The Handle Page 12

  He got the bed up, with great difficulty, and then he crouched in darkness, leaning against the walls at this back and right side, his fingers clutching the springs. He must now let the bed fall open. He must not lose consciousness so much that he should lose his balance and let the bed and himself crash down and out into plain sight.

  He knew Baron would go back within the hour to throw the two bodies overboard, and he knew immediately afterward Baron would begin the search. He could only hope Baron would not find him here and would believe Grofield had gone overboard.

  But time passed, and there was no sound of Baron searching. Being in and out of awareness so much, it was hard for Grofield to tell how much time had passed, and so he kept believing it had been less than an hour, it must have been less than an hour or Baron would have begun his search by now.

  He believed this as five hours went by, then hours. The bleeding had stopped, the blood had caked and dried over the wound. For a while he shook with chills, a terrible cold he feared was the cold of death, and then for another while he ran with sweat and his face was fiery hot with fever. And still, in his lucid moments, he believed that less than an hour had transpired since he had closed himself away in this vertical coffin.

  After fifteen hours he gave up. His stiff fingers loosened on the bed springs, his tense body relaxed, and he crashed forward, the bed opening and landing hard on its retractable legs, Grofield bouncing on the springs and then lying there sprawled out with his face against the springs.

  Midday sunlight poured through the windows, shining on him. He was exposed, vulnerable, open to his enemy, but he was no longer aware of it. He had passed out again.

  8

  At noon on Sunday Baron came to land, not because he had gone as far as he wanted but because the boat ran out of fuel. He had been fleeing south for nearly fourteen hours, and the scrubby rocky beach off to his right was Mexico, about two hundred miles south of the border, about twenty miles south of the village of Pesca.

  He beached the boat, then went below in search of food. He hadn't eaten since last night, hadn't slept since the night before.

  He noticed nothing wrong in the main cabin. Fatigue was part of the explanation, plus relief at having escaped once again, plus impatience to be off and moving.

  There was little to eat on board. A box of Ritz crackers, some liquor and soft drinks, some cheese spread and a few cans of soup. Baron made himself a quick meal, tomato soup and crackers and cheese and some bourbon straight from the bottle, and then he went back on deck for a look around.

  The area was deserted, as far as the eye could see. The land sloped upward gradually from the sea, then levelled out toward the distant horizon, and everywhere Baron could see it was the same; tan dry grassless earth, littered with small rocks and pocked with hardy clumps of desert greenery. The shallow water all around the boat was scattered with boulders.

  This was some of the wildest country Baron had ever seen. Gazing at it from the deck of the boat, he was filled with misgivings. If only the fuel had lasted a hundred miles longer, enough to get him to Tampico, to civilization.

  All right, that wasn't important. He was free of the island, that was enough. Now there was nothing for it but to cross this semidesert until he found a road, a town, any sign of human habitation. From there on everything would be all right, everything would be fine.

  He gathered up the suitcases, full of his worldly possessions, and went over the side. He waded to shore, holding the suitcases high because he didn't know if they were waterproof or not, and when he reached dry land he set the suitcases down and sat awhile on a boulder to collect his breath and his thoughts.

  He felt naked, without Steuber at his side. Steuber had been with him for a quarter of a century; it seemed impossible that Steuber now was dead. As though he and Steuber had somehow become Siamese twins, and it wasn't possible for the one to be alive without the other one still living.

  But that was nonsense. Self-interest, that was paramount. Steuber had merely been an adjunct, a crutch, an assistance in the problem of self-preservation. The problem still remained, without Steuber, and he could still face and solve it, without Steuber.

  He got to his feet, picked up the suitcases, and started walking.

  He walked west, due west, toward the sun. The suitcases, which had at first seemed so light, quickly became heavy, forcing him to make frequent stops for rest. He had brought the bourbon bottle along and used it sparingly to rinse out his mouth when it became too dry, but he soon saw he wouldn't be able to survive too long without water.

  There had to be a road, somewhere. He didn't know Mexico very well, but he was under the impression there were plenty of north-south roads, coming down from the border toward Mexico City. He was surprised there wasn't one skirting the shore, a scenic route for tourists who liked to look at the ocean.

  Walking was not too easy. From time to time he stumbled on the stones — the ground was littered everywhere with stones — and then the suitcases banged painfully against his shins. The sun was very hot, the air was humid and heavy. Baron soon took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, but within fifteen minutes his clothing was drenched with sweat.

  Still, he wasn't worried. This wasn't the Sahara desert, it was Mexico, and Mexico was a civilized country. There would be a road, sooner or later, and he would walk until he reached it.

  His shoes constricted his feet; within them his feet were burning. His arms ached from the weight of the suitcases. He blinked perspiration constantly out of his eyes, and when he licked his lips he tasted salt. More and more frequently he found it necessary to stop and rest.

  He evolved a procedure, a method. He moved by the numbers, trudging forward two hundred paces and then stopping, setting the suitcases down, sitting on one of the cases or on the ground while he counted ten inhales and ten exhales, and then getting up and moving forward again another two hundred paces. In his imagination he could hear Steuber just behind him, counting aloud as he had always counted for the exercises. It was almost as though, if he were to turn suddenly, he would see Steuber there, stolid and patient, his watch held in the palm of his left hand.

  The exercises had not been wasted. If he were not in perfect physical condition now, a man of his age, walking across this barren land this way, it might kill him. At the best it would take an impossible amount of time, maybe even result in his having to spend a night in the open air, lying on the rock-strewn ground.

  The sun inched down the sky ahead of him, slowly becoming a nuisance, burning into his eyes, making him squint, making it difficult for him to see, so he tripped more often. He was most of the time out of breath, but he kept doggedly to the same pace, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest.

  He trudged slowly across the afternoon, the suitcases hanging from his arms like blocky weights hung there for a punishment. Dust puffed up around his feet at every step, and when his shoe brushed the stones they clicked together like pool balls. The landscape was unchanging, unpopulated.

  In late afternoon the oppressive humid heat began to ease just a little, and the sun shrank from a white hell in the the middle of the sky to a more comfortable yellow-red ball falling slowly toward the horizon. Still, even yellow-red it was too bright to look at directly, and Baron still had to shuffle forward squinting, his face covered with dust, his clothing heavy with the dust intermixed with perspiration. From time to time he had sipped at the bourbon bottle to cut the layers of dust in his mouth, but he hadn't thought to bring any of the crackers or the other food from the boat, so now he felt a little lightheaded. But that was good, it made it easier to keep moving.

  By sunset he had walked a full twenty-one miles due west from the sea and had not yet come to a road. As the sun edged down out of sight far away in front of him, as the swift evening closed toward night, Baron began at last to feel real apprehension. Where had he landed, on what mistaken, lost, useless, forgotten shore had he cast himself?


  It took a conscious effort of will to keep from running.

  When he saw the man, he at first didn't recognize him for what he was, but mistook the seated figure in the failing light for only one more of the occasional boulders he passed. It was ahead of him, and as he came closer it seemed to him the boulder was odd somehow, wrong somehow. And then he recognized it for a man, squatting on a low rock, his rounded back toward Baron.

  Baron came forward, stumbling on the stones, forgetting his count. His suitcases banged the sides of his legs, hitting the raw places where they'd been hitting all afternoon, but he hardly noticed.

  In a way, he was astonished. In a way, he hadn't actually expected ever to see another human being again.

  He was so excited he made the mistake first of speaking English: “Hello! Where am I, where the hell's a road?”

  The other man was just as startled as Baron. He leaped to his feet, half-stumbled as he backed away. He was an old man in gray and white clothing, clean but very ragged. He had the deeply lined face of an Indian, and his eyes showed the whites in his surprise and fear.

  Baron realized the mistake with the English and leaped to another tongue. “Wo ist die autobahn? Habern sie—”

  No, no, that was wrong too, that was German. In his confusion and haste, backing away from English he had switched automatically to his native tongue.

  Spanish, that was what he wanted, Spanish, but for just a second there was none of it in his head. He floundered, then the Spanish word for road came to him — camino — and the rest of the language followed.

  So now he said, in Spanish, “I beg your pardon, I did not mean to startle you. I have been walking, looking for the road.”

  “Road? You want the road?” The old man spoke a dialect full of clicks and gutturals, so Baron could barely understand him.

  Baron nodded. “Yes. I want to continue my journey.”

  The old man waved his hand. “This is the road,” he said.

  Baron looked. There was almost no light left, but now he could make out the ruts, the hump in the middle, the swath across this land cleared of stones and pebbles. This was the road, he was standing on the road, the old man had been sitting beside the road.

  He said, “Where does this road go?”

  The old man pointed south. “Aldama,” he said. He pointed north. “Soto la Marina.”

  Neither name meant anything to Baron. He said, “Which way leads to a bigger road, with automobiles and trucks?”

  The old man pointed north again, toward Soto la Marina. “At the village,” he said, “you must take the road west. To Casa. To Petaqueno. To Ciudad Victoria, which is a great city.”

  Ciudad Victoria. That was the first name Baron knew. He said, “How far is that, Ciudad Victoria?”

  “From the village, perhaps more than one hundred kilometers.”

  One hundred kilometers. Sixty miles, a little more. Baron said, “No cars before there?”

  “Sometimes at Casas. Or Petaqueno, very often.”

  “And how far to your village, to Soto la Marina?”

  The old man shrugged. “Five kilometers.”

  Three miles. “Is there somewhere I could sleep there tonight?” Because another three miles was the most Baron would walk without sleep and food and water.

  The old man said, “In my house, near the village. I am going home now, come with me.”

  “Good.”

  They started walking along the dimly seen track, and the old man said, “The suitcases are heavy?”

  “No. Not too heavy.”

  “They have valuable things inside them?”

  Baron turned to look at him. Was this old fool thinking of robbing him? But he was too old, too frail, there couldn't be anything to fear from him. Baron said, “Just some clothing and things like that. Nothing valuable.”

  “Perhaps an electric razor,” said the old man.

  “No.”

  The old man was a moron. He did plan to rob Baron tonight, while Baron slept, but he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut and so he'd given the game away.

  The only thing to do was take care of the old man as soon as they got to his house, hut, hovel, whatever he lived in. Knock him out, tie him up, so Baron would be able to sleep unworriedly all night.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, each full of his own thoughts, and the last of the evening's light faded away, leaving a world so dark Baron had only the sound of the old man's sandals to keep him from straying off the road. He couldn't see a thing and couldn't understand how the old man could see. Although it probably wasn't seeing after all but simply knowing the road for all of his life.

  Ahead of them, the smallest of lights flickered, an anemic yellow. The old man said, “My house.”

  As they got closer, Baron saw that the light was a candle inside a small dirt hut. The window through which the light gleamed was simply a square hole in the thick dirt wall, with neither frame nor glass.

  “A poor place,” the old man said, apologizing.

  “No matter,” Baron said, and it was true. What did it matter where he slept tonight? Tomorrow night he would sleep in the Mexico City Hilton.

  The door was made of various gray pieces of wood haphazardly nailed together, the final result hung from cloth hinges embedded in the wall on the left side. The old man pushed this door open cautiously, as though it had fallen apart more than once before, and motioned to Baron to precede him. “My house,” he said again.

  Baron went in.

  The old man came after him, crowding him in the doorway, saying, “I wish you to meet my son.”

  The man rising from the wooden table in the middle of the room was not old, not frail, not small. He was huge, and he was smiling beneath his mustache.

  Behind Baron, the old man was saying, “This gentleman has many valuable things in his suitcase.…”

  Baron turned for the doorway, but it was too late.

  9

  Early morning sunlight tugged at Grofield's eyelids, urging him awake. Reluctantly, mistrustfully, he allowed his eyes to open, he allowed his mind to begin to question where he was.

  The boat. He remembered.

  What time was it? What day was it? Not yet midnight when he'd left the island, and he could vaguely remember sunlight as he'd lain on the open unmattressed bed, and he could remember even more vaguely crawling from that bed in darkness onto the far more comfortable carpeting of the floor, and now there was sunlight again, and he was still lying on the floor, and he couldn't begin to work out how much time had passed or what day it was supposed to be.

  Or where Baron was. Where was Baron?

  He moved, tentatively, and was pleased to find that nearly everything worked fine. Everything but the left arm. That didn't want to work at all. It felt like the Tin Woodman's left arm, in need of oiling.

  He wondered about himself, how sick or healthy he was, how weak or strong. He kept testing, trying this and venturing that, and the first thing he knew he was on his feet. He felt shaky, a little dizzy, and hungrier than he could ever remember being, but he was on his feet.

  He could even walk, if he was careful. Being careful, he moved around the open bed and over to the kitchen area of the cabin, and there he found some food and drink. He ate three cans of soup, cold and undiluted, spooning the stuff straight out of the can, mixing it with crackers and spoonfuls of cheese spread and long swallows of whiskey. He sat in the chair by the formica counter and ate everything in reach, and when he was done he felt as though he might survive.

  He was feeling good enough now to begin to think, to try to figure out what had happened. The boat was grounded, in close to shore. He was obviously the only one aboard her, so it figured Baron had gone ashore and taken off with the suitcases full of loot. What he couldn't figure was why Baron had never bothered to look for him, why he'd left this loose string untied behind him.

  In any case, the situation was bad. He'd been unconscious at least one day and night, making it probably
Monday and maybe Tuesday. The island had been demolished according to plan, but the plan had been demolished too. Parker and Salsa and Ross were all dead, Baron had the money and the diamonds, and Grofield was stuck God knew where with a bullet in his back.

  He shook his head, thinking about how bad the situation was, and then he went slowly and carefully up on deck. The body of Ross was gone, too, he saw, and looked the other way, toward shore.

  Bad. Desert type of place, nothing in sight.

  Still, Baron must have known what he was doing, must have had some reason to stop here. Maybe just out of sight there was a city. Monterey. Or Corpus Christi. Or Eldorado.

  A stray idea occurred to him. Was there any chance he might catch up with Baron, get the handle back? He didn't know how much of a lead Baron had on him, maybe a full day's worth, but was there nevertheless a chance it could be done?

  The background music began, floating around his head. Arabic, partly, with threads of international intrigue. Foreign Legion, decidedly. A very Gary Cooper sort of role.

  He felt his pockets and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and some matches. It was good the cigarette he lit was rumpled and bent, it added a dash of Humphrey Bogart to the blend. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he leaned on the rail at the bow and gazed toward shore.

  What the hell, he'd have to go that way in any case. He couldn't stay here. If he were to get the medical attention he needed, he had to find civilization, and that inevitably meant following in Baron's footsteps. If, in so doing, he caught up with Baron, so much the better.

  He'd have to prepare. He had no idea how far a town or city might be, or how much trouble he'd have reaching it. What might be a simple walk for Baron, hale and healthy, could be rough for Grofield the way he was right now.