What of Terry Conniston?

by Brian Garfield

  Luck, he thought, swinging back toward the ecstatic extreme. It was all working out perfectly…. But later, driving back from Soledad with the Rymer file on the Cadillac seat between them, he felt a sudden chill when Orozco said, “My boys could work a lot faster if I told them what we’re really up against. They don’t even know it’s a kidnap caper.”

  “Are you suggesting we tell them?”

  “No. I imagine by now it’s too late for you ever to reveal the kidnaping to anybody. You’d have to admit how you took advantage of it to get control of Conniston’s business.”

  Oakley stiffened. He held his tongue for a long while, thinking fast. The highway two-laned down through the cow-country valley and in spite of the air-conditioning he felt the sudden pressure of the day’s torpid heat. Dark sweat-circles stained the armpits of his shirt. Unnerved, he said, “Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions, Diego.”

  “I’m a detective, remember? Maybe I heard some of those phone calls you made this morning.”

  “You mean you listened in?”

  “I’d rather call it monitoring the conversation.” Orozco turned in the seat and tapped Oakley on the shoulder. “Maybe what really worries you is the possibility Terry’s still alive.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If she’s alive, she knows about the kidnaping. How you going to shut her up?”

  Oakley showed his teeth around his unlit cigar. “I’m not that cold-blooded. What do you take me for?”

  “I honestly don’ know, Carl. I ain’t got you figured out yet.”

  “Let me know when you do,” he said, recklessly vicious.

  “I’ll do that.”

  The road took them east between yellow-grass rolls of cattle country. Some distance ahead and a bit to the right they could see the gray rise of the Chiricahuas beyond the cliff of Biscuit Mountain. All forest up there, and abandoned old diggings; you could ride forty miles horseback through those mountains and never cross a road, never raise the lights of a human habitation. Oakley, who had room in his soul for a streak of ardent conservationism, knew those mountains from boyhood and felt, once in a while, a keen sadness at the passing of such beasts as the timber wolf and the mountain lion, which had been hunted relentlessly out of the region.

  Is it a sign of encroaching old age that the mind starts to wander? He squirmed his buttocks back in the seat, sitting up straighter, scowling.

  Orozco said, “How come a character with all Conniston’s money didn’t have a big staff of house servants and all? Mrs. Conniston like to cook? All’s I’ve seen around there is the housekeeper coming in during the day.”

  “Earle had a few spartan streaks. He liked to fool with electric wiring and plumbing himself—he did all the repairs around the house, he was a pretty fair Sunday carpenter and painter. They used to have two or three live-in servants but Earle”—he paused, and concluded lamely—”got tired of them.” No point in revealing to Orozco that a few months ago Earle had decided he didn’t trust any of them. Another sign of paranoia he had missed at the time. Storm signals had gone up all over the place, he realized now, but it had taken him the longest time to start recognizing them. Once you formed in your mind a picture of a person it was hard to dislodge it; you were reluctant to change your feelings about him.

  He glanced sidewise at Orozco and felt a little better for knowing that Orozco’s mind could drift off the subject at hand too.

  But not for long. Orozco said, “Sonoita coming up soon. Stop a minute and I’ll check in with my boys.”

  The pavement unrolled into Sonoita two miles ahead—a crossroads which could only be called a town by an act of charity. There were half a dozen buildings around the road-crossing, a few houses scattered on the slopes farther away, and a great litter of weathered high-fenced corrals and loading pens by the railroad tracks. From the four-cornered intersection roads ran north toward Tucson, west toward Nogales, south toward the Elgin cow-country, and east across the Army’s missile-artillery range to Fort Huachuca and old Tombstone, the onetime bailiwick of fabulous ones like John Slaughter and Wyatt Earp. It was a country full of violent history. At a local rodeo in Sonoita only a few years ago two ranchers, disputing their claims to the same Nogales girl, had shot it out in a gunfight the traditions of which went back to feudal duels. The antagonists had been an Anglo and a chicano; the Anglo, a wealthy rancher, had armed himself with a Mannlicher rifle, while the chicano, an only slightly less wealthy Mexican-American rancher, had brought a twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun. The Anglo had taken advantage of his firepower by opening fire before they had walked within shotgun range of one another. Nonetheless the jury—all gringos—had denied the state’s murder charge, found that defendant had acted in self-defense, and freed him. There had been a round of ranch-parties in celebration afterward, to which no Mexicans came; the valley, cut by the Santa Cruz River, was known accurately enough as the Santa Booze Valley; the chicanos had burned down a few barns in angry rage but the partying gringos had been too cheerful about the whole thing to retaliate. And this was the country in which Orozco wanted the gringos to give the land back to the chicanos. Oakley gave him a wry glance when he pulled over by the green-painted roadside phone booth.

  He waited in the car while the fat man made his calls. He thumbed through the dossier on the Rymer group again but it didn’t hold his attention. He checked the time—just coming up on two o’clock—and twisted the radio knob to catch the news-on-the-hour. A plane crash in Indiana, an airliner highjacking in Greece, Russian rumblings over the Czechoslovak hippies, a Chinese H-bomb test in Sinkiang Province, terrorist bombings of government radio stations in Bolivia; and now on the state and local scene, Democratic gubernatorial candidate flays flabby record of incumbent Governor, newspaper strike continues, three-alarm fire in downtown Tucson slum dwelling. The newscast gave twenty seconds near the end to Earle Conniston; the tycoon had, the announcer said in his relentlessly smiling voice, “succumbed to a sudden illness during the night.”

  Oakley switched it off, satisfied. Orozco came waddling back toward the car, got in and closed the door with a grunt. “Stay put a minute—I got to make one more call.”

  “Qué pasó?”

  “We’re gettin’ there—we’re gettin’ there. The Baird kid bought a ten-year-old Ford from a used-car lot in Nogales yesterday afternoon, not too far from where we found Terry’s car. The bleeper we planted in that suitcase showed up headed west on Highway Two across Sonora, toward Altar and Rocky Point. And here’s the funny thing. Terry Conniston went through the Mexican checkpoint five miles south of Nogales last night. Driving a ten-year-old Ford. Alone.”

  “Alone?”

  “By herself.”

  Oakley closed his eyes momentarily. “I don’t get that.”

  “Well, look here, maybe they planted the fear of God in her. They could have walked around the station while she went through it. Picked her up on the far side.”

  “How in hell could they persuade her to keep her mouth shut?”

  “I got no idea. Thing is, she did it. She can get anyplace in Mexico on that road, just about. It’s the main highway down through Hermosillo and Guaymas. Or she could turn right on Highway Two—the same road the suitcase took.”

  Oakley tried to picture the map in his mind. “Where would that get them?”

  “Eventually to Rocky Point. On the Golf of California. They could maybe hire a fishing boat there and head for just about anyplace. I sent a couple operatives down there in a seaplane. Meanwhile we’ve got two boys in a car at this end of Highway Two. That should bottle them up between the two ends of the road, unless they got through Rocky Point already and put out to sea—but there’s no sign they did. The bleeper ain’t showed up at Rocky Point. I’d hazard a wild guess they all rendezvoused together at some town along the road, Altar or Caborca, stopped overnight. They could still show up any time this afternoon at Rocky Point. Now I got to get back on the wire and give orders. You’re payin’
the bills, you’re the boss. How you want us to handle it?”

  Oakley was still absorbing it. She’s alive. His contradictory feelings made him react sluggishly but finally he said, “We’ll handle it ourselves. The less your men know, the better. We’ll drive down there and follow their route—if we catch up we’ll deal with them and if they go on to Rocky Point then your men can keep tabs on them until you and I get there. I don’t want outsiders or police involved.”

  “It’s your party,” Orozco said, and unlatched the door.

  Oakley said, “Tell your people in Nogales to have things ready for us in an hour. We’ll need guns and a radio direction-finder to zero in on the suitcase.”

  “Okay,” Orozco said. If he was displeased he didn’t give much indication, but he didn’t look overjoyed. He got out of the car and tramped to the phone booth. Oakley settled back in the seat. Whatever the outcome now, there was at least a measure of relief in the prospect of action.

  C H A P T E R Fifteen

  In the heat Billie Jean sat with her legs wide apart, fanning herself with a folded roadmap. Mitch formed a loose fist, shifting his glance from her to Terry, who stood near the gasoline pumps under the concrete station awning.

  Sleeplessness laid a semitransparent glaze over Mitch’s eyes; he had to keep blinking. Wracked by bruises and sore muscles, he contained his irritability badly. They had been stuck in this woebegone gas station seven hours.

  The grease monkey came up out of the pit under the car wiping his hands on a filthy rag. He was a diminutive old man with the high-cheeked face of a pureblood Indian, the jet-black hair and old-copper skin. A broad grin showed the gaps in his teeth. “Oll ehfeexed,” he said happily. “Jew gonna pagar een dolors o een pesos?”

  “Dollars.” Mitch’s hand plunged into his trouser side-pocket and crumpled a bill. “How much?”

  “Eh?”

  “Cuanto?”

  “Oh. Sí. Cómo, cómo—” The mechanic counted on his grease-black fingers, his lips moving. “Cuarenta … dos … catorce … por ocho.” He frowned and shook his head, and suddenly threw his head back, beaming. “Doce dolares, por favor. Ees twelve dollars.” He added with an apologetic shrug, “Would be maybe not so mahch, bot hod to ehfeex the calceta and the pompa too, jew know? The, ah, the—chingadera, I donno the name een Eenglish, jew know?”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” Mitch muttered, and fumbled twelve dollars into the blackened palm. He wheeled past the girls and said crankily, “Come on—come on.”

  He rolled the car on west through the rocky desert hills, wondering how long the old grease-monkey’s patchwork job would hold the water pump together before it burst again. He kept it down to forty-five most of the time, except on the downhill slopes, hoping the water temperature wouldn’t rise high enough to blow another hole by steam pressure. In the back seat. Billie Jean said crankily, “Jesus H. Christ. I never been so sticky damn hot in my life.”

  “Shut up.”

  Terry touched his arm but he gave her a stony look and she withdrew her hand. They limped west in silence after that.

  According to the map they had picked up at the gas station, Caborca was a smallish town (población 5,000-7,500) on the Rio Asunción. There was, however, no sign of a river anywhere in sight when they reached the sign which said HEROICA CABORCA. The appelation, Terry explained, commemorated the occasion in the 1850s when a hundred Yankee filibusters had invaded Sonora, planning to capture it and annex it to the United States; they had been besieged here by the local populace, abetted by several companies of militia, and finally forced to surrender, whereupon the Mexicans had lined them up against the wall and slaughtered them with rifle fire, after which the corpses were stripped of gold teeth and rings and left naked to the village pigs and goats. According to legend it had taken more than a year for the stench to dissipate. It had been the high point, if not the only memorable moment, in the town’s four-hundred-year history. The severed head of the filibuster leader had been pickled and placed on display in a jar. It was probably around somewhere, still. The walls of the old Franciscan church were still pocked with bullet holes.

  The town clustered against the shoulders of several steep round hills, surrounded by scratch-poor country, all weathered clay and dry brittle clumps of brush. Here and there were painfully irrigated vegetable patches. Flocks of gaunt sheep drifted listlessly across the open desert. Dogs lay in the shade watching through bloodshot eyes when Mitch reached the outskirts of town and slowed to a crawl to make way, horn blasting, through a thickness of chickens clucking in the road.

  Ahead on the right stood an apparition: a brand-new motel, complete with plastic, chrome, neon, and swimming pool. Mitch stopped in front of it and eyed the cars parked in the lot. None was Floyd’s Oldsmobile. Anyhow, he thought, Floyd wouldn’t be likely to stop at a conspicuous place like this.

  He drove on into town. The streets were narrow, once paved but now holed and dusted. There were occasional cobbled sidewalks. The adobe structures, rammed together like city slum buildings, were painted ludicrous colors—pinks, yellows, greens. Poverty didn’t have to be soot-gray. Slow-moving women with black hair tied back in buns and dusty dresses with flowing long skirts stared at Mitch as if he were a movie director looking for extras to cast in a Pancho Villa film. Men in cowboy hats sat somnolent in shady doorways like characters in cartoons of Old Mexico. It was the siesta hour.

  There were a few cars parked with two wheels on the sidewalk—mainly pickups and station wagons, the old ones with real wooden bodies. Mitch didn’t see the Olds anywhere; he hardly expected to. Floyd wouldn’t make it that easy.

  He pulled up next to a young man in pachuco-tight Levi’s and stuck his head out the window; he spoke with care, drawing his lips back over his teeth in exaggerated enunciation:

  “Por favor, amigo, dónde está la farmacia?”

  The youth grinned and rattled off something, adding wild arm-and-hand signals like a ship’s semaphore signalman. Mitch flushed and heard Terry laugh at him: “He says it’s two blocks down and turn right and go across the plaza.”

  “Okay,” Mitch said, “Gracias.”

  “De nada,” the youth said, and stood grinning until they drove out of his sight.

  Mitch said, “What’s so funny about us?”

  “Maybe he just likes to smile,” Billie Jean said. “Man, those tight pants, you could sure see how he was hung.”

  Mitch didn’t glance at Terry; he felt redness creep up his neck. Terry said, “You’ve got a way with words, Billie Jean.”

  “Shit—you making fun of me? Maybe I don’t like your high-and-mighty, either, you ever think of that?”

  The plaza enclosed a park with a dead lawn and two or three palm trees. Mitch drove around it and found a parking space in front of the pharmacy. A pulse began to thud in his throat. He got the .38 out of the glove compartment and shoved it in his pocket—it was empty but the whole world didn’t have to know that. I should’ve remembered to buy cartridges in Nogales. Maybe they’ve got some here.

  It was just like the photograph, von Roon’s name painted on the sign. The door was closed and when he banged on it he got no response. He tried the knob but it was locked.

  Terry said from the car window, “That’s why the kid was grinning. It’s siesta time—everything’s closed.”

  Mitch backed down the three steps and came around the car and got in. “Great.”

  Billie Jean said, “What now, smart guy?”

  “We wait for them to open up.”

  “Not here,” Billie Jean said immediately. “Not here. Too hot in this car. Man, what’s wrong with that place back there we passed with the swimming pool? I could use a jump in that pool right now.”

  He glanced at Terry. “That place might not be too bad an idea at that. If we can afford it.”

  Billie Jean said, “I got some money of my own. I’ll pay my own way. Just you drive me back to that pool.”

  Drunk in his legs, Mitch opened
the door and went in and looked around. His eyeballs seemed to scrape the sockets. The motel room was new, impersonal, sparsely filled with cheap blond furniture. It smelled stale. The drowsy desk clerk had explained with huge amusement how the motel, with its enormous carpeted lobby, had been built by gringo speculators who had assurances from the Mafia that Sonora was about to legalize gambling. The motel was to have been a gambling casino—only Sonora hadn’t passed the gambling law. That had been eight or nine years ago. The gringo speculators were still scheming and the Mafia were still making promises and the motel was still losing much money. The clerk had laughed uproariously. He had cast his wizened eye at Billie Jean (Terry had remained outside in the car) and at Mitch, and he had winked and handed over the keys to two rooms. They didn’t have enough money to take three rooms. Besides, it would have attracted attention.

  He sat down on the bed and began to unlace his shoes. A shadow filled the door and he looked up to see Terry looking at him with an inquiring glance. He said, “You two take the other room.”

  “If you think I’m going to stay in a room with that female Genghis Khan you’re mistaken.”

  “Stay here, then. God knows I’m too fagged out to be dangerous.” He smiled weakly. “I feel like a two-dollar clock that somebody forgot to wind up. I don’t know about you but I’m going to wash off some of this dirt before I have to start paying real estate taxes on it.”

  He shut himself in the bathroom, turned on the shower and let the water run until the rust cleared out of it, and scrubbed himself almost viciously. Blood on my hands, he thought sardonically, remembering the high-school production of Macbeth. “Is this a Floyd I see before me,” he muttered. He washed out his drip-dry shirt and underwear in the sink and hung them, wrung out and wrinkled, across the shower bar; and went back into the main room with a bath towel wrapped around his midriff. “I feel twenty pounds lighter.”