“If you go back into the drug business,” I tell him, “I’ll kill you myself.”
He should devote himself to his wine project, I tell him. Stay away from anything illegal.
I leave my cabana after supper and take a stroll through the hotel grounds. I avoid the beach or ocean views, since I spend my working day on one or in the other. I’m looking in a vague way for a gathering where I can relax, but Yunakov isn’t in his room, and so I wander up to the open-walled bar by the pool and order myself a Negro Modelo.
When my eyes adjust to the murk in the bar, I see Special Agent Sellers standing in a corner, trying to communicate with the green-and-red talking parrot the bar has installed on a perch. Sellers is still wearing his Jungle Jim outfit. I stroll over with my beer in hand and take a look at the parrot.
“Got him to confess yet?” I say.
Sellers glances at me, then gives a little start—yes, I am indeed a disturbing and ominous figure to find looming over one’s shoulder—and then he turns to me.
“The parrot’s not talking,” he says. “I think he wants his lawyer.”
“Motherfucker!” the parrot shrieks. His vocabulary seems to have been strongly influenced by drunken American tourists.
“Obviously a hard case,” I point out. “Why don’t you take a break and have a drink?”
He joins me at the bar and orders a vodka tonic.
“Did you ever find that man you were looking for?” I ask.
“He kept dodging the interview. Then someone shot into his room and he split.”
“You were looking for the props guy?” I ask in feigned surprise. He nods. “Do you know who shot at him?” I ask.
“That’s confidential,” he says, which I figure means he has no clue.
I decide to change the subject. “Any progress on who killed Loni?” I ask.
He looks a little uncertain whether or not he should be sharing any news, but then he decides to let his vodka tonic do the talking.
“Remember when I said it might have been an accident?” he says.
I nod.
“There was some problem with the evidence at first,” Sellers says, “but it got straightened out, and now it looks as if the shot was fired from the land. Maybe at someone on the tennis courts, from someone hiding in the jungle across the highway. And it punched through the wall and killed Loni purely by mistake.”
It isn’t hard to look shocked. I’d thought I was really clever working that one out all by myself.
“I’ve been thinking and thinking,” I say. “And I couldn’t imagine why anyone would—” I succeed in summoning a tear to my eye. “And now you say it really was an accident!” I blurt.
He nods in what is probably meant to be a comforting way. “That’s how the physical evidence lines up,” he says. “I said before that it could be random, but you disagreed.”
“I don’t know what I think anymore,” I say. I think about putting a quaver in my voice but decide against it. I don’t want to overact when my audience is only three feet away.
I sip my sweet, dark beer. Sellers says nothing. “Motherfucker!” says the parrot.
There’s a stir, and then a half dozen film crew come into the bar. They’ve obviously just come in from dinner somewhere, and among them I recognize Chip, the man who is here because he’s somebody’s cousin. And for some reason a memory of Juan rises to my mind. I don’t know this Ramirez. But what you say is interesting. I understand why somebody’s shooting at him.
It suddenly occurs to me that maybe Juan was telling the truth.
I nod toward the group. “Do you know the tall one there?” I ask. “The blond?”
“I was there when he was interviewed,” Sellers says.
“He’s not part of the crew,” I say.
“He’s here on vacation,” Sellers says. “He’s related to, ah, I think it was the assistant greenskeeper.”
I consider Chip from the vantage point of the bar. “Do you know what he does for a living?” I ask.
Sellers pulls out his handheld and pages through his files. Which is probably something he wouldn’t do if he hadn’t had more than a couple vodka and tonics.
“He works for Porter-Bakker Pharmaceuticals,” he says. “In marketing.”
It’s like an explosion in my mind, only in reverse. All the smoke and flame and debris fly together, the bits assembling to form a complete whole.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s interesting.”
It turns out that Chip is a golfer, and goes out most days to one of the many courses in Cancun. I watch him when he comes back from one of his trips, his golf bag slung over his shoulder. He walks into his suite, and he immediately realizes that someone has broken into his rooms and scattered his belongings everywhere. He drops his bag and runs to the settee in his front room, and pulls out a long box from underneath. He looks relieved to discover it’s still there.
“Right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
I and my four bodyguards leave my cabana, where I’m watching Chip’s antics on video, and then stroll across the compound to Chip’s suite. Two guards precede me through the open door.
“Hold on there, cowboy,” I say. “We’ve got to talk.”
Chip spins around, his face alight with what I believe is called a “guilty countenance.” He stares as my guards approach him.
“What do you have in the box there?” I ask, and then—because he looks as if he’s going to attempt desperate resistance—I add, “No point in fighting. A video record of this is already on a server in New Zealand.”
Which is true. My guards and I broke into Chip’s suite earlier in the day, put video cameras everywhere, then tossed his belongings all over the room all under the assumption that he would lead us to the box hiding under the settee—which of course we had discovered in the course of our search.
My guards, I am pleased to remark, seem to be brigands only slightly disguised in tropical suits. They would probably have taken Chip to sea and drowned him if I’d asked.
One of my guards takes the box from Chip’s nerveless fingers. I look at the box with all my Klingon intensity.
“What do you want?” says Chip. His face is stony.
“Let’s go outside and talk.” Away from any recording devices.
My guards pat Chip down for weapons, and then we all stroll to the pool, where Chip and I sit at a wrought-iron table. The sun dazzles on the water. There is the scent of chlorine. One of my guards adjusts the table’s red-and-yellow umbrella to keep us in the shade, and then the guards withdraw out of earshot.
I look at Chip, still using my Klingon face. “Let’s open the conversation by agreeing that you’re an idiot,” I begin.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page. Because from what I can see, you came here to kill Ollie Ramirez, only you missed him and killed a movie star. Which brings heat and publicity down on this whole production, making it difficult to complete your mission, and so you while away your time playing golf. And you did this in Mexico, where the authorities won’t even need to open that box, and find there a rifle covered with your fingerprints, to beat a confession out of you and throw you in jail, which you will very likely not survive because it’s going to be full of violent cartel killers who will torture you to death simply for the fun of hearing you scream.”
There is a moment of appalled silence, and then Chip summons the fortitude to ask a question.
“Why would I kill this Ollie Ramirez?”
I sigh. “On behalf of Porter-Bakker Pharmaceuticals, who’ve clearly made up their minds that Ollie’s discoveries are a threat to their bottom line. I looked them up—last year they made a profit of 6.3 billion on income of 49 billion. They could hardly keep that up if people could print their own prescriptions in their basement.” I give a contemptuous laugh. “They’re also idiots, by the way.”