The Aztec Avenger

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Doris was still asleep on the couch. Bickford sat beside her, a shambling brute of a man, ashen with fatigue and worry. Carlos sat in one of the armchairs, his legs crossed carefully in front of him so as not to spoil the crease in his slacks. He stared silently at the bandage that covered my right arm from my elbow to my wrist My Madras jacket lay on the floor beside me, its right sleeve ripped open. The gun in my right hand was steady, without showing the least sign of a quiver in spite of the pain I felt. I couldn’t let him think Td been hurt much. Brian Garrett sat in the other arm chair, leaning forward, his beefy face flushed with anger, glaring at me.

“Just so that you’ll know that what Bickford told you is true,” I said. I leaned forward over the coffee table cluttered with magazines and newspapers. The Sunday edition of the Mexico City News was on top. I lifted up part of the newspaper. Underneath was a one-kilo, plastic bag packed full of a white powder.

Carlos and Garrett both looked down at the bag, their eyes drawn irresistibly to it. With my left hand, I took out Luis’s knife and flicked open the blade.

Carlos’ expression didn’t change. If he recognized the knife, he gave no sign, but then there were hundreds more like it in town — one of which was embedded deeply in Jean-Paul’s spine.

I jabbed the point of the blade into the bag, tearing it open slightly. Some of the powder drifted out onto the glass of the table top.

“Want to test it?”

Carlos reached out with his fingertip to touch the powder. He put his fingertip to his tongue. He nodded his head.

I reached out with the knife again and enlarged the cut I put the knife back into my pocket, still holding the gun on them. Then, I picked up the torn bag in my left hand and moved to the French doors. I pushed one of the doors ajar with my foot. Standing in the doorway, still facing them, the Smith & Wesson .38 aimed directly at Carlos, I turned the torn bag over so that the white powder blew out into the night.

Garrett jumped to his feet “You fool!” he burst out “You know how much that’s worth?”

“Sit down, Brian,” Carlos said, equably. “This is a game for big stakes. The man is showing us he can afford to sit in on it.”

Brian dropped back into his chair. He ran a meaty hand through his greying hair. “Goddamn you,” he said to me, savagely. “What do you want from us?”

“Just what I wanted before. Lay off Stocelli. Stay away from me.”

“Or?” Carlos asked, calmly.

“I’ll bust you wide open. I told you that before.”

“You talk big, Mr. Carter. I don’t believe you can do it.”

“I’d been looking out the open French doors. Now, I said, “Come outside for a minute. I want you to see something.”

They exchanged looks. Carlos lifted his shoulders in a shrug as if to say he didn’t know what I had in mind. The three of them got to their feet and went outside onto the terrace.

“Over there. Take a look at the naval base.”

We could make out a flurry of activity as lights suddenly came on. The deep, urgent hooting of a ship’s horn blowing insistent, hoarse blasts for action stations came faintly across the bay to us. In only minutes, we could make out the dim shape of a corvette backing away from the dock and then, as it turned, churning water at its stern. It began to pick up forward motion. By the time the corvette had reached the narrow inlet to the ocean, it was moving at almost flank speed, curls of white spray making twin rooster tails at its bow.

“What’s all that about?” Garrett asked.

“You tell him what you think,” I said to Bickford. Even in the moonlight, I could see fear on his face.

“They’re going after the tuna boat,” he guessed.

“Exactly right.”

“But how? How could they know about it?”

“I told them,” I said, tersely. “Now, shall we go back inside?”

“Let me get this straight,” Carlos said. “You gave five kilos of heroin to the captain and sent him off?”

Bickford nodded miserably. “He’d have killed me, Carlos. I had no choice.”

Carlos turned to me. “And then you notified the naval base?”

“Indirectly. I called the police. I think they’ll pick up your ship in the next half hour or so.”

Carlos smiled confidently. “You think my captain will be so stupid as to let a naval vessel board his ship without first dropping the package over the side?”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “But he doesn’t know about the other four kilos I planted when Bickford and I were leaving the ship. They’ll find that second package because I told them just where to look for it. The first was only a decoy.”

Carlos’ face was an olive mask with two, narrowing eyes aimed at me.

“Why?”

“Do you still think I can’t break up your organization?”

“I see.” He leaned back in the armchair. “You’ve just cost us a great deal, Mr. Carter. Our captain will think we’ve double-crossed him. It’s going to be hard to keep him from talking as long as he thinks that way.”

“That’s step one,” I said.

“I think we’ll have to do away with him permanently,” Carlos reflected out loud. “We can’t take a chance on him talking.”

“He’s no great loss. Add up the rest of the damage.”

“We’ve also lost a vessel. Is that what you mean? True. Worse than that — word will spread. We shall have a difficult time finding a replacement for him.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“And for this, you gave up — let me see — four and five more, nine kilos, plus the one you threw away so dramatically to impress us—ten kilos of heroin?”

I nodded.

“That’s a large amount of money to throw away,” Carlos observed, watching me.

“It’s worth it.”

“We’ve underestimated you.” His voice was still un-troubled. We might have been two businessmen discussing a fluctuation in the stock market “We’ll have to do something about it.”

“Don’t try. It’s already cost you two men.”

“Two?” Carlos lifted an eyebrow. “The captain is one. Who’s the other?”

“Luis Aparicio.”

This time I could see the shock of my words hit Carlos, but the man regained control of himself almost immediately. I pointed at the bandage on my arm.

“He almost had me. He wasn’t good enough, though.”

“Where is Luis?”

“Dead.”

I watched Carlos freeze — all but his eyes which stared at me dubiously, as if he didn’t believe what he’d heard.

“You’ll find him in the trunk of Bickford’s car,” I said, carefully observing the impact of my words on the three of them. Bickford almost leaped out of his chair. Carlos had to put a hand out to restrain him. Garrett’s face turned a mottled shade of red. Carlos leaned forward, and, for the first time, I saw pure hatred on his face.

“He was my nephew,” said Carlos. The words coming from his lips were numbed by the realization of what I’d said.

“Then you can have the family duty of burying his body,” I said, and moved my hand enough so that the squat .38 Airweight revolver was aimed directly at Carlos’ head. Carlos sank back into the armchair.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about Jean-Paul Sevier?” I asked.

Carlos shook his head. “I don’t have to. Your question tells me that Luis was successful.”

“Then Luis didn’t make a mistake?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Carlos was in control of himself again.

“I thought Jean-Paul was killed by mistake, that I was the target. But if Luis killed him deliberately, it means you knew he was a police agent.”

Carlos nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“How did you find out?”

Carlos shrugged. “In the past, there have been several attempts to infiltrate our organization. We’ve become extremely cautious lately. Yesterday, to make doubly sure that Jean-Paul was who he said he was, I put in a call to our friends in Marseille. Everything checked out, except for one thing. Jean-Paul Sevier did not fit the description of the man they had sent. So I told Luis to get rid of him.”

His voice still showed no concern. His face had settled back into its normal imperturbability, his features varnished into their usual blandness.

“We have arrived at a detente, Senor Carter,” Carlos said. “Apparently, neither of us can make a move without bringing on a violent retaliation from the other.”

“So?”

“Wait a second, Carlos!” Garrett broke in to protest. “You mean we’re going to go along with this son-of-a-bitch?”

I looked at the angry, jowled face, the tiny broken veins in Garrett’s nose, the nicks in his heavy-fleshed chin where he’d cut himself shaving. This was a man whose impatience could destroy him, I realized, filing the thought away.

Carlos shrugged. “What other alternative do we have, amigo?”

“Goddamn it! He’s cost us two men and a ship. Are you going to let him get away with it?”

“Yes.” Carlos didn’t look at Garrett as he spoke. “There’s nothing else we can do at this moment.”

And what have you planned for me later, I wondered. I was sure that Carlos didn’t intend to let me live if he could help it I was much too dangerous to him. I knew that for the time being Carlos would go along with me because he had no other choice. The question was, how long would that be?

I arose. “I take it you’ve agreed to lay off Stocelli?”

Carlos nodded. “You can tell him he’s safe from us.”

“And myself?”

Again Carlos nodded. “We’re going to have our our hands full protecting our organization from the damage you’ve already done. Survival first, Senor Carter.”

I moved to the French doors without haste. Pausing in the doorway, I said, “You made one mistake today. I told you it would be costly. Don’t come after me again. It would be another mistake.”

“We profit by our mistakes.” He didn’t take his eyes off me. “Be assured we won’t be so foolish next time.”

You could take that remark two ways, I thought I was sure that the next time he sent someone after me it would be in a more careful manner.

“Just remember Luis,” I warned him. “If there’s another attempt on my life, I’ll go after the man who sent him — you! Entiende, Senor Ortega?”

“I understand very well.”

Quickly, I turned and went out through the French doors, leaving the three of them in the living room: Carlos seated in the deep armchair, the smoothness of his face an inscrutable mask hiding his feelings as he watched me go; Bickford, a gray-faced hulk sitting on the couch beside his sleeping wife; and Brian Garrett, staring angrily at the dusting of white powder on the rug and the empty, ripped plastic bag that lay on the floor near the doorway where I’d dropped it.

I crossed the terrace and swung my legs over the ornamental concrete block balustrade to the grass of the yard. Then, hidden in the darkness, I doubled back to stand beside a window opened next to the terrace, my back pressed against the wall of the house, the gun in my hand, waiting to see if they’d come after me.

Turning my head, I could see them in the living room. None of them moved.

After a few minutes, Brian Garrett walked over and picked up the plastic bag that had held the heroin.

“Ten kilos! Where the hell did he lay his hands on ten kilos to throw away like it wasn’t worth a goddamned cent?”

“You fool!” Carlos spat out the words. Garrett turned around to face him. “Forget the heroin. I want Carter. I want him dead! Don’t you understand what he’s doing to us?”