The Frighteners (20 page)

The tall girl went on: “Actually, she insisted on going because she thought Will needed her to keep Cody from putting one over on him if they met down here. Because they’d been partners for years. That means a lot to a Texan. In the early days they’d sweated and suffered and fought side by side; they’d got rich together; and while sobersides Will might occasionally get pissed off at his freewheeling partner’s get-rich-quick schemes, it would never occur to him that Cody might deliberately betray him, let alone, well, hurt him. If there was a confrontation between the partners, Millie wanted to be there to make sure Will didn’t trust Cody’s friendship too far. Well, you know what she told us just before they left, Junior.”

I asked, “What did she tell you?”

Charles answered: “That’s what put me on Cody’s trail in the first place. Millie wasn’t worried about hungry lions or dangerous revolutionaries, just Buff Cody. She told us she felt that, with a lot of money at stake, he could be really dangerous. She said she didn’t believe for a moment that friendship would keep him from taking violent action if he thought his partner was about to interfere with his profitable smuggling plans. She said she’d do her best to keep Will from sticking his neck out, but if anything happened to them down in Mexico, we could assume that Cody was responsible and it would be nice if we could get the authorities on the case somehow.” He gestured helplessly. “But when . . . when it did happen there wasn’t anything . . . What could we tell the police? That our mother had hated Mr. H. H. Cody and thought he might kill her and her lover, Cody’s partner; and now they were dead? What action do you think they’d take on evidence like that against a big man like him, particularly since it had happened out of the country? So I started following him around and discovered that . . .” He stopped abruptly.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

I grinned. “About what? About the fact that a certain Federal agency already had him under surveillance?”

There was sudden suspicion in the boy’s voice: “How do you know that? Oh, of course . . .’’He frowned, trying to work it out, remembering now that the Federal agents who’d been following H. H. Cody had taken him, Charles, into custody, and assured him I was Cody, and given him back his gun, and sent him after me after swearing him to secrecy. ‘‘If you’re not Cody, who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Same government, different agency,” I said. “I’m afraid we’re not always a band of brothers. In fact, we sometimes work completely at cross-purposes. Sad, but that’s the way governments are.”

“I suppose you can prove that!”

“That I’m a government agent?” I said. “Oh, sure, I always carry my little tin badge even when I’m pretending to be somebody else, just to make sure anybody who shakes me down will know I’m a phony. Be your age,
amigo
!"

That was a mistake. It reminded him that he was the youngest one here—at least, if Antonia didn’t have him beat in years, she did in experience. It made him think I was patronizing him; and maybe I was, a little. His ego had already taken considerable punishment recently. He’d come down here, armed, to avenge his mother, feeling ruthless and dangerous; but two days ago a man had simply ignored his gun, and today a girl had taken it away from him. And now they were all ganging up on him to sell him a highly implausible yam about an unlikely impersonation for which there was no real evidence but his bossy older sister’s questionable logic and the word of a little mestizo wench whose morals and veracity were highly suspect.

I’d forgotten the sensitive pride of a kid that age—well, a male kid that age. I’d probably been just as touchy, but it had been a long time ago. It wasn’t a good frame of mind for him to be in if we were going to work together, and I opened my mouth to say something soothing, but the ringing of the phone on the bar interrupted me. I picked up the instrument.

“Yes?”

“The yellow dog was delivered safely to the boarding kennel.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” I said. So it was Greer, the young agent I’d met briefly by a mountain lake, identifying me by giving my dog’s location and hearing me respond with Happy’s name. “Go on,” I said.

“You’ve got company outside.”

I sighed. I’d hoped they’d let me run until I found out what they wanted to know. “How much company?”

“I’ve spotted three of them.”

“U.S. or Mex?”

“Two U.S., one Mex. Do you want help?”

‘‘How much help?’’

“Just me and my piece at the moment. Reinforcements are a couple of hours away.’’

I said, “We can probably cover the back and front. Take anybody who tries the side window. I’ll need you to help bury the bodies afterwards, if any; but don’t come charging in without plenty of warning. The troops may be just a bit trigger-happy.”

“Gotcha. Greer out.”

Replacing the phone, I reflected a bit cynically on the fact that our man in Hermosillo had waited until now to alert me. He’d presumably been watching earlier, when I arrived. He’d let me walk in, all unsuspecting, on an armed Mexican beauty, junior grade, not to mention the brother-and-sister team—he couldn’t know they’d been immobilized. I decided that it was just another example of the reasoning that had sent me on this mission in the first place: I was a trained and experienced operative, and I wasn’t supposed to need a nursemaid unless the odds got too outlandish. At that, Greer hadn’t been quite as optimistic about my capabilities as Mac, who’d apparently figured I could handle without assistance any deathtrap set for me by anybody. Flattering, but a bit frightening. Greer, on the other hand, had left me to cope with three amateurs on my own, but he’d decided that I might need a friendly warning, and maybe even a friendly gun, when a trio of pros got into the act.

Correction: while the U.S. pair he’d mentioned was undoubtedly professional, the status of their Mexican ally remained to be determined.

I became aware that my companions were watching me expectantly, awaiting explanations, but I left them on the hook a little longer while I reviewed our defensive perimeter in my mind. One wall was safe, shared by the other half of this duplex motel unit, with no connecting door. On the other side, the protection of the large living room window had just been assigned to Greer, and an earlier peek into the bathroom had told me that the window in there was too small to admit anything but a monkey. Which left the front, which I intended to defend myself, and the rear, where large French doors opened from the bedroom into a small patio that was probably not impregnable, although I hadn’t checked for any gates.

I spoke to the Mexican girl: “Here’s your gun. Go into the bedroom. If someone breaks in from the patio unarmed, hold him. If he’s armed and Mexican, talk to him, stall him if you can; we’ve got some clout locally, but I don’t want to strain it by damaging any Mexican citizens I don’t have to. But if he’s armed and American and gives you any trouble, it’s okay to shoot him. Understood?”

“
Yo comprendo
, ” she said.

“There’s no shell in the chamber,” I said.

She jacked back the slide of the little pistol, let it snap forward smartly, and set the safety. She grinned at me. “There is now, Señor,” she said, and was gone with a flick of her
serape
.

Jo Beckman was frowning at me. “Do I gather that you’re expecting an invasion?”

She sounded skeptical. Considering that she and her brother, one of them armed, had entered the premises illegally and found Antonia already present with a gun, I couldn’t see why she’d be surprised that still others might have the same idea.

I said, “That’s right. There have been two attempts on my life already, if we include Junior’s noonday try in Cananea. I’m a real unpopular fellow.”

“You, or Horace Cody?” She frowned. “I mean, are they trying to kill you because they know you’re a fake or because they don’t? ”

This tall, lean lady might not do much for my virility, but I had to admire the way she’d gone straight to the heart of the puzzle.

I said, “It’s very complicated, and we haven’t got time to go into it now. If you and your brother get into that comer over there, you should be reasonably safe if it comes to shooting.”

She studied me for a moment longer, shrugged, and moved toward the spot I’d indicated; but the boy didn’t follow her. He looked toward the bedroom.

“Those French doors back there aren’t much. That’s the way we got in, easier than opening a milk carton. Suppose I go give the little lady a hand. ” He glanced at the pistol butt showing at my waist and held out his hand. “How about my gun?”

Well, it was understandable. Antonia was close to his own age, a pretty girl who wasn’t his sister, and she’d made him look bad earlier by taking his weapon away. Clearly he wanted a chance to demonstrate to her that he wasn’t the ineffectual stumblebum she’d made him appear.

I shook my head. “Sorry, Charles. No gun.”

He stood perfectly still for a moment, shocked and insulted; then he threw another glance at the door through which Antonia had gone. He protested: “You gave
her
back her gun!”

I said, ‘‘She’s seen the real Cody, and she knows I’m not him. And your sister has convinced herself that I’m a genuine phony. But you’re not quite sure, are you? You’re thinking Jo could be wrong, and Antonia could be a plant I put in here to lie for me, and I could just possibly be H. H. Cody after all, running a great big elaborate con game with you as the mark.” I shook my head again. “So, no gun.”

He made an angry sound in his throat, wheeled, and marched off toward the bedroom. I started to call him back but checked myself. Wherever he was, with his present suspicious attitude, he was trouble. Maybe it was better to have him one room away from me than in the same room behind me.

Jo Beckman said, “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

“Lady,” I said, “the last time I came across your kid brother I promised myself that, next time we met, I was going to treat myself to the pleasure of beating the living shit out of him even though I normally disapprove of fisticuffs. But look at him, there isn’t a mark on him. Be satisfied with that, don’t ask for nice.” Actually, I remembered, I’d had pleasant visions of carving the gun-waving punk into bloody little pieces for the hogs, but it was no time for meticulous accuracy.

The tall girl laughed. “Have we time for another drink?”

“A wench after my own heart,” I said. “Two Scotches, coming up.”

I went to get her glass and returned to the bar. As I was pouring the liquor, Jo Beckman said, “I really don’t understand what the hell is going on. Just exactly who are you, what are you trying to do, and who’s trying to stop you? Junior and I heard what you said to the Mexican girl about a missing shipment of weapons for a revolutionary organization, but. . ."

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. A woman’s voice spoke, heavily accented: “Please, I have the towels for the bathroom.”

“Just a minute.”

I walked over and placed one glass in Jo Beckman’s hand. It was, I noted, quite steady.

She said softly, “I was in the bathroom right after you cut us loose. There are plenty of towels.”

“Sure.” I raised my voice. “Coming!”

Walking over there, drink in hand, I paused to take a couple of slow sips before reaching for the knob. I was giving Greer time, I hoped, to get into position from wherever he’d made his call, presumably one of the nearby motel units. Then I pulled the door open.

She had the towels all right, a sizeable pile of them. Smiling at me apologetically over them, she stood in the doorway, a chunky brown woman in her thirties with short, dark hair that looked as if its last shampoo had been considerably longer ago than yesterday. Motel maids no longer go in for picturesque full skirts and white peasant blouses down there to please the
gringo
tourists; she was wearing baggy, faded jeans and a loose gray work shirt with the tails out. If she was actually a maid bribed to perform a small chore for the opposition, she undoubtedly found the costume more practical for making beds and scrubbing floors; but visually it was a dead loss on a sturdy figure like hers, making her look like a sack of potatoes. Well, in certain areas, melons.

“I am sorry to disturb the se
ñ
or,” she said, still smiling a bit hesitantly. “
Un momentito
,
por favor
. ”

“Help yourself.”

I stepped aside for her. She came forward, and I gave the door a left-handed push to close it behind her. At the same time, I threw my drink into her face right-handed, plastic glass and all, and carried through with my right hand by chopping down hard on the pile of towels. I felt a solid object under the layers of absorbent material and heard it thump on the carpet as she lost her grip on her burden. She started to grab for it, but my left hand shoved her forward, my foot tripped her, and things started happening very fast.

I was given no chance to deal with the gun on the rug, if it was a gun. The woman exploded into action. I was suddenly busy sidestepping a skilled backwards kick that would have had my knee bending the wrong way if it had landed. Even with a faceful of whiskey, she’d recovered instantly from her stumble and lashed out like a vicious mule—the first blackbelt motel maid I’d met, to my knowledge.

Even if I could have taken her, there wasn’t time for a lot of Hah-Hah stuff; my attention might be needed elsewhere in the suite at any moment. I backstepped quickly, therefore, to give myself shooting room, and got out my .38. The woman had whirled to stalk me with her hands raised, karate fashion, ready to crack cinder blocks, bricks, or me. Her whiskey-wet face was still smiling in an intent, meaningless way. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, really, if you liked them husky, and she had very white, very even teeth.

I realized abruptly that I’d seen her before. She’d been wearing military-style coveralls, and I’d seen her at a considerable distance, carrying a submachine gun of unknown manufacture as she examined the wrecked Cadillac, and then making a funny thing of modeling some of Gloria’s underwear for the benefit of her companions in the beat-up white station wagon she’d been driving. I didn’t particularly want to shoot her, but it didn’t look as if she intended to leave me much choice; she was going to rush my gun to keep me busy while her associates closed in. . . .