In Cold Pursuit
If it was me, I wouldn’t want to take a chance. Matter of fact—” he advanced on the left front tire, squinted, kicked, shook his head “—you got a worse problem there. See that crack?”Fortunately, from experience and the advice of male friends, Mary knew this approach, used mainly when there were only women in a car although a man wearing coat and tie in the summer could also be considered fair game. She said, “Thank you, I’ll have them both taken care of just as soon as I get back to Santa Fe,” and observed him taking angry swipes at his hair with a comb as, presently, she pulled away.
There was a new bridge by which to enter Juarez, and she got briefly lost looking for it. Jenny came to life and was told out of Mary’s slender store of Spanish that ropas meant clothing and cerveza, beer; she figured out licores by herself. She was astonished at the swarm of tiny tumble-down adobe houses visible on the slope of a hill even before they crossed the border, and the number of people plodding patiently along the foot-walks on the bridge. “Why are there so many of them?”
“Wages are a lot higher in El Paso.”
“But some of them are going the other way. Could they smuggle grass?”
Hardly, said Mary, although she had heard of parrots being introduced illegally into the United States by that means. Significant amounts of marijuana came in by planes flying too low for radar observation and making lightning drops in deserted areas. She was having to concentrate on the traffic now, because of the usual bottleneck at Immigration even though obvious tourists were waved through for the price of fifteen cents. She noted automatically that in this gaggle there were a number of blue cars.
Jenny asked curiously, “Can you get out just as easily?”
“Well, not quite.” Mary fended off an orange Maverick which was trying to usurp her right of way and leave her stranded while other bumper-to-bumper cars followed it. “If you’ve spent more than twenty-four hours in Mexico and have luggage, they take a look at it, even though they rely mostly on informers for their real catches. I’ve never been subjected to an intensive search, but I know people who have.”
These questions arose out of natural curiosity about a foreign country, she thought, but for some reason it seemed wise to add, “I wouldn’t care to get mixed up with the Mexican authorities in any way. They feel strongly about all kinds of things.”
Jenny gazed straight ahead behind her concealing glasses. “I’ve heard about their jails,” she said.
The Casa de Flores justified its name; there seemed to be more flowers, in round and square and oblong beds, than clipped green grass surrounding the cobbled forecourt with Moorish arches and a lot of dark-tinted plate glass. The distances everywhere were silvered by sprinklers and fountains.
Jenny, who seemed to have been expecting something quite different, was visibly impressed. In the huge ornately furnished lobby, Spanish-tiled and almost stumblingly dark to eyes just out of the sunlight, Mary was not so sure. A desk clerk with luxuriant sideburns studied her with admiration just short of a wink, let his gaze roam over Jenny with open astonishment, and continued what was clearly a personal telephone call before hanging up, pushing a registration form across the counter, and presently snapping his fingers at a bellboy. Fast Spanish was used, which had an excluding air.
The night before, Mary had asked for and been blandly assured of a room near the pool. She ought to have realized that in hotel parlance “near” was a very flexible word. The fiftyish bellboy conducted them out of the lobby, under one of the arches, up two wide shallow half-flights of stairs, and along a broad and occasionally alcoved corridor of sepulchral chill: “We must be a third of the way home,” muttered Jenny over her shoulder. He stopped at one of the planked and pointed doors, produced a key large and heavy enough to serve as a weapon, opened the door with a flourish.
But not before another door, two down and at the end of the corridor, had come snapping open—at the bellboy’s burdened tread, the tap of Mary’s heels, the slap of Jenny’s sandals?—and a man’s head emerged. There was something enormously vigilant about this simple action. A cart laden with used plates and glasses and silver reposed outside, which at close to four o’clock would seem to indicate that the occupants were extremely late lunchers or the Casa de Flores was leisurely about cleaning up after room service.
The edge of Mary’s vision saw the bellboy lift a semaphoring hand in what was unmistakably a gesture of reassurance. The head down the corridor withdrew itself and the door closed, and she was looking into a room with twin beds, a bureau and desk of carved dark wood, two lamps with enormous shades, two chairs upholstered in turquoise and gold, two paintings of Inquisition-like grimness.
The bellboy said something commanding in Spanish and flung open doors first on a closet and then a bathroom with a long sweep of mirror over a marble counter with inset sink and a great deal of ornamental tile. He gazed expectantly.
“It’s very nice,” said Mary. “Muy—” but the proper word escaped her, as did the framing of any circumspect query about that apparition down the corridor. Something about the impassive dark eyes, combined with the signal, told her that she wouldn’t have learned anything anyway. She tipped the bellboy, asked for ice, realized that she should have reversed this procedure, turned back into the room to find Jenny gazing at her with respect. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
“I don’t, beyond about twenty-five words. I keep meaning to take a course, but they have it while I’m having my dinner so one of us will have to reschedule.” Now that they were actually here and established, with a suggestion of sufferance in spite of the steep