The Mexico Run (3 page)

    I was anxious, not only to see how the car would perform, but also to get used to driving it. During the last four years my experience had been pretty much confined to army jeeps and command cars.

    By the time I reached Santa Barbara and picked up the freeway, I was satisfied. I was also getting very, very tired. I gassed up in Ventura, and so I drove the freeways through Greater Los Angeles, heading southward and didn't stop again, except for coffee, until I was on the outskirts of San Diego.

    My next job was to fix myself up with exactly the right kind of boat. She had to be equipped for sport fishing and in top condition. I wanted full electronics, including radar. I didn't want a commercial boat. I wanted one owned by a private party, preferably someone who belonged to a prominent yacht club and carried its burgee.

    It took a few telephone calls, but at last I found a man who had the right vessel, and I went and looked her over. He told me she'd be available the following month, but that I must make my reservation well in advance.

    It was almost dusk when I was again on the road, heading toward the border, where I would eventually cross over to Tijuana.

    Again, in spite of being tired and exhausted, I was tempted to go on, and probably would have, if I hadn't spotted a small, broken-down motel off to the left of the road, a few miles from the border. It was a dingy-looking place with less than a score of cabins, and there was a lone 1956 Cadillac with dented fenders in front of the office. A neon sign with two letters missing read: Cabins. Single, $5. Double, $6.

    The price was right. The place looked crummy, but after that forty-dollar-a-day deal in San Francisco, I felt it was time I became a little frugal. I pulled up and stopped in front of a sign which read: Happy Hours Lodge.

    I took the bag out of the back of the Jag and entered through a torn screen-door into a sad and discouraged office.

    It made a liar out of the name sign outside.

    The room was virtually bare, except for a fly-speckled, glass-topped desk, on which there were a few outdated copies of sporting magazines, a moth-eaten registration book, and a bell with a button on top to summon the manager. At least the sign said: Ring for Manager.

    I dropped my bag on the floor and pushed the bell.

    Nothing happened.

    I punched it again, and a voice from somewhere behind the closed door said, "One minute, I'm coming."

    It was a woman's tired voice, and a moment later the door leading into the interior opened, but it wasn't a woman who opened the door. It was a young girl, somewhere in her late teens. She was holding by the hand a five- or six-year-old boy with a dirty face and wearing soiled pajamas. She was a blonde, with very blue eyes and a beautiful complexion. She had the face of an angel, and in spite of the ragged Levi's and open-throated, man's shirt she was wearing, it was obvious that she had a body to match.

    She was a damned sight too beautiful to be in a dump like the Happy Hours Lodge, and she was too young to be the mother of the child she held by the hand, unless someone had taken a chance on a prison sentence for seducing a preadolescent.

    I gave her a tired smile, as tired as her voice.

    "If you're the manager here, I'd like a room."

    She didn't smile back. She merely looked at me with a peculiarly curious expression.

    "You want a room here?" She asked it as though she doubted my sanity.

    "For tonight."

    She pushed the register toward me, and I signed it. She watched me as though I were making some sort of terrible mistake.

    "That will be five dollars," she said.

    I took five dollars from my wallet, and she reached for a key on the rack behind the desk.

    "Number One. First cabin next to the office," she said.

    I asked her if I could have a bucket of ice, and she told me she would bring it to the room in a few minutes.

    "You want Cokes, there's a machine outside the door."

    The child in the dirty pajamas began crying for some obscure reason as I hoisted my bag and started for the door. She was talking to him in a soothing voice when the door slammed behind me.

    The room was just about what I would have expected for five dollars at the Happy Hours Lodge. There was a double bed with a soiled counterpane. The night stand next to it supported a lamp with the bulb missing, and a naked, forty-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture failed to conceal the fact that the flowered paper on the walls was peeling and that the linoleum on the floor was dirt encrusted and cracked with age. The single window facing the road was covered by faded drapes, and these half hid a green shade pulled down to the top of an air conditioner which,' surprisingly enough, turned out to be in working order.

    The formica-topped desk sat on one side of the room, and, oddly, it looked new. There was a straight-backed chair in front of it and, next to it, a folding rack for a suitcase.

    The bathroom was about what I might have guessed. The small sink was rust-stained, and it was impossible to stop the drip from the cold-water faucet. The shower was one of those square, tin contrivances, sold by Sears Roebuck. The towels were clean and freshly laundered, and there were two small, wrapped cakes of soap with the name of another motel on them. There were two glasses enclosed in sanitary wrappings on the cracked glass-shelf over the sink.

    I had put my bag on the rack and opened it and found the bottle of Jack Daniels. I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook, loosened my neck tie, and sat in the Naugahyde chair next to the bed. It faced a television set with a broken knob, but I couldn't have cared less whether the TV worked or not.

    I waited for the ice. Lights from a car flashed across the window, and I heard the sound of a dying engine, as heavy-rubber tires crushed the gravel, drive outside the door of my room. I stood up and reached in my pocket for some change, opened my door, and went out to find the Coke machine.

    The driver of the truck, which had pulled up next to my Jaguar, was entering the office.

    The Cokes were fifteen cents, and I didn't have the proper change, but there was a sign saying that change would be given for a quarter. I put a quarter in the machine, the Coke came out, but I didn't get the change. I went back to the room to wait for the ice.

    The Coke was cold, and I opened it, took one of the glasses, and had a straight shot, using the Coke as a chaser. I figured I had a few more minutes to wait, and I was right. I was considering a second straight shot without the ice, when there was a light knock on the door.

    I said, "Come in."

    She had combed back her hair, put on a little lipstick and eyeshadow, but it was wasted. With her face, she didn't need anything. She was carrying a cardboard bucket filled with ice cubes.

    This time she gave me the trace of a smile as she set the ice on the formica desk.

    "I'm sorry to be so long," she said. "We had another customer, and I had to put Johnny to bed."

    She hesitated a moment, and her eyes flickered to the bottle of Jack Daniels.

    "Will there be anything else?"

    I still don't quite understand why I said what I did next. I was dead tired, exhausted from the long drive. All I wanted was sleep. Another shot or two, then eight hours of solid rest.

    "Nothing else," I said, "unless you would like to have a drink with me. You look as tired as I feel, and if you are, maybe a drink would help."

    The smile left her face, and again she gave me that peculiar, half-questioning look. It wasn't so much that she was wondering what my motives might be in asking her to have the drink, as it was surprise that I had asked her. And then she shrugged, hunched her shoulders, went over to the straight-backed chair in front of the desk and sat down.

    "I'd love one," she said.

    I retrieved the other glass from the bathroom, filled both glasses with ice cubes, plus a couple of ounces of bourbon, and added Coke to one glass. I was about to do the same to the second when she shook her head.

    "I'll take it straight."

    I handed her the glass, and before I could go back to my chair, she downed it in two gulps. You would have thought it was mother's milk.

    I put my glass on the floor beside my chair, without touching it, walked over and took the glass out of her hand and poured another double shot in it.

    This time, when she smiled, she gave me the full treatment. She lifted her glass in a small salute, but didn't gulp it. Just took a sip and held on.

    "Are you the manager of this…"

    "This dump?" she finished for me.

    She wasn't being bitter, merely accurate.

    "Not the manager," she said. "He's, down the road getting drunk again. I'm Sharon."

    She said it as though it explained everything.

    "You work here, then?"

    "You might call it that. But, my God, would I do anything to get away."

    "If you want to get away, why don't you just leave?"

    She smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant smile.

    "He'd kill me. That's what he'd do. He'd beat me to death."

    "Who'd kill you? The manager? Who is he? Your father?"

    "Not my father."

    "All right then," I said, "you're free, white, and twenty-one…"

    "Eighteen," she said.

    "All right then, you are free, white, and eighteen. What's holding you? Why don't you just go? Nobody can keep you if you don't want to stay."

    She stood up and turned her back to me, and her hands went behind her, and she jerked the man's shut out of the Levi's and lifted it half over her head. She didn't say anything, and there was no need for her to say anything.

    For a moment, I myself was unable to say anything, as I stared at her naked back. It was criss-crossed with ugly, red welts. She let go of the shirt, not bothering to tuck it in, and turned around and reached for the Jack Daniels bottle.

    "That's what the son-of-a-bitch did to me this morning, when he found me packing a suitcase."

    "Is the child yours?"

    She shook her head. "His."

    "You should go to the police," I said.

    "He is the police. He's the deputy sheriff here."

    "Well, any son-of-a-bitch that would do that…"

    I stopped in mid-sentence. I didn't stop because of what I was thinking. What I was thinking was why the hell am I getting involved in something that is none of my business. This girl means absolutely nothing to me. I have no interest in her, I don't even want her.

    But even as that flashing thought passed through my mind, I wondered if I wasn't lying just the slightest bit to myself. In any case, my plans were made, the things I had to do certainly didn't leave room "for becoming involved with some girl who had her own set of problems, and who, without question, would sooner or later solve them in her own particular fashion.

    What stopped me in mid-sentence was the door crashing open.

    He stood just inside the door, and when I looked at the width of his shoulders, I figured that the only way he could have gotten through was sideways. He was a big man all around, and he must have weighed well over two hundred and sixty or seventy pounds. A good sixty or seventy of it, however, was in his belly.

    He had short red hair, tiny, close-set eyes, a chin like a mud scow, and a nose which had been broken at least twice. He was wearing a stained sweatshirt, a pair of khaki pants, and tennis shoes. No socks. His hands hung at his sides, at the end of hairy arms, and he could have hired them out to a Hollywood studio for an ape picture. He smelled of sweat and stale booze.

    For a second or two he just stood inside the room, and his eyes went from me to the bottle on the table to the girl. Then he moved, and for a big man it was fantastic. He was across the room like a cat. One hand reached out and slapped the girl off the chair. He turned toward me.

    "What are you doing with my wife? Getting her drunk?"

    Sharon lay on the floor, propped up on one elbow. The complete terror in her eyes as she looked at the man reminded me of an expression in the eyes of another girl, which I'd seen a long time ago and which I'll never forget.

    He took a sudden step toward me, and this time he staggered slightly. I realized that I would not have a chance to get out of the chair, and with his bulk and size I didn't believe it would do me much good if I did.

    I didn't even think. When my foot went out, it was instinctive. I didn't plan it; I only knew that I had to reach him before he reached me.

    The foot, the straight kick, caught him in the groin, and he hesitated for a fraction of a second. As he doubled over, I didn't wait. I came out of the chair like a bullet, my head bent low, and I caught him in that massive belly. The air went out of him like a punctured balloon.

    There was a gun in my suitcase, but I knew I wouldn't have time to get it. I wouldn't have more than a split second to do anything before he would recover.

    He wasn't the kind of man you could stop for long with a kick in the balls and a gut punch.

    I hated the thought of wasting good bourbon, but my right hand reached the neck of the Jack Daniels bottle, and I swung it full arc. It took him on the side of the head and shattered. If it hadn't, it probably would have fractured his skull and killed him. As it was, it dropped him cold.

    I turned to Sharon.

    "If this ape is your husband," I said, "I have just given you an instant divorce. I figure you've got about five minutes. Go in and pack your bag and meet me at my car. Make it fast."

    She got up without a word, not looking at him as she stepped over his fallen, prone body, and went out the door.