The Return: A Novel (39 page)

Marder said, “Good conversation?”

Alsop gave him a look in which fear, anger, and hatred were equally blended, stood up, and walked out without another word.

*   *   *

Marder watched him go. When he heard the sound of gravel spraying as the man’s car took off, he went to the landline in the kitchen and called El Gordo.

Someone answered. Marder identified himself, and El Gordo came on the line a few moments later.

“Our problem is resolved,” said Marder.

“That’s good. May I ask how?”

“Through what we call national technical means. But he won’t cause us any trouble. Any word on our business?”

“Yes. I’m informed that our business is where it should be. I am very pleased and will be more so when we have delivery.” He paused. “I’d like you to be there.”

“Not a problem.”

“Good. There will be a car at the head of your road at eleven-thirty tonight. Perhaps we can get together when the delivery has been made, to discuss subjects of mutual interest.”

Marder agreed that this would be nice, hung up the phone, and was about to leave the kitchen when Evangelista, the cook, asked him whether he wanted something to eat. Marder realized that he had not eaten anything solid since the kidnappers’ food the previous night. Thinking thus, he immediately felt weak and ravenous. He sat in a kitchen chair.

“I’ll make you
chilaquiles
,” she said.

“You don’t have to bother. We could just heat something in the microwave.”

The woman cast a baleful look at that appliance. “You don’t want to eat from that, Señor. It has rays that soften the bones. I’ll make you a nice dish in ten minutes, and meanwhile you can have a beer and I’ll get you some fresh
plátanos
.” She served these out, clanged a large iron frying pan on the burner, and started to chop garlic.
Chilaquiles
was a frugal dish, a way to use up stale tortillas and any odd bits you had left over. Marder watched as Evangelista cut up and fried onions, a heel of chorizo, chipotles, and a stack of yesterday’s tortillas; he smelled it too, and he was back in the first apartment they’d lived in up by Columbia, where his wife was making this very dish as he came in after work.

A moment of dizziness then, a disorientation, and for a second or two he wondered whether it was Mr. Thing performing at last. But, no, it was only the false Mexico Chole had created speaking past the years to the true Mexico Marder now inhabited. He sensed a presence behind him and felt a pang of terror, as he had in the degraded hotel, that if he turned around she’d be there, still young.

But it was only Carmel, who said, “That smells great. I’m starving—is there enough?”

Of course there was enough. Evangelista loaded two plates and watched contentedly, her big arms folded, while they ate. “We’re glad to have you back, Don Ricardo,” said the cook. “The place does not go well when you’re gone. You know, the foot of the master is the best manure.”

Statch laughed, rolled her eyes, and smiled at her father. It was funny but also true, like most proverbs. If Marder only knew what crop he was growing.

*   *   *

He spent the next couple of hours wandering through the
colonia
, observing, showing himself, letting people buy him drinks at the tiny cantina, solving problems for people or declining to solve them. Sort it out for yourselves, he told them, and sometimes they did. He understood that in any village there were feuds, resentments, but although this was not a hacienda where one man’s word was law, he felt the tug of former times built into the character of the Mexicans. They wanted to make him that sort of man, so they could relax into their traditional helplessness, and blame him when things went badly, and nourish themselves on hate.

He walked down to the beach and was surprised to find a group of men filling sandbags and passing them up the bluff via a human chain. A whole pallet full of the bags, green and made of tough plastic weave, waited to be filled. He went over to one of the men and said, “Rafael, what’s this about? Why do we need sandbags?” Rafael was a big, dark, stone-faced man with a cropped head and arms full of tattoos, a former soldier, Marder recalled, who was one of Skelly’s security subalterns.

The man shrugged. “It’s Don Eskelly’s orders. It’s for our bunkers.”

“Bunkers? Why do we need bunkers?”

The man seemed a little embarrassed to be telling this to Marder, who should know all. “For when the war comes, Señor,” he replied. Marder nodded and walked back up the stairs. Of course there would be a war. How could he have thought otherwise?

*   *   *

At eleven, Marder proceeded down the causeway for his appointment with El Gordo’s men. He’d told Carmel where he was going and, somewhat to his surprise, she hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. A few days ago she would have, but now she was a little more Mexican. She looked into his face soberly, and gravely, kissed him on the cheek and wished him good fortune.

An SUV waited there with two men he didn’t know. He got in the back as directed, and one of the men sat next to him. They drove off down the coast road toward Cárdenas, then east through the city until they reached the container port. There was a gate around the whole place and a gatehouse, but the guard on duty gave them no problem. They drove slowly through aisles of shipping containers stacked six high.

The man sitting next to Marder took out a cell phone, dialed a number, spoke, listened, and told the driver, “Second right and then left. We should see them.”

He put the phone away and smiled at Marder. He had a teardrop tattoo at the corner of his eye. Marder said, “I don’t see how you can do this. I thought La Familia had the port locked up.”

The man shrugged. “It’s a big port.”

They made their turns and saw a white five-ton Volvo truck with the logo of a beer company—
HERNANDEZ Y CIA, CERVEZAS Y MAS
—painted on the side, featuring a picture of a frosty Carta Blanca.

Marder pointed to the vehicle and said, “I thought Hernandez was a La Familia outfit.”

“Yes, we’ve borrowed it for this thing,” said the man, and laughed. “They won’t bother it when we drive through the city.”

Marder got out of the SUV and then, in the glare from an overhead lamp, he could see that there was also a small van parked alongside the beer truck and a group of about half a dozen men standing around, among whom were Reyes and Skelly.

Skelly and Reyes were deep in conversation, Marder observed, but when Skelly saw him he waved and walked over.

“I hear you took care of our problem with that guy.”

“I did. The man turned out to be open to reason.”

“Yeah, El Gordo was impressed. He had the sense that Alsop was using Cuello as a friendly to get the other cartels. Don’t you love when they do that?”

“It makes me proud to be an American. What’s going on here?”

“We’ve been reading serial numbers. It’s that orange one on the bottom level. We are about to have the grand opening, as soon as Reyes’s boy can get a bolt cutter out of his van.”

Here Skelly gripped Marder’s arm in a manner that focused his attention. Skelly was looking him straight in the eye as he said, “Now, in the most casual way you can, I want you to lean against the hood of the car you came in, and when they open the door of that container, I want you to sort of slide down so that the engine block is between you and the door of the container. Can you do that without asking a single fucking question and keep smiling because we’re just a couple of buddies meeting up after a worrisome interval?”

Skelly gave him a little pat on the arm and walked back to the door of the orange container. The Templos all gathered around, like children before the piñata, as Reyes cut the lock and lifted the handle that released the door latch. No one was watching Marder, so he, the good soldier, did as he was told and slid off the hood of the SUV.

He heard the metallic creak of the container door opening and he crouched as ordered. Then came a peculiar clattering sound that reminded him of a Linotype in operation, followed by shouts and agonized cries and a scatter of pistol shots, more clattering, and silence. He waited, then risked a peek over the hood. All the Templos lay on the ground, glistening with blood. Skelly was down too, cursing, and leaning over him were three Asian men, all small and well knit, dressed only in underwear shorts, and carrying MP5 submachine guns equipped with long black suppressors.

Marder stepped out into the pool of light. Instantly the muzzles of the submachine guns came up, until Skelly yelled something that Marder recalled was the Hmong language, and the guns dropped again. He knelt by Skelly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just shot. One of those fuckers got off a few rounds.”

“What’s going on, Skelly? Who are these guys?”

“Oh, some associates from our old stomping grounds. Njaang, Kroong, and Baan, this is Marder.”

The three men looked at Marder with the blank faces of seals.

Skelly said, “Marder, we’ve got a lot of stuff to unload. You’d better get busy before someone shows up.”

“I don’t understand,” said Marder.

“I’ll explain later, chief. Meanwhile, I’m bleeding here.”

Marder examined Skelly’s wound, a hole in the center of a platter-sized bloodstain just above the beltline on the extreme left. “You’re gutshot, man,” he said. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“I’m not gutshot. It’s a through-and-through—you can take me later,” said Skelly. “Just help the boys load the truck.”

A grin split his pale face, and his teeth shone startlingly in the sodium light.

“This is like old times,” he said. “But without the fucking air force.”

Marder didn’t think it was like old times at all. Skelly was still talking, but more weakly, and Marder had to lean closer to his mouth. “The boys will take the truck to the
casa
. Rafael knows to expect them. Did they do the sandbags?”

“Yes. You planned this whole thing?”

“Of course I planned it. You didn’t really think I was going to let that fat asshole get his hands on heavy weapons, did you? They’d have you out of there so fast you wouldn’t have time to put on shoes. No, they’re ours, and we’re going to keep them. Oh, and there’s a big suitcase you need to keep your eyes on.”

“What’s in it?”

“You don’t want to know,” said Skelly, and closed his eyes.

16

“I feel like shit, but you look like shit, Marder,” said Skelly from his hospital bed in Cárdenas General. “You’re out of shape. I’ve been telling you that for years.”

Marder looked at his hands, which were torn and blistered. “I’ll take your word for it, but in fairness, I feel like shit too. I’m at the age where a man of means expects others to do the heavy lifting. Your guys were amazing, I have to say. It was like watching an old-time movie, the way they moved. Little guys, but they could heave crates up on their shoulders that I could barely budge. Who are they, anyway?”

“Just some tough Hmong I work with when I’m back with the Shans. They’ll be useful in the coming days.”

“You think we’re going to be attacked.”

“I don’t know, you talked to El Gordo—what do you think?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell over the phone. He didn’t actually accuse me of ripping him off. I think the fact you were shot meant something. He asked how you were.”

“Did you tell him I was here?”

“Well, yeah. He asked, and I thought I was on sketchy ground already without making up an easily checked lie.”

Skelly was quiet for a moment, a look of concentration on his face. “He’ll be a little slowed down because he doesn’t have Reyes anymore, but I have to get out of here.”

He pushed a button, and in a shorter time than Marder would have expected, a nurse appeared. Skelly asked her to send Dr. Rodriguez along and she departed.

“You seem to have them well trained.”

“My winning personality or bribes, you choose. Ah, here’s my personal physician.”

A youngish man in a white coat walked into the room. He seemed happy to see Skelly but looked doubtfully at Marder, as if he were carrying staph.

Skelly said, “If you’ll excuse us, Marder, Dr. Rodriguez is going to practice the healing arts.”

Marder walked down the halls, glancing in the rooms he passed. Around nearly every bedside was the Mexican Family, almost always the mother, often spooning food into the patients, since everyone knew the hospitals fed you trash. Marder thought they weren’t feeding Skelly trash, and he doubted that these others got the kind of service he received.

He passed Dr. Rodriguez in the hall and paused to address him, but the man rushed by and did not meet his eye. A busy man, it seemed, or perhaps he was still unaccustomed to bribery and was ashamed.

Skelly was getting dressed. As he’d predicted, the slug had torn up the muscles of his flank but had done no intestinal damage. Another noble scar for Skelly.

They drove back to the
casa
in the SUV Marder had left in just a few hours ago. Everyone was glad to see Marder, again, and some were just as glad to see Skelly, including Rafael and his band of militia—and Lourdes. Skelly was conferring with his men in the front driveway; they were telling him how
los chinos
had arrived, how they were already setting up strongpoints with the powerful new weapons, how everyone was doing as they asked although they could speak no Spanish and barely any English. Marder was about to move off and inspect these wonders, when the beauty came racing up from the servants’ house and flung herself at Skelly, hanging on his neck and covering his face with kisses.

Skelly clutched the delicious body to him, grinning, and over her head passed Marder a satyric look and a wink. Marder turned away into a chaster embrace: his daughter.

“You’re back again,” she said, “miraculously preserved. When those guys came in with the guns, we didn’t know what to think, and they’re not very communicative. What language is that they’re speaking?”

“Hmong. They came over from China in the shipping container with the weapons, and when the container was opened, they came out and massacred all the Templos. How long has that been going on?” He gestured to where Skelly was walking away with his minions, Lourdes glued to his side.