The Damsel

One

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Grofield said, “Sorry? What for? What’s to be sorry about?”

“You’re mad at me,” she said.

Grofield said, “Give me another cigarette.” He’d left his Delicados downstairs.

They were in the room directly above his old one. The hoods had rented a suite up here, three rooms with this one in the middle. There was a hall door, but it was double-locked and the key was gone, so you could only get in and out through the rooms on either side.

And the window, of course. You could still go out the window, except the hoods had stripped the bedding from the bed, removed the curtains from the window, and even taken away Grofield’s belt. There was nothing to use as a rope anymore, so there wouldn’t be any more trips out the window.

Grofield and Ellen Marie Fitzgerald were alone now, Grofield half-sitting and half-lying on the bare mattress, the girl prowling the room in nervous agitation. They’d been brought here five minutes ago and left alone, and until now neither of them had done any talking. The way Grofield felt, the silence could have gone on forever.

But the girl had things to say, nice, useful things like I’m sorry. She also wanted to make amends; when Grofield asked her for a cigarette, she lit it herself before handing it to him. There was a faint trace of lipstick on the tip. She stood beside the bed, lit a second cigarette for herself, and said, “I’m sorry about the—”

Grofield quickly overrode her, saying, “The way I see it, the only reason your pals left us alone like this is to hear what we have to say.”

Her eyes widened, and she glanced toward one of the side doors. “You think so? Why?”

“To see where I fit in, see if we know each other from somewhere. You ready to tell me the truth now?”

She hesitated, biting her lower lip. Finally she said, “No, I can’t. I wish I could, I owe you at least that much, but—”

“You owe me plenty, honey.”

“I know. Believe me, I know, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“You can’t tell me much of anything, can you?”

“No. I just can’t, that’s all.”

Grofield said, “But there is a place you have to be by Friday. Or on Friday.”

“Yes. On Friday, yes.”

“And it’s the place you said before.”

“Acapulco, yes.” She saw him glance at the door, and said, “Oh, they know about it. That’s why they’re holding me. They’ll let us both go on Saturday, I know they will.”

Grofield said, “I’m not sure I can wait.”

“I know I can’t wait. But what can I do?” And, looking wild-eyed, she went back to the pacing again.

Grofield let the silence stretch between them again, for several reasons. In the first place, he expected any minute she’d make a slip and say something about the money. In the second place, he wanted time to think about where he was and work out a way to be somewhere else.

He hated the weakness of his body now, its stiffness and sluggishness. He was never sick, always in good physical shape, his actor’s preparations having included fencing lessons and tumbling, some acrobatics and horsemanship and ballroom dancing, so that he was ready at any time to take a role in The Prisoner of Zenda. Any time but now, when he needed it.

Plus, as if the wound weren’t handicap enough, he was completely off his home field. He’d never been in Mexico before, had no tourist papers, didn’t speak the language. Except for the clothes he had on — and the suitcase full of money — he had no luggage, nothing to wear, nothing. He was unarmed, he had no local contacts or friends, and he didn’t dare go to either the Mexican police or the American Embassy.

The more he thought about it, the more he had to accept the fact that he needed this girl’s help. She’d gotten him into a mess he couldn’t handle as a single, and she could damn well cooperate to get him out again.

She was still pacing over there, looking panicky but intent. He said, “Come here.”

She stopped, startled for a second, and then reoriented herself and came over toward him, but not close enough. He gestured impatiently for her to sit down on the bed next to him. She got a mistrustful look on her face, but he let her know with his own look of disgust that she’d guessed wrong. She said, “What—?” but he cut her off with a violent arm gesture that obviously meant shut up.

When she finally sat down, elbow to elbow with him, their legs stretched out parallel in front of them on the bare mattress, he whispered, “This is the way we have a private conversation. Get it?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered back. “I didn’t catch on fast enough, I was thinking about other things.”

“You’re sorry a lot, aren’t you? All right, never mind, just listen. There are things each of us wants.”

She nodded vigorously.

“So we help each other,” he whispered. “You help me get out of here and get my suitcase back. I help you get to Acapulco on Friday.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, maybe too quickly.

Grofield looked at her, and she was as sweet and innocent as a ten-year-old nun. Unicorn bait. And in the brain behind those eyes, Grofield was convinced, she was planning to ditch him, with or without the money, the first chance she got.

Well, the hell. You had to work with the materials at hand. Grofield whispered, “What about papers? You in the country legally?”

“Of course.” She seemed honestly surprised, so surprised she almost answered aloud.

“Ssst! Keep it down.”

“Sorry. I—”

“Again? Sorry again?”

“I do say that all the time, don’t I?”

“You have cause. What about a driver’s license? Got one?”

“Yes.”

“On you?”

“In my bra. I put all my papers there when I went out the window.”

“Fine. And here comes the capper. This is the one you’ve got to answer straight.”

“If I can.”

“You can. When you climbed down that sheet, the phone to call the cops is not where you headed. If we get away again, will your aunties call the cops?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Our deal is still on either way,” Grofield assured her. “It’s just we’ll have to work things different on the outside.”

She sat up straighter, half-turned to face him, held up her right hand in the three-fingered Scout pledge. “I guarantee,” she whispered fiercely, “those rotten bastards have never spoken willingly to the police in their entire lives and nothing about what’s going on now is going to change that. They will not call the police, I swear it.”

“All right. Good. So the next thing is to get out of here.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Don’t you believe me. Help me off this bed.”

“All right.”

She scrambled off first, took his right arm, and helped him through that no-man’s-land of balance between sitting down and standing up. Once he was vertical he was all right.

He looked around the room, and it was discouragingly bare. With the curtains off the window and the covers off the bed, the place looked naked, vacant, nobody home.

Aside from the bed, there was the normal minimum of hotel-room furniture; a metal dresser with a fake wood veneer, a floor lamp with an atrocious pink shade, a Danish-modern armchair with green leatherette seat and back, a small writing table and chair in a style to match the dresser, and a low luggage rack at the foot of the bed.

Grofield said, “Don’t you have any gear? Luggage?”

“In the closet.”

“Get it out, let’s see if there’s anything we can use.”

From the closet she got two small white suitcases, very expensive looking. She set them both on the bed, opened them, and stepped back. “Take a look,” she said. “No guns or knives or hand grenades.”

“Oh, shucks,” said Grofield. “I had such high hopes.” He went over and, right-handed, poked through both suitcases.

It was all normal goods. Cashmere sweaters, cotton blouses, wool skirts. Bras and panties and stockings and garter belts, but no girdle. Four pairs of shoes, of varying styles, and some rolled pairs of socks. Toothbrush and toothpaste and a whole array of toilet articles and cosmetics.

She said, sotto voce, as he kept poking, “You know, I’m beginning to get scared.”

“That’s all right,” he said, distracted, thinking about other things. What to use, how to use it, what’s the plan.

“Running away from them,” she went on, her whisper turning shrill, “sneaking away, that was one thing. But you mean to attack them, have us fight our way through them.”

“Only way. We might tie bits of clothing together, make another rope, but I wouldn’t trust it to hold.”

“No.”

“Nor me to hold onto it. My left arm isn’t much use. I can hold a cup or a spoon with it, but that’s about all.”

“So we have to go through them.”

“Center of the line,” he said. “Off tackle.”

“But there are three of them, and they’re all healthy, and they’re armed. And there are two of us, and we are half unhealthy and half a girl, and we aren’t armed.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Maybe we should wait and see what—”

He held up a can, saying, “What’s this stuff?”

“What? Oh, hair spray. You know, to hold a set.”

“This is one of these pressure cans, right? And the stuff sprays out the top here.” He gave an experimental push to the button on top, and a brief fog hissed out. “Doesn’t go far,” he commented. “Dissipates in a hurry. You ever get this stuff in your eyes?”

“Lord, no. It stings like fury.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I got a little in my eye once. It stings like soap, only worse. They tell you on the can, be sure and keep it out of your eyes.”

“Fine.” He went over and set the can on the dresser. “Weapon number one,” he said, and went back to the suitcases.

She said, “Hair spray? Against guns?”

“You packed this thing, I didn’t.”

“We’d better wait, really and truly. Maybe we’ll get a chance to sneak away again, and—”

He turned and said, “In the first place, no. In the second place, they’ll be watching you closer this time and you won’t be getting any more chances to sneak away. In the third place, I can’t afford to wait. In the fourth place, we can’t just take off, we’ve got to lock them up before we do, so we’ll have a head start on them and I can stop off for my suitcase. And in the fifth place, don’t talk so loud, they might still be listening.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“And in the sixth place, stop saying sorry.” He went back to the suitcases again, and came up with a small pair of scissors in a clear plastic case. “What’s this?”

“Nail scissors.”

“Nail scissors. A weapon?”

“They have blunt tips. Rounded tips.”

“Too bad.” He tossed them on the bed. “We’ll think about them some more later. What else, now?”

But there didn’t seem to be anything else. Reluctantly, Grofield gave up on the suitcases and looked around the room again, but the room itself was still as bare as ever. He went into the bathroom, a small white place with a vent instead of a window, and found nothing there either.

Back in the main room, he said, “All right, we work with what we’ve got.”

“But we don’t have anything,” she said.

“Sshh, quiet.”

Grofield prowled around the room, looking at this and that, thinking. He listened at the doors on both sides, hearing radio music from the room on the left and low conversation from the room on the right. So that was the disposition of forces, two and one.

She said, “They don’t want to kill us, but they will if they have to.”

“That’s the way I feel, too,” Grofield said. He unplugged the lamp, took the nail scissors, and cut the electric cord near the base of the lamp. He stripped about an inch of the two wires bare at the cut end, fastened these to the metal knob and lock of the door through which he’d heard the radio playing, and plugged the other end in again.

She said, “Won’t that kill somebody?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it’ll just knock him out. He won’t be coming in here, I’ll tell you that much.”

“I think you scare me,” she said.

Grofield flashed her his winning smile. “It’s only nature,” he told her. “The lioness defending her cub, the patriot defending his nation, me getting back to my suitcase. You don’t know the months of worry-free art that suitcase is going to provide me.”

“Art? Are you a painter?”

“There’s art and art,” Grofield said. He was disappointed in her. But then he smiled again and patted her cheek. “Don’t you worry your pretty head, Missy. We’ll see the plantation again.”

“But it will never be the same,” she said. “Never.”

Grofield liked her again now. He laughed and said, “Onward. Step two.”

Among the toilet articles in her luggage was a fresh cake of sweet-smelling soap. He took this, and a white sock, and went into the bathroom, where he filled the sink with steaming water, too hot to touch. He put the soap in the sock, then draped the sock over the edge of the sink so the soap was submerged.

She watched him uncomprehending, and finally said, “What’s all that about?”

“Product of a misspent youth,” he told her. “We’ll let it sit five minutes or so, and then we’ll see.”

“Some day,” she said, “you’re going to have to tell me all about yourself.”

He laughed. “Right after you tell me all about you,” he said. He went back to the living room and looked out the window; it was raining. “Must be four o’clock.”

Behind him, she looked at her watch and said, “Five after. How did you know?”

He pointed a thumb at the window. “Rain. It always rains at four o’clock here in the summer.”

“Is that right? I just got here this morning, I — that can’t be right. Every day?”

“Almost. It’ll be over in five or ten minutes, and the sun’ll come back out.” He looked around the room. With the clouds and the rain, the room was somewhat dim, even though the window was bare. “We better make our move before then,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

“An oldie. I’m going to have a sudden relapse, groaning and carrying on, on the bed. You hammer on the door — that one, not the one I wired — and call for help. They—”

“They won’t believe it,” she said. “Even I wouldn’t believe it. They did that in every western movie ever made.”

“I know. But I am sick and they know it, so it’s more likely to be legit in their eyes. Besides, I’ll holler my head off, and they’ll be in a hurry to stop me.”

“All right,” she said. “It’s worth a try. So they come in. Now what?”

“One or two of them come in,” he said. “In any case, we can figure only one of them will come over to me. The other will stay in the doorway, probably, or just a step or two inside the room. Now, the one who comes over to the bed is mine.” He picked up the can of hair spray and said, “I’ll use this on him, as soon as he gets close enough.”

“What if he doesn’t get close enough?”

“He will. The way I’ll be hollering, he’ll get close enough.”

“All right. What do I do?”

“You take care of number two.”

“Good of me,” she said.

“Clever of you, in fact. Come here, let’s see if it’s ready.”

They went back to the bathroom and Grofield took the sock out of the water. “It’ll do,” he said, studying it critically. “Give me a towel, we’ll dry this.”

She handed him a towel, and said, “I still don’t get it. Am I stupid?”

“No. Merely overprotected.” He folded the sock in the towel, patted it dry, put the towel down, and walked back into the bedroom. “What we have here,” he told her, “is a homemade blackjack.”

“We do?”

“Right. The hot water melted the outer edge of the soap a little, and now as it hardens again, the sock sticks to it and you’ve got a nice, hard handy cosh here.” He held the sock by the loose upper end and showed it to her. “The other way,” he said, “is to fill the sock with sand, but we don’t have any sand.”

“Does it really work?”

“Guaranteed. Just swing it with all your might. If his back is to you, which we dearly hope it is, go for the head. If he’s facing you, go for the stomach, swing sidearm. Then, when he bends over, give him the second one in the head.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“Acapulco?”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“There’s nothing to it,” he told her. “Just keep your hands by your side when they first come in, so your skirt hides the sap. Wait till I make my move, and then you go for number two.”

“But what if I don’t do it right?”

“Don’t worry about it. If you keep swinging, you can’t go wrong. Besides, I should have the other one’s gun pretty quick. At the very worst, you’ll be distracting him while I take care of his buddy.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was a lot easier to just go out the window.”

“Five flights up? If that didn’t scare you, this won’t.”

“It scared me, believe me it did.”

“And you did it anyway. So you’ll do this anyway.” He lay down on the bed, the spray can in his right hand tucked down against his right hip. The door was to his left, so the can should be out of sight until he was ready to use it. He looked over at her standing by the door and said, “You ready?”

She gave him a weak smile, a shrug, and a nod.

“Okay. Let me groan a few seconds first, build it up, before you start on the door.”

She nodded again.

Grofield closed his eyes and got into character.

Now and again his two occupations complemented each other. Grofield the professional thief had worked out the escape plan from this room, but it was Grofield the professional actor who put the plan into operation.

Who was he? Where was he? The underfurnished room, the bare mattress, the curtainless window, the girl standing apprehensive by the closed door... it was France, 1942. Outside, the German soldiers have just driven up in two trucks, following the jeep full of Gestapo men. Here, inside the farmhouse, lies the wounded British aviator, being hidden and cared for by the farm family with the beautiful daughter. Everything at this moment hinges on his silence, but he is unconscious, delirious, feverish, terribly wounded...

He thrashed a little bit on the bed. Eyes squeezed shut, he began to moan.

Two

“Help! Help!”

She was doing beautifully, hollering away and hammering her fists on the door. On the bed, Grofield was screaming like a banshee and waving his right arm in the air.

The door burst open so fast that Ellen Marie barely had time to jump back out of the way and get the cosh down out of sight. Grofield, doing it right, let another notch out of his voice and projected a howl straight through the ceiling.

Both of them had come charging into the room, guns drawn. It was the talker and one of his assistants. The talker yelled at everybody at once, trying to be heard over Grofield’s shrieking, “Shut up! What is it? Watch her! Shut your face, you!”

He came running toward the bed. The other one, open-mouthed, stood in the middle of the room and paid no attention to Ellen Marie, but gaped at Grofield instead. Grofield’s waving arm dropped down to his side, fingers folding around the spray can.

But the talker had his own methods. He didn’t want to know what Grofield’s problem was, he just wanted to shut Grofield’s mouth. So he came running to the bed, reversing the gun in his hand, and immediately swung the gun butt in a long, rapid loop aimed straight at Grofield’s head.

Grofield, his eyes half-closed, saw it coming just barely in time and wrenched himself out of the way with a jolting effort that drew the kind of knife pain from his wound that he hadn’t felt in two days. The gun butt smashed into the mattress next to Grofield’s ear.

He’d lost the can. It was down there somewhere, he almost had it, but his finger couldn’t find the button on top. He just grabbed it, swung with it.

The talker had wound up his swing half-bent over the bed, enraged face directly above Grofield’s. Before he could regain his balance, Grofield had swung around and hit him in the mouth with the side of the spray can.

But the can was too light. It startled the talker, but that’s all it did. Grofield hit him two more times fast with the can, once again on the mouth and once on the nose, and only dented the can. But by then he’d finally found the button, and he started spraying.

Only he was too late. The talker was already backing away from the bed, getting control of things again, reversing the gun to get the long-distance end aimed at Grofield. Grofield had managed to cut his lip, but that wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

Nor could he get off the bed in time. The useless spray can still clutched in his hand, Grofield struggled around on the bed, trying to get up, trying to get on his feet. His left arm didn’t want to help at all, didn’t want to do a thing.

In front of him, too far away, the talker had come to a stop, was braced, had the gun around and aimed, was saying, “Goodbye, you smart bas—”

And fell over on his face.

Grofield had managed finally to get off the bed by throwing himself over the edge. He and the talker hit the floor at the same time. The talker’s gun bounced and landed beside Grofield’s cheek. Grofield looked up and saw Ellen Marie standing there, the only vertical person in the room.

She shook her head and hefted the blackjack. “I don’t know what you’d do without me,” she said.

“You got him?”

“I got them both.”

“Bless you, Elly. You’re a dear child.”

“There’s a rumor going around,” she said, “that you’re going to help me.”

“Moral support,” he said. “Also, I hold your coat. Would you mind helping me up? I believe I’ve had enough humiliation for one day.”

She helped him to his feet and handed him the talker’s gun, then pointed at the other door. “I haven’t heard a thing from there,” she said. “Shouldn’t we have heard something?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. A scream maybe.”

“Or sizzling?”

“Oh! Don’t talk like that.”

“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go around and see.”

She said, “What if these two start to wake up again?”

“Conk them again.”

“Is that safe?”

“Sure. It’s soft, won’t cut the flesh or anything.”

“But what about concussions?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “What about them? Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

“All right.”

He went through the other room, out to the hall, down past the locked door to the room where he’d been imprisoned, and tried the door to room number three. It was unlocked, and inside, hood number three was lying on his face on the floor.

Grofield went over and looked at him and he looked very gray. Grofield called through the door, “Unplug that thing.”

“All right. Wait a second.”

Grofield waited till she told him it was all right, then unlocked and opened the door. “There,” he said. “Our choice of escape routes.”

She looked past him, saying, “Is he... is he—?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does. I’ve never, I’ve never been involved in — would you please go see how he is?”

“If you say so.” Grofield went over and knelt beside him and looked him over. “He’s breathing,” he said. “Shallow, but breath.”

“I’m glad.”

He looked up at her, and she really did mean it. She wasn’t, so far as he could tell, totally consistent. One minute she was climbing up and down the outside of buildings on a sheet and knocking out gunmen with a homemade cosh, and the next minute she was Louisa May Alcott.

Skipping right out of Alcott again, now, she said briskly, “Shouldn’t we hurry? We’ve still got to get away from here.”

“One thing at a time, sweetheart. Help me drag this guy into the other room.”

He was feeling very down now, after the sudden burst of activity. Also, his throat was sore from all the shrieking he’d done. Dragging the limp body into the middle room, even with Ellen Marie’s help, left him shaking with weakness. He sat down on the bed, gasping a little, saying, “Got to rest a minute. Look, you go through that side room, lock the door behind you, take the key with you, come around through the hall and come back here, okay?”

“You all right?”

“I’m fine. I just have to sit down a minute, that’s all.”

“Your face is all-over sweat. Let me get you a towel.”

“You’re a dear girl.”

She got him the towel and then went away to lock the connecting door. Grofield mopped his face and looked at the three sleeping beauties. “I would like to see you boys again some time,” he told them, “when I’m up to snuff.”

Ellen Marie came back in from the hall and said, “Now what?”

“Get their guns and their wallets and any official-type papers they may have on them, and pack everything away in your suitcase. Then we’re getting out of here.”

“Good. Where do we go from here?”

“First, down to get my suitcase. Second, out of the hotel and into a cab. Third, to a car-rental agency, where you are going to rent a car. Fourth, out of Mexico City.”

“I can’t go to Acapulco,” she said. “I don’t dare get there before Friday. There are more of—” she motioned at the three on the floor “—more of them down there. That’s why I came here; I thought I’d be safe here until Friday.”

“But they were waiting for you.”

“Yes.”

“So we’ll go somewhere else.” He felt more rested now, and much more pleased with life. He got to his feet, staggering almost not at all, and said, “A place I’ve heard of. We’ll both love it. Come on.”

They locked the hoods in, and went away.

Three

The car was a Datsun, a Japanese make, cream-colored, with automatic gearshift. A two-door sedan, it was a little cramped for Grofield’s long legs, but not bad. It was a family-type pleasure-type car, sturdy and reliable, but not very peppy. Grofield, at the wheel, had the feeling he’d have trouble getting away from even a determined cyclist.

Still, it was a pleasant little car, about the size of an American compact. Their luggage was on the back seat, two suitcases each now, Grofield having taken extra time to do some shopping for clothes and a bag to put them in.

Late afternoon in Mexico City. Always a good time of day, after the rain, with the sun out again and a bright, fresh, newly washed look to the world. Grofield drove west along Paseo de la Reforma, one of the two major thoroughfares of the city and its more beautiful. Eight lanes of two-way traffic were flanked by broad swaths of green grass. Statues, benches, and pedestrian paths lined these strips of grass, beyond which were narrow access streets paralleling the main lanes, and then finally the buildings. Movie houses, banks, hotels, and government buildings flanked Reforma. The Mexico City Hilton was here, and the American Embassy. At each major intersection there was a circle around a large monument; the statue of Charles IV, the statue of Columbus, the statue of Cuauhtémoc, and finally the Independence Monument, a great golden-winged figure called “the Angel.”

Farther west, Reforma turned at an angle to the right and cut through Chapultepec Park. Great trees arched over the roadway, roofing it in green, so that they drove through a dappled effect of light and shadow, the park stretching away on both sides. The peseros, one-peso taxicabs of red or yellow or dark green, raced by in both directions, the traffic crowded but surprisingly fast.

Ellen Marie lit two cigarettes, gave Grofield one, and said, “This is a beautiful city. I think I’d like to come here sometime.”

“You mean when you can look at it.”

“Something like that.”

Grofield glanced at her, sitting easy and relaxed beside him. Light and shadow, light and shadow; sunlight did very good things for her hair. “I can’t figure out what sort of mess you could get yourself in,” he said.

“Don’t try. Please.”

Grofield shrugged. “Patience is my middle name,” he said.

“Is Alan really your first?”

“Yes.”

“Thank, thank you, Alan, for helping me.”

“Sure. What did I do?”

“You made the blackjack.”

Grofield grinned. “Any time,” he said.

At the end of Chapultepec Park, at a huge statue-fountain affair that looked like the world’s biggest bookend, Grofield turned right off Reforma and onto Avenue Manuel Avila Comacho. He’d spent five minutes looking at a road map in the car-rental office, and now he was a little surprised it was all going as easily as the map had made it look.

She said, “You haven’t told me yet where we’re going. Is it a surprise?”

“For both of us. I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve heard of it. It’s north of here about—”

“North? But Acapulco is south. Shouldn’t we at least go toward Acapulco and stop off somewhere along the way until Friday?”

“No, not a bit of it. I looked at the map, and as far as I can see, there’s only the one road to Acapulco. It goes through Taxco, and then on down to the coast. It’s the only road to Acapulco from anywhere, so all your friends have to do is start at one end and search for us until they find us.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that. Only the one road?”

“Only the one road.”

“But that’s ridiculous. Acapulco is a big city, a resort city.”

“One road.”

“Good Lord, no place has only one road. I mean, there’s always at least a north-south road and an east-west road, and that’s two. And actually four, because you can come from each direction.”

“Not Acapulco. According to the map, there’s the road from Mexico City and that’s all. It comes from the north into Acapulco and stops. South of Acapulco is the ocean. East and west is the coastline, but there’s no road along it. Maybe there will be some day, but there isn’t now.”

“Then how are we going to get there?”

“We’ll worry about that,” he told her, “when the time comes. What we’re going to do now is go north, to a place called San Miguel de Allende. We’ll stay there until — When do you have to be in Acapulco? What time Friday?”

“Just before midnight, that’s all.”

“All right. Friday morning, early, we’ll leave San Miguel and head for Acapulco and see what happens.”

“But if there’s only the one road—”

“We’ll see what happens.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Four

Elly climbed out of the pool, tweaked flesh in at the bottom of her bathing suit, brushed wet hair back from her face with her palms, and came walking toward Grofield.

Grofield, in a bathing suit, sitting on the grass in the sunlight and holding a bottle of Carta Blanca beer in his hand, was well pleased with life. The late-morning sun was warm, the air was clear, the surroundings were pleasant, his wound felt fine, and the girl walking toward him looked incredible in a pale blue two-piece bathing suit. He smiled lazily, gestured with the beer bottle, looked up at Elly through a new pair of sunglasses, and said, “Howdy, comrade. Set a spell.”

“Comrade,” she agreed. She flopped down on the ground beside him, took the beer away from him, swallowed a healthy portion, and gave it back. “You ought to go in the water,” she said.

“My bandage.”

“We’ve got to change it anyway. Besides, it’s spring water, it’s warm, it’ll be great for your wound.”

“The sun is great enough. I’m content.”

She looked around and nodded judiciously. “You’ve redeemed yourself,” she said.

“Honey, I told you last night I’d never been to San Miguel before. I’d heard about it, friends of mine told me about it. They said it’s the Greenwich Village of Mexico, it’s full of American painters and writers and composers and whatnot, all on six-month tourist permits, because it’s supposed to be cheap and great—”

“And ugly,” she finished.

“No. And beautiful. I was talking to the barman; he says San Miguel is a national monument. They’ve got two, this one and Taxco, both national monuments. You can’t build anything or tear anything down without permission from the federal government.”

“Is that why they don’t fix the streets?”

“Cobblestones. It’s Old Mexico, preserved for the modern day. I thought it looked great, myself.”

She nodded. “Me too. I’m glad we went through it, it was very nice. I’d love to look at it forever, but I wouldn’t want to live there for a minute. That hotel was just a little too Old Mexico for me. I’m New America myself.” She stretched, which looked fine. “One thing, at least,” she said. “Honner won’t ever think to look for us there.”

“Honner?”

“The man you sprayed.”

“Honner.”

She stretched again. “Well, what do we do now?”

“We wait. We can go back into town tonight, see what the night life is like.”

“I can imagine what the night life is like. But all right, we’ll go.”

“I won’t twist your arm.”

“Will you come in the water?”

“Maybe later on.”

“I’m going now, I don’t want to get a burn.”

“See you.”

She got to her feet and stretched some more. Over at the other pool, the round one with the hot water in it, a couple of the old men sitting at the rim kept looking at Elly and shaking their heads, looking at her and scratching their stomachs, looking at her and kicking their feet a little in the water. Grofield watched them watch her go to the warm-water pool and dive in. Then they looked away, started talking real estate together again, and Grofield took another swig of beer.

This was a good place, about six miles north of town, in on its own dirt road from the blacktop road between San Miguel and a town called Dolores Hidalgo. The hotel was called the Taboada Balneario, and it was all by itself in the semi-arid plain. The buildings were long and low, in a combination of Indian and Spanish styles, with red tile roofs; thick-trunked trees were intermixed with the buildings. There were the two spring-fed swimming pools, one containing hot and the other warm water, plus a large dining room with one long window-wall facing the main lawn and pools. A bus came up from San Miguel once a day, bringing tourists to take pictures and swim in the pool, but they hadn’t arrived yet, and at the moment the place was nearly empty.

They’d found it almost by accident. Coming into town about seven-thirty last night, they’d both been unprepared for just how primitive a national monument could be. They’d looked at two hotels, one of which had a great central courtyard, but neither of which Elly would agree to stay in, and then Grofield saw a lavender Lincoln slowly poking its way along the narrow street, like a panther in a maze. The Lincoln had California plates, so Grofield stopped it, asked the driver to recommend a place, and the driver — an arrogant-looking fat man of about fifty — looked Grofield over, said, “middle income,” as though to himself, and then told them about the Taboada Balneario.

Nervous reaction from the excitement of the day had set in with Elly, who by then was being irritable and jumpy. She wouldn’t make sense when Grofield asked her if she thought they ought to make the extra drive and see what this place looked like, so he just drove it and the hell with her. He’d taken adjoining rooms without looking at them, he’d stuffed Elly and her luggage into one of them without letting her talk to him word one, and he’d gone into his own room and to bed and to sleep, promptly.

And this morning everything was fine. They were both rested and feeling easy, and the hotel was great, although hotel was maybe not exactly the word for it. The rooms were more or less motel fashion, in a row, with separate entrances, but Grofield had never seen a motel before with a brick ceiling. An honest-to-God brick ceiling; he’d spent about an hour this morning lying in bed and looking up at it, wondering why it didn’t fall down. It looked like a brick wall up there, but it was horizontal.

The hotel was on the American plan, meals included. They had a slow and leisurely breakfast together, then walked around the grounds a while before changing into bathing suits.

Grofield continued to sit there after Elly went back into the pool. He drank his beer, felt the sun warm on his back, and began to feel more and more like his old self.

Later on he did go in the pool for a while, and the warm water was fine for the wound, but not so good for the bandage, which was getting old anyway, having been put on five days ago. After the bus came from San Miguel, bringing tourists with cameras and natives in wool bathing suits, they went back to their rooms and she got the gauze and tape she’d bought yesterday to change his bandage.

He lay on his stomach on his bed while she sat beside him and cut the old bandage off. The water had loosened it from the wound, so it came off readily enough, and she said, “That’s ugly.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve never seen a bullet wound before. Do they all look like that?”

“No. Some of them have a lot of green pus coming out.”

“Ugh. Wait there a minute.” She left the bed, threw the old bandage away, went over to the bathroom and came back a minute later with a wet cloth. “Let me know if this hurts,” she said, and started swabbing the wound.

“Uh,” he said. “It doesn’t feel funny.”

“All done.” Putting a fresh bandage on, she said, “Is the bullet still in there?”

“No. A doctor took it out. The one who put the bandage on.”

“I suppose you were shot while you were stealing all that money.”

“Tell me about Acapulco,” he said.

“All right, never mind. I won’t pry.”

“You’re a nice girl.”

“All done,” she said, and stood up. “I put a smaller one on this time. It looks almost healed.”

“Don’t let it fool you,” he said, rolling over. “You can’t tell a wound from its scab.”

“What a charming way you have with the language.”

She was standing beside the bed, a sexy Florence Nightingale in her bathing suit and her hands full of gauze and tape. He grinned up at her, feeling the old urge, and reached up to touch one finger to the bone of her left wrist. Slowly he moved that finger up her forearm to her elbow, then closed his hand around her arm, tugging her gently closer. She didn’t resist, and her smile as she looked down at him was faintly quizzical.

Still smiling at her, he said, “One thing I want you to know.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m married.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, my God!”

This was the first girl he’d turned his attentions toward since tying the knot. If they were all going to react to the news that way, it was going to be hell. And yet, not to tell them would be to leave himself open to a vast array of unthinkable complications.

Done laughing, she looked at him and shook her head and said, “That is the God damnedest line-opener I’ve heard in my life, and believe me, I’ve heard some dandies.”

“I believe you.”

“Are you really married? Or is that just a thing you say so the girl won’t try to make a thing of it?”

“Both.”

“Is your wife nice?”

“She was the last time I saw her. God knows what she’s like now. But I doubt that she’d mind if I kissed you.”

“Nonsense.”

“You think she’d mind?” Grofield asked, putting on an innocent face at least as good as the one Elly sometimes used.

“Yes, I do,” she said, in mock seriousness.

“Then let’s not tell her.”

Elly smiled. “All right,” she said. “Let’s not.”

Grofield tugged at her arm again. She slid toward him.

Five

Elly said, “This is the night life, huh?”

“What’s the matter?” Grofield asked her. “Aren’t you thrilled, baby? I’m thrilled.”

They were back in San Miguel again, in a bar on the main square, where they’d been told they could find the center of the town’s night life. The bar was called La Cucaracha; a brown real-as-life figure of a cockroach, about a foot and a half long, was mounted at an angle on one wall.

The room itself was simply a small square full of seats, with a jukebox jutting out on one side. There was no bar, there were no more signs inside than there’d been outside — they’d had a hell of a time finding the place, since from the street it didn’t look as though there was anything here at all — and generally speaking, it was hard to convince yourself you were in a bar. Since the chairs and sofas were all done in plastic and foam rubber, the place looked most of all like the world’s most crowded doctor’s waiting room.

Every once in a while, Sancho Panza in a dirty apron would come through and take orders and go away again, coming back a while later with either what you asked for or something else.

The people here reminded Grofield of home, but that was because he’d lived at one time in Greenwich Village. Along Macdougal and Eighth streets the same faces could be found in all the tourist traps: the tourists themselves, looking embarrassed and irritable, and the unwashed, unshaven youngsters living around here while going through their artistic phase, looking both older and younger than their years. Both the tourists and the youngsters were self-conscious, and neither could cover it all the way.

But here there was a third kind of person, too. Around San Miguel there was a colony of retired people from the States, living on pensions. A thousand dollars a year was damn good money on the local economy, so these retired people could live in a climate as good as Florida or California, but at a fraction of the price. Their presence somehow made both the tourists and the youngsters look even more foolish than usual, as though somehow or other they’d been exposed as frauds.

It was now about nine o’clock at night. Grofield and Elly had come into town after dinner, had window-shopped in some of the local stores — silver and straw were the main materials used in the goods for sale — had wandered around looking at the old houses and the old streets that made this a national monument, and now had come in here to see what was doing.

Elly said, “If we hurry back to the hotel, we can go moonlight swimming in the pool.”

“What’s the matter? The pace here too much for you?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay. Drink up.”

They finished their drinks and sidestepped among knees to the door. Outside, the air was clear and the night dark. In front of them was a plaza or square, all complicated flowers and greenery, with geometric paths and ornamental fences, and with a bandstand in the middle. A single light bulb gleamed in the middle of the bandstand ceiling.

She said, “Let’s take a walk over there. By the bandstand.”

“Kay.”

They walked across the cobbled street and through the little park, hand in hand, and up onto the bandstand. Under the light, Grofield kissed her. She was warm and slender and soft, her blouse electric beneath his hand.

They went down off the bandstand on the other side and walked around the square, which was flanked on three sides by small shops and bars and eateries, all with either the most modest of signs or no signs at all, and on the fourth side by a large pretentious Gothic church. They walked around on the strip of sidewalk bordering the park, and all at once she stopped, squeezing his hand. “Don’t move!”

It was whispered, but it was shrill and urgent. Grofield stopped and didn’t move. He looked around and saw nothing, no one walking, no one in sight. There was the church, with some cars parked in front of it, and the shops with cars parked in front, and that was it.

“In front of the church,” she whispered.

He whispered back, “What? What is it?”

“The Pontiac. The green Pontiac with the whitewalls. It’s their car.”

“Honner?”

“Yes.” Her arm was trembling against his. “Honner,” she said.

Six

There was not much light. The only really bright illumination came from the bulb in the ceiling of the bandstand. Windows and doorways here and there around the square spread dim amber rectangles of light on the cobblestones, and from the doorway of La Cucaracha came the dim sound of the jukebox, playing Mexican guitar music.

A group of youngsters, chattering in Spanish, came up the hill on the other side of the square, turned left at the corner, walked away, out of sight and out of hearing.

Grofield whispered, “Sit down on the bench here. Don’t move. Don’t make any noise.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just be quiet.”

He moved away from her, into the park, skirting the edge of the park just outside the ring of light from the bandstand. When he was on the side opposite the church and the Pontiac, he stopped to watch and listen.

No one. Nothing moved.

He crossed the street, moving with silent, loping speed, turned right on the narrow sidewalk in front of the shops, moved back around the square again to the church, this time keeping close against the buildings.

Two couples left La Cucaracha, talking loudly together in English, their voices sounding hollow on the silent air, as though they were in an armory or an airplane hangar. They moved away, down a side street.

An automobile nosed its way into the square, drove around three sides, and finally came to a stop at a place reserved for taxis. The headlights went off, the driver got out and locked the car, and went away. He wore a cap, he had a black moustache, and his white shirt was bunched like a life preserver around his waist. As he walked away, he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth as though he were thirsty.

Grofield moved down the row of cars in a half-crouch, came to the Pontiac, stopped beside it. It was empty and the doors were locked.

He moved around to the front and opened the hood. It made a loud sound that rang in the silence, like the sound an oven makes when it’s cooling. Grofield reached in, unable to see what he was doing, and ripped every wire he could get his hands on. When he was finished, he left the hood open; it would make too much noise to shut it.

He went straight across the street now to where he’d left Elly. She was sitting on the bench where he’d told her to wait. He whispered, “Phase one. They aren’t there. Wait here some more.”

“Where are you going now?”

He squatted down on his heels and rubbed his palms and fingers on the grass, wiping the grease from the Pontiac off them. “The only way they could have found us,” he said, “is through the car-rental office. They must have checked them out this morning, with lots of pesos and a good story, and the clerk we talked to yesterday told them all about us, and how I studied the road maps for San Miguel de Allende.”

“They’re fast, Alan,” she whispered. “That’s why they scare me, they’re so fast. And Honner’s a lot smarter than he looks.”

“We’ll see. The point is, they’re sure to have a description of the car. I figure that’s where I’ll find them.”

“You’re going after them?”

“I’ve got to. We can’t get back to the hotel without the car. And our luggage is back there, remember? Luggage.”

“Oh,” she said. “The suitcase.”

“I’m beginning to regret that suitcase,” he said. “I admit it freely. Money is a burden. I may write a monograph on the subject.” He stood up. “Later on. I’ll be back soon. You be ready to jump aboard.”

“All right.”

He moved away, taking one of the captured guns from his hip pocket. He’d brought it along as an extra precaution, feeling a little foolish to be carrying it but preferring to feel foolish rather than naked. This was the smallest of the three guns they’d taken away from Honner and his friends, a.25-caliber automatic from Italy, the Beretta Jetfire. Little more than a toy with its tiny grip and two-inch barrel, it would do the job at the kind of range Grofield might want it for.

Carrying it in his right hand, he moved off again into the darkness at the edges of the square. He was still moving cautiously, but more quickly than before, sure he’d find all three of them near the car.

The car was three blocks away, downhill. The street to it was lit at long intervals by light standards containing low-watt bulbs. It was a narrow street, cobblestoned, uneven, hemmed in on both sides by the blank whitewashed or painted walls of the buildings. Heavy wooden doors opened directly onto the street. Here and there a glimmer of light showed in an upstairs window.

Grofield stopped two blocks away, in a patch of darkness against a doorway, and studied the terrain. Ahead of him on the right there was a Volkswagen Microbus with Mexican plates, parked facing downhill. In the next block there was an elderly Ford with Texas plates, parked on the left facing uphill, and across from it a motorcycle was leaning against a yellow wall. In the block after that, away from any streetlight, was the rented Datsun.

No one was in sight.

Grofield, studying it, decided one of the three might be in or next to the Ford, another would be hidden somewhere on the downhill side of the Datsun, and the third would probably be either in the Datsun itself or in a doorway right handy to it.

First things first. The Ford.

Grofield looked at the narrow blank street, trying to work out an approach to the Ford, and from behind him came a sudden burst of conversation. He turned his head, and coming down toward him was a group of three couples, all elderly, talking away with great animation. Grofield waited, and when they got to him he smiled and said, “Good evening.”

They were surprised, but said good evening back to him. To keep them from stopping, Grofield fell into step with them, in the middle of their group, saying, “This is my first day in San Miguel. I think it’s great.”

They all agreed it was great. Now that the surprise was over, they were all obviously pleased at his interruption; he afforded a touch of the unexpected to their night on the town. They were permanent residents, they said; each couple rented a house somewhere in town. They told him how cheaply a whole house could be rented — fifty dollars a month, forty dollars a month.

They asked him where he was from, and when he told them, they all began to talk about people they knew or had known from New York.

At the Ford, Grofield stopped abruptly and said, “Well, good night.”

“Good night,” they said. He’d stopped so suddenly the group had gone on a pace or two without realizing it, so he was already separated from them. They paused to wave, to finish sentences, and then moved on. Grofield opened the car door, showed the Beretta to the guy crouched on the floor in there, and said, genially, “Just think of the mess it would make.”

All cramped up like that, having hidden down there out of sight when he’d seen the group of senior citizens coming, he hadn’t had a chance to get at whatever armament he might have been toting himself. He stared sullenly at the gun in Grofield’s fist and said nothing.

It wasn’t Honner himself, but one of the others, the guy Elly had slugged. Grofield said to him, “What if this had been their car? Those old people? What then?”

The guy kept on looking sullen.

“Oh, well. Okay, come on out of there.”

The guy put one forearm on the seat, reached the other hand up to the steering wheel, and heaved himself upward into the descending path of the Beretta. The butt caught him on the temple and he sagged back down onto the floor again, his mouth hanging open.

Grofield, putting the gun away and crawling into the car, muttered, “One thing you can say for your job, you get a lot of rest time.” Moving with difficulty in the narrow space, he removed one of the guy’s shoelaces and used it to tie his thumbs together behind his back. Lying the way he was, all cramped up and with his arms useless, it was unlikely he’d get out of the car under his own steam. He was like a turtle on his back.

Grofield left the Ford cautiously, looked around for activity, saw none, and walked back uphill to the first cross street. He turned right, hurried over to the next block, turned right, down a block, right again, and came back to the street he’d initially left. The Ford was now uphill to his right, the Datsun just around the corner to his left.

There was no point worrying about the guy stationed downhill. The thing to do was clear the one near the car, which was parked facing uphill anyway, then get into the car fast and up the hill, pick up Elly, and get the hell out of town before Honner and the others could get themselves organized.

So where was number two? Grofield approached the intersection cautiously, peeked around the corner, and there he was. Sitting on a doorstep directly across the street from the car, smoking a cigarette, looking idle and harmless. He could take a chance on sitting out there in the open like that because he was a new face; Grofield had never seen him before.

Did that mean there were four of them now?

No, it was more likely this was a replacement for the one they’d given the shock treatment. He was maybe not yet in condition for round two.

But that Honner could replace him this fast, in Mexico City, was bad news. That he could do so meant Grofield could no longer be sure exactly how much manpower he was up against. Had it just been Honner and two other guys who’d checked the car-rental agencies and found out where he and the girl had gone, or did Honner have an unlimited supply of assistants?

Once again, Grofield wished he knew more about what was going on here, what Elly had herself involved in.

All right. Later. Right now, there was a new boy to be initiated. And in order to do it, Grofield had to walk all over the county, retracing his steps around the block and then going around the block on the far side so as to come back to this intersection from the opposite direction. He got there at last, peeked around the corner, and the new boy was just to his right, about ten feet away, still smoking and lazing and looking like local color. Except that the face came off the Brooklyn docks.

Grofield stuck his head around the corner and said, “Psst!”

The guy looked up, startled.

Grofield showed him the Beretta. “You stand up slow,” he said softly, “and come around here for a get-acquainted chat.”

The guy said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, buddy. You got me mistaken for somebody else.”

“Oh no,” Grofield told him. “If I had you mistaken for somebody else, you wouldn’t know it. You’d think this was a holdup. To plead ignorance before the question has been asked is to reveal knowledge. Confucius says. Come on around the corner, honey, it’s hazing time for the new pledges.”

The guy looked disgusted. He flicked away his cigarette — would that have been a signal to somebody? — and got to his feet and came around the corner, where Grofield hit him twice with the Beretta. Twice because the guy rolled with it the first time.

And now Grofield was in a hurry. Honner was probably staked out downhill somewhere, and had surely seen his boy walk around the corner. He’d be coming to see what was what.

Grofield came charging out from the cross street, unlocked the Datsun, jumped in, and was just putting the key in the ignition when he heard the scream.

Seven

Grofield squealed the Datsun around the square, and suddenly they were right in front of him, frozen in the glare of the headlights, a tableau straight off the cover of a 1940 pulp magazine. Against a background of cobblestone street and dark old buildings, the slender blonde struggled in the grip of two men, two burly types in dark clothing. One of them was Honner, the other was a second new face.

Grofield braked hard, stuck the Beretta out the window, and fired into the air, at the same time shouting, “Elly! Get over here!”

The new man let go of Elly and ran for cover, out of range of the headlights. Honner, not giving up so easily, kept holding onto Elly until she kicked him three or four times, when he too let go. Elly dashed for the car.

With her out of the way, Grofield snapped two quick shots at Honner, neither of which seemed to score. Honner, ducking low and fumbling inside his coat for a weapon of his own, ran away to the right toward the row of parked cars.

Elly scrambled into the car, and Grofield had tromped down on the accelerator before she was fully in. Her door slammed, she said, “Wow!” and they careened on around the square and down the hill, headed for the road out of town.

She tried to talk a couple of times, but was too out of breath, so she just sat there, half-turned so she could look back out the rear window. Grofield drove the way the Datsun people had never intended.

After a while he said, “You’ve got to tell me what I’m up against. I can’t work blind like this; I make mistakes I don’t know about.”

“What mistakes?” She was still somewhat out of breath, but better. “You did fine,” she said.

“Sure I did. I figured the three we knew were all there was, so it was safe to leave you and go for the guys on plant around the car. But there were two new faces back there, honey, two of them.”

“Don’t get mad at me, Alan, please.”

“You damn fool.”

“Please.”

Now that they were safe again for the moment, Grofield’s irritation was growing like Topsy. “What have you got me up against, damn it? A whole army?”

“No. Not an army, honest.”

“What, then?”

“I wish I could tell you,” she said. “Maybe I can Friday, when this is all over.”

“It may be over a lot sooner than Friday,” he said.

She took a quick look out the rear window, but there was no other traffic on the road. “Why?” she said. “They can’t follow us now.”

“I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about us.”

“You mean, you’ll walk out on me.”

“Walk, hell, I’ll run. I’d fly if I could.”

“This afternoon you—”

“This afternoon we wound up in bed. Which we both had known would happen since the first minute we looked at one another. It had nothing to do with anything else. You didn’t climb into my bed as part of a contract for me to stay with you till Friday, and I didn’t service you in order to keep you with me either.”

“Service!”

“That’s the word for it.”

“You can be a first-class grade-A bastard when you want, can’t you?”

“You send me in to fight three guys and I’m up against the goddamn Light Brigade. Don’t talk about bastards.”

She folded her arms, demonstrating a czarist contempt, and stared out the side window.

They drove the rest of the way to the hotel in silence.

As they were getting out of the car she said, “You know, I rented this car. If we split up, it goes with me.”

“Take it with my blessing. You can drop me off at the first city we come to.”

“I’ll drop you off right here, you mean.”

“Don’t get smart-ass, Ellen Marie.”

“You’re a hateful man. You’re the most hateful man I ever met.”

He walked away from her, went to his room, and unlocked the door. Inside, he left the door open and started to pack. He had the keys to the Datsun in his pocket, so he wasn’t worried about her taking off without him.

The other two guns and the three wallets were in his new suitcase. He took the usable papers from the wallets, threw the wallets in the wastebasket, stowed the papers in a pocket of the suitcase, and put the two extra guns in the pockets of his new raincoat. Then he packed everything else, leaving the raincoat out to be carried separately.

She came into the room as he was shutting the lid. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked at her, and she was being the little girl again, this time practically Baby Snooks. “Sorry again?” he asked her. “It must be a rough life, being sorry for this and that all the time.”

“But I am sorry,” she said. She came over and sat down on the bed. “I was just upset, because of those men grabbing me and all.”

“You’re about as trustworthy,” he told her, “as a pool shark. Cut out the innocent and frightened bit, I’m wise to you.”

“I’m not faking, Alan, honest I’m not. I am innocent, in some ways, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m frightened.”

“And you can bet your bottom dollar we’re through.”

“Alan—”

“All up,” he said.

The little girl turned on a little sex. “Please?”

“Kaput,” he said. He picked up the two suitcases. “Better get your stuff into the car. They’ll be out here looking for us sooner or later.”

“Alan, please.”

He left the room, went over to the car, and stuffed his luggage onto the back seat. Then he stood beside the car, waiting.

She came over without her bags. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said.

“Oh, bushwah. Will you cut it out?”

“If those two hadn’t jumped me, we wouldn’t be fighting, would we? We’d have come back here and had that moonlight swim — there is a moon, did you even notice it? — and then—”

“Yeah, there’s a moon,” he said. “A nice thin sliver. And a great big pool full of warm water. And a darling bed. And neither one of us would last till Friday, because you don’t have brains enough to let me know what’s going on so I can tell what to do about it.”

“Alan—”

“I leave here in two minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “With you or without you.”

“Alan, I want to tell you!”

He stood silent, ostentatiously following the sweep second hand of his watch.

“We can keep away from them now. Mexico’s a big country, we can go wherever we want, they’ll never find us.”

He ignored her.

“We had a bargain,” she said.

“It’s off.”

“Alan, please!”

“One minute,” he said. “Better get your bags.”

“How could you be sure I was telling you the truth? How do you know I wouldn’t just lie to you again?”

He looked up from the watch. “If it sounds like a lie,” he said, “I’ll ditch you. And I think I can tell when you’re lying to me. I’ve seen better liars.”

She waved her arms in a helpless gesture. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

Eight

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said, looking gloomily at the dashboard.

Grofield glanced away from the road. “That sounds like the preamble to a non-truth,” he said. “Watch it.”

“Oh, I’ll tell the truth,” she said. “Don’t worry about that.” She sounded fatalistic, the last defenses gone.

They were on the road, heading north. Rather than wait around at the hotel while listening to whatever she was going to have to say to him, Grofield had had her get her luggage and stow it away, and now they were moving again. She could tell him her story while he drove.

He’d taken a quick look at the road map, and decided to make for San Luis Potosí, a medium-size city about a hundred twenty-five miles away. They’d take this secondary road north to Dolores Hidalgo, then another secondary road back out to the main highway, Route 57 again, and then straight north to San Luis Potosí.

Now, as they drove along, she was supposed to be telling him at last what was going on, but after the doubtful preamble, she stayed glum and silent, gazing at the dashboard.

“The last I heard from you,” he said, to prompt her, “you didn’t know where to begin.”

“I was just trying to get it all straight in my head,” she said. She looked at him, her expression somber in the light from the dashboard. “I hope you really can tell when I’m lying and when I’m not lying, because I’m terribly afraid this is going to sound like the biggest lie of all.”

“Try me.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath, and said, “The best place to start, I guess, is with Governor Harrison. Governor Luke Harrison, of Pennsylvania. He used to be governor, a few years ago, but the title sticks.”

“That’s our lead character, then,” Grofield said. “Governor Luke Harrison of Pennsylvania.”

“I’m not telling you a lie!”

“What?” He glanced at her, and she was clearly upset. Looking back at the road he said, “Oh, you mean because I said lead character? I meant nothing by that, I was only using trade idiom. Remember, by profession I’m an actor.”

“An actor? You mean, for real?”

“Let’s not lose the thread, honey, I’ll show you my scrapbook later. We were, when last seen, studying a close-up of Governor Luke Harrison. Of Pennsylvania.”

“Yes. I... I’d better tell you about him, something about the way he is, so you’ll understand the rest of it.”

“By all means.”

“He’s one of the richest men in the state, in the first place, maybe the richest. He owns mines, and he’s in steel production, and his family has owned a lot of property around Philadelphia since before the Civil War.”

“Money and social status?”

“If he wanted it, yes. He’s what Philadelphia calls Main Line.”

“I know that. The New York equivalent is, or used to be, the Four Hundred.”

“Yes. But the thing is, he inherited all of it, the money and the position and everything. And he’s a dynamic, man, a forceful man, he’s... he’s almost frightening to be near, there’s so much energy in him, so much drive.”

“You know him personally, then.”

There was the faintest of hesitations, and then, in a flat voice she said, “Yes.”

“All right. A dynamo with inherited money and social position. The way that usually runs, the guy goes into politics just to work off the excess energy. He can afford to be a liberal, because they’re taxing him at ninety-one percent anyway, and the consciousness of the stuff that he got on a silver platter makes him one of those forthright fighters for the common man. Raise the minimum wage, increase unemployment insurance, give more aid to education, it’s up to government to solve the problems and make the world more beautiful.”

“Perfect,” she said. “That’s exactly the kind of man he was. Is.”

“I’ll do you another one,” Grofield told her. “In the old days, when government changed hands, it went back and forth between the machine boss and the reform group. Thirty years of the machine, two years of reform, thirty years of the same old machine, and so on. But not anymore. These days, it goes back and forth between the economizers and the social workers. I’ll bet your boy took over from a guy whose boast was that he’d balanced the state budget.”

She smiled, though reluctantly. “Right again,” she said. “And lost the next election to a man who promised to cut state taxes. Did you guess all that, or did you used to live in Pennsylvania?”

“Wherever I live, I take no interest in politics. Except in the abstract, of course. Shall we get back to the story?”

“Yes.” She smiled again, wanly, and said, “You don’t know how much I’d rather not talk about it. But if I must— For God’s sake, Alan, don’t ever use this. Don’t ever say anything to anybody, don’t ever—”

“Scout’s honor. The story.”

“All right. Back to Governor Harrison. He only had the one term as governor, and then he tried to turn a favorite-son Presidential nomination into a real nomination. It didn’t work, and he got a lot of the bigwigs in the party sore at him, so when he wanted to run for Senator from Pennsylvania, he didn’t get the nomination.”

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”

The comment, tossed off as a glib space-filler, seemed to intrigue her. “Do you think so? Maybe you’re right, maybe that’s what it is.”

“I have the feeling,” he said, in order to get her back on the track, “that Governor Luke Harrison isn’t ready to retire, and is still struggling for public office somewhere. Mayor of Philadelphia?”

“Oh, no. He has too much pride for that, he can’t possibly take any job smaller than what he’s already had.”

“So he’s moved out of politics into something else.”

“Not exactly. For the last several years he hasn’t done much of anything. He’s run charity funds and so on, he was involved in some sort of educational organization for the UN, he had an advisory post in Washington for a while, but nothing full, nothing solid, nothing to use up all his interest and energy.”

“Description of a powder keg,” said Grofield.

She nodded. “Yes. About to explode.”

“Now we get to you.”

“Not yet. There are other people in this. Governor Harrison’s son Bob. He’s twenty-nine years old, and for the past seven years he’s been personal press secretary to General Pozos.”

She’d said that last name as though she assumed Grofield would recognize it, but he didn’t. “General Pozos? Never had the pleasure.”

“Oh, you must have heard of him. He’s the dictator of Guerrero.”

“Strike two.”

“Really? It’s a country in Central America. You’ve never heard of it?”

“If I have, I don’t remember. But all right, I’ll take your word for it. General Pozos is dictator of Guerrero. Is that what they call him? Dictator?”

“Oh no. Officially he’s El Presidente. There was an election and everything. In 1937. And any year now, as soon as they get the constitution ready, there’ll be new elections and the provisional government will be replaced by a permanent democratic government.”

“Since 1937.”

“Yes.”

Grofield nodded. “They don’t like to rush into things.”

“Haste makes waste.”

“Right. Back on the beam, now. So far, we’ve got Governor

Harrison in Pennsylvania, full of energy and out of work. We’ve got his son doing what?”

“Press secretary. Public relations, that means. Trying to get the General a better press in the United States, mostly.”

“Check. The son is a PR man in Latin America. So now we have a cast of two, father and son.”

“Three. General Pozos.”

“Oh? He fits in here, too?”

“He’s the middle of it.”

“Any more characters, or do we get to the plot now?”

“More characters. Only one more to know about now. General Pozos has a son, too. Juan. He’s twenty-one years old, and he’s a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.”

“Aha. The two sons have switched countries.”

“Yes. Juan has been in the United States for eight years, since he started high school. Summertimes he spends back in Guerrero. Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter he spends with Governor Harrison. The Governor met General Pozos about twelve years ago, when they were both in Washington, and when it came time to send Juan north for his education, the Governor offered to take the boy into his own house. Bob was twenty-one then, just leaving home, and Juan, I guess, was a sort of substitute son for him.”

“So far,” Grofield said, “I don’t seem to catch a glimpse of Honner and the boys, and Acapulco seems far away.”

“All right, I’m getting to it. I have more to tell you about Governor Harrison, but believe me, it’s all necessary if you’re going to understand what’s happening now.”

Grofield sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. “Carry on,” he said. But at the same time he wasn’t as impatient as he sounded; this variety of personnel, this wealth of detail and fullness of background, were indications of truth. He believed this story, or would as soon as she started to tell it; lies have a clearer and more sensible line.

“Several years ago,” she said, “the Governor bought a house in Santo Stefano, that’s the capital city of Guerrero. He spends his summers there, spends a few days now and then the rest of the year. He’s gotten interested in Guerrero, in the country’s economy, its resources, its potential, its people, its history, just everything about it.”

“Ahhh. A little country all his own. The kind of man you’re talking about would like that.”

“He more than likes it,” she said. “He has an obsession for it.”

Grofield glanced at her. She was serious, intense, level-eyed; her cheekbones were prominent, casting shadows in the small light from the dashboard. He said, low-voiced, “I believe we’re getting to it now.”

“Yes. Governor Harrison wants Guerrero. He wants to run it himself, create a true nation of it. With General Pozos running things, the Governor can’t do much, but for eight years he’s been the most important single person in the life of General Pozos’ son Juan. When the General dies and Juan takes over — and he will, that’s guaranteed — then Governor Harrison can have Guerrero to himself. With Juan as the figurehead, with his own son Bob to handle the public relations and the paperwork, Governor Harrison can take the raw materials of a nation into his hands and do whatever he wants with it.”

“King Luke the First.”

But she shook her head. “No. He doesn’t want glory, he doesn’t want privilege. He doesn’t even want power, not for himself. He was born with all of that. What Governor Harrison wants is to serve the people. I’ve heard him talk, Alan, I’ve listened to him talk about this very thing, and he means it. He wants to raise the standard of living in Guerrero, wants to get good schools, good housing, good everything. He isn’t fooling, and he isn’t kidding himself. And if he gets the chance to do what he wants, it will be better for the people of Guerrero. In ten years he could make it the most advanced nation in Central America, maybe in Central and South America both. And right now it has the next to the lowest standard of living of any nation in the Western Hemisphere.”

“So he’s a good man.”

“No. He wants to do good things, but he’s not a good man. He’s — you’ve got to understand this, he’s had this dream in his mind for years now, years and years. And the way General Pozos lives — it would take Charles Laughton to do a movie biography of him — and the age he is, nearly sixty, it just seems as though it can’t be long to wait. But the years go by, and General Pozos keeps on living, and Governor Harrison has to keep on waiting.”

“I think I see it coming.”

“Of course. And Juan is graduating from college this year. The Governor wanted him to stay on, to do postgraduate work, but Juan said no. He’s going to move back to Guerrero, he’ll live there permanently. And very soon the Governor won’t control him anymore. Juan will be left to himself, and he might even grow up to be his own man.”

“The Governor can’t afford to wait.”

“No. And he realizes what he plans to do is evil, but he believes there are extenuating circumstances. The General is himself more evil than any single act against him could be, that’s one argument. And the ultimate good for all the people of Guerrero is more important than the immediate evil of the act, that’s another. And for a third, in a truly civilized world the General would have been executed for his crimes long ago, so this is merely the commission of an overdue good act.”

Grofield grinned. “I must ask the Governor to do all my rationalizing for me.”

“He’s good at it, mostly because he believes so completely himself.” She hesitated, as though at the brink of something, some dark pit, and then said, in a lower tone. “And he can convince other people, too. He’s a forceful man, a dominant man.”

“In other words, he isn’t doing the job himself. He’s talked someone else into doing it.”

“Yes.”

Grofield waited, but she didn’t say anything, so finally he said, “Who?”

“A doctor,” she said. “His own personal physician. When the Governor is running Guerrero, this doctor will run the Ministry of Health, will establish the hospitals and clinics, will even form a medical school. The two of them have talked about it for years together, the doctor’s as caught up in it as Governor Harrison, he even has architectural drawings of hospitals, he has lists of names of men he would try to hire away from American hospitals and universities.”

“Their own private model-train layout.”

“Yes! Yes! That’s what’s wrong with it, neither of them cares about the people! The populace, yes, but not the people, not the individual men and women. It’s just a population, and buildings, and land area, and natural resources, and harbors, and rivers...”

Grofield prodded slightly, saying, “Anyway, the doctor is going to do the job himself.”

“Yes. General Pozos is not a healthy man. He couldn’t be, the life he leads. This doctor has cared for him from time to time in the past, and now he’s volunteered to go down there and be the General’s personal physician on a full-time basis. The General, of course, thinks that’s wonderful.”

“What’s the plan? Accident?”

“Oh, no. Just bad health. General Pozos will waste away, will have this and that with complications. He won’t last three months. A personal physician, in constant daily contact with the patient, can kill in a thousand different ways.”

Grofield said, “Oh.” He turned on the car heater. “This plan is new,” he said.

“Brand-new. The General is on his yacht now, he’s spending two weeks cruising up and down the Pacific coast. He’ll be at sea until Friday morning, when he’ll come to land—”

“At Acapulco.”

“Yes. Mexico has separate states, you know, the same as we do, and Acapulco is in the state of Guerrero.”

“The same name as the country.”

“Right. So the General makes frequent stops there, for a day, two days, just long enough to pick out one or two women in bathing suits. He makes a production out of it, how the peoples of the two Guerreros, nation and state, are hand in hand in eternal friendship and all that. He makes a speech, usually, and has an official luncheon. The people at Acapulco like it fine, because Acapulco is a resort town, and colorful ceremonies about celebrities are always welcome in a resort town.”

Grofield said, “And you, knowing about the plan, have decided to go down to Acapulco on Friday and warn the General to be on the eary.”

“On the what?”

“On the eary. It’s slang, don’t worry about it, it means to be careful.”

“Oh. Yes, that’s what I want to do.”

“Whereas Governor Harrison, aware of your intention, has hired Honner to stop you. Honner has a blank check and can hire however many goons it takes.”

“Yes. Honner’s a private detective in Philadelphia. Or at least that’s what he calls himself. He’s done the Governor’s dirty work before.”

Grofield watched the road, a two-lane blacktop, straight as a die. Rolling, semiarid countryside stretched away on both sides, virtually lifeless. Every once in a great while there would be a small lone flickering light out in the darkness to left or right; a candle showing through the glassless window of a solitary mud hut. A smoke-snorting truck or a rushing passenger car would go by every now and again, headed south, at intervals of about ten minutes. It was bleak, poor, dry, empty country, with no towns or diners or roadside stands, no crossroads or gas stations or taverns. A bad place, particularly if Honner and his boys caught up.

Grofield looked in the rearview mirror and couldn’t be sure it was angled right, because he couldn’t see anything in it, only blackness. He twisted quickly around in the seat, holding the wheel with his left hand, and looked out the back window, and the mirror had reported the truth; there was about a foot of visible road behind the car, glowing dull red in the illumination of the taillights, but beyond that, stretching back to the edge of the world and over, there was nothing. Emptiness, blackness, darkness, and blind nothing.

Grofield faced front again.

Beside him, she looked back, then front, saying, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m thinking.”

He was thinking about her story. He believed it, both for what she’d said and for the way she’d said it. There had been hesitations here and there in the recital that led him to believe he didn’t yet have the whole truth, but he was convinced that what he’d been told was at least part of it.

But there were still questions. He asked one of them: “You’re taking a lot of trouble, you’re risking your neck. Are you sure it’s worth it?”

“What?”

“Why try to save General Pozos’ life at the risk of your own? If he’s such a bastard, why sweat it?”

“Because he’s a human being. Because no man should take another man’s life, that’s anarchy, that’s—”

“Okay, okay, okay.” He was about to hear a judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged speech, and he would rather not. He said, “What’s the General to you? What’s the relationship between you?”

“We’ve met, that’s all. Hello, how are you, lovely weather. At receptions, places like that.”

“Then where’s your connection with all this? You know all the inside dope, you’ve heard the Governor talk about what he’s going to do with Guerrero, where do you come in? You the Governor’s daughter?”

“No. The doctor’s.”

Grofield looked at her, and saw her wide-eyed and solemn. He turned his eyes back to the road. “Big Ed Fitzgerald?”

“Doctor Edgar Fitzgerald. He’s what they call an eminent physician. He’s my father.”

“And he knows about Honner and—”

“Oh no. I knew something was going on, and I knew Dad was troubled, and he finally told me what they were planning to do. What he was planning to do. I tried to talk him out of it, I tried to, tried to get him to think about it, see it, understand what he’s planning to do, but he’s blinded by visions of good works, the greater good for the greater number—”

“The end justifies the means.”

She smiled bitterly. She said, “He told me the Bible said that twice, once for and once against. It says the end doesn’t justify the means, but it also says by their fruits ye shall know them, meaning that good fruit has to come from a good tree, meaning the end justifies the means.”

“He’s buried his conscience in a ton of soft, round words.”

“Liberally sprinkled with ideals.”

“How do we get from your father to Honner?”

“I told him I would warn General Pozos when he got to Acapulco. You know, I don’t know of any way to get to him before that, he’s just out there in the Pacific someplace with a lot of whores. So I threatened to go to Acapulco, and he tried locking me away in my room, but I got away. So then I suppose he told the Governor, and I can just see it. The Governor calming him down, talking to him in that good, low, confidential voice of his, putting his hand around my father’s shoulders, saying, ‘Don’t you worry, Ed, we’ll find your little girl, we’ll keep her safe.’ And then telling Honner, ‘Find the little bitch, I don’t care what it costs. Don’t let her get to Pozos.’ And when Honner wants to know where the line is drawn, the Governor smiles at him and says, ‘Use your discretion.’ That’s his line, that’s the way you get evil things done for a good purpose. You hire a man and tell him what the good purpose is, and when he asks you how to get that good purpose you say to him, ‘Use your discretion.’ And this time it means, keep her alive if you possibly can, but the main thing is not to let her talk to General Pozos.”

“But what if they decide they have to kill you? What’s your father going to do then?”

“Nothing. He won’t know about it. They’ll cover it somehow, I’ll just disappear, nobody knows where I am. Oh, she’s off pouting somewhere, that’s all, she’ll turn up. And after the General’s dead, what does it matter?”

“Mm.” Grofield thought. “I have one more question.”

“All right.”

“Why did you come to bed with me? I thought it was a bribe, at least partly, to keep me with you, but that doesn’t figure now. You wouldn’t use that kind of a bribe to save General Pozos, he’s the wrong kind of Holy Grail to sacrifice yourself for.”

She smiled. “You should have a higher opinion of yourself.”

“I do. I also thought it was a bribe you got change on, and that you knew it.”

“Hah! Look out you don’t get round-shouldered from hugging yourself. You want a cigarette?”

“Yes. I also want an answer.”

“I’ll answer, don’t worry.” She lit two cigarettes, holding both in her mouth at the same time walrus-like, handed one to him, blew a cloud of smoke, and said, “I suppose partly it was reaction. We were safe, or at least we thought we were, and I was grateful, and the urgency was over for the moment. You know, it’s a well-known psychological fact that people think about sex right after a narrow escape. Preservation of the species, or something.”

“People think about sex all the time. I want to know why you did something about it.”

“Well, that’s part of it. And also, as I said, gratitude. And maybe a bribe, too, a little bit. And mostly...” she gave him a crooked smile and a warm look “... mostly curiosity.”

“Did you find out?”

“Mmmm.”

Grofield grinned. “Think there might be more to learn?”

“I don’t know. Ask me when we get wherever we’re going.”

“San Luis Potosí. The ruby in the forehead of Old May-hee-co.”

She waved the hand holding the cigarette, a careless gesture. “Olé,” she said.

Nine

“The way I see it,” Grofield said, scratching his head and studying the map, “we can bypass Mexico City and go through a place called Toluca instead, on something called Route 55, and take that down to Taxco, but from Taxco on there’s only the one road to Acapulco, and Honner’s going to be all over that road like a white line.”

They were sitting together on the terrace outside their hotel room. San Luis Potasí, a cramped, old picturesque city of narrow streets and Old World buildings, was spread out before them like the Spanish section of Paris in a musical by MGM. They had come here Wednesday night, and now it was nine o’clock Thursday morning, time to be leaving. Bright sunlight shone on the map spread out on the table in front of them, their breakfast dishes pushed to one side. The used coffee cups were taking on a cargo of cigarette butts.

She said, “There has to be another way, Alan. Can’t we go straight to the ocean from here, and then along the coast? What’s wrong with that? Look, we go from here to Aguascalientes to Guadalajara to Colima to Tecomán on the coast.”

“Sure,” he said. “And then look. An unimproved road as far as Aquila, and then nothing.”

“What’s that dotted line, from Aquila to — what is it? Playa Azul.”

He looked at the legend, said, “Proposed road. They haven’t built it yet.”

“Couldn’t we do it anyway? Maybe we could rent a jeep, it’s probably just sand along there—”

“It could also be jungle. Besides, that dotted line crosses two rivers, honey, and I guarantee you it does it a lot easier than we could.”

“Well, damn!” She stubbed out another cigarette in a coffee cup, and immediately lit a fresh one. “There’s got to be a way.”

“Trains and planes are out,” he said. “They’ll be blanketing the terminals, we wouldn’t get as far as the sidewalk. We’ve got to try it by car, that’s all there is to it. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting as far as Taxco, but after that it might be trouble.”

“Might be!”

“All right, will be. But we’ve got to try it.”

She bent over the map again. “What if we went around to the other side and down to the coast and back up? Isn’t there any road there either?”

“Nope. Look.”

She looked, and there was nothing, and she kept on looking, and there kept on being nothing. Finally she sat up and said, “All right, I give up. We have to drive to Acapulco, and we have to take the only road, and I don’t see how we’re going to get there.”

“What we’ll do,” he said, “is drive as far as Taxco, and then scout the territory. We can’t make plans of our own until we know how they’re set up. And they’ve got to be south of Taxco, because there’s three different roads we could be on until you get a few miles south of Taxco at, what is it, at Iguala. There’s no point in their watching three roads when they can wait a few miles farther south and only have to watch one road.”

“All right. But I’m not hopeful.”

“I am,” he said. “Aside from everything else, if this all works out, it’ll take care of a little problem of my own.”

“What problem?”

“I’m in this country illegally. I’ve got no papers, nothing. That’ll make it a little tough for me to get back out of the country without drawing attention to myself. If you manage to get to General Pozos, and if you manage to convince him you’re telling the truth, then the General is liable to be grateful to you and consider he owes you a favor. And the favor can be to rig some diplomatic courier route for me to sneak back into the States. Sensible?”

She smiled. “Good,” she said. “Self-interest always helps people perform at their best.”

“Is that right? You’re being a smart-ass again, you know that?”

She squinted at him. “Are you really married?”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you telephone your wife, or send her a telegram, or something?”

“No. I told her I’d be gone for a while, and she knows the kind of work I’m in, so she doesn’t expect to hear from me till she sees me.”

“I don’t know the kind of work you’re in.”

“You’re not married to me.”

She sat back, studying him, and said, “Some day I’d like to fill you full of truth serum and sit you down in front of a tape recorder and have you reel off your full life story. I bet it’s got some pretty odd moments in it.”

“Only since I met up with you. You done with that coffee?”

She looked into the cup at all the soggy butts. “Ugh! Are you kidding?”

“Then let’s go.” He folded up the map.

She said, “Shall we synchronize our watches?”

“After we put on blackface.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Interlocutor.”

Grofield laughed and said, “You’re a lot of fun, Elly, my dear. Too bad you’re about to get killed.”

Ten

Grofield walked down a street lined on both sides with tourist shops selling goods made of silver — Taxco was the silver center of Mexico, besides being its other city-size national monument — and at the corner he found a taxi, a dilapidated old Chevrolet with a heavy bear of a man at the wheel. Grofield stuck his head in the side window and said, “I want to go for a ride. Out of town.”

The driver turned his head and looked at him, like a man with nothing in this world but time and patience. “Where to?”

“A round trip. Down through Iguala and down the road toward Acapulco. A few miles. And then back here again.”

The driver turned it over, turned it over, and said, “Ten pesos.”

Eighty cents. Grofield said, “Sold.” He opened the back door and climbed aboard.

Slowly, with a constant shifting of gears, the driver pushed his Chevrolet southward out of town.

Grofield sat back, adjusting his sunglasses on his nose. Back in town, Elly was waiting in a tourist restaurant, her blond hair covered by a white bandanna. The Datsun was parked on a side street, where it was less likely to be noticed. Not that there was much to worry about there, anyway. Since Mexico had no make of car of its own, all of its automobiles were imported, with a minority of them being the expensive, big cars from the United States. The smaller, cheaper Datsun was a very popular car around here and less noticeable than a Plymouth or Ford. Also, because of the bleaching quality of the tropic sun, light colors were the rule; a cream-colored Datsun was anonymity itself.

“Drive slow,” Grofield said, when they cleared town. “I’m looking for friends of mine.”

“Sure. You know, I used to drive a hack in the States. In New York City.”

Grofield didn’t answer that at all; he couldn’t afford the distraction of a nice chat.

The set of the driver’s shoulders, the heaviness of his silence, showed he was offended.

The road skirted Iguala to the east, and a mile or so further hooked up with the main road between Mexico City and Acapulco. From here north it was a toll road, but southward to Acapulco it was free. Since Taxco the road had been all downhill, but now it leveled. They were still high on a plateau, and ahead of them, southward, Grofield could see the bulky mountains between here and the sea.

“Slowly, now,” said Grofield. “My friends should be along here somewhere.”

There were virtually no roads in Mexico more than two lanes wide, including the main highways, and this one was no exception. It was straight and flat at the moment, but narrow. Hilly, cultivated land flanked the road on both sides, and there were a last few buildings, bars, and restaurants. The government gas station, Pemex, had been back at the crossroads.

Grofield nearly missed it when he came to it. The dark green Pontiac, back in condition again, apparently, and parked in the shade beside a broken-down, roofless mud shack off the right side of the road. Grofield saw it out of the corner of his eye, sat back in the cab seat, and waited while they went on by. Then he watched out the rear window until he was sure they hadn’t noticed him — they weren’t looking for him, they were looking for her, or for both of them together — and then he leaned forward and said to the driver, “Okay, that’s fine. We can go back now.”

“I thought you were looking for friends.”

“They aren’t here yet.”

The driver shrugged and turned the car around. Going past the second time, Grofield could see Honner and three other guys sitting under a stunted tree near the car. They could take it easy and wait. They knew they had a faster car than Grofield and Elly, and faster than anything else they might have rented instead of the Datsun. All Honner and his boys had to do was sit there in the shade and watch the traffic, which was sparse, anyway, and when their quarry went by they could slowly get to their feet, brush their trousers off, stroll to their Pontiac, catch up with the Datsun and run it off the road — and the game would be over.

Except, Grofield assured himself, that it wasn’t going to be quite that easy.

On the way back to Taxco, winding and uphill, Grofield tried belatedly to get the driver into conversation about the old days hacking in New York, but it was too late. The driver’s feelings were hurt, and he wouldn’t talk. They were both relieved to get back to town and separate from one another.

Grofield found Elly sitting over a cup of cold coffee, chain-smoking again. He sat down and said, “I spotted them. They don’t expect us this early, but they’re there just in case.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Go back to that motel we saw, take a room, and wait.”

“Till when?”

“I figure about three o’clock in the morning would be about right.”

She shivered. “What a thought.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t occur to Honner.”

Eleven

“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” Grofield said.

“Good.”

He shut the car door, making the interior light go off, and now they were in darkness. He stood up, putting one hand on the car to keep himself oriented, and waited for his eyes to accustom themselves to the night, but they didn’t seem to want to do it. The sliver of moon was even thinner tonight, and there was no artificial light anywhere in the world.

The time was three-thirty in the morning, and the Datsun was on the dirt beside the road just a little way north of the shack where Grofield had seen the Pontiac. They hadn’t seen another car since they left Taxco. They might as well have been standing on a rock in the asteroid belt.

After a while Grofield could begin vaguely to make out the difference between the flat, straight roadway and the less-black, less-even countryside. He moved away from the car, out onto the blacktop, and walked slowly along, keeping to the silence of the blacktop and off the soft crunching of the roadside dirt.

He was weighted down with equipment. The Beretta was in one hip pocket, and a small bottle of gasoline was in the other. A foldaway knife was in his left-side trouser pocket, a torn-off strip of T-shirt and some matches were in the right side, and he carried another sock-and-soap blackjack in his left hand. He was, he hoped, ready for whatever came up.

Ahead of him there was a faint flicker of light. He moved toward it, cautiously, hoping some late-night driver wouldn’t pick this moment to go tearing by, all noise and wind and bright headlights. But the blackness remained silent and empty, and Grofield moved slowly through it toward the flickering light.

It came from the roofless shack. Grofield approached, cautious and silent, as in his head he heard background music, movie music; and he was an Apache creeping up on the wagon train, slow and silent with the deadly stealth of the red man, that lore of the forest that...

They had a table in there, with a candle on it. They had folding chairs, and three of them were sitting around playing cards, Honner and two others. The fourth guy was nowhere to be seen.

Grofield worked his way around the shack to the Pontiac, and was almost to it when he heard the voices. He stopped, startled, and listened.

There were two guys in the Pontiac, talking together idly, the way people do when they’re bored and waiting and they’ve run out of all the good anecdotes. That made five, one more than this afternoon.

No, six. The sixth one came walking along, a flashlight beam ahead of him, emerging suddenly out of the darkness. Grofield crouched behind the Pontiac, waiting and listening.

The newcomer, with the flashlight, said, “Okay, time’s up. You get out there for a while.”

“You ask me, they ain’t coming this way.”

“That’s okay. It’s your turn to get out by the road.”

“Marty, come along with me, keep me company.”

A third voice — the other one who’d been in the car to begin with — said, “The hell with that. It’s cold out there.”

They mumbled and groused among themselves a minute or two more, and then the changeover of the guard was made, and the new man on duty went shambling away with the flashlight, leaving this area in darkness again, while the two now in the car lit cigarettes and picked up the threads of an old conversation.

There were two cars. In the dim side glow of the flashlight, Grofield had seen the other one, parked just to the right. A Mercedes-Benz 230SL, the fast sports car.

It must have been further down the road this afternoon, when he’d come around looking. If he’d taken out the Pontiac then, and gone blithely on through, this Mercedes would have gobbled him up two or three miles down the road. But now they’d all come together to live through the grim Mexican night.

Grofield took out the knife, opened the blade, and went crawling over to the Mercedes. While the two in the Pontiac talked, covering the small scrapes and hissings he made, he slashed all four tires. It would be morning before they’d get this car running again.

As for the other one, the Pontiac, he couldn’t hit the tires with those two guys in it, they’d feel the car shift. So he’d have to be more drastic. He crawled away behind a tree to get ready.

The bottle of gasoline, the strip of cotton cloth, the matches, when put together, became the revolutionist’s delight, a homemade hand grenade, the weapon that used to be called the Molotov cocktail. Grofield lit it, stepped out from behind the tree, and tossed it.

The whole world lit up, red and yellow. There were two explosions, one after the other, as first the Molotov cocktail and then the Pontiac’s gas tank went off. Bits of hysterical flame fell everywhere, and before the sound was out of the air Grofield was off and running.

He had maybe half a minute before they’d get over their surprise back there and start after him. In that time he could get well away from the fire glow, and then they’d play hell getting wind of him.

Grofield almost overshot the car, running along blind on the blacktop. But Elly had the window open and heard his footsteps, and whispered hoarsely, “Over here! Over here!”

He moved with arms stretched out in front of him, stumbled to the car, pulled the door open. The interior light went on, suddenly reassembling a chunk of space and reality, and he saw her face pale and frantic. “What did you do?”

“Gave us light. Let me behind the wheel.”

She slid over and he got in. He started the engine, shut the door, but didn’t turn on the lights. Ahead of him there was the flickering yellow-red glow. He drove toward it, more or less on the road.

The Pontiac was burning like a Yule log. In the dusty light, silhouettes of men ran around like cartoon characters, waving their arms. They saw the Datsun as it passed them and came running after it. The Mercedes was limping toward the road like a dachshund with broken legs.

“Down!” shouted Grofield. “Down!”

They drove by with their heads down, with Grofield’s foot flat on the accelerator. They didn’t hear the sound of the shots, but starred holes appeared in the windows, something thumped the door.

Then they were past, and Grofield switched on the headlights in time to see that the road meant to curve to the left. And start uphill.

“My God!” she said, staring back at the little dot of red. Then it was out of sight.

“Acapulco,” Grofield said.