Kiss and Kill (14 page)

“I look at you yokels and I feel sort of envious. You're going to learn what it's all about—life, death, the whole bit. You, Burgess. How do you feel?”

Barney felt light-headed and enraged, as though he had walked professionally onstage in a play where nobody knew his lines and all gestures were amateurish.

“I feel curious,” said Barney. “How did you locate us?”

“Still on the job, eh? Like the girls in Pompeii who kept up the good work till the lava came pouring in on them. I admire the spirit.” So Garner was not an ordinary hood. In spite of the pounding in his ears, Barney wondered just who he and his companions were. It was a funny deal. “It's like this,” Garner said, as if he were enjoying himself. “My partners were getting spooked. Got to seeing unfriendly natives under every culvert. So me, I dropped off in Durango to make sure we weren't being followed. I saw this car cruising along, man and a girl in front, another man in back. Queer combination, two guys and a girl; not the usual bag of tourists. So I caught a cab, took a close look at the guy in back, and recognized Tollman from the picture in his wife's pocketbook. Left the cab and heisted a car in front of the hotel—some tourist from Oregon is hollering bloody murder to the cops right now. I spotted you in that station just over the mountains and got the scene. You were checking out the filling stations. Clever, I thought, because that Buick's a gas-eater. I pushed over the mountains and stopped at that station back there. The manager had me figured for a cut-up when I slipped him a bill and told him not to queer my joke. I was positive you'd pull in there to get your bearings. And, sure enough … So I got the drop on the little lady, and here I am. And here you are.”

The others did not know they were being followed, thought Barney; they were just uneasy. That meant Liz Tollman was in no greater danger than before—but how much danger was that? One thing was certain: if Garner succeeded in killing them, Liz would die, too.

Barney was now thinking with great clarity; the pounding had stopped. It was growing dark; with darkness there would come chances too foolhardy for daylight. The thing, then, was to keep the killer talking.

“Who shot the dog?” he asked curiously.

“One of my partners. Green's got ulcers and a bad case of jitters. Can't stand noise or waiting. He convinced himself that Liz was leading us on the wrong track.” He laughed again. “You don't mind me calling her Liz, Eddie? We've been together so long we've got sort of informal. Even intimate, you might say.”

Ed stiffened beside Barney, then deliberately relaxed. Barney applauded him silently: Ed was keyed for action, but under control. That meant that, when the time came, he could be counted on to help.

“But why the dog?” Barney asked.

“Green started slapping Liz around, even though he knew she'd told the truth. He was only mauling her because his belly hurt. The dog broke loose and bit Green. We let him kill the dog. What the hell? It calmed him down for a while.”

Liz in a car with madmen. A nightmare. He was glad she was not his wife. He could imagine what was going on inside Ed Tollman.

“Did the other killings calm Green, too?”

“Oh, I did those. Slow down here, Claire.”

Claire braked as they approached a dirt track intersecting the highway. A finger climbed Barney's spine; it wasn't dark enough yet. Two peons came down the track with banana-laden burros.

“Keep driving,” said Garner; and Barney felt better. He began to work his muscles without moving, tightening, loosening, getting ready.

The road led away from the coast and climbed the foothills. Garner continued talking in a friendly tone that made Barney wonder. The man seemed sane enough, but then the curtain would part to reveal his twisted values. Barney tried to analyze the type of disorder; he was reluctant to make his move without knowing how Garner would react. But he could make no sense out of him.

Garner felt good. People had always drawn away from him before they could discover how warmly full of love he was. Only at such a time as this, when he held a gun in his hand, could he hold their attention and convince them that he was their friend.

“You killed them?” the tough-faced man asked. “The old couple in Colorado, the driver, all of them?”

Garner wondered if the detective knew. Some people were aware that they were part of his dream, and that made them real, as real as he was.

“All of them,” said Garner amiably.

“But why?”

Why? That proved the detective didn't know after all, and Garner felt sad with the dissolution of the dream. The dream destroyed the fears that had gutted his life. Fear that he would not graduate from pharmacy school … fear that he would lose his job in the drugstore … fear that the other boarders were searching his room while he was at work. The dream had begun when the girl came in with a faked prescription, but she was so beautiful that he filled it anyway. She came back several times; he had kept thinking, I will ask her for a date next time. But the time never came; the police arrested him and she testified at the trial and he was sentenced to two years. On the inside, he found himself again disdained and condemned to associate only with other pushers. And even these scorned him, for he had been stupid. But he listened, and learned how to cut the stuff, and how to build up a clientele. He found where to get the pure H, and where there were men who supplied capital, provided someone else took the risk. And he had thought: I have it coming to me, by God.

He met Green and Brown when he got out. They smoked big cigars and wore suits with visible hand stitching. They belonged to country clubs and had summer homes and sleek women and sent their kids to exclusive schools. They held him in contempt, but it didn't matter. They would gamble a hundred thousand a piece on the chance of making a million; that was what mattered.

“But then,” Garner said to his new friends, “I saw a way to avoid the risk to myself. I met a young guy on the beach who'd done time for auto theft. The stuff was here in Mexico; all he had to do was deliver the money and pick the stuff up. He could speak Spanish—seems he'd been raised by a Mexican couple in California—”

“Johnny? I didn't know—”

Abruptly the woman shut her mouth. Her hair was piled on top of her head. Some of it fell down like gold. Garner felt a dampness on his palms. He reached out and touched the hair with his fingers. Then he pinched her neck—gently at first, then harder. He felt her skin go slick, but she did not move. He reached over and slipped his hand into her blouse and between her breasts. Her heart thumped against his palm. He withdrew his hand. This was not the time: the detective was watching. After he was dead, Garner would make her desire him, as she must have desired Johnny Talbot.

Garner had been waiting behind the adobe wall. The station wagon was hidden in the cactus; in it was the refrigerator which had carried the money into Mexico. He was waiting with the money repacked in a suitcase identical to the one Johnny carried. Then Johnny had come striding around the wall. He set down his old suitcase and began to open the new one.

“It's all there,” said Garner. “You'd better get back to your tourists.”

“They don't mind waiting,” Johnny said. “Got 'em eating out of my hand.” He laughed and finished unbuckling the case. “Couple of the chics make a handful. It's going to be a nice trip.” Johnny lit a cigarette and squatted there, looking down at the money. “I don't suppose you've thought of taking this and to hell with buying the stuff.”

Garner recalled Green's and Brown's eyes, four pieces of stone. “We wouldn't enjoy it long. Better run through what you're supposed to do.”

Johnny recited in a bored tone, “I stay with the group till we hit Cuernavaca. There I call the number you gave me and arrange a meet. He gives me the white stuff and I give him the green stuff. I bring it back and meet you in the Monterey bus station. You stow the stuff in the refrigerator and ship it across the border. And that's it.”

“Right.”

Johnny squinted at him. “You make it pretty complicated. Why?”

Garner did not reply. The truth was, he was afraid to touch the stuff at all. A customs broker had brought the refrigerator in, not knowing that the insulation had been replaced by money. Another would take it out, equally ignorant of the fact that twenty-five pounds of pure heroin lay between the enameled walls. Only twice would Garner handle the stuff: when he put it into the refrigerator, and when he turned it over to Brown and Green.

In Monterey the refrigerator had stood in Garner's rented apartment, unplugged, empty, and waiting, for three weeks. Then he had gone to their meeting place in the bus station. For three days he waited; then, to avoid arousing the suspicions of the ticket clerk, he had taken to walking up and down outside the station.

A week passed.

He visited the station twice a day.

Most of the time he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, seeing Green's stony eyes. “If you have any idea of making a break with this money, Garner, forget it. You wouldn't enjoy it long.” Brown had looked on silently. Brown rarely spoke. His silence was worse than Green's threats.

It had become obvious that Talbot was not coming.

In a panic Garner telephoned the contact, who told him that Johnny had been killed by a bus in San Juan del Río. Garner checked with the tour agency, which verified the story. For two days he holed up in a San Antonio hotel and sweated. He could neither eat nor sleep. On the third day he found himself staring at the sidewalk eight stories below. But then he had thought: I can always do that. Seeing Green and Brown can't be worse.

He had gone to them with the bad news.

“Stupid!” screamed Green. “The Mexican suckered you. He got the money and killed your boy to boot!”

Garner had gone back to Mexico with Green and Brown and sought out the contact. Juan Santoza did not look like a Mexican; he was very tall, fair, and blue-eyed, with an aristocratic thinness of feature. He looked at the .45 in Green's hand, shrugged, and walked out of the bar ahead of them.

“I have never seen the money,” he said in English, when they were in the car. “Not once did he produce it, though I met him three times.”

“Tell us what happened,” growled Green. Brown was driving; the Mexican sat beside him in the front seat. Green and Garner sat behind them, Green holding the automatic.

“I meet
Señor
Talbot in Cuernavaca, as is the plan,” said Santoza. “He does not have the money; he wishes to arrange a second meeting for the exchange of goods. Very well, I suggest Mexico City. But again he fails to bring the money. He is afraid, he says, that I will have friends waiting and that we will take the money and give him nothing. So I tell him to choose a place. He names San Juan del Río at such and such a time. I am there, we meet in the early morning. Again he does not bring the money.”

“Did you bring the stuff?” demanded Green.

“After the two times he fails to bring the money? He did not trust me, so I did not trust him. He said: ‘Give me the stuff and I will give you a key to where the money is.' I said, ‘Let me see the key.' He said he did not have it with him, but that he had a thing which would lead me to where he had hidden the key.

“That,
señores
, was too much. At some point a risk must be taken. I said that if he would give me the key and tell me where he had hidden the money, I would give him the stuff. Of course, I did not intend to give it to him until I had the cash, but I did not tell him that. He said he would take me to the key, but first he must say goodbye to a woman.

“When he left, I followed. I saw the bus hit him; in the confusion I searched him. I found nothing on him. I went to the hotel where he had stayed in Tula and learned that he had left without a valise. I thought that one of the other tourists had his luggage; I went back to find them, but they had gone. I could not go to the States. I sold my goods to another buyer and put it all out of my mind. This woman whom he went to say goodbye to was undoubtedly in his confidence. She has the money,
señores;
I don't know how you will get it back, but good luck.”

Green looked at Brown when the Mexican finished his story. The silent man shook his head, once.

“We don't believe you,” said Green.

“It is the truth, I swear.”

Brown stopped the car in a dark driveway, and Green ordered Garner to trade places with the Mexican. When Garner was in the front seat, Green handed him the pistol. The weight of it surprised Garner; he had never held a gun in his hand before. He rested the .45 on the back of the seat and watched Green smash the Mexican's face with his heavy fists.
Oh, the bright blood, the smack of bone on flesh
. Garner shivered with excitement.

“
Señores
!” gasped the Mexican. “I cannot change my story, for it is true!”

Green took a switchblade from his pocket and snicked it open. “You know what I'm going to do?”

“No …”

“Get your pants off and you'll find out.”

The Mexican's eyes rolled. His face was glazed with sweat. “
No
,
por favor
, I would die first!” His eyes swiveled to Garner. “Please, do not let them …”

It was then that Garner felt the .45 kick against his palm and heard a roar that deafened him. Half the Mexican's face disappeared. A red fountain gushed up and drenched everything. The Mexican's body fell over like a chopped tree, into Green's lap. Green stared down at it, then shoved the body away from him. It fell between the seats.

“Why did you shoot?”

“He didn't know anything,” Garner said.

“I was bluffing, you crazy bastard. Give me back the gun.”

Garner looked at him and wondered why he had ever been afraid of Green. But that had been before he had felt the .45 jolt against his palm and watched a living man blasted into fresh meat.