‘Ah. I thought I recognized the scent when you came in.’ He opened the passport. ‘The photograph does not do you credit. But then, passport photos never do.’ He held up the key. ‘This is the key to a night storage box.’
‘That is absolutely correct.’
‘What is in this box?’
‘I would say that is my business.’
Yet again he stared at her, then emptied the ten wads of notes on to the table, thumbed one of them. ‘Ten American hundred dollar bills. And ten packets. Do you habitually walk around with ten thousand dollars in your purse?’
‘One should always carry some small change, for things like taxis.’ Now she was deliberately baiting him, willing him to lose his temper and make the first move.
He took a final look into the bag, and found another bundle of notes. ‘What are these?’
‘Those are Bahamian twenty-pound notes.’
These he riffled in turn. ‘There are fifteen of them. That is three hundred pounds. Over a thousand dollars.’
‘Well—’
‘You need taxi money. Do you live in the Bahamas?’
‘When I can spare the time, yes. Have you never been there?’
‘No.’
‘You should try them. They are very peaceful.’
‘So, you walk around with more than eleven thousand dollars in your handbag. And you say you needed work.’
Anna shrugged. ‘Not even eleven thousand dollars lasts forever.’
He laid the bag beside the notes on the table, while Anna sipped champagne, holding the glass in her left hand. ‘I think you must be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,’ he remarked.
‘There you go again, flattering me.’
‘But you are also the most deceitful woman who has ever had the temerity to visit me. You are clearly well groomed and well educated. You live in the Bahamas, and you carry a small fortune in your purse. You use the most expensive perfume in the world. And that ring you are wearing is worth twenty grand if it is worth a penny. I would not care to estimate the value of the watch. And you are masquerading as a common prostitute?’
‘A girl must have her secrets.’
‘I do not like deceitful women. But I do like beating beautiful women. Strip, and kneel, with your arms on the chair.’
Anna placed her glass on the table. ‘Before I do that,’ she said. ‘I would like to ask a question.’
‘Yes. I am going to have sex with you. After I have heard you squeal with pain.’
‘You make the sweetest suggestions. But that was not the question. Is it true that you once had a tenement building in Chicago burned down because someone who owed you money was sheltering inside?’
Again his eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘And is it true that there were eighteen women and children in that building, all of whom were burned to death, because you had had your thugs shatter all the nearby water hydrants? I am assuming that the thugs in question included your people in the other room.’
‘Almost you make me think that you work for the FBI. Of course they are my people. They do what I tell them to.’
‘You haven’t answered the first question, Roberto.’
He shrugged. ‘I lost my temper.’
‘And did you also lose your temper when you threw your wife out of the twenty-first storey window in your New York apartment? A clever lawyer got you off that crime by claiming that she fell rather than was pushed, but for the murder of all those innocents you were arrested and condemned to the electric chair. And managed to escape from Death Row. They are still trying to discover how you did that.’
He pointed. ‘You do work for the FBI. And they have sent you, a mere chit of a girl, to arrest me? Well, my dear young lady, you seem to have forgotten that the FBI have no jurisdiction in Mexico. So when I am finished with you, and they find your body, if anyone is able to identify it, no one will be able to do a damned thing about it.’
‘It sounds so exciting,’ Anna said. ‘But actually, you are mistaken.’ She was still willing him to make the first move, but he was not responding, such was his confidence. It was time to end it. ‘I do not work for the FBI, and therefore, I have not come to arrest you. I have come to carry out the death sentence that was passed on you six months ago, and should have been executed by now.’
He stared at her, and then at the pistol that had suddenly appeared in her hand, pointing at him. ‘You . . . who are you? What are you?’
‘Do you know,’ Anna said, ‘I often ask myself that very question. My only clue is that someone once described me as an angel from Hell. Isn’t that sweet? Because Hell is exactly where I am sending you, now.’
At last he moved, reaching beneath his jacket, but he was far too late: Anna levelled the Walther and shot him between the eyes.
*
She remained sitting still for several seconds, waiting, the gun still levelled. But Capillano had fallen back against the chair and was totally inert. She had not really doubted that he would have died instantly; even a point two-two bullet, fired at six feet range, will tear its target apart, and while the entry wound was not large, the exit wound in the back of Capillano’s head, as she ascertained when she got up to stand over him, had left a mess of blood and brains scattered across the chair and the floor.
Blood was seeping down his face and dripping from his chin, staining his shirt. Anna holstered her pistol, the warmth from the barrel penetrating the silk of her knickers into her groin, closed the zip, then, carefully making sure her hand did not get stained, she rested two fingers on his neck for several seconds, ascertaining there was not the slightest trace of a pulse. Then she pulled on her gloves, and again carefully, opened the jacket, put her hand inside, and withdrew a Browning nine-millimetre automatic pistol. That was what she might have asked for.
She checked the magazine; it contained eight cartridges and there was one in the breech. She looked into his side pockets, but these were empty. She glanced around the rest of the room, selected the desk against the wall opposite the sideboard, and sat at it, resting the pistol on the blotting pad before starting to open the drawers. In the third she found the silencer she wanted, and screwed it into place.
She stood up, surveyed the dead man once again. Ninety-eight, she thought. But as she could not afford to leave anyone behind her to raise the alarm, he was about to be joined by four more; by his own admission, they were all guilty men.
She used her handkerchief, and carefully cleaned the glass she had been holding, then repacked her handbag, adding the discarded hairpins, held it in her left hand, went to the door, drew a deep breath, opened it and started shooting. The four men were seated at a table playing cards; the first she shot through the head as he turned to look at her, the second also took a bullet in the head as he raised it. The third, Carlos, reached his feet and had half drawn his pistol when he too went down, his brains scattered across the floor.
Esteban had fallen to his knees on the far side of the table, hands held to his head. ‘Please,’ he gasped, as Anna moved forward to stand above him. ‘I am not armed.’
‘I am sorry about this,’ Anna said. ‘I think you could be quite a decent man. So tell me this: how long have you worked for Senor Capillano?’
‘I have been his private secretary for twenty years.’
‘So you know all of his dealings during that time. And approved them, I suppose.’
‘Yes, yes. I know all of his secrets. Ask me any questions, and I will tell you.’ Then he asked, somewhat ingenuously, ‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said, ‘He is dead. And you have answered all of my questions and proved my initial assumption incorrect.’ She shot him through the head. Number one hundred and two, she thought. She laid the pistol on the table on top of the scattered cards, looked around the room; there was no trace of her presence anywhere, save for the whiff of perfume. But that would fade during the night.
She went to the mirror above the mantelpiec
e, surveyed herself. She looked exactly as she had done when entering the suite, save that her hair was now loose. Satisfied, she let herself out, listened to the latch clicking shut behind her, and took the elevator to the lobby. It was a quarter to nine, and the place was quite active. If it was inevitable that she should attract glances, no one seemed to be very interested in what she was doing, and she kept on the far side of the foyer from the reception desk, which was, in any event, coping with several customers.
She went through the doors from the air conditioning into the sudden warmth of the night; although with the sun gone, and at this altitude the temperature had dropped considerably from the afternoon, it was by no means uncomfortable. She crossed the road to the waiting car, tapped on the window. Rodrigo, who had seemed to be asleep, jerked upright. ‘Senorita? But—’
‘I told you I would not be long,’ Anna reminded him. She went round the car and got into the front beside him.
‘Senor Capillano let you go so soon?’
‘It took only a few minutes for him to lose all interest in me.’
‘But that is bad. What are you going to tell Senora Jaquetta?’
‘I don’t think it is my business to tell her anything. If Senor Capillano wishes to complain, then let him do it himself. I thought we were going to spend the night together.’
‘Oh, senorita . . .’
‘But first, there is something I must do. Take me to the Central Station.’
‘You wish to leave Mexico City? Leave me? But you cannot do that. There are no trains at this hour.’
‘I know that, Rodrigo. And I promised to spend the night with you, remember? But there is something I have to pick up from a left luggage locker.’
He seemed content with that, drove her to the station. ‘You will come back,’ he said, anxiously, as she got out.
‘Of course I am coming back. You are my transport. I will be five minutes.’
She went inside, opened the locker and removed the shoulder bag, left the box open with the key in the lock, returned to the car.
‘Now,’ Rodrigo said, ‘we go to your hotel, eh?’
‘I don’t think we should do that,’ Anna said. ‘I think we should go for a drive in the country.’
‘A drive in the country?’
‘It is a lovely night, and look, the moon is just rising. Let us go north, find a lonely road, and then we can stop, and . . . get to know each other better.’
‘This is not good, senorita. Lonely roads . . . they are full of bandidos. I would not like you to be raped. I would not like to be raped, either,’ he added.
‘I give you my word that no one is going to rape either of us,’ Anna said.
He didn’t seem entirely convinced, but took the Calz de Guadeloupe through the suburb of that name. The various suburbs continued for a good distance, still full of people and lights. ‘It will be some time before we find a lonely road,’ he said.
‘The night is young. Look, there is an open gas station. Pull in and fill your tank. Then it doesn’t matter how long we have to drive. What is the capacity of your tank?’
‘It holds thirty gallons, senorita.’
‘And what do you expect to get for a gallon?’
‘On an open road in the country? Oh . . . we should get twenty-five kilometres.’
‘Well then, you see, when you have filled up, we can travel seven hundred and fifty kilometres.’
‘But we have to come back.’
‘Rodrigo, if you spend your life worrying about every little thing, you will give yourself grey hairs. Or even a heart attack. You must learn to take life as it comes.’
Clearly trying to work out what she meant, he nonetheless pulled into the gas station and got out to fill the tank. Anna took the opportunity to unzip her side vent, just in case, and then to take three of the packets of money from her purse; these she folded into her left hand. She was still on a high, as she always was after fulfilling a commission, and she knew it would not settle for several hours. But it could be alleviated, and fortunately, Rodrigo was quite an attractive man. Just as long as she did not allow her bubbling libido to interfere with the clarity of her thinking.
Rodrigo paid for the fuel, returned, and they drove off. ‘Now,’ Anna said, ‘let us relax and have an enjoyable drive.’
‘There are less houses now,’ he said. ‘Soon we will find this lonely road, eh? Senorita, I am on fire for you.’
‘Well, you should be,’ Anna said. ‘But I have been thinking, about what you said. You are right, it may be too dangerous to stop.’
‘I do not understand, senorita. If we do not stop, how—’
‘Let us go to somewhere safe. Somewhere . . . I know, let’s go to Matamoros.’
‘Matamoros?’
‘You do know where Matamoros is?’
‘Yes, senorita. I know where it is. It is at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, just before it enters the Gulf of Mexico.’
‘And the Rio Grande is the border between Mexico and the United States, isn’t that right? The town of Brownsville is on the other side. Right?’
‘Yes, senorita. But . . . you wish to go to Matamoros?’
‘That is what I said.’
‘But senorita, it is more than six hundred kilometres.’
‘No, we’ve done about eighty. So it’s only about five hundred and fifty from here. And you have a full tank’
‘That is still not less than nine hours driving.’
‘That will be ideal. It is only just past ten o’clock. So we will reach the river at seven tomorrow morning. Just when everyone is waking up.’
‘You promised to spend the night with me.’
‘Is that not what I am doing?’
He considered this, and she went on. ‘I do not wish you to take your eyes off the road, but take your right hand off the wheel and put it in my left.’
He obeyed.
‘What do you feel?’
‘You are holding some crisp paper.’
‘You are absolutely right. It is a wad of American hundred dollar bills. There are thirty of them. Do you know how much that is?’
‘Ah . . .’
Anna sighed. ‘It is three thousand dollars. This I am going to give to you to drive me to Matamoros.’ She stuffed the notes into the side pocket of his jacket. ‘I would say that is a good night’s work. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Oh, senorita.’
‘And,’ Anna went on, ‘if you promise to keep your eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, I will give you a bonus.’ She unbuttoned his flies and slipped her hand inside.
PARADISE
‘I think,’ Anna said, ‘that you’re nodding off.’
The car had just swerved violently, and now it swerved again as Rodrigo brought it back under control. ‘I have been driving for so long. What time is it?’
‘Four o’clock. You have only been driving for seven hours.’
‘Seven hours! I have never driven for seven hours at a time in my life. And those mountain roads . . .’
‘But the mountains are now behind us.’ They had just completed the passes on the Sierra Madre Orientale and were descending again, past houses and hamlets, all apparently firmly asleep. She wondered if anyone had as yet tried to enter Capillano’s suite. But there was no reason for them to have done so, nor should there be a reason before possibly breakfast this morning, by which time she would be across the border. ‘And you are increasing your experiences.’
‘Perhaps, if you were to give me another bonus . . .?’
‘Perhaps later. Look there!’ Through a gap in the trees that lined the road, she could see the waning moon streaming across the water. ‘Isn’t that romantic?’
‘Romantic,’ Rodrigo groaned.
‘Listen, let us go down there and break our journey.’
‘It would be better to go to Monterey. It is not far from here, and I have a cousin living there. He will let us have a room.’
‘It would be more romantic to find a b
each and have a swim.’
‘I do not have a bathing costume.’
‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘neither have I.’
This idea seemed to activate him, and he began driving faster, following a succession of roads, continuing to descend until they could actually hear the sea, and turning down a lane, found themselves overlooking a beach, just as the sun rose out of the east.
‘Isn’t that magnificent?’ Anna asked.
‘Oh, yes, senorita. Oh, yes.’
She got out of the car and stretched, then retrieved her shoulder bag from the back seat and walked through the trees to the beach, hearing him behind her. She took off her shoes and felt the sand beneath her stockings, taking deep breaths of the utterly fresh air.
‘It is good to be alive on a day like this,’ Rodrigo suggested.
‘Absolutely,’ Anna agreed. ‘Would you like to unbutton my gown?’
‘Oh, senorita!’
She felt his hands on her back. His fingers were less knowledgeable than Carlos’s, and it took him longer, but she waited patiently until she could shrug the gown from her shoulders and past her hips, gathering it as it reached her ankles to stop it falling to the sand. She draped it on a convenient bush, keeping her back to him.
‘Oh, senorita,’ Rodrigo said. ‘May I . . . you are so beautiful.’
‘You say the sweetest things,’ Anna said. ‘Of course you may touch me.’
The adrenaline had by now stopped flowing at the furious rate it had been when she had left the hotel, but she still felt that, supposing circumstances were different, he could grow on her. He was attractively endowed, and his touch was gentle. If the main reason that he was still here was that she had needed a chauffeur – as her German masters had not thought it necessary for her to learn to drive, she had only held a licence for the past three years and had driven very little in that time – it was also because she liked him, and she hated taking innocent lives; merely to have turned him loose and stolen the car, even if he had been bound and gagged, would have risked having the Mexican police on her trail sooner than was necessary. But now she reckoned she was within five miles of the river.
He was still standing behind her, and slid his hands under her armpits, much as Carlos had done, to cup her breasts; she felt him tremble against her. But then his hands continued downwards, across her stomach, while he nuzzled her neck, before he seemed to freeze as his fingers touched her belt and the pistol.
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