“You’re crazy!” Bickford burst out. “You want to get both of us killed?”
“You’re not dead yet,” I said, raising the gun to his chest.
He stood there, hulking, aging, defeat turning him older than his years. “But they’ll kill me when they find out. You know that, don’t you?” He looked up at me. “How did you know about the tuna boat?” he asked, dully.
“I told you last night that I had a list of the vessels your people have been using to smuggle heroin into the States. The tuna boat is the Mary Jane, out of San Diego. It’s been hanging around for several days now, waiting for another shipment.”
“You’re guessing,” Bickford said, hesitantly, but I’d caught the flicker of expression on his face and it was all the confirmation I needed.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Let’s go bring them the package they’re waiting for.”
There was no problem in delivering the package to the tuna boat. We took Bickford’s car down to the malecon, Bickford driving and me beside him with the .38 in my hand.
Once on the boat, Bickford went directly to the captain’s cabin. The three of us filled the small room. Bickford went through the story. The captain asked no questions except to look suspiciously at me when I handed him the laundry parcel.
“He’s all right,” Bickford vouched for me. “It’s his buy. He just wants to be sure we deliver it.”
“We’ve never had any trouble before,” the captain complained, taking the parcel from me. He looked down at it and turned it over in his hands. “Laundry? That’s a new one on me.”
“How soon can you get under way?”
“Half an hour — maybe less.”
“Then you’d better be going.”
The captain looked inquiringly at Bickford. “Do as he says,” Bickford told him.
“What about the shipment I’ve been waiting for?”
Bickford shrugged. “It’s been delayed. We can’t have you hanging around here too long.”
“All right,” said the captain. “The faster you two clear my decks, the sooner I can get underway.”
Bickford and I left the cabin, making our way slowly in the dark along the cluttered deck. I stopped once beside a tarpaulin-covered lifeboat, and swiftly, with Bickford’s back to me so he couldn’t see what I was doing, I pushed the second laundry package under the heavy canvas and into the lifeboat.
As we dropped onto the dockside, we heard the engines start up. On deck there was a flurry of activity.
We crossed to where Bickford had parked his car on the Costera.
“Now what?” Bickford asked me, as we got in.
“I think we should pay a visit to Brian Garrett,” I said. Bickford started to protest, then thought better of it. I held the stubby, blued-steel revolver only a few inches from his side. He drove the car east along the Costera Miguel Aleman out of town and to the top of the headland. Finally, he turned onto a secondary road, and after a few minutes, he slowed to a stop.
“That’s Garrett’s place down there. You want me to drive right in?”
The house was set off by itself just under the crest of the ridge on the edge of the cliff that dropped away below it some two hundred feet to the sea. We were about a hundred yards away from the driveway that led to the main gate of the house.
“No, pull over here.”
Bickford turned the car to the side of the road. He brought it to a stop and shut off the ignition and the headlights. Sudden darkness closed us in, and, in that moment, I whipped the gun butt against the back of Bickford’s head, catching him just behind the ear. He slumped forward against the wheel. I put the gun in my right-hand jacket pocket, and, reaching into the other pocket, I brought out the roll of adhesive tape. I pulled Bickford’s hands behind his back, taping his Wrists with a dozen turns of the surgical tape. I stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth, taping a strip of adhesive from one cheek to the other to hold the gag in place.
Going around to the far side of the sedan, I opened both left-hand doors. Bickford was heavy. The years had put him well into the heavyweight class. I had to struggle to move his inert body into the back of the sedan. I bent over and taped his ankles and his knees. When I was through, I’d run out of tape, but he was securely bound. I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting loose.
Ten minutes later, I was moving silently through the darkness along the edge of the road until I came to the high wall that surrounded Garrett’s villa. The wall began at the sheer drop of the cliff edge on my right, cut through the field, then made a semi-circle all around the sprawling house to the cliff-edge on the far side.
There were lights on behind the wall. I could hear voices calling out to one another. As I moved closer to the wall, I could hear the splash of water. I recognized one of the girls’ voices as that of the blonde I’d seen earlier that afternoon at El Cortijo.
I crept along the base of the wall until I came to the driveway that angled in from the road. The gatefront was illuminated by two spotlights hung high on the main supports. There was no way for me to cross the driveway that close to the house without being seen, so I crawled back to the road and crossed it where I’d left Bickford and the car. It took me twenty minutes to make a complete reconnoiter of the other side of the house from the cliff edge to the drive, and then I retraced my steps and came back to the edge of the road again.
I was about to cross the road, the muscles of my leg already tensed to make the step, when some deeply rooted sense of danger halted me in my tracks.
There had been no change in the night sounds. Below the cliff, I heard the waves break in their same, slow, irregular rhythm against the boulders and onto the narrow, sandy beach. The westerly sea breezes rustled palm fronds together like a rubbing of dry hands. The night insects whined and chirped, twittering in the darkness all around me, yet it was as if some primordial alarm had been triggered inside my mind.
Long ago, I’d learned to trust my instincts completely. Even before the first, faint whisper of sound reached my ears, I flung myself sideways, twisting away from my unseen assailant.
I almost made it unscathed. The blow aimed at my spine caught me on the forearm as I turned, the blade of the knife ripping into my right arm just below the elbow, slashing it down to the wrist, making me drop the gun that I held in my hand. At the same moment, a hard, muscular body drove into me, knocking me off balance.
I fell flat on my face, barely in time to avoid the return slash as the blade cut the air where I had been only a second before. Without thinking, acting by pure reflex, I rolled quickly to the far edge of the road.
I lifted my head to see the blocky form of my attacker crouched in the spread-legged stance of a knife fighter. Moonlight glinted off the honed, razor-steel blade that he held in one outstretched hand, weaving his arm back and forth in front of him. I heard the rasping inhalations of breath as the man moved toward me, one shuffling step at a time.
I gathered my legs beneath me. My left hand scraped at the road. I found and clutched a fist-sized rock. I could feel the damp warmth of blood streaming down my right forearm and wrist. I tried to move my right hand. It was almost uselessly numb from the blow.
The man moved up beside the car to the open window of the driver’s seat. I saw him move his hand in through the window, and suddenly the car’s headlights came on, illuminating the road and the edge of the field, pinning me down in its harsh, white glare.
Slowly, I rose to my feet, my eyes squinting against the brightness of the lights. I began to move, trying to get out of the beam of the headlights.