The Croning Part 2

"Right. In the USA, if a man's wife goes off in the morning and doesn't return for thirty hours, we alert the proper authorities. It means something might be amiss." Don was flushed and his dander was up. The official's cool, condescending demeanor almost made him hope Mich.e.l.le was in trouble (G.o.d forbid!). He didn't wish to imagine the insufferable arrogance Montoya would exhibit when she came prancing along, blithe as a you please.

"Oh. That is what you do in the USA. Has this happened before?"

Don hesitated. "Er, not like this."

"So it has happened."

"But thirty hours! And no call! And n.o.body here has even heard of Professor Trent! How is that possible?"

"Your wife is an anthropologist. Well regarded. And you, senor?"

"Didn't you say you knew?" Don and the official stared at one another. Don sighed. "Geologist. I work for AstraCorp."

"That is not very exciting."

"No, it's not. Well, sometimes. There's the caving. That can be hairy."

"I'm sure." Senor Montoya scribbled something with a pencil stub. He removed his gla.s.ses. The sharpness of his gaze suggested that the gla.s.ses functioned as costume jewelry. "Professor Trent, you say?"

"Yes! Thank G.o.d! I thought either I or everybody in this place had gone mad. Yes, Professor Trent. You've heard of him."

"Of course. He works in Natural Sciences."

"That's swell. We find him, we find Mich.e.l.le. They're investigating some ruins. I don't think she said which ones..."

The old man clucked disapprovingly. "You let your wife run away with Professor Trent? Muy mallow. He is muy handsome. He's Swedish."

"Swedish?"

"Si, senor. Swedish. Professor Trent is popular with the senoritas. The faculty know to keep their wives far away."

It didn't seem possible Don was hearing these words come from the official's lips; it was too dreamlike, as if he'd fallen asleep at the hotel and was simply in the throes of a nightmare, any moment Mich.e.l.le would flip on the lights, or leap into bed and shake him awake for the tale of her adventures.

Senor Montoya waited, unblinking.

Don squared his jaw. "Fine. You don't want to help, I'll go to the cops. I didn't want to involve them, didn't want to make a fuss, but okay." He stood and straightened his jacket.

"Wait," said Montoya. "Perhaps we are hasty." He slipped his gla.s.ses over his nose and smiled, not particularly happily, but a degree or two warmer. "You don't understand. The policia are... Let us say, unreliable. They will want money or they will do nothing. As you say in America, sit on their hands."

"Yeah, that's what we say."

"I shall help you. It must not be held against me that the University was discourteous to a guest." Montoya clapped his hands briskly and dialed the phone and began speaking swiftly in Spanish to whomever answered. The conversation concluded quickly. He said to Don, "I have friends in the policia. These men are retired, so have plenty of time to a.s.sist you. Here, I shall give you their address. Go to them and they will escort you, help with the locals, smooth any difficulties. The city is beautiful. She is also perilous for foreigners, especially after dark. These men, my a.s.sociates will keep you from coming to harm."

"That's gracious of you, senor Montoya. Perhaps I should speak with the faculty...Trent's supervisor. As I said, I'm not even certain which ruins they're visiting."

Montoya picked up the phone. He spoke rapidly, and impatiently, or so it sounded, and scribbled more notes all the while not breaking his gaze with Don, not blinking his cold eyes. "I apologize, senor Miller. Most of the administration has departed for the day. Professor Trent's secretary provided an itinerary. Unfortunately, no site was listed and I am unaware of these mysterious ruins you mention. There are many unusual attractions here." He tore a square of notebook paper and handed it over. "Some of those establishments are notorious. You will need Ramirez and Kinder, I think."

There wasn't much for Don to do thusly confounded by the certainty and finality of Montoya's statement. Deflated, he thanked the elderly gentleman and spent half an hour negotiating the subterranean maze before pus.h.i.+ng through an unmarked service door into soft, purple twilight. He rented a taxi and hove off to track the policemen as Montoya had directed. The taxi driver frowned upon receiving the address and muttered sourly, but he threw the car into gear and careened through the labyrinth that comprised the surface streets of the city. Meanwhile, Don blotted the rivulets of sweat cascading down his cheeks and held onto the door strap for dear life.

He was dropped in a strange and largely unlighted neighborhood in a district he wouldn't have recognized in broad daylight. The street was unpaved and white dust covered everything, turning gray in the quickening gloom. A cat slunk through weeds in the cracked sidewalk, and a Mexican flag rustled limply where it hung from a deserted balcony rail. Faintly came the strains of a man and woman shouting and bits of music and canned laughter from a radio show, drifting through a window seven or eight stories up, the only one with any light s.h.i.+ning out. This was disquieting-Don was wearily accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the mighty city, the pell-mell crush of millions of citizens packed like ants into a colony. Such silence, such emptiness, was unnatural, was claustrophobic and deafening.

He spied the twinkle of the cityscape between canted and decrepit brick apartments. The lights of the center of town appeared as remote as the constellations glacially coalescing overhead. This celestial glow permitted him to shuffle across the rutted avenue and barely make heads or tails of the building numbers. None of them bore t.i.tles, just numerals bolted or painted onto stucco or wood, if at all. The alleys were black cave mouths and odors of urine and decay wafted from them and his eyes and nose watered and he covered his mouth with a handkerchief. Someone whispered to him from the shadows. A trashcan lid clattered across his path, rolling on edge, rolling fast.

"Oh, Mich.e.l.le," he said and picked up the pace, dangerous as that might be, and soon decided he was at the right door because it was made of rotten wood, its white paint peeling like dead skin, and because it was the only door in the wall that was otherwise crisscrossed with fractures and blurry graffiti and a few windows with iron grilles. No handle, though; the door fit square into the frame, rusty keyhole awaiting a key he didn't possess. Don was ashamed at the panic rising with helium lightness through his body, but the person in the alley called again, slightly louder, and there was an intercom with the letters worn off the placard, no taxi in sight, no nothing except acres and acres, and row upon row of menacing architecture. So he started pressing b.u.t.tons. After a while, and a series of hang-ups, garbled responses, or plain static silence, a buzzer buzzed in the guts of the building and the horrid white door clicked open and he ducked through.

The door didn't have a handle on the inside either. "What?" he said, his voice rebounding unpleasantly from the walls. He stood in a caved-in foyer that smelled almost as putrid as the alley had and was illuminated by a greenish-red light in a distant aperture. The floor was a partially skinned aggregate of tile, slate and gravel littered with broken gla.s.s and shreds of packaging and tatters of fliers. The walls were soft and pocked, corroded rebar exposed. A rickety metal staircase spiraled up and up into the green-red gloom. The radio program he'd heard outside echoed from the invisible upper levels, m.u.f.fled.

Away from the icy stare of senor Montoya, this entire endeavor seemed less of a wise idea with each pa.s.sing second. Here was the kind of place a dumb, b.u.mbling American might easily find himself set upon by vagabonds and held for ransom, or simply murdered and dumped in a ditch. He seriously wondered if it would be better to brave the unlighted streets and find a police station, or a payphone to contact the consulate and get the highest authorities involved. However, there was the small matter of no door handle or evident method of egress from the squalid foyer.

In his moment of doubt, the clang of a heavy door thrown wide rebounded down the stairwell and the music and recorded laughter tripled in volume. Footsteps and creaking approached at length. Minutes pa.s.sed. From the shadows above, a man said, "Hey, gringo. Get your a.s.s up here, p.r.o.nto!"

"Who goes there?" Don said, not quite sufficiently gullible to traipse farther into the dark without verifying the ident.i.ty of the speaker first. Ransoms and ditches, ransoms and ditches. Might already be too late.

"Listen, amigo-this is a bad neighborhood. There's some muchachos in the alley wanna slit your throat or make sweet love to your lily white a.s.s and they gonna be tryin' the door. I ain't plannin' on hangin' out here all night. Come on!"

The man didn't sound Hispanic and that threw Don until he recalled that Montoya had referred to the contacts as Ramirez and Kinder. Etymologically speaking, Kinder was awfully Caucasian, and that was close enough for Don, especially as he was anxious about the potential appearance of thugs who wanted to make love to his a.s.s or cut his throat, or first one then the other. Someone knocked on the door and dragged what sounded like a nail or knife across the wood. Don ascended the stairs to the second floor landing in three or four bounds. He stopped short of a man in a turban, v-neck silk s.h.i.+rt, cotton harem pants, and grimy sandals.

The fellow was extraordinarily pale, as if he'd given a bonus quart at the blood drive, and his eyes glinted blue as chips of ice. He was lean and his nose hooked at precisely the right length to be character-enhancing rather than repulsive. His voice was husky and raw; a drinker's voice. "Yeah, you're him. I'm Ramirez. Follow me." Don didn't have an opportunity to reflect on this turn of events as Ramirez turned and began to climb with the speed and agility of a mountain goat, remarking over his shoulder around the fifth floor, "Hug the wall, whitebread. Some of the supports are comin' unscrewed. Long way down."

Don, soaked in sweat and hallucinating from exhaustion, lacked breath to respond. He hugged the wall, though, and gladly. Sixteen months since his last caving expedition and he had seen his stamina decline to the degree his belly ever so slightly pooched over his belt. Mich.e.l.le hadn't commented, although he suspected she wasn't impressed.

On the seventh floor, Ramirez led him through a swatch of near-perfect darkness and into a shabby studio. Wallpaper hung in loose flaps and bare bulbs dangled by wires from a water-stained ceiling. A radiator thumped and rattled under the single prison cell window. In the corner a stove and antique fridge sat covered in mold. A vinyl couch, gradually coming unstuffed, and two wooden chairs were the only furniture. Boxes of newspapers were stacked waist-high, their surfaces layered with the white dust. The floor was bare wood, notched and scarred and stained. A naked woman sprawled on pile of blankets near the fridge. Her hair was so blonde it was nearly white. She snored. A c.o.c.kroach balanced upon her thigh, preening its antenna. On the wall above her, a nude Aztec princess and a jaguar in velvet. Doom sliding over a purple horizon, its wormy shadow a bruise upon the princess's bare shoulder.

A thick man in a serape sat on one of the chairs. His hair was blue-black, and thick and s.h.a.ggy 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 d.a.m.ned 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 gla.s.s 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. "Senor 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."

"d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l you doin' here?" Ramirez said. He took away Don's gla.s.s.

"Montoya sent me-"

"Oh, for f.u.c.k 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 Mich.e.l.le 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 dispa.s.sionate hatred. "What the h.e.l.l are we waiting for?"

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. n.o.body gonna lop off your head with me and Benny in your corner. Stick close, hug the wall-it's a longer fall than them d.a.m.ned 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ma.s.saged 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, d.a.m.n it!"

"What's that? Hey, this is excellent luck." Ramirez shook Don none too gently. "Open your eyes, sleepyhead. Clubbo and Gunter here have brought the good word. Gimme your wallet." He s.n.a.t.c.hed the remainder of the cash and stuffed the deflated wallet into Don's s.h.i.+rt pocket. He glanced down and shook his head sadly at all of the blood on the floor. "Man, he really bit the s.h.i.+t outta you. You need to see a vet."

Clubbo was a silver-haired Cuban in a white s.h.i.+rt and a sh.e.l.l necklace-Ramirez explained his friend was on the lam from revolutionary forces on his island. Gunter 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 t.i.ts floppier than the hat Mich.e.l.le 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 s.h.i.+t," 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 f.u.c.kin' around the ruins, huh? People around here don't appreciate gringas sneaking into our ruins. Uh-uh."

"Maybe she just f.u.c.king 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 b.i.t.c.hes. They don't care for nothing but themselves. I'm sorry to tell you this. It's the way of the world."

"p.i.s.s 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 a.s.s 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 h.e.l.l smoke." He clumsily s.n.a.t.c.hed 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?"

"Senor Miller, how do you think? Montoya told me over the phone."

"Yeah? d.a.m.ned 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 senora 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 rus.h.i.+ng into the hills looking for her and this Trent pendejo?"