A Deadly Shade of Gold (40 page)

but both ends worked. I saw Dominguez and Connie staring in at me.

"There's one thing," I said.

"Don't try to talk, baby." Connie said.

I made her understand about the promise and the money, and she agreed that she would immediately put the key and the seventy dollars in Honey's mailbox, don't worry about it, the house is in good shape, everything's fine, don't worry. In the middle of trying to form the next question, my arms got tired of chinning myself on this bottom rung of consciousness, so I just let it all go.

When I awoke again it was hot. Light came into the truck, dusty sunlight. I was being juggled and bounced. Connie sat on a tool box. It was a bad road. She looked tired. Her smile was wan. She said something I couldn't hear and felt my forehead. I saw my gear and her small bag and the two sacks of golden idols. I wanted to say something vastly significant, about a woman and gold and a wound, like those things you say in dreams, those answers to everything. But when I unlocked my jaw, all that came out was a bellow of pain.

She knelt and held me and said, "Just a little bit more, dear. Just a little bit more now."

I was on my face, in a rough softness, in a smell of wool and a sharper smell of medicine. They'd let something loose at me and it was eating its way into my back. I tried to roll over, but a hand came down on my bare shoulder and forced me back. I heard Connie in an excited clatter of Spanish, and a man's voice answering. Suddenly a huge pain towered shining white and smashed down on me and rolled me under.

I awoke slowly. I was in bed, I accumulated the little bits of evidence one at a time, with a great slow drifting care. I was naked. I was well covered.

I felt a stricture around my middle. I felt a wide, taut, professional bandage. It was dark where I was. There was a yellow light on the other side of the room. I turned my head slowly. Connie Melgar was over there, sitting, reading a book by a kerosene lamp, near a small open fire in a big fireplace. She seemed to be wearing pyjamas, and a man's khaki hunting jacket. There was a huge night stillness around us. I could hear the small phutterings of the fire.

"Connie?" I said, with somebody else's voice. A little old man's voice.

She jumped up and came over and put her hand on my forehead. "I was going to have to try to wake you up," she said. "You have pills to take."

"Where are we?"

"Pills first," she said. She went out of sight. I heard the busy ka-chunking of a hand pump.

She came back with two big capsules and a glass of chill water. Nothing had ever tasted better. I asked for more, in my little old voice, and she brought me another glass. She brought the lamp over and put it on a small table, and moved a straight chair near. I saw that I was in a deep wide bunk, with another above me, and a rough board wall at my left.

She lit two cigarettes and gave me one.

"Are you tracking, Travis? Do you think you can understand what I tell you?" she asked.

After a slow count of ten, I said, "Travis. My wallet?"

"That's the way a snoopy woman amuses herself, Mr. McGee. It is now midnight, my dear. You were shot about twenty-two hours ago. I am sorry we had to bring you such a terrible distance. I wouldn't have taken the risk. But Paul gave the orders and did the driving. You are in a cabin which belongs to one of Paul's friends. It is near the San Bernadino National Forest, and not far from Toro Peak, and it is five thousand feet in the air. You've been winking off and on like a weak light. You've had a doctor. He's a good doctor, but he doesn't have a license in this country. He also is a friend of Paul's. He works for a vet in Indio.

"He did a lot of prodding and disinfecting and stitching, and he put in some drains. He doesn't ask questions and he doesn't report gunshot wounds. He says you are fantastically tough, and you took the bullet in a very good place. If he had you in a hospital, he would open you up. And it may still come to that. We'll wait and see. He'll be back tomorrow. We have provisions, firewood, water and an old jeep. There isn't a living soul within six miles of us. You are not to move, for any reason. He gave you some shots. Paul went back. When you want the improvised bedpan, shout. It seems you might live. In the meantime, you are a big nuisance to everybody."

I closed my eyes to think it over. I drifted away and came back.

"Are you still there?"

"I think so."

"You can have some hot broth, if you think you can keep it down, and if I can make that damned wood stove work."

"I could keep it down."

She had to wake me up for the broth. She wanted to feed it to me, but after she got my head braced up, I was able to handle it.

"What about... have they said anything? Have you heard any news?"

"Strange news, Travis. Television executive slain in gun battle over beach girl, at millionaire's canyon home. Beauty contest winner slain by stray shot in bedroom gun battle. Charles "Chip"

Fertacci, skin-diving instructor, held in connection with the dual slaying, found unconscious in bloody bedroom. All very sexy and rancid, dear."

"No mystery guest sought?"

"And no Venezuelan heiress either, according to the news. But they could be looking."

"You can be damn well certain they are. What about Tomberlin?"

"Oh, he's in the hospital. Smoke inhalation and nervous collapse after successfully fighting a fire that broke out mysteriously in his photo lab. It seems he is a hobby photographer. The official diagnosis is that it was some sort of spontaneous combustion of chemicals. Minor fire damage.

No report of anything missing."

"They don't tie it up with the other story at all?"

"Just that it was a coincidence it happened the same night at the same house, and that Tomberlin's collapse might be partially due to shock and learning of the murders."

"When is Paul going to come back?"

"He didn't say. But he'll be back."

I started to take the last sip of the broth, and without warning my teeth tried to chatter a piece out of the rim of the mug. My arm started twitching and leaping, and she reached and grabbed the mug. I slid down and curled up, wracked with uncontrollable chills. She tucked more blankets around me. Nothing helped.

She went over and put logs on the fire, came back and took off the khaki jacket and came into the bunk with me. With tender and loving care, she wrapped me up in her arms, after unbuttoning the front of her pyjama coat to give more access to her body warmth. I got my arms around her, under the pyjama jacket, and held her close, my face in her sweet hot neck, shuddering and huffing and chattering. I was not a little old man. I had slipped back to about ten years old. I felt cold and scared and dwindled. This was the mama warmth, sweet deep musk of hearty breasts and belly, of big warm arms enclosing, and soft sounds of soothing, down in the nest of wool. At last the shudderings came less frequently. I was waiting for the next one when I toppled off into sleep.

I awoke alone in stillness, red coals on the hearth, a white of moonlight patterning the rough floor. I listened until I found the slow heavy breathing mingled with that silence, and traced it, and found it came from above me. At the foot of the bunk I could make out the rungs of the ladder fastened there. I swung my legs up and sat up. At the count of three I made it to a standing position. I held onto the edge of the upper bunk. She had her back to me, pale curls on pale pillow. The khaki jacket was on the straight chair. I was nine feet tall, and I had been put together by a model airplane nut. I got the jacket on, realizing it was not a case of gaining strength, but merely using what I had for what I had to do, before the strength ran out.

I made the door, opposite the fireplace. I leaned on the frame and slid the bolt over. It creaked as I let myself out. Porch boards creaked under my feet. There were no steps, just a drop of a few inches to stony ground. It was a pale landscape on the far side of the moon, sugar stones and a tall twist of pines and silence. Something far off made a sad sad cry.

I braced my back against one of the four by fours that held up the porch roof. Huge and virile project for a hero. Relief in the night, a stream to arch and spatter, small boy's first token of virility. As I finished the porch creaked again and she said, "You fool! You absolute and utter idiot!"

"How high are we?"

"Five thousand feet. Come back inside."

"What makes that mournful sound, Connie?"

"Coyotes. Come back inside, you burro."

"I can make it."

But I probably wouldn't have. I put a lot of weight onto those big shoulders. She sat me down, took the jacket, swung my legs in, tucked me in.

"If you want anything, wake me! Understand?" She laid the back of her hand on my head. She made a snort of exasperation and climbed back up her ladder. She flounced around up there, settling herself down.

"McGee?"

"Yes dear."

"You are muy macho. You have to be the he-mule. Too much damned pride. That pride can kill you, the way you are now. Let me help you."

"I'm not going to die."

"How do you know?"

"I keep remembering how you cured my chill. If I was going to die, I wouldn't have that on my mind."

"God help us all. Go to sleep."

The little doctor came in an old Ford in the late afternoon, roaring up the final grade in low. He had a leathery frog-face, and it was part of the deal that he did not give his name. He asked questions about fever, appetite, elimination. He inspected the wounds. He made clucking sounds of satisfaction. He bandaged again. He left more pills. He said he would be back. He would skip one day and then come back.

On the following afternoon I was stretched out on a blanket on the side yard in my underwear shorts when I heard another car come up that last pitch. It sounded like more car than the little doctor had. Connie brought Dominguez and another man around the corner of the cabin and out to my blanket.

"See him?" she said. "Disgusting. He said weak men have to have meat. I drove that foul jeep to Indio. I bought four steaks. He ate two for lunch."

"How do you feel, amigo?" Paul asked.

"Perforated."

"Permit me to introduce Senor Ramon Talavera." Talavera was a slim dark-haired man, with a Spanish pallor, a dark and clerical suit. I hesitated and then held my hand out to him. His hesitation was longer than mine, and then he bent and took it.

Paul turned to Connie. "If you don't mind, chica." She plumped herself down on the corner of the blanket, affixed her stretch-pants legs Buddha style and said defiantly, "I sure as hell do
Page 200

mind. What do you think I am? The criada around here?"

Paul looked inquiringly at Talavera. The pale man gave a little nod of agreement. Paul got two fat unsplit chunks from the woodpile, and they used them like stools. Connie handed cigarettes around.

Paul said, "It could be a mistake, but from what Connie said to me, I thought it would be wise to bring Ramon here to talk to you."

I looked at the pale man and said, "You have my sympathy in the loss of your sister and your friends."

"Thank you very much, sir."

"I think I know what you want to know, Mr. Talavera. Tomberlin wanted to stop Mineros'

activities. He knew that, because of past history, he could make Mineros lose his head if he could bring him face to face with Carlos Menterez. If Mineros killed Carlos and was caught, it solved the problem. If Carlos killed Mineros, it solved the problem. Tomberlin had two people planted down there. Miguel Alconedo, on Menterez's staff, and Almah Hichin, his mistress. I imagine he got word to them to try to take care of Mineros. Tomberlin used the collection of gold figures as a smoke screen. He is a very devious man. Almah Hichin talked Taggart into helping Miguel kill those four people. Then Tomberlin began to worry I think, about the reliability of Almah and Miguel. He sent people down-Fertacci and the beach girl-to deliver an order to Miguel to kill the Hichin woman and escape in the boat. They booby-trapped the boat. Tomberlin's orders were given through Claude Boody."

"Who is dead," Talavera said gently. "We got word that one of the men who killed them was on the way up from Mexico to sell things to Tomberlin. We approached Tomberlin. He did not know anything about anything, but he promised to cooperate. When he was contacted, he let us know at once. We tricked the man out of the gold, but we missed him. When he made contact to sell the last piece, I had the honor of being selected to go and deal with him." He looked into my eyes. "I understand he was your friend?"

"He was. He didn't know there would be a woman aboard. He had been sold an entirely false story about the whole thing. Almah Hichin was a sly woman. She made me believe she was telling me the whole truth by only telling me a part of it, in great detail."

"Your friend, Taggart, tried to tell me these things, but it was too late by then. A sister can be the most special person one can have, Senor McGee."

"He tried a bad gamble and it went wrong. There's been too much blood since then. It happened a long time ago, Talavera, and I have lost interest in it."

"Thank you. These other things you say, are they guesses?"

I held my hand out. "Boody burned my hand to be certain I was unconscious. But I wasn't. I listened to Boody talk to Fertacci about these things. I was able to fill in the blanks. I took a chance and knocked their heads together. I think Boody's heart gave out. The girl got a gun and started shooting at me. She missed with three shots from close range. I tried to knock her down with Boody's gun without killing her. But it threw high and to the right. So I disabled Fertacci and set the scene and let myself out. Neither Fertacci nor Boody nor the girl had the slightest
Page 201

idea who I could be. The girl remembered seeing me at Puerto Altamura. It made them very nervous. And I think that having Chip Fertacci in custody is going to make Tomberlin very nervous."

"Bail was set at fifty thousand," Paul said, "and he was released today. I have a strong feeling that young man is going to disappear."