"Poor fellow," I said. "If only he'd managed to blow a hole through me with his cute little 7mm Magnum, nobody'd have hurt a hair of his cute little head. My heart bleeds for him. But you didn't conic all the way to Mexico just to sympathize with unsuccessful murderers, I presume."
Her lips, innocent of lipstick, were tightly compressed. "Mr. Helm, just because you're shot at doesn't give you the right-" I said, "Honey, you're getting tiresome. How many times have you been shot at?"
"Well-"
"Wait till somebody takes a crack at you before you start telling people what kind of patient and long-suffering targets they're supposed to be. Anyway, who's talking about rights? It's a practical matter, Nicki. The man shot at me six times today. He missed, but he had quite a few cartridges left. He probably had instructions from somebody-it would be interesting to know who-to keep trying until he got me. But unless he's a hell of a lot better swimmer than I think, he won't be trying anymore. It's as simple as that. Now tell me what I'm supposed to do that I'll be able to do a lot better without an eager rifleman breathing down my back trail."
She drew a long breath. "Well, okay. You're supposed to get to a reasonably safe phone as soon as possible."
I regarded her narrowly. "You were sent all the way down here just to tell me that?"
"You're not supposed to call his special number. Call the office number and ask for him. There's a reason."
"But you can't tell me what it is?" She shook her head. "I don't really know."
"How soon is as soon as possible? I can't call from here; there's only one phone in the village and one at the hotel desk, and both are too damn public. I either call from somewhere in the city of Guaymas proper, if I can find a phone and get a US connection, or I wait until I'm across the border, a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive. And if I head north tonight, I may be stopped by the Mexican authorities who want to ask me questions about an empty boat I found drifting out in the Gulf. Anyway, I don't think I can pick up my boat at the marina this late. I'd have to leave it-"
"No," she said, "don't do that."
I grinned. "I didn't think he'd want me to leave that damned little nautical hotrod after the trouble he went to plant it on me."
"And you'd better not antagonize the Mexican authorities. I don't think a few hours are critical right now."
"Okay, I'll plan to leave in the morning, then. Tell me one thing, did he expect an attempt on my life?"
"I don't think he expected it, but he told me to make contact with you at once if I saw one made."
"That," I said, "is expecting it in my book. I had it figured otherwise, but I'm generally wrong when I try to second-guess him. But he might have warned me."
Her gray eyes were cool. "You're a pro, aren't you, Mr. Helm? Always alert, always prepared, like a Boy Scout? Are you supposed to need a warning to keep your eyes open?"
I grinned. "And if no attempt on my life was made, Miss Borden? What were your instructions then?"
"I was supposed to contact you in another day or two, anyway."
"But if I was shot at or otherwise attacked, you were supposed to move right in with instructions. Well, that figures. He'd know that would change my plans and he'd want you to catch me before I took off to report the incident in the normal manner. How long have you been here?"
"Two weeks."
"Staying where?"
"With sonic kids. You saw them. I was coming alone, but when I heard they were heading down here I kind of invited myself along, it made a better cover. They've got a converted panel truck to sleep in, over at the trailer court, amid one of the boys borrowed his daddy's boat. Sometimes we take our blankets in the boat and sleep on a beach somewhere. Smoke pot. Shoot speed and drop acid. Sniff cocaine. Get high on heroin. Copulate like animals. Real orgies, man." She grimaced. "Actually all they really use, besides a little marijuana, is beer."
"How much do they know?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"How did you work that?"
"I'm an ecological nut, man. Specifically, I'm a bird-watcher concerned about the fate of our feathered friends in this polluted world. I flip over frigate birds and blue-footed boobies and cormorants and pelicans and stuff. Did you know that the brown pelican is an endangered species, just like the hawks and eagles, all because of DDT? The eggs get so fragile they squash or something." She drew a long breath. "I shouldn't try to be funny about it. It isn't funny."
"No," I said. "So you're a birdwatcher. What does it get you?"
"The privilege of crawling around rocks with binoculars-I was on a hill across the bay when you went racing out to… to meet him. I saw the whole thing through the glasses. And sometime I get this terrible compulsion to go out in the roughest weather to see what the birds are up to-"
"At night?"
"Tonight I talked them into going out to one of the bird islands. You know, those big rocks covered with guano just outside the harbor. We shone the boat's spotlight on it so I could see the birds roosting there. Actually… actually I figured that if he'd managed to stay afloat, with the wind the way it was, that's where he'd most likely come ashore. But he wasn't there."
I said, "With a partner like you, I might as well give up homicide as a career. I drown them; you give them artificial respiration. 'What's the use?"
"That isn't very funny, either," she said coldly. "Anyway, he wasn't there. And I'm not your partner, Mr. Helm. I'm just a messenger girl."
I nodded slowly. "Armageddon," I said. "Gцtterdammerung. At the time he switched the identification signals, just recently, I thought Mac was just getting fancy with the vocabulary, but it could be he was trying to tell us something. Like that there's something big and desperate going on." I hesitated. "And the gent who's making like a fish out there was sent by somebody who wanted me put out of action-me and how many others, Nicki? And how many messengers like you have been waiting around to deliver Mac's word to the guys like me whom that mysterious somebody would like to have eliminated?"
Martha Borden licked her pale lips. "You underrate yourself, Mr. Helm."
"What does that mean?"
"As I said, for some reason he has a lot of faith in you. There are some others, yes, but I have the only action message, to be delivered to you. You're supposed to take it from there, once you've been in touch by phone. It all depends on you."
"What does?"
"I wish I knew," she said. "I wish I knew; and I wish I could believe he'd picked the right man for the job, whatever it is!"
V.
In the morning, I got over to the marina about nine to find that I'd missed all the excitement-which was exactly what I'd hoped for and why I'd taken my time packing and eating. I'd figured that with daylight and a calm sea something might be found, and I preferred not to be around when it was.
Now I learned that an early-rising fisherman, leaving the harbor at dawn, had spotted an object washed up on one of the guano-covered rocks off the entrance, and had swung over to investigate. He'd come racing back to report a dead man. The police had brought in the body, sent it into Guaymas, and interrogated its discoverer at considerable length. A khaki-clad officer was waiting to talk with me, although I wasn't considered particularly important. All I'd found was a boat.
Once again, I told where I'd found it, and how I'd done my best to search for the owner in spite of the lousy weather conditions. I was thanked for my trouble and instructed to go on about my business, so I drove over to the trailer parked in the nearby lot, hitched it onto the station wagon, and backed it down the launching ramp into the water. Then I got my boat and ran it over there. With the help of a couple of dockside characters, who earned a US buck apiece for their labors, I eventually got it onto the trailer. The main trouble, I guess, was that I wasn't used to cranking boats onto trailers; but there was also the problem caused by the complicated design of the little craft's bottom: a puzzle of grooves, ridges, and sponsons. You had to get her placed exactly right or the various rollers and supports just wouldn't fit.