Chapter Forty-Four
A little after midnight they burst out where the road had been blasted around a rocky ridge. Doc quickly pulled Dancy across the open gap and back into cover, but not before he’d seen the way the road switchbacked down to the lights of a town at the bottom of the ridge. Even as he headed down through the rough towards the next switchback, he was thinking it out.
They would be more exposed in the town, running down walled streets with no cover. Maybe it would be better to feint towards the town, then hightail off to the west. But then what? Even fine athletes like he and Dancy couldn’t run through the bush all night. And soon as the sun came up Martillo and company would be on them. It was only the darkness that allowed them to cut through the brush faster than the gang could track them. He headed towards the town.
Ten minutes later he heard the throb of the big Park Avenue below them, Martillo taking advantage of the highway to cut them off, pincer them between the car and the motorbikes. Doc slowed up as he approached the road, angling to get above the big car. He pushed Dancy down, crept up to the edge of the cut, and looked down at it. It loafed along without lights, like a drowsy black shark. Martillo leaned out the passenger window, holding a large pistol and looking up into the jungle. Morales sat on the roof holding an assault rifle. Doc could hear the motorcycles cresting the hill behind him. He stared down at Martillo, thinking longingly of the derringer in his pocket, knowing the shot would be impossible. He could wait until the car passed to make a dash across, but that would only delay him at each switchback. If they went end-around, plunging straight through the brush, they would just follow him down and probably have the car waiting at the bottom. He could double back, but that would just prolong the game and he’d be heading nowhere at all instead of just nowhere in particular. He started moving along the top of the cut, staying ahead of the Buick. He knew he would find something, and he did; a gully formed by strata, where the softer rock had broken up into small boulders. He moved up it quickly, stepping on each rock until found a big loose one. He listened a second, then jumped behind it and heaved. It moved slightly, then rocked to a stop. He motioned for Dancy to help him. She gave him an incredulous look, then simpered, “I’m not really into heavy rock, Conan.”
Cursing, Doc put everything he had into tumbling the boulder, then ran behind it, kicking it along as it rumbled down the gully and spilled out over the road. It only bounced once on the side of the cut, then thundered directly onto the road, rolled a little, and stopped. If it had hit the Buick, Doc’s troubles would have been reduced to manageable portions instantly, but it had landed twenty feet in front of the skulking car. The Buick braked convulsively, almost spilling Morales from the roof: he reacted by blindly spraying half a clip into the jungle. Doc lobbed a volleyball-sized rock in a high arc, narrowly missing the hood. A second, pineapple-sized fragment hit the roof, causing the bandit to scramble off, firing wildly uphill. The Buick slammed into reverse and screeched up the road backwards, stopping at the curve.
“Nice going, Alley Oop,” Dancy breathed at Doc’s elbow, “Now they know you’ve got nothing but sticks and stones.”
“They had to have known that anyway,” Doc growled, “Or things would have been over by now. I’m just trying to make them a little cautious about getting below us.”
“Well you did better than you know. Martillo adores that car. Like it was his mother or something.”
Doc took that in, nodding as if he’d known it all along. A small edge, but significant. The Buick swung to cover the straightaway, switching its headlights on, then blinking on the high beams. Martillo would try to keep them above the road while the motorcycles caught up, but without exposing his paint job to any further insult. Doc headed down to the next curve, rounding it without exposing them to the headlights, and continued down, dragging the girl with him. He didn’t like the way things were heading worth a damn. He glanced ahead, as if he could see the seductive lights of the town. Heading in like a damn moth to a flame, he thought. Being driven right into a trap. He had a sudden realization of a very fine and final kind: he was not going to get away from this, he would have to make a stand with his two bullets, seven on one.
Dancy was breathing a little hard as she pounded down through the underbrush, but her voice was steady as she said, “We’re going into the town?”
“Yep,” Doc snapped, “Hope you brought your make-up.”
“I couldn’t decide: ‘Evening of Sin’ or camouflage. I suppose you want to hail a cab or bus?”
“Nah, I’d just get bored waiting for a bus and Martillo would pounce on any taxi heading out of town at this time of night. Maybe we can steal something, but I doubt it’d outrun his V-8 Ford.”
“It’s a Buick,” she said. Then, “How about the cops?”
“There might be two of them, in a town that size. Probably both asleep. And they probably have little hammer decals on their dashboards and pay stubs from Armando’s Candy Shop in their pockets.”
“But they have guns.”
“That’s my fondest freakin’ dream, Dreamboat. But I’ll settle for a phone, a crowd and a back door. Maybe a brandy.”
Just as they reached the top of a cut a semi roared by beneath them, tearing into the curves with brakes moaning and unmuffled exhaust howling. Doc watched with a pang as it rounded the curve. It they could have jumped on it, they could be out of this, tearing off a piece on top of a load of sugar cane as they hauled ass down to Compostela. But there had been no way to jump on and if they flagged a truck down Martillo would hear it stop and have the Buick on its tail in minutes. He couldn’t hear the car, but he could locate the cycles, working closer to him. The boulder gambit had cost them a little time, but it had been worth it. The gang would have to pick up their trail at every highway crossing, never sure that they had not cut back or bolted off to the sides. Still, with the Buick backing them up like a gunship, and the motorcycles adding speed and flank to the men on foot behind them, the gang was pushing them inexorably down the highway.
Doc had one last misgiving about going into the town then they were there, sliding down a white-washed cement embankment painted with PRI slogans, flushing rats out of the trash heaped up against the bottom. Dancy brushed at her legs a few futile times before Doc caught her elbow and hustled her into the shadows of a palm-thatched roof supported by rickety poles. They stood almost touching, each curiously scanning the place over the other’s shoulder. Doc sized it up quickly. A pueblito, a farm town he didn’t recognize, which meant it was on a branch road up into the cane fields, not the main highway to Tepic. The road slid down and divided the town, which huddled against the hill. They were standing in a jumble of deserted thatch sheds, a farmer’s market by the principal highway crossing. Over nearer the road, the fruit and vegetable stands gave way to less flimsy shelters held together with metal signs advertising Pacifico and Modelo beer. Taco, birria, and seafood stands flanking a wide place in the road–the central business district. Across the road were a few more stands and buildings, cement walls flanking the mouths of three or four streets.
A battered Econoline van sat across the road, emitting a thin trickle of cumbia music as the driver lolled asleep at the wheel. The van was painted with pink and yellow stripes, the little CROC alligator proclaiming it a union taxi, and the legend “Sitio: Cruz de Pelotillehue”. Doc hustled Dancy across the highway to the taxi, pointing to the words and saying, “Well, here we are.”
She glanced at the dark, silent, streets, where not even dogs moved in the dust and trash. “Oh gee, and I forgot my camera,” she gushed, “And where would “here” be?”
“Cruz de Pelotillehue.”
She pointed at a sign by the road, “That says Cruz de Peatones.”
“It means Pedestrian Crossing,” Doc snapped as he pulled her across the highway towards the taxi.
“Well, they should make up their minds.”
Doc woke the driver by opening the side door and piling the two of them in. “Vamonos, amigo.”
The driver started the engine on reflex, then looked around, blinking. He said, “Let’s go where?”
Doc said, “Just start driving and I’ll get back to you.” He looked at Dancy.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, leaning over to wrench the rearview mirror around so she could fiddle with her hair. “I look like my scalp just exploded.”
Doc was thinking out loud as the van pulled away from the crossing and up a cobblestone street, at a loss for a move. “I can’t just tell him to drive around until he runs out of gas.”
“How about twice around the park while we neck in the back seat?”
“There’s got to be somewhere with a phone, maybe some guns.”
“How about the bus station?”
“That WAS the bus station.” He turned to the driver and said, “Take us anywhere that’s open. Somewhere I can make a phone call.”
The driver said, “Well there’s a Centro Nocturno with a phone.”
Doc said, “So let’s get there. Right away.”
“Centro Nocturno?” she asked, “Would that be a night club?”
“Technically, I guess,” Doc said, “What they are is whorehouses.
“Well, I can’t say you never take me anywhere.”