What of Terry Conniston? (24 page)

Oakley's solemn features had slowly lost their weariness; “By God. We've got the sons of bitches.”

“Maybe. Maybe all's we got is an empty suitcase. We'll see.”

“No,” Oakley said. “No. It's them. It's got to be. We've got 'em, Diego!”

Orozco only murmured, “Maybe ten miles away off to the right there. Let's see if we can find a road goes in that direction.” He bent his head over the map and moved a stubby finger along it.

Mitch parked the Ford in front of the
farmacia
and sat for a moment brooding at the place, elbows curled over the steering wheel. Terry Conniston said, “Do you want me to go in with you?”

“No. Floyd won't be too suprised if I show up alone. He will. be, if you're with me.”

“What makes you think he's in there?”

“I don't. I just can't think of anyplace else to look. Maybe he's not here at all. Maybe Billie Jean blew the whistle and they both took off somewhere. Oh, Christ, I'm just stalling. You keep your head down, okay?”

He turned his solemn glance on her and leaned back, reaching around with his right hand to lift the door handle under his left elbow. Terry put out a hand to stop him; she slid closer along the seat and presented her face and he kissed her before he got out. Her eyes held him through the windshield when he walked around the front of the car and climbed the steps. He put his back to her and set his jaw, hooked his hand over the revolver butt in his hip pocket and swung the door open to beard von Roon's den.

The woman behind the counter was the only person in the place that he could see. There was a laboratory behind the sales room, part of which he could see through an open door; there was another door at the back, closed, leading perhaps to a flight of stairs to the floor overhead.

The woman fixed her glance on Mitch as if she was waiting for him to serve a subpoena on her. She had a sagging jaundiced face, easy to take for an Oriental's; by her cheekbones and black ropy hair she was evidently a
mestizo
. Mitch strolled to the counter, measuring the thud of his pulse against the casualness of his bearing; he said in his rusty guidebook Spanish, “
Yo deseo a conocer al señor von Roon
. “He added as an afterthought, “
Por favor.”

“
El doctor no está aquí
.”

“Uh—
dónde está, por favor?
” He knew all his grammar was wrong but she obviously understood what he was trying to, say. He clutched the gun, out of her sight, and looked around nervously.

The Indian woman gave him a cool, contemptuous appraisal; she said, “
Quíen sabe?
” and began to move away.

With his left hand Mitch crumpled a five-dollar bill in his pocket and took it out. The woman paused, looking at him. He rolled the bill into a greenish wad, tight as a spitball, and let it roll casually across the counter toward her. “
Es muy importante
.” She probably thought he was a dope addict or a boy friend looking for an abortionist but he didn't care what she thought.

She picked up the wad and smoothed it out. Her expression did not change. She said, “
Está en la Ciudad México. Volveré martés
.” He was in Mexico City: he would return Tuesday. She gave him an arch smile and pocketed the five dollars.

Shaking, he took another bill out of his pocket and looked at it. Ten dollars. Deliberately, he ripped it in half and pushed one half across the counter. “
Por favor, dígame. Hay un joven Yanqui, muy duro, con pelo negro, tal guapo
—
con ojos muy
—uh,
malignos. Comprende? Estaba aquí?” It
was a limp description of Floyd—young Yankee, very hard, black hair, perhaps handsome, with very evil eyes—and he hadn't held out much hope of getting anywhere with it: but he saw the woman's face change and he knew he had scored a hit. The pulse thudded harder in him; he made a vague gesture with the half of the ten-dollar bill. “
Dígame
—
dónde está este Yanqui?
”

She spoke slowly, frowning, saying yes, there had been such a one; he had come seeking the Doctor von Roon and he had been told the same thing, that
el Doctor
would not return from Mexico City until Tuesday, perhaps even later. She kept her eyes on the half-bill in Mitch's fist and Mitch shook his head and pressed her: “
Dónde está ahora?
” Where is he
now?

“
El Doctor?
”

“
No. El Yanqui
.” He waved the torn money at her, leaning forward, his face fierce and furious.

She began to speak and he had to stop her and tell her to start over again and go slower. She did; she said with unconcealed impatience with his linguistic limitations that the Yanqui had left word where
el Doctor
could reach him but that she was to tell no one this except
el Doctor
. But when she said this her gaze was fixed on the torn bill in Mitch's fist. Mitch reached into his pocket for the third time and withdrew the last money he had—another fiver—and added it to the torn half of the ten in his fist. “
Es todo. No hay más
.” He turned out his pocket to show her.

She considered the money and she considered his face. She said, “
Usted
—
está un amigo del Yanqui?
”

Not exactly a friend of his, Mitch thought; but he didn't know how to phrase it in Spanish and so he merely shook his head at her. She was watching him in a way that made him morally certain she had disliked Floyd violently: Floyd had probably frightened her. And so, taking a chance, Mitch took the revolver out of his hip pocket and showed it to her, and put it away again, implying—he hoped—that it wasn't friendship that made him seek the
Yanqui
.

She took a while to make up her mind; finally she rattled off something decisive; he had to make her repeat it twice, at the end of which time she was exasperated with him and he was grimly satisfied. He left all the money on the counter and walked out of the place into the blaze of sunshine and said to Terry in the car window, “He's hiding out in a shack south of here—up in those hills.” He went around and got in. She didn't say anything; she only watched him. He took the gun out and snapped it open and stared at the six brassy new cartridge cases with their silver-colored primers. He had a pocketful more. He snapped it shut and put it on his lap and started the car.

They had to crawl the Ford through morning knots of pedestrians in the narrow curving streets. The early daylight streamed through the tall palm trees, its color very rich. They went past the old mission church at the edge of town and he saw distinctly the pocked bullet holes in its adobe façade. Small dogs ran yapping after the car until it cleared the last palms at the southern limit of Caborca. Mitch told Terry what had happened inside the pharmacy; he said, “Floyd probably threatened to kill her if she told anybody but twenty dollars was more money than she'd ever seen in her life. She saw my gun and she probably figures I'll kill Floyd for her—I wish I was as sure of myself as she seemed to be. Down here they think a man's got a hell of a lot of
machismo
and
cojones
if he sports a gun.”

“That was Floyd's gun, wasn't it? He hasn't got another one.”

“Knowing Floyd, he's got an arsenal out here with him if he thinks he needs one. Guns are easy enough to come by down here if you've got the money to pay for them. Everything's for sale down here. Jesus, Terry, I'm just talking to keep from going through the roof—maybe we better forget this whole thing and turn around.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

He had been thinking about very little else; but now he thought about it yet again and he realized with startling sudden clarity that these past days had secretly created resolve inside him. All his life he had failed at things. He didn't know whether it was hysteria or courage but whatever it was, even if he failed again this time it would not be for want of trying. It occurred to him, in a way he sensed but could not explain even to himself, that he might lose more by turning away from this than he stood to lose even if he failed against Floyd.

And so he took himself a little by surprise when he answered her question: “No. I guess I have to prove something.”

“You don't need to prove anything to anybody, Mitch.”

“I need to prove something to myself. Does that make any sense?”

“I guess it does, after all.”

The dirt road crabbed its way up into the beige-colored hills, full of rocks with square corners and washed-out ruts; the Ford strained and lurched at slow speed. “She said it was the far side of the hill from the big rock that looks like a hat. Must have meant that one up there. I think I'll leave the car there and leave you in it. Be better to go down on foot—maybe I can catch him by surprise.”

“I don't want to wait in the car, Mitch.”

“I'll have trouble enough watching him without looking out for you too. What the hell is that?”

It was a car—a dusty Cadillac gleaming in the sun, parked in the road by the hat-shaped boulder. It might have been imagination but he thought he could still smell the dust in the air from its passage: it must have arrived just before them. Scowling, he halted the Ford behind the Cadillac's bumper and got out, closing his hand around the gun, and walked quickly toward the crest of the hill. He heard Terry get out of the car behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to wave her back, but she kept coming and he didn't want to lift his voice; he only gestured again and went on, getting up on his toes and beginning to run with a sense of instinctive urgency. It was then that he heard the gunshot.

C H A P T E R
Eighteen

Oakley thought with bitter anguish,
He set it up beautifully and we walked right into it
.

The tumbledown shack stood in the full glare of the sun fifty yards downhill from them in a nest of splintered boulders; the Oldsmobile stood alongside the shack and cooking smoke rose from the chimney. Standing bolt still, Oakley slowly turned his head to look back past Orozco's frozen bulk toward the rocks high to their left from which the gunshot had come. The bullet had screamed off the dirt not three feet in front of Oakley's boot toe; it had brought them both up short and now a voice issued from the rocks—a cool deep voice Oakley recognized at once from telephone calls:

“Just stand still where you are and turn around so I can see you—slowly if you please; haste might make me nervous.”

Orozco's bootsoles crunched the earth as he made a slow ponderous wheel, keeping his arms well away from his body. Oakley stood fast, head cocked over his shoulder. He saw Floyd Rymer come out of the rocks moving like a big cat, all liquid grace and feline power, balancing a large automatic pistol on them. There was no mistaking Rymer's identity—the glossy photographs had captured his likeness perfectly. All except the eyes: hard, penetrating, yet utterly devoid of emotion.

“All right,” said Floyd Rymer. “The car belongs to Conniston but who are you?”

Oakley made no answer; his narrowed glance steadied on Rymer's gun and he felt sweat pour down his face. He heard Orozco say, “Let's say we work for Mr. Conniston.”

“Fine. Thumb and forefinger, now, both of you lift those pistols out of your belts and toss them on the ground. Don't try any cowboy tricks because we all know I've got nothing to lose by killing you. They'd probably never find your bodies.”

Oakley glanced at Orozco but Orozco made no signal; he only obeyed instructions by slowly lifting the revolver from his waistband and letting it drop on the ground a yard away from his boots. Oakley began to tremble; he did not stir until Orozco growled, “Do what he wants, Carl.”

When he picked the gun out of his belt he lost his grip on it and it fell down the front of his trousers, banged off his knee and skittered away in the dirt. A twitch lifted one corner of Floyd Rymer's mouth.

Floyd said, “How'd you trace me here?”

Orozco said promptly, “They picked up your license number when you crossed the border at Lochiel.”

Floyd rested his shoulder against a tall rock. “No good—try again. I've switched plates twice since I crossed over.”

Oakley's nostrils dilated; he felt faint in the burning sun. Orozco said, “All right. There's a radio bug in the ransom suitcase.”

Floyd Rymer's eyebrows lifted half an inch. “I salute you,” he said. “Thanks for warning me—I'll have to attend to that. Who else is around here? How many others behind you—and how far?”

Oakley said, “Don't tell him, Diego.”

“I wasn't plannin' to,” Orozco drawled. “Look, Rymer, we know your names, we found the two dead ones you left in Soledad. You can't get away even if you do shoot both of us. The whole world knows who you are. Now you turn over the money to us and tell us where we can find Terry Conniston and maybe we'll think about letting you cop a plea.”

Floyd Rymer smiled very slowly. It was the most terrifying expression Oakley had ever witnessed on a human face. Oakley's breathing was tight and shallow; his sphincter contracted, his palms dripped. Floyd lifted the automatic and Oakley clearly saw the knuckles begin to whiten; he knew that Rymer was going to shoot them both in their tracks.

A voice rammed down from the splintered boulders above:

“Stop it, Floyd!”

Oakley saw the rest in a blur, as if it were a dream: forever afterward he tried to bring it back but it never came clear to him, there was only a wheeling kaleidoscope of impressions. Floyd's head whipped around; Orozco began to move; there was a woman's scream, thin in the high air; a youth standing above Floyd Rymer with a police revolver cocked; the frenzied glitter of Floyd Rymer's eyes as the impassive expression suddenly broke and the handsome leonine face became a twisted ugly mask of fury. There was shooting: Floyd Rymer and the youth exchanging shots, both of them ducking and wheeling. The brass sun spinning overhead. Orozco ducking to the ground, scooping up his gun, coming up on one knee with amazing agility. One image stood out clear: the sudden jump and puff of a bullet striking the youth in the hip by his trouser pocket, the youth knocked down asprawl in the boulders by the impact of the big slug. The youth had fired a fussillade of shots but none of them had hit Floyd Rymer; Floyd came around and Oakley was staring down the muzzle of the automatic and he heard the great ear-splitting roar of two or three or four gunshots, a deafening rattle like artillery in his ear. Afterward he realized it had been Orozco, coolly and methodically pumping bullets into Floyd Rymer like a sharpshooter on a rifle range. Oakley had no recollection of Floyd falling, no recollection of the next few seconds; somewhere in the ensuing run of time he realized he had picked up his gun and walked forward, for he found himself standing above Floyd Rymer's dead body with the unfired pistol clutched in his fist. Orozco was kneeling down by the corpse and two people were coming down out of the rocks together, the youth hobbling on one leg and leaning his weight on Terry Conniston.