Unexpectedly, in view of my getting-lost record on this Mexican jaunt, I drove straight to the right unit without any detours or misadventures. I pushed the button on the Subaru’s dashboard to unlock the tailgate—my newly acquired heap had almost as many power conveniences as the demolished Cadillac, surprising for a fairly rugged little wagon with four-wheel drive. My worldly belongings, as far as Mexico was concerned, were contained in a light blue canvas carryall with piping and handles of some kind of darker blue plastic that was supposed to look like leather and didn’t. Well, the canvas didn’t look much like canvas either.
As I approached the motel door, bag in hand, I found that I was relieved not to have the girl with me, although it was a waste of a perfectly good honeymoon suite. Still, I missed her in a way, and I hoped I hadn’t left her too worried and frightened after Ramón and I had worked it out over tortillas and beans and coffee brought us by a dark-faced commando.
“I would rather hear your thoughts on the subject, amigo,” he’d said when I asked him just how big an assortment of what kind of arms he was hoping I’d help him keep out of the hands of the would-be insurgentes. “Let me see if your reasoning parallels ours.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know a hell of a lot about military hardware,” I said. “But if you want me to kick it around… four truckloads? What kind of trucks? Big semis?”
“No, they were not the large articulated vehicles. Those could not have been maneuvered on the small dirt road on which they were found. With the bodies of Jorge Medina and the four drivers lying nearby.”
I said, “They killed the drivers, too? Interrogation?”
“Yes, they had also been questioned brutally, like Medina. But apparently Medina had been clever and changed drivers after hiding the shipment, so those men knew nothing. Either that or they were very heroic, which seems unlikely. In any case, we know that they did not talk, or Mondragon would already have the arms.”
I wanted to ask the dimensions of the trucks involved, but he was obviously testing me to see if, perhaps, my brains had atrophied since we’d last met. I worked it out in my head and, for four moving-van-type vehicles, not too large, got the rather startling answer of roughly six thousand cubic feet of merchandise weighing, if the drivers didn’t mind straining their heaps a bit, around one hundred tons. This translated to something like three thousand assault rifles, a million rounds of ammunition, with space left over for some heavy machine guns and missile launchers and a reasonable quantity of grenades.
I said, “Wow, we’re getting into some pretty impressive figures here! I didn’t realize you could fight a war from just a few lousy trucks.”
“It is what we fear,” said Ramón.
I drew a long breath. “Three thousand guns is a lot of guns. Can the underground arm of this National Liberty Party come up with three thousand men to use them? And if so, can three thousand men take Mexico?”
“Fidel Castro took Cuba with eighty-two men, amigo.”
“Well, for a start. As I recall, he picked up a few reinforcements as he went along. But Mondragon is no Fidel, from what I saw of him. And your government may not be run by perfect angels with shining wings, but they’re no Batistas. At least I don’t think you have the heritage of oppression and hatred that makes instant armies spring out of the ground like mushrooms.”
Ramón sighed. “But there is inflation and poverty and dissatisfaction, although I will deny that statement if you ever quote me. And this is Mexico, my friend. Traditionally, in bad times here, an ambitious politico who has a plausible cause and some rifles to offer has always found men to shoot them.” He shook his head. “No, the PLN can probably not find that many men at the start, but more will come to them if they have any kind of success. And, no, it is not likely that they can take Mexico, although Mondragon does have a considerable following among the people. I do not, myself, think these men can win, but I have been wrong upon occasion. Even if they lose, however, they can turn my country into a battlefield, at least the northern part of it. Wounds can be inflicted that will bleed for generations. But it will not happen without the rifles.”
I was beginning to think that my companion might really belong to that rare, endangered species called patriot. Well, there are still a few of them around, even in our dark and dirty business.
I said, “So let’s find the lousy guns and remove them from circulation, one way or another. How are you planning to explain releasing us to search for them, a subversive Yankee arms smuggler and his moll?”
“The young lady stays,” Ramón said. “I require her with me so that I can display her as a hostage for your good behavior. I will report to those who must be informed that I have made a bargain with you. I have promised you that your crimes, to which your wife must be considered an accessory since she accompanied you willingly, will be forgiven if you carry out this mission successfully. Mr. and Mrs. Cody will simply be escorted to the border and sent back into the Estados Unidos with a warning never to return.”
I regarded him for a moment. It was pointless to ask what would happen to us if I was not successful. It would depend entirely on his political power and his political position. He wasn’t a vindictive man, but he wasn’t a sucker for friendship, either, if friendship was what we had. Faced with a failure that threatened his career and an armed revolution that could destroy his country, I didn’t think he’d risk very much to save me or my female associate, in spite of his promises, if somebody, say Captain Alemán in his role of political officer, demanded our blood.
All this was between us, unspoken, as he asked, “Where do you intend to start?”
“I can give you a better answer after you’ve told me what you know.”
Later, when he’d finished briefing me, and I’d made some suggestions to which he’d agreed, I said, “Okay, let’s put the show on the road. I’m the doting older bridegroom terrified by the threats you’ve made against my young bride. How could I bear to let you stick her into one of your filthy Mexican dungeons, you lousy greaser bastard?” I drew a long breath. “Let’s go see her so I can explain it to her.”
We found her eating her lunch at Ramón’s desk. She finished her coffee with a gulp and rose to face us. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I never was much of a picnic girl; I don’t like eating off my lap.”
“It is perfectly all right, Señora.” He smiled. “I apologize for the crude facilities of my camp, but you seem to have made good use of them.”
Actually, the improvement was startling. She’d discarded the forlorn remnants of her wedding costume and cleaned herself up carefully. She’d even washed her hair. Still damp, and stripy with the marks of the comb, it was beginning to return to gold at the ends as it dried. She was wearing a new gray chambray work shirt, stiff new blue jeans and blue-and-white jogging shoes over white gym socks. The damp hair, and the tape on her cheek—and another patch on the heel of her right hand—not to mention the other scrapes and scratches, made her look like somebody’s kid sister, a tomboy brat who’d just been washed off and patched up after getting mauled in a game too rough for her. It was hard to reconcile the rather wholesome picture she made now with the image I carried in my head of the disheveled but seductive glamour girl who’d conned me, not altogether against my will, into a violent moment of passion on the mountain.
She licked her lips. “What… what’s going to happen to us now?” she asked.
“I’m going out to save the world,” I said. “Well, at least the Mexican part of it. You’re staying here as hostage for my good behavior.”
“You will be quite safe, Señora,” Ramón said.
After a doubtful moment, she gave him a slow smile that had nothing tomboyish about it. “Oh, yes, I am sure I will be, Mr. Cacique…”
Now, in Hermosillo, I realized that I was stalling at the motel door. There’s always that sense of foreboding as you enter a new phase of an operation: you’ve survived the early threats and traps, now what’s waiting to kill you? I d
rew a long breath, turned the key, slammed the door back, and threw my little canvas bag into the room, hoping that the carpet that received it, and the pajamas in which I’d wrapped it, would preserve the expensive bottle inside.
Inside the honeymoon suite a gun fired.
15
The girl was wearing a rough serape thrown back over her left shoulder, leaving her gun arm free. There was something familiar about her, but I didn’t take time to make the connection, although she hadn’t shot again.
Figuring that no pro of any competence would let himself be tricked into shooting at a decoy bag, I’d made the kind of tumbling dive and roll into the room that can work when you’re up against amateur opposition; the amateur will shoot behind, always. You hope. But there had been no more shots. I’d come up into a crouch with the .38 ready, and there she was, holding a small automatic pistol awkwardly. If it had been aimed anywhere near me I’d have fired, but it was pointing in a vaguely upward direction, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. Responding to the threat of my gun, she held it away from her gingerly as if she’d picked up a dead rat by the tail. I saw her fingers start to relax.
“No!” I snapped. “Don’t drop it, dammit! Put it down on the big chair, gently. Pone la pistola…”
Hollywood to the contrary, you don’t go around dropping loaded automatics unless you’re looking for an interesting variation on Russian roulette—when they bounce they tend to go off in any direction. I was still trying to figure out the Spanish for lay that pistol down, baby, when she reached behind her to place the weapon on the seat of the chair in which she’d presumably been waiting when I startled her to her feet. She did it without looking, without taking her eyes off me. I knew her now; she was the girl of the shabby black dress and the high-heeled red shoes I’d seen, with an older male companion, in Cananea.
She licked her lips. “It is as I thought before! You are not…” She paused, frowning. “I was told the reservation was in the name of… But you are not that Cody, Señor!”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but let’s not shout the news all over Hermosillo.”
I maintained a poker face, and I hoped a poker voice, but her voice had given her away: it had been louder than it needed to be. She was pretty good, she didn’t once look toward the door leading into the other room of the suite, but she might as well have. It seemed unlikely that she’d jacked up the volume because she thought I was hard of hearing. On my feet now, keeping her covered, I sidled toward the outside door and listened to make certain nobody was charging up to ask who was shooting whom in here. No one seemed to be interested, which is often the case with a single, muffled, small-caliber report that could be a backfire or somebody slamming shut the trunk lid of a car.
I closed and locked the door. I motioned the girl aside and moved past her cautiously to gather up the pistol lying on the chair cushion. It was a cheap little weapon; a nickel-plated, hammerless auto so trashy that the manufacturer hadn’t even had enough pride in it to stamp his name clearly on the slide—perhaps he was afraid of bending or cracking the flimsy metal if he hit it too hard. The caliber had come through in readable fashion, however: .22 L.R., for Long Rifle, the little rimfire round I’d once discussed with Gloria. I found the catch, released the magazine, and pulled back the slide to eject the round from the chamber. I stuffed it into the top of the magazine, returned the magazine to the gun, and pocketed the weapon with the chamber empty.
The girl was watching me. She looked a little restive. Well, any attractive girl would, seeing a strange male paying more attention to a lousy pistol than to lovely, irresistible her; but I thought she was listening hard for sounds from the bedroom—this was the living-dining-kitchen area of the suite, with a cooking and eating corner sheltering behind a low room divider serving as a bar, and a social area holding a couple of comfortable chairs, a cocktail table, and a sofa that could presumably sleep an extra person or two when unfolded. If you and your bride wanted an extra person or two along on your honeymoon.
It was time for stocktaking at last, and I had my look. I’d got the impression in Cananea that she was kind of a cute little thing with her cheap, loose, knee-length, black dress, her pretty bare legs, and her high-heeled red shoes. In faded denim pants she gave a different impression. There was a long-sleeved black jersey which she filled adequately but not spectacularly. The heavy, gray-brown serape she wore over it gave her a slightly barbaric look that went well with the glossy, rather coarse black hair that, hanging loose down her back, was almost long enough for her to sit on. She was still wearing the scuffed red shoes with the high, slim heels, and I still got the impression that she’d have preferred to kick them off and go barefoot.
I decided that I’d been wrong to call her cute. I’d been misled by her small size and rather kittenish appearance. Well, a lynx isn’t very big, but nobody’d call it cute as it goes about its predatory wildcat business. I sensed that there was danger here, too. Her skin was a warm and dusky color, very smooth, and her small face looked crowded at first glance, as if her features had outgrown the space allotted to them. She had a big mouth full of even white teeth. She had a nose that was no dainty, girlish nubbin; it was a real nose with a fine arch to it; separating a pair of strong cheekbones. And she had magnificent, large, dark eyes with lashes that could break your heart. It was an offbeat face that took a little getting used to, after years of watching TV screens filled with stock beauties right out of the glamour factory.
She licked her lips. “The pistola is mine,” she said, in a tentative way.
I shook my head. “No longer, sweetheart. Any gun that fires at me is mine if I live to take it. Spoils of war.”
“But I was not shoot at you! You just frighted me so it go off, boom. And then I saw you were not Cody and did not shoot again.”
“But if I had been Horace Cody…”
“Then I would have kill you! That is what I come for. I am good shot; but it is the suspense. All the waiting, and then the door bang open like that and something fly through the air… I just pull the trigger before I mean. Very stupid. I did not even hit your valise.”
“Damn good thing, too,” I said. “Do you know what a fifth of J&B costs down here?”
“J. and B.?”
“Never mind,” I said. I regarded her for a moment. There was only one person she could be, of those I’d heard mentioned in connection with this mess, but it was safer to ask: “Who are you, Señorita?”
She hesitated but decided that there was no reason for her to remain anonymous. “I am Antonia Sisneros. Do you know that name, you who are not H. H. Cody? Do you know why I hate the man you pretend to be?”
I said, “You are the lady friend of the late Jorge Medina, who worked, for Cody, right?”
She grimaced. “Friend, yes. But no lady, not when my man is made to be kill! Where is real Cody?”
I asked, “How do you happen to know him by sight? When did you see him?”
“He visit Jorge in Guaymas where Jorge live; they must consult. About certain weapons. It was many days ago. I was with Jorge when Cody come. I was supposed to leave much before, but the love, it does not watch the clock. I was send away quick when he come to door, made to sneak by back door like thief, it make angry. They do not trust me to see this man, so I will see him! I wait over street until he comes out. It is dark, but I see good enough to know that it is not you. Very much luck, or I shoot you.”
“Very much luck,” I agreed. “Cody was arrested in El Paso a couple of days ago. I don’t know where he is now.”
“And you take his place? You do not look very like!”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say this impersonation is the world’s greatest success story. Well, I did find one sucker who seemed to believe in it; maybe there’s another somewhere. I keep hoping.” After a moment, I said, “I was given your name, Miss Sisneros. I was going to look you up when I got to Guaymas tomorrow. I was going to ask your help.”
Between us, Ramón and I
had figured out that she was probably the best lead we had. Meeting her unexpectedly like this had involved a certain risk, and if I’d come through the door first instead of my bag I might have some holes in me, but it was certainly convenient. I was trying to decide if it wasn’t, perhaps, just a bit too convenient.
“Help?” she asked. “What for do you need my help?”
I said, “The deal your friend Medina discussed with Cody, the night you saw him, went through, as you know. The weapons were landed on the coast. Medina hid them. He was killed by men trying to learn where.”
“And you wish to find, too?” She shrugged. “I know nothing of the hiding. I know that he should never have been given such a work. He was beautiful man but weak and much afraid. This selling of bad weapons, this working with insurgentes against the government, it make him very much fright, very much not happy. It make him dead. This Señor Cody, he promise much money if help, much threat if no. He has great fault for this. He should not make frighted man to be crooked and be kill. For this I will shoot him. I will shoot also the cheating general who not pay money promised but instead have my Jorge hurt until he die. You will try to stop?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “Shoot all the generals you want and all the real Codys you want, lady, just spare this phony one. But actually, since Horace Cody is in custody up in the U.S., you’ll play hell trying to get at him, so you’d better concentrate on Carlos Mondragon.”
I felt quite Machiavellian as I said it. The answer to one of my problems had dropped into my lap; if Mondragon was killed by an angry young woman avenging her lover, the Mexican populace could hardly blame their government or the Yankees. Ramón would be happy and cover up any crimes I had to commit. Now all I had to do was maneuver the kid into position and, while I was doing it, locate the missing arms and identify the mysterious Señor Sábado and deal with him.
Antonia Sisneros made a grimace of distaste. “Carlos Mondragon! One who talks much, promises much. One who will free us all from one terrible government and give us instead another terrible government. His. Like hole in head, is that what you say? That is how we need his murdering revolution!” She drew a long breath. “But insurgentes hiding in their own mountains…” She shrugged. “Not easy to find, Señor. Not easy to kill.”
The Frighteners Page 14