“They were awfully nice people.”
“How far from here?” I asked.
“Oh, ten, fifteen miles, something like that. I don’t know exactly. Right down where a side road turns off and goes around the head of the Gulf.”
“Can you find the place again?”
“I guess I could, yes.”
“You’d better find it,” I said.
“Why? And who the hell are you to be quizzing me like this?”
“I’m doing it,” I told him, “because you’re going to have to collect all the evidence you can get.”
“Why?”
“Puggy took your gun away from you?”
“Yes.”
“And where did you get that gun?”
He hesitated and looked at Nanncie.
Nanncie nodded her head. He said, “Nanncie gave it to me.”
“Where did Nanncie get it?” I said.
He shook his head. “She didn’t tell me. She said she had it for her protection and she thought I needed it more than she did.”
I said, “For your information, Eddie, whose last name was Sutton, accompanied by another man who was probably Puggy, crossed the border with the load of marijuana about ten o’clock last night. It had started to rain and they were two hours late — and I guess the fact that Puggy had to take care of you threw then off schedule bit.
“Anyway, Sutton pulled off to the side of the road wait for the scout car to go ahead and report a clear road. He and Puggy evidently got in some kind of an argument over the division of the profits or perhaps over the fact that they hadn’t killed you to silence you and—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Hale said. “I’ll bet they sent a car back to finish the job.”
“What makes you think so?”
“After I’d been lying in that car what seemed like ages another car came down the road and seemed to be looking for something. It came down the road and went back: two or three times.”
“You were close to the road?”
“I was close enough to the road so I could be seen by daylight, but a man coming down on a dark night, trying to find me by the headlights on a car, could very well have missed the car... I’ll bet that was what it was all about. I’ll bet they came back to take care of me, probably to drive me out someplace where they could load me aboard a boat, take me out in the Gulf and throw me overboard with weights tied to my neck and feet. It had started to rain. The night was as dark as pitch and the guys couldn’t find me.
“I was desperate at the time. I tried to make noises to attract the attention of the driver. I realize now it’s one hell of a good thing that I didn’t.”
“All right,” I said, “that’s probably true.”
“What happened after that?” he asked. “You said Puggy and Eddie got in a fight about something?”
“Puggy and Eddie got in a fight about something,” I said. “I imagine that Puggy started putting pressure to bear on Eddie about the fact that you needed to be taken Care of on a permanent basis. Anyway, they got in a fight and Eddie got killed.”
“Got killed?” Hale said.
“Got killed,” I said.
“How?” Hale asked.
“One shot from a thirty-eight revolver,” I said, “and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the revolver that fired the fatal shot wasn’t the gun Puggy had taken away you, the one that Nanncie had given you so you co protect yourself, and the same gun that had been given to Nanncie so that she could protect herself.”
Hale looked from me to Nanncie, then from Nanncie to me, then back to Nanncie. “Did Milt give it to you?” he asked Nanncie.
She nodded her head.
Hale reached an instant decision. “Don’t tell any about where you got that gun,” he said. “Let Calhoun explain it. He’s got plenty of money, plenty of pull, he’ll get the best lawyers in the country. Don’t let them drag you into it. Let’s let Calhoun shift for himself.”
11
I paid for the beers at the outdoor restaurant and said Hale, “Come on, you’ve got to pilot us down to the place where you spent the night. What happened with the ropes they tied you up with?”
“They’re in the back of my car.”
“Did you get the names of the people?”
“José Chapalla,” he said.
“They talk English?”
“Oh, yes.”
I walked over to look at the ropes in his car were a heavy fishing twine. When a knot is tied in stuff it can become very tight indeed.
I picked up the ropes and looked at the ends.
“What are you looking for?” Hale asked.
I said, “It’s a shame your Mexican friend didn’t know more about police science.”
“What do you mean?”
“A good police officer,” I said, “never unties a rope that a person had been tied up with. He cuts the rope and leaves the knots intact.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes you can tell a good deal about a person from the type of knot he ties.”
“Oh, you mean a sailor and all that stuff.”
“A sailor, a packer — and sometime just a rank amateur. Come on, let’s go. You’d better get your ear and we’ll follow. How far is it?”
“I would say around ten miles. But let me go with you, if you will, so I can stretch out. Nanncie can drive my car. I’ve had a real beating and I’m sore. My muscles are sore, my ribs are sore.”
“I know,” I told him. “I can sympathize with you. I’ve had several beatings.”
He climbed slowly, laboriously into the back of the car. “Gosh,” he said, “I’d love to have some hot water and a shave and get cleaned up.”
“In a short time you will,” I told him. “This is going to be my party from now on. I’m going to take you to the Lucerna Hotel in Mexicali. You can get a good hot bath and crawl into bed. Then you can get out in the swimming pool and float around and gradually exercise those muscles until you get the stiffness out of them.”
“That sounds good,” he said. “Boy, I’d sure love to get in a warm swimming pool and just relax and take all the weight off of myself and just float.”
“It can be done,” I told him.
We drove down to La Puerta where the road turns off to the east to go around the head of the Gulf.
“This is the road,” Hale said,
We drove down the road for some distance, then Hale said, “This is where they left the car.”
I got out and looked around.
I could see tracks where a car had been driven off the road, then where it had been standing perhaps a hundred yards from the edge of the road. There were footprints all around where the car had stood, lots of footprints.
We went back to the road and drove on...
“That’s the place,” Hale said, “that adobe house over there.”
It was an unpretentious adobe house with an old dilapidated pickup in front of it.
I stopped the car and got out to knock on the door. Nanncie pulled up behind us and parked.
Hale eased his way out of the car and shouted, “Oh José — Maria. It’s me. I’m back.”
The door opened.
A Mexican, somewhere in his fifties, with a stubby black mustache and a shock of black hair, attired overalls and a shirt that was open at the throat stood in the doorway, smiling cordially.
Just behind him, peering over his shoulder, I could see the intense black eyes of the man’s wife.
“Amigo, amigo!” he called. “Come in, come in!”
Hale hobbled along and introduced us. “José and Maria Chapalla,” he said. “They are my friends. And these two are my friends, Miss Nanncie and... What did you say your name was?”