THERE WAS not much light. The only really bright illumination came from the bulb in the ceiling of the bandstand. Windows and doorways here and there around the square spread dim amber rectangles of light on the cobblestones, and from the doorway of La Cucaracha came the dim sound of the jukebox, playing Mexican guitar music.
A group of youngsters, chattering in Spanish, came up the hill on the other side of the square, turned left at the corner, walked away, out of sight and out of hearing.
Grofield whispered, “Sit down on the bench here. Don’t move. Don’t make any noise.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just be quiet.”
He moved away from her, into the park, skirting the edge of the park just outside the ring of light from the bandstand. When he was on the side opposite the church and the Pontiac, he stopped to watch and listen.
No one. Nothing moved.
He crossed the street, moving with silent, loping speed, turned right on the narrow sidewalk in front of the shops, moved back around the square again to the church, this time keeping close against the buildings.
Two couples left La Cucaracha, talking loudly together in English, their voices sounding hollow on the silent air, as though they were in an armory or an airplane hangar. They moved away, down a side street.
An automobile nosed its way into the square, drove around three sides, and finally came to a stop at a place reserved for taxis. The headlights went off, the driver got out and locked the car, and went away. He wore a cap, he had a black moustache, and his white shirt was bunched like a life preserver around his waist. As he walked away, he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth as though he were thirsty.
Grofield moved down the row of cars in a half-crouch, came to the Pontiac, stopped beside it. It was empty and the doors were locked.
He moved around to the front and opened the hood. It made a loud sound that rang in the silence, like the sound an oven makes when it’s cooling. Grofield reached in, unable to see what he was doing, and ripped every wire he could get his hands on. When he was finished, he left the hood open; it would make too much noise to shut it.
He went straight across the street now to where he’d left Elly. She was sitting on the bench where he’d told her to wait. He whispered, “Phase one. They aren’t there. Wait here some more.”
“Where are you going now?”
He squatted down on his heels and rubbed his palms and fingers on the grass, wiping the grease from the Pontiac off them. “The only way they could have found us,” he said, “is through the car-rental office. They must have checked them out this morning, with lots of pesos and a good story, and the clerk we talked to yesterday told them all about us, and how I studied the road maps for San Miguel de Allende.”
“They’re fast, Alan,” she whispered. “That’s why they scare me, they’re so fast. And Honner’s a lot smarter than he looks.”
“We’ll see. The point is, they’re sure to have a description of the car. I figure that’s where I’ll find them.”
“You’re going after them?”
“I’ve got to. We can’t get back to the hotel without the car. And our luggage is back there, remember? Luggage.”
“Oh,” she said. “The suitcase.”
“I’m beginning to regret that suitcase,” he said. “I admit it freely. Money is a burden. I may write a monograph on the subject.” He stood up. “Later on. I’ll be back soon. You be ready to jump aboard.”
“All right.”
He moved away, taking one of the captured guns from his hip pocket. He’d brought it along as an extra precaution, feeling a little foolish to be carrying it but preferring to feel foolish rather than naked. This was the smallest of the three guns they’d taken away from Honner and his friends, a .25-caliber automatic from Italy, the Beretta Jetfire. Little more than a toy with its tiny grip and two-inch barrel, it would do the job at the kind of range Grofield might want it for.
Carrying it in his right hand, he moved off again into the darkness at the edges of the square. He was still moving cautiously, but more quickly than before, sure he’d find all three of them near the car.
The car was three blocks away, downhill. The street to it was lit at long intervals by light standards containing low-watt bulbs. It was a narrow street, cobblestoned, uneven, hemmed in on both sides by the blank whitewashed or painted walls of the buildings. Heavy wooden doors opened directly onto the street. Here and there a glimmer of light showed in an upstairs window.
Grofield stopped two blocks away, in a patch of darkness against a doorway, and studied the terrain. Ahead of him on the right there was a Volkswagen Microbus with Mexican plates, parked facing downhill. In the next block there was an elderly Ford with Texas plates, parked on the left facing uphill, and across from it a motorcycle was leaning against a yellow wall. In the block after that, away from any streetlight, was the rented Datsun.
No one was in sight.
Grofield, studying it, decided one of the three might be in or next to the Ford, another would be hidden somewhere on the downhill side of the Datsun, and the third would probably be either in the Datsun itself or in a doorway right handy to it.
First things first. The Ford.
Grofield looked at the narrow blank street, trying to work out an approach to the Ford, and from behind him came a sudden burst of conversation. He turned his head, and coming down toward him was a group of three couples, all elderly, talking away with great animation. Grofield waited, and when they got to him he smiled and said, “Good evening.”
They were surprised, but said good evening back to him. To keep them from stopping, Grofield fell into step with them, in the middle of their group, saying, “This is my first day in San Miguel. I think it’s great.”
They all agreed it was great. Now that the surprise was over, they were all obviously pleased at his interruption; he afforded a touch of the unexpected to their night on the town. They were permanent residents, they said; each couple rented a house somewhere in town. They told him how cheaply a whole house could be rented—fifty dollars a month, forty dollars a month.
They asked him where he was from, and when he told them, they all began to talk about people they knew or had known from New York.
At the Ford, Grofield stopped abruptly and said, “Well, good night.”
“Good night,” they said. He’d stopped so suddenly the group had gone on a pace or two without realizing it, so he was already separated from them. They paused to wave, to finish sentences, and then moved on. Grofield opened the car door, showed the Beretta to the guy crouched on the floor in there, and said, genially, “Just think of the mess it would make.”
All cramped up like that, having hidden down there out of sight when he’d seen the group of senior citizens coming, he hadn’t had a chance to get at whatever armament he might have been toting himself. He stared sullenly at the gun in Grofield’s fist and said nothing.
It wasn’t Honner himself, but one of the others, the guy Elly had slugged. Grofield said to him, “What if this had been their car? Those old people? What then?”
The guy kept on looking sullen.
“Oh, well. Okay, come on out of there.”
The guy put one forearm on the seat, reached the other hand up to the steering wheel, and heaved himself upward into the descending path of the Beretta. The butt caught him on the temple and he sagged back down onto the floor again, his mouth hanging open.
Grofield, putting the gun away and crawling into the car, muttered, “One thing you can say for your job, you get a lot of rest time.” Moving with difficulty in the narrow space, he removed one of the guy’s shoelaces and used it to tie his thumbs together behind his back. Lying the way he was, all cramped up and with his arms useless, it was unlikely he’d get out of the car under his own steam. He was like a turtle on his back.
Grofield left the Ford cautiously, looked around for activity, saw none, and walked back uphill to the first cross street. He turned right, hurried over to the next block, turned right, down a block, right again, and came back to the street he’d initially left. The Ford was now uphill to his right, the Datsun just around the corner to his left.
There was no point worrying about the guy stationed downhill. The thing to do was clear the one near the car, which was parked facing uphill anyway, then get into the car fast and up the hill, pick up Elly, and get the hell out of town before Honner and the others could get themselves organized.
So where was number two? Grofield approached the intersection cautiously, peeked around the corner, and there he was. Sitting on a doorstep directly across the street from the car, smoking a cigarette, looking idle and harmless. He could take a chance on sitting out there in the open like that because he was a new face; Grofield had never seen him before.
Did that mean there were four of them now?
No, it was more likely this was a replacement for the one they’d given the shock treatment. He was maybe not yet in condition for round two.
But that Honner could replace him this fast, in Mexico City, was bad news. That he could do so meant Grofield could no longer be sure exactly how much manpower he was up against. Had it just been Honner and two other guys who’d checked the car-rental agencies and found out where he and the girl had gone, or did Honner have an unlimited supply of assistants?
Once again, Grofield wished he knew more about what was going on here, what Elly had herself involved in.
All right. Later. Right now, there was a new boy to be initiated. And in order to do it, Grofield had to walk all over the county, retracing his steps around the block and then going around the block on the far side so as to come back to this intersection from the opposite direction. He got there at last, peeked around the corner, and the new boy was just to his right, about ten feet away, still smoking and lazing and looking like local color. Except that the face came off the Brooklyn docks.
Grofield stuck his head around the corner and said, “Psst!”
The guy looked up, startled.
Grofield showed him the Beretta. “You stand up slow,” he said softly, “and come around here for a get-acquainted chat.”
The guy said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, buddy. You got me mistaken for somebody else.”
“Oh no,” Grofield told him. “If I had you mistaken for somebody else, you wouldn’t know it. You’d think this was a holdup. To plead ignorance before the question has been asked is to reveal knowledge. Confucius says. Come on around the corner, honey, it’s hazing time for the new pledges.”
The guy looked disgusted. He flicked away his cigarette—would that have been a signal to somebody?—and got to his feet and came around the corner, where Grofield hit him twice with the Beretta. Twice because the guy rolled with it the first time.
And now Grofield was in a hurry. Honner was probably staked out downhill somewhere, and had surely seen his boy walk around the corner. He’d be coming to see what was what.
Grofield came charging out from the cross street, unlocked the Datsun, jumped in, and was just putting the key in the ignition when he heard the scream.