Free Puerto Vallarta Squeeze by Robert James Waller Page B

Mexicans and our language sounds like Chinese to them.”
    The talk about place had given Danny an opening. “Where you from, originally?” He pretended to concentrate on driving, giving the impression he wasn’t all that interested.
    “Brooklyn, Seventh Avenue. Area called Park Slope.”
    “You grow up there?” Danny had a deep-down sense the quiet man was in a mood to talk.
    “Partly. My father pulled out when I was ten.” The shooter looked over at him, a kind of dark rain moving across his face.
    He was calling up old images, bad things that happened. His voice took on that color and sounded distant, maybe lonely, maybe all of that and something more. For a moment Danny thought the conversation was over, but the shooter went on. “Don’t know why he left. Never did understand it. Just left. My mother couldn’t take care of both of us, so she sent me off to live with her mother and father in northern Minnesota. The ol’ man drank a lot. My grandmother was pretty nice, but they were in their seventies by that time. Not ready to take up being parents again.”
    Danny was surprised at what the shooter was saying, talking personal stuff, perfect background information and context for the events of two nights ago. “Minnesota sounds pretty good. I went through there once. Lots of water, clean.”
    “It’s all right. When the ol’ man was off the bottle he taught me to hunt and fish. Did a lot of that. All of ’em are dead now, my mother included.”
    Danny bored in. “Ever see your father again… after he left?”
    “Once. He and my mother got back together again and came down to Parris Island when I finished boot camp. Didn’t have much to say to them… .”
    The shooter let it go, his voice circling down. He lit a cigarette and watched the dry, flat countryside rolling by, the Sierra Madre tracking along parallel to them forty miles east. A-little farther on Luz said something Danny couldn’t make out over the wind blasting through the Bronco and the roar of a low-geared engine.
    The shooter heard her. “She wants to visit the cemetery where her parents are buried. Says it’s down toward someplace called Teacapán.”
    “Ceylaya.” Luz was nearly shouting, trying to make Danny hear. “My parents are buried there. I have not visited their graves in four years.”
    “Luz, this isn’t any goddamned tour. It’s a long way to the border. Maybe we’ll stop on the way back if it works out and you can visit all the cemeteries you want.” Danny was saying those things, knowing he wouldn’t do it, knowing he’d make up another excuse on the way back. Sometimes you say those things anyway.
    Silver-and-green Pacifico buses, big trucks, long line of them jammed up on a hill, bathing Vito in black exhaust fumes. Then over the Río San Pedro bridge, where a huge chunk was missing from the cement railing on the right. Danny had seen those gaps all over Mexico and always wondered for a moment who and what went over the side and never came back and how long it’d been since they’d done it.
    The shooter was looking at the road map while Danny looked over his shoulder at Luz. She was near to crying, her eyes looking wet and infinitely black in the way they got when she was sad. Danny felt like a real shithead, but there was work to be done. A delivery job, information gathering, lot of work. Besides, he’d never liked cemeteries of any kind. Luz sat in the jumble where she rode, staring west out a side window of the Bronco.
    The shooter folded the map. “If you take a little road out of Escuinapa and run west toward the sea, you go right past Ceylaya.” He unbuttoned his right shirt pocket and took out three hundred dollars American, handed it to Danny. “Let her visit the cemetery, what the hell… hour down to the coast, hour back. We’ll find someplace on the beach for lunch. All right?”
    Luz was listening, watching them.
    Danny felt like crap. Take the money and he’d be showing love for lucre but