Free The Dogs of Mexico by John J. Asher

Sol where 95-D split—the old highway and the newer toll road, though both were still named 95-D. He had decided beforehand to take the old highway for its more scenic possibilities.  
    The pines disappeared. The grass turned brown and the hills went bald. Now and then an old man or a boy grazed a few goats on the dusty shoulder. An occasional Madonna or bleeding Jesus rose up by the roadside to peer out from grottos decorated with plastic flowers, bits of colored glass, cheap trinkets. Many of the trucks and buses were old and boxy, painted magenta, green, yellow.
    Cars were few and far between, but at one point a white Chevy eased up behind and stayed with him for a mile or so. His first thought was of cartels and kidnappers. But while light reflecting off the windshield made it hard to see inside, it looked like a large platinum blond behind the wheel and a young boy in the passenger seat. Then the car fell back and disappeared.  
    In his active days paranoia had been central to his every-day existence and now he felt it surfacing again. He recalled Duane Fowler back in Miami, stealing a look out his window, absent-mindedly reconnoitering the premises. There was an old axiom within the Company: “Paranoia is a healthy thing when you have real enemies.”  
    A little before three in the afternoon, he rounded a series of switchbacks and the town of Taxco sprawled up the inside bowl of the mountains before him like the tiered layers of a wedding cake—sunlight on white plaster walls and orange-tiled roofs. Dazzling.

    HIS ROOM IN the Hotel Rancho Victoria, a long motel-like structure hugging the mountainside in the upper reaches of Taxco, was located on the end, shuttered windows on three sides. The late-afternoon sun glowed in bright orange squares on the Saltillo tile floor. The room had a double and a single bed, the single tucked into a shallow alcove between the bathroom and a set of French doors opening onto a patio with a vine-laden baluster overlooking a steep slope to the town below.
    He took the video camera outside. All around the inside curve of the mountain, windows and terraces spilled over with flowers, lush with bougainvillea, hibiscus, geraniums, marigolds, the smell intoxicating. Bells began to ring from the twin towers of the Templo de Santa Prisca church, its spires visible in the mid-distance below, the sound quavering up the hillside. This is a good place , he thought. A good place . Without warning, an empty feeling settled through him, a vague longing. Surely this moment was meant to be shared. He thought of Tricia, but he could no longer conjure up the closeness they once enjoyed. The isolation he felt was similar to what he’s felt when the woman, Ana, walked out of the restaurant back in Mexico City.  
    Feeling sorry for myself , he said with a touch of self-derision.  
    He went inside and tried to nap. But then Nick kept playing around in the periphery of his waking dreams. Finally he got up and took another Vibramycin.

10
    Guests

    P ACO’S SECOND-FLOOR bar was open to the evening air on two sides, the interior lit yellow against the night stealing in over the rooftops. Half a dozen mariachis wearing sombreros and pants with silver conchos down the outseams stood against the back wall. For a few pesos they sang sad, off-key Mexican ballads accompanied by big-bellied guitars and mournful trumpets.
    Robert sat at a small table alongside the railing overlooking the sidewalk below. The Templo de Santa Prisca rose cater-cornered across the zócalo, its baroque towers black against the last light of evening. Vendors spilled over the yellow-lit stone steps in front, hawking silver jewelry, primitive dolls, indigenous paintings on bark paper. They pushed carts of foodstuff in paper cones—pineapple, lemons, mangos, sliced cucumbers, jicama drenched in lime juice and dusted with chili powder. A vendor stood dwarfed under a cloud of balloons. Children with packs of gum in cigar boxes hustled