“After the water,” said the bar owner, “you must have a hair from the dog that has bitten you. This will also help the tremors of the hand, telegrafista it is called, as in the motion of the fingers of a telegraph operator at the key, a symptom of tequila drinking. It will pass. Here.”
A smaller glass appeared almost under Tony’s nose, filled to the brim with the transparent and deadly liquid that brought about his downfall of the previous night. Its sharp cactus-needle odor assaulted his nostrils and bitter bile rose up into his mouth at the same time in response. He could not.
“Drink it, it is the only way.” Spoken from the source, the man who knew.
Tony realized that he had to do it, had to sober up and look for a way out of this mess of his own creation, but forcing his traitor hand to seize the glass was a totally different matter. He assembled the shattered shards of his will and tried, driving that vibrating member up to seize the glass and hurl the contents down his throat before nausea reversed direction.
Down it went, burning like lava, searing a track that led straight to his interior where it exploded; he shuddered as with the ague. But the burning died down, carrying with it most of his worse symptoms, permitting a measure of intelligible thought at last. The owner nodded with approval. He should nod, a good part of Tony’s money now rested in his ancient cash register. Payment in advance for drink, floor space and eye opener. Perhaps more.
“Would it be possible to use your premises to wash?” Tony asked. His hand grated over a chin like coarse sandpaper. “And to shave as well?”
Without too much reluctance a towel and razor were supplied: the hard cake of yellow soap would have to do for everything. Once washed, cooled, shaved, nicked, and blood-spotty Tony had to admit that he did feel a little bit better. The next thing was money. With much greater reluctance the owner permitted him a single phone call, his credit was obviously running out, which had only even more depressing results. Mr. Sones had checked out of the Hilton earlier that morning, undoubtedly while he lay snoring in a drunken stupor, and by now was halfway to Mexico City.
With shuffling tread Tony exited, wincing at the searing light, his feet automatically taking him downhill to the shore. There was a concrete bench here under a palm tree and he slumped onto it and tried desperately to see a way out of this dilemma, but he could not. A charter boat thud-thudded out to the open sea and far off a ship’s whistle hooted. He sank deeper into black depression. Someone sat on the bench next to him and he was not even aware of it until the newcomer spoke.
“Listen, Joe, you got contacts here, you look like a guy what knows his way around. If you can put me in the way of some good grass, couple of lids or more, I’ll make it worth your while. Whaddaya say?”
The speaker was American, camera-hung, gaily dressed and eager.
“No spik English.”
Disgruntled, the prospective pot purchaser walked away. Tony felt a measure of disgust. So that was what he looked like? A marijuana pimp or something. He had indeed sunk about as far as could be sunk.
No! A rush of indignant self-assurance booted him in the rump. Never! He was a well-disguised international agent, that was all. A beautiful disguise that worked to perfection, a disguise improved by a night on a bar floor; he might even have done that on purpose for authenticity’s sake. Foreign agents brook no bounds when it comes to doing their job. All right, he had one or two too many (one or two what? Bottles?), but that was a mistake he would not repeat. His cover had not been blown, he was still relatively intact and on the job. Just a little bit lighter in the pocket, that was all. How much was it? Eighty dollars, no more, a minute fraction of what the government was spending on this operation. All he needed was some more money and he would be back on the job crossing swords with the best of them in this dangerous game of wits.
With this came the first glimmerings of an idea. Not the best idea so he filed it away for consideration after he had worked on other and more secure schemes. Except none of these came to mind easily, or at all for that matter, so with a great deal of reluctance he had to return to his first brainstorm which revolved around the fact that the only people he was acquainted with in Acapulco, other than his drinking companions of the previous evening and the departed FBI agent, were the members of the Italian Agenzia Terza. Could that acquaintance be turned to his advantage? He had one important thing going for him, the fact that they considered him a dangerous and intelligent agent for the opposition, a false belief admittedly but one now even more strongly rooted since his dramatic escape from their clutches. What was needed was a plan that would enable him to take advantage of this belief without putting him in the way of bullets or spiked spaghetti. And it wasn’t as though they were enemies since the paintings would go to Italy in the end. Grunting with the effort he cudgeled his brain.
No more than half an hour later he took the first step away from the bench, starting on the path which he hoped would lead to success; in any case he had very little to lose at the moment. Perched in sun-baked solitude by the shore was the concrete blockhouse of a public convenience and, as he pushed open the caballeros sign one more time, the thought came unbidden that being a secret agent meant spending a lot of time in this sort of locale. There were no horsemen in the gloomy interior, or occupants of any kind, and he quickly changed clothes, putting the peon into the morral and taking out the Yankee. A little creased by being slept on, but the creases were well disguised by the active floral pattern. There was a discarded newspaper in the corner that he could put to good use, though the headline that caught his eye was far from reassuring, murder in mexico: death by violence. He read quickly about the hapless North American tourist murdered in a singularly brutal fashion, no details given, by his roommate who was now fleeing justice although the police were closing in. It did not make inspiring reading. Smoothing out the newspaper, with the damning headline facing inward, he used it to wrap the clothes, machete, hat, into a not too untidy bundle. He slicked his hair back with some water, then, one at a time, put his feet into the sink and washed them and the sandals free of dust and grime. The reflection in the mirror was that of a seedy gringo, but at least a gringo. Now the next step.
The door to El Restaurante Italiano was already gaping open. This time, however, with very little effort, he resisted its gastronomic blandishments, memories of his last visit being still quite clear. Instead of entering he leaned in through the doorway blinking at the sudden gloom, and spotted the waiter setting a table to the rear.
“Hey, you. Tell Timberio that I want to see him out here. Now.”
The waiter looked up at the hail and dropped a plate that shivered into fragments on the floor, then stood with mouth open and eyes bulging. Very satisfactory if this is what they thought of him. Tony broke the paralysis by waving his bundle in the man’s direction with a certain threat in the gesture so the waiter jumped back, then ran into the kitchen. Tony strolled the few feet to the corner where he could see people approaching from any direction, then leaned against the wall and tried to adopt a sinister air. A hung-over expression asserted itself instead and he twisted his lips in what he hoped was a cold sneer.
Within seconds Timberio popped from the door, and vanished just as precipitously when he saw Tony nearby. The second time he peered out cautiously in all directions before sidling carefully down to whispering distance.
“What is it you want?”
“To talk business just as I did last time.” Sneer. “Before you blew the whistle with that drug attempt.”