Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 3, March, 1953

The Sleeper Caper by Richard S. Prather

Shell Scott went to Mexico City to investigate a racing fix — but he found himself getting ready to hill a filler.

You take a plane from the States and head south; a few hours later and up more than seven thousand feet, where the air is thin and clear, you land at Mexico City and take a cab to the Hipódromo de las Américas where the horses run sideways, backwards, and occasionally around the seven-furlong track, and you go out to the paddock area after the fourth race.

You see a big, young, husky, unhandsome character with a Mexico City tan, short, prematurely white hair sticking up in the air like the end of a clipped whisk broom, and his arms around the waists of two lovely young gals who look like Latin screen stars, and you say, “Geez, look at the slob with the two tomatoes.”

That’s me. I am the slob with the two tomatoes, and the hell with you.

Five days ago I’d left Los Angeles and my one-man agency, “Sheldon Scott, Investigations,” and flown to Mexico for my client, Cookie Martini, an L.A. bookmaker. A big one. You may sneer at the thought of my taking a bookie for a client. Okay, sneer. As far as I’m concerned, people are going to gamble whether there are bookies or not. If they can’t bet on the nags, they’ll bet on the number of warts on some guy’s nose. Cookie Martini was at least an honest bookie, and his money was clean. In the last year or so he’d started booking bets on tracks outside the States: France, South America — and Mexico City. He and some other books taking Mexico City bets had recently been clipped for nearly three hundred thousand dollars. Cookie figured that too many longshots were coming in, too many sleepers, and he suspected a fix. So he’d hired me to find out if anything smelled here at the Hipódromo. It smelled. And it was starting to look as if a guy could get killed just sniffing.

“I wonder where Pete is?” Vera asked.

Vera was the tomato on my left, and I had to reach way down to put my arm around her. She was only five feet tall, but that still made her a head taller than Pete. Pedro Ramirez, her husband, was one of the season’s leading riders at the Hipódromo, even though he was still an apprentice.

“He’ll be here in a minute, Vera,” I said.

He was a few minutes late, and we were to meet him here and wish him luck. Pete was riding Jetboy, the solid favorite in the fifth race coming up, and it was a big race for him. He’d started the day with a total of thirty-eight wins behind him and won the second race. One more winner and he’d lose his “bug,” his apprentice’s two-kilo weight allowance, and become a full-fledged jockey. It was important in another way, too. He was supposed to throw the race.

Elena Angel squeezed my right arm. “Here he comes, Shell.”

For a moment, I just enjoyed the squeeze. This Elena was married to nobody and that pleased me hugely. She was tall, blackhaired, with creamy skin and what I thought of simply as “Mexican” eyes. Dark eyes, soft, big, shadowed eyes with both the question and the answer in them. And her body could best be described with words that are pornographic.

I gave Elena a squeeze to make us even — actually, that particular squeeze put me way ahead — and looked to my left. I could see Pete walking toward us fast from the Jockey’s Room, practically sprinting. I always got a kick out of him when he was in a hurry — unless he was on a horse. He was only about four feet tall, wiry, a man of twenty-four, but he still looked like a kid. A tough kid. A kid who’d haul off and slug you in the knee if you cracked wrong.

When he got close, I said, “Hi, champ. I’m sinking the roll this trip.”

He grinned, jaws working while he flashed white teeth. Pete was nervous, high-strung, like a thoroughbred, and he constantly chewed little candy-coated Chiclets.

“Si,” he said. “You sink it all, Shell. This one is a shoo-in. This one, I lose the bug for sure.”

He spit out his gum and fished in his pocket for the pack, shook two white Chiclets out into his small palm. “Dio, they go fast,” he said in surprise. “I thought I had a full box.” He shrugged. “Gum?” He tossed one cube into his mouth and held out his hand.

The girls didn’t chew. I took the gum, started to pop it into my mouth, and stopped when I saw Pete’s face. I’d just noticed that his lips were puffed and the side of his jaw was swollen.

“What happened, Pete?” I asked. “You kiss a horse?”

He stopped grinning. “I kiss a fist. Jimmy Rath’s.” He saw the hot anger boil up in me at mention of the name, and he added, “I fix him. Don’t worry. Sometime I fix him with a baseball bat. Anyway, I fix him good when I boot Jetboy in.”

I looked toward the oval walking ring. Jimmy Rath was there with another guy about my size. I took a step toward them but Elena and Vera both hung onto my arms and Pete said, “Relax, Shell. So what do we prove this way? When I boot this one home, I’m through for the day. I come up to your table, and you can stand right behind me when I spit in his eyes. I don’t need no bodyguard. Anyway, Rath’s just Hammond’s stooge. Hammond, he’s back of it.”

I knew what Pete meant. We both knew it, and everybody knew it, but proving it was another thing. When Cookie Martini sent me down here he’d given me a letter to Pete, and Cookie told me he’d checked and there wasn’t a more honest jock in the business than Pete Ramirez. I’d watched Pete race Sunday, and met him afterwards. I told him what I was here for, laid it on the line. Pete was, if anything, more interested in cleaning up any mess here than I was. Like a lot of Mexican kids born in the poor outlying states, he’d had it tough as a kid. Now he was a jockey starting to make the grade and dreaming the big dream: a fine house, clothes — and a hundred pairs of shoes. Racing was his job, the center of his dream. Pete wanted it to be clean — and let the best man win.

And, Pete said, jocks were throwing races. He couldn’t prove it but he knew it was happening because he could ride alongside the other jocks and see them pulling leather, holding their mounts back. Sometimes owners gave their jocks instructions that their horse wasn’t to finish in the money, but Pete said this other thing was different; it happened too often, to the wrong horses. And Pete had heard soft-talk, rumors of fixes and payoffs and threats against jocks who weren’t supposed to win. Almost always it was the favorite supposed to lose, and a longshot that actually won.

Pete had nosed around, questioned the other jocks; I’d done a pile of routine legwork in Mexico City, checking the books I could find, talking to horseplayers, trying to get a lead to who was putting the fixes in. The picture was pretty conclusive: at the top was a fat guy named Arthur Hammond whom everybody seemed to be scared of. He was from the States, had once been a trainer, but was ruled off the tracks for life because of shady practices. His retinue was a little mug named Jimmy Rath, and usually a couple of heavies. Hammond occupied the same table at the track every day. He’d been in a few scraps with the local cops, but never went to jail, mainly because he was “like that” with a Mexican biggie named Valdez. Valdez wasn’t a politico, but he had almost as much behind-the-scenes power as the President. And Valdez always helped his pals. Always.

Jimmy Rath had got Pete alone yesterday and told him to lose the fifth race today, Thursday, for ten thousand pesos. Pete laughed at him and walked away, reporting the bribe offer to the Racing Commission and later to me. There were no witnesses or corroboration, and consequently no proof. Apparently Rath had just now made his offer again, a little differently.

I asked Pete, “When did this happen? Anybody see it?”

“No, no, of course not. He send me over to the tack room after the fourth, and boost the ante to fifteen thousand. Then he say I either lose or get taken care of. I told him to go — well, you know. That’s when he hit me, and when I wake up, he’s gone.”

Elena said angrily, “They ought to do something about that Rath.”

“Yeah.” As far as I was concerned, the “they” was rapidly becoming me. My fingers were sticky; I realized I still held the Chiclet in my sweaty hand, and the sugary coating was getting slippery. I stuck the gum in my coat pocket and looked toward the walking ring. Rath wasn’t there. I knew where he probably was; with Hammond and two other bruisers upstairs.

In a few minutes, Pete left to weigh in, and the three of us went back upstairs to our table high in the stands overlooking the beautiful oval track bordered by trees, green lawn cool and colorful inside it. A hundred conversations swelled around us, and a constant stream of men and women wound in and out of the tables. It was pleasant and lovely, but mainly I was looking at four men seated a few tables away from us.

Jimmy Rath was there with two bruisers — and Hammond, a thick bulge of fat puffing over his collar. Rath sitting at the same table was proof enough that Hammond was the boy fixing the races — as far as I was concerned. The Racing Commission and the cops felt differently. And it would take more than hunches to get Hammond because of his pal Valdez.

Suddenly, I stopped paying any attention to Hammond. Something was moving on my leg. Slowly, suggestively. Elena and I sat close together facing the track, and her hand was resting just above my knee, caressing me gently.

I turned and looked at her face close to mine, looked at the rest of her. She was wearing a gray skirt and a pink sweater that covered her up completely, but was still very nearly indecent. A shroud on that body would have looked indecent.

“Cuidadito!” I said. “Be Careful, baby. Two more seconds and another inch, and I’ll go screeching around the track with the horses.” She smiled, wiggled long lashes. My spine wiggled. “I will be careless,” she said. “You do not look enough at me.” Her hand moved. I moved. I had never been alone with Elena since Pete introduced us, but I knew if I ever was, there’d be plenty happening.

I put my hand over hers and said, “Honey, you want me to fall down frothing?”

“Yes,” she said. Then: “What is frothing?”

The question was gone from her eyes now; only the answer was there. I started to tell her a terrible lie about what frothing meant, but right then the high, fast notes of the bugle sounded, and the announcer said the horses were coming onto the track for the quinta carrera, the fifth race.

Elena took her hand away, and I put it back, and then the horses were passing in front of us. I saw Pete in bright red-and-white silks up on Jetboy, a black five-year-old gelding with clean, graceful lines. I expected Pete to look up and nod or wave, but he went right on past, head slightly bent.

I realized I didn’t have a bet down on Jetboy, so I went down to the mutual windows and bought two fifty-peso win tickets. Jetboy was one to two, the odds-on favorite. By the time I’d reached the table again, the race had already started. I sat down beside Elena, stuck the two tickets into my pocket and my fingers hit the sticky gum. I pulled it out, started to throw it away. Then I noticed that the white coating had melted and there was what appeared to be a hole pushed into the gum. I squinted at it, spread the thing with my fingernails. There was a hole, all right, with a white powdery stuff inside it. It hit me all at once, and I jumped to my feet just as the crowd did, except they were yelling about the race.

The horses were charging down the far side of the track, opposite the stands, and Jetboy trailed the fifth-place horse by four lengths. Usually Pete stayed closer than that, but he wasn’t riding as smoothly as he usually did. I knew damn well why, and my heart jumped up into my mouth as he started his move on the last turn. The crowd was jumping up and down as Jetboy reached the fourth spot close behind the bunched leaders. I watched Pete slumped over the saddle, riding sloppily, not like a kid with thirty-nine winners behind him — and then he tried to go through on the inside, and I bunched my hands into tight fists and almost squeezed my eyes shut. He couldn’t make it, there wasn’t room and I knew he couldn’t make it. I was yelling at the top of my lungs as I saw Jetboy practically brushing the hard, sharp wooden rail. The whip came down again, and it all happened in a second.

Jetboy leaped forward, running up on the heels of the horse ahead, stumbled, fell. I saw Pete hurtle through the air like a bundle of rags, slam into the rail — and in the sudden shocked silence of the crowd I thought I could hear him hit. He fell to the dirt track, rolled and lay still as the horse sprinted down toward the finish line. Jetboy struggled up and galloped away.

I heard Vera’s piercing scream, and then, intuitively, I looked toward Hammond’s table. He was watching the finish of the race, more interested in that than Pete’s crumpled body.

I snapped out of it, whirled and ran down the steps, sprinting toward the track. By the time I reached the rail, the huddle of doctors and officials cleared away, and Pete was lying there with a white sheet over his body and head, and there was nothing else I could do. Except break Hammond in two. Clear down the middle. Like a goddamn match-stick that didn’t have a chance.

I ran back up the steps, the fury hot in me now, my hands itching. I saw Vera lying in a faint at our table, Elena bending over her. I didn’t stop. I walked straight to Hammond’s table.

None of the men looked up until I stopped alongside them. Hammond was on my right, facing the track. Opposite me and on my left were the two musclemen, and Rath sat with his back to me. I could feel the muscles around my mouth twitching, jerking.

I put my palms flat down on the table, and Hammond glanced up, fat pink face gleaming slightly with perspiration, thick lips dry. “Yeah?” he asked.

“Don’t ‘yeah’ me, you fat bastard,” I shouted.

There was a slight movement behind me. I reached out without turning, slapping Rath backhanded, knocking him out of his chair. His head cracked against the iron rail, and he let out a yell and started to jump up.

“Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “Wait a minute. What’s this all about?”

“You don’t know, huh, Hammond? You haven’t the faintest idea!”

An empty glass in front of Hammond held several colored tickets. His program was open in front of him, Number 2 circled — a horse named Ladkin. I looked at the tote board where the winning numbers were already lighted under the “Oficial” sign: 2, 3, 6, 1. Ladkin was the winner at fourteen to one. Another sleeper. Hammond didn’t stop me as I picked up the glass and dumped out his tickets.

There were twenty fifty-peso win tickets on Number 3, and ten win tickets on Number 4. Nothing on the winner. For a few seconds it puzzled me, but only for a few seconds. Those heavy bets were enough to push the odds on Ladkin up to fourteen to one.

“Hammond,” I said, “you usually bet two horses to win in the same race? A question, fat boy.”

His pink face grew pinker and for the first time he got nasty. He leaned toward me, his face angry. “Give a listen, Scott. I heard all I care to hear right now. I know you been poking your ugly nose in the wrong holes, you hear me? You keep it up, you never will get Stateside.”

“It isn’t just a fixed race now, fat boy. It’s murder.”

“Murder, my backside! The kid made a bad ride, that’s all. Everybody makes a bad ride every now...”

I didn’t wait for more. Half a dozen partly-filled plates of food were on the table, some highballs. I lifted the edge of the table and the whole goddamn mess against Hammond’s belly. He tried to scoot back, but the plates and glasses slid off the table as it hit him, and food and liquor smeared his tan suit. The big goon on my left reached for me, but I was more concerned about Rath. His right hand jerked under his coat and before he had a chance to get whatever he was reaching for, I hit him with the side of my hand, hard, on his right shoulder. He yelled like a madman, his fingers spreading wide in pain, and then Hammond shouted, “Hold it! Rath! Kelly! Knock it off. Quick.”

I’d thought we were going to have a real knockdown brawl right there, but Hammond apparently didn’t want it that way. Rath hesitated, then obediently sat down. Kelly followed suit.

Hammond glared at me, eyes narrowed to angry slits. He brushed at the slop in his lap and said, “You’ll regret this, Scott. You’re gonna be goddamn sorry for this, you hear me?” He looked around the table and jerked his head, then got ponderously to his feet. The four of them left. Nothing else happened. It surprised me, but I didn’t worry about it. I went back to my own table.

A half hour later, after Vera had dazedly spoken with a track doctor in the emergency clinic and looked once more at Pete, we left. She didn’t break down till we reached Pete’s car. As we drove away she lay flat on the back seat, fingers clutching at the cushions and her body shaking with sobs. Vera didn’t want to go home, so we took her to her mother’s house where she’d be with her family. Then Elena and I flagged a libre, one of the taxis, drove to her apartment in Lomas Colony, and I took her to her door.

Before I left, she said, “Shell, you must be careful. It is very bad, I know, but go with care. Perhaps... another time we can be happier together.”

“Sure, Elena. I’ll keep in touch.”

She moved close to me, kissed me gently, lightly on the mouth, then went inside. In the cab again I told the driver to head toward the Prado. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, but first I was going to get my gun and strap it on. I knew I was going to get Hammond and Rath, one way or another, but I didn’t know how. Hammond had a lot of protection, power on his side, and you can’t convict a man for murder — or even fixing races — because he buys tickets on losing horses. I was still trying to figure a way to get Hammond when the cab driver yelled, “Madre Dio!” and grabbed for the wheel as if it were a life preserver. A big Packard cut close to our fender, ramming its nose ahead of the cab. The cabbie jerked the wheel all the way over to his right, jammed on the brakes so suddenly that I almost flew into the front seat. The cab skidded along the road, almost slamming into the Packard, and then shuddered to a stop.

We were on the Reforma, far from town still, and in a wooded section. Trees grew at the right of the road and there was little traffic here. One of Hammond’s bruisers was jumping from the side door of the Packard and starting back toward us, a gun in his fist. There were a couple other guys behind him.

I didn’t wait to identify them. I threw the cab’s door open and leaped out, started to run into the trees, but a gun cracked and I heard the bullet whistle by me. The guy yelled something at me from no more than ten feet away. I’d had it; there wasn’t a chance I could get into the trees before a slug hit me. I stopped.

I heard one footstep as I started to turn, but I never made it around. Probably it was a gun butt, but whatever it was, it was solid, and it landed on my skull. They were dragging me when I came to and when I tried to move they stopped and dropped me. Somebody told me to get up, and in a minute I made it. We were deeper in the trees, and my company was Kelly, the other strong arm man, and Rath. Rath stood in front of me while the other two grabbed my arms and slammed my back against a tree, pulling my arms behind me around the tree trunk. And then Rath started in on me.

He was methodical about it, but it seemed to give him a sadistic pleasure. First he looked up at me from his approximate five-nine and said, “You sure made a fool of yourself today, Scott. You sure made the boss mad. We oughta plug you, but too many people saw that beef. We’re gonna teach you to lay off us, though.” He grinned. “After this, we figure you’ll get a plane back to the States.”

He waited till he’d told me all that, then he hit me. He hit me in the stomach, but I was braced for the blow and Rath wasn’t an especially powerful man, anyway. The first time he hit me it didn’t hurt so much; but along about the tenth time in the same spot it was getting bad. Once, while I still had the strength, I lifted one foot and tried to kick him in what is politely called the groin, but he got out of the way. Then he took a gun from one of the guys holding me, and slammed it along my jaw twice. My legs suddenly weren’t strong enough to support me, and I sagged lower, my arms bending up behind me till it felt as if they’d pop out of their sockets.

Rath’s face filmed with perspiration and a little saliva drooled from the corner of his mouth. He kept grinning all the time, enjoying himself. He’d hit me and the air would gush out of my mouth; everything swam in front of me and finally Rath was just a blur of movement that meant pain.

I realized the blows had stopped. A hand ripped my shirt open and I tried to lift my head. Rath slapped me several times then said, “Look, Scott.”

My eyes focused slowly on the knife in his hand. I saw it move back and forth, then the point pressed against my chest. “See how easy to kill you?” Rath said. His voice was taut and excited, like that of a man in bed with a woman. “See?” he said. He pushed on the knife a little and I felt the point bite into my chest, slice through the skin and flesh.

I almost yelled aloud, tried to press back against the tree, suck in my chest and get away from that blade, and Rath laughed, pulled the knife away and held it before my eyes, let me see the red-stained tip. “So get out of Mexico, Scott. Or next time I push this thing all the way in.”

He ran the honed edge down the front of my chest, cutting the skin, not deep but painfully. Then he stepped back. The men behind me let go of my arms and I fell forward on my face, unable to stand. My cheek pressed against the dirt and I saw Rath’s pointed shoe leave the ground and felt it dig into my side, then there was a blow on my head again and welcome blackness swept over me.

I must have lain there unconscious for quite a while because it was nearly dark when I came out of it. When I tried to move I gasped as pain leaped through my stomach and chest. I bit my lip, grunting, as I got slowly to my feet and started trying to find the road. I could move only a few feet before I had to stop and rest. Finally I reached the Reforma and got a libre to stop.

“Get me to a doctor,” I told him.

Doctor Dominguez pressed the last wide strip of adhesive tape against my chest and said, “There. You don’t seem to have internal injuries, but we’d better get you to the hospital.”

“I told you I haven’t got time for that.” My brain was alert enough now; I simply hurt like hell. “Just so I’m not bleeding inside, doc, and nothing’s busted.”

“At least you should go to bed and stay there.”

I couldn’t explain to him that there wasn’t room in my mind for thinking about hospitals or beds. The fat face of Hammond and the thin features of Rath, and the white, dead face of Pete Ramirez took up all the room there was in my mind. I just wasn’t able to think about anything else even if I’d wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

Before he’d started working on me I’d given Doctor Dominguez the cube of gum still in my pocket, the Chiclet, and told him what I suspected. Half an hour after he finished bandaging me he had the other answer.

“Yes, Mr. Scott,” he said, “it was drugged. Crude, too; somebody merely hollowed out a small space inside the gum and filled it with the powder—”

“Would it kill a man?”

He frowned. “It might. Hard to say. It would at least make him sluggish, drowsy. Why? Where did you get this?”

“Arthur Hammond gave it to a jockey who was killed today.”

He got slightly green. “Ah... no, you must be mistaken, Mr. Hammond is a well thought of man.” It was obvious the name Hammond frightened him. He said, less warmly, professional now, “That is all I can do for you.”

It was also obvious he wanted to get rid of me. I paid him, asked him to call me a cab, and left.

I stood outside the Rio Rosa, a nightclub near Insurgentes, pain constant in my chest and stomach. I’d got a morphine surette from the doctor, but it was in my pocket; I might need it more later than I did right now. From the doc’s I’d gone to the Prado and picked up my gun, then I had started hunting for any one of the four men I was after. But now, three hours later, this was the only lead I had. I’d checked the phone book: no Hammond. A man with as many enemies as Hammond undoubtedly had doesn’t advertise his address. I’d checked every crumb I knew in Mexico City, and plenty I didn’t know. His address was a complete mystery. Almost all I’d learned was that a lot of people were afraid of Hammond and his thugs — and of Hammond’s pal, Valdez. But I learned that a couple of months ago Jimmy Rath had paid the rent on an apartment for a girl named Chatita, who was now in the show here at Rio Rosa — and apparently didn’t like Rath any more. I went inside.

For fifty pesos the headwaiter let me knock on the door of Chatita’s dressing room. When she opened the door, her eyes widened with surprise. I guess I didn’t look very handsome, with my jaw swollen and a cut in the flesh over my cheekbone.

I said, “May I talk to you for a minute?”

She looked at my bruised face, frowning. “I am sorry. I must get dressed.”

Now that I took a look at her, she was right. She had on a silk wrapper thin enough so that the points of her full breasts showed through it. She started to shut the door and I took a chance. “It’s about Jimmy Rath.”

I got more than I bargained for. “Jimmy!” she said venomously. She opened the door wide, looked at my face again, “Did he do this to you?” I nodded and she said, “Come in.”

She shut the door behind me, locked it, then turned to face me. “Sit down,” she said, pointing toward a wooden chair. “You... do not like Jimmy?”

“I hate him,” I said. “I want to find him and tell him so.”

She smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile. “I hope you find him,” she said. “I hope you beat him to death.”

This Chatita was tall, close to six feet in her high heels, and she would have towered above Rath. He was shaping up as a queer one. Chatita had the sensual, smooth-skinned face found on many of the lovely Mexican women, with large dark eyes and a mass of black hair. Her face had a hot beauty that went with her full-curved body.

“Where can I find him?” I asked.

“I wish I knew. How do you know I once knew him?”

“I heard you were friendly. Not any more, huh?”

She walked toward me, stood in front of the chair I sat in. “I am an exotica,” she said. “A dancer.” She meant, I figured, that she did a strip act. She went on, “My body, it assures me a living, a job.”

I didn’t know what she was getting at, but I nodded.

“My body,” she said, “it is good. It is to be proud of.” She had been holding the thin robe around her; now she parted it, slid it down from her shoulders as she faced me.

She wore brief step-ins beneath it, nothing else. And she did have a lovely body, full and voluptuously curving. Her breasts were large, firm, erect. I didn’t know why she had so suddenly pulled the robe from her shoulders, but soon I understood.

Her flat stomach was a criss-cross of scratches where someone had played there with a sharp knife. “You see,” she said. “That is from Jimmy. I hope you find him.” She bit her lip. “My body he has made ugly. Ugly!” She pulled the robe back over her shoulders.

She sat in a chair before the dressing table and we talked for a few minutes. When she’d known Rath, he had lived in Arthur Hammond’s house — but she didn’t know where the house was. It seemed no one knew where the fat bastard lived. Except for that she couldn’t help me, though she gave me a better picture of Rath himself.

“He is evil,” she said, “insanely evil. He bought me expensive things, but I could not stay. I was with him one month. The cuts, they are from the knife he carries always.” She hesitated, then went on, “Even in bed. He would hold it here—” she pointed to her throat — “when he... at the moment when...” She didn’t finish it, but I knew what she meant. After a pause she continued, as if she wanted to share what she knew with somebody else, “He wanted me to hurt him. He liked to hurt and be hurt. Twice he gave to me the knife, asking that I hurt him with it. Carefully, he would say, carefully. But I could not do it and he would become angry, frightening. Then, one night, he did this to me.” She touched her stomach.

She was quiet for a minute. I had already told her that if I found Rath I was going to break several of his bones, and she said, “If you do find him, remind him of this. Will you, for me?” Her fingers moved slowly over her stomach beneath her silk robe again. “It would help me,” she said, “because there is inside me much hate for him.”

“I’ll remind him, Chatita. If there’s time.”

I started to get up normally, forgetting my bruises, and flopped back into the chair. The next try I made it moving slowly. Chatita stepped to me and took my arm, her free softening for the first time. “I did not know you were hurt so. You hate him as much as I, no?”

“Maybe more, honey.” Her robe had fallen open, baring her breasts. I put my hands on her shoulders, caressed her gently and said, “You probably make the cuts worse in your mind than they really are, Chatita. To a man, they mean nothing. Believe me. You’re a beautiful and desirable woman, honey.”

I could hear her breathing quicken as I continued to touch her. Her tongue moved over her lower lip. “Thank you,” she said. “It is good of you, but it is not true.”

“It is true.”

Under different circumstances, I don’t think I’d have got out of there before morning. But I left. Before she closed the door she smiled at me and said, “Thank you. Perhaps... perhaps it is true.”

I grinned, said, “You damn bet it is,” and staggered out of the place.

At two in the morning I gave up and went back to my room at the del Prado. I hadn’t learned anything except what Chatita had told me, and by two o’clock I felt like a walking hamburger. I went to bed.

Getting up in the morning and getting dressed was a solid half hour of agony. It had been bad enough before I slept, but now my muscles had stiffened and every movement was torture. I was two-hundred-plus pounds of pain — and hate. But the hate was stronger than the pain.

I walked around the room for another half hour working my arms, bending, stretching gingerly, until I’d got some of the stiffness out of my body. Then I had breakfast and started hunting again. I knew if everything else failed I could spot the men I wanted at the track, but there were no more races until Saturday. I checked the phone books again — no Hammond listed.

At five o’clock in the afternoon I came out of a bar on Bucareli. I’d heard it was a hangout for Kelly, and I’d hoped to get some information. All I got was blank stares. But I found Kelly — and Rath.

When I came out, they were waiting for me in the big Packard, a custom job with a low two-digit license plate which shouted that this was an important car and to keep out of its way. Kelly was behind the wheel and Rath stood outside, leaning against the door. When he saw me, he walked over to me.

The street was crowded, but the gripe and fury and hate boiled up inside me when I saw him and I reached for him.

He said sharply, “Hold it. You want the girls hurt?”

That stopped me. “What do you mean, you little pile of—”

“Watch it,” he said. I didn’t like the casual, confident way he was talking. He knew I could bend him till he broke, but he said, “We told you to beat it, Scott. You got no sense at all. Now listen. There’s a plane out at seven. You be on it. You don’t want nothing to happen to those girls, do you?”

“What girls?”

“Vera. And Elena Angel. You kind of like that Elena’s pretty face — and things. Don’t you, Scott? She’s a real hot looking tamale. Be a shame if something happened to her. It will, Scott, unless you get lost fast.”

I wanted to get my hands on this guy so bad it was hard for me to think, but that penetrated. When it did, I started cooling down. My heart slowed and thudded heavily in my chest. But finally I realized he had me over a barrel. If I kept nosing around, I might get Vera and Elena hurt or killed. The thought of Rath getting his slimy hands on either one of them, especially Elena, turned my stomach.

Rath said, “You get out tonight, and we leave the gals alone.” He shook his head. “Sure hate to miss gettin’ next to that Elena, though.”

I grabbed him, jerked him to me. “You little bastard!”

He swallowed, but he said, “So help me, they’ll get it. Let go. Let go of me. They’ll get it sure.”

“All right. I’ll... quit. But if you lay a hand on either of them, I’ll kill you.”

He grinned. “Seven o’clock. There’ll be somebody at the airport to make sure you blow.” Rath climbed into the car and they left. I went back into the bar, got the bar phone and shooed the bartender away. It had occurred to me that Rath would hardly have been so cocky — unless he already had one or both of the girls somewhere.

Elena didn’t have a phone, but I called Vera’s mother, got Vera and made sure she was all right. I told her to stay put, not go out alone, then hung up, grabbed a cab and told the driver to step on it. Sick worry built up in me and I kept seeing Elena’s face, the dark eyes; I could almost feel the caress of her fingers and the cool pressure of her lips.

In Lomas we stopped in front of the apartments and I ran up and banged on Elena’s door. It was unlocked and swung open. The apartment was empty. One blue slipper lay inside the front door. One. Its mate was nowhere in the apartment. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle, but in the bedroom I found a blouse and skirt, bra and panties folded neatly on a chair under which were shoes and stockings. The bathroom door was open and I went inside. The floor was wet in and near the shower, and a wet towel hung from the rack.

Elena had been here not long ago, had showered. But her clothes were still outside on the chair. They must have forced their way in and taken her just the way she was, maybe in a robe or coat from the closet, something to cover her nakedness. And I still didn’t have any idea where they might have gone. I knew I couldn’t trust Rath — or any of them. If I left on that plane tonight, no telling what would happen to Elena. But if I didn’t leave...

I went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed. I’d already gone over half the town, asking questions, threatening, trying to buy or beg information, and I’d got nothing solid. There had to be some other way. I racked my brain — and thought of something. It was a two-digit license number that I remembered seeing on a custom Packard.

It took me an hour, and thirty-five hundred pesos, which was a lot of money, especially in Mexico. Over four hundred dollars, but it was worth it. I paid the money to a police officer and learned that the license plates had been issued to Arthur L. Hammond at an address in Cuernavaca — fifty miles away over a curving, dangerous road.

I rented the fastest car I could find and pushed the accelerator down all the way and kept it down except when not slowing down would be suicide. I couldn’t be sure Elena would be at Hammond’s, but it seemed likely. Chatita had told me Rath lived at Hammond’s. I remembered the other things she’d told me too, and I thought with revulsion, almost with horror, of Rath’s hands on Elena’s soft body, his knife at her throat... his wet lips on her lips and flesh. I kept the accelerator down.

It’s usually more than an hour’s drive to Cuernavaca from Mexico, but I made it in forty minutes. My watch said seven-fifteen when I cut the car lights and coasted to a stop near the big house where I knew Hammond lived. Three minutes at a service station, after I told the attendant the address, had given me the location, but three minutes were three too many. They’d know by now that I hadn’t left on that seven o’clock plane. I took out my gun, checked it. Driving had loosened my muscles, but the pain that had been with me all day was even worse, and I wanted to be able to move fast, without pain slowing me.

I took the morphine surette from my pocket, pulled up my sleeve and jammed the hollow needle into my arm, squeezed half of the morphine into my blood. I knew how it would affect me, that it would keep me keyed up, make me a little lightheaded, but it would kill the pain enough so I’d be nearly normal — and it wouldn’t slow me down or blur my brain too much.

I got out of the car and walked through darkness toward the house. The Packard was parked in the driveway. Lights burned in the lower floor of the house, and thick vines covered the walls. I walked to the rear of the house, feeling the morphine working, easing the ache. My skin tingled slightly.

I heard a scream, suddenly stifled. It had come from the back of the house here, above me. On the second floor, light spilled from an open window and I heard a short cry again — from that room where lights blazed. Ugly pictures crawled in my mind as I stared at the lighted window, then I walked toward the wall beneath it. Vines covered the entire wall, but I didn’t know if they’d support my weight. Like a lot of the Cuernavaca houses, this one had small terrazas or balconies at many of the windows, including the one I wanted to reach. I pulled at one of the vines, let my body hang from it. It sagged, rustling and scraping slightly against the wall, but it didn’t break.

I was a bit light-headed now, buoyant. I felt incredibly strong. And I was completely unafraid of what might happen to me. But there were no more sounds from the window above, and that scared me. I took off my shoes and pulled myself up the vines, finding spots to place my feet, straining upward with all the strength in my arms. It seemed to take hours instead of minutes, as if time had been distorted, but my outstretched hand touched the rim of the balcony and I wrapped my fingers around it, pulled myself up and then stepped over the rail.

I could see into the room, see part of a bed, a bare leg in my line of vision. I moved to my right, taking the .38 Colt from its holster. Elena lay naked on the bed, huddled against the headboard. There was fear in her eyes, and revulsion. The muscles along her flat stomach rippled with terror, and her breasts heaved as she drew in a frightened breath.

I couldn’t see anybody else. With the revolver tight in my right hand I bent and went through the open window fast. Elena jerked on the bed, rolled to one side and I looked toward her as I stepped inside the room. But even as I looked in her direction I sensed, more than I saw, movement on my right. I spun around bringing up the gun as Rath jumped toward me, his thin face twisted and ugly, and the gleaming knife in his right fist slashing up from his side toward my belly. Instinctively I thrust my hands at the slashing blade and felt it slice against my wrist, felt the jar against my gun just before it slipped from my hand and fell to the floor.

Rath jerked his hand back, thrust at me again with the knife, and I stepped aside. It seemed that I had all the time in the world and as the point of the knife leaped at me I slapped my hand past its arc and clamped my fingers on Rath’s thin wrist. My other hand shot to his elbow, jerked as I pressed downward on his wrist, and in the slow motion of my mind I saw the knife turn to point at his chest, my fingers slipping down to cover his hand and imprison the knife there as he shouted in sudden pain. I gripped his elbow tight, then shoved with all my strength against Rath’s hand.

The hand went back, carrying the knife against his chest. Slowly the knife went in, slowly, an inch, and then two, and it was as though no fine flesh and muscle and tendons were there to stop the thin steel as it sank deeper into his chest until at the end it was buried there.

Rath staggered back, his mouth twisted. Perhaps it was the drug in my veins, or the blood pounding in my head, but it seemed that his face grew an expression not of fright or terror, but of an almost unholy pleasure. His lips were pulled back from his teeth and his eyes were stretched wide. I remembered that Chatita had said Rath liked to be hurt, to feel pain, and he was feeling pain now, deadly pain.

He stood quite still for seconds, facing me as his hands crept up to the handle of the knife and tugged gently at it, then still with that odd, crazed expression on his face he fell forward to his knees. Slowly he toppled to the floor, the projecting knife handle holding him at a queer angle. It took him quite a while to die.

I forgot to tell him about Chatita, and I wished I’d remembered. Rath seemed to die too happy.

I picked up the .38 and turned to the bed, every sense and nerve in my body keyed up and tingling. Elena threw herself into my arms, buried her head in my shoulder, and let all the horror and revulsion come out of her in a steady stream of tears.

She whispered, “Shell. Oh, my God, Shell,” and then she pressed herself against me, put her arms around me and pulled me close, tight against her naked body.

She was a wild, hot, frenzied woman for a long minute, savagely alive in my arms, pressing against me, kissing me, clutching and caressing me with hands and breasts and body, as if she couldn’t thank me enough, as if she were thanking me with everything she owned.

“Elena, honey,” I said. “Who else is here?”

She pulled away from me, suddenly remembering where she was, suddenly remembering the danger around us.

“Hammond is here. That is all.” She spoke in short phrases, her breathing as unsteady as my own. “Rath was... just getting ready to...” She shuddered. “I thought he was going to kill you with the knife. We heard something outside. I did not know what or who it was. When I saw you, I thought he would kill you.”

I got off the bed, moved away from her, the gun in my hand again. “What about the others?”

“Hammond only is here. Downstairs. I do not know where.” She paused. “Shell, what are you going to do?”

I grinned at her, the blood pounding through my veins, thundering in my head. “I’m going to kill him.”

She licked her lips and stared at me, leaned back on the bed with her arms behind her, conical breasts thrusting forward, stomach sucked in sharply, the long smooth sweep of thigh and leg extending to the floor. She didn’t speak.

I left her there and went out. I found stairs leading into darkness below me and I walked down them, almost floating, alive in every pore and atom of my being. Then there was a hallway, light seeping under a door. I opened the door, stepped quietly inside.

Arthur Hammond stood at a bookcase on my right, his back to me. On his left a few feet away was a polished desk. There was a snub-nosed revolver on its top, out of place and ugly against the gleaming wood. Hammond’s coat was off and I could see the strap of a shoulder harness he was still wearing. He must have taken the gun from its holster and put it on the desk top once he was safe in his home. He hadn’t yet heard me.

I pointed my gun at his back, thumbed the hammer on full cock, let my finger tighten ever so lightly on the trigger.

“Hammond,” I said softly.

He turned, placing his finger between the pages of a book he held in his hands. “What?” He blinked at me. For an eternity he stared at me, uncomprehending, then his features slackened as if the muscles that held his face to the skull were dissolving beneath the skin. His jaw sagged, his pouchy cheeks drooped, and he began to tremble.

“No, no,” he said, his voice quavering. “Wait. Please, please wait.” I could hardly hear him; his voice was a whisper floating in the room.

“This is it, Hammond,” I said. “For killing Pete Ramirez. For a lot of things that you’ve done.”

“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t.” He said the same thing five or six times, unable to take his eyes from the bore of the gun I pointed at him. My finger almost trembled on the trigger. The gun had a soft pull and I knew just a breath more pressure and the hammer would fall, the pin would strike, the slug would rip into Hammond’s fat, quivering body. He knew it too. He kept talking, repeating the same words over many times, but he never stopped, as if he knew that once he stopped speaking, a bullet would slam into him, rip into his heart or his brain.

“I didn’t kill him. It was a drug. In the gum. It couldn’t kill him. Please. It was Rath, he gave it to him, put it in his pocket after he hit him. The kid wasn’t supposed to get killed, just lose the race. I had to make him lose.”

“But it killed him, Hammond, as surely as if you’d shot him. He might have died even if he hadn’t fallen.”

That was the first time I’d spoken for quite a while, and it seemed to break the almost hypnotic spell that had gripped him. He put his hands out in front of him and moved sideways a little — toward the desk.

He reached to his cheek and pinched it hard, unconscious of the movement. “Let me go, Scott,” he said.

“No.”

“I haven’t done anything. You were right about the races, but I didn’t mean to kill Ramirez. I had to win. I’d already wired the name of the winner, Ladkin, to the men in Los Angeles. He had to win. They’d have killed me.” He kept moving slowly toward the desk. His body hid the gun from my sight now, but his hands were still in front of him.

“What men in Los Angeles, Hammond?”

He gave me some names, rapidly. They didn’t mean anything to me — but they would to Cookie Martini. Then he said, “I’ll make you rich if you let me go, Scott. We pick the winner here and bet on the other horses to make the odds right. There’s books in the States, and some here, that take Mexico bets. There’s millions in it. I’ll make you rich.” His right hand rested on the edge of the desk behind him.

“How do you pick the winner, Hammond?” Just a little more time, I thought. He was going to try it soon. He kept edging closer to the gun.

“We know, from friends, when a horse is ready for a good race. About the jockeys, we... bought a couple. One other was married, stepping out with a chippie, and we held that over him. Ramirez was just... a mistake, Scott, a bad break.” He was getting some of his nerve back now. “Listen, Scott,” he said. “Be sensible. You can take me in to the cops, but they won’t keep me. You know Valdez? He won’t let a rap stick. He’ll cover for me, fix any charges. There’s no proof anyway. You can’t win, Scott. And I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s not enough.” His hand was out of sight behind him now; I knew he had his hand on the gun, was just working up his nerve, pushing himself to the point where he could make his try. And I knew Hammond was telling the truth. I couldn’t make a charge against him stick. Not here. And Valdez would get him out of any mess I got him into.

“I’ll give you more, anything, anything you want.”

“It’s not enough.”

He bit his lips. “You’re a fool, Scott. Every man has a price. You’ve got your price, too, I know it.” His voice got higher and louder as he kept on. “You’re stupid, stupid. I can pay you; you’re—”

It was a damnfool thing to do, but he did it. He dropped suddenly to the floor, his face as frightened as any face I’ve ever seen, but he swept the gun out in front of him, firing before the gun was pointed within a yard of me. He would have kept on firing, too, but I put that extra breath of pressure on the .38’s trigger and it roared and flame spat toward Hammond’s belly. He jerked as the slug struck and then I fired again, saw the small hole appear over his heart.

He slumped back against the desk and his head fell forward. He still had the gun in his hand, though, and I couldn’t take any chances. I shot him in the head. Yeah, that was sure a damnfool thing for Hammond to do. But I had to pull the trigger. I had to defend myself. Hell, he was going to shoot me.

He didn’t move any more. He wouldn’t. I couldn’t help thinking that Hammond had been right: like everybody else I had my price; he’d just paid it. And I also thought that Valdez or Rath would have a hell of a time getting Hammond out of this mess.

There were still a few tag ends, including Kelly and the other strong arm boy, but they could wait. I left Hammond on the floor and went out, back up the stairs. Most of all, I wanted to get the hell out of there before any of the boys showed up. Taking care of them was one thing. Meeting them in their own back yard was another. I ran up the stairs quickly.

When I opened the door, Elena was still on the bed but her hands were pressed tightly against her eyes. I shut the door behind me. Slowly she took her hands from her eyes and looked at me. She looked at me for a long time as the fright left her face. When she spoke her voice was tight.

“I’m going to pieces, Shell. I was going crazy. I heard the shots. I... thought it might be you. And I wanted you to come back to me.” She bit her lips, moved slightly on the bed, light gleaming dully on her nakedness.

“Get a coat on,” I said. “Fast. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

I was still feeling high, the blood still rushing through my veins, setting up a terrible din in my head. She grabbed a coat from the closet, a man’s raincoat, shivered into it, and took one last look at Rath, dead and bloody on the floor.

“Let’s go,” she said, turning away. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Shell.”

She was still wearing the raincoat much later, but it wasn’t covering a hell of a lot of her. It was open at the throat, spread in a wide V that gashed down to the tightly belted waist. Her legs were tucked under her on the sofa, in her apartment, and I was sitting next to her and marveling about the wonderful raincoats they were turning out these days.

The drug had worn off now, but who the hell needed it any more. I leaned toward her, pulling her close to me. She ran a hand over the tape on my chest.

Her face was an inch from mine when she said softly, her eyes heavy-lidded and her mouth slack with passion, “You are hurt. But I will be careful with you, my Shell. You will see.”

I pulled her tight against me, kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheek, then with my lips against her ear I whispered, “Elena, honey, be as careless as you like.”