The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

FINDERS KILLERS! John D. MacDonald

We waited for him to run, because that was the final proof of guilt that we needed. We had him bottled up in a Chicago apartment. Our boys drove the cabs, delivered the milk, cleaned the street in front and in general covered him like a big tent. I don’t know exactly how we gave it away. But we did. We threw it to him.

You can say we were careless. That’s in the same league with Monday morning quarterbacking. Our excuse was that we didn’t know he was tipped. He walked into the apartment house and never came out again. Three hours later when we took the wire and tape off the fat woman across the hall from where he had lived, we learned how he’d used that cold, dark, drizzly evening to good advantage.

She was a tall woman, and fat. We knew he wore size 10B shoes. Hers were 9A. He tapped at her door. He hit her so hard that she still remembers hearing the tapping, but she can’t remember opening the door. Figuring the rest was easy. He merely undressed and wrapped his own clothes around his middle, tying them in place. Then he got into her clothes. He took her raincape and a big floppy hat. Maybe he’d taken the precaution of shaving himself closely. Maybe not. It was a dark night.

He walked out. Aragon, holding the night glasses on the apartment door, didn’t spot him. The boys in the cellar played back the recording of him going to bed. It was a sensitive pickup. I heard the shoes drop, the springs creak, the sleepy yawn.

And that was the way Torran walked out on us – walked out with two hundred and forty thousand dollars in brand new treasury notes in five-hundred dollar denominations – all in serial sequence, most of it still in the mint wrappers. In addition he had an estimated twenty-five thousand in smaller bills, all used stuff. He had a lot of the bonds, too. Negotiable stuff. Very hot. Even if they’d just dumped out the bank guards without the holes in the backs of their heads, the bonds would have been hot.

They had carried the guards across the Connecticut line before dumping them out. Torran and Holser. We knew that much. We didn’t have to worry about Holser. Some kids on a picnic found Holser a hundred feet from the highway. The thigh had gone bad under the dirty bandage. There was a hole in the back of his head. The slug matched the ones taken from the two guards.

There is not the slightest point in going over the history of how we located Torran. It was dull work. It took seven months. Then we had him bottled. We still couldn’t be certain that there wasn’t a third party involved. So we watched him. I was the one who advised against moving in and grabbing him. “Wait a little,” I said. “He’ll either run some more, or he’ll have company.” Either way, I thought, we couldn’t lose.

I’d been with it for seven months. By painstaking spade work I’d uncovered the initial lead that eventually led to him. I was a hero. So Torran slipped away. So I was a bum.

It took three days to prove we hadn’t the faintest idea whether he’d left town, and if so, how, and in what direction.

Broughton called me in.

His eyebrows look like white caterpillars. He looks like a deacon in the neighborhood church. He’s the Broughton who went into that New Orleans hotel room in ’37. He expected one man to be in there. There was a slip. There were four of them. When it was over, Broughton was still standing up. The lead he was carrying didn’t pull him down until he got back out into the hall. That Broughton!

“Sit down, Gandy,” he said.

I sat. No excuses. They never go.

“Washington is disturbed, Gandy,” he said.

“As well they might be, Mr Broughton.”

“I’ve watched you carefully, Gandy. You’ve got a lot of presence. You speak well and you think clearly. But you’re too ambitious. You expect too much, too fast.”

“And?”

“And I could butter you up to keep you aboard. During your four years with us, you’ve done well. But now you’re marked. You saw what the papers did to us. That was unfortunate. Now you’re not Agent Gandy any more in Washington. You’re Russ Gandy, the one who lost Torran.”

“So I lost him. So I’ll find him again.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re being reassigned to duty with the School.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He looked at me and the blue eyes went hard and then softened. “I was pretty ambitious for a while, Gandy. Until the afternoon I had Barrows trapped and he walked away from it.”

“I see,” I said. I stood up. I was too mad to stay sitting. “Suppose I go find him anyway?”

“Not as an employee of the Bureau. A private citizen has no standing.”

“Do I have your permission to dictate a resignation to your secretary?”

He shrugged. “Go ahead. Make it effective as of now.”

With my hand on the doorknob I turned and said, “Thanks.”

He looked as though he had already forgotten me. “Oh . . . that’s all right, Gandy. Just remember that this talk was off the record.”

“Of course.”

After I dictated the resignation and signed it, I went and cleaned out my desk. In four years I’d cleaned out a lot of desks. This was different. There was no new desk waiting.

My file on Torran belonged to the Bureau. I flipped through it. I knew it by heart. I took out two pictures – not the best two – but good enough, folded them and stuffed them in my pocket. They’d been taken with a telephoto lens from the window across the way where Aragon was holed up.

I left the office without kissing anyone goodbye. The check would be sent to my bank marked for deposit. Four hundred and twenty something. The last check.

I went back to the crummy room I’d rented and in which I’d spent only sleeping time. On four years of salary and expenses, when all you think about night and day is a job of work, you save dough. I looked at the bankbook. Twenty-nine hundred in the savings account. Four thousand in the checking account.

I’d left the little badge and the Bureau weapon and the identification card with Broughton. I sat on the bed and cried without making a sound. Like a kid. He’d been too right. I was ambitious. And they’d taken away my toys.

What the hell was Torran to me now? I took out the pictures. I looked at them. One was an enlargement of the face. Aragon had caught him just as he came out into the sunlight. Torran. A bad boy. No punk. Thirty-four, approximately. Eight of those thirty-four years had been spent in prison. Auburn, Atlanta, Ossining. Armed robbery. Extortion. Now it was a big one. Bank robbery, kidnapping and murder.

The joker was that he looked like a nice guy. Big mouth, slightly crooked nose. Laugh wrinkles around the eyes. The old prison pictures were no good because he’d been out for five years. In the picture he looked like he was on the verge of smiling. Or laughing – at me. How do you figure a guy like that? You can’t blame society. Good family, good education. So he was just a wrongo. One of those guys who work twice as hard as anyone else while they try to make it the “easy” way.

Now he had made a big strike. But keeping it was a horse of a new shade.

I looked at the pictures and called him everything in the book. I went out and had a steak; then bought a bottle, brought it home and killed it. It came close to killing me. When I woke up after fifteen hours of sleep it was nine in the morning.

Torran’s pictures were on the floor. I picked them up and cursed him some more. It was easier to hate him than to hate myself. Before the war I was an accountant. One year at a desk telling myself I’d get used to it sooner or later. Then five years of war to prove to me that I couldn’t settle down. I took the exams and made the Bureau.

After four years it had begun to look to me as though pretty soon I’d be telling J. Edgar to move over and make room for new blood. I liked the chase and I liked to catch them. But you try to be too smart – you try to move too fast. Boom.

I wanted to catch Torran. I wanted to catch him so very bad I could taste it.

But what can one man do? Now the Bureau would be going after him twice as hard. Good sense would have said to drop it. I went in and looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look so sensible. In fact, I thought I looked a little bit like some of the boys I’d caught during the last four years. Long hard face with heavy bones. Lids that cover maybe too much of the eyes at the outer corners. Big stubborn cleft chin. Hair that’s mine, but looks as though it were made from the end of the tail of a handy horse. Beard stubble. I shaved it off. My hand shook. I stopped now and then to drink more water. I got so full of water I wondered when I’d start to make sloshing noises.

After three cups of coffee at the corner café, I could think again. What Broughton had said about private citizens stuck in my head.

My local contacts weren’t too bad. By late afternoon it was fixed. In three days I’d have my license as a private investigator in the State of Illinois. License and a permit to carry a gun. So I got in the car and went to Boston. Once you start to do something, you can keep on even though you know it isn’t smart.

I left Chicago on Monday at six p.m. I went through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany. I was in Boston at eight o’clock on Tuesday. I went to bed, got up at eight in the morning and located the house in Newton Center where May Marie Sipsol lived with her aunt. It was her bearer bonds that Torran had taken along with the cash. It was just her bad luck that her daddy died exactly when he did.

She was a blonde with a skin like milk in a blue glass – a trembly uncertain mouth, and eyes so close together they threatened to overlap. She wanted none of me. She was a timid eighteen. She spoke of the authorities and what they were doing and she said she couldn’t pay me. I said I didn’t want pay. I said I wanted a percentage on recovery. I said ten would be enough. The bonds totaled a ten thousand face. Eleven thousand for Russ.

We were alone in a room with Italian antique furniture. It smelled like dust. When I realized that she meant what she said, I took her by the shoulders and shook her until her eyes didn’t focus. Her aunt came in and bellowed at me. I pushed the aunt out of the room and locked the door. May Marie whimpered. I shook her again and she wanted to kiss me. Her breath was bad.

Pretty soon she decided that this was a “great love” and that I was a very dramatic type and it was all pretty much like out of a Raymond Chandler movie. By the time the cops the aunt had called started beating on the door, I had our little contract all signed and tucked into the back of my wallet – the wallet with the little holes where the gold badge had been pinned.

She gave the cops and her aunt undiluted hell. She raged like an anemic tigress. I held my breath and kissed her again and left with my contract.

I was back to Chicago on Thursday afternoon. I picked up my documents, bought a .357 Magnum, phoned the office and found out from my only friend there that – in cautious doubletalk – Torran was still at large.

On Friday morning I got up and went to work. I went on the basis that he had left town. Assuming that, I knew he was too smart to use any common carrier. He had no car. So he had stolen a car. Most cars not stolen for repaint and resale are recovered. He wouldn’t drive it too far. Not Torran. He’d want to get well out of town. An hour out, or maybe two. I went to headquarters and my pretty new documents gave me the in I needed. Torran had left the apartment house at eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. I copied down a list of the cars stolen after eight and before ten. I was informed that my ex-coworkers had been in. That was all right with me.

One, and the one I liked the best, I almost missed, because it wasn’t reported until nearly midnight. The people had gone to a movie eight blocks from where we had Torran bottled up. Their car, a black Pontiac sedan, 1947 model, had been left in the parking lot near the theater. They’d gone into the theater at twenty after eight. That made sense. Torran was smart enough to pick a car that had just been parked, and he’d have had time to get there and watch the lot entrance. He wouldn’t want a flashy car.

There was a blue check after the entry. I looked it up in the recovery register. Recovered in Beloit, Wisconsin, on Friday – reported to the Chicago police at one in the afternoon. They had informed the owner and he had said he’d go up and get it Saturday.

None of the others looked as promising.

Friday noon I was in Beloit. When I made inquiries about the car, the local cops gave me a bored look and said that it had already been checked by the Bureau.

After I smiled enough, they let me know the facts. It was on the main drag in a meter zone. It had been tagged for all night parking, then tagged again for overtime in a meter Friday morning. Then they checked against stolen car numbers and towed it in and told Chicago. The answer to my big question was disappointing. Were there any cars stolen from here Thursday night – any time between ten and two? Sorry, no. No missing persons – with car and all? Nope.

A sour lead, and I couldn’t tell if I was right. I went back to Chicago and checked out of my room. I waited until night before leaving. Then I left from the parking lot street at eight-thirty. I was Torran, wearing women’s clothes. My feet hurt. I was in a stolen car. I wanted to shed the clothes.

I took Route 20 out through Elgin. I stayed well within the speed limits, as no doubt Torran had done. I pretended it was raining. I looked for a chance to change my clothes. I’d need some sort of shelter from the rain, or else have to do it in the car. The longer I kept my own clothes wrapped around me, the more wrinkled and conspicuous they’d get. The ideal spot would be one where I could change and also ditch the women’s clothes.

That’s a tough assignment on a rainy night in a heavily populated section. I didn’t have much hope of it working out. He could have pulled off in any number of places after leaving Starks. At Rockford I turned right on Route 51. I crossed from South Beloit over into Beloit and parked as near as I could to where the car had been found. It was twenty-five after ten. Allow Torran ten minutes to change and he would have gotten in just before quarter to eleven at the latest.

I lit a cigarette and sat in the car for a few minutes trying to think. I went for a walk. Three blocks away was a bus station. Every night a southbound bus left for Rockford, La Salle, Bloomington, Decatur and Vandalia at eleven-fifteen. I liked that one. The hunted animal doubles back on its tracks.

I found the driver having coffee. I asked him if he’d taken the bus on that run the previous Thursday week. He took a tattered mimeographed schedule out of his inside pocket, studied it and said that he had. I asked him if he remembered any specific people on that trip and he gave me a look of complete disgust. “I drive one hell of a lot of buses,” he said. I showed him the picture of Torran. It rang no bell.

He warmed up a bit for a five-dollar tip. I sat beside him with my coffee. “Now think back. Did anything happen that was unusual that night? It was raining. Remember? Anything at all that might have puzzled you?”

He started to shake his head slowly and then stopped shaking it. He looked into space for a moment. “Now wait a minute. I don’t know if this is anything or not. I make my Bloomington stop. Below there, some place just outside Heyworth, a car goes by me doing maybe ninety. Up ahead it slows down to a creep and I got to pass it. Zoom, it goes by me again. Looks like a girl driving. She slows up again and I got to pass her. Then she scoots by again and I don’t ever catch up to her again. The third time she goes by she leans on the horn like she was saying hello to somebody. You know – shave and a haircut, two bits.”

“Could she have been looking for somebody on the bus?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Anybody get off at Decatur?”

“Three or four, I think.”

“Nothing funny about them, about any one of them?”

“Now, you know, I just remembered. One of them had a ticket to Vandalia, but she got off at Decatur.”

“She?”

“Yeah. Big heavy woman with no baggage.”

“And a big hat?”

“Damn if that isn’t right! One hell of a big hat!”

I added another five to what he already had. I thanked him and went to the ticket office and got a timetable of that late run. It’s roughly a hundred and forty miles from Beloit due south to Bloomington. Even with two stops the bus made it in under three hours, getting to Bloomington at ten after two in the morning.

I was in Bloomington at ten minutes of two. A bored man with gray pouches under his eyes lounged behind the ticket grille.

“Were you on a week ago Thursday at this time?”

He yawned. “I’m on every night, friend. In the daytime I try to sleep. The neighborhood is full of kids. I’m learning to hate children.”

“Would you remember if someone, it might have been a girl, just missed the southbound bus from Beloit to Vandalia?”

“If you’d come around a year from now, friend, I’d still remember the lady. You don’t see much of that material in bus stations. She came plunging in here five minutes after number seventy had pulled out.”

“Nice?”

“About five eight. She stood right where you’re standing. Hair like harvest wheat – with rain beads caught in it. Moon-pool eyes, pal, and a funny, tough, scratchy little voice, like a tired phonograph needle. She asked me if the bus had left and I said yes and away she went. It was like she pulled me along on a string. I went right to the door. She got into a big gray sedan and went away from here so fast that the tires yelped.”

“What make?”

“Oh, the car? Who knows? Big and new. Cad, Buick, Packard. Take any car. Say, that’s pretty good! Take any car.”

“A dark-eyed blonde. Hair cut short?”

“Nope. Nice and long. The kind to run barefoot through.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-two, three, four.”

“Clothes?”

“Brother, I was too busy taking them off to take a look at them. Something green, I think. But it could have been blue.”

At Decatur I found that I was too close to falling asleep at the wheel, so I checked in at a hotel. In the morning I bought a road atlas and took it into the sandwich shop with me to read while having breakfast. I looked at the map with the idea of trying to outguess them – rather than guess the way they would.

Obviously Torran had phoned from some place along his escape route and told the girl his plan. I had them spotted at Decatur in the rain in her car with Torran still in his disguise and with dawn not too many hours away. Either they were going to make a long run for it together, or she was going to take him to some hideout. If he had called from Beloit – which seemed the most probable, then I could draw a circle two hundred miles in radius around Bloomington and safely assume that she had roared over to Bloomington from some place within that circle.

It didn’t look as though she could have made it from St Louis. If she had to get ready for a trip, Springfield might be a logical starting point. Yet, if it were Springfield, why not let Torran ride all the way to Decatur? If it were Peoria, she should have been in Bloomington in plenty of time. Galesburg seemed just about right. If she’d been in Chicago, then why hadn’t he gone to see her before he began to suspect that he was being covered?

At any rate, Torran was going to be too smart to make any two-hundred mile run in a big car at that time of night. There are two many town cops who like to wake themselves up in the small hours by hauling down big cars on the road. Torran had gotten into Decatur by bus at just about three in the morning. He hadn’t seen the blonde in a long time. He needed to change back to his own clothes. Everything pointed to their holing up close to Decatur. A tourist court was indicated. I was in for some routine legwork.

I hit twelve places before lunch. Each place I hit drained some of the confidence out of me. The second place after lunch was called the Sunset Rest Courts and it was three miles out of town on Route 36 heading east.

The woman was very brisk and friendly. “Yes, we had a girl and her mother register a week ago Thursday – I should say Friday morning at three-fifteen. The girl woke me up. We had a light burning that night because we had a vacancy. She said she had planned on driving all night but her mother was taken sick. Nothing serious.”

“A blond girl?”

“Yes. Quite pretty. I showed her the vacant room and she seemed satisfied. Here’s the register card.”

I looked at it. Mrs Walter B. Richardson and Anne Richardson, of Moline. Make of car – Buick. License – Illinois 6c424. All in angular backhand script – finishing school script. I wrote down the license number, fairly certain that they had taken advantage of the dark night to put down the wrong number.

“Are you from the police? Is something wrong? We’ve never had any trouble here. We try to run a—”

“You’re in no trouble. I’m just looking for someone. This won’t even get on the records. Do you know which way they went?”

“Well, Mrs Richardson must have recovered in a terrific hurry. They left here a little after seven. They went out of here so fast that I actually dressed and went over to see if they’d taken anything from the room. I can see the road from my bed. They went up the highway, heading east, and then turned up there at the fork and went south on Route One Twenty-one.”

“Did they have any reason to believe that you might have seen which way they went?”

“No. I’m a very light sleeper. I was about to get up anyway. As I say, I just happened to see them turn south.”

“Could I take a look at the room?”

“If you want to. There’ve been quite a few people in it during the week.”

“Then maybe there’s no point in it. Who cleaned it after they left?”

“I did.”

“Did you find anything of interest that was left behind?”

“N-n-no, not really.”

“What did you find that puzzled you?”

“A razor blade in the bathroom waste-basket. Lots of women use razor blades, of course. But this one had stiff black stubble on it, and caked shaving cream of some sort. I just thought it seemed odd. No one was in there but the two women between the times I cleaned the bathroom.”

I left and drove slowly down 121. It was definitely a secondary road. The shoulder was narrow and the brush was high in the shallow ditch. In the patches where the brush was thickest I went about eight miles an hour.

After about two miles I saw something in the brush. I got out and took a look. An old white rag caught on the base of some weeds. The second time I saw something, it was jackpot. A brown wool dress, ripped down the back and under the arms. Big shoes with the leather stiff from dampness, the stitches pulled by strain. Heavy stockings, a rain cape and a big floppy hat. The works had been rolled into a tight bundle and fastened with a woman’s belt. After I was certain of what I had found, I bundled it back up and got ready to toss it farther into the brush. A truck went by, a farm truck, and the driver looked curiously at me. I locked the bundle in the back end of my car with my luggage.

I sat behind the wheel and studied the maps. Either the gray Buick was hot or it wasn’t. If it was, I could be in trouble. If it wasn’t, then the smartest thing for the two of them to do would be to make a lot of road time. I was willing to accept south as the direction. His first run had been to the north. South looked good.

But the south is pretty roomy. Again I had to try to think like Torran. Unless the girl had brought clothes for him, which wasn’t likely, he’d be anxious to pick up a wardrobe. The best wardrobes come from the big cities. The big cities, more often than not, are inclined to have the most alert boys in the cop line. His picture would be widely plastered around. I sat and thought and scratched my head. I just didn’t have enough. With Torran alone I could chance guessing his next move. You study a man’s life long enough and you can detect the pattern of his thoughts. But Miss X added a new factor. I could guess his decisions but I could not guess either hers or their combined decisions.

So I went to Beloit for the second time. I arrived late Saturday night. Sunday morning I went to the phone company offices, presented my credentials, asked for information about any long-distance calls which had been made from the bus station ten days ago. After some stalling, the chief operator on duty dug into the records and came up with three long-distance calls made from the bus station between ten-thirty and eleven-fifteen. The one to Cleveland I didn’t consider. Nor the one to Evansville, Indiana. The one I liked was made at five after eleven to a place called Britcher City, a town of fifteen thousand midway between Urbana and Danville on US 150 east and a bit south of Bloomington. The call was to anyone at Britcher City 3888.

I hadn’t checked out of my hotel room. I found a place that would grease my car, change the oil. I took an hour nap and had a quick sandwich before leaving Beloit at noon. It was a hundred-and-ninety-mile trip to Britcher City. I drove by the city limit sign at five minutes of four. I found a square redbrick hotel called the Westan Arms and got a room. I used a pay phone in the lobby to call 3888.

I heard it ring three times at the other end and then a voice said, “Good afternoon. Westan Arms Hotel.” I nearly dropped the receiver. “Sorry,” I said, “wrong number.” I hung up. Sometimes it happens that way.

I went to the desk. The gray-haired woman desk clerk said, “Yes, Mr Gandy?”

The boyish grin was the right one to use. “I’ve got a problem, ma’am.”

“I hope we can help you.”

“I believe a young lady left here recently. I don’t know what name she was registered under. She may have checked out ten days ago. Blonde tall girl with dark eyes.”

“Oh, her!” the woman said with surprising coldness. “Friend of yours?”

“It’s very important to me to locate her.”

“Well, we don’t know much about her, to tell the truth, even though she did live here for two months. Her name is Marta Sharry. Is that the one?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to see her handwriting to make certain. Would that be too much trouble?”

She shrugged and turned around to a file behind the counter. She hunted for three or four minutes, then pulled out a card. The angular backhand was familiar.

“That’s her writing. Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“No, she didn’t. I thought there was something funny about her. No mail and no phone calls, until that last one – all the time she was here. We wondered if she was hiding from somebody.”

“Did she act as though she were hiding?”

“No. She used to take liquor to her room and drink it alone. She used to sleep every day until one or two in the afternoon. Along about five o’clock he would come for her and she’d go out with him.”

It was time for the boyish grin again. “Who is he?”

She smiled a bit wryly. “Every city has its Joe Talley, I suppose. He runs something that is supposed to be a private club. I don’t know why the police don’t close it. Heaven knows all that goes on there. He’d bring her back here at three and four in the morning. We don’t like that sort of guest, but she was quiet and she always paid her bills. I’ll bet you Joe Talley knows where she went.”

“Did she have a gray Buick?”

The elderly woman sniffed. “Not when she came here, she didn’t. Very remarkable. Joe Talley blossoms out in a new car and suddenly she has his old one, with different plates.”

“Where did she garage it?”

“Down at the corner. Landerson’s Service.”

I pushed the register card back to her. Miss Marta Sharry, New York City. Not much information there. “Where is Talley’s place?”

“On Christian Street. Go down Main and turn left on Christian three blocks from here. It’s eight blocks out on the left and it looks boarded up, but it isn’t. There’s an iron deer in the yard. You’ll see the sign on the gate. The Talley Ho.” She lowered her voice and looked around. “They gamble there,” she said.

I thanked her with as much enthusiasm as I could manage. I went to the place where she’d kept the car. It was open. A pimply boy was on duty. Just remembering the blonde seemed to up his blood pressure. He had big wet eyes and they glowed.

I made like I was a friend of hers. The license was 6c424. That surprised me a bit.

Again I was shot with luck. He smirked and said, “I guess that fancy name, that Marta Sharry, was kind-of a stage name, huh?”

“Oh, she told you her right name?”

He had the decency to blush. “No. She had the registration in one of them little plastic things on the key chain. I took it out once because I wanted to see how old she was. The name on it was something like Anne Richards.”

“Anne Richardson?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Good thing Joe Talley didn’t catch you spying on her, eh?”

He licked his lips. His eyes shifted away from me. “I wasn’t doing nothing,” he said sullenly.

“Did she come and get the car when she left town?”

“She phoned, and I drove it over to her. I helped load her bags in the back. She give me five bucks.”

“She seem nervous?”

“No. Kind of excited. Joe Talley came along. He sat beside her in the front seat and I walked back here. I saw her come by ten minutes later and he wasn’t with her then.”

“What time was that?”

“Sometime before midnight.”

From there I went to the Talley Ho. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. It was a big three-story Victorian frame house, with a cupola, a bunch of scroll saw work and an iron deer standing next to a chipped bird bath in the shaggy lawn under the shade of big elms.

I went back to the hotel and slept until ten. When I went back to the Talley Ho I found the narrow side street lined with parked cars. There was a guard at the gate.

“This is a private club, mister.”

“So I’ve heard. I’m a stranger in town. I thought maybe I could join.”

“Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. Write us a letter and we’ll let you know.”

“Couldn’t I talk to the manager?”

“No. Sorry. I got my orders. Nobody gets in unless they got a card.”

“That’s a hell of a note. Miss Sharry wrote me and told me that Joe Talley would treat me right if I ever came through here.”

He turned the flashlight on my face again. “You know her?”

“No. I just made up the name.”

“No need to get fresh, stranger.”

“Hell, I like standing out here. Don’t you?”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Anybody comes along I’ll be right back, tell ’em. What’s your name?”

“Gandy. Russ Gandy.”

He was gone five minutes. He came back with a taller man. At their request I came inside the gate. I stood while they put the flash on me again.

“What’s your business, Gandy?”

“I’ll talk to Talley, if you’ll get him out here.”

“He’s out of town. I’m in charge.”

“What’s your name?”

“Brankis.”

“Come over here a minute, Brankis. This is personal.”

We went over by the deer. I tapped a cigarette on its cast-iron muzzle and lit it. “It’s like this, Brankis. I ran into you-know-who in Chicago. He told me he had Anne Richardson staked out here. At the Westan Arms. I phoned her couple weeks ago. She told me that a guy named Joe Talley is all right, and—”

“Anne Richardson? Who the hell is she?”

“Don’t be cute, Brankis. She’s Torran’s girl.” I purposely made it a little loud.

“Dammit, lower your voice!”

I laughed at him. “Then the name means something to you?”

“How do you figure with Torran?” he said in a half-whisper. “Nobody’s ever been hotter than he is. So why should he pop to you?”

“Maybe you can call me an associate, Brankis.”

“What kind of a word is that? Associate, yet. Joe isn’t going to like any link-up between him and Torran through that girl. She’s all mouth.”

“Like any lush. Now can I come in and play? I just want to kill some time.”

“No, friend. Anybody coming in gets Joe’s okay and I told you Joe is out of town.”

“That’s too bad. I got some merchandise for him.”

“Merchandise? What kind of merchandise?”

“Brankis, you must be a real small wheel in this outfit. Annie knows more than you do. She told me Joe Talley is always in the market for this kind of merchandise.”

It was too dark to see his face. I waited, hoping it would work. When he spoke he piled the words on too fast to cover up the period of silence. “Oh, that stuff.”

“Yes, I got it down at the hotel. Want to come look it over and set a price?”

“Sure. I’ll come take a look.” He couldn’t admit Joe had been leaving him out in the cold, and he had to see the merchandise to know just how far out he’d been left.

We went to the gate and he said, “George, I’ll be back in a while. You have any problems, ask Mac what to do.”

We went out and got in my car. I stopped for the first cross street and glanced at him, seeing his face for the first time, liking the youngness, the weakness, the loose viciousness of his mouth. I started up, took out my cigarettes and, as I offered him one, I managed to drop the whole pack at his feet. He bent over instinctively to pick them up. As he got into the right position I hit the brakes hard. His head dented the glove compartment door and he sighed once and flowed down onto the floor, like some thick, slow-running liquid.

I parked in shadows and looked him over. All he carried was a sap in black woven leather with a coil spring handle. I bent over him, folded his hat double to cushion the blow and hit him hard behind the ear, flush on the mastoid bone. I took his pulse. It was slow and steady.

I headed toward Danville, found a dirt road that turned left. The sign said the towns of Pilot and Collision were up that road. How does a town get to be called Collision?

The sky had cleared and the moon made a good light. The road was a little soft in spots. Farmhouse lights were off. The road made a right-angle turn to the left and another to the right. When I saw a break in a fence, I got out and checked the ditch. It was shallow and dry. The pasture seemed firm enough. I put the car in low and drove across toward a dark clump of trees. I parked and hauled him out and used my tow rope to tie him to a tree. I wrapped him up so that all he could do would be roll his eyes and wag his tongue. He was limp, sagging in the rope. I sat and smoked and waited for him to come around.

After a long time he sighed. Then he groaned. I knew he could see my cigarette end, glowing in the darkness.

“Whassa marra?” he asked. “Whassa idea?”

I didn’t answer him. He was silent for a long time. He said, “What do you want?” Panic crouched behind the level tone.

I watched him and let him sweat. To him, I was just a dark shadow sitting on the front fender of the car.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked. His voice shook.

A farm dog howled at the moon far away. A sleepy rooster crowed in a half-hearted way. Down the line a diesel hooted at a crossing.

“It was all Joe’s idea,” he said. “I’m not in on it. He met her in the hotel. She got tight out at the place. She hinted about Torran. Just little hints. So Joe pried it all out of her. She told him how she was waiting for word from Torran when he got ready to make his run for it. She didn’t know where or when Torran was going to run. She had five thousand he’d given her in Chicago right after the job, when they split up. She was to buy a car and get it registered under her own name.” He stopped talking and waited for me to say something.

He started again, his voice pitched higher than before. “Joe started thinking about all that cash. All that money, and he worked the girl up to where she was thinking of crossing Torran, because Torran had been pretty rough with her. The more he thought about getting his hands on that dough, the better he liked the idea. He talked it over with me. The idea was to get Torran to run with the girl to right where Joe wanted him to run. It had to be done delicate because if Torran felt maybe the girl was steering him some special place, he’d smell a cross.”

Again he waited and again I said nothing.

“What are you going to do to me? I’m telling you everything I know.” It was half wail and half whine. “Joe fixed her up with the car and figured that because of the dough in serial sequence and the bearer bonds, Torran would want to get out of the country to where maybe he could buy a banana citizenship and get a better percentage than trying to fence the stuff here where it’s too hot to touch. And if Joe got the dough here he’d be in the same trouble. Mexico has an easy border to cross, even with them looking for you. So Joe figured help him get into Mexico through the girl, and take it away from him down there.

“Joe goes to Mexico a lot because if you spend too much here, the tax boys get curious. He’s got a house down there he rents by the year. In Cuernavaca. As soon as the girl got the word from Torran she told Joe and he flew down to set it up. If Torran goes to Canada or flies out of the country some other place, Joe is licked. The girl was supposed to get away from Torran for a couple minutes and wire me so I could phone Joe. The wire hasn’t come yet.”

I flipped a cigarette away, stood up, walked over to him. I said casually, “If I kill you, Brankis, you can’t phone Joe and tell him about this, can you?”

“Now wait a minute!” he said in a voice like a woman’s.

“Or maybe I’ll tip Joe Talley that you opened up like a book.”

“A deal, mister,” he said breathlessly. “I keep my mouth shut and so do you. Honest.”

“And I get word on that wire the minute you get it.”

“Yeah. Sure!”

I untied him and slapped him around and took him back and left him. I went right to Western Union. A bored night man looked at my credentials without interest, sneered at a twenty-dollar bribe and told me the only ones to see telegrams were the persons to whom said telegrams were addressed. There was no time to arrange a tap on the Talley Ho phone. I added two more twenties. He ignored me. I added two more. One hundred dollars.

He yawned and picked up the money. “It was marked deliver,” he said, “and I sent it out twenty minutes before you came in. It was from National City, California, and it read: Plan to take cruise to Acapulco starting tomorrow. It was signed Betty.”

He pocketed my money and shuffled back and sat down and picked up a magazine.

Thirty-one hours later I was sitting by a window on the port side of the Mexico City–Acapulco plane as it lifted off the runway at seven in the morning. There was a wad of traveler’s checks in my pocket and a bad taste in my mouth. I had wasted too much time getting the turista permit, making travel connections.

We climbed through the sunlit air of the great plateau, lifted over the brow of the mountains near Tres Cumbres and started the long, downhill slant to Acapulco on the Pacific. It was hard to figure just how quickly Torran and the girl would get there. My phone calls to California had established that there was no scheduled cruise to Acapulco at the date the wire had indicated.

Probably Torran had made arrangements to have a boat pick him off the lower California coast and smuggle him down to Acapulco. The odds were against his tarrying in Mexico long. Extradition was too simple. The same method of travel would take him down the Central American coastline to some country where an official would listen joyfully to the loud sound of American dollars.

One thing I could be certain of. Joe Talley would be there. And I would know Joe Talley. I’d memorized a recent picture of him – a beefy blond with a rosebud mouth and slate eyes. I knew Torran’s face as well as I knew my own.

Traffic wasn’t heavy as it was the off season for Acapulco, the summer-rate season. The air was bumpy. A large family across the way was airsick, every one of them. We flew to Cuernavaca, over the gay roofs of Taxco. Brown slowly disappeared from the landscape below us and it began to turn to a deep jungle green.

At nine o’clock we lifted for the last low range of hills and came down to the coast. The Pacific was intensely blue, the surf line blazing white. The hotels were perched on the cliffs that encircled the harbor. The wide boulevard ran along the water’s edge.

There are hunches. All kinds. This was one of those. I looked at the city as we came in for the landing. I looked at it and I didn’t feel anything and then all of a sudden I felt confident and good. I felt that whatever was going to happen, it would happen right down there.

We made a bumpy landing and as soon as we were down I knew why Acapulco was not at the peak of its season. The heat was like when a barber wraps your face in a steaming towel. It was heat that bored a hole in you and let all the strength run out. It was heat that kept your eyes stinging from the sweat running into the corners.

I stood in the shadow of the wing as they untied the baggage and handed it down. I took my bag and walked across the runway, and it was so hot the soles of my feet began to burn. I took the sedan which had HOTEL DE LAS AMERICAS on the front of it, remembering that it had been recommended to me in Mexico City. No one else was going to that hotel. The airsick family piled into a shabbier sedan labeled HOTEL PAPAGAYO.

The hotel was something right out of the imagination of an assistant to a Hollywood producer. High on the cliff, with cabañas, shops, pools, outdoor cocktail lounges, outdoor dining room and dance floor. I registered, took a cabaña, took a shower and put on the Acapulco clothes I’d bought in Mexico City. Protective coloration. I wanted to look like an American tourist. The shirt had a pattern of tropical parrots. The shorts were lime yellow. The sandals had straps that hurt me across the instep. I topped it off with a white mesh cap with a ballplayer’s bill, oval slanting sunglasses.

I told my troubles to the desk clerk. “I’m trying to find a friend here in town. I don’t know what hotel he’s at. How would I go about it?”

“An American, sir?”

“Yes.”

He gave me a list of the six most likely hotels. The flaw was that Joe Talley might not be using his own name. But there was no real reason for him not to do so. His name would mean nothing to Torran. Torran was big time. Talley was a small town crook. And just before lunch I found him. He was at the Papagayo. It was one of those breaks you get. I was just getting out of the taxi in front of the place when I saw him coming across the road from the beach. He had a dark pretty girl with him. Both of them seemed a little unsteady on their feet. They passed right in front of the cab and went into the hotel grounds. Joe was speaking Spanish to the girl. She was giggling. I don’t know how good the Spanish was. It sounded good and she seemed to be enjoying it. The black hair on the girl wasn’t a dye job. Of that I was certain.

There were enough people around so that I could follow them into the grounds. I shoved money at the cab driver. I got such a wide grin I knew it was too much. I went in. The cabañas were on either side of long walks behind the hotel. Tropical foliage was lush around them. I kept them in sight. They turned into the last but one on the central walk and I saw Talley unlock the door.

I strolled around. I went by to the end of the walk, came back, and when I was sure I wasn’t observed, I ducked into the thick brush beside their cabaña. The windows were open. Through the screen I heard the buzz of a fan, the clink of bottleneck on glass, the girl’s thin giggle. They kept talking Spanish to each other. They stopped talking after a while. I didn’t risk raising my eyes above the sill until I heard the roar of a shower. Then I looked in.

It was Talley who was taking the shower. I could see the girl. She had changed into a white dress. She went over to the bureau and started making up her face. I walked away from there. I had vaguely planned to have Talley lead me to Torran and Anne. If Joe Talley could take Torran, it was all to the good. If he couldn’t, he’d knock Torran off balance long enough for me to take him. But Talley was playing. He was like a guy with nothing on his mind. It bothered me. He ought to be pretty well tightened up. Just the thought of coming up against Torran ought to keep him nibbling on his hands. Something had gone wrong in my guessing.

An hour later the girl came out of the cabaña alone. She had a big bright red purse slung over her shoulder. I tossed a mental coin and decided to stay with Joe Talley. So I intercepted her where I could keep Talley’s cabaña in sight.

“Do you speak any English?” I asked her.

She gave me a long cold look, then wrinkled her nose in a very charming little smile. “A leedle.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“Dreenk? No, gracias. Other time, maybee.”

A nice old lady schoolteacher walked by, glanced at the girl and gave me a sour look. I tried to make a date with the girl, but she walked on.

I shrugged and found a bench where I could see Talley’s cabaña. The long hours went by. I was hungry and thirsty and out of cigarettes. I cursed Talley, Torran, Anne Richardson, Mexico and the three hundred and seventy thousand dollars.

When Anne Richardson came by me, it caught me by surprise. I was waiting for Talley to come out. It shook me to see her and know that it could be the one. I went over the ticket agent’s description. Hair like harvest wheat, he had said. Moon-pool eyes, whatever those are. The funny, tough, scratchy little voice would be the payoff.

I had to make a quick revision of all my guesses. It was like coming in on the third act, not knowing your lines or what has happened so far. I moved in behind her as she headed down the walk. She wore an aqua cotton two-piece dress with a bare midriff. She walked on high cork soles, and she was tall enough not to need them, and her walk was something to remember and speculate about and bring back to mind on long cold winter nights. A man like Torran should pick inconspicuous women. She was as noticeable as a feather bed in a phone booth.

She went to Joe Talley’s cabaña, tried the door and went in. My play was to walk slowly by and see if I could duck into the shrubs again. This time they’d be speaking English, at least. But before I could get by, the door banged open and she came out again, blanched to the color of roquefort, sucking at the air through parted lips. I took a quick step back, caught her wrist and spun her around.

“Let go, let go!” she panted, fighting me. The voice was small, scratchy.

“Get back in there, Anne!” I said, pushing her toward the door. Her ankle turned because of the high cork soles and I caught her before she fell. My using her name took a lot of the scrap out of her. Her eyes were wide and hot as she looked at me. Moon-pool eyes, to that ticket agent, are the ones so dark that you can’t see where the irises leaves off and the pupils begin.

“Who are you?”

I shoved her again, reached around her to the door and pushed it open, pulled her in. She turned her back to me and I spun her around and caught her hand just as she yanked the small automatic out of her white purse. I tore the gun out of her hand and it hurt her fingers and she yelled with the pain. But I heard it as though it came from a long distance.

I was too busy looking at Joe Talley. He was pretty messy. Through the open bathroom door I could see the top half of him. The shower was still on and turned too hot so that steam drifted around him. He lay on his back with his legs still in the shower and the big knife was stuck through his throat at an angle so that the tip of it came out under his ear.

The girl made a dive for the door and I caught her in time, whirled her back, picked her up bodily and threw her onto the bed. “Be good,” I said. She lay there and stared at me. I opened her purse, took out cigarettes, lit one. I looked around the room. The search had been pretty complete. The bottle on the bureau. Two glasses had been used. The third was still clean, still upside down on the tray. I poured some of the defunct’s bourbon, a liberal dose, took it over and pushed Anne’s legs out of the way so I could sit on the bed.

“I could use some of that,” she said in a wheedling tone.

“Tell me some things and maybe you’ll get some.”

“Why did you kill him, honey?” I knew she hadn’t. I knew she didn’t have time to do it. But she didn’t know I knew.

Her eyes darkened curiously. “I’m asking you that, mister.”

“I’m turning you in to the local cops. I think they have cells with dirt floors. I think the jailers will give me a vote of thanks for putting something like you in there. The bugs are bad, but they’ll keep you entertained.”

“You can’t bluff me, mister. Who are you?”

“How did you get here so fast from National City? You and Torran.”

“Who’s Torran? Somebody I ought to know?”

“From way back,” I said.

“Why did you kill Joe Talley, mister?”

I took another pull at the drink. Her eyes kept flicking to the glass and now and then she’d lick her underlip.

“We’re going around in circles, Anne. I didn’t kill him. And I know you didn’t. But I do know who did. Interested?”

She sat up, pulled her knees up, hugged them. “Who?”

“I’ll give you a little. You give me a little first.”

She shut her eyes for a long three seconds. “We got here fast because there was a light plane staked out for us at Ensenada.”

“A girl killed him. A Mexican girl wearing a white dress and carrying a big red purse. She was pretty. He brought her back here from the beach around noon. They both looked a little high.”

Still hugging her knees, she said five or six words that she shouldn’t have known. Her lips writhed like bloody worms as she said them.

I asked, “Where’s Torran?”

Suddenly a thought seemed to strike her.

Her eyes went wide. She scrambled off the bed, took one hesitant step toward the door and then stood there. “Look, I just realized that maybe . . .”

“Go ahead and talk. Get it off your chest,” I told her. “I know that you and Joe Talley planned to hijack Torran’s take and you crossed Torran by sending the wire to Brankis. I know which bus Torran took dressed as a fat lady, and I know the place he tossed the getup out of the gray Buick, and I know how you honked at the bus.”

It was meant to shake her. It did. Her face went white again. She sat down beside me on the bed.

“Who are you?”

“I’m just a guy interested in three hundred and seventy thousand dollars, sweet.”

She ran her fingertips along the back of my hand. “If I could trust you, mister.”

“How do you mean?”

“Wouldn’t I be a damn fool if I steered you to that money and then you took it all?”

I nodded gravely. “You’d grab it all for yourself if you could, wouldn’t you?”

She looked at me. “I need help. Joe was going to help. I’m afraid he talked to the wrong people. I’m afraid he was killed by somebody who wants the money.”

“Where’s Torran?”

“How can I trust you?”

“You can’t. But I think you’re on a spot where you’re going to have to trust somebody.”

She turned into my arms and caught her hand strongly at the back of my neck and kissed me. She could be considered an expert. The kiss was as smarting hot as the sauce that came with the one meal I had in Mexico City.

“It’s nice,” I said casually, “but it isn’t worth three hundred and seventy thousand.” I blocked the slap she threw at me and watched her as she went over to the bureau.

She picked up the bottle and tilted it high. Her throat worked convulsively for five long swallows. She lowered the bottle, said, “Haaaah”, tilted it high again and took three more swallows. She wiped her wet mouth on the back of her hand, leaving a smear of deep red.

“I’ve got to tell you,” she said, “because I’ve got to have help. Torran is sick. He got sick in National City, and he’s been running a hell of a high fever. He’s out of his head sometimes. That made it simple for me to contact Joe as soon as we landed. Joe made the arrangement for a house up the beach, a small place walled in and private. Torran’s there. The bad thing was not knowing how to get the money away from him. It’s all crammed into a huge money belt. Even sick like that, I couldn’t risk it. And I’m not killing anybody, even for that amount of money.

“Joe has contacts. He got some sedative and handed it to me early this morning. I couldn’t get it down Torran until noon.

“When he was out, I got the belt off him. I know it isn’t safe to stay here. I can’t get it out of Mexico without Joe’s help. So I hid it in the house and came to get Joe and tell him. Now I’m afraid to go back there, because if Joe talked to the wrong people and there’s another group after that money, they’ll be at the house now. If you come back with me and help me get the money, and help me get it to El Salvador, I’ll give you seventy thousand.”

“Half, sweet.”

“One hundred thousand. No more. Final offer.” The liquor had gotten into her bloodstream. Her lips looked swollen and she weaved slightly.

“Half, and be good, or I’ll take it all.”

She leered at me. “Maybe we could stick together, huh? Your money is my money?” She laughed. It looked funny to see her standing there laughing, because behind her I could see Joe Talley’s hand, palm upward, the steam curling around it.

She turned toward the bottle. I got there first. She cursed me. She clawed at my face and I slapped her so hard her eyes went off focus. Then she turned sweet. “You gotta help me, honey,” she said. “Gee, I don’t know your name.”

“Russ, sweet. Be good. Stand by the door. There’s prints to get rid of. That heat is going to make time of death tough for them to determine.”

I cleaned up and we left. A man was standing up the walk talking to a woman who stood in front of the neighboring cabaña. I turned back toward the door, waved, and said, “See you later, boy.”

Her face and eyes were empty as we got into the cab. She gave the address “Ocho Calle Revocadera.”

“You know the language?”

“Twenty words, Russ.”

I held my hands low and took a look at the automatic. It was a toy. Twenty-five caliber. Curly designs etched into the steel. The clip was full. The cab took fifteen minutes to put us by the gate in the wall around the house. She sat in the cab and started to tremble. “I’m scared,” she said in a low tone.

I held the door and she got out. I paid the driver and the cab went away from there. I looked at the gate. There was a chain for a padlock, but no padlock. I slipped the catch and pushed it open. The lawn was deep green, unkempt. Flowers straggled in wild confusion along the side of the pink stone house.

“What room is he in?”

She was shivering again. “In . . . in the back.”

“Did you lock the place up?”

“Yes.”

I took a look at the side door. The wood was splintered and pieces of the brass lock lay on the stone step. I pushed her to one side, kicked the door open and went in fast, whirling on balance, the way I had been taught. The hallway was empty, dim. I listened. The house was silent.

“Come in,” I whispered. She came in obediently. She was chewing on her lip. The liquor was sweating its way out of her.

“Where did you hide it?” I whispered, my lips close to her ear.

“You’ll take me with you, Russ?”

“Of course.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Come on, then.” She walked with extreme caution. I followed her. It was hard to walk silently on the gayly patterned tile floor. She peered into the next room and then walked in. Suspended from the ceiling was a huge fixture, like a fruit bowl. She pointed up at it. I picked up the antique Spanish chair from its position near the door and put it silently under the fixture. She put her hand on my shoulder and stepped up onto the chair, reached her hands up and around the edge of the fixture.

The flick of movement was off to the side. I turned, firing as I turned, my snapping shot drowned by the resounding smash of a heavier weapon. He stood gaunt in the doorway, wearing only pajama pants, his eyes glittering and feverish, black stubble on his face, his lips cracked and caked with white.

As the muzzle swung toward me, I saw the tiny holes appearing in his naked chest, all left of center. His left. The little automatic shot well. He tried to hold onto the doorway and steady the weapon. He trembled with effort but he could not stay the slow sagging of the muzzle. When he fired it, it was aimed at the tile. It smashed tile, whirred by my head and chunked into the wall behind me. His knees made a clocking sound on the tile and he folded awkwardly onto his face, getting one hand up but not far enough.

I turned toward Anne Richardson. Both her hands were clamped on the rim of the light fixture and her feet were still on the chair. But her knees sagged so that all her weight was on her hands, and on the fixture. It pulled free of the ceiling and she came down with it, hitting cruelly against the heavy arm of the chair, tumbling off onto the floor while the glass splashed into all corners of the room.

I knelt by her and turned her over gently and saw where the bullet had entered, just below the bare midriff, dead center, ranging upward. She gave me an odd little smile and said, “Tell . . . tell them I . . .” Then she chopped her heels at the floor so hard she broke the straps of both cork-soled shoes and they came off. She arched up a few inches and dropped back and died. I wondered what I was supposed to tell them.

I went to the front door and listened. There was no traffic in the road. The nearest beach house was four hundred yards away, and the sound of the surf was loud.

Torran was dead. That look of affability was gone in death. He looked weak, vicious, cruel. He looked like a punk, a dirty small-time killer. I searched the house. The kitchen was small. The girl in the white dress lay with her head under the sink, face down, the big red purse under her stomach, her white dress high on the bare strong brown thighs. The slug had made an evil mess of the back of her head. Her companion, a dark man I had never seen before, was one eighth alive. At least he was breathing. His pulse had a flutter like the wings of a captive moth. He had two in the belly.

When Torran had regained the belt, he had put it where a sick person could be expected to put it. Under his pillow. I opened it. Each compartment was hard as a stone with money. It was crammed in so tightly the belt would have to be cut to get it out without tearing it.

I looked at it. All the money in the world. Fresh money, still in the mint wrappers. All the money in the world for all the things in the world. I sat on the bed that smelled of fever and sickness in the room with the drawn blinds and ran my fingertips back and forth across the visible edges of the stacks of bills. I thought of crazy but possible things.

It was done very, very neatly. It was done the way experts do it. A gardener was working in front of my cabaña at the Hotel de las Americas. Another man was coming down the path with a covered tray. I unlocked the door and went in. When I was three steps inside the room the gardener shoved the muzzle of the weapon through the screen of the side window. The waiter tossed napkin and tray aside, kept the light machine gun the napkin had covered. He held it centered on the small of my back. At the same instant the third man stepped out of my bathroom and covered me with a professional-looking revolver.

I raised my arms and stood there. With no accent at all the man in front of me said, “Sit down and hold onto your ankles.”

I did as directed. They took the gun first. Then they took the money belt off me. They put the gun and the money belt on the bed. They seemed to be waiting for someone. I felt better. I had a lovely idea. “Police?” I asked. My voice sounded like something crawling up the side of a wall.

“But of course,” the English-speaking one said.

We all waited. Broughton came in. The white caterpillar eyebrows showed no surprise, no elation. He looked like the deacon standing at the end of the pew waiting for the collection plate to be handed back.

“You saved us some trouble, Gandy,” he said.

“Glad I could help.”

“We didn’t find Brankis until yesterday. We’ve gotten excellent cooperation from the Mexican authorities.”

“Put that in your report, Broughton.”

He nodded. “I will. You nearly made it, Gandy. One day later . . .”

“My hard luck, I suppose,” I said. “Can I get up on my feet?”

He nodded. I got up. He showed expression for the first time. I was something low, dirty and evil. Something you’d find under a wet rock. Something he wanted to step on.

“We’re taking you back,” he said.

“Kind of you, sir.”

I grinned at him. I gave him a big broad grin and he turned away from it. I was laughing inside. I was laughing so hard I hurt. Let him have his fun. Sooner or later he was going to find out about the wire I sent before returning to my cabaña – that wire to Washington Bureau Headquarters, giving the case code name, reporting recovery, requesting instructions.

You see, it looked like all the money in the world, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.