The Frighteners (7 page)

They were in there. It was another big-enough chamber, for a can, reasonably clean for Mexico, where surgical sterility is not considered essential to the process of elimination. They faced me from between the toilet and the urinal, which wasn’t the usual kind of one-man porcelain plumbing but a tiled trough built around the comer into which a faucet poured a small stream of water, perhaps to encourage reluctant kidneys by its example.

I stepped inside after again making sure that no one was about to jump me from behind the door. I noted that a single golden lock had at least detached itself from Gloria’s perfect hairdo and fallen into her face, which was pale and frightened.

“Drop your gun and close the door, you dirty murderer!” said the young man behind her.

There was no hurry. I held on to the .38 and let the rest-room door close behind me. There was no hurry now. If he’d been a professional, it would have been over by now, and one or two of us, maybe all three of us, would have been dead; but I’d sensed that this was an amateur operation and held my fire. There was no hurry at all. Pros shoot the instant they have a clear target; but amateurs have a terrible compulsion to chat with everyone they intend to kill.

“Drop your gun or your wife dies!” he said.

I was grateful for the reference to my matrimonial status. It reminded me of who I was here. As Matthew Helm I’d have had to keep in mind the fact that in our unsentimental outfit we never play the hostage game; and that the standing orders require us, mission permitting, to take out anyone who attempts to pull it on us, no matter how many prisoners get massacred in the process. The theory is that at the very least this makes for one idiot hostage-taker fewer in a world that’s too full of them; and perhaps if we demonstrate enough times that it doesn’t work on us, they’ll stop trying it on us.

But here I wasn’t Helm, sometimes called Eric. I was Cody, sometimes known as Buffalo Bill, a totally different character driven by totally different motives. Gloria was staring at me in a pleading way, her expression begging me to do nothing rash that would bring her a bullet in the back. Her face was shiny-wet with fear.

I could see enough of the man to get a general idea of his appearance, although his height remained a question mark since he was crouching behind her for cover with his left arm across her throat. He seemed to be a rather handsome young fellow with brown eyes—I could see only one past Gloria’s head, but I assumed the other matched—and more dark hair than seemed necessary. He was wearing blue running shoes, clean blue jeans, a navy blue turtleneck, and a light blue windbreaker, pretty much the same color-coordinated outfit as worn by our young man Greer who’d come for me in the mountains. The uniform of the day for bright young men used to involve gray flannel and Florsheims; now it’s blue denim and Adidas. I couldn’t see the weapon he was poking into Gloria’s back, but her expression made it clear that he wasn’t bluffing with a ballpoint pen.

“Drop the gun, Cody! I won’t say it again!”

He’d already said it three times, and now he’d called me Cody. Okay, if he didn’t know the real Cody, presumably the real Cody didn’t know him, so it was safe to ask.

I asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Mason Charles, Junior. Yes, Charles, like in Millicent Charles. You met her, she said you’d had dinner once with Will Pierce and her and disapproved of her. Well, she didn’t like you either. I suppose that made it easier for you when you sent your machete-wielding goons to slaughter your partner and any witnesses who might be along; maybe you even instructed them specifically to get rid of her, too. . . ."

“Mason Charles!” That was Gloria. “Of course! Millie talked a lot about you. . . . Look, I’m Gloria, Gloria Pierce, well, Gloria Cody now. Please, you’re hurting me with that gun!”

The young man’s face was grim, what I could see of it. “I know who you are, and I don’t think my mother and you did a lot of friendly chatting about her offspring—in fact, you refused to meet us after they decided to get married, didn’t you? You weren’t going to have anything to do with her brats, isn’t that what you said? You hated her and gave her a hard time even before they . . . even back when she was just your father’s secretary. Don’t try to kid me you and she were cozy pals now that she’s dead!”

Gloria said desperately, “You’re wrong, I never hated. . .!"

“Well, whatever you called it, you snooted her all to hell and did your best to break things up between her and your pop. . . . I don’t know where you fit into this. I do know that you did your best to make my mother unhappy while she was alive, and now that she’s dead you’ve married the man who had her and your dad murdered, which makes you either pretty naive or pretty callous. Either way you’re not entitled to much consideration in my book; but if you behave and keep your mouth shut, maybe you won’t get hurt.”

His name had rung no instant bells for me, although I’d been told how Gloria’s male parent had died and with whom. However, the ensuing dialogue had identified the young man fairly well. Another case of bereavement to be laid at the door of the mysterious, machete-wielding desperados of the Sierra Madre. Apparently Mason Charles had no more faith in those simple ethnic
bandidos
than I did; but there was no way we could discuss the matter sensibly here.

I said, “Look, Charles, whatever I have or haven’t done, and I’ve got a few things buried along my back trail I wouldn’t care to have dug up, Gloria had no part in them, hear? And I assure you, one thing I haven’t done is set up my partner and your mom for murder. . . ."

“Your assurance isn’t good enough!”

“Listen to me, son!” I snapped, as Gloria winced to the jabbing pressure of the gun muzzle in her back. “I’m giving you my word that I had nothing to do with your mother’s death. . . . Hell, boy, let me finish! I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to put up my gun and turn my back on you and walk out of here—or not, if that’s the way you want it. If you like, you can shoot me at your leisure. Or you can put the piece away, apologize to the lady, and come to the table with her and I’ll buy you a beer. Or a whole damn dinner if you like, while you tell me what a bastard you think I am and what’s your reason for thinking so.” I drew a long breath. “Well, here I go. Fire at will.”

Holstering the Smith and Wesson deliberately, turning, moving to the door, I told myself that as soon as it wouldn’t interfere with the operation I was going to find the young creep again and carve him into small, bloody pieces, which I would then feed happily to some hungry Mexican hogs—but that was just me keeping myself angry enough to ignore the crawling sensations along my back as I waited for the blast of noise behind me and the bullet. No shot came. I got the door open and marched out of there. When I reached the table, I sat down gratefully and finished off my beer, wishing it were whiskey, and ordered another. I’d done what I could, at some expense to my nerves; the situation I’d left behind would have to resolve itself without me, one way or another. But she was a very lovely girl, and they don’t get shot very often by handsome young men, at least not until the two of them have had time to get acquainted.

The
carne asada
hadn’t got as cold as I’d expected; apparently the incident hadn’t taken as long as it had seemed to. I chewed my Mexican meat and waited. Presently Gloria appeared from the DAMAS side of the screen, unharmed. Young Charles appeared from the CABALLEROS side with his hands empty. I noted that he was moderately tall, although no beanpole like Buff Cody or Cody’s present impersonator. He threw a look in my direction, hesitated, and strode out the door of the restaurant. I wondered if I’d been wrong about the ownership of the red pickup; but I heard no motor start up outside. Apparently Charles had been sensible enough to park his transportation some distance away, out of sight. Well, you can’t be stupid all the time, although some folks try.

I watched Gloria approach. The color had returned to her face. The vagrant lock had rejoined the disciplined waves and swirls of her perfect hairdo. The stress damage to her makeup had been repaired.

“Okay?” I asked, rising to help with the chair.

She nodded without conviction, still shaken by her experience. I returned to my seat and picked up my knife and fork again.

I said, ‘‘I see that the Dark Avenger of the Sierra de la Madera disdained to join us.”

She said, “You took an awful risk.”

“You ain’t just kidding,
querida
."

“No. I mean with my life. Not dropping that gun when he told you to. He might have shot me!”

“That Boy Scout?” I shook my head. “Not a chance. Me, maybe, if I’d remained facing him and given him time to psych himself up and tell me all about why he had to kill me. These resolute young revengers always want you to know why you’re dying. But there was no way he could have killed an attractive girl no matter how tough he talked to her—except maybe accidentally while he was using that pistol as a cattle prod. And he’d never in the world have shot me in the back either. They have this thing about directional homicide. Murdering an eastbound gent, if you’re east of him, is okay; but if he happens to be traveling west, it’s a no-no. Once I got myself turned away from him in there I was safe as a house.”

“I see.” Her voice was dry. “That’s why you’re hitting the beer so hard, because you were so safe. Because we were both so safe.”

I glanced at her sharply. She was more perceptive than I’d thought. After a moment I grinned. “Tell me about it,” I said. “Start with the gun. What kind was it?”

“What difference. . . . I keep telling you, I hate them!”

“You hate them, but you don’t know anything about them and can’t be bothered learning. That’s not much of a hate. A real hater learns everything he can about the hated enemy.”

She said, “I think it was what’s called an automatic. Fairly large. Not one of the little pocket things. It had a fat grip that pretty well filled his hand, and he had a good-sized hand. It had a hammer but it wasn’t—what do you call it?—wasn’t cocked.”

I said, “Hey, that’s not bad for a gun-hater. It tells us that we’re dealing with, probably, one of the big 9mm auto pistols, say Beretta, or maybe Smith and Wesson. It probably holds fourteen or fifteen rounds, which is handy to know. It means he doesn’t have to reload after five or six, like with a revolver. The gun is probably double action. That means the trigger doesn’t just fire the gun, it cocks the hammer first—double action—so you don’t have to cock it with your thumb or by working the slide, which is why he didn’t bother to carry it cocked.” I was talking idly just to steady her down. I went on: “Okay. How did he get you in there?”

She licked her lips. “Well, you don’t stare at a strange man when he’s coming out of the Caballeros fixing his pants. I just started in the other door. The next thing I knew, I’d been yanked practically off my feet and dragged into the men’s room. He showed me the gun, told me to behave and I wouldn’t get hurt; we were going to wait for hubby, you, to miss me and come after me. When I started to protest, he jabbed me so hard with the gun it really hurt; I was terrified that it was going to go off against my back. It seemed like forever before we heard you knocking on the other door and calling to me.”

I said, “Good report. Now let’s try you on something hard. How did he know?”

“Know what?”

“Everything.” I shook my head irritably. “Look, we were married just a few hours ago—at least we’re supposed to’ve been married just a few hours ago—but here’s a character several hundred miles away in the wilds of northern Mexico who knows all about it. He seems to have a pretty speedy society-news service, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, we didn’t come here by private jet. He could have been at the wedding and followed. . . ."

I shook my head quickly. “No. He couldn’t have been at the wedding or he’d have known that the guy he was pointing a gun at just now wasn’t the same guy who’d stood beside you at the altar. He might have been waiting outside in his car, watching the doors of the reception hall, say, far enough away that he didn’t see Buff Cody too well when the two of you came running out in a shower of rice and drove off.”

“That’s right, he knew about the marriage; but he did accept you as the real Horace.”

I said, “If we assume that means he was there and didn’t get the news by carrier pigeon, how did he get here? We made a point of shedding all surveillance at the time you switched husbands in El Paso, remember? And we were clean as far as the border; the guy I called in Douglas said so. The chances of Charles guessing where we planned to cross and picking us up as we entered Mexico are very small; and I can swear that nobody’s been tailing us along this little twisty road, at least not without a full team of three or four or five inconspicuous, radioequipped cars that could trade off whenever there was a risk of my having noticed one of them.”

Gloria frowned. “What are you trying to say . . . Horace?”

“I’m saying this young fellow knew too damn much. He knew we were married and he knew where to find us. How did he learn all that?”

She regarded me gravely for a moment. “Even more important, how did he learn that you . . . that Uncle Buffy had arranged for Papa’s and Millie’s murders?”

I said, “You’re accepting that as the truth?”

“Shouldn’t I?” She licked her lips. “If I accept that Uncle Buffy had his . . . his frighteners, as you called them, scare me into marrying him so that he could inherit my fortune, is it unreasonable of me to accept that he had Papa killed first so he’d have a double heiress to marry, with both Mama’s old New England money and Papa’s new Texas money in my name? Besides, those terrorist tactics wouldn’t have worked as long as Papa was still alive to console and protect me. Of course . . . of course it makes Uncle Buffy out to be a terrible monster, having his best friend murdered, but we’ve already pretty well established that, haven’t we?”

I said, “Well, whatever you accept privately, publicly you’re going to have to deny hotly that here’s any possibility of your husband—me—being responsible for your daddy’s death; that’s just too ridiculous for words! Otherwise this marriage becomes totally unbelievable; you wouldn’t stay with a man you suspected of being your pop’s murderer.”