walking along the sandy shoulder of the road, and small businesses. Another mile, and now there’s a sidewalk and the lights are brighter.

“You ever been here before?” Julio sitting sideways, looking at me from over the front seat.

“No.”

“All jungle,
un pantano,
in English ah, ‘swamp’ until maybe,” he has to think about this, “twenty years ago. Then the government they decide they want resort. Here.” He smiles, gestures toward the floor in the front seat, as if the government would plant their resorts at that location. “And poof, like that, resorts all over. Meliá Cancún, La Piramides,
Royal Solaris Caribe. Like Las Vegas,” he says. “You been there?”

“Not for a number of years.”

“Disneyland, huh?”

“That’s what I hear.”

He starts pointing out the attractions. By now the properties are abutting one another, palatial grounds with manicured lawns to make French aristocracy envious. These are lit up by banks of floodlights, some of them in color with water effects, fountains shooting spray skyward. He tells us that the name of the busy boulevard we are on, two lanes in each direction with traffic lights, is Kukulcan.

Adam disconnects his seat belt, and slides forward, leaning over the back of the front seat to be heard better. “This is the street where this man Ibarra has his office?”

“Yes, sir. We’ll be coming to that right up here. Beyond Kukulcan Plaza. I will show you.”

“Anything on the two sons?” asks Adam. “Ibarra brothers.”

“Ah, yes. Bad people. Very bad,” he says. “Emm, south. They are south, near Tulúm.”

“What he means, they got property down there,” Herman tries translating as he drives, glancing back over the seat occasionally to make sure he can be heard. “Word around is they trying to develop it. You ask me, I think they doin’ something else.”

“Drugs?” asks Adam.

“Could be.”

“And the father?”

“Mystery man,” says Herman. “Told he and the boys don’t get along.”

Adam settles back in the seat again, leans over toward me. “Sounds like confirmation of what we’ve heard. Father and sons not getting along. And drugs.”

“Metz told me that the brothers wanted heavy equipment to develop a project on the coast, some property they wanted to sell for a resort. It could be true.”

“Did Metz send any equipment?”

“No.”

“There, you have your answer,” says Adam. “But perhaps part of his story was true.”

“What’s that?”

“Fact that the father and sons are at each other’s throats.”

“Here it is.” Julio turns and leans over the seat. “This building right here is the plaza. You hotel is here, but we go on to Ibarra’s?”