resort.
Perhaps once it had looked like the photographs in the brochure, but it sure didn’t any more. Plus, it wasn’t even on the coast. In fact, the area they had driven through to get there was almost semi-industrial. But Dad had got a deal — ‘Hell, they were practically giving the rooms away,’ he’d said, drawing a major eye roll from Mom — and the staff, no doubt eager to make a good impression, had gone out of their way to be welcoming. So much so that Mom had had to agree that the service was pretty much the best they’d had anywhere.
The only real problem for Julia was that she was twenty-one and on vacation alone with her parents. And she was bored.
That evening, Dad being Dad had made a big show of letting her have wine at dinner and joking with the waiter about carding her. Not that she was a big drinker but she didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d been drinking at parties since she was eighteen and it wasn’t a big deal, like he was making out. Mom, who’d had to clean out Julia’s waste basket when she’d thrown up into it after one party, had kept quiet.
In the meanwhile, Julia had spotted the bar down the street on one of their rare forays out of the resort — Dad being a firm believer that all-inclusive meant exactly that, and spending more money was stupid. The staff didn’t encourage you to leave the resort either: there had been problems in the area between drug gangs, nothing that had affected any Americans or other tourists but Julia could feel anxiety in the air whenever anyone stepped outside. The hotel had a couple of guards at the entrance, both armed, but you saw armed guards in lots of places, these days, not just in Mexico. If you lived in Arizona, with its gun laws, guns were something you barely registered. Dad had one and he’d made sure that Julia knew how to use one. In any case, it was just three or four hundred yards from the hotel to the bar, where Julia had seen a couple of young American backpackers hanging out when she had passed it.
After dinner she went back to her room, changed and freshened her makeup. Around ten o’clock she left again, slipping out of the resort by a side entrance. Walking down the street, she was glad of the break from her parents. She loved them, and she knew that they were clinging to the last few precious times when they would have her to themselves, but sometimes, like this vacation, it got too much.
The bar was almost empty and all the drinkers were old and local. No Americans. No one under the age of forty. She could feel male eyes on her, which creeped her out. The bartender took pity on her and suggested somewhere else. It wasn’t far and it might be more her style. There was live music, although he didn’t know on which nights. She shouldn’t walk alone under any circumstances. He called her a cab and gave her the firm’s number: she should use them to get back to her hotel. They were a local company, reliable and safe.
The cab ride took ten minutes and she was glad she had the phone number because now she had no idea where she was in relation to the hotel. She was just starting to regret her adventure when she noticed him sitting at the bar. American. Bearded, tanned and slim. He was older but not too old — and he was handsome. Like, really handsome.
Sitting next to her at the bar, Charlie Mendez had been wary at first. There had been no Americans in the place when he had arrived and definitely no young American women, never mind one who was on her own. When she had walked in and hopped up on a barstool, looking slightly uncomfortable and out of place, he had taken it as a sign of good fortune, but at the back of his mind he was worried.
Buying her a drink, he had searched her face for a sign that she had recognized him. But since he had fled the United States, he had grown the beard, and his already tanned skin had darkened under the fierce Mexican sun. He had dyed his hair too. He looked different, more like a man coming to terms with his age than the Peter Pan figure he had cut back in Santa Barbara.
‘Do you want another beer?’ she asked. She had short blonde hair and had on one of those bras that flat- chested chicks wore to make themselves look like they had a rack, but she was pretty.
He dug into his pocket. ‘No, I got this. Same again?’
She chewed her bottom lip, then scooted off her stool. ‘No, something different.’
‘Like what?’ he asked, with a smile.
‘I gotta go visit the little girls’ room. Why don’t you surprise me?’
He watched her leave. As she disappeared through the door marked Senoras, he leaned over to the bartender and ordered a beer for himself and a margarita for his new friend, Julia. When the drinks came, he slid an extra twenty dollars across the bar and asked the bartender if they had a room upstairs he could rent for a few hours.
The bartender left him, and Mendez went to work on Julia’s margarita. A few moments later, she was back, hopping on to the stool and taking a sip of the drink.
‘I love margaritas. How did you know?’
Mendez flashed the wide-eyed, puppyish grin that had served him so well back in Santa Barbara. ‘Wild guess,’ he said, as she took another sip.
Twenty-five
In the car, Hector realized that his anger towards Charlie Mendez had faded. It was the emotion he should have felt rather than the one he did. Inside, he was happy that Charlie had screwed up and gone AWOL without telling anyone. For starters, it gave him something to do. He had a mission — finally. He had to find Charlie and bring him back.
Yes, even if he couldn’t find him, or if he was picked up by someone before Hector got to him, that meant the end of the babysitting. It was what his young charge liked to call a win-win situation, a phrase, Hector reflected, that only an American could use with a straight face. In America things might be win-win. In Mexico they were more likely lose-lose.
He pressed down a little harder on the gas pedal as traffic cleared out of his way, the flashing lights on the roof of the car easing his passage. As he drove, he made one more call. Not to the boss, who would only be told about Charlie after Hector knew more, but to the bartender who had called him when word had got out that Hector was looking for the American. There would be good money for the man, a heavier tip than he was used to.
‘He’s with a girl,’ the bartender had told him. ‘We have a room upstairs. He’s there with her but maybe you should get here soon.’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’ Hector pressed, but he had lost the signal, and in any case it didn’t sound like the bartender could do anything about whatever the problem was. Hector flicked the switch on the console that turned on the sirens and picked up his speed.
He left the car down the street and walked to the bar. The parking lot was full. It was a busy place all week round, trade helped by the protection Hector’s boss offered. Although neither the boss nor Hector nor anyone they knew drank here often, it was considered safe for locals and tourists so it was often full.
Inside, the bartender nodded for Hector to follow him to a narrow wooden stairway. Hector grabbed his arm and stared at him, his gaze reminding the bartender of who he was before he asked, ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The girl. I’ve never seen her before.’
He was talking in riddles — and the smell of whisky was tantalizing. ‘So what?’
The bartender lowered his voice. ‘She came in on her own and sat down next to him.’
The only girls who did that were working girls so Hector didn’t see why the man was so anxious, standing there in the narrow hallway, sweating. He shrugged. Then he wondered if maybe Charlie had done something to her. Hurt her. Killed her even. Surely only that would make the bartender so twitchy.
Hector squeezed the man’s arm. ‘Come on. Spit it out. What’s the problem?’
The bartender leaned in towards him and whispered, ‘She’s American.’
Hector pushed past him, his feet hammering up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the tiny wooden postcard of a landing and threw open the only door.
What confronted him inside told him he had been right. Win-win was for asshole gringos, like Charlie Mendez. For a man like Hector there was only ever lose-lose.
