The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (118 page)

Trigg reminded Leah that he and his business partners preferred to call it the Pleasure Mall. Trigg was touchy about the use of the right terms. The defunct Tucson shopping mall had been a blight on Tucson’s face; gangs of homeless had broken in and squatters had been living in the Penney and Sears stores. The mall would be completely renovated; first class all the way. Nothing would be cheap or dirty about the Pleasure Mall, Trigg argued. The finest food and liquors would also be available as well as luxury hideaways with hot tubs and pools for nude swimming. All the shops would be tasteful or at least educational. Theirs would be the first shopping mall of its kind in the world. Lingerie shops would be next door to video rentals and adult bookstores. The Pleasure Mall would feature a gallery of erotic art. Sex toy stores would offer live demonstrations to promote safe sex. If all that wasn’t educational enough, Trigg had been negotiating with a promoter in London to lease a rare collection of specimens in jars and under glass consisting of the scrotums and penises of all species, including a number of human specimens. Trigg also hoped to lease a nineteenth-century wax museum devoted to unnatural sex positions and unnatural sex partners. This was only the beginning, Trigg said. The best was yet to come. Not even the Japanese had devoted an entire shopping mall only to sex.

Leah glanced at her wristwatch. She smiled and shook her head. Trigg could argue all he wanted, but no one who could afford better was going to live in a town with a sex mall. The ugliness of Tucson would only make the white marble palazzos and canals of cobalt-blue water more irresistible. Leah was getting tired of Trigg and his obsession with his paralysis. She lied and said she was late for an appointment and left him with his Pleasure Mall blueprints spread open on the bed. Trigg’s dream of nerve transplants for spinal injury patients was pathetic.

THE EASY PART had been emptying the vaults, packing the car, and driving to the airport in Oaxaca. Once Menardo was dead, the others had immediately shunned her; even the maids and cook had left after Tacho had disappeared. They had fled back to their barrios or villages until the official investigation had been completed or abandoned. No one had expected the new widow suddenly to disappear before the funeral, not even the police chief and the general, who had been suspicious of Alegría from the start. Alegría had made her moves while all the attention was focused on dead Menardo.

Alegría felt her heart beat more slowly as the jet taxied down the runway. She had cleared everything from the vaults—Menardo’s “savings” in uncut emeralds, pearls, and gold nuggets from Peru. The most important contents of the vaults had been the half dozen bank safe-deposit-box keys and the worn address book with the locations of the banks in San Diego and Tucson. Within a few hours after Menardo’s death, Alegría had made all the necessary arrangements. The travel agent in Culiacán had been the brother-in-law of the doctor’s wife Alegría knew from the country club canasta tables. The travel agency “specialized” in group tours to the United States.

Alegría had been instructed by the doctor’s wife to request the “deluxe luxury tour”; the doctor’s wife had been born in San Salvador, and a number of her cousins and their friends had taken the deluxe
luxury tour to the United States. Sure it was expensive—$2,000 U.S.—but from start to finish you traveled in complete luxury and safety. You could carry with you as much as you wished because special arrangements had been made with the authorities. There were no stops for inspections. At the border itself there would be a short walk—nothing more than a mile or two—and then waiting on the U.S. side would be air-conditioned motor homes stocked with ice-cold beer. A large truck followed with excess baggage and crates containing art objects or antiques. After refreshing showers in the motor homes and a change of clothing, members of the tour would be allowed to examine their luggage and crates traveling by truck, to assure group members their precious belongings had made the border crossing intact. A champagne brunch would be served during the drive to the train depot in Yuma. The doctor’s wife had giggled; certain art and antiquities dealers took the “tour” regularly for “business” reasons. Others went because they had heard about the “love bus” and the wild parties that went on all night while the tour bus cruised north.

The luxury bus tours operated out of a travel agency located in a run-down mansion in the old residential district of Culiacán. The wide doors of the old mansion’s dining room and ballroom had been rolled back to accommodate the bus tour passengers and their belongings. Alegría’s companions appeared to be an assortment of Mexicans and Central Americans—all light skinned and well dressed—who kept their hands on their briefcases and other carry-on luggage at all times; the wealthy Salvadorians were all young married couples. The women were dressed much like Alegría, in linen suits and lizard-skin pumps; the men wore stylish golf shirts or seersucker trousers and blazers.

The travel agent introduced himself as Mario. “Welcome to the luxury bus cruise.” They would be getting under way within a few hours. Boxes, trunks, and suitcases were stacked in a great mound in the center of the hardwood floor of the mansion’s ballroom. Alegría watched Mario’s eyes dart from tour members to the pile of luggage and back, over and over, as if he were sizing up each of them and their belongings. Mario had then met privately with each tour member in the mansion’s library. When Alegría went into Mario’s office, he asked for her payment, then counted the cash twice before slipping the money into a briefcase between his feet. Alegría felt relieved that Mario’s attention was on the money, and not on questions about the weight or the contents of her luggage. That’s what $2,000 U.S. bought: no questions and no need for
passports or visas because the buses took “special routes” through the mountains at night to reach the border.

Mario had been looking at lists on the desk when he asked if Alegría had any questions. She could sense immediately he did not expect questions or maybe he didn’t want any questions. Alegría had been curious. What shoes should she wear? She had been told there was a distance to walk. “The walk? A short walk!” Mario had answered, nodding rapidly as his eyes darted to her feet, then to the briefcase between his own feet. “You walk from one bus to another,” Mario said as he walked Alegría to the door. “Relax! Enjoy! There’s nothing to worry about,” Mario said as he motioned for a young Costa Rican couple to enter the office.

There was no music, but maids brought out glasses of champagne and little crackers covered with anchovies, green olives, peppers, and cheese. Some of the Salvadorian women, friends since grade school, had taken suitcases to dressing rooms upstairs where they had changed into party dresses, chattering gaily about the interior decoration of their new homes in the U.S. They would have their babies there. This tour made it all so easy and convenient. They could bring jewels, antiques, and art without duties, or taxes. Alegría had gone to boarding school with young women who had enjoyed similar privileges of wealth and white skin. Alegría was just like them; they were all on the run, taking as much family wealth as possible as they fled north to the United States. They wanted only to burp babies wearing satin baptismal gowns and to enjoy the wealth that rightfully was theirs, without fear of bloodshed. Alegría could see only one difference between herself and the others: they thought they had a right to their wealth, and she knew that she did not have any right to wealth—no one did—but she had taken as much as she could. Alegría had learned to take and take; because those who didn’t ended up dead.

More champagne had been served while Mario announced a slight delay with their luxury cruiser bus. Two hours later when the bus had finally arrived, all the tour members, including Alegría, had been drunk on the cheap champagne. Mario had disappeared upstairs, and soon disco music began to pound from intercom speakers in the ballroom. The young Salvadorian couples were in a party mood, and the young husbands had got drunk enough to change to their tuxedos for the luxury bus cruise. Why not celebrate? They had almost reached the United States; they were almost to begin exciting new lives. They were proud they were not like others; they did not have to run and scramble or
arrive as the peons did with backs wet from sweat or river water. The young Salvadorians were proud of their wealth and the privileges wealth had bought them.

The luxury cruiser had two levels; the sight-seeing level had a cocktail bar, with a disco music setup that the bartender could control with the touch of a finger. New orange carpet covered the bus interior; the bus seats had been freshly upholstered in orange velvet. The men’s and women’s rest-rooms were no larger than closets, but each had tiny lavatories with lighted mirrors, new yellow vinyl wallpaper, and yellow vinyl floor tile to match. Two “bus hostesses” in maid uniforms had been drinking with the bartender. The bus swayed and lurched and the hostesses staggered and giggled in the aisles as they gave out blankets and pillows and took orders for cocktails with crackers and cheese or beer served with popcorn or peanuts.

Alegría could feel the approach of a headache from the champagne. She sat with the reading light out and her seat back fully reclined. The throb of the disco music overhead played against the roar of the big diesel engine as the bus raced through the darkness. Alegría closed her eyes and listened to the voices around her. When wealthy Mexicans got drunk, they had to brag to each other about all the money they had stashed in U.S. banks. On and on they went, speeding north through the night; the driver was “making time” in the light traffic and the bright moonlight. Money was all that the Tuxtla country club couples had ever talked about, and Menardo had been no different from the others. They had talked about the good years, when money had flowed from the foreign bankers: money, money, everywhere; millions and millions in U.S. dollars! Enough they could afford to live anywhere. The billions and billions owed to foreign bankers the people of Mexico never even saw.

Bartolomeo had confronted Alegría about that. Wasn’t it so? Hadn’t Menardo and the governor stolen millions from the hydroelectric project that was never completed? Alegría had laughed and nodded her head. Of course the accusations were true. Of course the money had been stolen, but the common people had never expected to see any benefits for themselves. Alegría had never been afraid to argue with the Marxists or others because she believed each was born to a fate. The poor had been born to suffer; suffering was their fate. Alegría could not change her fate, which had been always to enjoy wealth and luxury effortlessly. She had studied philosophy at two universities and had got no further than to call it “fate.” Bartolomeo had called it “accident.”

The celebrating Salvadorians had finally passed out or fallen asleep in their party clothes, the young marrieds with their arms thrown around one another. A few women had kept overnight bags with them, but all other luggage had been transported separately by truck, so they could not change clothes. Alegría watched the silver light of the moon reflect off the dry coastal mountains in the distance. The Salvadorians had been the only talkers; the others and the Mexicans like herself traveled alone and each had remained aloof. They all had secrets they carried in their luggage, or perhaps secrets pursued them—Alegría could not guess. She had heard the wives at the country club talk about cousins and sisters married in Honduras and Costa Rica now frantic to escape the spreading civil wars. The paperwork took months; even priority and privileged lists at the embassies were eight to ten weeks behind. Hundreds of travel agents offered U.S. tours like Mario’s. As the doctor’s wife at the country club had said, the question wasn’t the expense but the quality and the guarantee of no embarrassments; no scrambling or running, no swimming across rivers, no wet backs.