Steve Martini - The Arraignment

The man in the yellow shirt holds up a hand, palm out, the universal gesture to stay put, talking to Julio.

He calls to the trailer, and a couple of seconds later the door opens. My vision doesn’t penetrate the shadows inside. Whoever it is talks from there.

“Por favor, senor.” Julio is now interceding, his hands still raised. I can make out a few words. “Norteamericanos, hombres de negocios.”

Questions from inside.

“Si.” Julio nodding his head. “Si.”

Then silence. Julio stands there, sweating in the sun.

The kid outside keeps waving the muzzle of his assault rifle past my head.

More conversation between Julio and whoever is inside, Spanish too fast for me to comprehend much of anything, though I make out the words: pueden entrar.

Julio comes back to the car. He opens Adam’s door and sticks his head in. “Both of you can go in,” he says. “We must remain here. They will want to search you. You have no weapons?”

Adam shakes his head.

“No,” I tell him.

Julio holds the door while we get out. I slide across the seat and follow Adam out his side to avoid Pimples with his cannon standing beside my door.

They do a thorough frisk on both of us, all the way down to the ankles, smalls of our backs, and crotches. They take the folder notebook out of Adam’s hand and check to see if anything is in it besides paper and a pen. They give it back to him, then one of them moves us toward the door, pushing with the rifle in my back. We step up onto the plywood platform and toward the door.

As Adam walks inside, I can feel a rush of cool air escaping from the rooftop air conditioner running at full bore.

The second I clear the doorway, it slams closed behind me. I feel another set of hands checking from under my arms down to my belt, another quick check for weapons.

Instinctively, my hands go up. Then whoever it is pulls the wallet from my back pocket.

Inside the trailer it is dark as a cave, small windows with venetian blinds pulled closed. One small floor lamp in the corner. Coming in from the brightness, I can’t see much of anything for several seconds.

The guy behind me moves around to the front. He is older, harder, an edge to his face that the kids outside have not yet earned. Even in the shadows, I can see that his face is pocked by acne.

Across the room in the corner a man sits behind a desk, slick dark hair, shirtsleeves, and a tie. I am guessing in his mid-thirties. He is leaning back in an old wooden swivel desk chair that groans as he moves. His hands are coupled behind his neck, feet planted in the middle of the desk, on top of the blotter with papers and ripped-off slips from an adding machine underneath his alligator loafers.

There is a tumbler of what looks like whiskey and ice at the edge of the desk.

He watches with cool disinterest as his man finishes checking Adam, pushing hard enough that Tolt is wobbling around with his hands in the air. He finally finds what he is looking for, Adam’s wallet. Then he steps away.

The guy behind the desk says: “You can put your hands down now.” Perfect English. “So you’re American businessmen. You have business cards?” Acne flips him both wallets and he catches them on the bounce off his desk, one of them landing in his lap.

He opens one wallet and looks inside. “Paul Madriani.” He looks. I nod. Then the other wallet. “And Adam Tolt.”

My eyes are on the large blanket laid over the object lying on the floor against the wall two or three feet from where I’m standing.

He starts fishing inside the wallets and comes up with business cards. “Both of you are lawyers. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“May I ask who you are?” says Adam.

“You can. You may.” But he doesn’t offer a name.

“We, ah, we’re down here scouting properties for development,” says Adam. “Real estate along the coast. The Riviera between Cancun and Tulum. Looking for opportunities.”

“I see. What everybody wants, a good opportunity. Have a seat. Where are your manners, Jorge? Get the gentlemen a drink.” He is still picking through our wallets as he chides his subordinate for his lack of hospitality.

Adam takes a seat on a hard wooden chair across from his desk. I try the couch a few feet away, nearer the window. Through a crack in the blinds, I can see Julio outside chatting it up with one of their guards. Herman has lifted the rear door of the Suburban and is sitting in the back with his legs dangling over the bumper, his arms folded, sweating with his jacket on, one hand not too far from the automatic under his coat, assuming they haven’t lifted it from him.

From here I can also see a small corner of the item on the floor where the blanket is folded back. It is white and looks like gypsum, rough edges like stone.

“What would you like to drink? We have bourbon.” He pulls a few more items from our wallets, what look like driver’s licenses, and checks these against the business cards already out.

“Sounds like it’ll be bourbon,” says Adam.

“And you?” He looks up at me.

“The same.”

Jorge leaves to get the drinks.

The man behind the desk fixes Adam with a stare. “You gonna stick with this bullshit?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The real estate bullshit?”

“I assure you…”

“You can keep your fucking assurances,” he tells Adam. “What I wanna know is what you’re doing here.”

“I’m telling you we’re looking for property.” Adam is holding a leather folder with a pen and paper for effect.

“Fine. You want to talk about property. We got property. We got a nice cliff over here, goes way out over the ocean. Maybe you like to see it? Lot of rocks at the bottom.”

“We were thinking perhaps a nice beach,” says Adam.

“I’ll bet you were.”

“I’m telling you we represent investors, a consortium up north.”

“That’s right. A company called Jamaile Enterprises,” I say.

I can feel a palpable wince from Adam as I say the words. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t have to worry about the man behind the desk. But I figure we have nothing to lose. I want to see if I get a rise, but he doesn’t seem to recognize the name.

I’m guessing this is the business side of the brothers Ibarra, Arturo, who is threatening to drop us off a cliff, which leaves me to wonder about Jaime, the one Metz called the Neanderthal.

“To buy land down here, you need a Mexican partner.”

“We know that,” says Adam.

“I have had enough American partners to last me a lifetime,” he says. “They never seem to work out. Last ones got cold feet. Left us high and dry.”

“How did you deal with it?” I ask.

He looks at me, makes a face, and glances at Jorge who has now rejoined us holding two glasses, bourbon on the rocks. “We had to sever the relations, you might say.” He smiles, thin lips, tight and sinister.

“Well, I can assure you that that would not happen here,” says Adam.

Jorge deposits one of the tumblers with iced bourbon on the desk in front of Adam and hands the other one to me. Then he takes a seat at the other end of the couch, staring at the back of Adam’s head through dark, dead eyes. Occasionally he glances over at me with the affability of someone measuring you for a coffin.

“I told them you might want to take them over and show them the cliff.” Ibarra is talking to Jorge. “Of course, we let them finish their drinks first.”

“I’m telling you we’re just exploring for property.” I can hear the strain in Adam’s voice as he tries to convince him. A man of influence, suddenly without any.

“Esploring,” he says. “That’s a good word. It looks like you are esploring all right. You come here with men who are armed.” He nods out toward the cars, toward Julio and Herman, leaving us to wonder whether Ibarra’s men outside have taken their weapons.