Montezuma’s Revenge

Six

For a good sixty seconds Tony just lay there with his tired mind trying to fit all the pieces together. Phone. Who? True? Lies maybe. But if it were true ... What would happen to him if the police were on the way here now and his roommate had been found dead with a knife wound in his back, while Tony had in his possession a deadly butcher knife that fitted the wound precisely? It was very obvious what would happen to him and as this reality drilled home through his sluggish brain cells he found himself standing beside the bed, covers tossed wide, eyes rolling like a trapped animal. Flight! He had to get out of here.

His fingers fumbled as he pulled on the clothes he had taken off, when?, it seemed like just minutes before. The shirt had a mourning band inside the collar while the pattern of the necktie had been enlivened with a splotch of kosher mustard. Never mind, speed counted, no time to find another. Jacket and trousers rumpled as well; refugee not fashion plate. Could he take his luggage? He considered this while he tied his shoes. No, impossible, there was no time to pack anything. But he must take the painting, get it to Washington, that could go in his attache case with his passport and other papers. Fine, work of a second.

The painting was in the case and the case locked and he had actually started for the door before memory caught him neatly between the eyes so sharply that he skidded to a stop. Hadn’t he forgotten something, one little thing?

The knife. How the police would relish finding that here. It was still on the floor of the closet where D’Isernia had placed it. Click, open the case and toss it in. Clack, lock it and out the door. Slam.

“Good morning. Looks like it’s gonna be a nice day.”

The voice, close to his ear, jolted Tony so hard he almost dropped the case, but he held it more tightly and turned to face the man just emerging from the next suite. Stetson hat of great expanse, high-heel boots elaborately tooled and decorated, face as leathery as the boots, wrinkled and wattled. Not the police at all, just another tourist, nothing to fear. The sound of his own heart, as loud in his ears as a pile driver, slackened a bit.

“Good morning. Yes, nice day.”

They discussed the weather all the way to the elevator while Tony wondered why he was doing this and not just bolting. Act normally, that was the cue. Be calm, talk with this son of the old West, and make his exit gracefully from the hotel. He had definitely decided upon this wise course when he noticed that the indicator showed the elevator rising toward this floor and, clearly as though all were glass, he saw the police who were jammed in it shoulder to shoulder.

“Late, got an appointment, good-by.”

Off and running toward the exit sign down the hall leaving Tex gaping behind him, through the door and down the stairs to collide with the bellboy who was coming up them.

“Just the gentleman I was hoping to meet, senor. For some inexplicable reason a great number of police have entered the establishment and have been asking for you. They rise now in the elevator.” The vision had been true! “I thought perhaps you would care to avoid embarrassment and exit through the service entrance.”

“Done! Show me the way.”

They clattered down the stairs to the ground floor and along an ill-lit hallway toward an open door and sunlight.

“I cannot thank you too much.”

“There is an easy way to express one’s gratitude, senor”

“I was about to do that. Here, take this for your services.” They were at the entrance now, bills changing hands again, when Tony had a second vision, as clear as the one he had had of the police—jammed elevator. This involved a man who could be bought, for any man who could be bought would certainly be on sale to others.

“And take this as well,” Tony said producing more money and pointing off to the right. “If the police should ask, by all means tell them that you saw me and that I went that way.”

“As good as done.”

Tony walked quickly off to the left, but no more than ten steps. When he looked back over his shoulder the doorway was empty. He turned and crossed the street and hurried away in the opposite direction. Not too fast, make haste slowly. There were other pedestrians here and he accommodated his pace to theirs while trying to ignore the growing sensation between his shoulder blades, his ears ready for the cries that would stop him, followed by the bark of the volley of bullets. When he reached the corner he could bear it no longer and, as he turned, he risked one long look behind him before the wall intervened. Prophecy again. Burned on his retina was an image of the nark of a bellboy pointing down the street in the direction he had originally taken, while blue-coated figures rushed past him like hounds upon the scent.

A false scent. Now he had to muddle his trail some more while he considered what he should do next. The squeal of protesting brakes sounded in his ear as a battered bus proudly titled “La Dulce Vida” stopped at the curb to disgorge passengers. In an instant Tony was in the midst of pushing figures with baskets, dangling squawking chickens, bags of beans, crates of cucumbers. This wave rushed away and a minor backwash of passengers streamed past to board the bus. It was natural to join them and he swept in, to fumble out the copper coins in payment and to stand, surrounded and lost in the crowd as the vehicle rumbled away.

What next? For the moment he was safe, but the haven was only a temporary one. He searched for an answer but could find none; his mind wasn’t working too well, the affairs of the previous night and the resulting fatigue were taking their toll. For the moment it was all he could do to hold to the smooth metal of the pole and jounce along with the other passengers. Soon, he would decide soon, he held to this optimistic thought as he came as close to sleep standing up as he could.

The rest of the passengers decided for him as the bus ground to a halt one last time. There were shouts of instruction and the wild clucking of suspended hens as everyone exited, Tony as well, carried along with the press. When he was outside and had managed to force his way clear he saw that they were in the open-ended cavern of a bus terminal, Estrella de Oro, a great sign read over the entrance and this star of gold was marked prominently on all of the vehicles here. A column of cities was picked out in red letters against the dirty white of the wall, but they were distant and hard to read. What was close was a rumbling giant of the road, tires as high as his shoulder, with a winding cue of prospective passengers snaking toward its open door. Without further thought Tony joined the end of the line and others grouped up behind him. They had shuffled forward a few paces before he realized that all the others held tickets, no doubt purchased inside the station. This was not a good thing. He liked the idea of boarding this bus at once, wherever it was going, though he disliked immensely the idea of asking for a ticket, being surveyed by the agent, who would undoubtedly be a man of suspicious manner and keen memory who would later tell all he knew to the police. What could he do? The man ahead of him, a farm worker in simple cotton and wide sombrero, clutched his slip of pasteboard between work-gnarled fingers. Tony leaned forward and spoke quietly into his ear.

“Friend, I am late arriving here and very tired. Would you save me the inconvenience of buying a ticket at the window by allowing me to purchase your ticket from you at a price ten pesos above the sum printed on its face?”

“Done,” the man said with instant decision. Money and ticket changed hands and the man hurried away to buy a second ticket. The quick transaction went unnoticed in the crowd. A moment later and he was aboard, taking one of the few remaining empty seats next to a woman of solid girth whose ample flesh lapped over onto his cushion, as did her armload of packages.

“Excuse me,” With his solid flank he pushed at her gelled one until it jiggled aside and gave him room to sit down. The flank’s owner sniffed loudly but said nothing. Within the minute the door closed, to the cries of the outraged ticket holders who could not be jammed in, while the barking exhaust of the bus echoed from the concrete walls and into the street. Safety, for the moment, lay with motion and Tony sighed inwardly, then realized that there was still one important point he was unaware of.

“Would you tell me where this bus goes?” he asked his seat mate. She first delivered a look that made silent comment upon his sanity or the quantity of alcohol he had recently consumed, and only after this message had been delivered did she reluctantly answer the question.

“Acapulco.”

Wasn’t that nice. Playground of the jet set, and perhaps not a bad choice. There was an international airport there, he knew from the ads in the travel section of the paper, and if he moved fast he might be able to get a plane back to the United States. He hoped the efficiency of the Mexican police did not extend to wiring his description to all airports in the country at once. He hoped. He nodded forward onto the attache case on his knees and dozed off with that hope, jogging and nodding as the bus forced its way through the city traffic, sleeping better once they plunged onto the toll road over the hills. When they made the occasional stop he lifted his head to see brown walls and dusty squares, occasionally a lurch disturbed him and he looked out at the sweep of valley and mountain they rushed through, replaced soon after by the acid green of jungle when they dropped down to the coastal plain. It could not be said that he slept well, but he did feel slightly better when with a great hissing of air brakes they pulled into the Acapulco terminal. This was done by completely blocking the width of Calle Costera Miguel Aleman ... the handsome boulevard that flanked the shore, then backing into the building. Tony blinked the sleep from his eyes and stepped out into the damp oven of the Acapulco afternoon.

“Pardon me, mister, but I would want to talk with you.” This was it; the expected touch on the sleeve, the long arm of the law reaching out for him, the end of the trail. There could be no escape now and it would be almost a relief to end this insane chase and be taken into custody.

Almost. While the tired part of his sensibilities wanted to flop down and toss in the towel there was a small hard core of resistance that would not allow it. No. He would not give in that easily. All of these conflicting thoughts warred and grappled in the seconds it took him to turn and look at the man behind him. As he did so his face grew slack, his eyes opened wide in simple wonderment.

“Mande?” he asked, as bereft of any knowledge of the English language as the simplest peon. His accoster, a man with an exceedingly blue jaw and an official look, responded automatically in Spanish.

“What is your name?”

“Juan Lopez, why do you ask?” Spoken with the most nasal of vowels and elongation of the final syllables.

“A mistake. I am looking for a North American.”

Tony shrugged and turned away, walked away with the other man’s eyes burning holes in his back. One pace, two, three, five, he was at the curb and the light was green, crossing, halfway over before the cry.

“Come back here! I want to talk to you.”

Tony ignored it, walking on faster and faster. The policeman was suspicious, his clothes probably; every stitch radiated gringo in opposition to his linguistic cover. A whistle blew shrilly and he ran.

There was a park here, between the road and the water, not large but filled with stands and stalls and vendors of souvenirs for the tourist trade, its alleys and passages forming a maze to faze any minotaur hunter. Tony plunged into it with the thud of heavy feet close behind. Left, right, squeeze between a counter laden with stuffed armadillos, frogs, snakes, deformed foxes, this standing beside a tin-sided booth of postcards, ashtrays, toy banderillas, bullfight posters. Out behind the stalls, then down another narrow way.

It worked. Pursuer and pursued were swallowed up in the crowds and stalls. But for how long? This was a limited area and already more whistles were sounding in the distance. Tony slowed to a rapid walk with sweat bursting from every pore, his jacket clinging to him like an overcoat. He took a moment to stop at a bench and remove jacket and tie and thrust them crumpled into his attache case, to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. This was a little cooler and altered his appearance slightly. The attache case could not be hidden, but more than one businessman carried this badge of rank even here. With a hunted animal’s cunning he circled back and emerged from the maze almost where he had entered, backtracking while the pursuit rolled on. A minibus stopped not ten yards away and disgorged police who rushed into the park. He tried not to look at them as he crossed back over the avenue and strolled away from the scene. Keep moving, a few blocks farther on. Steps led down from the crowded houses on the hillside above and he turned up them, past a tortilleria with its patient queue of customers, past an open doorway with an indefinable object hanging above it. He stopped to catch his breath, looking up at the thing. An elongated silver tank of some kind with valves at one end. It had been decorated with snout and ears before, a twist of wire behind in the form of a tail, and lettered in red long porker. This small mystery was resolved by a sign behind it that read long porker diving school, learn to scuba here.

“The class goes out soon, sir, why don’t you join us?”

The lounger in the doorway extended the invitation in English so apparently Tony’s northern antecedents were still showing.

“I don’t have my trunks with me.”

“That’s all right.” The young man straightened up and removed the toothpick he had been worrying, eager now with the possibility of a fresh customer. “We supply everything you will need. Tank, mask, fins, weights, a bathing suit if you want one, good instruction, just one hundred and fifty pesos for everything.”

“That’s a little expensive,” Tony said, completely by reflex.

“For the first time, to show you how much you will like it, we will make a special price of one hundred and twenty-five.” He stepped aside and waved entrance; Tony went in more for a chance to sit down in the shade than any desire to enjoy the subaqueous pleasures of the bay.

“I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not sure I’m really interested.” Two policemen went past the doorway talking loudly. “But this is too good a chance to miss, so I think I will.” He was safe here for the moment, breathing time, thinking time until he figured out what to do next. Somewhere to the rear a small baby cried? He looked around. Tanks, masks and ancillary equipment in racks on the walls, photographs between them of the school’s owner diving with various improbable people, yellowed newspaper clippings pushed into the frames for the sake of verity. Vice President Johnson, Grace Kelly, Senator Bilbo. The lure of the sea draws us all. A buxom young woman with long red hair came out of the rear room buttoning her blouse, her other hand securing an infant in burping position at her shoulder.

“Underwater,” she said, “we cannot talk. Therefore we communicate with hand signals. When we want you to come up we put our thumbs up like this, when we want you to go down we put our thumbs down like this. Do you understand?” The baby blipped a milky bubble.

“It seems simple enough. But how do I breathe?”

“You have already paid?” There seemed a limit to free information.

“No. Sorry. Here you are. The man said you have swimming trunks?”

“These should fit you.” The money went into the front of a drawer from the nether reaches of which was produced a sort of knitted wasp costume of alternate black and yellow bands, large buttons on the front, long in the leg, neck high.

“If you have a place I can put this on?”

“In the back, the bathroom. You can leave your things back there too. They’ll be safe, there’s always someone here.”

The bathroom opened off the smallish room to the rear that was cluttered with tools and workbench, a throbbing compressor in one corner, cluttered shelves above. Tony entered and locked the door behind him and sat down on the commode in tiled white solitude and wondered just what to do next.

Up until now it had been simple flight with the hot breath of the police on his neck all of the time. He had no idea they were so shoes and unlocked the door. The girl was putting the sleeping baby in a plastic carrier under the workbench.

“You can put your clothes on that rack,” pointing. Yankee English twanged from the other room and she went out to care for the newest customers.

As Tony hung his clothes from the hook and pushed his shoes against the wall he saw the shelves and the boxes above the bench, cigar boxes for the most part, many of them dust coated, rarely touched. Spare parts, old nuts and bolts. Yes, of course, a box could probably stay here for years without being noticed. The voices were busy outside, the rustle of money. Quietly as possible, Tony lifted the pile on the top shelf and slipped the box with the painting in under them. It vanished as easily as a pebble tossed among its fellows on the beach.

Heat shimmered in the air outside the open window while he tried to keep his attention on the new skill of scuba diving. A finger across the throat, I am running out of air. To clear water from the mask, seal the exhaust valve with the palm, lean backward, blow out through the nose. Trees and high-rise hotels fringed the sand along the great arc of the bay, all the way up to the hills beyond. Sport fishing boats bobbed at the wharf; the deep blue of the water did not look inviting. The lesson ended as sturdy, damp men in bathing trunks carried in tanks and equipment, seizing up filled tanks for the empty ones. The six new students were herded together; a very schoolteacherish pair of girls plunking away at the nasal cords of their New England voices, a newly wed couple playing constant handsies with each other with grim continuity as though they would be parted forever if flesh no longer touched flesh, a pimply youth and Tony. Carrying their breathing masks, goggles, fins, towels, weights, they straggled down the steps and across the road following the school employees with the tanks. Tony came last, biting into his mouthpiece and holding his goggles to his eyes as they passed the police car at the curb. He was ignored. They were too much a part of the ordinary Acapulco scene. As they walked along the stone at the water’s edge Tony looked down at the debris-strewn surface, the murky depths. As good a place as any, probably better. A few feet down nothing could be seen. He walked slower until all of the others were ahead, then fumbling so he did not drop anything else, he eased the knife from its nest inside the towel and let it fall. A silver shimmer, a slight splash, it was gone.

Behind him there were high-pitched shouts and a larger splash. The boy kicked a brown leg and went deep, surfacing a moment later, blowing and smiling and holding up the knife. Horrified, Tony took it back and put it away quickly, nodding thanks with ill grace, ignoring the waterfront urchin whose smile turned to an angry scowl as he cried out for some reward for retrieving the dropped knife. Tony tried to pantomime that he had no money with him, hard to do since there were no pockets in the trunks to turn out empty, and in any case the boy was having none of it. He swam alongside shouting for money for the knife while the student divers looked on with interest. Tony stared straight ahead, walking swiftly. A moored boat intervened and the shouts died away; were the others looking at him suspiciously? He cursed silently to himself.

An incongruously small outboard was clamped to the transom of the battered, twenty-foot boat. A faded awning gave some relief from the blowtorch sun. A small boy with a coffee can worked industriously to bail out the brimming bilges. The divers found their seats, the tanks were passed in, the outboard fluttered to life and they moved slowly out onto the swelling waters of the bay. The pimply youth at Tony’s side began to grow palely green and Tony pointed over the side, not feeling so well himself.

“How far out do we go?” Tony asked the man at the tiller.

He smiled and shook his head, the other employee in the bow nodding equal linguistic ignorance. No matter, it was all cutting throats with fingers and thumbs up under water, the same in Spanish and English. The boat putted up and down over the rollers, Tony nodded half asleep, the speckled youth made retching noises over the side. When the others looked away in embarrassment Tony came quickly awake and slipped the knife from the towel, waited for a shuddering moan to cover the splash, then let it slip from his fingers, this time vanishing for good. It was a marked relief to have it gone.

It took the struggling boat over half an hour to round the point and reach an anchorage in the lee of the rocky walls of Isla la Roqueta. Here, away from the silt and floating debris of the harbor, the water was incredibly clear, limpidly blue. One by one the novices followed their instructors over the side, sitting on the gunwale and falling backward, dropping into the soft embrace of the sea. Tony was amazed how easy it all was once he sank beneath the surface. Another world of different dimensions with a new-found freedom. Silent too, other than the whistling of his breath as he sucked at the tank, comfortable and calm.

When he became more secure in this new medium, Tony dived deeper along the rope secured to the bottom. The instructor floated over and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger with the other fingers raised, reminiscent of a television beer ad but meaning underwater Are you OK? Tony returned the same signal signifying that indeed he was. A school of small fish moved past him, turning together on some secret signal. On the bottom among the rocks there was an aureate glint. Gold perhaps, lost treasure? He kicked down to it but the treasure was only a discarded beer can. His cares were lost for the moment in the depths of the sea.

But, when his air finally ran out and he had to surface, memory and reality returned. What next? He was still on the run and in addition, he realized with the onset of a stabbing complaint in his middle, he was very hungry. Other than the nocturnal pastrami he had had no food in—how long?—twenty-four hours at least. Flight was important, but hunger became of more overwhelming urgency as the ancient boat struggled slowly toward the land. When they finally did touch shore he was first off, even before the painter was tied, rushing to the Long Porker premises and changing quickly out of his wet trunks. His wallet and papers were intact, the redhead and infant had been on guard all the time, and when he unlocked the bathroom door he could see the box with the painting still safely buried under the pile on the shelf.

Food! The sun was nearing the horizon, the search would have moved out of this area by now. So, close by would be safest—as well as the quickest way to get some nourishment. He climbed the steps to the first cross street on the hill and there, like a beckoning beacon, the sun reflected from a pendant sign before an open door, el restaurante italiano. Acapulco had German, French, Chinese restaurants, so why not Italian as well? His stomach signaled with a growl that anything would do for the moment and he hurried toward it, pushing into the dim and cool interior. Checkered tablecloths and the mandatory candles in wax-laden bottles. A waiter emerged from the back after Tony had seated himself at the nearest table and tapped a coin against the bottle, bringing the menu and digging out a match to light the candle. Even before he had done this Tony had opened the menu, glanced at the first item, then closed it.

“Spaghetti and meatballs, a glass of red wine now, and some bread please.”

“Sisisignore”

He sipped at the wine and had demolished the entire plate of bread long before the spaghetti came. An older man, the owner presumably, came out of the back, polished a glass or two at the bar, nodded at him gloomily and vanished again. In the distance could be heard a radio playing a constant string of commercials interrupted by an occasional brief selection of music. Then the spaghetti arrived, steaming and saliva producing, heavy with the spheres of the meatballs. Tony ate, half aware of the four men who came in and sat at the table across the room. Then two more at a different table. The food was very good.

Tony blinked and realized he was very tired, his head almost nodding. The owner was back, arms folded behind the bar, looking his way. The waiter joined him in the silent perusal. All that was missing was the cook—was he on display here! Only the great fatigue prevented him from getting angry. And the men at the other tables, weren’t they looking at him too? They were speaking to each other, the words somehow strange—not Spanish at all.

His vision blurred and it was as though the film had been spliced in a projector. These men weren’t Mexicans at all—they were all Italians!

With this realization came another and more disturbing one. His head was lying on the table. It took a great effort to raise it, bobbing from side to side. The fork was still in his hand and he let it drop, horrified, into the remains of his meal.

“They’ve ... they’ve drugged the spaghetti!” he said hoarsely.

This time when his head dropped and rested among the crumbs on the cloth it remained there. He snored peacefully.