The Name of the Game is Death Read online

  My mother and sisters were all waiting for me. At first I thought it was about being expelled, but they hadn't heard. They'd bought me a new Persian kitten. I thanked them. I wasn't mad at them about anything. I wasn't mad at my father about anything. I fed the new kitten because it was a poor dumb animal that needed my help, but I didn't play with it.

  My father came home early, in a tearing rage. The principal had called him. When he saw the new kitten and learned where it had come from, he clouded up and thundered my mother and sisters about going behind his back. They turned on him en masse, and it astonished him. He didn't change his mind, exactly, but for the first time in better than a week I got to bed that night without a licking. I had to admit I was glad. My right shoulder had

  been hurting a little worse each of the last three days. I made a bed for the new kitten and went to bed early myself.

  By noon the next day I had caught up again on lickings. Before breakfast I slipped out of the house and waited for the fat kid on his way to school. He screamed like a girl just at the sight of me. I was in the house at ten o'clock when my father came home from work and marched me

  upstairs. He really laid it into me. About an hour afterward I was sick to my stomach.

  I didn't go downstairs for lunch. My stomach still felt bad, and my shoulder was really giving me a hard time. I tried staying in bed, but that made the shoulder worse. Around two o'clock my mother came into my room. She looked at my eyes, put her hand on my forehead, and called the doctor. I had a broken collarbone, and the doctor strapped me up like a mummy. He asked me about the marks on my body. I didn't answer him. It was none of his business. Afterward I heard him talking to my mother out in the hall, and my mother was crying.

  I took it easy the rest of the afternoon. I wondered how I could keep after the fat kid with an arm strapped down, but I knew I'd find a way. I was sitting downstairs leafing through an encyclopedia when my oldest sister came flying into the house. She ran into the kitchen without seeing me, and I heard her breathlessly telling my mother about a big moving van in front of the fat kid's house.

  His family was moving away.

  I don't know why I was so sure they were moving out of town. Maybe because I knew they knew I'd find him if They lived anywhere in the same town. I felt a deep sense of peace.

  And just like that, it ended.

  The shoulder healed in live weeks.

  In eight they let me back into school.

  Around the house the subject was never mentioned.

  In a year I think everyone had honestly forgotten.

  Except me.

  I made El Paso the first night.

  Highway 20 through Mesa, Safford, and Duncan in Arizona brought me to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Between Safford and Duncan the desert is for real. The stark, multi-colored rock and sand of buttes and coulees grimly overshadow the sparse greenery of saguaro cactus, mesquite, and palos verde.

  Highways 70* and 80 join up at Lordsburg and run together through Deming to Las Cruees. I turned south there on 80 to El Paso. The temperature when I left Phoenix had been eighty-five. Rolling past the railroad-marshaling yards in El Paso, there was a flurry of snow in the headlights. Altitude makes a difference. The odometer on the Ford said 409 miles when I pulled into a motel on the east side of town.

  I'd pushed it a bit to make El Paso. I had a reason. I had to get my arm attended to before the bandage became a part of the tissue. I knew where I could get it cared for, no questions asked, across the International Bridge in Juarez.

  The motel office had signs at the front desk advertising fabulous guided tours of the fabulous city of Ciudad Juarez in fabulous Old Mexico. I had them call the agency, and in thirty minutes a potbellied little Mex showed up to guide me. He was about thirty-five, with the eyes of a well-fed weasel. Six dollars changed hands, and we took off in his car.

  He was a cheerful talker. Compulsive, almost. He had been baptized Jaime Carlos Torreon Garcia, he told me, 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 aga
in 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.

  Dead, the man was an anchor around my neck.

  Alive? Better, although not much better.

  I clicked the knife blade shut. "Sit up and listen to me," I said.

  He gave a kind of shuddering sigh. "Por Dios, S-Senor, I implore—"

  "Shut up. Drive back to the motel."

  It took him a full minute to get the car started. His coordination was gone. He drove like a sleepwalker, his face like yellow wax in the light from the street lamps, his eyes sneaking looks at me. The car bounced high as he turned too fast into the motel driveway. For a second I thought we might take out a unit before he hit the brake and we skidded to a stop.

  I got out of the car, then motioned at him. "Take off, man. Get lost."

  He stared at me suspiciously from behind the wheel. Was it a trick? It didn't take him long to decide if it was, that he still liked it better than where he'd been. He tramped on the accelerator, and his car hit the street doing forty-five, tires squealing in the night.

  I watched him go.

  Jimmy had been right up to the gates, and he knew it. Given his type, la-should head straight for his bed and stay there with the covers over his head for three days.

  But I couldn't count on it.

  Five minutes after his tail-lights winked out of the motel driveway. I was headed east again in the Ford.

  III

  In a way it was odd about that fat kid's family leaving town that time. Six years later it was my family who were going to leave.

  The way it happened was like getting struck by lightning.

  I was eighteen, in my senior year in high school. It was late in the spring, and after a succession of chill, rainy days we'd finally caught a hot one. I had my sweater over my arm when I came out the school's back entrance and cut through the parking lot on my way home. I saw four policemen standing in the middle of the lot, and I wondered what they were doing there.

  I knew one of them, Harry Coombs, and I nodded as I passed the group. He said something to the others, and the biggest one, who had been standing with his back to me, turned around to look. "You," he said to me. "Come over here."

  I went over to them. I knew who the big one was without really knowing him. His name was Edwards, and he was a sergeant. He was a beefy type with thinning red hair. I didn't like him. No good reason. His voice was too loud. He took up too much of the sidewalk when he swaggered by. Things like that.

  He looked me up and down when I stood in front of him. "What d'you know about hubcaps missing from the faculty cars three times a week?" he demanded. He looked hot and uncomfortable, still in his winter uniform.

  "I don't know anything about it," I answered him. And I didn't, except what I'd been hearing in school assemblies for the last month.

  The lower lip in his red face swelled pugnaciously. "Harry says you spend enough time in this parking lot to tell us what's going on," he continued aggressively.

  "I said I see him going through here on his way home from school most days!" Coombs cut in.

  Edwards paid him no attention. "Well?" he said to me.

  "You think whoever's doing it waits for me to come by so I can see them?" I was mad. "Or maybe you think I'm doing it?"

  "I'll ask the questions," he snapped, scowling. "What's your name?" I told him. I was liking him less and less every second. "Now you know you must've seen what's been goin' on out here." He said it almost coaxingly. "Who are you covering up for?"

  I looked at Harry Coombs to see if Edwards was kidding. Coombs looked away uncomfortably. "Look, you can't mean it," I said finally. "I don't—"

  "Answer the question!" he roared.

  I started to walk away. Edwards grabbed me by the arm. I've always hated having people put their hands on me. I jerked my arm out of his hand. He probably outweighed me three to one, but I caught him on the wrong foot. He staggered sideways two or three paces. His red face looked bloated.r />
  My sweater had fallen from my arm, and I stooped to pick it up. Edwards kicked me, hard. I went over and down, flat, skinning my palms on the parking lot cinders.

  I scrambled up and went after him, the hate of the world in my heart. Harry Coombs clamped me in a smothering bear hug before I could reach Edwards. Coombs kept muttering in my ear, but I was struggling so hard I couldn't hear what he was saying. I kept yelling at Coombs to lei me pi, my head twisted over my shoulder. I never even saw Edwards when he stepped up and slapped me heavily In the lace.

  "Goddammit, Sarge!" Coombs said angrily. His grip on me relaxed, then tightened again when I lunged forward.

  "Shut up, you!" Edwards barked at him. "This is a wise guy. We'll take him down to the station and talk to him."

  "Then take him down yourself," Coombs said. He released me. "I'm on duty on the beat here."

  "You're on duty where I tell you you're on duty, Coombs," Edwards warned. "Get him in the patrol car, an' get in yourself." The sergeant clumped heavily back to the other two officers who had been standing by silently.

  It was only by an effort of will that I kept my hand away from my smarting face. Don't fight it, I told myself. I walked toward the cruiser parked in a corner of the lot. Harry Coombs tramped along beside me, muttering under his breath.

  The five of us rode downtown. I never said a word. Inside the police station a cop who had previously taken no part took my arm and led me to a door opening on two steel cells with cement floors. He motioned me inside.

  Even a couple of years later I'd have known they were just trying to scare me. Nobody goes into a cell without a charge against him. A session in an interrogation room would have been the correct thing. But I didn't know. I took it seriously.