“Stop.” What’s the word? “Pare.”
“Que?”
“Pare.”
“Si.”
Slowly he brings the bike to a halt as I feel through my jacket pocket for the slip of paper with Ibarra’s diagram. I unfold it and try to make out the squiggles and lines in the dim light. Then I see the words “far right.”
“We went the wrong way.”
“ Que?”
“We took a wrong turn. Back there.” I wave with my arm back over his shoulder. “We were supposed to go to the right. The far right.” My voice projects volume to compensate for the lack of language skills. I turn all the way around on the seat and point back over his shoulder. “The other way,” I tell him.
“Donde?”
“There.”
“No,” he says. “Por aqui,” and he points down the path in front of us.
“The Door to the Temple of the Inscriptions is that way,” I tell him.
“No.” He shakes his head, stands up, and starts pedaling again. “Por aqui.”
“Stop.”
He ignores me.
I try to step off, but he picks up speed so that one foot drags on the ground.
“Senor.” His voice is harsh now, angry.
I look back over my shoulder and he shakes his head at me. “Por aqui.” He nods in the direction we are going.
I get the message. He’s saying it’s this way. Whoever has sent him has given him precise instructions. I could drag both feet, stop the bike, and get off. Use the pistol to get rid of him if I have to. But then I would never find Adam. They would kill him, if they haven’t already. Of course they will kill both of us the minute they open the package and see what’s in it. Ibarra’s plan was never to allow them to get that close. I was to see Adam. Have them bring him into the open. One of their marksmen would take out whoever was holding him, and at that same instant I was to throw the package into the underbrush and follow it.
In the confusion, Ibarra’s men wearing flak vests were to grab Adam and pull him behind cover.
Now I grind my teeth as we ride. The only certain security is the tiny Walther in my pocket. Each turn of the wheels puts more distance between Pablo Ibarra’s men and me. Herman was right. Whoever planned this planned it well.
I look down at the pink scrap of paper folded over in my hand. It’s one of the telephone slips Harry brought down from the office. On the form-printed side is the message. I recognize Marta’s handwriting.
It’s strange how in moments of crisis, familiar things offer the illusion of comfort.
I’m rumbling through the jungle on a three-wheeled bike, sitting in front of a crazy Mexican who is probably delivering me to my death, and all I can think about is Joyce Swartz, the name on the line. I can hear Joyce’s raspy voice over the phone, the muddle of her words, the cigarette dangling from her lips as she talks.
I stare at the slip in a daze, reading words, unable to decipher the message as the vibration of the bike shivers my vision and rattles my teeth.
Suddenly the rhythm of the wheels begins to slow as he stops pedaling and coasts. I look up and we roll to a stop in the middle of nowhere. The white limestone stand of the path narrows into the distance ahead, then disappears around a curve. He has covered at least a mile, maybe more, from where the bikes were parked. Now he motions for me to get off.
“Where? Donde?”
“Aqui.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“Aqui.”
“Here. You want me to stay here?”
“Aqui.” Then he motions down the path with one arm, as if he’s waving me away.
I pick up the package and step off the bike.
He swings it around in a wide arc, turns, and heads back.
I stand in the middle of the path, watching him until I can no longer hear the rattle of metal. I lose him as the bike recedes into the distance, swallowed by the edges of jungle as the path disappears.
I turn and look the other way. There is nothing but a narrow strip of white in both directions, like a single thread running through a cloth of green. The man on the bike pointed in that direction, so I begin to walk, staying along one edge of the path near the underbrush to make myself no more of a target than necessary.
Tucked under one arm is the package. Suddenly I stop and look around. Every bush and tree along the path looks like every other one. Still it’s better than delivering a package of empty hopes to men with guns.
I break a branch from one of the bushes to mark the spot, and then I set the package behind an outcropping of stones a few feet off the road. Its absence and my knowledge of its location give me something to bargain with, if only to kill time in hopes of finding an opening. If they don’t see it on me and they’re smart, they won’t shoot me at least until we talk.
I step back out to the path, still carrying the little slip of paper in one hand. There’s no way to tell the distance to the spot where Pablo Ibarra’s men are waiting since the diagram conforms to no scale. Besides, having ridden through curves and around bends on the front of the bike, I have no sense of direction.
I’m about to ball up the note and toss it into the brush when my eye catches a word on the other side. The word “Capri.” Without the jarring motion of the bike I read the cryptic message written by Marta and handed to Harry, along with other messages, in an envelope.
“Joyce says Jamaile owned one piece of property. The land under the old Capri Hotel.”
I stand there for a moment, my eyes on the slip of paper, weary, unable to focus. I start to walk slowly down the path, thinking Nick owned Jamaile and Jamaile owned the Capri, the greasy spoon downtown where we had coffee that morning.
I look up and step a little closer to the bushes on one side as I walk. What does it mean? None of it makes any sense. If Nick owned a chunk of land downtown, why didn’t Dana know about it, or Margaret in the divorce? Nick was broke. What was he doing looking at empty offices in San Francisco and New York, dealing with Metz and the Ibarra brothers to broker a piece of history worth millions? Certainly he would get a fee, but…
Suddenly I stop. My heart skips. I turn and start to walk quickly in the other direction. A few steps and I start to run, looking back over my shoulder, headlong down the path.
The broken branch pointing the way to the package is just ahead, when he steps out from the green foliage on the other side of the path ten feet in front of me. Adam is holding a pistol pointed at me.
“Where are you going in such a rush?”
I stop, look at him breathing heavily, then bend and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
“And here I thought you were coming to save me,” he says.
“You killed them. Nick, Metz, Espinoza, Julio.”
“No. No. There you go, jumping to conclusions. Actually I didn’t have anything to do with Espinoza. I didn’t even know about him until you told me. In fact the sheer volume of things I didn’t know overwhelms me.
“And as for Nick and Metz, I didn’t pull the trigger if it makes you feel any better. Though you could say I did set matters in motion. Some people out of Tijuana actually. The world has become an awful place. For enough money they don’t even want to know who you are. I have to say they did a better job than the two idiots in the airplane. I didn’t like that whole idea, but they insisted. By the way, if you don’t mind my asking, how’s Harry?”
“He’s going to be fine.”
“I see. That could be a problem. You see, I couldn’t be sure how much he knew, so I thought it would be best if he were invited to join us.
“You actually came here thinking you were going to meet the two brothers. I must say I did a bang-up job in a short period of time. You like the outfit?” His clothes are covered in dirt, one knee is torn out of his pants, and there’s a bruise on the side of his face.
“All part of the preparations,” he says. “You can imagine my panic when Harry dropped that bit about Nick’s
