by Nick Carter
The young diver knelt briefly in front of a small shrine at the back of the ledge, bending his head and crossing himself before he rose to his feet again. He picked his way back to the edge of the cliff.
Now the spotlights went out and he was in darkness. Below us, there was the smash of a hard wave and the high toss of white spume against the base of the cliffs. On the opposite side of the chasm, a bonfire of crumpled newspaper erupted into flame, the glare lighting up the scene. The boy crossed himself once more. He stretched on his toes.
As the drums picked up a fast roll, he sprang out into the blackness, his arms whipping out from his sides, his legs and back arching until he was a bow in the air, falling slowly at first and then faster, dropping into the brightness of the bonfire light and finally into the great swell of a wave—his arms breaking the swan dive and coming up over his head at the last possible moment.
There was silence until his head broke water and then there were shouts and applause and cheers.
As the noise died away around us, I heard Carlos Ortega speak up from just behind me. “He’s one of the best of the divers.” He pulled out a chair next to me and sat down.
“Once in a while,” Carlos remarked pleasantly as he sat down and adjusted the chair, “they kill themselves. If his foot slips on the ledge as he jumps, or if he doesn’t spring out far enough to clear the rocks—” he shrugged. “Or if he misjudges a wave and dives in too steeply when there isn’t enough water. Or if the undertow sweeps him out to sea. A wave can smash him. against a rock. Angel Garcia died that way when they were filming a jungle movie here in 1958. Did you know that?”
“You can skip the sightseeing lecture,” I said. “Let’s get to the point.”
“You know that Senor Dietrich is my guest?”
“I managed to figure that one out for myself.”
“And you know that his daughter decided to join him?”
“So I’ve learned,” I said, unemotionally. “Now, what the hell do you want from me?”
Consuela spoke up. “Shall I leave you now, Carlos?”
“Not just yet.” He took out a small, thin cigar and lit it slowly. He lifted his eyes to me and said affably, “How would you like to go into partnership with us?”
I’d expected threats. I’d expected and thought about almost every eventuality but this one. The offer caught me completely by surprise. I looked at Consuela. She, too, waited for my answer.
Carlos leaned even closer to me. I caught the scent of his after-shave lotion. “I know about Dietrich’s formula,” he said, his voice barely loud enough to reach my ears. “I know about his conversation with you and what he can manufacture.”
“That’s quite a spy system you have at the hotel,” I commented.
Carlos ignored my remark.
“What Dietrich has discovered can make billionaires of us all.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“Why include me in the deal, Ortega?”
Carlos seemed surprised. “I thought it would be obvious to you. We need you.”
And then I understood it all. “Stocelli,” I muttered. “You need a distributor for the heroin. Stocelli would be your distributor. And you need me to get to Stocelli.”
Carlos smiled at me, a thin, malevolent grimace.
Consuela started to speak up. Ortega silenced her. “Perhaps you should leave us now, my dear. You know where to meet us—that is, if Mr. Carter agrees to join us.”
Consuela rose. She walked around the small table to my side and let her hand rest on my shoulder. I felt the tight pressure of her slender fingertips.
“Don’t do anything rash, Nick,” she murmured. “The three men at the next table are armed. Aren’t they, Carlos?”
“Esverdad.”
Consuela moved off in the direction of the steps. I watched her for a moment before I turned back to Ortega.
“Now that she’s gone, Ortega, what is it you want to tell me that you don’t want her to know about?”
For a moment, Ortega didn’t answer. He lifted one of our empty glasses and idly twirled the stem in his fingers. Finally, he put it down and leaned toward me.
“Do you think I don’t know that John Bickford is a Weakling who can be pushed around without much trouble? He thinks with his cojones. All that matters to him is that wife of his, that expensive puta. And Brian Garrett? Do you think I’m unaware that Garrett is no stronger than Bickford?”
Carlos was whispering now, his face only inches away from mine. Even in the darkness, I could see how his eyes had lit up With the intensity of his inner vision.
“I can be one of the wealthiest men in the world. But I cannot do it myself. Here in Mexico I have some influence. I have connections. But what happens when we move our operation to the States? There would be only Bickford, Garrett, and myself. Can you see Bickford standing up to Stocelli? Or Garrett? They would dirty their pants the first time they came face to face with him. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes. You’d get rid of Garrett and Bickford to team up with me on this deal.”
“Exactly. Now what do you say?”
“What’s the split?” I said, knowing Ortega would take my question as the first step toward my agreeing to go along with him, Carlos smiled. “Ten percent” I laughed out loud. I knew that Ortega expected me to bargain. If I didn’t he would be suspicious. Ten percent was ridiculous. “If I go along with you, then we split right down the line.”
“Fifty percent? Absolutely not.”
“Then get yourself another boy.” I settled back in my chair and reached for my pack of cigarettes lying on the table. In the flame of the lighter, I could see Ortega’s face regain its smooth, cold composure.
“You’re in no position to bargain.”
“Who says so? Look, Ortega, you need me. You just got through telling me that you can’t pull off this deal without me. Bickford and Garrett? Stocelli would eat them up and spit them out and come after you. Now, you listen. If you’re going to hold out a carrot for me to stretch after, you damned well better make it a fat, juicy one or I’m not even going to nibble.”
“Forty percent?” Carlos offered tentatively, watching me carefully.
I shook my head. “Fifty percent. And if I ever catch you trying to cheat me—even by a penny—I’ll come after your hide.”
Carlos hesitated, and I knew I had him convinced. Finally, he nodded his head. “You bargain hard,” he said, grudgingly. He held out his hand. “Agreed.”
I looked down at his hand. “Come on, Ortega. We’re still not friends, so don’t try to make me think I’m your buddy. This is purely a business deal. I like the money. So do you. Let’s keep it on that basis.”
Ortega smiled. “At least you are honest” He dropped his hand to his side and rose to his feet “Now that we are partners, shall we go, Senor Carter?”
“Where?”
“I’m a houseguest at Garrett’s hacienda. He’s asked me to invite you to join us there—if you decided to team up with us.” He smiled at the irony.
As we walked up the narrow stone and concrete steps that led up from the La Perla nightclub, I could see that we were followed by the three men who’d been sitting at the next table all evening.
A car was waiting for us at the circular, cobblestone drive at the top of the cliff. The chauffeur held the door open as we came up to it. Ortega got into the rear seat first, motioning for me to join him. As I settled myself, the chauffeur closed the door and went around to the front seat. He started up the engine and then turned to face me, his thick fist gripping the butt of a big Mauser Parabellum pistol, its muzzle aimed squarely into my face from only inches away.
Without moving, I asked, “What the hell is this all about, Carlos?”
“Your gun,” said Ortega, holding out his hand. “It’s been making me nervous all evening. Why not give it to me so that I can relax?”
“Tell him to be careful,” I said. “I’m reaching for it now.”
/> “By the barrel,” Ortega snapped. “If it comes out of your jacket any other way, he’ll shoot.”
I slid Wilhelmina carefully out of the holster. Ortega took it from me.
“Do you have any other weapons, Senor Carter?”
It took me only a fraction of a second to decide. I slid Hugo out of his sheath and handed the slim stilleto to Ortega. “Take care of them for me,” I said easily.
“Vamanos, Paco!” Ortega snapped out the words. The driver turned around and put the car into motion. He drove around the center island and down the hill.
We came slowly down the cobblestone streets from the cliffs of Quebrada and through the narrow streets of the older section of Acapulco. As we turned onto the Costera Miguel Aleman and drove eastward I could look across the bay at the lights of the Hotel Matamoros. Ortega caught my glance.
“It would be very bad for you to even think of going back to your hotel, Senor Carter,” said Ortega, drily.
“How do you figure that?”
“You might run into Teniente Fèlix Fuentes of the Federales,” said Carlos. “And that would have been a bad thing for both of us, como no?”
He turned his head to face me, his dark eyes glinting with malicious amusement.
“Did you think I didn’t know about Teniente Fuentes being here in Acapulco?” he asked. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Downstairs in Garrett’s huge hacienda, there was a raucous party going on. A dozen of his friends had come down from Newport Beach in an eighty-foot motor sailer. The stereo was blasting away, and half of the guests were already drunk. Td been hustled upstairs into the bedroom by Ortega and Paco. Paco had pushed me into the room and slammed and locked the door behind me.
Consuela lay on the huge king-sized bed. Across the room from her was an entire wall of wardrobes, their doors mirrored to catch every reflection in the room.
She smiled at me, and suddenly she was a sleek, sinuous jungle cat, stretching sensuously. She held put her arms. “Come here.”
I stretched out in an armchair, leaning back and crossing my legs.
“I want you to make love to me,” Consuela said, her eyes half closed, twisting her body like a smooth, limber tigress. I sat where I was, eyeing her reflectively.
“Why?” I asked. “Because the house is full of people? Does that turn you on?”
“Yes.” Consuela’s eyes were only slightly opened.
She smiled possessively at me. “You’re teasing me,” she said. “Come here.”
I got to my feet and moved over to the bed. I let myself down on top Of her, putting my lips against the smoothness of her throat, holding her long ripe body in my arms. I let my weight come down on her as I breathed into her ear.
“Oh, you bastard!” Consuela lifted my head, holding it in both her hands and smiling into my eyes.
I lifted myself from her and moved across the room,
“Where are you going?”
“To shave,” I said, rubbing one hand across the bristle on my cheeks. I went into the bathroom and stripped off my clothes, then turned on the shower and stepped into it.
I had toweled myself dry and was lathering my face when I heard her call out, “What’s taking you so long?”
“Come join me,” I called back.
In a moment or two, I heard her come up behind me, and then I felt her naked body pressing against me, soft breasts flattening against my back, smooth arms coming around my waist, wet lips kissing my shoulder blades and running up my spine to my neck.
“You’ll make me cut myself.”
“Shave later,” she whispered against my back.
“Take a shower while I finish shaving,” I said.
I watched her in the mirror as she moved away. She turned on the water and stepped behind the shower curtains out of my sight. I heard the heavy stream gush in a roar of sound from the shower head. Quickly, I looked around the shelves beside the mirror. On the counter, I found a pint-sized bottle of after-shaving lotion in a heavy, cut-glass decanter.
Consuela called out to me. “Come in here with me, darling!”
“In a moment,” I called back.
I grabbed a hand towel from the rack and twisted it around the decanter. Holding both ends of the towel in one hand, I swung it back and forth, then slapped the heavy weight of the makeshift sap against my left hand. It made a reassuringly solid thud as it struck my palm.
I moved over to the bath and pulled the curtain aside gently.
Consuela had her back to me, her face lifted and her eyes closed to the hard spray of water beating against her. For a second, I looked at the rich, curving lushness of her body, the smoothness of her back and the way her waist curved in then flared out to join her round hips and the long line of her thighs.
With an audible sigh of regret, I snapped the towel-wrapped decanter against the back of her skull in a short, swift flick of my wrist. The blow caught her just behind the ear.
As she sagged, I caught her weight with my left arm, feeling her soft skin slide against my own, feeling all the smooth, taut flesh going suddenly slack in the crook of my arm. I dropped the decanter onto the bathmat behind me and reached under her legs with my right arm.
Lifting her from the tub, I carried her into the bedroom. Carefully, I put her down on the bed, then went around to the far side and pulled back the covers. I picked her up again and gently put her on the sheet.
Her long, seal-brown hair, damp from the shower, was spread out on the pillow. One of her slender, tanned legs was half-crooked at the knee, the other stretched out straight. Her head had fallen slightly to one side.
I felt a surge of remorse over what I’d had to do as I lifted the top sheet over her, pulling it up to cover the lovely joining of her legs. Then I lifted her right arm, placing it on the pillow above her head. I stepped back and looked at her. The effect was just right—exactly as if she were asleep.
Now, I pulled back the covers on the other half of the bed, rumpling the sheets deliberately. I punched the pillow until it was mussed and threw it haphazardly against the headboard. I turned out all the lights in the room except for one small lamp in the far corner of the room.
Back in the bathroom, I dressed and checked the bedroom one last time before I slipped out through the tall French doors onto the dark balcony, carefully closing the doors behind me.
The sounds of the party surged up at me from below. The music was as loud as when I’d arrived with Carlos. The pool was bathed by the floodlights, making the area around it seem even darker in contrast. The balcony on which I stood was in the darkest part of the shadows.
The room behind me was in the wing of the house that overlooked the pool I felt sure that the Dietrich’s would be in the other wing of the house. Moving silently, I paced along the balcony, pressing myself against the wall to remain in the shadows.
The first door I came to was unlocked. I opened it a crack and peered into the room. It was empty.
I moved on. I tried the next room. Again nothing. I moved around to the front of the hacienda. From where I crouched in the shadows of the balcony, I could see two of the guards near the front gate which was brilliantly and harshly lit by the spotlights mounted above the entrance. Beyond it was the driveway that led to the road on the edge of the cliff. Other guards were probably patroling the grounds.
I went back to the wing where Consuela Delgardo’s bedroom was located. I checked out every bedroom there. The last one was the one in which Ortega bad been sleeping. The heavy scent of his after-shaving lotion struck my nostrils as soon as I stepped into the room. I took a chance and turned on a lamp. Against the far wall was a large wardrobe closet. I opened the double doors. Behind Ortega’s neatly hung slacks and sport shirts, I found a cardboard carton, the flaps interlocked to keep them closed. I opened it Inside was an array of the by-now familiar plastic kilo bags of heroin. It was the forty kilos that had been in Dietrich’s suite.
Refastening the flaps of
the carton, I pushed it back into the wardrobe and shut the doors, then turned out the lamp and left.
Well, I’d found the heroin, but there was still no sign of Dietrich or his daughter. Standing in the dark of the balcony, pressed against the wall of the house, I began to feel my frustration. I looked at the luminous hands of my wristwatch. More than ten minutes had gone by.
There was still the downstairs to check out I went back to the far end of the balcony and, in an easy drop, I let myself down to the ground. The cliff edge was only a few feet away, falling precipitously to the sea almost a hundred feet below. Hidden by the shrubbery, I moved from one room to the next, checking out the downstairs completely. Not a sign of the Dietrichs.
The servants quarters? Yes, of course. They could be there. It made more sense than keeping them in the main house where someone could stumble onto them accidentally. I moved across the neatly trimmed grass, moving from one palm tree to the next, hiding in their shadows. Twice, I had to avoid the patroling guards, thankful that they didn’t have dogs with them.
The servants’ quarters was a long, low one-story adobe brick building. I could look into each of the six rooms through the windows. Each was lit up, and in each there was no one but Garrett’s Mexican help.
I moved away from the building, crouching beneath the leaves of a low-growing pineapple palm. I looked back at the hacienda. It had been built on a concrete slab foundation with no basement There was no attic, either. I’d checked the house thoroughly and was certain that the Dietrichs weren’t in it, not unless they were dead and their bodies had been stuffed into some small closet I had overlooked. But that didn’t seem likely. Carlos needed them alive.
I peered at my watch again. Twenty-two minutes gone. Where could they be? Once more I went over the options that remained for me. I could go back to the room where Consuela lay unconscious and wait to follow Carlos’, lead. When we had left the Hotel El Mirador he’d said that we’d be leaving for the States around four or five in the morning. But, if I did that, if I waited until then, the initiative and the advantage would be with Carlos.
