anyway.
“I wish we had time to go out and see the pyramids,” Brett said. “The Temple of the Sun and the Moon aren’t far from here. A day’s excursion.”
I looked at my watch. “How about lunch instead?”
“Lunch is good.”
We left the museum and walked until we came to an interesting restaurant. It wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t exactly a hole in the wall either. No one spoke English there, so we pointed at the menu a lot, not sure of what we were getting.
It turned out to be something the waiter called mole de quajalote, and it was good. It tasted like some kind of bird, maybe turkey, in a very sweet sauce. We also had a dish called cochinita pibil, which I could tell was made from pork.
When we finished with the meal, they brought out a sweet bread and a kind of pudding made of milk, fruit, sugar, and stuff I couldn’t identify. It was too sweet for me.
Feeling like funnel-fed geese, we decided to walk off the meal. Outside the air was rawer than before. It had a stench, like gasoline mixed with sewage, tortillas, and frying meat. The last two smells came from the large number of vendors who cooked you meals on the spot. Chances were, you ate the stuff in the square, you could get a case of the squirts that would make a mud slide seem tame.
We looked at huge and beautiful churches, took a short walking tour that was guided by a man that almost spoke English, though it was certainly better than my Spanish, and finally we ended up at the Mexico City zoo. It was a huge zoo, well tended, but as always, like circuses, it made me sad. Polar bears housed in southern regions do not consider themselves on a tropical vacation. They just look lost.
About three in the afternoon we caught a taxi, found out our first experience had not been a fluke. This taxi ride was just as scary, and by the time we arrived back at the hotel, the sweet sauce I had eaten was nestled in the back of my throat.
We went up to our room, brushed our teeth, looked at our watches. We were about fifteen minutes early. We checked to make sure both our watches said the same thing. They did. Finally, we said fuck it, walked over to Cesar’s room, knocked on the door.
Ferdinand let us in. About five minutes later, Leonard showed up.
“You sightsee?” I said.
“Just the back of my eyelids,” Leonard said. “I slept in. Jim Bob snores like a goddamn bear. I didn’t sleep good last night. I’m sort of pissed off, actually. I don’t like it when I don’t sleep well.”
“Where’s Jim Bob?” Brett said.
“He was gone when I got up. I grabbed some lunch, read a Western Jim Bob had brought with him, went to the bathroom a lot, blew my nose, looked out the window, and here I am.”
“Quite a prosperous day,” I said.
There was a knock on the door. I looked through the peephole. Jim Bob was shooting me the finger.
I opened the door, said, “What an adolescent.”
“I drop these pants, boy, you’ll think adolescent. Calling me a child is like calling-”
“Oh, just come in and shut up,” Brett said.
There were two suitcases setting on either side of Jim Bob. He picked them up, carried them into the room. He put them on the bed.
“What you got there?” Brett asked. “Sex toys?”
“You wish,” Jim Bob said. “Cesar’s contacts. They’re bad boys.”
Inside one suitcase was something wrapped in a white towel. Jim Bob removed that, laid it carefully on the bed. It was a bottle of chloroform.
He removed a folded duffel bag from the suitcase and unfolded it. It was about six feet in length. Beneath it were a couple of blackjacks, a slapjack, and four nine-millimeter automatics. The other case contained ammo clips and several pieces that went together to make a rifle and a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The rifle had a scope and a silencer. There was ammunition for both guns.
“I still think shooting him from a distance is the way to go,” I said.
“He must know who it is that kills him,” Ferdinand said.
“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “It’s a grace note. Five seconds of knowing you’re about to die, for whatever reason, is a long goddamn time. Shooting him from a distance is just doing the motherfucker a favor.”
“All right,” I said. “Outline it.”
“For what we’re doing here,” Jim Bob said, “the guns are out. We take the blackjacks, or the slapjack, our hands, whatever. We use the chloroform. We get these two guys down quick, we nab the woman, put her out of commission, and we’re out of here.”
“How are we out of here?” Brett asked.
“We stick the woman in the duffel bag, we check out, we get in the black van out front that Cesar will have waiting, we go to the airport, and he drives the woman back to his place. We meet there.”
“Why don’t we just put her in our pocket and walk out?” Leonard said. “A duffel bag? That’s it? A fuckin’ duffel bag?”
“It’ll work,” Jim Bob said. “Trust me.”
“So we’re supposed to meet them as they come up the elevator,” I said. “What if someone rides up the elevator with them?”
“They won’t,” Jim Bob said. “Cesar says they never ride up or down with anyone. They wait until they have it to themselves. Safety precautions.”
“Don’t these guys know what Cesar looks like?” Brett said. “I mean, hell, they cut the tip of his finger off and slapped his ear silly.”
“These men may or may not,” Jim Bob said. “But they won’t see him if he doesn’t want to be seen. Cesar’s good. Almost as good as me.”
“Why so much protection?” Brett said. “Is she made of gold?”
“She’s protected because of people like us,” Jim Bob said. “Juan Miguel protects his property, and to him, she’s property.”
“So the elevator opens on this floor,” Leonard said. “What’s to prevent someone else being in the hallway, seeing us go at these guys?”
“Nothing,” Jim Bob said. “We deal with that if it happens.”
Just before six the phone rang. Jim Bob answered, listened, hung up. He turned to us.
“Yippie ki ’eah.”
I put the slapjack in my back pocket, Leonard took a blackjack, and Jim Bob brought only himself. Ferdinand said, “And me?”
“You’re going to have to wait in the room,” Jim Bob said. “When we knock, you be right by the door and let us in. Got me?”
Ferdinand nodded.
Brett opened the door for us and tagged along behind carrying a towel. She had poured it full of chloroform, and the stench of it was strong in the hall.
“This is so fucked,” she said.
“I’m about to swoon here,” Leonard said. “Brett, you think maybe you got enough of that crap on the towel?”
“Too much and you’ll kill her,” Jim Bob said. “Hit her with it quick, then get it off her face.”
No one was in the hallway. We stopped at the elevator. The numbers on the elevator light were racing toward our floor. Then the other elevator started moving up.
“Which elevator are they in?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jim Bob said.
“Oh, shit. That’s good.”
We tried to stand casual, just a wad of folks waiting to get on the elevator. The door opened. A short, stocky woman just shy of three thousand years old with sparse hair dyed shoe polish black and at least twenty-five whisker hairs to match, also dyed, stepped out of the elevator carrying a white poodle with a leash.
Brett leaned close to my ear, spoke softly. “Maybe we should sap her once for not getting rid of that
