The Frighteners (16 page)

I said, “I’ve met some backwoods characters in their eighties who could walk me into the ground. The real Cody could be tougher than you think, and he’s certainly got the resources to get a little Japanese station wagon planted anywhere he needs it.”

Ramón shrugged. “In any case, you were doing quite well without help; I saw no reason to interfere. I merely gave orders to have you and the lady brought in the following morning. It seemed unnecessary to interfere with the happy couple’s wedding night, even though it had to be spent under fairly uncomfortable conditions. ” He gave me a sly glance; I wondered what those damned Yaquis had reported to him. “Although not as uncomfortable as if General Mondragon and his men had caught you. The interrogation to which they subjected Cody’s partner, Pierce, and his lady, was rather brutal, I understand.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, frowning. “You mean they worked over Mrs. Charles and Gloria’s dad before finishing them off?”

“Worked over?” Ramón frowned at the unfamiliar phrase.

“Oh, yes, it was very ugly work. I had forgotten that Mr. Pierce was the papa of the young lady at present calling herself your wife. A very lovely person, congratulations.” He paused and went on: “Yes, the full story was not released. Officially it was felt that a rape and two machete deaths were adverse publicity enough for our country without adding torture to the list of horrors.”

I said, “Heavy questioning would indicate that his captors had reason to think Pierce had some information they wanted. I presume it involved the missing weapons everybody seems to be chasing.”

Ramón said, “Yes, Mr. Pierce was apparently conducting a private investigation into his partner’s illegal affairs. With what you call inside information—I understand he had been associated with Cody for years—he seems to have made a discovery here in Sonora that led to his capture, questioning, and death. At least certain people obviously thought he was carrying information worth killing for; but indications are that they failed to extract it from him, just as they had failed earlier with Cody’s accomplice Medina.”

I said, “So your idea was that, having missed out twice, these unpleasant folks decided to grab Cody himself and put him through the wringer and see what they could squeeze out of him, arms-wise.” I hesitated. “Who the hell are these people? You mentioned a General Mondragon. I suppose he’s the man I saw, the handsome chap in khakis with an outsize Yankee bodyguard. At least he was giving the orders to that gang of bandits.”

“You are guessing correctly,” Ramón said. “But we must not call them
bandidos
. They are noble revolutionaries who are going to bring democracy and freedom to my poor, oppressed country.”

I said, “Yeah, with machetes.”

Ramón laughed shortly. “Is there another way? This is Mexico, my friend. Here, political change has always come with the machete. Or the rifle. Or the cannon. Well, the machetes we have always with us, but we can keep the rifles and cannons to a minimum. Now explain,
por favor
, what you do here, and in that elderly disguise. ”

I hesitated. It seemed unnecessary to go into all the complicated motivations and machinations behind my stage appearance as Horace Cody, so I gave him a slightly edited version.

“Cody’s under arrest in El Paso, for attempted murder. He’s being held incommunicado, I hope. It was thought that, if I made this honeymoon jaunt in his place, somebody might get in touch with me—or, hell, try to kill me—and give us a line to those arms.” Well, it wasn’t too far from the truth.

“And the young lady? Is she a—what do you call it?—a ‘ringer,’ too?”

“No, she’s the real thing.”

“She must be a brave girl. How did you get her to cooperate?”

“She’s the victim Cody intended to murder, after marrying her. For her money.’’

“I see.”

I said, “So your people picked us up when we crossed the border and followed us to Cananea. Your boys must be as good on the road as they are in the brush; I wasn’t aware of anybody behind us.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t overlook them. It wasn’t necessary to follow,
amigo
. We knew where you would be hit; Mondragon and his band have been under loose surveillance for months.”

It didn’t seem diplomatic to point out that his boys apparently weren’t quite perfect; supposedly protecting me, or Horace Cody, they’d apparently missed young Mason Charles and his ambush in the restaurant john.

Ramón was still speaking: ‘‘That is our function, about which you asked earlier: to keep track of this embryo paramilitary force and any others that may appear up here in the north, while letting them think themselves unobserved. These particular heroes are the action arm of the PLN, the National Liberty Party, which as you may know is a small, very noisy, opposition movement.”

I said, “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“Unlike the more respectable parties of the left and right, the PLN has made little real impression on the political scene. Its overt, legal, political activities are, we think, only a screen for its illegal ambitions. Like violent overthrow of the government.”

I said, “The government being the Institutional Revolutionary Party for which you work.”

He shook his head. “Do you work for your Republican or Democratic parties? I work for Mexico,
amigo
. And I do not think my country needs to be tom apart by a bloody rebellion armed by foreign profiteers.” Having put me in my place, he smiled thinly and went on: “To be sure, the present administration is not one of angels. But I see no shining wings on the others, either. In any case, politics is not my business.”

I said, “So why just watch these hotheads playing their murderous little games? Why not bring in the troops and wipe them out?”

He made a show of being shocked. “What fascist talk is this? Are you suggesting that we should murder our brave but misguided fellow citizens? Is that the democratic American way of dealing with dissension?” He laughed grimly. “It is true that Mexicans have been killing Mexicans for centuries, always with the finest political motives, but I and those above me would like to avoid serious bloodshed here, if possible, not only for humanitarian reasons, but because drastic action on our part against Mondragon could well create a national hero, martyr, and trigger the very uprising we are trying to avoid. At the moment, as you saw, they have only weapons enough for a handful of them and rather a strange collection of firearms at that. They will not constitute a military threat unless they are properly armed. It is my duty to see that this does not happen.”

“And in the meantime you let them chop up American millionaires and Cadillacs undisturbed. Shedding
gringo
blood and crankcase oil doesn’t count.” I grinned. “Forget it, I’m kidding. Tell me more about that joker, the one who was running that ambush.”

Ramón said, “The left-handed officer you saw, Carlos Mondragon, calls himself a general; revolutionary armies have more generals than they have soldiers. Mondragon has no real military training but that, of course, has been true of many leaders in Mexico’s past. Benito Juarez did not commence his career as a soldier. Mondragon sees himself as another brave commander of revolutionary armies and patriotic savior of his country. The political head of his party, he is a compelling orator and very popular.”

‘‘It looked like a half-baked operation to me, ” I said. ‘‘Mondragon, at least, couldn’t seem to keep his eye on the ball. He let his men horse around helping themselves to our belongings and chopping up what they couldn’t use and busting up the car while we slipped away.”

“It is the way he maintains his popularity, catering to the men. The world is full of incompetent people who are convinced that they can run a restaurant, write a novel, or conduct a revolution.” Ramón grimaced. “They are all half-baked operations until they catch fire, if I may use the word. Then they become great popular causes. My mission here, to put it another way, is to make certain that this one does not ignite.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately somebody in your country seems to be willing to spend considerable money to fan the spark of dissension that now exists into the leaping flame of revolution.”

I hesitated, because this was an awkward subject. ‘‘How much money? Do you know?”

He answered readily enough, “We estimate that the total sum involved was approximately two million, four hundred thousand dollars. Our information is that a down payment was made of one third, or eight hundred thousand dollars. This must have been paid by the PLN to Señor Cody, or he would not have ordered the munitions. At that, he must have added some of his own money to make the purchase; his Asian suppliers would not have shipped until they had cash in hand. Cody would have expected to be reimbursed, with a massive profit, when the final payment was made by the PLN; but as we know, Mondragon never paid but instead tried to take the weapons by force. Apparently his source of funds failed him.”

“Or they got greedy and tried to help themselves to both the arms and a million six.”

Ramón shook his head. “With that much money lacking, there are many possibilities, but we feel that the most likely theory is that their financial backer simply refused, or was unable, when the time came, to pay over the additional sum.”

I asked the critical question: “Do you know his name, Ramón?”

Ramón hesitated, and then spoke without expression: “Will it surprise you when I tell you it is this man who calls himself Sabádo? And while we have not been able to establish his nationality, I think we can both guess the nationality of the funds he is distributing.”

I studied his face for a moment. “You can’t be saying that a certain large country just to the north can actually be spending money to interfere in the politics of a sovereign Latin American nation. What an outrageous suggestion! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

He gave me his thin smile. “You said it, my friend. I didn’t. Even if I had proof, I would say nothing. There is enough anti-Yankee sentiment here already. I would merely continue to try to prevent those arms from reaching the rebels, maybe I should say the would-be rebels.”

I frowned thoughtfully; but it didn’t make sense to me. I said, “I’m a political moron, Ramón. I thought our two countries were getting along reasonably well, considering everything. What would be our motive for upsetting your apple cart?”

“Apple . . . oh, yes, I understand.” Ramón grimaced. “The motive? You know what the motive is,
amigo
. Always the same one. We do what we can to get along with you, but we will not stop the world for the sake of a little white powder. We will not turn our country into an armed camp for the sake of a pretty weed. We will not forget the falling price of oil, and our rising inflation, and our starving citizens, and concentrate our limited resources on saving a few idiot
gringos
from taking pleasure in chemicals that no one is forcing them to smoke, inhale, or inject into their veins. No matter what we do to assist this crusade of yours, it is never enough. So it seems that people in your government, some people, have decided, with or without consulting higher authority, that if our present government will not cooperate properly with this noble jihad of yours, they will force upon us a government that will. Mondragon has undoubtedly sworn a sacred oath to give the highest priority to helping you eradicate this evil traffic if he is assisted to power.’’

I drew a long breath. “Well, it’s no crazier than some other unauthorized undercover adventures we’ve heard about. Even after the earlier scandals, the U.S. government still seems to be thick with freewheeling gents ready to implement their own foreign policy with secret funds—the media seem to be licking their chops over a new revelation daily. Maybe the most recent furor in Washington was what scared off the moneybags in this operation when it was time for the final payment, leaving the PLN boys no choice, if they wanted the arms, but to try to take them by force. Only Jorge Medina was a little too smart for them and died a little too soon. And Cody was left holding the bag. Instead of the profit he’d hoped to make on the transaction, which would keep the wolf from the door until his new wife’s money became available, he was even stuck for the dough he’d shelled out for the arms in addition to the down payment the

PLN had given him; and thanks to Medina’s caution he didn’t even have the arms. So he decided to come down here and find them; maybe he could sell them to somebody else and get his money back. Only Señor Sabádo didn’t want anybody stirring things up down here; as far as he was concerned, the longer the buried weapons stayed buried, the better for him. He was going to wipe the whole operation off the record, and if that meant wiping out Buff Cody and snoopy Will Pierce and any ladies who happened to be associated with them at the time, that was just too fucking bad.”

Ramón said, a little impatiently, “That is all very well, my friend, but we really have only one interest in this business: the missing shipment. If it stays lost, very well; but it must not be found except by us. Found and, preferably, destroyed, but at least put out of the reach of this revolutionary rabble, one way or another. Our Mexican rabbles, properly armed, can be quite formidable, as any history book will tell you.”

I looked at him for a moment; then I grinned. “So ask,
amigo
."

He regarded me grimly. “You are the best man to look for those arms. As Horace Cody, you may have access to contacts that we do not have.”

“Maybe. But since I’m not really Cody, I could have trouble finding them. I’ll need all the information you have available.”

“It will be yours.” He laughed shortly. “Very well, I will make the request a formal one. Señor Cody, as a great favor, will you be so kind as to maintain your masquerade and employ it, and your unique talents, to determine for us the location of the missing munitions. I, and my country, will appreciate very much your assistance in this matter and will make certain that you suffer no legal consequences for any action you may be forced to take in our behalf.”

I said, “You’ve got yourself a deal,
amigo
.”