On my way back to the bridge, I stopped to buy my quota of duty-free liquor, one gallon, which I took half in tequila and half in gin. They sell good rum, too, but it's a taste I never acquired. The border whiskey isn't fit to drink. With my armload of bottles, I crossed the river again-it costs one cent going north-and told the man at immigration that I was a U.S. citizen, showed my liquid loot to customs and paid tax on it to the state of Texas, although why Texas should have the right to tax the private liquor of residents of other states has always been a mystery to me.
I came out of the building fairly certain that my activities were a matter of interest to no one-which was what I'd started out to determine in the first place. When I got back to my hotel room, the phone was ringing.
I closed the door, parked my load and went over to pick up the jangling instrument.
"Mr. Helm?" a hearty male voice asked. "This is Pat LeBaron, of Private Investigations, Incorporated. I just wanted to welcome you to our city and make sure you got our last report all right."
"Thank you, Mr. LeBaron," I said. "The report was waiting for me when I arrived."
"You're lucky to have made El Paso today," he said. "It looks as if they're in for some weather up in New Mexico and Colorado. We may even get a taste of it here." He paused. "I saw a dove flying south," he said.
"It will return north soon enough," I said, completing the password I'd been given by Mac. That kind of silly, secret-agent stuff always makes me feel self-conscious, and apparently it affected LeBaron the same way, because he was silent for a moment.
Then he said quickly, "Yes, that's very true, isn't it, Mr. Helm? Spring always comes, if you're around to see it. Is there anything we can do for you while you're in town? I don't want to sound as if I were trying to drum up business, but I thought you might be planning to visit a certain place in Juarez, maybe tonight, and… well, it's not a town you want to wander about alone after dark, if you know what I mean. I feel kind of responsible for bringing you here-"
"How responsible?" I asked.
He laughed. "Well, I'll tell you, we have a set fee for escort work, of course, by the day or hour, but you've been a good client. If you'll just buy me a steak at La Fiesta, I'll go up the street with you afterwards and make sure everything goes okay."
"Well-" I made a show of hesitating.
LeBaron said, quickly and understandingly, "Not that I don't think you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, haha, Mr. Helm, but I probably know Juarez a little better than you do. I'll pick you up at eight."
At eight on the dot, he called me on the house phone. I took the elevator down to the lobby. A short, sturdy, dark young man got off a sofa and came up to me. For all the width of his shoulders, he had a sleek, patent-leather gigolo look. He had dead-white skin and brown eyes. I'm a transplanted Scandinavian myself, and I have an instinctive mistrust of brown-eyed people, which I admit is perfectly ridiculous.
"Mr. Helm?" he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Pat LeBaron. I'm real pleased to meet you in person, after all the dealings we've had by mail and phone."
I murmured something appropriate, took his hand and gave him the little-finger signal we have, the one that confirms recognition and, at the same time, tells the other guy who's running the show. His eyes narrowed slightly at my immediate assertion of authority, but he gave me the proper response. We stood like that for a moment, taking stock.
No brotherly love flowed between us in that moment. It never does. It's only in the movies that people in the business are partners unto death, linked by iron bonds of friendship and loyalty. In real life, even if your assigned assistant is someone you might like a lot, you damn well don't let yourself. Why bother to get fond of a guy, when you may have to sacrifice him ruthlessly within the hour?
There seems to be a theory among modem business organizations that a man has got to love all his fellow workers in order to cooperate with them. Mac, thank God, has never made this mistake of confusing affection with efficiency. He knows he'd never get a bunch of happy, friendly guys to do the kind of work that we're doing, the way it's got to be done.
He pointed out to me once, in this regard, that the Three Musketeers and their pal D'Artagnan were no doubt a swell bunch of fellows, and that the relationship between them was a beautiful thing, but that when you studied the record you came to the sad conclusion that Louis the thirteenth would have got a lot more for his money, militarily speaking, by hiring four surly swordsmen who wouldn't give each other the time of day.
So I didn't worry when LeBaron and I didn't take to each other on sight. He was a trained man; I was a trained man, and we had a job to do. I could always find some other guy to get drunk with, afterwards.
"The car's out front," he said, releasing my hand. "If you don't mind, we'll walk from the bridge. Things sometimes happen to American cars parked in Juarez at night. It's bad enough leaving it on this side."
"Whatever you say, Mr. LeBaron," I said.
"Hell, call me Pat."
"Pat and Mart," I said, as we went outside. "It sounds like a comedy team."
He laughed heartily. "Hey, that's a good one, Mr. Helm… I mean, Matt. I'll have to remember to tell my wife."
He drove us to the bridge in a blue year-old Chevy sedan and parked it in a lot under one of the long sheds that keeps the sun in summertime from turning your car into an oven. Not that Juarez, or El Paso, either, is much of a place to go in summer. Last July, when I was in Juarez, the temperature was a hundred and twenty in the shade.
We both paid our two cents, crossed the bridge and walked through the carnival atmosphere of Avenida Juarez. The short block to the nightclub was darker, quieter and less reassuring. Going into La Fiesta, we were set upon by taxi drivers who wanted to take us elsewhere, now or later.
"Cab number five," one man kept shouting. "Hey, Mister! Cab number five!"