The Name of the Game is Death

but his friends called him Jimmy. He worked for Pan Am in El Paso, but lived in Juarez. He guided nights and weekends. Would I care to see the most excellent Mexican filigreed silver, handworked? I regretted that on Mexican filigreed handworked silver I was loaded. Jimmy was too old a hand at the game even to look disappointed at my turndown.

It was a twenty-minute ride from the motel to the bridge. On the way across it, Jimmy had a sparkling remark for everyone at the check-in stations—English for the US customs men, Spanish for the Mexican soldiers. No one bothered to look at me. With the number of trips Jimmy made over that bridge, he was better known than the president of the country. Either country.

The fabulous city of Ciudad Juarez was—as always— dirty, dusty, and squalid. Except when it rained, and then it was muddy beyond belief. Mexican authorities show a reluctance to put drains in their streets. God sends the rain and the mud, and God will take it away.

My mentor headed unerringly for a bar. 'My friend,' he told me, with an encompassing wave of his hand at the swarthy, shock-headed proprietor. 'He has the finest cantina in the old town.'

I looked around at the empty booths and flyspecked walls. 'He's not a relative?' I asked Jimmy.

'A cousin,' he admitted blandly. Since I so obviously knew the rules of the road, he sat down and ordered Canadian Club for us both without consulting my taste in the matter.

'Have a couple,' I told him. 'Take your time. I'm going to walk around to the Street of Girls.'

He slid from his stool immediately. 'I must go with you,' he protested. 'Or they will cheat you, amigo.'

'I'm the bashful type, Jaime Carlos,' I said. 'I'll go it alone. I'll pay your commission just like you'd get it from the house.' He eyed me doubtfully but returned to his Canadian Club.

Out on the street I side-doored it a couple of times to make sure lie wasn't following me. I couldn't see any sign of him, although probably half the Mexican population shared his silhouette. I hadn't been in Juarez in years, but I knew where I wanted to go. I turned up the third street on the left. The side street's macadam ended ten yards from the intersection, and the sidewalk vanished. I stepped down eight inches onto an earthen footpath.

I found the old woman's place with no trouble. I recognized the partly rusted-away iron fence around the scruffy, postage-stamp-sized front yard. The last time I was here, Ed Morris had been with me. Ed had been pushing up daisies for quite a while now. He'd never learned to keep his mouth shut in a strange bar.

I In old woman looked me over through a hole in the door panel when I knocked. I don't know what she thought she saw, but she opened the door. There was no conversation. She tested the bill I gave her under three different lights while I removed my shirt. Her fat hand then made a swooping movement somewhere inside her clothes, and the bill disappeared.

She hummed a tuneless monotone while she worked on the arm. I'd been afraid she might have to steam the old bandage free or use ether, but she cut it carefully in several places and worked it loose. She knew her business. It wasn't a painless operation, but considering the length of time the wound had gone unattended it went a damn sight easier than I expected.

I looked at the wound while she prepared a new bandage. A beauty contest queen might have hollered foul, but it was healing. The new bandage was smaller and less bulky, and so easier to hide. The woman never spoke while she applied it. The last time I'd been there she'd looked three years older than the Archangel Michael, and she'd found no Fountain of Youth in the meantime.

Outside again I headed back to the main street. I turned automatically for a look behind me as I stepped back up on the sidewalk. A dim street light away I saw a figure of Jimmy's general dimensions. I stepped into a doorway and gave the half-seen figure a chance to catch up, but nobody passed. It bothered me. I used my handkerchief to wipe the red dust of the earthen path from my shoes, then walked back to the cantina.

Jaime Cargos Torreon Garcia wasn't there.

His cousin, the bushy-haired proprietor, looked surprised to see me again so quickly. 'No sport?' he inquired.

'No sportsman,' I answered. 'Too old, I guess.'

'It comes to all of us,' he philosophized, but he crossed himself against the approach of the evil day.

Jimmy bustled in die front door. He, too, seemed surprised to see me. His well-managed expressions of sympathy for my supposed lack of success would have gone down better if I hadn't seen the thick coating of red dust on his shoes.

I tossed a bill down on the bar and hustled him out of there before he could speak. Whatever he knew, it was going to stay with him. Let the cousin believe my sudden exit to be the frustrated petulance of a sexual loser. Cousin Jimmy had acquired dangerous knowledge. Dangerous for him.

We got into his car while he kept shooting nervous little glances at me. If he had information, I was sure he didn't know what to do with it. He needed to put his head together with someone and plan a financial coup based on his knowledge of the gringo's movements. Jaime Carlos Torreon Garcia had the proper piratical instincts but a serious deficiency in his operating procedure. And he wasn't going to live long enough to improve it.

'I think I've had enough sightseeing,' I said, turning toward him. I drew the Woodsman, and his eyes popped like a frog's on a hot rock. 'Drive up to the checkout zone. Tell them 'no purchases' in Spanish. Nothing more. Let's hear you say it.

'No compra,' he said huskily.

'That's all you'll say,' I warned. 'Let's go.'

He had trouble getting that much out at the bridge, let alone anything else. We went through in a breeze. I repeated my warning before we reached the US inspection station. Two minutes later we were back in El Paso, and I felt better. Trouble in Mexico I didn't want. Authorities there have a nasty habit of tossing a gringo into a flea- infested calaboose and conveniently losing the key. Sometimes a man can buy his way out, but sometimes he can't.

That left Jimmy.

'Drive up one of these side streets,' I told him.

I le got the whole picture immediately on a big screen. Me nearly let the wheel go completely. 'S-Senor, don't do lines thing,' he stammered. 'I beg of you, don't do—'

'Left, Jimmy. Now.' The car lurched as he yanked convulsively at the wheel. The street lights were conveniently spaced. I estimated we were a half-mile from the motel, comfortable walking distance. 'Pull over,' I ordered. 'Between the lights.' He did so, babbling unintelligibly in a half-English, half-Spanish, high-pitched wail, 'Dump your pockets out on the seat,' I demanded. 'Be quick.'

It was dark, but I could see. About the third item he showered on the seat was a pocketknife of the type known along the border as 'Nacional.' Heavy bladed and in a solid casing, it's a lethal weapon. Jimmy was still turning out his pockets when I picked up the knife and opened it.

I don't know if he heard the snick of the opening blade or saw the movement of my arm, but he screamed hoarsely and went for the door handle. I grabbed his collar and jerked him back. He collapsed on the seat beside me, his high, keening voice yammering. I hit him in the belly to shut him up.

In the sudden silence I took his sweaty neck in my hand and found the carotid artery with my thumb. I opened the door on my side. A carotid can be messy. I didn't want to get splashed. I braced my heels against the floorboard and reached for him with the blade.

Then I hesitated.

In the quiet I seemed able to think—for the first time since I'd seen red dust clinging to this man's shoes. I'd been so upset at my own stupidity in letting the fool follow me that I hadn't thought the situation through.

Alive, he'd talk.

Later, if not sooner.

That I knew.

But dead, his body would talk, perhaps even more to the point. His cousin expected him back with a tale of where Jimmy had followed the turista and what profit might be wrung from it. If he didn't come back, the cousin would eventually call the police. They'd have little trouble tracing Jimmy to the agency. I had had the motel call the agency. And the motel would furnish the police with a description of me.

And of the Ford.

It would make me too easy to find.