The young man took out a knife with a long, slim blade honed so many times that it was now worn to a thin crescent of convex steel.
He slid the blade under the bottom shell of the turtle near a hind flipper. Blood turned the knife red at the first slash. He cut in quick, savage strokes, moving his knife beneath the rim of the bottom shell, slicing through skin, flesh, muscle, and membrane with swift twists of his wrists as he squatted on his haunches beside the turtle.
The turtle twisted its head from side to side in slow, silent, saurian agony. Its slant, reptilian eyes were glazed from the sun. Its flippers waved in rhythmic, hysterical helplessness.
I watched the young man’s knife plunging deeper into the turtle. With each slash, his hands turned red with blood, first his fingers, then his hands, then his wrist, and finally his forearm all the way to the elbow.
I could see the viscera of the turtle pulsating in pink, wet coils of gut.
In a few minutes, they were through. They sloshed down the jetty steps with buckets of sea water and packed away the turtle meat in a bushel basket.
I had taken a full roll of color film while they were butchering the turtle. Now, as I wound the film back and began to reload my camera, I heard a voice behind me.
“They are pretty good, no? The one with the knife, eh?”
I turned around.
He was in his late twenties, good looking, with a stocky, athlete’s body, the muscles moving easily under his dark, copper-colored skin. He was dressed in cotton slacks, sandals, and a sport shirt completely open to display his bare, broad chest. He looked like every other one of the hundreds of beach boys who hang around the hotels.
“What do you want?”
He shrugged. “It depends. You need a guide, senor?”
“No.” I turned away and swung over to the Costera Miguel Aleman. The boy fell in beside me.
“What about women, senor? Eh?” He winked at me. “I know a very beautiful girl who knows many tricks—”
“Get lost!” I said, irritated at his unusual persistence. “I don’t like pimps!”
For a moment, I thought the guy would jump me. His brown face mottled with a sudden, dark flush of blood. His hand went back toward his hip pocket and then stopped. I saw sheer, murderous rage leap into his eyes.
I tensed, ready for him to jump.
He took a deep breath. The light went out of his eyes. He said, with an attempt at a smile that didn’t quite succeed, “Senor, you shouldn’t say things like that. Sometime, you will say-that word to somebody, and he’s going to put a knife in your ribs.”
“I told you I didn’t need your help.”
He shrugged. “Is too bad, senor. I can give you much help. Maybe you change your mind when I fee you next time, eh? My name is Luis. Luis Aparicio. Until then, adios.”
He turned and swaggered away, walking with an exaggerated stride to display his machismo.
There was something strange about what had just happened. I had insulted him. I had called him a name that, said to any other Mexican male, would have had him at my throat with a knife. Yet, he had swallowed his pride to go on pretending that he was just another tourist guide.
I’d intended to have a drink downtown before I went back to the hotel, but now I changed my mind. I was sure that the overtures my would-be friend had made were not accidental I knew I’d see Luis Aparicio again.
I stepped out into the street, waving down a taxi with its fibre sign showing. As I got in, I saw a familiar figure on the other side of the Costera. It was Jean-Paul. The slim Frenchman was with Celeste. He lifted a hand in greeting as my taxi moved away.
Senora Consuela Delgardo was prompt. She pulled up to the hotel at almost exactly seven-thirty in a small, red Volkswagen. I saw her come into the lobby and look around. She caught sight of me as I walked toward her, and held out her hand. We went back out the door together.
Consuela drove the winding roads like she was competing in the Mille Miglie.
We had a drink at Sanborn’s where the seats around piano bar were the only ones lit. I noticed that she steered us to those tables. I couldn’t see anyone else, but anyone else could sure as hell see me.
Then we went to dinner at Hernando’s. We met a tall, redheaded Englishman with a British accent so thick it was almost a parody. Consuela told me his name was Ken Hobart and that he ran a charter airline. He wore a thick RAF-type mustache under a beak of a nose. He finally ambled off, leaving us alone.
Consuela Delgardo was a beautiful woman. She was in her late thirties, a boldly handsome woman with a strongly boned face. Her hair was a rich, sable brown that she wore long, and it fell almost to her waist. She was tall, with superb legs, a narrow waist and full breasts. Her English was without a trace of an accent.
What unsettled me was that she stared as boldly and as appraisingly at me as I did at her.
Over coffee, I said, “Senora, you are one very lovely woman.”
“—and you would like to go to bed with me,” she finished.
I laughed.
“If you put it that way, sure.”
“And I,” she said, “I think you are a very fine man. But I am not going to bed with you tonight.”
“In that case,” I said, getting to my feet, “let’s go see your friends and find out what they want to tell me.”
We went to see Johnny Bickford.
Bickford was in his early sixties, white-haired, with a broken nose and a deep tan. The knuckles of both hands were flat from having been broken many times in the ring. Wide shoulders bulged his cotton knit, short-sleeved pullover. Faded tattoos, blue behind the deep brown of his skin, covered both forearms.
His wife, Doris, was almost as tanned as he. Platinum blond hair, eyebrows bleached blond from the sun, and faint blond down on her arms. She was also a lot younger than Bickford. I’d say she was in her early thirties. And she was a tease.
She wore no bra under her dress, and her cleavage was all hers and firm She was scented with Arpege. And I would have bet that when she was younger she went for at least two hundred a night You can always spot an ex-call girl There’s something about them that gives them away.
The terrace of Bickford’s casa overlooked the narrow inlet that led from the Pacific into the bay. I could see the dark expanse of the ocean as well as the lights of Las Brisas and the Naval Base at the foot of the hills across the inlet Scattered at random up and down the hillside were the lights of other houses, like immobile fireflies imbedded in the gelatin of the purple night shadows.
The two of us were alone on the terrace. Consuela had excused herself to go inside to freshen her makeup. Doris went with her to show her the way to the powder room.
I took a chance and said abruptly into the darkness, “I don’t want any part of your deal, Bickford.”
Bickford was not surprised. He said, easily, “That’s what we’ve been told, Mr. Carter. But, sooner or later, we’re going to get Stocelli. Since you can get to him easier than we can, you can save us a lot of time.”
I faced Bickford and said, sharply, “I want you to lay off Stocelli.”
Bickford laughed. “Come on, now, Mr. Carter.” His voice had the huskiness of an ex-prize fighter. “You know you’re in no position to tell us what to do.”
“I can blow your whole organization apart,” I said. “What kind of position does that put me in?”
Bickford chuckled. “Is that a threat?”
“Call it what you want to, but you’d better take me seriously, Bickford.”