"So now we know," I said, "why Rocko reacted the way he did to having somebody pry that little door open and take that tank of gas. He knew it had to be taken by somebody who knew what was hidden in it. The first guess would be Sessions. So he would go looking for him."

Meyer nodded. "Let"s say he didn"t find him. Sessions was found dead on the morning of the seventh. He could have stolen it, emptied it, hidden the stuff away, and died of an overdose."

"Or once he found him, maybe he was satisfied Carl knew nothing about it. And it would be fair to a.s.sume Rocko had enough left on hand to stick much too much into Sessions."

Meyer thought that over. Then he shook his head. "I can"t buy that, Travis. I can"t buy the idea that Rocko would kill anybody. Not then. Not at that time. Maybe now. Maybe he has been coming closer and closer. I think he gave it a lot of thought after he discovered a hiding place the border search had overlooked on the dry run. He knew that if he tried to cross with the whole group, five minutes of interrogation would crack any one of the other four, and the five of them would be busted. So they camped out, in wild areas. He knew that alone he could make it. Maybe he had plans of marketing it at ten times his cost, hiding the cash in the same place, crossing back with it, and running another batch over again, for the big final score. I think he must have thought of the obvious way out. Chunk them on the head and bury them out in the wastelands. It"s so completely efficient, he had to think about it. And if he didn"t do it, it is because he couldn"t bring himself to do it."

"Because he is such a nice guy."

"Because he decided they would destroy themselves if he nudged them in the right direction. And check his track record so far. Carl and Bix are gone. We don"t know about Minda McLeen. We know he"s batting five hundred. It could be seven fifty."

"So who stole the little gas tank, Meyer?"

"You force me to guess? I would say that Carl Sessions talked about the Americano with a fortune in junk in the bottled gas tank, and I would guess that his addiction would put him into contact with some very rough local types, and it would be natural for them to check it out. And easy enough. So then Rocko would be compelled to pick up another stake, so he could go make another buy, hide it in another tank, and take it across alone. So he went cruising, and he let Bruce Bundy pick him up, but it didn"t work out the way he planned it. When he saw he wasn"t going to con any cash out of Bundy, he went cruising again, and came up with Minda"s father, Wally McLeen. So he would have heard by then that Bix and Minda were guests of Eva Vitrier."

We were both silent, trying to appraise the possibilities. I said, "Remember? The girls quarreled. Minda left for Mexico Gity. So Rocko couldn"t contact her. a.s.sume that when he took the Bundy car, he went right to the Vitrier place in La Colonia. And the next thing we know, it"s Sunday afternoon and he and Bix and the yellow car are way the h.e.l.l up in those mountains."

"It would be nice to talk to Eva Vitrier," Meyer said.

"It would indeed. A total recluse, using a h.e.l.l of a lot of money to buy total privacy, to build big walls. And she"s gone. Try and find out where."

"Somebody could get into her place and look around."

"Like me?"

"Well, any large, curious, agile fellow, let"s say."

"And I get slapped into a cell out in that Zimatlan jail."

Meyer shrugged. "I"ll be there every visitors" day. Speaking of jail, what about our friend in there?"

"You"re in the best position to decide."

"I just don"t know. He seems docile. I might take the risk if I had to take the blame, too. But if I make a bad guess, then Enelio is in trouble. It"s just a hunch, my friend. I sense a kind of animal wildness, a potential for unpredictability. Talking to him, even when he wept, was like sitting in a zoo. I didn"t want to make any sudden motions. I would have felt better with bars between us."

"So, I go with your instinct, Meyer. Your average is too good. We can get in touch with Enelio and find out if he wants us to take the package back to the store."

We got up. Meyer went through the door first. The blanket was thrown back. The bathroom door was closed. I could hear water running. No reason at all why I shouldn"t accept that obvious conclusion, that Nesta had gotten up, and gone into the bathroom. I did accept it, and in a sudden surge of adrenaline, rejected it a microsecond later, rejected it as I was in motion, going through the doorway. To reverse motion meant vulnerable stasis for too long an instant, so I dived forward, and just as my palms. .h.i.t Meyer in the middle of the back, knocking him onto and over the nearest double bed, something chunked very solidly and painfully into the meat of my back, just under the right shoulder blade. I used the leverage of Meyer"s solidity to thrust myself to the right, and the momentum took me across the tile floor, scrabbling on all fours for balance, and simultaneously trying to turn so I would be facing the doorway when I came back up. I made it and saw Nesta going by the windows. He was out on the porch and moving fast.

I caught him on the road, about seventy yards up the hill. He was in no shape for uphill running. He turned, gasping and gagging, and swung some kind of dark club at my head so off balance I had time to step back and let it go by. It carried him halfway around. So, in that tiny interval of time when he was almost motionless, trying to reverse direction, I hit him a very nice right hand shot right on the point of the shoulder. It is that ancient and effective torture of schoolyards and playgrounds. The nerves run over the bone of the arm socket right at that point. He dropped the weapon. Something inside a sock. It made a metallic thud. His arm hung slack, dead and useless and he cupped his shoulder in his big left hand and looked at me with the twisted face of a child fighting tears, chest heaving from the effort of running.

"Naughty, naughty!" I said and reached out quickly, caught the end of his nose between thumb and the bent knuckle of the forefinger, and gave a long hard pull downhill, stepping aside and releasing him. He ran a half dozen jolting steps and stopped, his back toward me. I picked up the improvised weapon and gave him a gentle push. It got him in motion and he walked the rest of the way to the cottage, up onto the porch, and into the room, not looking at Meyer as he pa.s.sed him. Meyer stood outside the door, fingers laced across the nape of his neck, grimacing as he turned his big head from side to side.

"Whiplash, maybe," he said.

"Officer, he stopped dead right in front. of me." I spread the opening of the dark sock which belonged to Meyer and peered down into it and said, "Tsk tsk tsk! Little present for you."

He took it, reached down into it, and pulled out his st.u.r.dy little travel alarm. St.u.r.dy no longer. The case had burst open and there were a lot of little loose parts down in the toe of the sock.

He dumped them out on the metal top of the porch table, quite sadly. "McGee, I have to a.s.sume you reacted first. It will never cease to make me feel insecure, the way you do that. What alerted you, d.a.m.n-it?"

"I haven"t any idea. Something subliminal. Something smelled or heard or seen, on an unconscious level."

"And if I were a more primitive organism, I could perform such feats also?"

"Flattery won"t help."

We went in. Nesta sat on the foot of Meyer"s bed. His right arm was cradled in his lap and he was looking down at it, slowly flexing the fingers.

"They"ll be interested in knowing you like to pop people on the skull," I said to him.

He did not raise his eyes. "The law likes to get cases off the books. It takes the heat off them. I thought I better get going before I got elected," he said.

"You"re going back inside."

"So?" he said in a toneless voice.

"I can tell them about your little try here, or I can keep it between us."

It brought a quick and wary glance before the eyes dropped again. "What"ll it take?" he asked.

"Something important that you maybe left out of your confession hour with Meyer. We think there"s a good chance Rockland could have set Bix up to kill herself trying to drive down the mountain alone at dusk."

"I didn"t even know about that until just the other day, when Mike and Della told me about it. I didn"t even know she was dead."

"How did you feel when you heard it?"

"I didn"t feel much of anything. A long time ago she was something else. That was one pretty girl and that was one h.e.l.l of a body. I was willing to trade off Minda for the chance to start balling her. But it was like nothing. Like one of those plastic things in a store window. All you had to do was lead her into the bushes or take her into the camper and she"d lay down on her back. Then a long time later when she"d lost a lot of her looks, and n.o.body was hacking her any more, I sort of got to like taking care of her. I don"t know why. Making her look a little better, making her eat, making her walk around. But she was gone anyway. She was dead before she was dead. Even pot took her too far out of her tree. When Carl turned her on with horse it was too late to make any difference one way or another. What did I feel? Nothing, I guess. Nothing at all."

"Would Rockland want her dead?"

"Why would he? She didn"t know who the h.e.l.l she was or where she was or who we were. Her memory was shot. The way she was just... around, like a lump, used to get on Rocko"s nerves. He used to try to get some kind of rise out of her. One time... I don"t know where it was, I think maybe someplace south of Puebla, outside one of those little towns, some Mexicans came around in the evening, mean-looking b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in those white pajama suits and straw hats, one with a shiny new rifle, and the others with machetes, a dozen I guess. They had eyes for Bix. So Rocko started laughing and grabbed her by the wrist and grabbed a blanket and took her over into the cornfield and peddled her a.s.s for two pesos a trick, and came back with her and told me the banker"s daughter had earned herself thirty-two pesos. He gave me the money and told me to buy her some penicillin in the next town. Why would he kill her? She was less than nothing. Good Christ, by then she looked forty years old."

"When you left you were giving up your share of the Los Angeles loot?"

"I didn"t even think about it, man. I was hallucinating bad. I could shut my eyes and feel my hands melting and dripping off my wrists. Rats were running around under my clothes, eating me. Hairy red spiders as big as airdales kept jumping out and jumping back in any direction I tried to walk. And Rocko had sicked them on me and he was making my hands melt, and I just had to get the h.e.l.l out of there. And I did. I wish I could help you with something. But I don"t know anything I didn"t already tell."

"What would you have done if you"d nailed me with that clock when I came in the door?"

"Hit him next. Take your money and your car keys and get onto one ninety and head southwest, because they"d expect me to head for Mexico City. My best bet would be to try to get to Vera Cruz and stow away aboard some crock heading across the Gulf."

"And if you hit us hard enough to kill?"

"I start running. It looks like I killed the others, so what difference would it make?"

"It might make a little difference to you," Meyer said softly.

"To me? Well... yes. A little difference, I guess. But not a h.e.l.l of a lot."

I sat on the bed and phoned Enelio. I said, "We don"t want to take any chances with this one. He got cute, and he"ll get cute again."

Enelio said that Chief Alberto Tielma of the Zimatlan jail would give me a nice official receipt for him. He asked me if we got anything out of Nesta, and I said we got a history of the little Mexican hayride those five took that would gag a weasel, but nothing that helped with the primary problem of how come the girl drove off the mountain.

"So," he said, "when something pozzles me, I find out anything I can find out, and I still see no reason under G.o.d for anybody to drive a camper going like h.e.l.l down into that lousy country down there, except somebody wants to get rid of a camper, which is a large object. If, G.o.d forbid, I wanted to get rid of a large object on wheels, I mean without selling it, which is always possible, no matter what kind of papers you have on it, maybe I would take it down that way."

"So you"d consider going on another expedition with Meyer and McGee?"

"My trouble is I am impulsive. Also I never make the same mistake once. I think... Yes, if it"s okay with you, I pick you up maybe at the Marques tomorrow afternoon?"

It was agreed. We toted Nesta back to jail. He had the contrived indifference of the born loser. He had not a word to say all the way.

Fifteen.

MEYER AND I had just finished a late Wednesday lunch on the veranda of the Marques del Valle when Enelio Fuentes arrived, by prearrangement, in the jeep. As we went out the Mitla road, Meyer and I, taking turns yelling against the wind, filled Enelio in on the little talk with Nesta, and the subsequent problem of talking him out of leaving.

I said that after due deliberation, and weighing of all factors, I had told the police chief, with gestures, about Nesta"s antisocial behavior. I had finked on him.

"Hey, how can an animal like that one," Enelio roared, "carve that strong glorious wooden head? How is it possible?"

"All great artists lead placid, humble, gentle lives," Meyer hollered. "They are all celibates and never drunk or violent. You know. Like your own Diego Rivera was."

Grinning, Enelio took his right hand off the wheel and made that unique and expressive Mexican gesture of consternation, like trying to shake water from the fingertips.

The road he was looking for began about twenty miles beyond Mitla. It was a dirt road that, about four miles from the main road, went through a village, and then continued on, dropping perhaps a thousand feet before reaching dry stony flats. Sometimes he could get up to twenty miles an hour before braking, putting it in low, and lurching through rain gulleys and across a moonscape of potholes. Then the road became straighter and smoother, and he was able to make good time. A long high dust plume was kicked up behind us in the windless hot afternoon.

He slowed and stopped and we got out. He took binoculars out of a case and looked west. He said, "Yes, the smaller road out of Ocotlan runs down through those ridges. When I was small we hunted rabbits over there. But not over here. This is the burned land. Sand, rock, cactus. Only by the dry rivers are trees. See. Deep roots. They drink deep only after the rains. You know, it is maybe a little bit too much, those Texas schoolteachers just being there at the right time and looking way over here and just happening to see what she thinks was the camper, and he thinks was not."

"But the dust would draw your attention," Meyer said.

"And, this," I explained, "is the kind of coincidence-if she did see it that is not a coincidence at all. Because the world is jammed with people, and if you talk to enough of them, you usually find that the unseen things were seen by someone. And if they are a little out of the ordinary, like the vehicle she saw going too fast, they stick to the edge of memory. Had it been going slower, she would never have examined it so carefully through the gla.s.ses, and she would have forgotten it by the next day. She claimed she saw blue, and saw glintings that could have been the aluminum camper body. But it is a h.e.l.l of a way over there."

"One h.e.l.l of a way indeed. And the road goes nowhere," said Enelio. "So what went down it had to come back or still be somewhat ahead. And the wind blows the sand and dust so there are no tracks."

The road dwindled away to nothing in about six more miles. Enelio told us to hang on. He turned sharply right and soon I realized what he was going to do. He made a big circle around the rocky landscape. It had to be an irregular circle due to the contour. A couple of times he had to back and shorten the diameter of the circle.

When we were two thirds of the way around I tapped Enelio on the shoulder and pointed ahead and to our left, inside the arc of the circle. He drove over and stopped and we got out again. It was a clear and distinct tire track in the lee of an outcropping of red-brown rock. It had run through some kind of crumbled clay, and though some sand had blown into it, it was unmistakable.

Enelio sat on his heels and crumbled the claylike substance between his fingers. "Animalitos. d.a.m.n, we call them hormigas. Some are red. They bite. They make little hills."

"Ants?"

"Yes! The tire went through the middle of this little one and along the edge of this big one. They brought up the dirt from underneath the sand; and it is moist almost."

He stood up and shaded his eyes. "Back there is the last of the road. So draw a line from there to these tracks..." We turned and looked, and Meyer suggested we fan out a little and walk it, looking for any clue, not taking any route a vehicle could not take.

After a hundred yards my route ended in impossibility. I backtracked and cut over to the other side, beyond Meyer. Then I came to a place where the earth dropped away. It was a deep meandering crack, perhaps twenty feet across and fifty feet deep, with round boulders and brush at the bottom of it. Enelio shouted. We hurried along the brink to where he stood. He was at the edge of a semicircular bite looking down at where the landslide had choked the bottom of the dry wash. There was an uncommon amount of loose brush on top of the barrier.

Enelio widened his nostrils and sniffed the breeze. He crossed himself and said, "Death." I caught it then, too-the sweet, rotten, sticky smell of decaying meat.

We stumbled and slid down the slant of sandy soil. We pulled the brush away, exposing the upper half of the rear of the camper. It was nose down into the stones, the landslide drifted high around it. The smell was sickeningly strong.

"The McLeen girl?" Meyer asked in church tones.

"Somebody our boy Rocko took a dislike to," I said.

"You get the dirt off the door while I go get something I know about," Enelio said. He went plunging up the loose slope and disappeared. I started digging the door out with my cupped palms, and with Meyer helping me. We heard the sound of the jeep overhead. It stopped. After a few minutes Enelio came sliding back down. He had a thin piece of rag tied around his head so that it came across his upper lip. He had another piece for each of us. The center position that came across the lip was damp with raw gasoline.

"One time when we had to go into the mountains after bodies from a plane crash, one of the medical people taught me this thing. Gasoline numbs the smelling. It overpowers everything. There was one trouble. For nearly a year afterward, each time I would smell gasoline, I would start gagging. Also it would a burn on the lip. But it is better than the only other choice, eh?"

The camper body was out of line and the door was jammed. But it was on such a steep angle I could stand on the aluminum beside the door and bend over and take hold of the handle. I yanked it open and let it fall back. There was enough reflected sunlight so that we could see quite clearly into the dark interior. Enelio grunted, spun, jumped down and trotted twenty feet along the bottom of the wash, then bent over and vomited explosively.

"You can move away too," I told Meyer. "I want to make sure."

"I should help you."

"Get going."

"Thanks, Travis."

I took a deep breath and clambered down into the camper. He had been wired up with considerable loving care. Extension cord wire. Spread eagled, on his back on the narrow floor, head down, feet up toward the doorway. Wire snugly knotted to each wrist and ankle and angling off to whatever was st.u.r.dy enough and handy enough. Dead mouth crammed with something and taped in place. Bulky roll of the sleeping bag under his back, to keep him arched. I tried not to look too closely at him. I found his trousers against the bulkhead up front. The wallet was in the hip pocket. I turned the identification toward the bright light that streamed down, and got my verification. I put the wallet in my pocket and climbed carefully up to where I could hoist myself up and out with one final effort. Then I took that long close look at him, and left in a hurry. I went up that slope like a giant jackrabbit and hit a pretty good stride as I pa.s.sed the jeep. I stripped the gasoline rag off and dropped it as I ran. I stopped and faced into what little breeze there was and started hyperventilating.

The jeep stopped behind me. Over the motor noise I said, "Make no jokes."

"There is no intention, senor," Enelio said.

I knew they would not want to touch the wallet. I turned and held it so they could read the driver"s license through the yellowed plastic.

"Rockland!" Meyer said loudly. "Rockland?"

"The description matches what... what"s left."

"Was he shot, or what?" Meyer asked.

"I don"t think the question is material. I do not know everything that was done to him. But I think he was tapped on the head and then stripped, spread and wired in place and gagged. Then various things were done to him. The most impressive, perhaps, being a knife line drawn across the belly, then down the tops of the thighs, then across the thighs about six inches above the knees. Then the entire area thus outlined was carefully flayed, skinned like a grouper. I would guess that he was not blinded until a bit later on."

"I would be very grateful if you would not continue this," Enelio said.

"I am glad to stop right here."

I climbed in by going over the back of the jeep, as I sensed they did not want me too close. Meyer said, "Not even Rockland should be..."

"Are you sure of that?" I asked.