The Aztec Avenger

by Nick Carter

  “What else are you so sure of?”

  “That you never carry narcotics. They’d never risk your getting picked up for dope smuggling. Then they’d have to find another courier they can trust with cash the way they now trust you. And that’s hard to do.”

  “You’re damned right!” Consuela was indignant “They know I’ll never carry drugs.”

  “Does it make you feel better to think you’re only carrying money?” I asked her, with the faintest tinge of sarcasm in my voice. “Does that make it all right? It’s heroin that brings in the cash, you know. If you’re going to be moral, just where do you draw the line?”

  “Who are you to talk to me like this?” Consuela demanded, angrily. “Whatever you do won’t stand up to inspection, either.”

  I said nothing.

  “We’re not so different,” Consuela told me, anger coating her voice like blue-white midwinter ice sheathing a rock. “I learned a long time ago that it’s a tough life. You make out the best way you can. You do your thing and let me do mine. Just don’t pass judgment on me.” She turned her face away from me. “Take me for what I am, that’s all.”

  “I make very few judgments,” I told her. “And none in your case.”

  I reached over, catching her chin in my hand and turning her face to mine. Her eyes were chilled with the deep frost of resentment. But below the thin glaze of repressed fury, I sensed a maelstrom of churning emotions she was barely able to control. Inside, I felt a surging response to the sudden, sensual feel of the smoothness of her skin against my fingers, and an overwhelming need arose in me to unleash the turmoil that stormed within her.

  For a long, interminable minute, I made her look at me. We fought a silent battle in the few inches of space that separated our faces, and then I let my fingers move slowly across her chin and slide across her lips. The ice melted, the anger went out of her eyes. I saw her face soften, thawing into a complete and utter surrender.

  Consuela opened her lips slightly, catching at my fingers in gentle, nipping bites with her teeth, without once taking her eyes from mine. I held my hand against her mouth, feeling the sharpness of her teeth against my flesh. Then she let go. I took my hand away from her face.

  “Goddamn you,” Consuela said, in a hissing whisper that barely reached across to me.

  “I feel the same way.” My voice was no louder than hers.

  “How do you know how I feel?”

  The anger was now directed against herself for being so weak and for letting me discover it.

  “Because you came here to see me when you could have telephoned just as easily. Because of the look on your face right now. Because it’s something I can’t put into words, or even try to explain.”

  I stopped talking. Consuela got to her feet and picked up her beach robe. She slipped it on in one lithe movement. I stood up beside her. She looked up at me.

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking her by the arm. We walked around the edge of the pool and along the gravel path, up the several flights of stairs that led to the terrace and to the elevators that would take us to my room.

  We stood close together in the dimness and the coolness of the room. I had drawn the drapes, but light still came through.

  Consuela moved into my arms, pressing her face into my shoulder, close to my neck. I felt the softness of her cheeks and the wetness of her lips as her teeth nipped gently at the tendons of my neck. I pressed her closer to me, the heavy fullness of her breasts soft against my chest, my hands gripping the firmness of her hip.

  Now, as she moved her face urgently up to mine, I bent down to meet her. Her mouth began an angry, insistent, relentless search for my lips and mouth. I took off her beach coat, slipping the straps of her maillot off her shoulders, pulling the suit down to her hips. Her breasts were incredibly soft—silky skin against my own bare chest

  “Oh, wait,” she said, breathlessly. “Wait.” And she moved out of my arms long enough to pull the suit down past her hips and to step out of it. She threw the handful of net onto a chair and reached for the waistband of my swimming trunks. I stepped out of them, and we moved together as instinctively as if we had performed this act so many times before that it was now second nature to us and we did not have to think what to do next.

  We moved over onto the bed. I reached for her again and was very gentle with her and very insistent until she came achingly alive in my arms.

  She said, once, gasping, “I didn’t think it was going to be like this. God, it’s good.”

  She shuddered in my arms. “Oh, god, it is good!” she exclaimed, breathing her warm, moist breath into my ear. “I love what you’re doing to me! Don’t stop!”

  Her skin was fine and soft, slick with the thin sheen of perspiration, smooth with the ripeness of a woman’s body swollen with excitement. Her lips were warm and damp, clinging moistly to me wherever she kissed me. She moved slowly in response to my stroking fingers until she became wet and full and could not help twisting herself urgently against me.

  In the end, we came together in a frantic outburst, her arms clenched around me, her legs entwined with mine, pressing herself upward against me as hard as she could, pulling me into her with her arms, her throat making little high-pitched sounds that grew into cat growls of sheer, helpless abandon.

  At the final moment, her eyes opened and stared into my face, only a hand’s breadth away from hers, and she cried out in a torn voice, “You goddamned animal!” as her body exploded against mine, her hips beating against me with a fury she could not control.

  Later, we lay together, her head on my shoulder, each of us smoking a cigarette,

  “It doesn’t change anything,” Consuela said to me. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. “It was just something I wanted to do—”

  “—we wanted to do,” I corrected her.

  “All right, we,” she said. “But it doesn’t change one thing. Get that straight in your mind.”

  “I didn’t think it would.”

  “It was good though,” she said, turning to smile at me. “I like making love in the daylight.”

  “It was very good.”

  “Christ,” she said, “it was so nice having a man again. Not someone freaked out. Just straight,” I tightened my arm about her.

  “It’s crazy,” Consuela mused. “It’s not supposed to be that good the first time.”

  “Sometimes it is.”

  “I think it would be good with you every time,” Consuela said. “Only it doesn’t pay to think about it, does it? We don’t know if it’s ever going to happen again, do we?”

  She turned against me so that she lay on her side and put one leg across mine and pressed herself against my body.

  “Listen,” she said, in an urgent whisper, “you be careful, will you? Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said.

  “That’s what they all say,” she said. Her fingers touched the scars on my chest. “You weren’t so careful when you got these, were you?”

  “I’ll be more careful.”

  Consuela flung herself away from me and lay on her back.

  “Damn it!” she said, in her husky, ripe voice. “It’s hell being a woman. You know that?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Consuela went home to dress. She said she’d return in about an hour to pick me up for our appointment later on. I showered leisurely and was shaving when the telephone rang. The rough voice did not bother to identify itself.

  “Stocelli wants to see you. Right now. He says it’s important. Get up here as fast as you can.”

  The phone went dead in my hands.

  Stocelli’s swarthy, round face was almost purple with impotent rage.

  “Look at that,” he bellowed at me. “Goddamn it! Just look at it! The son-of-a-bitch got it in here in spite of everything.”

  He jabbed a thick forefinger at a parcel wrapped in brown paper with a blue slip of paper taped to it

  “You think that’s my damne
d laundry?” Stocelli yelled at me in his rasping voice. “Pick it up. Go ahead, pick it up!”

  I lifted the package from the coffee table. It was a lot heavier than laundry should be.

  “We opened it,” growled Stocelli “Guess what’s inside.”

  “I don’t have to guess.”

  “You’re right,” he said furiously. “Five kilos of horse. How do you like that?”

  “How’d it get here?”

  “A bellhop brought it He comes up in the elevator so my boys stop him in the entry. He tells them it’s the laundry I sent out yesterday and puts it on a chair and goes back down the elevator. They even tip him. Those dumb bastards! The goddamned package sits around for more than an hour before they think to tell me about it How do you like that?”

  “Was he a hotel employee?”

  Stocelli nodded. “Yeah, he’s legitimate. We brought him back up here.. All he knows, it’s sitting on the counter in the valet shop waiting to be delivered. The laundry slip has my name and penthouse suite on it, so he brings it up.”

  “I don’t suppose he saw who left it?” I asked.

  Stocelli shook his round, almost bald head. “No, it was just there. Any of the hotel employees working in the valet shop could have brought it up. He just happened to see it first and thought he’d pick up another tip.”

  Stocelli stomped heavily over to the windows. He gazed blankly out at the view without seeing it. Then he turned his thick lumpy body back to face me.

  “What the hell have you been doing for the last day and a half?” he asked, irritably.

  “Keeping you from getting killed,” I said, equally as blunt. “Michaud’s organization sent a man over here to get the local organization to knock you off.”

  For a moment, Stocelli was speechless. He pounded one clublike fist into the palm of his other hand in frustration.

  “What the hell am I?” he burst out. “A goddamned clay pigeon? First the Commission, now Michaud’s mob?” He shook his head like a short, angry bull. “How’d you learn about it?” he demanded.

  “He made contact with me.”

  “What for?” Stocelli’s small eyes focused on me, narrowing suspiciously in his round face. He hadn’t shaved and the bristle on his face was a gray and black stubble, contrasting with the black sheen of the few strands of hair he combed over his bald pate.

  “They want me to help them knock you off.”

  “And you’re telling me about it?” He put his hands on his hips, his legs astride, leaning toward me, almost as if he were barely able to restrain himself from attacking me.

  “Why not? You want to know, don’t you?”

  “What’d you tell them?” Stocelli asked.

  “To lay off you.”

  Stocelli lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “Yeah? What else? Suppose they don’t, then what?”

  “Then I’ll blow their organization wide open.”

  “You told them that?”

  I nodded.

  Stocelli pursed his small lips thoughtfully.. “You play rough, don’t you . . . .”

  “So do they.”

  “What’d they say when you told them that?”

  “I’m supposed to get their answer this afternoon.”

  Stocelli tried not to appear anxious. “What do you think they’ll say?”

  “Figure it out for yourself. They need Michaud’s organization more than they need you. That makes you expendable.”

  Stocelli was a realist. If he was frightened, he didn’t show it. “Yeah. You gotta figure it that way, right?” He changed the subject suddenly. “Who’s over here from Marseille?”

  “Someone named Jean-Paul Sevier. Do you know him?”

  His brow furrowed in thought. “Sevier?” He shook his head. “I don’t think I ever met him.”

  I described Jean-Paul.

  Stocelli shook his head again. “I still don’t know him. But that don’t mean anything. I never paid no attention to any of them except the guys running the organization. Michaud, Berthier, Duprè. I wouldn’t know the others.”

  “Does the name Dietrich mean anything to you?”

  There was no reaction. If Stocelli knew the name, he hid it well. “Never heard of him. Who’s he with?”

  “I don’t know if he’s with anybody. Did you ever have dealings with anyone by that name?”

  “Look,” growled Stocelli, “in my lifetime, I met a couple thousand guys. How the hell do you expect me to remember everyone I ever met? He’s nobody I ever did any business with, that’s for sure. Who is this guy?”

  “I don’t know. When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  “All right,” said Stocelli, dismissing the topic. “Now, I got a little job for you. I want you to get rid of that goddamned package.” He gestured at the laundry bundle with his thumb.

  “I’m not your errand boy. Get one of your own men to dump it.”

  Stocelli let out a rumble of a laugh. “What’s the matter with you? You think I’m stupid? You think I’m dumb enough to let any of my boys run around this hotel with five kilos of pure horse? If they get picked up with it, it’s like putting the finger on me. Besides, you know goddamned well I can’t trust them to get rid of it. You know how much that stuff is worth? Whoever I give it to, the first thing he’s gonna do is try to figure an angle how he can peddle it Five kilos, that’s better than a million bucks on the streets. That’s too much temptation. No sir, none of my boys!” I changed my mind. “All right,” I said, “I’ll take it” Stocelli was suddenly suspicious of my easy agreement “Wait a second,” he growled. “Not so fast. How come you don’t tell me to go get lost? That’s no little favor I’m asking you. You get caught with that stuff and you’re gonna spend the next thirty years in a Mexican jail, right? From what I hear, those aren’t places to spend even thirty minutes. So how come you’re willing to stick your neck out so far for me?”

  I smiled at him and said, “It doesn’t make any difference, Stocelli. I’m the only one around here you can trust to get rid of it for you and not get your ass in a wringer.” I wasn’t about to tell him what I had in mind. The less Stocelli knew about what my plans were, the better. Stocelli nodded slowly. “Yeah. Come to think of it, that’s funny, ain’t it? Out of all my boys, it turns out you’re the only one I can depend on.”

  “Very funny.”

  I picked up the package and tucked it under my arm, then turned to go.

  “Let me know what happens,” said Stocelli, in almost a friendly voice. He walked to the door with me. “I get nervous sitting up here without knowing what’s going on.”

  I took the elevator down to my room without meeting anyone. I opened the door with my key and walked in. And stopped. Lying on top of my bed was a brown, paper-wrapped package with a blue laundry list attached to it, identical with the one I held in the crook of my arm, the one I had just taken from Stocelli’s penthouse suite.

  It took me no more than ten minutes to fix things so that when the police came they’d find nothing. If the pattern was the same, I knew that the police would have been tipped off that they could find one cache of heroin in Stocelli’s penthouse suite and another in my room. They were probably on their way to the hotel by now.

  Less than half an hour later, I was in the lobby waiting for Consuela to pick me up. I wore my camera slung around my neck with a 250mm telephoto lens attached to it. Over my shoulder, I carried a large, top-grain, cowhide camera equipment bag.

  Consuela was late. I put the heavy camera equipment bag and my camera down on the seat of an armchair. “Keep an eye on that stuff for me, will you,” I said to one of the bellhops, handing him a ten-peso note. I walked over to the desk.

  The clerk looked at me with a smile.

  “Senor Stephans, no? May I help you?”

  “I hope so,” I said, politely. “Do you have a guest registered here by the name of Dietrich—Herbert Dietrich?”

  “Momentito” said the clerk, turning to the guest card-file. He searched through it
and then looked up. “Si, senor. El Senor Deitrich arrived yesterday.”

  Yesterday? If Dietrich came in yesterday and Stocelli the day before, and he had been on the same plane with Stocelli, then where had Dietrich been for twenty-four hours?

  I wondered about that for a moment, and then asked, “Would you know what room he’s in?”

  “He occupies Suite nine-oh-three,” said the clerk, checking the file again.

  “Would you happen to know what he looks like?” I asked. “Is it possible that you could describe him to me?”

  The clerk shrugged. “Lo siento mucho, Senor Stephans. Es imposible! I’m sorry, but I was not on duty when Senor Dietrich registered.”

  “No es importante” I told him. “Thank you anyway.” I passed him a folded bill.

  The clerk smiled at me. “De nada, senor. If I can be of help to you in the future, please let me know.”

  I went back across the lobby and picked up my equipment. I was hanging the camera around my neck when Consuela came up to me.

  “My god,” she said, laughing at me, “you really do look like a tourist with all that photographic gear strapped on you.”

  I smiled back at her. “Tools of my trade,” I said, easily. “I’m a freelance photographer, remember?”

  “Tell me about it later,” Consuela said, looking at her wristwatch and then taking me by the arm. “We’ll be late if we get caught in traffic.”

  We were just pulling out of the circular drive in front of the hotel when the police car turned in and came to a screaming stop in front of the entrance. Four policemen jumped out and walked quickly into the hotel.

  “What do you suppose they want?” Consuela asked, peering into the rear-view mirror.