The Frighteners (9 page)

“Out!” I snapped. “Back to the highway on the double. . . . Dammit, I said leave that door open!”

She reached back to yank it open, more vigorously than necessary, and walked off stiffly, but stopped to look back at the white convertible, which had the hastily abandoned look of a ship after the crew has taken to the lifeboats.

Gloria turned to me in protest. “But we can’t leave it in this garbage dump, and not even locked! It’ll be stripped by morning!”

I said, “What does it take to keep you moving? Come on!”

I took her arm, not very gently, and hurried her down to the highway and across it. One of the ubiquitous Mexican buses went roaring by heading east, leaving a stink of diesel.

“Matt, I really don’t like the way you . . ."

“You can tell me all your don’t-likes in a few minutes, sweetheart. You left some good girl-tracks over there, real beauties. Now I want you to put a nice, clear, high-heeled print of your left foot in that soft spot, facing the highway, as if you were moving toward a parked car. . . . For Christ’s sake, this is no time to worry about a little dust on your shoe! Now a dainty right toe-print here . . . Swell, even a city boy ought to be able to read that sign like the Last of the Mohicans. Now grab this paper bag and hang onto it, along with your purse. I’m going to pick you up and carry you so you don’t leave any more pointy little heel marks.”

“Look, this is absolutely crazy. . . .”

I said, ‘ ‘If you prefer, we’ll let you clamber around this landscape in your stocking feet, but it looks mighty stony and uncomfortable and hard on the nylons. . . . Okay, put your arms around my neck and hang on tight, but don’t drop that bag.” Lifting her, holding her, I grinned at her flushed and angry face, very close. “Ain’t it hell what a man will do to get a dame into his arms?”

Behind us, as I made my way down into the roadside ravine with my warm but resentful burden, I heard a big semi going by to the east, followed by a passenger car of some kind. I didn’t turn my head to look. In spite of her fashionably slender look, she’d turned out to be a substantial girl. She was all I could manage to carry, and I didn’t want to stumble and drop her. She’d leave marks that would be hard to erase; besides, she was mad enough already. Some westbound traffic went by on the road above and behind us. We were well down the slope now, too far down to see or be seen; but I found myself listening closely. I didn’t hear a vehicle stop. At the bottom of the gully, I set the girl on her feet.

“Matt, if you don’t explain this minute . . . !”

I said, “Just stand there; don’t leave any more footprints than you have to. I’ve got to go back and fix a couple of places where I slid. Thank God Cody didn’t go in for very high-heeled boots."

She licked her lips. “He was thinking of me, he said; he didn’t want to tower too high above me at the altar.”

It seemed like oddly considerate behavior for a would-be murderer. I said, “A real sweet guy sometimes, huh? Don’t move, I’ll be right back.” When I returned, carrying a branch of desert juniper that I’d used to brush away the more conspicuous traces of our descent, she started to speak angrily, but I cut her off: “That paper bag, please.”

She handed me the sack and watched me produce a small canteen full of water, a little pocket telescope, a compass, and a couple of folded pieces of paper. The canteen went onto my belt; the other items into my pockets.

“Matt, if you think I’m going to . . . !”

I remembered that I’d suspected that her beautiful mouth could develop an unbecoming pout. I’d been right, and her voice had acquired a typical spoiled-brat whine to go with it. She’d been fun to have along when she’d eagerly spotted the mileage marker, like a clue in a happy treasure hunt; but she was getting tiresome now.

However, I tried to speak patiently. “I don’t think we have much time, Gloria. Please be quiet and listen. There’s not much cover here, and I’d like to put a little more distance between us and the highway. Besides, I want to be up on the ridge where I can see what’s happening. But I’m not Superman and I can’t carry you up, it was hard enough bringing you down. So I’d appreciate it if you’d make the climb under your own power. Please? Watch where you put your feet. Stay on your toes as much as possible and try not to let your heels dig in. Okay?”

She shook her head violently. “No, it’s not okay! I’m not going to move another step in this ghastly wilderness until you tell me exactly what you think you’re doing!”

I said, “Dammit, I’m trying to save our lives, baby! Please start climbing.”

“No! Not until you explain. . . ."

I didn’t want to hit her—that is, sure, I wanted to, a little, she was a stubborn, infuriating bitch, but I didn’t know how she’d react to physical abuse. Anyway, she’d told me the proper weapon to use against her. If she hated and feared guns, hell, I’d give her guns. At the sight of the .38 her face changed shockingly.

I said, “Either you move or you get shot, sweetheart. After listening to all this gripe, gripe, gripe I don’t really give a damn which you choose. Just make up your cottonpicking little mind. . . . Okay, that’s better.” I drew a long breath as, after a momentary hesitation, she turned sullenly and started to climb. “A little to the left now. Swell, you’re doing fine.”

She had to lift her hem considerably in order to negotiate the steep hillside. I should have found the view intriguing as I climbed along behind and below her. I’m usually a sueker for a neat derriere in a smoothly fitting skirt, slender legs in sheer nylons, and, for a bonus, occasional glimpses of a lacy slip or petticoat. I could excuse my lack of reaction by saying that I was too busy with my juniper broom, brushing out the traces of her progress and my own, one-handed; but the fact was that having to threaten her had made me feel lousy. I don’t like, at any time, waving guns stupidly at people I have no intention of shooting. I particularly don’t like it when it works too well.

I mean, this girl should have known that, no matter how much she annoyed me, I wouldn’t fire. For one thing, I had orders to preserve her, and for another, after all the trouble I’d taken to hide our tracks, I obviously wasn’t going to cut loose with a cannon blast and let everybody within miles know where we were. But instead of spitting in my eye defiantly, as she should have, instead of calling my bluff and leaving me standing there foolishly holding my silly firearm, she’d surrendered abjectly at the sight of it. I remembered the gray terror on her face in the washroom in Cananea, and I remembered again that this was the girl who’d let herself be frightened into marrying a man almost three times her age. Lovely as she was, and bright and pleasant upon occasion, she was clearly lacking something in the courage department. Well, when they’re beautiful enough I guess they don’t have to be heroines.

“Easy, now,” I said at last. “The old Indian fighters never silhouetted themselves on the skyline. Cut around through that notch to the left. . . . Are you okay?” She’d slipped to one knee.

“Well, I just ruined a stocking, but I don’t suppose that means anything to you.” She started upwards again wearily. Her voice was bitter, as well as noticeably breathless from her exertions. “You might at least have let me change out of my wedding gown, such as it is, before dragging me on this mad mountain-climbing expedition.”

I said, “I told you, that’s just the point. Cody was counting on it in Juarez, the fact that nobody’d expect him to make any violent evasive maneuvers as long as you were both in your chapel clothes. Well, I’m hoping it’ll work here, too. But if we’d suddenly turned up in jeans and hiking boots, they’d be ready for us to do something drastic, and we’d never shake them.”

“Shake who? I didn’t see anybody at that kilometer marker, and you said you didn’t either.”

“That was their mistake. They should have had somebody waiting to greet us at the rendezvous with a big smile and an outstretched hand, but I guess nobody wanted the job. The guy would have been taking a certain risk, and sacrificial goats are hard to come by these days. So, seeing nobody, we were supposed to pull up into that little road behind that decoy van and get out to investigate it, at which point they’d spring their little trap. Probably they pulled some stunt just like that, arranged some kind of a secret boondocks meeting, to get your daddy and his lady friend off the highway where they wanted them.”

“You’re just guessing. You can’t know . . ."

I said, “I know that when I get that funny itch between my shoulder blades it’s time to get the fuck out of there. That’s how I’ve stayed alive longer than most in this business.”

She threw a glance over her shoulder. “You haven’t said who you think it is. It can’t be Uncle Buffy himself; we saw him arrested in El Paso.”

‘‘I don’t know who he’s got doing his dirty work for him here, but I’m looking forward to finding out.” I checked back to see how high we’d come. “That’s far enough, I think. Let me get up there with you and take a look. . . . Swell, now lie down behind that bush, please.”

We were on the side of a little knob that lifted us above the level of the brush and low trees on the far side of the ravine out of which we had climbed. There was a good view of the road. We could even see over the ridge on the other side of it into the open space where we’d left the white Allante, looking very expensive and deserted among all the litter. There were no other vehicles in sight until a bus roared by on the highway, going west.

“You can’t be serious!” Gloria said.

Kneeling, I looked up at her, still standing there in her white suit like the Eddystone Light. She might have been a little more conspicuous with strobe lights in her hair, but not much. I was fed up with her; besides, there was action below. A brown van was just coming into sight from the east. Gloria was saying something about how I couldn’t possibly expect her to lie down on the ground, dressed as she was. I reached out and yanked her feet out from under her. She sat down hard, and the pitch of the hillside brought her sliding down to me with another interesting display of nylon pantyhose and lacy lingerie. I told myself this was no time to be admiring a lady’s intimate apparel, and I grabbed one arm and twisted it around so she was glad to roll over onto her stomach and flatten out behind the bush I’d indicated. I took off my conspicuous white Buff Cody hat, tucked it under the bush out of sight, and lay down beside her and showed her the gun again.

I said, “Now lie perfectly still and stop all this nonsense. Jesus Christ! You have a trained man assigned to you. You’re told one of his jobs is to keep you alive. And by God, when he tries to do that job, you’re so dumb you fight him every step of the way. Think about this: if your idiotic chatter and moronic behavior cost me my life here, I’ll be damned sure I take you with me. Now be quiet and watch!”

Down on the highway, they were taking their time, leaving no stones unturned and no side roads unexplored. I knew the Cadillac wasn’t visible from the highway, hut they investigated the little track as a matter of routine. Thorough.

I spoke softly to the sullen girl beside me: “We can figure a two-way radio and some kind of roadblock prepared for us ahead, which was why I didn’t dare drive too far past the contact point. You always have to assume the other guy has a few brains, in this case enough to provide himself with a backup in case Plan One misfired. So the boys at kilometer ninety-five called ahead to say we must have smelled a trap because we’d driven past them without stopping. Then the boys waiting to take us if we got past ninety-five reported back that no fancy Yankee convertibles had reached them. Obviously we’d stopped somewhere in between, and our friends in the van down there have been coming up the highway slowly, checking both sides to find out where we disappeared to. . . . Aha, they’ve found us!”

The van had pulled up behind our Allante. The rear doors opened and half-a-dozen men got out—correct that, two of them were women, although it was hard to tell the difference. They were all dressed like farm workers, a few in the white pajama suits of Latin
paisanos
straight out of Central Casting, others in dark shirts and jeans or other work pants. There were big straw sombreros, and there were the kind of freebie caps that advertise feed or beer or machinery. Mostly the men and women were pretty dirty and ragged, but the weapons they carried gleamed cleanly in the low evening sunshine.

I whispered to the unresponsive girl: “Quite an assortment of firepower. Ammunition supply must be a problem. I see everything from a .45 Colt Auto to a 9mm Uzi to a specimen of the gutless old .30-caliber carbine that must be one of the most useless firearms ever invented but for some reason everybody loves it. . . . And there’s
El Jefe
in nice clean khakis; and just look at the tool he’s carrying, in addition to another .45 in a fancy holster on his left hip. We’ve got us a southpaw villain, it seems.”

A moderately tall man, wearing a long-billed khaki cap to match his sharply pressed shirt and pants, had emerged from the van’s right front door. Even in the most romantic Mexican movies, most Latin leading men are fairly substantial; but this hero wasn’t carrying too much extra weight. I’d brought out the little telescope that had been provided for me. It was sharper than you’d expect for as small as it was. It showed the khaki-clad gent to me clearly as he stepped forward to take the keys out of the Caddy’s ignition. He went back and opened the trunk, clearly not well enough acquainted with fancy automobiles to know that you don’t need a key for that operation nowadays; all you have to do is push a button on the dashboard. He stood there studying the closely packed luggage.

“He’s trying to figure out if there’s anything missing,” I said. ‘‘He wants to know if we—particularly you, since women aren’t supposed to be able to get very far in high heels and nylons—if we grabbed any practical clothes when we lit out of there so fast we didn’t even pause to lock the car behind us. But that’s a neat packing job and it looks undisturbed. You and Cody really had your honeymoon chariot loaded.”

She was watching the distant scene. “What in the world is he
doing
?” she asked.