by Lionel White
I shook my head. “Not unless they sell several hundred kilos for a thousand dollars,” I said.
“You are interested in several hundred kilos?”
“The first time around, yes. The second time, I’m interested in tonnage.”
He seemed to be mildly impressed. He stood up and crossed the room, put his hand out and picked up the two five hundred dollar bills.
“You seem to have a great deal of faith in my connections, senor.”
“A great deal,” I said.
“And assuming that I am able to steer you in the right direction, just how would you plan to pay for this hundred or so kilos of marijuana and perhaps, later on, those tons you mention?”
“Cash,” I said. “American dollars, or pesos, if you prefer it that way.”
“And where would you want delivery?”
“Ensenada.”
He nodded his head thoughtfully.
“I believe it could be arranged. It may take a week or ten days.”
He hesitated a moment, looking down at the two five hundred-dollar bills in his hand. “And these?”
“A sign of my appreciation.”
“And you say you are prepared to pay in cash?”
“I will have the money with me,” I said. “Of course, the deal will be contingent upon the wholesale price, as well as the quality of the merchandise. I am only interested in very pure stuff.”
“And that is all,” he said. “You’re only interested in pure stuff. Nothing else. Nothing hard?”
“Nothing hard,” I said.
“A shame,” he said. “A man who has the capacity for moving tonnage across the border would seem to be wasting his time on a minor commodity.”
“That’s the way I prefer it,” I said.
Again he was hesitant for a while, looking thoughtful. Finally he looked at me. “And you say you have the cash on hand to pay?”
I nodded.
He was still holding the two five-hundred dollar bills in his hand, and he carefully folded them twice and laid them on the small table next to his chair.
“It is possible that I could help you out,” he said. “I do have certain friends. However, I am not interested in small change.”
Again he hesitated, watching me closely.
“Let us come to an understanding. There’s nothing I can do for you after you receive the delivery. From that point on, you will be on your own. No Mexican can be of any use to you when it comes to crossing the border. You will have your own immigration inspectors to cope with, and I can assure you that they are alert since this latest campaign of cooperation between my government and your government has gone into effect.”
“I understand, captain,” I said. “I am only interested in contacts. Reliable contacts. I want to be sure that I am dealing with dependable people and that once I have taken delivery, I will not be interfered with for at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours. At the end of that time, the merchandise will no longer be in Mexico.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, senor. Let us say I am able to arrange the connections you want and that things go through on schedule. The price will not be a thousand dollars. You’re talking kilos and hundreds of kilos, talking tonnage. I will expect a percentage of what you pay. Let us say tentatively, twenty-five percent. Payment is to be made at the time of delivery. It will not be made to me directly, but will be put on top of the total price you pay.”
“That will be satisfactory,” I said. “And how long do you believe it will be before-”
“You are staying in Tijuana for several days, senor?”
“If necessary, yes. But I plan to drive down to Ensenada as soon as possible, and I shall be there for at least a day or two.”
“Ensenada,” he said. “I see.”
He stood up.
“I suggest you stay at the hotel here for the next few hours. I will be in touch with you. It is possible I may have some information for you very shortly. In the meantime,” he bowed slightly but didn’t offer to shake hands, “it has been a pleasure to talk with you, Senor Johns.”
He smiled and added, “And please give my regards to that most charming little daughter of yours.”
His sarcasm wasn’t wasted, and I wondered if Sharon had stupidly suggested to him that she could have been my daughter. I wouldn’t have put it past her, although, to have qualified, I would have had to be ten years old at the time she was conceived.
A moment later the door closed behind him.
5
I was still holding the two folded notes of five hundred dollars he had picked up and handed to me on his way out. It suddenly occurred to me that he had taken Bongo’s letter with him.
I didn’t like it. It had all been too easy. It wasn’t that I could put my finger on anything in particular. It was just something in his attitude and his quick willingness to accept me at face value.
There was nothing, however, I could do about it. The next move would be up to him. I was pouring a drink of tequila and regretting the fact that I’d neglected to pick up a bottle of decent bourbon when I had gone out, when the door opened and Sharon entered.
She was wearing a large, carved, Mexican-leather shoulder bag, and over her right arm was an Indian serape. She had been doing a little tourist shopping with her getaway money.
Knowing how I felt, she looked at me a little defiantly and then said, “Hi.”
There was something a little odd about her expression, a peculiarly glazed look in her eye, and I knew at once she must be about half stoned. She couldn’t have done it on the one cigarette I’d taken away from her, so I gathered that she must have had several others.
“I thought I told you to leave.”
She shrugged. “I was just getting ready to when he came.”
“And how long was he here?”
“Oh, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Where did you get that joint you were smoking when I came in?”
“He gave it to me.”
“What else happened. What did he ask you?”
“Well, he knocked at the door and said that you were expecting him, so I asked him to come in and wait and I told him I thought you’d be back. I didn’t leave then, because I didn’t know whether you’d want me to leave him in the room alone. So I just waited for you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Didn’t he ask any questions about me?”
“No, he just wanted to know how I liked Tijuana and if I’d been in Mexico before and, you know, things like that. Just sort of making conversation.”
“Did he tell you who he was?”
She shook her head. “He just said his name was Morales and that you were expecting him.”
I looked at her and said, “All right, kid, get your bag packed and get going. The only thing you can do down here from now on is get yourself into a lot of trouble. I’m going to telephone for a cab. You can���”
She interrupted me. “I want to take a shower and change my clothes.”
“You had a shower last night. You look fine.”
She pouted. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“All right, change your goddamn clothes and get going. I’m no longer fooling about it.”
She rummaged through her suitcase, pulled out a couple of garments and went into the bathroom, and a moment later I heard the sound of the shower. I walked over to the telephone and called down to the desk. I told them that I’d want a cab within the next twenty minutes, and they said they’d arrange for it.
When she came out, she was wearing a long, flowered skirt, and somehow or other she had managed to wrap the Indian serape around her shoulders, and it was pinned together so that it substituted for a jacket. She’d washed the lipstick and the make-up off again, and she looked young and lovely and very desirable.
“You like it?” she asked, smiling at me coyly.
“Looks great on you. But start packing. No h
ard feelings, it’s just that you have to go back to the States, and I have things to do.”
I guess the idea finally got through to her that I was serious, because she shrugged her shoulders after a moment and went over and started doing things with her suitcase.
A little more than a half hour later, I was having another drink of straight tequila and she was sitting on the bed, pouting and looking unhappy. The taxi hadn’t shown up, so I went over to the phone to call the desk to check on it. I was lifting the receiver when the knock came on the door.
I figured that the driver had bypassed the desk clerk and come directly to the room. I called out, “Come in.”
There were two of them. Both short, heavy-set, in uniforms, wearing dark glasses. It occurred to me, for no reason at all, that I had never yet seen a Mexican policeman who wasn’t wearing dark glasses.
The one with a Zapata moustache closed the door and stood with his back to it. The other one, the tougher-looking one, with acne scars marring his face, took a couple of steps into the room.
“I should like to see your identification, senor.”
I stood up and took my wallet out of my pocket and searched until I found my old army driver’s license and the registration card which I had picked up two weeks ago for the Jaguar. I handed them to him silently.
He stared at them for a moment or two and then reached back and gave them to his partner with the handlebar moustache.
I was still holding the wallet. His eyes went to Sharon.
“And your identification, senorita,” he said.
She looked at him blankly and I was beginning to wonder if she had any identification, when she shrugged and her hand went into the bag which hung on her shoulder. She took out a worn, man’s leather wallet and rifled through it. She found a rectangular card and handed it to him.
He studied it for a moment, then looked up at her.
“Sharon Cameron, seventeen years old.” He hesitated a moment. “You crossed the border with this man, senorita?”
I didn’t know what it was all about, but I cut in before she had a chance to answer.
“We met at a bar downtown and���”
I got no further.
“If you wish to remain healthy, senor, you will keep your mouth shut.”
He turned back to Sharon. “You will answer my question, please.”
She hesitated for a moment, looking toward me, but there was nothing I could tell her.
“Like he said, we just happened to run into each other and then, well���” She was picking it up better than I thought she would, but he didn’t give her a chance to finish.
“And you spent the night in the hotel with him here, didn’t you senorita?” His eyes went to her suitcase.
She looked at him dumbly and then half-nodded. He tossed her I.D. card back on the bed and turned back to me. I was still holding the wallet in my hand.
“Your wallet, senor.”
I handed it to him and he rifled through the bills, his face expressionless. He closed the wallet and passed it to his partner, who was still standing at the door.
I was beginning to take a slow burn.
“Now see here, officer,” I began.
It was a mistake. Out of. the corner of my eye, I saw his partner take the gun out of the holster he wore on the ammunition belt around his waist. The one who had been doing-the talking took a quick step toward me. He gave me a stinging blow on the side of my face with his opened hand and I guess he must have been a Grade B movie fan, because the hand was going back and forth as he struck first one side of my face and then the other, eight or ten times.
It left me groggy.
“Stand up,” he said, “and face the wall. Raise your hands over your head, step back from the wall, and lean against it. Spread your feet.”
He probably watched TV shows, as well as Grade B movies, but I didn’t argue with him. The search was thorough, but not gentle. When he finished, he told me to turn around and sit down in the chair.
He nodded to his partner, who put his gun back in the holster. The partner went through my opened suitcase, and when he came to the.45 automatic, he looked up and then carefully removed the ammunition clip and the shell from the chamber. He tossed the empty gun on the bed.
When he finished the suitcase, he went through the rest of the room. He didn’t, however, bother with Sharon’s luggage.
No words were spoken.
The bathroom came next and he was in it for less than a minute when he returned holding a flip-top, Marlboro cigarette box in his hand. He opened it and dumped out approximately a dozen, tightly rolled, thin cigarettes.
They weren’t Marlboro’s, and I didn’t have to be very bright to guess what they were.
My eyes went over to Sharon, and she was looking at me with a sort of dumb, baffled expression. She shook her head back and forth a couple of times.
For some reason, I believed her. It was a plant. I was beginning to guess what it was all about. I recognized the uniforms as belonging to the Tijuana city police department. These were not narcotics agents, nor were they immigrations or Federals. It was very obviously a routine shakedown. They had my wallet, they had checked its contents, knew that it held the two five-hundred-dollar bills, as well as several hundred in small assorted bills.
I figured there was only one thing I could do.
I was getting ready to make my pitch when the one who had struck me in the face spoke.
“Narcotics,” he said. “Illegally bringing a weapon into the country. Crossing the border with a minor for immoral purposes.”
He shook his head, sadly. It was a shakedown all right.
“We all make mistakes, officer,” I said. “If you would just let me have my wallet back and the one or two hundred dollars in it to take care of my hotel bill, I would be glad to���”
He didn’t let me finish.
“You are already guilty of serious crimes,” he said. “Are you now attempting to bribe a Mexican police official?”
I was beginning to wonder what in the hell he did want, and I was also beginning to wonder what I could do about it. It just didn’t seem possible that I had run into a couple of honest Mexican cops. If I had, it was an impossible situation. I could let them take me down and book me and then I could probably try and get hold of Morales and see if things couldn’t be fixed.
I would hate to do this. I was pretty sure Morales wouldn’t be happy about it.
But the more I thought of it, the more I doubted the honest cop theory.
Someone had planted that pack of marijuana cigarettes in the bathroom. I was positive that Sharon didn’t know about them, and I couldn’t see when Morales could have had the opportunity to plant them or why he would have wanted to. I couldn’t figure the whole thing out, unless they were holding out for more than the money that was in my wallet. Or possibly they were just trying to save face before they left.
I decided the best thing to do would be to test the honest cop theory.
Looking up, I shrugged and said, “All right, if I have violated your laws, I suggest we let a judge make the decision. But one thing I would like to say. The cigarettes you found belong to me. This girl didn’t know anything about them.”
I was not necessarily being chivalrous. I was sure the cigarettes were a plant and I could see no point in both of us being thrown in jail. I knew what Mexican jails were like. I also knew how long it might take to make bail, and I can’t say that it gave me any particular pleasure to think of Sharon having to go through the experience.
Acne-face walked over and stood in front of me. He looked dangerous.
“Are you trying to tell a Mexican official how to perform his duties, senor?”
I was suddenly tired of being pushed around. The sons-of-bitches had my money, what the hell more did they want? I stared back into his face. When I spoke, my voice was controlled, but it was a controlled fury.
“No, officer,” I said, “I am not trying to tell a Mexi
can police official how to perform his duty. I am telling two greasy, crooked cops to take their dirty shakedown money and get the hell out of this room.”
It was another mistake.
This time he didn’t use his opened hand. He used his closed hand, and it was closed on the slender end of a blackjack.
Except for the first two blows, I don’t know how many times he hit me. The first one I partly ducked, and it opened up a gash next to my right ear. The second one must have caught me along the side of the head.
There were others, but I didn’t find out about them until I came to some hours later and was able to make an inventory of my battered body.
***
It seemed to take forever for me to come to, and I had no idea how long I had been out. Even when ultimate consciousness came back, I just lay there, thinking I was reliving one of those old nightmares which had been bothering me over the months.
But there are no physical pains in a nightmare. You don’t have a head that feels as though someone has been using it for a battering ram. You are able to open both eyes, not just one. You don’t look down and see dried blood across your naked chest.
My one good eye finally went from my chest to the four white walls of the room. There was a window, high in the wall, opposite the narrow cot on which I lay, and there were bars across it. The door was solid. It looked like metal. There was no doorknob, no keyhole.
In one corner of the room was an enamel pot.
I was lying on an old army-blanket, and I could feel the springs through it. There was no pillow. Looking back at the window, I could see it was still daytime.
The floor was cracked concrete, and there was no furniture but the cot. No electric light-bulb. It was a jail cell, but I didn’t believe it was in Tijuana. The jail there was behind the police station, in a relatively modern structure.
This cell, even for Mexico, was the bottom of the barrel.
My head ached. I ached all over. Gradually I was remembering why. I shifted onto my side in the bed, trying to sit up. I didn’t make it. I couldn’t make it. They must have done a complete job on me after knocking me out, probably with boots as well as blackjacks.
