Pattern for Panic

by Richard S. Prather

  And it was time I got going, so I sapped Emilio hard enough so he'd stay on ice for a long, long while, left him in the car and locked it, and threw the keys away. It was just beginning to rain.

  I parted the drapes hanging from the low entrance to Los Turcos, bent over and went inside. I still had five minutes, so I stopped inside the main room of the club, the Arabian Room, letting my eyes get accustomed to the dimness.

  A number of nightclubs in Mexico City are much more dimly lighted than any public nightclubs I've seen in the States. Usually, the waiters carry pencil flashlights so they can see the customers and add up the checks. Los Turcos was so dark you needed a flashlight, and it was, of all the clubs I had seen in Mexico, the most ideal for lovers.

  Turcos is straight out of the Arabian Nights, with nothing Mexican about it, but rather Eastern motif and architecture. The Arabian Room is filled with tables and a small dance floor at the back with a recessed niche for the orchestra half hidden behind a gauzy, semi-transparent drapery. At the rear of the main room are small, half-hidden booths, with veiling like the cloth of harem pajamas covering their entrances and concealing the people inside from occupants of the main room. Low hassocks rest on the floor around a foot-high table in the small rooms, and it seems they need only a water pipe or hookah to make them actually a part of the land of minarets and spires, muezzins and prayer rugs. Four other rooms complete the club—the Egyptian, the Kasbah, the Moro, and the Persian Room. The Persian Room was the one I wanted.

  A waiter walked up to me, but I told him I was meeting a friend. I did have him get me a phone book, though, and in the light from his flash I checked the Villamantes Exportadora e Importadora on Juarez. The number Emilio was to call only in emergencies, saying he had the wrong number, was the number of Villamantes’ office.

  This early in the afternoon there were only two couples in sight at tables in the big room, barely discernible in the dimness. I walked to the dance floor, then along its edge to the small pointed archway in the wall, through which was the More Room. The entrance was only about four feet high, and I had to stoop down in order to squeeze through, then I straightened up and stood inside the low entrance for a moment.

  Here there were no couples, no one. Later tonight the lovers, the young, dark-skinned Mexican men and their lissome, red-lipped señoritas would dance, and sit at the small low tables or in the tiny duplicates of the larger booths out front. But now the room was empty. The Persian Room was through the low archway on my left. Someone would be in there, waiting for me in another small booth, like these here, hidden behind the concealing drapery. I felt in the pockets of my trenchcoat; in the right one was my gun, in the left the box of matches with the torn El Bufón Don Antonio. A folded newspaper, with Emilio's reports inside it, was under my arm. I could feel my heart thudding, but whether as part of the dizziness and faint constant fear that was still with me, or from anticipation, I didn't know, I walked ahead, went through the archway. It was darker here.

  The room was long, narrow, with the little booths beginning near me on my right and extending to the wall ahead of me—five of them. The fifth booth, Emilio had told me. At this hour the draperies were parted before all the booths, showing their interiors, the small seats and round tables—except at one of them, the fifth. Behind its gauzy curtain the light of a candle flickered.

  If the person behind that veil was a complete stranger, one who had never seen me, I'd probably be all right. If it was somebody who knew me, or what I looked like, there could be trouble. I shook a cigarette from my pack, held it in my left hand, put the matchbox in my right pocket with the gun, and walked toward the fifth booth.

  I had to bend over to step inside. I parted the drapes with my left hand, stepped through into the cramped space and let the drape fall behind me. For a moment I was too startled to speak, then the exclamation burst from my lips.

  “My God,” I said. “Monique!"

  Chapter Fourteen

  I was stunned temporarily, staring at her less than two feet from me. I could reach with my fingers and touch the sensual lips I had kissed last night, lips that had whispered tender and savage words to me in the darkness.

  She didn't speak, but there was an expression compounded of amazement and shock on her beautiful face, a face made even more lovely by the candle's soft light. And as I looked at her, with my throat drying and a hollowness swelling in my stomach, I wondered why I hadn't thought of this before. I remembered that she had met the Buffingtons two months ago—only a short time after the doctor's deadly experiments; that she had been with them constantly, had come with them to Mexico, knew of their every movement.

  And finally I understood other things: almost every time I had been shot at, or followed, I had just left Monique or was with her. Even last night when I had taken her from the Prado, she could have—she must have—phoned from her bedroom the men who had followed us. Even in the flight from them, while acting superbly, it now seemed that she had done her best to help them and slow us down: falling, delaying—but always in the clear herself in case we got away.

  Finally I found my voice. I didn't know what to say, but I went through with it the way I'd planned it, watching her face.

  “It has been a long time,” I said. It didn't sound silly or melodramatic any more.

  She licked her lips, bit the lower one. Then she pressed a hand against her throat and answered like an automaton, “Only—ten days."

  “It has seemed longer.” I felt sick. The dizziness and nausea were becoming worse. I put the cigarette in my mouth, lit it, then slid the matchbox over the small table to her.

  She was still confused, uncertain. Her left hand was clenched into a fist, and slowly she opened it. The torn part of the Velasquez was wrinkled in her hand.

  “I didn't—I didn't expect—” She left the sentence hanging in the air.

  She had spoken dully, as if dazed. I tried to think. There was a chance, maybe one in a hundred, that if Monique could have been a Communist all this time without my knowledge, perhaps she might, at least while shocked by my sudden appearance here at Turcos, believe the same of me.

  My brain started working again; actually my chances were pretty good. The Communist is accustomed to deceit and dissembling, undercover agents, the ritual of Communism, the passwords and shadowed meeting places. While the normal up-at-six and to-bed-at-ten guy will almost never believe that next-door-neighbor Joe, who “looks just like anybody else,” could be a Red or a spy or a saboteur—which is the basic reason for Communist strength—the Communists themselves have been conditioned to accept such things as part of their everyday existence. And they live in a constant atmosphere of fear and mistrust, with the knowledge that they are watched by others. I might bull it through—unless Monique knew she was to have met Captain Emilio. But the code words and recognition signal indicated she hadn't known.

  There wasn't much help for it now; I had to try.

  Only a few seconds had passed. I said slowly, “I'm surprised, Monique. I didn't expect to contact you."

  She looked straight into my eyes for the first time. “I ... I hardly knew what to think.” She took a deep breath. “Did you, I mean, have you—"

  “Yeah. I've got it.” I hoped I knew what she'd started to say. I handed her the folded newspaper and took a chance. “It seems the good doctor is cooperating."

  She had removed Emilio's reports, was reading them in the light from the candle. “Yes,” she said, eyes skimming over the medical report. “This is excellent.” She looked at the other paper, then opened her purse and started to put them in it. I caught her wrist.

  “I'll keep them."

  She frowned. “But they were to be delivered to me."

  “I know, Monique. But they go to Culebra.” I took the papers from her.

  “Yes, but—"

  “We're to take them to him at the Center."

  Her eyes narrowed, then she shrugged. “There is no difference,” she said.

  I looked at
my watch. “We'd better leave."

  “We? But I was supposed—"

  I pasted on a grin. “No, both of us, Monique. I've already told you. We're both to go out to the Center—with the reports. Those were my instructions."

  It didn't sound good, didn't ring true. There was too much I didn't know. But I couldn't let her out of my sight, even if she tumbled—or was already sure I was lying. Monique was, again, the last thread, the only thing I had. The coldness of my skin, my weakness, reminded me that no matter what happened I had to stick close to Monique, perhaps even hurt her, make her tell me what I needed to know. But as long as there was a chance she might believe me, accept me, I'd play it like that. I didn't know if I could go through with it the other way.

  “Let's go,” I said.

  We went through the dimness of the club and out the draped front entrance, Monique ahead of me. The rain was steady now, big drops splattering heavily on the sidewalk. The gutters were beginning to fill. I pulled my trenchcoat around me, holding it together with my hands.

  Monique waved, said, “There's one; run,” and darted into the street as a libre, a new green-and-black Plymouth, slowed and stopped. I jumped inside the car after her, leaned back against the seat—and kept my mouth shut. I didn't have any idea where to tell the driver to go. I got out cigarettes.

  I breathed easier when Monique leaned forward and said, “To the Reforma. I'll tell you where then."

  We turned left off Diagonal San Antonio into San Juan de Letran and headed toward town. “Cigarette?” I asked her.

  She smiled. “I can use one."

  I tried to keep the conversation going so she would have to talk instead of think. Rain drummed on the top of the cab and the tires hissed on the street. I talked about last night, about the rain, about everything except Doctor Buffington.

  We turned left at Juarez and followed it into the Reforma, passed Chapultepec Park and kept going. We passed the Hipódromo de las Américas and drove on for miles. Finally I stopped talking. The conversation had probably kept her from thinking, but it had kept me from thinking, too. The way I felt made thoughts move sluggishly in my mind, but I began remembering things: that I'd been shot at in the taxi last night, while with Monique, in what was an obvious attempt to kill me; that Monique had been present at the beef with Belchardo, though there was a chance she didn't know he was on her team; and my conversation with Doctor Buffington had hardly been the words of a good Communist. And there was something else bothering me, something I had forgotten.

  Often the unconscious mind will warn a man when he has seen or heard something of potential danger which the conscious mind has ignored or forgotten. Often it has happened to me, and the prodding uneasiness alerts me, makes me search my mind, hunt for the missing piece. But there had been uneasiness and that strange fear in me for hours now; I couldn't separate the natural fear from the induced, artificial anxiety and alarm. I told myself that even if Monique had only pretended to believe me, was planning even now to trick me some way, I could handle her, guard against any sudden or strange action.

  I looked around. We were far from the city and there were no houses here; many trees and shrubs grew at the sides of the road. The countryside was becoming more dense, more covered with greenery, but there were no signs of civilization, not even the small villages of mud-and-stone huts with their packed-earth floors since the last one, Tlaxpacin, we had passed through ten minutes ago. The uneasiness grew.

  I thought back. Our conversation, then leaving—Leaving Los Turcos. Even if Monique believed me and we were headed for the Center, perhaps near it now, she would hardly—the idea skittered in my mind, wavered. I concentrated on it, thought around it. The Center was secret. A Communist going there would hardly hail a cab, any cab, to take her to the place. The thought got clearer. I remembered that Monique had flagged the libre which had come by almost as soon as we stepped out of the entrance, had run to it as I followed. I glanced toward the front of the car, my eyes falling on the rearview mirror. The driver's eyes looked back at me, straight at me, widened slightly, as an involuntary shudder rippled down my spine.

  I looked at Monique again as lightning hissed like a million snakes no more than a hundred yards away, crackled in the air as it struck the earth and the thunderous, snapping rumble roared in my ears. I jumped, startled. The car was climbing—laboring up the slanting road. I was shaky, nervous. I didn't like what had happened to me, the way I felt. It was foreign to me, strange, unnerving. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't calm myself; and it seemed that when fright started building in me it grew of its own accord. It wasn't like me and I had to fight it constantly.

  Lightning flashed farther away, and it was seconds before the booming rumble of thunder reached us. We crested the top of the grade and started down the other side. For just a moment, from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a gray building to the right, perhaps a mile from us. It was only a blur, the short flash of something looming there in the murk of gathering darkness nearly obscured by the mist and falling rain.

  I could feel tension rising inside me, tightening in my belly. I put my right hand on the gun in my pocket, slipped my finger through the trigger guard. Then Monique spoke. I jerked my head around toward her, too quickly, too suddenly for the simple words she spoke, my nerves jangling.

  “I'd like a cigarette, Shell."

  She was smiling, the smile a caricature painted in red on her white face. I told myself to stop it, relax, take it easy, stop it. Weakness licked at my arms and legs. She kept smiling.

  “Sure, Monique. Just a minute."

  Something was going to happen. It wasn't thought, or a hunch, but knowledge. I could feel it building, growing, getting closer. I looked at the rearview mirror. Nothing. His eyes weren't staring back at me; he peered through the windshield as the wipers clicked back and forth, monotonously. I remembered suddenly the tiny girl in my dream, her head rocking back and forth like the arm of a metronome. The wipers swished back and forth, and clicked, and clicked.

  I felt for the cigarettes, thinking, talking mentally to myself. The gun, keep your hand on the gun, maybe she's not doing anything, maybe it's your imagination. I had put the cigarettes in my right coat pocket I could feel them against the hand holding my revolver. I shook my head, let go of the gun, pulled out cigarettes and transferred them to my left hand, started to put my right hand back into my pocket. The steady, fixed smile was still on Monique's lips.

  And then it happened, suddenly, as Monique raised her left hand and touched the driver's shoulder.

  The driver slammed on the brakes and the car slowed and swerved as tires caught at the road. I was thrown forward against the front seat, unable to reach my gun. Monique threw herself against me, her hands clutching and scratching, slicing across my face and gouging at my eyes, her lips still pulled away from her white teeth in a parody of that smile.

  The car stopped as I smashed my fist against Monique's jaw, knocking her away from me. The driver spun in his seat, a gun in his hand swinging toward me. I shoved my hands toward the gun, felt the jar and pain as the metal hit them, grabbed the gun and twisted it; then Monique was clawing me again, her fingers clutching at my arm. As the driver raised up in the seat, facing me, I lunged toward him and shoved him backward. The gun slipped from my grasp as he fell against the steering wheel, the horn braying for a moment, and then the gun clattered as it dropped to the floor boards in front.

  I swung my elbow with all my strength into Monique's belly and she gagged, bending over. The driver pawed toward the gun. I reached for him, got my fingers in his coat and jerked him to me. He tried to turn but I sliced the edge of my right palm along his jaw, a glancing blow. I jerked at his collar as I bent forward over the front seat, spun him partly around, my right hand held high and spread open, blood thundering in my head. He turned toward me as he brought his hands up, digging for my throat, and I swung at his face. My palm sliced his nose and red squirted from it over his mouth as the thin bones crum
pled. But I'd struck too low to kill. He was stunned, sagging momentarily—and his face was a foot from mine, the bare, unprotected bridge of his nose suspended before my eyes. I swung my open hand toward it, felt it strike and his body tug against my fingers. I swung once more and dropped him, dead, upon the seat.

  Monique was trying to straighten up, her mouth smeared and twisted, eyes fixed on me. I grabbed her throat and slapped her across the face, then back, again, and again. “You bitch. I ought to kill you."

  I let her go and she buried her face in her hands. I grabbed her purse and went through it but there was nothing of importance, at least no gun. In a minute she took her hands from her face, looked at me.

  I felt hollow, sick inside, drained and empty. “My God, Monique, why?” I said. “Why?"

  She stared at me, her face frozen.

  “Why?” I said again. “I liked you, Monique; I liked to be with you. You were—hell, I don't know. It was good to touch you, talk to you, kiss you. Like last night. You can't be two people, that had to be you."

  “You wouldn't understand."

  I didn't answer her for a moment. “Maybe I wouldn't, Monique. Make love to me one night, be wild and warm and savage, even sweet and tender, in bed. And kill me the next."

  “We—weren't going to kill you. Shell."

  I laughed at her. “You weren't, huh? Maybe not. Maybe you were going to let someone else do it. But you knew damn well I was as good as dead.” I looked around, at the darkening sky, the rain still falling lightly. “What difference does it make who kills me?"

  “I'm sorry. Shell."

  “You mean you're crazy, you're out of your mind. I think I'm a little crazy myself.” I stopped, let my breathing slow down. “All right, Monique. I guess I didn't fool you for a minute, did I?"

  She shook her head. “Not for a minute."

  “Where did I slip?"