The rear entrance into El Puno bore a marked resemblance to stage equipment doors on theaters off Broadway in New York. Huge steel panels mounted on rollers drew back to allow loading and unloading of scenery and fixtures. Now one of them was cracked slightly to allow cool air into the building. I slipped inside, but was hardly through the door when a hand grasped me rudely.
“You’re late!” a voice cried.
I glanced around at a tall, gangling Mexican woman who suddenly jerked me into a dressing room where thirty or more half-nude chorines were throwing on costumes.
“This is yours,” the Mexican woman said.
I blinked. The costume she tossed me wasn’t much more than three pink feathers from a very small bird. I started to tell her she had the wrong girl when a husky, well-built man came striding into the dressing room. He wore a blue suit and a black bow tie and his eyes gleamed brightly as he looked around. It was Luis Chucho. I ducked my head out of sight and unzipped the back of my dress.
“Girls,” Luis announced, “this is a big night for El Puno. Our first French-American revue. Do a good job and each of you will receive a special bonus—from me!” He winked and moved in my direction, patting some of the girls on their naked backsides.
I knew discovery now would wreck my plans. A pink-feathered mask went with the costume. I drew this over my eyes and peeled off my dress. He stopped behind me.
“Mady?”
That name struck a bell. The busty blonde doll with the all-over suntan on the billboard out front. Mady Some-thing-or-other. An American chanteuse. Apparently this was her costume. I nodded without looking around.
“I thought you were ill tonight,” Luis said. I could see his face reflected in the mirror through the slits in my mask. He held a cigarette in his teeth; an inquisitive smile on his lips.
“Lost my voice,” I whispered huskily.
“You have not lost anything else,” he said, admiringly. “Do not forget your promise after the show.”
“Oh, I won’t.”
“Good. I will expect you to come to my suite. At the top of the stairs. I will be waiting.”
“I can hardly wait,” I said.
He swallowed deeply, running his eyes down my torso. “Nor I.” He walked on.
The Mexican woman clapped her hands. “Girls, girls, you must hurry. Only ten minutes.”
There was a squeal of voices and most of the costumed women rushed from the room. I dabbed at my mouth for a few moments with a lipstick brush until Luis left, then I reached for my dress. The Mexican woman caught my arm again.
“No” she said, decisively.
“Look, dearie,” I lifted the mask, ‘I’m not Mady.”
“I know, but Luis thinks that you are. You must go on, or I will lose my job.”
“That’s better than losing your life,” I said, pushing her away.
Her eyelids narrowed. “Then why did you pretend when he talked with you? Huh?”
I didn’t answer, but stepped into my dress.
She knew something was fishy and it didn’t take her long to figure out what.
“You do not want him to know who you really are!” she exclaimed. “I will tell him, you are not Mady!”
“No! Wait a minute. What do you want me to do?”
“Dance.”
“What?”
“It is simple. You can do it as you wish. I will explain to Luis that I changed your number. You have only to do a little strip tease.”
“A strip tease?”
“Si.” She held up the costume. “Just remove the feathers. Then the men will carry you from the stage.”
“What men?”
She led me to the dressing room door and gestured at a group of dark-haired men standing in the wings of the theater. They were painted bronze. And that wasn’t all. Their muscular bodies glistened in the bright lights. They were stark staring naked. I stepped back into the dressing room and gulped.
“No,” I said.
“Luis is outside in the corridor—”
“No,” I repeated, unzipping my dress again. I tore off my bra and panties and fastened the costume to me. It was the sexiest damned thing since the invention of sin.
Bells began to ring. Music lifted from the orchestra pit. I walked out into the wings feeling positively lewd. My bosom swayed fetchingly, capped by the feathers, and the bronze men stared as I moved. The chorines danced onto the stage, singing, whirling. Some of them were bare from the waist up. Some from the waist down. Others wore masks and gloves and stockings. High heels kicked and tapped merrily as the revue got under way. El Puno was jammed.
Then came my turn. I tried to renege at the last second, but the Mexican choreographer pointed in the wings to Luis and gave me a shove. I spun out onto the stage. Applause exploded and suddenly through the slits in my mask I could see the bright lights, the taut, staring faces, and I froze. Cymbals clanged. Trumpets blared. Chorines fluttered, leaped and spun behind me. But I couldn’t move. The bronze men rushed out seizing me in their arms, whirling me in the air. When they stopped, I noticed one of my feathers was missing. Then I noticed something else. The biggest guy came at me with his hands cupped. He threw me to the floor. That’s when all hell broke loose. The choreographer hadn’t told me about this. Two of them converged on me. I leaped to my feet and kicked one in the stomach. The other I just kicked. They both crumpled to their knees, screaming. The curtain came down.
So did Luis. He came down on me like an avalanche, tearing off my mask.
FOURTEEN
“Mady was no lady,” I said to Luis, covering the spot where the feather was missing. “No wonder she’s sick. Anybody who could go through that routine three times a night and twice on Sunday ought to be in the hospital.” I rushed into the dressing room and threw a robe around my shoulders. Luis followed.
“You’ve wrecked my show!” he hurled.
I gestured at a couple of the bronzed men. “They were trying to wreck me. So we’re even. Now get out of here. I’m going to dress.”
“No you’re not!” He spun me around.
“Look, Luis, don’t try and be tough with me.”
“I will be any way I wish. This is my place.”
“So I understand. What happened to you Sunday night at the slaughter house?”
“That is my business.”
“It happens to be mine, too,” I said. “I wound up the fall guy of that little excursion. Where were you when they stripped and tied me to that tree?”
“I—I do not remember.”
“Come now, Luis, you can do better than that.”
“Leave me alone, Honey!”
“That’s what I want you to do for me.”
“All right!” he hurled. “But then I want to see you in my office. Pronto 1”
He strode from the dressing room, fists clenched, chin lifted defiantly. I slipped into my panties and bra, lifted the black sheath over my arms and zipped up the back. I smoothed on fresh makeup, brushed my hair and walked out into the wings of the theater. The curtain was up again revealing a sheet of ice on part of the stage. A curvaceous red-head twirled on silver skates to the music which floated from the orchestra pit. She was nearly nude, except for a thin cape of gauze, and as she whirled her smooth white body glistened in the hot fights.
“Where’s the ice come from?” I asked one of the American chorines.
“An elevator in the floor of the stage. They have an ice storage plant downstairs to keep it frozen.”
I was about to investigate when the muzzle of a gun pressed against my spine.
A voice whispered, “Keep smiling and head straight for that stairway.”
I didn’t argue. At the top of the stairs, the gunsel steered me down a corridor to a plush door with a gold handle.
“Open it!” he commanded.
I did. Inside was an exquisitely handsome suite of rooms: a pale sand-colored bedroom, a master bath with huge ivory tiles, an all-electric kitchen and a private little breakfast
nook and bar with a rectangular portrait of a matador in a gold and white suit glaring down savage-eyed. Luis waited, a cigarette dangling from his thin lips, a tall drink perched in his right hand. He pushed it toward me and signaled for the gunsel to leave the suite.
“Sorry I have to resort to such a method to bring you up here, Honey, but you are not to be trusted.”
“Who told you that,” I said.
“My better judgment.”
He poured himself a drink and offered me a stool at the bar. I shoved a thigh up and crossed my legs, staring at his swarthy face. Now was the time to play my cards right. One false move might be my last.
“What’s with you, Luis?”
“What do you mean?”
“When we first met I thought you were just some nice guy trying to help a lady out. Why’d you trick me?”
“I didn’t!”
“I suppose taking me out to the slaughter house was just your way of showing me the town.”
“That wasn’t my idea,” he said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.
“That’s right.” I ran my finger around the rim of the drink he’d handed me. “You take orders.”
“Not any more.”
“Oh?”
“Things have changed.”
“Since when?”
He shook his head hopelessly, squeezing the cigarette between his teeth. “You’ll never learn, will you?”
“Learn what?”
‘To stay out of other people’s business.” He gestured futilely. “You saw Pete take the horn. You knew he was dead. Why’d you have to stay in Tijuana?”
“Because I like the enchiladas.”
Luis scowled. “Everything would have been all right if you had gone home.”
I scratched the freckles on my knee. “Like what, for instance.”
“Like Maria Spota. Like Don Mano—”
“Like almost Honey West. What do they want me for?”
“Honey, you have been going around in circles.”
“Then straighten me out.”
His eyes strayed to the swell of my dress. “It would be a pleasure. But I can not.”
“What’s the big secret, Luis? Where’s Pete?”
He didn’t answer.
I continued, “At first, I thought he got it because of a syndicate, but now I’m not so sure. There’s something bigger than that. Something bigger than the plaza, this place and La Tita all rolled into one.”
“You are better off not knowing, Honey.”
“Pete’s the key to it, isn’t he?”
“He was.”
“He knew too much.”
“You might say that.” Luis crushed out his cigarette, turned and set the ashtray on a shelf behind him.
At that precise moment, I switched our glasses, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t discover the change. “Luis, are you Zingo?”
He revolved back around on his stool and laughed. “No.”
“Who is?”
“You would die if you knew.”
I lifted the switched glass casually and took a sip. “Isn’t that what you have in mind for me anyway?”
“Honey, do not spoil the occasion,” he said, joining me in a long draught. “You looked magnifico out there on that stage. Even if you did ruin the act.”
“It was the feathers. They tickled.”
He chuckled, taking another slug. “There’s one thing I like about you, besides your delicious body. You have a brain, Honey. Oh, what a brain. Einstein could not have done better.”
“Sometimes you talk very American, Luis.”
“My mother she was Americano, like you. Blonde. Blue eyes. She is dead now. It is too bad. She was a good woman.” He took another swallow and rocked sideways on his stool. His eyes glazed and he grasped the bar. “I want to tell you the truth about Sunday night. You were framed.”
“So I gathered.”
“Punta Punta was waiting out in the stockyard behind the slaughter house with a rag soaked in chloroform. We thought if we frightened you, you would return home.”
“Where do you fit, Luis? Are you the number one man under Zingo? You must be. You have very elegant quarters. You manage the best spot.”
He laughed again, rubbing at his eyes. Obviously he was unaware of the switch. “You are going in circles again, Honey. I have your little pearl-handled gun. And the cute garter with the holster—”
He fell off his stool, crumpling to his knees. “Holy God that was a strong drink, I—” He looked up at me, then it came into his eyes. “You—you switched drinks with me—
“All’s fair in love and war, Luis.. Last time I took the header, remember?”
He crashed over on his side, mouth open, eyes half-lidded. “Honey, you—you shouldn’t have done this—I—” He tried to cry out, but no sound came into his throat.
I bent over him. ’Who is he, Luis? Who is Zingo?”
He took a deep breath and rolled over, lips falling open into a snore. I slapped his face several times, but he continued to sleep. In the glow from a small lamp under the bullfighter’s portrait, Luis’s cheeks looked like well-tanned leather. Beneath his coat nestled a .38 revolver in a button-down holster. Six bullets nestled just as nicely in their respective chambers. I shivered. One of those, for certain, was meant for me. A search of his pockets revealed a set of keys, a box of cigarillos and a wallet stuffed with twenty-dollar bills and peso notes.
My attention centered on the odd-shaped portrait after I locked the suite door and listened for sounds in the corridor. The bullfighter wore a montera pressed low on his forehead and held a muleta in his left hand. There was something familiar about his face, although the artist had used his paints generously to create a surrealistic interpretation of the torero. A cocky, devil-may-care smile Bickered in the delicate features. The eyes gleamed wildly. It was the stare of a madman. Or a fiend about to commit some awesome crime.
Systematically I went through the suite with a fine tooth comb. Under a mirror in the bedroom I found a metal file box which one of Luis’s keys unlocked. It contained numerous record books, all with entries in English. An Accounts Receivable ledger listed shipments received over a span of three years. One recent entry specified: Four pounds ten ounces 5’17’60 HOY JOY. The name struck a bell. Very likely this was the boat which had attacked me near Rosarito Beach. Its cargo, no doubt, was illegal drugs. That would explain the heroin stashed under my convertible’s hood. That would also explain the big secret operation Luis had hinted at. Entries in the ledger added easily to a million dollars in dope traffic. No wonder they were out to get me with hammer and tongs. The same had apparently applied to Pete Freckle. He had gotten in their way somehow.
In a bottom drawer of a bureau I discovered my silk garter holster and pearl-handled Hi-Standard .22 revolver. I wriggled the band up around my right thigh and plunged the gun into its holder. Now I was ready for the gunsel, for Luis, for Zingo, for anybody. But knowing about the dope was frightening. Men who dealt in that sort of business would go to any lengths to keep their secret.
In the corner of another drawer I came across a photograph of Pete Freckle’s mother and father. Also a shirt with Pete’s initials monogrammed on the breast pocket. They were crumpled together as if they might have been picked up somewhere and stuffed there out of sight. That seemed very odd. Pete’s mother was an invalid and except for a constant supply of blood she would have been dead years ago. In the photograph she sat in a wheelchair, a genial warm smile on her wrinkled face, her hands interlocking with the gray-haired man who stood beside her. Pete’s father had passed on the summer his son left for Mexico. He had been a laborer all his life and wasn’t able to leave his family too well fixed. It was Pete’s ambition to make a fortune bullfighting in Mexico so that he could support his mother.
Luis was still sleeping when I returned to the bar to use the telephone. It didn’t take long to reach the Tijuana police station after placing my call, but getting through to Fred was the rea
l trick. I pretended to be a secretary to the American consul and after much authoritative badgering they finally put the crippled newsman on. Sensing they would monitor the call I continued my ruse even with Fred until he recognized my voice.
Then he asked, “Where’ are you?”
“You can guess, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you confess?”
“The Capitan knew I was staying at Las Tunas. He planned to take me there with his squad of men. So, to protect a certain party, I spilled the beans. Now I’m going to spill something else if they come through with a firing squad.”
“Keep calm,” I said, squinting down at Luis. “That certain party you’re talking about is on the verge of cracking open the case.”
“Good. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a roof over my head and the cockroaches don’t bite.”
“That certain party says she’s sorry. Were Jay and Bass able to help at all?”
“Not much. They’re a couple of right guys though. They gave it the old college try. Now I understand they’ve gone to a certain spot to dig for lead.”
“It may be more profitable than gold,” I said. “I’ll get back to you later. Don’t go away.”
“I won’t,” Fred answered, and hung up.
The operator dialed La Tita for me. The number rang three times before a deep masculine voice broke in. “Hola.”
“Hola to you,” I said, gripping the receiver. “Where’s Punta Punta?”
“Honey?” the voice demanded. “Is that you?”
“Jay?”
His voice lowered into a whisper. “Brother, am I glad you called. Listen, we’re in real trouble. The manager of this place caught Bass and me snooping around and he’s called the police. He’s outside now arguing with Bass about it. I’m in his office.”
“What happened?”
‘Well, I was doing what you told me, looking for .45 slugs in the wall near the front door when this character with a skeleton face comes running up and screams that we stole something.”
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