The woman fixed her glance on Mitch as if she was waiting for him to serve a subpoena on her. She had a sagging jaundiced face, easy to take for an Oriental’s; by her cheekbones and black ropy hair she was evidently a mestizo. Mitch strolled to the counter, measuring the thud of his pulse against the casualness of his bearing; he said in his rusty guidebook Spanish, “Yo deseo a conocer al señor von Roon. “He added as an afterthought, “Por favor.”
“El doctor no está aquí.”
“Uh—dónde está, por favor?” He knew all his grammar was wrong but she obviously understood what he was trying to, say. He clutched the gun, out of her sight, and looked around nervously.
The Indian woman gave him a cool, contemptuous appraisal; she said, “Quíen sabe?” and began to move away.
With his left hand Mitch crumpled a five-dollar bill in his pocket and took it out. The woman paused, looking at him. He rolled the bill into a greenish wad, tight as a spitball, and let it roll casually across the counter toward her. “Es muy importante.” She probably thought he was a dope addict or a boy friend looking for an abortionist but he didn’t care what she thought.
She picked up the wad and smoothed it out. Her expression did not change. She said, “Está en la Ciudad México. Volveré martés.” He was in Mexico City: he would return Tuesday. She gave him an arch smile and pocketed the five dollars.
Shaking, he took another bill out of his pocket and looked at it. Ten dollars. Deliberately, he ripped it in half and pushed one half across the counter. “Por favor, dígame. Hay un joven Yanqui, muy duro, con pelo negro, tal guapo—con ojos muy—uh, malignos. Comprende? Estaba aquí?” It was a limp description of Floyd—young Yankee, very hard, black hair, perhaps handsome, with very evil eyes—and he hadn’t held out much hope of getting anywhere with it: but he saw the woman’s face change and he knew he had scored a hit. The pulse thudded harder in him; he made a vague gesture with the half of the ten-dollar bill. “Dígame—dónde está este Yanqui?”
She spoke slowly, frowning, saying yes, there had been such a one; he had come seeking the Doctor von Roon and he had been told the same thing, that el Doctor would not return from Mexico City until Tuesday, perhaps even later. She kept her eyes on the half-bill in Mitch’s fist and Mitch shook his head and pressed her: “Dónde está ahora?” Where is he now?
“El Doctor?”
“No. El Yanqui.” He waved the torn money at her, leaning forward, his face fierce and furious.
She began to speak and he had to stop her and tell her to start over again and go slower. She did; she said with unconcealed impatience with his linguistic limitations that the Yanqui had left word where el Doctor could reach him but that she was to tell no one this except el Doctor. But when she said this her gaze was fixed on the torn bill in Mitch’s fist. Mitch reached into his pocket for the third time and withdrew the last money he had—another fiver—and added it to the torn half of the ten in his fist. “Es todo. No hay más.” He turned out his pocket to show her.
She considered the money and she considered his face. She said, “Usted—está un amigo del Yanqui?”
Not exactly a friend of his, Mitch thought; but he didn’t know how to phrase it in Spanish and so he merely shook his head at her. She was watching him in a way that made him morally certain she had disliked Floyd violently: Floyd had probably frightened her. And so, taking a chance, Mitch took the revolver out of his hip pocket and showed it to her, and put it away again, implying—he hoped—that it wasn’t friendship that made him seek the Yanqui.
She took a while to make up her mind; finally she rattled off something decisive; he had to make her repeat it twice, at the end of which time she was exasperated with him and he was grimly satisfied. He left all the money on the counter and walked out of the place into the blaze of sunshine and said to Terry in the car window, “He’s hiding out in a shack south of here—up in those hills.” He went around and got in. She didn’t say anything; she only watched him. He took the gun out and snapped it open and stared at the six brassy new cartridge cases with their silver-colored primers. He had a pocketful more. He snapped it shut and put it on his lap and started the car.
They had to crawl the Ford through morning knots of pedestrians in the narrow curving streets. The early daylight streamed through the tall palm trees, its color very rich. They went past the old mission church at the edge of town and he saw distinctly the pocked bullet holes in its adobe façade. Small dogs ran yapping after the car until it cleared the last palms at the southern limit of Caborca. Mitch told Terry what had happened inside the pharmacy; he said, “Floyd probably threatened to kill her if she told anybody but twenty dollars was more money than she’d ever seen in her life. She saw my gun and she probably figures I’ll kill Floyd for her—I wish I was as sure of myself as she seemed to be. Down here they think a man’s got a hell of a lot of machismo and cojones if he sports a gun.”
“That was Floyd’s gun, wasn’t it? He hasn’t got another one.”
“Knowing Floyd, he’s got an arsenal out here with him if he thinks he needs one. Guns are easy enough to come by down here if you’ve got the money to pay for them. Everything’s for sale down here. Jesus, Terry, I’m just talking to keep from going through the roof—maybe we better forget this whole thing and turn around.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
He had been thinking about very little else; but now he thought about it yet again and he realized with startling sudden clarity that these past days had secretly created resolve inside him. All his life he had failed at things. He didn’t know whether it was hysteria or courage but whatever it was, even if he failed again this time it would not be for want of trying. It occurred to him, in a way he sensed but could not explain even to himself, that he might lose more by turning away from this than he stood to lose even if he failed against Floyd.
And so he took himself a little by surprise when he answered her question: “No. I guess I have to prove something.”
“You don’t need to prove anything to anybody, Mitch.”
“I need to prove something to myself. Does that make any sense?”
“I guess it does, after all.”
The dirt road crabbed its way up into the beige-colored hills, full of rocks with square corners and washed-out ruts; the Ford strained and lurched at slow speed. “She said it was the far side of the hill from the big rock that looks like a hat. Must have meant that one up there. I think I’ll leave the car there and leave you in it. Be better to go down on foot—maybe I can catch him by surprise.”
“I don’t want to wait in the car, Mitch.”
“I’ll have trouble enough watching him without looking out for you too. What the hell is that?”
It was a car—a dusty Cadillac gleaming in the sun, parked in the road by the hat-shaped boulder. It might have been imagination but he thought he could still smell the dust in the air from its passage: it must have arrived just before them. Scowling, he halted the Ford behind the Cadillac’s bumper and got out, closing his hand around the gun, and walked quickly toward the crest of the hill. He heard Terry get out of the car behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to wave her back, but she kept coming and he didn’t want to lift his voice; he only gestured again and went on, getting up on his toes and beginning to run with a sense of instinctive urgency. It was then that he heard the gunshot.