The Frighteners (18 page)

The girl was watching me. She looked a little restive. Well, any attractive girl would, seeing a strange male paying more attention to a lousy pistol than to lovely, irresistible her; but I thought she was listening hard for sounds from the bedroom— this was the living-dining-kitchen area of the suite, with a cooking and eating comer sheltering behind a low room divider serving as a bar, and a social area holding a couple of comfortable chairs, a cocktail table, and a sofa that could presumably sleep an extra person or two when unfolded. If you and your bride wanted an extra person or two along on your honeymoon.

It was time for stocktaking at last, and I had my look. I’d got the impression in Cananea that she was kind of a cute little thing with her cheap, loose, knee-length, black dress, her pretty bare legs, and her high-heeled red shoes. In faded denim pants she gave a different impression. There was a long-sleeved black jersey which she filled adequately but not spectacularly. The heavy, gray-brown
serape
she wore over it gave her a slightiy barbaric look that went well with the glossy, rather coarse black hair that, hanging loose down her back, was almost long enough for her to sit on. She was still wearing the scuffed red shoes with the high, slim heels, and I still got the impression that she’d have preferred to kick them off and go barefoot.

I decided that I’d been wrong to call her cute. I’d been misled by her small size and rather kittenish appearance. Well, a lynx isn’t very big, but nobody’d call it cute as it goes about its predatory wildcat business. I sensed that there was danger here, too. Her skin was a warm and dusky color, very smooth, and her small face looked crowded at first glance, as if her features had outgrown the space allotted to them. She had a big mouth full of even white teeth. She had a nose that was no dainty, girlish nubbin; it was a real nose with a fine arch to it, separating a pair of strong cheekbones. And she had magnificent, large, dark eyes with lashes that could break your heart. It was an offbeat face that took a litde getting used to, after years of watching TV screens filled with stock beauties right out of the glamour factory.

She licked her lips. “The
pistola
is mine,” she said, in a tentative way.

I shook my head. “No longer, sweetheart. Any gun that fires at me is mine if I live to take it. Spoils of war.”

“But I was not shoot at you! You just frighted me so it go off, boom. And then I saw you were not Cody and did not shoot again.”

“But if I had been Horace Cody . . ."

“Then I would have kill you! That is what I come for. I am good shot; but it is the suspense, si? All the waiting, and then the door bang open like that and something fly through the air. . . . I just pull the trigger before I mean. Very stupid. I did not even hit your valise.”

“Damn good thing, too,” I said. “Do you know what a fifth of J&B costs down here?”

“J. and B.?”

“Never mind,” I said. I regarded her for a moment. There was only one person she could be, of those I’d heard mentioned in connection with this mess, but it was safer to ask: “Who are you, señorita?”

She hesitated but decided that there was no reason for her to remain anonymous. “I am Antonia Sisneros. Do you know that name, you who are not H. H. Cody? Do you know why I hate the man you pretend to be?”

I said, ‘‘You are the lady friend of the late Jorge Medina, who worked for Cody, right?”

She grimaced. “Friend, yes. But no lady, not when my man is made to be kill! Where is real Cody?”

I asked, “How do you happen to know him by sight? When did you see him?”

“He visit Jorge in Guaymas where Jorge live; they must consult. About certain weapons. It was many days ago. I was with Jorge when Cody come. I was supposed to leave much before, but the love, it does not watch the clock. I was send away quick when he come to door, made to sneak by back door like thief, it make angry. They do not trust me to see this man, so I will see him! I wait over street until he comes out. It is dark, but I see good enough to know that it is not you. Very much luck, or I shoot you.”

“Very much luck,” I agreed. “Cody was arrested in El Paso a couple of days ago. I don’t know where he is now.”

“And you take his place? You do not look very like!”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say this impersonation is the world’s greatest success story. Well, I did find one sucker who seemed to believe in it; maybe there’s another somewhere. I keep hoping.” After a moment, I said, “I was given your name, Miss Sisneros. I was going to look you up when I got to Guaymas tomorrow. I was going to ask your help. ”

Between us, Ramón and I had figured out that she was probably the best lead we had. Meeting her unexpectedly like this had involved a certain risk, and if I’d come through the door first instead of my bag I might have some holes in me, but it was certainly convenient. I was trying to decide if it wasn’t, perhaps, just a bit too convenient.

“Help?” she asked. “What for do you need my help?”

I said, “The deal your friend Medina discussed with Cody, the night you saw him, went through, as you know. The weapons were landed on the coast. Medina hid them. He was killed by men trying to learn where.’’

“And you wish to find, too?” She shrugged. “I know nothing of the hiding. I know that he should never have been given such a work. He was beautiful man but weak and much afraid. This selling of bad weapons, this working with insurgentes against the government, it make him very much fright, very much not happy. It make him dead. This Señor Cody, he promise much money if help, much threat if no. He has great fault for this. He should not make frighted man to be crooked and be kill. For this I will shoot him. I will shoot also the cheating general who not pay money promised but instead have my Jorge hurt until he die. You will try to stop?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “Shoot all the generals you want and all the real Codys you want, lady, just spare this phony one. But actually, since Horace Cody is in custody up in the U.S., you’ll play hell trying to get at him, so you’d better concentrate on Carlos Mondragon.”

I felt quite Machiavellian as I said it. The answer to one of my problems had dropped into my lap; if Mondragon was killed by an angry young woman avenging her lover, the Mexican populace could hardly blame their government or the Yankees. Ramón would be happy and cover up any crimes I had to commit. Now all I had to do was maneuver the kid into position and, while I was doing it, locate the missing arms and identify the mysterious Señor Sabádo and deal with him.

Antonia Sisneros made a grimace of distaste. “Carlos Mondragon! One who talks much, promises much. One who will free us all from one terrible government and give us instead another terrible government. His. Like hole in head, is that what you say? That is how we need his murdering revolution!” She drew a long breath. “But
insurgentes
hiding in their own mountains . . .” She shrugged. “Not easy to find, señor. Not easy to kill.”

I said, “Killing is not my primary job at the moment. My job is the arms. But I have a hunch I’ll have no trouble finding those men when the time comes. They’ll find me. They’ll be watching me search, hoping I’ll lead them to the hidden weapons cache, hoping to move in when I locate it. You’re sure you don’t know where your boyfriend hid the stuff?”

“Ha, I am woman, I cook the food and keep clean the house and make the love. My Jorge no tell woman about weapons, that is man business. I know nothing of the hiding.”

I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. She had a very good little poker face, but it did not seem advisable to pursue the subject until I’d investigated the room next door.

I said, “Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but before we proceed, maybe you’d like to give me that
pistola
under your shirt. It looks like a big one. If it slides down your pants leg, it could give your toes an awful whack. . . . Careful, now!”

She had some difficulty getting the weapon out from under her jersey and the tight waistband of her jeans, worn without a belt. Well, snug as they were, there wasn’t much chance of her losing them, even without support. She gave me the gun reluctantly.

“It is mine. I take. It is very good gun, very expensive.”

It was nice to find someone with a sound respect for guns as property. You meet a lot of characters, many with badges, who wouldn’t dream of stealing a hundred bucks from your wallet but think nothing of casually depriving you of personal property in the form of firearms worth many times that; and you’re supposed to accept this kind of larceny calmly. It was refreshing to find someone who didn’t.

Her second weapon was, as she’d said, a good one, around six hundred bucks retail: a big new 9mm Beretta automatic, the one with the fat grip and the magazine holding fifteen rounds and the self-cocking trigger mechanism that saves you from having to jack the slide back, or even cock the hammer, to fire the first round. It was fully loaded with a cartridge in the chamber. As I looked at it, something stirred in my memory, as if I’d seen this gun not too long ago; but the picture wasn’t clear.

“From whom did you take?” I asked. She shrugged and didn’t speak. I said, “Why don’t we ask your friend in the next room to join the party?’’

She laughed. She had a pretty laugh. “But they cannot join,” she said. “I tie good.”

I looked at her for a moment, still wondering about her. I mean, now that I’d survived the initial encounter, I could say that it was lucky she’d come to Hermosillo to meet me, saving me from having to hunt her up in Guaymas. Or was it? And what about the Mexican spitfire act and the heavily accented English? Well, things do break your way sometimes in the business, and Hispanic ladies are notoriously temperamental, and a lot of people aren’t fluent in languages not their own. Nevertheless, she wasn’t a kid I intended to turn my back on until I knew considerably more about her.

She’d tied very good, however, just as she said. They lay together on the big honeymoon bed in the rather ornate bedroom, a man and a woman, thoroughly trussed with strong rawhide that reminded me of the stuff the little Yaqui lieutenant had produced to tie my wrists. I wondered how much Indian blood Antonia Sisneros carried. The woman lay facing me very uncomfortably, with a gag in her mouth and her wrists and ankles lashed and then drawn together behind her with more rawhide so that there was no possibility of her walking, hopping, or even crawling anywhere. She was a woman I didn’t know, but she had good sense. She’d presumably tested her gag and bonds earlier and decided that there was nothing to be gained by thrashing around fighting them. She just lay there watching us with cold blue eyes that said she’d endure any indignities she had to endure, but she didn’t have to like them—or forgive them.

The man beside her was one of the you-can’t-do-this-to-me kids. He’d already mussed the bed badly with his fruitless struggles; now he had to flop around some more to show us how mad he was, and how he was going to tear somebody limb from limb when he got free. He made some angry gaa-gaa noises through his gag. I knew him. I’d met him in a certain men’s john two days earlier. He was the young man who belonged to the pistol I’d just taken from Antonia.

The last time I’d seen him I hadn’t got a look at the gun, because it had been poked into the back of my supposed bride, but afterwards I’d figured out what kind of a weapon it had to be from Gloria’s inexpert description. He was young Mason Charles, the one man I’d fooled with my disguise so far, the dedicated avenger who thought I’d arranged to have his mother killed along with Will Pierce on the Mazatlan-Durango highway.

Antonia looked down at her two prisoners rather fondly, as if they were property of which she was proud, and at the moment you could say they were.

“No problem,” she said. “I wait for Cody. I hear them come and I hide. I do not know if friend or enemy of Cody. If friend, I want no interfere. If enemy, they cannot have, he is mine. So I take gun away and tie good, hey?”

I was relieved to find that my fifth of Scotch (750ml by local measurement) had survived intact in the canvas bag in spite of making a crash landing after flying a dangerous mission under fire. I placed it securely on the bar but reminded myself that there were a couple of small chores I should perform before I could relax.

First I found and pocketed the empty .22 cartridge case. Then I located the bullet hole under the windowsill. It was fairly inconspicuous but unmistakable, so I worked on it a bit to make it look like an irregular chip knocked out of the plaster rather than a neat, round hole. I used the little, all-stainless Russell knife I’d already employed to release Antonia’s captives. It was a replacement for a favorite Gerber I’d lost on a previous assignment-destroyed, along with the lethal lady who’d taken it from me, when a certain terrorist headquarters blew up, never mind how.

The ex-prisoners were still pulling themselves together, ignoring the Mexican girl who was watching them with malicious pleasure, getting all the mileage she could out of their humiliation. An interesting little girl, a striking little girl in her offbeat way, but not necessarily a nice little girl. I found ice and beer in the diminutive kitchenette refrigerator. The glasses provided were flimsy plastic wrapped in even flimsier plastic. I peeled them and asked for orders. Antonia voted for beer; the other two admitted, grudgingly in the case of the man, that a spot of J&B wouldn’t be unwelcome. Mason Charles went on to explain to me how unfairly he’d been tricked and disarmed by that little Chicana tramp. . . .

The as-yet unidentified woman looked at him sharply, silencing him. “Cool it, Junior,” she said. “Apologize.”

I remembered that he’d originally introduced himself as Mason Charles, Junior. He said quickly, “The hell I’ll . . . !” Then, surprisingly, he shrugged, drew a long breath, and turned to Antonia. He made her a ceremonious bow, and spoke elaborately: “My humble apologies, señorita. Please allow me to withdraw that unfortunate remark.”

It wasn’t the most sincere apology I’d ever heard, but the Mexican girl accepted it with a mocking little curtsy that went oddly with her faded jeans; but at least it showed she knew how. “It is forgotten, señor,” she said.