“No!” Jay roared. “That’s not true! Look at Bass. He’s a practicing dental surgeon, winner of two awards from dental colleges for work in his field. You can’t accuse us of this. It would ruin us forever.”
“What were you trying to do to me that day on the boat?” I demanded. “It was a neat bit of flying, Jay. You should have been a stunt pilot.”
“Honey,” he argued, “you have this all wrong.”
“The only thing wrong, Jay, was trusting you. I let you plant a package of heroin in my car. I let you scare Maria Spota into giving me that note. I let you fool me into thinking you were going to help me, instead of sending those ghouls with a machine gun. You showed your hand tonight by opening this grave. You were probably curious, as two medical men would be, about the extent of damage after five days of burial. But only somebody who knew where the grave was could have found it in the dark.”
Bass lunged forward, leaping over the grave and knocking the revolver from my fingers. I fell back and rolled with the blow, kicking at him as he slid by, ramming home a heel to his ribs. He crawled to his feet and dodged a vicious swipe of Fred’s cane, then flattened the newsman with a hard right.
Patty Robinson dove for my loose gun, hut Jay was too fast. He caught her from behind, tearing the robe off her shoulders. The raven-haired torero fell forward, stumbling into the open grave, screaming. She was naked under the robe and both Jay and Bass stopped for an instant, open-mouthed when they saw her roll over.
Bass reached for the gun, but I kicked him again and the revolver slithered across the dirt, dropping into the swimming pool.
“Let’s get out of here!” Jay yelled, dashing toward the garage. Bass followed after him, stumbling over a chair and sprawling headlong, then springing up and continuing after the other man.
I helped Patty out of the grave and lifted Fred up with the assistance of his cane. They were both wide-eyed. Fred for a different reason. Patty was standing before him stark naked.
“Quick!” I directed. “I need a gun!”
“There’s one in the house,” Patty said. “A .45, in the desk near the front door.”
I grabbed Fred’s hand. “Come on, before they get away!”
The crippled newsman fell and picked himself up again as we rushed through the house, stopping only to get the gun in the desk drawer. When we reached the front of the house, Jay and Bass were just pulling their car around the Mercedes-Benz. They turned on the narrow bridge, almost going over the side.
We were in Patty’s automobile by the time they reached the street. We pulled around, wheels kicking up dirt, and started after them. Their tail lights kept us on the trail for a few minutes, then they dwindled in the darkness like dying embers.
“We’ve lost them,” Fred announced.
I braked to a stop at a lonely intersection and read the sign. Wind blew a tumbleweed across the road, and, distantly, a dog howled.
“I’m going to follow a hunch,” I said. “We’re heading for the airport.”
We drove south again, along the old Mexican trail, until we reached the turn-off to the airfield. In the flares lit along the runway, we could see a sleek-looking Beechcraft with blue wings and a red-striped tail. Its propeller was turning angrily, cleaving the night with a fierce howl. I ignored all signs warning automobiles to stay off the field and drove onto a cement apron toward the warming airplane.
They must have spotted us because a burst of machine-gun fire exploded violently, sending a shower of metal across the front of the Mercedes-Benz. The engine stopped.
I leaped out, running toward the plane, the .45 cocked in my right hand. A figure in overalls dove for cover along the apron as I squeezed the trigger. A bullet zinged into the ship’s fuselage. At that moment, the racy craft lunged forward, angled around and headed toward the main runway. I crossed a taxi strip, stumbled over some rough ground, and reached the cement artery just as they turned into the wind.
I was about a hundred yards from where the Beechcraft now stood poised, wings trembling, propeller spinning. They suddenly released the brakes and barreled toward me. I aimed Patty’s revolver at the moving plane and ripped a shot dead into its nose. Even from this distance I could recognize big Bass as he stuck the machine gun through a window slot and opened fire. Bullets ricocheted off the cement, screaming from the impact. The plane hurtled toward me like a maddened bull, filling the night with its sound. I pulled the trigger again. Bass’s face squeezed together. He lifted his hands to his chest. The prop gnashed the air, almost in my lap. I fired again.
The Beechcraft lifted up, engine howling, wings wobbling. It soared over my head, the wheels missing me by inches. I ducked to the cement and took one last passing shot. Suddenly the plane’s arc changed. Its nose dropped sickeningly and smashed into the cement.
NINETEEN
Men came running from all parts of the field as the plane split open into a bubble of orange flame and burst up into the night sky like a miniature atom bomb. Pieces flew in all directions, some skidding past me on the cement runway.
By the time Fred reached me, some of the men were squirting the remains with fire extinguishers, yelling in Spanish, cursing.
Fred helped me to my feet. “You okay, Honey?”
“I think so.”
Things had happened so fast I wasn’t sure of anything, except that Jay and Bass were dead. That I was sure of. There was nothing left of the Beechcraft but a molten, battered skeleton.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, turning my eyes away from the wreckage.
We walked across the field, Fred limping at my side, to Patty’s Mercedes-Benz. The front end was torn from the machine-gun bullets.
“Will she still run?” I asked, studying the holes.
“I think so,” Fred returned. “She must have died on you before.”
I fired up the engine and backed around until we were on the road to the main highway.
Then Fred asked the question. “Did you get either one of them?”
“I don’t know,” I said, quietly, remembering how Bass jerked forward in his seat. “I think the engine quit when they tried to lift her into the air too soon.”
We found a little all-night cafe off the main road and turned in. I was still shaking. Fred sat opposite me in a booth and we just stared at each other for a few minutes.
The newsman twisted a fork in his thin fingers. “They seemed like two nice, decent fellows. Why, Honey?”
I groaned. “Don’t ask me why, Fred. Why do people take the stuff in the first place?”
“They get hooked.”
“Yeah,” I said, solemnly, thinking of Pete Freckle, the hoy, running through high grass, shouting happily at the top of his lungs, legs thrashing merrily.
“They sure do,” I said biting my lips.
It took until Sunday to straighten things out with the Tijuana police. They had so many charred, rotted and battered bodies lying around they didn’t know where to begin. A thorough search of Jay and Bass’s trailer produced enough evidence to link the two Americans with one of the largest dope syndicates ever uncovered. They also caught the Hoy Joy making one of its drops at the float and started a chain of arrests that closed out the entire syndicate from its origin in Mexico City.
Fred drove back to Long Beach Friday morning, but I stayed on mainly to help Patty Robinson iron out her problems. After many long discussions she decided to shed her male identity. The new impresario of the plaza capitalized on the decision immediately. He ran several hundred posters announcing the most sensational news in the history of bullfighting. The great Rafael was to fight his last match Sunday in the Tijuana ring. They decided Patty should make her announcement at the conclusion of the afternoon.
I didn’t stay to see the matches. I couldn’t, remembering the Sunday before when Pete Freckle had been gored. As I was driving out of town I passed by the stadium. From over the sun-strewn rim could be heard the wild cry, Ole! Ole!”
I drove on down the highway, s
eeing in my mind’s eye the wild crashing of hoofs, the flurry of the cape as the bull thundered by; Patty Robinson standing in the center of the arena with her cap lifted, a smile on her pretty face.
I drove on. The dirty little streets of Tijuana faded behind me. Faded into a dusty hot afternoon.
Dig A Dead Doll Page 15