What of Terry Conniston?

Charley Bass said, “Well, I don’t know, honey. It’s pretty tough getting back through the border without papers.”

“I thought maybe you’d know a way.”

“I might,” he said, and pretended to think on it. Billie Jean leaned toward him with a moist hot smile; the dress slipped off her shoulder and one huge breast almost slipped its moorings—a deliberate movement and one which she undoubtedly had practiced to an art. He thought about it. She had a vapid conventional mind, desolate and predictable; she wouldn’t be any trouble. A few nights of hot sex with her and then maybe he could look up Sweeney in Hermosillo—Sweeney was in the skin trade, or had been, and a lush-bodied girl stranded in Mexico without papers was just Sweeney’s meat. Sweeney would give Charley Bass a cut of the profits. If Sweeney was still there. It had been some time since Charley Bass had co

Billie Jean said throatily, “Be a buddy, mister. You know what’ll happen if I get caught without that damned permit. I get a couple years of laundry-hands and starchy prison food to spread out on and ain’t nobody ever go

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“I heard once from a girl I knew. It sent shivers crawlin’ up my back just hearing about it.”

“Sounds pretty grim.”

“You can say that again. So how about it, lover?”

He covered her hand with his palm and gave it a warm avuncular squeeze. “You just leave it to me, honey. Everything’s going to be just fine and dandy.”

Billie Jean’s plump face lit up. She leaned forward and pulled his head toward her and kissed him with moist warmth and suction.

C H A P T E R Seventeen

The big Cadillac drummed eastward away from the seacoast, its quadruple headlights stabbing the darkness. Twisting through the coastal hills, Carl Oakley had both hands on the wheel at the ten-minutes-to-two position; his head was thrust forward slightly, tense, the eyes concentrated on the pitted road ahead as it sped into the light.

Diego Orozco said, “You want me to drive a while? You’re pretty tired.”

“I’m all right. I’m fine.” He felt alert but jumpy; he had taken two Dexedrines. “Where did we miss them, Diego?”

“Beats shit out of me.”

“Your boys seemed too positive they couldn’t have got through Rocky Point.”

“If they had we’d have picked up a smell of them. They didn’t take no boat out, there weren’t any airplanes and copters in or out, and the road south along the coast is blocked off for construction. How many times you want to go over all this, Carl? It adds up the same every time.”

Oakley stuck a cigar in his mouth and punched the dashboard lighter. “You keep trying to use your head. You figure the thing to do is rule out all the impossibilities and look at whatever you’ve got left. But what happens when you rule out all the impossibilities and there isn’t anything left?”

“Then,” said Orozco, “you’ve overlooked something.”

“All right. What?”

“Lots of things, Carl. They didn’t do what we expected them to do, that’s all. Plenty other things they could’ve done just as easy. For instance maybe they’re holed up making arrangements to get phony papers. False passport, forged seaman’s card and papers, you can get a berth on some Liberian freighter bound for Macao and nobody’ll ever find you again. All it takes is a little time and the right contacts. Or maybe they figured to draw us off down here on a cold trail and then disappear, filter back into Nogales over the weekend and get back into the States by joining the mob of tourists returning Sunday night from the bullfights.”

The lighter had snapped; Oakley pressed it to his cigar and heard it sizzle. He sucked the powerful smoke deep into his lungs and coughed. “But you’re sure the bleeper’s still working. The batteries haven’t had time to die out?”

“I ain’t sure of nothing—but theoretically the thing’s still alive and well and livin’ in that suitcase. We got to get within twenty-five or thirty miles of it before we can pick it up, though.”

“It doesn’t add up. If they didn’t get as far as Rocky Point they’ve got to be somewhere along this road. Why didn’t we pick up the signal if we passed right by them?”

“Maybe they’re holed up in a lead mine. Maybe they were too close to a short-wave broadcast station that jammed the signal. Maybe there was a mountain between us and an ionized cloud layer above it. Maybe they discovered the bug and smashed it. Maybe they emptied the suitcase and buried it in a slag heap full of metal ore. Maybe the bleeper was faulty in the first place and ain’t working at all. You want ironclad guarantees, Carl? You won’t get them from me.”

“Maybe if my mother had a beard she’d be my father. I’ve had maybes up to here.”

Orozco sat back, adjusting his bulk, tugging at his amply fleshed throat. He subsided into tight-lipped reserve; when Oakley glanced at him his eyes, reflecting the dim dashboard glow, had an ominous murky color.

The lights of a car rushed forward and passed them; Oakley glimpsed a family of adults and kids in the long chrome-glinting station wagon, towing a boat on a trailer.

Orozco sat motionless, the smoke of Oakley’s cigar making a vague cloud between them. Oakley felt rumpled and haggard. He glanced at the gun glinting dully in Orozco’s waistband and said, “Could you kill a man?”

“I have.”

“You have? Where?”

“Where you get a medal for it. Korea.”

“Not the same thing as I meant. What if we do catch up and they want to make a fight of it?”

Orozco’s head turned slowly. “I’m not worried about me, Carl.”

“All right—all right.” Orozco was right, Oakley thought irritably. It was himself he was worried about. Orozco, giving him a gun yesterday, had asked, “How good are you with one of these things?” and he had had to answer, “Not very.” It wasn’t a question of marksmanship; it was a question of character. He had never been under fire, never aimed a gun at another human being.

The sky ahead was graying up. They covered the next forty miles without talking while dawn came indigo and violet and red and pink and orange. Oakley lowered the visor against the horizon-balanced sun. He felt the glazed, slightly out-of-contact unreality of sleeplessness. His eyes began to stray out of focus and he had to blink frequently and harshly; the eye-sockets felt dry and raw from cigar smoke. There thrummed in his ears a steady soporific beating of engine, tires, wind.. The road followed the gentle undulations of arid swells across the uneven desert, mountains heaving their dry-sided bulk against the sky at random intervals in various directions; the road swung along parallel to a dry riverbed, keeping to the low ground. A roadsign loomed and flashed by: Caborca 20 km. Shortly thereafter, something began to tweet and twitter in his ears—at first he thought it was an atmospheric change that had set up a ringing; then the sound became so tangible he began to look around the interior of the car to see if a small bird had flown in through the window by mistake.

Orozco said very gently, “Slow it down, Carl.” He was bent forward over the portable radio receiver that bulked on the floor between his legs. Half-blinded by sun glare, Oakley could barely make out the rhythmic flash of a dull red lamp on top of the set. Orozco was turning dials in his big fists; the beeping sound grew louder and softer as he adjusted the coordinates. He brought it back up to its loudest pitch and made a mark on the map in his lap. “Somewhere south of us,” he muttered. “South-east. Keep going a couple miles and we’ll take another fix, try and triangulate him down.”