What of Terry Conniston?

by Brian Garfield

  He said quickly, “We?”

  “Yeah, some—some people I hitched a ride with.” Her restless eyes shifted away, combing the crowd.

  His hands felt sticky. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re alone here? What a godawful place.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “How about another drink, hey?”

  “You paying?”

  “Of course, honey.”

  “Okay, then. I’m kind of short, you know? The guy with the bugle over there bought me these, but then some fat Mexican woman came in and dragged him away by the ear.” She didn’t laugh. “His wife, I guess. Seven or eight months pregnant from what I could see. Poor son of a bitch must be pretty uptight if she keeps after him like that all the time. Why didn’t she just let him enjoy himself? Who’d be hurt by it?”

  “It wouldn’t have bothered you?”

  “Me? I like it, they like it. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well,” Charley Bass said, “you know these Catholics.”

  “I was raised Catholic. I know all about it.”

  “Say, what’d you say your name was?”

  “Billie Jean. I forgot your name.”

  “Charley Bass. Like Sam Bass, the Texas outlaw, ever heard of him?”

  “I don’t know. You related to him or something?”

  “Who knows?” He turned and signaled the barmaid. She came over with a cork-lined metal tray and a bored face and Charley Bass made a circular gesture to order another round; the barmaid turned away, expressionless, giving no indication whether she had understood the order.

  He shifted his chair forward when he turned back to face the table. His knee touched against Billie Jean’s and she did not withdraw; he gave her a lidded smile and said, “I’m in the oil business. Buy and sell leases. From Pasadena, believe it or not. How about you?”

  “Oh, I’m from—just around, you know.”

  His hand, under the table, explored her thigh. Under the thin fabric of her dress he saw her nipples grow, harden and swell. Her eyelids drooped and she squirmed on the chair. He said, “I got a room in the old hotel a couple of blocks up the street. How about it, Billie Jean? Nice way to pass the time.”

  “Maybe,” she said. A crafty light came into her eyes. “Look, Mister Charley Bass, maybe you’d like to do a girl a favor.”

  “Just name it.”

  “Well, it’s like this, see—these people I, uh, hitched a ride with, they’re still here in town, but when I came along with them I didn’t know what they were like. I found out they’re, you know, involved in something kind of shady-like. I ain’t sure what it is,” she added hastily, “maybe dope smuggling or something, but I’m pretty sure they think I’m onto them on account of something one of them let slip in the car. Soon as we got here I split, you know? They ain’t come looking for me but just the same I’d just as soon not see them again, you know what I mean? They’re pretty tough, you know?”

  He reached out and patted her hand. “I’ll be glad to give you a ride, honey.”

  “Well, it—”

  She broke off because the barmaid had returned. The barmaid set down drinks on the table and waited indifferently until Charley Bass paid her, whereupon she counted the money laboriously and turned away without a word or a nod.

  Billie Jean said, “It ain’t just a ride I need.”

  “What, then?”

  “Well, these people I was with, they’ve still got my papers. You know, my tourist permit. Mister, I don’t want to go back there and face them just to get that piece of paper. I tell them I want my permit back and they’ll sure as hell think there’s something fishy going on, you know? Maybe think I’m gonna turn them over to the cops or something. They’re a pretty mean bunch, you know?”

  Charley Bass said, “Well, I don’t know, honey. It’s pretty tough getting back through the border without papers.”

  “I thought maybe you’d know a way.”

  “I might,” he said, and pretended to think on it. Billie Jean leaned toward him with a moist hot smile; the dress slipped off her shoulder and one huge breast almost slipped its moorings—a deliberate movement and one which she undoubtedly had practiced to an art. He thought about it. She had a vapid conventional mind, desolate and predictable; she wouldn’t be any trouble. A few nights of hot sex with her and then maybe he could look up Sweeney in Hermosillo—Sweeney was in the skin trade, or had been, and a lush-bodied girl stranded in Mexico without papers was just Sweeney’s meat. Sweeney would give Charley Bass a cut of the profits. If Sweeney was still there. It had been some time since Charley Bass had conned his way up out of that league but he was a little strapped right now and a few hundred extra wouldn’t hurt any. Why not?

  Billie Jean said throatily, “Be a buddy, mister. You know what’ll happen if I get caught without that damned permit. I get a couple years of laundry-hands and starchy prison food to spread out on and ain’t nobody ever gonna look twice at me again. Listen, they put you in jail down here, you know what happens to you. The American consul never heard of you. Piss and dirt in some old cell they used to use back when they fought Indians. Big stinky Indian butches crawling all over you and you rot on pinto-bean dysentery. They won’t even let a white woman work, like a Mexican citizen prisoner, make a few pesos on the side.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “I heard once from a girl I knew. It sent shivers crawlin’ up my back just hearing about it.”

  “Sounds pretty grim.”

  “You can say that again. So how about it, lover?”

  He covered her hand with his palm and gave it a warm avuncular squeeze. “You just leave it to me, honey. Everything’s going to be just fine and dandy.”

  Billie Jean’s plump face lit up. She leaned forward and pulled his head toward her and kissed him with moist warmth and suction.

  C H A P T E R Seventeen

  The big Cadillac drummed eastward away from the seacoast, its quadruple headlights stabbing the darkness. Twisting through the coastal hills, Carl Oakley had both hands on the wheel at the ten-minutes-to-two position; his head was thrust forward slightly, tense, the eyes concentrated on the pitted road ahead as it sped into the light.

  Diego Orozco said, “You want me to drive a while? You’re pretty tired.”

  “I’m all right. I’m fine.” He felt alert but jumpy; he had taken two Dexedrines. “Where did we miss them, Diego?”

  “Beats shit out of me.”

  “Your boys seemed too positive they couldn’t have got through Rocky Point.”

  “If they had we’d have picked up a smell of them. They didn’t take no boat out, there weren’t any airplanes and copters in or out, and the road south along the coast is blocked off for construction. How many times you want to go over all this, Carl? It adds up the same every time.”

  Oakley stuck a cigar in his mouth and punched the dashboard lighter. “You keep trying to use your head. You figure the thing to do is rule out all the impossibilities and look at whatever you’ve got left. But what happens when you rule out all the impossibilities and there isn’t anything left?”

  “Then,” said Orozco, “you’ve overlooked something.”

  “All right. What?”

  “Lots of things, Carl. They didn’t do what we expected them to do, that’s all. Plenty other things they could’ve done just as easy. For instance maybe they’re holed up making arrangements to get phony papers. False passport, forged seaman’s card and papers, you can get a berth on some Liberian freighter bound for Macao and nobody’ll ever find you again. All it takes is a little time and the right contacts. Or maybe they figured to draw us off down here on a cold trail and then disappear, filter back into Nogales over the weekend and get back into the States by joining the mob of tourists returning Sunday night from the bullfights.”

  The lighter had snapped; Oakley pressed it to his cigar and heard it sizzle. He sucked the powerful smoke deep into his lungs and coughed. “But you’re sure the
bleeper’s still working. The batteries haven’t had time to die out?”

  “I ain’t sure of nothing—but theoretically the thing’s still alive and well and livin’ in that suitcase. We got to get within twenty-five or thirty miles of it before we can pick it up, though.”

  “It doesn’t add up. If they didn’t get as far as Rocky Point they’ve got to be somewhere along this road. Why didn’t we pick up the signal if we passed right by them?”

  “Maybe they’re holed up in a lead mine. Maybe they were too close to a short-wave broadcast station that jammed the signal. Maybe there was a mountain between us and an ionized cloud layer above it. Maybe they discovered the bug and smashed it. Maybe they emptied the suitcase and buried it in a slag heap full of metal ore. Maybe the bleeper was faulty in the first place and ain’t working at all. You want ironclad guarantees, Carl? You won’t get them from me.”

  “Maybe if my mother had a beard she’d be my father. I’ve had maybes up to here.”

  Orozco sat back, adjusting his bulk, tugging at his amply fleshed throat. He subsided into tight-lipped reserve; when Oakley glanced at him his eyes, reflecting the dim dashboard glow, had an ominous murky color.

  The lights of a car rushed forward and passed them; Oakley glimpsed a family of adults and kids in the long chrome-glinting station wagon, towing a boat on a trailer.

  Orozco sat motionless, the smoke of Oakley’s cigar making a vague cloud between them. Oakley felt rumpled and haggard. He glanced at the gun glinting dully in Orozco’s waistband and said, “Could you kill a man?”

  “I have.”

  “You have? Where?”

  “Where you get a medal for it. Korea.”

  “Not the same thing as I meant. What if we do catch up and they want to make a fight of it?”

  Orozco’s head turned slowly. “I’m not worried about me, Carl.”

  “All right—all right.” Orozco was right, Oakley thought irritably. It was himself he was worried about. Orozco, giving him a gun yesterday, had asked, “How good are you with one of these things?” and he had had to answer, “Not very.” It wasn’t a question of marksmanship; it was a question of character. He had never been under fire, never aimed a gun at another human being.

  The sky ahead was graying up. They covered the next forty miles without talking while dawn came indigo and violet and red and pink and orange. Oakley lowered the visor against the horizon-balanced sun. He felt the glazed, slightly out-of-contact unreality of sleeplessness. His eyes began to stray out of focus and he had to blink frequently and harshly; the eye-sockets felt dry and raw from cigar smoke. There thrummed in his ears a steady soporific beating of engine, tires, wind.. The road followed the gentle undulations of arid swells across the uneven desert, mountains heaving their dry-sided bulk against the sky at random intervals in various directions; the road swung along parallel to a dry riverbed, keeping to the low ground. A roadsign loomed and flashed by: Caborca 20 km. Shortly thereafter, something began to tweet and twitter in his ears—at first he thought it was an atmospheric change that had set up a ringing; then the sound became so tangible he began to look around the interior of the car to see if a small bird had flown in through the window by mistake.

  Orozco said very gently, “Slow it down, Carl.” He was bent forward over the portable radio receiver that bulked on the floor between his legs. Half-blinded by sun glare, Oakley could barely make out the rhythmic flash of a dull red lamp on top of the set. Orozco was turning dials in his big fists; the beeping sound grew louder and softer as he adjusted the coordinates. He brought it back up to its loudest pitch and made a mark on the map in his lap. “Somewhere south of us,” he muttered. “South-east. Keep going a couple miles and we’ll take another fix, try and triangulate him down.”

  Oakley’s solemn features had slowly lost their weariness; “By God. We’ve got the sons of bitches.”

  “Maybe. Maybe all’s we got is an empty suitcase. We’ll see.”

  “No,” Oakley said. “No. It’s them. It’s got to be. We’ve got ’em, Diego!”

  Orozco only murmured, “Maybe ten miles away off to the right there. Let’s see if we can find a road goes in that direction.” He bent his head over the map and moved a stubby finger along it.

  Mitch parked the Ford in front of the farmacia and sat for a moment brooding at the place, elbows curled over the steering wheel. Terry Conniston said, “Do you want me to go in with you?”

  “No. Floyd won’t be too suprised if I show up alone. He will. be, if you’re with me.”

  “What makes you think he’s in there?”

  “I don’t. I just can’t think of anyplace else to look. Maybe he’s not here at all. Maybe Billie Jean blew the whistle and they both took off somewhere. Oh, Christ, I’m just stalling. You keep your head down, okay?”

  He turned his solemn glance on her and leaned back, reaching around with his right hand to lift the door handle under his left elbow. Terry put out a hand to stop him; she slid closer along the seat and presented her face and he kissed her before he got out. Her eyes held him through the windshield when he walked around the front of the car and climbed the steps. He put his back to her and set his jaw, hooked his hand over the revolver butt in his hip pocket and swung the door open to beard von Roon’s den.

  The woman behind the counter was the only person in the place that he could see. There was a laboratory behind the sales room, part of which he could see through an open door; there was another door at the back, closed, leading perhaps to a flight of stairs to the floor overhead.

  The woman fixed her glance on Mitch as if she was waiting for him to serve a subpoena on her. She had a sagging jaundiced face, easy to take for an Oriental’s; by her cheekbones and black ropy hair she was evidently a mestizo. Mitch strolled to the counter, measuring the thud of his pulse against the casualness of his bearing; he said in his rusty guidebook Spanish, “Yo deseo a conocer al señor von Roon. “He added as an afterthought, “Por favor.”

  “El doctor no está aquí.”

  “Uh—dónde está, por favor?” He knew all his grammar was wrong but she obviously understood what he was trying to, say. He clutched the gun, out of her sight, and looked around nervously.

  The Indian woman gave him a cool, contemptuous appraisal; she said, “Quíen sabe?” and began to move away.

  With his left hand Mitch crumpled a five-dollar bill in his pocket and took it out. The woman paused, looking at him. He rolled the bill into a greenish wad, tight as a spitball, and let it roll casually across the counter toward her. “Es muy importante.” She probably thought he was a dope addict or a boy friend looking for an abortionist but he didn’t care what she thought.

  She picked up the wad and smoothed it out. Her expression did not change. She said, “Está en la Ciudad México. Volveré martés.” He was in Mexico City: he would return Tuesday. She gave him an arch smile and pocketed the five dollars.

  Shaking, he took another bill out of his pocket and looked at it. Ten dollars. Deliberately, he ripped it in half and pushed one half across the counter. “Por favor, dígame. Hay un joven Yanqui, muy duro, con pelo negro, tal guapo—con ojos muy—uh, malignos. Comprende? Estaba aquí?” It was a limp description of Floyd—young Yankee, very hard, black hair, perhaps handsome, with very evil eyes—and he hadn’t held out much hope of getting anywhere with it: but he saw the woman’s face change and he knew he had scored a hit. The pulse thudded harder in him; he made a vague gesture with the half of the ten-dollar bill. “Dígame—dónde está este Yanqui?”

  She spoke slowly, frowning, saying yes, there had been such a one; he had come seeking the Doctor von Roon and he had been told the same thing, that el Doctor would not return from Mexico City until Tuesday, perhaps even later. She kept her eyes on the half-bill in Mitch’s fist and Mitch shook his head and pressed her: “Dónde está ahora?” Where is he now?

  “El Doctor?”

  “No. El Yanqui.” He waved the torn money at her, leaning forward, his face
fierce and furious.

  She began to speak and he had to stop her and tell her to start over again and go slower. She did; she said with unconcealed impatience with his linguistic limitations that the Yanqui had left word where el Doctor could reach him but that she was to tell no one this except el Doctor. But when she said this her gaze was fixed on the torn bill in Mitch’s fist. Mitch reached into his pocket for the third time and withdrew the last money he had—another fiver—and added it to the torn half of the ten in his fist. “Es todo. No hay más.” He turned out his pocket to show her.

  She considered the money and she considered his face. She said, “Usted—está un amigo del Yanqui?”

  Not exactly a friend of his, Mitch thought; but he didn’t know how to phrase it in Spanish and so he merely shook his head at her. She was watching him in a way that made him morally certain she had disliked Floyd violently: Floyd had probably frightened her. And so, taking a chance, Mitch took the revolver out of his hip pocket and showed it to her, and put it away again, implying—he hoped—that it wasn’t friendship that made him seek the Yanqui.

  She took a while to make up her mind; finally she rattled off something decisive; he had to make her repeat it twice, at the end of which time she was exasperated with him and he was grimly satisfied. He left all the money on the counter and walked out of the place into the blaze of sunshine and said to Terry in the car window, “He’s hiding out in a shack south of here—up in those hills.” He went around and got in. She didn’t say anything; she only watched him. He took the gun out and snapped it open and stared at the six brassy new cartridge cases with their silver-colored primers. He had a pocketful more. He snapped it shut and put it on his lap and started the car.

  They had to crawl the Ford through morning knots of pedestrians in the narrow curving streets. The early daylight streamed through the tall palm trees, its color very rich. They went past the old mission church at the edge of town and he saw distinctly the pocked bullet holes in its adobe façade. Small dogs ran yapping after the car until it cleared the last palms at the southern limit of Caborca. Mitch told Terry what had happened inside the pharmacy; he said, “Floyd probably threatened to kill her if she told anybody but twenty dollars was more money than she’d ever seen in her life. She saw my gun and she probably figures I’ll kill Floyd for her—I wish I was as sure of myself as she seemed to be. Down here they think a man’s got a hell of a lot of machismo and cojones if he sports a gun.”