The Menacers (12 page)

Somehow we never did get around to dinner that evening. In the morning, we read in the newspaper that the fire-breathing UFOs had once more made hostile contact with earth, near a little Mexican fishing village named Puerto Peñasco, on the Gulf of California.

We entered Mexico by way of a town that was called Lukeville above the border and Sonoita—or Sonoyta—below. It was located on the section of the international boundary line between Arizona and Sonora that angles kind of northwestwards, eventually striking the Colorado River not too far above the point where it empties into the head of the gulf that the Mexicans like to call the
Mar de Cortez
, the Sea of Cortez: that desolate, rather narrow body of water almost a thousand miles long that’s bounded on the east by the Mexican mainland and on the west by the Baja California peninsula, the long, dangling tail of the North American continent.

There wasn’t a great deal of international traffic when we drove through the gate, so we were soon taking our turn at the desk inside the shabby little one-story customs-and-immigration building, watching one of the Mexican border officials making out our tourist permits. They have a dramatic, rapid-fire typewriter technique that’s worth watching. Then we were on the road again, heading towards the village of Puerto Peñasco, some sixty miles away.

I heard Carol, beside me, give a funny, relieved little laugh as we left Sonoita behind and struck out across the cactus-studded desert at a legal one hundred kilometers per hour—sixty mph to you.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

“Borders always scare me,” she said. “I’m just a hick at heart. Matt?”

“Yes?”

“You’re using me, aren’t you?” She made a face. “No, don’t make any sexy, double-meaning cracks, and don’t tell me how you are just a poor little public-relations boy trying to get along in the big cold world. You’ve got some idea that I can be helpful to you down here in Mexico, don’t you? Maybe you figure you’ll attract less attention as a lady photographer’s assistant, or something. Well, I just want you to know that I don’t mind, so you can stop feeling guilty about it. Remember that I didn’t
have
to invite you along just because you gave me a very broad hint.”

I said, “Carol—”

She went on unheeding, “In fact, I think it’s kind of romantic and exciting, darling. Just let me know what you want me to do—in a way that won’t compromise your precious security, of course!”

I glanced at her, sitting there with her nice blonde hair and neatly lipsticked mouth and fresh complexion, thinking it was kind of exciting and romantic to be associated, even unofficially, with a dangerous character like me. I started to speak and changed my mind. First of all, I was under orders not to confide in her, and secondly, when they get that notion, all the words in the world won’t drive it out of them.

She was wearing a tan skirt and jacket, with a silk shirt or blouse in a lighter color I guess you’d call beige. The fashionably short skirt had big pleats front and rear, making it suitable for reasonably vigorous activity, and the sporty, bush-type jacket had all kinds of pockets—you half expected a few cartridge loops, African style.

It was kind of a movie-safari outfit that went with her romantic notions, made more so by the little suede boots she was wearing. However, except for the thin shirt, it looked fairly durable, and professional photographers do tend to go in for individualistic costumes at times, so I didn’t really hold it against her. If male camera artists could sport fancy hats and capes, it wasn’t really a crime for a girl to show up on the job in a bush jacket, particularly if she looked good in it, which she did.

“Just one question,” I said. “Exactly how did you happen to get saddled with this UFO photo-assignment, anyway?”

“Oh, that.” She laughed. “There wasn’t any ‘happen’ about it. I’m a determined, husband-hunting girl, darling, and I didn’t really think you meant to come back to me, when you left so suddenly. So I was going after you. I asked myself why a crack U.S. undercover operative would be rushed to Mexico at just this time—”

“You’re still a victim of my ex-wife’s vivid imagination,” I complained, going through the security motions. “The truth is, she just couldn’t bear to admit we got divorced because we couldn’t get along in bed.” I saw that Carol was smiling, totally unconvinced, and I went on: “Anyway, I didn’t tell you where I was going.”

“No, but you didn’t make any great effort to cover your tracks, did you? And Santa Fe is a small town, and I happen to know the girl in the travel agency, who sold you the tickets. And the big thing in Mexico right now is UFOs. I figured if I got a job covering the story, I’d probably run into you down there, somewhere…”

In a way it explained one of the coincidences Mac had thought incriminating, but it didn’t really prove anything. In fact, I tend to be rather suspicious of females who claim to find me irresistible. It happens in this business, but the record shows that most of the ladies involved have ulterior motives for flattering me thus—a disillusioning fact that does terrible things to my ego.

Any woman, therefore, who uses my personal magnetism—or my matrimonial desirability, for God’s sake!—as an excuse for chasing me the length of Mexico, or even laying plans in that direction, will normally find her explanation received with a certain amount of cynicism. But here, for no very good reason, I found myself believing in what I was told—or not so much in the story, perhaps, as in the girl who was telling it. I had learned nothing that would convince Mac of her innocence, of course; but I’d never been sold on the idea of Carol Lujan as a desperate communist agent in the first place…

I guess I was concentrating more on my thinking than on my driving. At any rate, I almost ran us off the road when a horn blared, it seemed, just behind my left ear. I pulled aside and let a big black U.S. made sedan shoot by: one of those mean-looking front-wheel-drive Oldsmobiles with concealed headlights. Detroit has got very bashful about its light-bulbs lately. They get some funny notions of propriety in that town. A few years ago, if I remember correctly, it was the tires and wheels that had to be decently covered, with modest little skirts that made it almost impossible to change a flat.

The car was driven by a dark-faced individual wearing khakis and an official-looking cap. I didn’t know him, but the front-seat passenger was a well-dressed Mexican gentleman with a neat moustache that looked very familiar. I’d last seen it in a hotel room in Santa Fe. Apparently our friend Solana-Ruiz also read the morning papers—or maybe he had private sources of information. In any case, he apparently considered the Puerto Peñasco incident worthy of his personal attention. He had to be going there since the road went nowhere else.

A woman was riding in back, but I couldn’t get a good look at her through the dark glass. Nevertheless, I had an uneasy feeling that under more favorable circumstances I might have recognized her, although at the moment I couldn’t think of any female acquaintance Mr. Solana and I might have in common.

“What’s the matter, do you know that man?” Carol asked.

“What man?”

Carol laughed tolerantly. “You’re very stubborn, aren’t you, darling? I’m just going to have to learn not to ask any questions at all. How much farther do we have to go? I thought it was only sixty miles from the border. It doesn’t look as if you could find a cup of water in this wasteland, let alone a whole gulf of it.”

We came upon the town almost without warning. The character of the landscape didn’t change much, but suddenly there were some dark objects on either side of the straight, paved road ahead. Reaching them, we discovered that they were mud houses, and that we were at the outskirts of Puerto Peñasco. Half a mile farther, and we could see the water ahead: a blue bay with a sandy beach curving towards a rocky point sticking out to the left, where most of the town seemed to be located. There were docks and warehouses and a number of sturdy-looking fishing boats.

The place that had been recommended to us by an Arizona filling-station attendant who’d been there was called the Motel Playa Hermosa—the Beautiful Beach Motel. We turned off at a big sign before reaching the town proper, and bounced along an unpaved street leading to the beach. The motel area, on the waterfront, was enclosed by a wall, inside which we found a number of low buildings and a larger structure housing the office, restaurant, and bar. Driving up to this, I saw Solana-Ruiz’s Oldsmobile parked in front, looking like a blind monster from the ocean depths—or maybe it was just taking a nap with its eyes closed.

Several tables on the veranda by the front door were occupied. At one, a girl sat alone. She was wearing very snug, ankle-length, elastic pants, kind of orchid in color, and one of those skimpy sleeveless white jerseys that look like a man’s undershirt. It bulged in an interesting way although she was not, in other respects, a bulgy girl. She had thick lipstick on, and heavy eye-makeup. The elaborately formal arrangement of her piled-up brown hair contrasted oddly with the scanty informality—if that’s the word—of her costume.

I didn’t look at her too hard. In the business, it’s considered impolite to recognize people you know until they’ve indicated that they’re willing to be recognized. I looked just long enough to make quite sure that this bosomy tight-pants chick was really my slim vestal virgin from Mazatlán, the sweet young girl who’d called herself Priscilla Decker.

As I started past her Priscilla looked up and said, clearly, “Well, if it isn’t the super-spook himself! What are
you
doing here—as if I didn’t know!”

Carrying the suitcases into the unit that had been assigned to us, I was surprised at the icy sharpness of the wind off the gulf. I remembered the sweltering heat of Mazatlán, only a few hundred miles south on the same coastline—well, seven or eight hundred. Apparently the weather had changed drastically during the couple of days I’d been out of Mexico.

I set the bags down and went over to investigate the primitive gas heater set into the wall. The room was just a cinderblock cell, gaudily painted and cheaply furnished; and like any beach house in autumn, it had a damp and clammy feel. I felt Carol come up to stand behind me.

“Matt, what’s a spook?”

“I believe the word is a colloquialism for ghost or disembodied spirit, ma’am,” I said without looking around.

“But it’s also slang for intelligence agent or spy, isn’t it?” Carol laughed softly. “She really let your cat out of the bag, didn’t she?”

I turned the valve, applied a lighted match to the outrushing gas, and closed the battered cover of the heater. “I’ve never seen the dame before in my life,” I said. “It was a simple case of mistaken identity. You heard her admit it.”

“Of course, darling. There are so many men six-feet-four running around these days, you just can’t tell them all apart.”

I got up and turned to face her. She looked at me for a moment, smiling; then her smile died, and she reached out and touched my cheek with her fingertips.

“I’m sorry. If you aren’t allowed to tell me anything, you aren’t, and I shouldn’t tease you. Matt, do you love me? Or is that classified information, too?”

I made the standard response to that ancient question. I took her into my arms and kissed her hard. Her lips were warm and responsive, and as I held her I couldn’t help the thought, that comes to us dangerous gents from time to time, that it would really be pleasant to have an understanding woman to come home to between assignments—particularly if the understanding woman were blonde and lovely and nice to be with like, say, Carol Lujan. After a little, she held me off gently.

“That’s not… not answering my question!” she said, rather shakily.

I grinned. “Why are women always so dead set on having it put into words?”

“Maybe—” She licked her lips, looking up at me. “Maybe because they’re afraid. I’m scared, Matt. I’ve got a funny feeling… I don’t like this place. I don’t like that girl on the veranda. It isn’t really going to be romantic and exciting, is it? All right, all right, I know you can’t tell me anything But I wish we could just turn around and drive back across the border to that nice motel in Lordsburg and forget the whole thing.” She laughed abruptly. “There! I’ve got it off my chest. Now I’ll let you wander over to the bar for a beer, or something, while I rinse the alkali dust off the face and body.”

I looked at her suspiciously. “Why the sudden modesty?” I asked. “I’m a big boy now. I’ve seen girls undress before, present company included.”

“You’re being stupid, darling.” Her voice was a little sharp. “Don’t you see that I’m giving you an opportunity to make contact with your fellow-agent without my embarrassing presence? Run along now like a good little spook. Shoo. Scat!”

The late afternoon sunshine struck me as I stepped outside, but so did the wind, making me wish I’d taken time to grab a sweater or jacket. I walked along the low wall separating the motel compound from the beach. Down at the shore, some kids were playing in the breaking waves. I noticed that several of them were wearing those black-rubber wetsuits for warmth. I didn’t blame them. It wasn’t exactly what I called ideal swimming weather. Other kids were setting off the usual Mexican firecrackers. A couple of beach buggies were racing around on the sand: stripped-down Volkswagens, by the look of them, with little open bodies and big tires.

I turned into the bar, which wasn’t crowded, and found myself a stool without really looking around.

“
Una cerveza, por favor
,” I said in my best Spanish, which isn’t very good. I was aware that somebody was taking the seat to my left, and I caught a whiff of cheap, strong perfume. “Make that
dos cervezas
,” I said.

“How do you know I want beer?” Priscilla Decker asked.

“If you don’t want it, I’ll drink both of them, and you can buy your own damn booze,” I said. “God, you stink! What is that stuff you’ve got on, insect repellent or varnish remover? And just what the hell are you and that smoothie boss of yours trying to pull now?”