Okay, he'd watch the famous Acapulco cliff divers…
All right, now he'd done that. Now what?
He found himself back at the Esplanade. A tiny strip of coral sky still clung to the horizon, and already there were a million stars. Well-dressed Americans-mostly couples, or maybe that was only Hardy's vision of it-sat with aperitifs at outside tables. The breeze had changed, blowing out across the town toward the water. The night smelled faintly of oil and urine.
Hardy sat on the beach, facing away from the lights. He could hear the lap of water across the sand. Behind him there was always guitar music, male voices singing, softly, far away.
They had jai alai in Las Vegas, Nevada. There was a stadium in Tijuana about a thousand miles closer to home and still across the border. Puerto Vallarta, maybe. Oaxaca? Ixtapa? Who knew how many places?
If Rusty was here, and he was starting to think that was a pretty big if, and if he was going regularly to bet on jai alai, then Hardy would still need to have at least one person at every gate if he wanted some reasonable chance to get him.
There was no way. He didn't have that kind of money and he didn't know anybody. Maybe Abe could get the local police involved, send down a picture of Rusty…
Right, Diz. Count on that one.
He lay back into the sand, crossing his hands under his head, staring up at the man in the moon.
The El Sol wasn't anywhere near the beach. Beyond the street-front lobby each ground-floor unit on both wings of the hotel had sliding glass doors that opened onto a red-tiled terrace that looked out on the pool. More bougainvillea climbed the filigreed wrought-iron to the second-floor walkway. Palms and banana trees, spared by location from most of the wrath of the hurricane, dotted the inner courtyard.
Hardy sat outside on his terrace with a rare cigar and a bottle of El Presidente brandy. He wasn't really drinking -he'd poured an inch into the juice glass from the bathroom about forty minutes before and half of it was still there. He'd been in Mexico enough to know that, all cliches notwithstanding, you really didn't drink the water. And he was sick of orange pop.
Since one of the advertised features of the El Sol-in neon over the door of the lobby-was a telephone in every room, Hardy had a telephone. He also had a television set. The fact that neither worked didn't surprise him very much. He thought it might be fun someday to settle down here in Mexico and open a luxury hotel-Ice machines! Pinball! Cable TV! Magic fingers! And, of course, telephone. None of them would have to work. The fact that you had them made you special.
He had some luck calling San Francisco earlier from the pay phones near the post office. He got Jane's answering machine and told her where he was, that he might get back in a week. The cryptic and enigmatic Hardy.
Isaac Glitsky, Abe's son, said that Abe and Flo had been down in L.A. since Friday. Interviewing for a new job, Hardy figured, and making a weekend of it. Really doing it? When Hardy decided to head south, he didn't mention it to Abe. He hadn't felt like explaining his somewhat farfetched reasons, trying to justify taping his.38 up under the fender of his Samurai. Abe would have gone nuts. But now Isaac was supposed to ask where he was and Hardy told him and said he'd call back the next day.
Frannie hadn't been home.
There was some quiet laughter across the way on another shadowed terrace. Someone had slipped into the pool. He heard a telephone ring faintly up in the lobby. He drew on his cigar and sipped the brandy.
The telephone!
He'd taken it outside to the terrace and periodically lifted the receiver to silence. Now suddenly there was a dial tone. He dialed Frannie's number, waited. Waited some more.
"Hello."
"I don't believe it."
"Dismas?"
"C'est moi. No wait, wrong country, soy yo."
"Are you all right? Abe called here. He didn't know-"
"I know, but you did. I'm here. I'm okay."
The pleasantries, getting used to the distance, the separation. The drive down, the hurricane, the phones being out.
"… which is why it's taken so long to get through. How are you feeling?"
"Okay."
Not too committal there. "Okay?"
The long-distance wires hummed in the silence.
"I'm okay. I went to the doctor's Friday and heard the heartbeat." The baby's. She took a breath. "It's really there and alive." He could hear her eyes brimming. "I missed Eddie, I missed you, I had a bad night. I think I'm pretty confused about things right now."
Hardy sipped some brandy. "Do you want me back up there?"
"I don't think… I don't know what I'd do with you right now. But I know I want you to be careful."
"I'm always careful. I'm using block-out, wearing a hat, not drinking the water, the whole shebang."
"Do you know what you want to do when you get back?"
As though she were sitting in front of him, Hardy shook his head. "No. What I'm trying to do now is figure out what lunacy made me decide I could find Rusty Ingraham down here, if he's alive, if he's here."
"Maybe Abe could somehow get the police down there to help you?"
"Who's going to help a civilian with no hard evidence look for a guy who's considered dead? Abe won't."
"I don't know. When he called"-she paused-"he's your friend, Diz. He really sounded worried, wanted to know where you'd gone, why didn't you tell him, all that."
"It's just not the kind of thing he would understand. That's why he gets paid for what he does."
"Well, he also told me to tell you to come home. The case is closed."
Some parrots screeched in the top of one of the palms. Hardy's stomach tightened. "They found Rusty's body?"
"No, not that. Just a second, he had me write this all down."
His cigar had gone out. The swimmer's wake lapped the pool's edge. Hardy found he was sweating, gripping the receiver white-knuckled.
"Okay," she said, "are you still there?"
She told him that Glitsky said he had questioned a man named Hector Medina as he'd been planning to. The next day, the day Hardy left for Mexico, Hector evidently jumped from the top of the Sir Francis Drake to one of its lower roofs. They found between two and three thousand dollars in cash on him.
"So Abe thinks he killed this man Johnny LaGuardia. And he says it follows that he paid Johnny to kill Rusty Ingraham."
"What about the girl that was with him?"
"Maybe, he says, it was just bad luck she was there. Anyway, that's what Abe seems to think. That Hector Medina realized he was going to get caught for it and couldn't face it."
"Was there a note? Didn't he have a daughter or something?"
"I don't know. I guess no note. Abe would have said, wouldn't he? I mean, in a message for you."
"And Abe said he really thought that's how it went down?"
"Well, he said it tied everything up pretty well."
Lap of water, screech of parrot, the hum of the longdistance connection.
"Diz?"
"He's in L.A. now, interviewing for a job down there. I wonder if maybe he just wanted to feel like his cases were settled."
"Doesn't it make sense to you?"
"I guess. No. Not really."
"Abe told me you'd made a pretty good case that Rusty was dead."
"I know. I did."
"But now you don't believe it?"
"Well, four days and fifteen hundred miles ago I wasn't sure I believed it. Now, I'm here, I might as well give it a day or two more, but I have to say that after today, even if he's alive, finding him doesn't look very promising."
"And what'll you do if you do find him?"
"I don't know. I guess it depends. Have a party, get drunk, tie him up and ride him back to San Francisco. Maybe go to the police here and try to have him extradited-"
"Would you please try to remember he might be dangerous?"
"Okay. I already thought of that."
"I mean it, Dismas."
"I mean it, too, Frannie. What mor
e do you want me to say?"
She waited a beat. "I want you to say you're coming home, that we'll see each other again."
"Okay, I'll say that."
Another beat. "You will?"
"God willin' and the creek don't rise," he said.
Chapter Twenty-four
" ^ "
The eyes opened to darkness. Over by the opening for the window, where the light would eventually start, there was nothing. Gradually as he looked, the one darkness became several different shades of black and gray-the shapes of the desk, a poster, the window, one of the chairs. Stars flickered dimly in the black sky.
Rusty Ingraham sat up on the hard bed. The girl next to him was asleep, her long hair splaying over her pillow. He wearily tapped his good right arm on the mattress, as though asking it to quit being so unfriendly. He got up and went into the bathroom, feeling his way through the still unfamiliar house. Closing the door behind him, he turned on the light and watched the cockroaches scatter.
Outside were no living sounds, not even the birds that herald the coming day hours before the sky began to lighten. So it was very early, perhaps even very late the night before. How long had he slept?
Abruptly, he flipped the light off again, standing still and listening carefully now. Always listening carefully, keeping his eyes open. It was already getting old.
He could just make out the sounds of water in the bay -the slush slap against boat and piling, the gentler wash against sand. The house was north of the city, on the beach.
Something-a lizard? A tree rat?-skittered across the roof. Far off, a motor-a car or a fishing boat-started up, coughed once, then faded. He turned the light back on. The porcelain toilet didn't have a seat. The mirror over the sink had rust spots through the glass. There was no curtain in the shower area.
Well, what did he expect on the notice he'd given? There would be time, and already money, for something better..
His arm was throbbing slightly and he tried to remember if he'd taken his antibiotics before going to bed with… whatever her name was.
Well, whoever she was, she had been just what he liked -pretty, enthusiastic, game for a good time. And going home to Atlanta today. And another one would arrive, or had arrived and was waiting for him. These vacation girls were the way to go. No promises, no pretense. None of the hassles a steady woman could bring you.
He touched the bandage gingerly, trying to see if the throbbing was the onset of infection, which could be trouble, or just the pain of rebuilding tissue. He tried to flex his left arm but thought he was still quite a ways from that.
No, it was a good solid dull pain. He mugged at the mirror, his lady-killer grin. His eyes were clear. No fever, therefore no infection.
He went back to the bed and stretched out next to the girl. The window remained a black hole in deeper blackness. A creaking sound, like a twig breaking, made him jump, and the girl stirred beside him. Then silence.
It was just the house settling.
He drifted back off into sleep.
It was only a hunch, but Hardy thought it was better than trying to cover twelve exits at one time.
He thought he would give it two more days and then start the long haul back home. This morning, still pretty fatigued from the drive down, he had slept in, but tomorrow he planned to get in one run at deep-sea fishing, maybe get a nice picture of himself and a sailfish to brag about back at the Shamrock.
He got to the stadium well after the games had started. He heard the loudspeaker and the applause from the edges of the parking lot. There'd been no blue Volkswagen Jettas parked in the street he had taken leading up to the stadium. Tomorrow, if nothing worked today, he would hire a lucky cab driver and put on some miles covering the streets all around the neighborhood. But today he would start with the parking lot.
There was no concrete. It was a dusty, grassless, pot-holed couple of square blocks surrounding the stadium, into which people had driven and parked in pretty much random order. If you were near the stadium, Hardy figured it would take at least an hour to let the lot clear enough to make your way out. There wasn't anything resembling a lane where traffic should go, no white lines for parking areas. If your car fit, jam it in there.
Twenty-five minutes of walking in the bright hot sun got pretty depressing. The Volkswagen was a popular car in Mexico. The old Beetle was as common as it had been in the United States in the sixties. But there were also Rabbits and, unfortunately, Jettas. And two of them light blue in his first pass at the outside border of the lot.
Wonderful, he thought. A dozen exits to the stadium. Probably a dozen blue Jettas in the parking lot. He needed twenty guys, a week, and a ton of luck. And even then…
He sat on somebody's fender near the entrance to the lot, sucking down an ice-cold Fanta, trying to come up with some plan that might work. The landscape of automobiles shimmered and glared in the heat.
California plates!
Acapulco was a long way from California, and almost no one, except for the lunatic fringe among whom Hardy was beginning to count himself, drove. There wouldn't be more than twenty cars in the lot with California plates, and he guessed the odds of finding more than one blue Jetta with them were significantly on his side.
Whistling, he started walking through the lot.
"Woo, I'm dizzy."
She pressed her body up against his good side.
She was fantastic. Long, leggy, a face for the movies. Hair a deep chestnut, green eyes. She was a secretary from Washington, D.C., and wore a white T-shirt from the Hard Times Cafe that said 'I like mine all the way wet.' The T-shirt was a little small-her breasts held the front up high enough to show her navel in the slim waist. Maybe she was twenty-two, and with a couple of margaritas already in her. Look out.
"Watch out for the potholes," Rusty said. "Just lean against me."
"Could you believe those bodies?" she said.
"Pretty amazing."
"I mean, I've seen jocks before, but these guys…"
He let her go on. Fantasize all you want, he was thinking. And he'd been studying the guys, too. Getting to know them a little now, what to watch for. And getting lucky, hitting two, then three, four in a row, clearing over a thousand U.S. today, more than making up for last week's disaster.
He was glad the hurricane had enforced the time off. He had been starting to press. Just down here and thinking he had to make his mark right away. Wrong. He had time. He kept telling himself he had time. All the time in the world. So he took a few days off, met Atlanta, stayed indoors. It had been good for him. Now, starting a new week fresh, hitting it right away, this was it.
Most of the cars were out of the lot. He and D.C. were laughing, watching out for potholes. They were going to go down to the Esplanade and have turtle soup and a lobster dinner and blow a wad of this money, then maybe hit a cock fight. Or anyway, something with a cock.
He smiled. Whatever they did, it didn't matter. He was loaded. After being down here ten days, he had more than he had come with. And that's the way it would keep rolling. No more getting behind the eight ball. Study the game. Bet cautiously until you hit your roll. Then, like today, run it.
And he thought he was seeing it already. Some pattern. Some way to make a steady income. It wasn't exactly like the ponies, where there were all these variables. Horses were dumb animals. Jai alai was people, momentum, things you could understand, predict.
It was late afternoon. The green hill had a sepia tone through the dust of the lot. They got to his car and heard footsteps coming up behind them.
"Hey, Rusty! Rusty!" Hardy closed the distance between them. He took off his sunglasses. "It's you, isn't it?"
Rusty was good, Hardy gave him that. Barely a flicker of panic. "Diz!" He reached out his good arm and pulled Hardy into an embrace. "God, it's great to see you."
"Me? It's great to see you. I thought you were dead."
"Dead?" the girl said.
"Oh, hey, excuse me, this is D.C. D.C, an old
friend, Dismas Hardy."
She nodded. "What do you mean, dead?"
Rusty laughed. "I'm not dead, thank God."
"Me, neither."
"I can see that. What are you doing down here?"
"Maybe great minds think alike. I'm waiting for your first call and watching the news and I see some girl has been killed on a barge in China Basin, and-"
"What? Who was killed?"
Hardy shrugged. "I don't know. But I knew that's where you lived, so I went down to check it out and it was the slip you'd given me. I didn't want to wait around so Louis Baker could find me. I just went back home, threw some things together and lit out."
"It was Maxine…" Rusty leaned up against the fender of his car. He put his hand up, shading his eyes.
"Who's Maxine?" D.C. asked.
"She was a friend, just a friend." His eyes were actually glazing, near tears. "God, Diz, she must have come over to visit and was there when Baker got there."
"That's what I figured. I just split. Especially since you didn't call me, I figured-"
"I know. I just spooked, same as you. When I got home from seeing you I sat around for an hour and realized I just couldn't do it, couldn't just wait there for Baker to come and kill me. What was the point? But I should have called you. I'm sorry."
"What are you guys talking about?"
Rusty was making a point of recovering from the shock of Maxine's death. He told a good story while Hardy and D.C. listened. It sounded romantic, frightening, kind of cool.
"So what happened to this guy Baker?" D.C. asked.
Hardy looked at Rusty and shrugged. "I don't know. I hope he's back in jail by now. He probably left some prints, don't you think, Rusty? Something, anyway." He turned to the girl. "They usually do. I figured I had some vacation, I'd take it and give the cops a month or so to figure it out. If not, time I get back, I can tell them what I think and they'll go get him, but I thought it would be safer to get away first. So I've been bumming in Mexico a couple of weeks."
The Vig dh-2 Page 28
