The Frighteners (27 page)

He looked up at me searchingly and nodded. “Those clothes look like they fit you pretty good, even the hat and boots. But you’d better wear that bolo tie of mine; it’s my lucky piece, and anybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t leave it behind, nohow.”

I was aware of Jo, who’d come to stand in the doorway, turning away; a moment later she was back, handing me the braided, silver-tipped, leather tie with its big silver-mounted turquoise. I’d left the cheap one I’d worn for my masquerade when I changed out of my own beat-up, white wedding costume in Ramón’s camp.

“There’s a man I’m supposed to be looking for,” I said. “While you were being held, did you hear them mention the name Sabádo?”

Cody frowned. “Not Sabádo. But I did hear them refer to a Mister Saturday once or twice.’’

“In what connection?”

“Can’t really say. I mean, I just heard the name go by me. Like I said, there was a lot of talk.”

“Was the speaker being serious or funny?”

“Kind of funny. Like he was calling a feller my height, or yours, by the name of Shorty, or referring to the boss as Old Sourpuss. You know the way a bunch of the boys will make up fool names for everybody. Is it important?’’

‘‘Not at the moment,’’ I said. ‘‘So let’s go over what you told me once more. I’m to take your truck and take the road north along the coast and find a man named Arturo. Last name?” “Don’t know as he’s got one. Never heard it if he does.’’

“There are only two things wrong with that program I can see at the moment,” I said. “First, the only road shown on the map doesn’t run along the coast; it cuts well inland. It doesn’t return to the coast until it hits a flea-spot on the paper with the fancy name of Puerto de la Libertad, at the mouth of the Rio Lobos, seventy-five miles north of Kino Bay. Second, it all seems to be empty country, rocks and desert. There’s nobody out there. The map shows no sign of habitation, nothing. So just what are you expecting to gain by sending me out into the empty desert to find a man who doesn’t exist, Mr. Cody?”

The old man grinned. “There’s always somebody out there, son. And you look like a man who knows enough not to trust any fancy maps. Hell, if Will Pierce and I had trusted to the crap they draw on maps we’d still be wondering where our next meal was coming from. . . . Shit, I keep forgetting. Will’s not worrying about his meals these days.” He cleared his throat. “Damn, we had us some times, Will and I, I can tell you, until we went and got ourselves rich and spoiled all the fun.”

After a moment, I said, “There’s a lake on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico called Stinking Lake. Good spot for duck hunting, but you’d never find it if you followed the gas station maps or even the state tourist map. They’ve had the roads up there all wrong as long as I can remember.’’

‘‘Well, there’s a jeep track runs up along the coast. Jeep track, hell, if I know my locals they make it in ordinary pickup trucks and maybe even beat-up old Yankee Cadillacs. Anyway, it goes at least twenty-five miles north, I’m told, to a little fishing village some say is called El Mirador. Others say El Mirador’s the name of another village up there that dried up and blew away and this one’s got no name. Anyway, name or no name, that’s Arturo’s village.”

“Arturo is a fisherman?”

“I gather that’s what he calls himself, and likely he catches a fish now and then when he’s got nothing better to do. But mostly . . . You know what kind of fish is a square grouper?”

I grinned. “Sure, it’s a bale of marijuana,” I said. “But I heard the term in Florida, where fishermen often find them drifting after some smuggler’s boat has jettisoned a load when the Coast Guard got too close. I never heard it used on this coast.”

“It’s used. There’s other stuff comes through, too; stronger stuff. Don’t approve of the trade myself, but I was raised not to run to the school principal with everything I saw. Or the police. I take care of my conscience and let the other fellers take care of theirs. Anyway, I was given to understand this Arturo knows everything goes on in this part of Mexico.”

I asked, “Is this El Mirador place, where Arturo lives, by any chance located on Bahia San Cristobal, where the arms were landed?”

“Nobody lives at Bahia San Cristobal far as I know. But if anything gets landed there, I’ve been told, Arturo’s the man to tell you about it. Any trucks that went to Bahia San Cristobal or came from there, he’d have known about them. He might even have heard the names of the drivers. Hell, he might be the man who recruited them in the first place. I figured it was a starting place. Arturo might have a clue to where that shipment was hid. You shouldn’t have no trouble getting there in that truck of mine; that’s why I picked it off Herrera’s used-car lot.” He gave me a mean little grin. “No trouble except that it’ll damn near beat you to death like it almost did me. Goddamn beefed-up suspension. Don’t have to worry about locking the front hubs for the four-wheel drive. They’re automatic; and the lever for the transfer case is right by the gearshift, marked good and plain. Left some pistols behind the seat I took off those fellows. Didn’t want to come in here armed and maybe get myself shot; but if you could see your way clear now to leaving me one . . ."

“I found them,” I said. “But Dr. Beckman doesn’t trust you very much, amigo, and she’s the one who’ll be mostly looking after you while I’m gone, so I think I’d better keep your guns for the time being. As I said, there’ll be some people watching out for you. They’ll have enough guns.”

He turned his head painfully to look at Jo. “I suppose a lot of folks, including your brother, been telling you what a wicked old man I am, ma’am.”

“Not to mention my mother,” Jo said.

Cody smiled thinly. “Didn’t get on with Will’s lady at all, and that’s a fact.”

“She told us, if anything happened to her or Will down here, you’d be to blame, Mr. Cody.”

“Hating women do say the damndest things; and your ma purely did dislike me, young lady. Maybe because I’d seen Will make a fool of himself about women like that before, and I tried to warn him against her.” He grimaced. “You’d think an old man like me would have learned better, wouldn’t you? Should have known I’d just make Will stubborn mad and the lady a bad enemy.”

Jo hesitated. “Why . . . why would you want to warn your partner against my mother, Mr. Cody?”

The man in the bed shook his head minutely. “No profit in my talking against your ma, girl. I think you know the kind of woman she was. Maybe the boy don’t or don’t want to admit it—boys get funny ideas about their moms—but you’re a smart young lady and you know. No need for me to badmouth her to you.”

Jo licked her lips, and said stiffly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother was . . . was a fine person and you’re just trying to . . . You haven’t really explained why you came here. You must know lots of people who’d be willing to help you, at least for a consideration, yet you came crawling to a man you didn’t even know. . . ."

“A man who owed me,” Cody whispered. “Ask him, he’ll tell you. He stood by while they arrested me; watched them put the handcuffs on me. He drove off with my car. He took my young wife. He even took my name. Waiting in that place they held me, I figured to look him up some day and get back some of what he took, out of his hide maybe. Then I heard them talking about the way they’d tried to kill him a couple times and he’d got away from them and even got one or two of them doing it. So maybe he wasn’t such a bad feller after all; leastways he was tough and on the same side as me, against them. Figured if I could find him, a man who was in my debt like that, a man with the same interests you might say, we could work something out. Like we’re doing.”

Jo gave an exasperated little sigh. “They ought to give special courses in male psychology. No woman would think like that. She frowned. “This Arturo you’re sending him to, is he old and blind or something?’’

“I’m told he’s a middle-aged gent; don’t know about his eyesight. . . . You’re wondering how your man’s going to fool him? I never met Arturo, ma’am. All I know of him is what I hear from . . . well, let’s say from folks who had business dealings with him.”

“Drug dealings?”

The old man moved his shoulders in a minute shrug. “I figure it’s my job to make one gent named Cody do what I think is right. It’s not my job to make the whole world do what I think is right. Or not do what I think is wrong. Too many folks minding other folks’ business these days, ma’am.”

The air was getting pretty thick with philosophy. I said, “To get back to business, what you’re saying is that you don’t really know this Arturo. And he doesn’t know you. So even assuming that I can deceive him into believing I’m you, what have I gained? What lever can I use to make him talk . . . ? ” I stopped, listening.

“You forget, you’re in Mexico,” Cody said. “Money’ll get you damn near anything in Mexico. Well, it’s the same back home, but they ain’t so blasted hypocritical around here. . . . Something wrong, son?”

“Easy now,” I said softly. “We’re about to have visitors. Take it very easy, Mr. Cody, don’t make them nervous.”

Jo said quickly, “But if it’s Antonia, she’s coming in here to kill Mr. Cody. Are you going to let her? You can’t let her!”

The old man said dryly, “I surely do appreciate your friendly concern, ma’am, but it seems a mite inconsistent.”

I said, “Nobody’s going to kill anybody. Just stay perfectly still and don’t startle them. . . ."

There was a sudden ripping noise as a knife slashed away the screen at the open window. The twin barrels of a shotgun parted the worn curtains, faded green with a pattern of white in this room. For a moment I thought I’d made a serious error, perhaps a fatal one, since neither Antonia nor her weatherbeaten sidekick had carried a shotgun when last seen; and if I’d let the wrong people get die drop on us, we were in serious trouble. Then I saw
T
ío 
 Ignacio’s weathered face behind the big hammers of the ancient doublegun. I’d wondered why Antonia, an impatient type, had waited so long before crashing the party; but apparently, not trusting my cooperation, she’d taken time to let Ignacio provide himself with heavier artillery, either from their car or from a friend or relative in Old Kino, probably the latter since, if they’d had a shotgun along, they’d have brought it to the house in the first place. I noted that the hammers of the antique weapon were cocked.

“
Pasa adelante, guapa
, ” said the man at the window.

I was aware of Jo, in the doorway, stepping aside to let Antonia come in. The Mexican girl stared at me for a moment defiantly. Flinging back her
serape
with a dramatic gesture that freed her gun arm, she turned toward the bed, raising the little .22 I’d been wondering about. A couple of tense seconds passed, but the weapon did not fire. Instead, the Mexican girl made an odd, hissing sound and swung the gun muzzle toward me.

“Ees joke, perhaps?” She spoke through clenched teeth. “This man, he is no Cody, no more than you! You make big Yankee joke with Antonia, maybe?”

I’d rather tackle a vanload of armed revolutionaries than the Mexican telephone system in the middle of the night. Fortunately I managed to arouse the manager of the new motel up the beach—La Playa de Kino,
playa
meaning beach—and a U.S. fifty-dollar bill changed his indignation to cooperation. As Cody had said, money is very effective in Mexico; particularly, with their current rate of inflation, American money.

Señor Saiz’s efforts at the motel switchboard finally got me through to our man in El Paso, Texas, whom I didn’t know and probably never would know. The Lone Star Improvement Corporation, twenty-four-hour service. Up in Texas, three hundred and fifty miles from Kino Bay, Lone Star juggled some electronics and telephonies and finally connected me with Greer, sixty miles away in the Hotel Gandara in Hermosillo. Not the most direct route of communication; but I had to keep in mind that I expected, and even hoped, that there’d be people coming after me, and whatever price I paid the manager for his silence, they could probably outbid me.

For Horace Cody, wounded and on the lam, to call a hotel in Hermosillo, a city where he had no obvious connections— particularly that hotel—would have raised questions in their suspicious little minds. For him to call an oddball company in El Paso, his hometown, shouldn’t. He was a rich man, and they’d figure it was one of his tame corporations, perhaps a front for some kind of shady business. He could be calling for assistance, or money, or information, or political influence to be used in his behalf. They’d consider it normal fugitive behavior. I hoped. . . .

We’d had an interesting time back at the Schonfeld house, of course, after the Mexican girl’s announcement. I’d noted that Cody himself had taken it calmly enough; but Jo had reacted with a gasp of incredulity and started to protest. However, there’d been other problems to be solved of more immediate importance than a mere question of identity, so I’d cut her off.

“Antonia, how about asking your uncle to park the artillery? That ancient
escopeta
makes me very nervous; I’d hate to have him pull the trigger and blow himself up.”

“No blow, very good gun.” The Mexican girl laughed shortly and made a gesture.
T
í
o
Ignacio withdrew the long shotgun barrels and the curtains fell back into place before the window, hiding the damaged screen. Antonia looked at the little pistol in her hand, shrugged, and tucked it inside her waistband. “So. Now explain this so-funny joke,
por favor
.”

Jo had exploded at last: “But it’s ridiculous! This has got to be the man who married Gloria Pierce with my brother watching the chapel from across the street. Isn’t it, Matt? Isn’t he? He’s the man you traded places with, the man you’ve been impersonating, isn’t he? You can’t tell me somebody went to all the trouble to fix you up like that, complete with gray hair and beard and bald spot, just so you could impersonate a bad impersonator; that would be just too mad for words! Not that the whole thing isn’t pretty wild anyway!”

I looked at the old man in the bed with the phony bandage on his head.