Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

“Guns ain’t cool. You got one, you got to use it. Jose is a hit man. I’ll give you his number. Mexico City. Like a jungle. Bite first. Not easy. Knives. Not much better. Need to trick them. Think fast! Sweets, why puzzle your little blonde head?”

The inner pool seemed cold. She had to leave it and walk out to the beach, but the beach proved no better. The sand vibrated like brilliant snow.

“Coco! Coco con ron?”

A dark hand gestured towards a heap of green coconuts. She nodded acceptance. A sharp steel blade flashed and the machete chopped through the end of the nut.

A plastic straw was shoved at her. She took the straw and the nut, and stared at the note which was wrapped around the straw. It didn’t say much. It said only that Jeff would meet her at ten that night at the Shrimp Bucket on the Old Beach.

“Where did you get this?”

White teeth flashed in the dark face. “Don’t speak English. No entiendo.”

Too embarrassed to discard the coconut in front of the boy, she had to lug it back to the hotel and then drop it into the wastebasket in her room. The note was typed. It could have come from anyone. Why didn’t Jeff contact her directly? What was wrong?

Later, when she had shoved away her unease, she walked again along the beach. The same man with his upper lip missing and wearing his same lipless smile approached her.

“Mees! Mees! You walk tonight. You walk. Take maybe Aranas.”

Aranas were the little two-wheeled spider carriages drawn by rawboned, broken-down horses. It would have seemed mad to her, even two years before, to have even considered going down that beach at ten o’clock at night. Mad — pure madness, but she had to find out about Jeff. What was Jeff doing? Why didn’t he tell her?

She compromised on the Aranas, for at least then she would have the driver and the horse. The swing along the beach front took twenty minutes, and then she walked into the loud interior of the Shrimp Bucket. She ordered Pescado Blanco, but she couldn’t eat.

The temperature was immense with all the bodies, and all the heat of the night, but she could only feel the chill, which was like the chill of steel in Wisconsin on a day when for weeks it had been twenty below and under.

She waited there for an hour, but Jeff didn’t show up. She asked the waiter if he knew Jeff Meadows. The waiter went and asked the cashier and the head waiter, but nobody knew any Jeff Meadows. It seemed more than coincidence when she went outside that the same Aranas was there, and waiting, but she called him over.

“Hotel Neva, por favor.”

“Si, Senorita.”

When they rounded the hill and came tight under the cliff, the road was blocked. There were police cars, and a crowd of gesticulating men and women. She asked the driver what had happened, but he didn’t know. She got out and approached the group.

“What is it?”

A policeman pointed. “A man. He is murdered. Do you know him?”

It was Jeff, lying on his stomach, a machete sunk deep into his back. Blood streamed, splashed, serpentined up and down the road. She felt the cold sink deep into her being. Shrugging, fighting to hide what little feeling she had ever felt, she turned and walked back to the Aranas.

“No, I do not know him”

Lynda huddled in her room. It would have been wise for her to call up the airline and get the next plane out. Except Jeff would not be at the airport in San Francisco. He would never meet her again. Never again would Jeff smile his half-wolf, half-boy smile and fill her hand with great wads of currency.

She was alone. Her thoughts vibrated through her head with the violence of bullets, and she regretted not knowing the arts of violence.

The next day she walked down the beach, and again the dark man with his lipless smile approached her. He seemed more arrogant than ever.

“Mees! Mees! Wanta buy horse? I got nice horse. You wanta buy?”

“I hate horses.”

“Mees. Tonight. Ten. Old bathhouse. You know? You come?”

Yes, she knew. It would have seemed to her the deepest part of nightmare to have gone near the concrete structure which the municipal government in a mad moment must have considered a bathhouse. If it was used at all, it was used for a urinal.

At least an occasional hose washed from its cold tile floor most of the debris. It was squalid, dirty, dark, totally beyond anything she had ever known. The bathhouse represented an ultimate finisterre to which she did not want to go.

She concealed her revulsion and turned back to the lipless smile. “You know Julio? Julio Anthony?”

A quick expression of cunning crossed the dark eyes. “No. Nada. No Julio. No Anthony in Mazatlan.”

His dark face gave every indication of something deeply concealed. It would have been utter insanity for her to trust him. More than likely, this smirking character was Jeff’s killer. If she had seen him do the act, she could not have believed it more.