A knock on the door made me sit up and swing my stockinged feet to the floor. "Just a minute," I called. "I'll be right there, Miss Devlin."
Of course, it didn't have to be Charlie Devlin, although it was time she arrived. It could be the Mexican police, perhaps having obtained my description and license number from the pickup-truck-load of native citizens who'd seen Beverly and me by the roadside near the wreck.
I didn't really think those citizens would volunteer information to the cops even if they heard it was wanted. Mexicans, as far as I know, have no more love for getting involved than anyone else. Nevertheless, I had to keep in mind the possibility that the local law was smarter and more suspicious than I'd hoped, and had traced me here somehow-in which case I could only act as much as possible as if the last thing in the world I was expecting to see, when I opened the door, was a policeman. The knock came again, more impatiently, as I finished tying my shoestrings.
"Okay, okay, I'm coming, Charlie!" I shouted. "Let a man put his shoes on, will…!"
Speaking, I crossed the room and yanked open the door, and stopped without completing the sentence. It wasn't Charlie Devlin, standing there in the hall. It wasn't the Mexican constabulary, either. It was the willowy blonde, the elongated acrobatic dancer, Frank Warfel's current playmate. Her presence didn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me, although she was certainly preferable to a policeman. We faced each other in silence for a moment.
Then she asked, "Who's Charlie?"
"Just a girl I know," I said.
"Lucky you," she said brightly, "to know a girl named Charlie."
"I also know a girl named Bobbie," I said, since it seemed to be that kind of a conversation. "What can I do for you, Bobbie? Excuse me. I mean, of course, Miss Prince."
She gave me her wide, delicious, sexy, meaningless Hollywood smile. "Probably you can do lots of things for me, darling. We'll have to talk about it some time. But right now, The Man wants to see you."
I studied her for a moment, dubiously. She wasn't really a bad-looking girl, and I don't want to give the impression that I like them fat, or even pleasantly plump. I just felt she was overdoing the hipless, bustless bit. Actually, she looked better in street clothes than in the sexy satin lounging pajamas in which I'd last seen her, which had emphasized her narrowness.
Now she had on a checked black-and-white pantsuit that would have made any other woman look broad as a barge; it only made her transverse dimensions seem practically normal. There were wide, floppy trousers and a long jacket thing without sleeves-maybe it qualified as an overgrown vest-and a soft white silk blouse. Her shoes were the square-toed, square-heeled jobs dictated by current fashion; apparently Frank Warfel only demanded spike heels at home. Her face was made up so dramatically that, with the striking blonde hair-now worn seductively loose down her shoulders-you just knew she had to be a big movie star. The game was to determine which one she was being this week.
"Frankie wants to see me?" I said. "What about?"
She gave me the wide, wet, irresistible movie smile once more. "Who reads minds?" she asked. "He takes me into his bed, not into his confidence, darling. I don't know what the hell he wants to see you about. Why don't you ask him?"
"Where?"
"In my room. Right down the hail, darling."
It wasn't right. I mean, her eyes weren't right and her casual manner wasn't right, and she was hitting me over the head with too many darlings. It was a set-up, a deadfall, a trap. I'd been around long enough to smell them, and this one had the characteristic sour stink of betrayal. Anyway, if Frank Warfel had wanted me for casual conversation, he wouldn't have used his special, acrobatic blonde as a messenger. He'd have sent one of his ordinary errand boys as he had before. The presence of the girl meant that, for some reason, he felt that a little sex appeal was advisable this time to render me unsuspicious and vulnerable. On the other hand, I reflected, with all of desolate Baja California outside to choose from, it seemed unlikely that he'd pick a public hostelry to murder me in.
Anyway, as I've said, I wasn't happy with the case, even though my part of it should have been at an end. If Frank Warfel was setting traps for agents of the U.S. government, it might be interesting to know why. Idle curiosity isn't encouraged in the profession, but this seemed like a justifiable bit of research.
"Lead the way," I told the girl cheerfully.
She didn't move at once. She hesitated, studying my face. I had a hunch she was toying with the idea of issuing a warning. Then she moved her narrow shoulders in the minutest of shrugs, turned, and walked ahead of me down the hall. She stopped in front of a door, knocked, and turned to give me her photogenic smile once more. Still smiling, with no change of expression whatever, she kicked me hard on the shin.
The toe of her fashionable shoe must have been reinforced for just that purpose. As I bent over with the sudden pain, the door opened, and a big man reached out to chop with his hand at the back of my neck. He caught me as I fell and dragged me inside.
XIV
I lay on the bed where I'd been dumped and listened to the voices. One was familiar. I'd heard it only once before, in a Los Angeles apartment, but after a little I placed it as belonging to the man called Jake, official frisker and bodyguard to Frank Warfel. Well, that figured.
This voice said, "Here you are, sir. One snub-nosed.38, one wallet with cards identifying a Mr. Matthew Helm, one customer's copy of a rental-car agreement paid up by credit card in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and one used one-way TWA ticket from Albuquerque to Los Angeles."
The second voice, responding, didn't figure at all. It was not Frank Warfel's voice. It was higher and shriller, kind of peevish. After a rustle of paper, it said: "New Mexico. Looks like he did a lot of driving there, the last few weeks. Could there be a connection? Has Frankie been doing any visiting a couple of states to the east, recently?"
"No, but his girl could have, the Blame dame," Jake said. "Three times in the last couple of months Frankie lent her a driver and she took off in that hopped-up little Pontiac with the fat tires. We never could manage to tail them. That Willy Hansen's lousy in traffic, or pretends to be, but give him an open road and nothing can catch him. I mean, he flies low and fast. But they were always heading east when the boys lost them."
"But that's not the way Frankie was heading just now when you lost him." The unknown man's voice had a tart, sarcastic sound.
Jake was apologetic. "Hell, Mr. Tillery, it's a big ocean, and keeping track of a boat in all that fog and mist..
Anyway, there was a heavy swell running, nothing to bother a vessel the size of the Fleetwind, but the boys in their little power cruiser took quite a beating."
"Extend to them my sincere sympathy," said the man called Tillery, "and then fire them and get yourself some real sailors. And maybe some real drivers, too." There was a little pause. "I thought you told me the Fleetwind was tied up for repairs."
"That's what I heard Frankie say. Something about needing a new generator fitting, or something. That's why the boys weren't quite ready to-"
"In other words, Frankie made monkeys of you."
"Maybe so, Mr. Tillery," said Jake doggedly, "but we did manage to find where he's going and when he'll be back. He's planning to make his first dope pickup at Bernardo tonight. He'll be back at his usual dock tomorrow night like nothing had happened, like he's been doing ever since he got the boat. If he's left alone, he'll land the shipment in a day or two. If the law comes aboard, he'll pump it out the trick seagoing john he's got rigged. I hate to think of it, considering what the stuff is worth."