very quickly aborted. There were a lot of corpses resting in various areas of the continental shelf, and in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, who had only wanted to be decent businessmen and make their way without hurting anyone.
Wulff heard him out. It really took only fifteen or twenty minutes, all told; a man in great pain tends to talk in a kind of shorthand, particularly if he is trying to be communicative after many years of being the reverse. But just at the point when he seemed to have reached the end of what he had to say, Díaz lurched into a new position and began to tell Wulff about his itinerary.
He was planning a trip through the United States, it turned out, beginning just as soon as the planned business in Mexico had been concluded. Meeting Wulff in the bar and going for his cache had caused a slight delay, but in any case, it could not be put off any more than by the end of the week. At that time Díaz would leave the hotel, cross the border into Texas, and begin to make his long, slow way north, with stops scheduled at Shreveport, Mobile, and Raleigh, finally ending in Philadelphia in three or four months, depending upon what kind of connections he would make at the various cities and exactly how much complication there would be.
At every city along the way Díaz was to pick up a load of junk from a specified source.
It was a matter, the man explained, of being a negotiator, of putting together a position which would be representative of many other subsidiary interests. What he would be picking up from each of his steps would enable him, Díaz said, to go into Philadelphia in very strong bargaining position, a position, hopefully, which would be superior to anyone else’s. He might well emerge from the series of conferences and arrangements there as the most important figure. You never could tell. In any event, it was certainly worth the risk.
It was only at that that Wulff balked. Up until then what Díaz had been saying seemed credible; a little bizarre, perhaps, but then, almost everything having to do with the international drug trade was bizarre, but the business about converging on Philly, all of the second-rank elements in the country trying to carve up the territory for the next two hundred years, sounded right. At the first Continental Congress they had settled up the country for two hundred years of slavery; why not set it up for two hundred years of drugs at this one? That was acceptable. What wasn’t acceptable was the image of Díaz hopping from town to town in the southernmost part of the country trying to pick up a larger cache, working in earnest if subterranean negotiations. That somehow did not figure at all.
“You were going to kill these people,” he said.
Díaz, weakened from pain and conversation, was still able to summon some energy as he looked up at him. “No,” he said.
“You were going on a killing quest. You were going to murder your contacts in these towns so that you could show up in Philly with a lot of credit. You’re a murderer, Díaz.”
The man bit his lip, said nothing. He cast a haunted look toward the corner where the corpse of the short man lay. Deep in his eyes was burning a kind of reminiscent hope, as if he thought that the short man would come off the floor roaring and change the balance of power. “No way,” Wulff said. “He’s dead.”
Díaz said nothing this time. His left hand was splayed over his smashed wrist. “Are you going to get me help?” he said quietly, almost reasonably.
“For a broken wrist? You’ll make it.”
“I am in great pain.”
“Give me your list,” Wulff said.
“What? What’s that?”
“The people you were going to see. The sources that you were going to meet, Díaz. You must have it written down somewhere, or at least in your head. Tell me who they are.”
Díaz said, “I can’t understand you.”
“Yes you can, You understand me perfectly.”
“There is no list,” Díaz said. “Nothing is put in