The Mexico Run (23 page)

    But then I thought of Angel, who was still in that cell up in Ensenada. If I were to walk out now, I wouldn't have to guess what would happen to him. I wouldn't be putting him in jeopardy. I would be condemning him irrevocably.

    The plane for Acapulco took off on schedule, and the rental car was waiting for me when I arrived at the airport. The Santa Marino was listed as a motel, but it was seven stories high, had a beautiful ocean view, two Olympic-sized swimming pools, private tennis courts, and was as elaborate as any first-class hotel, and more expensive than most of them. My room was seventy dollars a day.

    Captain Morales' instructions to me had been simplicity itself. He had explained that Dr. Constantine lived in a heavily guarded villa on the outskirts of Acapulco. I was given the telephone number, and he explained that it was an answering service where I should leave a message. There was no hope of reaching Dr. Constantine directly. I was merely to give my name and room number at the Santa Marino and say that I was a business associate of Mr. O'Farrell in San Francisco, and that I would like to get in touch with Dr. Constantine. And then I was to wait. From that point on, I was to play it by ear.

    "He will check back, of course, probably before he attempts to get in touch with you. Constantine has worldwide connections and so you must be extremely careful to tell him nothing that cannot be checked out, and you may be assured that he will check very thoroughly."

    I decided to get a good night's sleep and postpone the call until the following day.

    It was easier than I thought it would be, almost too easy. I made the telephone call at ten-thirty the next morning, but instead of an answering service, I reached an electronic device which taped messages.

    I did as Captain Morales had advised me. Gave my name, my address, my room number, and said that I was an acquaintance of Mr. O'Farrell of San Francisco and would like to see Dr. Constantine.

    I hung up and waited.

    I stayed in my room and called room service for lunch and had the bellboy bring up newspapers and a couple of magazines. At four-thirty that afternoon, the call came.

    I was simply told that I would be picked up in half an hour by a chauffeur-driven car, and that the driver would call me from the lobby when he arrived.

    This time there was no patting-down for concealed weapons, no blindfolds, no hocus-pocus The chauffeur was a Japanese in a rather threadbare black uniform, and the car was a thoroughly respectable and slightly ancient Bentley limousine.

    The trip from the motor lodge to the villa took something under forty minutes, and we entered the grounds through iron gates, which were opened electronically by a remote-control device triggered from the car. There was nothing even slightly sinister about the place, and the chauffeur merely stopped in front of the entrance and opened the car door for me, and I walked over and rang the door bell.

    The door was opened after a moment's delay by an elderly servant, also wearing a slightly threadbare uniform. He motioned me to follow him, and we passed down a long hallway, and I was left in what appeared to be a combination library and den.

    I sat there for some ten minutes and was becoming restless when the door was again opened and a very small, slender man with a bald head and a Van Dyke entered the room. He was wearing a smoking-jacket.

    He nodded to me, but made no effort to shake hands. He walked over and sat behind a desk, then looked up at me rather shyly and said, "You are Mr. Johns."

    I nodded.

    He said, "I am Dr. Constantine."

    I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Captain Morales hadn't finally slipped up. This shy little man with the Van Dyke looked as though he might have been an assistant instructor in some second-rate college, or perhaps a family dentist. I couldn't quite conceive of him as a sinister head of an international drug cartel.

    "Now Mr. Johns, if you will tell me what you wanted to see me about…"

    I said, "I have done some business with Mr. O'Farrell in San Francisco, and I thought it might be possible I could do some business with you."

    He nodded, not seeming particularly surprised. "Just what business did you do with Mr. O'Farrell?"

    "I sold him a certain commodity which I brought into the States from Mexico."

    He nodded. "And you want to sell me something?"

    "Not exactly," I said. "My business is not really selling, nor is it buying. I'm essentially a mover, a carrier of goods. May I say, of goods which sometimes are very difficult to import and export."

    Again he didn't seem in the slightest bit surprised, and I was having a difficult time figuring him out. I began to have the eerie feeling that the whole conversation wasn't actually taking place. It followed no script which I had ever read or heard about.

    "Mr. Johns," he said. "I am a simple man. I do not beat about the bush. When I received your call, I, of course, immediately checked with Mr. O'Farrell in San Francisco. He remembered you. He also explained to me the extent of your relationship. Let us be quite frank with each other. Why have you come to me?"

    I had been prepared to go through the usual devious hocus-pocus, and gradually lead up to things. He was laying it right on the table. I decided to play it the same way.

    "I came to you, Dr. Constantine, because I have reason to believe that you are a dealer in hard narcotics, perhaps one of the most important dealers on this continent. I would like a job. A very high-paying job. I would like to be one of your runners. It is as simple as that."

    He smiled at me rather benignly. "You too are refreshingly frank," he said. "You say you would like to work for me. Let me ask you something. Why me?"

    "A very simple reason," I said. "My understanding is that you are a major exporter. I want to go where the money is."

    He looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked up again. "Have you had experience in this particular field?"

    "Not directly," I said. "I have moved marijuana across the border. I've done certain things in the Orient, while I was in the service."

    "But not narcotics."

    I shook my head. "Not so far."

    He stroked his Van Dyke. "Odd," he said. "I told you that I had talked to Mr. O'Farrell in San Francisco. Among other things he told me about you is that he had suggested your going into narcotics and that you were not interested. But now you are interested. Would you like to explain?"

    "The explanation is simple." I said. "I had hoped to stick solely to marijuana. I discovered, however, that because of the bulk involved, the risk was too great for the profit to be made. I am interested in money. Big money and fast money. I am willing to take larger risks for larger profits.

    "I also came to the realization that it is a lot more difficult to get a large package across the border than a very small one. Having reached that conclusion, it seemed to be only logical to seek employment from the people who are bringing the stuff into the country, rather than from those who are pushing it once it is there. Hence I am here."

    "You are delightfully straightforward, and in this business those are two qualities one doesn't often encounter. If you are telling the truth, then it is possible we might actually get together. On the other hand, if you are not telling the truth, it is equally possible that you might never leave this place alive."

    He spoke the words as though he were saying nothing more sinister than that I might catch a bad cold if I walked out in the rain, and again I had that weird feeling that the conversation wasn't really taking place and that he didn't really exist.

    "I'm going to ask you some questions, Mr. Johns. In fact a great many questions. I want to know who you know, what you've done, where you've been, who your friends are. In short, everything there is to know. It may take a little time, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer any of my questions. I want you to be absolutely sure that you stick strictly to the truth. You may as well relax, because this will take time. Perhaps you would like a drink before we begin?"

    I thought that I would like a drink, and also that it would show supreme self-confidence if I trusted myself to have one. I said I'd like a scotch and soda, and he fixed me one from a cabinet, taking ice from a bucket very punctiliously with a pair of silver tongs and using an old-fashioned soda splasher on whatever it was he poured from the cut-glass decanter. He took soda and ice for himself.

    He watched me with some interest as I tasted the drink cautiously, wondering what he was giving me.

    "Is your drink all right?" he asked.

    "It has the taste of very good scotch," I said.

    "What a carefully weighed reply," he said. "Perhaps we can do business. Assuming, of course, that you check out." Then he began to ask the questions.

    It took the better part of three and a half hours, and he took the whole thing down on tape. If I had had any previous idea that he was over-simple or in any way naive, I was swiftly disillusioned.

    I don't think he could have done a better job of it had he had me wired to a lie-detector machine. It wasn't that he was tricky. He was just thorough. Completely and absolutely thorough.

    He handled the inquisition with the skill and dexterity of a brain surgeon wielding a scalpel. Before he was through, he probably knew more about me than I knew about myself.

    I held nothing back. Not even my initial contact with Captain Morales. The one thing that I did not tell him was the fact that it had been at Morales' suggestion that I came down to see him.

    He had not been surprised when I told him that it was through Morales that I had found my contact to purchase marijuana in Mexico. Apparently, it was common knowledge that Captain Morales operated outside, as well as inside, the law.

    I knew that I would have to stay completely within the confines of the truth, and I did so. Even to the extent of mentioning my dates with Ann Sherwood when I had been in San Francisco. He had wanted to know the names of every person that I had spoken to since I had been back in the United States.

    By the time the three and a half hours were up, I was utterly exhausted. It was worse than a third degree.

    When it was finally over, he shut off the tape recorder and looked up at me.

    "And now Mr. Johns," he said, "I'm going to ask you to be my guest for the next twenty-four hours while we process this. I'm sure that will not interfere with your plans."

    I told him that it would not.

    "I will have you escorted to a private suite of rooms," he said, "and we will try to make you as comfortable as possible. But I must ask you one thing. As you can see, this is hardly an armed fortress. I must insist that you stay in your rooms until I get in touch with you. It would not be a good idea to attempt to leave."

    "I understand," I said.

    He stood up then and again pushed a button on his desk, and a moment or two later the servant who had let me into the house came to the room.

    "See Mr. Johns to the guest suite," he said.

    He stood up, and this time we did shake hands. A moment later I followed the uniformed butler out of the study.

    I spent the next twenty-four hours mostly sleeping and eating and going through three complete mystery novels, which I found in the small library in the guest suite which I occupied.

    I don't know how thoroughly he researched my background, but he must have done a very fast and competent job. I had one bad moment when finally I was back again in the library downstairs, talking to Dr. Constantine.

    "We have checked you out as much as we can," he said, "and have substantiated most of what you have told me. There is one thing, however, that you seem to have overlooked. I am curious to know why."

    "And what is that, Dr. Constantine?"

    "You neglected to mention that you hired a doctor in Ensenada to treat this man Angel Cortillo in prison," he said.

    "It slipped my mind, and frankly you didn't ask me, and so I never thought to mention it."

    "It strikes me as slightly odd that you would go to the trouble of getting a doctor for a man who is accused of murdering the woman you were living with."

    "I had better explain," I said. "In the first place, Cortillo is, as I believe I mentioned, an old friend of mine. In the second place, I do not think that he was guilty of murdering the girl."

    He looked at me closely.

    "And who do you think did murder her?"

    "I think Captain Hernando Morales murdered her," I said.

    He nodded, not surprised.

    "Wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility," he said. "Is there anything else that I should know?"

    "Nothing," I said, "except that I did start to get a lawyer for him."

    "You would probably be wasting your money," he said. "From what I have learned from certain sources I have up that way, they have an open and shut case."

    We talked for a little longer, and he seemed satisfied that my credentials were valid. Finally, he said, "All right, Mr. Johns, I believe we can do business. How soon are you prepared to move?"

    "The sooner, the better," I said. "I need money. A lot of money."

    "You will make a lot of money, if you are successful. And let me warn you, you cannot afford to be anything but successful. For your work, you will receive ten percent of the United States street price of the package you will be taking in. Your first trip will involve one half a million dollars. And you will receive your commission upon the successful completion of delivery. And it must be successful. In this business there is no room for error. Now, here is what I want you to do.