Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (20 page)

Though the vestibule into which they walked was dark and quiet, empty save for the presence of some ancient cracked urns, it was obvious that activity was occurring elsewhere. Men’s voices could be heard and the sound of footsteps across mud-baked floors. All this noise seemed to be coming from below them.

“Come with me, gentlemen, I wish to introduce you to my partner.”

Ignacio’s partner had not expected company, that was clear from the onset. A buxom girl in a peasant dress and a lowcut white blouse that seemed unequal to the task of constraining her top-heavy breasts sat giggling on his lap, permitting him as many liberties as he chose to take and they were a great many. One enormous hand, scarred white along the palm where he had managed to stop the progress of a knife into his heart, had dug itself down below the white fabric to cup the left breast, which was struggling to emerge. The other, distinguished by the lack of three middle fingers that had been sacrificed in yet another battle, was feverishly tracing the rounded contours of her thigh, in the process causing her long embroidered dress to hike up way above her knees.

Ignacio did not seem at all perturbed at this public display, nor did his partner, whom he had yet to introduce, seem at all conscious that he now had an audience. Maybe he wanted an audience. The Mexican girl, however, did take notice of the intruders, but this only caused her to giggle harder.

“Meet my partner, Señor José Virgilio.”

José Virgilio’s massive head appeared from behind the tangle of female hair that had kept it hidden and a great enthusiastic smile revealed a full set of teeth that had all been capped in gold. To look at his teeth was like staring a flashbulb in the face when it popped off.

Of Virgilio’s eyes, only one seemed to be functioning. The other was mostly empty, a bloody white that lacked a pupil. The sight of him so startled Slater that he abruptly turned his head away.

Virgilio evidently was quite aware of the effect he had. He let out a bitter laugh, gave a tug to his slight obtuse triangle of a beard, and unceremoniously pushed the girl from his lap, sending her tumbling to the floor. Slapping her soundly on the rump was sufficient to propel her screaming out of the room.

Seizing Slater’s hand, then Harry’s, Virgilio greeted them. He did not wait for Ignacio to introduce them. There was no necessity of that. He already knew what their names were—not the aliases they had assumed in the plaza but their true names.

Harry, still trying to maintain the forced spirit of cordiality that Ignacio had instituted, nearly froze to hear his name and Slater’s pronounced by this man whom neither of them had ever heard of before, much less met. The thought struck him with terrifying immediacy that they had been set up. If their identities were known at the Villa Corona, then it was likely that their purpose in coming to Carangas was similarly known.

“So you have come to purchase our heroin?” Virgilio inquired, a false heartiness in his voice. “We already have many buyers, you understand, but we can always use more. To heroin there is no end. The poppies flourish, the farmers grow wealthy. Why should there not be more heroin?” He turned, pushing his monstrous face into Slater’s. “I speak extraordinary good English, don’t I?”

Slater regarded him with distaste but nodded all the same.

“That is because I lived in your country and studied there. At San Francisco State College, you know of it? My parents, God keep their souls, had a great deal of money so that they could afford to send me to the States. We should all have so much money, no?”

Now he held up his nearly digitless hand, proudly exhibiting the stumps where there used to be full fingers. “Understand that I did things that my education did not intend me to do. My parents, God keep their souls, were disappointed in me. But I had a temper, no? And much ambition.” He fixed his eyes on Harry. “And you too have much ambition.” He tilted his head, a feigned expression of deep sorrow came upon his face. “And it is disappointing that you shall end your life without ever being able to fulfill your ambition. It is also a shame that it has fallen upon me to deprive you of living out your allotted time.”

Harry said nothing to this, would not lower his eyes or avert them from his would-be executioner. Slater’s hands were trembling, but he seemed determined to retain his dignity. Ignacio, on the other hand, appeared immensely pleased at the ease with which he had succeeded in trapping his quarry.

“You though,” Virgilio spoke now to Slater, “you would seem to have so little time left that your death will be almost a formality.”

“You disgust me,” Slater muttered. His voice was scratchy, labored, betraying his extreme nervousness.

Harry regretted that he had permitted Slater to accompany him, but he had not believed that the danger would be so immense. “How did you know who we were?”

“How did we know?” Virgilio thought that this must be a joke. He began laughing. Ignacio thought this rather humorous himself and joined in the laughter.

“We have a friend in San Francisco,” said Ignacio patiently, “and he took pains to inform us that you would be coming here.”

“Friend?” Harry had an idea who the friend might be.

“He is called, I believe, Father Nick.”

Father Nick had somehow managed to get his revenge even in this remote unmapped place.

But what Harry could not comprehend was how Father Nick had discovered the mission he was undertaking on behalf of Harold Keepnews. No matter how he ran it over in his mind it didn’t jibe.

Virgilio, unlike his minions, did not appear to be armed. And from what Harry could see, neither was Ignacio. Nonetheless, action, even desperate action, was out of the question. While he hadn’t been frisked and was still in possession of the Magnum and a much smaller .22 strapped to his ankle and hidden under his pants leg, to produce either of them now would be, he knew, utter folly. For without needing to turn around he realized he and Slater were being carefully watched by some of the same armed men they had seen earlier. Virgilio was not the sort of a man to expose himself unnecessarily to risk despite the testimony of his battered flesh.

“We shall commit your souls to God—that is if He is prepared to receive you—very soon. Only not here. This is my home and place of business. My laboratories are situated in the basement. My workers are coming and going all the time. They are peaceful men, concerned only with distillation and refining. I would not wish them to think me inhospitable to my guests. So you shall both be executed outside, away from here. With these temperatures, with such humidity, you will be surprised at how quickly your bodies will putrify and be swallowed up by the plants.”

Soundlessly, three men, all wearing dull white tunics, all brandishing Karl Gustav submachine guns, appeared, stepping up behind Harry and Slater in response to Virgilio’s command.

“You will forgive me,” Virgilio addressed them, “if I do not see you to the door. It is a dereliction of my responsibility as host, I know, but I have other obligations that demand my attention.”

One of those obligations, Harry surmised, was undoubtedly the buxom peasant girl.

“You will please surrender your weapons,” Ignacio said, reminding his partner that this rather important detail had been neglected.

Harry threw down his .44 which landed with a jarringly loud clunk against the tiled floor. He did nothing to draw attention to the .22 strapped to his ankle.

One of the guards now poked his weapon against Slater’s back, grunting to make his—and the gun’s—point clearer. He had evidently decided that Slater must also be armed, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he had confirmation of this fact.

Slater turned swiftly, angrily, toward the man and without considering the consequences, slapped him across the face with the back of his hand. This took everyone by surprise, and for a moment no one, not even the offended guard, reacted.

There was a moment of dead silence in the room. Then the guard lunged forward, hoping to deliver a more painful injury to Slater with the butt of his gun. Slater, proving astonishingly agile for someone his age, managed to avoid the blow and the weapon simply glanced off the side of his arm. This man’s difficulties in subduing Slater were clearly amusing his companions and even Virgilio and Ignacio, for they made no move to aid him. Instead they stood right where they were, laughing, waiting for an entertaining climax.

Something seemed to have come unhinged in Slater. Faced with imminent death, he appeared to gain rather than lose confidence. His eyes were inflamed, his gray hair stuck out wildly from his pink, sunburned scalp. “This what you’re after, you son of a bitch?” he challenged his assailant.

Harry looked to see him holding up a knife that was ordinarily employed to cut bait and filet tuna. It was stained and not as sharp as it might have been, but it was effective for all that. Harry had not known he’d been carrying it and could not quite understand how he had gotten it out so quickly. It might well have been sleight of hand: the rabbit plucked out of the hat.

This changed everything of course, but no one in the room could actually believe Slater would use the knife, Harry included. Indeed, the entertainment value of the proceedings seemed only to have increased. The smiles that had perched on the lips of the men remained where they were.

Harry realized now that all eyes were turned on Slater and the determined guard and that the .44 lay unobserved only half a foot away from him. It was possible that Slater hadn’t gone mad after all, that he was doing his utmost to provide the distraction necessary for Harry to recover his weapon.

But at that moment Harry still could not risk even the slightest movement without drawing attention back to himself.

The guard said something unintelligible to Slater, presumably urging him to drop the knife. But far from dropping it Slater was whipping it through the air, daring the Mexican to advance closer. There was no question that the guard was so frustrated now that he would have simply liked to shoot Slater and be done with it. But he knew that this would be a violation of orders and would, besides, cut short the little drama that his employers found so highly amusing.

So he had to make do with clubbing Slater senseless or else ramming him directly, which was the alternative he chose, charging in at him like a bull ready to gore a particularly brazen matador. His thinking in this strategy wasn’t exactly coherent. For one thing, the knife still was slashing through the air in such a way that it threatened at the very least to deprive the guard of his left ear and a goodly portion of his scalp besides.

As a result, the guard strode almost directly into the knife’s path, still under the impression that Slater would not dare strike him with it. Neatly sidestepping the thrust of the Karl Gustav, Slater, as though doing a little jig on a dance floor, leapt up and, in coming down, sliced open the guard’s tunic and much of his chest underneath. Then, like a mother embracing her son, he hugged the guard, clasping him with one hand while the other busied itself digging the knife in under his solar plexus and manipulating it around, cutting savagely into subcutaneous tissue and the vital organs that it protected. The guard flung aside his weapon and in an odd unexpected motion clutched hold of Slater as though to prop himself up against the pain.

Now the others concentrated all their attention on the struggling pair. This drama had taken an unexpected turn, and they were uncertain whether it pleased them. They still, of course, felt in control of the situation and could at any time—just as soon as the guard got out of their way—dispense of Slater with a single volley.

But Harry, recognizing that this was his opportunity, his sole chance, dived for the .44, flattening himself out against the floor and firing quickly at the two remaining guards. It was the force of the .44 cartridge he counted on, not the exact location it entered his targets. He hadn’t the time to sight the gun, after all.

All his many years of practice had not been for naught. One bullet ascending up from the floor caught a guard in his kneecap. The injury was at once so painful and so debilitating that all the man could do in response was fire a fitful, ineffective blast of his gun toward the ceiling before flopping down against the far wall. The hardness of his landing caused his gun to fly away from him. Perhaps sensing that the odds had vastly altered, he made no effort to retrieve it. Instead he stayed where he was, trying futilely with his hands to staunch the flow of blood. Tears drained copiously from his eyes.

The second guard took a more serious injury as the .44 tore apart his intestines, sending up a great stench as feces oozed out of the wound. There was no possibility of retaliation from him. Surprise seemed to have frozen itself permanently on his face.

Slater, perhaps thinking that the situation had now been consolidated, allowed his eyes to wander and he stepped back from his dying victim, preparing to drop to the floor to escape the crossfire—should there be any crossfire.

Which may have explained why he failed to notice Virgilio who, having sought the relative sanctuary of the floor at the first report, now seized hold of the submachine gun that had fallen away from Slater’s assailant. Virgilio had not emerged as a triumphant survivor from so many battles to die empty-handed; it would be a dishonor to exit from the earth, if that was his fate, without taking at least one of his enemies with him.

The Karl Gustav clattered in his hands. Splotches of blood appeared in sequence all down the length of Slater’s body as though he were being spattered. But he was being completely riddled; that his body remained whole on the outside was a cruel deception, for on the inside there was nothing that was not pierced, shattered, or ruptured. Slater’s eyes sought Harry’s one last time and there was a sign of recognition in them, a sign of something else too, of friendship and forgiveness. Then he seemed all at once to diminish in size, to fade into something incorporeal, something that was just blood and air, no longer identifiable as an old mariner who had come to meet his death in this forbidden site in western Mexico.