"I don't have a good map, but there's a set of aerial photos we've been working from, over on the bedside table. You can have them; we've got another set." She opened her purse and took out a key and laid it on the photographs. "As for a jeep, I thought you might be wanting one, so I checked. There don't seem to be any available at the moment, but you can take my station wagon-I'll be riding with the Mexican police when I leave. The wagon's got a little more road clearance than a sedan to start with, and the springs are beefed-up for hauling a trailer; it'll go practically anywhere."
"A trailer?" I said, curious. "What kind of a trailer do you pull, Charlie?"
"I keep a horse at a ranch outside L.A. Sometimes I haul it up into the mountains for a trail ride." She hesitated. "I didn't mean to sound catty about the girl-or maybe I did-but has it occurred to you that she could still be working for the syndicate and setting a trap for you? I grant your terrific masculine charm and all that, but isn't it odd she'd change sides so easily?"
I said, "You don't know how easy or hard it was. And whether she's trapping them for me or me for them doesn't really matter, does it? Just so she brings us together, the reasons aren't too important. This Baja California is pretty wild country, the kind of country I'm supposed to be good in, and if I can't handle anything a bunch of city boys dream up, I deserve to be trapped." I winked at her. "Now beat it, unless you want to stick around and scrub my back. And good luck at Bernardo."
She didn't move at once. "Matt," she said slowly, "Matt, please be careful. I really appreciate what you're doing. Although I'm sure you're doing it partly for reasons of your own."
I grinned and watched her pick up her jacket and go out the door, a tall, neat, nice-looking girl with crisp, short hair and a complicated personality that would take some figuring out, if a man decided it was worth the trouble. At the moment, I had other problems considerably more urgent.
XIX
The Warfel rescue expedition almost came to grief before it got started, shortly after dark. Driving south along Ensenada's main street, barely a block from the hotel, I headed Charlie Devlin's big Ford station wagon down into a kind of dip and hit a foot of water-well, call it eight inches. It was careless driving, I suppose, but even an old southwesterner like me, used to the intermittent streams and flash floods of that country, doesn't expect to meet a running arroyo in the middle of town on a clear spring evening.
"Hell, you should see Tijuana," Bobbie said after I'd nursed the half-drowned engine back to life and made it through the wash. "Anytime it's rained within a week, they've got a temporary river cutting the city in half, and only a lousy little two-lane bridge to carry all the traffic from one side to the other. You probably didn't notice, if you came through in the dark before anybody was awake, like we did; but on a busy weekend it can be the world's biggest traffic jam."
"You came down with Sapio and Tillery? What kind of a car are they driving?"
"It's Tillery's car, a Chrysler, the fancy model with the fake spare-tire cover growing out of the trunk lid. Don't you hate air scoops that don't scoop anything, and tire covers that don't cover anything? I mean, how phony can you get?" She drew a long breath. "Darling, do you want to know something? I'm still scared. In fact, I'm more scared."
"You could have stayed behind," I said.
"Alone?"
"I offered you a bodyguard."
"A cop? Thanks, I'll take Mr. Tillery any day, him and all his nasty friends, male and female and in between."
I grinned in the darkness. "What's with you and cops, Bobbie?"
"What's with you and cops?" she retorted. "I don't get the impression you're particularly fond of them, either."
I shrugged. "In my business, we sometimes find the official badge bearers getting a little too official, even in home territory. Then we have to get on the phone to Washington, and strings have to be pulled, and everybody gets very unhappy with everybody, especially with us. And in a foreign country like this, of course, the constabulary can make things very awkward indeed."
"Well, it's the same in my business, darling," Bobbie said, "except that we girls can't get on the phone to Washington. You'd be surprised what a cop sometimes figures his badge entitles him to, and I don't mean just payoffs of one kind or another. Hell, look at all these student riots. If I walked down the street, and somebody called me a pig-and that's a pretty nasty thing to call a woman in some places-and I grabbed a club and busted his head open, you know what would happen to me: when they finished trying me in court for assault and stuff, they'd make me pay damages till I was old and gray! A private citizen isn't allowed to hit anybody except in real self defense; name-calling doesn't count. But if you call a cop a pig and he clubs you, he figures he's a hero and deserves a medal for saving the country-and most of the time he gets it, too. Don't wish any cops off on me, darling. I'll just stick with you and take my chances."
"Okay, it's your choice," I said. I switched on the dome light. "But since you're here you might as well do some navigating. Take another look at those aerial photos and see if you can figure out just how far we go before we turn off to this Bahia San Agustin place. You're sure that's what Tillery said? Bahia San Agustin?"
"You asked me that before," she said, a little annoyed. "Yes, I'm sure! And it's right here on the photo with a hand-lettered name on it, like on all the rest of the prominent natural features along the coast. And it looks like a good, sheltered spot to bring in a boat you don't want a lot of people to see, nice and deserted. There doesn't seem to be a house or road within miles, except the track leading in from the main highway."
"The question is, why would Warfel risk landing at all, except at Bernardo where his lab is?" I shook my head ruefully. "Well, maybe we'll find out when we get there. For now, let's just hope we can hit the right road in the dark."
"Well, we've got a long ways to go yet."
We rolled on southward through the outskirts of Ensenada. Charlie Devlin's big wagon, for all its bulk, was considerably more pleasant to drive than the rental sedan I'd left behind. The power brakes were less sudden, the power steering had some road feel to it, and the beefed-up suspension was taut and competent. The engine was smooth and incredibly strong. It gave the massive vehicle the performance, if not the handling, of a sports car. Chalk up another point for the horse-loving, humorless Miss Devlin-but she was not the lady whose character concerned me now.
After studying the aerial photograph a little longer, Bobbie returned it to its envelope. She leaned back against the head rest, stretching her long legs as far as the car would permit. She was wearing sneakers and white jeans, a striped yellow-and-white boys' shirt with the tails out, and a fringed sarape-a coarse, gray-brown, patterned Indian blanket with a hole to stick the head through. Topping off the outfit was a brown hat with a brokendown brim, which she now tipped over her eyes. I cut the interior light and reflected on the various incarnations of Roberta Prince.
I mean, first there had been the sexy, Hollywood-type gangster-moll with the undulating walk, the heavy make-up, and the various glamor-pants getups; and then there had been the nice, tall, tomboy-kid-next-door-trying-to.. be-ladylike-once she got some clothes on-in a pretty yellow dress, with just a touch of lipstick.
That was the attractive companion with whom I'd had dinner, during which she'd told me what Tillery had told her over the phone: essentially just that he'd be seeing her, and paying her for her services, later that evening when he got back from Bahia San Agustin down the coast. Afterwards we'd taken a stroll along the waterfront hand in hand, watching the sun disappear into the Pacific and pausing now and then for some amorous by-play that was supposed to be just for show but didn't quite work out that way. We'd returned to the hotel slightly disheveled and reasonably sure that, whether or not the syndicate boys had had us under surveillance earlier, there was nobody watching us now.