Cantina Lola was not, however, one of these latter. It was a dive, straight on. Dark, grimy, smelling of accumulated human sweat and stale beer. There was a short bar, near the door, and a few small tables, juke box and a tiny, raised stage—rooms upstairs and a door leading somewhere rearward.
The guy behind the bar was the only person in evidence. He was about forty, wore faded but clean Levi’s and a crisp white shirt. He was bright of eye and quick of smile.
He greeted Bolan like a longtime friend. “What you doing so early, mon? No jukin’ for another hour.”
Bolan eased onto a stool and told the guy, “Thirsty, mon.”
“Cerveza?”
“I guess,” Bolan growled. “You got Carta Blanca?”
“No, mon, but I got Bohemia and Moctezuma.”
“What’s that Moctezuma?” Bolan asked, though he already knew. “The dark stuff?”
The bartender was already serving it up. “Try it, you’ll like it,” he said, smiling. “Ten pesos, mon.”
Bolan threw out a ten and growled, “I can get it for seven on the zocalo, mon.”
“Sure but you don’t get the atmosphere there.”
Bolan looked around the joint and chuckled. “You can say that, yeah.”
“You want some girls? It’s a little early, but I bet you fifty I could get a lineup down here in two minutes flat.”
“Later, maybe,” Bolan replied, still chuckling.
“You from L.A.?” the guy asked.
“No, but I’ve been there.”
“Me too, mon. Three times.” He held up three fingers as proof. “You know Alvera Street?”
“Good old Alvera street,” Bolan said.
“You’re packing a piece, aren’t you, mon? How come you packing? Looking for some action?”
Bolan gave the guy a cold stare as he said, “You didn’t spend all your time on Alvera, did you.”
“I know a mon with a piece when I see one, mon.”
Bolan stuck a cigarette between his teeth and asked bright-eyes, “Know a match when you see one?”
The guy reached under the bar and flipped out a book.
Same one, yeah.
Bolan lit the cigarette, allowed the match to burn to the edge of his grasp, then dropped it on the bar.
“You like the Moctezuma? Pretty good, huh?”
It tasted like sorghum molasses kicked with gin. But Bolan said, “It’s okay.” He lit another match.
“What you doing, mon?”
“Playing with fire,” Bolan replied quietly.
“Looking for a connection?”
“Having a beer,” Bolan said.
The guy laughed and turned away, busying himself with the setup at the back bar. Without turning around, he asked, “Where you from, mon?”
“I didn’t ask you that, mon,” Bolan said casually.
The guy laughed again. “Who you looking for?”
“A deaf and dumb bartender,” Bolan replied sourly.
It broke the guy up. All up. When he turned back to the bar again, the Virgin of Guadalupe stood beside Bolan’s beer.
The bartender’s laughter abruptly ceased. “You like dolls, mon?”
“I like virgins,” Bolan explained.
The guy laughed some more, but his heart was no longer in it. “Every girl we got here is a virgin and sweet sixteen,” he told the cold-eyed customer. “You want me to find you one?”
“Just one, yeah,” Bolan said.
Gone was the merry eye and innocent smile. The guy was hard and direct as he snapped, “Stay right here!” He whirled away and went quickly toward the rear.
Bolan waited until the door back there closed behind the guy, then he followed.
He was about halfway there when the door swung open again and two gringos in shirtsleeves and shoulder leather came charging out.
In the background, beyond the doorway, Bolan got a snap impression of a small room with minimal furnishings and the bartender talking to a tall, gorgeous blonde in a mod slack suit.
It was no more than a flashing glimpse, and it was all the look he could afford to spend on background scenery.
The two guys in the doorway were brandishing their hardware. That confrontation was occupying the major share of Bolan’s attention and directing his instincts. The Beretta snapped up at full extension, three quick rounds leaping out and striking faster than scrambling reactions could command a pair of slow trigger fingers.
The two went down loudly and grotesquely, with much flinging and spattering of fluids.
The door behind them immediately slammed shut.
Bolan leapt over the mess and kicked the door open.
“I’m clean, mon!”
The guy was standing against the wall, hands clasped atop his head and the legs spread wide, old habits dying hard.
A sharply dressed leg was just disappearing behind a low window sill at the back wall.
Bolan ran past the guy and followed the leg.
It was a very dark alley, mon.
He hit it cautiously, immediately catching the motion at the end of the building. A moment later, he received another half-glimpse of the woman as she disappeared around the corner onto the street.
It was glimpse enough.
He’d found the Virgin of Guadalupe, yeah—also known as Martha Canada, girl adventurer.
And, God, how he hated that.
15: The Watch
He gave her plenty of rein and let her run. The narrow back streets of Old Town were busy enough to make the track possible, not too choked with people to defeat it.
She moved with confidence, only rarely glancing over the shoulder, circling surely toward La Quebrada then down the hill to the zocalo. He watched her hail a horse-drawn buggy at the Montera and head south.
Bolan crossed over and followed on foot, keeping the buggy in view but giving it plenty of head.
This part of town was in high gear, thronged with tourists and a full contingent of hawkers, vendors, and the usual variety of sidewalk merchants. It was a good night in Acapulco. The sidewalk cafes and beer gardens were enjoying capacity crowds, with dancing under the stars and miniature golf also getting a big play. Music from the Fiesta, a bay cruise boat, drifted across the water to add to the frivolous atmosphere.
All of which made the track a bit more difficult. Bolan was still quite a distance to the rear when the calandria pulled over, just below the yacht club, and the girl hopped out.
He closed fast, and picked up that golden head again as it moved purposefully along the line of docked boats.
A Mexican youth, who had obviously been awaiting the woman, snapped to at her approach. The two of them stepped immediately into a small dinghy.
A racing sloop, built on Salem lines, was riding anchor about fifty yards out, dim light showing at the cabin ports. The dinghy headed straight for the sloop. Bolan watched the woman board, then he strolled back to the yacht club office.
He passed a fifty-peso note to the guy on duty there and told him, “I’m supposed to meet some friends for a little party but I can’t find their yacht. Can you help me? It’s the Mariah.”
The fifty disappeared quickly as the guy consulted his log. “Si,” he said thoughtfully. “Mariah has come in today from Zihuatenejo. She is—oh!—this is why you no can see. She is anchored just off—come, I will point—”
Bolan stopped the guy. “Don’t bother, I’ll find it. That is Señor Brown’s yacht, right?”
The guy showed Bolan a blank look. “But no,” he said, glancing back to the log. “Mariah is owned by Señor Cassiopea.”
“Oh, I guess Brown is just using it.”
“But no, señor. There is no Brown with Mariah.”
“Well who checked her in?”
“Señor Cassiopea, himself.”
Bolan was showing the guy baffled eyes. “When was that?”
“Six o’clock, señor.”
“Today? I mean, this afternoon?”
“Si.”
/> Pretty good going, Bolan was thinking, for a guy who’d been splattered all over JR’s patio at two o’clock. He told the man, “I’m sure he said Mariah. Do you have a Maria?”
The guy blinked and his eyes swept the log book in a purely perfunctory exercise. “No Maria, señor.”
Bolan sighed and peeled off another fifty-peso note—four dollars, American. “I just assumed he meant the yacht club. Gracias.”
“De nada. Momento, señor.” The guy had integrity. For the extra fifty, he was about to make a call. “I will check the harbormaster.”
“It’s okay, forget it,” Bolan said. “Uh, this Mariah.” He made an embarrassed chuckle. “My friend Brown wouldn’t be just one of the crew, would he?”
The guy again dutifully consulted his log. “No Brown, señor.”
Bolan’s eyes were following the guy’s finger as it moved across the entry. He could not make out the names—but they would probably mean very little, anyway. He was going for numbers, and he counted four.
“What’s her port of registry?” he asked casually.
“Long Beach,” the guy read. “California, USA.”
“That’s not my Mariah,” Bolan said regretfully. “Gracias again.”
He went out of there with more questions than answers.
The Mexican government took a very dim view of improperly registered foreign boats. There was a very precise protocol to be observed, precise registry at all ports of call, strict accounting of crew members. You left each port with the same crew who brought her in, or your boat would end up impounded for months or even years while the authorities decided what had gone wrong.
There would be no blatant oversight of that protocol by a wiseguy with a sensitive job to perform. If the log said four crewmen were aboard, then very likely that’s what was aboard.
But, dammit, who were the people on that sloop—and why were they here? What had they been doing at Zihuatenejo, a sleepy fishing village a hundred miles or so up the coast?
Obviously, Cass Baby had arranged some sort of schedule for the Mariah to put into Acapulco at this particular point in time—and with his own name officially entered in the visitors’ log.
Why?
Nothing in the guy’s background indicated an interest in sailing, nor had Mariah been mentioned in any of the background material on the guy.
Martha Canada obviously knew the story.
So what the hell was going on?
Bolan hailed a cab and returned to the zocalo to pick up his car, then drove to the yacht basin and parked within view of the Mariah, settling into the watch with determined patience.
He had to find some answers. And he had to find them pretty damn quick. Bolan had well learned, however, that patience was often the quickest bridge from nowhere to somewhere.
He would wait and learn … and perhaps live to wait and learn again, another day.
Mack Bolan did not enjoy the dark thoughts occupying his mind during that long vigil beside the bay. He was a hard-nosed realist, sure, but even a guy like Bolan needed some optimism to cling to. And he did not like what was happening to his few fragile ideals concerning American womanhood.
Marty was obviously buried in this dark business all the way to her pert little chin. If the obvious should become established as the undeniable, then that lovely young lady was a direct contributor to the death of John Royal, as well as to the undisclosed fate of the six young women who’d been with him just prior to his death. Aside from the cold hard fact of murder itself, there was also the sickening odor of duplicity and betrayal.
Like it or not, he’d been affected by the lady. Yeah, and he did not wish to believe the things that were clamoring for belief.
Royal had been a weak man, sure, but not a rotten one. The guy deserved better than what he got, especially if you remembered that he died at the hands of one whom he’d selflessly sought only to protect—at great danger to himself.
Bolan had to believe Spielke, primarily because the tracks and the odors supported that belief. And if Spielke hadn’t done it, and if Martha Canada was running around the city in the company of some very hard dudes …
The Mata Hari corps, yeah. It did not belong to Spielke. Certainly it had not belonged to soft and easy John Royal. Was it led, then, by a blue-eyed “virgin” with a soul so dead as to turn on a harmless guy like JR and blow that guy away while he was tied like a Christmas turkey?
Yeah, possibly.
The lady had never been particularly warm to Bolan, but was it mere coincidence that she’d become so openly hostile only after their arrival at the Royal villa?
Coincidence, no—of course not—not for someone who knew that the whole joint was planted with electronic ears. Coincidence, no, for someone whose chief interest was to provide some interesting words for those listening ears.
Had she actually taken the sedative? Probably not. Something like that was simple to fake. How long, then, had she been theoretically “alone” at the villa? Thirty to forty minutes?—from the moment Royal and Bolan departed for the airport until Royal returned with the other girls.
What kind of horrendous setup had JR and the six girls walked into, on that return? What was waiting for them there? And why?
Worst of all … who had helped to set the poor guy up that way? Who, indeed. “I need your help,” Bolan had told the guy. And the response had come back quick and positive: “You’ve got it.”
They were not comforting thoughts, no, those that accompanied the man during that dockside vigil.
There were several trips of the dingy, during those two hours—a bit of coming and a bit of going—a conference of conspirators, one could say.
And Bolan patiently took their note, numbering them and classifying them, marking and sizing them, until the last sour note had been sounded.
Then he followed the basic note, a coolly composed young woman, when she came finally ashore and stepped into a cab.
He smiled grimly at its destination, a casita at Las Brisas, a very familiar casita, one for which Mack Bolan had paid the rent.
He watched her inside, and saw her settle in, then he broke the patient watch and returned to Old Town.
Interesting, yes—even if discomfiting.
And now patience had run its course.
All that remained was the cross-check with Leo Turrin—and then patience would have its reward.
And then, very probably, one hell of a firestorm was going to rage across this lovely city on the bay.
16: Flowing Together
Bolan reached the telephone exchange a few minutes behind schedule, but this time there was very little delay in getting the call through to Leo Turrin.
“It’s your southern correspondent,” Bolan told that worried voice in Pittsfield. “What do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” Turrin replied. “Sometimes I think the more I hear the less I know. Maybe it’ll mean more to you than it does to me. Can you think of any reason why several large hunting parties would want to be at a place called Oaxaca?”
“Depends,” Bolan said, “on where they came from and what they’re hunting for.”
“Yeah, well, they came from little old New York and thereabouts. I’d say they’re looking for big game.”
“Along the Costa Chica, maybe,” Bolan tried. “Is that where the black Mexicans live?”
“By and large, yeah.”
“That’s the region, then.”
“I see,” Bolan said. “Okay. How many you make?”
“Three parties, about fifty in each.”
Bolan whistled softly. “Well organized, is it? Guides and all?”
“You got it,” Turrin replied. “I make it about, uh, no more than a few hours from Acapulco. Less, if you’re thinking in terms of air transportation. And I did hear something about choppers. Why do you suppose?”
“How does it sound from your end?” Bolan countered.
“Doesn’t sound like much of a fun vacation,” Turrin said sourly. “The
other guys have it better, I’ll bet.”
“Which other guys?”
“The fishing parties.”
“We have those too, eh?”
“Oh, sure. About four of them, scattered along the coast down there. These names mean nothing to me. Maybe they will to you. I read one at Puerto Escondido, one at Puerto Angel, another at Salina Cruz—then I got one I’ll have to spell, I don’t know how the hell to—”
Bolan said, “Zihuatenejo.”
“Okay, if you say so. How’d you know?”
“That party has already arrived in Acapulco Bay.”
“Oh. Well, the others could have moved too, I guess. I don’t know just how close to the moment all this is. I had to pull it out of a—well, never mind.”
“I understand,” Bolan told him. “I guess these, uh, parties know how to keep in touch, eh.”
“Oh, they’re connected, yeah. Believe it.”
“That good, eh?”
“Bet your life on it, buddy,” Turrin said soberly.
“Okay, I’ll do that. What else did you make?”
“How’m I doing, so far?”
“Four point oh,” Bolan assured him.
“If you say so, okay. What else? Okay, here’s an item. White daddy is very disturbed with you.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Bolan said drily.
“He says your ground is quote highly sensitive unquote. Thinks you should move on to a better vacation spot.”
“I’m sort of attached here,” Bolan growled.
“You’re your own man. He said pass it. I passed it. Forget it.”
Bolan said, “I already did. But tell daddy I respect his feelings. It’s just that mine are what I live by. Or die by.”
“Sure. No sweat,” said the faithful friend. “I struck out on your virgin, I’m afraid. Nothing. But here’s some other stuff. First, the flags.”
“Okay, go.”
“The white one was hoisted by a Rover boy detail in Washington. Get this. It came to them via the State Department. That’s as far as I could get.”
“What sort of detail is that, Sticker?”
“Something special. I couldn’t get it.”
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