This was a good place, about six miles north of town, in on its own dirt road from the blacktop road between San Miguel and a town called Dolores Hidalgo. The hotel was called the Taboada Balneario, and it was all by itself in the semi-arid plain. The buildings were long and low, in a combination of Indian and Spanish styles, with red tile roofs; thick-trunked trees were intermixed with the buildings. There were the two spring-fed swimming pools, one containing hot and the other warm water, plus a large dining room with one long window-wall facing the main lawn and pools. A bus came up from San Miguel once a day, bringing tourists to take pictures and swim in the pool, but they hadn’t arrived yet, and at the moment the place was nearly empty.
They’d found it almost by accident. Coming into town about seven-thirty last night, they’d both been unprepared for just how primitive a national monument could be. They’d looked at two hotels, one of which had a great central courtyard, but neither of which Elly would agree to stay in, and then Grofield saw a lavender Lincoln slowly poking its way along the narrow street, like a panther in a maze. The Lincoln had California plates, so Grofield stopped it, asked the driver to recommend a place, and the driver—an arrogant-looking fat man of about fifty—looked Grofield over, said, “middle income,” as though to himself, and then told them about the Taboada Balneario.
Nervous reaction from the excitement of the day had set in with Elly, who by then was being irritable and jumpy. She wouldn’t make sense when Grofield asked her if she thought they ought to make the extra drive and see what this place looked like, so he just drove it and the hell with her. He’d taken adjoining rooms without looking at them, he’d stuffed Elly and her luggage into one of them without letting her talk to him word one, and he’d gone into his own room and to bed and to sleep, promptly.
And this morning everything was fine. They were both rested and feeling easy, and the hotel was great, although hotel was maybe not exactly the word for it. The rooms were more or less motel fashion, in a row, with separate entrances, but Grofield had never seen a motel before with a brick ceiling. An honest-to-God brick ceiling; he’d spent about an hour this morning lying in bed and looking up at it, wondering why it didn’t fall down. It looked like a brick wall up there, but it was horizontal.
The hotel was on the American plan, meals included. They had a slow and leisurely breakfast together, then walked around the grounds a while before changing into bathing suits.
Grofield continued to sit there after Elly went back into the pool. He drank his beer, felt the sun warm on his back, and began to feel more and more like his old self.
Later on he did go in the pool for a while, and the warm water was fine for the wound, but not so good for the bandage, which was getting old anyway, having been put on five days ago. After the bus came from San Miguel, bringing tourists with cameras and natives in wool bathing suits, they went back to their rooms and she got the gauze and tape she’d bought yesterday to change his bandage.
He lay on his stomach on his bed while she sat beside him and cut the old bandage off. The water had loosened it from the wound, so it came off readily enough, and she said, “That’s ugly.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve never seen a bullet wound before. Do they all look like that?”
“No. Some of them have a lot of green pus coming out.”
“Ugh. Wait there a minute.” She left the bed, threw the old bandage away, went over to the bathroom and came back a minute later with a wet cloth. “Let me know if this hurts,” she said, and started swabbing the wound.
“Uh,” he said. “It doesn’t feel funny.”
“All done.” Putting a fresh bandage on, she said, “Is the bullet still in there?”
“No. A doctor took it out. The one who put the bandage on.”
“I suppose you were shot while you were stealing all that money.”
“Tell me about Acapulco,” he said.
“All right, never mind. I won’t pry.”
“You’re a nice girl.”
“All done,” she said, and stood up. “I put a smaller one on this time. It looks almost healed.”
“Don’t let it fool you,” he said, rolling over. “You can’t tell a wound from its scab.”
“What a charming way you have with the language.”
She was standing beside the bed, a sexy Florence Nightingale in her bathing suit and her hands full of gauze and tape. He grinned up at her, feeling the old urge, and reached up to touch one finger to the bone of her left wrist. Slowly he moved that finger up her forearm to her elbow, then closed his hand around her arm, tugging her gently closer. She didn’t resist, and her smile as she looked down at him was faintly quizzical.
Still smiling at her, he said, “One thing I want you to know.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m married.”
She burst out laughing. “Oh, my God!”
This was the first girl he’d turned his attentions toward since tying the knot. If they were all going to react to the news that way, it was going to be hell. And yet, not to tell them would be to leave himself open to a vast array of unthinkable complications.
Done laughing, she looked at him and shook her head and said, “That is the God damnedest line-opener I’ve heard in my life, and believe me, I’ve heard some dandies.”
“I believe you.”
“Are you really married? Or is that just a thing you say so the girl won’t try to make a thing of it?”
“Both.”
“Is your wife nice?”
“She was the last time I saw her. God knows what she’s like now. But I doubt that she’d mind if I kissed you.”
“Nonsense.”
“You think she’d mind?” Grofield asked, putting on an innocent face at least as good as the one Elly sometimes used.
“Yes, I do,” she said, in mock seriousness.
“Then let’s not tell her.”
Elly smiled. “All right,” she said. “Let’s not.”
Grofield tugged at her arm again. She slid toward him.
5
ELLY SAID, “This is the night life, huh?”
“What’s the matter?” Grofield asked her. “Aren’t you thrilled, baby? I’m thrilled.”
They were back in San Miguel again, in a bar on the main square, where they’d been told they could find the center of the town’s night life. The bar was called La Cucaracha; a brown real-as-life figure of a cockroach, about a foot and a half long, was mounted at an angle on one wall.
The room itself was simply a small square full of seats, with a jukebox jutting out on one side. There was no bar, there were no more signs inside than there’d been outside—they’d had a hell of a time finding the place, since from the street it didn’t look as though there was anything here at all—and generally speaking, it was hard to convince yourself you were in a bar. Since the chairs and sofas were all done in plastic and foam rubber, the place looked most of all like the world’s most crowded doctor’s waiting room.
Every once in a while, Sancho Panza in a dirty apron would come through and take orders and go away again, coming back a while later with either what you asked for or something else.
The people here reminded Grofield of home, but that was because he’d lived at one time in Greenwich Village. Along Macdougal and Eighth streets the same faces could be found in all the tourist traps: the tourists themselves, looking embarrassed and irritable, and the unwashed, unshaven youngsters living around here while going through their artistic phase, looking both older and younger than their years. Both the tourists and the youngsters were self-conscious, and neither could cover it all the way.
But here there was a third kind of person, too. Around San Miguel there was a colony of retired people from the States, living on pensions. A thousand dollars a year was damn good money on the local economy, so these retired people could live in a climate as good as Florida or California, but at a fraction of the price. Their presence somehow made both the touris
ts and the youngsters look even more foolish than usual, as though somehow or other they’d been exposed as frauds.
It was now about nine o’clock at night. Grofield and Elly had come into town after dinner, had window-shopped in some of the local stores—silver and straw were the main materials used in the goods for sale—had wandered around looking at the old houses and the old streets that made this a national monument, and now had come in here to see what was doing.
Elly said, “If we hurry back to the hotel, we can go moonlight swimming in the pool.”
“What’s the matter? The pace here too much for you?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay. Drink up.”
They finished their drinks and sidestepped among knees to the door. Outside, the air was clear and the night dark. In front of them was a plaza or square, all complicated flowers and greenery, with geometric paths and ornamental fences, and with a bandstand in the middle. A single light bulb gleamed in the middle of the bandstand ceiling.
She said, “Let’s take a walk over there. By the bandstand.”
“Kay.”
They walked across the cobbled street and through the little park, hand in hand, and up onto the bandstand. Under the light, Grofield kissed her. She was warm and slender and soft, her blouse electric beneath his hand.
They went down off the bandstand on the other side and walked around the square, which was flanked on three sides by small shops and bars and eateries, all with either the most modest of signs or no signs at all, and on the fourth side by a large pretentious Gothic church. They walked around on the strip of sidewalk bordering the park, and all at once she stopped, squeezing his hand. “Don’t move!”
It was whispered, but it was shrill and urgent. Grofield stopped and didn’t move. He looked around and saw nothing, no one walking, no one in sight. There was the church, with some cars parked in front of it, and the shops with cars parked in front, and that was it.
“In front of the church,” she whispered.
He whispered back, “What? What is it?”
“The Pontiac. The green Pontiac with the whitewalls. It’s their car.”
“Honner?”
“Yes.” Her arm was trembling against his. “Honner,” she said.
6
THERE WAS not much light. The only really bright illumination came from the bulb in the ceiling of the bandstand. Windows and doorways here and there around the square spread dim amber rectangles of light on the cobblestones, and from the doorway of La Cucaracha came the dim sound of the jukebox, playing Mexican guitar music.
A group of youngsters, chattering in Spanish, came up the hill on the other side of the square, turned left at the corner, walked away, out of sight and out of hearing.
Grofield whispered, “Sit down on the bench here. Don’t move. Don’t make any noise.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just be quiet.”
He moved away from her, into the park, skirting the edge of the park just outside the ring of light from the bandstand. When he was on the side opposite the church and the Pontiac, he stopped to watch and listen.
No one. Nothing moved.
He crossed the street, moving with silent, loping speed, turned right on the narrow sidewalk in front of the shops, moved back around the square again to the church, this time keeping close against the buildings.
Two couples left La Cucaracha, talking loudly together in English, their voices sounding hollow on the silent air, as though they were in an armory or an airplane hangar. They moved away, down a side street.
An automobile nosed its way into the square, drove around three sides, and finally came to a stop at a place reserved for taxis. The headlights went off, the driver got out and locked the car, and went away. He wore a cap, he had a black moustache, and his white shirt was bunched like a life preserver around his waist. As he walked away, he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth as though he were thirsty.
Grofield moved down the row of cars in a half-crouch, came to the Pontiac, stopped beside it. It was empty and the doors were locked.
He moved around to the front and opened the hood. It made a loud sound that rang in the silence, like the sound an oven makes when it’s cooling. Grofield reached in, unable to see what he was doing, and ripped every wire he could get his hands on. When he was finished, he left the hood open; it would make too much noise to shut it.
He went straight across the street now to where he’d left Elly. She was sitting on the bench where he’d told her to wait. He whispered, “Phase one. They aren’t there. Wait here some more.”
“Where are you going now?”
He squatted down on his heels and rubbed his palms and fingers on the grass, wiping the grease from the Pontiac off them. “The only way they could have found us,” he said, “is through the car-rental office. They must have checked them out this morning, with lots of pesos and a good story, and the clerk we talked to yesterday told them all about us, and how I studied the road maps for San Miguel de Allende.”
“They’re fast, Alan,” she whispered. “That’s why they scare me, they’re so fast. And Honner’s a lot smarter than he looks.”
“We’ll see. The point is, they’re sure to have a description of the car. I figure that’s where I’ll find them.”
“You’re going after them?”
“I’ve got to. We can’t get back to the hotel without the car. And our luggage is back there, remember? Luggage.”
“Oh,” she said. “The suitcase.”
“I’m beginning to regret that suitcase,” he said. “I admit it freely. Money is a burden. I may write a monograph on the subject.” He stood up. “Later on. I’ll be back soon. You be ready to jump aboard.”
“All right.”
He moved away, taking one of the captured guns from his hip pocket. He’d brought it along as an extra precaution, feeling a little foolish to be carrying it but preferring to feel foolish rather than naked. This was the smallest of the three guns they’d taken away from Honner and his friends, a .25-caliber automatic from Italy, the Beretta Jetfire. Little more than a toy with its tiny grip and two-inch barrel, it would do the job at the kind of range Grofield might want it for.
Carrying it in his right hand, he moved off again into the darkness at the edges of the square. He was still moving cautiously, but more quickly than before, sure he’d find all three of them near the car.
The car was three blocks away, downhill. The street to it was lit at long intervals by light standards containing low-watt bulbs. It was a narrow street, cobblestoned, uneven, hemmed in on both sides by the blank whitewashed or painted walls of the buildings. Heavy wooden doors opened directly onto the street. Here and there a glimmer of light showed in an upstairs window.
Grofield stopped two blocks away, in a patch of darkness against a doorway, and studied the terrain. Ahead of him on the right there was a Volkswagen Microbus with Mexican plates, parked facing downhill. In the next block there was an elderly Ford with Texas plates, parked on the left facing uphill, and across from it a motorcycle was leaning against a yellow wall. In the block after that, away from any streetlight, was the rented Datsun.
No one was in sight.
Grofield, studying it, decided one of the three might be in or next to the Ford, another would be hidden somewhere on the downhill side of the Datsun, and the third would probably be either in the Datsun itself or in a doorway right handy to it.
First things first. The Ford.
Grofield looked at the narrow blank street, trying to work out an approach to the Ford, and from behind him came a sudden burst of conversation. He turned his head, and coming down toward him was a group of three couples, all elderly, talking away with great animation. Grofield waited, and when they got to him he smiled and said, “Good evening.”
They were surprised, but said good evening back to him. To keep them from stopping, Grofield fell into step with them, in the middle of their group, saying, “This
is my first day in San Miguel. I think it’s great.”
They all agreed it was great. Now that the surprise was over, they were all obviously pleased at his interruption; he afforded a touch of the unexpected to their night on the town. They were permanent residents, they said; each couple rented a house somewhere in town. They told him how cheaply a whole house could be rented—fifty dollars a month, forty dollars a month.
They asked him where he was from, and when he told them, they all began to talk about people they knew or had known from New York.
At the Ford, Grofield stopped abruptly and said, “Well, good night.”
“Good night,” they said. He’d stopped so suddenly the group had gone on a pace or two without realizing it, so he was already separated from them. They paused to wave, to finish sentences, and then moved on. Grofield opened the car door, showed the Beretta to the guy crouched on the floor in there, and said, genially, “Just think of the mess it would make.”
All cramped up like that, having hidden down there out of sight when he’d seen the group of senior citizens coming, he hadn’t had a chance to get at whatever armament he might have been toting himself. He stared sullenly at the gun in Grofield’s fist and said nothing.
It wasn’t Honner himself, but one of the others, the guy Elly had slugged. Grofield said to him, “What if this had been their car? Those old people? What then?”
The guy kept on looking sullen.
“Oh, well. Okay, come on out of there.”
The guy put one forearm on the seat, reached the other hand up to the steering wheel, and heaved himself upward into the descending path of the Beretta. The butt caught him on the temple and he sagged back down onto the floor again, his mouth hanging open.
Grofield, putting the gun away and crawling into the car, muttered, “One thing you can say for your job, you get a lot of rest time.” Moving with difficulty in the narrow space, he removed one of the guy’s shoelaces and used it to tie his thumbs together behind his back. Lying the way he was, all cramped up and with his arms useless, it was unlikely he’d get out of the car under his own steam. He was like a turtle on his back.
The Damsel Page 6