them. Two trucks, going through one after the other, the day before each of the robberies. Once we had that, we figured out who they were, and then we watched them move, watched them scout the bank, cleared out the bank a half hour before they were due to come in, and when they came in… there we were.'
They talked about it for a while, and then Lucas gave them details on a case involving an art professor, on which Mallard's office had provided help. 'Marcy Sherrill said your information was so generic that it made her brain hurt,' he said.
'Fuck her if she can't take a joke,' Mallard said.
'Louis,' Lucas said, 'the language.'
AND THAT WAS THE EVENING.
The next morning, Lucas was a few minutes late getting down to the lobby: Mallard and Malone were both early risers, and he wasn't. He shaved, stood in the shower for five minutes, lay down on the bed for a few minutes more, dozing, then had to brush his teeth again when Malone called to ask where he was. She was annoyed: 'Get going, Lucas-our contact's already here.'
When he got down, Mallard and Malone were waiting in the lobby with a Mexican man who wore a gorgeous off-brown suit with a cornflower-blue shirt and buffed mahogany oxfords. Lucas was admiring the Mexican's dress when Mallard said, 'Jeez, Davenport, where do you get these clothes?'
Lucas looked down at himself. He was wearing tan slacks with a gray cast, a black silk Hawaiian shirt with red-and-gold cockatoos, a medium-blue tropical-weight wool-knit jacket, and loafers that were the casual variants of the Mexican man's. He thought he looked pretty good. 'What's the problem?'
'No problem…'
'You look excellent,' the Mexican said, smiling.
His English was lightly accented, and Malone said, 'This is Colonel Manuel Martin, Mexican National Police. He arranged the interview with the Mejia family.'
Lucas and Martin shook hands. The Mexican clearly had more Indio in his ancestry than Spanish, was six inches shorter than Mallard and a little rounder. His expression was one of weary amusement. Lucas said, 'Pleased to meet you,' and Martin nodded and said, 'I understand you've danced with Clara Rinker.'
'She's a good dancer,' Lucas said. They were drifting toward the dining room. 'What's the story on this Mejia guy?'
Martin's eyebrows arched a bit, and he cocked his head to the side. 'I was trying to think how to explain that, and finally I came up with this: He is Mexico's Joseph Kennedy. The father of your President Kennedy? Where the early money came from is not exactly known; it is now legitimate. But because of past associations, the entire Mejia family is very, very careful. And they have excellent connections with the less reputable…' He struggled for a word, and finally landed on 'element.'
'They'll talk to the cops?'
Martin shrugged. 'Of course. Joseph Kennedy would speak to the police, would he not? So will Mejia. Especially where our interests are aligned.'
THE BREAKFAST WAS AMERICAN -eggs, milk, cereal, sausage, and coffee-though Martin stayed with fruit, bread with cheese, and olives, popping the olives one at a time with his fingertips, as though he were eating pecans. During the breakfast, he gave them a short history of Cancъn, drew schematic maps on a paper napkin to explain the lay of the Yucatбn, and the cities of Cancъn and Mйrida, and outlined what was known of Clara Rinker's stay in Mexico.
'She wasn't working for the Mejias before she came here, of that we are certain. They had no idea of who she was. If they had known, it is doubtful that Paul Mejia would have been allowed to continue the relationship. From what we can piece together, he met her at the hotel where she worked-purely accidentally, she was a bookkeeper and he was checking on a business question having to do with automobile parking costs at various beach hotels-and that she did not know about the Mejia family until another woman at the hotel told her, some time after they began seeing each other. She lived quite modestly in a rented apartment.'
'Fingerprints?' Lucas asked.
'Nothing. The room had been methodically wiped. There were personal items left behind, but nothing that you could not buy in five minutes in another city. And, of course, nobody ever took a picture of her. There was never an occasion.'
'No way to tell where she went?'
'She disappeared after an appointment at the doctor's office,' Martin said. 'She had recovered from the shooting-the checks… Is that right, the medical checks?'
'Checkups,' Malone offered.
'Yes. The medical checkups were routine, and had become more a matter of physical rehabilitation. She had some damage to her stomach muscles, and they needed strengthening. Anyway, there is a large taxi stand not far from the doctor's office, but none of the taxi drivers we've found remembers seeing her or taking her anywhere. That's possibly because they take all kinds of Americans everywhere, and they simply can't remember, or because the Mejia connection had been rumored, and nobody wanted anything to do with her.'
'So she takes a taxi and she's gone.'
Martin shrugged again and said, 'What else can I tell you? We have document checks, of course, for people coming and going, and since that time, we have no Cassandra or Cassie McLain, and of course, no Clara Rinker, entering or leaving Mexico.'
MALONE AND MALLARD questioned Martin through the breakfast-they weren't quite rehearsed, Lucas noticed, but they were coordinated. He began watching them more closely, and began to suspect that the coordination was personal, rather than professional. But what about the Sheetrocker, he wondered?
Then, in the government GMC Suburban that Martin himself drove to Mйrida, Mallard scrambled into the back with Malone, and Lucas noticed that their shoulders touched during much of the ride, and he thought, Hmmm. The two FBI agents pushed the questions even when it was obvious that they were running in circles, as though they were playing a ranking game with each other…
Martin was unfailingly polite through it all. Halfway to Mйrida, the FBI questions ran out, and they rode in silence for a while.
Martin eventually turned to Lucas. 'If I might ask… where did you get your jacket? It's very nice. Also the shirt, although it's not my style.'
'Got it in San Francisco. One of the gay men's boutiques-my fiancйe would know the store,' Lucas said. He opened the front lapel and read it. 'It's a Gianfranco Ferre. I liked the fabric for hot weather, although it does get some pulls in it.'
'Hmm.' Martin nodded, pursing his lips. 'Large people like yourself look authoritative even in casual clothing. I'm afraid my body was made for suits.'
'But that's a great suit,' Lucas said. 'I saw one like it, I think, a friend of mine had one. Ralph Lauren, the Purple Label? Though it was in blue.'
'Exactly, this is what it is,' Martin said, looking pleased, touching his necktie knot and lapel. 'Some people in America think brown suits look bad, but I think, with brown people, they look not-so-bad.' And a moment later: 'Have you ever looked at a suit by Kiton?'
Lucas said, 'I saw some, at a show…'
They talked about suits for a while, then about shoes. Martin told Lucas that he'd paid $1,100 for a pair of semicustom oxblood loafers by an English cobbler named Barkley, only to find that every time he went through an airport metal detector, the steel shanks in the shoes set off the alarm. 'So, when I go to the States, my beautiful shoes stay at home. It is the only way I can assure myself of the sanctity of my…' He searched again for the word, came up with 'rectum,' and smiled brilliantly over his shoulder at Malone.
'Don't like those body-cavity searches, eh?' Lucas asked.
'American security is sometimes… unusual,' Martin said.
When they got out of the truck in Mйrida, Malone took Lucas by the elbow and stood on tiptoe, her mouth by his ear, and said, 'If you talk for one more fuckin' minute about fashion, I'll fuckin' shoot you.'
