Chapter 9

Two days in a row I woke up with that God's-in-His-Heaven-All's-right-with-the-world feeling. I even thought I heard the chirping of a bird somewhere outside. I stretched luxuriously in the bed and turned to say good morning to Connie. But the bed was empty next to me, the pillow undented. Maybe she went home after work to pack a bag. That's what I told myself, but I didn't believe it.

I got out of bed, shaved and dressed. Still no Connie. Downstairs I told the simpering desk clerk I would be in the dining room in case anyone was looking for me. He looked at me queerly, but promised to relay the information. My apprehension had no affect on my appetite and I packed away a good-sized breakfast, finishing off with three cups of coffee.

Still no Connie.

Upstairs again I wore a hole in the carpet pacing back and forth and crushing out half-smoked cigarettes. By noon I was ready to go out and look for her.

I waited until after lunch and then asked around the hotel for her. No one in room service seemed to have any idea where she might be. There was no one around who had been on shift with her last night.

I went up to my room and found two men waiting for me. They were the same two men I'd met at the gambling house. I walked into my room and saw the dapper one sitting in a chair quietly smoking a cigarette and cleaning his fingernails with one of those little pocket tools. The other one, the big one who'd answered the door was sprawled out on my bed.

"Come right in, Mr. Bell," the one in the chair said. "We've been waiting for you."

I closed the door behind me and walked to the sofa to sit down. The ox rolled over on his side to fix me with an idiotic glare and the little one, Frank, came over to stand in front of me.

"We understand that you don't intend to deal with us," he said.

"You understand right."

"I don't think you realize how damaging these pictures could be, Mr. Bell. If we were to...."

"Hey, Frank," Oxhead interrupted from the bed. "Let's stop talking. Let me hit him a couple. That'll convince him."

Frank ignored the interruption and went on. "If we were to distribute' those photographs as we threatened it would ruin you."

I snorted. "If I were to raise the point of my shoe off the floor very rapidly it would hit you right between your legs. I guess that might ruin you."

He glanced down at my foot and stepped back a pace.

I went on. "You people seem awfully concerned about my moral standing in the community. Let me give you a little tip. Forget it! Mind your own business! I explained to the girl last night that there was nothing you could do to me. I'm divorced. I don't work for somebody else. In fact I don't even know where I'm going when I leave here. If you were to get those pictures printed in every newspaper in the country, they couldn't do me any harm."

"Come on, Frank. Let me hit him." The big fellow had a one track mind.

Frank smiled. "She said you would be stubborn."

"Not just stubborn," I told him. "Downright uncooperative. I will not give you one cent. If that's clear you can turn around and slither out under the door."

I was getting pretty angry. There were more important things on my mind just then. I needed to think and I was worried about Connie. I didn't have the time to sit and trade innuendos with this smudged carbon-copy of a Chicago hood.

He lost his temper too, and when his temper went, so did his caution. He stepped in close to me and leaned over to fill his hand with my lapel. I was leaning back relaxed against the back of the sofa and he shoved his face into mine. He had bad breath.

"Look, I'm tired of playing games widr you. Either you pay up or...."

He finished the sentence in a strangled cry as he fell back away from me with his hands held tenderly to his crotch. I did what I had threatened to do-I kicked him right smack between the legs.

For a man as big as he was the guy on the bed was pretty fast. I had just time to get to my feet before he was on me. His big arms swung through the air and his rock-like fists smashed into me, one into the side of my head to explode colored lights behind my eyes, and the other to my kidney, sending a bolt of pain shooting across my back.

The force of his blow threw me halfway across the room, I was flat on my back when he came to me. What happened next was something I had seen in wrestling matches but never tried before. The ox grabbed two handbills of shirt-front and hauled me to my feet. I came about halfway up and grabbed his arms just above the elbows. Then I jumped straight up in the air and kicked both feet into his stomach. He grunted like a slaughtered steer. I came down on my back with both my feet still planted in his gut and my hands on his arms pulling him over me.

He was trying desperately to let go of me but I had a good hold on him. I pulled him over my feet so he was balanced on them, his own feet off the floor. His tremendous weight carried him over my head, and I helped him in that direction with a thrusting kick of my feet. Now I had a choice of action. If I held on to his arms he would turn completely over in the air and land flat on his back. If I let go he would sail over me and land head first.

I let go and waited for the crash. It was even louder than I expected. Then I scrambled to my feet and looked around. Frank lay curled in a little ball, tiny mewling sounds coming from his throat and his hands cupped over his crotch. Tears of agony ran down his face. The other one, the big guy, lay just as he'd fallen. He'd struck head first in the corner, his head hitting both walls and the floor at the same time. He wasn't moving and I wondered if he was dead or just unconscious.

I lifted Frank off the floor and threw him down on the sofa. "As soon as you can walk, get your playful pal out of here. And tell your friends anyone else who comes around can expect the same thing."

I lit a cigarette and sat down to wait for them to leave. In the normal course of events in this world a big man is at a disadvantage. Everything is too small for him-beds, clothes, chairs, meals, women, everything. Only on certain rare occasions have I ever been really thankful that I was born large. This was one of those occasions. I shuddered to think what might have happened if I had been five feet nine and a hundred and seventy pounds of flab.

Frank stopped mewling like a lost and hungry kitten and began to straighten himself out. He moved slowly and gently, afraid to jostle himself. If looks could kill I suppose I would have been stretched out on the floor alongside the ox. His eyes flickered with hate as he stared at me.

"Bell, you bastard, you asked for this." His voice was a hoarse screech. "The price has just doubled. It's ten thousand now and we're not selling a few lousy negatives. If you ever want to see that Mex broad again you'll fork over inside of twenty-four hours."

I was on him in a second. His face blanched with fear when I grabbed him.

"What are you talking about?" I shouted.

I had him by the throat and was holding him off the couch. I shook him back and forth until his teeth rattled and his eyes rolled around in his head. He gurgled and squawked and a stream of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth.

"Talk to me," I told him when I stopped rattling him.

"The girl, the one who works here in the hotel, we've got her."

It took a few more shakings but I got the whole story from him. It seems that even before Laurie took me out to that place they had me marked as a pigeon. Someone had followed me around since the day I'd checked into the hotel. Then Laurie went back and told them of my refusal to play their game. They'd grabbed Connie from the hotel. It wasn't blackmail anymore. Now it was ransom.

They would have preferred to make a less risky deal for five thousand, and Frank and his friend had been sent along to make one last try. But since I wouldn't go for that they were forced into the kid-napping-for-ransom business at ten thousand. They were taking a chance, of course. Connie might have been only a quick roll in the hay to me, someone for whom I wouldn't part with ten thousand.

But it had worked. I couldn't afford to call their bluff.

Frank hauled his friend to his feet and they staggered to the door. They left on a chilling note. With the door still open Frank turned back to the room. "If you don't pay we won't get rid of her right away," he said. "The boys out at the house will use her for a while, and then maybe we'll use her in a couple of the shows. You'd be surprised how convincing a whip and a few shots of heroin are. Or maybe when we're through with her we'll sell her to some whorehouse in Mexico City."

With that parting shot they were gone, and thirty seconds later I was pounding on Laurie's door. It took a few seconds for her to answer and she opened the door in a robe, her face still fuzzy with sleep. I slapped her hard and pushed my way into the room, locking the door behind me.

"You bitch, you no-good rotten bitch."

She held her hand to her face, her eyes wide with shocked surprise. "What are you talking about?" she screamed.

"They've got Connie."

"Who the hell is Connie?"

Then I told her all about it. About Connie and me and the visitors I'd just entertained. It took a few minutes, and by the time I'd finished I'd calmed down a little.

She went to the dresser and pulled out a bottle of liquor. There was only one glass in the room and no ice, but I wasn't interested in the social niceties. She poured herself a stiff drink and I slugged it right from the bottle. The booze seemed to help.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

I didn't know myself so I didn't answer.

"I guess you'll have to pay them, huh?"

Ten thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money. It represented a good percentage of a lot of years of sweat and work. I didn't want to pay those lice in the worst way.

"Remember what I was talking about last night?" I asked.

"Yeah, it kept me up most of the night thinking about it. I tossed and turned and couldn't find the guts to go through with it."

"You better find the guts somewhere because you're going through with it whether you like it or not."

"I can't. I can't do it."

"I'm not going to pay them, and I'm not going to leave that girl there. Either you go to the cops with me and get off easy because you help, or I go alone and you get flushed down the drain with the rest of the rats. Make up your mind, we haven't got much time. They only gave me twenty-four hours."

It took a little more convincing but an hour later we walked into police headquarters. We'd taken a cab from the hotel and the driver made sure no one was following us before he dropped us a block away from the station. We cut through a big department store and a couple of alleys for insurance and we didn't waste any time getting inside the building. Of course, we were still taking a chance. They might have someone here on their payroll. But it was a risk we had to take.

Once inside the big municipal building I had an idea. El Paso Police Headquarters is located in the same building as all the other public offices. That one building houses the town government and also the offices of the US Immigration Service, the Federal District Court and, thankfully, the FBI.

We skipped the cops and went straight to the FBI.

The agent we talked to looked like he was still in college somewhere. He wore the approved style clothing and the stem of a pipe stuck up out of his breast pocket. His name was James McGivern.

A clerk in the outer office sent us down a long corridor with glass-enclosed cubicles on both sides. McGivern was in number ten. We went in without knocking. He was smiling and affable when we walked in and he was all serious business two minutes after I started our story. He took notes as I talked and when I was finished he was silent for a moment.

"This is a tricky situation," he said. "In one sense we have no power to act. The girl who was taken is not an American citizen and she is being held in a foreign country."

"But they took her from here and they're asking me for the money. Besides, they're not Mexicans." I guess I was shouting. "If it will make any difference Connie will be an American citizen as soon as I can marry her."

He shook his head. "That has no bearing."

"You mean there is nothing you can do?"

"I didn't say that," he said. "If all the particulars are true we can get all the cooperation we need from the Mexican authorities."

I started to say something, but he stopped me with a wave of his hand and reached for the phone. He talked for a long time and his conversation was all mumbling. Here and there I caught a word or two but I couldn't make any sense out of what he was saying.

He hung up and turned back to me. "Have you got the ten thousand?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'd have to get it from my bank in California."

"No, that would take too long. We'll supply the money. Tonight you and Miss Yost will go across the border with a package of ten thousand dollars in marked bills. You'll arrive at the house at about ten fifteen. If everything works out all right we should have this mess cleaned up by midnight."

I felt a lot better and I smiled. "Five minutes ago you said you couldn't do anything."

"It was true. The FBI will have no part in this affair except that a couple of our men will be there to protect you. The whole thing will be handled by the Mexican authorities and the Immigration Service."

"And what do we have to do?"

"Nothing besides what I've told you. I've just been talking to Immigration. They've been suspicious of these people for a long time, and the Mexican authorities are also anxious to clean it up. When they make the raid tonight the whole outfit will go up, including the cops who are being paid off."

"What about the money?"

"You'll meet our men here at nine thirty. They'll have the package with them. You'll take the package and proceed to the house. Our men will be following you in another car."

"But what if they have someone following us, too?"

"Please, Mr. Bell. We're not exactly amateurs at this sort of thing."

"And the girl?"

"If she's still all right by this evening, she won't be harmed."

I wasn't relieved, but this seemed the best course of action. I amended their plan slightly. When all hell broke loose at the club I was going to find Connie, and God pity anybody who got in my way.

Laurie and I went down to the basement of the building and out through the garage entrance into an alley. We walked along the alley until we came to the kitchen door of a restaurant. We walked through the kitchen and out onto the main street. My stomach was jumpy and cold shivers kept running down my spine.

"What are we going to do until tonight?" Laurie asked.

"I don't know. I don't think I could take sitting around the hotel. How about a movie?"

She shrugged her shoulders. She seemed as nervous as I was. We found a movie theater on the next block and sat through two showings of a B-Western and a grade Z picture about a couple of guys who rob a bank and hide out in a nudist colony. They were both terrible pictures and they didn't improve the second time around.

By eight thirty I'd had enough of sitting in that darkened theater. My nerves were on edge and my stomach was growling. And I'd gone through the whole two shows without a cigarette. They have some stupid local law in El Paso that forbids smoking in theaters.

I grabbed Laurie's arm and pulled her up from the seat. "Come on," I growled. "Let's get the hell out of here...."

"I'm hungry," she said when we were out on the street.

We had hamburgers and french fried potatoes at a greasy joint two blocks away from the FBI office and then we started walking. We strolled along like a couple of lovers, holding hands and stopping every once in a while to look into store windows. I used these stops to check the people around us. I couldn't be sure we weren't being followed and I had a creepy feeling at the back of my neck.

Finally I spotted him. He was caught with only a window to look into and he seemed to be paying too much attention to the bras and slips and girdles in the display. Of course, I might have been wrong. He could have just been some poor innocent pervert. But I couldn't afford to take the chance.

I took Laurie by the elbow and we hurried down the street to the corner. Around the corner we stopped and leaned back against the building. A few seconds later he came hustling around the corner and he almost stopped when he saw us. He recovered quickly and hurried on by. When he was halfway down the block Laurie and I went back around the corner and down the main street into the first bar. We found a booth in a darkened rear corner, I ordered a beer and a glass of wine. I was sitting facing the plate glass window of the joint and saw our triend pass in front three or four times, looking for us.

At nine-thirty we went out the back door of the bar and down the alley to the side street. We followed the side-street route to the Municipal building and I was pretty sure no one was following us when we went inside. McGivern and another man were waiting for us.

"I decided to go along on this one myself," he said.

He turned over the package of money and reviewed our instructions. I asked him for a gun, but he turned me down. I wasn't supposed to get involved in die actual capture of those bastards.

A cab took us back to the hotel. I had my car sent around. While we were waiting I ran upstairs. In my suitcase I carried my one and only souvenir of the war. It was a titty-caliber shell casing into which a primer rod from a One-Oh-Five howitzer shell had been inserted. The whole thing was filled with lead to keep it steady when it was standing on end and it was pretty heavy. It was about nine inches long and would make a pretty good weapon. It was small enough to tuck under my belt.

I couldn't be sure anyone was following us from, the hotel so I stopped for gas on the way to the bridge. A car pulled out of the traffic stream right behind us and stopped at another pump. There was only one person in the car, a last year's model Chevvie.

I paid for the gas and watched in the rear-view mirror when we pulled away. The Chevvie pulled out right behind us and stayed about three cars back all the way to the bridge. When he followed me through Juarez and onto the back roads I knew he was our boy. I only hoped McGivern and his buddy were behind him.

The ox opened the door for us and he looked like he wanted to tear my arm off and beat me to death with the bloddy stump.

"Where's Frank? I've got the money and I want the girl."

He grunted and led us into a side room. Frank sat behind a desk.

"You look a lot better than the last time I saw you," I quipped.

He only smiled. I heard the door lock behind me and Laurie gasped. A fist thudded into the middle of my back and I plunged headlong across the room. The ox followed and picked me up again. When I was on my feet his fist whistled into my gut and I doubled over. The pain was excruciating. I grabbed my belly like I was holding it against the pain and my fingers closed over the end of the primer rod in my belt.

I looked up in time to see the ox's fist hurtling toward the back of my neck. I rolled out of the way. When I came to my feet the rod was in my hand. I swung with all my strength and the ox put up his forearm to block the blow. There was a satisfying crunch when the lead-filled shell casing smashed against bone. I struck again, this time using the weapon like a sword and thrusting it into the animal's ribs. He was howling and grunting at the same time when I put him out with a crashing blow to the side of his stupid head.

Frank was on his feet and struggling toward the door with Laurie holding on to him with all her strength. I ran across the room and grabbed him around the throat with my free hand, holding the shell casing in front of his face where he could see it.

He stopped struggling and I let him go.

"I owe you for this afternoon," he said. "The doc says it'll be a couple of weeks before I'm back in action. You'll never get out of here now. We've got the money and we've got you and before we bury you out in the woods you'll be sorry you ever learned how to walk."

"Shut up!" I said. "Or I'll smash your face in."

He looked at me and then at the club and he shut his mouth.

"Now, where's the girl?"

"It doesn't matter. You'll never get out of here now."

"If that's true then I don't have anything to lose by beating you to death right now."

His face went white. "Where's the girl?" I asked again. "In a room on the second floor."

"Is she okay? If you bastards touched her I'll kill you."

"She's all right, she's okay. Nobody laid a finger on her."

"We'll soon see. You're going to open that door and take us to her. I'm going to be right behind you. If anybody even looks at us funny I'm going to break your skull wide open. As you said before, I can't get out of here so I have nothing to lose."

I slipped the club up under my sleeve and the three of us moved out of the room. Frank walked with a peculiar mincing step, half in fear and half in pain from my kick. A couple of dark-suited apes looked at us curiously and then turned away. We walked up the stairs and down a corridor. Frank stopped in front of a closed door.

"Is there anyone with her?" I asked in a whisper.

He nodded his hear.

"Call them out and send them away."

He knocked on the door and there was an answering grunt from inside. "It's me-Frank. Come on out. I'll take over the girl."

The lock clicked and the door swung open. Two men walked out, looked at us, got a nod from Frank, and walked away toward the staircase. I shoved him into the room and Laurie closed and locked the door behind us.

Connie was tied to a chair. Her hair was mussed, her face was dirty and her blouse was ripped to reveal one naked breast, purpled with a large bruise. "Untie her," I told him.

He untied her and she rushed into my arms to bury her sobbing face against my chest.

"Did they hurt you?" I asked.

"Oh, Herb, I heard them talking. They weren't going to let us go when you came with the money." Her arms squeezed around me and I quieted her with an arm around her shoulders.

It was all over in ten minutes. First we heard a loud blast on a whistle and then there was a lot of screaming and a couple of shots. Feet raced through the house and orders were yelled in Spanish and English. When everything was quiet again we went out of the room and downstairs. In the hall we found McGivern standing with a group of Mexicans and Americans in uniforms.

The next few hours were a jumble of questions and statements and containers of coffee. I explained everything to Connie on the long ride to the Mexican police station and then I had to identify Frank and the ox. The pictures of Laurie were found and burned, and the cops didn't even hold her.

It was after three in the morning when they let us all go. Laurie rode back to El Paso with McGivern and Connie came with me. She wore a jacket someone had been kind enough to lend her to cover her torn blouse. Once we were in the car and everything was finished I felt a strange sense of anger.

"Next time," I said sharply to Connie, "when I tell you to quit a job you do as I say. This whole thing could have been avoided if you hadn't worked that one more night."

She gave me a small smile and cuddled close. "Yes sir. Whatever you say, sir."

I pulled up on the Mexican side of the border and turned the Healey around.

"Where are we going?" Connie asked.

"We're going to stay in the car and keep driving until nine o'clock in the morning."

"Why?"

"So we can make sure that nothing will happen until after we're married."

She smiled again, softly, and her eyes glistened.

Of course we didn't drive all night. I found a motel on the Pan American highway and we stayed there until almost noon. We didn't get much sleep.