The Frighteners (8 page)

Gloria smiled faintly. “Dear Horace, could we start operating on the assumption that we both have reasonable intelligence?”

I frowned at her. “What did I say wrong?”

She said, “Look, I know you don’t think much of me. You think I’m a spoiled Texas bitch and a coward to boot. Scared of guns, scared of being hurt or killed to the extent that I was even willing to marry a much older man I didn’t love just because I thought he’d keep me safe. Just now you thought I should have stood in front of that dreadful pistol smiling bravely instead of all pale and sweating, didn’t you? You’d be much happier carrying out this mission with a fearless little two-gun cowgirl type who could be a real fighting partner to you. . . . No, wait, let me say it all. The fact is that I don’t think much of you, either. At least I didn’t. I thought you were just the stupid, macho, gun-loving kind of man I detest, the kind that goes around killing things, and even people, to prove how virile they are.”

I’ve been shooting since I was old enough to hold a gun. I won’t say I’ve been fornicating since I was old enough to hold a woman, because I was a backward boy in that respect; but I’ve still been working at it for quite a while. And with all my experience in both endeavors, I have yet to find a correlation between marksmanship and cocksmanship; but if this kind of parlor psychology made her happy, who was I to make her sad?

I said, “Well, this marriage, such as it is, wasn’t arranged for reasons of compatibility.”

She laughed shortly. “No, but I do seem to have had you figured slightly wrong, Horace, dear. You see, I was perfectly sure you’d come smashing heroically into that awful rest room with two guns blazing, like John Wayne attacking a frontier saloon. There’d be blood and dead bodies everywhere, and one of the dead bodies would be mine—I could just see myself lying all gory on that disgusting floor between the toilet and that crazy urinal trough. But I was wrong. You handled it very quietly and intelligently and . . . and courageously, not that I ever doubted your courage, just your good sense. But I think it would be nice, although admittedly I’m not very brave, if you gave me credit for a little common sense, too.”

It was a commendable speech and increased my respect for her; but I couldn’t figure out exactly what she was driving at.

I said, “I wasn’t aware that I’d doubted . . .oh.”

“Yes,” she said. “You don’t have to point out the obvious, darling; I’m moderately bright. I could see at once that if we were going to make any kind of success of this matrimonial charade, I couldn’t let that boy’s accusation pass unchallenged. I mean, I know you didn’t have Papa killed, because you’re not Uncle Buffy; but that’s just what nobody else including Mason Charles must suspect, isn’t it? So I lit into him after you were gone and told him there was no possible way my darling Horace could have done such a dreadful thing, and where in the world had he picked up such a filthy lie?” She shook her head quickly. “No, he wouldn’t tell me who’d told him, but it was obvious that somebody had fed him the information. It seems likely it’s the same person who told him how to find us, don’t you think?” She laughed. “I think that, after your commendable behavior, not at all that kind of a guilty mastermind of murder, my attack made young Mr. Charles kind of wonder if he hadn’t got a bum steer about his mother’s death from somebody.”

“Well, maybe it is a bum steer,” I said. “You say there’s strong evidence that Cody arranged those phony attempts on your life; but his setting up the killing of your dad and Millicent Charles is just hearsay so far.” I grimaced. “Whether the boy’s information is right or wrong, the big question is who gave it to him. However, at the moment we have a bigger one: Where the hell is our man, our woman, in Cananea?”

I looked up hopefully as the restaurant door opened, but it admitted two young Mexican couples, all four kids in jeans. There was considerable noise and laughter and horseplay before they settled down at a table. I noted that the man and girl I associated with the red pickup were leaving now. The girl was a slim, dark, pretty little thing with long black hair worn loose down her back. She was wearing a shapeless black dress and bright red slippers, rather dusty and badly scuffed, with high, slim heels. She walked a bit gingerly, as if the bright pumps didn’t fit very well; I had a hunch that, as soon as she’d left civilization behind, she’d kick them off and go barefoot. The man, a good many years older, was in jeans and a work shirt; a blocky gent with a leathery Indian face. They dropped no messages and went out without having looked my way. No contact there.

I made something of a production of figuring the bill and tip and translating the pesos into dollars for Gloria’s benefit. Actually, although it looked like the national debt, it came to less than ten bucks, not bad for two pretty good dinners, several beers, and a fairly generous
propina
. It became obvious that none of the four young Mexicans was going to approach us; they were engrossed in their own laughing conversation. I sighed, got up, and helped Gloria with her chair; Buff Cody was going to have a real reputation for courtesy in this part of the world.

Outside it was still daylight, but the sun had dropped a noticeable distance toward the western horizon. The low light made the shabby little town of Cananea look quite picturesque, with shafts of golden sunshine striking through the dust raised from the unpaved streets by the passing cars and trucks, mostly vintage vehicles. I noted that the red pickup was gone. It had been replaced by a very battered jeep, presumably belonging to one of the kids inside. No one seemed interested in us standing there in our wedding clothes beside our expensive American convertible.

I drew a long breath. “Scratch one rendezvous,” I said. “As we Texans say, a water haul.”

“What do we do now?”

“We were given no fallback routine; but we do have a hotel reservation in Hermosillo. Maybe that’s the fallback; maybe our contact just wanted to check us out first, here. Anyway, I see no alternative.”

“Well, wake me when we get there. That beer made me sleepy. I’ll be glad to get out of these clothes and into a comfortable bed.” She glanced at me sharply. “Alone.”

“Si, señora. No amor. Que lastima.”

“What was all that garbled Spanish?”

“I just said it’s a pity. ”

“Down, Rover.”

But she was smiling faintly as she got into the car. I closed the door on her and went around to slide behind the wheel. I

started the engine and checked the dials and the rearview mirror. . . .

“Glory, dear,” I said.

Something in my voice made her sit up and look at me sharply. “What is it?”

“Pass me a Kleenex, please. Somebody seems to have been messing with my mirror.”

I pointed. Soaped on the left-hand outside mirror of the Cadillac were two numbers and two letters:
KM95
.

Driving off into the sunset, I didn’t turn my head to look back, but I did use the mirrors. They showed nobody back there who seemed interested in our departure, only a bunch of dirty kids beyond the restaurant, playing some kind of a game that involved a lot of running and shouting. They displayed plenty of healthy energy, even if their moms didn’t wash their little faces quite as often as would have been considered proper north of the border.

Nevertheless, I had a hunch somebody’d hung around long enough to see if I’d spotted the message. If so, he would have seen me cleaning it off the mirror, presumably having read it first. Or she would. The pretty little lady in the shabby black dress and the red shoes? Or her peasant companion? The pleasant, dumpy woman with the blue apron who’d served us? One of the four jean-clad kids from the jeep? What about Mason Charles, Junior; could that whole performance in the rest room have been faked for reasons still to be determined? If so he’d taken some awful chances with guns; we could easily have wound up in a Wild West shootout. No, I didn’t really think it was Charles. Probably our contact was somebody who’d been careful not to let himself, or herself, be seen; but I wished he, or she, had been a little less cryptic and let us know what the communication meant. Correction; the meaning was fairly clear, it was the precise application that had me puzzled.

“What does it mean?” Gloria asked. “What’s KM?”

“Karl Marx, of course,” I said. “Come on, Mrs. Cody!” She threw me a resentful glance. “Well, I suppose it must stand for kilometers, but. . . Ninety-five kilometers, that’s about fifty-seven miles, isn’t it? But fifty-seven miles from where?”

Our relationship had changed somewhat since she’d analyzed it for us. In a sense we’d made a deal: she’d combat her natural inclination to consider me a dangerous, macho meathead if I’d refrain from treating her as a brainless, gutless society bitch.

I said, “A kilometer is roughly six-tenths of a mile, check. And in the absence of indications to the contrary, I’ve got to assume that we’re supposed to measure our distance from right here in Cananea.” I pushed the button to set the trip odometer back to zero. “The catch is, if I remember my geography correctly, ninety-five kilometers will take us well past the little town of Imuris, where we’re supposed to turn left—south—on the main highway that comes down from Nogales, on the Arizona border, and goes to Hermosillo, Guaymas, and the whole west coast of Mexico. But that’s a hell of a busy road; I kind of assumed we were sent this way, instead of through Nogales, because somebody wanted privacy. . . ."

“Matt, look! Sorry, I meant Horace. But look!”

I looked ahead where she was pointing. There, at the side of the highway, was a small, square, white, official-looking post. Painted on it in black was:
84KM
. I shook my head at my own obtuseness. As I drove, I’d been vaguely aware of the roadside mile markers—well, kilometer markers—but I simply hadn’t made the connection.

As we passed it, Gloria said eagerly, “Obviously we’re not supposed to drive ninety-five whole kilometers from here; we’re simply supposed to find the ninety-five-kilometer post. Which way have the numbers been running?”

“They started at Agua Prieta and they’ve been getting bigger ever since.”

“Well, it seems as if we only have eleven kilometers to go. About seven miles. Let’s go!”

She was all caught up in the wild excitement of it; she, a mere amateur, had solved the riddle and saved the day for the stupid pro. I let the fancy automatic transmission—I hate the damn things—work its way up through the gears, if gears are what those slushboxes have inside them. We passed some enormous heaps of orange-brown gunk from the mine and headed up into the wooded hills. Excuse me, the Timber Mountains. The road climbed to a pass called Puerto de Cananea, 1840M. About 5500 feet. It wasn’t real mountain-goat country, there were no spectacular cliffs or peaks, there was just a lot of evergreen landscape standing more or less on end. Beyond the pass the country was more arid, and the vegetation was much less dense, although it seemed odd that the slopes facing the wet Pacific Ocean should be the ones lacking moisture.

The highway builders had made no effort to move the mountains out of our way in U.S. road-building fashion. The highway followed the folds and dips and precipitous slopes faithfully, the pavement was atrocious, and as we labored out of one ravine and plunged into the next I’d be blinded by the sun that was sinking rapidly ahead of us. Some of the kilometer posts were missing. Number ninety-two appeared on schedule, but ninety-three was not in its appointed place.

“There’s ninety-four,” said Gloria. “What are you doing?”

I’d put my foot down and the Allante was gaining speed. ‘‘We had a date in Cananea, and a man with a gun was waiting for us. I think we’d better just blast on past this rendezvous and see what’s there. You watch on your side, and I’ll watch on mine.”

Doing about sixty, which was all that road was good for, I saw the kilometer post a couple of hundred yards before I reached it. There are very few marksmen who can figure the correct lead for a target traveling at eighty-eight feet per second that only presents itself for an instant, and there were no marksmen waiting. There was only a small dirt road running up the side of a hill and, parked just off it, barely visible through the brush, an old brown van. No enemies waiting in ambush but, on the other hand, no cheering crowds, no welcoming band.

“Anything on your side?” I asked as I took the next curve fast.

“Just brush and trees and cactus.”

“One brown Dodge van on mine. Nobody around it, but I couldn’t see inside it.”

‘‘Matt, aren’t you going back?’’

I didn’t remind her that I was supposed to be Horace around here; I was debating whether or not to pass a slow-moving Arizona Chrysler with a sticker on the rear bumper that, translated, read I LOVE MY DOG. However, LOVE was represented by a red heart, and DOG by a picture of a German shepherd, a somewhat unreliable canine in my opinion; but then I’m a Labrador man myself. I hoped our man Greer had got the pup to Santa Fe all right and that he was settling down well to kennel life. I remained in line behind the slowpoke, since I wouldn’t be following him long.

I spoke without looking at my companion: “From now on, please do exactly as I tell you. For a start, unbuckle your seatbelt. We’ll be unloading fast. . . . No, please, there’s no time for a question-and-answer session now! We can talk later.”

I didn’t have to unbuckle my own claustrophobia straps because I wasn’t wearing them. Maybe they’re okay for peaceful civilians, but in the business your life can just as easily depend on your ability to get out of a car fast as on your ability to stay in it. Gloria had choked down a protest, but her expression was hostile again. So much for detente.

She said stiffly, “I hope you know what you’re doing, because I certainly don’t. And please remember that I’m hardly dressed for acrobatics.”

I said, “How you’re dressed, and how I’m dressed, is one of the few things we’ve got going for us right now. . . . There, I see a good spot up ahead, I hope. Stand by to disembark. Bring your purse. Leave the car door open.’’

The rearview mirrors were clear for the moment. I slowed and swung the Allante onto a small dirt road that headed over a low hill to the right. The dog-loving Arizonians disappeared around the bend ahead. When I got the car to the top of the rise, pitching and bucking in the ruts, I found that the track didn’t go anywhere; it just stopped at a wide, level, open spot surrounded by brush and littered with cans and bottles and other trash. Maybe it had once been a parking space for the machinery that had built the road. I stopped, set the parking brake, and switched off, leaving the keys in the lock. Getting out, I reached in back to get a sturdy paper bag displaying the name of the hardware store I’d patronized in Douglas, Arizona. Gloria was moving, but in a hesitant way, as if reluctant to leave the luxury car for the great outdoors.