The Aztec Avenger

CHAPTER TEN

The killer had chosen his time well. I heard no doors opening or closing. No one came out into the corridor. There was nothing but quiet in the hallway outside my room. I stood for a long time over Jean-Paul’s body before J reached down and grasped the entry hall rug, pulling the corpse further into the room, sliding it away from the door. Cautiously, I opened the door and looked out. The corridor was empty. I shut and bolted the door and knelt down beside the slim body of the Frenchman sprawled on the bloodied rug and looked at his face for a long time, all the while feeling an angry churning inside me because I had made a mistake.

I should have realized earlier at El Cortijo that Carlos had already put into motion whatever plans he had to get rid of me even before he and Brian Garrett met with me. I should have known that he never had any intention of letting me leave Acapulco alive, not while I knew what I did about his organization. I’d thought I had more time, at least until tomorrow morning, but I’d been wrong in that assumption. Time had run out and now Jean-Paul was dead because of it. I knew, too, that I could never get the Mexican police, especially Lieutenant Fuentes, to believe that I’d had no part in Jean-Paul’s death.

It was long past time for me to act. I looked down at Jean-Paul’s open, staring eyes and reached out with a finger to close the lids. I opened his jacket. A walnut handled, 38 calibre Smith & Wesson Airweight Model 42 revolver was tucked into a short holster in the waistband of his slacks. I transferred the gun to my own hip pocket. I checked my watch — too early in the evening for me to make any attempt to dispose of the body. Even though there weren’t many guests in the hotel, it would be taking too much of a chance to assume the hallways would be empty now.

Carefully, I rolled the thin rug around his corpse. It didn’t quite come down to his ankles but at least his face was covered. With strips of cloth that I tore from a pillowcase, I tied the rug at his chest and at his knees.

I looked around for a hiding place in the room. The clothes closet was too dangerous, so for the time being I settled for pushing the rug-wrapped body under the double bed, dropping the bedspread down the side so that its edge came almost to the floor.

With Jean-Paul out of the way for the moment, I turned my attention to cleaning up the evidence of what had happened. I turned on the hall light, checking the walls for spatters of blood. I found a few. The lower panel of the door was a mess. In the bathroom, I soaked a towel in cold water and went back to the entry hall and washed down the door and the walls.

The rug had prevented any blood from getting on the floor.

Afterward, I rinsed out the towel as much as I could and balled it up and threw it on the floor under the sink. I stripped off my own blood-stained clothes and showered.

I used two more towels drying myself off and balled. them up and threw them under the sink along with the other towel. Let the maid think I was a slob. At least, it would stop her from examining the first towel too closely.

After I shaved, I changed into a clean sport shirt, slacks, and a Madras jacket.

I was going to strap on Hugo and wear Wilhelmina, my 9mm Luger, but a 9mm handgun of any size makes a pretty hefty bulge. You can see it too easily under tropical weight clothes, so I left the gun and the knife in the false bottom of my attaché case.

I settled for Jean-Paul’s .38 Airweight instead.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have worn the jacket. In May, Acapulco evenings are too warm to make a jacket anything but unnecessary, but I was carrying Jean-Paul’s revolver and small as it was it was still too noticeable unless I wore something to cover it.

When I finished dressing, I went back into the bathroom one more time. I took a small vial of nembutal sleeping pills from my shaving kit. There were ten or twelve capsules in the vial. Occasionally, when I can’t fall asleep, I’ll take one of them. Now, I had another use for them. I put the small, plastic container in my pocket, along with a roll of half-inch adhesive tape that I had in my first-aid kit.

Back in the bedroom, I picked up my camera and slung the bulky camera equipment bag over my shoulder.

As I went out the door, I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign oyer the outer doorknob. I put the room key in my pocket. Like many hotels, the Matamoros attached a heavy, bronze plaque to the key so that guests wouldn’t want to carry it around with them and would get in the habit of leaving the key at the counter. I don’t like to do that. I want to be able to get in and out of my room without attracting notice by stopping at the desk each time. The key and plaque sat heavily in the hip pocket of my slacks.

Going down to the lobby, I saw no one either in the corridor or in the elevator. At the front desk, I stopped to ask if there was any mail for me. I didn’t expect any, but as the clerk turned to the racks behind him, I was able to check the slot for Suite 903. Both keys were in the box. Apparently, Dietrich still had not come in.

The clerk turned back, smiling regretfully. “No, senor, there is nothing for you.” He wasn’t the same clerk that I’d talked to earlier in the day,

“Do you know Senor Dietrich?”

“Senor Dietrich?”

“Suite nine-oh-three,” I prompted him.

“Ah! Of course. He is the very nice gentleman who checked in yesterday. I registered him myself.”

“He’s not in now, is he?”

The clerk shook his head. “No. I saw him leave about half an hour ago.”

“You’re sure? A man in his middle sixties — I stopped. That was as much as I knew about Dietrich’s appearance. I hoped the clerk would go for the bait.

“Certainly, I know what he looks like! Quite tall. Very thin. Very distinguished. Silver hair. Blue eyes. He walks with a slight limp although he does not carry a cane. His daughter is most beautiful.”

“His daughter?”

“Si, senor. One does riot forget a young woman as beautiful as she! Such long blond hair!” Then the clerk caught himself as the idea struck him. He arched a knowing eyebrow. “Of course, perhaps she is not his daughter, eh, senor? We do not ask such questions.”

“That’s Dietrich, all right.” I passed a bill to the clerk. “I’ll get in touch with him later.”

“Shall I leave word for him, senor?”

“No, I’m not sure just when I’ll be able to see him. Thank you for the information.”

“De nada.”

At the Hertz office, I rented a sedan and drove to Sanborn’s where I purchased a detailed street map of Acapulco. In the dining room, I sat in a booth and ordered coffee and spread the map out on the table in front of me. I tried to trace the route to Bickford’s villa over which Consuela had driven me last night. The map didn’t show all the smaller byways, so I wasn’t completely sure that I had the right street. I remembered that it was a short cul-de-sac and that there were only a few houses on it. All of the houses overlooked the bay. I felt sure that I’d recognize the street if I could find it again. Bickford’s house was the very last one at the end of the cul-de-sac, isolated from the others.

In my mind, I went over all the possibilities until I narrowed them down to three. It took me two cups of coffee and half a dozen cigarettes before I finally folded up the map and left.

The first street tried wasn’t a dead end as the map showed it to be. It had been extended to join another, so I turned back and tried the second. This one was a dead-end street but there were too many houses on it, all jammed as closely together as they could be built.

I made another attempt. This one was wrong, too, so I drove back to the highway and pulled the car off the road. By now, it was getting on toward ten-thirty. I turned on the dome light and spread out the map again, trying to discover where I’d gone wrong. Finally, I found it. I’d made my turn at the wrong traffic circle. I turned off the light, folded up the map and pulled back out onto the road.

This time, I found the street on my second attempt. Four widely separated houses were spaced along its length. Bickford’s house was the last one on the side toward the bay; A high, adobe brick wall with an ironwork grilled gate faced the street. I didn’t drive down to it. I left the car out of sight around the corner and walked down the unpaved road to the gate which was secured with a chain and padlock. I pressed the bell and waited. In the darkness, I heard the chirp of insects and the clacking rustle of palm fronds rubbing against each other in the gentle, moist sea breeze.

It was several minutes before the gateman showed up, an elderly, gray-haired mestizo with a bristling stubble of whiskers, tucking his shirt into his baggy trousers as he came padding up the path.

I gave him no time to think.

“Hurry up, viejo!” I snapped curtly in Spanish. “Senor Bickford is waiting for me!”

The old man stopped a foot away from the gate, peering at me, his brows wrinkling in thought.

“I know nothing—”

“Open the gate!”

The old man took a flashlight out of his pocket He turned it on my face.

“Not in my eyes, you old fool! Turn the light on my hand.”

Obediently, the old man pointed his flashlight down. He saw the blued steel of the Smith & Wesson .38. His eyes still fixed on the gun, the gateman took a fat bunch of keys from a pocket of his worn trousers. His fingers trembled as he selected the key and inserted it The padlock snapped open. I reached in with my left hand and unhooked the chain. I pushed the gate open, still pointing the gun at the old man, and moved inside.

“Close the gate, but don’t lock it.”

He did as I told him.

“Who else is here?” I motioned with the gun to step off the path.

“Only the senor and the senora,” he answered nervously.

“Your wife?”

“Mi mujer es muerta. She’s dead, there’s only myself.”

“The other servants?”

“Gone. They do not sleep here. They will not be back until morning.”

“Has Senor Bickford gone to bed yet?”

The old man shook his head. “I do not think so; The lights are still on downstairs.”

He lifted watery, frightened eyes to me. “Por favor, senor, I am an old man. I want no trouble.”

“There could be much trouble here tonight,” I said, watching him.

“I can be very far away in a very short time,” the old man said, pleading now. “Especially if the police might come.”

“All right,” I said. I reached for my wallet and took out four hundred-peso notes — about thirty-two dollars.

“To make your trip easier. For your inconvenience.” I pressed the bills into the gateman’s hand.

The old man looked down, then thrust the bills into his pocket “I may go now?”

I nodded. The man opened the gate a hand’s breadth and slipped through. He was running down the dirt lane immediately, his huaraches flapping against his heels and making soft, scrabbling sounds in the gravel as he ran. He turned the corner and was out of sight within seconds.

I pushed the gate shut and moved into the darkness of the landscaped grounds toward the house.

From the doorway that led from the kitchen into the dining room, I watched Bickford and his wife. They both sat in the part of the living room that I could see across the dining area.

Bickford put down the magazine he’d been holding and took off his heavy-framed reading glasses.

“You want a nightcap before we turn in?” he asked Boris.

Doris was sitting on the couch painting her toenails with intense concentration. Without looking up, she said, “Make it a double.”

I walked into the dining room and stopped in the archway that separated it from the living room. “I suggest you save it for later,” I said.

Bickford looked up in surprise. Doris dropped the bottle of nail polish on the white couch. “Oh, shit!” was all she said.

I stepped into the living room and let Bickford see the gun in my hand.

“What the hell is this all about?” he demanded.

“Your friends don’t want to do things the easy way.”

He wet his lips, nervously looking at the gun. “Why me? I did what you asked.”

“As you once said, you’re just the guy in the middle. I guess that means you get it from both ends.”

“What do you want?”

“Not much. You and I are going to take a little ride together.”

“Hey, wait a second!” Doris cried out.

“He won’t be hurt if he does what I tell him to,” I reassured her.

“What about her?” Bickford was still nervous about the gun.

“She stays behind.” I took the vial out of my pocket and shook out two capsules onto the top of the bar.

“Mrs. Bickford, I’d appreciate it if you’ll just take these pills—”

“No!” Bickford burst out, getting to his feet “Leave her out of this!”

“That’s just what I’m doing. I’m not foolish enough to tie her up. There’s too much chance of her getting free. And I’d rather not hit her on the head.”

“What — what are they?” he asked.

“Sleeping pills. They won’t hurt her.”

Doris rose from the couch and came over to the bar. I noticed that she wasn’t frightened at all. She even gave me a quick smile that Bickford couldn’t see. She picked up the pills and poured herself a glass of water.

“You’re sure they won’t hurt me?” There was a tinge of amusement in her voice, her heavily lashed green eyes stared boldly into mine. She put the pills in her mouth and washed them down, then stepped closer to me. “All I’m going to do is fall asleep?”

“Go sit down, Mrs. Bickford.”

“Doris,” she murmured, still staring boldly into my face, the tiny smile locked on her lips.

“Back on the couch.” Doris turned away from me slowly and walked back to the sofa, deliberately putting a swing into her hips. Bickford crossed to her and sat down beside her. He reached solicitously for her hand, but she pulled away.

“For Chrissake, Johnny. I’m all right, so calm down, Will you? If he wanted to hurt me, you couldn’t stop him.” She turned her face toward me. “How long does it take?”

“Ten to twenty minutes,” I said. “You might just as well stretch out and relax. We’ll wait.”

Less than fifteen minutes later, Doris closed her eyes. Her breasts rose and fell in the easy rhythm of sleep. I waited another five minutes and then motioned Bickford away from her.

“Let’s go.”

Bickford got to his feet. “Where?”

“We’re going to pay a visit to a tuna boat,” I said “The one tied up down at the malecon—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“—and once aboard,” I went on as if Bickford hadn’t said a word, “you’re going to get hold of the captain and give him a package. You’ll tell him that it’ll be picked up in San Diego in the usual way.”

“You’re crazy!” Bickford burst out. “You want to get both of us killed?”

“You’re not dead yet,” I said, raising the gun to his chest.

He stood there, hulking, aging, defeat turning him older than his years. “But they’ll kill me when they find out. You know that, don’t you?” He looked up at me. “How did you know about the tuna boat?” he asked, dully.

“I told you last night that I had a list of the vessels your people have been using to smuggle heroin into the States. The tuna boat is the Mary Jane, out of San Diego. It’s been hanging around for several days now, waiting for another shipment.”

“You’re guessing,” Bickford said, hesitantly, but I’d caught the flicker of expression on his face and it was all the confirmation I needed.

“Not anymore,” I said. “Let’s go bring them the package they’re waiting for.”

There was no problem in delivering the package to the tuna boat. We took Bickford’s car down to the malecon, Bickford driving and me beside him with the .38 in my hand.

Once on the boat, Bickford went directly to the captain’s cabin. The three of us filled the small room. Bickford went through the story. The captain asked no questions except to look suspiciously at me when I handed him the laundry parcel.

“He’s all right,” Bickford vouched for me. “It’s his buy. He just wants to be sure we deliver it.”

“We’ve never had any trouble before,” the captain complained, taking the parcel from me. He looked down at it and turned it over in his hands. “Laundry? That’s a new one on me.”

“How soon can you get under way?”

“Half an hour — maybe less.”

“Then you’d better be going.”

The captain looked inquiringly at Bickford. “Do as he says,” Bickford told him.

“What about the shipment I’ve been waiting for?”

Bickford shrugged. “It’s been delayed. We can’t have you hanging around here too long.”

“All right,” said the captain. “The faster you two clear my decks, the sooner I can get underway.”

Bickford and I left the cabin, making our way slowly in the dark along the cluttered deck. I stopped once beside a tarpaulin-covered lifeboat, and swiftly, with Bickford’s back to me so he couldn’t see what I was doing, I pushed the second laundry package under the heavy canvas and into the lifeboat.

As we dropped onto the dockside, we heard the engines start up. On deck there was a flurry of activity.

We crossed to where Bickford had parked his car on the Costera.

“Now what?” Bickford asked me, as we got in.

“I think we should pay a visit to Brian Garrett,” I said. Bickford started to protest, then thought better of it. I held the stubby, blued-steel revolver only a few inches from his side. He drove the car east along the Costera Miguel Aleman out of town and to the top of the headland. Finally, he turned onto a secondary road, and after a few minutes, he slowed to a stop.

“That’s Garrett’s place down there. You want me to drive right in?”

The house was set off by itself just under the crest of the ridge on the edge of the cliff that dropped away below it some two hundred feet to the sea. We were about a hundred yards away from the driveway that led to the main gate of the house.

“No, pull over here.”

Bickford turned the car to the side of the road. He brought it to a stop and shut off the ignition and the headlights. Sudden darkness closed us in, and, in that moment, I whipped the gun butt against the back of Bickford’s head, catching him just behind the ear. He slumped forward against the wheel. I put the gun in my right-hand jacket pocket, and, reaching into the other pocket, I brought out the roll of adhesive tape. I pulled Bickford’s hands behind his back, taping his Wrists with a dozen turns of the surgical tape. I stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth, taping a strip of adhesive from one cheek to the other to hold the gag in place.

Going around to the far side of the sedan, I opened both left-hand doors. Bickford was heavy. The years had put him well into the heavyweight class. I had to struggle to move his inert body into the back of the sedan. I bent over and taped his ankles and his knees. When I was through, I’d run out of tape, but he was securely bound. I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting loose.

Ten minutes later, I was moving silently through the darkness along the edge of the road until I came to the high wall that surrounded Garrett’s villa. The wall began at the sheer drop of the cliff edge on my right, cut through the field, then made a semi-circle all around the sprawling house to the cliff-edge on the far side.

There were lights on behind the wall. I could hear voices calling out to one another. As I moved closer to the wall, I could hear the splash of water. I recognized one of the girls’ voices as that of the blonde I’d seen earlier that afternoon at El Cortijo.

I crept along the base of the wall until I came to the driveway that angled in from the road. The gatefront was illuminated by two spotlights hung high on the main supports. There was no way for me to cross the driveway that close to the house without being seen, so I crawled back to the road and crossed it where I’d left Bickford and the car. It took me twenty minutes to make a complete reconnoiter of the other side of the house from the cliff edge to the drive, and then I retraced my steps and came back to the edge of the road again.

I was about to cross the road, the muscles of my leg already tensed to make the step, when some deeply rooted sense of danger halted me in my tracks.

There had been no change in the night sounds. Below the cliff, I heard the waves break in their same, slow, irregular rhythm against the boulders and onto the narrow, sandy beach. The westerly sea breezes rustled palm fronds together like a rubbing of dry hands. The night insects whined and chirped, twittering in the darkness all around me, yet it was as if some primordial alarm had been triggered inside my mind.

Long ago, I’d learned to trust my instincts completely. Even before the first, faint whisper of sound reached my ears, I flung myself sideways, twisting away from my unseen assailant.

I almost made it unscathed. The blow aimed at my spine caught me on the forearm as I turned, the blade of the knife ripping into my right arm just below the elbow, slashing it down to the wrist, making me drop the gun that I held in my hand. At the same moment, a hard, muscular body drove into me, knocking me off balance.

I fell flat on my face, barely in time to avoid the return slash as the blade cut the air where I had been only a second before. Without thinking, acting by pure reflex, I rolled quickly to the far edge of the road.

I lifted my head to see the blocky form of my attacker crouched in the spread-legged stance of a knife fighter. Moonlight glinted off the honed, razor-steel blade that he held in one outstretched hand, weaving his arm back and forth in front of him. I heard the rasping inhalations of breath as the man moved toward me, one shuffling step at a time.

I gathered my legs beneath me. My left hand scraped at the road. I found and clutched a fist-sized rock. I could feel the damp warmth of blood streaming down my right forearm and wrist. I tried to move my right hand. It was almost uselessly numb from the blow.

The man moved up beside the car to the open window of the driver’s seat. I saw him move his hand in through the window, and suddenly the car’s headlights came on, illuminating the road and the edge of the field, pinning me down in its harsh, white glare.

Slowly, I rose to my feet, my eyes squinting against the brightness of the lights. I began to move, trying to get out of the beam of the headlights.

My attacker moved out in front of the car, a stark, dangerous silhouette against the dazzling brilliance of the beams.

I moved another step.

“It ain’t going to do you no good to run.”

The long blade of the knife in his hand began its slow, snakelike weaving once more.

“Stand still, hombre! I’m gonna make it quick for you.”

I recognized the voice. It belonged to the stocky young man who had approached me at the malecon two days before — Luis Aparicio. The recollection brought back a flood of others. For some reason, the image of the turtle being disemboweled flashed into my mind. In my head, I could see again the turtle lying helplessly on its back, the quick slashes of the fisherman’s knife, the muscular arm bloodied to the elbow, and the long gray and pink coils of wet gut spilled onto the steps of the jetty.

Pushing the images away, I kept my voice calm with an effort. “Hello, Luis.”

“I told you we would meet again,” Luis said. He moved forward another shuffling step. “Tonight, I fix your friend at the hotel. Now, I take care of you.”

“You’ve been following me?”

Luis shook his head. “No, I don’t follow you. I come out here to see Carlos Ortega to tell him what I do at the hotel. I come up the road and I see a car. What you think I find inside, all tied up, huh? So I wait. Pretty soon, who you think comes up?” He smiled without mirth and took another step toward me. “Hombre, I’m going to cut you slow, and there ain’t nothing you can do.”

My mind was racing, calculating the few options I had. To run would only delay the end by a few desperate minutes. To stand and fight with only a rock as a weapon and with one arm rendered helpless was equally useless. To move in, unarmed, on a trained knife fighter would be sheer suicide.

In that second, I evaluated and discarded every choice but one, and even then, I knew the odds would be heavily against me. One small fact had come into my mind. I remembered how quickly Luis had lost his temper when I’d refused his offer to serve as my guide. Now, I gambled on that.

“A little punk like you?” I laughed at him, the derision in my voice reaching out and stinging him like a slap in the face. “Only from behind and in the dark— and even then you missed!”

Luis stopped moving forward. We were no more than eight feet apart

“You think I can’t do it?”

“Come and try!” I held out my left hand so that Luis could see the rock I held in it. Deliberately, I turned my hand over and let it fall to the ground.

“For a man, I might need a weapon,” I said, putting as much scorn into my voice as I could. “For you—” I spat into the road.

Luis turned slightly toward me. The headlights touched and lit up his face in sharp triangles of black and white. His mouth twisted into an angry grimace.

Slowly, I reached back into my hip pocket with my left hand and took out my handkerchief. I wound it around my slashed, right forearm.

“What’re you gonna use when I cut your stomach open?” Luis jeered.

I didn’t look at him, although every nerve in my body screamed at me to keep my eyes on the knife in Luis’s fist. Again, I reached behind with my left hand, my fingers going into my pocket and curling around the heavy brass plaque attached to my hotel room key. I kept my body turned away from Luis as I slid the key and plaque out of my pocket.

“You don’t have the cojones to come at me face to lace,” I taunted him. “I might take that knife away from you and make you get down on your hands and knees and lick it with your tongue like a dog! You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you little maladonada.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Luis snarled, trembling with rage.

I prodded him again. “Malcreado, chico! I spit on little pimps like you!”

Deliberately, I turned my back on him and took a step down the road away from him. Luis uttered a cry of rage and sprang after me.

With the first scraping noise, I flung myself to one side and spun around. Luis’s knife came whipping up at me, slashing through the air where I had stood only a fraction of a second before.

The furious sweep of his lunge had left him wide open. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I brought my left hand swinging around from my side in a vicious snap, hurling the brass plaque and key full into Luis’s face from only inches away. The heavy edge of the brass plate caught him across his eyelids.

He screamed out in pain. One hand involuntarily flew up to his blinded eyes, the other desperately thrust out the knife as he stumbled away, his sandals skidding on the loose gravel of the road. He slipped to one knee, his left hand going out to break his fall, the other still clutching the switchblade.

I took a long, savage step forward, lashing out with the full power of my right leg in a hard, driving kick— thigh muscles, calf muscles, back muscles all explosively concentrated with the whole force of my body, my ankle locked, my toe pointed rigidly.

And Luis, desperately pushing himself to his feet, came rising sightlessly into the blow, catching the point of my shoe squarely in the middle of his throat.

His mouth flew open. His knife dropped. Both hands went to his neck. He thrust himself stumblingly to his feet, staggering erect, standing finally in a bent-kneed, swaying crouch, the raw, animal sound of his scream blocked in his throat by a smashed larynx.

Luis turned toward me, the brutal glare of the headlights shining full on his bulging eyes and tortured face. Blood ran from his eyelids where the key and plaque had torn them open. His mouth gaped and closed as he tried to drag air into his lungs. His chest convulsed with the enormous and futile effort. Then, his legs buckled and with a great shuddering gasp, he fell forward, his face smashing into the gravel of the road. He thrashed crablike in the dirt, trying to breathe, trying to get up. His muscular body arched in one, giant final spasm and then he was still.

For a long moment, while I caught my own breath I watched him carefully. Then I went over to him and picked up the knife from beside his body. I wiped my own blood off the blade onto Luis’s shirt, folding the blade into the handle and putting it into my pocket I found my hotel key and, after a few minutes’ search, I found the .38 Airweight revolver that he had knocked from my hand in his first, murderous rush.

Finally, I went back to the car and turned off the headlights. I didn’t know how much longer I had before someone might come along. In the sudden darkness, I felt drained and tired and my arm began to ache badly, but there were still a few things I had to do before the night was over. For one thing, I couldn’t leave Luis’s body where it was. I didn’t want it discovered just yet.

I opened the trunk of the car, and, tired as I was, I hauled his body to the car and heaved him into the compartment, then slammed the lid shut

Wearily, I climbed into the front seat and started the car. I turned it around in the darkness before I switched on the headlights and drove back to Bickford’s casa.

Half an hour later, I sat patiently in Bickford’s living room waiting for the big man to regain consciousness. My arm had given me hell, especially when I had to move Bickford’s inert body from the car into the house, but I managed it in spite of the pain. I’d cleaned the cut with peroxide and had wrapped it tightly with bandages, both of which I’d found in the medicine cabinet in Bickford’s bathroom. The wound wasn’t deep, no tendons had been cut, but now the numbness had worn off and it hurt. I tried to ignore the pain, exercising my fingers to keep them from stiffening up. Every once in awhile, I’d pick up the gun in my wounded hand and grip the butt tightly. After awhile, I was satisfied that I could use it with my right hand if I had to.

Bickford was still completely out. So was his wife. Doris would probably sleep through until late morning. While I waited for Bickford to come to his senses, I went over to the telephone and got the number I wanted from information. I put in the call to police headquarters and hung up quickly because I didn’t want to answer any questions. I went back to the armchair to wait patiently.

In about fifteen minutes, Bickford came awake. I saw the surprise on his face at finding himself sprawled on the floor, staring at my shoes. He grunted heavily and rolled over onto his back. I leaned down and ripped the adhesive tape from his mouth. He spat out the gag.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” he said thickly, “what’d you have to slug me for?”

I ignored the question. “I want you to telephone Garrett.”

Bickford glared at me. “What the hell am I supposed to tell him?” he asked sourly. “That I screwed up? That you’re sitting here in my house with a gun in your hand and want to talk to him?”

“Exactly. Right down to the last detail.”

I knelt down beside him, taking Luis’s knife from my pocket and pressing the button on the side of the handle. The blade flicked out Bickford’s eyes widened in sudden fear. Roughly, I turned him on his side, slitting through the adhesive tape that bound his wrists behind him, and then I cut the tape at his ankles and knees.

He sat up slowly, flexing his fingers. He rose unsteadily to his feet, moving across the room on ponderous feet. His eyes went to the couch where Doris lay.

“She’s still asleep. I’ve already checked on her.”

“She’d better be all right,” Bickford growled.

I ignored the comment “Get on the telephone and tell Garrett that I’m waiting here for him — and that he’s to bring along his friend, Carlos.”

Bickford glared at me, but he reached out for the phone and made the call Then there was nothing for us to do but wait until Brian Garrett and Carlos Ortega arrived.