With her helpful Spanish phrase book, she asked a grandmotherly woman about finding a driver who would take her to Campeche. The woman avoided eye contact and shook her head. Lorraine asked a vendor next, but he was far more interested in selling his wares than answering her questions. He held up a number of things—baskets and pottery—he hoped to persuade her to buy and explained two or three times in fractured English that he would give her a special rate because she was his first customer of the day. She finally extricated herself from him, then asked a third person, a young barefoot woman, who pointed Lorraine in the direction of the cantina.
On second thought, perhaps it would make more sense to contact the American Embassy by phone and not worry about hiring someone to drive her.
Lorraine flipped through the pages of her Spanish dictionary until she found the word for telephone. She felt embarrassed by how little she remembered of her high-school language class. “Teléfono?” she asked.
The barefoot woman grinned and nodded enthusiastically, then pointed toward the cantina again.
Lorraine grumbled under her breath, glancing at the very place she’d planned not to enter. She supposed she didn’t have anything to lose. If Jack did happen to be inside, which she strongly suspected he was, she’d simply explain what she’d said in her note.
When she peered inside the cantina, she found—to her relief and surprise—that Jack Keller was nowhere to be seen. The place was stark, devoid of any decoration. It had a rough plank floor, a long wooden bar and a number of crude tables and chairs.
Four or five underdressed women glared at her when she walked in. Lorraine smiled at them, certain they could see that they had nothing to fear from her. She had no intention of cutting in on their business.
A greasy-looking man looked up from a table, where he sat with a bottle of tequila and a shot glass. He was dark and ugly, and a scar ran down one side of his face. He eyed her with the avid interest of a tomcat spying a mouse. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation, but she ignored him and approached the bartender, whose frown seemed to suggest she should get out while she could.
Lorraine forced a smile. With her dictionary in hand, she asked about the phone. He shook his head. There was one attached to the wall, but apparently it was out of order. No funciona, a handwritten sign informed her. Again going through the dictionary, she painstakingly asked about hiring a driver to take her to Campeche.
“I take you to Campeche,” the greasy-looking man at the table offered in heavily accented English, his voice slurred with suggestion. His chair made a scraping sound as he stood and carried the bottle and shot glass over to the bar.
Every eye in the place was on the two of them.
“No, thank you,” Lorraine said politely. She continued to look at the bartender.
“You want a driver?” the man persisted. “I get you there.”
“I prefer to hire a car, thank you.” She returned her attention to the bartender.
Her unpleasant companion slammed the bottle down on the bar. “We have fun on the road, no?”
“No,” Lorraine said, refusing to look at him. He smelled evil. She’d never thought such a thing was possible, but this man was the epitome of the word. The stench about him was nothing compared to the blankness in his eyes, as if he had no feelings, no sympathy, no conscience. The way he stared at her made her skin crawl.
The bartender, who’d said little to this point, spoke to the man in a placating manner. Although she couldn’t understand much of what was said, it seemed fairly obvious this man was feared. The bartender then appeared to suggest something involving one or more of the other women, judging by the way he motioned toward them. One thing Lorraine did pick up from the exchange was the man’s name. Carlos.
Carlos’s reaction to the bartender’s suggestion was a blast of foul-sounding words that had the bartender fleeing to the other end of the bar.
“You come with me,” Carlos said, and reached for her. “We have fun on the road to Campeche, you and me.” He grinned at her as if to say she might as well enjoy it because she had no choice.
Lorraine managed to avoid his grasp. “I most certainly will not.”
He lunged for her a second time, but once more she was able to avoid his groping hands. Clearly Carlos was drunker than he’d seemed, which was in her favor. Although he looked to be a mean drunk.
“Kindly keep your hands to yourself!” she snapped.
Carlos’s response was to grab a fistful of her hair and yank hard.
Lorraine let out a cry of shock and pain, whirled around and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. “Keep your filthy hands off me!” The action had been purely instinctive. She didn’t know what kind of monster this man was, but she wasn’t going to let him or anyone else manhandle her.
A collective gasp went through the cantina. Even Carlos was too stunned to react. Then he slapped her, hard enough to send her staggering backward. Her jaw felt as if it’d been dislocated, and the pain brought stinging tears to her eyes.
He laughed, and it was the cruelest sound she’d ever heard. She saw pure undiluted hate in his eyes. Holding her hand over her cheek, she took three small steps back, recognizing beyond doubt that she’d crossed a dangerous line and was about to suffer the consequences.
She wanted to say something, a joke, an apology, anything to defuse the situation, but her mouth had gone dry. She could hardly force out a word.
She’d made one mistake after another, but this was the most desperate yet. Two minutes ago she’d walked into the cantina with a simple request and now she was staring into the eyes of a man who wanted to kill her—and worse. She felt a sudden urge to yell “Time out!” so she could sit down and analyze what had gone wrong…and figure out how to rescue herself.