The Frighteners (32 page)

She shook her head quickly. “I come with,
por favor
. Very quiet, Antonia, stay back enough, okay?”

I frowned at her for a moment. That she knew more than she was telling was obvious. She’d led us to this vantage point without hesitation; clearly she’d been in the area before. She was keeping something from me, and any sensible pro would have strangled her on the spot rather than run the risk of having her, loaded with guns, behind him. I saw that she knew exactly what I was thinking and found it amusing. Anyway, I liked the kid, and too much suspicion can be counterproductive, and to hell with it.

“Sure,” I said. “You’d better carry this damn conspicuous hat of Cody’s for me. Next guy I impersonate, I hope he goes in for berets or small black beanies. Where do I find this cigarette-happy character?”

Antonia took the hat and rifle. Something had changed between us; my gesture of confidence had made a difference, although I couldn’t have said how.

She said, “If you make to the right,
a la derecha
, and climb only fifty meters, maybe, and progress around hill, you will see big stone with tree behind. He is there.
Vaya con Dios
,
amigo
.”

I couldn’t help remembering that the last Mexican citizen who’d bid me go with God was the one who’d sent me into this elaborate mousetrap. But you have to trust somebody; and the man was exactly where she’d said he would be. I wished for a nice dark turtleneck and some durable pants and some silent shoes, or at least just the silent shoes; but there was a considerable breeze rustling the brush and grass of the hillside, and he wasn’t really listening for footsteps. He didn’t expect to have to deal with anything close enough for him to hear it. He was just looking off to the south and west, every so often making a careful scan of mountains and valley with a pair of big binoculars, 7 x 50s by the look of them. Night glasses, suggesting that he’d been up here watching for us since before dawn; he was getting bored and tired now.

As Antonia had said, he had shoulder-length blond hair streaming out below a wide-brimmed hat, General Custer style. Well, poor Custer lost his scalp at the Little Bighorn or the Greasy Grass or whatever you want to call it. I waited for a good rushing gust of wind, pitched a pebble beyond him, and while he was half-raised looking that way, got an arm around his face from behind and cut his throat with the three-inch Russell blade, learning that the flat, little all-steel knife, while very good for concealment, became quite slippery when wet. Well, you can’t have everything.

An odd, low, warbling birdcall made me look around, still holding him. Antonia was crouched on the slope above me. 

“Make okay?” she whispered. “
Bueno
. I come down, hey?” 

I shrugged. If she wanted to see a dead man, that was her concern. Sliding down to me, she had her look, her face quite without expression, which must have taken some doing. I mean, when you sever a man’s carotid and jugular you get a lot of blood and it isn’t nice. Antonia didn’t even gulp once. She just reached out her hand for the knife I still held.

“I clean.”

“Not if you’re going to jab it into the ground like I’ve seen some dodos do it. I spent a lot of time putting a good edge on that blade.”

“You think
estúpido?
Clean with grass, okay?”

While she was busy, I planted the guy back where he’d been, seated against his rock. Checking, I found that he carried no IDs, not even phony ones. A right-hip holster held the same model four-inch-barreled Colt as I’d found in Cody’s paper-bag collection. His binoculars were kind of messy; but I found a clean handkerchief in his pocket with which to wipe them, and hung them around my neck. His hat, which had come off, I put back on his head, tipped over his eyes. His little two-way radio, fortunately, had escaped the flood; a red indicator light showed that it was turned on and, presumably, receiving, although there seemed to be nothing to receive at the moment. I hooked it onto my belt with the clip provided. Then I turned my attention to the rifle leaning against the rock beside him.

In this day of complex automatic weapons, there’s something beautifully simple-minded about a bolt-action rifle, basically just a steel tube with a removable plug at one end fastened to a piece of wood. This was a Ruger M-77 with a barrel that looked very slim and clean because there was no front sight to mar its lines; there was no rear sight either. There was only the big variable telescope, one modem accessory I’m happy to adopt since it makes long-range shooting much easier. I hoped the dead man had sighted it in carefully; there was no way for me to check it out now.

I wasn’t too happy about the caliber: .243, or 6mm. With its little, 100-grain bullet—there are lighter slugs but for a man-sized target like Horace Hosmer Cody he’d have picked the heaviest generally available-—the .243 is a marginal cartridge as far as I’m concerned, losing a lot of its punch beyond three hundred yards where a 180-grain, .30-caliber projectile is effective well past six hundred. But at least I had a rifle, which was a relief; this was not good pistol country. A half-gallon canteen of water let me rinse myself off a little better. There was also a half-full quart Thermos of coffee lying beside the green backpack in which he’d brought his gear to this viewpoint. Inside the pack I found a box of .243 cartridges, which I pocketed, 100-grainers as I’d guessed, and two sandwiches done up in neat little baggies. I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Antonia, who gave me my hat and my well-cleaned knife in return.

“Ham or cheese?” I asked.

“
Queso
,
por favor
. Here, you drink a little.”

We stood there eating the dead man’s sandwiches and passing his coffee cup back and forth since, inconsiderately, he’d only brought the one that came with the Thermos. It was callous of us, I suppose, but it had been a long, dry, hungry morning, and I’ve seen dead men before; I was only surprised that the girl could take it so casually. Most girls I’d known wouldn’t have eaten for a week after being exposed to such a horrible sight. As if reading my thoughts, she wiped her mouth and looked down at the body approvingly.

“You kill good,” she said calmly. “Like Indian. Maybe join tribe, hey?” She flashed a grin at me to show it was a joke. 

“Just waiting for an invitation,” I said. “What tribe?”

Her grin faded. “No more tribe. All fat and stupid and frighted. You, me, we make new tribe. Go warpath, scare shits from everybody, ha!”

I said, “Well, first we’d better get the hell out of here, before they start calling up their boy and get no answer.’’

She said, “Wait. You come to see Piedras Negras.
Por favor
, the little spyglass?” When I gave it to her, she peered through it for a moment. “Yes, look down there.”

She pointed. There was no village. There was only a clearing among the tumbled black blocks of stone, a small amphitheater, far below us to the south; and at first I thought I saw three fat men in formal black suits walking around it in an odd, drunken manner, which didn’t make sense. I put the liberated binoculars to my eyes. I had to give one ocular some spit and a swipe with my own handkerchief before I could focus. Then the magnified scene became clear, and I could see that the creatures waddling around the clearing weren’t men at all, but birds. Very large black birds with ugly red heads. They were pecking at some sprawling objects down there that seemed to have been pretty well picked over already.

“Let me introduce.” Antonia’s voice, from behind me, was expressionless. “
A la izquierda
, most left, is Se
ñ
or Enrique Serafin Ruiz. In back, far back, Se
ñor
 Bernardo Bustamente, who try to run away but not enough fast. More
a la derecha
, right, and more closer, Señor Eloy Miera. And most right, Señor Santos Delgado, who seem to have lose the head,
que lastima
.  . . ."

I studied the distant scene thoughtfully through the liberated binoculars. Instinct told me that casual was the way to play it; the kid was watching me and, pretty tough herself, she wasn’t going to respect a man who got all upset about a few dead bodies.

I said, “Well, you can’t say Arturo isn’t a man of his word. He was paid to direct us to the current place of residence of those truck drivers; and there they are. I suppose that’s what Will Pierce and his Millie saw when they drove in there, although the bodies were fresher then. ”

“S
í
, much more fresher, much more
zopilotes
eating; more
cuervos
—crows. Very disgusting sight, I think. Horrible, yes? Big joke of Arturo. He say so-proud Yankee woman much
hist
é
rico
, much
vomito
, much fonny, much scream and sob.
‘Fuck your lousy guns,’
she scream, '
get me out of this dreadful country.
’ ”

So much for the theory that Pierce had found a clue here. All he’d found was a charnel yard that had turned his handsome, ambitious lady inside out—there would have been a solid black mass of scavengers on the bodies back then, ripping and tearing—and transformed her into a sick, frightened creature concerned only with home and safety. There’s a breed of civilized predator that can perpetrate all kinds of ruthless atrocities as long as there’s no blood involved; however, faced with true, gory, deadly ruthlessness, these dainty menaces, male or female, invariably react by losing their lunches and scrambling for the nearest exit.

It appeared that Arturo, whose humble abode Mrs. Charles had scorned, had followed the couple to see the result of his big joke and had undoubtedly found it most satisfying. Yielding to his lady’s panic, Will Pierce had renounced all hope of retrieving the lost arms—with the drivers as dead as Medina and unable to reveal the hiding place, it wasn’t much of a hope anyway. Knowing that they were probably under surveillance, he’d fled with her south to Mazatlan meaning to swing east through Durango and Torreon where they could pick up the main highway back north to El Paso and so complete the detour around the area in which the insurgentes operated. However, Mondragon had followed, and they hadn’t made it. Scratch one William Walter Pierce, elderly and susceptible and not excessively honest, and one Millicent Charles, whose stomach hadn’t been as strong as her ambition.

Antonia had some pertinent questions to answer, of course, but this wasn’t the time to ask them. Instead I asked, “Can you find me a spot from which I can study the whole mountainside? I want to see if there are any of this character’s friends stationed around here.”

“Yes, sure, you follow.”

Scrambling along behind her, I noted that she was pretty well loaded down with firearms now, having quietly appropriated the dead man’s revolver, which seemed fair enough, since I had his rifle. She found me a better vantage point with good cover near the top of the knoll. It let me survey most of the big bowl through which the molten lava had poured before spilling over into the valley below. I couldn’t locate the source of the flow; erosion had pretty well ground down these mountains, leaving no easily recognizable cones or craters. Well, I wasn’t hunting volcanos. But it was Antonia who spotted the next watcher, about a half mile along the slope, when he got careless with his binoculars.

“I’m afraid he’s a dark-faced local lad,” I said after making a careful study through the 7x50s. “And that
bandido
mustache. No open season. Find me a
gringo
, please.”

“Yes, I think
Mexicano
. ’’ Antonia lowered the little telescope. “But if he hunt you, why you care?”

I said, ‘I’ve got a boss in Washington, sure; but locally I’m working for a gent with a certain amount of clout. . . influence. He can help me get away with a reasonable amount of rough stuff; and nobody on this side of the border is going to worry too much if a bunch of Yankee thugs, who’re probably here illegally, and who’re certainly carrying illegal arms, and undoubtedly engaged in illegal activities, go and get themselves quietly terminated. Too bad about them. As you say, que las-tima, what a crying shame. But we’ve got four Mexican corpses over there already. To be sure, they weren’t real solid citizens, and they died running guns for the revolution, but I’d better not crowd my luck, or the tolerance of my
patr
ó
n
, by giving him too much additional Mexican blood to wipe off the record. If that character over there was coming at me with hostile intentions—like the karate lady in the motel in Hermosillo—I wouldn’t hesitate to take him out; but as long as I can pick and choose I’ll keep on hunting the
extranjeros
and let the
nativos
go.” I glanced at her. “That must have been quite a massacre down there. I suppose I should have realized that Medina wasn’t going to trust those truck drivers to keep their traps shut after they’d helped him hide the arms, no matter what they promised and how much he paid them. Fine old custom. Hell, the legendary buccaneers of the Spanish Main always slaughtered the crews that helped them bury their treasure chests.”

There was a little pause; then Antonia said, “Jorge gorgeous man but not much smart. Trust anybody. Other peoples must think for him always. Sooch a beautiful baby, my Jorge.”

I was a little startled. I suppose I’d assumed right along that Jorge Medina, kind of a shadowy figure, had been a moderately clever operator who, even in death, had outsmarted his murderers by withholding from them the merchandise they wanted so badly, the weapons he’d acquired as agent for Will Pierce. But apparently I’d credited Señor Medina with more brains than he’d possessed.

I said, “So hiding the arms was your idea.”

She laughed shortly. “Hey, I sit in Jorge’s peekup when they talk. I look at tall sneaky
pol
í
tico
, so much handsome, so much stupid, so much ambitious, so much greedy. I think he now crying big tears inside because he must pay first-money to Jorge or there will be no weapons. I see he will never pay second-money like promise, not with other men to help him, no way, Jose. Take arms, laugh at my poor foolish Jorge. Maybe kill.” She shrugged. “I must protect, okay?”