WILL AND TINY FLEW TOGETHER FROM Reagan National Airport in Washington to Mexico. They landed at the Aeropuerto Internacional de Cancún. Will couldn’t help but think of his honeymoon with Fiona at Isla Cozumel, just south of Cancún.
On the flight, the two men had strategized on their approach to the quick, two-day investigation. Tiny was going to rent a car and drive the short distance inland to San Rafael. There he was going to meet with his Mexican contact, who was to come down from Mexico City, and try to glean as much information as he could on the inside Mexican view of the shoot-out at Chacmool.
Tiny’s contact, a shadowy character who went only by the name of Hermán, was engaged in an import–export business. Tiny knew he had regular contact with some of the drug gangs and Yucatán jungle bandits. He also had a good working relationship with the Mayan population—the dominant demographic group in the area—as well as with some high-ranking officials.
Will would take a taxi down Federal Highway 180 into the jungles of the Yucatán, where he would first stop off at Chichén Itzá and the spot where Marlowe and his commandos had been dropped off and had made their way through the jungle to the house on the outskirts of Chacmool.
Hermán had arranged for the taxicab driver to act as a guide for Will—and had assured Tiny he was reliable and knowledgeable. He did add, however, that Will should bring a pocketful of American dollars—not pesos, as that denomination was ever plummeting because of the unstable Mexican economy.
The driver, a middle-aged Mexican with missing teeth and a broad smile, went only by the name Pancho. He greeted Will at the airport with a smile and a two-handed handshake, quickly grabbing his bags and tossing them into his taxi.
The cab itself was a vintage Cadillac convertible of uncertain color—ranging somewhere between silver-gray, black, and purple, with an attempted repaint job that appeared not to have taken. The vehicle had no doors, which, Pancho assured Will, aided in good ventilation.
As the attorney started out on the several-hour trip, his guide offered to sell him a bottle of Coke, which he conveniently kept in a styrofoam cooler in the backseat.
“Five dollar—one bottle—American dollar only,” Pancho said with a smile, showing the gap in his teeth.
Settling himself into the front seat next to his driver, Will snorted and shook his head. Five dollars for a bottle of soda—this guy must think I’m stupid, he mused to himself.
They quickly left the beautiful beaches and international hotels of the Cancún beach area and entered the jungle.
After less than an hour they were driving on a poorly maintained two-lane road and were surrounded by all-but-impenetrable green forest that rose up in tangled trunks of tan-and-beige jungle trees and undergrowth. As they drove, the jungle seemed to grow closer, encompassing the highway and blocking the fierce sun.
Pancho was chain-smoking, breaking the silence occasionally only to point out a small village here, or perhaps a dilapidated gas station there…one belonging to a friend of a relative of a friend.
It wasn’t very long before Will’s lightweight Hawaiian shirt was drenched in sweat, his hair damp, and droplets of sweat were falling from his nose and eyebrows. Soon he was reaching into his wallet with disgust and pulling out five-dollar bills, which Pancho stuffed merrily in his top pocket as he invited his passenger to retrieve the bottles of Coke from the cooler himself.
Will figured he should have known that Pancho had a soda racket when he first entered the car and noticed a bottle opener permanently screwed to the dashboard.
“Tell me something, Pancho,” he addressed the other man. “Are you Mayan?”
Pancho shook his head.
“No—but I’ve got a lot of friends who are Mayans. We call them Indians down here.”
“We’re going to Chichén Itzá first, right?”
The Mexican smiled and nodded. “You’re not turista, are you?” he asked. “You’re a lawyer—down here on a law case, huh?”
“Yes—after that we’re going to Chacmool, right?”
Pancho nodded again.
“Now, after Chichén Itzá,” Will continued, “we’re going to walk through the jungle together. On a path I’m going to show you from some notes I’ve got. It leads to a house on the outskirts of Chacmool—okay?”
Pancho stopped smiling, and he flipped his cigarette out of the car and gave Will a quizzical look.
“Walk through the jungle? Don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve got the car—we’ll drive there.”
Will shook his head violently.
“No—you and I have to take a path through the jungle, exactly as I instruct us. You need to go along with me in case there are some Mexican police who ask what we’re doing.”
“That’s going to cost you extra—fifty American dollars.”
Apparently, Hermán’s advice to Tiny had been no exaggeration. Will was glad he had brought a huge pile of American bills in his pocket.
He tried to glance at his file on the way to the Mayan ruins, but the wind blowing through the side openings where doors used to be threatened to rip the pages from his hands.
When they got to the town of Valladolid, Pancho pulled into a gas station, bragging that Valladolid was one of the biggest cities in the area. But Will found it a sleepy provincial Mexican town. There was a market at its center, and a sixteenth-century—according to his tourist book—Spanish church dominated the central square. Several skinny, brown-skinned boys—Mayans, perhaps—were playing baseball behind the gas station, and a little girl in a dirty dress stared at him as he stepped out of the Cadillac and stretched. He smiled at her, but her wide eyes remained unblinking, and she played with her dress nervously and then ran away.
“There are good hotels—clean rooms, very beautiful—if you want to stay here for the night,” Pancho said, climbing back in and starting the car. “Only twenty-five miles or so now. We soon get to the ruins.”
“How do the Mayans get along with the Mexicans?” Will asked.
The driver shrugged. After a few moments he answered.
“Still problems—the Indians still have a few uprisings—fights with the police. They don’t think the government takes care of them. They think the government…” he thought for a minute for the right word. “…That the government pushes them down—steps on them,” he continued.
Slowing down, Pancho pulled off the main highway onto a side road that led toward the ruins. They stopped at a tourist gate with a booth, where a guard let them through.
After they parked the car, Will grabbed the diagram he’d made from his briefcase and asked Pancho to lock the case in the trunk. He stuffed the diagram in his pocket, and they trudged off toward the ruins.
The attorney glanced at his watch. Time was short. But by retracing Marlowe’s steps right up to the site of the killing, he hoped to dislodge some hidden piece of evidence—anything.
What he really wanted to do was to climb inside Marlowe’s head to learn what he had known that night. Barring that, a walk through the hot Mexican jungle would have to suffice.