Don Pendleton - Devil's Mark

Bolan found himself on the same page as the inspector. “What do you think?”

“I do not know.” Villaluz stared into the smog clouding Mexicali city in the distance. He suddenly perked up as they hit the city limits. “Let us get onto business.”

“The Barbacoa Four?” Smiley asked.

“No, the best Mongolian Barbecue in Mexico.” Villaluz roared into town as if he owned it, and now he whipped through the checkpoints with a flash of his badge. He drove to the famous intersection of Avenida Madero and Calle Megar and took a turn into La Chinesca, Mexicali’s famous Chinatown. The buildings were a mix of old and new, but most had Chinese flourishes like pagoda accents and painted doors. What La Chinesca had more than anything was restaurants. They crowded every street, each one declaring in Spanish, Cantonese and English that they served the auténtico Chinese-Mexican cuisine.

Bolan had never seen so many Chinese people dressed like cowboys in his life.

Villaluz pulled down an alley and rolled up the windows against the flies and the rotting stench of the offal littering the ground from all the butchering going on to fuel over a hundred restaurants in less than four city blocks. The feral cats and dogs were some of the fattest Bolan had ever seen. He smiled at the inspector. “You were born here.”

The inspector grinned back. “You are a very astute man. I was born in Mexicali, but as you may suspect, particularly for a man of my age, when I was coming up through the ranks, if you had ambition, Tijuana was the only place to be. But this is where I grew up. Right across the street. When I was a boy, you could cut the line between La Chinesca and the rest of Mexicali with a knife, and we were always fighting the Chinese gangs.”

“What’s the tong situation like here?” Bolan asked.

“A very good question. Up until the 1950s Chinese actually outnumbered Mexicans in this city. The tongs controlled the opium trade, prostitution and gambling. Now they are a small minority, and, as you might imagine, Mexican brown heroin pushed out China white in the 1980s and the tong control with it. The cartels have pushed the Chinese out of almost all organized crime except that which the Chinese commit against one another. Though they do a brisk business in specialty Chinese brothels, gun-running and gambling.”

“What kind of gambling?”

“Mostly dog and cock fighting.” Villaluz shook his head ruefully. “The Chinese have a ferocious reputation.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, sí, if you challenge them? They have a special stipulation.”

Smiley gave Villaluz a leery look. “What’s that?”

“That if their animal wins? They get to cook and eat yours.”

“That’s sick,” Smiley stated.

“Oh, some of the restaurants in La Chinesca specialize in fighting-dog meat. Many people, both Mexican and Chinese, believe if you eat moo shu pit bull it increases your virility, and machismo.”

Smiley stared at a badly drawn graffito of a dog on the back door of the building. “No. Oh, hell no. Tell me we’re not.”

“We are. There is someone I think we should talk to.” Villaluz gave Smiley a serious look. “Señorita, I strongly recommend you order the shark fin tacos with hoisin sauce.”

Bolan opened his door and the side-street abattoir stench was almost overpowering. He gave Smiley a hand over an expansive puddle while Villaluz banged on the door. A pudgy little Chinese man in an apron and a paper hat opened the door with a cleaver in his hand. He and Villaluz exchanged a few words, and suddenly the man was all smiles and ushered them in. Smiley closed her eyes as they walked through the kitchen past meat hanging on hooks that clearly wasn’t beef, pork or chicken. Both Chinese and Mexicans labored over prepping ingredients for the Sunday dinner crowd and takeout rush. They pushed through the kitchen door out into the restaurant. The decor was half Mexican rancho and half Mandarin splendor. It was just about noon on Sunday, and the place wasn’t open for business yet. The chef led them to a booth in the back where a man sat with a bottle sipping Patrón Silver tequila.

Bolan was pretty sure he had never seen a Chinese man dressed for a square dance before. The man wore a taupe-colored Stetson hat and a pink, yoked cowboy shirt. His attempt at a beard and mustache was worse than Villaluz’s. Most of the Chinese people Bolan knew avoided the sun, but this man was deeply tanned and had crow’s feet around his eyes. The man’s sleeves were rolled up, and the calluses covering his knuckles bespoke long and intensive martial arts practice. He paused for the barest of moments as he took in the state of Agent Smiley’s face and then nodded at the inspector.

Villaluz made a graceful gesture with his hand. “Señor Cooper, Señorita Smiley, allow me to introduce Señor Juan-Waldemar Wang.”

Bolan shook his head. “That’s a mouthful.”

Wang threw back his head and laughed. “You have no idea, GI.” Wang spoke his English with a southwestern twang. “So you can just call me J.W.”

“You speak excellent English, J.W.”

“Texas A&M, business. Take a load off.”

Everyone took a seat. Wang made a vague gesture at the chef and a waiter with shot glasses and beers appeared almost instantaneously. Wang didn’t appear to believe in frivolous excesses like lime or salt. He raised his glass. “Salud.”

Everyone drank. The smooth tequila blossomed into warmth in Bolan’s stomach and he chased it with a slug from a sweating bottle of Pacífico beer. Bolan motioned for another round of shots and raised his. “Gan bei.”

Wang drank to the traditional Chinese toast “dry glass” and grinned. “Check out the culture on Cooper!” Bolan shrugged.

Wang looked Bolan up and down with renewed interest. “So my old buddy Israel is FIA, the señorita is DEA, what does that make you muchacho?”

“Concerned citizen?” Bolan ventured.

“Well, what’s concerning you today, Citizen Cooper?”

“Milanesas?” Bolan asked.

Wang sighed happily at Bolan’s request for fried, breaded steak. “Oh, we got that, and oh! And I have surprise delicacy!” Smiley squirmed visibly in her chair. Wang fired off a rapid string of orders in Cantonese, and the waiter and the chef made for the kitchen at the double. “What else is concerning you, Cooper?”

“Silencio.”

Wang leaned back in the booth in thought. “Well, you know we inscrutable Chinese practically invented the concept.”

“True, and as the inspector pointed out earlier, by comparison cartel guys talk about silence a hell of a lot more than they practice it.”

“They’re a bit loose-lipped compared to some,” Wang conceded. “What’s that to me?”

“Well, in Tijuana the silencio is starting to get enviable even by Chinese standards.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“How’s it here in Mexicali?”

Wang smiled as the waiter staggered over beneath a mountain of plates and a bucket of beer on ice. “Ah.”

The plates of beans, rice and tortillas and fried steaks were plentiful; however, the biggest point of interest were the heaping plates of fire-roasted red mezcal worms. Smiley eyed the mystery-meat milanesas with suspicion. She regarded the roasted caterpillars in open horror. Wang was throwing the gringos an open culinary challenge. Villaluz sighed with pleasure at the seasonal Mexican delicacy and dived in with aplomb. Bolan followed suit.

Bolan squeezed a wedge of lemon over his milanesa and tucked in. Despite the fact that it was delicious, he privately hoped no canine gladiator had given its life for it. Bolan finished his beer and the waiter stopped just short of doing a baseball slide to fetch him a fresh one. Bolan and the inspector ate heartily and waited politely for Wang to pick up the ball again. Smiley picked at her beans and rice.