Warren Murphy - Date with Death

Date with Death

The Destroyer #57

by Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy

Copyright © 1984

by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

All Rights Reserved.

Date with Death

A Peanut Press Book

Published by

peanutpress.com, Inc.

www.peanutpress.com

ISBN: 0-7408-0851-6

First Peanut Press Edition

This edition published by

arrangement with

Boondock Books

www.boondockbooks.com

?CHAPTER ONE

The shack was made out of bits and pieces. Cardboard mostly, plus the remains of several packing crates and a couple of dented tin signs stolen from a nearby construction site. The floor was hard-packed earth covered with a patchwork of fraying straw mats. There were no windows. Just an opening that served as a door, and a fist-sized hole in the roof to ventilate the smoke from the kerosene lamp.

Inside the tiny shack, seven people were sitting cross-legged around a makeshift table. Six of them were members of the Madera family. The seventh, the one nearest the door, was their honored guest. The guest's name was Wally Donner, and at the moment he wasn't feeling well. In fact, if he didn't get some fresh air soon, he was going to be sick, violently, eruptively sick, and that didn't fit into his plans at all.

Donner's face glistened under a sheen of sweat, and his sopping stay-press shirt was permanently glued to his back and shoulders. Along with the heat, his legs were starting to cramp up from sitting so long on the floor. But the worst of it was the smell, the almost indescribable odor of six unwashed bodies packed into a space not much bigger than his walk-in closet back home.

Donner took a deep breath, forcing himself to ignore his surroundings. He had to concentrate on the job, the only thing that really mattered. He was here to sell a dream, a vision of a distant, glittering place. It wasn't nearly so easy as he'd first thought it would be. Sometimes you had to make people imagine that place, to see it clearly in their minds. And like all good dream merchants, Donner tried to remember the first and only rule of the game: Keep your mind on the dream.

"Everyone get enough to eat?" he asked with a big, friendly grin. His voice was deep and soothing. In the sputtering lamp light his damp blond hair looked like burnished gold. His pale blue eyes were bright with feverish excitement.

"It was truly a feast," Consuela Madera murmured politely. She was the oldest of three sisters, and the best-looking. Donner had met her just a few minutes after he'd parked the van under a dusty piñon tree in the village square. From the moment he saw her, he knew she was exactly what his employer was looking for. The two younger Madera girls were acceptable, too. Both ebony-haired beauties in their own right, they had turned out to be an unexpected but welcome bonus.

"It's nothing," Donner said, gesturing expansively over the litter of torn Cheese Doodles wrappers and bags that had once contained Ring Dings and Devil Dogs. "In America, this would be no more than a snack." Just looking at the chocolate-smeared cellophane made Donner's stomach turn, but he kept smiling.

"Such things are easily bought in America?" Miguel Madera asked hopefully. He was the family's only son, a fat, wheezing lump with dull, lusterless brown eyes and near-terminal cases of bad breath and acne. He'd eaten almost as much as the rest of the family put together. For a while, Donner thought he was going to have to go back to the van for another armload of goodies.

"You can get them just about anywhere north of the border," Donner assured them. "And with the kind of money we're offering, you could fill whole rooms with the stuff."

The announcement set off a burst of excited chatter among the Maderas. They lapsed into the local dialect, a weird blend of Spanish and some guttural-sounding Indian language. Donner spoke fluent Spanish, but he could only understand every fourth or fifth word of what they were saying. It irritated him.

He felt a faint breeze and turned his head quickly toward the flow of fresh air. His stomach settled down a little, but the stench remained. It was the thick, clinging smell of poverty, as unmistakable in its own way as the scent of $50-an-ounce perfume.

"Tell us again about the dwelling places," Consuela requested with a smile.

"Each of you will have a room of your own," he explained. "A room ten times the size of this place. There will be thick carpets, wall to wall, air conditioning, and hot water. And of course, as I promised, a color television in each and every room."

"It all sounds so fantastic," Consuela murmured. She tilted her head in contemplation. The dim, wavering light emphasized the bold curve of her high cheekbones and the coppery glow of her skin. Her black hair shimmered with gold highlights.

She was a beauty, all right, Donner thought. No matter that in twenty years she'd look like every other potato-bodied broad in Mexico. For now, she was just right. She would serve his purpose well.

"What exactly would we have to do in return for all this?" she asked.

He flashed his most charming smile. "Why, whatever you'd like," he crooned. "Arrange flowers, decorate, shop. Anything that's fun." He gave her hand a pat.

Consuela nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She knew such things were possible, even true. She'd crossed the border herself last year, wading across the muddy Rio Grande by night with a dozen others, carrying a few things wrapped in cloth on her head. The border patrol had been waiting for them on the American side. When the aliens were spotted, men in trucks chased them, cutting great holes in the darkness with their glaring searchlights. But Consuela had managed to evade them long enough to spend three whole days with her cousin, who worked as a housekeeper in El Paso. The border patrol caught up with her there. After a night in a detention center, they'd sent her back home on a bus. But she'd seen the wonders by then and knew them to be true.

"A few months ago," she said slowly, "another man offered to take us across the border. But he wanted us to pay him a hundred dollars apiece, in advance, and to hide in the trunk of his car, all of us together." She still shuddered at the memory of the grinning entrepreneur, with his pockmarked face and single gold tooth that gleamed like an evil eye.

Donner laughed. "A coyote."

"Pardon?"

"A coyote," Donner said. "A professional smuggler of aliens. Well, I'm not one of them. I don't want any money from you people. My employer is covering all the expenses. We'll be crossing the border in style." He gestured toward the shiny new Econoline parked outside the door. "No hiding in trunks with me."

"But the border guards—"

"Arrangements have been made with the authorities for you to cross over without any of the usual bother."

It all sounded so impossibly wonderful to Consuela, and yet she found herself hesitating over the offer. She didn't have the slightest idea why. "What about the carta verde?" she asked. "My cousin said that you must have one to be able to work in America."

"No problem," Donner replied. He smiled to cover his growing irritation while he reached into the pocket of his wilted shirt and slipped out a slender stack of "green cards," the necessary document for aliens working stateside. "We'll fill them in later," he said, fanning them out like a conjurer about to perform a trick. When everyone had gotten a good look at them, he tucked them safely away again.

"Well?" he prompted Consuela. He knew she was the one to convince. If she went for it, the others would follow along.

"But why?" she asked. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. 'Why us? We have done nothing special to merit this good fortune."

Donner leaned forward conspiratorially. "Well, I'm not supposed to tell, but…" He let his words trail off into enigmatic silence. The Maderas leaned toward him in anticipation.