One thing was certain. They had to have powerful political connections, and it was already obvious that they had the proper police connections. It also seemed obvious that they had little worry as far as any danger I might represent. If there was any worrying to be done, it would undoubtedly be on my part. I had been a little surprised that they had shown no curiosity as to how I planned to get the marijuana over the border and into the States.
I wanted to be alone for a while to think things over, and so instead of going down to the bar and getting Sharon, I poured myself a drink of straight bourbon and sat by the open window and sipped it. I wanted to plan my moves for the next few days, and they were going to be busy days. But somehow or other my mind kept going back to the girl who was waiting in the cocktail lounge downstairs.
I had not questioned Sharon, but I was certain in my own mind that during that two-day period I had been held captive she had seen a great deal of our friend Captain Hernando Morales. I was equally sure that she had gone to bed with him.
It wasn't jealousy, but the idea somehow disturbed me. God knows the girl meant nothing to me. I didn't even want her around, hadn't wanted her from the first. Certainly I couldn't be jealous of her. On the other hand, the idea of her and Morales together bothered me.
Sharon was anything but an innocent and naive child. Her bedroom techniques were enough to establish that she had had plenty of experience and knew her way around. I couldn't even say that she was a stupid girl. But Captain Morales was a dangerous man and, I suspected, a very vicious man.
I tried to figure it out. If he had really wanted Sharon, he had every opportunity to take her while I was being held. It would have been very easy for him to have told me when I came back to Tijuana that she had merely returned to the States. On the other hand, he had all but insisted I keep the girl with me. I wondered why. One thing I was sure of: a man like Captain Morales always had a motive for everything he did.
I took another drink and suddenly realized I was very tired. I was still sore and bruised from the beating I had taken, and I needed some rest. It had been a long, tiring day. A tense day. There was one sure way to relieve the tension.
I left the room to go down to the lounge and pick up Sharon.
The moment I stepped into the all-but-deserted cocktail lounge I realized that whatever plans I may have had for relaxing and relieving my nervous tension that night would have to be postponed.
Sharon sat slumped in a bar stool, her head dropped down on her folded arms. She was out like a light.
Homer Billings was behind the bar, and he looked up at me as I entered. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders and looked over at the girl.
"The little lady was overtired from your trip, I'm afraid," he said.
"No need to be afraid," I smiled back at him, without humor. "I'll take her to the room now."
"Can I help you?"
"I can handle her alone all right," I said.
I didn't bother trying to awaken her, but merely slung her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and trudged back to the yellow suite.
I didn't take her clothes off, but I did remove her shoes. And then I stripped to my shorts and lay down on the bed beside her. The bourbon, on top of the tequila I had had with Angel Cortillo, was enough to do the trick. I was out like a light within ten minutes and didn't awake until the sun was high in the sky the following morning.
***
During the next three days, I was too busy with the things I had to do to give more than a passing thought to the girl who was sharing the suite with me at La Casa Pacifica. I merely saw to it that she had enough money to wander around the tourist shops, which she loved, and buy herself a few trinkets. I was satisfied to know that she was apparently staying out of trouble and amusing herself in any way she could.
She had found a small private beach below the cliff, which she reached by way of a long flight of steps, and she seemed content to spend hours by herself lying on the sand in the sun in a bikini and listening to Mexican music over the transistor radio which she had purchased. Reading didn't interest her, but she had managed to find a few ancient comic books in English in the lobby of the lodge.
Angel Cortillo's help in what I had to do was almost beyond value, but we had to be very careful, as we did not want to be seen together, so we only met after dark. The truck itself was no problem. Angel had a cousin who owned an ancient Chevrolet pickup which would serve our purpose adequately and which he was willing to rent to us for a very nominal fee. The big problem was finding the right place along the coast.
We spent most of one late evening aboard the
Rosita Maria,
studying maps and charts of the coastline both north and south of Ensenada. Cortillo, of course, was familiar with the various bays and inlets and coves, but we had to find exactly the right place. There had to be a certain amount of privacy, and there also had to be enough water so that he could get in relatively close to shore. It had to be completely secluded, located where there were no houses within sight. At the same time, it must be so situated that a road would lead down to a beach where a dinghy could make a landfall.
Even under normal weather conditions the Pacific Ocean off Baja California is rough. There is almost always a heavy surf. The few truly well-protected coves are ringed by houses or small resorts. Those which are not are almost invariably unavailable from the land side, because of high, craggy cliffs which make ascent to their beaches all but impossible.
However, by diligently studying both sea-charts and topographical land-maps, we finally came across a spot that seemed possible. It was a little further away than Angel liked, but it seemed about the only place available. It lay some seventy kilometers south of Ensenada, and from all we could learn, it was completely isolated.
It was a small, half-protected cove, formed by a semicircle of shoreline, and although there appeared to be a wide sand-bar blocking most of the entrance, Angel believed that if he came in on high tide, he would be able to get across it. He would have to wait, of course, for a second tide in order to get out and take a chance that the weather didn't turn bad before he had an opportunity to leave. A secondary road seemed, from what I could tell by the map that I was studying, to go to a small settlement some half mile or so inland. I decided that on the following day I would drive down and see how close I could drive a truck to the beach itself. If it seemed possible to do so, then Angel would ostensively take off on a short fishing expedition and go down by water and check out the possibilities of making a landfall. If he found that he could get in past the sand-bar he would then drop anchor and determine if it were possible to beach the twelve-foot dinghy powered by a small outboard which he carried in davits at the stern of the
Rosita Maria.
On Saturday morning I told Sharon that we were going on a picnic for the day, and I packed her into the Jaguar along with a portable barbecue and a hamper of food. We headed south on Route 2. I was prepared to encounter some rather difficult terrain, and so I brought along an extra jack and a short-handled spade. It was well that I did.
As long as I stayed on the main road going south, there was no difficulty. It wasn't a great road, but for Mexico it wasn't bad. After passing San Vincente, I found what I thought was the right turn off to the west, and I took it only to find it ended at a deserted ranchhouse, some two miles inland.
I returned to the main road and continued on for another three miles until I found a second dirt road. This time I hit pay dirt. After going some four miles I came to a small settlement. There was no one in sight which didn't surprise me because it was already midday, and the heat was intense. There were half-a-dozen houses and what appeared to be a combination grocery store and barroom. The main street led on through the settlement toward the southwest, and I continued along it. I passed several shanties which seemed to be inhabited, although I saw no one. Gradually, the road dwindled out until it was barely more than two tracks with grass growing between them.
I was beginning to get discouraged and was considering turning back when I spotted in the distance ahead what appeared to be an abandoned, fallen-down, adobe building.
Sharon, who had been sleeping during most of the journey, had awakened and was beginning to ask questions. She was also getting hungry and couldn't understand why we didn't stop and have our picnic. I told her I was looking for a shady spot.
I started to circle the building and the walls of what once must have been a courtyard. On the far side, the terrain changed from baked and cracked red mud to sandy soil dotted by cactus plants. I pulled alongside a wall, where the car would be out of the sun, and cutting the engine, I thought I heard in the distance what sounded like breaking surf. I retrieved the food hamper from the car and got out the Styrofoam box in which I had packed cracked ice and drinks. I made us two long, cold drinks and then told Sharon to get out the food. I wanted to take a walk around the place.
She was perfectly happy not to accompany me. I started west, climbing a steep grade toward the direction in which I believed I had heard the sound of the ocean. Ten minutes later, coming over the rise, I looked down, and there indeed was the Pacific breaking on a narrow sandy beach some hundred yards below me.
Two things struck me at once. It would be impossible to reach the beach by vehicle, and even to reach the tall cliff on which I stood looking down at the sea, it would take at least a four-wheel-drive jeep or truck to negotiate the last three-quarters of a mile I had walked.
I took the binoculars from the case which I'd slung over my shoulder, and first looked out to sea and then looked north and south. I was in the center of a small, semi-protected cove and from the white caps breaking some quarter mile off shore I was sure that they were breaking over the sand-bar of that same cove Angel Cortillo had spotted on the sea chart.
There was a high point of land immediately to the north at the edge of the cove, and at the top of it was what appeared to be either an abandoned lighthouse or the remnants of an ancient windmill. Next to the binocular case was my Polaroid camera, and I immediately snapped pictures of the abandoned building, as well as other shots of the bay. I was confident that if this was the cove we had found on the sea chart, Angel would be able to identify it from the water side when he made his survey, some time during the next day or two.
If we were right about it, the problem would be one of simple logistics. Certainly, from all appearances, it was isolated and private enough for our purposes. I put the camera and the binoculars back in their respective cases and started to trudge back to the abandoned adobe courtyard where I had left Sharon and the Jaguar.
I had walked less than ten minutes when I spotted them both, and the minute I did, I knew I was in trouble.
The car was some quarter of a mile from the ancient adobe ruin, and it was buried to its hubs in the sand. I guessed immediately what had happened.
Sharon had grown tired of waiting and had decided to come looking for me. I was surprised that she had gotten as far as she had. When I reached the car I was drenched through with sweat and so damned mad that it took all my willpower to resist smacking her. Sharon was standing beside the car attempting to put the top up in order to get some shade.
I didn't speak to her, nor did I stop. I let her struggle with the top, and continued on to the adobe ruins. I had a couple of drinks while I charcoaled a sandwich steak on the portable barbecue.
Sharon returned to the adobe courtyard some half hour later. I had finished lunch and had stripped down to my shorts. I was still sweating, although I had found a spot in the shade where there was the faintest whisper of a breeze.
Sharon herself was wringing wet from her walk, and she also discarded everything but her brassiere and panties. She sat down beside me, and wordlessly I poured us each another drink.
When we had finished I took the glass from her hand and sat it on the ground. Then deliberately I stripped off the rest of her clothes and my own, and we really started to sweat. After it was over, we lay exhausted for at least an hour, and then I got up and got back into my shoes and shorts. She followed me to the Jaguar, and it took the two of us a good hour and a half to get the car back to the adobe building. I did most of the shoveling and the pushing, and she sat behind the wheel as we inched it slowly through the sand drifts. We were still not on speaking terms.
That night, back at La Casa Pacifica, we were both too exhausted to have dinner. Instead we went up to the room and got royally drunk; too drunk to screw, but not too drunk to enjoy certain interesting variations on the theme. I remember thinking just before I fell asleep that at least it had not been a wasted day. Exhausting, but not wasted.
I didn't see Angel until late the following afternoon, and this time I did not meet him on his boat. He'd given me the address of a small cantina at the northeast end of the city, and told me it would be safe for me to meet him there. I had no difficulty in finding the place.
Over a tequila I told him of my previous day's trip and what I had discovered. He was satisfied that I had found the cove we had pinpointed on the chart, and agreed that he would take off the following morning to survey it from the water side.
"And about the truck,
amigo.
You say that it would never make it through the sand?"
I nodded. "Not within approximately a mile of the beach," I said. "And that is too far. We will have to manage to get some sort of a four-wheel-drive jeep. Do you think it could be arranged?"