Gun for a Gringo

Chapter II Rendezvous with Rebellion

The house was on the outskirts of the town, set far back from the street and screened from view by leafy banana trees and other foliage. You wouldn’t have known it was there at all except for the wall that enclosed the grounds; not a light showed. The driver pulled a bell-rope for me and a peon in pajamas came shuffling out and undid the chain that braceleted the outer gate. I followed him up a tiled walk and into the place.

Torres was standing waiting for me on the other side of the door; I noticed he had his differential ready in his hand, a snub-nosed Belgian peacherino, the kind you load at the butt. “So you ordered coffee,” he said, putting it back under his wing.

“I ordered coffee,” I agreed.

“Lucky for you,” he said dryly. “Come in, Stiff.” He motioned toward a door off the main hallway. There were three of them in there, heads close together. Two were the same ones who had checked up on me at the rat-hole. The third was another big shot, I got a load of a diamond crown on one of his grinders when he opened his mouth to talk.

“Amigos,” Torres introduced me, “this is Stiff, who likes the climate down here better than in his own country.” The way he pronounced my name was beginning to jar on me. I wondered if he really knew what it meant in slang; it might yet end up by being appropriate for all I knew.

He handed me a pencil and a square of paper tacked to a drawing-board. “I got them specially for you,” he said, “Now show us what you can do.” He brought out a photograph clipped out of a newspaper and laid it beside me. It was of an old man with fierce white mustaches, wearing a visored army cap. I recognized it right away and got a grip on my chair with one hand. “Go on,” he urged, “copy this picture. But quick, just the sketch, the cartoon, eh? I time you.” He took out his watch and held it in his hand.

It was a pushover; I had a rough outline of the photo down on paper in something under a minute-and-a-half. He passed it around among them. “Do another,” he said, “and see if you can cut it down to a minute, leave out all the shading and fancy business.” I did it in fifty-five seconds.

“Still too long,” he said. “It’s got to come out in thirty seconds. No more than ten strokes of the pencil.” I showed him I could do that too.

He turned triumphantly to the others. “What did I tell you? This man is just what we need, eh? I knew that the minute I watched him at Filthy’s today! All we have to do is fix him up with a clean shirt and a counterfeit staff-artist’s press card — they won’t even search him going in! Being a damned gringo, he can get closer than any of us could without arousing suspicion.”

I had everything I needed to know now except two things — where and when. I wasn’t kept in the dark long. “Know who this is?” he asked me, fluttering the newspaper-likeness.

I shook my head. “Never saw him before in my life.”

His eyes narrowed to malignant slits. “Savinas, President of the Republic. Savinas, dog of a tyrant, butcher, assassin! You’re going to meet him face to face tomorrow night at the Villa Rosa, the Pink House, on the hill. He’s giving a banquet to all his generals to celebrate the anniversary of the revolution. You’re going to ask permission to draw a sketch of him for your paper back in the States. He’s as conceited as a peacock, he’ll be tickled silly! You’re going to stand in front of him and draw him, like you did just now. And when he picks it up and looks at it, you’re going to put a bullet through his head!”

Four pairs of eyes were watching me. There was an automatic lying on the table, no one’s hand was on it but it was pointed my way. “Either, or—” it said. My own was down under my trouser-leg. I could have had an itch down there that needed scratching, for instance, or a shoelace that needed retying — it would have been easy enough. But I was under pretty definite instructions and it was up to me to follow them out. My orders were to protect the old man from harm, and nothing else; not to make a pinch or try to clean up single-handed. I was his personal bodyguard and not his chief of police. And I’m funny that way, I do just what I’m paid for and nothing else. There’s a gent in Alcatraz right now could tell you the same thing. Besides, by tipping off these four in the room with me, I might be letting forty others get away clean, and the whole thing would only start over again next chance they got.

“Well,” he said, “what’ve you got to say?” And his fingers, drumming the table, inched nearer the automatic.

To have taken what he had just paid off to me without a jolt, would have been a dead give-away; they would have tumbled in a minute that I was phony if I’d appeared willing to go through with it that easy. Even a stumblebum derelict would have shied at the kind of proposition this had turned into. So I squawked, not too much and not too little, just enough to make it look right.

“Seventy-five C’s,” I said with a lopsided smile. “Why didn’t you make it two million? I’ll be where I can’t enjoy ’em. You’re not paying me to rub Savinas, you’re paying me to commit suicide. Why didn’t you give it to me straight?”

For a minute his paw closed on the automatic, and I knew I could never get down to my hoof in time so I didn’t try. But I must have stacked up just right for their trigger-man, I guess he hated to waste me. He banged open a drawer instead and took out some stuff in an envelope. “Here’s a forged Costamalan passport, here’s your ticket for the Pan-American night-plane that touches here at midnight tomorrow night. My Bugatti will be waiting outside the grounds for you. It can get you over to the airfield in ten minutes flat — there’s not another thing on wheels in the country that can catch it. All you have to do is remember which door you came in by in the Villa Rosa; the chief electrician there is in with us. When he hears your shot, a fuse will ‘accidentally’ blow, every light in the place will go out, it will be half an hour before they go on again. What more could you ask?”

“That’s more like it,” I drawled. “Y’had me going for a minute when you first sprung it at me like you did. The way you tell it, I’d call it a very classy little set-up. I’m your guy.”

He put the gun away. “I’m glad we came to an agreement,” he said smoothly, “I would have hated to have to bury you in the garden outside — my servants just got through spading it.”

I looked politely bored. “And there really is a seventy-five hundred, or zat just a figure of speech? I’ve only got twenty-four hours I can swear to, so I’d like to get the feel of it,” I told him. But what I really wanted was to get out and turn in my report to the old man as quick as I could, so he’d have time enough to take whatever precautions he needed to, and unloading a little of the blood-money around town came in handy as an excuse for getting away.

But they weren’t the suckers they looked. “You can have it right now,” he said, “but I don’t know what good it’s going to do you, because you’re not going any place to spend it. You’re staying right here.” And he took out a rubber-banded wad of it and pitched it at me.

I pocketed it — for evidence. “So what am I gonna do,” I yelped angrily, “sit here and play solitaire with this all night?”

“What’d you have in mind?” he said. He was fiddling with the gun again, this time leaving it in the drawer. I saw one of the others bring one out too. Then he must have pushed a button without my noticing it, for the driver was suddenly standing behind me, blocking the doorway.

“I wanna take a bath in cologne-water,” I said. “I wanna lie there cracking champagne-bottles in the tub. I wanna sleep in silk pajamas and light my Perfecto with a five-peso bill. This is my last night on earth, damn it all; I gotta lot of back splurging to catch up on!”

“You think we’re crazy?” he snapped. “You think this town hasn’t eyes? This afternoon you’re flat broke, tonight you start buying half the town drinks — and talking your head off. I know your kind! Savinas’ police agents pick you up in a minute, ask you where you got the sudden money, they have ways of making people talk. You can do everything you want to do right here under this roof. Take him upstairs and lock the door!” he snapped at the driver. “Then go out and bring in a case of Mumm’s 1915, and a pair of silk pajamas from one of the Chinese stores, and a box of Perfectos, and a deck of cards — anything he wants, I don’t care!”

That being the way it was, I shrugged. “You win,” I said. It was a cinch I’d get out of here before the night was over, anyway, so why gum up the works now?

I followed the driver upstairs to the second floor, to a room at the rear, overlooking the garden. The windows had no bars on them, and it wasn’t much of a jump down from the little balcony outside. Getting out was all right, but I also had to figure on getting back in again before they missed me. I decided I’d put the lam off awhile, until they all started pounding their ears.

The driver started checking off the things I wanted on his fingers. “Wait a minute,” I said, “I’ll write you out a list.”

“I can’t read,” he grinned apologetically.

I stopped short and gave him a look. Then I grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbled on it in English: “Can’t sleep, give me something that will make me.”

“Here,” I said, “take this with you. Y’know that English pharmacy near Filthy’s? Show it to the guy in there, he’ll give you something that’ll scent up my bath. You wouldn’t know how to ask for it otherwise.”

Torres could read English and might intercept it, but he’d think I wanted it for myself. Who wouldn’t be jumpy the night before they were slated to kill a president?

He went out and locked the door after him. I went right out on the balcony and scanned the garden. It was so choked with banana-fronds and herbage it was hard to gauge how high the drop would be from where I was, so I decided the old bedclothes-rope stunt would be the best bet after all, instead of risking a broken neck. And right while I was looking, the tip of a cigarette glowed red down there in the dark. Probably the peon-gatekeeper was out there, set to watch me. I went back in again as though I’d just come out for a breath of air.

The driver came back again lugging all the stuff for my “celebration.” He also had a small pill-box labeled: “Only one to be taken at a time.” I stuck it in my pocket and got the cover off it after it was in. I could feel a lot of little things like aspirins.

He locked the door again, on the inside this time, and shoved the key into his pants pocket.

“So you’re staying around?” I said.

“I’m sleeping in here with you tonight — boss’ orders,” he told me.

I shrugged.

“You’re sleeping in here all right,” I said to myself, “but not with me, Sun-tan.” I busted the neck off one of the champagne bottles against the wall and got it into two glasses. You couldn’t notice the three little pellets dissolve in all that fizz. I don’t think he’d ever seen champagne before anyway.

We clicked glasses. He made a face. “Bitter,” he said.

“Y’gotta get used to it,” I answered. I got most of mine down the collar of my shirt. It ran down my sleeve, but he didn’t notice it.

“Open up the cards,” I said, “and I’ll teach you how to play rummy. We need somebody else, though. Who’s that guy down in the garden? Get him up here, there’s too much champagne for two of us anyway.”

He went out on the balcony and whistled down. “Hey, Jose,” he whispered, “want to come up and have a drink?”

“Tell him to climb up on the outside,” I said, shuffling. “They’ll never know the difference.”

By the time the gatekeeper had shown up in the room with us, I had his nightcap all ready for him. Then the three of us sat down and I started to teach them.