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.
Twenty-six
Contrary to its carefully cultivated image as a hotbed of decadence and debauchery, Los Angeles was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise city. There was too much money out there and up for grabs for it not to be. It wasn’t even seven in the morning but the diner on the corner of Melrose and Lankershim already had half a dozen people waiting for a table.
In a corner booth, Lock took a sip of coffee and pushed a half-eaten Western omelette around his plate while Ty continued to shovel up a mountain of food. They had walked there from the hotel, Lock wanting to make doubly sure that the surveillance they had been under had ceased. Not that it mattered. A new security team had already moved in to take over the coat-holding and car-door-opening duties demanded by Triple-C, but when it came to Mendez they were still at square one. Despite contacting everyone who might be able to lead them to him, there had been no new sightings, no fresh intelligence of any description.
Ty wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and belched. ‘So what’s the plan, Senor Lock?
‘Apart from you maybe getting some table manners?’
‘Sorry about that, just came out.’
‘So what do you mean, “What’s the plan?”’
‘Well, we going to go down there and get this asshole or what?’
Lock eyed him over the table. ‘Slight hitch, Senor Johnson.’
Ty smiled and scooped up some more food. Lock swore that his partner had hollow legs. Ty could eat all day every day and not put on a pound. It was irritating in the extreme.