Like a loud cry of warning, the telephone rang.
“I still think it was kind of a dirty trick,” said Astrid pensively in the car driving north through the fringes of El Paso.
She had collected her promised due of dinner in a Juarez nightclub as a reward for her day’s activities. First, the contrived meeting with Jenny Acton, then the hoped-for, almost predictable ride into town with her and Mary Vaughan: people who came to Mexico generally did shopping or sight-seeing. The instant taxi back to the Casa de Flores, where the clerk who had seen her in conversation with the two did not demur at all at giving her the key to her room when she said that she had left her wallet there.
The identification of the proper suitcase was as simple as she had been led to believe, and she hadn’t even had to use the little lock-pick she had been given. The pottery birds were made to order, although it didn’t really matter where she put the stuff, just so long as Jenny Acton wouldn’t notice it at once. Then downstairs again, and the prepared envelope handed to the clerk with a winning smile: “I thought I’d explain to them in case we miss each other later on.”
Brian Beardsley turned his head now and looked at her in the dim dashboard glow. “They lost me my job,” he reminded her simply. “It’ll teach them a lesson, that’s all.”
“But she won’t really have to go to prison or anything, will she?” pursued Astrid.
She was younger than Mary Vaughan had thought, twenty, a college drop-out from North Carolina with a sense of values that shifted about like patterns in a kaleidoscope. As a beauty from the cradle on, she had been spared the tiny battles and skirmishings-for-position and despairing Saturday nights of most girls, and it might have been partly boredom that had led her to become involved with drugs in her freshman year. (She could easily uninvolve herself; she just hadn’t wanted to yet.) Drifting to New York in the company of her roommate, she had encountered the incredible man at her side, and come willingly with him to Santa Fe and then Juarez.
Astrid had not seen any articles about Americans in Mexican jails for the simple reason that she never read newspapers: why distress herself with smolderings in the Middle East, earthquakes, politics, the chroniclings of children with leukemia? Still, into the oddly contemplative silence of the car, she repeated, “She won’t really—”
“No problem,” lied Brian Beardsley with calm. “Her people have money. They can get her out with a telephone call.”
“Oh, good,” said Astrid, who believed herself to be thinking quite rationally but was not, “because even though she’s so skinny and all she seemed kind of nice. Well, I mean, you used to like her, didn’t you?”
She would be a lot skinnier before long, thought Beardsley, and viewed with pleasure the powerful Actons coming humbly to a Juarez jail with food packages and perhaps medicines for their incarcerated daughter. He said indifferently, “She’s not a bad kid.”
And in fact for a time he had found Jenny different and interesting, a combination of cynic and believer in Santa Claus. His friends had looked upon her in the light of a mascot, and there had been a certain pride in the conquest—and there was, he discovered to his real surprise, the Acton money, unsuspected because of Jenny’s casual and spent-looking wardrobe. He could do worse; he could do a whole lot worse.
The Actons had smiled reservedly on Jenny’s announcement, and even—a declaration of upper-echelon war?—produced champagne in crystal glasses. Two weeks to the day, his employer had told him stiffly that they could scarcely have a man under investigation in the firm. His rage had been such that he had not made any attempt to see Jenny again but begun to ponder, instead, how he could pay these people back.
. . . As he had done, with his telephone call to the police just before he and Astrid left their motel; it seemed a good idea, on several counts, to be back over the border when they descended. He began to watch for the signs that would direct him west and eventually to California, where he knew a way to disappear for a while in case the Actons should think to point an accusing finger. It would be a pity in a way to divest himself of Astrid, but she was much too memorable and he had a friend who would like her.
And here she was, starting off about Jenny again: “Poor kid . . .” He turned on her with an intensity that made her cower against the seat. “How many times do I have to tell you that she’ll be all right, for Christ’s sake?” He grew calmer, with effort. “If you want somebody to feel sorry for, try me. I’ve got a four-hour drive to Nogales, while she’s tucked up in her little bed . . .”
13
“Mary. I tried to call you a few minutes ago but your line was busy,” said Owen St. Ives. “Tell me, how is Jenny?”
Mary closed her eyes and took a long breath, holding it for a few seconds out of sheer relief. “Asleep, or rather out cold. I’ve been frantic.”
“But you saw my note.”
“No, and I looked, and I couldn’t—but I found . . .” This was near-incoherence; she must not babble. Into it, sharp as a flare of light, shot the memory of St. Ives in conversation with the chambermaid, the woman with the ready key. “. . . her doctor’s telephone number, in New York. I was going to call him,” said Mary. She steadied her fingers around the receiver, because she had arrived on safe ground. “Owen, what did Jenny have to drink?”
“A whiskey sour, which she must
