Puerto Vallarta Squeeze Read Online Free PDF Page A

credit cards.”
    Danny handed the money back to Luz. “Stick this way down inside the sleeping bag. If we get stopped by the federates or the judicial police, I’d prefer not to have my pockets bulging with American dinero.”
    He glanced at the shooter. “Aren’t you afraid of being rolled, carrying around that much cash?”
    The shooter was slowly moving his head back and forth like a radar antenna, scanning the street ahead and both sides of it.
    “It’s been tried.” He spoke in a detached way, as if he were on time-share, concentrating on something else. “Five of the boy-os made a move on me in Manila once.”
    “What happened?”
    “Didn’t work out the way they’d planned. Overconfidence will do that to you.”
    Danny should have listened to those words. Later on and looking back, he was pretty sure the shooter was trying to tell him something, but he’d been concentrating on getting them through the streets and thinking about what this story would do for his wallet and his reputation—a whole new rejuvenated Danny Pastor, comeback kid and demon of the talk shows, recipient of literary prizes and hero to right-thinking citizens everywhere.
    He’d never realized how tricky it is to know something about somebody and not let them know you know when you’re trying to help them for all the wrong reasons. Insurgentes was a bright, major thoroughfare running north through town, eventually tying into other streets and leading toward the airport. The problem was how to get out of town without being noticed and at the same time not be too obvious about it so he didn’t tip off the shooter about knowing more than he was supposed to know.
    Danny parked the Bronco on a side street near the Rio Cuale and went around the corner to a small grocery store on Insurgentes. Fruit, candy bars, cheese, loaf of bread, two gallons of drinking water. And a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, economy size. As he climbed in the Bronco, a truckload of police bounced north along Insurgentes, siren blaring.
    “What’s all the excitement?” the shooter asked, sounding innocent and only a little curious.
    “The hombre tending the store says there’s been some kind of shooting over on Ordaz. That’s what the sirens and traffic are about. The federates probably will be stopping everybody on the highway out, looking at papers, searching cars, and all the rest of that good crap. I’m going to take a back route that’s a little rough, but it’ll save us a lot of time and hassle.” Pretty decent, reasonable explanation. Christ, Danny said to himself, I’m already thinking like a criminal.
    “That sort of thing happen often here? Shootings?” The shooter was lying back, seeming to be relaxed, flicking cigarette ashes out the side as they bumped over cobblestones. But he never stopped looking everywhere at once.
    “Not very often. Lot of petty stuff, not much heavy violence.”
    “Who got hit?” Interesting choice of words. Most people would have said “shot” or something along those lines.
    “Don’t know for sure.” Danny swerved to miss a rumbling bus carrying night workers north toward the big tourist hotels. “Apparently an American navy officer and some other gringo. Most likely a bar fight.”
    He couldn’t see Luz’s face, but she had to be wondering just what the hell he was doing and why he was saying less than he knew. And the bar fight explanation was a little weak, since American naval officers weren’t given over to that sort of thing.
    Danny took the Bronco into the back streets of Puerto Vallarta. Across the Rio Cuale at a shallow spot, through the storage yard of an old foundry, in behind the new Pizza Hut, and down a dirt road where the poorest of the Mexican workers lived, which included most of the locals. He could still hear sirens six blocks west, in the general direction of El Niño. The policia and probably the army, maybe even federates, were running around like malevolent Keystone Kops, but most of the