The Damsel

by Richard Stark

  He was so completely the émigré, in fact, that Spanish now seemed to him a foreign tongue. He was, for this last leg of the trip from Mexico City to Acapulco, aboard an Aeronaves de Mexico plane, and when the stewardess had spoken to him in Spanish, he had at first failed to understand her, and then had blurted his answer in English. Then, when she responded in English, he made a belated switch to his rusty Spanish, creating the sort of awkward situation a twenty-one-year-old is seldom equipped to handle.

  Incidents like that made him keenly aware of the anomaly of his position. He had lived most of his life in the States, but he was still a citizen of Guerrero. He thought of himself as an American and spoke most naturally in English, but his name and appearance were both clearly and permanently Latin. Uncle Luke, no blood relation to him at all, was by far the most important individual in his life, while his “real” father, whom he had been taught from childhood to call “General,” was of importance only in a financial way, and even that would soon be coming to an end.

  It seemed to him from time to time that a more delicate person might decide to be heavily neurotic and introspective and erratic in such a situation. As for himself, he had too much enjoyment of life to worry about abstract problems of identity. He enjoyed the University of Pennsylvania, he was delighted to have been taken under the wing of Uncle Luke, and he saw nothing in the foreseeable future to make him frown or worry or feel apprehension.

  And there, out the window, under the wing, lay the royal blue of the sea. He had remembered to pack his bathing suit—the white one—and looking at the water far down there, he began uncontrollably to smile again.

  The stewardess came around, waking the man beside Juan and telling him in Spanish that they were approaching Acapulco and he must put his seat belt on now. She looked at Juan, hesitated just an instant, and then told him the same thing in English. But she smiled, letting him know that she didn’t think him merely a poseur, a fake gringo.

  Juan clicked on his seat belt. “Oh, just a few tests,” ran the joke line in his head, the scene clear and well rehearsed.

  The plane circled interminably, giving him an endless series of views of the beauty of Acapulco; green mountains, blue sea, paler blue sky, white crescent of the town.

  “Oh, just a few tests.”

  4

  GOVERNOR HARRISON LOVED to drive the beach buggy, the converted jeep with its striped tin top. It was such a feckless, childish, irresponsible vehicle in appearance, and yet so rugged and reliable in performance. The perfect way to relax, to forget your troubles, to feel the weight of worry slip away and recapture the lost ebullience of youth.

  After he’d calmed Edgar yet again, that grinding, painful, slow, unending task, the Governor had felt the need for therapy, for mindless relaxation, and so he’d come down the hill from his cottage, gotten into his candy-stripe buggy, and off he’d gone roaring into forgetfulness. Up over the mountain east of town and down the other side to El Marqués, in its own way a more exclusive and expensive resort than Acapulco next door. El Marques, with its peculiar long beach of gray sand the color of coal ash, and the long, lazy breakers beating slowly upon it, with its few secluded old-style hotels and its occasional fenced-in private estates, was more than Acapulco the sort of place visited by politicians and heads of state. Dwight Eisenhower, in fact, had stayed at El Marqués one time while President of the United States. It was a mark of General Pozos’ style and temperament that he should invariably choose the more public and obvious Acapulco.

  Driving the beach buggy was fun, but there was no point arriving anywhere. This time Governor Harrison didn’t even bother to drive as far as the beach, but turned around at the traffic circle by the naval base and drove back over the mountain again, passing the Hotel San Marcos and driving on into the town of Acapulco itself, past Hornos, the afternoon beach, all the way around to Caleta, the morning beach and dead end.

  He got out of the buggy there a while and took off his shoes and socks and walked in the sand, leaving shoes and socks on the floor of the buggy. He walked this way and that, amid the bathers and the sunbathers. Boys tried to sell him straw hats and straw mats, serapes and wooden dolls, sandals and iced soda. If you were thirsty for alcohol you could have gin in a hollowed-out cocoanut with a straw. He wanted nothing.

  From the beach he could see General Pozos’ yacht, anchored out away from shore but within the harbor area. The launch had not yet left the yacht, and probably wouldn’t much before noon.

  Governor Harrison was surprised at how violently he didn’t want to see General Pozos again. He felt contempt for the man, impatience, deep dislike, the same as ever, but these emotions no longer rode freely in his brain. The decision having been made, the plan now in operation, it seemed as though he were no longer free even to think poorly of General Pozos, as though the General were already dead and it would be bad form to harbor unkind thoughts about the dead.

  Of course, there was Bob, too. How long had it been since he’d seen Bob? Seven, eight months, something like that. A man and his son drift apart when the son reaches his majority. Thinking about Bob, actually thinking about the boy for the first time in years, the Governor was surprised at the sudden realization that he no longer knew who Bob was. When had that happened, when had he lost contact with the boy?

  God, years ago. When the son had been in his teens, the father was at his most active politically. And after that Bob had gone away to college, and now for the last seven years he’d been working for Pozos.

  While Juan Pozos took his place.

  Standing on the warm sand, feeling the sand between his toes and on the bottom of his bare feet, gazing out toward the yacht in the harbor all gleaming and white, Governor Harrison smiled crookedly and thought:

  We’ve exchanged sons. While somehow he has become my enemy, and fate has decreed that I shall cause his death, he and I have exchanged sons. Why should General Luis Pozos be the man with whom my life is so entwined? Are we the two sides of the same coin, the two extreme examples of forms of government? Does God have a symbolic purpose in my causing the death of the dictator?

  He was surprised to discover that he didn’t want to see his son. In a way, he was afraid to see him.

  That damn girl, he thought, why don’t they catch her?

  He turned away from the sea, walked heavily back through the sand to the beach buggy, and discovered that someone had stolen his shoes and socks. He looked around, glaring, and it seemed as though all the Mexicans nearby were looking at him sidelong and smirking. He had no doubt that every one of them had seen the robber, had seen the shoes and socks taken, and had done and would do nothing about it. The guilty one was probably still in plain view, sitting on the sand all smiling and innocent. With a sudden release for his foul mood, he swore angrily and climbed into the buggy and drove it violently back through town, cutting off other drivers and running a traffic light.

  Back at the hotel, he stopped in at the main building to ask if there had been any phone calls, but there had not. Still barefoot, giving his anger free rein for the total relief of it, he strode up the path to his cottage to find Edgar still sitting there where the Governor had left him, smoking his pipe and gazing moodily out to sea.

  The doctor saw him, and took the pipe from his mouth, saying, “Luke—”

  “I don’t have the patience for you now, Edgar. If it’s more nonsense, I don’t want to hear it.”

  The doctor said, in a tone of surprise, “What’s happened to your shoes?”

  The Governor opened his mouth to say something hasty and biting, but the sudden sound of the phone ringing in his cottage stopped him. “Later,” he said, and hurried inside.

  5

  DOCTOR FITZGERALD SAT staring at the sea and pondered thoughts of death. Willful death. Murder, murder most foul.

  No. Not murder most foul. In the case of General Pozos, it could well be murder least foul, the closest thing to truly justified homicide. But murder just the same.

  Sitti
ng in the sunlight while Luke was gone to answer the phone, Doctor Fitzgerald thought about what he was here to do, and wondered how he had come to such an intention. The stages of his conversion had been gradual and soft; he could be sure only that Luke Harrison, out of total conviction, had ultimately convinced him as well, and now the two of them were here to turn that conviction into action.

  Of course, it was up to him actually to do the deed, but he neither blamed Luke for this nor considered it unjust. By his training and background, he was the only man for the job, it was as simple as that.

  His one fear was that he wouldn’t be able to last the ordeal. There would be no one there to talk to, no one to help him argue away his doubts. Luke daren’t be anywhere near, and Luke’s son was no part of the conspiracy. There were only the two of them in it; himself and Luke.

  Well, no. Three now, including Ellen Marie. He had been foolish to talk to her, he realized that now, but he had desperately needed to talk to someone, and since Myra’s death he had come to depend more and more on Ellen Marie for comradeship and understanding.

  But this time she had understood nothing. He had tried to explain, but in his mouth Luke’s arguments had sounded stiff and unnatural, and her first instinctive revulsion to the plan—hadn’t that been his first reaction, too, long ago?—had never been overcome. And when at last they both had come to realize that neither could possibly alter the feelings of the other, she had made her wild threat to warn the General of what was to come.

  Warn that tyrant, warn him! To do so would be to commit treason against the entire human race. Luke Harrison had said so and he himself had agreed. Could anyone possibly hold any sort of brief for General Pozos?

  But nothing would change her mind, and so he had attempted to confine her, for her own good, until it all should be over, when he could attempt—with the deed finished and in the past—to reconstruct their shattered relationship. But she had gotten away, and where was she now? It was impossible even to guess. Luke had hired private detectives to try and find her, but so far they hadn’t had any success at all. Apparently, if the private detectives were as good as Luke claimed they were, she hadn’t come into Mexico at all, but was probably still somewhere in the States. Very possibly in New York or somewhere like that, sulking, as Luke maintained.

  Of course, just in case she was in Mexico and still intended to try to talk with General Pozos, some of the private detectives were going to be here throughout the General’s stay—only today and tonight, thank goodness—to keep her safely away, out of the General’s sight and hearing.

  The General. Doctor Fitzgerald thought of him again, and the plan again, and closed his eyes in torment. His pipe, long since out, hung slack from his mouth. He visualized the next days, weeks, months, as he would whittle away at the General’s life.

  Not that long, no, not that long. They had thought to make it last three months, an illness of three months’ duration, but now that the time to begin was so close, the doctor realized he could never never never survive an ordeal like that for three long months.

  Three weeks would be more like it, much more like it.

  As he understood it, the current ocean voyage was scheduled to last another three weeks. That much he could probably survive, arranging it so that the General would sicken rapidly on the final stage of the trip, perhaps even to the point where it would have to be cut short. Yes, and have the General totally bedridden by the time they arrived finally at the palace in Santo Stefano. Then, in three or four more days, it could be finished.

  He had just come to this decision, and was mulling it over, when Luke returned from his phone call.

  Doctor Fitzgerald said, “Was that about Ellen Marie? Have they found her?”

  “No, they haven’t,” said the Governor harshly. “I wish to Christ they would.”

  Doctor Fitzgerald turned his head, and here, coming up the tile path, suitcase in hand and broad smile on face, was the General’s son, young Juan. In astonishment, forgetting everything else for the instant, the doctor exclaimed, “Well, look who’s here!”

  The Governor turned his head. Coming along past the swimming pool, beaming in obvious delight, Juan said, “Hi, Uncle Luke. How’s everything?”

  In the harshest voice the doctor had ever heard him use, the Governor snapped, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The doctor saw the smile collapse on Juan’s face, saw the boy’s expression become puzzled and hurt, and all at once he thought: It’s his father we’re going to kill. And he saw why he had been foolish to tell Ellen Marie, to expect her to make the kind of dispassionate moral judgment necessary to understand what it was he had to do.

  Juan, stumbling, bewildered, embarrassed, was saying, “I just, I just flew down to see you.”

  “Well, you can turn right around,” the Governor said, in the same cold, harsh voice, “and just fly right back again.” Spinning on his heel, the Governor stalked into his cottage and slammed the door behind him.

  Juan had dropped his suitcase, and now he turned to the doctor, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture, saying, “I was only, only . . .”

  “I know,” the doctor said gently, understanding and sympathizing. “Luke’s upset right now, that’s all. He had a phone call, I think it was bad news about something. Sit here with me, he’ll be out in a little while, his old self, I’m sure of it. It’s just the phone call.”

  6

  THE CALL had been from Honner, telling the Governor that Ellen Marie Fitzgerald and the man with her were dead.

  Life had been hectic for Honner since three o’clock this morning, when all at once the Pontiac had blown up and the Mercedes had turned out to have four slashed tires. The girl and the son of a bitch with her had gone tearing on by, in the clear, and that was that.

  Honner was the first of the survivors to get over his excitement and panic. The others wanted either to start running down the highway after the Datsun’s taillights or throwing dirt on the burning Pontiac. Neither move made any sense, since you couldn’t catch a Datsun on foot and there was no percentage in trying to put the fire out. The two guys in the Pontiac were dead already, so let them cook.

  Honner got the rest organized again. That’s what he was for, that’s what his reputation was all about. He got the other three rounded up, and they all packed themselves into the Mercedes and drove into Iguala on the rims.

  Iguala was asleep, so asleep it was nearly dead. Honner finally found a telephone and called another of the Governor’s men in Mexico City. The Mercedes was still the best car for the job down here, better than anything else they might come up with at this time of night, so Honner told the man in Mexico City to get hold of four new tires and send them down with somebody to put them on the car. Honner considered calling Governor Harrison then, too, but it was a hell of an hour at night and there wasn’t anything to report by way of success, so he decided to wait till later.

  At five o’clock, even though the new tires hadn’t arrived and he couldn’t yet start out on the trail again, Honner felt he could no longer delay giving the Governor the news. So he called, and told the Governor what had happened, and the Governor told him to call Borden, one of his men in Acapulco, and tell him to start north, watching for the girl. They’d catch her in a pincers.

  Fine. That sounded good, and it sounded sure, and that made Honner a lot happier. And when the new tires came, shortly after five-thirty, already on rims and set to be slapped on the car, Honner was happier yet. He picked one man, Kolb, to go with him, told the others to follow along in the Chevrolet that had brought the tires down, and headed south at top speed.

  He left the Chevrolet out of sight behind him before he reached the really bad road. For most of its southern half, the Mexico City–Acapulco highway is a road far more scenic than navigable. It travels through green mountains, twisting and turning, climbing and descending through some of the wildest, emptiest, most beautiful and terrifying scenery in the world. Hairpin curves are consta
nt as the road pokes its way up and down the cliff faces. On every side are the dark green mountains, slashed here and there with raw rock where the road has been blasted through, so that when climbing toward a high pass it is possible to look out over a cliff drop of hundreds of feet, to look down through clouds drifting past the slopes below you, and see there a bit of road you traversed ten minutes ago and over there another section you won’t be reaching for ten minutes more.

  To make any speed at all on a road like this was impossible, so here the great advantages of the Mercedes over the Datsun were minimized, though the Mercedes could still handle the curves at somewhat better speeds. Honner drove hard, and well, and averaged nearly forty miles an hour.,

  Until, at ten minutes past nine, rounding a particularly sharp curve high in the mountains some ninety miles north of Acapulco, Honner very nearly crashed into a white Ford coming the other way. Both drivers slammed on the brakes and the cars shivered to a stop next to one another, where the drivers stared at one another blank-faced.

  The other driver was Borden, the Governor’s man from Acapulco.

  Honner and Borden got out of their cars and faced one another in the middle of the road. Honner said, “You let them through, you moron, they’re in a white Datsun.”

  “They didn’t pass me, brother, I’ll swear to it,” said Borden. “I saw two vehicles the whole time since I left the city, one of them a blue Karmann Ghia with two bearded guys in it and no room for anybody else, and the other an oil truck with a guy alone in the cab, which I know for sure because I stopped him and asked directions.”