“Four or five miles down the road after we get out of town.”
“What’s the countryside like?”
She had to think about it; finally she said, “Kind of flat and deserty. It’s the other side of these hills.”
“In other words they could see somebody on foot for quite a distance?”
“I’m afraid they could,” she answered, indicating by her reply that she understood what he had in mind. “You’d have a long walk.”
“How long? Five miles? Ten?”
“I don’t know, Mitch. It’s awfully flat to the south of it. Of course it would all depend whether they happened to be looking out in that direction.”
“We can’t take the chance they won’t.” He chewed his lip. The road curled past the high bull ring — a coliseum papered with colorful posters — and ran on south through a widening canyon alongside the railroad tracks. The dark blue car absorbed sun heat through the roof; he drove with all the windows open, his left arm propped up. The traffic was steady and light, mostly old American cars and Volkswagens. The Ford fitted in beautifully.
The last adobe buildings receded behind them and were absorbed in the mirror’s rear-view by the dun-colored hills. The road ran up a long easy grade ahead and disappeared over it. Terry said, “It’s down on the flats beyond this hill.”
He pulled over to the shoulder before they reached the crest; got out and walked up just far enough to be able to see past the crest. From this high vantage-point he could sweep a panorama that sprawled a good many miles toward various mountain ranges, haze-blue in the distance. The road ran down the slope ahead of him two or three miles to a permanent roadblock and a solitary cubical building flying the Mexican flag; beyond, the highway ribboned south for miles before it twisted out of sight.
He pinched his mouth irritably and walked back to the car. “That’s no good. We’ll have to wait for nightfall. Then you drive through the checkpoint while Billie Jean and I walk around the back of the place. We’ll make a wide circle, a mile or so — you’ll have to wait for us on the other side.”
Billie Jean said, “You mean we got to kill the whole day here? It’s too damned hot.”
“We’ll go back to Nogales and get some lunch and some beer.”
“Yeah,” Billie Jean said. “I could use some.”
He made a tight U-turn and drove back the way they had come. Terry’s hand rested on his thigh as he drove.
Chapter Fourteen
Somehow Earle Conniston’s office — which had rarely been occupied by more than two people at a time during Conniston’s reign — had become the center of the household. They had all four congregated there on the night of Earle’s death; it seemed natural that they keep coming back to it.
Halfway through this insomniac night they were gathered in the office — four people in the same room but not together. Carl Oakley was striding back and forth. Louise Conniston sat pushing her ice cubes around with a swizzle stick. Frankie Adams, graven-faced, was twisting his knuckles and chewing on a pencil and frowning at a newspaper crossword puzzle in his lap. Diego Orozco sat in his favorite straight chair with hands on knees, the weight of his huge belly sagging against his thighs.
Louise wore a rustling silk dress. When she twisted in the chair to look at Oakley her breasts handled the cloth seductively. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“I think better on my feet.”
“You’re nervous. You’re making me nervous, so you must be nervous.” Her words ran together carelessly; she was tight, or high — Oakley had never pinned down the distinction.
Frankie Adams said, “What’s the capital of Ecuador? La Paz? Five letters.”
“That’s in Bolivia,” Oakley said absently.
Orozco muttered, “Quito.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Oakley tugged back his sleeve and looked at his watch. Two seconds later if someone had asked him the time he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He resumed pacing with his hands in his pockets.
Adams uttered a monosyllabic curse and slapped the pencil down on the newspaper. “I can’t do these damn things.”
Louise said, “It beats hell out of me how you two legal and detective geniuses can identify both those dead bodies and still come up with nothing.”
“We’ve got their names,” Oakley said, “and for the moment that’s all we’ve got. It’s worth about as much as a nun’s virginity — we’ve got it but what good is it?”
Orozco said in his unperturbed growl, “We’ll have more information coming in pretty quick. My stringers are working up files on them.”
“Sure... sure,” Louise said. “But what happens then?”
“I’m not clairvoyant,” Oakley said. “All I can tell you is they didn’t leave her there dead. Which means she may be alive.”
Louise knocked back her drink. “But if they let her go why haven’t we heard from her? And if they didn’t, why didn’t they?”
Oakley didn’t answer. He went to the big leather chair and sat back, crossed his legs at right angles, laced his hands behind his head and knitted his brows. He kept looking at the telephone. All evening he had swung pendulantly from one extreme of emotion to the other — elation, despondency. They had found the spliced phone wires early in the afternoon and after that things had moved fast: they had found the two naked bodies in the ghost town before sundown. A discreet contact of Orozco’s in the Tucson police lab had run the fingerprints through for identification and Oakley had still been on his after-dinner coffee when the replies had come through — Orozco’s team had worked with remarkable dispatch. But what did it add up to? Oakley had even looked them both up in every one of the phone books in Earle’s cabinets. No Theodore Luke, no George Rymer. The two names hung suspended in a vacuum.
None of the radio direction-finders had picked up any signals from the bugged suitcase. The two sets of tire tracks in the ghost-town barn meant very little, if anything — one set belonged to Terry’s Daimler, which had not been sighted anywhere, and the other set consisted of worn mismatched tires of a brand not used on new cars. Thus there was no way to identify the make of the larger car. Orozco’s operatives had put out the word on the red sports job but that, Oakley thought bitterly, was like looking for a needle in Nebraska. Arizona was crawling with two-seater cars and half of them were red.
Theodore Luke had a vague record of three arrests and one suspended sentence, on charges of simple assault and drunk-and-disorderly. George Rymer had a record of narcotics arrests. Both men had been musicians — New York City had refused Theodore Luke a cabaret license because of his criminal record. But there was nothing in the sum of that information to suggest that either of them had ever been involved in robberies, extortions, or any of the other varieties of crime that a lawyer might expect to find in a kidnaper’s background.
It was all elusive, inconclusive, mocking. Oakley’s eyes were lacquered with weary frustration.
Frankie Adams said crossly, “I’m going to bed,” and left the room. Louise stirred the melting ice in her glass; Oakley watched her moodily. She caught his eye on her and she smiled, her eyes half-closed; she looked warm and lazy. She sat up and lifted her arms to fiddle with her hair. Under the silk dress her breasts stood out like torpedoes, drawing Oakley’s masculine attention, arousing him and irritating him with the distraction. Louise, meeting his glance, became very still, her arms upraised; her eyes mirrored a sensual speculation. Still smiling, she yawned luxuriously and walked out of the room trailing musk.