Nora selected number 39. Jose moved her luggage into that room. Amparo went in to help her unpack and Nora closed the interconnecting door. Jose unpacked my two bags. I took out the two items I did not want him to handle, the zipper case which contained the statuette pictures, and my slightly oversized toilet kit.
When he was through, and had asked if I wanted anything else, and had bowed himself out, with golden smile, I checked the room for a suitable hiding place for the five pictures. I did not hope to find anything that would defeat a professional search. I just wanted to thwart amateur curiosity.
One table lamp had a squat pottery base. I dismantled the fixture. The base was half full of sand for stability. There was ample room for the pictures, slightly curled, shoved down partway into the sand. I put it back together again. Now the leather folder contained misleading information, a sheaf of typed sheets of computations, percentage returns on real estate and investments, detailed recommendation for purchase of things I would never buy.
I took the toilet kit into the bathroom. It has a shallow false bottom, so inconspicuous as to be quite effective. I had debated bringing a weapon, and had at last decided on a flat little automatic pistol I had filched from an unstable woman’s purse, a Parisian woman. It is a ridiculous little thing made in Milano, silver-plated, with an ivory grip, one inch of barrel, without safety or trigger guard. The six clip has a sturdy spring however, unusual in these junk weapons. It is 25 caliber. I’d brought a full clip and a dozen extra shells. At eight feet I could be reasonably certain of hitting a man-sized target every time. At fifteen feet I would be half sure. At twenty-five feet it would be better to throw stones. It is a bedroom gun, with a brash bark like an anxious puppy. Its great advantage is its size. It is very thin. The grip fits the first two fingers of my hand. I can and have carried it in my wallet, tucked in with the money. It makes an uncomfortably bulky wallet.
I dumped the toilet gear out, pried up the false bottom and felt a little ridiculous as I looked at the toy gun. I had more faith in the other two items concealed there, the little vial of chloral hydrate, and the tin of capsules of a tasteless and powerful barbiturate, labeled respectively as nose drops and cold medicine. I checked the clip on the little gun and transferred it to the side pocket of my trousers. It was safe. It could not fire until I had jacked a shell into the chamber. I left my medicines and extra shells concealed.
After I had showered and changed, Nora rapped on the interconnecting door. I opened it and she came in, in an ivory linen dress that darkened her skin.
“Amparo is a jewel,” she said. “Nice rooms.”
“Maybe the food will be good too.”
“I hope so.”
“Shall we walk around? Explore?”
“If you’d like.”
“Why are we almost whispering?” she asked, and smiled nervously, her dark brown eyes glinting in the diminishing light of dusk.
“Before we go out, is there anything in your room, anything that ties you to him in any way?”
“You told me to be sure of that. I was. There’s nothing at all, Trav. But… he could have talked to someone about Gardino and McGee. Old friends.”
“There has to be a scrap of bait left out, a hint of bait, nothing definite.”
“I have the feeling someone is listening to us.”
“Not from this room. You’ll feel that way all the time we’re here. Until we know. Until we’re sure.”
“It isn’t anything like I thought it would be.”
We walked to the far end of our exterior corriclor, away from the lobby and found a sun deck at the end, large, with an iron railing, with a short curved staircase leading down to a path that led to the apron of the pool. The sunbathers were gone. A couple swam, dived, the man full of the spurious peppiness of the mid-forties living up to the demands of a lovely young girl, making his youthful motions, keeping his belly tucked in, having a whee of a time.
We walked to the far side of the pool and looked down at the little yacht basin. Two more sports fishermen had arrived, unloaded the customers, and the crew of two aboard each one was hosing down, oiling reels, slipping the canvas covers onto the boat rods, talking and laughing across the dock to each other.
We took a flagstone path through the flowers toward the main entrance, watching the orange sun slip down beyond the far islands which guarded the bay from the hundred and fifty mile sweep of the Gulf of California.
“We’re almost opposite La Paz,” I said. “I guess it’s just a little south of us.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Once upon a time.”
“Trav, tell me why I feel so strange and uncertain and… unreal?”
“After we find the bar.”
“Okay. After we find the bar.”
It was on the level below the lobby, an upholstered little room hoked up with candles, nets, tridents, glass floats, but dim and pleasant enough. We got our drinks at the bar, took them to a banquette corner. Several tables had been pulled together to seat ten people, five couples-the men big and brown and beefy, and their women smallish, tough, leathery. I needed one glance for the whole story.
“Those are the big game fish buffs,” I told Nora. “Names in the record books. Invitation tournaments. Except for the fox hunting crowd, they are the most insular, most narrow and arrogant and self-satisfied bores in creation. If you can’t kill fish in proper style, you’re vermin. They clutter up Bimini. They ought to be restricted to Cat Cay, where the only ruder people in the world are the Cat Cay dock hands.”
“How about the four dark suit types in the corner?”
“Mexican businessmen. Maybe looking for another place to stick up a hotel.”
“And those kids at the end of the bar?”
Three towering and powerful young men, and two slim sunbrowned girls, and a huge black dog. “That’s tougher. I’d say scuba types, if this was a better area for it. I’ll say it anyway. From the way they’re dressed, they’ve got a boat here. Probably came down the coast of Baja California and around to La Paz and cut across to here and will end up in Acapulco. How about the gal clothes?”
“That simple little beach shirt on the blonde is a forty dollar item.”
“It would have to be a good hunk of boat. So it’s that big motor sailor at the far dock out there. Fifty something feet.”
“And the couple just coming in?”
“Ah, the firm tread and the steady eye of shutterbug tourists. Kodachrome and exposure meters, and hundreds of slides of the real Mexico.”
She lowered her voice. “And the couple at this end of the bar?”
The woman was dark, hefty and handsome, glinting with gem stones. The man was squat and powerful, with an Aztec face and a gleaming white jacket.
“Just a guess. They’re from one of the houses over there beyond the boat basin. Drinks and dinner at the hotel tonight, for a change.”
“You’re good at that, Trav.”
“And often wrong,” I said, and went to the bar and brought fresh drinks back.
She sat closer to me and said, “Why do I feel so strange?”
“Because on the other side of the continent it looked easy, Nora. Now all you can see is closed doors, and no way of knowing if any of them will open. Baby, nothing is easy. Life comes in a thousand shades of grey, and everyone except madmen think what they do is reasonable, and maybe even the madmen do too. People don’t wear signs, and being dropped into a strange area is like a starfish landing on a strange oyster bed. You don’t know which one to open, or if you can open anything. On serial television it’s easy. For Superman it’s easy. For Mike Hammer it’s easy. But real people wander around in the foggy foggy dew, and never get to understand anything completely, themselves included. You put on your heroine suit, honey, and now you feel a little jackass in it. That’s good for you. I brought you along as cover. A place like this, a man comes here with a woman, or comes after the fish. With you along they classify me harmless, as I did most of the people in this room. So keep your head close to me and glow at me. You had to come here or you’d never feel right about him, so it’s good for you. But remember, we’re standing at the plate blindfolded. They give us an unlimited number of strikes, so you swing until your arms get too tired, and hope you don’t get hit in the head.”