Authors: Rex Burns
“How do you know?”
“Two years—hell almost three years ago, now—we were talking deep-sea fishing. He mentioned he had a finca on the Mexican coast and that he could walk to the harbor where the charter boats docked. I asked him where it was and he said Cabo San Lucas!”
T
HE TRIP TO
Cabo San Lucas by Mexicana Air takes I about three hours, and I was lucky enough to get the last single seat on a flight crowded with grinning tourists eagerly drinking the complimentary margaritas. The several fishing villages that make up the cape’s scattered population form patches of dusty green at the tip of the thousand-mile finger of rocky waste that’s the Baja California peninsula. The towns had been there for centuries, clinging like whelks to the meager subsistence that the sea and rocks provided, and much of the population was the offspring of pirates who had sheltered in the lee of barren, guano-streaked rocks to dart out and strike the Spanish ships that cruised the Pacific coast from Chile north, or that lumbered across the central Pacific to the isthmus with the riches of the Philippines in their holds. Now it was a newly discovered tourist mecca, but the ancient tradition of piracy was still alive in the fleets of drug runners who moored their glistening yachts in the small harbor behind the Arch and lounged in the sun while counting their money. Loomis would be right at home.
It was a long shot, but McAllister had insisted—putting us back on the payroll with a joke about having his accountant work overtime to fire us so he could hurry up and rehire us. It wouldn’t take more than a day to be certain, and the chance to get Loomis was worth that. Make the offer, McAllister told me; find the man and make the offer.
Through the quivering window on one side of the plane, the flat, dead-looking waters of the Sea of Cortez gradually gained life, rippling like wrinkled aluminum foil with the Pacific surges that rolled into the sea’s mouth from Tahiti or China. Through the other window, when the plane finally banked for its landing, the earth was a brown tumult scarred here and there by patches of gray green crops and meandering lines of arroyos that hid a little moisture from the tropic sun. On the steep glide down toward the new airport’s single strip of black asphalt, I could see the small houses scattered among palm thickets and stiff cactus and linked by webs of unpaved roads and meandering dirt trails. As I bounced on the broken springs of the creaking taxi that carried me the thirty or so miles to the town of Cabo San Lucas, I glimpsed boxlike houses nestled in the saguaro and cholla and, occasionally, the sudden luxuriant green of carefully tended gardens and palm trees that marked hotels perched at the edge of the sea.
The territory of Baja California del Sur is controlled by the Federal Police based a hundred miles north in La Paz; but the several towns of Cabo have their own local police—municipals who patrol the highway and answer emergency calls in squad cars that look like the highway patrol vehicles in any number of states north of the border. They would be my last resort because they would have questions of their own. My guess was that someone in the village—shopkeeper, waiter, bartender—would know of the gringo whose picture I showed them. I also guessed that the harbor Loomis had told McAllister about was at San Lucas instead of one of the lesser indentations along the almost featureless stretches of sandy cliff and beach.
We lurched and swerved through low sandy hills tangled with sun-scorched shrubs and cactus, passing on blind curves with the faith of a devout Catholic. When we neared one of the billows of green palms, the driver would point and name the resort—”Calinda Aquamarina,” “Palmilla”—and tell me what attractions each had: sport fishing, surfing, skindiving, a notable restaurant. Finally, dropping out of a last tangle of highway past skinny, long-horned cows that grazed on cactus, he pointed ahead to the spine of tan rock that sank into the sea beyond the glitter of distant white buildings. “El Cabo—the tip. Beyond that, splash!”
“That’s the Arch?”
“Yes. Like a window. This side, the Sea of Cortez, that side, the Pacific. You must take the tour to Lover’s Beach—swim in two oceans. Very nice—very cheap. You are looking for fishing?”
“No. I’m looking for a person.”
“Oh?”
“An emergency. He’s here on vacation, but I have important papers for him to sign.”
The brown eyes in the rearview mirror looked at me without expression and I lifted from my briefcase the impressive sheaf of papers that made up the Columbine Project.
“You are maybe police?”
“No. I’m a lawyer. Soy un abogado.”
“Ah. The lawyers and the vultures,” he said in Spanish. “They fly around in the same circles.”
“But the lawyers can eat more than the vultures.”
“Ha! Es verdad!”
The road suddenly ran out of pavement in a rattle and skid of gravel and a scattering of warning signs that marked construction.
“It’s a drainage ditch around the city for the floods.”
“You get that much rain here?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Some day. But I don’t think so.”
The town’s edge was a swirl of new highway construction that tangled the light traffic of cabs, tour vans, and the ubiquitous flatbed trucks that were used for everything from construction to family outings. The pop and sputter of small motorcycles filled the sun-washed streets as we slowed to a stop-and-go crawl past the bright facades of shops and restaurants. “Where does this man live?”
“I don’t know where he’s staying. I have to find him.”
“Ah. He’s a Norteamericano?”
“Canadian.” I showed him Loomis’s photograph. “Edward Holtzmann. He has a finca somewhere near the harbor.”
“Okay—that’s not so hard. We will look.” His eyes snagged mine again in the rearview mirror. “I can be your guide, yes? I know Los Cabos—we will find him.”
“That’s fine.”
Nothing said about money—that would come later; but McAllister could afford it. The driver, a greater happiness at the prospect of a day-long hire and a job out of the ordinary, turned completely around while he drove and held out a hand, “My name is Juan Rodriguez.”
Our first stop was a cantina that faced across the main street to the harbor, where small boats of all kinds lay moored and pointing at the open sea. On the other side of the flat water, a large hotel jutted from a rise of high ground and overlooked the town; behind the cantina, the spine of gray-and-brown rock lifted steeply toward the pale and hazy sky. Scattered across its barren face, houses clung above the dusty heat of the village, propped by masonry arches and concrete pillars. “My friend owns this bar—he knows everything about San Lucas. You wish to come in? Good food, good drinks!”
“Perhaps after we find him.”
Juan Rodriguez was only slightly disappointed. “Only a few minutes.” He took the photograph with him and I strolled along the narrow walk past the tourist shops to gaze at the harbor and the open-air market that formed a cluster of thatched roofs. On the near horizon loomed the white massiveness of a cruise ship, and scratches of white marked the steady shuttle of barges going back and forth from the ship to the quay. From this angle, the Arch wasn’t visible, but glass-bottomed boats and motor cruisers filled with brightly dressed tourists moved steadily from the harbor and back, rounding a shoulder of steep rock for the gap in the mole that protected the small harbor from the sea. Now and then, a fishing boat, its rods lifted high above the conning tower like a row of feelers, pushed slowly through the smaller skiffs and outboards that constantly crossed the glaring surface. Despite the smallness of the village, there was a sense of urbanity and congestion, the sudden boiling up of human activities that marked a crossroads in what was otherwise an alien wilderness of desert and empty ocean. It had a cosmopolitan note reinforced by the French and Spanish, the German and English that idly drifting clusters of tourists spoke as they strolled from one shop to another in the weighty midday heat. It was the kind of place that Loomis could comfortably be lost in—remote enough from the United States for safety, yet not isolated nor vacantly provincial. And his money would go a long way.
“Ah, there you are! My friend, he does not know this man personally but he has given me many places to ask for him.”
“Where do we start?”
“The bakery—every man must have bread, yes? My cousin there will know if this man lives here.”
“Let’s start at the real-estate office.” I pointed to the sign that dangled over a curving, narrow street that followed a gully leading up the mountainside. My other hand held a fifty-dollar bill under Juan’s wide eyes. “If we find him within an hour, you get a bonus.”
“Ah!”
It didn’t take that long. The woman in the real-estate office, once she was convinced that I wasn’t looking for a condominium with a magnificent view of both the Sea of Cortez and the blue Pacific Ocean, leafed through her records for Holtzmann’s name. I had the feeling that she recognized the photograph Juan showed her, but she took the name from a Rolodex while an anxious Juan, glancing at his watch, hovered at her shoulder. The house was high up on Guerrero Street, a winding trail of gravel and dirt that climbed behind the town and narrowed so that even Juan had to slow to thread between steep cuts on one side and the railless plunge into the village hundreds of feet below. Finally the cab creaked to a halt at the fenced entry to what looked like a single-story, tile-roofed house and a wide expanse of concrete driveway.
“Forty-two minutes, senor. Less than one hour!”
I handed him the fifty which he studied for a moment. “I’ll probably be here one hour. Can we make it to the airport for the afternoon flight?”
“Como no? No problema!”
Squealing and rumbling, the cab seesawed back and forth to turn on the narrow lane and head back down. I paused a moment in the wind that swirled dust and an occasional zinging insect; from this high, the ocean liner looked like a child’s plaything, and the white marks of the barges seemed scarcely to move. Through a sharp V in the peaks, I made out the hazy line of the Pacific horizon and a distant cloud bank that caught the light like a shred of dirty canvas. The bungalow showed no sign of life. I hoisted the briefcase and let myself through the metal gate, my shoes loud on the gritty concrete driveway. The house was one of those I had noticed from below, jutting out from the cliff like a mushroom growing on a tree trunk, and falling away in three or four stories below the ground-level entry. I clattered the iron knocker against the carved wood of the doorway. A few moments later came an answering rattle of a latch and the door opened a few inches to show a black-haired woman somewhere in her sixties who kept her hand across the opening and peeked over it. “Si, senor?”
“Senor Holtzmann, por favor. Esta aqui?”
“Momentito, senor.”
Sandals padded away across the cool, dark tile and from somewhere in one of the neighboring houses a dog started barking—a single, halfhearted yap followed by time to regain its breath, then another perfunctory yap.
“Por favor, Senor Kirk.” The woman unlatched the final chain and let me in to the soothing shadow of the room. I followed the pale bobbing of her polished heels toward a staircase that wound in a spiral down to the next level. There, in a shaded veranda that reached out over space, Loomis lay sprawled on a chaise lounge, a book folded on one finger, and peered professorially over his glasses at me.
“Ah, Devlin—I’ve only arrived myself this morning. It certainly didn’t take you long to find my little Shangri-la.”
“McAllister remembered that you owned a place in Los Cabos.”
“Good Lord, that man’s memory! I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, but that really was years ago.” He glanced at my briefcase and smiled slightly. “And that must be the papers that you’ve come so far to have me sign. Sit down, please. Enjoy the view. Can Maria get you something cool to drink? I heartily recommend her mai tais.”
“Why not?” I nodded to the woman. “Un mai tai, por favor.”
She nodded back without showing any of her gold-lined teeth, and padded away into the house. Loomis grunted slightly as he hoisted himself to a higher sitting position and set the book on the glass table by his chair. Beyond him, a trickle of water fell down a low rock wall to form a small pool whose sound softened the heat and glare of the sky beyond the patio. Above, sunlight filtered in blurry spots of light through the thick bougainvillea vines that dangled orange and pink and purple blossoms.
“The real-estate woman called you?”
“We have an understanding. For a retainer, of course. Everything is for a fee—it’s one of the few unchanging universals.”
“This is a very nice hideout.”
“Thank you. That wasn’t its original intent. But as things turned out … “
“You left Denver in a hurry.”
“It’s not polite to overstay one’s welcome.”
“I thought you were quite popular. And growing more so.”
“Ah well, fame isn’t everything. And it’s so fickle.”
“If I found you, so will Neeley.”
“I’m aware of that. And I’m grateful that you used your own name with Senora Castro—it saved me some strenuous effort, which, in this heat, is a blessing.” He yawned and quickly covered his mouth with a polite hand. “Pardon me—it’s siesta time. A very sane custom in the tropics, and I’ve been traveling a great deal in the past twenty-four hours. For all the good my circuitous route did me. Tell me,” he changed the subject, “how is our pompous and arrogant friend taking all this?”
“McAllister? When I first told him about you, he wouldn’t believe it.”
Maria’s sandals slapped across the tiles and wordlessly she handed me a large, cold glass filled with juices and fruits. Then she padded away again into the dimness.
“He wouldn’t believe it,” Loomis repeated to himself and sipped his own drink. “You mean he wouldn’t admit that I had outsmarted him?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“Oh, I do. And I did. All’s fair, my boy, all’s fair; and if you don’t know by now that the corporate world is aflame with war—nasty, brutish, and not very short wars—then this segment of your education has garnered you nothing, has it?”