Dr. Mendoza volunteered here two days a week. It was a good break from his surgical practice at the private hospital in downtown Culiacán, where all his patients were well-heeled. He felt it was good karma.
It had been a long and busy day. A man of around seventy, complaining of tenderness in his groin, had a bulge the size of a lemon. It had been there for more than a year. It was a right inguinal hernia that was incarcerated but not, thank God, strangulated. Dr. Mendoza scheduled the man for an outpatient procedure.
A young man had accidentally slashed one of his wrists with a machete while chopping weeds in a coconut grove. He’d come in with the laceration bound in a dirty, bloody handkerchief, blood dripping everywhere. A little girl had stepped on a sewing needle at home, and her mother, a seamstress, had tried to pull it out but succeeded only in breaking off one end. A teenage boy’s arm had been broken for three weeks, had been reset wrong, and Dr. Mendoza had to yank it into place to reset it properly. An adorable little baby girl with tiny stud earrings, wearing a pink sweater, was screaming in pain. Her eyes were red. He reassured the baby’s nervous parents that their child had nothing more serious than a bad case of conjunctivitis, easily treated with ophthalmic Cipro.
The waiting room bustled with patients and their families, people dirty and sweaty from working in the fields or the maquiladoras, many of whom had no teeth and no last name. With the squalling of infants and the screams of children and the shouting of the adults, you could barely hear yourself think. But Dr. Mendoza didn’t mind it at all.
Even though he was a surgeon, most of the work he did at the free clinic was general medicine. He was vastly overqualified. But that was fine. He believed in balance. He believed that the good he did here two days a week compensated for… his other work.
Then he noticed the clamor of the waiting room subside. Something had happened to quiet all but the youngest. He stepped out of the examination room and saw a man standing at the entrance to the waiting room. He wore snakeskin boots and jeans and a gaudy silk shirt. He wore a little gold AK-47 on a gold necklace, and a black cowboy hat. A tattoo covered most of his neck.
Everyone in the room was frightened of the man. They recognized his type. He was a gavillero, a trigger man for the cartel. A killer. The man squinted, his shrewd eyes scanning the room, then falling on Dr. Mendoza. Heads turned toward the surgeon and back toward the gavillero.
Dr. Mendoza beckoned him in with a flick of his hand.
Away from the eyes of an audience, the gavillero seemed to become another person. He was polite and deferential, almost obsequious.
“Don Armando,” he said, bowing his head. “I come with a message from el gran jefe.”
Dr. Mendoza’s eyes bored into the gavillero’s.
The younger man handed the surgeon a folded slip of paper and gave another nod.
Dr. Mendoza took it, glanced at the name and telephone number, folded it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his white coat.
“Tell el gran jefe I will take care of this tonight. After I see my last patient.”
“Yes, sir,” the gavillero said with another nod.
“Well?” Dr. Mendoza said.
“Sir?”
“You may go,” Dr. Mendoza said. “I have patients waiting.”
37
Galvin’s invitation, the more Danny thought about it, was baffling, even nerve-racking.
Was it some sort of mind game? Was Galvin toying with him? On two occasions he’d caught Danny in compromising, or at least highly questionable, circumstances. That time when he returned home unexpectedly to find Danny loitering in his study. And when he noticed his BlackBerry had unaccountably migrated to the wrong suit pocket. His driver had taken the fall for the transmitter discovered on his desk. But how could Galvin not suspect Danny? He’d have to be oblivious or hopelessly naïve-neither of which described Thomas X. Galvin.
Or playing him in some patiently twisted way. Why else would he have invited Danny to spend a weekend in Aspen, to burrow even deeper into the bosom of his family-unless he was three steps ahead of Danny and was playing the long game. Some complex scheme in which Galvin would confront him, trap him, expose him.
Or worse.
On his way back home, he called Lucy and told her about Galvin’s invitation. He half expected her to react negatively, or at least skeptically. He always trusted her instincts. She’d been right, probably, to warn him against accepting a loan from Galvin, even though she had no idea what the terrible cost would be.
“Aspen!” she said. “Are girlfriends invited?”
“Expressly.”
“Aspen sounds great.”
“Really? I’m surprised.”
A secure text message alert interrupted the call, that strange plinking sound. It was from AnonText007: 10 a.m. McDonald’s Central Square, Cambridge
“I’ve never flown in a private plane,” she said.
“You don’t mind all this?”
“All what?”
“Extravagant, conspicuous wealth.”
“Why should I mind it? It sounds fabulous. I haven’t been skiing in years, ever since Kyle started snowboarding.”
“How about all that time up close and personal with the Galvin family?”
“It’ll be fascinating.”
“You have no idea.”
“Aren’t you and he becoming best buds?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. We get along.”
“Well, let me remind you, I’m a trained psychiatrist. Maybe I’ll gain some useful insights into Abby’s relationship with the Galvins.”
“I’m surprised.”
“What, you expected me to tell you not to go?”
“I expected you to agree with me that it might not be a good idea.”
“Is there some reason I’m overlooking?”
He exhaled. He was keeping so much from her now that he was finding it hard to keep track of what he’d told her and what he hadn’t, what she knew and what she didn’t.
“I suppose not,” he said.
Central Square in Cambridge was barely a mile away from Boston’s Back Bay but a world apart. The Back Bay was wealth and European sophistication: harmonious Victorian architecture, redbrick sidewalks, tree-lined streets, gas streetlamps, stratospheric real estate prices. Whereas Central Square, just across the Charles River, was seedy and shambling, perennially run-down, in a state of constant urban decay.
Danny had driven past this McDonald’s probably a thousand times before but had never noticed it. As soon as he pulled into a space on Mass Ave, half a block away, he had a fairly good idea why Slocum and Yeager had selected it for a meeting. The restaurant was inconspicuous and was on the corner of Mass Ave and a narrow side street, with plate-glass windows on either side, a glass box. If you were sitting inside the McDonald’s, you could observe everyone coming on both sides.
It was also the kind of place where you could sit at a table and hang out indefinitely without being disturbed. The counter staff were talking among themselves and taking the occasional order from a customer.
Danny entered, grabbed a corner table, set the gym bag on the floor. The whole place smelled like French fries, which was not unpleasant. The DEA guys weren’t there yet. Two young men were speaking Portuguese, one wearing a Red Sox cap. An Asian kid in an MIT sweatshirt was devouring a Big Mac, wearing giant headphones, and fiddling with his iPod or iPhone at the same time. No one else was there.