Chapter 2
The sound of someone scrambling on the roof above his hotel room awakened Garson from a light sleep. He opened his eyes, stared into darkness. He could see a faint moonglow through the skylight. Something like the shadow of a man passed across the skylight. Again, he heard the scrambling sound. A heavy sense of menace filled Garson. He closed his eyes, tried to fight it off, blaming the highly spiced foods of his dinner.
A bright light flicked across his face, visible through his eyelids. The sense of menace was an imminent thing. Garson rolled off the bed.
Something crashed through the skylight, thumped onto the bed. The springs creaked and groaned. Pieces of glass fell all around Garson.
He lay quietly on the floor in the dark, his heart thumping.
Good God! What was that?
He put out a hand, felt on the bed. His fingers encountered a rough, cold surface like rock or concrete.
Footsteps pounded on the tiles outside his door. Someone knocked. Gabriél Villazana’s voice came through the panels: “Señor Garson? Está bien, Señor?”
Garson remained mute, his throat dry.
An excited conversation in Spanish went on outside his door.
Why don’t I say something? Garson asked himself. And part of his mind said: Because that was no accident! Right now it’s safer to play dead.
Garson got to his feet, took his watch from the bed stand—eleven-thirty.
Then: Somebody tried to kill me!
Reaction set in, and Garson’s knees began to tremble.
Again, running footsteps sounded on the tiles outside, heavier footsteps. A fist pounded the door.
“Hey in there! Are you all right?”
Garson recognized Choco Medina’s rumbling voice.
“Yes. I’m all right,” Garson said. He swallowed to ease the dryness of his throat, made his way around the bed, opened the door.
A ring of faces filled the hallway. Garson recognized Medina and Villazana.
A sense of defenseless loneliness filled Garson.
Medina’s evil features relaxed into a grin. “You gave us a scare,” he said. “What was all that commotion?”
Garson found the light switch on the wall beside the door, stood aside. He didn’t trust his voice.
Medina entered. Villazana followed, closed the door behind him.
“Whew-eeee!” said Medina.
“Madre de Dios!” said Villazana.
A large, jagged chunk of concrete lay across his pillow, shards of glass all around it. The concrete was easily as long as the pillow, half as wide.
He looked up at the skylight perhaps twenty feet above the bed. An irregular hole reached across the glass. Pieces of the frame hung down, swaying lightly.
“That thing would’ve crushed your skull like an eggshell if you’d been in bed,” said Medina. “Where were you when it fell?”
“Somebody awakened me by making noise on the roof,” said Garson. “Then they flashed a light onto my face. I rolled off the bed just before that thing fell.”
Again he looked at the chunk of concrete, shuddered.
Medina turned to Villazana, spoke in a burst of Spanish too rapid for Garson to follow. Garson caught the word for workers in Villazana’s reply.
“He says there were workmen up on the roof today repairing the wall between this building and the next one,” said Medina. “He thinks they must have left that piece of concrete balanced on the scaffolding.”
“Then who flashed that light on my face?” asked Garson.
Medina looked at Garson. “Do you think this was not an accident?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” said Medina. “But it would’ve looked like an accident. There’d have been no inconvenient investigation.”
“Who’d want to do such a thing?” asked Garson.
“Someone who doesn’t like people asking questions about the Hacienda Cual.”
Garson studied Medina’s pockmarked face, wondered: Could he have had anything to do with this? He looked at Villazana.
“The patron saint of this hotel, she was with you tonight, Señor,” said Villazana. “Ahhh, those bad fellows! I will punish them tomorrow!”
And could he have had anything to do with it? wondered Garson. Villazana did not appear particularly disturbed by the incident.
Garson turned back to Medina, the feeling of wrongness strong in him. “Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
Medina shrugged. “It has a certain familiar pattern, but quién sabe?”
“Who?”
Medina shook his head. “I dunno.” He glanced up at the skylight, and Garson noted that his hand was close to the revolver in his belt holster.
“Someone like your Yegua?” asked Garson. “Someone who shoots from hiding?”
Medina’s attention snapped back to Garson. He stared into Garson’s eyes with a curious intentness.
“That’s a connection I’d never made before,” said Medina. “But now that you mention it…” He reached out, snapped off the light.
Villazana gabbled something in Spanish.
“Callaté!” rumbled Medina.
Shut up!
“What’s wrong?” asked Garson.
“Our friend may still be on the roof,” said Medina.
Garson shivered. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Don’t be a dope,” said Medina. His voice sounded like a rolling of gravel in the dark. “Cops can be bought cheap down here. They carry guns that can go off by accident while you are standing unfortunately in the way!”
A feeling of desperate anger swelled in Garson. “Do you have a spare gun, Choco?”
Medina remained silent a moment, then Garson heard him move, saw the faint ghostly shadow of him approaching. Some-thing cold and smooth was pushed into Garson’s hand: a revolver.
“It’s a thirty-eight special,” said Medina. “Do you know how to use it?”
Garson oriented the gun in his hand. “Yes.”
“I think you’d better come home with me tonight,” said Medina.
The anger became a feeling of stubborn determination in Garson, reinforced by the feeling of the revolver in his hand. “No!”
“This could have been an accident,” said Medina. “But I…”
“Sí! An accident!” babbled Villazana. “The workmen! They…”
“Callaté!” said Medina.
Villazana fell into abrupt silence.
“We’ll move the bed out from under the skylight and get Villazana here to put a piece of canvas over the hole,” said Garson.
“A piece of canvas won’t stop a killer,” said Medina.
“I don’t think they’ll try again tonight.”
“What if they don’t think the same way?”
“What can they do if I’m not under the…”
“‘What can they do?’ he says.” Medina put a hand on Garson’s arm. “They can poke a gun through that hole up there and put a nice new bullet in you.”
“I don’t think so,” said Garson. “That wouldn’t look like an accident.”
“But you would be just as dead!”
“I’m an American citizen!” barked Garson. “They can’t go around popping off an American citizen without a big stink!”
“You know, Mr. Garson, I’ve run into this strange attitude before. It gets hundreds of American citizens killed every year.”
“Besides, I’ve got a gun now,” muttered Garson.
“American citizen with a gun,” said Medina. “The world’s most dangerous game!”
Garson fought down laughter that he knew would have sounded almost hysterical. “They wouldn’t have rigged an accident if they just wanted me dead.”
“You can’t be sure,” said Medina.
“This Antone Luac wants his privacy pretty badly,” said Garson. “I wonder why.”
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea for you just to forget all about this and go home?” asked Medina. “After all, if…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… one story can’t be worth all of…”
“The hell it isn’t!”
Garson thought about dropping the story, about leaving this threatening atmosphere of mystery. Nothing had ever sounded so appealing to him. But the anger pulsed in the back of his mind. He felt the weight of the pistol in hand. And something more: the thing he called “story fever.” It filled him with an absolute hunger to unravel this mystery.
“Hell no, I’m not going home!” he said.
“It’s your funeral,” said Medina.
There was a tone like regret in Medina’s voice. It sent a shudder of fear through Garson, but he suppressed the feeling.
I’m staying, he thought.
After Medina and Villazana had gone, Garson waited in darkness while someone climbed to the roof, nailed canvas across the shattered skylight. Then he moved his own bed to a corner across the room.
Now that he was alone, questions came crowding into Garson’s mind.
What was Medina doing around here so late at night? He was too available. And why did my comment about the killer of his brother surprise him?
And Garson remembered Eduardo Gomez.
Good God! Gomez was coming back tonight! What if he saw all the commotion and got frightened off?
And another, more chilling thought: What if the people who dropped the concrete saw Gomez visit me today? If they’d try to kill me, would they hesitate over killing a Mexican?
Again Garson experienced a sense of tragic premonition about Gomez. And he recalled the line from Gomez’s letter:
“He kill mi.”
Why would Luac kill to maintain his privacy? Garson asked himself. Why?
Garson had the sensation that his tight little Stanley-and-Livingstone-plus-female story was getting away from him.
Before the sleep of exhaustion overcame Garson that night, he recalled Villazana’s statement about the trucks that visited the Hacienda Cual. What’s in those trucks?
He slipped into a dream of an endless line of trucks driven by repetitive Choco Medinas. And as each truck passed, the dream Medina looked at Garson with a feeling of deep regret—and shot at him with the big revolver.