The Frighteners (4 page)

We had no trouble at the border. As a rule, driving south into Mexico, only two classes of people have trouble at the border: the cheapskates who can’t bear to part with a little cash and the highly moral folks who feel that it’s terribly, terribly wrong to present a foreign official with a small monetary reward for his services. I’m not particularly tightfisted at any time, certainly not when operating on a government expense account, and morality isn’t a big thing in our agency, so we went through in a breeze.

“You didn’t have to be
quite
so generous!” My lovely young bride, who’d been awake since we’d made our first pit stop in New Mexico, spoke tartly as we drove away. “You’re the great Mexico expert, of course; but even I could tell they’d have been happy with a buck or two apiece. A veritable blizzard of five-dollar bills was not indicated.”

“That’s my girl,” I said. “You’re doing fine. You sound just like an honest-to-God, genuine wife.”

She started to make some kind of a retort, but glanced around and said instead: “You’d better pay a little attention to your navigation, mister. That doesn’t look much like a main highway out of town up ahead. Unless their roads are even lousier than I remember.”

She was perfectly right. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere or, since I’d made no turns, failed to take the right one, forgetting that Mexican road signs tend to be inconspicuous when they aren’t totally nonexistent. Actually, I was far from being the great Mexico expert she’d called me. Although I’d spent my younger years in the border state of New Mexico and crossed into old Mexico frequently, my knowledge of the language is rudimentary; and I hadn’t been down here recently. . . .Counting back, I was shocked to realize that it had been well over ten years since, also in the line of duty, I’d last made this crossing from Douglas to Agua Prieta. Dark Water, to you.

I saw that we’d reached the ragged and run-down edge of the town. The low buildings were adobe brick from which, in many cases, the plaster had flaked off if it had ever existed. The street could be called paved, but you had to dodge the numerous and sizeable potholes; beyond the next cross street it degenerated abruptly into a dirt track leading across a cow pasture. As my ersatz bride had pointed out, it was clearly not the highway we wanted.

I made a U-turn and started back the way we’d come only to have a loafer outside a shabby cantina wave a warning hand to let me know that I was proceeding the wrong way up a one-way street. They don’t mark them any more clearly than the highways; there’s only an occasional, casual little arrow painted on the comer of a building or tacked to a telephone pole. I U-tumed again—fortunately there was very little traffic here—and pulled up beside the gent who’d warned me. I hit the switch to bring down the right-hand window. The honeymoon heap boasted every power convenience known to man, including some I hadn’t figured out yet.

I leaned across the front seat and called, “Cananea,
por favor
.”

The man came forward, frowning. My pronunciation was apparently a little off; he hadn’t caught the name. When I repeated it, he grinned happily, showing big, white teeth in a dark, unshaved face.

“Ah,
Cananea!
”

He proceeded to let me know, with gestures and rapid-fire Spanish, exactly where I’d gone astray and in what manner I should now conduct myself in order to rectify my unfortunate error. How they choose to speak their language is their business, of course, but they’d make it easier for dumb gringos if they slowed it down a bit. The elaborate sign language helped, however. I got the general idea, thanked my informant profusely, and drove away.

My companion wasn’t impressed. “Terrific!” she said sourly. “People are trying to kill me, I’m coerced into doing crazy things like pretending to be the wife of a perfect stranger; and it turns out that the high-powered guide and protector they’ve married me to, more or less, can’t even find his way through the first Mexican town we hit without asking directions from a sidewalk bum!”

I glanced at her sharply. “What’s this about killing?”

She said, “I suppose I’ll have to tell you all about it, but let’s not overload your feeble intelligence until it’s got us on the right road.”

I found the main road and made the prescribed turn. The town of Agua Prieta fell behind us. The Mexican landscape was bleak and rugged. It was covered with low, spiny brush punctuated by prickly cactus and thorny mesquite. That southwestern vegetation takes its defenses seriously. The highway was a narrow, winding, patched strip of blacktop that was not designed for a freeway locomotive like our Allante; but the beast had fairly quick power steering, and its suspension wasn’t too soggy. I’d driven worse roads in less suitable automobiles.

The day was sunny, the sky was very blue, and the desert air was so clear that the hills on the distant horizon were as sharply defined as those nearby; there were no atmospheric gradations whatever. It was a good day on which to start on a honeymoon, but I would have preferred to pick my girl and have nothing on my mind but love. As it was, I was conscious of having been thrown into this job very low on information; and I couldn’t help wondering how much of what I’d been told in the rush was the truth. Mr. Somerset with his careful, three-day whiskers wasn’t a gent who inspired a great deal of confidence in me, although he seemed to have sold himself thoroughly to Gloria. But where business is concerned, there’s only one man I trust—and even Mac has been known to pull a swifty occasionally. Or two or three. He was doing it now, of course. He’d thrown me into this mess with the warning that things weren’t what they seemed, which is as much warning as he ever gives us; just enough, he hopes, to keep us from spoiling the operation by getting killed.

As I drove, I glanced at the girl who shared with me the fancy car belonging to the man whose name I’d appropriated along with his brand-new wife. Gloria sensed my attention and gave a pull to her skirt, brushed away an imaginary smudge, and grimaced.

“It’s not exactly the costume I’d have chosen for a Mexican tour, but at least I’m getting some wear out of it, ” she said dryly. “At one point, I was about to stuff it all into the fireplace and pour charcoal lighter all over it and watch it bum.”

“Seems kind of drastic,” I said mildly. “An expensive bonfire, by the looks of it.”

Her voice was suddenly harsh: “How do you think a girl feels about the gorgeous wedding outfit she’s picked very carefully to please the man she’s about to marry. . . . How do you think she feels after learning that this wonderful man is planning to murder her for her money afterwards?” Gloria shook her head quickly. “Oh, it wasn’t that my heart was broken or anything like that. Our marriage was more a practical arrangement than a passionate romance; after all, he was quite literally old enough to be my father. I’d known him all my life; he’d been Papa’s friend and partner since before I was bom. Good old Uncle Buffy! And all those years I’d believed in that kindly, helpful, sympathetic . . . I didn’t love him, not in a romantic way, but he was an old, trusted friend, a solid rock. . . . Oh, God, you can’t stand being so wrong about somebody, the sneaky old bastard!”

I said deliberately, “So you got back at him by preserving your expensive bridal finery to use in a phony wedding instead of burning it. You didn’t let him know you were onto him; instead you got hold of the proper authorities and set him up. Or did they get hold of you?”

“They got hold of me, of course.” She shook her head ruefully. “I never suspected a thing, and I wouldn’t have known where to go if I had. I’m sure the police would just have treated me as a hysterical girl with the bridal jitters. After all, Horace is a wealthy and respected citizen. I didn’t believe it myself when Mr. Somerset first told me, and I thought his proposition was downright wild. It wasn’t until he proved to me what Uncle Bufly was planning. . . . After that, I had no choice but to cooperate, did I? I had to go through with the wedding so Mr. Somerset could make this crazy bridegroom switch, although I still don’t understand what it’s supposed to accomplish.”

I said, “Well, it’s supposed to lead us to the arms somehow, but don’t ask me exactly how. Presumably we’ll know more after we’ve made contact with this character Cody arranged to meet in Cananea. ’’ After a moment, I went on: “So you’d known him all your life? Cody?”

She nodded. “Yes. He was always there, off and on, as far back as I can remember, good old beanpole Uncle Buffy, seven feet tall in his cowboy boots—well, almost—and so skinny he used to say he had to stand twice in the same place to cast a shadow. A real Gary Cooper type. He’s a little more substantial nowadays, but not much. Well, you saw him. He used to bring me lollipops and ice cream cones when I was a little giri. He never forgot Christmas or my birthday; he’d always send me something wonderful even when he couldn’t bring it himself, like when I was going to school in the East.”

I glanced at her. “So that’s where the accent went,” I said. “I wondered. I haven’t heard you cut loose with a single Texas you-all, not one.”

She grimaced. “Yes, they did a pretty good job of beating it out of me, those eastern bitches. I don’t know why they had to pick on me. Some of those honey-chile southern belles in the school talked pretty funny, too. But Papa said I’d better play along. . . .She drew a long breath. “You know that my father was murdered here in Mexico?”

I nodded, preoccupied with the immediate traffic situation. I gauged my distances, pulled around a slow-moving semi, and ducked back into the right-hand lane in time to miss an oncoming bus. You can take a bus anywhere in Mexico a car can go and some places you’d think it can’t.

I said, “I gather that after your daddy died, down here in Mexico, strange things started happening to you in El Paso. Peculiar enough that you finally took your troubles to good ole Buff Cody, your late parent’s friend and business partner.”

She drew a long breath. “Yes, stupid me, but how could I guess. . . . It seemed like the natural thing to do, at the time. I went to his office, and . . . and I was so scared and confused, with Papa dead like that and all those weird things going on, that I broke into tears telling him about it. He gave me his hanky to blow my nose on, just like when I fell off my pony when I was a kid; and he asked me some questions. Then he told me to run along and he’d put some of his people to work on finding out the score. He told me to be real careful until he got it all taken care of; and he turned me around and shoved me toward the door, whacking me affectionately across the rear of my smart tailored slacks just like he used to slap the seat of my dirty jeans when I was a little girl. . . . Only I wasn’t a little girl anymore and suddenly, when he touched me like that, we both knew it.”

“He’d never made a pass at you when you were little?”

She shook her head. “Oh, I always used to kiss him hello and good-bye, the way you kiss family. He was family, Uncle Buffy, and I’d sit on his lap sometimes, but he never. . . No, no passes, although just the other day he told me that he’d surely had a hard time keeping his hands off me all those years, I was such a purty li’l thang.” She smiled grimly. “But kids don’t know. God, he was Papa’s friend, he was Papa’s age; and it never occurred to me to think of him that way. Until that day. But we didn’t say anything that day.”

I asked, “How did the subject of matrimony finally come up between you and Uncle Buffy?”

She said, “Well, the first time I was almost killed after . . . after Papa died, I naturally assumed it was an accident. This crazy man in a pickup cut in and ran me into the ditch, but I was lucky, it was a shallow ditch. I was just bounced around a bit, and it didn’t even hurt my little Mercedes. I didn’t even need a wrecker; a couple of nice men stopped and got behind and shoved when I stepped on the gas, and she came right up to the road. I was mad, of course, drivers like that shouldn’t be allowed loose, but it didn’t occur to me, when it happened, that it might have been deliberate. But that night I got a phone call: ‘You were lucky, lady, but we’ll get you next time just like we got your daddy.’ ”

She stopped and was silent for a moment, clearly reliving the experience.

I asked, “What kind of a voice, male or female?”

“I thought male, but it was really just a hoarse whisper.”

“Did you get in touch with the police?”

“Yes, but they didn’t seem to take it very seriously. I wasn’t hurt, my car wasn’t damaged, and it was just another crank call, a dime a dozen. And then, a few days later, I was getting ready to get into the car after breakfast. It was a cold, mean morning and there had been some rain and sleet during the night. At the last moment, after unlocking the Mercedes, I leaned over to make sure the windshield wiper blades hadn’t frozen to the windshield. There was a funny, slapping noise and a distant report; and the car jerked a little. When I looked, there was a bullet hole, right about where I’d been standing when I reached for the windshield wiper. I was petrified for a moment; then I ran back into the house and called the police again.”

“Did you get their attention this time?” I asked.

She laughed shortly. “Oh, yes. Car crashes and nut calls just bore them, but a firearm seems to wake them up a bit. They came out and figured angles and trajectories and decided that the shot had come from the overgrown vacant lot a little ways up the street on the other side, but it was pretty tangled in there, and they didn’t find any cartridge cases.”

“What about the bullet?”

‘ ‘It went right through the car from left to right. I had to have both doors fixed and it cost me quite a lot. But it missed the comer of the garage and went rambling on over the little ridge we’re on. No dead people have been reported, so it didn’t hit anybody, wherever it came down. The police said the holes looked as if they were .22 caliber, but they had a big argument as to whether it was the rimfire .22 or the centerfire .22. They decided that it had to be the centerfire because it was powerful enough to penetrate both doors. I hope that makes sense to you. It doesn’t to me.”

I said, “The rimfire is the little one all ranch kids used to grow up with including me. It’ll kill a man, or a woman, but you wouldn’t normally pick it for that. There are several centerfires to choose from, but the most likely is the .223, or 5.56mm, used in the Army M-16 assault rifle. It’s certainly a killing round, although if I were doing it myself I’d pick a larger caliber to make sure.” I glanced at her. “In case you’re curious, the little one has its priming compound around the inside of the rim of the cartridge case, rimfire. The big ones have their primers in the center of the case head, centerfire. Now you know.”