Kitten with a whip (16 page)

The trio grinned trimnphantly among themselves and Jody said, "Just hke that!'*

"First, though, we're going to pick up aroimd the house ..." He set Tody to cleaning oflF the coflFee table and sent Buck to the trash barrel in the garage with the bottles of her hair preparations. She washed and dried the highball glasses by hand and put them away. It amounted only to some ten minutes work, nothing he couldn't have quickly done himself when he returned home, but it gave him a punitive Httle glow of satisfaction to see them doing something constructive at his command. As overseer, his only contribution was to wrap and safety-pin a dish towel around Pancho's moist rea bandages so the car upholstery wouldn't get stained. Then, with the house set to ri^ts, he put on his coat, turned out the Hghts and locked all the doors. He doubted that he would ever leave a door unlocked again.

Both the boys were fascinated by the electronic mechanism that lifted open the garage door from inside the station wagon. "Hey, that's shiny 1" Buck exclaimed. "I'm going to have me one of those someday."

"Sure," said Jody. "Except it'll be operated by the guard."

Pancho muttered from the back seat he shared with Buck, "She gets cuter and cuter and cuter, doesn't she? A real snotty-type big shot."

"No squabbling!" David snapped. 'Xet's keep our

minds on business." He took a back road, dark and little traveled, that wound past the reservoir and eventually hooked up with the coastal freeway a short distance above the border. He enjoyed speeding tonight, exhilarating in the blast of air that swept in through the windows as if it w^re the wiud that would clean these people out of his life. It was good to be on the go again, driving toward a definite destination and freedom.

Pancho's arm was beginning to pain him now and he whined and complained about it babyishly untH Buck told him to shut up. Jody fiddled with the car radio, searching the dial from one end to the other for a news broadcast. The most she could find was a five-minute summary that didn't mention her. She grunted with disappointment.

"Maybe that's good, though," she conceded. "Maybe they've stopped looking so hard. Let's try the big gates."

"Isn*t there some kind of curfew for you kids?" David asked.

She giggled. *Tlien you be oiur daddy."

They rolled down the hill into San Ysidro, the border port of entry on the U. S. side, a Httle hamlet as much Mexican as American, save for the garish motels that catered to the tourists who preferred to sleep on their native soil. Due south could be seen the broad curtain of Hghts on the slopes of residential Tijuana. It was difficult to realize that this sparkling but prosaic view represented a foreign land.

David didn't Know whether to anticipate trouble at the international Hne or not. Plenty of times the Mexican border guards didn't even stir off their stools to wave the cars through, in contrast to the return trip when U. S. Customs men and Immigration men carefully scrutinized every passenger and automobile for ahens and contraband.

He was just as glad that Jody was in a cautious mood. A couple hundred yards short of the border, she had him turn into a dark shut-down parking lot. He waited, engine idling, while Buck limped on ahead to reconnoiter the broad nine-lane portal that arched over the highway. Buck returned shortly, looking mean.

"Damn them all/* he said. "They got some of our cops watching, sheriffs men. They're looking at everybody."

"Let's leave her here," Pancho whimpered. "Don t you see how I'm suffering? This arm's about to kill mef"

"Nobody's leaving me nowhere," said Jody flatly.

David said in a quiet voice, "Haven't I read in the papers about places along the border where you can sneak across on foot?"

"You shut up, tool All you got eyes for is the skip bit, I can see through you. Let me thinki" A second later she turned to Buck. "How about the river bed?"

He shrugged, busy combing his hair. "Last time I was by theyd put up some wire."

"Could we bust through?"

"This bucket got any soup?"

"Okay." She squirmed around to instruct David. Turn left at the next street for about half a mile. There's some vacant lots we can cut across."

He obeyed, thankful that there was no moon. When the paving ended and the road became rutted dirt, he shut off his headhghts. Then the trail petered out altogether among squatting shadows of scrubby sagebrush and mesquite. David drove on, not thoroughly convinced that he wasn't struggling through a dream. The car rocked this way and that, and the weird silhouettes that surrounded them looked ready to leap at them as he bumped over potholes that he couldn't detect in the dark. Then a tall thin shape appeared directly in front of him and he braked jarringly to a sudden stop.

"It's just the lousy fence!" Buck hissed.

"Okay. What next?" David could see now that it was scarcely a formidable barrier, five strands of barbed wire.

"Aim at the post. Don't hit the wire in the middle or it acts like a spring."

"Hold it, David." Jody put her hand on his knee. "Roll up your window. Maybe Buck don't care if the wire snaps back and takes off your head, but I do."

"Thanks." He rolled up his window, squinted into the murk ahead and stepped on the accelerator. The station wagon charged forward and there was a jar, not too hard, as his bumper struck the fence post squarely.

The post splintered and gave way, raking the underside of the car as the wires snapped like whips. He caught a glimpse of a loose end lashing against his window and then it was all behind them and uiey were in Mexico. As simple as that.

The mesa came to an end, falling ofiF in a gradual slope leading down to the river bed. The broad sandy channel remained dry at nearly every season of the year now that Rodriguez Dam penned up the water ten miles to the east. Freed of the threat of floods, the river bottom had spawned dozens of ramshackle dwellings built from tarpaper and flattened gasoline tins, and there was even a fenced-in softball field, tonight unlighted, where the river once had flowed.

They came upon paved road again and David switched on the headH^ts, reheved to be done with slinking about Hke a smuggler. Yet, the idea bore down on him with full force for the first time, that's exactly what he was—a smuggler. He had just succeeded in smuggling a fugitive out of the United States of America. In a way, though he didn't like to find himself looking at it from this angle, it was an achievement to be rather proud of.

They drove up onto the bridge that crossed over the river bed toward the main extent of the border city. With Buck giving the directions, David detoured along side streets to avoid the neon brilliance of Avenida Re-volucion, the crowded midway of Tijuana's tourist trade.

"Turn here," said Buck. "Half a block down, see where that rooster's running across? Right there's an alley. Pull in and cut your Hghts."

Where they stopped was a squalid area of unpainted garages and sagging fences, a poverty-ridden neighborhood reeking with me rancid sweetness of garbage and no plumbing. For once, David felt grateful that Jody had doused herself so liberally with the cologne. And, for his part, he wouldn't have cared to have even a splinter removed by a doctor who practiced in these surroundings. But he tried not to mink of it as any of his business, and he supposed that in Pancho's case any doctor was better than none.

Buck left them, vanishing down a narrow corridor between two yards. To all of them it seemed they waited

a long time, Pancho cursing softly with self-pity and wondering aloud what could have gone wrong, in one of the houses a radio was playing a rhumba tune, the only real indication that the neighborhood was inhabited by human life.

Buck materialized out of the corridor at last. "Okay," he said. "Hell go for it. He wants ten bucks."

*Tm down to the cotton," Pancho objected. "What would I be doing with ten bucks?"

'Hell, don*t look at me," Buck said. Try the Boy Scout here." David reached for his wallet but Jody flared up immediately. "None of that stuflE," she said. "That money's mine. David's already given it to me."

That touched off a vitriohc quarrel oetween Jody and Pancho, with him whining that she wanted to see him bleed to death and her retorting that he could rot away on the spot for all she cared. David listened to them trade insults and obscenities in their pecuhar jargon and he could only understand about half of them. Like David, Buck stayed out of it, a second middleman until he finally intervened with, "The guy*s waiting in there and might go back to bed. Come on, Jody. We drove down all this way."

She relented grudgingly. "Give him five," she told David. "Even that's overboard for what he*s got to do. They can promise the rest for later."

Although accompHshed, the compromise pleased no one—including, David reflected, the quack waiting inside when he heard about it. Probably, though, in this sort of clandestine enterprise he didn't expect to get all he asked, anyway. He gave Pancho a five-dollar bill and watched the boys shp away between the fences, Buck leading.

Jody was still brooding about the money. "Always been this way, right from the first. Soon as I get something of my own, somebody like them is there to lap it up."

"Easy come, easy go," David murmured sarcastically.

"Now don*t start picking at me again." She leaned out the window, peering into the dark where the pair had disappeared. Then she sat back in the seat and looked quizzically at David. "Well? You waiting for a beU to ring?"

He didn't understand.

"Let's get on our horse," she urged impatiently. *^ou think I got eyes for waiting around on them?"

David smiled as he started the engine.

'1 know what you're thinking about me," Jody accused him. "The dirty rat bit. Well, I figure I can always make more friends. I make friends real easy."

"I wasn't thinking that at all, Jody." He backed the car out and drove off with her. The only thing he had in mind was a bit of simple arithmetic. Three minus two left one. Two down and one to go. The one to go was undoubtedly the most dangerous factor of the lot but he felt as if he was getting somewhere at last.

Chapter Fourteen

They rode around for a while, aimlessly jogging through dingy back streets where heat sat like piled black velvet. David had no definite plan; nor, apparently, did Jody. They didn't speak, conscious that their thoughts couldn't be shared. As they neared the southern end of town, David veered over onto the maia avenue, a paved boulevard that wouldn't punish the tires so much. They were past the glare and frenzy of the toiuist district and the few people on the streets were Mexicans.

He thought he knew exactly what Jody was thinking. She would be projecting her next move and seeing how she could use him to accomplish it. For himself he was waiting for her to announce her strategy. He felt sure any ideas that came from him would be inspected too thoroughly for a possible trap. Better let her come to a decision, then he could go ^ong with it, his eyes open for the first chance to make his escape.

Tody had a plan now. He recognized her familiar oblique approach, this time expressed by yawning openly. He said, ''Yeah, it's been a long day," and waited to see where that would lead her.

"I'm beat and double-beat. What time you got?"

*Ten, a little after."

nfou beatr

"I'm getting there."

*Well, if we're both feeling dragged, why don't we stop and get a Httle rest?" She pointed ahead down the street. "How about that motel? It doesn't look too rinky on the outside."

He objected as a matter of course. She would be expecting it. He said, "No, we can't do that."

"Well, I hate to be constantly arguing with you, David, but that's exactly what we're going to do. Shack up, like. We can't keep driving around Tijuana all night, and

unless you want to bust through the border again . . ." He sighed for her benefit and obediently turned the station wagon into the motel driveway. Jody had yawned again and he wondered why he hadn't had the motel idea himself. If she shoula fall asleep—and the girl couldn't hold out forever—how could she possibly protect herself in advance against his escape?

As Jody had intimated, the motel didn't appear too bad but that was the most that could be said for it. It would have been classified as second-rate on either side of the border. A downcast collection of white stucco hutches were grouped around a weedy patio that boasted a cast-concrete foimtain, dry and out of order, and some parched flower beds that needed help. The

Earldng area in front held only two cars. Sunday night usiness wasn't brisk at this end of town.

Jody went with him to the office. He had to bang repeatedly on the counter to bring forth the proprietor from some mysterious quarters in the rear. A shawled and bathrobed old woman finally shambled out barefoot to answer his smnmons. The manager's mother or mother-in-law, David guessed. She was grumpy at being aroused, peering at them with near-sighted eyes devoid of welcome or curiosity. Si', there existed a double. Okay —five doUars.

David hesitated over the old-fashioned book register, trying to think up a name to use. He certainly wasn't going to sign his right one. Tody at his elbow prompted nim firmly. "Come on. Buck, I want to get to bed."

He wrote "Mr. and Mrs. Buck Vogel, San Diego" and thought that it was pretty clever or Jody. Not mat it made any difference but it was only a halE he.

The old woman gave him a key with a red clay tag numbered three and let them go find their cabin by themselves. David opened the door, patted the inside wall in a fruitless search for a Hgjht switch, finally groped inside until he encountered a dangling overhead bulb. Once lit, it swayed for a moment or so, making the shadows of the furniture slip up and down the walls eerily.

David looked aroimd. "Well, it's only middling terrible," he decided. "The towels are clean."

Jody fluffed her hair in front of the dresser mirror, then stared closer. "Oh God, is that meY*

"Ifs got a warp in it."

"For a minute I thought I was breaking up." She flopped across tiie bed, kicking off her shoes. "Ah, this is more like itl Take off your coat and poop out, David. All the room in the world here."