We all thanked him for his time. Enelio shook his hand in that special way which inconspicuously transfers a folded bill from pocket to hand to hand to pocket.
As we drove away I said I wanted to replace the gift.
“Hey, you are pretty fonny, McGee. What time is it? Five o’clock already! Hey, Meyer and me will leave you off at the car, and by the time you get up to the Hotel Victoria, hombre, you will find us sitting at a shady table by the swimming pool looking at the lovely little birds in their wet little bikinis, and you will be one drink behind.”
Eight
THERE WERE indeed some delicious little morsels making energetic use of the giant pool, getting the last of sun and water and squealing games of tag before the shadows of the mountains moved in and the evening chill began.
The drinks were good, and Enelio was sufficiently well known to get very earnest service. For a time Meyer scribbled on the back of an envelope, pausing to squint into the distance and think. When I asked him what he was doing he said he would show me in a couple of minutes.
Finally he handed it to me and said, “Timetable. If I screwed up anything, let me know.” I held it so Enelio could read it also.
Jan. 10 Five cross into Mexico at Matamoros in camper.
Mar. 25 (approx) $13,000+ sent to Bix in Culiacan, Sinaloa.
Apr. 24 Rocko w/camper checks into Los Pajaros.
May 25 (approx) Bix Minda move from Los Pajaros to room in Hotel Ruiz.
June 9 Official request to locate Sessions.
June 30 (approx) Bix and Minda move to Mrs. Vitrier’s guest house.
July 5 Rocko beats up Mike Barrington.
July 7 Sessions found dead.
July 10 Camper permit tourist cards run out.
July 23 Rocko leaves Los Pajaros, by request, moves in with Bruce Bundy.
July 30 (approx) Bix Minda quarrel Minda goes to Mexico City.
Aug. 1 Before dawn, Bundy stops Rocko from leaving with loot.
Aug. 1 Minda’s father arrives, looking for her.
Aug. 2 Bundy lends his yellow British Ford to unknown person called George.
Aug. 3 Bix killed.
Aug. 4 Mrs. Vitrier identifies body.
I said, “Meyer, it makes it look a lot neater and more orderly than it is.”
Enelio took the envelope and frowned at the timetable, and then said, “No sense to one thing here, men.”
“Such as?”
“He couldn’t have stayed in the trailer park after the permit and cards ran out. You have to show your car papers when you check into any trailer park. They put the date and so forth on their records. The police are very fussy about car permits. They check the books. So then their papers were still good on July twenty-three… which means this first date is wrong, when they came in.”
“No, Enelio. It was pretty well checked.”
“Okay. Then sometime before April twenty-four, they went up to the border and got everything new again. New car papers, new tourist cards. I think… maybe seven days from the border down here to Oaxaca. So the date on everything could be April seventeen, eh? Good until October sixteen. You can look in the office at Los Pajaros. They will have the permit number and the place of entry. It is not so necessary to go to the border to get the tourist card new. It is not supposed to be done, but it can be newed… renewed in Mexico City, if there is a little gift to the right clerk. But not for a vehicle. One must go to the border. Where were they? Culiacan? Shortest way is up to Nogales.” He grinned at us. “And I know why they went there. Pretty stupid thing to do.”
“How could you know?” Meyer asked.
He tapped the side of his head. “Very smart fellow, this Enelio Fuentes. Sessions died from drugs. Okay. Sonora has a lot of poppies growing. The crude opium-it’s called goma-is sold in one ton lots to the little factories where they reduce it to heroin. I think the biggest operations are in Sinaloa. And some very rich men there in fine houses, you believe me. What was stupid was having money sent to Culiac-In. But maybe not. How was it sent?”
“Bank draft.”
“Dumb stupid, man! A few years ago, okay. Now the Mexican Narcotics Bureau is pretty smart. They find out who is making a deal. Then they tip their people on our side of the line. So they get searched and, okay, suppose there’s four kilos of heroin. Tell them they are going to be tossed into a Mexican jail for ninety-nine years. Scare them all to hell. Then take three kilos, and a big bribe to let them keep one, then tip the customs men on your side of the line. They get… what’s the damned word… sawhammered?”
“Whipsawed.”
“So a bank draft is like hanging out a sign. I wonder what the hell happened.”
Meyer said, “I can’t see Bix Bowie as a smuggler of narcotics.”
“So? That sister probably couldn’t see little brother Carl stone cold dead in the market, man, full of old needle holes.”
I asked him, “Could anybody go to Culiacan and buy heroin?”
He shrugged. “For double the going price, and never seeing the face you buy it from. Why not? Double the going price is maybe one tenth the wholesale price in the States. One hondred and thirty thousand dollars, U.S., is… one million, six hondred twenty-five thousand pesos.”
“In a very dirty business,” Meyer said.
Enelio laughed. “Sure. But don’t you know how the whole world thinks about dirty business? Everybody says, ‘Oh, I know it is a bad, bad thing. But it is going to happen anyway. I can’t stop it all by myself. So as long as somebody is going to do it, it might as well be me.’ Meyer, I like you. You could not do bad things. Me, I do terrible things, believe me.”
“Oh, so do I, Enelio. Unspeakable things.”
Enelio made a sad face. “But for me, instead of involving money, always it involves women. That is my burden.”
He looked at his watch. He said he had to go and change and go out. We thanked him for everything. He said he would phone us tomorrow, and maybe we could find something amusing to do.
The pool was shadowed, and most of the birds had flown. A batch of American youngsters in their late teens came whooping down from the hotel, smack-diving into the pool. Brown little girls, rangy boys, firm young flesh.
“You have to understand that all these kids are in revolt against the establishment,” Meyer said in earnest imitation of Wally McLeen.
“Oh for chrissake, Meyer!”
“I found Wally quite touchingly simplistic. And that is a very funny tourist hat he wears.”
I yawned. “And they translate ancient tablets inscribed three thousand years before Christ and find out that way back then the young were disobedient, had no respect for the old ways, and everything was going to hell in a handbasket.”
“Spoken like a true member of the establishment.”
“Old friend, there are people-young and old-that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it’s revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from the scripture by an old one. We are, all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can’t see it all that way bore hell out of me.”
“You’re snarling, McGee. So it is either the effects of the altitude, or postcoital depression. Or nervousness at round two coming up.”
“Or frustration. I want to know where Rocko is. I want to know who was up on that mountain with Bix. I want to find Jerry Nesta. I want to talk to Minda McLeen. I want to talk to Mrs. Vitrier. I can scratch Carl Sessions. Thin blond guitarists shouldn’t live in cardboard boxes and use dirty needles. And I want to bounce the rest of Brucey’s story out of him.”
“And you should be busy prettying yourself up for Lady Rebecca.”
“I keep thinking of all the other people who would have been so happy to come to Mexico with me. You’re getting so nervous about my date, I better make a phone call. Don’t move.”