“Can’t do that, Jesse.” Peter craned his neck, peering over McDowell’s shoulder. “I’m looking for Jason Bourne.”
“Good bleeding luck with that, laddie.” McDowell shot him a sardonic look. “How many roses should I send to the funeral?”
“Listen, Jesse, I just flew in from DC, I’m tired, hungry, cranky, and in no fucking mood to play games with you or any of Danziger’s little tin soldiers.” He made to take a step around McDowell. “D’you think I’m afraid of any of them, or of Danziger?”
McDowell raised his hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point, laddie.” He took Marks by the elbow. “I’ll fill you in on everything, but not here. Unlike you, Danziger still owns my ass.” He steered Marks out the door and into the hallway. “Let’s go down to the pub and lift a few. When I get a pint or two in me, I’ll screw me courage to the wall.”
The Slaughtered Lamb was just the sort of London pub that had been written about for centuries. It was low, dark, ripe with the scents of fermented beer and very old cigarette smoke, some of which still seemed to hang in the air in a boozy mist.
McDowell chose a table against one wood-paneled wall, ordered them pints of the room-temperature brew and, for Marks, a plate of bangers and mash. When the food came, Marks took one whiff of the meat and his stomach turned. He had the waiter take the plate away, and settled for a couple of cheese rolls.
“This investigation’s part of Justice’s ongoing case against Black River,” McDowell said.
“I thought that case had been wrapped up.”
“So did everyone else.” McDowell drained his pint and ordered another. “But it appears that someone very high up is gunning for Oliver Liss.”
“Liss left Black River before any of the shit hit the fan.”
McDowell took possession of the new pint. “Suspicion has been thrown his way. Point being that he may have gotten out, but it still is likely that he was one of the architects of Black River’s dirty dealings. Our job is to confirm that conjecture with hard evidence, and since Noah Perlis was Liss’s personal lapdog, we’re tossing his place.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Marks said.
“Mebbe so.” McDowell gulped down his beer. “But one thing we did find there was a photo of this bloke Diego Hererra. You heard he was knifed to death last night in a posh West End casino by the name of the Vesper Club?”
“I hadn’t heard,” Marks said. “What’s it to me?”
“Everything, laddie. The man who was seen knifing Diego Hererra was with Jason Bourne. They left the club together just minutes after the murder.”
Soraya drove due south as, she intuited, Arkadin-going by the name Frank N. Stein-had. Twilight was falling gently as a leaf as she pulled into Nogales. She was still in Arizona. Just across the border was the sister town, Nogales, in the Mexican state of Sonora.
She parked and strolled through the dusty central square. Finding an open-air café, she sat and ordered a plate of tamales and a Corona. Her Spanish was a good deal better than her French or her German, which meant that it was very good, indeed. And here her dark skin, Egyptian blood, and prominent nose were easily mistaken for Aztec. She sat back and allowed herself to breathe while she watched the comings and goings of people on errands, shopping, strolling hand in hand. There were many old people, sitting on benches, playing cards or chatting. Vehicles passed-old, dented cars and dusty, rusting trucks loaded with produce. Nogales’s business was agriculture, shipments from its sister town continuously coming across the border for packaging and transshipping all across the United States.
She had finished her last tamale and was on her second Corona when she saw an old black Chevy, dusty and hulking, but the plates didn’t match and she went back to her beer. She declined dessert but ordered coffee.
The waiter was setting the tiny cup in front of her when, over his shoulder, she saw another black Chevy. She stood up as he walked away. The plate matched the one on the car Arkadin had rented, but the driver was an eighteen-year-old punk. He parked near the café and got out. His hair was crested, his arms covered in tattoos of snakes and plumed birds. Soraya recognized the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Aztecs and Maya. Downing her espresso in one shot, she left some bills on the table and walked over to the punk.
“Where did you get that car, compadre?” she asked him.
He looked her up and down with a sneer. His eyes on her breasts, he said, “What business is it of yours?”
“I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Why should I be worried?”
“Because that Chevy is a rental car from Tucson-you and I both know that.”
The punk continued his sneer. He looked like he practiced it in front of a mirror every morning.
“Do you like them?”
The punk started. “What?”
“My breasts.”
He laughed uneasily and looked away.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m not interested in you or the car. Tell me about the man who rented it.”
He spat sideways and said nothing.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re already in enough trouble. I can make it go away.”
The punk sighed. “I really don’t know. I found the car out in the desert. It was abandoned.”
“How did you start it up-did you hot-wire it?”
“Nah, I didn’t have to, the key was in the ignition.”
Now, that was interesting. It probably meant that Arkadin wasn’t coming back for it, which meant that he was no longer in Nogales. Soraya thought for a moment. “If I wanted to cross the border, how would I do it?”
“The border station’s just a couple miles south-”
“I don’t want to go that way.”
The punk squinted, eyeing her as if for the first time. “I’m hungry,” he said. “How about buying me a meal?”
“Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect anything else.”
When he laughed, the brittle shell of his forced bravado cracked open. His face was transformed into that of a simple kid who looked at the world through sad eyes.
She took him back to the café, where he ordered burritos de machacaand a huge plate of cowboy beans larded with chiles pasados.His name was Álvaro Obregón. He was from Chihuahua. His family had migrated north in search of work and had ended up here. Through the intervention of his mother’s brother, his parents worked at a maquiladora packaging fruit and vegetables. According to him, his sister was a slut and his brothers goofed off all day instead of working. He himself was employed by a rancher. He’d come into town to pick up an order of supplies the rancher had phoned in.
“At first, I was excited about coming here,” he said. “I’d read up about American Nogales and discovered that a lot of really cool people were born here, like Charlie Mingus. His music sounds like shit to me, but you know, he’s famous and all. And then there’s Roger Smith. Imagine banging Ann-Margret, huh! But the coolest is Movita Castaneda. I bet you never heard of her.”
When Soraya said she hadn’t, he grinned. “She was in Flying Down to Rioand Mutiny on the Bounty,but I only saw her in Tower of Terror.” He mopped up the last of his beans. “Anyway, she married Marlon Brando. Now, there was one cool actor, until he blew up like a blimp, anyway.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smacked his lips. “It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. I mean, just look around you. What a fucking dump!”
“You seem to have a good job,” Soraya pointed out.
“Yeah, you try it. It sucks.”
“It’s steady work.”
“A rat makes more money than I do.” He gave a wry, lopsided smile. “But that doesn’t mean I starve to death.”
“Which brings us back to my original question. I want to get into Mexico.”