I made something of a production of figuring the bill and tip and translating the pesos into dollars for Gloria’s benefit. Actually, although it looked like the national debt, it came to less than ten bucks, not bad for two pretty good dinners, several beers, and a fairly generous propina. It became obvious that none of the four young Mexicans was going to approach us; they were engrossed in their own laughing conversation. I sighed, got up, and helped Gloria with her chair; Buff Cody was going to have a real reputation for courtesy in this part of the world.
Outside it was still daylight, but the sun had dropped a noticeable distance toward the western horizon. The low light made the shabby little town of Cananea look quite picturesque, with shafts of golden sunshine striking through the dust raised from the unpaved streets by the passing cars and trucks, mostly vintage vehicles. I noted that the red pickup was gone. It had been replaced by a very battered jeep, presumably belonging to one of the kids inside. No one seemed interested in us standing there in our wedding clothes beside our expensive American convertible.
I drew a long breath. “Scratch one rendezvous,” I said. “As we Texans say, a water haul.”
“What do we do now?”
“We were given no fallback routine; but we do have a hotel reservation in Hermosillo. Maybe that’s the fallback; maybe our contact just wanted to check us out first, here. Anyway, I see no alternative.”
“Well, wake me when we get there. That beer made me sleepy. I’ll be glad to get out of these clothes and into a comfortable bed.” She glanced at me sharply. “Alone.”
“Si, Señora. No amor. Qué lástima.”
“What was all that garbled Spanish?”
“I just said it’s a pity.”
“Down, Rover.”
But she was smiling faintly as she got into the car. I closed the door on her and went around to slide behind the wheel. I started the engine and checked the dials and the rearview mirror…
“Glory, dear,” I said.
Something in my voice made her sit up and look at me sharply. “What is it?”
“Pass me a Kleenex, please. Somebody seems to have been messing with my mirror.”
I pointed. Soaped on the left-hand outside mirror of the Cadillac were two numbers and two letters: KM95.
8
Driving off into the sunset, I didn’t turn my head to look back, but I did use the mirrors. They showed nobody back there who seemed interested in our departure, only a bunch of dirty kids beyond the restaurant, playing some kind of a game that involved a lot of running and shouting. They displayed plenty of healthy energy, even if their moms didn’t wash their little faces quite as often as would have been considered proper north of the border.
Nevertheless, I had a hunch somebody’d hung around long enough to see if I’d spotted the message. If so, he would have seen me cleaning it off the mirror, presumably having read it first. Or she would. The pretty little lady in the shabby black dress and the red shoes? Or her peasant companion? The pleasant, dumpy woman with the blue apron who’d served us? One of the four jean-clad kids from the jeep? What about Mason Charles, Junior; could that whole performance in the rest room have been faked for reasons still to be determined? If so he’d taken some awful chances with guns; we could easily have wound up in a Wild West shootout. No, I didn’t really think it was Charles. Probably our contact was somebody who’d been careful not to let himself, or herself, be seen; but I wished he, or she, had been a little less cryptic and let us know what the communication meant. Correction: the meaning was fairly clear, it was the precise application that had me puzzled.
“What does it mean?” Gloria asked. “What’s KM?”
“Karl Marx, of course,” I said. “Come on, Mrs. Cody!”
She threw me a resentful glance. “Well, I suppose it must stand for kilometers, but… Ninety-five kilometers, that’s about fifty-seven miles, isn’t it? But fifty-seven miles from where?”
Our relationship had changed somewhat since she’d analyzed it for us. In a sense we’d made a deal: she’d combat her natural inclination to consider me a dangerous, macho meathead if I’d refrain from treating her as a brainless, gutless society bitch.
I said, “A kilometer is roughly six-tenths of a mile, check. And in the absence of indications to the contrary, I’ve got to assume that we’re supposed to measure our distance from right here in Cananea.” I pushed the button to set the trip odometer back to zero. “The catch is, if I remember my geography correctly, ninety-five kilometers will take us well past the little town of Imuris, where we’re supposed to turn left—south—on the main highway that comes down from Nogales, on the Arizona border, and goes to Hermosillo, Guaymas, and the whole west coast of Mexico. But that’s a hell of a busy road; I kind of assumed we were sent this way, instead of through Nogales, because somebody wanted privacy…”
“Matt, look! Sorry, I meant Horace. But look!”
I looked ahead where she was pointing. There, at the side of the highway, was a small, square, white, official-looking post. Painted on it in black was: 84KM. I shook my head at my own obtuseness. As I drove, I’d been vaguely aware of the roadside mile markers—well, kilometer markers—but I simply hadn’t made the connection.
As we passed it, Gloria said eagerly, “Obviously we’re not supposed to drive ninety-five whole kilometers from here; we’re simply supposed to find the ninety-five-kilometer post. Which way have the numbers been running?”
“They started at Agua Prieta and they’ve been getting bigger ever since.”
“Well, it seems as if we only have eleven kilometers to go. About seven miles. Let’s go!”
She was all caught up in the wild excitement of it; she, a mere amateur, had solved the riddle and saved the day for the stupid pro. I let the fancy automatic transmission—I hate the damn things—work its way up through the gears, if gears are what those slushboxes have inside them. We passed some enormous heaps of orange-brown gunk from the mine and headed up into the wooded hills. Excuse me, the Timber Mountains. The road climbed to a pass called Puerto de Cananea, 1840M. About 5500 feet. It wasn’t real mountain-goat country, there were no spectacular cliffs or peaks, there was just a lot of evergreen landscape standing more or less on end. Beyond the pass the country was more arid, and the vegetation was much less dense, although it seemed odd that the slopes facing the wet Pacific Ocean should be the ones lacking moisture.
The highway builders had made no effort to move the mountains out of our way in U.S. road-building fashion. The highway followed the folds and dips and precipitous slopes faithfully, the pavement was atrocious, and as we labored out of one ravine and plunged into the next I’d be blinded by the sun that was sinking rapidly ahead of us. Some of the kilometer posts were missing. Number ninety-two appeared on schedule, but ninety-three was not in its appointed place.
“There’s ninety-four,” said Gloria. “What are you doing?”
I’d put my foot down and the Allante was gaining speed. “We had a date in Cananea, and a man with a gun was waiting for us. I think we’d better just blast on past this rendezvous and see what’s there. You watch on your side, and I’ll watch on mine.”
Doing about sixty, which was all that road was good for, I saw the kilometer post a couple of hundred yards before I reached it. There are very few marksmen who can figure the correct lead for a target traveling at eighty-eight feet per second that only presents itself for an instant, and there were no marksmen waiting. There was only a small dirt road running up the side of a hill and, parked just off it, barely visible through the brush, an old brown van. No enemies waiting in ambush but, on the other hand, no cheering crowds, no welcoming band.
“Anything on your side?” I asked as I took the next curve fast.
“Just brush and trees and cactus.”
“One brown Dodge van on mine. Nobody around it, but I couldn’t see inside it.”
“Matt, aren’t you going back?”
I didn’t remind her that I was supposed to
be Horace around here; I was debating whether or not to pass a slow-moving Arizona Chrysler with a sticker on the rear bumper that, translated, read I LOVE MY DOG. However, LOVE was represented by a red heart, and DOG by a picture of a German shepherd, a somewhat unreliable canine in my opinion; but then I’m a Labrador man myself. I hoped our man Greer had got the pup to Santa Fe all right and that he was settling down well to kennel life. I remained in line behind the slowpoke, since I wouldn’t be following him long.
I spoke without looking at my companion: “From now on, please do exactly as I tell you. For a start, unbuckle your seat-belt. We’ll be unloading fast… No, please, there’s no time for a question-and-answer session now! We can talk later.”
I didn’t have to unbuckle my own claustrophobia straps because I wasn’t wearing them. Maybe they’re okay for peaceful civilians, but in the business your life can just as easily depend on your ability to get out of a car fast as on your ability to stay in it. Gloria had choked down a protest, but her expression was hostile again. So much for détente.
She said stiffly, “I hope you know what you’re doing, because I certainly don’t. And please remember that I’m hardly dressed for acrobatics.”
I said, “How you’re dressed, and how I’m dressed, is one of the few things we’ve got going for us right now… There, I see a good spot up ahead, I hope. Stand by to disembark. Bring your purse. Leave the car door open.”
The rearview mirrors were clear for the moment. I slowed and swung the Allante onto a small dirt road that headed over a low hill to the right. The dog-loving Arizonians disappeared around the bend ahead. When I got the car to the top of the rise, pitching and bucking in the ruts, I found that the track didn’t go anywhere; it just stopped at a wide, level, open spot surrounded by brush and littered with cans and bottles and other trash. Maybe it had once been a parking space for the machinery that had built the road. I stopped, set the parking brake, and switched off, leaving the keys in the lock. Getting out, I reached in back to get a sturdy paper bag displaying the name of the hardware store I’d patronized in Douglas, Arizona. Gloria was moving, but in a hesitant way, as if reluctant to leave the luxury car for the great outdoors.
“Out!” I snapped. “Back to the highway on the double… Dammit, I said leave that door open!”
She reached back to yank it open, more vigorously than necessary, and walked off stiffly, but stopped to look back at the white convertible, which had the hastily abandoned look of a ship after the crew has taken to the lifeboats.
Gloria turned to me in protest. “But we can’t leave it in this garbage dump, and not even locked! It’ll be stripped by morning!”
I said, “What does it take to keep you moving? Come on!”
I took her arm, not very gently, and hurried her down to the highway and across it. One of the ubiquitous Mexican buses went roaring by heading east, leaving a stink of diesel.
“Matt, I really don’t like the way you…”
“You can tell me all your don’t-likes in a few minutes, sweetheart. You left some good girl-tracks over there, real beauties. Now I want you to put a nice, clear, high-heeled print of your left foot in that soft spot, facing the highway, as if you were moving toward a parked car… For Christ’s sake, this is no time to worry about a little dust on your shoe! Now a dainty right toe-print here… Swell, even a city boy ought to be able to read that sign like the Last of the Mohicans. Now grab this paper bag and hang onto it, along with your purse. I’m going to pick you up and carry you so you don’t leave any more pointy little heel marks.”
“Look, this is absolutely crazy…”
I said, “If you prefer, we’ll let you clamber around this landscape in your stocking feet, but it looks mighty stony and uncomfortable and hard on the nylons… Okay, put your arms around my neck and hang on tight, but don’t drop that bag.” Lifting her, holding her, I grinned at her flushed and angry face, very close. “Ain’t it hell what a man will do to get a dame into his arms?”
Behind us, as I made my way down into the roadside ravine with my warm but resentful burden, I heard a big semi going by to the east, followed by a passenger car of some kind. I didn’t turn my head to look. In spite of her fashionably slender look, she’d turned out to be a substantial girl. She was all I could manage to carry, and I didn’t want to stumble and drop her. She’d leave marks that would be hard to erase; besides, she was mad enough already. Some westbound traffic went by on the road above and behind us. We were well down the slope now, too far down to see or be seen; but I found myself listening closely. I didn’t hear a vehicle stop. At the bottom of the gully, I set the girl on her feet.
“Matt, if you don’t explain this minute…!”
I said, “Just stand there; don’t leave any more footprints than you have to. I’ve got to go back and fix a couple of places where I slid. Thank God Cody didn’t go in for very high-heeled boots.”
She licked her lips. “He was thinking of me, he said; he didn’t want to tower too high above me at the altar.”
It seemed like oddly considerate behavior for a would-be murderer. I said, “A real sweet guy sometimes, huh? Don’t move, I’ll be right back.” When I returned, carrying a branch of desert juniper that I’d used to brush away the more conspicuous traces of our descent, she started to speak angrily, but I cut her off: “That paper bag, please.”
She handed me the sack and watched me produce a small canteen full of water, a little pocket telescope, a compass, and a couple of folded pieces of paper. The canteen went onto my belt; the other items into my pockets.
“Matt, if you think I’m going to…!”
I remembered that I’d suspected that her beautiful mouth could develop an unbecoming pout. I’d been right, and her voice had acquired a typical spoiled-brat whine to go with it. She’d been fun to have along when she’d eagerly spotted the mileage marker, like a clue in a happy treasure hunt; but she was getting tiresome now.
However, I tried to speak patiently. “I don’t think we have much time, Gloria. Please be quiet and listen. There’s not much cover here, and I’d like to put a little more distance between us and the highway. Besides, I want to be up on the ridge where I can see what’s happening. But I’m not Superman and I can’t carry you up, it was hard enough bringing you down. So I’d appreciate it if you’d make the climb under your own power. Please? Watch where you put your feet. Stay on your toes as much as possible and try not to let your heels dig in. Okay?”
She shook her head violently. “No, it’s not okay! I’m not going to move another step in this ghastly wilderness until you tell me exactly what you think you’re doing!”
I said, “Dammit, I’m trying to save our lives, baby! Please start climbing.”
“No! Not until you explain…”
I didn’t want to hit her—that is, sure, I wanted to, a little, she was a stubborn, infuriating bitch, but I didn’t know how she’d react to physical abuse. Anyway, she’d told me the proper weapon to use against her. If she hated and feared guns, hell, I’d give her guns. At the sight of the .38 her face changed shockingly.
I said, “Either you move or you get shot, sweetheart. After listening to all this gripe, gripe, gripe I don’t really give a damn which you choose. Just make up your cottonpicking little mind… Okay, that’s better.” I drew a long breath as, after a momentary hesitation, she turned sullenly and started to climb. “A little to the left now. Swell, you’re doing fine.”
She had to lift her hem considerably in order to negotiate the steep hillside. I should have found the view intriguing as I climbed along behind and below her. I’m usually a sucker for a neat derriere in a smoothly fitting skirt, slender legs in sheer nylons, and, for a bonus, occasional glimpses of a lacy slip or petticoat. I could excuse my lack of reaction by saying that I was too busy with my juniper broom, brushing out the traces of her progress and my own, one-handed; but the fact was that having to threaten her had made me feel lousy. I don’t like, at any time, waving guns stupi
dly at people I have no intention of shooting. I particularly don’t like it when it works too well.
I mean, this girl should have known that, no matter how much she annoyed me, I wouldn’t fire. For one thing, I had orders to preserve her, and for another, after all the trouble I’d taken to hide our tracks, I obviously wasn’t going to cut loose with a cannon blast and let everybody within miles know where we were. But instead of spitting in my eye defiantly, as she should have, instead of calling my bluff and leaving me standing there foolishly holding my silly firearm, she’d surrendered abjectly at the sight of it. I remembered the gray terror on her face in the washroom in Cananea, and I remembered again that this was the girl who’d let herself be frightened into marrying a man almost three times her age. Lovely as she was, and bright and pleasant upon occasion, she was clearly lacking something in the courage department. Well, when they’re beautiful enough I guess they don’t have to be heroines.
“Easy, now,” I said at last. “The old Indian fighters never silhouetted themselves on the skyline. Cut around through that notch to the left… Are you okay?” She’d slipped to one knee.
“Well, I just ruined a stocking, but I don’t suppose-that means anything to you.” She started upwards again wearily. Her voice was bitter, as well as noticeably breathless from her exertions. “You might at least have let me change out of my wedding gown, such as it is, before dragging me on this mad mountain-climbing expedition.”
The Frighteners Page 7