Something in Vallarta

By Robert Richter

Cotton Walters is a young American expatriate hiding out on the Mexican west coast in 1972. An ex-student, ex-political activist with uncertain draft status and pending legal problems, he has lived incognito for over a years along a tropical frontier of fishing villages and empty beaches, thriving on cantina life, beachcombing, bodysurfing, jungle slumming, and playing second base a local village baseball team. He's an illeagal gringo alien, living a lazy village life and known to his cantina buddies as Algo â "Something", in English. Armed with a little Spanish and a passion for the Mexican coastal culture, he is a disillusioned dropout, waiting for the rest of the world to regain some sanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Permanent Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 1991
• ISBN: 9781877946097

Robert Richter

Robert Richter is the author of the Something series of mystery novels set in Mexico and featuring Cotton Waters, known to his fishermen buddies along the Blue Coast as "Algo," (Spanish for "Something"). The Series includes Something In Vallarta 1991), Something Like A Dream (2014), and, set to appear in 2015, Something For Nothing. Cotton Waters works his "cultural services" hustle in the streets of Old Town Puerto Vallarta, taking care of dubious business on the seedier sides of the Mexican Riviera for the restless and rich--and sometimes for the needy. From Nebraska homesteader stock, Robert Richter grew up in Colorado and was a member of the first MA creative writing program at Colorado State University in 1973. In 1975, he returned to the remnants of the family farm and was a fourth generation dryland wheat farmer for twenty years. After giving up his own farming, Richter did itinerant farm labor, substitute teaching, court interpreting, and conducted escorted excursions in Latin America while continuing to write cultural essays, history, and fiction. Richter won the Nebraska Arts Council's Literary Achievement Award in 2000, and in 2007, he was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Buenos Aires, studying and writing about Argentina's frontier history. He continues to live in southwestern Nebraska, but he has a relationship with west coast Mexico that goes back forty years. Experience in both those cultural geographies continues to infuse his work.

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that.

Chapter One

My initial introduction to Juan Carlos’ Iguana Bar came many moons ago with the Lo De Marcos baseball team when we split a doubleheader with Puerto Vallarta’s hotshot city team. We had collected on an emotional five hundred peso bet on the last game and were celebrating a banana hacker’s southpaw sinker. Juan Carlos was the padrino to our third baseman, Cate, and that made the Iguana Bar an inner city haven for a village team of fishermen, jungle scroungers, family men, and macho bucks. Plus me, one gringo second sacker.

A one-beer stop turned into an all night junket when some Jalisco charro from a ranchero near Guadalajara boasted that he could jump through lariats while downing shots of Cuervo tequila. One of those green-eyed descendants of an old criollo land grant family, he danced his traditional boot heels through a twirling rope, skipping in and out of tight-twirled loops that wobbled and widened a little more with every quick snap of a shot to his mouth. With shot number nine and the brim of his sombrero drooping, he got two ropes spinning to a chorus of Viva Jalisco, did a miraculous jig for ten seconds, and then hogtied himself in a heap on the floor. When he could finally stand to the thundering cheers of the packed house, he downed one more free shot of Cuervo, and Juan Carlos had to hustle him off to a bed upstairs.

Mucha cerveza and great shrimp ceviche that night, with good loud Mexican music and wild laughing laborers, truck drivers, pescaderos, vendedoros, and a few mujeres to drool over. Even a couple of other Spanish-speaking gringos wandered in for everyone’s diversion. Hemingway would have loved it. It was a clean, well-lighted place when a drinking riot wasn’t going on, with lanterns hung from the rafters, simple wooden booths and benches around the walls, solid machete-chipped tables carved full of initials and misspelled names surrounding a well-worn dance floor, and a bar made from the end of an old Vallarta pier across one whole wall. Behind the bar were the well-stocked liquor cabinets that looked salvaged from some Spanish ruin, and they surrounded the doorway to the best seafood kitchen in town.

Above the doorway, stuffed and mounted on a chunk of black volcanic rock, was the biggest iguana I’d ever seen, a small dragon that watched over the room and seemed to snort smoke and breathe fire after a few shots of rot-gut tequila. You could rent a room overhead by the hour or the day, with or without a woman to go with it. The beer was almost cold, the tequila cheap, and the company mostly local working people taking a rest from the real world out in the streets.

But on this particular morning it was pretty subdued. I drifted in—wondering what the hell I was doing in Puerto Vallarta in the first place. I’d been in Mexico about eighteen months, was finally getting used to the pace of life, and doing just fine drifting from village to village up in Nayarit. All I wanted to do was live along the coastline, among friends who didn’t mind hiding or warning me when the Federales were around. Until the world regained some sanity, I preferred to be on the beaches, fish and body surf, eat and drink my fill in the cantinas, and stay out of harm’s way.

I had no desire to be here, but this sticky hot November morning I had caught the bus at Lo De Marcos with all the vendors and their sacks of vegetables, and the old women with their bolsas and buckets full of fish and fresh oysters, all of us rolling to market in order to scrounge some pesos out of Puerto Vallarta. Chuy had cut my shoulder-length hair and shaved off my beard about a week ago, but I still felt naked; my neck and ears sunburned and peeled. I’d gained about fifteen more pounds than I should carry—too much Mexican beer and too many tortillas. I felt like a dork, like some soft college student who’s lost his tour guide in the west coast wilds.

Yet it didn’t really matter. A gringo my size and color is a gringo is a gringo. If the Migra, or the Federales, or the local juez in some village wanted to hassle a gringo and I was around, I was easily found. God knows I’d had enough of that crap already over the months. I’d kept hidden pretty well, but I’m blond, blue-eyed, over 200 lbs, and about six inches taller than most Mexicans, and just being a gringo meant complicity in American foreign policy. In these years it didn’t matter that you personally had nothing to do with the Vietnam war, the government, or the national ethics. So if you were travelling on your own, sometimes, you took a lot of third world heat.

Though I felt bad about that, and somehow responsible, it was, finally, just a time-consuming hassle.

Dudes in government uniforms were always boarding public transportation, looking over cargoes and people, sometimes shaking down some lost stupid-looking preppie in a baseball cap riding a second class bus in from Tepic. I was paranoid, I admit, but I couldn’t have left Mexico even if I’d had some place to go as it wasn’t legally healthy to be in my own country either.

I’d been putting off decisions as long as possible, and I was definitely down to my last bucks. So here I was, desperate enough to be in Big Town Vallarta, looking for anyone who could put me in touch with the local American crowd, the ones with the houses up on the cliffs, with servants and chauffeurs and private secretaries. That’s where the money would be—American money, and Americans throwing it around. If I could scrounge up some kind of work in Gringo Gulch, doing something for rich folks with all their dinero for a couple of weeks, maybe I could flush out a measly couple of hundred dollars. All I had to do was kick myself in the ass and get out there and hunt it up. Then I’d slip back to Lo De Marcos and resume the lifestyle to which I was suited. Simple as that.

The bus ride in had been uneventful enough but thinking about having to make the effort to survive financially was depressing. I had jumped off the bus even before it reached downtown and headed for the La Bar Iguana de Juan Carlos. I figured I’d have a couple of beers there, eat lunch, look at the newspaper, and assault the city that afternoon after I got my bearings and dulled the depression.

Hola, Algo. ¿Qué tal? Juan Carlos greeted me, and we made simple conversation, talking about Lo De Marcos baseball, the Red Tide ruining the fishing, the tourist season starting to pick up. I told him I was looking for work from rich gringos. We were discussing how I could meet the cream of the season’s social crop when Ramon, the golden boy, came in, making a big deal of patting me on the back as if we were old friends. I smiled and bought him a beer.

Hey, Algo, een Vallarta for the poosey, heh? Ramon made the usual crude gesture—the index finger of one hand sliding in and out of the closed fist of the other. No more of thees, heh? Then he did a jerking off pantomime, har-haring, and having a great laugh on the gringo who never got any poosey that he had ever heard of. Like so many Mexican dudes, Ramon’s jokes were simple and gross to the core, but his in particular were spiced with the macho arrogance of assuming he was God’s gift to women—especially gringa women. He was a local Lo De Marcos stud with a well-muscled body built by diving for oysters all day long each day as a kid. Finally, he had wandered into Vallarta and was picked up by some weekender—a wild secretary from Encino, or, was it a grade school teacher from Omaha—and given every Mexican’s dream. From then on he let his pretty face and broken-English charm carry him from one bed to the next, surviving on the treats the gringas bought him and lifting a bill or two from their purses when the chance came along. He occasionally made it back up around Lo De Marcos in his resort clothes and gold jewelry to keep his buddies informed of his success and to mooch a beer in trade for a good gringa screw story.

Ramon had an ego the size of the Pacific and a natural talent for getting what he wanted without paying for it in cash, service, or sincere consideration. He could lie, cheat, and get away with petty theft as easily as he could fuck and breathe. He could tell you what you wanted to hear with that wide white smile; but if you looked at the hardness around the edges of his black eyes, he looked like Juan Carlos’ iguana, and you knew what he thought of the rest of the world: it was his rock to perch on.

I usually tried to avoid him, as did most folks in the village. He was someone who could inflict your life with lots of petty nastiness if he didn’t like you, so you tolerated him while he was around, but kept an eye on all your belongings. I bought him a beer that morning and ordered a lunch of grilled huachinango, frijoles, and fresh tortillas. I didn’t want to mention that I was looking for a job, and by then I was thinking I could get a room above the bar and put off the hassle one more day. But Juan Carlos heard us talking about gringo money, and said, This gringo is looking for money, too. He needs work.

¿Verdad, Algo? Ramon barked a laugh, his reptilian eyes lighting up with pleasure. Are you going into the jungle with El Cuate to hunt for limes?

I need to earn some money a little quicker than that.

He wants to work for some rich gringo, Juan Carlos added.

Ah, like I do, Ramon bragged. I make good money. Dollars, not pesos.

Yeah? Doing what?

Whatever the old ones want. I drive for them. I get them someone to work in the kitchen. I guard them from the thieves.

I choked on a tortilla with that one, and washed it down with beer. Juan Carlos didn’t believe him either.

¡Qué va! When did you go to work? You have some work, you owe me some money. Ándale. Let’s have it.

Now he had to come up with some pesos to prove his brag, and Juan Carlos collected—including enough to buy the next round. I gave Ramon a hearty gracias, and a Salud! with the tip of the glass to Juan Carlos.

Ramon was quiet for a while, then he said, You want a job? I can get you a job.

With who?

A gringo. Un amigo mío. Aquí. Right now, en Vallarta.

The same one you work for?

No, no, but un vecino. I work for old people, casados, who live here a long time. Their sobrina comes to Vallarta. She is very bee-yoo-tee-fool. Muy chulada, ay que hombre. They talk screwing sign again with an expression of virility on his face. He called it faawcking" in a passionate whisper.

Yeah, yeah. So?

This is You-deeth. She is amigas con la vecina who is also very bee-yoo-tee-fool. My chulada, ay que hombre. They talk that here esposo needs a gringo. I will talk to him. I must go up there soon. Today. I go for the faawcking, heh? I will talk to this man and tell him you are a good man, Algo, como los Mexicanos.

Okay, yeah. You do that. Gracias. I’ll stay here at the Iguana Bar and wait for you. Ándale. Gracias. The sooner the better. Ándale, pues.

True or not, it was a way to be rid of him and I could put off looking myself the rest of the day. Ramon stood up grinning that phony, hard-eyed grin that meant, I’ll prove it to you, you gringo bastard. I gave him my well practised dumb American grin, the one that said It’s all lost in the translation to me, amigo. We shook hands and he went out, his rings and neckchains flashing.

I nursed a beer and looked through a new copy of El Corriente, the Vallarta daily. It had big oil news from Campeche Bay and government debt problems from Mexico City, and the latest bloody shoot out in a Guadalajara drug war. Also news that Vallarta had a serious shortage of construction materials for the new building-in-progress along Hotel Alley. There were only two other local events of real excitement. One was a fire in one of the beach restaurants just off the Malecón where an obnoxious gringo had thrown a plate of greasy enchiladas onto a brazier grill. The other was that an oyster diver from Sayulita had washed up on the beach north of the downtown hotels. The back of his head had been bashed in, and various fish had lunched on his body, but he had been identified by relatives who had last seen him heading his launch down the coast toward Banderas Bay a week before to do some work for a gringo, and to do honor for Mexico, he had told his wife before leaving. The diver was Mário Arguello. I didn’t know him, but I knew some of his family because I had lived in Sayulita for several months not long before and had many friends there—mostly more cantina buddies, fishermen and divers, and jungle scroungers. It was a village of easy going, generous people, and this was a sad loss in a big family. The paper didn’t mention that, only that there was speculation of murder. But it was being called a diving accident for now since it could turn out to be a rather scandalous event for Puerto Vallarta if murdered divers started washing up at the beach hotels at the beginning of the tourist season. That wouldn’t be good for business.

The rest of the newspaper contained a whole section on Vallarta’s version of the debutante ball, the usual obituaries of ancient civil war veterans, and an international section mainly of expensive restaurant ads and want ads for leasing condominiums or finding maid service. There didn’t seem to be any notices desperately soliciting workers with my particular skills. Though I didn’t quite know what my skills were, I was sure I’d recognize the description if I saw it. I finally gave up the job search in the paper and had another beer.

Later on in the afternoon a siesta crowd slowly filled the bar stools and booths. The barroom air thickened with cigarette smoke and kitchen aromas and the low music of whispering voices. Juan Carlos turned up the wailing Mexican love ballads. The shadows darkened, the noise grew louder, and the twilight felt bloated and heavy-eyed. The iguana grinned at me.

I rented a room from Juan Carlos and finally got out of there, tired of barroom bull and way too many beers. The room right over the bar, with a window facing out on Calle Quince, was narrow and raunchy—greasy walls of no recognizable color and filled by a wooden rack with a ragged mattress for a bed. There was bottled water and a wash basin on a leaning night stand, a single straight-backed chair with uneven legs, and a naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling. No Holiday Inn suite, but by then it hardly mattered. It seemed a safe place, and the door locked, so I crashed, thinking that I would have been doing the same thing had I stayed in Lo De Marcos.

Chapter Two

I bolted awake in darkness to a pounding on the door. My heart in my throat seemed to be choking me, and a chill coursed through my numb limbs. I was dizzy and nauseous, forgetting where I was and screaming, ¿Quien es? ¿Quien es?

The only answer was more pounding. I got up and turned on the light, muttering, Yeah, yeah, making sure I was fully dressed before opening a door on the Mexican world. I didn’t want to be hauled off somewhere unprepared. When I opened the door a crack, I saw Ramon’s grin reflecting back at me. He knew he had scared me and was enjoying it.

Hola, Algo. ¿Que pasa? See? I am back and I have you the job. Like nothing, heh? Ramon is more than talking.

What time is it?

¿Quien sabe? Not late.

I knew better than to ask time of Ramon. He was one of those Mexicans for whom time in numbers means nothing. Life doesn’t move that way for them.

So what’s up?

"Work. Didn’t I tell you? You got work for this man. Muy rico, muy rico. I tell him you just right. He listens to me. Here, aquí. He handed me a greasy, wadded piece of paper with a name scribbled on it: Johnny Finch, number seven, Iturbide. You go tomorrow. You make good money." Ramon’s pretty-faced voice said more than the words.

I didn’t want to believe it, and I didn’t want to be obligated to Ramon for anything.

What time? I asked again, still not completely awake.

Mañana.

Sí, sí. What will I do?

¿Quien sabe? Who knows? Perhaps you work for me. I make work for you, heh? He laughed.

You work for him?

No, no. His neighbors. But sí, sometimes. He dropped it there. You go. Tomorrow, heh? Ramon does you good, heh, Algo?

He headed out, and I was glad and I didn’t want to think about it. I locked the door behind him and passed back out to a rhumba beat drifting up through the ceiling of the Iguana Bar.

Coming alive in pretty good shape sometime around mid-morning, I had huevos rancheros downstairs with lots of tortillas, frijoles, and coffee. Other than Ramon’s macho superior attitude about one-upping the gringo, I couldn’t think of a reason not to check out the