Free Puerto Vallarta Squeeze by Robert James Waller

what Danny already knew, leaving out certain and significant parts, of course, and finished up by saying, “Danny
     came in the restaurant where I was working, one night. I liked him right away; he was more polite than most of the men. I
     remember he was going to order enchiladas, but I told him the chiles rellenos were better, that we had big chiles and big
     chiles are very good.” She smiled at Danny, but the shooter didn’t seem to be picking up on it, that chiles play a central
     role in Mexican sexual humor. To be a man and have a big chili is considered a good thing. Danny rolled his eyes and looked
     out the window.
    The Dixieland band moved into “Muskrat Ramble.” From the small aviary in the hotel courtyard, parrots took up where the trombone
     left off: shufflin’… shufflin…
arrrk!
    Mosquitoes whined on the other side of the screen next to Danny, looking in at his face and neck: “Psst! Hey, you… gringo
     guy… come outside for just a little while, gringo.” One of the cooks was laughing somewhere back in the kitchen, and the overhead
     fan turned slowly, reminding Danny of a boozy old song they used to sing about one of the early hangouts in Puerto Vallarta:
    Layin’ around the Oceana,
    Overhead fans and no hot water.
    Drinkin’ tequila and teasing the girls,
    Hustlin’ a fisherman’s daughter.
    Luz was telling the shooter how much she wanted to live in the United States someday. He listened attentively, nodding from
     time to time, but didn’t say anything.
    The light was fading fast, almost gone.

FLAMENCO AFTERNOONS
    F our horses and a colt slumbered along Juárez, taking their time. Danny Pastor waited for them to move over, shifted up through
     the gears, and headed toward the outskirts of San Bias. There he turned east on a road that would take them up to Route 15,
     the main north-south highway in western Mexico. It was a good morning, mist coming off ponds and rivers and colored amberish
     by early light. A good morning, a full, bright morning in May, soft and warm and making it seem as if everything might turn
     out all right.
    Still, Danny was impatient and the opposite of that, all at the same time, flopping around somewhere in the middle ambiguities.
     In his thoughtful moments he considered what would happen if they were stopped by one or another police outfit, trying to
     think what he might say about a passenger who carried no tourist card. Ordinarily that could be worked out with
mordida,
but it was hard to say what level of interest in gringos of all kinds had been generated by the killings in Puerto Vallarta.
     Maybe none at all, maybe a lot, maybe it was just being treated as a local problem. The conservative Danny was inclined to
     head for the border, fast. The other Danny knew he should take his time, get to know the shooter inside out, needed to do
     that if the story was going to be all it could be.
    The shooter had put on dark green sunglasses and his ball cap, drinking coffee from a paper cup. He was wearing the same clothes
     as the night before, still reasonably pressed, in spite of the heat and humidity. His eyes were better this morning, not as
     tired. Danny, wearing green cotton shorts and an old, multiwrinkled ecru shirt with a plain collar, felt rumpled and disorderly
     compared with the shooter, who had an air of military about him, of neatness and slow, deliberate precision.
    Luz was rested and showed it, smiling, bouncing along in her little space behind the shooter and Danny. She pointed at a long-tailed
     blue magpie jay flying through the trees to their right, morning light showing for an instant through the translucent blue
     of the bird’s tail and wings. What could be better for her? Nothing. A pleasant morning and headed for
el Norte,
where she’d always wanted to go.
    Two bobwhite quail scurried across the highway, running on short, quick legs, then lifted off and flickered into the Guaycoyul
     palms. Red-flowered trees, yellow-flowered trees. The