mustache.”
“Twice,” I said. “She also has a poodle.”
The woman moved slowly, putting the dog down, leading it on its leash. She had just turned the corner away from the elevator, out of sight, when the other elevator’s light hit our floor and the door opened, and there was one of the most astoundingly beautiful women I have ever seen.
She was probably five seven, a little over a hundred pounds, well built, face like an angel, large black eyes and soft black hair that flowed to the middle of her back. She wore a short blue dress and matching high heels. Her legs were fashioned from a dream. She looked very elegant.
The guys on either side of her were well dressed, but not so elegant. They would have looked the same in thousand-dollar suits or tablecloths. They looked about as casual as meat gravy stains on a white shirt.
As they stepped out of the elevator, Jim Bob said something pleasant in Spanish, stepped aside. As they passed, the guard on the left eyed Jim Bob. Brett took hold of her skirt, pulled it up and scratched her leg, causing the skirt to ride almost to her hip.
The guy looked.
Jim Bob sapped him. It was a good lick. The guy stumbled, Jim Bob leaped on him, started beating him like a hamburger steak.
The other guy was on the move now, his hand going inside his coat. Leonard grabbed that hand with his left, poked the man in the eyes with his right. The big bastard grunted, his hand came out of his coat, he tried to reach for his face, but Leonard had that hand. Leonard twisted slightly, and the dude flipped, hit the floor hard, banging the side of his head. I kicked the poor bastard hard as I could. He didn’t go out, but he didn’t act as if he was in any hurry to get up.
Leonard bent down over him and went to work with the sap. It sounded like a carpenter driving a pesky nail. Even after I thought the guy was out, I heard the sap ring a half dozen more times.
Brett had wrestled the woman to the floor and was trying to push the chloroform-filled towel over her face, but no luck. The woman started to scream.
Jim Bob pulled Brett off the mistress, brought his palm down swift, but not too hard on the woman’s forehead, just above the eyebrow at the left corner.
She went out.
I was standing, panting. The place stank of chloroform. I had moved away from the elevator wall, and now I could see down the hall. The woman with the poodle had stopped, listening to those screams.
Brett stepped into the hallway. “A bug. A spider. It frightened me.”
The woman looked puzzled.
Jim Bob stepped into view, he spoke Spanish. The woman grinned, said something in Spanish. She and her dog went on down the hallway.
“What did you say?” Brett asked.
“Just what you did. I told her you saw a spider.”
“What did she say?”
“What a sissy. Words to that effect.”
“I’m not sure I like that.”
When the old woman was out of sight, Leonard removed the guns from the bodyguards, got one of the guys by the leg and started dragging him down the corridor toward Jim Bob’s room. Jim Bob got the other guard by the leg, and I picked up the woman. She was as small as a child.
I looked down at her. A small purple bruise was forming at the corner of her eye. She was so gorgeous I felt as if her beauty were sucking out my soul. I could see why Juan Miguel would leave his wife. It’s a hard thing to admit beauty alone can make you crazy, but a woman like this, good God, she could make you crazy.
“When we get her to the room,” Brett said, “maybe you could tuck her in, give her a bottle.”
I made a snorting sound. “I hope you’re not jealous of someone we just tried to chloroform and hit on the head.”
“I’m jealous of someone who looks like a magazine cover, that’s what I’m jealous of,” Brett said.
Jim Bob knocked, Ferdinand opened the door. Jim Bob and Leonard dragged the guards inside. I carried the woman and put her on the bed. She had begun to stir. She opened her eyes. Brett, smiling, leaned forward and pushed the chloroform-filled towel over her nose. The woman struggled briefly, went out.
Brett pulled the towel away.
“Tie up and gag these mooses,” Jim Bob said. “And quick before they wake up. Tie her up too, and pull her dress down. I don’t need to see that. I like it, but I don’t need to see it. I better not see it. Damn, those panties are sheer…”
“We get the picture,” Brett said.
31
We bound them and gagged them with strips of sheets. We poured the chloroform down the sink, put the towel in the tub. The air was still fairly stout with it. We opened a window. We turned on the TV set, sat the bodyguards on the floor with their backs against the bed.
We found a Spanish game show. Jim Bob patted them on the head and we left out of there, the woman in the duffel bag, slung over Leonard’s shoulder.
We rode the elevator down. As Jim Bob and Brett stopped at the desk with our keys, prepared to check us out, Leonard and I walked outside to the curb. There was a black van there. Cesar got out of it, nodded at us. He opened the side of the van. Leonard put the duffel bag on the seat, closed the door.
“We will see you in Playa del Carmen in a while,” Cesar said. “We must drive the whole way. Where is Jim Bob?”
“Coming,” Leonard said.
Jim Bob and Brett came out. Jim Bob got in the van. Before he closed the door I looked at the duffel bag on the seat. “She’s moving,” I said.
Jim Bob reached inside his coat, pulled out the blackjack. With a motion a ballet dancer would have appreciated, he shifted in his seat and smacked the bag where the head was. The bag quit moving.
“Goddamn, Jim Bob,” I said. “It’s not her we want to hurt.”
“You want I should take her to a bullfight?” Jim Bob said. “A bump on her head is better than us in a Mexican jail. You should know.”
I closed the door, Cesar drove them away.
We had a slightly better ride to the airport than from it. I was able to get out of the taxi without feeling faint. Our life had only been in danger maybe half a dozen times.
We caught our flight out without incident, arrived that night in Cancun, took our rental back to Playa del Carmen. We didn’t have reservations, but we got our same hotel without trouble. Leonard got a room. Brett and I shared a room.
That night, when she finished brushing her teeth, Brett said, “Do you think that woman is beautiful?”
I was stepping out of the shower. “Ravishing,” I said.
“She was very pretty.”
“Ravishing.”
“Don’t overdo it if you want Mr. Happy to actually be happy tonight.”
“But with that knot on her head from the blackjack, not so beautiful. And you know what? Jim Bob may have hit her again. Maybe a lot of times. She could be real ugly by now.”
“That’s better. And dry under your balls. I hate it when they’re sticky on my ass.”
“You say the most exciting things,” I said.
“Do you know what they’re planning to do?”
“About as much as you do. They’ll drive her to Cesar’s, taking their time. Maybe stop along the way a couple of nights. Tomorrow, a couple of us go to see the man, tell him we have her, and then we lay the trap.”
Brett had slipped out of her clothes, and I was enjoying watching her pull on a nightie with no underwear. No
