Chapter 4
When I awoke, she was gone. I sat up slowly and found that my head could stand a little more motion. I was beginning to mend. It was time I started thinking about getting out of there and looking for Duke Bevins.
I wasn't sure what I would do with him yet. If there was some way to slip a knife between his ribs and get away clean, that was first choice.
But I had to get back my money. And I had to get to Acapulco in time to keep him from collecting the jewels. I intended to have them for myself.
That was even more important than seeing Duke dead.
There wasn't any real hurry getting to Acapulco, because the mail only left Puerto Reyes twice a week, and tomorrow was the day the train pulled out. Mail was slow in this part of the world. About as slow as if it were carried on the backs of burros, which it sometimes was.
The package with the jewels could take two weeks to reach Acapulco, even a month. But that wasn't any reason for me to be hanging around in this native hut letting a hot-blooded little wench sap my strength.
I saw my shorts wadded in the corner beside the mat, and I put them on. They were the only clothes I owned in this world. And the watch strapped to my wrist was the only thing of value I owned. I wound it and looked at the sweep second hand to see if the watch still ran.
It did.
That would make it a lot more saleable. But how in the hell was I going to find a buyer? I might end up in the pokey if I started wandering around in just my shorts.
I went to the door and watched the gal squatting over a wood fire. She was stirring something in a black kettle which hung from a crossbar. I hoped it was more plantains or something just as good.
She turned around and smiled. Then she dished up some kind of stew onto a plate and brought it to me.
I pinched her rump to show my appreciation. Then I carried the plate inside and sat on the mat. It was quite a mixture, corn and green vegetables and fish. Maybe a little goat too, since I'd noticed a few goats wandering around the village. Whatever it was, it was good enough to eat.
She sat down beside me and watched while I cleaned the plate. Her dark eyes stared without blinking.
"Where is this?" I asked. "Donde esta."
"Mi easa."
She gave me a toothy smile.
"I know. But what town?"
"Puerto Arista."
I shook my head.
"I don't know where that is."
"You don't know?"
"What state?"
"Chiapas."
"Oh," I said. "So I'm in Mexico. Tehuantepec."
"Si. Tehuantepec."
I grinned. I could see now why she was such a voluptuous little wench. The woman of Tehuantepec had the reputation of being Amazons. They kept their men so beat that they had no strength for anything but lying in the sun.
It would be a nice lazy existence, but I had more important business to take care of. There was a son-of-a-bitch who had tried to kill me. He had taken every cent I owned. I wasn't going to rest until I had him right were I wanted him. I was going to give him just what he deserved.
As soon as I put down the plate, she slid over and laid her hand intimately on my leg. I pushed the hand away. This was no time to get sidetracked, which would be easy enough to do, with a hot little piece like her.
I unstrapped the watch from my wrist and held it out to her. She looked at me uncertainly.
"Can you sell this for me?"
"You want money?"
"That's right."
"I try " she said.
She took the watch and walked out the door. I had to trust her with it. I didn't have any clothes, and I didn't know anybody around in the market for a watch.
I went outside and helped myself to another plate of stew. Then I stretched out on the mat to wait for her to come back. I could sure have used a cigarette.
She was gone nearly an hour. When she came in the door, she handed me a stack of crumbled bills. I smoothed them out and counted them. Three hundred and fifty pesos. That should be enough for a bus ticket to Acapulco.
I held out twenty pesos.
"For you," I said.
She looked at it and shook her head. Then she smiled and rubbed her belly.
"Mucho gusto," she said in a voice that growled.
I could see she was ready to jump on me again, so I hurried outside. I saw a pair of white pants handing on a limb to dry. I walked over and held a pair up to measure them for size. I figured I could get them on without splitting out the seams.
Again I held out the twenty pesos and made her understand that I wanted to buy the pants. She nodded and took the money. I put on the pants and found that there were no buttons. She brought a piece of rope and slipped it through the loops. That held them up good enough.
When I started to walk away, she grabbed my hand and tried to hold me back. I shook her loose. She followed me for a quarter of a mile, then at last she gave up.
I followed a road at the edge of the village which wound up into the foothills away from the ocean. It was a steep climb under the hot sun. I stopped several times to sit and rest. There were plenty of big leafed trees for shade.
Finally I came to a larger village.
It was just like any small settlement that you might expect to come across in that part of the country a few adobe huts along either side of the road, dirty-faced kids, barking dogs. In the center of town were a couple of shops and an eating place that wasn't too clean.
I sat down at a shaky wooden table and bought a meal for myself and the flies.
After I had eaten a few beans and tortillas, I found a small shop where the sold clothing. It was run by a fat little Mexican with a bushy mustache.
"I want to buy shoes and a suit," I said. "Everything."
"Si, senor. I have just the suit for you. El bianco white. Very good for tropical weather."
He pointed a chubby finger at the suit he was wearing, which was anything but white.
He took me to a rack and searched through it until he found something my size. The pants fit better than the pair I had on. He had a pair of oxfords made of woven leather which didn't pinch my feet too much. I bought sox and a hat and paid him eighty pesos for everything. That left me two hundred and forty-odd pesos.
Not a hell of a lot of money for traveling through Mexico.
"Does a bus stop in town?" I asked.
"Autobus? Si, senor."
"Where does it go?"
He waved his hand toward the mountains. "Al Machaquilla."
"And Acapulco."
"Si, senor. Very far."
"When can I catch the next bus?" I asked. "Manana."
"Not 'til tomorrow?"
"Only one bus a day, senor."
I frowned. I didn't want to get stuck in this dump of a town all night. I went out and walked a-long the street in my new clothes. I talked to several people who could speak a little English, and I finally found a ride.
One of the local big shots owned a junk heap, a nineteen-forty Chevrolet. I waved fifty paces in his face enough money to hitch a ride to Machaquilla. It was only thirty miles away, but the ride took us nearly three hours. We followed a dusty cow path and had to pull off it a hundred times to get around ox carts and lazy Mexicans riding burros.
We were just at the outskirts of Machaquilla when the Chevrolet ran out of gas. I got out and walked the rest of the way into town. There were a-bout a dozen shops in Machaquilla. Every town I came to was a little bit bigger than the last. At least I was nearing civilization.
I passed a kid on the sidewalk carrying a basket. He had cigarettes for sale. I bought a pack. They were the strong Mexican kind made of very dark tobacco. But at least it was tobacco, and I was glad to get it.
I found the bus station, which was just a wooden bench in front of a general store.
A clerk in the store sold tickets for the bus, a sullen little Mexican with a waxed mustache and the air of a petty official. I found out that a bus heading north would arrive in an hour or so. The way schedules ran in Mexico, that meant it should be there sometime before midnight.
At least I shouldn't have to spend the whole night in this dump of a town.
I sat on the bench outside and smoked, watching the local scene. There wasn't much to see. An occasional mangy dog. A peddler woman. An old man leading a burro loaded with firewood. Even a truck rattled by, carrying a load of straw mats.
The sun had already dropped low in the west. I'd be spending the night on a Mexican bus, which wasn't the safest place in the world for a man to try to sleep. I'd heard tales of buses running off the road in these mountains.
But I had urgent business in Acapulco.
My hands drew into knots as I thought about the business I had with Duke Bevins.
I went weak with anger, thinking how I would like to have my fingers around his throat for just one minute. I could almost see his face go puffy as I throttled him. It would be like sweet music to hear his dying gasp.
Some bastard. He had tried to kill us both. He had swiped every cent I owned. He had even burned the cruiser to cover up. And that boat was worth several thousand dollars, one third of which had belonged to me.
I had learned the hard way that you can't trust anyone. I had known Duke for more than a year. We'd been drunk and gone whoring together, living it up in Puerto Reyes.
I knew he wasn't an angel, but I never figured him for the kind of rat he'd turned out to be.
I sat there and chewed my lip, watching the sun set, casting its last faint light on a dusty Mexican town. And I swore I would have my revenge. Not just for myself, but for Chris as well. He wasn't the greatest guy in the world himself, but he didn't deserve to die.
I smiled grimly.
It was kind of comforting to know that Duke thought I was dead. It would give me the jump on him. I could just stay out of sight and watch him and wait for the right moment to strike. A oat and mouse game.
As I sat and waited for the bus, I tried to put myself in Duke's shoes, to feel what he was feeling, get into his mind. Where would I go when I hit Acapulco? A swanky hotel. Duke liked to live big, and with my money and Chris' he could afford the best. I tried to remember everything I knew about Duke Bevins. There was no telling what bit of knowledge might come in handy. This was one job I planned to do thoroughly.
Duke was from Nashville. He'd done a hitch in the army, where he'd learned to drive a bulldozer. That's how he had come to be in Puerto Reyes. He'd hired out to an American contractor who was building a dam for the government. When the job was finished, he'd stayed on.
I'd been sitting around the bars, waiting to catch another ship out. Chris had been laying low in Puerto Reyes, after a bank job had left him pretty hot in the states.
We'd all had a little money, so we pooled it and went into the black market. They were both shrewd, and they learned the business fast. I'd had some experience handling black market merchandise from the time I was stationed in Italy.
We had a thriving business going.
We would still have been in business, if the damned policia hadn't gotten too greedy. They didn't know it yet, but they'd killed the goose that laid the golden egg. There wasn't anyone else around Puerto Reyes who could build up the black market trade the way we had.
A bunch of stupid jerks who couldn't stand the steady flow of prosperity. They'd wanted it all at once. And so they had upset the applecart.
I cursed.
The world was full of fools. If Duke hadn't made his move, we could have gone on someplace up the coast and started all over again. We had the contacts and the money to work with. In a couple of years I could have had that nest egg I wanted to set me up for life in the states.
But there was still the jewels.
Split three ways, the take on the jewels would be quite a hunk of cash. But when I got my hands on it all, I'd be rich. That's the way it was going to be now. I'd made up my mind to it. I was going to have it all, and Duke was going to be very dead.
The sun was down. I suddenly realized it because everything was dark. There isn't much lighting in a primitive Mexican town. All I saw was a couple of fires in front of adobe huts where someone was cooking.
Then there was the flicker of a lantern in the window of the general store. The night had gotten cool. All I had to keep me warm was the flimsy cotton shirt. I went into the store to buy a bottle of liquor.
I would have settled for brandy, or even tequila. But all they had was mescal. It's pretty rotten stuff. And they put a big fat grub worm in every bottle, which doesn't make it very appealing.
But since that was all they had, I bought a jug. I sat on the bench and nipped from the bottle, thankful it was dark so I wouldn't have to look at the goddam worm.
I had a pretty good buzz by the time the bus finally arrived. The clerk who 'had sold me the ticket had said the bus would be there in an hour! I had waited four. That was just about the way I had figured it.
I climbed aboard and made my way down the aisle, stepping over bundles and a crate of chickens.
It wasn't one of their first class buses. Even those are pretty bad. This one was strictly for peons. I felt right at home with my white cotton clothes and bottle of mescal.
I settled in an empty seat beside a grimy window. It was a straight-backed seat which you couldn't adjust. I got as comfortable as I could and closed my eyes.
It was a long night.
I managed to sleep about fifteen minutes at a stretch, then we would hit a hole in the road and I'd be wide awake. Each time I awoke I'd take a slug from the bottle of mescal. It became a real comfort to me. Except that near daybreak I got down near the worm. I had to be careful not to swallow him. Even if I couldn't taste the damned thing, I imagined I could.
The morning sun rose hot and orange, directly behind the bus. We were winding through the mountains, leaning out on every curve. There weren't any guardrails, and I could look down for thousands of feet.
For several miles we went up a steep grade, higher and higher. And then we sailed down to the next valley, picking up speed, getting closer to the edge each time we hit a curve. I began to sweat inside.
The tops of the mountains were rocky. The valleys were green, matted with jungle growth. You could see a monkey now and then, and lots of brightly colored birds.
Later on we left the jungle and the highway leveled out. We traveled through dry, semi-desert where they raised a lot of cactus and sisal.
Finally we rolled through the narrow, rutted streets of a town and came to a stop in front of a bus station that looked fairly new and clean. There was a twenty minute stop. I went inside and had coffee with some kind of doughy pastry.
Then we were driving through the countryside once again. We had just reached the bottom of a steep grade, doing about sixty, when a tire blew out. Right under my seat. I heard the rubber flapping against the bottom of the bus. The driver took the whole road, driving a couple of approaching cars into the ditch.
He got stopped on the gravel shoulder. Everyone climbed out. The tire was flat all right, and the rim was bent. I was willing to bet every peso I had in my pocket that there wasn't a spare tire on the bus.
I was wrong. There was a spare tire to the back, and there was only one hole worn in the rubber that I could see.
I looked back when I heard the steady whine of a motor. A blue Plymouth came crawling out of the steep ditch, onto the road. The woman behind the wheel was American, and she was plenty mad.
I walked toward her, grinning.
She slammed on the brakes and got out to see if she had put any dents in the fenders.
She was a blonde, the first one I'd seen in quite a spell. And she really looked good to me. There was a light golden color to her hair that glittered in the sunlight. She was wearing a pair of skin-tight toreadors which displayed the graceful curves of her hips and legs.
The blouse she wore was made of a pale blue silky material which was drawn tight against the conspicuous thrust of her breasts, showing off every contour.
"They're crazy she said angrily. "Every mother-one of them. He went around me like I was standing still. No wonder he had a blowout. Look at those tires. There's not a bit of tread on any of them."
"Kind of lucky to be alive, aren't we?" I asked. "You were on the bus?" I nodded.
"For a while it was kind of hairy. I was hoping he could get it stopped before we went in the ditch. That would have rolled us over for sure."
She looked at me curiously. She had big blue eyes that could stare right through a man. Yet there was a softness behind them, a kind of bedroom quality.
"What are you doing on that bus?"
"I'm a victim of circumstances," I said.
"You must be at that "
"It's quite a story." I thought for a minute, then decided to tell it to her straight. Though she probably wouldn't believe it. "I was hijacked by a friend. We were supposed to be friends, anyhow. He knocked me on the head, took my money, burned my boat and left me swimming in the Pacific Ocean."
I didn't tell her about Chris being dead. There was no reason to complicate the tale.
"That wasn't very nice of him, was it?" she said. "I see you made it to land."
"I had a wrist watch. Sold that and bought these clothes and a bus ticket."
She laughed.
"You know it's such a fantastic story that I believe you. What happened to your friend who took your money?"
"He should be in Acapulco. He thinks I'm dead and he doesn't have a care in the world."
"I'm on my way to Acapulco. How would you like a lift?"
"Would I? My back's about busted from sleeping all night on that crummy bus."
"Come on," she said, giving me a pretty smile. "You can help with the driving."
I climbed behind the wheel before she could change her mind. It had been over a year since I'd driven a car, but I hadn't forgotten the touch. When we rolled past the bus, the driver was sitting on the ground, smoking a cigarette and staring fiercely at the busted tire.