Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

“I wasn’t an honest cop,” Luis said. “Not by your standards. Police are paid badly. They have to take small gratuities to feed their families. No amount of money can condone killing.”

“I don’t blame you, you being Indian, too.”

“Maya.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You said Indian,” Luis said. “That is like me calling you gringo. I am Maya.”

“Sorry,” Lamm said, raising hands in mock surrender. “A final question before I get in any more trouble. What’s Balam mean? It don’t sound Spanish.”

“Balam is jaguar in Maya.”

Bud Lamm gulped his drink, shivered, and said, “Jaguar. I can use one.”

Luis returned to Cancún City, reciting a prayer to any saint specializing in the longevity of Volkswagens. On a broad avenue of government buildings was the Quintana Roo State Judicial Police and Inspector Hector Salgado Reyes.

Salgado was dressed like Luis, in slacks, white shirt, and sandals. He eschewed the military uniform favored by his peers. Hector was roly-poly and nearly bald. Epaulets and khaki would have made him resemble a character in an operetta.

Hector was Luis’s mentor. During the scandal, he had tried to save his favorite young officer from Mexico City clout and his own zeal. He, of course, could not. Hector’s stand was unpopular. He barely saved his own career.

Luis related his story.

Hector was mildly sympathetic. “Poor stupid man. His wife will kill him.”

“Not if we recover the sixty thousand dollars.”

“Ricky Martinez and his golden clients,” Hector said, clucking his tongue. “Ricky would buy a sweepstakes ticket and be thunderously disappointed if he didn’t win. Ricky has no grasp on reality.”

“I realize Cancun has no shortage of con men, Hector, but have — you received other complaints fitting this pattern?”

“Not of this magnitude. Sixty thousand.” Hector whistled. “This could be his first and last job, you know. He accepts his wonderful fortune as an omen, a message from God that he retire from crime and spend it. No. Rental deposits hustled by bogus managers, five hundred, a thousand, that is the usual score.”

“I wonder if our Ralph Taggert has flown out already.”

“I would,” Hector said, rocking thoughtfully in his chair. “Then again, I might not. I might worry.”

“Why?”

“You fly home. Whichever city you fly to, you submit to U.S.A. Customs. They don’t like the shape of your nose, they search your luggage. They discover the sixty thousand. What do they think?”

“Drug money,” Luis said.

“Exactly. You have nothing to do with drugs, but you raise suspicions. They hold onto you and make inquiries.”

“Taggert waits in hiding or he converts the money.”

“Yes,” Hector said, raising a stubby finger. “Remember this, Luis. Dollars flow into Cancún. They do not flow out. That is an unnatural act.”

Cancún Island, the hotel zone, is a 7-shaped, fourteen-mile strip of luxury hotels, fine restaurants, a lagoon, and beaches with sand that could be mistaken for granulated sugar. In twenty years Cancún has gone from scrub brush to a sun-and-fun mecca that hosts a million visitors annually.

It got me out of the cornfields, Luis thought yet again as he cruised along Kukulkan Boulevard, the narrow island’s single street. Good or bad? he debated for the thousandth time, coming to the same nebulous conclusion.

Paradise Investment Properties Associates rented space in a newer hotel toward the southerly, least developed portion of the island. Luis didn’t recall seeing it before. They were springing up like weeds. The architecture was familiar, though: a latter-day Maya pyramid of glass and view decks.

Straight through the lobby was a disco boasting the latest electronic glitz, to the right a coffee shop serving tacos made with American cheese and iceberg lettuce, to the left an arcade of shops and realty offices. Luis, guided by a neon PIPA, asked a lovely, green-eyed mestiza receptionist to see the boss. She said that he was unavailable indefinitely. Luis sat on a sofa and said, fine, I’ll wait indefinitely. The receptionist went behind a partition. Luis heard whispering, including “Indian.”

A man of approximately forty came out with the pouting receptionist. He had Luis’s muscular build but was six inches taller. Luis surmised that his hairy arms and hands displayed more gold — watch, bracelet, several rings — than every piece at BLACK CORAL combined.

“Chester Cross,” he said. “Call me Chet. I’m the branch manager. Hortencia says you were gonna camp out.”

The levity was accompanied by a quick smile, but not in Call-Me-Chet’s ice-blue eyes.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I didn’t peg you as a prospect. No offense.”

“Bud Lamm.”

“C’mon back.”

At his desk, Cross said, “I didn’t know Lamm from Adam until he came in to see a salesman we don’t have about a property this office didn’t sell him. Needless to say, he came unglued.”

“You don’t know Ralph Taggert? He has business cards.”

“Anybody can have them printed. Where do you fit in?”

Luis disregarded Cross’s question and repeated Bud Lamm’s description of Taggert.