Nick rapped on the bar again. The service was lousy, too. He studied a faded poster over the back bar, a garish advertisement for beer. A pariah dog the color of diluted mustard, skinny and trembling, slunk through the door to cower beneath a table. Somehow the sight of the miserable dog triggered the growing irritation in Nick. He slammed his fist down on the bar. “Goddamn it! Is anyone here?”
An old man, wrinkled and bent, the joints of his fingers grotesquely swollen, shuffled from a back room. “I am sorry, Señor. I did not hear you at first. My granddaughter, the little one, she died this morning and we must make ready the funeral. You wish, Señor?”
“Tequila, por favor. And I am sorry about your granddaughter. Of what did she die?”
The old man put a dirty glass and half a bottle of cheap tequila before Nick. He pushed forward salt, half a lemon and a plate of shriveled mango slices. Nick poured the tequila and drank, ignoring the lemon — it looked sick — but using the salt. The old man stared at him with apathy until Nick repeated his question, then he hunched his shoulders and spread his hands in the age-old gesture of defeat.
“Of the fever, Señor. Of the typhoid. There is much of it around here. Some say it is the well, from which all must drink.”
Nick poured himself another shot of tequila. “Don’t you have a doctor in the village?” Stupid question!
The old man shook his head. “No doctor, Señor. We are too poor. None will stay in our village. The Government has promised us a doctor, and serum, but it does not come. The doctor does not come. So our children die.”
There was a long silence broken only by the buzzing of flies. The cantina was full of them. Nick said: “Is there a policeman in the village?”
The old man gave him a shrewd look. “No police, Señor. They do not bother with us. Or we with them. We spit on the police!”
Nick was about to reply when he heard the sound of an expensive motor in the street. He went to the door and, keeping out of sight, peered out. It was the Rolls Royce he had seen last evening through the binoculars. There was no flash of silver hair this time. Whatever the purpose of the Rolls in this remote little village, evidently the lady was not involved.
The car was driven by a short, sturdy little man who looked like a mestizo or, to N3’s experienced eye, a Chinese trying to pass as a mestizo. In the circumstances, Nick thought, it could well be. He watched with interest as the Rolls stopped a little way past the cantina and the driver got out. He was wearing slacks and a garish sport shirt and a pair of blue sneakers. He walked with a bouncing spring in his step, giving the impression of squat muscularity, of a powerful coiled spring. Judo man, thought the AXE agent. Karate, too, probably. He filed the thought away.
The man was carrying a small hammer and a large, rolled-up sheet of paper. He went to the blank, windowless side of a deserted adobe house and nailed up a poster, taking the nails from his mouth and banging them in with rapid strokes. Nick could not make out the words but the emblem of the serpent was clear enough. The golden serpent with its tail in its mouth, the same as the bracelet he had been shown.
Another man put his head out of the rear window of the Rolls and said something to the mestizo. The man was wearing a white, snap-brim panama, but Nick caught a good look at the face. It was pink, well nourished, running a bit to jowl. A porcine face that he had seen not many hours ago in a glossy photo in San Diego. The man’s name was Maxwell Harper and he was head of a large public relations firm in Los Angeles. It was he who handled The Bitch’s cosmetic account.
Harper was also in charge of publicity for the Serpent Party, hence the CIA’s somewhat cursory interest in him. The man was doing nothing illegal, as the Director had taken pains to point out. He was properly registered with the Mexican Government and had been given a professional work permit. He was being paid openly by the Serpent Party to promote their campaign. Even so, an eye was to be kept on him. Nick had gathered, from what the Director had not said, that the CIA had a vague uneasiness about Maxwell Harper.
The mestizo finished hammering up the poster and went back to the car. Instead of sliding beneath the wheel he took another roll of paper from the front seat, said something to Harper, and started for the cantina.
Nick turned and headed for the back of the cantina. As he passed the bar he held up a twenty peso note and put his finger to his lips. The old man nodded. Nick slipped through the door into the back room. He closed the door but for the barest crack and stood listening. His eyes, roving the poor barren room, fell upon the tiny coffin on a pair of trestles. The child in it was dressed in a white frock. Her small hands were crossed on her breast. She looked like a brown rubber doll laid to rest for the moment.
A spate of Spanish, heavily laced with the dialect of the province, came from the bar. Nick put his eye to the crack. The mestizo was having a drink and haranguing the old man. He had spread the poster on the bar and weighted it with beer bottles. He jabbed a blunt finger at the lettering and kept talking. The old man listened in a sullen silence, nodding now and then. At last the mestizo shoved a small packet of peso notes at the old man, pointed to a wall of the cantina, and left. Nick waited until he heard the soft vanishing purr of the Rolls, then he went back to the bar. The old man was reading the poster, moving his lips.
“They promise much,” he told Nick. “The Serpents — but they will do nothing. Like all the others.”
Nick scanned the lettering. It wasn’t too bad, he admitted. Not exactly subtle, certainly not honest, but done with cunning. That would be Maxwell Harper’s hand. Public relations writing, American style. Every promise was qualified, but in such a way that the ignorant, the unlettered, would never notice it.
He had a last shot of tequila and shoved a five-thousand peso note at the old man. “For the muchacha,” Nick said. He nodded toward the back room. “For a stone, perhaps. And I am sorry, old man. Very sorry.”
At the door he halted and looked back. The old man was fingering the money. A single silver tear exuded from the rheumy eyes and crept down his dark cheek, tracing a light path in the dirt. “Muchas gracias, Señor. You are a good man.”
A thought struck Nick. “The child,” he said gently. “Why didn’t you take her up to the castle, to the place they call El Mirador? Surely they would have helped you? I hear the woman who owns it is very wealthy.”
The old man stared at him for a long moment. Then he spat. “We did take her, Señor. We begged for help. I myself, in person, wept. I got on my knees. We were turned away at the gate.” He spat again. “La Perra! The Bitch! She helps no one.”
Nick Carter found this hard to believe. Bitch she might be, still she was a woman. And a woman and a sick child — “Perhaps it was the fault of the guards,” he began, but the old man interrupted him. “They called the castle on their telephone, Señor. I myself heard them speaking to the woman. To La Perra. She would do nothing. She called us beggars and ordered the guards to drive us away.”
Nick went down the mean street to a small bodega to which the old man had directed him. It was a poor setup, with everything in scant supply, but he managed to buy some canned food, two blankets and a tiny mange-ridden burro, called Jake. He paid, loaded his supplies on Jake and headed back for the barranca. No one paid him the slightest attention as he left the village. There was no sign of the Rolls.