by Wade Miller
Biggo stood by the door. He said, "Fifty-fifty."
Toevs' face screwed up. "Ah, give a man a break, Biggo. We soldiered together." Biggo opened the door again and Toevs said hastily, "All right. Fifty-fifty it is."
Biggo closed the door and came back and poured the last two drinks, taking the short one himself. He tossed the empty bottle into the corner angrily. He was somewhat shocked with Daniel Toevs. Ten years ago Toevs would have told him to go to hell before he split a simple deal like this down the middle. But Toevs had let part of himself wither away. He was afraid to go to Ensenada, afraid he would fumble and lose the chance at big money. Toevs had gotten old. The thought of that made the whiskey thicken in Biggo's mouth and he had a difficult time swallowing it. He was angry with himself for driving a hard bargain and angry with Toevs for letting him do it.
So he scowled down at the old man in the chair. "Okay. I'll leave tomorrow."
Toevs was holding up a folded paper to him. "This is it, Biggo. Take good care of it." He couldn't understand why Biggo should be angry. This made Biggo even angrier. Why did weakness always ask for a pushing around?
To make himself feel better, he took out his wallet. "You'll need some operating expenses. Deduct it later."
He had five hundred dollars, more or less. He gave Toevs two hundred.
"No. I didn't come all the way up here for a touch," said Toevs. But his hands were shaking again.
Biggo scornfully quoted some Arabic profanity and Toevs laughed. Then Biggo said, "It's an investment, you dumb Dutchman. You put up that paper. I put up the money. Even-steven." This gave Toevs some of his pride back and it was the least he could do. Biggo felt sorry for him.
Toevs gave Biggo a Cleveland telephone number- apparently a bar-to call as soon as he arrived in Ensenada. There was always the possibility of further developments.
They were through talking now. Toevs was ready to go but he was hesitating, looking at the bathroom door closed against the sound of running water. Biggo couldn't see pushing the old man around any further; what's-her-name-Felice-was just another girl. He said, "Hell, take her along, Dan'l."
He threw open the door and steam came out. Feminine clothes were scattered carelessly on the floor. The tailored pink panties had worn threadbare around the elastic. Felice was stretched out in the tub, her hair up and her head back as she sipped luxuriously from the glass in her hand.
She turned off the tap and smiled sleepily at Biggo. "I hope you don't mind, honey. It feels so good." Her small breasts pointed at him through the suds and she wiggled. Some of the suds drifted away.
Toevs was gazing over Biggo's shoulder. The girl raised her bare knees and lathered them, refusing to look at him. After a minute, Toevs said, "Well, I guess she's figuring on staying, Biggo." He almost made it sound as if he didn't care.
Biggo closed the door and helped Toevs shrug it off. Toevs groped for his hand fervently as he left.
"You take good care of yourself, Biggo."
"I always have, Dan'l."
"You watch your step," Toevs said earnestly and shook hands again and walked carefully away down the hall. He looked even older than he was.
After Toevs had gone, Biggo wrote out a telegram that would cancel the rest of his lecture tour. That didn't break his heart. He read the confession of George G. Noon. It was everything Toevs had promised. It would certainly mean the end of Silver Magolnick. Biggo thought it was a very good thing that the present gambling boss didn't know the confession existed.
He got out his knife and slit open the paper binding inside the battered leather binding of the Bible. He slipped the Noon confession into the aperture and glued the bindings together again. Nothing showed.
Felice hadn't emerged yet. He undressed and lay on the bed, smoking. After a while he took up the Bible and opened it to First Kings. He began to read about the battle at Ramoth in Gilead, reconstructing the strategy from what he remembered of the land around there. He nodded approvingly and said aloud, "They were tough ones."
Felice was still making splashing sounds in the bathtub. Finally Biggo got tired of waiting and yelled for her until she came trotting out.
CHAPTER TWO
Wednesday, September 13, 2:00 p.m.
He arrived in Ensenada three days later by way of a twin-engine DC-3 operated by an unscheduled airline out of Los Angeles. As soon as the ship passed over San Diego and the border, Biggo kept one eye cocked at the thin black ribbon of road that wound along the coastline below. He memorized its curves from habit because he always liked to know the ways out of a place.
Except for the road he took little interest in the plane or the scenery. He could fly some himself and he had seen too many semi-arid shores like this one of Baja California, Republica de Mexico. So he spent his time balancing his expenses against what remained of his money. Plane fare, meals and a big night in Los Angeles (and what he had given Toevs) had pared his five hundred dollars down to a lean two hundred. Not much but enough. He didn't intend to live like a tourist and he did intend to close the deal as quickly as possible.
He sat behind a pair of honeymooners. They made Biggo uncomfortable although he thought the girl was a pert-looking trick. But he thought the man was hardly old enough to start shaving. Biggo would glower out the window, then glance back at them, refusing to admit he was envious. He didn't like the possessive way the young man clasped the girl's hand against her thigh. He wished now he'd brought the girl from Cleveland along with him, the way she had wanted. Try as he might, he couldn't remember her name.
They landed in Ensenada at two o'clock. The hot Mexican summer afternoon swept into the plane as soon as its door was opened. Biggo got out first and felt himself begin to sweat as he looked around. Near at hand was a crumbling adobe storehouse and across the unpaved airstrip was another shack and that was all. A few old planes, some flyable and some not, sat by the buildings. The airport was managed by two grinning Mexicans; their office was the front seat of a dilapidated Dodge.
Watching to see where the honeymoon couple would go, Biggo nearly forgot his suitcase in the plane. He hadn't been back long enough to get used to it or its weighty prospect of clean clothes. A musette bag was usually ample enough to carry his straight razor, Bible, ammunition and Beretta automatic. He climbed back into the plane to get it and emerged again looking more like a tourist.
His eyes were caught by a man in a black suit who was squatting in the shade under the wing of an old Stinson biplane. The man was looking at Biggo intently. He was cow-faced and redheaded. Biggo studied him for a minute. Since the man didn't produce a live peacock or any-think like it, Biggo decided he was just a Mexican government agent inspecting the new arrivals. When Biggo looked at him again, the redheaded man was eyeing the cute honeymoon girl with the same intent stare.
Biggo found a cab for himself and told the driver, "Take me someplace where there's beer," and sank back into the seat. He lapsed into Spanish automatically. "Hace mucho calor, no?"
The airport was toward the southern rim of the foothills which ringed the broad curving bay where Ensenada nestled. To reach the town they drove north, coming upon houses immediately, just across the road from the airstrip. They stood on small lots, most of them, with no trace of grass or shrubbery. The streets were wide and dusty. Only the main highway leading through the business section was paved. A gang of street repairmen broke off their leisurely work to watch them roll by.
Biggo looked away from the heat-shimmering hills and at the glinting ocean. He tapped the driver and asked about the big white building like a sultan's palace. It turned out to be the Riviera Pacifico, the tourist hotel and the town's pride. But, in its own oasis of palm trees and green growth, it held itself aloof from the town.
He was pleasantly surprised with Ensenada. Backed up against the northern rim of hills, looking out at the placid bay, it had for him a natural charm, peaceful and unhurried. The high sagebrush hills displayed rows of whitewashed boulders which spelled out boasts of
local liquors and business houses. The business district was three blocks wide and five long. Biggo had the taxi drive up and down the main streets while he got the lay of the land.
He saw a lot of souvenir shops and bars for tourists but nothing like Tijuana or Juarez. This place wasn't a commercial tourist trap or a squalid native village. It was a middle-class Mexican city, a port town of some less than twenty thousand people. At the curb, new Cadillacs and Buicks parked next to ancient Ford trucks and once he spotted a burro-drawn cart. Shopkeepers lounged in shadowy doorways, contentedly surveying their world. The streets were almost deserted. It was hot. On one corner a group of Americans, with their parcels and cameras, glanced around for a new direction to wander.
Over it all hung the too-sweet smell, the old familiar smell. Not an unpleasant odor, certainly, but merely foreign. Biggo had smelled it in many corners of the world. Lower standard of living, that's all it was. Its ingredients were too numerous to classify.
Then he saw the painted sign that said ZURICO'S. He paid off the cab-driver and got out by the statue where the town petered out on the north end. He felt pretty good. Coming into Ensenada gave him a coming-home feeling and he couldn't understand why. This was another foreign country, wasn't it? As usual, he was the arriving stranger.
"I was born out of my time," Biggo said aloud. He had read that somewhere and the idea had stuck with him.
He looked up at the calm face of the statue. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the little priest who had stirred all Mexico to revolt nearly a century before. "Those were the days," Biggo told Hidalgo. "That's when I should have been living too."
Zurico's was saloon below and living quarters above. Its back-end loomed over the stone embarcadero and the sportfishing pier where a few men cast lazily. Hundreds of white seagulls soared overhead and hundreds more floated on the bay waters like wave-sparkle come to life. Small fishing craft and some larger tuna clippers bobbed on the incoming tide.
He forgot about Miguel Hidalgo. He squinted at the girl, the bare-armed American girl, who was going up the three steps into Zurico's. Her brown hair was shingled short and cool-looking. She wore a peasant blouse and skirt. Her arms and legs and neck were bare and white, seemingly soft to the touch. Biggo glimpsed quite a bit of her legs as she went up the steps. He picked up his suitcase and crossed the street.
He shoved through the swinging doors and went around the curved screen that kept passers-by from looking into the long room. On one side of him was a bar with stools; on the other side were scarred tables and straight chairs. A stuffed wildcat snarled perpetually behind the bar, flanked by two calendars, out of date, which exhibited pictures of nude women. The floor was bare wood.
The two Mexicans sitting near the entrance screen calculated Biggo as he came in. The bartender was a young kid who probably should have been in school. The American girl was talking to a hatchet-faced Mexican dandy with sideburns at the far end of the bar. Biggo made the sixth person present.
The dandy with the sideburns stopped smirking and talking at the girl when he saw Biggo and went into a tiny backroom off the bar. The girl made a mouth after him as if she was mad about something. Then she looked at Biggo. Everybody was looking at Biggo.
He didn't mind. He dropped his suitcase with a thump, ordered a beer and drained it without taking the stein from his lips. He ordered another. The two Mexicans approached him, violin and guitar in their hands, and asked if he would like to hear some music. He shook his head but sent one of them out for the local newspapers. All this time he didn't pay any attention to the girl. She finally grew tired of waiting. She came and sat beside him at the bar.
"You a stranger in town?" she asked.
Biggo looked her over. She was not quite pretty and not getting any prettier in this place. Her face looked vaguely disappointed with the way things had gone. But there was nothing disappointing about her figure. Biggo decided she was built better than either of the two calendar women easy. And the cologne she wore wasn't too cheap. "My first trip," he said when he was finished looking.
"Think you'll like it?"
His eyes let her know what he was thinking. "I always have." She kept her red moist smile on anyway.
Her name was Jinny. She didn't bother to give a last name so he matched her. "Just call me Biggo."
"What kind of a name is that?"
He told her Irish. She suggested they move to a table. They did. He stopped buying beer and started ordering whiskey. But the kid bartender made up a fizzy concoction for her with a cherry in it.
So he asked how long she had worked there. She wilted a little and asked, "Oh, God, does it show that much?"
She really wanted to know the truth. Biggo felt a bit sorry for her. He said, "Well, I can't imagine anybody coming in here just to drink with that mangy wildcat."
That made it all right with her pride in appearances. "It's a dump all right but Zurico has big ideas. He plans on dressing up the place and giving it some class. I'm the beginning, a sort of hostess."
The sideburned Mexican was watching them from the little cubbyhole behind the bar where he'd disappeared. "That Zurico?"
"That's his brother. Zurico's fat and short and not too hard to take. He's older too. He hasn't come in yet today." Biggo shrugged; that took care of business for the moment. Jinny said, "Smile or something, won't you, so hell-on-wheels will think I'm doing the job right?" Biggo smiled and dropped his big hand on her knee. She jerked out from under. "Don't overdo it, pal."
The musician came back with the newspapers-two local ones-that Biggo had sent him for. He leafed through all the stories and ads for any mention of peacocks. No luck but perhaps the elder Zurico brother had seen the signal around town.
Jinny said nastily after he had ignored her for a few minutes, "Would you rather I went off and died or anything?"
"One thing at a time, honey. What are you doing tonight?"
"Why? Aren't there any good shows in town?"
"Where's a nice place to stay, then?"
Biggo found her bitterness and wisdom somewhat pathetic. She looked at his secondhand suitcase. "You can always get a suite out at Riviera Pacifico. They start at sixteen bucks a day."
"I'm down here incognito," Biggo said with a wink. It wasn't too far from the truth but he played it as a joke. "I don't want to be ostentatious about it, honey. Now where do you live?"
"But my seven big brothers don't have a spare bedroom. Sorry. Why don't you try the Hotel Comercial? Down the street two blocks. It's good."
Biggo could practically see the thoughts going through her head. She had him pigeonholed neatly: a husband off on the loose for a moment. He let her get a better view of his bankroll when he ordered the next round of drinks. It still looked impressive. She was friendlier.
"What are you doing in Ensenada, anyway, Biggo?"
"Where's this Zurico fellow?"
"You going to buy the joint?"
"I might-if you come with the fixtures. I got a business proposition which Zurico might be interested in since he's going for so much class."
"He's his own bouncer. What are you selling, Biggo?"
"Peacocks," he said and watched her face. "Tell him I stopped by."
It didn't register. "He's running a bar, not a zoo. He even says it's a cocktail lounge. What are you talking about, anyway?"
"I raise them. Peacocks, I mean." He had the kid bring the bottle over to the table to avoid delays. Plane rides always made him thirsty.
Selling more drinks pleased Jinny. She said, "You're kidding me, aren't you? Nobody raises peacocks. Don't they just happen in a state of nature?"
"No. Haven't you ever had a peacock cocktail?" The sound of it amused Biggo and he repeated it. "A pea-cocktail. You know, an old-fashioned with a peacock feather in it." He was just rambling, feeling good. He had thought that perhaps the percentage girl might recognize something familiar in the peacock talk. But she hadn't. Evidently Zurico hadn't set his employees to watching for the peacock signal to
o.
Jinny laughed. He liked to see her laugh. She had a wide moist mouth that wasn't meant to be sullen; it was meant to be kissed. He decided to make sure about that tonight.
"A feather merchant," she said. "An honest to God feather merchant."
There was somebody shouting behind the saloon, on the edge of the bay. They had to raise their voices to talk. "Zurico could make fans and give them to the women customers. I got all sorts of ideas."
"Oh, I'll bet you have, Biggo."
"Simple case of supply and demand. I've got the feathers. If Zurico's got a heart in his body, he'll create a demand."
The shouting went on. The Mexican troubadours laid their instruments on the bar, the kid put down the glass he was drying, Zurico's brother popped out of his cubbyhole office-and suddenly they were gone. They disappeared through the back door of the saloon.
"Hey, what's the story?" Jinny wanted to know.
So did Biggo. He had caught a few of the shouted words and one of them was muerto. Muerto. Death.
He decided he'd better find out what was going on. He finished off his drink and picked up his suitcase. "Be seeing you, honey."
Jinny said, "Well, I like that!" and was still sitting at the table when he went through the back door and onto the stone embarcadero.
He stopped. Below him, below the pilings of the sport-fishing pier where a strip of sand hadn't yet been covered by the incoming tide, clustered a little group of men. There was Zurico's brother and the kid bartender and the musicians and some other men Biggo hadn't seen before. One still carried a fishing pole. Biggo looked where they were looking, at what lay at their feet.
