David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

The waitress materialized. McIlvaine ordered a grilled liver-wurst and Swiss on corn rye with pepperoncini and onions, mustard not mayo, coleslaw side, iced tea with extra lemon, then handed her the menu and watched her flee.

Lattimore, prompting, “Andy?”

“Where was I…” He adjusted his glasses, glanced at his watch. “Ah yes. Perhaps your Samir’s Fatima, if she exists, has moved to another camp, Trebil for instance. Maybe she’s gone back to Baghdad, meaning she could be God only knows where.

These are not people who trust the government or the press, the Palestinians, I mean. They feel very much hunted and betrayed. But there’s something else too. Something rather curious.”

A busboy delivered a dewy tumbler of iced tea and a saucer of lemon slices. McIlvaine fussed the straw from its wrapper. The busboy, a Latino, vaguely reminded Lattimore of Happy’s cousin Roque and he suffered a sudden flash of misgiving, wondering where the kid might be.

“My friend spoke to a contact he’s developed, a man once very well appointed within the Mukhabarat. Obviously, this is very sensitive. I can’t tell you any more than that about the man.”

Like I could burn him from here, Lattimore thought.

“But he remembered a Palestinian named Salah Hassan from the al-Baladiyat neighborhood. The man was arrested for trafficking in foreign currencies sometime after the end of the Iran-Iraq War.” He began squeezing lemon into his tea, one wedge, two. “Curiously enough, this Salah Hassan had a wife named Fatima and a daughter named Shatha. And after her husband’s imprisonment-they cut off his hand, like they do with thieves, then stuck him in a prison somewhere to be forgotten-the woman, this Fatima, she not surprisingly fell on very hard times. There are brothels in Baghdad, obviously, though they’re known to favor green lights, not red. Apparently this Fatima had a small but very devout clientele. But once Saddam’s regime fell and the Mahdi militias began their persecution of the Palestinians, which became quite indiscriminate after the bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, she grabbed her daughter and fled the area and no one is willing to admit they know where she ran off to. Assuming anyone knows. Maybe one of those devoted patrons stepped up, whisked her off to his tent in Araby.”

The waitress returned to the table, this time with McIlvaine’s sandwich and coleslaw. Setting it down, she turned her attention to the remains of Lattimore’s lunch and cocked an eyebrow. He leaned back so she could clear. Earlier, he’d considered flirting-innocently, of course, unless she responded-but McIlvaine was like a sexual black hole. Once she was gone: “This source of your friend’s, any chance he got a look at the document you showed me, the one linking Samir to the Mukhabarat?”

McIlvaine stuffed a paper napkin into his collar, gripped half his sandwich in both hands and leaned forward over his plate. “It’s a contact sheet, that’s all. At some point he was brought in for an interview. That’s all you can infer from it reliably. Whether there were others-contacts I mean, interviews-it’s impossible to tell. Sorry, nothing else on that end to report.”

Lattimore smiled absently, wondering how long courtesy would demand he sit there watching the other man eat. Hearing the unmistakable popping growl of a Harley 110 V-Twin outside, then the distinctive potato potato potato of its idle as it backed to the curb, he felt an immediate pang of longing-the empty road, freedom. It occurred to him that Samir might have been one of this Fatima’s devoted johns, one whose ardor went haywire, to the point he married her in his mind, plotted to get her and her daughter out of Iraq forever. He was clawing his way to America, trying to find her the future she deserved, one for which she would be slavishly grateful, if he could ever find out where she was. Weirder things had happened, he supposed, especially when pussy was involved.

“By the way,” McIlvaine said, speaking through a mouthful of liverwurst, “any idea where our would-be terrorist might be at the moment?”

THEY ROSE EARLY AND DROVE THROUGH MILE AFTER DEEP-GREEN mile of banana, papaya and mango groves on their way north from Lázaro Cárdenas with its massive industrial port.

“They used to call this stretch of road Bandido Alley,” Bergen said at one point. “The whole state of Michoacán was pretty much a playground for the Valencia cartel. Then the army came in, put up roadblocks, cracked down on drug labs, burned pot fields. Drove the trouble off the coast and into the hills, at least until after dark. No guarantee it won’t come back, of course, but for now I think we’re safe.”

The checkpoints grew fewer in number over time and the Eurovan invariably got waved through. As the sunlight hit its noonday pitch the terrain grew dramatic, the road winding steeply along mountainsides that dropped off into crashing waves. When the road leveled out again the vine-covered hills to the east were wreathed in filmy cloud, the palm-rimmed beaches to the west almost monotonous in their perfection, untouched by tourism or development. On some the surf was wild and unwelcoming, on others it dissolved in a rumbling hiss onto vacant sand. Roque began to understand the stubborn pride of Mexicans, as well as their despair.

They stopped for gas in a beachfront hamlet, buying it from a bowlegged woman smoking a pipe who siphoned it from a drum. A little farther on they lunched on fresh ceviche at a seafood bar and stocked up on water for the afternoon heat.

The hours grew hallucinatory, dissolving into sweaty sunlit dreams of roadside shrines, wild hillsides, makeshift cornfields, thatched enramadas and palapas , interspersed with signs marking iguana crossings, armadillo crossings, warnings against hunting raccoons.

Once, they found themselves bestilled inside a pastel cloud of butterflies.

When they struggled through Manzanillo with its cruise-ship crowds, Bergen told the story of a woman known as Mountain Girl, one of Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, who gave birth to her daughter Sunshine in the decrepit local hospital, only to flee her room one night when beach crabs, crazed by the full moon, stormed the newborn’s bed.

Colima dissolved into Jalisco, the villages thinned out and the Costa Alegre began, with its sculpted mansions on the cliffs and scowling guards at the gates: crisp uniforms, wraparound shades, machine guns. “Nice place to visit,” Bergen cracked, “if you’re Mick Jagger.”

As the sun dropped into the ocean beyond the Bahía de Banderas, Puerto Vallarta came and went in a blur of colonial-era cobblestone streets, roadside market stalls, the rebuilt promenade. “Just a little ways more,” Bergen said, to explain why he wasn’t stopping. “I know I’ve warned off driving at night but we’re so damn close. Keep your fingers crossed.”

They took the main highway toward Tepic, then cut off toward the coast, the road a rustic two-lane obstacle course of cavernous potholes, fearless chickens, slinking dogs. Here and there between nameless hamlets a bar appeared, nothing but a box of concrete trimmed with Christmas lights and barbed wire, a jukebox throbbing inside- cumbia, chuntaro, grupero -while outside jubilant drunks wandered the roadbed or stone-eyed men stood with arms crossed, watching the strange van rumble past.

The isolated stretches grew longer, the darkness so thick it felt like their headlights were boring a tunnel and they were barreling through it, jostled by the bad road, swarmed with dust.

It was in one of those mid-hamlet stretches of pitch-black night that the headlights appeared behind them. They seemed to float independently, buoyed by the darkness like fireflies, then the engines could be heard and Roque realized they were motorcycles. Shortly everyone turned around to look.