by Mike Resnick
I thought about it for a minute.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said at last. “I’m the only person who has any interest in Fuentes. If you talk to Federated they’ll know I’m in town, and you’ll probably be putting yourself in danger as well.”
“Who is this they you keep referring to?” asked Vallero. “You make it sound like a conspiracy of gigantic proportions.”
“I don’t want to discuss it on the phone,” I said. “If you want to get together at my hotel, I’ll tell you the whole story.”
“It is a story that I would like to hear,” he replied. “But I think my first order of business is to track down Fuentes for you. Does he have a police record? That would help.”
“Not in Mexico.”
“Well, I shall do what I can,” said Vallero. “Will you be at your hotel for the rest of the day?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll call you tonight or tomorrow morning and let you know what we have found,” he said.
I thanked him, hung up the phone, and sat down on a wicker chair with the guidebooks I had picked up in Mazatlan. They made boring reading, but the detective business as a whole is pretty boring. I’d liken it to big game hunting: hours and days and even weeks of boredom, punctuated by a few seconds of such danger that you wonder why you ever minded the boredom in the first place.
I had dinner sent up to my room. It could best have been defined as Mexican pasta and weak beer, and I was about halfway through it when the phone rang.
It was Vallero, telling me that one of his men had radioed in that a light was on in Fuentes’s apartment.
I thanked him, took one last bite of pasta, hit a green pepper head-on, raced to the bathroom to wash my mouth out with the lukewarm, semi-clear liquid that trickled out of the cold water tap, and went down to the garage.
A moment later I was driving the Honda south on Carranza Street, my pistol loaded and tucked away in my shoulder holster, hoping that I could finally get to the bottom of this mystery and maybe even get back to the States alive and in one piece.
Well, what the hell. I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, too.
7.
I pushed the doorbell, waited for the buzzer to unlock the inner door, and climbed the fourteen stairs to the second floor. Fuentes’s door was open, and he was standing just inside it, dressed in a colorful silk sports shirt and tan slacks.
“Yes?” he said in a soft, smooth voice.
“Riccardo Fuentes?”
“Yes. Should I know you?” he asked in perfect English.
I shook my head. “My name is Elias Paxton. I’m a private investigator working out of Cincinnati.”
“You’re a long way from home, Mr. Paxton,” he said smoothly. “Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you,” I said, following him into the living room. It looked like he had taken a broom to it since I’d been there earlier in the day.
“May I offer you a drink?”
I hadn’t seen anything but beer when I’d made my inspection, so I asked for a Scotch just to see where he’d been keeping it. He went to a cupboard that I would have sworn was empty and pulled out a bottle and a couple of glasses.
“With or without ice?”
“Straight is fine,” I said, frowning. I knew there hadn’t been any ice in his refrigerator in the afternoon, and I didn’t think he’d had time to make any, but he was evidently prepared to produce some if I requested it. It was possible, of course, that he’d come home from wherever he’d been, cleaned his house, and made some ice cubes, but it felt wrong.
He poured my drink, handed it to me, and sat down on a couch, gesturing for me to do the same.
“Are you sure it’s me you want to see?” he asked.
“Yes. You were on Federated Flight 308 a week ago last Sunday, weren’t you?”
He scratched his head and appeared lost in thought for a minute. “A week ago Sunday? Yes, I guess I was.” He looked up at me. “I didn’t mean to seem confused or evasive, Mr. Paxton, but I’m on duty one day and off two, and sometimes it’s a little hard to remember which day I worked.”
“Did you pick up a dog in Cincinnati?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I always check the cargo manifest,” he said. “I’m sure I would remember a dog.”
“Why?”
“Because if it was to be on board for any length of time, either Todd or I would have had to check on it to make sure it hadn’t gotten sick or overheated.”
“You dropped Binder off at Casa Grande?” I continued.
“Yes. I always do . . . did,” he amended. “He was a decent man. I’ll miss him.” He paused, took a sip of his drink, and then looked sharply at me. “You’re not here because of Todd, are you? I mean, I was told that his death was accidental, that he piled up his car on the way home from the airport.”
“No. I’m just trying to find a dog.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing,” he said, smiling again.
“Probably. I’ve just got a couple of more questions and I’ll be on my way. You were four hours late landing at Casa Grande. How come?”
He scratched his head again, then pulled out an aluminum comb and began slicking his hair back down. “Four hours, was it? I’m trying to remember what happened.” He frowned. “Ah, I’ve got it! We were having trouble with our landing gear.”
“Did you radio your condition to anyone?”
He shook his head. “No. It happens from time to time. Federated doesn’t exactly purchase the best planes in the world. We just diverted south and flew in a holding pattern until we got it fixed.”
It sounded phony as all hell—nobody flies in a holding pattern for the better part of four hours—but there was no way I could call him on it. In fact, everything seemed just a little phony. There was something very wrong here, more than just a suddenly cleaned house and a cock-and-bull story about defective landing gear, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Fuentes asked.
I didn’t want to leave yet, not until I could pinpoint what was bothering me, but I also didn’t want to invent foolish questions that might lead him to conclude that I hadn’t bought his story, so I just shook my head.
“I guess not,” I said. Then, since word of my presence in Monterrey was doubtless going to go out to any and all interested parties regardless of what I did next, I added, “I’m going to have to pay a call on the local Federated office. Is there anyone in particular that I should speak to?”
“A man named Felipe Cormangia.”
“How do I get there?”
“Have you a map?” he replied.
I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and unfolded it. He took a pen from his pocket, pinpointed where we were, and showed me the quickest and easiest route from his apartment to Federated’s Monterrey cargo office.
And suddenly I knew what was wrong.
His moustache could have grown a little longer since the photo was taken, but he sure as hell hadn’t learned to write with his right hand in the interim.
The second he saw my face he knew he’d made a mistake, though he probably didn’t know what it was. He lunged for me, trying to poke my eye out with his thumb, and as I backed away I bumped against the couch and lost my balance.
I fell heavily to the floor, and he leaped on top of me, swinging both hands wildly. I caught a heavy shot on the neck, but I managed to slip or block most of his other blows, and an instant later I brought my knee up hard in his groin. He screamed and fell off me.
I kicked him once in the face and once more in the groin, just to make sure most of the fight was out of him, then pulled my gun out and held it next to his head.
“Now we’re going to have another little talk,” I grated while panting heavily. “And this time I want the truth. First question: Who are you?”
He was too busy vomiting all over himse
lf to answer, so I waited until he was through and then asked him again.
“Fuck you,” he gurgled.
“Is Fuentes alive?”
“Fuck you!” he repeated.
“You can tell me or you can tell the Monterrey police,” I said. “But you’re sure as hell going to tell someone.”
He glared at me but said nothing.
I walked over to his phone and, without taking my eyes off him or lowering my gun, put in a call to Vallero. He wasn’t in his office, but I gave his secretary Fuentes’s address and told her to send a couple of cops over on the double.
Then I hung up the phone and walked back to the man on the floor.
“As soon as they get here you’re going to be charged with at least one murder and possibly two,” I said. “You could make things a lot easier on yourself if you’ll tell me what’s going on.”
“I never killed anyone,” he said, looking a little unsure of himself.
“If you’re just an actor, maybe you’d better tell me who hired you.”
For just a moment I thought he was going to talk. Then his face became sullen again, and he went back to glaring at me.
A couple of minutes later I heard a police siren coming up the street, and the man who wasn’t Fuentes rose painfully to his feet. He looked pretty unsteady, but I kept watching him nonetheless.
It was a good thing for me that I’m not a trusting soul by nature, because an instant later he reached into a back pocket, pulled out a switchblade, flipped it open, and hurled it at me, all in one motion. I ducked and snapped off two quick shots.
I had only meant to wound him, to shoot his legs out from under him, but he had crouched down as he threw the knife, anticipating a shot, and my first bullet went right through his left eye. He was dead before the second shot broke his knee apart.
“Shit!” I muttered, walking over to the body. I considered going through his pockets to see what I could find, but decided that the cops would be arriving any second, and just in case they didn’t feel it incumbent upon themselves to ring the doorbell I didn’t want them bursting in to find a gringo kneeling over a hometown boy while holding a smoking pistol in his hand.
I was about to go downstairs and lead them up to the apartment when I heard a pounding at the door. I let them in, explained that I had fired in self defense, and volunteered to follow them down to their station in my Honda. They didn’t like that idea, and even put a set of cuffs on me as they led me out.
I went through two hours of questioning that was right out of an old Warner Brothers crime-almost-pays movie before Vallero showed up. He shooed everyone else out of the grilling room, unlocked my handcuffs, turned off the light they’d been shining in my eyes, had an aide bring me a warm beer, and started asking the same questions I’d been hearing, but in a more sympathetic tone.
I spent an hour telling him the whole story, from the time I had first been contacted by Lantz. He listened thoughtfully, playing with the ends of his waxed moustache and chain-smoking cigars that weren’t much larger than a kingsized cigarette; but where Mike Pratt had agreed with my conclusions and jumped intuitively from one step to the next, Vallero was a methodical man who, while he sympathized with me, felt I was dead wrong from the first step onward. He kept pointing out that no one had actually seen the dog put aboard the Federated plane, that no one had proved the manifest was phony, that even I admitted I couldn’t prove that Alice Dent or Raith or Binder had been murdered. There were, he admitted, many strange things going on, but he felt that Pratt and I had jumped to our conclusions with too little evidence.
“That’s because they’re killing off our evidence faster than we can track it down,” I told him irritably.
He shook his head. “You haven’t been methodical enough.”
“You mean hunting down the Cincinnati desk clerk or the other freight loader?” I said. “The second word goes out that I’m looking for them, they’re going to turn up dead.”
“We will proceed on the assumption that you are correct,” he said softly, “since any other assumption is untenable given the circumstances. But could you not have contacted the various Federated offices along the route to see if any of their freight loaders saw a dog when they loaded or removed freight from the flight?”
I swore under my breath. “It never occurred to me,” I admitted.
“And,” he continued slowly, as if weighing each word, “could you not also have checked with the various aviation tracking stations to find out exactly what happened to Flight 308 during the missing four hours? It is my understanding that they have stations every fifty miles throughout the United States.”
“I should have,” I agreed. “But that still doesn’t explain what’s been happening. If I’m wrong, why is everyone trying to kill me?”
“Everyone is not trying to kill you. Possibly only one man, or one small group of men, is trying to do so. Possibly it is because of the dog, possibly not.”
“It can’t be because of the dog,” I said. “She simply wasn’t worth enough, and there was no way for anyone to sell or show her.”
“There is no way for anyone to sell or display a stolen Rembrandt,” he pointed out mildly, “yet five men have killed for Rembrandts during this century.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Rembrandts grow more valuable. Dogs just grow older. It’s got to be something more.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Unfortunately, you seem to have killed the only man who might have cleared the matter up.”
“I didn’t have much choice,” I said. “How long before your people can identify him?”
“Less than a day, I’m sure—if he is not Riccardo Fuentes.”
“He’s not. If you’ll send someone to my hotel room you’ll find all my data on Fuentes. I’ll bet none of it matches, from the appendectomy scar to the missing teeth.”
He lit another cigar, blew a pair of almost square smoke rings into the air, and stared at me for a long moment. “We found his knife buried in the wall, so even if he really was Fuentes, we will not be pressing charges against you.”
He paused. “But if you are correct, in whole or in part, about what you think has been going on, you seem to have reached a dead end: no dog, and no one left alive who can tell you what happened. Have you considered what you will do next?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“Then may I make a suggestion?”
“Be my guest.”
“I do not necessarily agree with your theories, but if we are to proceed for the time being on the assumption that you are correct, it would seem that no further attempt will be made to hinder you now that you have run out of suspects.”
“True.”
“What if, therefore, I were to withhold the information that the man you killed tonight is dead? What if I were to tell the press that he is merely wounded, and will be questioned as soon as he has recovered sufficiently?”
“I don’t like it,” I said after some consideration.
“Well,” he shrugged, “it was merely a suggestion.”
“Oh, I didn’t say we won’t do it,” I added quickly. “But I don’t have to like it. I’m going to be a piece of goddamned bait.”
“We’ll give you all the protection we can,” he said.
“You’d better protect the corpse, too,” I pointed out. “If they think he’s alive, they’re going to go after him even before they get around to me.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he replied with a smile. “I think we can prepare a warm welcome for them.”
“I just hope you can prevent them from doing the same for me,” I said devoutly.
“We can put you under around-the-clock observation,” he said. “But you must understand that, as with political assassinations, if someone is determined to kill you to the point where he will sacrifice his own life, there is probably nothing we can do to save you.”
“If they were that fanatical, I’d be dead already,” I said with more bravado than
I felt.
We spent a few more minutes talking. Then Vallero looked at his watch, announced that he had been on duty for close to fourteen hours and was going home to get some sleep, and arranged for one of his officers to drive me back to the Ancira. He promised that my Honda would be delivered to the garage before dawn and that the keys would be left at the front desk.
The night had turned rather warm and muggy, which the officer assured me was unusual for the mountains, and when I got to my room I found that it was quite uncomfortable. I closed the windows, turned on the air conditioner, discovered that it didn’t work, and settled for sitting under the slowly rotating overhead fan.
I put in a wake-up call for nine o’clock, went to sleep, and beat my call by a good forty minutes, thanks to a room service waiter who had tripped and sent an entire tray crashing noisily to the floor three or four rooms down from me. I sat on the edge of the bed, ordered a pot of coffee to be sent up, and called Nettles. I didn’t tell him what had happened, just that I was alive and well and sleuthing in Monterrey. He was polite enough not to ask why I had told him I was going to Cincinnati the last time we had spoken.
Then I called Mike Pratt and told him what had gone down. I wasn’t even worried about the call being traced. They knew where I was staying by now anyway, and if Pratt posed any threat to them they’d have taken care of him days ago.
“So you’re stuck down there until someone makes a move?” he said when I had summed up the situation.
“Right,” I replied. “My biggest problem now is going to be acting like I’m still following a lead rather than waiting to get shot at. See if there’s anything on the cargo manifest that was shipped all the way from Cincinnati to Monterrey. Maybe I can pretend to be following up on it.”
He promised to find out and get back to me, and was on the phone again five minutes later.
“Lucky you,” he said. “I’ve got two shipments for you to check out. Univax Computers sent a batch of chips to a joint called Monterrey Data”—I scribbled the name down—“and Amalgamated Laboratories sent some drugs to San Benedicto Memorial Hospital. “
“Drugs?”