Steve Martini - The Arraignment

As he does, three large SUVs, dark and gleaming under the bright lights, drive up and park in an arc around the wing on Adam’s side. I start to get my bags from the back.

“You can go ahead and leave the bag,” says Adam. “They’ll get ’em for us.”

I follow him to the door. Adam slaps the pilot on the arm. “Good flight. Very comfortable. Now, you guys are heading back to San Diego, as I understand it, tonight.”

“Right. Be back here tomorrow night. Then we’ll be on the ground here ’til Sunday evening.”

“Great,” says Adam, and he heads down the stairs with me right behind him. Before I get to the ground, he is already shaking hands, smiling at two men who have gotten out of one of the cars. He motions me over.

“Julio. Like you to meet Paul Madriani. Paul. This is Julio Paloma. Julio’ll be our guide while we’re down here. I hope you don’t mind. Our firm has used Julio’s company for security on trips down here before. I took the liberty.”

“Not at all.” We shake hands. Julio is a big man, I’d say six-foot-five, a broad grin, white even teeth, and a hand that swallows my own. Neck like a bull, shoulders like an NFL lineman, he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen except for the one standing next to him.

Adam introduces me to Herman Diggs, an African-American mountain who I am told is from Detroit. I look up at him. His top front tooth is chipped like a jagged piece of ice. I don’t ask how it got that way. I’d like to have my hand back. Both of them are decked out in slacks and dark blazers, enough cloth to sail a good-sized ship, each with a patch sporting a company logo over the breast pocket.

Adam tells me they are specialists in corporate security. They conduct some small talk with Adam while their minions gather our luggage.

We head toward the second car in line, followed by the Julio and Herman show, guys with our bags taking up the rear like a safari. These they pile into the back of the last car in line while they huddle to call signals on the best route to wherever it is we are sleeping tonight.

“You sure you have enough vehicles?” I ask Adam.

“Never be too careful down here,” he says. “Julio can tell you. He chauffeured me around Mexico City last time I was down. That was about two years ago, wasn’t it?” His voice goes up a notch to be heard over the blast of a jet throttling up off in the distance. He turns to look at Julio, who is too busy at the moment, making arrangements for travel, to hear him.

So Adam turns back to me. “May as well get in,” he says.

Oversized tires with lots of aggressive rubber. We could use a ladder to climb up into the backseat of the huge Suburban. We settle in and find the seat belts. Adam closes the door to keep the air-conditioning inside. The engine is still running.

“Anyway, it was a meeting on gas and oil leases for one of our clients.” Adam’s going on with his story even if nobody is listening. “And son of a bitch if somebody doesn’t try to grab one of our briefcases. Two kids on a motorbike.”

“Really?”

“That’s what I mean. You’ve got to be careful.”

“Did they get it?”

“Hell, no,” he says. “Herman there saw it all in his side-view mirror. He opened the driver’s door just as they were accelerating. Made a real mess. Blood all over the inside of the door, broken bones. Nobody killed, so I guess it could have been worse.”

“Yeah. They could have run into Herman,” I say.

Adam laughs, takes off his glasses, and wipes them down with a handkerchief. The car’s air conditioner is working overtime with one of the front doors still open.

“Beginning to fog up. I hate the humidity down here.” Adam checks his watch, then taps it with a finger. It’s stopped. He takes it off and taps it gently against the metal frame around the inside of the passenger window, then listens to it close to his ear to make sure it’s going again.

“This old Hamilton’s an antique,” he says. “Like me. It keeps great time, but it doesn’t like humidity. Makes two of us.” He wipes perspiration from his forehead with the handkerchief. “What time have you got?”

“It’s a little after one-thirty.”

“Add two hours,” he says. “Central time. We’ll sleep in the morning. Otherwise we’ll be wasted.”

Herman and Julio finally get everything together and we head for town, Herman behind the wheel and Julio riding shotgun.

Out of the airport, within two minutes we’re on a dark four-lane highway traveling at high speed for a few minutes before we reach an overpass. We turn off and head toward what looks like open water behind flat terrain covered by low jungle foliage. A few miles on, and we start to see lights, a few pedestrians walking along the sandy shoulder of the road, and small businesses. Another mile, and now there’s a sidewalk and the lights are brighter.

“You ever been here before?” Julio sitting sideways, looking at me from over the front seat.

“No.”

“All jungle, un pantano, in English ah, ‘swamp’ until maybe,” he has to think about this, “twenty years ago. Then the government they decide they want resort. Here.” He smiles, gestures toward the floor in the front seat, as if the government would plant their resorts at that location. “And poof, like that, resorts all over. Melia Cancun, La Piramides, Royal Solaris Caribe. Like Las Vegas,” he says. “You been there?”

“Not for a number of years.”

“Disneyland, huh?”

“That’s what I hear.”

He starts pointing out the attractions. By now the properties are abutting one another, palatial grounds with manicured lawns to make French aristocracy envious. These are lit up by banks of floodlights, some of them in color with water effects, fountains shooting spray skyward. He tells us that the name of the busy boulevard we are on, two lanes in each direction with traffic lights, is Kukulcan.

Adam disconnects his seat belt, and slides forward, leaning over the back of the front seat to be heard better. “This is the street where this man Ibarra has his office?”

“Yes, sir. We’ll be coming to that right up here. Beyond Kukulcan Plaza. I will show you.”

“Anything on the two sons?” asks Adam. “Ibarra brothers.”

“Ah, yes. Bad people. Very bad,” he says. “Emm, south. They are south, near Tulum.”

“What he means, they got property down there,” Herman tries translating as he drives, glancing back over the seat occasionally to make sure he can be heard. “Word around is they trying to develop it. You ask me, I think they doin’ something else.”

“Drugs?” asks Adam.

“Could be.”

“And the father?”

“Mystery man,” says Herman. “Told he and the boys don’t get along.”

Adam settles back in the seat again, leans over toward me. “Sounds like confirmation of what we’ve heard. Father and sons not getting along. And drugs.”

“Metz told me that the brothers wanted heavy equipment to develop a project on the coast, some property they wanted to sell for a resort. It could be true.”

“Did Metz send any equipment?”

“No.”

“There, you have your answer,” says Adam. “But perhaps part of his story was true.”

“What’s that?”

“Fact that the father and sons are at each other’s throats.”

“Here it is.” Julio turns and leans over the seat. “This building right here is the plaza. You hotel is here, but we go on to Ibarra’s?”

“Yes. Yes.” Adam motions for them to keep going. He wants to see where Ibarra’s office is.

“Dats an indoor mall, you need anything,” says Herman. “Lotta shops, restaurants, air-conditioning. Hangout for the ugly Americans wanna say they been to Mexico but didn’t sweat. This area’s called the Zone. Zona Hotelera.”