Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno (11 page)

“I don’t think they have them here.”

“You’re not going to look for them now, are you Johnny?” the old man said, looking keenly at Wulff. “I mean the thing that brings you down here isn’t that you’re looking for some of that free and easy open sex, now, is it? Because I think you’ll find that a lot of that stuff is pretty exaggerated.”

“Oh no,” Wulff said, “I’m not here for sex. I’m here on business.”

“Good business or bad business?”

“I don’t know. It all depends.”

The old man smoothed the blue and white surfaces of his sport shirt against his body and said, “I hope you don’t think I’m being too inquisitive here, that you think I’m being nosy or anything like that.”

“Oh no. I’m from New York myself.”

“I figured that. You look like a nice, intelligent young fellow of a very fine type you don’t often see around here. I could have almost told you were from New York or I never would have rented you in the first place. I do some pretty careful screening, you know. You’ve got to keep up standards here. I mean without standards, where the hell are you?”

“That’s true.”

“But I could see that you’re pretty decent.” Puzzled, the old man looked at the five bills in his hand as if he was not quite sure what they represented, how they had gotten there. “Well I guess you’ll be staying here for a week,” he said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on how my business goes. But I paid for the full week in advance.”

“Well if you paid for the full week in advance you ought to use it. I’m not out to make turnover money on you. The trouble is people have no respect for money any more. They think that it’s something they’ll always have enough of, that’s their problem. You stay out the full week.”

“I’ll think about it,” Wulff said. “I promise you, I’ll really think about it.”

“It would be foolish not to.”

“Please,” Wulff said to the old man, “please, I really do have to get settled in.”

The old man looked as if he had caught a glimpse of his long-departed wife in some angle of the sun and a literal expression of fright came across the blunt angles then. “Don’t have to be that way,” he said. “It’s your room. You can do anything you want with it.”

“Please. I’m in a hurry.”

“People got no goddamned patience any more, that’s part of the problem. Don’t have the time to sit and talk, don’t have the time to really deal with others. Just rush on through. Ruining the whole goddamned country; there’s no sense of place any more.”

“Sure,” Wulff said. “Sure, that’s it.” He turned from the old man, went down the steps, opened the trunk of the Fleetwood and then just stood there, looking at the old man for a while, holding the counterbalanced lid. The old man showed no disposition to leave the porch. Little leaves drifted across his face, a late October wind caressed his face and brought streaks of red to it. He made an accommodating motion to Wulff. “Just go ahead,” the old man said, “don’t worry about me, I’m just getting some air. I’d help you if I could but I’ve got a bad back. Otherwise I’m very strong, though. I could take anything you wanted in if my back weren’t so weak from all that late fucking.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Wulff said. It seemed that he had said all of this before, but then always, everything was new. “I’ve got some personal materials here.”

“Personal materials?”

“Stuff that’s important to me, anyway.”

“Go on. Unload it. You don’t think I give a damn what you have, do you now, Johnny?”

“You don’t understand,” Wulff said, “I really have a personal feeling about this stuff. I just feel that I—”

“You don’t want some old bastard staring at it, is that right? That’s what you think of me, you think of me as some old bastard, some old son of a bitch who just rambles on and on and can’t be turned off. Hell, I was thirty-two years old once.”

“I’m going to be thirty-three,” Wulff said mildly. In all of his travels he had never felt so at bay. The old man had managed what none of his enemies had; they had never made him feel apologetic and vaguely ill at ease. But then again he couldn’t deal with the old man the way that he had been able to handle the enemies.

“I’ll just go in,” the old man said. “I won’t bother you. Hey, you don’t have someone in that trunk, do you? You don’t think you can sneak someone in, not pay rent, is that it? Well, you don’t have to worry; the basic charge is for the room, not for the person. I don’t care how many people stay with you.”

“No,” Wulff said, “no, it isn’t another person. It’s just some stuff I have.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy. I mean I don’t want to push you or anything like that. I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m making your business my business. It’s just so hard,” the old man said, “so
hard
to find anybody who will listen to you at all; maybe you have to buy a little conversation when you’re old. You’ll find that out, Johnny. You’ll know it some day.”

“Okay,” Wulff said, “I don’t mind. That’s all right.”

“Easy to be gracious. So easy to be gracious when you’re thirty-two years old. You see how it gets when you start poking around those upper forties, son, you see how gracious you can be then. That’s the test of a man,” the old man said and went back into the house.

Wulff stayed there for a while, letting the hood slide up, the ordnance gleaming at him. The old man could well be observing through a window, his glance fixated on exactly what Wulff was bringing in there. If he did, that would be trouble … unless, of course, the landlord got satisfaction from the idea of heavy weaponry being in his house. That was a possibility—anything was a possibility—but not worth chancing.

But Wulff did not think that the man was looking outside. Call it a matter of instinct, call it a certain leap of perception, he did not think that that was the old man’s style at all. Some skulked and some were all on the surface and some did not react at all … this old man said what he had to say and was done with it.

Would that Wulff would be the same when he got that far.

If
he got that far. He saw no reason to calculate that he would last even to half that age.

But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, old age being what it was in America, Wulff thought. Maybe you were far better going young and in the illusion that you had lost yourself in a pleasant, dignified old age. Because to actually enter upon it was horrifying; it was something that drove most Americans insane. No wonder they hadn’t really extended the lifespan in fifty years of advancing medical science; people simply did not want to be old. They would rather be dead.

Thoughtfully, Wulff threw a blanket over the ordnance, just to be on the safe side. Grunting, he carried it through the door. He could, of course, leave it out in the street in the Fleetwood, take his chances. It had been done. He might have been able to get away with it.

But the hell with it. Phoenix was a really tough town. Anything that was founded on drawing water from the desert would have to be.

At Mexico City Carlin deplaned quietly, shamed. He could barely stand to look at the stewardess. Whatever had happened, whatever had passed through him had been like an illness, some strange malaria-like disease that left you with shaking sweats and three hours later the inability to remember exactly how you had felt. It was better to put it out of his mind completely, put it down to a reaction to what had happened, to the tension of the situation. No good would be served, certainly, by ever thinking of it again. “I’m sorry,” he murmured to her as he passed her moving toward the ramp. “I’m really sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“None of you are ever sorry,” she said, and he would have answered that one too except that he was moving out of the plane then and she was behind him. He knew that she was looking, staring at him, that the hate he had seen suggested in her glance had probably coalesced into something even more intense and dreadful … but there was no good in looking back. He would not think of it. He wasn’t thinking of Janice, was he? So why the hell should he think of some stewardess with whom he had made a mistake, but then everybody was human and had a right to make mistakes. At least, that was the more encouraging way to look at things.

Standing in the terminal building, feeling the thin air breathe fire into his lungs, Carlin thought of the pros and cons of calling Montez. On the one hand the man would be glad to hear from him, owed him one favor or twenty, would send a car to the airport, would in every way make Carlin’s trip easier. But then again Carlin had the vague feeling that calling Montez might not be the best thing to do, despite all that the man owed him, despite the certainty that Montez would fall over himself trying to accommodate Carlin. Call it suspicion, call it a vague instinctive feeling; the fact was that Montez might have picked up some news of the murder from some other source. It was unlikely, but these things happen, word spread around and there was something
disquieting
about the murders … Montez might even get the wrong idea about them. Of course, once Carlin had a chance to explain everything to him things would straighten out and there would be no problem in getting anything he wanted from the man in terms of sanctuary … but still it was the matter of approach, it was something that had to be considered.

Still, Carlin was tired of decisions. Everything was a decision; how to deal with Wulff, what line to take with the knowledge of the man’s approach, whether to kill, how to kill, when to kill, what to do next … he had been poised on decision’s edge for days and days and he was no goddamned binary computer, the coding was overloading his nervous circuitry; in short he was getting close to being knocked out. Let chance decide, Carlin thought, the air burning his lungs more and more, really a bitch, and he was not even out of the heavy, air-conditioned terminal itself, it would be even worse in the mountains outside. Let chance decide and whatever be decided let it be done fast. It was all catching up with him. Fatigue dragged at him like a hand, he felt himself beginning to collapse over his baggage. That would make a hell of a picture, wouldn’t it? He would flop over those bags and the porters would come and take him to the infirmary where they would pull his identification from his pockets while he was undergoing treatment and they would run an investigation.
Run an investigation.
No, whatever else, that would not work out. He had to keep upright. He had to keep going.

Carlin took a coin out of his pockets and tossed it in the air. Heads, he would call Montez and get picked up at the airport; tails, he would get a cab and go out himself. Heads. He looked at it and in the cheater’s way found himself instinctively wondering whether or not he ought to make it best out of three. Fuck it. One toss, one decision, that was what he had decided and there was no point in turning back now. He went over to one of the phones, his breath gasping and whistling in his ears now. Maybe he should not have come to Mexico City. Perhaps this was not as good as it looked at first.

But again, the hell with it. You went forward. Carlin had no idea how to work with the receiver, the paybox, the writing in Spanish that apparently called for Mexican coins; he only bellowed into the receiver until the operator, sounding confused, came on. Carlin told her who he wanted and the address and the operator after going away for a while said in a bad accent that this was an unlisted number that could not be released and Carlin cursed her and said she had better get the damned call through and she said that procedure was procedure or at least that was what he thought she had said, there was no deducing Spanish any way at all and he said that if she didn’t get the goddamned call through he would order the President of the United States to drop bombs on Tijuana, he was an important
turista
with good contacts through the White House and since the President was bombing anywhere else on request he was sure that the President would be happy to oblige. This puzzled the operator—or perhaps it shamed her. In any case, the phone at the other end began to ring and a voice answered. The operator said something like a million pesetas and Carlin began to rave and curse again until the voice said that this was perfectly all right, he would be more than happy to accept this call collect on behalf of his friend.

It was Montez all right. “Where are you?” Montez said.

“I’m at the airport. I just flew in here.”

“That is very good,” Montez said. “To what do we owe the exceptional pleasure of this visit?”

“I had some important things come up,” Carlin said. “Some business that could be settled better perhaps face to face.”

“You would like me to accommodate you? I will send a car directly to the airport.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Carlin said.

“Is there any length of time that you would like to stay with me? My house is your house, of course.”

“It may be a little while. I don’t know exactly. More than a day or two.”

“Well, that will be excellent,” Montez said. “It will give us an opportunity that we have never perhaps had before, which will be to simply talk with one another and to get to know one another exceptionally well. That will be a privilege. I will certainly look forward to that.”

“Well, I’m sure I will, too.”

“You just remain at the airport, my friend, and make yourself comfortable. If you wish, I could call one of the functionaries there and introduce you and arrange for you to wait in comfort. It will be about forty-five minutes. Perhaps a little less since I will tell my driver to hurry. I am very glad to hear from you and very anxious to see you.”

“Well,” Carlin said, “well, that’s all right. You don’t have to call anyone. I’ll just sleep on a bench here or something. You can tell your driver how to find me, yes?”

“Oh, indeed,” Montez said. “As a matter of fact there will be no need for my driver to have a description. I have changed my mind while speaking to you. I am so anxious to see you that I believe that I will also come. I will come with my driver and the two of us will pick you up together. That is how very anxious I am to see you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“For a friend anything is necessary. Nothing is unnecessary.”

“That’s very gracious of you.”

“No more gracious than our friendship,” Montez said, “which I am sure will go on to even greater and higher levels of true communication.” Then he waited courteously, saying no more until Carlin realized that Montez, polite to the last, wanted Carlin to hang up, would not be the one to first terminate the conversation. It was the kind of strange courtesy that had always been there in Montez; the courtesy of European royalty or some ruined Spanish prince. He had never trusted it but then again it hurt no one and was kind of gratifying. Besides, Montez owed him this kind of deference. He had made Montez everything he was.

“I’ll see you, then,” he said. “I’ll be right here waiting,” and hung up, walked away from the booth quickly. The phone started to ring back at once, the operator probably, like American operators, wanting some identifying information, but the hell with her. The hell with all of them. Carlin walked away, half-staggering, and took a gleaming bench to himself, folded himself over his valise, drew it into his stomach, half-dozed. The air still hurt his lungs but he seemed to be getting used to it. He would be all right if he concentrated on slow, careful, shallow breaths for a while. He was all set now. Everything was coming together. Montez had seemed perhaps just a little bit strange over the phone, a little bit peculiar in the way he had decided to pick Carlin up at the airport himself … but then Montez was a strange man. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Just once, Carlin thought, give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

He dozed.