by Jack Barnao
"She's not that good a swimmer,” I said, and Amadeo nodded.
"Pathetic.” Then he stood up. “Shit, I wonder if she's tryin’ a drown herself."
We walked down to the water's edge, where the man in the casual clothes was just turning back, pointing his finger at Helen, who had come out from under the shelter of the umbrella. He was making threatening noises of some kind, but she was ignoring him, looking out at Debra, who was still splashing away in a straight line from the beach. I was torn. My job was to guard Amadeo, but I couldn't stand there and let a woman drown. I glanced at her and at Helen, looking for some sign of real alarm, and then down the beach ran Beth, dressed in a practical one-piece swimsuit that looked as if she knew what she was doing, and she dived neatly into the water and swam out after Debra, gaining on her with every stroke.
Debra was fifty yards out now and failing, her strokes getting weaker and weaker until she was only patting at the water like a baby in a tub. Her head came up straight, panicky, uncertain now, with the reality of death resting on her tired shoulders, and then she slipped completely under.
Beth was only three strokes from her and she arched in the water and went down, coming back to the surface with one hand in Debra's hair. I heard the faint cry Debra gave and saw her hands reach up to her hair, but Beth had her tight and she began kicking back toward the beach, towing the model at arm's length.
Amadeo surprised me. He ran into the surf and started swimming out toward them, moving cleanly through the water. I ran in after him, and within a few seconds we were side by side out by the women. Debra was sobbing, “Let me go. Let me go,” and Beth was ignoring her, concentrating on her one-handed backstroke, tugging Debra back to shallower water. As soon as it was shallow enough, I put my feet down and called out to Beth. “If you're tired, let me take her."
"No need,” she puffed. “I've got her."
Amadeo ignored her and reached out toward Debra, but I touched him on the shoulder and he turned to me, his eyes blazing. “I'm tryin'a help."
"What she needs is room. Come on, back up the beach.” We paddled gently in behind the women until Beth finally stood up and put her arm around Debra's shoulders and hugged her. Debra was weeping and shaking her head, but Beth talked to her soothingly and urged her back up the sand. The client was still standing there with Helen next to him. He came forward and started speaking at once, but Beth prodded him in the chest with one finger and he threw his hands up explosively. Amadeo and I came out of the water and stood on either side of the women, looking at him.
"So where does it say I have to stand for this kind of garbage? You tryin'a scare me, what? What? Answer, for Christ's sake. You some kind of dummy?"
Amadeo stepped forward and said, “Whyn't you take a hike, Mac, the lady's havin’ enough trouble without you mouthin’ off at her."
The man swore at him, and Amadeo hit him clumsily on the side of the head. Dumb. If you hit somebody, make sure they stay hit. All he had hurt was the other man's pride, and the next thing, they were wrestling in the water, swinging big handicapped punches at each other.
I turned to the women. “Listen, take Debra inside, I'll pick up the pieces here."
Helen looked at me, stone-faced. “Don't be too quick, will you? It couldn't happen to two nicer guys."
Beth turned to Debra and said, “Come on, you need a cup of coffee and some dry clothes.” Then she and Helen both smiled at me and took Debra away up the beach between them, while I stood back and waited for the fighters to tire themselves out. I felt the same as Helen about them, let them bruise one another.
It took about a minute. Amadeo was fighting out of pride, and maybe even guilt, but he was up against a man who had probably never been humiliated before, and they both had a lot to prove. His fancy clothes were soaked and he had a mouse under one eye, but he could have been a Gurkha for all the surrendering he was going to do. I had to wait until they were both gasping.
I hauled him to his feet, then Amadeo. “You two look like a couple of dorks,” I informed them cheerfully. “The only way you can come out of this with any dignity left is to go up to the bar like a couple of buddies and have a beer together, laughing all the way, otherwise it's going to be in the papers, and you"—I prodded the client in the back—"are going to find yourself looking down the barrel of a lawsuit from Debra Steen's attorney."
"I'm gonna sue this bastard for every nickel he's got,” he seethed, and Amadeo made another lunge at him.
"He's Mexican, you're wasting your money, let him buy you a beer and you come out of this looking good, otherwise the whole garment district is going to be laughing at you over their corned-beef sandwiches and cream sodas."
"Asshole,” he said, but he straightened up and wiped his hair out of his eyes and started to laugh although his eyes were cold. “Lemme buy you guys a drink, hemlock, they got any."
He put his arm on Amadeo's shoulder, and Amadeo flinched but then did the same, and they walked back up the beach to the bar. A couple of people looked at them curiously as they passed, but their cover story was working, two big goofs horseplaying in the surf, the client being the better sport, not worrying about his clothes.
There was a different barman on duty, Eduardo, young and eager, and he got Bohemias for Amadeo and me, an agua mineral for the client, whose name was Irv, and we sat and yukked it up at the bar for ten minutes before he finally stood up, his drink untouched, and shook hands with Amadeo and sloshed away up the steps.
The barman looked at Amadeo and grinned. “Loco,” he said, and Amadeo answered him in rapid Spanish that had them both chuckling. Then we went back out to our place on the beach. Amadeo was sitting upright now, full of himself. He glanced at me and grinned, balling up his right fist. “I showed that mother, eh?"
"You sure did,” I said. Showed him how not to fight, but then, he already knew that, or he would have punched your head off.
Amadeo squirmed his shoulders back into his seat. “Yeah. Didn't need no help, jus’ cleaned his clock. Like he made me mad, eh, pickin’ on that poor bitch."
"Not the act of a gentleman,” I said gravely. I could see a beach vendor coming toward us from the town end of the beach, crunching tirelessly over the soft sand, carrying a bundle of baskets. He was heading straight for us, and I checked that both his hands were visible, each clutching the handles of a bundle of his embroidered straw baskets, but there was a look about him that jangled my receptors. I slipped my hand inside the pocket of my jacket and held the gun on him invisibly. When he came close enough, I said “No quiero, muchas gracias.” I don't want any, thanks, but he ignored me and spoke in rapid Spanish to Amadeo.
Amadeo answered and then turned to me. “This is the guy I've been waiting for. Give him fifty thousand pesos for me, will ya?"
Eleven
Half the money I had drawn from Cahill was in pesos, so I peeled off fifty thousand and handed it over. He took it without smiling and handed me his smallest basket. I didn't want it, but it was his cover, so I took it and put my bundle into it. Now I looked like every other gringo on the beach. The only difference was that I had a gun in my basket instead of suntan lotion.
The man grinned an ingratiating grin and moved away from us, up the beach, past the other sunbathers, but I saw that he didn't linger to haggle with any of them but kept walking at the same sand-crunching pace past our hotel and the few small cabañas farther on.
"What happens now?” I asked.
"We need a Jeep. He's gone to get it for us,” Amadeo said, and lay back, his eyes closed.
"And you've wasted a day lining up a Jeep? Hell, you could have hired one yourself, yesterday, we could be on our way home by now."
"Yesterday was a total screw-up,” he said.
"I don't need any more games from you. Why do you have to get this guy to find a Jeep? Maria could have got one as easily as she got that boat, easier maybe."
He opened one eye and peered at me. “I told you before, nothin’ goes down in this
place that García don’ hear about. He knew I was comin’ back. He knew I needed a Jeep. He must've had some guy sittin’ at the rental office checkin’ every Jeep goes out."
I didn't answer, and he shut his eyes again, smug and happy. “You gotta understand, I know how things work in this town, you don't."
"What was to stop her coming into town in a Jeep?"
"Mexican women don’ drive Jeeps. They'd a seen her an’ been on her quicker'n a dog on a dinner,” he said disgustedly. “Now whyn't you relax till it's time?"
"Is he bringing the Jeep here?"
"No. Fer Crissakes. He brings it here, they see it, they follow me."
I wasn't satisfied. “What good would that do them? They couldn't follow you in that boat of García's. The first yard off the road would tear his tank out."
Now he sat up again, his mouth pursed in anger. “They got Jeeps an’ they got radios. How d'ya think they run the drug business in these mountains here?"
That made sense, but I didn't want glib answers. “All right, so they've got Jeeps. We'll have to be cute when we take off, when will that be?"
"Later. We'll meet up with my amigo where it's quiet an’ head out. Thing is, they know I've got some bread down there. They jus’ wanna know where."
"You sure do things the hard way. If this was my problem, I would have landed somewhere else and rented a Jeep. That way you could have picked up the cash without coming onto García's turf."
He didn't answer, but I could guess why, this was his fallback plan. His first choice had been to leave me on the beach, red-faced, while he took off in the motorboat. Getting his money was the fallback situation. Once he'd got it, he would revert to his original plan, shake me and head for cover.
"Where are we meeting him, and when?"
"Two o'clock.” He looked at his watch and sighed. “That means we got three hours t’ kill. Then lunch, then a cab, then we're on our way. Now whyn't you let me grab some z's?"
He lay back again and was asleep within a minute, his mouth hanging open, snoring gently. After a while I moved out slightly into the sunshine and let the brightness soak into me. I'm not a sun worshiper. I've spent too much time in the desert for that, but I prefer being tanned to the fish-belly whiteness you end up with after a winter of overcoats and fur hats, two borders north of Mexico.
The barman came around taking orders. Amadeo was still asleep, so I ordered a Bohemia and a ginger ale and made myself a shandy. Straight beer, in the quantities it takes to keep your fluid levels up in Mexico, would have slowed me, but I couldn't take to a diet of soda water. The shandy was a compromise.
Nothing much happened all morning. The usual round of vendors came and went, but I smiled and waved them away. I had no room in my plans for extra baggage. If all went well, I planned to pick up some Kahlúa for Janet Frobisher and a bottle of vanilla for my mother's cook. I would do it at the airport. The price would be higher there, but Cahill wouldn't count the change from his grand, a couple of hundred pesos extra didn't matter.
Around noon Amadeo woke up and we took a quick dip, me watching for any signs of trouble but feeling fairly secure on the beach, which was crowded now with hotel guests. And after ten vigorous minutes we went back to the bar for a beer and then up to the room to shower and put some clothes on for lunch.
I was in the shower when I heard Amadeo say, “Now what?"
I turned the tap off and listened as another knock came at the door. Draping the towel around me, I hissed at him to get out of sight. Then I took out my gun and held it underneath a second towel and opened the door.
One of the hotel porters was standing there with a package about a foot square, wrapped in decorative paper and tied with a ribbon. “Señor Amadeo?” he asked.
"Sí, es aquí.” Yes, he's here.
The boy held the package out, and I waved for him to come inside. He did, unconcernedly, so I knew that whatever was in the package was news to him. I found my cash and dug him out a hundred-peso piece and he thanked me, put the parcel on the bed, and left.
Amadeo came away from the wall, where he'd been making like a coat of paint, and looked at the parcel. “What in hell is that?” he wondered. He reached out to open it, but I knocked his hand away.
"Don't touch it. It could explode."
He laughed scornfully. “A bomb? You gotta be outa your mind."
"Are you expecting anything from anybody?"
"No.” He shook his head. “But shit, look at it, it looks fancy. Why'd anybody send me a bomb dressed up like that?"
"The IRA do it all the time. It's a neat way of getting to the guy they're after. They generally use a letter, but they have better explosives than these people. This could be an old-fashioned bundle of dynamite."
He looked at me, and the grin on his face shriveled up. “You serious?"
"Dead serious. Lie on the floor on the other side of that bed, cover your ears and keep your mouth open."
He did it, reluctantly but not sure of himself anymore. I got the rifle from the closet and lay down beside the bed, putting the rifle muzzle six inches from the package. If it was a bomb, it might be triggered by magnetism, by the presence of a knife used to cut the paper. Now I reached up and used the muzzle of my pistol to shove the rifle against the package, keeping my whole body down below the level of the concrete bed base. I was as safe there as I would be in a bunker.
Nothing happened, so I shoved the muzzle against the package firmly, jolting it hard. Again nothing. Still staying down out of the line of a possible blast, I used my left hand to manipulate the rifle to turn the package over, bottom up. Then I waited for a further minute and stood up, still suspicious.
Taking a chance, I bent my head close to it and listened for the faint ticking of a watch. I couldn't hear anything, but that didn't mean a lot. Watches are silent these days. I sniffed it but couldn't make out the faint pickle smell of plastic explosive.
At last I went into the bathroom and got my clasp knife out of my pants packet and went back to the package. Amadeo was stirring, peering up over the edge of his bed, “Keep down,” I told him and held the parcel firmly against the mattress while I very carefully cut out a square of the bottom of it, using the finely honed tip of my knife blade and trying to avoid any sawing motion.
It took a minute to get through the cardboard inside, and while I was working a fly buzzed persistently around my fingers. When I had the square cut on three sides I hinged it out carefully, and then I understood why the fly was there. The inside of the cardboard was sticky with blood.
Amadeo had come up behind me and was standing at my shoulder, watching in fascination. “What's that?” he asked, knowing the answer, forming his words carefully in his fear.
I didn't answer but went on cutting around the bottom of the box until I was confident that the box was not booby-trapped. When I could see all the way around, I cut the ribbon and lifted out the bottom of the box. Amadeo gagged. “Jesus Christ.” he said, and crossed himself. Then he ran to the bathroom and I heard him vomiting as I carried the box into the room after him and upturned it slowly on the tile floor. I lifted it away and looked at the contents. It was the head of the man we had met on the beach.
Amadeo groaned and reeled over to the sink to splash his face with cold water. He was plaster-white.
"It looks as if renting Jeeps is hazardous to your health,” I said.
He snarled at me. “What's with you? The guy's dead, you make jokes."
I lifted the head and put it back in the box, jamming a towel in on top of it to keep out the flies that had started to gather. Then I ran the shower until the tile was free of the blood that had smeared it. “Two questions for you. First, how important is it that you get to that cash?"
"I gotta get to it.” He backed out of the bathroom, eyes fixed on the box in its pretty blue paper. “I gotta give Maria some money so she can hide an’ I can have something to come back to after the court case in T'rannah."
"Second question. How far
is it to this hiding place of yours?"
He looked up at me blankly. “Howja mean?"
"How far is it? A hundred miles, fifty, ten, what?"
"Around thirty."
"By road, or as the crow flies?"
He frowned. I could see that he had trouble concentrating. The murder had suddenly explained to him what kind of trouble he was in. He knew that could have been his own head instead of some Indian's. “By road partway, then cross-country.” He wasn't thinking any further than he had to.
"How far is it on foot?"
"Over the mountains? You gotta be kidding."
"How far?"
He rested his weight on one hand and then slowly lowered himself onto the bed. “Maybe twenty-five. It's on a track from the road, but if you was to go straight, uphill, downhill, twenty-five."
I stood and thought about that for a while. We had two choices, either we could take a taxi out of town to the beginning of the trail and walk in from there, or else we could walk the whole way. It would be a stretch, especially for Amadeo, who was developing into the kind of guy who would die of exertion pressing the button on his TV remote control. But that way had the advantage of being secure. If we took a cab or hired a car and drove out of town and left it anywhere near a trail, a local would know where we were headed and could be there before us.
"Well, we've got to get rid of this box. If we call the cops in, we'll never get out of jail. The locals will make sure of that,” I said. “And we've got to do it fast. By tonight there are going to be vultures hanging overhead.” He shuddered but said nothing.
"So the way I see it, if you want to get your cash, we've got to walk in and get it. When we get back out to the highway, we can flag down a truck, maybe, and ride north, out of state. Then we can take a flight back to Canada."
"You've never been up in those hills,” he said angrily. “They're steep, an’ it's hotter'n a bitch."
"Not as bad as country I've fought over before this. My only question is, can you make it?"