"You put yourself there. Why?"
"As you said, I'm a gambler."
"Not good enough."
"Perhaps I wanted to test another theory of mine. Chalice once said that if you ever found out about us, your first reaction would be to kill. I don't believe that. Particularly not now."
Eddie's words came as little bitter drops. "And that's what you're counting on. If I blow you away I lose my last chance to get out clean."
"What I'm counting on is your good sense. I'm not trying to take the girl away from you. She's there for both of us." "You prick. You cold-blooded prick." "What is it going to be, Eddie? The dice are rolling." Vasily, tensed and braced, felt movement above and behind him, and then the pressure of a bare foot in the small of his back. He sucked in breath, then forced himself to breathe it out. Another breath, another, and then the pressure of the foot relaxed, and was gone.
"Get going," Eddie said. "We can't stay up here all night."
7
The Mexican dogs began barking before dawn—first the strays on the square in the center of town, then the pets penned into jungled yards, the chorus finally joined by the wild pack that ranged along the cobbled road that led out of San Miguel de Allende. Their yowling split the stillness of what was left of the warm Mexican night, and as the gray edge of dawn appeared, the wails were augmented by a cascade of church bells tolling madly, an ornamental counterpoint of roosters greeting the day, and, in the case of Eddie Mancuso, the cracked voice of a drunken Otomi Indian singing of amor as he wandered down the road with his wood-laden burro.
Eddie sat straight up in bed, sweating and furious at being awakened. It happened that way every night, and neither alcohol nor Valium nor the ear stopples that always fell out while he slept could get him past the crazed cacophony of the Mexican dawn. It woke him that way every morning, and once awake he stayed awake, jaded, unrested. And now, hungry.
He crawled out of bed wearing only shorts and T-shirt, eyes half shut as he stumbled across the tiled floor and down the stone staircase toward the kitchen at the bottom of the house. He passed through a series of gardened patios, and beyond them in the fields saw his sheep stirring lazily, his rabbits in their hutch making breakfast on alfalfa. The sheep and the rabbits were silent, but they were part of the dawn, and he glared at them.
In the kitchen a pile of crisp tortillas lay on the shelf next to a bowl of mangos and avocados, guavas and oranges. He stared down at the fruit with bleary eyes, trying to decide. All the fruit was good, and the oranges were particularly sweet and delicious, but it took fifteen minutes of passionate squeezing to produce a decent glassful. He thought longingly of a container of Tropicana, of Egg McMuffins, of lox and bagels from Zabar's, and in a final burst of self-pity wished heartily for that simplest of luxuries, a glass of water he might drink directly from the tap. In the end he heated a can of tomato soup, spooned it up with a dried tortilla, and washed it all down with a bitter cup of black coffee.
With the hunger pangs eased, he decided to try for more sleep. As he climbed the stairs he hurried past Chalice's bedroom as he always did, hoping not to hear what he heard too often on his early-morning travels, but through the door came the clear squeak of bedsprings, then Vasily's mutter, Chalice's moan. He grimaced and ran from the sounds, pounding up the stairs and hoping childishly that the noise he made would distract them. Back in his room he stretched out on the bed, kicking away the damp and tangled sheets, and closed his eyes. He lay with his stomach knotted and his jaws clenched before dropping into a tossing, troubled sleep.
The house that Vasily had found for them in San Miguel de Allende was perched on a steep and cobbled road that twisted up from the village in the valley, leaving the narrow, dung-filled streets and then striking out arrow-straight across the brown desert to join the highway heading south to Queretaro and on to Mexico City, hours away. The house was built into the side of the hill, rising from a walled courtyard to a succession of brick levels that topped the crest. The walls continued down behind the house, on a slope dotted with prickly-pear cactus and chaparral, enclosing the shed that they used for a workshop. The shed was private, and within the walls grew just enough withering grass to support the small flock of sheep that grazed there daily.
The people of San Miguel were puzzled by the sheep, but their curiosity was idle and prompted no questions that could not be answered with a shrug. The middle-aged European with the courtly manners and excellent Spanish, the sullen little American who seemed to glow with contained resentment, and the attractive woman who walked between them with such a jaunty step ... ah, well, it was known that most gringos were loco, and if these three wished to keep sheep they were simply proving a point that all Mexicans knew. Besides, San Miguel was filled with American eccentrics: the young, guitar-strumming art students at the Instituto Allende, the retired elderly slowly shriveling in the fierce year-round sun, and the inevitable leavening of slow-talking dope dealers, would-be painters, sometime writers, divorcees, and booze mechanics; all on the run from something up North, even if that something was nothing more than boredom. They drifted into and out of town on the seasonal tides, and the three people on the hill were lost in their numbers. It was that kind of a place.
Their cover story was simple: three old friends, all aspiring painters, come to San Miguel to capture on canvas the exotic panorama of the desert. At times they went to the various street fiestas, with fireworks and plumed Indian dancers, at times ate an indifferent meal in town, and at times strolled around the zocalo at sunset while the birds shrilled in the trees and the town band played off-pitch Verdi. But most of the time they stayed at home, working at their art.
With its rising layers of terraces and flowered gardens, its long, cool bedrooms floored with multicolored tiles, the house on the hill was large enough for three strangers to have lived there comfortably, and in the beginning the three could well have been strangers. The top tier of the house belonged to Eddie, the next below was Chalice's, and Vasily occupied the lowest level, close to the cobbled road. The Russian had assigned the quarters on the day after their arrival from the Yucatan, and they had accepted the arrangements indifferently. But if Vasily's intention had been to create a symbol—Chalice sandwiched between the two men—Eddie had made sure that the symbol remained only that.
For Eddie Mancuso was sulking. That was the only word for it.
He had been sulking since the pyramid at Uxmal, and his depression had deepened in San Miguel. Their second night in the house, a warm night made balmy by the drifting scent of jacaranda, he lay sleepless in his bed and heard the soft pad of bare feet on the steps outside. He stiffened, alert, but did not move. A moment later he saw her shadow cross the window glass, heard the click of the opening door, and smelled at once the fragrance of Diorissimo as she entered the room. He saw the familiar curves of her flesh through the wisp of white she was wearing. She sank to the side of the bed, sitting on the edge.
After a silent moment, Eddie said, "No sale, Chalice. I'm not interested."
Her finger touched his cheek. "I know you're angry and you're hurt, but I can't believe that."
"Why not? We didn't sign any contracts. All we had was some good times in the sack. Now it's over."
"I still can't believe it." One hand gently touched his shoulder, while with the other she made light, circular motions on his chest, stirring the curly black hair.
He felt the tingling in his shoulder and chest, but he forced himself to lie rigidly, his arms under the blanket, staring up at her. "Does Vasily know that you're here?"
"Of course he does." She was rubbing him with both hands now, making wider circles, swinging lower. She leaned over him, and through the gauzy fabric her nipples, stiffening, grazed his skin. "What I have with Vasily has nothing to do with you. And vice versa. Can't you see that? 1 still feel the same about you. Nothing's changed."
"Not for you, maybe. But for me it has. You're wasting your time."
Disregar
ding that, breasts pressing, lips at his neck, she was all over him, hands fluttering lightly across the blanket covering his thighs. "I know you, baby. I know how your mind works, and how your body works, and I know . . ." She broke off with a delighted chuckle as her hand on the blanket found the thick, long protuberance between his thighs. Delight turned to triumph. "Now tell me you don't feel anything. . . ."
Sweat broke from his forehead. "The hell with what I feel. This is what you feel."
He drew his right hand out from under the covers, and the bulge in the blanket disappeared. In his hand was a pistol. It was pointed directly at her. She did not know that it was a Mauser, but she did know that it was the largest pistol she had ever seen.
He said coldly, "Here's my erection, ready to go off. I heard you coming two minutes before you got here. Anybody else, he would have been dead. Now, for the last time, will you get out of here?"
She stared at the pistol, fascinated. Then she shook her head. "You'd never use that on me."
"Move," he said, his voice tight, high. "On the count of three, you get it. Now move. One . . ."
Chalice smiled.
"Two . . ."
She puckered her lips, blew him a kiss.
"Three."
Her lips were still puckered when he pulled the trigger. A jet of water hit her face, a ramjet as heavy as a baby fire hose. It was the Vesuvius of water guns, the Mount Etna of toys, and it soaked her face, her hair, flowing down her breasts to her waist. She stood, spluttering, trembling, hands knuckling at her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Eddie said, chuckling. "I guess I came too quick, huh?"
Chalice fled, dripping water over the tiles and the handwoven Indian rugs. Eddie heard her footsteps pattering swiftly down the stairs. Then the closing of a door, then silence. The smile vanished from his face; his laughter died.
Keep laughing, he told himself. That's the only way you're going to make it.
After that night he continued to sulk, speaking rarely to Chalice, and then always in a flat tone that refused any show of friendliness. To Vasily he spoke only of the mission, their work: designing and creating, fashioning new equipment, foraging for supplies, testing and retesting the nuts and bolts of their profession, and, most important, exchanging the tricks of the trade each had accumulated over the years.
"Lilies of the Valley," said Vasily. "You cover them with vodka and heat them on a burner. Then strain off the liquid and simmer what's left to a thick paste. The nerve toxin that results is both quick and fatal."
"I've heard of that one, but I've never tried it," Eddie said. "Did you ever use mountain laurel?"
"I'm not even sure what it is."
"Kalmia latifolia. Probably doesn't grow where you come from. Anyway, you put some in a glass jar and set it out in the sun for a day. Then you throw out the laurel and recap the jar real quick. What's left in the jar is straight sodium cyanide gas. Nice, huh?"
"Lovely. Just put the jar on top of a door. When the victim walks in the jar falls and breaks, and it's all over."
"Neat, too. No evidence, just some pieces of glass."
"Tell me, do you milk your own snakes, or do you buy the venom from dealers?"
"Always milk my own," said Eddie. "I may be a city boy, and cows confuse me, but milking snakes is my specialty. Rattlesnakes are easy. It's those damn boomslangs that are tough to do. The fangs are set so far back that you can't get at them."
"I might be able to help you on that one. Try pegging the jaws open and using a suction pipette."
"Yeah, that might work. If you can get the snake to cooperate. Most of the snakes I know are touchy that way."
"What do you know about lasers?"
"Plenty. We've got this thing called Project Flash Gordon. The Air Force started it with a Marked Target Seeker system. Parker wanted me to take it a little further—use a gas amplifier and turn it into a heat source."
"What about using laser fusion in a device?"
"Hey, wait a minute. We've got eight individual hits to make. You're talking about something that would take out a blockhouse."
"Just thinking out loud," said Vasily, and went on to talk about methyl mercury as a tissue penetrant. Eddie countered with the advantages of using dimethyl sulfoxide, and they were off again, exchanging treasured secrets. They went on that way for hours at a time, and it was only during those freewheeling discussions that Eddie found himself able to relax. He had always respected
Vasily Borgneff professionally, and now he found himself liking him as well. The Russian was the first person he had ever been able to speak to openly. They knew each other's worlds, and in the fertile ground of those long conversations on death and dying they each saw the seeds of a friendship sprouting.
He's okay, Eddie decided. No matter what else is coming down around here, this guy is okay.
He's a solid person, was Vasily's estimate of Eddie. He's a master of his trade, and he's good to be around.
But despite this relaxation, Eddie continued to sulk outside the workshop. He rejected the hopeful smiles of Vasily and Chalice just as he rejected everything else that was lovely all around him: the old Spanish-style house, the bountiful gardens of purple bougainvillea and red geraniums, the crystal air, and the fire-and- salmon-colored sunsets over the distant lake. Eventually he even rejected the food prepared by the two sober-faced, black-haired maids, one afternoon pushing aside a fragrant plateful of polio mole poblano in disgust.
"I'm finished eating this Mexican crap," he announced. "Once, just once, I want something made without chili peppers."
That afternoon he tramped down the long hill in the afternoon sun to the supermercado and filled two shopping baskets with canned hams and frankfurters, baked beans, assorted soups, cookies, and jarred fruits. He ordered two cases of Pepsi-Cola to be delivered, and then took a rattling taxi back up the hill. Thus supplied, he quit the dining-room table and ate his meals in his room—the ultimate rejection.
Thirty-eight years old, and Eddie Mancuso was sulking.
"I warned you," said Chalice, at breakfast with Vasily and heartily attacking huevos rancheros and frijoles. "I told you it would be this way."
"May I smoke?" Vasily, already finished with his spartan meal—one slice of smoked ham, one slice of dry toast, two cups of coffee—inspected thin Cuban cigars in a gold case. When Chalice nodded, he selected one and lit it. After a long puff, he said, "You once told me that if he ever found out about us he would kill. First me, then you. You said nothing about him behaving like a child."
Chalice shrugged. "Whose idea was it to tell him? "
"Uxmal was a gamble. It happened to work."
"You mean that he didn't freak out. But can he function?"
Vasily considered this seriously, frowning at the tip of his cigar. "Quite so," he murmured. "That's the operative question. And at the moment, the answer is no. Not at one-hundred-percent efficiency."
"Can you do with less?"
"I wouldn't want to bet my neck on it. Or his, for that matter. I've grown fond of Eddie."
"In that case, you're betting both your necks on a three-legged horse. He's unhappy, he's depressed, and ever since Uxmal he knows that there's no Santa Claus."
"Chalice, he had to be told. Of course, I expected a reaction. He is a romantic. I expected anger, perhaps a blow, even a challenge to a duel. All followed by an eventual acceptance of the facts. What I did not expect was a lovesick teen-ager." He cursed softly in Russian.
"I told you what he's like."
"Very well, and since you know him so much better than I do, what do you predict? Will Achilles continue to sulk in his tent, or will he come out? It rather depends on you, doesn't it?"
"Look, I want him," she said angrily. "I made him an offer and he shot me with a water pistol. Vasily, don't you dare start laughing. . . ."
"I'm not," he said, and made sure that he wasn't.
"Well, how do you think that made me feel?"
"Wet," he mur
mured, and then added quickly, "and humiliated."
"Damn right I was."
"Tell me, as a point of information only, how often does Eddie ... I mean, when the two of you are together, how often is he accustomed to . . . ?" He raised his eyebrows delicately.
"Often enough, and that's all I'm saying."
"Fair enough. I leave tomorrow for the south—I'll be away for at least a week. Time enough, I should think, for reconciliation."
"I'm not making any promises. It might not be water in the gun next time."
"Do it, Chalice." He rose from the table and smiled down at her. "Get our Achilles out of his tent before I return." The smile faded. "Because if he stays inside, we're dead, both of us. And possibly—under the circumstances—all three of us."
Mancuso, sulking, bent over the workshop table, a jeweler's loupe in one eye. In his left hand he held the stripped-down chassis of a Polaroid Pronto camera, in his right hand a fine-edged tweezer. From a metal tray he picked out a tiny screw and set it into a slot on the camera frame. He twisted his fingers, but instead of engaging, the screw slipped out and clattered onto the tray. He found it with the tweezers and tried again, his fingers barely moving, but even that gentle pressure was enough to pop the screw loose from the mounting. He frowned, tried a third time, a fourth. On the fifth attempt the screw engaged and turned. He set the camera down and examined his hands critically, still frowning. He had always been able to depend on his hands. At the sound of footsteps outside he quickly bent over the camera again, threading another screw into the frame. Mercifully, it engaged at once. He continued to work on the assembly, aware of Vasily's presence behind him. On the last two screws his hands slipped again. He did not raise his head until the mounting was complete.
Then he looked over his shoulder. "That's it. Finished."
"You seem a little tense, Eddie." Vasily's voice was solicitous. "Your hands."
"Nothing wrong with my hands."
"Really? You seemed a bit—"
"There's nothing wrong with my hands," he repeated flatly. "It's finished. I can adapt it to the Nikonos or the Leica, too. We can test it anytime."
THE DEATH FREAK -- An Eddie Mancuso Thriller (Eddie Mancuso And Vasily Borgneff Book 1) Page 7