Darkest Hour

by Nielsen, Helen

  He was in a wide corridor with a red tile floor and white plastered adobe walls. A series of carved wood doors led to other rooms; farther down the corridor were other doors marked “Sauna Baths,” “Exercise Room,” “Massage,” “Medicinal Bath.” At the end of the corridor a stairway led up to an enclosed area posted: “Hospital—No Admittance.” Another corridor, which he followed, led out to a huge patio where a group of patients were sunning themselves about a less exotic pool occupied by the more rotund guests. In one area of the patio a mixed-gender group in sweat shirts and pants was being mobilized for some muscular activity, and beyond them a wide, curving drive led to an open gate. Simon threaded his way toward this exit. Attendants were easily recognizable by the immaculate white of their uniforms. None of them seemed to take notice of him as he passed. A guard at the gatehouse was watering a pathetic patch of shrubbery hemmed by healthy succulents and his attention was caught by the sound of a motor just as Simon, responding to the same stimulus, darted behind a wisteria bush. It was the big green Cougar with Otto at the wheel. He stopped to speak to the guard.

  “If you’re going into San Diego give my wife a call,” the gatekeeper said. “If she’s shacked up with anybody boot him out.”

  “I’m going to Ensenada to go fishing,” Otto said. “Keep your bed clean on your own time.”

  The gatekeeper cackled. “Fishing! I know what you’ll be fishing for! Don’t bring back anything contagious. The boss still believes in the immaculate conception.” The Cougar roared forward and the gatekeeper was left chuckling at his own low humor. He didn’t look up when Simon strolled through the gates. It was almost too easy.

  A well-traveled unpaved road stretched before him. Simon started walking at as brisk a pace as his leg would allow. He was out of sight of the spa when the sound of another motor approaching from the rear sent him scrambling for the shoulder. The car thundered past in a cloud of yellow dust, braked to a screeching halt and ground into reverse. It was a big Buick with the top down and both seats filled to overflowing with waving femininity. “Hey, Americano, want a ride?” “Say, he’s cute! When did you check into the fat farm? I may stay another week!” The faces—all smiling, mouths open, eyes carefully guarded by sunglasses—were too similar to give separate entities to the words. The rear door swung open and generously larded thighs twisted to make room on the seat. “There’s only one village within twenty miles so there’s no need to ask where you’re going,” the driver said. “Hop in. My name is Angie. Next to me are Phyllis, and then Mary, and in the back seat Shirley, Jane and Lou. What do we call you?”

  “Simon.”

  “Right. What happened to your leg, Simon? Pull a muscle on the morning hike? That group-activity director’s a slave driver. And how do you like that menu? A thimble of this, a gram of that…. Know where we’re going? First to the bakery and then to the beer tavern.”

  “You’ll be sorry when you step on the scale in the morning,” Shirley warned.

  “In the morning I’ll worry about it. I’ve knocked off seventeen pounds in two weeks and I’m ready to start eating the cactus plants. Imagine paying two hundred bucks a week to get tortured!”

  “I can get it for you wholesale,” Simon said, rubbing his jaw.

  Angie laughed and started off on another subject. The nice thing about driving to town with a carload of women was that he didn’t have to talk. There was no opportunity. Within five minutes they reached the highway, swung west and began a gradual descent into a small green valley where the bell tower of a rusty brown church gave the first indication of the village below. It was a small, sleepy town—off itinerary for tourists and offering little of scenic value save the church and an old-fashioned plaza with an ornate wooden bandstand long unused and badly in need of paint. There was a two-story hotel with a glazed brick façade concealing the neglected interior, a post office, a taxi stand where the driver listlessly polished the hood of an aging Plymouth sedan, and a dozen or more family-operated shops that suddenly came alive at the sight of the carload of visitors. “Baskets, señorita? Handmade. Wrought-iron candelabra? Bird cages? Guitar, señor? Candles? Souvenir?” Angie parked the convertible in front of a bakery shop with half a dozen tables set up in the brick patio, and Simon slipped away from the calorie hunters.

  It still seemed strange that Berlin had done nothing to stop him from leaving the spa. Was the return of his clothing a signal that the trade was completed, or had something gone wrong and was he being used again? He walked to the corner and tried to get his bearings. It was a typical border town. The main intersection was the road they had just traversed and a divided highway that terminated at the plaza. The highway ran north up a hillside above which, perhaps a dozen blocks away, a flag was flying over a square cement building. Stars and stripes. Home and freedom. Simon rubbed his leg. He could make it but it would be slow, painful and without cover. He limped toward the taxi. The driver looked up sullenly as Simon touched the handle of the rear door.

  “This taxi taken, señor,” he said.

  “By whom?” Simon asked.

  “Touristas.”

  “What tourists?”

  “Qué hora est?”

  Simon glanced at his watch. “Three twenty-five,” he said.

  “At three-thirty touristas come. This taxi taken.”

  “I don’t believe you. Who told you to tell me that?”

  The driver glanced up on the street. A policeman wearing a khaki uniform and a service revolver on his hip had stopped directing a group of school children across the street and was watching the dialogue at the taxi stand. One hand rested loosely on his hip just above the gun holster. It was obvious that Max Berlin knew the first requisite to the successful operation of a business in a foreign territory: bribe the local officials.

  “Is there a bus?” he asked.

  “To where, senor?”

  “San Diego.”

  “Si, señor. Everyday at ten o’clock in the morning. You buy tickets in the hotel.”

  Simon couldn’t wait until morning, but he did go inside the hotel. He asked the desk clerk for a public telephone and was politely informed that only local calls could be placed because a windstorm had blown down the lines to the Estados Unidos. It was a lie. Berlin’s call to New York had gone through without a hitch, but Simon knew that an argument would bring the policeman with the gun at his finger tips and a trip to a cell where the wait would be longer and less comfortable. Without comment he returned to the street to ponder Berlin’s strategy. He was sadistic, but something more than personal satisfaction must be involved in this game of assumed indifference. He walked back to the plaza and stared up the hill to where the flag was still flying. It was a magnet and a challenge. Berlin must be aware of that. Not feeling up to Angie and her friends again, he circled the plaza. The sole industry of the village seemed to be an ugly brick brewery located at the lower end of the square. Simon watched a pair of huge silver trailer trucks approach the main intersection. One turned west onto the Ensenada highway, the other shifted into low and began to grind upward toward the border. At the same time a blue station wagon bearing California plates and an inordinately long radio aerial descended from the border area. The driver was a woman wearing dark glasses and a large straw hat. The station wagon parked just ahead of the Buick convertible and the woman stepped out on the street. A tourist. She didn’t seem overweight and there was a chance she had dropped over the border for souvenirs or tax-free perfume, or even to smuggle some tax-free liquor into California. In that event she would soon be returning over the border and there was a lot of room in the back of a station wagon. He strolled back across the street to the bakery.

  A native musician with a small Mexican harp had set up shop in the patio. He was strumming a sad-gay folk song that ended with a flourish as Simon arrived. Angie led the applause and started the light rain of coins that began to fall at the harpist’s feet, and Simon strangled a shout as the straw-hatted tourist turned about to observe the acti
on. Vera Raymond. She recognized him immediately and her eyes commanded him to silence.

  “Play ‘Estrellita’!” Angie cried. “I’ll cry. I always cry, but play it anyway.”

  Simon watched Vera open her handbag and search for a coin. As the harpist adjusted the strings of his instrument, she deliberately took out a piece of silver and tossed it past the musician so it would roll to Simon’s feet. She watched him pick it up and walk toward her. “You overshot the mark,” he said. “Care to try again?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “No harm done.”

  She held out her palm to receive the coin and Simon saw something glitter in the sunlight. He placed the quarter in her hand and picked up Wanda’s ring.

  “No harm done,” she repeated.

  “Right,” Simon said. He pocketed the ring and walked away quickly. He couldn’t ask how she had come to be in this place or how she had recovered the ring, and he could no longer dare to steal a ride in the wagon, but he did know that Jack Keith had kept a bargain. Wanda was safe. Now he could move.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was still a long walk up the hill to the border-control station, but Simon thought he might not have to make the walk alone. The streets were filling with school-aged children now and what traffic passed through the village was at a standstill. Mexican people love their children. Max Berlin could bribe public officials and maintain a stooge at the hotel, but even he wouldn’t dare endanger a child. They were everywhere. Simon moved in among them and placed his arms about the shoulders of two ten-year-olds as they moved by the observant eyes of the policeman. One false move—one tiny infringement of the law—and he might be jailed incommunicado for days. The boys were his cover.

  “I’ll bet you boys can’t tell me whose name is on the bronze plaque in the plaza,” he said.

  “How much do you bet?” the first boy asked.

  “Fifty cents.”

  “Make it a dollar.”

  “Okay, a dollar.”

  “Then pay me. El Presidente Lopez Morales—that’s whose name is on the plaque in the plaza.”

  “That’s right!” cried the second boy. “You pay!”

  By this time they were almost a whole block up the hill leaving the policeman and the traffic behind. It might be as easy to leave the village as it had been to leave Max Berlin’s spa.

  “You owe me a dollar!” the first boy challenged.

  “I’ll pay, I’ll pay!” Simon laughed. He loosened his hold on the boys’ shoulders and stumbled a little as he dug into his coat pocket for his wallet.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  “I hurt it,” Simon said.

  “How did you hurt it?”

  If he made the injury interesting enough to young ears they might accompany him another block. He held out the dollars for a lure. “I hurt it riding a motorcycle,” he lied.

  “What kind of motorcycle do you have?”

  “BSA Hornet,” Simon said. It was really Chester’s bike but this was no time to split hairs.

  “Dirt track?”

  “How do you think I hurt this leg?”

  Simon relinquished the dollar and held his audience spellbound to the next intersection. When the boys split he looked back down the hill to see if there was any sign of pursuit. Something was happening in the street opposite the plaza. The blue station wagon had attempted a U turn from the curb and was blocking the progress of another silver beer truck. The driver of the truck was pounding on the horn and the policeman was wading through a sea of children waving both arms and shouting incoherent directives. If Vera Raymond had planned to create a distraction she was successful. Simon took a deep breath, gritted his teeth against the pain in his leg and continued the climb. He didn’t pause to look back again until he had reached the border station. What he saw then was an only slightly less confused situation than previously. The station wagon was proceeding slowly through the crowd and the truck was trying to pass as they approached the hill. Simon turned to the border guard who smiled courteously while processing his credentials. He was free.

  He continued to walk. The station wagon would be coming through the reentry station within a few minutes. He wanted the pickup to look casual just in case Berlin’s influence extended this far.

  The road widened at the first curve and Simon looked back. What he saw was puzzling. At last view the station wagon had been ahead of the truck and, being much the lighter vehicle, should have been first to arrive at the border. But this wasn’t the case. No station wagon was in sight, but the truck, engine running, idled at the station while the guard studied the driver’s bill of lading. He watched him return the sheet and wave the driver on. The huge cab and trailer roared into gear and raced toward him. Air brakes groaned and the van came to a halt at the curb.

  The driver was a young giant with a heavy growth of black hair on his head and sleeveless arms, and a big black cigar clamped between his teeth. He opened the cab door and beckoned. “Hop in,” he called. “You’ve got nothing but hills and curves for the next eight miles.”

  This wasn’t the lift Simon wanted. He stared back at the border but no station wagon came into view. If something was amiss and the women were in trouble with the law he could be of more use to them stateside than sharing a provincial jail. “Thanks,” he said, and climbed into the cab. The truck roared forward. The driver hadn’t lied; past the first curve the narrow road began a tortuous climb. In spite of the grade the huge vehicle gained speed. Simon glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the trailer swing out wildly behind the cab—too light to hold the road at such speed. Sudden fear sharpened the senses. There was a reason why the truck was able to pass the station wagon on the hill: it was empty.

  “You must have gotten your driver’s license in a Tijuana cab,” Simon muttered.

  The driver crouched over the steering wheel, grinning. “Eight miles,” he repeated, never taking the cigar from between his teeth. “Get lost in this place, or stumble into a ravine, and only the buzzards know for sure. Hombre, I think that door next to you didn’t close tight—”

  The fear hadn’t come soon enough for Simon to be ready for the next move. The driver leaned across him and slapped the door handle. The big door swung open as he spun the wheel to the right and banked into a sharp turn. Simon’s body lurched toward the gap where the door had been. He grabbed the door frame with both hands and shoved his feet forward to brace against expulsion. They were still climbing at a reckless speed while the tops of the scrub growth nodded at the rim of the canyon. Now the road jackknifed back and the driver swung the cab outward to wipe Simon off on the edge of a solid rock wall. The swinging door saved him, taking the blow first at a momentum that ripped loose the hinges and sent it clattering down the road behind them. Simon, tensed for the next curve, screamed when the hot cigar seared into the flesh of his hand. This was Max Berlin’s brand of good-by. Not a snub—just a bleached skeleton that someone might find someday in the belly of a rocky ravine. The truck hit a dip and gained momentum for the next curve, and this time, Simon knew, he would get a blow from one of those hairy arms to make certain he took the plunge. He shifted his grip on the top of the cab and drew back his legs. He had time for one kick—both feet hard against the steering wheel as it started to spin to the right. Finger bones cracked under his heels and the truck veered toward a rock wall on the opposite side of the road. The driver hit the air brakes and yanked at the wheel. The cab lurched. Simon felt the metal of the door frame ripping at his hands as he pulled his feet away from the steering wheel and swung his body sideways back into the cab. The driver mouthed a curse and brought the silver behemoth to a grinding stop at the base of the dip. Directly ahead the road was blocked by a huge sedan parked sideways across both traffic lanes. A Cadillac. Simon was out of the cab before the driver could react, and Jack Keith, his shotgun pointed at the driver’s head, stepped out of the shelter of a boulder and yelled:

  “Come out of that cab with both hands in the sky�
�like now!”

  He stepped forward and yanked open the door. The driver, the cigar hanging loosely from his mouth, crawled out and raised his arms. “Simon,” Keith called, “get off your rump and open up the trailer. We don’t have time for chitchat.”

  The tone was authoritative. Simon scrambled to the rear of the truck and opened the rear doors to the trailer. It was an empty shell that was about to become accommodations for one. Keith’s shotgun prodded the driver to the opening.

  “Inside,” he ordered.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Simon asked.

  “Easy. You rented a plane and flew to La Verde. Your plane never left that field again, but Whitey Sanders’ Bonanza checked out shortly after you left Bonnie Penny at the Gateway. I twisted Whitey’s arm and he admitted loaning it to Max Berlin…. Wait, frisk the driver before he gets in the trailer. What’s he carrying?”

  He was carrying a switch-blade knife and a loaded Luger. Simon handed the knife to Keith and held on to the Luger. Max Berlin hadn’t returned Keith’s automatic. It seemed a fair exchange.

  “Okay, get him inside and latch the door. We’ve got to get this rig rolling. Berlin has a landing strip about a mile from his spa. By this time the town cop is telephoning the word that the truck driver crossed the border. Within a few minutes we can expect an air escort to make sure everything goes according to plan.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question,” Simon said. “How did you know I was on this road?”