by Sam Stewart
“Short of that … they kill us.”
“Well … I’d like to widen our options,” Mitchell said.
They continued in silence. He glanced up ahead to where the rockline veered again and angled to the sea. Climbing to the top of it, they saw what they were in for: the beach disappeared; the flat sheet of water made a bed against the rocks, very shallow, very clear. They could see Billy’s wall, like the walls of some fortified castle on the hill. On the opposite horizon, a solitary sailboat scudded on the breeze.
They sat on a boulder now, shucking their boots off and squinting in the glare.
Mack said rhetorically, “What other options?”
“I don’t know,” Mitchell said.
“I do,” Mack said. “There’s the quick and the dead, man, and nothing in between.”
He handled the Mag again, switching it over from his boot to his belt.
“There’s jail,” Mitchell said.
Mack looked at him ironically. “Yeah. So there is:”
“Billy—” Mitchell switched the .38 to his sweater. “What do you think he’d get?”
“He’d get F. Lee Bailey.”
Mitchell laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
They started wading through the cove, concentrating only on the motion and the shock.
“Fucking freezing,” Mack said. With the water to his kneecaps, he lit a cigarette. “Fucking polar expedition.”
“Change your mind about Spain?”
“Land of the snow-capped cojones,” Mack said.
“Keep hackin’ it, soldier.”
Mack started humming, “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” They were still a good four hundred yards from where the rocks jutted outward from the shore, arriving at a saw-toothed angle as they went, like a prehistoric alligator nosing out to sea.
Mitchell said insistently, “Suppose we got some evidence.”
Mack stopped walking now and stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Evidence. You know. Exhibit A, Exhibit B …?”
Mack wagged his head again and moved. “I repeat.”
“I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “Suppose we got into the house.”
“Sure. Okay. And suppose,” Mack said, “we find a bottle in the kitchen says ‘TMF.’”
“‘TMF Used in Naturalite Killings.’”
“Absolutely,” Mack said. “Except by that time we’re dead. We’ve been imploded by the Uzi.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Even so. What then?”
“Then … I was thinking of a citizen’s arrest.”
“Beautiful. Except you’re not a citizen, asshole. You’re a foreigner.”
“True.”
“Worse, you’re a wetback. You didn’t get a stamp on your passport, remember?”
Mitchell didn’t answer.
“Are you settled in your mind? Do you know what you’re doing now?”
“Punting,” Mitchell said.
The rocks curved around again and offered them a beach. This one was Billy’s—a half-moon of sand between the rim of the water and the sheer face of rock. The frontage looked to be about a hundred and thirty feet, about sixty going in. Above them, at the top of the weed-sprinkled cliff, the wall gave over to a low iron rail and to something very much like a fire escape platform, the stairs in a zig-zag pattern down the rock, where they stopped—midair about forty feet up. After that what you’d need would be the upended ladder that retracted to the roof.
He raised the binoculars and panned along the rock. Not a foothold in a mile. He focused on the low iron railing at the top and then down around the balcony and over to the stairs. He took it from the top again and watched it like a hawk.
None of it was wired.
Either that, or it was wired too subtly to see.
“So?” Mack said.
“So we take ’em on the road.”
30
“First of all, he doesn’t go out,” Joanna said. They had a table set up on the terrace of their suite at La Punta Hotel. Sitting in the sun eating cold spiced chicken and hot cornbread and tomatoes as God had intended them to taste, and a chilled Spanish wine.
Mack speared a leg. “You mean he doesn’t date girls?”
“I mean he doesn’t leave the house.”
“You mean never?”
“Pretty close.” Joanna was enjoying her moment in the sun. She’d played out the morning in the hot little office of the local La Prensa. “According to my good friend the editor-in-chief, whom I also have on tape”—Joanna pulled out her little four-inch recorder—“in case you don’t believe me—Exigente doesn’t budge. You remember that joke? Rich-bitch dame that’s got her kid in a wheelchair? Someone says, ‘Aw. Poor thing. Can’t he walk?’ and the woman says, ‘Yes, but thank God he doesn’t have to.’ Like that,” Joanna said.
Mack looked at Mitchell. “Well … shoots hell out of catch’-em-on-the-road.”
Mitchell sipped his wine. There were red Bermuda onions and he speared himself a thick pale juicy-looking slice. He was thinking that sometimes you got to make your own dumb desperate decisions, and sometimes life kind of dumped them on your plate. He was aware of Joanna, how she looked at him—eyes like a disapproving doe. Like Bambi’s aunt. He loved her that moment with a cumulative passion.
“According to my sources …”—she kept her voice even—“he gets everything delivered. Food … women … Uzis …” She paused and said, “You’re not going in there.”
Mitchell didn’t answer.
“He’s a gun collector.”
Mack took another piece of chicken.
“With a huge ex-wrestler and a guy that kind of doubles as a bodyguard driver.”
“That’s all?” Mitchell said.
“He’s supposed to have a maid.”
“A maid,” Mitchell said. “We’re familiar with the maid.”
Mack said, “Everyone’s familiar with the maid. Make you a deal.” He turned to Mitchell. “You fight the other guys, I’ll fight the maid.”
“Will you stop?” Joanna said.
They were silent, eating.
Mitchell looked up at her. “I can’t,” he said soberly. “I’m backed to a corner.”
“That’s bull,” Joanna said. “First of all, for one thing, why don’t you call the cops?”
“I explained about the cops.”
“Why don’t I call the cops?”
“Because he owns them,” Mitchell said. “A guy like Billy, the cops’re the first thing on his marketing list. He buys them before he buys orange juice and bread.”
“So what about Ortega?”
“What about him?”
“You like him. You could tell him what you know, he gets Interpol and a warrant.”
“That easy,” Mitchell said. “Like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t get a warrant until you’ve got the evidence and you can’t get the evidence until you’ve got the warrant.—Give up,” he said, “huh?”
Joanna shook her head. “Pay the goddam money.”
He looked at her awhile. “I can’t,” he said flatly. “Even if I wanted to. The company’s on the edge. He’s got me busted, Joanna. So I either stop him now or start folding up the tents.”
Joanna rolled her eyes and said, fold the damn tents.
Mitchell didn’t answer. He stood up silently and ambled to the rail. He couldn’t give it up because once in a while there were things you had to stand for aside from your own skin. The psychos and the sharks had been eating up the world, and everybody else rolled over and went to sleep. There were times you had to fight.
He paced, looking over at the fisherman’s harbor with its three-fingered dock, a few dozen boats still tethered and bobbing. Mack said eventually, “So … what now?”
***
She stood on the balcony and watched them for a while as they headed for the docks. She wanted to believe that it simply wasn’t likely, after all this tim
e, that she’d find him, that she’d cross her stars with him again, and then lose him again.
But then if you wanted to extend that notion, you’d have to believe in a moralistic plan, in a guardian angel, Individual Attention from the planetary eye, which ought to, if it kept its eye out for anything, keep it on The Bomb.
She leaned against the rail, watching as Mitchell moved farther away from her, becoming a small blue figure on the docks. So he’d try to get a boat. Okay. She hadn’t asked him how he planned to climb the cliff. And even if he did, if he made it to the house … a big strange house in the pitch dead of night and they wouldn’t know the layout. She thought: they’ll be killed.
She went back to the room again and paced around the bed.
At least there was time. They’d be back around six—or they’d told her they’d be back. But in any case they’d have to come back before they sailed because Mitchell’d left his goddam pistol in the drawer.
And the goddam Cartier phone book on the desk.
She stared at it awhile.…
***
Billy’d been snorting when Consuela came out to the recliner by the pool and said, “Señora on the phone.”
“Señora?” Billy said. “Señora who?”
He got a shrug.
Servants, Billy thought. They either didn’t do windows or they didn’t do phones. Or they didn’t give head. You had to compromise a lot.
Indifferently, he picked up the phone and said, “Moi.” Feeling his Cheerios, feeling the little round Oh-Oh-Oh’s doing cartwheels in his head.
He listened for a while. Listened to the voice, very serious and sexy with a catchy little catch, going “Mr. McAllister? My name’s Joanna Reese and I’m doing an article for Entrepreneur …”
Billy almost laughed. So they hadn’t forgotten him over in The World. He listened to the voice tell him flattering, tantalizing, elevating things, and then he listened to it listen. It wanted, it hungered to listen to him speak. It panted, it lusted for McAllister’s opinion.
Billy said, “How about … quarter after six.”
31
The boat smelled of fish, a good gutty smell. Mitchell breathed it in and went down through the hatch again and looked around the shelves at almost everything he’d need—enough fishnets and rope to answer a lot of problems. And a grappling hook anchor—small, two-pronged. He brought it through the hatch.
Mack was on the deck, unraveling a long coil of nylon filament that stretched between his hands, the left hand holding it loosely, like a cup hook; the fingers didn’t close.
“How’s it coming?” Mitchell said.
Mack nodded. “Thirty-five …” He kept counting as he worked. “I got forty-five feet.”
“Another yard,” Mitchell said. He lit a cigarette and then paced around the deck, looking at Mack who had the line around his wrist; he stretched it, holding it in tension with his foot and then slashed it with his knife. It was lightweight nylon but tougher than a nail. He tossed it to Mitchell. “You think it’s gonna work.”
“In theory.” Mitchell sat and then threaded it through the anchor. “Want to try it?”
“Not me, kid. I flunked it in Basic. I’m serious. We had a sergeant—Francis Xavier Ryan. I said to him, Sergeant—what do you expect from a kid that learns baseball from a nun?”
Mitchell laughed, tied a knot, a good strong anchor knot that almost ripped his hands. “This is only Plan F. Can you think of something else?”
“A Huey,” Mack said. “With a couple of door gunners. No.” He paced around. “When do we meet whatsisname—the guy with the rifles?”
“After ten,” Mitchell said. He folded a fishnet and tied it with a rope. Somebody sitting on the deck of another boat had started playing a guitar, very Spanish, very sad, and he suddenly thought about the beach house in Baja, Leo on the phone going, “Listen—there’s a private detective in New York …” Cy doing blackmail. He looked up at Mack. “I want to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you kill Sergeant Burdick?”
“Who the hell’s Sergeant Burdick?”
“Nam. In the can.”
“Oh.” Mack grinned at him. “That Sergeant Burdick.”
“It’s important,” Mitchell said. “What happened to him?”
“Died. In action, so to speak.”
“I said it’s important.”
“No,” Mack said. “I only found him, that’s all. It’s a very long story.—Why?”
“It’s a very long story,” Mitchell said.
***
Joanna checked her watch again. Twenty after five. She could wait half an hour. She opened her suitcase and took out the fuzzy pink sweater and the skirt and started marshaling her arguments:
1.) She’d be safe.
2.) She had her wonderful pocket-size recorder, so tiny you could stick it in a pack of cigarettes and leave it open on the table. Confident crooks could say incriminating things.
3.) If nothing else, she could ask to see the villa and especially the guns.
Reconnaissance, she thought.
She pulled on her pantyhose and lit a cigarette, then sighed and started working with the nightfighter makeup: the eyeliner, shadow-concealer and the base.
***
At Diego’s request, Patrolman Estanchez made the call to the Islas Baleares Garaje and spoke to the manager. Yes, he remembered the couple in the Jeep. The man, he remembered distinctly from the license, came from Beverly Hills, a location he remembered, having seen it quite often on a television show: Las Vidas de los Ricos y las Famas. Now wait … wait a second … where were the goddam papers … Yes, here they were. The name of the man would be Robert … Roy … he spelled the last name … and the girl’s—was Estanchez concerned about the girl?
Estanchez said indifferently, “Well … if you’ve got it,” and wrote it in his book. He went a step further and tracked them to a two-room suite at La Punta. Then, with the station completely to himself—the telephones quiet and Diego at an afternoon session with his mistress—he started to wonder what the hell was it about. Why Diego had pounced. What had gotten him hot about a Wrangler in the woods. Diego was an asshole but then, on the other hand, Diego was a crook. If Estanchez had one ambition as a cop it was nailing Diego, catching him with something disgusting on his hands, something that would grab the authorities in Palma. Obstruction of Justice. It would have to be that. But nothing to do with a man and a woman and a Wrangler in the woods.
Alamedas came in to take the six o’clock shift and said he didn’t think he’d last. He’d been having diarrhea which he graphically described. Estanchez said, “Thanks.”
Alamedas took the desk. “Que pasa?” Referring to the notes about the Jeep.
“Just a message for Diego if he calls,” Estanchez said. “Some banditos he wanted me to check about.” He laughed.
“Banditos?” Alamedas looked over at the notes. “Ya veo.” he said. “Si, si. Los banditos de Beverly Hills.” He laughed and said, “Jesus,” and hurried to the john.
The telephone rang.
***
Joanna left a note. She began it, Darling—Don’t be mad at me, but … I got an interview with Billy.
To start with, she put it by the phone in the living room and then changed her mind. She put it on the bed. And then just to make sure, she put his pistol at the side so it pointed like an arrow.
***
Mitchell walked into the quiet living room and flicked on the lights. “Joanna?”
No answer.
Mack walked over to the couch and sat down. “Cat’s away,” he said dryly. “I bet she’s out smooching with a bullfighter.”
“Smooching?”
“Screwing,” Mack said. “Feel better?”
The door to the bedroom was open. The maid had been in. The bed was turned down and the lights were turned off.
“Or how about she went for a walk,” Mack said. “Or she’s sitting in the bar.”
Mitchell said, “I guess,” and went over to the phone.
The guy who answered the phone in L.A. said, “McGinty, Squad Nine.” McGinty said, sorry, Ortega wasn’t there. He’d been kicked up to National Coordinating Officer and shuttled to New York. Mitchell couldn’t reach him but McGinty ought to hear from him in five or six hours. “If you want to leave a number …”
“No,” Mitchell said. “Forget it” Hanging up, he said, “Well … worth a try.”
Mack just shrugged at him.
“Listen,” Mitchell said, “maybe she was right. Maybe Ortega gets Interpol and a warrant. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Or none of the above.”
“There’s that,” Mitchell said.
“If you want to sickly o’er with the pale cast of maybe, could we do it in the bar? I’m getting hungry,” Mack said. And Mitchell said, “Maybe Joanna’s in the bar.”
32
Billy said, “So what can I get you from the bar?”
Standing there smiling, he looked, Joanna thought, like a haggard little boy. Tan cotton pants and a dead-white sweater. He’d said, “I’m Billy, you’re Joanna, let’s fuck.” Then laughed. “Only kidding.” Then winked at her. “So what can I get you from the bar?”
“Just a tonic would be fine.” Joanna looked around. The living room was large—white stucco walls and a wood-beamed ceiling. White shag scatter rugs and red leather wing chairs and a white linen couch. She followed him through an open doorway to a den. Like the living room, it gave on a terrace at the back; there were wide French doors.
“You a health nut?” Billy said. “You rather have a carrot juice?”
“A tonic’ll be fine.”
“In America, everyone’s a health nut,” Billy said. “They drink carrot juice and jog. No smoking, no drinking. Way it’s going,” Billy said, “pretty soon they’ll have printed-up signs in hotel rooms: ‘Thank you for not fucking.’” He laughed, looking up at her.
Nice, Billy thought. He liked the way she looked. Not too stupid but not too smart. But she thought she was smart. All the broads did. You had to play with them a little.
He poured her the tonic now and fixed himself another good vodka on the rocks. He was too high up; he realized it now but she was looking and he didn’t want to swallow any pills. No; he didn’t need any wiseass reporter saying, “Billy cooled out with a couple of Quaaludes and added …” But she wasn’t even looking at him now, she was looking at the gun case, the guns behind glass.