Rag Man: A Novel - Hardcover

Hautman, Pete

3.46

67 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743205596 ISBN 13: 9780743205597

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2001

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Mack MacWray's new clothing manufacturing company was wildly successful - until the day his charming, street-savvy partner, Lars Larson, disappeared with all the assets, leaving Mack stuck with nothing but debts and shattered dreams. Devastated, Mack thinks he has nothing left to live for until, at the edge of a cliff on the idyllic Mexican resort of Isla Mujeres, he comes face-to-face with his former partner. Mack discovers something about himself that fateful afternoon - that maybe he's not such a nice guy after all. After push comes to shove, Mack must live with what he has become.
Mack returns to the U. S. with his moral compass demagnetized and discovers a world of opportunity. Without the ball and chain of guilt and accountability, making money is all but guaranteed. He transforms himself from bankrupt loser to hard-nosed success story - but at what cost? His wife wants the old Mack back; her best friend wants Mack in bed; Lars's widow wants money (or revenge); and Detective Jerry Pleasant wants answers - or maybe more.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Pete Hautman is the author of the New York Times Notable Books Drawing Dead and The Mortal Nuts. Mrs. Million won the 1999 Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction. He lives with mystery writer and poet Mary Logue in Tucson; Minneapolis; and Stockholm, Wisconsin.

Chapter 7

"Esp�rame, por favor." Teddy handed the taxista a hundred-peso note. "Ahorita vengo."

The driver took the note, held it up to the light. "No problem, amigo. I wait for you."

Teddy got out of the cab, ran his hands down the front of his guayabera to smooth it, brushed the brim of his panama with his fingertips, and entered Plaza Flamingo, an indoor conglomeration of shops and restaurants thick with U.S. franchises. Why anyone would travel thousands of miles to eat a Big Mac or a Domino's pizza was a mystery to Teddy, but they did. There was even a Planet Hollywood.

Plaza Flamingo did an enormous amount of business during the winter and spring, when hundreds of thousands of U.S. tourists descended upon Canc�n, but this time of year the tiendas were quiet, free from the jittery crowds of pallid vacationers. Teddy passed a jewelry store, a gift shop, and a Subway sandwich shop -- all with their gates open but few customers. He crossed the atrium with its chronically malfunctioning fountain. Today it was dry. Several people sat around its perimeter smoking cigarettes and speaking rapid Spanish. Strolling, window-shopping families from Mexico City or M�rida, spending a weekend in Canc�n to escape the inland heat, dominated the sparsely populated corridors. At the moment, Teddy was the only non-Mexican in sight. He liked it that way.

The clerk at La Casa del Habano was cleaning the glass countertop with a blue rag, polishing with slow, circular strokes, a distant smile on his placid face.

"Buenos d�as," Teddy said.

The clerk looked up. "�Buenos d�as! Se�or Larson!" He folded the rag and put it away. "I have good news for you. We have just received a new shipment. You prefer the Espl�ndidos, no? One box?" He bobbed his round head, his slanted eyes disappearing as he smiled. Like many Mayans, he would not have looked out of place in Hong Kong. Or maybe he was Chinese. In Canc�n, anything was possible.

"S�, s�," Teddy said.

"No problem. I get them for you."

The clerk went into the humidor and climbed atop a short ladder. A few seconds later he came out with a cedar box of Cohiba Espl�ndidos, displaying it as if he had unearthed a great treasure.

"You see?"

"I see. Bueno." Teddy pulled a money clip from his pants pocket and peeled off eight five-hundred-peso notes while the clerk undertook the laborious process of handwriting a receipt. Mexican merchants took their receipts very seriously.

"I meet a friend of yours," the clerk said as he wrote. "He come into the store yesterday. No. Day before."

"Oh?" Teddy felt his heart speed up.

"He ask if I know you."

"What did you tell him?" He strained to keep his voice calm.

"I just say I know you."

Teddy turned and looked out through the glass storefront into the atrium. A woman with her teenage daughter, walking quickly. An old man with a broom. A young Mexican couple carrying several shopping bags. Teddy ran down a list of names in his mind. People to avoid. "What did he look like?"

"Like a tourist. American. He ask me do you come here much."

"What did you tell him?"

The clerk shrugged, smiling uncertainly. "I tell him you come here sometime."

Teddy kept his eyes on the shoppers. He tapped the box of cigars with a forefinger. "How many more of these you got? �Cu�ntas cajas?"

The clerk stopped writing. "Two, I think maybe."

"Bien. I'll take them." Teddy peeled more bills off his clip. He would have to avoid the area for a few weeks, stay on Isla. Whoever had been asking about him, he didn't want to run into them. "Anybody else comes in here looking for me, you tell them you don't know me. Like Pancho Villa. �Comprende?"

The clerk's face lost all expression. "S�, se�or."

Teddy watched the plaza traffic -- still no gringos -- as the clerk painstakingly amended the receipt, counted the money, gave him change, and loaded the cigars into a large plastic bag. Teddy pulled his panama low on his forehead and left the store on high alert. He walked directly to his waiting cab, took a quick look around, got in.

"Puerto Ju�rez, por favor." He looked back as the cab pulled out into traffic, but saw nothing unusual.

At 10:30 A.M., side one of the Enya tape ended. Paula MacWray's hand followed the wire from her headset down to the Walkman. She pressed the eject button with an oily forefinger, reversed the tape, then rolled over onto her back. Sun crashed through the lenses of her dark glasses as the music -- a slick New Age interpretation of Celtic rhythms -- filled her ears. She squeezed her eyes closed, reached down, and groped for her bottle of Corona. Left side? No, right. She caught the bottle by its neck and lifted it out of the ice bucket. Frigid droplets of water tracked across her belly. She tipped the bottle to her mouth and swallowed. The beer went down like a rope of sleet, sending a chill up the backs of her arms and down her sides.

Paula pushed the bottle back into the ice and felt around for her tube of sunscreen but could not seem to locate it. Damn. Where was Mack when she needed him? She sat up and opened her eyes. There, right under her elbow. She squeezed a scribble of white goo, hot with stored sunlight, onto her thighs. She began to rub it in, taking her time. The tropical sun was unforgiving. Most of the other people around the pool were under the long ramada on the south side, in the shade. Another half hour and she would be sufficiently baked to join them. She coated the tops of her thighs, her knees, her shins and feet, enjoying the sensation of hands kneading flesh. Mack should be doing this for her. Where was he? Three days in Canc�n and she'd hardly seen him. Every morning he took off, saying something about "seeing the sights." He would put on his new hat, a long-billed fishing cap with Canc�n embroidered on the front, and walk up Paseo Kukulc�n. She wouldn't see him again until sunset.

Paula made sure to get a heavy layer of sunscreen on her inner thighs, on her belly, and under her breasts -- areas most susceptible to sunburn. The skimpy two-piece, purchased in the hotel swim shop that morning, revealed portions of her anatomy that had not seen sunlight in years. When her front side was completely coated, she let her arms fall to her sides and let the sun dig in.

Whatever Mack was doing with himself, he seemed to have regained his sense of purpose. Mexico had wiped off some of that hangdog look, and he was drinking less. On the downside, he hardly seemed to know she existed. They hadn't made love once since arriving in Canc�n. Mack had entered a private world to which she was not invited -- and she wasn't sure she wanted an invitation. She hadn't come to Mexico to share Mack's private hell. She'd come here to relax.

Maybe Mack needed the alone time. Maybe by the time they returned home he would be able to see things more clearly. Maybe they both would.

"Stay back! Not so close."

"No problem." The cabbie sped up.

Mack ducked down in his seat. "No! Don't get so close. I don't want him to see us."

"Okay, no problem." The cabbie laughed.

"Don't lose them."

"No problem."

"Don't let him see us."

The cabbie sped up.

"No!" Mack opened his phrase book. "�No santa sede!"

The cabbie giggled, but he seemed to get the message. "No problem."

Mack raised his head. Lars's cab was two cars ahead of them. Lars! It was like a dream, as if he had stepped into another reality. A bad knockoff of a Hitchcock movie. He had flown thousands of miles to this garish speck on the map and actually found him. Unbelievable.

A bank of low gray clouds had settled upon the horizon to the north. Lars's cab followed the Paseo Kukulc�n traffic through the zona hotelera, past the Hyatt Caribe, the Sierra, and the less expensive Miramar, where he and Paula were staying. Blips of ocean appeared between hotel towers. Mack's first look at Canc�n had reminded him of Las Vegas. Today it looked to him like a twisted Disneyland, sprawling resorts made of Lego blocks and sand. Mack figured Lars would be staying in one of the biggest, most garish hotels -- one of the places that looked like enormous Mayan pyramids -- but the cab continued past the Caracol district, through the Club de Golf, and over the Playa Linda bridge onto the mainland. Mack hadn't seen this part of the city. They passed a series of small hotels. At one point a bus cut between the two cabs and they almost lost Lars's cab when it turned north at an interchange. The cabbie, responding to Mack's shouted command, circled the bewildering intersection; they caught up with Lars on Avenida Bonampak, the downtown bypass. The buildings became smaller and shabbier, and the signs advertising U.S. products -- Burger King, Levi's, Coca-Cola -- were replaced by unfamiliar Mexican brands.

Lars's cab turned onto a wide boulevard. They headed northeast, following the shoreline. A few miles later it pulled over to the curb at a busy intersection, people everywhere. Lars got out of his cab.

"Go past them, then pull over," Mack said. He counted to five, then sat up and looked back just in time to see Lars, plastic bag in hand, disappearing into a covered passageway between two long, low buildings.

"Where are we?" Mack demanded, fumbling with a fistful of U.S. currency.

"Puerto Ju�rez," said the cabbie. "Where you take a boat."

Mack handed the cabby thirty dollars, probably too much, hopped out, and jogged back to the entrance into which Lars had disappeared. He found himself in a wide alley shaded by a twenty-foot-high peaked roof. He could see the ocean at the far end, but Lars had disappeared. Mack walked quickly toward the water, emerged into sunlight at the base of a long concrete pier. Vendors on each side offered him seashells, baseball caps, pastries, cheap jewelry. Mack wove his way through the gauntlet, shaking his head, smiling, avoiding eye contact. A few dozen people were crowded near the end of the pier, boarding an ungainly-looking two-decker ferry.

Mack stopped. Was Lars on board? He searched the boarding passengers...

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