Puerto Vallarta Squeeze Read Free Page B

Break down and the local thugs who have a general dislike for gringos might try to beat on us. Word is, bandidos are back in business on Fifteen up north and also around Durango, east in the mountains. On top of that, the federates can think up about a million reasons to give you trouble, even if you aren’t involved in any trouble to start with. They operate as their own law, more or less. Hard to tell ’em from the bandidos. Mexican law descends from the Napoleonic Code, not English common law, so habeas corpus is not part of doing business down here. They get you in jail and figure you’ll just sit there for life or until someone from the States sends a few thousand in bribe money to get you out.”
    The shooter toyed with his empty shot glass, tilted it up, and looked at the bottom. “Well, there’s two of us. We can watch each other’s backs, can’t we?”
    He glanced up at Danny, who wasn’t sure whether the question was rhetorical or required an answer, decided on the former, and focused momentarily on where the shooter was fiddling with his shot glass—the little finger on his left hand was missing.
    In any case, by the easy way he’d said it, the shooter obviously wasn’t worried about village thugs or bandidos, maybe not even federates or anyone else who might jump up and get in his way. He’d just cracked some important-looking gringo plus a naval officer for whatever reason, and he was sitting there with that hard little smile of his, like the whole thing was an evening stroll along the Malecón.
    Danny was still considering a fast tunnel backward toward the light of where he was an hour ago, toward recommended and sensible boundaries. Alternatives: Stay in Puerto Vallarta and ride Luz María’s warm and willing body into another thousand sunsets, get some real work done on another book while waiting for the next royalty check that’d be less than the previous one. Good choice, if low risk and even lower money were the criteria.
    Or, haul ass off into the Mexican night with a killer who might just put a pencil-size hole behind your right ear somewhere out on the road. At that level, bad choice. Still, five thousand for the ride plus another ten for the serial rights plus a book would sum to plenty of long, easy nights of Willie and Lobo, not to mention Luz, who could get especially willing and somewhere on the far side of enthusiastic with lobster and drink swirling around in her soft brown tummy. And maybe a few dollars up to Chicago for Janice and little Robbie, show good intentions and that sort of thing. Besides, Danny figured the shooter had no quarrel with him, and professional hit men don’t hit anybody they don’t have to. That’s one of their survival tactics, which is something Danny knew from his newspapering days on the streets of Chicago.
    So there was the business of money—the compulsions of greed or necessity, usually indistinguishable—plus the tequila in Danny’s head and the consequent upward slope of his risk curve toward imprudence. Not to mention ill-considered wed to misguided and penny wise cum imbecility. Later on, Danny Pastor would know Proust had it right: “It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions.”
    Some years before, Janice, Danny’s first and only wife, had said it differently, “Danny, make it a personal rule never to make decisions when you’re drinking. They’re always bad ones. Tattoo that rule on top of your thumb so you’ll see it when you lift the glass.”
    As they used to say, and put on T-shirts now, tequila has four stages:
I’m rich,
I’m beautiful,
I’m bulletproof,
I’m invisible.
    Danny was at stage three and climbing when he decided to take the shooter north, toward wherever it is men go when they’re out of their minds or in need of money… which amount to the same thing most of the time.

BACK ROUTES
    D anny’s ’68 Bronco, torn seats and modified to