A motel, a credit card and a bottle of Tequila

Noon located a suitable, low-key hotel near the city centre, the Hotel Ucum, on Calle Mahatma Gandhi. The building was a brightly painted double storey with open verandas running along the corridor outside the rooms. The place was cheap and clean enough. There were a fair number of American tourists in town, so Noon hoped to not attract attention. Turning the bedside fan on to full speed he collapsed on the bed and slept until daybreak, oblivious to the mosquitoes filling swollen abdomens from the roped veins at the backs of his hands. 

Noon sat on the edge of his hotel bed, looking out of the open door and through the elaborate wrought iron railings to the jumble of the city buildings beyond. He felt refreshed, although his wrists itched and he needed a shower, but first to make final contact. Remaining very cautious and keeping to their agreed code, he composed a message with the location details for the Mayan museum and a proposed time of five that afternoon. 

He got to thinking about what he really wanted to achieve and had to admit that he no longer knew. Perhaps he had never known the answer. Evaluating and then stripping out all of the expendable elements in his life, Noon was left with the one thing that was kind of non-negotiable, his freedom. Well, he had that didn’t he? He was in the Yucatan in a crazy little Mexican motel with a bottle of tequila and a credit card. A simple nod to the greasy little concierge would secure him one or more young female companions who would smilingly act out any convoluted perversion that he might dream up. It wasn’t women then. In fact, it was all about women; desiring them, coveting them, betraying them, making them the centre of his universe, enslaving himself to the idea of them. 

She didn’t arrive at their rendezvous alone. 

Shaking hands briefly. “Let me introduce my father.” She spoke to the old man in formal Spanish. “Papa, this is senor Noon. He has traveled from Arizona to bring us the items recovered from the brothers.” Noon had no idea what she had just said.

 The old man extended a cool, scaly hand and at the same time clasped Noon briefly at the elbow with his free hand. He muttered something in Spanish and swivelled his neck, looking for a place to sit down. 

Carminda indicated a bench in the corner of the expanse of polished marble floor. They sat, Carminda and Noon together and the father at the end of the bench next to his daughter. The old man leaned his chin on his walking stick and stared upwards at the mobile display of Mayan feathered headdresses rotating slowly in the centre of the vast space. Tourists circulated beneath the museum exhibit as in a trance, eyes turned towards the twisting kaleidoscope of jungle plumage as they strolled, shoe soles squeaking, in ever-changing fractals. Hushed voices echoed in an unintelligible burble as visitors passed through the halls. 

“I will speak Spanish to Papa and translate for you.” 

He was still staring at her, thinking of that last night together in his house; now here she was beautiful, exotic and radiant in the heavy tropical air. “Sure, that will work fine.” 

He got the social code immediately. The father was old school, here as a chaperone and on serious business with the American. Carminda was officially a virgin, off-limits unless Papa gave his formal blessing to anything more than polite conversation. No touching or hugging. 

Noon leaned in towards her, his voice lowered, out of the father’s line of sight, his mouth brushing the hair hanging over her ear, “I thought I would never see you again. We have a lot to discuss.” 

She turned to him, staring into his eyes for a few seconds before speaking. “Papa is here to receive the phone cards that were recovered from the traveling brothers, in the desert.” 

He struggled to remain calm. He felt shackled by the presence of this formal old patriarch. Looking up at the feather displays, “I could simply stand up, shake your father’s hand and walk away.”

 “Why would you do that?” 

“Why not? It would fit right in with the tone you’ve just set.” 

“Give my father what he came for. It’s the least you can do in order to restore some justice to the situation.” Rearranging the folds of the bright printed frock around her knees, “You removed the tiny birds from the bodies. You knew what fate had befallen those men, yet you said nothing.” 

“One thing I’ve just learned, the one with the strange ears was not your father.”

 She looked directly ahead and swept her hair back from her forehead, “I admit that I lied about their identity.”

 “So who were they then?”

 She glanced sideways at her father. The old man was nodding off. She lightly touched Noon’s hand, “Old fishing companions of my father’s. I thought that you would be more likely to help me if I said that one was my father,” withdrawing her hand, “but obviously I misjudged you.”

 “Why did you take off?”

 “I panicked when I found the tiny bird hidden in your house.”

 “Your note had me racing off to Phoenix after you,” hesitating and glancing at her face “thinking there was something ...”

 Her eyes flickered, as if some explosive emotion was trapped behind them, “I got picked up at the bus station. I was repatriated within a day.” Turning earnestly towards him, “I was being watched. Someone reported me.”

 Noon thought for a bit. “In that case, you are obviously of interest to someone over there.” Cracking his knuckles, “Which is the bit that you are deliberately not telling me about.” He tugged at his trousers just above the knees, making as if to stand up.

 Papa plucked at his daughter’s sleeve, asking something.

 She turned to him, nodded reassuringly and turned her attention back to the business at hand. “Noon, what do you want with this piece of plastic? Unless you plan to trace all the names and numbers, which I would strongly advise against, otherwise, do the right thing and walk away.”

 He said nothing.

 “This could get you killed.”

 His eyes narrowed and his voice came out in a rumbling hiss, “Your old man gonna beat me to death with his walking stick? You’ve lied to me from the beginning!”

 She appeared unperturbed by either insult or accusation. “The cards are not yours to keep, they belong to the picaflor.”

 At the mention of the hummingbirds, Papa leaned forward in his seat and tapped Noon on the knee with his stick.

 Carminda gently steered the stick away and whispered in her father’s ear. She stood up. “Papa needs the bathroom. He cannot go alone and I may not stay sitting with you, without a chaperone.”

 Noon turned away dismissively, “You certainly didn’t need one once you got into my bedroom.”

 The flat of her hand stalled millimetres from his cheek. She turned on her heel, helped Papa to his feet and steered him towards the bathrooms.

 He felt reckless, in need of some dramatic intervention in a situation that hadn’t turned out quite as he had hoped. He called after her, “They were deliberately rubbed out. They didn’t die of thirst out there.”

 She paused, her hand still firmly gripping her father’s elbow. Her head turned towards him and then she straightened her shoulders and with a swish of her skirt she strode away towards the bathrooms.

 Noon had startled himself by the wild speculation he had just blurted out. He stood up, started after them, turned back, started to mingle with the tourists and then made his decision. He headed for the exit.....

Excerpt from "Flash of Monochrome"

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CH4PTL2