The Frighteners (30 page)

At last Antonia said, “He say one hundred dollars.”

“Do I bargain?”

“Me, Antonia, I have bargain. You pay.”

“It’s a deal.” Actually, it was too good a deal. If the man really had the information I needed, I’d have paid several times that. I made a show of having to search my wallet for enough American money, coming up with four twenties, a ten, a five, and five ones. It didn’t seem advisable to flash any hundreds or even fifties around this place. “Here you are.”

I gave the money to Antonia, who passed it to Arturo, who counted it carefully; then he began to talk. I listened to the names he rattled off, which I caught after a fashion, at least the last names, confirmed when Antonia repeated them: Delgado, Ruiz, Miera, and Bustamente. But the directions lost me. Even when Antonia told them back to make certain she’d got them right the Spanish crackled too fast for me to follow it. All I could make out, because it was spoken several times, was the word cordillera, meaning mountain range. A final slug of mescal and Arturo’s gende handshake, as we stood up, put the seal, on the bargain. The little man was smiling at us, innocently pleased to have been of assistance.

“Varya con Dios, señorita, señor. ”

We walked down to the pickup in silence; even the dogs didn’t bother with us any more. I heard somebody start to laugh back at the house and stop laughing abruptly. I remembered to make a painful production of climbing into the cab. Nobody followed us away from there.

“Fonny man, Arturo,” Antonia said as we left the village behind. “When I come with Jorge, Arturo very rude, have many men with guns, behave to Jorge very tough, very dangerous. This time, with you, so much nice. I think he play treeks, no?”

I was glad to hear her say it. I mean, I still had some doubts about that heavy Spanglish accent and about the girl herself. After all, she’d wished herself off on me deliberately, and all I knew about her was what she’d chosen to tell me. However, the fact that she wasn’t dying to sell me Arturo as just a happy country boy was certainly a point in favor of her honesty. My Scandinavian ancestry didn’t qualify me to understand the Mexican mental processes of a gent like Arturo very well, but Latin or Nordic, Catholic or Protestant, black or brown or red or yellow or white, I know a cheerful con man when I see one.

“I think he plays tricks, yes,” I said. “Let me have it, quick, what he told you about those truck drivers he recruited for Medina.”

“You hear names?”

“I think I caught most of them, but give them to me again, please.”

“Those men name themselves Santos Delgado, Enrique Serafin Ruiz, Eloy Miera, and Bernardo Bustamente.”

“And the place? Did he tell you the town in which they live? Do they all come from the same town?”

“He say they all together. He say you find in place call

Piedras Negras, means black stones, in the Cordillera Santa Anna, how you say, Mountains of Santa Anna?”

“Named after the well-known general? Quite apart from his performance at the Alamo, he was kind of an all-around political bastard, wasn’t he?”

“Our General Santa Anna very great man,” she said, “and very great bastard, yes.”

“And where is this
cordillera?
"

She pointed ahead. “Other side Cerros Vaqueros, there, is Valle de Santa Anna, where other road go. Road to Bahia San Crist6bal and Puerto de la Libertad.”

“The one we turned off just outside Bahia Kino?”

"Si, that one. Other side valley, big mountain. Cordillera Santa Anna. We climb over Cerros Vaqueros and down across valley to road, drive north seven kilometers, turn into cordillera on road not so big, find Piedras Negras. Big stones, what you call conspicuous, no can miss.”

I said, “Oh, God, not another one!” When she looked at me questioningly, I said, “I’ve spent most of my life searching hopelessly for places I can’t miss. . . . Never mind, it was just a dumb
gringo
joke. And that bunch of hills up ahead is Cerros

Vaqueros, the Cowboy Hills?"

“That is what Arturo call them. He say much steep but he make in camioneta with four-wheels-driving easy.”

I studied her a moment and asked the big question: “Did he say why he was so eager to help us locate a couple of million bucks worth of armaments instead of finding and cashing in on them himself? I mean, he must guess, even if you didn’t tell him, why we’re trying to track down those men.”

“No tell, but Arturo say. Proud man, he say. Drugs okay. Weapons no okay. Against principle, he say.”

It wasn’t fair to laugh; the sneaky little guy might actually have meant it. They all pride themselves virtuously on having something they won’t do.

“I’m not sure I believe that story,” I said.

Antonia grinned. “Besides, guns much dangerous to sell, government no like. Drugs, every people want, who can stop?

Only foolish policemen try, not very hard. But guns make government angry, make tough, make much trouble for business of Arturo.”

I said, “Okay, that makes more sense. But I have a hunch he isn’t above cashing in on those guns without going near them. I think he sold what he knows to the opposition before peddling it to us.”

“Opposition?”

“The
norteamericanos
who were hunting Cody and are now, I hope, hunting me, thinking I’m Cody. Not that they’d kiss me on the cheek if they knew I was me: but Cody, Will Pierce’s former partner, is the guy they really want to silence like they did Pierce himself. I’m just a minor annoyance, an actor they’d hoped to use who had the bad taste not to stick to his script. I was gambling that they’d take a little more time to pick up his trail, my trail now. I was betting that we’d have them behind us, driving up here; but I seem to’ve lost my bet.”

“My trail,
igualmente
,” Antonia said. “Equally mine.”

‘‘I’m not forgetting it,” I said. ‘‘Anyway, judging by Arturo’s helpful, overhospitable behavior, I’d say the opposition has been here ahead of us and bribed him to make things easy for us to go where they can dispose of us at their leisure. It isn’t too surprising that they got here first, considering the revolutionary connections they’ve got. Among their guerilla friends there are undoubtedly several unsavory characters who know all about Arturo, crime’s little Mister Big in these parts.”

“Oh, yes, many bad peoples know Arturo.”

I went on: “When the boys fell for Cody’s senile-citizen act and lost him up in the U.S., they must have figured out that he’d head for this part of Mexico. After all, that was where he’d been planning to go at the time of his arrest. He’d been starting out to investigate the activities and death of his partner, using his honeymoon as a cover; and it now appears that El Mirador is where Will Pierce came first. So they beat us here and paid Arturo for information and cooperation. The larcenous little creep was undoubtedly happy to take their money, plenty of it no doubt, and then screw an additional lousy hundred bucks out of us, and ply us with mescal and information, and send us driving off with his blessing—Vaya con Dios, indeed!—right into the enemy’s arms, or guns.”

“So what you say we do,
hombre?
"

“Just what they expect us to do, up to a point,” I said. I grimaced. “My gambles haven’t been paying off well lately. A week ago I took a chance that young Charles wasn’t going to shoot me and he practically blew my head off. And today I figured I’d have the hunters behind me so I could ambush them, and instead it seems they’re in front figuring to ambush me. But if at first you don’t succeed . . . I think we’ll gamble that the boys with the guns, since they know where Arturo’s going to send us, and since they think I’m old Buff Cody and not hotshot agent Helm, will do it the easy way. They won’t set up along the road to take us, a risky moving target—without heavy weapons, shooting at people in cars is always chancy—they’ll just wait for us at the place to which they know we’re coming.” “You mean Piedras Negras.”

I nodded. “Did Arturo say how far to the junction where we head into the hills?”

“He say four kilometers from El Mirador.”

“One and a half to go, then,” I said, with a glance at the odometer. “El Mirador. What the hell does it mean, anyway?”

“Mirador is balcony, or high place from which one watches.”

“I didn’t see any high places except that little hill on which he had his house, but who says names have to make sense?” I glanced at her. “So Arturo told you Will Pierce visited him and pretended to be Cody, just as he did with Jorge Medina.”

“S
í
, Señor Pierce, who call himself Cody, come to El Mirador with Yankee woman, not so young but muy bella, Arturo say. Very nice the hair, the makeup, the clothes; but much complain. Road bad for beautiful big car, dust bad for pretty white
pantalones
, too much hot she say, and sit in the car with the
aire acondicionado
while men talk on
portal.
” Antonia grimaced. “This in
primavera
, spring, many days ago, not even so hot as now! She should stay summer and see real hot!”

“Maybe she’s seeing it where she is now.” When Antonia glanced at me uncomprehendingly, I said, “What’s Spanish for hell?
Infieno?
The dame is dead along with her gentleman friend. They were killed by Mondragon and his henchmen two or three or four days—I haven’t got the chronology of their trip quite straight—after they paid that visit to Arturo. Two questions come to mind. First, what did they want from Arturo, did he say?”

“They want what you want, the drivers of the
camiones
. He say he give them what he give us: the names and Piedras Negras.”

I said, “That’s odd, because right after coming here—well, maybe they had time to explore as far as Piedras Negras, but not much farther—Mrs. Charles and Mr. Pierce seem to have lit out for points south. The place where they were murdered is some eight hundred kilometers down the coast and a hundred inland, around five hundred miles of driving. Could they have found a clue to the arms that took them that far afield? It doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of pretty rugged country right around here. I’d think there’d be any number of suitable hiding places within, say, thirty miles—fifty kilometers—and your Jorge and his trucks and his second batch of drivers were found in the mountains not too far east of here.” Actually, Ramón had told me, the four vehicles and the five bodies had been found just off the little mountain road on which he’d had his encampment. “If Jorge actually hid the stuff way down Mazatlan way, he must have done a hell of a lot of driving with that convoy of trucks, with more to look forward to when the deal finally went through. It seems unnecessary for him to have spent that much time on the main roads, not to mention unsafe. After all, just a small accident could have brought them to the attention of the cops. But if he didn’t lug the goods way down there for concealment, what the hell were Pierce and Mrs. Charles doing there?”

Antonia gave that inimitable Latin shrug that indicated, in this context, that she had no theories to offer. As I drove along slowly, trying to work things out in my head, I found myself distracted by thoughts of the late Millicent Charles, who, after making the same excursion we were making, had met such a brutal death with her lover, so many miles to the south. The true Millicent Charles had clearly been a somewhat different person from the widowed mother, brave and loving, whom Mason Charles had tried to sell me. Even her daughter had halfadmitted that dear Millie hadn’t been quite perfect; and Buff Cody obviously considered the dame a rapacious female menace who’d hypnotized Will Pierce and turned him against his partner of a lifetime when said partner tried to speak a few sage words of warning. It seemed likely that she’d been more or less responsible for Will Pierce’s financial troubles; her hatred for Cody was probably what had caused Pierce to reject his partner’s investment advice and lose his shirt.

Then, after helping him to financial ruin, dear Millie had apparently made it clear that she wasn’t very fond of bankrupt millionaires, and if Will wanted to keep her, he’d damn well better pull up his socks and do something about it. She’d presumably put enough pressure on the lovesick sexagenarian to send Will Pierce looking for money in strange and illegal places; always assuming that she hadn’t actually suggested, or maybe even planned, his ill-fated forays into crime. Maybe she was also the one who’d had the idea of his doing the dirty work under the name of Cody, the man she hated because he’d seen right through her. Perhaps I was being unfair, but the evidence seemed to indicate that the mother of Mason and Joanna hadn’t been the nicest lady in the world, although I gathered that, for her age, she’d been one of the prettiest. . . .

“Alto!”
At Antonia’s command, I halted the truck. She pointed to a rudimentary road running up into the hills to the left. She asked, “Is four
kilometros
now?”

“Three point seven. Close enough.” I studied the marks in the dust. “Looks as if there’d been some traffic here. I make out at least two different treads. Well, let’s give it a try and hope there’ll be room enough up there to mm around if it gets too bad.”

It was quite a drive. I’ve put in more time in sports cars and other rapid vehicles than I have in four-wheel-drive machinery, since most of my boondocks experience was gained on the back of a horse or backpacking on foot. Fortunately this wasn’t a true off-road situation requiring an expert. I did have a track of sorts to follow, and there was no question of coping with deep snow, tricky mud, or even soft sand, although some of the arroyo crossings weren’t as firm as I’d have liked. Mostly it was simply a matter of using the low-low granny gear judiciously, not so much for its power as for the fact that it let me take the bad spots very slowly without slipping the clutch. I concentrated on picking a route that wouldn’t high-center the tall GMC and was glad I hadn’t had to try it in the lower Subaru which, while competent enough in other respects, might not have cleared some of the obstacles we had to straddle.

Then the top was in sight. I found good cover for the truck well below and sneaked up to the crest cautiously, to look out over a desolate basin sloping down from our hills and then up to a higher mountain range beyond: the Valle Santa Anna and the cordillera of the same name. Way over there near the foothills was a red-brown line across the yellow-brown landscape; and I spotted a plume of dust moving along it. The telescope told me it was kicked up by a big, old, empty, flatbed truck heading south along the unpaved road. I warned myself not to get paranoid, every vehicle in northern Mexico wasn’t hostile; but I watched it out of sight just the same.