The Poisoners

X

When I came outside, the mist was just as thick as it had been, or a little thicker, and it smelled just as bad, or a little worse. I went over to the new rental car that had been brought to me by Devlin's people after I'd explained to the guy on the phone that I'd ditched the other one, because somebody might have seen the license plate at the scene of the shooting and mentioned it to the police. He'd promised to deal with the problem, if it turned out to be a problem.

I'd already driven the replacement far enough to know that it was never going to become my favorite vehicle: a commuter's special with too many power gadgets and too little character. It had one of those space-age names- Satellite-that they like to give to cars nowadays when they're not naming them after animals, birds, or poisonous reptiles.

Getting into the shiny sedan, I heard a siren on the freeway and saw an ambulance go by up there, heading for Los Angeles. It was the third such emergency vehicle I'd encountered since starting south. Well, it was a bad night for driving. There was bound to be some breakage. With that thought, I slid behind the wheel, swung the car around jerkily-a sports car man at heart, I'm not at my best with automatic transmissions and power brakes-and headed for the nearest on-ramp to join the fun.

Southern California drivers are a courageous lot. You might even call them reckless-perhaps life has lost its meaning down there without real air to breathe. By the time I'd raced that headlong, suicidal traffic through the gradually lessening fog to the outskirts of San Diego, I was happy to pull off the freeway and find a phone. When I called the garage, Charlie Devlin answered promptly.

"McCrory's Motor Service."

"Hi," I said.

"Oh, it's you. Where are you now?" I told her, and she said: "No farther than that? Well, your subject crossed the border at Tijuana, some twenty miles ahead of you, almost an hour ago. She headed south towards Ensenada, our people report. The white Jeepster was two cars behind her going through the international gate."

"Your people couldn't stick a pin in his tire to stop him, or plant some marihuana under his seat, or something?"

"Don't be silly, nobody cares about marihuana smuggled into Mexico. And I told you, these are information people, not action people. When they need muscle they call the police. Or us. Did you want the police dragged into this?"

"I guess not." Obviously, if I'd wanted the police, I should have made up my mind earlier. "You're sure she's on her way to Ensenada?"

"No, of course I'm not sure. She could have doubled back, although she wasn't seen recrossing the border. But she could have swung east towards Mexicali; there's a good highway just south of the line that runs well over by Arizona. However, when last seen, she was barreling out on Mexico Highway 1, the road that'll take you clear down Baja California to La Paz, if you and your vehicle are tough enough to make it. It's about eight hundred miles. The pavement ends about ninety miles south of Ensenada at present. After that, things get pretty rough."

I'd heard about that rugged peninsula road before- they run well-publicized races down it for trail-type vehicles, and a lot of them fall by the wayside-but I let her finish the geography lesson anyway.

Then I said, "Well, Beverly's not likely to try the Baja boondocks in her flossy convertible, but Willy's all set to make the run with that four-wheel-drive heap, once he does his job. Maybe that's the idea."

"Or maybe we're just supposed to think that's the idea."

"I'll keep both possibilities in mind. How's your car coming?"

"It'll be another hour or so. I had them wake up somebody to get the parts in L.A. and run them down here…"

She stopped abruptly. I heard some odd, choking sounds over the phone.

"What's the matter?" I asked quickly. "Miss Devlin? Charlie?"

Her voice came back on the line sounding kind of hoarse and strangled. "Just this damn allergy. Don't get excited. As I was saying, we've got the parts now, but the man's just started putting them in. As soon as he's finished, I'll come after you."

"Name a rendezvous," I said. "I don't know the area."

"The Bahia Hotel in Ensenada. It's on the main tourist drag, on the right-hand side of the street going south; you can't miss it."

I said, "Okay. Incidentally, I've switched cars. Look for a Plymouth Satellite four-door, kind of reddish-brown. If the sun visors are down, you make contact with me as soon as possible. If they're up, stay clear and wait until you hear from me. Watch that allergy, Charlie."

"Thanks," she said. "You he careful, too. Oh, I've ordered LA to check on Dr. Sorenson for you."

"Thanks."

Getting into Mexico was no problem; the uniformed officials at the gate just glanced at my identification and waved me through. Coming back, however, promised to be a different proposition, judging by the line of backed-up traffic waiting to be searched for drugs on the U.S. side. Considering that any smart smuggler would have the word by now, it seemed unlikely that the Customs boys were making any great hauls to justify the unpopularity they were generating on both sides of the border, but maybe they were hardened types who didn't care whether or not people loved them.

I followed the sparse highway signs through Tijuana in the dark without learning much about that colorful, wide-open town except that it doesn't spend much money keeping up its streets. Shortly after leaving the city limits, however, I found myself paying toll for the privilege of driving down an excellent four-lane highway at the legal speed of a hundred and ten kilometers per hour, roughly seventy m.p.h.

I could see the ocean on my right, now, in the growing dawn light. Down here the air was clear, and it looked like a beautiful morning coming up, with only a few clouds in the sky. It was like driving out from under a moist, stinking, gray blanket; but that ocean bothered me. Some people, I know, think of oceans in terms of pleasure boats, or sport fishing, or surfboards, or just plain happy swimming; but in my line of work we tend to regard any large body of water primarily as a tempting place to ditch a corpse.

Beyond the southern fringes of Tijuana, there wasn't much in the way of human habitation to embarrass anyone planning a burial at sea-or a heroin pickup, I reflected. Infrequent highway signs indicated turnoffs to villages that, as far as I could make out from the highway, were largely collections of shabby house trailers parked along the shore for the convenience of fishermen from the north. At least they looked very much like the seaside slums I'd seen elsewhere in Mexico, inhabited, during the season, by dedicated Yankee anglers. At this time of year, in the middle of the week, the villages were mostly deserted. They became more infrequent the farther south I drove.

Seeing the lonely road, and the empty, rocky coastline, I decided that Willy had deliberately waited for his victim-we prefer the word subject-to get down into Mexico where he could do his work conveniently and unobserved. Driving along, I watched the pavement for signs of hard, emergency braking, and the shoulder for tracks leading off the road.

I found them. You'd be surprised how many double streaks of rubber leading away into nothing you'll see on any highway if you really look; and how many wheel tracks run right off the edge of the road embankment without further traces of the vehicles that made them. I must have stopped half a dozen times in forty miles, quite sure that I'd come upon a broken convertible beyond those swerving tire marks leading into empty space, only to find myself looking at a virgin hillside or an unmarked cliff, with no signs of wreckage below.

The last time, however, as I was turning back to the car, I saw what I was looking for on the distant rocks beyond the small bay ahead: a pile of twisted metal with gold paint on it, gleaming dully in the shadow of the coastal hills. Well, at least it hadn't burned.

I drove over there and parked above the place and sat a moment in my car, not particularly wanting to see what was down there. I mean, it was too bad about McConnell, I'd been a little slow there, they'd caught me by surprise, but at least I'd been present and trying. Here I might have saved a life by calling in the police and having Willy Hansen picked up on some pretext or other before he crossed the border. Or I could have had the girl picked up and held in protective custody.

It would have involved a lot of explanations and formalities afterwards; it might even have loused up the mission completely. Mac would have been annoyed, but that wasn't why I hadn't done it. The fact is, I hadn't really thought of it until too late. People like me just don't think in terms of police; and because of my lone-wolf working habits, a girl was dead. There was nothing left for me to do but go look at what was left.

I got out of the car. At this point, the lanes of the dual highway were cut into the steeply sloping hillside at different levels. There was a masonry retaining wall to keep the upper northbound lane from sliding down onto the lower southbound lane on which I stood. There were plenty of signs to indicate what had happened.

Beverly had simply failed to make the sweeping right-hand turn around the head of the bay. She'd lost control of her car somehow and gone clear across the road to the left. She'd caromed off the stone retaining wall, leaving gold paint and chipped stonework behind her. Still fighting helplessly for control, perhaps, she had bounced back across the highway and over the edge. The tracks were clear in the dirt of the highway shoulder.

Professionally speaking, I had to admit that it was a good job. It looked like a simple matter of too much speed and too little driving ability. Well, if Willy was anything, he was a pro in automotive matters. I wondered just how he'd managed to work this.

I started for the edge and paused to study the tracks of a four-wheel-drive vehicle with cleated tires on all wheels. Then I saw a small green suede shoe beyond. I picked it up, frowning. Its presence up here could only mean that Beverly had jumped clear when she saw the precipice ahead, and her shoe had come off in the fall..

I hurried to the edge and looked down. It wasn't really a precipice, just a steep incline of rocky rubble and tough little bushes, but quite a scramble for a man with city clothes on. I found the other shoe about a quarter of the way down, and some scraps of green wool cloth snagged on the brush, but I didn't find her. There was other stuff all down the slope, including seat cushions, broken glass, and one door of the convertible. There was also a familiar leather purse, which I picked up. It had gotten badly scratched but it had stayed closed.

There was no girl, alive or dead. I made sure of this, and went over to the car. It was a total loss, smashed and battered into shapelessness, having rolled down a couple of hundred feet of hillside before coming to a sudden stop against the black rocks of the shore. It had ended right side up and the top had been ripped off. There was nobody inside and no blood on the upholstery, which fitted the theory that she'd unloaded before the vehicle went over the edge, but where was she?

That was, of course, a stupid question. I knew where she was, and I laid down the purse and shoes I'd collected, and walked to the edge of the rocks and looked down. Slow, heavy waves broke into foam twenty feet below, and I could feel a little spray blow up against my face. There was nothing washing around down there, of course. Willy, coming along right after the crash, however he'd made it happen, would have cleaned up tidily. The weighted body he'd dumped off the rocks might break loose and come ashore eventually, but not so soon and probably not here.

I looked out to sea where the waves were breaking over other black rocks, a hundred yards out in the bay. They looked sinister and dangerous out there. I wondered why Willy had bothered to dispose of the body. It would have made a better picture for the authorities, when they arrived on the scene, if he'd left her wherever her headlong dive from the doomed car had deposited her-after, of course, making quite sure she was dead. But maybe he'd had to put a tell-tale bullet into her to keep her from getting away.

Some impulse of anger made me pick up a chunk of rock and pitch it at the water below.

"Help!" The weak voice seemed to come out of the cliff at my feet. "Who's up there? Oh, please won't you help me! Somebody, please get me out of here-"