Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (6 page)

Down Mexico Way

It’s only eight in the morning, but already hot as Hades. Jack Niles stares helplessly at the cleavage of the bikini-clad bar girl, Ginny, as she leans over the beer cooler, filling it with longnecks. A skinny Mexican kid is vacuuming sand from the pool. Otherwise the pool area’s deserted.

Everyone in the all-suites hotel is sleeping late. Ordering room service. Catching a lazy fuck or a few more zzzz’s. The kids watching cartoons in the other room.

Jack’s hand plays nervously with a cheap plastic lighter, depressing the starter mechanism a dozen times in rapid succession. All but once the flame blossoms from the metal nozzle.
Out of a hundred flicks, how many times will it fail?
he wonders.
How many times did the space shuttle soar into the sky like a brilliant bird before the Challenger exploded in an inferno of burning metal and flesh?
These days, only two things get Jack’s blood up. Probability and chance.

The probability that out of the hundreds of companies listed on the NASDAQ, the SEC would pick his to investigate. Whether he has a chance of avoiding jail time.

Lighting a cigarette, the first of the day, he leans with his back against the bar, watching the Mex kid work the long aluminum pole that maneuvers the pool vac.

A man in floral trunks comes out through the glass doors from the lobby and crosses the empty concrete deck. Choosing a chaise lounge at random, he drops his towel and a paperback. Then continues purposefully around the pool toward the bar pavilion where Jack waits in the shade. The newcomer’s skin exudes the rich walnut tan of a beach habitué.

As he comes up to the bar, his eyes meet Jack’s with curiosity; then shift to Ginny. She gives him a cute bar-maidenly smile.

“Tequila Sunrise, sweetheart?” she asks.

“Sure thing.”

Up close, Jack can just about count the hairs curling out of the man’s ears. His eyes are gray and sad like a rainy December day in Dallas.

“And bring my friend here a fresh whatever-it-is he’s drinking.” He nods at Jack. “Bill. Bill Oaks. No relation to the dead protest singer.”

“It’s a tad early for me,” says Jack, crushing out his cigarette.

“Lighten up, pal. You’re on vacation, right?”

An avalanche of ice cubes plunging from a plastic bucket into a bin area behind the bar drowns out Jack’s reply. Ray, the other daytime bar person, sets the bucket down and looks at Jack and the other guy.

“Bill. Meet Jack the gambler. He never drinks before noon.”

“Surely an exception can be made.”

“My wife doesn’t like morning drunks,” says Jack. “And she has the money.”

Bill sips his Tequila Sunrise. Ice tinkles.
How many ice cubes in a Tequila Sunrise?
wonders Jack. Jack’s mind races like the wheels of a pickup stuck in soft sand; he can’t concentrate on anything.

“Say,” says Bill. “Aren’t you the CEO of that software company that went belly up in Dallas after the FBI raid? Some kind of SEC investigation?”

Jack’s eyes glaze over. “Can’t talk about it.” He holds his palms aloft. They’re like two soft white wings. “Lawyers,” he adds as an afterthought.

The raw clank of coins colliding overrides the ice-striking-glass sound. It’s Ray, jiggling the tip change in the pocket of his knee-length Abercrombies.

“Twenty says you can’t guess how much money’s in Ray’s pocket plus or minus ten percent,” says Jack, his eyes unglazing.

Bill cocks his head like a parrot, listening to the sound of the coins striking each other. Counting the dimes and nickels and quarters. He pouts his lips.

“You’re on.”

Two and a half hours and five Tequila Sunrises later, Jack Niles steers the Cadillac Escalade on to the cement causeway linking South Padre Island to the Texas mainland. His wife, in the white leather seat opposite, reaches out her fingers and squeezes his leg. Her given name is Jill. As in Jack and Jill. It still gets a laugh with strangers. Caught in the blasting stream of the air conditioner, her blonde hair sways across her austerely pretty face.

“Don’t catch cold, hon,” she says.

In the backseat Bill Oaks lounges sideways, the collar of his silk tropical shirt askance. “Hot back here,” he says. Jack turns on the back seat blower.

The Escalade rolls like a sailor through the streets of Port Isabel. At last, just past the H-E-B supermarket, it turns onto the two-lane highway to Brownsville and Matamoros.

It’s a dull dusty ride to the border. Bill Oaks, agent to the stars, regales Jack and Jill with strange tales from the Pacific edge. Mudslides and ecstasy parties in Malibu. A midnight run through the desert to Vegas—a famous starlet behind the wheel, naked except for a pink dog collar around her neck. The only difficulty arises when she sashays bare-assed across the lobby of the Bellagio and tries to check in without any luggage.

“So,” ponders Jill. “What brings y’all to boring South Padre?”

“Just taking a breather. Step out of the fast lane.” Then, after a pause: “Go some
place where I won’t run into anyone I know or who knows me.”

“Been coming to Padre Island since I was a kid.” says Jack. “Back when there was nothing but two lanes of cracked blacktop with a drawbridge out from Port Isabel. When a sailboat was going through the channel and the bridge was up, you just waited awhile.” Flooring the gas pedal, he swerves the Escalade around a minivan that has pulled partway on the shoulder to let Jack pass.

The outskirts of Brownsville present a cluster fuck of dingy bars, taco joints, gas stations, junkyards and strip clubs, in no particular order. At the international bridge most of the traffic is coming north into the lone star state. They breeze across; on the Mexican side a mustachioed border cop in a green uniform waves them through. Under the bridge the Rio Grande glides by, brown and sluggish as a snake at midday.

Jack parks the car at Garcia’s restaurant and gift shop and slips the private guard a hundred pesos. They catch a cab to the address Jack got from an old frat buddy.

“I don’t understand why we’ve got to come to sombrero-land so you can gamble my money away,” Jill says in a certain unmistakable tone, as the bare skin of her thighs squeaks across the vinyl back seat of the cab. “It’s so damn hot away from the beach.”

Jack looks at the photograph on the cab license, then at the driver’s profile. They don’t match up.

“You should have stayed at the beach, honey bun.”

“Maybe I’ll just find me a Mexican gigolo with a waxed mustache to fuck me silly.”

“Suit yourself.”

Bill is looking uncomfortable. “I’m not a gambler either. Just along for the ride.”

“I’ll bet,” says Jill.

The cab drops them at a post-war
palacio
protected by a high wrought-iron fence. A buzzer opens the gate. The house is painted the same pink as a harlot’s toenails. Several lemon trees and a fig fill the otherwise bare front yard. From the second floor balcony, a man in a dark suit watches them go up the tiled walk and disappear through the deeply shaded front door.

Inside a black man wearing a tuxedo serves drinks. You can play roulette, dice or poker. Jack leans over and turns up the leg of his cream-colored triple-pleated slacks. A rubber band around his ankle holds a roll of
gringo
bills.

He hands the money to the croupier at the roulette table.

In the meantime Jill has gotten hold of a drink. Something clear and lethal
con
hielo
in a highball glass. While she and Bill watch, Jack loses the entire five thousand dollars in under an hour.

“Shit,” Jack says, as the croupier rakes away his last pile of chips.

“Asshole,” says Jill. “You did the same thing with your company.”

After a brief scuffle, Bill manages to separate them. “Let’s go in the bar and get a free drink,” says Jack.

Jill and Bill and Jack, in that order, walk single file into the bar. It’s in a separate room with heavy crown molding painted vampire red.

As always in these circumstances, an ample woman in a black negligee leans against the bar, fanning herself. She gives Bill the twice-over.

“You want something?” she asks.

“A drink.”

A barman is slicing limes with a dull knife. He curses when the knife slips off the tough rind and cuts him.

They order
cervezas
. A dish of pickled
jalapenos
rests on the bar. Jack eats a
jalapeno
. After one bite, Bill drops his on the deeply polished wood. “Sensitive stomach,” he says, and orders a Diet Coke.

Jill is sulking, her lips thrust out like a ripe seedpod about to burst.

“If the Escalade wasn’t in my name, we’d have to walk home from here,” she says. “I have absolutely no idea how I ended up married to you.”

“Must have been my boyish charm.”

“I must have been out of my mind.”

“You always were a little light in the head.”

“Listen, buster. I’m not the one that pissed away a hundred million dollar company and then cooked the books to cover my tracks.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jill.”

“Just great, Jack. Next I suppose you’ll punch me in the face.”

“Not if you shut up.”

There is enough menace in his voice that Jill stops talking and takes a sip of her Corona. She looks anxiously up at the ceiling as if it might suddenly collapse.

A thickset man in a navy blue suit and white shirt enters the room. Two young men in thin-lapelled sharkskin jackets follow him. The older man’s clean-shaven face is as dark and scarred as the earth. His nails are manicured. An immodest diamond ring circumscribes one finger.

The barman sets a frothy lime-green daiquiri on the bar in front of these expensive hands. One of the younger men sits at a table. The other leans against the wall. Apparently they aren’t drinking. The man in the suit looks at Jill.

He introduces himself as Demetrio Sandoval. His English is accent-less. “You’re very beautiful,” he says to her. She blushes.

“You’re ten years too late, pal,” she says and takes a long pull on her beer.

Demetrio looks past Jill to where Bill and Jack are standing against the bar. Jack is telling Bill about the eleven-foot hammerhead he caught off Port Aransas.

“Is your husband a gambler?” Demetrio asks.

“Jack’s a loser.”

“That’s a tough situation to be in.” Demetrio raises his hand. “Jack,” he calls.

They exchange pleasantries. In the next moment they’re into a game of liar’s poker, using a pair of hundred dollar bills. It’s all Jack has left -- his mad money for the coming week. He loses on the third round.

Demetrio drinks the dregs of his daiquiri and smacks his lips.

“How about a serious bet?” he proposes.

“I’m dead broke,” says Jack.

“What’ve you got?”

Jack considers his doppelganger in the mirror behind the bar. His tongue curls over his bottom lip that is dry and chapped.

“An ’05 Escalade. Silver.”

“The fuck you do,” squeals Jill, her voice cracking. She stares at Demetrio. “The car belongs to me.”

Jill’s mouth twitches.

“I need to pee,” she says. Grabbing her snakeskin clutch, she strides out of the room. Jack and Bill and Demetrio watch her go.

“Now there’s a fine piece of ass,” says Demetrio.

“That’s my fucking wife you’re talking about.”

“Fifty thousand U.S. or your wife. A fair exchange?”

Silence descends over the room. Bill raises an eyebrow. The barman polishes an already too clean glass.

“What shall we bet on?”

In the ladies room, Jill rucks down her black lace boybriefs and squats over the toilet. Of course the toilet paper dispenser is empty.

When Jill comes out of the stall, a woman in a beaded camisole is leaning over the sink adjusting her mascara. She’s attractive in an undernourished borderland sort of way. Her cheeks are pitted with old acne scars. In the mirror her eyes glance in Jill’s direction.

“What a day,” says Jill, splashing water on her face.

“You need somethin’ to pick you up?”

“Probably.”

“Me to, honey.”

The woman taps out two lines of blow on the black marble countertop. It’s very pure. Jill leans on the countertop listening to her heart doing a wild tattoo.

Tears roll down her cheeks. She tells the woman about Jack, more than she could ever want to know. The woman makes a satirical remark about men and their equipment.

When Jill walks back into the bar, she’s still feeling woozy. Demetrio is working on a fresh daiquiri. The two young men are gone. So are Jack and Bill.

“Jack and I made a bet,” says Demetrio. “He said you’d be back in less than five minutes. ‘A quick pisser,’ he said.”

“I must have gotten sidetracked.”

“You don’t belong to Jack any more.”

A nervous smile quickens across her lips. “Where’s your waxed mustache, ace?”

First Epilogue

A week after Jack gets back to Dallas, an acquaintance asks him about Jill. Is she visiting her mother, perhaps? He tells the woman Jill was swept out to sea while swimming at a beach known for its treacherous currents, its riptide.

Eventually the police take notice. Inquiries reveal no record of a
gringa
woman recently drowning in the Mexican coastal area Jack mentions. Jack is Jill’s sole heir. Four million dollars worth.

Jack is arrested at DFW airport just as he’s about to board a flight for Nassau. The charge is murder.

Second Epilogue

Five years later, a tall thin woman walks naked out of the sea. She stands alone on a stretch of tropical beach. Her face conveys an austere beauty, etched by time and the pain of childbirth.

At the edge of the beach she dons a terrycloth robe and walks through a grove of coconut palms to the glass doors of a sprawling postmodern beach house. The children are just sitting down to lunch. The boy, age four, is dark and sometimes cruel. The girl, a year younger, is an exact replica of her blonde mother. They’re too excited to eat, despite the best efforts of the cook and the live-in maid.