Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

Cold Flight by Moss Tadrack

Life for Lynda was one sweet sleighride — those lovely trips to Mazatlan, with Jeff waiting for her when she got back and all that lovely money rolling in. Then Jeff told Lynda that the game was up and that from then on she would have to go it alone...

Lynda Penny felt chilled. Outside, 30,000 feet beneath the Aeronaves jet, Baja California baked. La Paz would be her first step, then the Transborador to Mazatlan would be her second.

“Like, Sweets, keep your cool!” Jeff’s warning had been specific. “We live in violence. You can’t escape violence. They’ll know you. They’ll follow you.”

“All the way?”

“Inch by inch.”

“Must I?”

His look expressed half disgust, half condescension. “You wanted it, didn’t you?”

Sipping her margarita she could almost, but not quite, forget what she had wanted. An apartment on Pacific Heights, with corresponding life-style, had sprung from dream to reality within the span of one year. Back then, the first few times, the cost had seemed so light, the danger so slight. Take a vacation in Mexico and get paid for it!

“A few ceramics. You could bring them back. It’s a gift for a friend.”

“I suppose so.” It had hardly seemed important.

A week after her return, Jeff Meadows had taken her out, first to Ernie’s, then to a show, then home to his pad.

“Sweets, I got something for you. Hold out your hand and close your eyes, and I’ll give you...”

She had never seen so much currency in her life. She held exactly two hundred one hundred dollar bills in the palm of her hand. It had taken her, as soon as she got back to her room, hours to count it. Never once in Wisconsin, never once in Appleton, had she imagined being so rich, having all to herself so much money.

“Jeff, what’s it for?”

“You’re better off not knowing.”

And she was better off not knowing. For a year, she didn’t ask, but then one night, angry with herself and angry with him, she insisted.

“Why... why twenty thousand each time?”

“You know those ceramics — those little clay horses? Nothing much outside, but inside there’s plenty. They’re worth a hundred grand to me. I don’t want to kid you any longer. I can’t.”

“Why are you telling me now?”

“I have to. There’s a certain danger. Ever hear of Julio Anthony?”

“No.”

“He runs the Bay Area. He’s found out about me. He knows my connections. He probably knows about you. If he takes over, he’ll eliminate some people. I’m one. You’re another.”

She had first felt the chill then, and it had been hot in her apartment. To keep San Francisco’s fog from penetrating, she had turned the thermostat to its highest point. Steamy jungle air circulated among her hanging plants, but hot jungle air did not stop the icicles from slipping down her spine.

“Jeff, you mean kill?”

“Yes, Sweets, I mean kill.”

Jeff had planned her trip like a military campaign. This would be her final visit to Mazatlan. Never again would it be necessary for her to face the sharp scrutiny of customs, or pretend to play with toy horses. Jeff would settle the score in Mazatlan. He would wipe off his slate, clean up his action.

“You never know, Sweets. You never know. You’ll make out fine. Who knows? You might even marry rich. Rub against money long enough, and some of it is guaranteed to rub off on you.”

He had kissed her, too loosely, too indifferently.

“Jeff, what about you?”

“I’m going to try Mexico City for a while. Paseo de la Reforma, three seventeen. Nothing too rough. Maybe some gambling.” His blue satyr’s eyes pierced her. “I don’t need money. I need...”

She had not the foggiest notion in the world about what young Jeff Meadows truly needed. He took her as a woman, but his taking was more ritual than passion. Always something inside him looked beyond her, even beyond the currency which he threw casually into his dresser drawers.

“I don’t know what I want. It’s been fun in Frisco, but I need a new city. I need new kicks. But don’t forget kid, I’ll take Julio’s number-one man off you for good.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, but I’m finding out.”

Jeff had always computed her runs on the basis of no contacts, no obvert trafficking with the underworld south of the Border. Invariably she stayed overnight in La Paz, then took the overnight ferry to Mazatlan.

She had never seen anyone she could openly suspect. But somebody saw her and watched over her. In the past, she had tried to guess if it were Alex, or Carlos, or Roberto, but she couldn’t pin it down. It could have been anyone, anyone at all.

Nothing changed, nothing ever changed, but on the morning of her departure, she would stride up from the hot blazing beach and find five little ceramic horses on the vanity in her hotel room. She would wrap each one carefully in a blouse or a sweater and fit them into her blue flight bag.

White sunlight raked the deck. Ocean and sky vibrated with cold blue. For some reason she had not slept well, but she could not trace her reason for not sleeping. She had felt chilled in her stateroom. In the bar, when she went up for a drink, she had noticed a dark man with a long thin nose. She had not even stayed for her second drink.

A rock ripped at blue ocean, tearing it into long white rags, and the Transborador turned towards the port. A small boat brought out the pilot. Lynda leaned on the rail and watched him.

A deep voice spoke to her. “Miss Penny, it must bore you to see the same thing over and over again.”

She glanced right. A tall man, dressed in loose-fitting Ivy League clothes, leaned on the rail. His sandy beard, his blue eyes, looked vaguely familiar.

“I don’t know you.”

“But I know you. You’re the mule. Right?”

Total terror chilled her to the marrow of her bones. How did he know? Jeff had never warned her about such an encounter. This man was not Julio’s number-one man, was he?

“Like being a mule is being out of it. You don’t know the score?”

Without thinking she heard herself asking. “So what is the score?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“Death.”

“Death?”

“It’s like those poison bottles. Skulls and crossbones. Nothing less. Nothing more. It would help if mules like you were aware. If they really knew. They don’t.”

“You can’t touch me.”

“I don’t want to touch you.” — He turned and walked away. “Ever.”

From that second on, nothing went right. Her stay at the Hotel Neva proved cold and unreal. Even the hot sun, the hot beach chilled her. She had expected to see Jeff, at least in the distance. She had not seen him once.

Hot sunlight forged cold steel knives from shards of glass around the wall of the hotel’s inner pool. She had not expected to meet Julio’s number-one man, and perhaps she hadn’t. But who was the man who had followed her along the beach, and who smiled his lipless smile at her?

“Mees! Mees! You wanta horse? You wanta buy horse?”

Jeff had taught her so little. What could she do? How could she survive? Something muttered along with his love words had been a small indication of what to do if cornered.

“Guns ain’t cool. You got one, you got to use it. Jose is a hit man. I’ll give you his number. Mexico City. Like a jungle. Bite first. Not easy. Knives. Not much better. Need to trick them. Think fast! Sweets, why puzzle your little blonde head?”

The inner pool seemed cold. She had to leave it and walk out to the beach, but the beach proved no better. The sand vibrated like brilliant snow.

“Coco! Coco con ron?”

A dark hand gestured towards a heap of green coconuts. She nodded acceptance. A sharp steel blade flashed and the machete chopped through the end of the nut.

A plastic straw was shoved at her. She took the straw and the nut, and stared at the note which was wrapped around the straw. It didn’t say much. It said only that Jeff would meet her at ten that night at the Shrimp Bucket on the Old Beach.

“Where did you get this?”

White teeth flashed in the dark face. “Don’t speak English. No entiendo.”

Too embarrassed to discard the coconut in front of the boy, she had to lug it back to the hotel and then drop it into the wastebasket in her room. The note was typed. It could have come from anyone. Why didn’t Jeff contact her directly? What was wrong?

Later, when she had shoved away her unease, she walked again along the beach. The same man with his upper lip missing and wearing his same lipless smile approached her.

“Mees! Mees! You walk tonight. You walk. Take maybe Aranas.”

Aranas were the little two-wheeled spider carriages drawn by rawboned, broken-down horses. It would have seemed mad to her, even two years before, to have even considered going down that beach at ten o’clock at night. Mad — pure madness, but she had to find out about Jeff. What was Jeff doing? Why didn’t he tell her?

She compromised on the Aranas, for at least then she would have the driver and the horse. The swing along the beach front took twenty minutes, and then she walked into the loud interior of the Shrimp Bucket. She ordered Pescado Blanco, but she couldn’t eat.

The temperature was immense with all the bodies, and all the heat of the night, but she could only feel the chill, which was like the chill of steel in Wisconsin on a day when for weeks it had been twenty below and under.

She waited there for an hour, but Jeff didn’t show up. She asked the waiter if he knew Jeff Meadows. The waiter went and asked the cashier and the head waiter, but nobody knew any Jeff Meadows. It seemed more than coincidence when she went outside that the same Aranas was there, and waiting, but she called him over.

“Hotel Neva, por favor.”

“Si, Senorita.”

When they rounded the hill and came tight under the cliff, the road was blocked. There were police cars, and a crowd of gesticulating men and women. She asked the driver what had happened, but he didn’t know. She got out and approached the group.

“What is it?”

A policeman pointed. “A man. He is murdered. Do you know him?”

It was Jeff, lying on his stomach, a machete sunk deep into his back. Blood streamed, splashed, serpentined up and down the road. She felt the cold sink deep into her being. Shrugging, fighting to hide what little feeling she had ever felt, she turned and walked back to the Aranas.

“No, I do not know him”

Lynda huddled in her room. It would have been wise for her to call up the airline and get the next plane out. Except Jeff would not be at the airport in San Francisco. He would never meet her again. Never again would Jeff smile his half-wolf, half-boy smile and fill her hand with great wads of currency.

She was alone. Her thoughts vibrated through her head with the violence of bullets, and she regretted not knowing the arts of violence.

The next day she walked down the beach, and again the dark man with his lipless smile approached her. He seemed more arrogant than ever.

“Mees! Mees! Wanta buy horse? I got nice horse. You wanta buy?”

“I hate horses.”

“Mees. Tonight. Ten. Old bathhouse. You know? You come?”

Yes, she knew. It would have seemed to her the deepest part of nightmare to have gone near the concrete structure which the municipal government in a mad moment must have considered a bathhouse. If it was used at all, it was used for a urinal.

At least an occasional hose washed from its cold tile floor most of the debris. It was squalid, dirty, dark, totally beyond anything she had ever known. The bathhouse represented an ultimate finisterre to which she did not want to go.

She concealed her revulsion and turned back to the lipless smile. “You know Julio? Julio Anthony?”

A quick expression of cunning crossed the dark eyes. “No. Nada. No Julio. No Anthony in Mazatlan.”

His dark face gave every indication of something deeply concealed. It would have been utter insanity for her to trust him. More than likely, this smirking character was Jeff’s killer. If she had seen him do the act, she could not have believed it more.

She returned to her room and, with all the afternoon in front of her, she considered what she could do and what she could not do. There were so many things she could not do. If only Jeff had left her one little scrap of information, anything at all. Then, as if he’d spoken to her, she remembered.

“Sweets, anything happens. There’s a hiding place in the Cathedral, under the seventh pew from the front, Center.”

She took a cab to the central square, stopped at the old cathedral. Its vast interior was cool, quiet, and her chill didn’t oppress her. She knelt, without thought, and felt under the seat. She found an envelope and a key. That and a sequence of numbers were for Jeff’s apartment in Mexico City. She could go there.

An image of the bathhouse haunted her. It was all dirty, rough concrete. It would be deadly at might. It would be beyond her ability to go there alone. How could she struggle through that night and meet the man who wanted to kill her? She would rather wait in her room. But if she waited in her room, then there would be no escape from anything.

She had to go to the Supermercado and make her purchases. She had to consider Jeff’s way of doing it. She had to make sure everything was securely wrapped and hidden in the neat shopping bag which she had purchased.

Concealment was almost out of the question. She had to wait for the sun to sink, and then she had to race for the cab and ride down the beach. Her walk to the bathhouse took only seconds. She stopped, listened. She heard only happy shouts from far away. She entered. No one was there.

She found it not as dirty she expected. The tile floor was smooth and even. She set to work without hesitation and spread the lard, making nice even coats all the way from the entrance, backing herself farther and farther into the last possible corner. She kept with her only the. hard secure shape of her iron tongs. Her wait was long, and she didn’t know if she would last out the full length of time until it would be ten o’clock.

She turned down her breathing to a slow soundless in and out tune. Her heart was neither too rapid nor too slow. She heard a quick scrabbling on the rocks outside, and then the voice at the door.

“Mees! I have horse. You wanta buy horse?”

She said nothing. She waited. His dark outline blocked the light, and then the man slid into the entranceway. She knew she had less than one second more.

“Here!” she said finally, “I’m here!”

He started his rush with a as savage grunt. He gave a yell. He made a wild movement with his machete, but it clattered on the tile, and he slipped and sprawled into a crazy crablike, twisting shape. She could see his hands and arms.

His head offered her a clear target, and she swung with all her weight. His violence turned into quiet, peaceful somnolence, and he lay humbly at her feet. She stepped carefully beyond him, picked up his machete, and then with her hands firmly encased in her best gloves, she swung down.

Lynda opened the door of Number 317 on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City and walked straight to Jeff’s wall safe. She now knew its combination almost by heart. She checked the pile of currency. She felt the chill less and less. For a few seconds, she sat beside the phone and then she dialled a number.

“José, I have a job. Twenty thousand. Will you do it?”

“Who?”

“Julio Anthony.”

“Si!”