The Aztec Avenger

CHAPTER SIX

I slept late. When I awoke, my mouth was dry from having smoked too much the night before. I showered and put on swim trunks and a lightweight beach shirt. I donned a pair of dark glasses and went down to the pool, carrying a camera slung around my neck and an equipment bag hanging from my shoulder.

The camera equipment and the dark glasses, together with a loud, patterned sport shirt make a pretty good disguise if you don’t want people to notice you. You’re just another tourist in a town full of them. Who’s going to look at another gringo?

At the pool, I ordered huevos rancheros for breakfast. There were only a few people around the pool. There were a couple of cute young English women. Slim, blonde and with cool, clear English voices emerging from lips that barely moved. The tone was lilting, with vowels as liquid as the water still beading on their suntanned bodies.

There were two other women in the pool, splashing around with a muscular character who looked like he was in his late twenties. You’ve seen the type. All bulging pectorals and biceps overdeveloped from constant weight lifting.

He made a pain in the ass of himself. He wasn’t satisfied with the two girls in the water. He wanted the English women, but they made a special point of ignoring him.

Something about him antagonized me. Or maybe I wanted to prove I could do it. I waited until the English women were looking in my direction and smiled at them. They smiled back at me.

“Hello.” The long-haired blonde waved at me.

I motioned for them to come over and join me and they did, dripping water, standing hip-slung and casual.

“When did you get in?” asked the other.

“Last night.”

“Thought so,” she said. “We haven’t noticed you here before. There aren’t many guests at all. Did you know that?”

“My name’s Margaret,” the first girl said.

“And I’m Linda…”

“I’m Paul Stephans,” I said, giving my cover name.

There was a massive splash at the pool as Muscles hauled himself out.

Without looking at him, Linda said, “Here comes that bore, again. Are they all like that in San Francisco?”

“San Francisco?” asked Margaret, puzzled. “This morning at breakfast, Henry told me that he was from Las Vegas.”

“Doesn’t make any difference,” said Linda. “Wherever he’s from, I can’t stand him.”

She flashed me a smile and spun away on long, suntanned legs. Margaret gathered up their towels. I watched them walk up the stairs that led to the hotel terrace, their lithe, bronzed legs moving in beautiful counterpoint to their semi-clad, sensual bodies.

At the same time, I was wondering about Henry, who came from either San Francisco or Las Vegas.

About that time, a young couple came down the stairs and put down their things near me.

The man was slender and dark. Very hairy legs. The woman with him was slim and had a fine figure. Her face was pert rather than pretty. They went into the water and swam, and then came out. I heard them speaking in French to each other.

He dried his hands on a towel and took out a package of Gauloises. “The matches are wet,” he called to the woman.

He caught me looking at him and came over. He said, pleasantly, “Do you have a match?”

I tossed him my lighter. He cupped his hands in front of his face to light the cigarette.

“Thank you. Allow me to introduce myself. Jean-Paul Sevier. The young lady is Celeste. And you are?”

“Paul Stephans.”

Jean-Paul smiled cynically at me.

“Forgive me for not believing you,” he said. “You’re Nick Carter.”

I froze.

Jean-Paul gestured easily with his hand. “Don’t be disturbed. I merely want a word with you.”

“Go ahead. Talk.”

“We are puzzled about your connection with Stocelli.”

“We?”

He shrugged. “I represent a group from Marseille. Does the name Andrè Michaud mean anything to you? Or Maurice Berthier? Or Etienne Duprè?”

“I know the names.”

“Then you know the organization I represent.”

“What do you want from me?”

Jean-Paul sat down at my table. “Stocelli has isolated himself. We can’t get at him. Our Mexican friends here can’t get at him either. You can.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do. Walk in and shoot the man?”

Jean-Paul smiled. “No. Nothing as crude as that. We merely want your cooperation to — as you say— set him up. We’ll take care of the rest.”

I shook my head. “No deal.”

Jean-Paul’s voice got hard. “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Carter.” Before I could interrupt, he went on quickly. “One way or another, we’re going to kill Stocelli. By that, I mean that our Mexican contacts will do the job as a favor for us. Right now, all they ask is a meeting with you. That’s not much, is it?”

“Just a meeting?”

He nodded.

I thought for a second. It could be a set-up to knock me off. On the other hand, it was the fastest way for me to get to know who the Mexican crowd was. In my business, you get nothing for nothing. If you want something, you’ve got to take the risks.

“I’ll meet with them,” I agreed.

Jean-Paul smiled again. “In that case, you have a date tonight Her name is Senora Consuela Delgardo.

An extremely pretty woman, I’m told. She’ll call for you here at the hotel around seven-thirty.”

He got to his feet.

“I’m sure you’ll have an enjoyable evening,” he said pleasantly, and went back to join Celeste, who’d just come out of the pool again.

Late in the afternoon, I took a taxi down the hill from the hotel to El Centro, the area of the cathedral and zocalo and the Monument to the Heroes. El Centro is the center of the town. It’s from here that all taxi and bus fares are computed by zones.

Acapulco is the main town in the state of Guerrero. And Guerrero is the most lawless state of all in Mexico. The hills just outside of Acapulco are filled with banditos who’ll slit your throat for a few pesos. The police aren’t able to enforce the law much outside the town limits. Even the army has its problems with them.

Wearing a loud sport shirt, a pair of light powder-blue slacks, and my feet in new leather huaraches, I walked into the park next to the malecon.

Everywhere I turned, I saw los Indios, the broad, brown-skinned faces of the men topped by short-cropped, jet black hair. Beside them, squatting on their haunches, were their women. And every one of them with obsidian eyed, high-cheekboned, brooding Indian faces.

As I looked at them, I realized that the old statuary of their ancient gods was more than a representation of some unknown deity; it also must be a good likeness of how the Toltecs themselves looked in those days.

And they hadn’t changed much over the centuries. These lndios looked as if they could still tear open your chest with a flint knife and rip out the bleeding, pulsing heart.

I made my way to a quieter part of the malecon, taking photographs as I went. Further down the curve of the waterfront, I could see a commercial tuna fishing boat, stumpy and squat Its decks were littered with equipment and it was tethered fore and aft by heavy manila hawsers to black iron bollards on the concrete malecon.

In the distance, at the docks below the massive stoneworks of Fort San Diego on the crest of the hill, I could see a freighter moored beside the warehouses.

I strolled along the malecon. On the stone steps that led to the water’s edge, I stopped and looked down.

There were two fishermen there. A young one and an old one. Both were bare except for ragged shorts. They held a huge, six-foot turtle between them. The turtle was on its back and helpless.

The young man took out a knife with a long, slim blade honed so many times that it was now worn to a thin crescent of convex steel.

He slid the blade under the bottom shell of the turtle near a hind flipper. Blood turned the knife red at the first slash. He cut in quick, savage strokes, moving his knife beneath the rim of the bottom shell, slicing through skin, flesh, muscle, and membrane with swift twists of his wrists as he squatted on his haunches beside the turtle.

The turtle twisted its head from side to side in slow, silent, saurian agony. Its slant, reptilian eyes were glazed from the sun. Its flippers waved in rhythmic, hysterical helplessness.

I watched the young man’s knife plunging deeper into the turtle. With each slash, his hands turned red with blood, first his fingers, then his hands, then his wrist, and finally his forearm all the way to the elbow.

I could see the viscera of the turtle pulsating in pink, wet coils of gut.

In a few minutes, they were through. They sloshed down the jetty steps with buckets of sea water and packed away the turtle meat in a bushel basket.

I had taken a full roll of color film while they were butchering the turtle. Now, as I wound the film back and began to reload my camera, I heard a voice behind me.

“They are pretty good, no? The one with the knife, eh?”

I turned around.

He was in his late twenties, good looking, with a stocky, athlete’s body, the muscles moving easily under his dark, copper-colored skin. He was dressed in cotton slacks, sandals, and a sport shirt completely open to display his bare, broad chest. He looked like every other one of the hundreds of beach boys who hang around the hotels.

“What do you want?”

He shrugged. “It depends. You need a guide, senor?”

“No.” I turned away and swung over to the Costera Miguel Aleman. The boy fell in beside me.

“What about women, senor? Eh?” He winked at me. “I know a very beautiful girl who knows many tricks—”

“Get lost!” I said, irritated at his unusual persistence. “I don’t like pimps!”

For a moment, I thought the guy would jump me. His brown face mottled with a sudden, dark flush of blood. His hand went back toward his hip pocket and then stopped. I saw sheer, murderous rage leap into his eyes.

I tensed, ready for him to jump.

He took a deep breath. The light went out of his eyes. He said, with an attempt at a smile that didn’t quite succeed, “Senor, you shouldn’t say things like that. Sometime, you will say-that word to somebody, and he’s going to put a knife in your ribs.”

“I told you I didn’t need your help.”

He shrugged. “Is too bad, senor. I can give you much help. Maybe you change your mind when I fee you next time, eh? My name is Luis. Luis Aparicio. Until then, adios.”

He turned and swaggered away, walking with an exaggerated stride to display his machismo.

There was something strange about what had just happened. I had insulted him. I had called him a name that, said to any other Mexican male, would have had him at my throat with a knife. Yet, he had swallowed his pride to go on pretending that he was just another tourist guide.

I’d intended to have a drink downtown before I went back to the hotel, but now I changed my mind. I was sure that the overtures my would-be friend had made were not accidental I knew I’d see Luis Aparicio again.

I stepped out into the street, waving down a taxi with its fibre sign showing. As I got in, I saw a familiar figure on the other side of the Costera. It was Jean-Paul. The slim Frenchman was with Celeste. He lifted a hand in greeting as my taxi moved away.

Senora Consuela Delgardo was prompt. She pulled up to the hotel at almost exactly seven-thirty in a small, red Volkswagen. I saw her come into the lobby and look around. She caught sight of me as I walked toward her, and held out her hand. We went back out the door together.

Consuela drove the winding roads like she was competing in the Mille Miglie.

We had a drink at Sanborn’s where the seats around piano bar were the only ones lit. I noticed that she steered us to those tables. I couldn’t see anyone else, but anyone else could sure as hell see me.

Then we went to dinner at Hernando’s. We met a tall, redheaded Englishman with a British accent so thick it was almost a parody. Consuela told me his name was Ken Hobart and that he ran a charter airline. He wore a thick RAF-type mustache under a beak of a nose. He finally ambled off, leaving us alone.

Consuela Delgardo was a beautiful woman. She was in her late thirties, a boldly handsome woman with a strongly boned face. Her hair was a rich, sable brown that she wore long, and it fell almost to her waist. She was tall, with superb legs, a narrow waist and full breasts. Her English was without a trace of an accent.

What unsettled me was that she stared as boldly and as appraisingly at me as I did at her.

Over coffee, I said, “Senora, you are one very lovely woman.”

“—and you would like to go to bed with me,” she finished.

I laughed.

“If you put it that way, sure.”

“And I,” she said, “I think you are a very fine man. But I am not going to bed with you tonight.”

“In that case,” I said, getting to my feet, “let’s go see your friends and find out what they want to tell me.”

We went to see Johnny Bickford.

Bickford was in his early sixties, white-haired, with a broken nose and a deep tan. The knuckles of both hands were flat from having been broken many times in the ring. Wide shoulders bulged his cotton knit, short-sleeved pullover. Faded tattoos, blue behind the deep brown of his skin, covered both forearms.

His wife, Doris, was almost as tanned as he. Platinum blond hair, eyebrows bleached blond from the sun, and faint blond down on her arms. She was also a lot younger than Bickford. I’d say she was in her early thirties. And she was a tease.

She wore no bra under her dress, and her cleavage was all hers and firm She was scented with Arpege. And I would have bet that when she was younger she went for at least two hundred a night You can always spot an ex-call girl There’s something about them that gives them away.

The terrace of Bickford’s casa overlooked the narrow inlet that led from the Pacific into the bay. I could see the dark expanse of the ocean as well as the lights of Las Brisas and the Naval Base at the foot of the hills across the inlet Scattered at random up and down the hillside were the lights of other houses, like immobile fireflies imbedded in the gelatin of the purple night shadows.

The two of us were alone on the terrace. Consuela had excused herself to go inside to freshen her makeup. Doris went with her to show her the way to the powder room.

I took a chance and said abruptly into the darkness, “I don’t want any part of your deal, Bickford.”

Bickford was not surprised. He said, easily, “That’s what we’ve been told, Mr. Carter. But, sooner or later, we’re going to get Stocelli. Since you can get to him easier than we can, you can save us a lot of time.”

I faced Bickford and said, sharply, “I want you to lay off Stocelli.”

Bickford laughed. “Come on, now, Mr. Carter.” His voice had the huskiness of an ex-prize fighter. “You know you’re in no position to tell us what to do.”

“I can blow your whole organization apart,” I said. “What kind of position does that put me in?”

Bickford chuckled. “Is that a threat?”

“Call it what you want to, but you’d better take me seriously, Bickford.”

“All right,” he said, “prove it.”

“Just a few facts,” I said. “Your people are running heroin into the States. Up until a year or so ago, you’ve been involved only with the Mexican-grown stuff. But the authorities have been clamping down on the poppy growers, and that cut into your source of supply, so you turned to Marseille. Your organization has become part of the pipeline from Marseille to the States. You run the stuff into the States through Matamoros into Brownsville, Juarez into El Paso, Nuevo Laredo into Laredo, Tijuana into L.A. A lot of it goes directly from here to San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, usually by tuna boat or freighter. A lot of it goes by private aircraft across the border into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Do you want the names of some of the ships you use? I can supply them, Mr. Bickford. Push me hard enough, and I’ll supply them to the authorities.”

“Jesus Christ!” said Bickford, slowly and softly as though he’d gone into shock. “What you know is enough to get you killed, Carter!”

“I know a lot of things that can get me killed,” I replied, coldly. “Now, how about it? Will you lay off Stocelli?”

Bickford was still stunned by what he’d heard. He shook his head. “I–I can’t do that I’m not in a position to make a decision like that.”

“Why?”

There was a pause, and then he confessed, “Because Tm just a guy in the middle.”

“Then pass the word on,” I told him, pressing him hard. “Tell your boss”—I saw Bickford wince at my use of the word—”that I want him to leave Stocelli alone.”

I saw the two women come out of the house toward us. I got to my feet

“I think we’ll have to be running along,” I said, taking Consuela by the arm as she came up to me.

Bickford stood up, a big, rangy man, his hair gleaming whitely in the moonlight, a troubled look on his battered face, and I knew I’d been right in my estimate of him. He’d dropped out of the fight game because he lacked the guts to take a hard punch and come back swinging. He was all show. His toughness was all on the outside.

“You’ll have to come around again,” Doris said brightly, looking at me, her eyes filled with invitation. “Both of you,” she added.

“We’ll do that,” I said, not smiling back at her. I turned to Bickford. “It’s been nice talking to you.”

“You’ll hear from us soon,” said Bickford, making no effort to keep up the pretense. Doris threw him a sharp, warning glance.

The four of us walked out to Consuela’s little car and said goodnight.

Consuela was quiet on the ride back to my hotel. We were almost there when I suddenly asked, “Who’s Luis Aparicio? Is he one of your men?”

“Who?”

“Luis Aparicio.” I described the young Mexican I’d met that afternoon on the malecon.

After a pause, she said, “I don’t know him. Why?”

“Just wondered. Are you sure?”

“I’ve never heard of him.” Then she added, “I don’t know everyone in the organization.”

“And the less you know the better off you are?”

Consuela made no answer for a long time. Finally, she said, in a voice devoid of all warmth, “I’m still alive, Mr. Carter. And, in my own way, I do quite well.”