Down Among the Dead Men Read online

  Down Among the Dead Men

  Robert Gregory Browne

  Robert Gregory Browne

  Down Among the Dead Men

  PART ONE

  Casa de la Muerte

  1

  Vargas

  They found the bodies in the desert, about twenty miles southwest of Tolentino.

  Two Texas dirt bikers, father and son, had come down from El Paso to ride the dunes and discovered a dead woman lying in the scrub, her throat slit, her body half-drained of blood.

  It didn’t stop there.

  Vargas had to give the two men credit for calling the local policia rather than packing up their bikes and hightailing it back across the border. Most Americans thought of this part of Mexico as some lawless dirtwater hellhole full of corrupt huta who would toss you into jail at the slightest provocation. And taking ownership of a house full of corpses was always risky business for anyone, let alone a couple of gabachos.

  But it seemed that the two had been genuinely concerned about doing the right thing, and Vargas admired that. Their willingness to walk him through the crime scene didn’t hurt, either.

  The father, Jim Ainsworth, was a lean, sunbaked cowboy who reminded him of that guy from the Lord of the Rings movies. Viggo something. They met on a Friday afternoon at the Cafe Tacuba, a hole-in-the-wall just off the 45, where they shared a booth near a window that hadn’t been washed in a decade, if ever.

  The accordion-laced songs of Julieta Venegas played quietly on a jukebox in the corner, an ancient, mule-faced waitress swaying to the beat as she dragged a damp rag across a tabletop.

  They were just finishing their meal when Ainsworth said, “You still haven’t told me which one of the shit catchers you work for.”

  Vargas raised his eyebrows. “Shit catchers?”

  “Newspapers. That’s about all I use ’em for. Line my rabbit cages.”

  There was a bit of a twinkle in Ainsworth’s eyes and Vargas wasn’t sure if this was a pointed jab or just a piss-poor joke.

  “No paper,” he said.

  Ainsworth frowned. “I thought you were a reporter?”

  “Used to be. Now I’m freelance. I write books.”

  That was stretching it a bit. Truth be told, this was Vargas’s first stab at writing long form and he wasn’t completely sure he had it in him. After fifteen years of turning in concise thousand-word stories to the Los Angeles Tribune — and the San Jose Reader before that-the idea of pumping out four or five hundred pages of who-what-where-when-and-why seemed like a slow, uphill trudge. This book would either make him or break him.

  Ainsworth nodded as he scraped the last of his beans off his plate. Vargas had sprung for the meal, mentally counting every peso as he’d scanned the menu, wondering how much more spending he could get away with before his advance money was gone.

  “I’ve never had much use for books, either,” Ainsworth said. “My wife, God bless her, used to go through about every half-baked paperback she could get her hands on, but I never saw much point to it.”

  Vargas said nothing. He wasn’t interested in getting into a debate with this guy about the merits of literature.

  “I’ve gotta admit,” Ainsworth went on, “I didn’t mind her reading the spicy ones.” He flashed a conspiratorial grin. “She was a helluva woman.”

  “I’m sure she was,” Vargas said, smiling politely. Then he nodded to Ainsworth’s empty plate. “You want anything else?”

  Ainsworth leaned back and sighed, rubbing his stomach. “I think that’ll about do her.”

  Vargas gestured to the plate next to Ainsworth’s. Tacos and beans and Mexican rice that had barely been touched. The seat behind it was vacant.

  “What about your son?”

  “He’s never been much of an eater,” Ainsworth said. “He ever gets his ass back from the bano, I think we’re good to go.”

  2

  They drove out to the desert in Ainsworth’s F-150, a couple of dusty red dirt bikes chained to its bed. Ainsworth had taken one look at Vargas’s rusted ten-year-old Corolla and offered to drive.

  “It’s these goddamn long legs,” he said. “I need all the room I can get. Besides, I don’t really want to leave these bikes out here.”

  Vargas didn’t mind. He figured he’d save on gas, and Ainsworth had said the truck was air-conditioned, a luxury the Corolla hadn’t been blessed with. It was late October, but the Southwest was in the middle of a massive heat wave, and by the time Vargas had reached the cafe this afternoon he’d been drenched in sweat.

  He rode up front with Ainsworth, while the son, Junior, sat in the extended cab behind them. Junior was a lean, twentyish version of his old man, but there was something seriously off about the guy. He spent a lot of time staring at nothing and spoke about as much as he ate. The few words he had said had been accompanied by a loopy half-there smile as if he were hooked up to an invisible morphine drip.

  Ainsworth, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy talking.

  “Me and Junior get down this way just about every couple weeks. Nice to get out of Paso, you know? Just load up the bikes, hop in the truck, and drive.”

  “Why Chihuahua?” Vargas asked. “There’s plenty of desert up in Texas.”

  Ainsworth shrugged. “Something about this place, I don’t know, everything’s slower down here. Everybody pretty much minding their own business. Never in a hurry to get in your way.” He paused. “Besides, you can’t beat the price of that sweet Mexican chocho. Right, Junior?”

  “Chupamelo, mamacita,” Junior said.

  The words, which roughly translated to “ suck it, baby,” surprised Vargas. Junior seemed too simpleminded and innocent for such a vulgarity, let alone in Spanish.

  Ainsworth, however, chuckled, glancing at his son in his rearview mirror.

  “Your mother was still alive, she’d wash that mouth out with industrial-strength Ajax.” He looked at Vargas. “You’ll have to pardon my boy’s manners.”

  “I’ve heard worse,” Vargas told him.

  “And I’ve probably said it. I gotta admit I haven’t been the best influence on the kid. Took him to his first whorehouse when he was fifteen. You shoulda seen how big his eyes got when he saw all them cute little bare-assed chiquitas lined up just for him. I swear to Christ it took him longer to make up his mind than it did to do the deed.”

  “Slow draw, quick trigger,” Junior said. “That’s what Big Papa told me.”

  Ainsworth summoned up a deep, lusty laugh this time.

  “That I did, Son. That I did.”

  Twenty miles down the highway, they took the turnoff past a battered, bullet-riddled road sign that read: DUNAS DEL HOMBRE MUERTO. Dead Man’s Dunes. Vargas thought this was both ironic and appropriate, considering what the Ainsworths had found here.

  A narrow dirt road took them to an abandoned PEMEX gas station that looked as if it hadn’t seen business since the early sixties. The windows had been boarded up decades ago, the plywood now gray and dilapidated, covered with layers of crude spray-painted graffiti written in both Spanish and English. puta and joto and fuck were featured prominently.

  Ainsworth pulled onto the asphalt next to the pumps and killed the truck’s engine.

  “This is it.”

  He gestured beyond the station to a wide expanse of beige, dusty earth, dotted with dunes and yellowing desert scrub. Nothing unusual. You could find miles of the stuff from here to Texas.

  What set this particular piece of land apart was the house that sat in the distance. The one that had been featured on the local news and in the Chihuahua newspapers just two months ago, a crumbling adobe box with broken and missing windows and only half a roof.

  Despite the heat, Va
rgas felt a faint chill. And a small tug of excitement.

  “Take me through it,” he said to Ainsworth. “Step by step.”

  “That should be easy enough. Right, Junior?”

  But Junior wasn’t listening. He was staring at the house, his dopey smile gone. He looked as if someone had just ripped out his soul.

  “I wanna go home,” he said.

  “Come on, now, Son, we talked about this.”

  “I don’t care,” Junior said. “I wanna go. Now. I don’t like this place. I don’t like it at all.”

  Ainsworth showed Vargas a tight smile.

  “Boy hasn’t been right in the head since the crash. Caved in half his skull. Almost joined his mama in the morgue.” He returned his gaze to Junior. “I told you, Son, I’m not gonna let you pussy out on me. We made this man a promise and by God-”

  “It’s not that big of a deal,” Vargas said. “He can wait for us here if he wants.”

  Ainsworth turned sharply. “Did I ask you to butt in?”

  “I’m just saying, if he doesn’t feel comfortable…”

  “If God had put us on this planet to feel comfortable, Pancho, we woulda all been born with La-Z-Boys stuck to our hindquarters.”

  Vargas stiffened.

  “The name is Ignacio,” he said. “I told you that. Most people call me Nick.”

  “Fine, Nick. But we’re doing you a favor here, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to get between me and my own goddamn son. He may be a half-wit, but he’s twenty-two years old and it’s about time he grew some motherfuckin’ balls.” He eyed his rearview mirror. “You hear me, Junior?”

  Junior didn’t answer, lost somewhere inside his own head.

  “You hear me?”

  “I wanna go home,” Junior said. “What if they’re still in there?”

  “Who?”

  “Them people. The dead ones.”

  “Now why would you think that?”

  “I seen ’em. Laying there all shot up. They kept looking at me with them dead fish eyes.”

  Vargas expected another flash of anger, and was surprised when Ainsworth softened, a genuine warmth in his voice.

  “Listen to me, Son. You’re mixed up, is all. I promise you, they’re not around anymore.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Mex police came and tidied the place up, remember? We were here when they came.”

  Junior thought about this a long moment, looking thoroughly confused; then the sun slowly rose somewhere inside his brain, shining light across the memory.

  He nodded. “They asked us questions.”

  “That’s right,” Ainsworth said.

  “And I didn’t say nothin’ wrong.”

  “Right again. You made your papa proud.”

  “And they put all them people in big black bags, threw ’em in the back of a truck.”

  “Every single one of ’em. And we’re here to show Mr. Vargas what we found and where we found it. He’s gonna write you up in a book, make you famous. What do you think about that?”

  Junior’s smile returned.

  “Like Elvis the Pelvis?”

  “Just like Elvis,” Ainsworth said.

  3

  The house was farther away than it looked.

  They drove along what had once been an access road but was now little more than chunks of broken earth, making passage by truck difficult and uncomfortable. Vargas had to hold on to the support bar to keep from getting knocked around inside the cab.

  Ainsworth had offered to pull the bikes down, give Vargas a ride, but Vargas had declined. The one time in his life he’d taken a ride on the back of a dirt bike had scared the ever-loving crap out of him. Not an experience he was interested in reliving, especially with this guy at the wheel.

  About halfway there, Ainsworth brought the truck to a stop and gestured with a nod toward a nearby dune, fronted by a patch of scrub.

  “I came up over that rise and nearly put my rear tire in her face. Almost took a header in the process.”

  “She the only one you found out here?”

  Ainsworth nodded.

  “Sonsabitches must’ve used a razor-sharp garrote. Practically took her head off. Then they shot her a couple times for good measure. Local police figured she’d managed to run for it and got caught.”

  “Oh? They tell you this?”

  Ainsworth huffed a dry chuckle.

  “Hell no. They wouldn’t give us the time of day. For a while there, I thought they were gonna cuff us both and send us off to no-man’s-land. But that didn’t seem to keep them from jabbering on in front of us. And I may have forgotten to mention to ’em that we both speak Spanish.” He grinned. “Figured the more we looked like turistas, the better off we’d be.”

  “Mi padre es un bastardo elegante,” Junior said.

  Ainsworth smiled. “You’re right about that, boy. I’m what you might call a wolf in hick’s clothing.”

  They both got a good laugh out of that one as Vargas stared at the patch of earth where the body had lain. After several weeks, whatever blood there’d been had been absorbed by the dirt and brush and blown away by the wind and was no longer visible. But Vargas had worked a few crime scenes in his time, and it wasn’t hard to imagine what the dead woman had looked like.

  But then it wasn’t imagination he should be relying on, was it? That would only get him in trouble again.

  “What was she wearing?” he asked. “Was she in her nun’s habit?”

  Another dry chuckle. “You see any convents around here? She looked like a typical border bunny. Jeans and a T-shirt. First glance, that’s what the policia thought they were. A buncha wetbacks, headed for El Paso.”

  Vargas bristled. “Are those the terms they used?”

  Ainsworth studied him a moment.

  “Look, Nick, you seem like a nice enough guy, but you start gettin’ all holier-than-thou on me, you’re not gonna get much of a story.”

  Point taken. Vargas had heard his share of unrepentant bigotry over the course of his life, especially growing up around the fields of Southern California, where the term “berry picker” was not an endearment. His father had worked those fields for hours so long, at wages so low it would make you weep. But he’d never complained, despite the animosity he’d encountered on a regular basis. Much of it from the very families who bought those berries at prices his cheap labor allowed them to afford.

  But this trip to Chihuahua wasn’t about old wounds. When it came to work, Vargas had always tried to keep his emotions in check. No reason that should change now.

  He gestured to the house.

  “Show me where you found the rest of the bodies.”

  Robert Gregory Browne

  Down Among the Dead Men (A Thriller)

  4

  Beth

  “ I don’t know about you,” Jen said, holding the black cocktail dress against her chest and admiring herself in the mirror, “but I plan on getting laid tonight.”

  Beth knew she shouldn’t be shocked by this pronouncement. Jen was painfully matter-of-fact about such things. About most things, if you wanted the God’s honest truth.

  But Beth was shocked nonetheless, and could only guess that this was because she’d been playing surrogate mom to the girl for nearly half their lives and felt some knee-jerk moral obligation to express disapproval.

  “Do we really have to talk about this?”

  “Little sissy’s got a crush,” Jen said, blissfully ignoring the question as she laid the dress across her bunk. “Did you see that boy’s derriere?”

  “Boy? I don’t remember any boys.”

  “They’re all boys. You, of all people, should know that. Just look at Peter.”

  This was another area of conversation that Beth would just as soon avoid. She was still smarting from the divorce and felt no need to go down that ruinous path. She was here to have fun. Maybe not as much fun as Jen was planning, but enough to help her forget what a mess her life had become.


  The cruise to the Mexican Riviera had been Jen’s idea. After her best friend, Debbie, had dropped out at the last minute, Jen had offered the vacant slot to Beth, and Beth had jumped at the chance to get away for a long weekend. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to spend their entire vacation keeping tally of Jen’s conquests.

  The aforementioned Julio was a bartender they’d met up on the pool deck, where they’d gone to get some sun before dinner. He wasn’t tall, but he was definitely dark and handsome, and yes, Beth had noticed how nicely his derriere had filled out his tight white shorts, and she could fully appreciate Jen’s enthusiasm.

  “From what I can tell,” Beth said, “Julio’s no boy. Has hair on his chin and everything.”

  Jen grinned. “It’s the everything that I’m interested in.”

  “Doesn’t the cruise line have some rule against the help fraternizing with guests?”

  “Calm down, girl, you’re not in court. We’re on vacation here, remember? There are no rules.”

  “You sleep with him, you could get him fired.”

  Jen’s grin widened. “Trust me, I’m worth the risk.”

  “Oh, brother.” Beth rolled her eyes.

  “Why are you always such a prude?”

  “I’m not a prude, it’s just-”

  “I know, I know, only when it comes to me.” Heaving a sigh, Jen pulled off her T-shirt, then reached back and untied her bikini top. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sis, but I’m all grown up now. You don’t have to protect me anymore. If anything, I’m the one who should be doing the protecting.” She paused. “Speaking of which, how’s your head?”

  “Pounding, thanks to you.”

  “Hey, I can’t help it if you’ve got a stick up your butt about anything remotely provocative. If you were smart, you’d find a Julio all your own.”

  “Not likely.”

  Jen flung the top aside and Beth instinctively averted her gaze. She’d seen her sister naked plenty of times over the years but suddenly felt as if she were invading Jen’s privacy.