Cry in the Night (15 page)

Even in the dimness beneath the pine tree I could now see something of the terrain, tumbled heaps of rocks and wind-bent trees. If I could see better, he could see better. No frightened creature of the night could lie more still than I. I might have been a part of the ground.

“You come with me now,” he pled. “I will show the treasure to you. We will take the gold with us and go together for you to get the money. Once I have the money, you will have the treasure. Please, come now.”

He assumed that somewhere I had access to money, much money. He must believe the money was in another place, waiting. That meant he was sure I had no money in my room at the Ortega house. I remembered the edge of slip that had shown from my suitcase. Someone had searched my room, must have told him there was no money hidden there. I thought of the little maid who had brought me hot chocolate and who had led me through the night to the gate into the alley and him. He kidnapped me to show me the treasure and then he was sure I would give the money to him, not to Gerda or Juan. He was so confident, but I was sure that there could be no treasure. No map and no treasure.

Yet, he had killed for this treasure and he would kill again.

My mind rebelled. Ancient Aztec gold would not be hidden in a cave marked upon a map by the “old” road. That road might be a hundred years, but not four hundred and fifty years old. Had it all been a dreadful mistake? Had Raúl fallen accidentally and his imaginings triggered his brother to murder for nothing?

“Listen to me.” He was angry now, angry and determined that I should do his bidding. “I tell you, I followed Juan. I saw him today creeping like a shadow, hiding a suitcase in the cellars. It must be the treasure.”

Today. He saw Juan move something today. That was why he had taken me captive tonight. At first, he had tried to frighten me, the note at the airport, the doll flung on my floor. When I didn’t go back to New York, he shot at me on the Avenue of the Dead. Now I realized he had intentionally missed. His plan then had been to prevent the transfer of the gold to a courier from the museum. His focus had been on finding the gold. Today when he followed Juan, he was sure that he could take possession of the treasure. He arranged with his sister, the little maid, to persuade me to come to the alley. He wanted to deal with me. I had money, he had gold, the transfer could be made.

I had no money. I doubted, as I lay shivering on that cold hillside, that he had a treasure.

If I moved, if I tried to run again, he would hear and catch me. If I lay still all night long, the sun would rise, its bright rays slipping down the hillside. Eventually, he would find me.

I was cold. And angry. I did not want to die on a rock-strewn hillside in Mexico.

I hated the sound of his voice. Now it rose as he implored me. In a dreadful fashion, the cadence was reminiscent of vendors everywhere in Mexico trying to sell you something—a ring, a horse made of straw, a serape, moccasins, balloons, postcards, necklaces, lace scarves, baskets, leather purses.

“Please, miss, you come now, you will see. My brother, he told me the gold was soft and warm to the touch. Please, miss.”

I wanted to shut away his voice, shut away the picture of hands lifted up, filled with gold, cajoling, bartering.

“Miss, you come now. We will look at it together—” His words broke off.

I heard the roar at the same instant, the growl of an MG changing gears as it climbed the hill. The road was just above us. The lights from the car whipped across the top of the pines. Loose gravel spun beneath the wheels as the car careened around a sharp curve. The lights flickered in the treetops only for an instant. The screech of the tires sounded scarcely longer. But the whine of the motor could be heard when the car was long on its way around the curving, twisting road.

It was an MG. I knew it. I never questioned it. This road, this narrow twisting road, must belong to the Ortegas.

Tony’s MG?

When it was very quiet again, the sound of the car only a memory, I realized I was alone on the cold, silent hillside.

Raúl’s brother had gone.

Chapter 15

It was much later that I learned why things happened as they did that frightful night, learned that Tony woke up the house, stormed up and down stairs, shouted when the twins led him to my room and I was gone, my purse on the desk, the bedcovers thrown back, my gown and robe a silken heap on the chair.

Lights had flooded the Casa Ortega. When everything had been searched, when they were sure I could not be found, the twins, white-faced, told Tony all that they knew, and the bits and pieces and patches of information—the hint of gold, Juan and Gerda, my disclaimer to the old gentleman that I was involved—all added up to danger. It was then that Tony stormed up to Juan’s room.

Juan was gone, too.

I knew none of this as I ran, stumbled, fought my way against fear and the night and the deep-rutted road, knowing that ahead of me raced a killer, a killer who could move like a deer through the trees, a killer who would stop at nothing to claim what he felt was his. If only I could reach Tony first, if I could have the strength and breath to warn him, to shout, to save him from the danger he faced on my account.

There is no time to dissemble when you are running for someone’s life. I didn’t question that I cared so much, that I would run until I dropped, that I would kick and claw and battle to save him. It wasn’t sensible. It wasn’t rational. I had lived my life being sensible and rational. Tonight that caution fell away.

I remembered the way his hair glistened in the moonlight, black as a raven’s wing. I remembered the eagerness in his voice when he showed me the mosaics at the university. I remembered the way he laughed and took my hand the afternoon we walked up Reforma. Simple things, nothing to set the pulses racing, nothing but kindness and grace and good humor, qualities to build a life on.

Hot stabbing pain in my side clawed like a live thing. I gasped for breath and sweat slipped down my face and back. More frightening than shouts or footfalls or racing motors was the silence. I might have been the only person in the world as I ran up the steep curving road.

I rounded a bend and saw a dark sprawl of buildings that had to be the Ortega hacienda. No light shone. No one moved in the dusty foreyard in front of an immense wooden door.

Where was the MG?

Where was Raúl’s brother?

I stopped and stared at the dark hacienda. It was utterly quiet. I hesitated, uncertain what to do. Every passing second brought danger closer to Tony. Should I batter on that huge wooden door? Hope that someone would hear and come and help?

Struggling for breath, trying to think, I started for the door, then, at the last instant, turned away. Where was the MG? That was what mattered. Tony would not be far from the MG. The hacienda, like a huge sleeping animal, loomed above me. I ran to the right and passed a dozen dark oval openings beneath massive arches. Then I was at the end of the house. A dusty road angled up the hillside, away from the darkness of the hacienda. I saw the MG a hundred yards away. It looked as though the car had skidded to a stop. The driver’s door hung open. Light spilled out onto hard-packed earth. The headlights gleamed brightly, throwing into sharp relief the thick rank of pine trees that crowded up the hillside. The lights angled away from the tiled-roof building just past the car. A barn? Stables converted to a garage? Storerooms? Square cut pillars curved into big graceful arches to support pale whitewashed walls. The arched openings were even darker than the night. Somehow, though, the lights from the MG seemed more threatening than the dark arches because the headlight beams aimed pointlessly up the hillside.

I reached the car and stopped to stare at the Saint Christopher medal dangling from the rearview mirror. I had noticed the medal the first morning when Tony took me to the museum. Saint Christopher had lost his place in the calendar of saints, but not in the hearts of travelers. I reached in and slipped the chain from the mirror and wrapped it around my hand until the round medal was in my closed palm. Then I turned and walked toward that big dark building. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes. My labored breathing was a rasping sound in the stillness. My lungs still strained from my wild run up the steep road.

“Tony.” I said his name aloud. How could it be so silent? There should be some sort of sound. There was nothing.

When I stepped beneath the central arch it was like sliding into subterranean water, into total darkness. I felt before me, both hands outstretched, and took one cautious step after another. Finally, my fingers touched weathered wood. Splinters pricked my skin. I patted the wood gently. I touched the cold metal of a bolt. I slid the bolt free and pulled the door out. The door moved with a feathery, sighing creak.

I looked inside and was surprised that I could see. The door opened onto a courtyard. Bright shining stars showed, once again, hard-packed dirt and black walls broken only by an occasional door. It was so barren and lay so quietly in the chill light of the stars that the courtyard might have lain undisturbed for a hundred years.

Desperately I looked back at the MG. The abandoned car was there so Tony must be somewhere near. If I shouted, if I called to him, would he hear? Raúl’s brother was somewhere near also, a killer who moved as quietly as a deer.

My throat closed upon the call I wanted to make.

I saw a faint luminous patch on the ground on the far side of the courtyard. The area of light was so small and indistinct that I blinked and squeezed my tired eyes and looked again. The small patch was there.

I stared, puzzled and uncertain. Why should there be a square of light in the ground? But the light was the only hint of human presence. I began to move across the hard dirt of the courtyard. With every step I took, the small square of light became more distinct. I was so tired, and my mind had been buffeted by so many shocks, that I was mystified by that patch of light, unable to guess what it could be.

When I was close enough to see a trapdoor thrown back and the protruding rungs of a ladder, I realized I was looking at an opening to a tunnel of some sort. I knelt beside the square opening and smelled musty dryness of long-closeted air.

Now, for the first time, I heard sounds.

Someone spoke softly in Spanish. The tone was unmistakable, a taunting, daring sound. Shoes scuffed against dirt and there was the noise of struggle, thumps and grunts and wheezing breaths. I swung over the side of the opening and started down the ladder. I dropped the last half dozen feet to land in a painful heap on hard earth. I pushed myself up and ran down a curving tunnel toward a gleam of light and sounds of combat.

The tunnel opened out into a cavernous room dimly lighted by a single bulb dangling from the center of the vaulted ceiling. On the far side of the cellar were several rows of wine racks. In the shadows of the first and second row, I saw them. I stumbled to a halt and my hands reached out to the cool plastered wall of the tunnel for support.

Raúl’s brother, one hand held stiffly against his side, leaned against the end of the first wooden rack. Blood dripped down from that stiff arm, ran in a thick red rivulet to spatter onto the earthen floor. He stood between me and his unmoving victim. I could see the bright shine of black shoes, the dark gray limpness of trousers.

I was too late, too late, forever too late. I turned away and pressed against the curving wall of the tunnel. The wall itself seemed insubstantial. The mind and body can absorb only so much and I was far beyond the limit of my endurance. I had tried hard, very hard, and my struggle had been for nothing. I had found warmth in Tony’s black eyes and the touch of his hand. Now, because of me, his body lay limp on a dirt floor. He would never again look up curving stairs and smile at a woman. He would never again sit at his desk and pit his judgment against his competitor’s. He would never again pour wine into his companion’s glass and look across the table, his dark eyes intent and measuring.

Sick at heart, I raised my head to look back into the cellar. I looked, then strained harder to see. Those shoes, that crumpled length of cloth. Did it really look like Tony?

But it had to be Tony. His MG sat outside. I held tightly in my right hand his medal of Saint Christopher. It was foolish to hope, hideous to open myself again to the shock of finality.

Raúl’s brother moved, stiffly, doggedly. I realized with vindictive delight that he was seriously wounded. He dragged his right leg across the floor as if any movement were painful. He clasped his left arm against his side.

I now saw the fallen man clearly. Suddenly I knew who lay there. I edged back into the tunnel, trying to move like a shadow. I eased back one step, another.

If he turned his head he could see me.

I saw his right hand then. Bloodied fingers gripped the knife. Blood rushed down his arm, splashing onto the floor.

I was almost safe in the darkness of the tunnel when the shout came.

So much had happened that I had thought I was beyond feeling anything. I was wrong. Vivid joy swept me. Then, sheer horror.

The shout was hoarse with fear. “Sheila! Sheila!” Running feet thudded. The sounds came from another tunnel opening on the other side of the cellar, an opening near the wine racks and the body. And the killer.

Raúl’s brother stared at the dark mouth of that tunnel opening, head lifted, watching as an animal watches. He hunched his shoulders, slowly lifted his right hand, the hand with the knife.

“Sheila, are you here? Juan, where are you? Answer me.”

I screamed his name.

At first the words were thick in my throat, my voice a ragged whisper. Fear sucks breath out of your lungs. I pushed out the words. My voice grew stronger and stronger. “Tony, go back. Get out of here. Get the police. He has a knife. He killed Juan and he will kill you. Tony, get out, get out, get—” I ran across the earthen floor, stumbling and crying and screaming. I caught the killer’s arm, heard his gasp of pain. I tried to bend back his hand.

He grabbed me and flung me at the ground.

I slammed down and there was no air left to scream a warning. As I landed, I struggled to get on my feet. I scrambled toward him and managed to catch one leg, clawing at his ankle, crooking my arm around his legs.

He stumbled.

For one wild victorious moment, I felt him flail for balance.

He almost fell, but then he steadied, catching himself. One hand plunged down, grabbed my hair, a great thick handful, and yanked viciously.

My head snapped back. I let go of his legs and he was free.

He didn’t look down at me. He shouted. The hand with the knife swung down toward my face.

I saw the silver flash of the blade and, sharp and painful, the point of the knife snagged below my ear. I didn’t dare struggle.

Tony skidded to a stop no more than five feet away, a look of desperate fear etching deep lines in his haggard face.

The three of us froze into deadly tableau.

The point of the knife moved back to my ear. I felt a prick and the warmth of blood on my throat.

Tony yelled and started to move.

The knife moved from my ear, touched my throat.

The soft voice of the killer stopped Tony a foot away.

Tony answered and held up his hands.

Raúl’s brother nodded and pulled the knife away from my throat. He let me go and I tumbled back on the floor. I lay on that hard-packed earth, raised up on one elbow.

Tony spoke, quickly, emphatically. “Sheila, listen carefully.”

Raúl’s brother interrupted. “I will tell her. So she will make no mistake.” It was an effort for him to speak. But any hope that we might be able to overcome him were shredded by his words. “Miss, you understand, if you give me trouble, I kill you. I already tell Tony, I kill you quick if he tries to get me. You understand?”

“I understand.” My voice was faint but steady.

“Take your belt”—he pointed to my navy blue patent-leather belt—“and tie Tony’s hands. Tie them in front so I can see.”

As I took off the belt, I realized the right side of my dress was wet and sticky. I couldn’t see the blood against the navy blue, but I felt sick. I knew he had cut only my earlobe, and earlobes bleed furiously, but still I felt sick. What would he do once I tied Tony’s hands? Would he push me aside and stab Tony? I held the belt in my hands, hands smeared with blood.

There was blood everywhere around me. Blood on my neck and shoulder and hands. Blood on the man who stood, knife in hand, so near me. Blood on the floor.

I held the belt and looked at Tony.

He understood my fears without any words at all. “It’s all right, Sheila. Do as Lorenzo says. He has promised not to hurt us if we do as he says.”

I looked behind Tony at the long crumpled length that was his dead brother. “How can we trust him?”

Lorenzo saw my glance. “I told Juan the treasure was mine. I told him. But Juan laughed and said he had warned Raúl away and now he was warning me.” Lorenzo’s face was suddenly implacable. “Juan killed my brother.”

And tonight Lorenzo’s sister brought me to the alleyway. Did she know what he planned? Or did she think she was simply arranging a meeting?

Juan had killed Raúl. Lorenzo had killed Juan, not for treasure alone, but to avenge his brother’s murder.

Tony stretched out his hands and nodded at me.