Nick Carter - The Aztec Avenger

At the pool, I ordered huevos rancheros for breakfast. There were only a few people around the pool. There were a couple of cute young English women. Slim, blonde and with cool, clear English voices emerging from lips that barely moved. The tone was lilting, with vowels as liquid as the water still beading on their suntanned bodies.

There were two other women in the pool, splashing around with a muscular character who looked like he was in his late twenties. You’ve seen the type. All bulging pectorals and biceps overdeveloped from constant weight lifting.

He made a pain in the ass of himself. He wasn’t satisfied with the two girls in the water. He wanted the English women, but they made a special point of ignoring him.

Something about him antagonized me. Or maybe I wanted to prove I could do it. I waited until the English women were looking in my direction and smiled at them. They smiled back at me.

“Hello.” The long-haired blonde waved at me.

I motioned for them to come over and join me and they did, dripping water, standing hip-slung and casual.

“When did you get in?” asked the other.

“Last night.”

“Thought so,” she said. “We haven’t noticed you here before. There aren’t many guests at all. Did you know that?”

“My name’s Margaret,” the first girl said.

“And I’m Linda…”

“I’m Paul Stephans,” I said, giving my cover name.

There was a massive splash at the pool as Muscles hauled himself out.

Without looking at him, Linda said, “Here comes that bore, again. Are they all like that in San Francisco?”

“San Francisco?” asked Margaret, puzzled. “This morning at breakfast, Henry told me that he was from Las Vegas.”

“Doesn’t make any difference,” said Linda. “Wherever he’s from, I can’t stand him.”

She flashed me a smile and spun away on long, suntanned legs. Margaret gathered up their towels. I watched them walk up the stairs that led to the hotel terrace, their lithe, bronzed legs moving in beautiful counterpoint to their semi-clad, sensual bodies.

At the same time, I was wondering about Henry, who came from either San Francisco or Las Vegas.

About that time, a young couple came down the stairs and put down their things near me.

The man was slender and dark. Very hairy legs. The woman with him was slim and had a fine figure. Her face was pert rather than pretty. They went into the water and swam, and then came out. I heard them speaking in French to each other.

He dried his hands on a towel and took out a package of Gauloises. “The matches are wet,” he called to the woman.

He caught me looking at him and came over. He said, pleasantly, “Do you have a match?”

I tossed him my lighter. He cupped his hands in front of his face to light the cigarette.

“Thank you. Allow me to introduce myself. Jean-Paul Sevier. The young lady is Celeste. And you are?”

“Paul Stephans.”

Jean-Paul smiled cynically at me.

“Forgive me for not believing you,” he said. “You’re Nick Carter.”

I froze.

Jean-Paul gestured easily with his hand. “Don’t be disturbed. I merely want a word with you.”

“Go ahead. Talk.”

“We are puzzled about your connection with Stocelli.”

“We?”

He shrugged. “I represent a group from Marseille. Does the name Andrè Michaud mean anything to you? Or Maurice Berthier? Or Etienne Duprè?”

“I know the names.”

“Then you know the organization I represent.”

“What do you want from me?”

Jean-Paul sat down at my table. “Stocelli has isolated himself. We can’t get at him. Our Mexican friends here can’t get at him either. You can.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do. Walk in and shoot the man?”

Jean-Paul smiled. “No. Nothing as crude as that. We merely want your cooperation to — as you say— set him up. We’ll take care of the rest.”

I shook my head. “No deal.”

Jean-Paul’s voice got hard. “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Carter.” Before I could interrupt, he went on quickly. “One way or another, we’re going to kill Stocelli. By that, I mean that our Mexican contacts will do the job as a favor for us. Right now, all they ask is a meeting with you. That’s not much, is it?”

“Just a meeting?”

He nodded.

I thought for a second. It could be a set-up to knock me off. On the other hand, it was the fastest way for me to get to know who the Mexican crowd was. In my business, you get nothing for nothing. If you want something, you’ve got to take the risks.

“I’ll meet with them,” I agreed.

Jean-Paul smiled again. “In that case, you have a date tonight Her name is Senora Consuela Delgardo.

An extremely pretty woman, I’m told. She’ll call for you here at the hotel around seven-thirty.”

He got to his feet.

“I’m sure you’ll have an enjoyable evening,” he said pleasantly, and went back to join Celeste, who’d just come out of the pool again.

Late in the afternoon, I took a taxi down the hill from the hotel to El Centro, the area of the cathedral and zocalo and the Monument to the Heroes. El Centro is the center of the town. It’s from here that all taxi and bus fares are computed by zones.

Acapulco is the main town in the state of Guerrero. And Guerrero is the most lawless state of all in Mexico. The hills just outside of Acapulco are filled with banditos who’ll slit your throat for a few pesos. The police aren’t able to enforce the law much outside the town limits. Even the army has its problems with them.

Wearing a loud sport shirt, a pair of light powder-blue slacks, and my feet in new leather huaraches, I walked into the park next to the malecon.

Everywhere I turned, I saw los Indios, the broad, brown-skinned faces of the men topped by short-cropped, jet black hair. Beside them, squatting on their haunches, were their women. And every one of them with obsidian eyed, high-cheekboned, brooding Indian faces.

As I looked at them, I realized that the old statuary of their ancient gods was more than a representation of some unknown deity; it also must be a good likeness of how the Toltecs themselves looked in those days.

And they hadn’t changed much over the centuries. These lndios looked as if they could still tear open your chest with a flint knife and rip out the bleeding, pulsing heart.

I made my way to a quieter part of the malecon, taking photographs as I went. Further down the curve of the waterfront, I could see a commercial tuna fishing boat, stumpy and squat Its decks were littered with equipment and it was tethered fore and aft by heavy manila hawsers to black iron bollards on the concrete malecon.

In the distance, at the docks below the massive stoneworks of Fort San Diego on the crest of the hill, I could see a freighter moored beside the warehouses.

I strolled along the malecon . On the stone steps that led to the water’s edge, I stopped and looked down.

There were two fishermen there. A young one and an old one. Both were bare except for ragged shorts. They held a huge, six-foot turtle between them. The turtle was on its back and helpless.

The young man took out a knife with a long, slim blade honed so many times that it was now worn to a thin crescent of convex steel.

He slid the blade under the bottom shell of the turtle near a hind flipper. Blood turned the knife red at the first slash. He cut in quick, savage strokes, moving his knife beneath the rim of the bottom shell, slicing through skin, flesh, muscle, and membrane with swift twists of his wrists as he squatted on his haunches beside the turtle.