A strange hush came over them and both their eyes darted to me and back again. This thing, this mysterious health problem that had afflicted Gus had come up again and again but I had yet to figure it out. I didn’t want to ask. Maybe I was going to have to. I didn’t want the man having a stroke on me if that’s what it came down to.
“I miss you, you know?” Dan continued. “But please tell me what brought you here all of the sudden.”
Gus sucked in his upper lip until the bristles of his mustache stood out. “We need to find Travis Raines. He’s somewhere in Mexico, maybe Veracruz.”
Dan’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “You want to find Travis Raines? The Hombre Blanco?”
“What, seriously, that’s his nickname?” I blurted out.
Dan ignored me, getting out of his wicker chair and walking over to the kitchen. “My God, my God. We need some coffee. Yes, we do.”
Gus and I exchanged a glance as Dan put on the kettle and began carrying things over to the table for us, cups, saucers, a sugar bowl, non-dairy creamer. Then he sat back down and lit another cigarette. His hand shaking.
“Tell me why you need to find him.”
“It’s not so much him that we need to find but a man who is after Travis. He has a woman with him. We think he’s planning on using her to assassinate the Hombre Blanco.”
He blinked a few times, puffing back rapidly. “I see. And this is a bad thing?”
“He will get the woman killed. Getting to Travis Raines isn’t easy. If it was, he’d already be dead.”
“Yes, Gus, I know this. What do you think I do all day here? Think of fairy tales?”
I looked at Dan imploring. “The woman, Ellie, is very important to me. The man she’s with will hurt her. She’s not a gun for hire. She’ll have to do it against her will and it will end very badly, for everyone, if we don’t get to her first.”
“Who is the man?”
“Javier Bernal,” Gus supplied.
Dan’s eyes widened and he quickly put out his cigarette. “Javier is here in Mexico?”
“You know him?” I asked.
Dan gave me a petulant look and got up to the kettle which was just starting to steam. “Yes, I know him. We all know him. We are all part of the same family when you trace us back. Sinoala.”
The other extremely dangerous and fanatical cartel.
Dan poured the water into a French press and brought it over to the table.
“This sounds like something Javi would do.”
And now he knew him on a first name basis. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be good. I shot Gus a look but he was focused on the coffee. I wanted to keep staring at him, get him to look up, but Dan was already observing me, eyes narrowed.
I cleared my throat and nodded at the press. “Local coffee?”
Dan watched me for a few painful beats before he said, “Yes, of course. None of that American shit.”
Gus smiled. “I’m pretty sure half of the American shit comes from Mexico at any rate.”
Dan shrugged lightly. “This is true. But we don’t put chemicals in our coffee.”
“Not like what you’re putting in your lungs,” Gus joked.
And suddenly they seemed like old pals ribbing each other again. Maybe I was creating these situations in my head. Maybe my gut was wrong.
But my gut was never wrong.
Dan poured us both a cup of the fragrant, dark liquid and said, “Do you know where Javi is?”
We shook our heads. “No,” Gus spoke, “we figured you could tell us.”
“Why would I tell you?”
“To be a friend, I guess.” Gus was still smiling but his posture changed ever so subtly. He was aware now, more alert. Maybe because Dan was being stubborn. Or maybe because Dan and Javier were friends, something Gus couldn’t have seen coming, and friends sometimes go to great lengths to protect each other. If my devotion to Ellie had brought me here, perhaps Dan’s loyalty to Javier was just as strong.
The bad feeling in my gut multiplied when Dan put the coffee press down and one of his hands, so easily, so slowly, went to his side and under the table. I didn’t look, I didn’t acknowledge it. I only sipped my coffee all the while knowing he had a gun under that table, maybe affixed to the underside, and it was pointing at us.
We wouldn’t be walking out of here alive. Not if we could do something about it.
“Well, I don’t know where Javi is. But Travis is in Veracruz. Fucking Zetas have taken over the whole city, such a shame.”
“Where in Veracruz?” I asked.
Dan smiled wryly and took a sip of his coffee, bringing his hand back on the table. “I do not have his address, if that is what you’re asking. It’s a large compound in the hills. Where the rich bastards live.”
“How do you think Ellie will get close to him?” It was a longshot, but one I felt I needed to ask. If I was right and there was a gun under the table, he’d be telling us the truth because the dead don’t talk. The dead wouldn’t spoil this attempt on Travis’s life, someone both Javier, Dan, and maybe Ellie, would want killed.
“I don’t know,” he said carefully. He put his coffee cup back down. One hand went under the table while the other was going for a cigarette.
“Can I have one?” I said quickly, putting my hand out. “I always wanted to try the Mexican kind.”