A Deadly Shade of Gold

by John D. MacDonald

  She sat opposite me and looked at me with a certain somber speculation. "One man from Garcia loves a hotel girl. I hear a thing. I wonder something. You go in there? Kill a dog? Almost kill some man too?"

  "Me? No."

  "Yesterday your skinny woman is in the red car with the Heechin rubia. Then you are alone in the red car. And one time you are in the car with your skinny one. And one time Heechin is alone, eh?"

  "So?"

  She slitted the anthracite eyes. "Felicia is not stupid. It is about Sam, eh? These things?"

  "Felicia, those men who hurt you, they had a white car?"

  "Ah, such a beautiful car, si."

  "How was Sam going to get to the States from Los Mochis?"

  "He gets to Ensenada by little airplane, it is easy from there, Trrav. Many ways."

  "Where no one will look in that heavy case he had?"

  "Many ways. For a man who has some Spanish and some money." She closed her strong coppery fingers around my wrist. "The hotel girl says one thing. There is one bad man at Garcia. One killer, eh? Miguel, I think. You are trouble to Garcia, maybe they send him. Cuidado, hombre."

  "Why would they think I'm trouble?"

  "The rubia could think so, eh? Too many questions, maybe? One thing. You have trouble, Trrav, you have friends here. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Miguel is most sad of the dog. His dog, Brujo."

  "What does Miguel look like?"

  "Tiny small skinny man with a sad face. Maybe forty years. Very quick."

  "And he worked with Sam on the Garcia boat?"

  "Ah, you know it too! On that boat, La Chispa Very pretty. But not using it now a long time. Months, maybe. Garcia use it every day almost, long ago, many people, fishing, drinking, music. Nobody to run it now, unless Miguel." She patted my hand. "Have care, amador. Come back to Felicia."

  "I think we are leaving soon."

  She concealed a sharp look of disappointment with an almost immediate impassivity. She nodded. "Maybe this is not a good place for you."

  I trudged the seven hundred miles to the Casa in my dirty shirt, feeling unwell. I had the cold sweats, and the residual twitches of alcoholic poisoning. And I had the guilts. You think that you have laboriously achieved adult status. Then you prove there must be an incurable streak of adolescence. I knew that Nora would be wild with worry. When I went to the desk for my key I had the impression everybody knew exactly where I had been all night. Arista seemed blandly contemptuous.

  He said, "At the lady's request, sir, I made flight arrangements for you. But you would have had to leave here at ten-thirty by bus. It is now too late. Please let me know if you want this arranged again for tomorrow. It is a considerable inconvenience to me when such plans are changed."

  "Aren't you being paid to be inconvenienced, Arista?"

  "In the case of valued guests, I would say yes." For a moment I debated pulling him over the counter by the front of his spotless jacket, and running him down his front steps. But the effort would joggle my head.

  "What kind of guest am I, Arista?"

  He smiled. "We have discovered a small difficulty in the reservations. We shall require that your rooms be vacated by tomorrow, sir. I trust you will be able to settle your account in cash?"

  "Or you will call the village cop?"

  "I would not imagine you are entirely unacquainted with the police, sir."

  I had difficulty in thinking clearly. I could not imagine what had so abruptly changed his attitude. Could Almah Hichin have made some kind of complaint? Had I been seen going in or out of my room window? Could he really be so prim about a night on the town?

  "That's a dangerous smile, Arista. It tempts me to see if I can knock it off."

  He took a hasty step back. "If you and... the lady leave quietly tomorrow, sir, I will not cause you any trouble. As you leave I shall turn over to you an object I now have in my office safe. It is not customary for tourists to bring such things into Mexico. The room maid reported that a toilet was not flushing properly. The maintenance man discovered... the hidden weapon and turned it over to me. I will give it back to you when you leave. I wish to operate... a quiet and respectable resort, sir."

  I stood for a few minutes in thought. "I suppose your whole staff knows about this by now."

  "It is the sort of thing that would entertain them."

  "When was it found?"

  "Yesterday, in the early afternoon. I expected you to deny any knowledge of it, sir."

  "Why.

  "Possession of a weapon can be an awkwardness for a tourist, I would think."

  I smiled at him. "Arista, it just grieves me that I can't ever tell you how stupid you're being. I might be able to tell the owners, but I can't ever tell you."

  It was a childish counterattack, but it knifed him neatly. I saw his face go blank as he began to think of certain legitimate reasons why I might have a gun in the room.

  "But, sir, I can only go by what...."

  "Forget it, Arista."

  "But... it could be possible that reservations might be rearranged so that...."

  "Forget that too. Set us up to get out of here tomorrow morning."

  "Operating a place such as this is often a very... "

  "You have lots of problems," I said and walked away.

  It was after twelve. The interconnecting door was closed. It was locked on her side. There was no answer to my knock. I took a tub, hot as I could stand it, and topped it off with a cold shower. I pared the sandpaper stubble from my jaws. All the thorn gashes were cleanly scabbed, and I got rid of the last of the little bandages. The gnawed place on my arm was healing well too, and did not look too much like toothmarks, so I left the bandage off also. I dressed in fresh clothing, and looked at my face in the mirror. Eyes sunken and slightly bloodshot. Slight tendency toward cold sweat. A faint beginning of hunger. Small motor tremor of the hands.

  Just as I was about to leave the room, I heard Nora stirring around on the other side of the door. I knocked and heard her call, "Just a minute!"

  In a little while she unlocked the door and opened it and said, "Yes?" She wore a robe and a small and rather formal smile.

  "I thought you might have wondered about me."

  "Not particularly, Trav."

  "Oh."

  "I wandered out to the road and I saw Miss Hichin go by, alone, heading up toward the house, driving quite slowly. I thought you would come back and tell me what she had told you. I thought you might realize I was quite anxious to know. Then it got to be dark, I sent Jose down to the vilIage to find you, on his scooter. He said you were singing and dancing. I hope you had a jolly time. I made reservations but...."

  "I know, I talked to Arista. He's making them for tomorrow."

  "I've been at the pool. I'll be going down to lunch in a little while."

  "I don't think that would be a good place to talk to you."

  "Why not?"

  "It's public. You might be upset."

  "I don't imagine anything can get me that upset."

  "It upset me, Nora. I got pretty drunk."

  "Evidently. You look it."

  "I stayed there."

  "More research, no doubt."

  "You can't do much research after you pass out."

  "Let me explain something to you. You don't have to justify yourself to me. I haven't put any strings on anything. You're a free agent, Trav. I expected a little more consideration. Not on the basis of anything between us, but just because... you know I was anxious to know what you found out."

  "When you get dressed, come in here and I'll tell you."

  She came in when she was ready. I told her. Long after she kept denying that Sam could have done that, tears running down her face, I knew that she had begun to accept it. And I was certain when she began to blame Almah. I tried to explain to her how I had felt about the little broken blonde, but she could not comprehend that, because hers was a different kind of toughness. It wasn't the hard and fragile kind. The
n I told her about Arista and the gun. She understood then why Arista had been rude and impertinent to her.

  "There's something else about the gun," I said. "All the hotel servants know about it. They lost a gun up there the other night. It makes a pretty easy two plus-two. But I don't think anybody will make a move. Menterez is helpless. The girl is demoralized. I don't think any of them want any police problems. Some girl that works in the hotel sees one of those Cubans. Word would get back that way, probably last night. Probably water swirling out of the tank moved the gun and it got in the way of the mechanism. One of those things."

  "If those guards decide it was you, Trav, what would they think you were trying to do?"

  "Friend of Mineros, maybe, coming to take another crack at Menterez. If they know about the gun, let's assume they know we're leaving. There's nothing more here, Nora. We go and try it from the other direction. Tomberlin and Mineros, the friends of Mineros."

  "Why haven't those friends come after Carlos Menterez before now?"

  "Maybe they have been around. Killing a man in that shape would be doing him a favor. And it would have to be a personal thing. Mineros could blame Carlos for the death of his brother, his brother's wife, his nephew. Maybe the people who knew what Mineros was trying to do, maybe they don't have strong reasons. This is remote. It's hard to get at him. And it's obviously dangerous. Maybe the two younger men who were killed along with Mineros are the only ones who would have had the push to make another try. Hell, maybe somebody is setting it up more carefully for the next attempt. We're in the dark, Nora."

  "And the girl and that lawyer will get the money?"

  "If she can get him to sign. If the bank accepts it. If somebody isn't waiting for her to walk out with it. If the cash isn't found at the border and impounded. Carlos Menterez must know exactly what she is. And he knows that's all he has left. Money he can't get to, and a girl who doesn't give a damn about him. A big house and a crazy wife and not much more time left. And a stranger's face at his window. Nora?"

  "Yes?"

  "Does it do any good to tell you I'm sorry?"

  "It was probably a good thing, Trav. Maybe I was getting emotionally dependent. Maybe... things were getting too important." She tried to smile. "I guess it's a little bit like waking up."

  I checked my watch. It was two-thirty. "Do you want lunch?"

  "I guess not. Not now."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Lie down for a little while, I guess." She went into her room. In a few moments she rapped and came back in and handed me the garish little bedroom gun.

  "By the way, you handled that well," I told her. She made a sour mouth. "I imagined her with Sam. I guess it made me pretty convincing. That plus a natural antagonism toward pretty blondes." The door closed.

  I was able to get a sandwich at the hotel bar. Afterwards I wandered down to the boat basin and walked around to the other side reserved for resident boats. There were four tied up there. I would have expected La Chispa to have been one of the two bigger ones. But it was a flush deck cruiser, about 42 feet, twin screw, doubtless gas fueled. It was custom, with a big bow flare, outriggers, too much chrome for my taste. It had that look of neglect which a boat can acquire quicker than any other gadget known to man. The varnish was turning milky. The chrome was pitted. The white hull was black-ringed like a boardinghouse bathtub. Birds had left their tokens topsides. The mooring lines were chafed and bearded, and she looked a little low in the water, as if the pumps would have a long chore when somebody turned her on. The dinghy was upside down topsides, and named the Chispita. Sam's assault craft. The stupid son of a bitch.

  I went back past the sign which said Owners and Guests Only, and hunted for Heintz and found him in the shed behind the dock office putting a new diaphragm in a complex-looking fuel pump. I made some small talk, and when I thought I could do it casually enough, I said, "it looks like one of those over there is going to sink at the dock one of these days."

  "Oh. La Chispa? The owner is sick."

  "Doesn't he have anyone to look after it?"

  "The man left when he got sick."

  "I hate to see that happen to a boat."

  "I know. One of these days, maybe, I'll see if I can get permission to fix it up."

  "Pretty small to go anywhere from here, isn't it?"

  "Just a local boat. He had it freightered to Mazatlan and brought up here. A long run for that boat, Mazatlan to here. You have to wait for good weather. If he wanted, he could run it over to La Paz, but nowhere from there except back. Not enough range. A damn fool maybe could get it up to Guaymas, or maybe even down to Manzanillo, but that's the end of the line. The big motor sailers are what you have to have on this coast."

  "I understand some pretty good sized yachts get lost in these waters. I read about one a couple of months ago."

  He tightened up the last bolts on the housing of the fuel pump before answering. "The Columbine. She was in here. She anchored off. A good sea boat. I would guess an eight hundred mile range at low cruising. Things can happen. It was chartered. Maybe bad maintenance. Dry rot. Bottled gas explosion in the galley. Maybe they set course for Cabo San Lucas and the compensation chart was wrong and they made a bad estimate of speed and passed it too far to the south. It's a damn big ocean out there."

  He put the tools away and walked to his office. I walked along with him. He stopped suddenly and stared across the small boat basin.

  "Maybe we can both stop worrying about La Chispa," he said.

  I looked over and saw a swarthy little man in khakis trot out along the finger pier and leap nimbly aboard the boat, a cardboard carton under one arm, and a bulging burlap sack over the other shoulder.

  "That one worked as mate aboard," he said. "Hola! Miguel!" he called.

  The man looked around the side of the trunk cabin. I could not see him distinctly at a hundred and fifty feet, but I saw the white streak of grin.

  "Buena tarde, Senor Heintz!" he called back. Heintz said about two hundred words at high speed, ending in an interrogating lift of his voice. Miguel answered at length. Heintz laughed. Miguel disappeared.

  "I told him he should be ashamed of the condition of the boat, and he said that if one works twenty hours a day, there is no time for playing with toys. Now he is ordered to put it in condition to sell it, very quickly and cheaply, and perhaps he will buy it himself and compete with the hotel for fishing charters. That was a joke. He's not that good with a boat, and you couldn't run that thing at a profit. I've been relieved not to have him around for a couple of months. He's a violent little man. He hurt two of my men badly. They were making loud remarks about the Cubans, for his benefit. If Taggart hadn't broken it up, he might have killed them both. He looked as if he wanted to. Taggart grabbed him and threw him off the dock."

  "Was he taking supplies aboard?"

  "Maybe. There'd be a better market for it in La Paz or Mazatlan. The owner will never use it again. But I wouldn't want to trust Miguel to get it there. I've seen him at the wheel. He tried to handle it like Taggart did. That is like letting a child drive a sports car."

  After I had left Heintz, I went up to the pool level and sat at a shady table overlooking the boat basin and had a bottle of beer. I watched Miguel working around the boat and I felt curious and oddly uneasy about it. It made sense that Almah should try to pry loose all the money she could. Sell everything that wasn't bolted down. Maybe Carlos would sign the boat documentation, releasing ownership. And perhaps the title papers on the automobiles. But by doing that she would be delaying the day when she could force him to sign the bank papers. And from the look of him, she couldn't count on too much time.

  I saw Miguel squatting and fooling with the dockside power outlet, trotting back and forth. Finally dirty water began to squirt off the bilge. Then, one at a time, I saw him lug four big batteries over to the office shed, where Heintz probably had a quick charger. Miguel went back and stood and studied the lines. It was well moored, with four lines an
d two spring lines. He took three lines off and coiled them, leaving the bow line, the stern line and the bow spring line on.

  Then he went up the steps on the far side, and up the path and disappeared, moving very spryly. A few minutes later I saw a car going up the road, one of the three I had spotted while scaring hell out of myself. It was one of those Datsun things, the Nipponese version of a Land Rover. Carlos was fine for cars-the Datsun, the Ghia, and a big black Imperial.

  In addition to the steps and walk there was a steep curve of narrow road which came down to the boat area. And I wondered why Miguel hadn't used that. He had the car for it. The Boody jeep would make it easily. And I wondered if Miguel hadn't been just a little too jolly in his long range conversation with Heintz. Also, he was doing nothing about dressing the boat up. Maybe she wanted to sell it in a hurry. That much of a hurry? Ninety-nine percent of the things that ninety-nine percent of the people do are entirely predictable, when you have a few lead facts. Drunks, maniacs and pregnant women are the customary exceptions. Everyone has the suspicion he is utterly unique. But we are a herd animal, and we all turn to face into the wind.