He thought that over. “Mexico?”
“It might be a nice change at that.”
“You are a brassy bastard, McGee. Don’t push it too hard.”
“Listen to me. I did not kill him. Nora did not kill him. Neither she nor I have any idea who did kill him. We would both like to know. You have a limited budget and you have a limited jurisdiction. And a lot of curiosity. And some anger about the way it was done. We’re angry too. What do you know that could be any help to us? I trade that for my confidential report to you about how it all comes out. If you don’t want to play, you won’t get a chance to listen.”
“My God, you are a brassy bastard! If there’s anything that turns my stomach, friend, it is the amateur avenger sticking his civilian nose into a rough situation, muddying everything up.”
“I’ve seen it rough here and there, around and about.”
He thought it over. He leaned back and looked at the lounge, tilted his balding head and gave me an oblique glance. “Just what is it you do?”
“I do favors for friends.”
“Did Taggart want you to do him a favor?”
That damned instinct of his. “I don’t know. Either he didn’t get around to bringing it up, or he changed his mind.”
“Nobody gives me the same story on you, McGee.”
“I never exert myself unless I have to. A genuinely lazy man is always misunderstood.”
“l even heard that you won this barge in a crap game.”
“A poker game.”
He waited, and then gave a long sigh. “All right. Except for this little morsel, I would have taken you in, just for luck. I don’t think it’s going to do me much good to sit on it. A bartender made him from the picture. A highway bar a half mile south of here. He came in about quarter of nine. He made a call from the pay booth. He sat at the bar and nursed beers. At maybe quarter after he got a call on that phone. He seemed jittery. A half hour later a well-dressed man arrived, carrying a briefcase. Dark, medium height, maybe about thirty. They seemed to know each other. They went back to a booth. They had a long discussion. They left together, somewhere around eleven. This was a handy bartender. Observant. The well-dressed type did not drink. He kept his hat on. Dark suit, white shirt, dark tie. The bartender said they seemed to be dickering over something, making some kind of a deal, and they didn’t seem very friendly about it.”
“It isn’t very much.”
“It’s something, but not very much. It’s enough to take pressure off you. He called somewhere and left a number. Briefcase phoned him back and he told him where to come. When Taggart thought he had the deal made, he took Briefcase back to the cabin. Assume Taggart was selling something. Two cars. Briefcase followed him. They make the deal. Briefcase leaves.
“He goes down the side road, parks by the car dump, puts on his blood suit, takes the knife and comes back, having cased the cabin. Maybe his orders were to make the deal, but rescind it good if Taggart gave him half a chance. Five dirty minutes used up in killing Taggart. Recover the money. Stash his costume in a junk car, drive away.”
“In a rental car? Back to the Miami airport?”
He looked at me approvingly. “Maybe you’re not a clown after all.”
“But you couldn’t check it out?”
“How many phone messages come in? How many cars are checked out? How many medium-sized, dark-haired guys, thirty years old fly in and out every day? Maybe it’s an organization thing, and Briefcase is a local operator. It fades out into nothing, McGee. When it’s professional, it always fades out into nothing, unless we get one hell of a break.”
“What’s so professional about hacking him up like that?”
“A professional with a personal interest, maybe. Or maybe that’s the way he goes for kicks, when he has the time.” He grinned. “I’m a pro too. That’s why you’re going to come along and sit in my car while I talk to Miss Gardino. It’s the only way I can be sure you don’t get on the phone.”
He couldn’t trick her or trap her. All he could do was break her down to the tears and the truth. And he left me there at the shop with her, back in the office, steadying her down. The big sobs were less frequent. Shaj stared in at us and gave a little nod and went away. I patted Nora’s lean shoulder. Her dark hair smelled grassy, like summer grass and clover. She gulped against my chest, sighs between the fading sobs.
The little office was functional, rubber tile, steel, electrical computation, posture chairs. Out in the shop the women were drifting in the buying glaze, touching fabric, pursing lips, standing hipshot and pensive, the chic skilled clerks in attendance, amid a readiness of mirrors, a piped music barely audible. The office girl lurked in one of the store rooms, in impatient diplomacy.
Nora launched herself back into self-dependence, giving a little push at me to turn herself away, delving for tissue, honking into it and then trying to smile.
“He hits the nerve, doesn’t he?”
“He opens you up like a guide book. It’s his trade.”
“Trav, I didn’t… let him make me say anything about… the gold.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“But he got the rest of it. The loving.” That narrow, vital, ugly-lovely face twisted into a grimace that pulled the flesh against the bone, showing the skull shape, the tooth-look of death.
“So we can leave any time,” I said. “As soon as you’re ready.”
She looked flustered. The eagerness was still there, but the actual fact of departure made her uncertain. “I… I have a lot to do.”
“As soon as you’re ready.”
Eight
THE TRAVEL agent in Los Angeles was a darling fellow, in tight green pants, yellow shirt, green ascot, desert boots. At a distance he was still a subdeb, but at close range he wore a thousand wrinkles, fine as cobwebs, and his eyes were as old as tombs. Nora and I sat on his moulded plywood chairs and talked to him across a pale pedestal desk. I had made it clear to him that it was Miss Gardino and Mr. McGee.
He looked pained and said, “If that is REALLY the sort of thing you have in mind, I think you would be TERRIBLY pleased with Mazatlan or Guaymas, or perhaps as far down as Manzanillo. Puerto Altamura is so DIFFICULT.”
“In what way?”
“Transportation wise, sir.” He studied the folder he had taken from the file, and went over to a large map of Mexico on the side wall. He put a manicured finger next to Puerto Altamura and said, “I could arrange some HORRID little flight into Culiacan, and from there you could rent a car and driver to take you to Pericos, and then over a DESPERATE little swamp road. Or perhaps a flight into Los Mochis, and a car over to Boca del Rio, and a rented boat from there. Or, I understand there is a little charter amphib at Navojoa. And then, of course, there is really only the one place to stay there… and suppose you are not comfortable?”
“It’s supposed to be pretty good, isn’t it?”
He shrugged, fluttered his hand. “The Casa Encantada. The literature always says they are luxurious. I’ve never been there, or talked to anyone who has stayed there. As you see here, sixty beautiful rooms, pool, beach, gourmet food, boating, fishing, tennis… Really I can TRULY recommend a lovely place in…”
“Puerto Altamura sounds pretty good to me,” I said. “We’d like something… a little off the beaten track.”
His eyes moved sidelong toward Nora, a reptilian flicker of understanding. He gave up. “I’ll see what I can do, sir. It may take some time to arrange. Such perfectly GHASTLY phone service. I’ll try to book you through by the most comfortable means, believe me, provided I can arrange reservations. How long would you want to stay there, sir?”
“A month. Six weeks.”
“My word!” he said, aghast. “Uh… two rooms, sir?”
“Please.”
He looked at his watch. “I suggest you phone me in, say, an hour and I may be able to report some progress.”