In any event, it seemed unlikely that the management would insist upon proof of matrimony. The instructions I'd received in Albuquerque, while driving east across the country after a job in the high Sierras, had been for me to get down to El Paso right away and register as man and wife, using my own name and giving Santa Rosa as my home town, since there wasn't time to construct a fancy cover for me, and since I'd just been through that redwood country and still had California plates on the truck.
"Do you remember a girl called Sarah?" Mac had asked over the long-distance phone.
"Sure," I'd said. "You mean the one who was working for one of the intelligence outfits in Sweden? Sara Lounger? A gent on the other team gunned her down in a park in Stockholm."
"Not that one," Mac said. "Sarah with an h'. One of our own people. You encountered her in San Antonio, Texas a couple of years ago. There was a misunderstanding about identity, and you got the drop on her and searched her for weapons-quite thoroughly." He cleared his throat. "Very thoroughly indeed, she informed me afterwards, with some heat. I should think you'd recall the incident. She certainly does."
I nodded, forgetting that he could hardly see the gesture
– way off in Washington, D.C. "Yes, sir," I said. "I remember now. A tall girl, not bad looking, in a tailored sort of way. She was going under the name of Mary Jane Chatham at the time, I think. Mrs. Roger Chatham. Her code name didn't figure much in the proceedings, which is why I didn't place her at once."
"Do you remember her well enough to recognize her?"
"I think so," I said. "Brown hair, gray eyes, a good figure, if you like them long and lean, and a trained walk. Said she'd been a model once, and I believed her. Nice long legs. Shy, like a lot of tall girls." I laughed. "Sure, I remember Sarah, the big kid who could blush all over."
"You seem to have the right person in mind," Mac said, "but that last information is not part of her record."
"Make a note of it, then," I said. "She had a thing about taking off her clothes; the only female operative I ever met who'd managed to get through training with her modesty intact. Potentially good stuff, I thought, but a little on the amateur side. What's the matter, has she got herself into something she can't handle?"
"Well, you might say that," Mac said. "She seems to have run into an awkward situation in Juarez, Mexico, just across the river from El Paso. We want to extricate her before any more harm is done. You will therefore…" He told me what I would do.
"Yes, sir," I said when he'd finished. "Question, sir."
"Yes, Eric?" he said, using my code name formally, almost reprovingly. He likes to think his presentations are complete and no questions are necessary.
"What if she doesn't want to come?" I asked.
He hesitated, and I could hear the singing of miles of wire running across mountains and plains and mountains again clear to the east coast. When he spoke, his voice sounded reluctant.
"There's no reason to think she'll be difficult. I'm sure, when she sees you, she'll cooperate fully."
"Yes, sir," I said. "But not fully enough, apparently, that I can count on her giving me a recognition signal voluntarily. I have to be able to recognize her, you said. I can't just walk by with a carnation in my buttonhole and wait for her to fall upon me, her rescuer, with delight. It seems odd."
He said coldly, "Don't be too clever, Eric. I have told you all you really need to know."
"I'm sure you're the best judge of that, sir. But you haven't answered my question."
He said, "Very well. I want her back in this country. Get her out."
"How far do I go?" I persisted. He tends to be hard to pin down, when it's a question of giving explicit, unpleasant instructions concerning one of our own people. I wanted the record perfectly clear. "Do you want her badly enough to take her dead or alive?" I asked.
He hesitated again. Then he said, "Let's hope it won't come to that."
"But if it should?"
I heard him draw a long breath, two thousand miles away. "Get her out," he said. "Goodbye, Eric."
It turned out to contain an official-looking report, ostensibly the fourth and last on this particular job, from an outfit calling itself Private Investigations, Inc. It dealt with the daily activities of a subject calling herself Lila Martinez, now definitely established to be the same person as a certain Mary Jane Helm (Mrs. Matthew L. Helm), born Mary Jane Springer, whom I had asked them to locate. The subject was, it seemed, currently residing in Juarez and working in a place called the Club Chihuahua.
The document ended with the notation that this written report would summarize for my benefit information already submitted by phone. There was also a note to the effect that Private Investigations, Inc. appreciated my patronage and my check, just received. They hoped I had found their work satisfactory, and that I would call upon them again if necessary and recommend them to any of my friends who might be in need of similar discreet assistance. They reminded me that their services were not limited to tracing missing persons, but also included industrial investigations and divorce work. Signed, P. LeBaron, Manager.
On my way back to the bridge, I stopped to buy my quota of duty-free liquor, one gallon, which I took half in tequila and half in gin. They sell good rum, too, but it's a taste I never acquired. The border whiskey isn't fit to drink. With my armload of bottles, I crossed the river again-it costs one cent going north-and told the man at immigration that I was a U.S. citizen, showed my liquid loot to customs and paid tax on it to the state of Texas, although why Texas should have the right to tax the private liquor of residents of other states has always been a mystery to me.
I came out of the building fairly certain that my activities were a matter of interest to no one-which was what I'd started out to determine in the first place. When I got back to my hotel room, the phone was ringing.
I closed the door, parked my load and went over to pick up the jangling instrument.
"Mr. Helm?" a hearty male voice asked. "This is Pat LeBaron, of Private Investigations, Incorporated. I just wanted to welcome you to our city and make sure you got our last report all right."
"Thank you, Mr. LeBaron," I said. "The report was waiting for me when I arrived."
"You're lucky to have made El Paso today," he said. "It looks as if they're in for some weather up in New Mexico and Colorado. We may even get a taste of it here." He paused. "I saw a dove flying south," he said.
"It will return north soon enough," I said, completing the password I'd been given by Mac. That kind of silly, secret-agent stuff always makes me feel self-conscious, and apparently it affected LeBaron the same way, because he was silent for a moment.
Then he said quickly, "Yes, that's very true, isn't it, Mr. Helm? Spring always comes, if you're around to see it. Is there anything we can do for you while you're in town? I don't want to sound as if I were trying to drum up business, but I thought you might be planning to visit a certain place in Juarez, maybe tonight, and… well, it's not a town you want to wander about alone after dark, if you know what I mean. I feel kind of responsible for bringing you here-"
"How responsible?" I asked.
He laughed. "Well, I'll tell you, we have a set fee for escort work, of course, by the day or hour, but you've been a good client. If you'll just buy me a steak at La Fiesta, I'll go up the street with you afterwards and make sure everything goes okay."
"Well-" I made a show of hesitating.
LeBaron said, quickly and understandingly, "Not that I don't think you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, haha, Mr. Helm, but I probably know Juarez a little better than you do. I'll pick you up at eight."
At eight on the dot, he called me on the house phone. I took the elevator down to the lobby. A short, sturdy, dark young man got off a sofa and came up to me. For all the width of his shoulders, he had a sleek, patent-leather gigolo look. He had dead-white skin and brown eyes. I'm a transplanted Scandinavian myself, and I have an instinctive mistrust of brown-eyed people, which I admit is perfectly ridiculous.
"Mr. Helm?" he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Pat LeBaron. I'm real pleased to meet you in person, after all the dealings we've had by mail and phone."
I murmured something appropriate, took his hand and gave him the little-finger signal we have, the one that confirms recognition and, at the same time, tells the other guy who's running the show. His eyes narrowed slightly at my immediate assertion of authority, but he gave me the proper response. We stood like that for a moment, taking stock.
No brotherly love flowed between us in that moment. It never does. It's only in the movies that people in the business are partners unto death, linked by iron bonds of friendship and loyalty. In real life, even if your assigned assistant is someone you might like a lot, you damn well don't let yourself. Why bother to get fond of a guy, when you may have to sacrifice him ruthlessly within the hour?
There seems to be a theory among modem business organizations that a man has got to love all his fellow workers in order to cooperate with them. Mac, thank God, has never made this mistake of confusing affection with efficiency. He knows he'd never get a bunch of happy, friendly guys to do the kind of work that we're doing, the way it's got to be done.
He pointed out to me once, in this regard, that the Three Musketeers and their pal D'Artagnan were no doubt a swell bunch of fellows, and that the relationship between them was a beautiful thing, but that when you studied the record you came to the sad conclusion that Louis the thirteenth would have got a lot more for his money, militarily speaking, by hiring four surly swordsmen who wouldn't give each other the time of day.
So I didn't worry when LeBaron and I didn't take to each other on sight. He was a trained man; I was a trained man, and we had a job to do. I could always find some other guy to get drunk with, afterwards.
"The car's out front," he said, releasing my hand. "If you don't mind, we'll walk from the bridge. Things sometimes happen to American cars parked in Juarez at night. It's bad enough leaving it on this side."
"Whatever you say, Mr. LeBaron," I said.
"Hell, call me Pat."
"Pat and Mart," I said, as we went outside. "It sounds like a comedy team."
He laughed heartily. "Hey, that's a good one, Mr. Helm… I mean, Matt. I'll have to remember to tell my wife."
He drove us to the bridge in a blue year-old Chevy sedan and parked it in a lot under one of the long sheds that keeps the sun in summertime from turning your car into an oven. Not that Juarez, or El Paso, either, is much of a place to go in summer. Last July, when I was in Juarez, the temperature was a hundred and twenty in the shade.
We both paid our two cents, crossed the bridge and walked through the carnival atmosphere of Avenida Juarez. The short block to the nightclub was darker, quieter and less reassuring. Going into La Fiesta, we were set upon by taxi drivers who wanted to take us elsewhere, now or later.
"Cab number five," one man kept shouting. "Hey, Mister! Cab number five!"