My next move was to El Puno. I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t quite five o’clock yet. The road out toward Rosarito Beach gleamed in the late afternoon sun. I parked behind Jay and Bass’s trailer and plodded ankle-deep through white sand to the door. Waves crashed invitingly on the shore and seagulls fluttered in a soft blue sky.
Once inside the trailer I picked out a black sheath that I’d brought along for just such an occasion. I stripped off my blouse and skirt and was climbing into the dress when the door banged open. A dark wry face poked through the opening. Also a pistol.
“Senorita West?”
“What in—?”
A slim figure in a police uniform came into the trailer. “You’re under arrest.”
‘Tor what?”
“For the murder of Maria Spota. Come along peacefully. There are other men outside.”
“Can’t you wait until a girl finishes dressing?”
Another man stepped through the door, also clutching a gun, smirking. He stared at me half-in and half-out of the sheath, focusing on my legs and thighs, the way I was hunched forward.
“Bring her along,” he spat. “Without the dress. Maybe she will get some idea how it is to be dead!”
THIRTEEN
Clad only in bra and panties, I was shoved out of the trailer and into a police car. Dusk was moving in over the hills, streaking the sky with its dark fingers of color. At the Tijuana police station three of the arresting officers took me into a back room. They were slimy looking characters with oily black hair and sharp, angular faces, blue in their unshavenness. I sat in a chair, crossed my legs and kept both hands in my lap.
“Senorita West,” one of the officers said, a wild stare in his eyes, “we want the truth.”
“And I want some clothes.”
“Did you kill Maria Spota?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Punta Punta. If you’ll take the time to examine the bullet—”
“Senorita,” one of the other men interjected, “the bullet passed through Maria’s body.”
My heart sank. That had been my one hope. If the slug had lodged in the dancer’s body they might have compared it with another fired from Punta Punta’s gun.
“Can’t you tell by the wound?” I said. “My gun’s a small caliber twenty-two. Punta Punta’s is twice as large. It would cut a much larger hole.”
“The bullet bounced off a rib,” the first officer said. “She was too messed up to tell what size the bullet was.”
“Just my luck.”
“Besides, Punta Punta is one of Tijuana’s leading citizens.”
“He’s a ruthless, cold-blooded killer,” I said. “He’d cut his own mother’s heart out if he thought it was worth anything.”
“Senorita, it is bad for you to speak like this. It can only go worse for you at the trial.”
They were literally feasting on me with their eyes. I guessed what the next step might be and I tried to figure a way of avoiding it.
“You are a powerfully built woman, senorita,” the third man said. “Perhaps you have something deadly hidden under your clothing.”
“What’s hidden is all mine. If you want to search me get a matron.”
“Matron?” the first man laughed. ‘We do not have such things. You Americanos are very funny. You come down here to Mexico for a few laughs. But you are what is funny. We watch you as you walk down our streets and we are laughing. You are such suckers. Stand up!” He ran his fingers along my bare shoulders.
“Get your crummy hands off me,” I said.
“We must search you, senorita, it is the law.”
“Just what do you want?”
The first man’s eyes gleamed. ‘We could be lenient with you, senorita. Very lenient, if—”
“Would you let me go?”
“Senorita, you ask the impossible.”
“That’s what I thought. Listen to me, your sainted Punta Punta not only killed Maria, but he shot the matador Pete Freckle in your arena last Sunday.”
The three men guffawed rudely. One of them grabbed me by the arm. I knew it was now or never. He jerked me to my feet, thick fingers plunging down the front of my bra, grasping. My hands caught his wrist, and pretending to be ticklish I swung around until he was behind me, arm over my shoulder. Then I jerked forward. He issued a quick gasp, which ended in a half-scream, as he went up into the air heels over head, crashing squarely into the two other men. They toppled like bowling pins, swearing, groaning, legs flying.
I tried the first door behind me. It led into a narrow corridor that was dimly-lit and smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes. There had to be a back way! I guessed at the right direction and turned toward another door faintly outlined in the distance. This opened onto a dark alley behind the police station. As I stepped out into the dust and dirt, I heard a cry somewhere in the building behind me.
Realizing I wouldn’t get far on the street in underclothing and high heels without creating some kind of alarm, I dashed across the alley and into the first door I could find. Pale darkness enveloped me. I slammed the door closed and listened. Faint murmurings of two people came distantly. I crept forward slowly, feeling my way along a wall. The voices grew louder. They were hushed, stilted, ominous like whispered gasps from the bottom of a well. I stumbled over some steps, climbed up and grasped what felt like a curtain. A finger of light stabbed through the black, wiggling, undulating in the distance. It became brighter and brighter as I moved in that direction, seeming to emanate from a hole in the dark. The voices intensified.
Suddenly a woman screamed. Then another. A man’s guttural tones rose in the inky void. I staggered back as the light splashed over me, dousing me with its brilliance. Something jerked behind me. I whirled and nearly jumped out of my skin. Two gargantuan figures rose up along what seemed like a straight wall of light. It was a man and woman and they were about six times bigger than lifesize!
Another scream rent the air. Then it struck home. I was in a movie theater. Light twisting down from the projection booth had illuminated me in front of the screen. A man yelled crudely in Spanish creating a tumult of laughter. I could imagine what had been said.
Getting out of the theater was no easy trick. I couldn’t find the back door, now thoroughly blinded from the projector’s glare, and blundered into curtains and walls until a narrow passage led me into one of the aisles. A match suddenly Bared held by a man with a dirty, puffy face. He lunged for me, a hand sliding over my right thigh, as I darted toward the foyer. The chase was on. Four or five Mexicans came hot on my heels as I sprinted through the lobby and onto the neon-splashed sidewalk. A young man in a gray coat and hat spun me around, eyes widening as he drank in my semi-nudity, a whistle forming on his lips. I broke loose, turned a corner and discovered another dirty, trash-littered alley a few feet farther and plunged into it. The wolves were not far behind. I had to find Las Tunas Hotel before they caught up with me or— Their yells and wails drove me through another door, straight into the arms of a white-faced American sailor.
“What the hell!” he rasped.
My hand went over his mouth as I swung the door closed. The pack went by outside, howling. The sailor had pale blue eyes and an aquiline nose. He kissed my fingers, peering down the deep V in the top of my bra. It kept heaving open even wider as I gasped for air. I covered the opening and looked up at him.
‘1—I—” My explanation seemed futile. Who would believe a story so fantastic as mine?
“I—I’m ready,” he said.
“Ready for what?” I asked, pushing his arms down.
“Ready for—well, you know what,” he said, shyly. “I’ve been waiting for about fifteen minutes. Ever since the lady upstairs took my money and told me to come down here.”
I glanced around. In a hare bulb’s glare I could see a rumpled bed in the comer. The odor of sweat and sex hung heavy in the low-ceiled room.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong girl,” I said, crossin
g my arms.
He wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Fortunately, at that moment, the right girl arrived on the scene. She was a frothy bleached blonde with sensuous dark eyes. She stopped on the staircase, robe open down the front, and hurled a vehement exclamation in Spanish.
I lunged out the door and into the alley again. What a way to spend an evening, I thought. I break out of jail, fight my way through a movie theater, and wind up in a brothel only to get daggers from the Number One girl. A heck of a way to make a living!
I finally found the back entrance into Las Tunas. The jolly-faced proprietor didn’t see me sneak up the stairs, and I made it all the way to Fred’s room without encountering anyone. The newsman’s eyes widened when he opened the door.
“Honey, what the hell are you doing?”
“Seeing Tijuana in my Maidenform bra.”
He crossed to a closet and tossed me a robe. “What happened?”
“What happened to you?” I demanded. “Manuel just about had me on ice. I had to throw everything but the kitchen sink at him.”
“I thought you were all right,” Fred blurted. “As soon as I got out that side door, I rushed downtown to the nearest telegraph office and filed a story.”
“Great newspaperman!” I said, dropping into a wicker chair. “No doubt you’re one of the guys who filed a Dewey victory in ’forty-eight before the polls were closed.”
“I didn’t mean to run out on you, Honey.”
“Look, you probably don’t realize it, Fred, but I’m in real trouble. The police arrested me for Maria’s murder.”
“Who sprung you?”
“I sprung myself. With a small lesson in judo.”
“Oh, brother!” Fred sagged on the bed. “Now what do we do?”
‘We get Punta Punta. But, first, I have to pay a visit to El Puno before Manuel crawls out from under that bronze statue I belted him with and warns Zingo.”
Fred snickered. “You propose to do this in your undies?”
“That’s where you come in.” I took a cigarette out of a pack near the bed and lit it. “You’d help the cause immensely if you’d drive out to the trailer and bring me back a dress.”
“What about the cops?”
“They’re looking for a dame in her B.V.D.’s. I doubt if they’ll get very far out of town.”
Fred shrugged his thin shoulders. “I don’t care how far they go. It’s us I’m thinking about. We ought to beat it across that border.”
“Go ahead!”
“But, Honey, I can’t leave you—”
“You said you didn’t mind taking a few chances.” I blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Well?”
He sank his teeth into a knuckle, then cursed. “Damn you, Honey! You always get me where the hair is short.” He stood up, bracing himself with his cane.
“I always thought you were somewhat of a long hair, Fred.”
“You know what I mean!”
He limped to the door, firing those wonderful eyes at me that were filled with anger and admiration.
“A black dress, Fred. And a gold purse.”
He nodded.
Two hours passed.
The ashtray beside the bed was crammed with lipstick-stained butts by then and my legs were sore from pacing around the room. My watch showed nine o’clock. The trip shouldn’t have taken more than an hour at the most. I began wondering whether the police had gone out to the trailer. If so, had they arrested Fred as an accomplice to Maria’s murder? Ten more minutes dragged by. Then twenty. I went to the window and peered down at the street below. A few cars moved slowly in the darkness. Neon lights blinked. Voices floated up.
Thoughts kept bombarding my mind like raindrops on a tin roof, jokingly, harsh, unceasing. Pete Freckle hung there in the void, a shapeless mass struggling for existence in the fibers of my brain. He kept crying out, the way he’d cried the day he was hit by the truck. We were seven. Two freckle-faced kids playing in the street. Then out of nowhere came the tanker, its huge wheels grinding along the road, its oily black body blotting out the sun. I screamed, but it was too late. Just as I had screamed that day in the stadium as the bull’s black body had hurled him into the air. When I reached him he was bleeding from his mouth and nose, a river of red coursing down the side of his thin face. He didn’t cry, but he looked at me as I lifted his head and his eyes cried out for me to help him. I rocked him in my arms until help came. I held him and cried like a baby.
I turned away from the window and lit another cigarette, the last one in Fred’s battered pack. My eyes stung and I felt sick at the pit of my stomach. Footsteps fell harshly in the corridor outside. I rushed to the door and flung it open. A hand held out my black sheath and gold purse and behind it was blond, grinning Jay Hook.
“Hi, Honey!” He entered the room casually.
“Jay, what in the world?”
“Bass and I decided to come down tonight instead of tomorrow. We were worried about you.”
“Where’s Fred? Fred Sims?”
“Jail.”
“What?”
“Yeah, the police arrested him at the trailer. About the time we arrived. Seems he was mixed up in some kind of shooting. He confessed right there on the spot.”
“Confessed?” I blurted.
“Yeah. Seems he shot some nightclub cutie named Maria Spota. The police thought you did it, but Sims said no, and confessed. Bass is down with him now at headquarters seeing if he can’t straighten things out.”
I sat on the bed. “The crazy fool. I suppose he figured he was doing me a favor by confessing.”
“He saved your neck, Honey. What’s been going on?”
“Jay, if I told you, it would take a year and a month of Sundays just to piece together the first day.”
He was handsomely dressed in an expensive gray cashmere suit and suede shoes. A large diamond sparkled on the third finger of his right hand.
He pulled the wicker chair up near me, cupping his slender hands on his knees. “Honey, why don’t you clear out of this once and for all? It’s murder.”
“You can say that again. A couple of murders.” I took the dress into the bathroom, stripped off Fred’s robe and stepped into the sheath.
“Listen, Jay,” I called to him. “You can do me a great favor if you’ll go to the police station and help Bass pull Fred off the hook.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do, Honey. He’s already confessed.”
‘Tell them he’s nuts. Throw all your Ph.D’s at them. Just get Fred out of there and across the border.”
Jay groaned. “That’s a mighty tall order, Honey. He’s confessed to murder.”
“Sure, a murder committed by a slimy little rat named Punta Punta.” I rearranged my hair, touched up my lips and walked back into the room. “Look, Jay, if you can’t spring Fred with a little medical hocus-pocus, drive out to a place named La Tita on Calle Valente. Look around for some .45 slugs that may be buried in the ceiling or walls near the front door.”
He swayed forward in his chair, nibbing his neck. “Sure, Honey, anything you say, only don’t get us into too much trouble. We want to help, but don’t forget—” he shrugged, “we’re just a couple of guys on vacation. We can’t afford to spend the rest of our lives in Tijuana, Mexico.”
“Neither can Fred.” I kissed his cheek and moved toward the door. “If you need me I’ll be at a place called El Puno. And thanks for the use of your trailer. It was great.”
He seized my hand and swung me around into his arms. “The trailer’s still yours,” he said. “Bass and I’ll sleep on the sand. We’ve got sleeping bags. It’ll be plenty warm.”
“No, I don’t want to put you out—”
“We want to keep our eye on you. We won’t help Fred if you don’t promise.”
“Okay,” I said. “See you there later.”
“Wait, Honey!”
I didn’t wait. I ran down the stairs to the street and flagged a taxi. I had to reach El Puno quickly. Be
fore Zingo had a chance to prepare for my coming.
The taxi was quite a surprise. Behind the wheel sat the duck-tailed Mexican youth who had driven Luis and me to the slaughter house that Sunday night.
“Well, if it isn’t Pancho Villa,” I said, hunching against the seat. “I thought you were dead.”
“Me, senorita?” he asked, apparently just as surprised to find me as his fare. “I am okay.”
‘Where’s Luis?”
“Luis?”
“You know who I’m talking about.” I removed a five dollar bill from my purse and shoved it into his hand. “Where is he?”
A grin spread on the mouth of the driver. “You mean Luis Chucho? The once great torero who lost his courage? The tall, handsome Luis who wears nice clothes and kisses all the senoritas “Well?”
The grin faded. “I do not know him.”
I shoved another five spot into his dirty palm. The grin reappeared. “You must mean Luis Chucho. The cocky coward who manages El Puno.”
I slapped my forehead as the realization struck home. “Of course! It all fits,” I said. “Punta Punta at La Tita. Luis at El Puno.”
The grin broadened. “You are becoming smart, senorita. You had better stay that way, if you wish to five. Do not go to El Puno.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “But no thanks.”
“They will step on you like a cockroach.”
“Maybe. I don’t squash easily.”
He lapsed into silence, hot eyes fixed on me in the rear view mirror. When he pulled up in front of the nightclub, he said, “Senorita, have you ever had molasses poured over you and been staked to the ground in the hot sun?”
“No.”
“The ants—the big red ones—they crawl on you. And they bite. It would be a shame to see this happen to you.” I nodded and climbed from the cab. When I paid the fare, I slipped him an extra five. “This is for the ant colony,” I said. “Buy ’em a brunette.”
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