The Threateners (25 page)

I nodded, accepting this, and said, “So you got scared.”

"That’s right. A girl’s got to look out for herself. Suddenly here was this high-grade bureaucratic creep I was working for going totally ape, and giving me his big save-the-world pep talk—well, save America from being buried in nickel-and-dime drugs—and telling me to kidnap the widow of a best-selling author and torture an agent of the U.S government, my God! I went along for a little—it’s always easier just to do what the boss tells you, I guess—but like I said, I was getting scared. He’d have me killing people next!”

I spoke deliberately: “You’re delicate or something? You’ve got some weirdo objection to killing people?”

She looked at me sharply, startled; then she laughed abruptly. “All right, I admit I didn’t quit giving you the cigarette treatment because I’m such a softhearted slob; I did it because I decided it was time to bail out before I let the man order me into trouble he couldn’t get me out of.”

“Just bail out, or actually change sides?”

She licked her lips. "Well, hanging from a parachute with everybody shooting at you is kind of lonely. I figured, even though you were in a bad spot at the moment, you were a lot tougher than you were acting and would probably wind up on top in the end. Maybe, if I gave you a hand, you’d give me a break later. . . .”

“I didn’t notice you giving me any hands.”

“Why do you think I talked Dennis into letting me be the one to escort you down to the river? I hoped you’d understand that the softhearted little girl who couldn’t really bear to bum you wasn’t going to shoot you, either, if you made a run for it. But you didn’t.”

I said, “Even if I’d got the message, and believed it, Dennis stayed in too good a position behind us, and was just too damn eager to shoot me for old time’s sake.”

Belinda said, “I really wasn’t going to let him kill you, I swear it! I had my gun ready when we got down there, but you took care of him yourself before I could make up my mind to. . . She drew a long breath. “Maybe I hesitated too long, but damn it, Helm, I’d never shot at a man, just those big paper targets that are supposed to look like men! But before that I did help you out by giving him a big phony story about how scared you’d been on that cable car in Rio, since you obviously wanted him to think you were practically helpless with vertigo. Remember?”

I remembered, and her story had been closer to the truth than she seemed to know, but if she was really hoping to gain my trust, she was plowing a barren field; I don’t even trust the certified colleagues Mac sometimes assigns to work with me. However, the girl and I were in this predicament together and there was no reason not to accept her assurances on a tentative basis, hoping we could work together to get ourselves out of it. Which didn’t mean I’d turn my back on her carelessly.

“Well, I’m not holding any grudges, if that helps,” I said. “As I said, getting slightly scorched is all in the day’s work. And at the moment, at least, we’d better cooperate if we’re both going to get out of this alive. . . . Oh, Jesus!”

“What is it, Matt?”

I didn’t answer; I was watching the man in the copilot’s seat. He’d looked aft to check on us; now, satisfied that we were still safely secured, he turned away from us, and I was remembering a tallish, black-clad man throwing just such a look behind him before he went over my six-foot backyard fence like a great cat. . . .

“Palomino,” Mac had said as he shoved a manila folder across the desk to me.

I’d said, “Nobody’s named Palomino. A palomino is a horse.”

That had been in Washington, after I’d spent a dull morning looking at photographs of varying degrees of technical excellence—mostly they hadn’t been excellent at all—representing black-haired killers, known hit men, about five ten, about one-seventy, who might have some connection with the South American drug trade. I’d finally narrowed it down to half a dozen who might have been the man I’d seen crouching over Marie Steiner’s body. Mac had selected the most likely candidate, a man who’d been seen in the company of Gregorio Vasquez on several occasions. I’d read the condensed dossier he’d shoved across the desk:

Palomino Escobar, Hector
. (For cover names employed refer 

original file.) Five eleven and a half, one-eighty, hair 

black with widow’s peak, sometimes modified by razor. 

Eyes brown. Skin olive. Face narrow, nose long, broken 

once, lips thin, teeth large, chin pointed. Mustache often 

worn, dimensions various. Identifying marks: aside from 

nose break, none known. (For fingerprints refer master file.) 

Not known to drink excessively. Occasional use cocaine, 

frequent marijuana. No known homosexual tendencies. 

Heterosexual relationships numerous, tending toward violence. 

Adequate pistol, poor rifle, excellent edged weapons, 

adequate unarmed combat. Preferred MO: strangulation 

(wire). Associated Medellin to ’86, current affiliation 

unknown. Responsible for following deaths (confirmed): DEA 

Agent James Pollard, Miami, May ’86. Also Felix Bustamente, 

San Juan, Jan ’82; Roman Soldana Parral, Key West, 

Sep ’83; George Larragoite, New Orleans, May ’84. . . .

Okay, so I’d missed the height by half an inch and the weight by ten pounds. The hit list went on, showing one or two kills a year. There was also an impressive catalog of unconfirmed deaths attributed to Palomino by sources of varying degrees of reliability.

I reflected that the record keepers could now add for this year:
Raoul Marcus Carrera Mascarena (alias Mark Steiner), Santa Fe
. They could note that Palomino’s current employer was no longer unknown. They could also bring the modus operandi up to date: our boy was no longer enamored of the wire noose, he’d found an ancient weapon he, or his employer, liked better. . . . The fact that he’d killed a DEA agent was not a matter of great concern to me; it wasn’t as if he’d got one of ours. Even then, well, we’re not exactly a little band of brothers. We can’t be responsible for every dumb government employee who puts his neck into a noose, or a Thuggee scarf, at least not until we’re asked to be.

But the man had killed Mark, who’d been a good journalist and a friend of sorts as well as a guest in my house, and Palomino had also been accomplice to a couple of other killings of which I disapproved. On the other hand, I’d disposed of his two associates on that mission with an outsized bowie knife. He might consider that sufficient reason for disliking me; and we were in his hands.

I'd been looking for a tiger and apparently I’d found one.

The landing must have looked spectacular. I would have preferred to be standing safely on the ground watching it. In the curtained cabin, I just heard the warning thumps of the wheels being lowered; then the plane tilted sharply as it turned, presumably to line up with the unseen runway. After straightening up for a moment, it dropped suddenly and sick-eningly, elevator fashion, and slammed onto the ground hard enough to drive me down into my seat and strain the tape that served me as a safety harness. I was still listening for the crack of a breaking axle or the bang of a blowing tire when I saw, dead ahead through the windshield, big, jungly-looking, vine-laced trees rushing at us. We came to a stop with a little, very little, to spare.

I drew a long breath. “Goddamn all macho Latin stunt pilots!”

Belinda said, “Where the hell are we?”

Up forward, Palomino had again turned in his seat to keep an eye on us. I managed to get a glimpse of my watch at last and saw that it was now well past four in the afternoon; we’d left my room in Las Cataratas Hotel a little before eleven. Belinda’s question seemed to hang in the air between us. I tried to work out a reasonable answer, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t know what course we’d flown, I’d been unconscious for part of the time so I didn’t know how long we’d been airborne, and I didn’t know how fast a plane like this would fly. However, a conservative estimate of four hours in the air at a hundred and fifty miles per hour would put us six hundred miles from Iguassu Falls, in any direction, which gave us a large choice of countries. Paraguay was definitely a possibility, we’d actually touched that in die tour bus; and Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia were all within reach, if I remembered my hasty preflight atlas research correctly. Peru probably wasn’t, way up there in the Andes overlooking the Pacific Ocean. . . .

A voice asked sharply,
"Who in the world is that woman?"
Palomino had opened the cabin door when we stopped taxiing. Now I could see a silhouette in the bright opening. Female silhouettes, unless viewed with the chest area in profile, are almost indistinguishable from male silhouettes these trousered and long-haired days—in fact, the boys and girls seem to make a point of it—but the voice was unmistakably feminine, speaking English touched by one of those slightly affected eastem-girls’-school accents.

Palomino sounded surprised at the question. “On your recommendation to Señor Vasquez, I was ordered to bring here the tall hombre I see once before up in the Estados Unidos, the one who make such business with the big knife, and the muchacha who travel with him. This I have done.”

“This you have not done!” The woman’s voice was harsh. “You managed to get the proper hombre, all right, but goddamn it, the muchacha isn’t Ruth Steiner!” When Palomino didn’t speak at once, she went on: “Damn it, Hector, how could you make such a mistake? This isn’t the woman I asked you to bring. This isn’t the woman Mr. Vasquez wants!”

I reflected that
El Viejo
must really be an impressive old character, for this upper-class Yankee dame—judging by her accent—to call him Mister.

Palomino said stiffly, “Senorita, I bring the lady you say, the rubia, the blond one who is with the man.”

Throughout all this, the pilot was writing in a notebook, perhaps the ship’s log, paying no attention to the proceedings. He was just the guy who ran the streetcar; the problems of the passengers meant nothing to him.

“For heaven’s sake, I described her as a skinny blonde!” The woman ducked to enter the cabin, studying us as she approached. She went on: “This one may be blond, at least as long as she keeps the bleach bottle handy, but you can hardly call her skinny!”

“She is not fat,” Palomino protested, and of course by the standards of his country—of most Latin countries—where anorexia is not fashionable, Belinda’s well-rounded figure was practically perfect, maybe even a bit on the economical side. He said: “They come out of his room together. If she is not the Senora Steiner, who is she?”

The woman with the classy accent was standing over me now. The cabin lights were still burning, although the motors had stopped and I could see her clearly; and of course I knew her. Well, it was about time we met formally; we’d been covering the same ground for weeks. Spooky Three, otherwise known as Patricia Weatherford. Today she was looking very sporty in tailored chino shorts and a short-sleeved shirt of the same material, with epaulets. Her tennis-player arms were brown and muscular, as were her legs, terminating in white ankle socks and jogging shoes, or maybe they were tennis shoes.

She was frowning at Belinda. She spoke to Palomino without turning her head: "Actually, I know this woman. At least she’s one of the tour group we’ve been keeping under surveillance for you. However, I have no idea what she was doing in Mr. Helm’s room; I thought his affections were otherwise engaged. Her name is Ackerman, Mrs. Roger Ackerman. Her husband is considerably older. I’ve seen her talking with Helm, but it never occurred to me there was enough attraction there to cause a mix-up. . . .”

Palomino said stiffly, “There would have been no meex-up if the right woman had been pointed out to me, as I asked, so I would know her on sight."

“And I reminded you, and Mr. Vasquez, that Helm had seen you once at fairly close range. You’d given him good reason to remember you, up there in New Mexico. We had to keep you out of sight; we couldn’t take the risk of his recognizing you and being warned. . . . Tell me what happened.”

Palomino clearly wanted to carry the argument further, but he checked himself and said, “I follow the plan we have agreed; I wait until your man in the hotel lobby signals that they have gone to their rooms. Many people are in the corridors, I wait until I can approach without being seen, but a woman comes, a big woman with a red face and white hair. I wait around the comer as she knocks on the man’s door. In answer to her question I hear him call her Annie and say that Ruth feels not well and they will not take the tour to the falls. Good, I think, they will be in the rooms with all their companions elsewhere, as I want them. More people pass; then I start for the door, but step back quickly. These two are coming out, and there is a younger man with them. What younger man? This I have not been told. The signal was to be made when they were in their rooms alone.”

“It’s impossible to watch a hotel room constantly without attracting attention, you know that. I suppose somebody could have slipped in. . . . Well, obviously, somebody did. More than one somebody. Go on. What happened then?”

Palomino said, “I step back quickly and wait to let them pass me. He walks behind, a very serious young man who holds a gun in his pocket. You tell me the two who are wanted have a relationship. These two walk arm in arm, so close, so loving; I never doubt that she is the one with whom he travels, the one with whom he sleeps, you say. They proceed to the river. What happens at the river I cannot see until I make my way through the forest quietly, then I see a struggle on the cliff. The man fights, the woman has a gun now, also, and waits for the moment that will let her shoot without hitting the man. A true woman, I think, prepared to kill to help her man. But the man requires no help, he is strong, he throws the enemy into the river far below. While he is so engaged I take the woman and drag her into the bushes; then I take the man as he comes up the path still breathing hard from the fight and not alert, foolish enough to pick up the pretty white shoe I leave for him to see. And now you say she is not his woman, not the one we want? How many women does he have?”