He couldn't wait till he got it back down on the desert so he could pick up speed.
The desert smoldered in the sun, heat rising from the ground to enfold him, and the bushes seemed to shimmer with fire. He wondered how far ahead his quarry was. If he did not know now that he was being followed, he soon would. The noise of the convertible's engine echoed back at him from the hills.
He realized how much Ortiz must hate Nachita. The old man possessed the same qualities of strength, courage, and intelligence. He could be cruel, that was true, but only in the way that life itself was cruel. He had fought for his nation and seen it defeated. Still, he had retained his honor, and Ortiz had not.
The sun beat down mercilessly, but Dillinger obstinately refused to put the top up. He drove down into a shallow depression and up the other side, pausing to reach for his canteen. He tilted his head, the cool liquid spilling across his face. As he straightened, the desert seemed to move and the mountain to float before him.
There was no sound. Only a great silence. For a moment Dillinger was part of it, fused into a single whole. He sat at the wheel as if turned to stone, hardly daring to breathe. Then there was a slight rattle, the faintest of sounds, as a lizard passed between two rocks. Life in a barren wilderness, the second time such a thing had happened to him. If Rose had been there, she would have taken it as an omen.
He didn't realize that Ortiz could observe him. But in fact Ortiz was only six hundred yards from the car, about a hundred and fifty feet higher among the rocks that bordered the desert. He had been giving his horse a rest. The child was asleep on the ground, exhausted. But he had his energy still, and his pride, and now, in his sight, the white convertible, standing still.
Ortiz leaned his left elbow on the rock to steady his arm as he sighted along the top of the rifle. It was too far for accurate fire, but if he hit the car at least, the stupid American would drive closer, close enough perhaps for Ortiz to put a final bullet between his eyes.
Carefully, Ortiz squeezed the trigger.
Dillinger jumped in his seat instinctively when the bullet hit the hood ornament and ricocheted into the right side of the windshield, spidering the glass. In an instant, he turned on the ignition, accelerated like a demon, and became a fast-moving target. But no further shots came.
His hatred for Ortiz doubled because of the damage to the car. It was as if the car's virginity had been taken. It would need a new hood ornament. It would need a new windshield. And where in all of Mexico would he find someone who could make it new without asking too many questions? Damn.
Ortiz saw the car moving fast in his direction and kept his finger ready on the trigger. Suddenly, the car disappeared from his view. He frowned, then seeing that the child was still asleep and his horse safely tethered, he moved quickly toward a new position. And sure enough, within minutes, looking between two large rocks, he saw the Chevrolet, not racing as before, but parked, its engine still running, the sound of it now echoing. But of Dillinger there was no sign.
It had been a momentary flash of scarlet from the rocks that had warned Dillinger of Ortiz's new position. He'd parked the car, left the engine running, and got out carrying his Thompson. He figured he'd have to climb two hundred feet to get well above Ortiz, so the hunter could become the hunted.
Rose, Chavasse, and Nachita had been able to make faster time down the mountain than Dillinger, aided by the old Apache's unerring eye for the trail. Once on the plain, they had ridden hard, changing mounts when the horses tired.
It was Rose who spotted the stopped Chevrolet. Nachita had motioned them to slow down, then stop also. It was then that they heard the shot, and even from that distance they could see that the car had been hit.
Rose didn't know whether Dillinger had been hit or not, but when that shot rang out, she was certain she loved this man who led an impossible life.
Nachita also decided on the advantage of the higher ground, and so they tethered their horses and started to climb. Soon they reached a flat outcrop, and Nachita motioned Chavasse and Rose to lie flat. He crawled forward, then motioned them to crawl forward too.
He pointed. They saw Ortiz's tethered horse and something very small just waking up. "Juanita!" Rose's heart sang.
"Careful," Nachita cautioned, pointing to a position in the rocks almost directly below them. Ortiz was in a sniper's position, waiting. They could not see Dillinger anywhere.
"You and Chavasse go for the child now. When you are almost there, I will get Ortiz."
Dillinger, recovering his breath, now moved into position where he would be able to see Ortiz. There he was! If he only had a rifle. He had to get closer so that the Thompson would be sure to get Ortiz with the first burst.
He climbed down as quietly as he could. Suddenly, there was a noise off to the right. It was Ortiz's horse whinnying. Rose was clearly visible, running ahead of Chavasse. In a moment she had put down her rifle and scooped up Juanita into her arms.
Ortiz saw this also, and cried out like a madman whose property was being stolen. Dillinger pulled himself up on the rock in front of him, ready to fire his Thompson, but Ortiz, screaming indecipherable words in Apache, was running toward Rose and Juanita. Dillinger saw Chavasse fall to one knee to take better aim at the zigzagging Apache. The Frenchman fired once, the bullet skimming off a rock, and then a second and third time in quick succession. If he'd hit Ortiz it hadn't slowed the Apache down a second. Dillinger was scampering breathlessly down the rocks, hating the Thompson for the first time in his life because it was too inaccurate to use with Rose and Juanita now just beyond Ortiz in the line of fire.
Why didn't the kneeling Frenchman fire again, Dillinger thought as he moved quickly over the sharp rocks, trying not to trip. Chavasse was looking at his rifle as if it had jammed, when Ortiz came close enough to kick the rifle clear out of Chavasse's hands. Out of the corner of his vision, Dillinger saw that Rose had put Juanita down to pick up her rifle. She should never have let go of the kid. She should have run with Juanita in the opposite direction.
Ortiz saw his chance. Instead of stomping on Chavasse as he had planned to do, he ran toward the child. Dillinger knew the danger. Once the Apache had the kid in his arms, the Thompson'd be useless. Dillinger ran as he'd done the hundred-yard dash in high school, at the last moment flinging the Thompson away as he risked everything in one flying tackle, hitting Ortiz just at the back of the knees, crumpling him to the ground.
Ortiz in his rage summoned up the energy of a giant, and with a mighty heave rolled over and pinned Dillinger to the ground.
"Get the kid!" Dillinger yelled at Rose, then felt the Apache's fingers tighten on his throat.
Rose, standing ten feet away, rifle in hand, didn't know how to shoot Ortiz without hitting Dillinger.
"Get the kid and run like-" Ortiz's hands, the strongest Dillinger had ever felt, tightened on his windpipe, cutting off his yell to Rose and his air. At least the kid was safe, he thought, but what a way to go.
And then, staring up at Ortiz's face whirling against the sun, Dillinger suddenly felt the handgrip on his throat loosen.
"Scum!" he heard Nachita saying as he twisted Ortiz's head in an arm lock. "Geronimo wouldn't even have let you hold the horses."
Dillinger saw Nachita's knife as if in slow motion go in and out of Ortiz twice, and then Ortiz's eyes rolled upwards. As Nachita stepped back, Ortiz rolled off Dillinger and sank to the ground.
Somewhere Dillinger could hear Juanita crying. Then Chavasse was standing over him, and then a moment later Rose was kneeling beside him. His breath was coming back, and he knew, like a man redeemed, that everything would be all right.
Rose accepted custody of Juanita as if she were her own. As Rivera's closest adult relative, she used her authority to see that Dillinger got the $20,000 of gold that Rivera had promised him. And when Dillinger suggested that Fallon's $5,000 go to Chevasse so that he could stop being a hotel manager and barkeeper in a strange la
nd, Rose accepted that also. What she could not accept as easily was that with the passing of weeks, Dillinger had decided to return home. Nachita accompanied them to the border because he knew a place that was absolutely safe from detection. Rose rode along with Nachita, but for the last few miles she let Nachita lead her horse and she sat with Dillinger in the convertible, both of them aching with their feelings for each other.
"If only I'd have met you in Indiana," Dillinger said.
"If you'd met me in Indiana, you'd have taken no notice of me," Rose replied.
"I'd have noticed you anywhere," he said.
When they reached the border, a desolate place with cactus and bramble, Dillinger pulled over, took Rose by her shoulders, and said, "Please come with me."
"I love you, Johnny," she said. "But I cannot go with a man who doesn't know where he is going."
And so he offered her his white Chevrolet as a gift. "This way," he said, "you'll know I'll come back."
"Because you love the car."
"Because I love you both. Put Mexican plates on it, have it painted black or red, and nobody'll ever bother you."
"You forget," Rose said. "I can't drive."
Dillinger looked at Nachita on his horse. He didn't drive either.
And so he said his good-byes to both of them. "You know what you need here in Mexico? More banks."
Without looking back, Dillinger drove across the invisible line that separated Mexico from home. As quickly as he could, he got onto a good road, and then came to a place in New Mexico called Las Cruces, by which time he had decided that he couldn't go on driving a car that the FBI and God knows how many policemen were on the lookout for.
On the side street he spotted a black Ford roadster that looked like a thousand other black Ford roadsters. He parked the white convertible right behind it, and within minutes had wired the Ford to start without a key. Nobody was looking, so he transferred the suitcases containing his gold and the Thompson and some extra clothes and the picture of Rose she had given him that was too big to put in his wallet.
As he drove the Ford away, he looked once in the rearview mirror. That white convertible was one helluva car.
He parked in the business district, and asked a policeman if there was a nearby ice cream parlor.
"Yes, sir," the cop said. "Right around the corner."
Dillinger saluted the cop in thanks.
There were four teenagers at the counter, drinking ice cream sodas. When the soda jerk came over, Dillinger said, "I'll have a black and white."
The chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream tasted like all of his childhood memories together.
"Ten cents," said the soda jerk.
"That," said Dillinger, "was the best ice cream soda I've had in a long, long time."
The soda jerk beamed. "Those kids," he said, pointing to the teenagers, "never say nothing nice about my sodas."
Dillinger put two bits on the counter. "Keep the change."
"Gee, thanks," the soda jerk said, hoping the stranger would become a steady customer.
But the stranger hit the road like there was no tomorrow, driving through Roswell, Portales, Clovis, and then into Texas, through Amarillo and Phillips and Perryton into Oklahoma, past Hooker and into Kansas, where he pulled up at a gas station in Meade, and used the public phone booth to make the one call he had to make.
The secretary said, "Mr. Hoover, there's a collect call from John Dillinger. Shall I accept?"
J. Edgar Hoover nodded, because you didn't need to put a tracer on a collect call. The operator could tell you where the call was made from. He got on the line and motioned the secretary to pick up the extension so she could write down what was said.
"Mr. Hoover," Dillinger said. "You can find that white Chevy convertible you're looking for in a town called Las Cruces in New Mexico. I don't want you to say I've never been helpful to you."
Hoover thought Dillinger was very helpful because a line could be drawn from Las Cruces to wherever he was calling from now and they'd know which direction he was headed in.
"Thank you," Mr. Hoover said.
"Don't hang up," Dillinger said. "I'm not finished."
"Good-bye," Hoover said, thinking, You are finished.
"Don't hang up, you son-of-a-bitch," Dillinger yelled. "I'm the best thing that ever happened to you."
But the line was dead.
Three months later, on Sunday, July 22, 1934, John Dillinger was shot dead outside the Biograph Movie Theater in Chicago by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was betrayed by a woman.
About the Author:
Harry Patterson is the real name of Jack Higgins, who, under both names, has had eight international bestsellers in a row, including TOUCH THE DEVIL, available in a Signet paperback edition, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, and THE VALHALLA EXCHANGE. His novels have been populated by such well-known characters as Winston Churchill, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lucky Luciano, Margaret Thatcher, and now John Dillinger, the American Robin Hood, a legend in his lifetime, and an even more interesting legend in the hands of a master storyteller.
The End
Jack Higgins - Dillinger Page 18
