Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (4 page)

           
The Posada San Carlos had only one
drawback. The location was lovely, the rooms were comfortable, the food was
good, the service was excellent, and the prices were reasonable; but at certain
times of the day the noise in the lounge and adjoining dining room was almost
unbearable due to an electronically amplified group of musicians who didn't
seem to feel they were earning their pay unless the big windows facing seawards
were rattling in their frames, and the silverware was dancing on the
tablecloths. One thing no Mexican band really needs, anyway, is amplification.

           
They were playing now. I discovered
that there was something to be said for them after all.

           
They made conversation possible, if
the other party was close enough, without any danger of being overheard by
anyone else in the room.

           
I regarded the girl for a moment,
and said, "Naturally, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking
about."

           
She said, "You're Eric. I'm
Nicki
. The code is double negative."

           
I finished my drink and set my glass
aside. "Double negative? What does that mean?" I shook my head.
"Sorry,
Nicki
. You've got the wrong guy. My name
is Matthew."

           
"Armageddon," she said.

           
I'd started to rise. I sank back
into the big chair and lifted a finger to summon a waiter.

           
"Another martini, please,"
I shouted to him over the noise. "Anything for you?" I asked the
girl.

           
"Yes, I'd like a
margarita."

           
My previous female companion had
considered margaritas a corny tourist tipple, but then she'd had a lot of
screwy ideas. I have no objections to that cactus-juice cocktail myself,
although it's not, in my opinion, designed for serious drinking.

           
"And a margarita for the lady,
por
favor," I yelled, and watched the waiter move
away, while the waves of sound from the band washed over me rhythmically. They
weren't bad, you understand, they were just too damned loud.

           
I turned my attention to the girl
beside me. She was a reasonably sized, well-proportioned, dark-haired,
basically sound specimen of human female, but she was doing her best to hide
the fact, at least the female fact. She had a boy's haircut, or what used to a
boy's haircut before they all started letting it grow. She also had a boy's
pants on, complete with fly-pretty soon nothing will be safe from women's lib,
not even our jock-straps.

           
They were white cotton pants,
slightly flaring, and quite dirty. Her horizontally striped blue-and-white
jersey was pretty dirty, too, as were her frayed white sneakers, not to mention
the visible areas of her ankles. She obviously had no brassiere on under the
jersey, and it didn't make any difference, not because she wasn't endowed with
the customary protuberances, but because she didn't give a damn, and if she
didn't, who did?

           
She was, obviously, a product of
years of television commercials, although she'd have hated anybody who told her
so. But if enough stupid industrial magnates spend enough million dollars on tastelessly
revolting advertising, telling kids that the thing to be is clean and
sexy-using product A, of course-the brighter and more rebellious ones are bound
to figure out that the only sensible response to make to all this nauseating
propaganda is to be dirty amid sexless.

           
Actually, she wasn't a bad-looking
girl. She had a nicely rounded young figure inside the grubby pirate costume,
and a tanned, slightly snub-nosed face with clear gray eyes. The heavy, dark
eyebrows were, of course, totally
unplucked
, just as
the mouth was totally devoid of lipstick. It was a pretty good mouth, big
enough, potentially sensitive, but rather firm and disapproving now. I watched
it take a sip of the margarita magically produced by the waiter, as I tasted my
own martini.

           
"You haven't given the
countersign, or whatever you call it," the girl said.

           
"
Gotterdämnerung
,"
I said, and went on casually:

           
"He's getting doomsday as hell
in his old age, isn't he?"

           
"Oh, he's not so old," the
girl said quickly and rather defensively, as if she thought I was trying to
trick her into betraying herself, and maybe I was. "Not really."

           
"So the code is double
negative," I said.

           
"Yes, whatever that may
mean."

           
"If you were supposed to know
what it meant, he'd have told you, wouldn't he?" Actually, it was a
warning that this young lady, while working for us, was not to be trusted too
far; and that therefore any information she supplied should be corrected in
certain ways before being used as a basis for action. "What's he called?"
I asked.

           
"I've given you the word. What
more do you want?"

           
"What do we call him?" I
asked again, patiently. It was important for me to learn just how much of an
outsider I had to deal with.

           
"He's known as Mac around the
office. I never learned why."

           
"Nobody knows why," I
said. "Maybe it's his name."

           
"Nobody there knows what his
real name is."

           
I said, "You're doing fine.
Where's the ranch?"

           
"What?"

           
"The ranch, sweetheart. The
place we go to have the wrinkles ironed out after a rough assignment. Where is
it?"

           
"Just west of Tucson,
Arizona."

           
"What's behind his desk?"

           
"A chair, of course. Oh, and a
window. A bright window."

           
"Have I worked for him
long?"

           
"Yes. You were out for a while
some years ago but you came back in. You're one of his very senior
people."

           
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"I can feel one senior foot slipping into the grave as you say it."

           
"He has a lot of faith in you,
Mr. Helm."

           
"And you wonder why, don't
you?" I grinned as she didn't speak. I asked, "What did I do when I
wasn't working for him?"

           
"You were a photographer; a
photographer and journalist."

           
"Have I ever been
married?"

           
"Once. Three children, two boys
and a girl. Your wife's remarried and living on a ranch in Nevada with the
kids. Well, the oldest boy is in college somewhere on the West Coast. UCLA, I
think."

           
I hadn't known that. In the
business, it's best to stay clear of people you love or
somebody'll
get the bright idea of using them against you.

           
"You've done a lot of
homework," I said. "If you're
Nicki
when
I'm Eric, who are you when I'm Matthew Helm?"

           
"Martha," she said.
"Martha Borden. No relation to Lizzie with the ax. Do I gather that the
inquisition is over, Mr. Helm?"

           
"For the time being."

           
"You're a suspicious man."
She was silent for a little and went on: "And a vicious one. You didn't
have to kill that man."

           
"That's right," I said.
"I didn't have to. He could have lived a long, happy, fruitful life. The
choice was his. He chose to shoot at me."

           
"So you dumped him overboard,
towed his boat away, and left him out there to drown!"

           
I looked at her grimly. I couldn't
get away from them, it seemed. Having just got rid of one who made fine
distinctions between birds and birds, I'd acquired one who made fine
distinctions between homicides and homicides: shooting was apparently okay but
drowning was terrible. Or perhaps it was just unsuccessful shooting that was
morally acceptable, while successful drowning wasn't.

           
"Poor fellow," I said.
"If only he'd managed to blow a hole through me with his cute little 7mm
Magnum,
nobody'd
have hurt a hair of his cute little
head. My heart bleeds for him. But you didn't conic all the way to
Mexico
just to sympathize with unsuccessful
murderers, I presume."

           
Her lips, innocent of lipstick, were
tightly compressed. "Mr. Helm, just because you're shot at doesn't give
you the right-"

           
I said, "Honey, you're getting
tiresome. How many times have you been shot at?"

           
"Well-"

           
"Wait till somebody takes a
crack at you before you start telling people what kind of patient and
long-suffering targets they're supposed to be. Anyway, who's talking about
rights? It's a practical matter,
Nicki
. The man shot
at me six times today. He missed, but he had quite a few cartridges left. He
probably had instructions from somebody-it would be interesting to know who-to
keep trying until he got me. But unless he's a hell of a lot better swimmer
than I think, he won't be trying anymore. It's as simple as that. Now tell me
what I'm supposed to do that I'll be able to do a lot better without an eager
rifleman breathing down my back trail."

           
She drew a long breath. "Well,
okay. You're supposed to get to a reasonably safe phone as soon as
possible."

           
I regarded her narrowly. "You
were sent all the way down here just to tell me that?"

           
"You're not supposed to call
his special number. Call the office number and ask for him. There's a
reason."

           
"But you can't tell me what it
is?"

           
She shook her head. "I don't
really know."

           
"How soon is as soon as
possible? I can't call from here; there's only one phone in the village and one
at the hotel desk, and both are too damn public. I either call from somewhere
in the city of
Guaymas
proper, if I can find a phone
and get a US connection, or I wait until I'm across the border, a
two-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive. And if I head north tonight, I may be stopped
by the Mexican authorities who want to ask me questions about an empty boat I
found drifting out in the Gulf. Anyway, I don't think I can pick up my boat at
the marina this late. I'd have to leave it-"

           
"No," she said,
"don't do that."

           
I grinned. "I didn't think he'd
want me to leave that damned little nautical hotrod after the trouble he went
to plant it on me."

           
"And you'd better not
antagonize the Mexican authorities. I don't think a few hours are critical
right now."

           
"Okay, I'll plan to leave in
the morning, then. Tell me one thing, did he expect an attempt on my
life?"

           
"I don't think he expected it,
but he told me to make contact with you at once if I saw one made."

           
"That," I said, "is
expecting it in my book. I had it figured otherwise, but I'm generally wrong
when I try to second-guess him. But he might have warned me."

           
Her gray eyes were cool.
"You're a pro, aren't you, Mr. Helm? Always alert, always prepared, like a
Boy Scout? Are you supposed to need a warning to keep your eyes open?"

           
I grinned. "And if no attempt
on my life was made, Miss Borden? What were your instructions then?"

           
"I was supposed to contact you
in another day or two, anyway."

           
"But if I was shot at or otherwise
attacked, you were supposed to move right in with instructions. Well, that
figures. He'd know that would change my plans and he'd want you to catch me
before I took off to report the incident in the normal manner. How long have
you been here?"

           
"Two weeks."