The Frighteners (29 page)

“How the hell did you get here, Antonia?”

“Was not far. I guess you come here for tel
é
fono. I walk.”

“In those heels?”

This evening she was again wearing the scuffed red pumps in which I’d seen her a couple of times before.

“I take off. I carry the moccasins here.” She patted a lumpy area of her
serape
, and went on: “Arturo have not much English. You have not much Spanish. I speak both very good; I come with.”

I looked at her sharply. “How do you know Arturo doesn’t speak English?”

“Jorge take me to El Mirador one time.”

“Medina took you to meet Arturo?”

“Not much meet. I stay in peekup. Man business. You know. Woman stupid little thing not to bother stupid little head.” She shrugged. “Good to make man feel big and smart, no? But I see. I hear. Arturo knows many people who care not much for honest or dishonest. He get the four bad men who drive the
camiones
for Jorge. Yes, I know El Mirador. I know Arturo. So I come with, no?”

We made slow progress in the dark. The pavement ended at the bluff—solid black against the starry night sky—that also terminated the beach at the north end of the settlement, like a roadblock thrown up by a giant bulldozer. From there we followed a small dirt road that angled inland to scramble over the massive obstacle and drive into the apparently uninhabited valley beyond. At least, with Kino Bay left behind, there wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere.

Except for the fact that its cab was reasonably luxurious-well, after we’d shoveled out most of Cody’s garbage and scrubbed out most of his blood—the GMC three-quarter-tonner, unlike many of the lighter, half-ton jobs, made no soft concessions to passenger comfort. On the other hand, it gave the impression of being totally indestructible, it had plenty of power, the headlights were excellent, and the dashboard actually mounted a businesslike display of instruments instead of entertaining you with cute little twinkie-winkie lights in the manner of too many cars nowadays.

I’d probably have missed the turnoff if I hadn’t had the girl to warn me it was coming up, since the so-called coast road was even less impressive than the main, inland, north-south highway-meaning the rough dirt track—that we’d been following. The new thoroughfare was merely two ruts across the desert. In this dry weather, it should be passable, but I shifted into four-wheel drive anyway just to make sure I knew how.

“What’s a guapa?" I asked after a while.

I guess she’d fallen asleep beside me in spite of the jarring ride. She stirred and asked, “
Qu
é
 dice?
”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Is okay.”

I said, “When your uncle called you into the bedroom after shoving his shotgun through the window, he addressed you as
guapa
. I don’t know the word.”

She laughed. “Very good word for you. Means ‘pretty one.’ Say to all the girls. Maybe they slap you the face. But maybe not.” She glanced at me. “You fuck with the tall
muchacha?
”

“None of your damn business, small fry,” I said.

“Okay, you fuck with her. I bet she not so good as me.”

I said, “It’s too bad that we’ll never know, isn’t it?”

She gave me again that big, white, flashing grin. “She your lady now? I could take you away, I bet, but it is still too soon after Jorge, I am not interest.”

“Well, it’s nice to know what to expect,” I said. “And what not to expect. Talking about expectations, are there any surprises along this road, like sudden arroyos or soft sand dunes? ”

“No, Jorge make it easy in his little peekup from Japan that have not even the four-wheels drive. In such a big strong
camioneta
like this one, no problema. But maybe Arturo shoot. Not very nice man. But maybe he talk. What you wish I ask him if he talk?”

“The drivers,” I said. “I think they’ve got to be the starting place. Your friend Medina used two sets of drivers for his trucks, apparently. Eight men. The first quartet was presumably the bunch you heard him ask Arturo to recruit for him. I figure those men drove the four trucks up to Bahia San Cristobal, loaded them with arms from the ship, and then drove them on to Medina’s secret hiding place. They unloaded the weapons there, and Medina undoubtedly had them take the empty trucks a reasonable distance from the cache so nobody could guess where they’d been. Then Medina paid those four men off and sent them away after, presumably, swearing them to silence. If I could find them, or even just one of them, I might be able to get a lead on those armaments. You don’t happen to know any pertinent names or addresses, by any chance?”

“No, but maybe Arturo tell. I will ask. You have money?”

“Yes.”

“For money, maybe he tell. And maybe he just kill and take money anyway.”

“The possibility had occurred to me,” I said dryly. “Well, the way I figure it, Medina was being very cagey. He didn’t trust that first crew of his to keep its mouth shut under duress, so he got rid of it before entering the danger zone and had a second bunch of drivers standing by who couldn’t be made to spill anything because they didn’t know anything. They drove those empty vans to the mountain rendezvous to meet the guerillas commanded by that great orator and self-styled revolutionary general, Carlos Mondragon. And that’s where the four trucks were found, with all four men lying beside them, tortured and dead. Along with the man who’d hired them, your lover Medina, who’d probably thought he was reasonably safe because they couldn’t afford to get too rough with him or they’d lose the information in his head and with it the weapons. Only Mondragon or one of his henchmen didn’t know his own strength. . . .Oops, what do I do here?”

“
A la derecha
, to the right,” Antonia said, as I slowed uncertainly at a fork in the track I was following. “Other road go straight to beach. That Mondragon I will kill very soon with much hurt, very slow. ’ ’

There was a hint of light in the sky over the shadowy moonscape inland; we’d have daylight soon. As always, the vague sharpening of the horizon in the east made the darkness seem more impenetrable where we were. The headlights appeared to be drilling a tunnel for us through solid blackness. A jackrabbit flashing across the path of illumination ahead at full throttle was a startling sight, reminding us that we were not the only inhabitants of this dark underworld.

I said, “Too bad they killed Will Pierce before you could get to him; you could have had a lot of fun with him, too.”

“Yes, they owe me, is that what you say? Señor Pierce was mine!’’ Then the girl glanced at me with sudden suspicion. ‘‘You make joke of Antonia, hey? You think is funny I want to kill?” I said, “Hell, no. Blast Mondragon all you want, if it’ll make you feel better. There are too many people in the world already; we can spare a few of those who won’t behave themselves properly. But toasting him over a slow fire first, I don’t know. I’ve always felt that if you’re going to kill something, whether it’s a duck, a deer, or a man, you ought to make it quick and clean. Oh, sometimes you’ve got to stretch it out a bit if there’s information to be extracted, but you don’t have to like it.”

“Fonny man,” she said. “Has sentiment, mucho corazon, very nice! Maybe I will take away from that female medica.” The dawn broke abruptly, as it does in that part of the world; one moment we were jolting blindly down the narrow beam of our headlights, the next there was pale light all around us, growing rapidly brighter. Our first sight of the village was from the high ground inland. I stopped to use the mini-telescope I’d tucked into my overnight bag way back when I’d packed my gear in Ramón’s mountain camp. El Mirador, if that was its name, was on the shore of a rather pretty little bay—well, pretty if you don’t equate scenic beauty with lush vegetation. This was still a rugged, arid landscape. The road ran down the long slope from the hills to a scattering of mud huts with a few beat-up cars and pickup trucks parked among them. Beyond, I could see three fishing boats moored in a small inlet. I passed the spyglass to Antonia.

“I wonder they don’t use this bay for unloading their goods, whether drags or weapons.”

“Is too shallow for ship, only small boat can use.”

“Which house is Arturo’s?”

“On the hill, the big one,
muy grande
.”

It didn’t look
muy grande
to me when I got the telescope back, just two huts joined together by a covered breezeway; but that made it twice as large as the one-hut establishments in the village below, and I guess it all depends on the frame of reference. On the bare, dusty premises was a tan four-wheel-drive pickup that looked larger than ours, I guessed a one-ton job, dirty but reasonably new and otherwise in good shape; and a big, battered, gold-colored American sedan old enough to have fins on it. There were also three rusty, wheel-less wrecks from the dawn of automotive history. I’ve never yearned to own a bunch of nonfunctioning cars and display them in my yard, but it seems to be a fairly common compulsion.

We got back into the GMC and drove down there. Several dogs of indeterminable breeds made halfhearted passes at us, barking as if their hearts weren’t in it, as we drove through the dusty space in the center of the little community. You could hardly call it a town square, or a
plaza
, but perhaps they did. I could see no people at all. There was, however, a small goat in one yard. More dogs came out to greet us as we ground up the hill to Arturo’s house. There was a rusty iron gate in front, in a barbed wire fence that had largely fallen down on both sides of it. I parked in front if it and got out awkwardly, the bulky bandage reminding me that I was supposed to be a wounded man. I hobbled around the truck to help Antonia out.

“Sooch a gentleman!” she murmured.

‘‘We’re being watched; why not put on a good show?’’ I said. “When we get out of here you can open your own damn doors, baby. If we get out.”

“There is Arturo.”

He was standing in the breezeway; and I had a sudden impulse to laugh. I guess I’d been expecting to see a dramatic figure of some kind, tall and Mephistophelian perhaps: the sinister local
jefe
of crime. I suppose I’d also expected him to be surrounded by heavily armed henchmen. What I saw was a single, chunky, bowlegged little man with a big, black mustache in a round, brown, friendly face that smiled a big welcome at us. He was wearing work clothes that had seen better days. He looked a little like one of the plump, baggy-pants comedians they love in Mexican movies, and like them he had a big hat on, shapeless and sweatstained, which he swept off with a flourish as I let Antonia through the gate and she went up the foot-hammered dirt walk toward him.

I stopped to let her make the first social overtures; also to close the gate again. I’d been brought up in ranch country where custom dictates that, even if it serves no useful function, you leave a gate the way you found it. A couple of the dogs came up to investigate me. I let them sniff my hand and told them they were great dogs and they believed me. I get along well with dogs; it’s people who give me trouble. But Antonia was beckoning to me, and I left my instant canine friends and marched stiffly up the walk to join her in front of the little man.

She said to him, “This is Señor Horace Cody.” Apparently Arturo did know some English because she used that language. She went on, speaking slowly and clearly to me, but obviously hoping that Arturo would also understand what she was saying so he wouldn’t think we were plotting against him: “I have explain to Señor Arturo that you are truly Señor Cody. I have tell him the one who was here before is your partner who use your name and trick you like he trick my Jorge, like he trick Arturo himself. I have say you wish much to find men Jorge use to do that bad man’s business.”

I said, “
Buenos dias, Señor
.”

‘‘Buenos dias.’’

He held out his hand. I remembered that they don’t go in much for the Big Grip down there; we barely touched palms gently. He started to speak, in Spanish, with gestures. When he was through, Antonia translated.

“He say please excuse he not speak much good ingles. He say his house is your house. He say he is very happy you come all this way to see Arturo. He say a friend of his present him with some mescal of own making, very not legal, but here is no policeman, and he thinks it is very fine mescal. It would please him much if you would taste and see if you agree.” She hesitated. “You must say yes or is big insult.”

I said, “There’s nothing like a little mescal for breakfast. Tell him I’ll be honored to join him in a drink.”

The little man waved us through the breezeway where some battered chairs, no two alike, were scattered around a covered patio of weathered concrete. As we sat down, a middle-aged brown woman in a shapeless brown dress brought out a bottle without a label and some shot glasses. The bottle was clear, and the liquid inside was very pale. There were other men around us now, although I didn’t know where they'd come from; tough, wiry, brown-faced men. There wasn’t a firearm in sight; it was strictly a social occasion.

Arturo passed me a glass and lifted one of his own, speaking in Spanish: “
Por todos mal, mescal. For todos b
í
en, tambi
é
n
!” Antonia translated: “Is old saying: For all things bad, mescal. For all things good, the same.”

“Say, that’s real sharp. The universal cure and celebration. I’ll have to remember that.” Living near the border, I’d only heard it about a hundred times before, and Buff Cody undoubtedly had, too, but this seemed to be a good place to play stupid. “Do I sip it or slug it down?”

“Slug is okay.”

I saluted Arturo with my glass and drank it off, as he did the same. The mescal was strong but smooth. Some of it goes down as if they hadn’t got all the spikes off the cactus from which they made it; but this was all right, for mescal. That took care of the hospitality, and it was time for business. I sat and listened to Antonia talking with Arturo, catching an occasional word like hombres and camiones. Four or five men snd several dogs stood around saying nothing.