He’s inviting me to a party in his suite by way of consoling me for my loss. I’m so eager to get out of the depressing flower-filled environment that I jump at the chance.
It’s much the same as the party the other night, except that Ossley is in hiding and there’s no sign of cannabis, not least because a pair of Mexican police have joined the fun. These are uniformed state police who are here to guard us and to keep order, as opposed to the plain-clothes PFM who are actually investigating Loni’s murder. I assume the two police are off duty, because they’re slamming down cognac as if they’ve never had expensive, imported Napoleon brandy before. Both of them are Mayans around five feet tall.
I look at the pistols they’re carrying on their belts—and the two Heckler & Koch submachine guns they’ve propped in a corner, along with a shotgun for shooting at drones—and a scheme begins to drift across my brain on featherlight feet.
I decide that the cops are going to be my friends.
I top up their glasses. I talk to them both, and ask them about their lives. Hector has the better English skills, but Octavio is far more expressive, communicating through expansive gestures, tone of voice, and a natural talent for mimicry. I ask if he’s ever thought of being an actor.
They’re pretty flattered that a big Hollywood star is taking an interest in them. They tell big exciting police stories that, though they may be true, I suspect didn’t happen to them but to someone else.
When the party breaks up, I take Hector and Octavio for a walk, me swaying along with a couple tipsy guys shouldering automatic weapons nearly as long as they are. They let me march along with the shotgun. I take them to the little hotel annex where Ossley is holed up, and I carefully count the number of sliding-glass patio doors until I come to Ossley’s room.
I offer to pay them a thousand dollars apiece if they’ll shoot at that door sometime tomorrow afternoon, when I’m scheduled to be on the set. I tell them I want them to aim high, so no one will be hurt.
They’re sufficiently hammered that they don’t see anything terribly wrong in my request, and a thousand dollars is, after all, about three times their monthly salary. Though Hector is a little puzzled. “But why?” he asks.
“Publicity,” I tell them with a wink, and that seems to satisfy him.
“Okay,” Hector says. “But we need another five hundred.”
“What for?”
“To pay the sergeant to make the evidence disappear.”
I’m hardly sober during this conversation, but next morning I remember enough of what I’d said to stock up on some cash. We are in a part of Quintana Roo filled with Americans and American dollars, and getting a few thousand from the bank is no problem. After which I head off to my makeup call.
We’re shooting another underwater scene. I’m scheduled to be on the set for six hours, but there are a raft of technical problems, more than the usual amount of chaos, a distinct lack of cooperation on the part of the ocean, the sun, and the clouds, and so many retakes that I’m working for nearly twelve long hours, much of it in the ocean. It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time I’m out of makeup and back at the cabana.
My guards go into my cabana ahead of me to make certain there are no assassins lurking therein, and to their surprise discover Ossley and Emeline hiding in my spare bedroom. I affect more astonishment than I actually feel and ask Ossley what they’re doing here.
“Umm,” he says. “Can we talk privately?”
My guards make sure he’s not carrying anything pointy, then slip out to guard the gardens.
I sit in a chair beneath a vase filled with fading mourning blossoms. “What can I do for you?” I ask.
Ossley doesn’t look good. He’s unshaven, he’s shambling, and his hands keep roaming over his body as if to make sure it’s all still there.
“They took another shot at him today!” Emeline says in complete outrage.
I look at Ossley. “I ran for it before the police got there,” he says.
I conceal my inner dance of delight. “Sorry about all that,” I tell him, “but you can’t hide here, you know. I don’t want anyone in my place who will be drawing fire.”
Emeline looks at Ossley. “Tell him,” she says. “Tell him what you’re thinking.”
He gives a little twitch. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other night.”
I put on my Klingon mien and look at him seriously. “Maybe you’d better remind me. Because what I most remember is you lecturing me about freedom.”
It’s Emeline who’s responsible for his change of heart, Emeline and of course the bullets Hector fired through Ossley’s patio door. When all is said and done, I’ve won. And I see no damn reason why I shouldn’t rub his superior little nose in it.
After I finish talking to Ossley and Emeline, I decide to let him stay in the spare room overnight, then hide him somewhere else the next day. After which I take a little walk, find Hector and Octavio, and make them and their unknown sergeant as happy as I am.
Hollywood stardom opens a lot of doors. Which is why it doesn’t take nearly as much effort to get an interview with Juan Germán Contreras as you might think. I go through his brother, who owns the trucking company, and when I finally get the word that he’ll see me, I bring presents. A very expensive bottle of small-batch bourbon, plus Ossley’s 3D printer, the beaker he’d shown me at the party, and a container of Ossley’s rotgut cabernet.
The actual meeting is all very last-second. I get some GPS coordinates texted to me and drive to the location with my bodyguards. This turns out to be a half-completed Burger King overlooking the ocean, with the waves breaking white over the reef, and waiting for me there is the brother, Antonio. We’re required to put our cell phones in a plastic bag hidden on the construction site because cops can follow our phones’ GPS. We follow Antonio’s Chevy Tahoe off into the jungle, where we go through several gates guarded by some very large, well-armed Mexicans, and then to a modest-sized bungalow with a tile roof, a house identical to about a million homes in California.
My guards aren’t happy about any of this, but I’m the boss, and they sort of have to do what I tell them. They’re warned to stay in the car. Antonio’s guards help me carry my gear into the house, and there I meet the man of the hour.
I’m all dressed up like the Pope of Greenwich Village. Gray tropical suit, red tie, wingtips. My goatee has been trimmed, and my head re-shaved. I’m hoping I look like a Klingon mafioso.
I suppose I should ask forgiveness for pointing out again that I happen to look sinister in a very freakish way. I terrify small children. I scare room-service waiters I meet by chance at night.
Plus during my wilderness years, when I was struggling, if I worked at all, I played a heavy. I’m very good at projecting menace when I need to.
Juan is so menacing in real life that he doesn’t have to act scary. He also didn’t put on a tie. He’s a trim man of around forty, dressed casually in a cotton peasant shirt, drawstring pants, and sandals. I’ve done my research, and I know that the most wanted man in Mexico is a former high-ranking officer in the PFM who went over to the Dark Side. He maintains what can only be described as a paramilitary bearing, and he seems to bear a reserved curiosity about what brings me here.
He smiles whitely and shakes my hand. I present him with the bourbon, and he offers me a seat on a chair so grandly carved and painted with Mesoamerican designs that it should really be sitting in a museum of folk art.
He and his brother Antonio take their seats. “I understand there has been violence on your production,” Juan says.
“I’m afraid so,” I tell him.
“I regret to say that I can’t help you,” he says. “The police have surrounded your company with their own people, and they and I—” He waves a hand ambiguously. “We do not work together.”