The Croning (6 page)

A thick man in a serape sat on one of the chairs. His hair was blue-black, and thick and shaggy and fell to his waist. He hunched over a long, primitive stone knife, sharpening it with a whetstone. He glanced at Don and returned to his business.

“Kinder, it’s our wayward gringo. Gringo, this is Kinder. Wanna drink, amigo?” Ramirez didn’t wait for a reply. He threw the bolt on the door and peeked through the spy hole, as if it were possible to see a damned thing on the pitch-black landing. “Yeah, all clear. Sometimes the pendejos follow us. That’s when I reach for this.” The pale man slid a nine iron from a bag stuck between two piles of boxes, brandished and slid it back into place. “Okay. Time for a drink.” He stepped over the snoring woman and retrieved a bottle of tequila from the shelf. He squinted, then poured some booze into a dirty glass and brought it to Don. Don had a sip against his better judgment. When in Rome, and so forth. Ramirez swilled directly from the bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and belched. “Yo, Benny, wanna slug?”

“Uh-uh.” Kinder spat on the stone and kept grinding. He might as well have been hunkered near a prairie campfire. The muscles in his shoulders flexed and rippled through the fabric of the serape.

Don couldn’t tell if that was a petrified worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle or a trick of the light. “Señor Montoya says you gentlemen can help me with a problem. He says you are policemen.”

“Retired,” Ramirez said. He didn’t appear old enough to rate retirement. “Montoya sent you over here. That was dumb. We woulda come to you. But whatever, hombre, whatever. What’s your problem, uh?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No, amigo. Montoya only said a gringo pendejo was making waves at his office and we needed to take care of it. We gonna take care of it. You got money, right? American dollars. No pesos.”

“Huh? Wait, he sent me to you because the cops would shake me down for cash.”

“Damned right those pigs would. Never ever trust the pigs, my friend.”

“But…
You
want money. And
you’re
a cop.”

“Of course we want money. That’s how it works. Grease the wheels so they roll, amigo. I’m no pig, I gave that up moons ago. Trust me, I know how the pigs think. You’re way better off with us. You’re with the angels now. Right, Benny boy?”

Kinder spat and slid the blade across the stone.

“Okay, man. How much you got?” When Don hesitated, Ramirez rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. “Let’s go. How much?”

“Uhhh… Thirty-five, American. A couple hundred pesos.”

“You…say what? Thirty-five American?”

“Thirty-five American.”

“Throw him out.” Kinder didn’t bother to glance up this time.

“What the hell you doin’ here?” Ramirez said. He took away Don’s glass.

“Montoya sent me—”

“Oh, for fuck sake. Yeah, yeah. Why?”

“My wife. She’s missing.” Don found it difficult to form words. He swallowed and set his jaw. “I can write you a check for more. Or get it from the hotel, or whatever. Or, you know what? Forget it. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Slow down, don’t be mad. I’m yankin’ your chain. Montoya said to take care of you, that’s what we do. Benny’s into reruns of Bob Hope. After he listens to his show, we talk. Come to an agreement.”

“This was a bad idea. The worst. Thanks for the drink. I’ll show myself out.” The very idea of navigating the stairway of certain death terrified Don, but he wasn’t going to accept any more grief from these seedy characters. Likely true that the police would be unsympathetic, yet such was his predicament that calling in the cavalry, an cavalry, appeared the only tenable option.

“Hang on, hang on. Thirty-five is something. Not much, but something. I dunno. Maybe I could make a call. Besides, you’ll trip and break your neck if I don’t go with you. Montoya might not want it like that. Gotta picture of your woman?”

“Here.” Don sighed. The mention of the stairs clinched it, though. He thumbed through his billfold and handed Ramirez a snapshot of Michelle standing on the lawn in her blue sundress, croquet mallet in hand, a floppy hat shading her face.

“Mother Mary, that’s a fine-looking woman,” Ramirez said in a reverential tone. He scooted over to Kinder and showed him the photo.

Kinder expertly flipped the knife and slid it under his serape. He stood and rolled his brawny shoulders and looked at Don with dispassionate hatred. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

2.

The trio descended into the lobby, Kinder at the fore, gasoline lantern lighting the way, Don in the middle, and Ramirez at the rear, tapping the nine iron against his palm. They went outside into the humid night, crossed the street, bee-lined through a deserted lot and wound up inside a locked garage that Kinder possessed the key to. Inside the garage were islands of tarps and machinery and broken cars. He whisked the canvas from a cherry Cadillac convertible. Don rode in back. Ramirez took shotgun and Kinder drove. Ramirez and Kinder chatted in Spanish, referring by the dashboard glow to the jotted itinerary Professor Trent’s secretary had provided.

Ramirez whistled. “Amigo, some of these places are not so good. Are you sure your wife would go there?”

“No. It’s Trent’s list. She went with him to see ruins.”

“I don’t understand. Your wife got a boyfriend?”

“Jesus, no. Look, they’re just friends. Not even friends; colleagues, like cops, you see?”

“But, man. These places… Okay, okay. You’re the boss. Benny will take us right there, no problem. Right, Benny?”

Kinder stepped on the gas and the Cadillac’s engine rumbled and wind whipped through Don’s hair and stung his eyes. The lights of the metropolitan heart of the City didn’t draw nearer, but slid sideways and receded as the car growled its way beneath a series of bridges and then climbed a steep switchback grade. Tenements and cinderblock and corrugated tin row houses crowned the rise. A large portion of the block appeared to be a ramshackle cantina. Cars parked at random angles in the dirt lot, the ditch and the road. People stood around drinking, or flopped in the dirt, loving or fighting, it was impossible to tell; dozens of them, and more lined the roof of the cantina like birds on a wire, bare legs hanging in front of the dead neon sign that spelled
Casa del Diablo
. Light fell from the stars and the batwing doors and a pole with a torch breathing medieval fire over the scene.

Don thought there must be a serious mistake. “This can’t be right,” he said.

Kinder parked in the middle of the road. There was nowhere else. “It’ll be fine,” Ramirez said as he hopped over the side, one hand on his turban. He waved impatiently at Don. “Don’t lag behind the big dogs, amigo. This is no place for puppies.”

“I’m sure it’s not where my wife would’ve come.”

“Don’t be scared, puppy. Nobody gonna lop off your head with me and Benny in your corner. Stick close, hug the wall—it’s a longer fall than them damned old stairs.” Ramirez snickered and grabbed Don’s shoulder and pushed him forward across the muddy lot and through the batwing doors into a smoggy, smolten den of crimson light and fire pit smoke coiling and roiling in a bloody miasma that rendered the occupants, of which there were scores packed into the oven, shadowy figures who stopped their boozing, dicing, and whoring to stare at Don. A yellow dog missing an eye snapped at him, all rotten teeth and lolling tongue, and tore off a chunk of his leg, putting action to the crowd’s voiceless intent. People laughed and guitars and horns kicked back to life. He’d paid the cover charge of flesh.

“Haha, Benny, he’s bleedin’ like a stuck pig. Better sop it up, amigo. These mutts got the rabies. So do the dogs, harhar! Hey, give me some dough.” Ramirez grabbed the notes Don blindly thrust at him.

They shoved him into a chair in the corner and he hissed through his teeth with agony as blood soaked his pants leg and he patted it with his handkerchief. Too much blood though.

“Ay caramba! Poochie took a whole piece,” Ramirez said and pressed a bottle of warm beer into Don’s hand. “Drink. It helps!”

Don swallowed and while he did, Ramirez cackled and dumped a stream of whiskey from a bottle he’d uncapped directly onto the seeping wound. White fire did a tarantella in Don’s brain and he nearly fell backward off the chair. Ramirez caught him.

“Shh, amigo. Don’t show no weakness. Gotta be strong, gotta have cojones. Dog eat dog in this town, harhar!”

No question remained in Don’s mind that he’d royally screwed up with this particular operation. Instead of getting out of a hole, he’d continued to dig for China. He lay his sweaty forehead against the table and prayed for the searing pain in his thigh to relent, for the hyenas to vanish in a puff of smoke, for the whole quagmire to dissolve and reveal itself the effluvium of a nightmare. None of that happened. Instead, Ramirez massaged his shoulders while raising the bottle with his free hand and swilling inhuman amounts of tequila and muttering what had to be a slaughtered rendition of a Mexican lullaby.

Kinder returned, a couple of men in tow. “Good news, gringo. These guys know where the chica and her boyfriend went.”

“Not her boyfriend, damn it!”

“What’s that? Hey, this is excellent luck.” Ramirez shook Don none too gently. “Open your eyes, sleepyhead. Clubbo and Günter here have brought the good word. Gimme your wallet.” He snatched the remainder of the cash and stuffed the deflated wallet into Don’s shirt pocket. He glanced down and shook his head sadly at all of the blood on the floor. “Man, he really bit the shit outta you. You need to see a vet.”

Clubbo was a silver-haired Cuban in a white shirt and a shell necklace—Ramirez explained his friend was on the lam from revolutionary forces on his island. Günter was European. His hair was nearly as long as Kinder’s, but dirty blond, and his beard was full and curly. He wore a leather jacket and leather pants and resembled an Ostrogoth who’d stepped out of a time machine, as painted by Frank Frazetta lacking only a sword in his hand and a nubile maiden wrapped around his leg. He’d tattooed skulls on his knuckles and a thick spiky bracelet adorned his left forearm. Kinder said something about a stint in a Russian gulag.

Neither of the newcomers spoke. Their gazes slid over Don and fastened to the cash in Ramirez’s fist. Ramirez gave each a share. The men frowned and pocketed the loot. A topless bargirl with tits floppier than the hat Michelle wore in her snapshot sashayed over with a platter of beer and another bottle of rotgut tequila and everybody had a snort, including Don, who demurred and tried to squirm away, but Kinder pulled back his head by the hair and Ramirez cannon-balled the medicine down his throat and laughed as the American coughed and choked and thrashed around.

“So your lady, she’s a scientist or some shit,” Ramirez said, and knocked back another shot of hooch. He looked like an albino devil and the stone at the center of his turban glistened like a third eye, flickered with the inner fire of the Fabled Ruby Ray powering on. “Yeah, this is the question of the hour. Why she fuckin’ around the ruins, huh? People around here don’t appreciate gringas sneaking into our ruins. Uh-uh.”

“Maybe she just fucking around,” Kinder said, gazing at the door, one hand hidden under the table like he was waiting for John Wayne to strut in and open fire.

Don laughed crazily, and red hate shot through his vision. He reached across the spilled drinks, smashed tortilla chips and half-full beer bottles, and socked Kinder in the mouth. Don had boxed a smidge in his youth and this was a decent blow, delivered from the lower back and hip, thrown loose as an uncoiling chain until it snapped tight on impact. The kind of blow that when delivered with twelve-ounce gloves could lay a man on his backside. Bare knuckle, it was a wicked shot. It felt like hitting a sandbag.

Ramirez and Clubbo yanked him back. Each man drove his thumb under Don’s clavicles and he lost most of the feeling in his arms and chest.

Kinder blinked and casually flicked a drop of blood from his dented lip. “Don’t want me talking about your puta that way, eh? Okay, I’m sorry, gringo.”

Again Don lunged and again the men restrained him, although this time Ramirez punched him in the heart and Don’s vision went for a few seconds, along with his wind.

Kinder smiled slightly when the American ceased gagging and retching. “Forgive me. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is an animal. Lupe,” he nodded at Ramirez, “give our amigo another drink. He needs it. You smoke, amigo?” He drew a cigarette from a plain white pack and lighted it with a match he struck on the sole of his boot. “Nah, you don’t smoke. Climbing in and outta them caves, you gotta be strong.” He flexed his biceps mockingly. “Too much smoke robs your strength. But listen, so does a woman. Don’t hit me, hombre. I’m giving you some wisdom. Women like your wife, women who wear pants and run around with handsome strangers, you gotta watch out for those bitches. They don’t care for nothing but themselves. I’m sorry to tell you this. It’s the way of the world.”

“Piss up a rope,” Don said, hoping for Gary Cooper but probably channeling Andy Griffith. Cursing wasn’t his forte, however the occasion seemed to merit it. The others had released his arms, but he’d calmed and his urge to kick the Mexican’s ass or die trying had subsided. His rage smoldered, tempered by the change in Kinder’s timber, how the man’s rough features had smoothed and taken on the aspect of an entomologist preparing to dissect an insect. Genie-like, Louis Plimpton’s blandly superior face came to mind. “I sure as hell smoke.” He clumsily snatched a cigarette from stoic Clubbo and lighted it from the candle in the bowl because his fingers weren’t working very well. “How’d you know I cave?”

“Señor Miller, how do you think? Montoya told me over the phone.”

“Yeah? Damned short conversation.”

“Montoya is concise.”

Don’s pain receded to a dull throb in the background wash of light and noise. “You guys aren’t cops.”

“Real bright one here,” Ramirez said.

Kinder sighed. “Shut up, Lupe. Look, amigo. Everything is going to be all right. The señora is fine. She’ll come home tomorrow as if nothing ever happened. What say we enjoy a few more drinks then get you to your hotel and you forget about rushing into the hills looking for her and this Trent pendejo?”