Free The Mexico Run by Lionel White Page B

with that precise accent he had picked up in the States, tinctured with a Texas drawl, "Amigo, we shall paint the town. I will have the tequila standing by and shall personally prepare the en-chilladas and tacos. And girls, plenty of girls. You have chosen a beautiful time to pay me a visit. Business is lousy, and so my time will be at your disposal. We will celebrate."
        I knew that he had not changed. Angel loved cooking hot Mexican dishes, and he loved his tequila. And there were always the girls. Despite his short, truncated, heavy body, his ugly, pock-marked face, Angel Cortillo had never had difficulty finding girls. No, I didn't believe that Angel would have changed over the years. But I wondered how much I had changed.
        One thing was certain. I was no longer the same person that Angel had known back in that small Texas town, some fifteen years ago.
        I would be seeing Angel within the next few hours, and so I stopped thinking about him and started thinking of that other man that I would be meeting in Ensenada, a man about whom I knew absolutely nothing. A man who would be contacting me at the small, isolated seaside motel some six miles south of the Ensenada city line on the Pacific coast. The motel had been recommended to me by Captain Morales, and he had telephoned ahead to make a reservation for "my friend Senor Johns and his wife."
        It was just after four o'clock when I pulled into the outskirts of Ensenada, and had Sharon not been with me, I would have driven down to the waterfront and looked up Angel Cortillo immediately. However, I was not anxious to have Sharon know anything more than necessary about my business, and so I drove directly through the town, which had changed virtually not at all since the last time I had been there, and headed south.
        I passed between rows of broken-down shacks and discarded, skeletonized, old cars, carefully avoiding the deep ruts. After several miles I came to a fork and took the right hand road which was hardly more than a cow-path. There was a weather-beaten sign at the fork, with an arrow pointing to the right, underneath which was the badly hand-lettered sign La Casa Pacifica.
        A half mile further on, I dipped into an arroyo and then climbed a short hill. When I reached the top, I was looking down at the Pacific.
        A hundred yards ahead to the right, just over the hill, was a low, rambling adobe building with a red tile roof. It was surrounded on three sides by a white stucco, six-foot-high wall, and beyond the roof line on the far side lay the ocean, its turbulent waves washing the rocky shore some two hundred feet straight down from where La Casa Pacifica tottered at the edge of the cliff.
        I drove through the opened gates in the center of the white wall, passing beneath an overhead arch on which were the words: La Casa Pacifica. The large patio inside of the walls was unpaved, and two saddled horses, reins hanging over their heads to the ground, stood patiently in the shade of a group of tall, windblown palm trees. Off to the other side was an ancient pickup truck, with its front left wheel resting on a jack and the tire removed. Next to it was a Buick sedan with crumpled fenders, a dented top, dust-covered but apparently still serviceable. The words La Casa Pacifica were barely discernable on the right-hand front door.
        I pulled up to face the iron-studded, double doors leading into the lodge, stopping next to the jacked-up pickup truck. There was no one in sight. A sign in English at the side of the double doors read: Office and Cocktail Lounge.
        Sharon apparently saw the sign at the same moment I did. Her expression brightened visibly. She sighed as she opened the door and climbed to the ground.
        "My God, I could use a cold drink. It's been a scorcher."
        I took our two suitcases out of the back of the XKE and started for the entrance, Sharon following a step behind. One door