The Death Bird Contract

By Philip Atlee

A hard-edged covert operative crosses into Mexico—and enters a dark, dangerous spiral—in this novel from “an able practitioner” of the thriller genre (Larry McMurtry, The New York Times).

A freelancer specializing in covert ops, Joe Gall has been tasked with doing a background check on a millionaire—a job that will take him into the wild and gritty world of 1960s Mexico. Unfortunately, the assignment has already come to a bad end for two different agents before him. It will put Gall in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people—not to mention piranhas—as he goes deeper and deeper undercover, into the terrifying world of heroin addiction . . .

From the Edgar Award–nominated author of The White Wolverine Contract, this is lighting-paced Cold War–era action at its best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504065740

Philip Atlee

Philip Atlee (1915–1991) was the creator of the long-running Joe Gall Mysteries, which is comprised of twenty-two novels published in the 1960s and 70s. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Atlee wrote several novels and screenplays—including Thunder Road starring Robert Mitchum, and Big Jim McLain starring John Wayne—before producing the series for which he is known. An avid flyer, he was a member of the Flying Tigers before World War II and joined the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Book preview

1

I awakened from a dark, drugged sleep, and without opening my eyes knew I was in Mexico because I could smell Mexicans. I had been jarred out of a deep tequila dream by an ululation of witches. My eyes flew open to regard the two brown maids weeping hysterically. Wringing their hands and cringing behind the tall black gringa, who wore only a long-sleeved pullover sweater, which came down to her hips.

The tall Negro girl was barefoot, and as I focused on her shapely legs I wondered through the immense hangover fog: does she or doesn’t she have anything on under that hip-length sweater? Or would only her chiropodist know for sure? When the little Laocoön group began howling again, I sat up in my big matrimonial bed and shouted, Silencio!

Jannina, the jet Nefertiti, announced: There’s a corpse downstairs in the sala.

Okay, I said. Just so we know. Turning my head cautiously to keep it from falling off, I leaned toward the bed table and fumbled out a Belmonte cigarette. Lighted and inhaled without fear because no self-respecting carcinogen would associate with a cigarette that bad. The first drag nearly blacked me out; then I squinted at the three girls and said, Throw the goddamned thing out in the street and lock the door.

This callous suggestion precipitated a new avalanche of expostulations, so I told them all to leave my room immediately, and I would come down later and view the muerto. When they did not act on this advice, I threw back the covers and lunged out of bed naked. That broke their ranks; they retreated, sullen but not mutinous, and Conchita, the demure little moonfaced maid, so far forgot her fear as to murmur "patrón!" in an admiring voice.

Advancing unsteadily, I grabbed my robe, threw it on, and went down the hall and along the arched terrace. The tiled floors were cold under my bare feet. I stalked past pale begonias dripping from iron-ringed pots and ollas of huge, glossy elephant ears, the elegante plants.

Downstairs, I strode through the patio, past the three shuttered bedrooms and the comedor with the stained-glass windows, and turned into the sala. Stood there in the gloom of the drawing room, looking around while the three girls whispered outside in the sunlight. The sala smelled stale from the wreckage of last night’s bash; sticky bottles and glasses and crushed maggots of cigarettes lay all around. The wide fireplace held the cold ashes of logs that had crackled with applause to our levities. But no corpse.

I walked back out into the blinding sunlight and stared across at the thick patio wall, which was thirty feet high and covered with a riotous profusion of orange and scarlet bugambilia blossoms. Sunlight smashed off the whitewashed walls and splintered my eyes.

He must have left, I said, and the two Mexican maids broke into a cacaphony of liquid explanations, none coherent.

Despacio, favor, I said wearily, raising both hands. Let’s take it from the top, slowly. You first, Carmen. And I pointed at the middle-aged maid, who was nearly twenty and more inclined to sanity than Conchita.

Carmen said that a ghostly one had come into her bedroom late in the night. He had been black, horned, and fierce, clanking in chains and seeking someone. This apparition had told her he would not leave until he had found the person he had come for. I considered this report gravely, wincing at my own breath, and the little brown girl added that the intruder had smelled like garlic.

Misunderstanding my reflective silence (I was only wondering if I had strength enough to get back upstairs), Carmen added that she had crossed herself and called out the name of Our Saviour, whereupon the evil intruder had vanished. And next morning, when she and Conchita had gone to clean up the sala, another corpse had been stretched out on the floor. A terribly pale gringo corpse, bloodless because its throat had been cut.

Life is mostly sorrow. I heard Carmen out, murmured "con Dios", and staggered back upstairs. Jannina was behind me, but I slammed the bedroom door in her face and went into the bathroom. There, alone at last, I leaned over the lavatory and stared in the mirror at the lean visage with bloodshot blue eyes. In the mirror image, that fellow might have been the tatterdemalion remnant of a good polo player. His battered face looked regular under a tan so heavy that it was now only rusty, but I could locate the scars and cuts under the eyebrows.

A palpable rogue, I decided, nodding without enthusiasm at the fellow who was giving off waves of La Herradura tequila. I reached for my toothbrush and attacked the mossy growth of algae on my teeth.

Watching my mouth stretch, I was not inclined to apologize for the fact that my toothbrush was manually operated. I am not opposed to modern technology, as such, but I was waiting until battery-powered toothbrushes were more advanced. That is, embodied into a platform that uses the principle of powered bristles plus powered gums. I don’t know how they’ll do it, exactly, but they will, and I’m not going to settle for half-measures. Perhaps one of those belly straps that half-rotate the body at high speed, with the brush synchronized inside your mouth, but opposed in direction.

I had taken half a dozen savage and competent strokes with the manual brush, up and down, when I realized that something was wrong—very wrong. By misadventure, while brooding on technocracy I had loaded my brush with Brylcreem, an extremely greasy hair dressing. As waves of rebellion started up from my protesting stomach I realized that those lying copywriters for once had been on target. At least one of their commercials was right; a little dab would do it.

Man endures. After twenty minutes of scrubbing with a proper dentifrice, some hearty retchings, and repeated garglings with an astringent mouthwash, I seemed recovered and could even smoke one of the abominable Belmontes without gagging. Heartened, I shaved slowly and carefully because every finger seemed to have a separate motor impelling it. When that was done and I had showered, I felt cleaner, but was still floating in a tequila haze.

I put on a dressing gown of gray Italian silk, walked out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and along the arched terrace to Jannina’s suite. She had changed from the hip-length sweater into a black sequinned blouse and stretch pants, and was reading the Excelsior, a Mexico City daily, on a chaise longue. As I entered she removed her black-rimmed glasses and observed me without enthusiasm. I sat down in a chair, stretched my legs, and regarded my scarred left ankle.

If I could have my druthers, I said, "I would druther have some café con leche, quite hot."

Jannina got up gracefully, full-breasted under the sparkling blouse, and walked across the terrace to call for Carmen. They were exchanging modulated screams when I told her to tell Carmen to bring, in addition, a bottle of La Herradura, hielo, and a bottle of Garci Crespo mineral water. Limes, also, quartered.

When this addition had been made to the order, the tall girl came back into the room with the exaggerated walk of a high fashion model, which she had been until two weeks ago. She sighed and settled back on the chaise. Her classic face was scrubbed clean; her red hair was pinned high, and she was regarding me impassively.

Hijinks in the old hacienda last night, I understand. Did they involve anybody we know? I asked.

Not really, she said. Only smash and grab, a seduction and a rape. But you were never in better form.

So? I twiddled my toes. Care to fill me in?

Jannina bowed her head in mockery; her right hand touched her forehead, lips, and heart, in succession. ‘Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel, Oh Lord!,’ she said. Don’t you really remember?

There are patches of fog.

She sighed again and cradled her hands behind her head; and that lifted the firm breasts. You and your oddball friend, old boy-boy Loco Sautto, went skin diving into several bottles of tequila while you shouted rehearsed dialectics at each other. When your lungs proved stronger, he tried to sneak a feel under the table, so I went upstairs to bed. You, however, stayed with him in the sala, yelling at the top of your voices until twoish. Then I heard you both lurch out the front door, probably to some stinking cantina with an odorous urinal trough running across the room.

Saints preserve us! I said. Fair shocking, that’s what it is.

At 4 A.M. you returned, like every good Mexican family man does, and tried to break my door down by frontal assault, shouting that you had something to tell me. I declined this invitation, having heard it before, and you went downstairs again.

Just plain shocking, I repeated. Conchita came in with the tray, poured the hot milk and the steaming black coffee together, and I had a long stomach-settling drink of it. When the little maid had flounced out, Jannina stretched again on the longue, and it disturbed me again.

Repulsive, I think, is the word, she said.

Say on. I downed a pony of the chilled tequila (it tasted of clean straw), and tamped it down with a nip of lime, salt, and a sip of cold mineral water. After a three-second countdown, heat exploded in my gut.

"When you went downstairs, Lupé was showering, and the cynic would say it was an odd hour for it. Anyway, you gave her a big hello, shucked off your vestidos and joined her in the shower. The soaping and so forth turned into an audible communal effort, and when it was over, you carried her into her narrow room, bellowing ‘Guadalajara!’ Quite piggish, really. I could hear you from the terrace …"

The night watch, eh?

The watch that ends the night, señor. Jannina laughed mirthlessly and stared at the stylized chromos on the wall; they were all of unnamed saints undergoing horrible trials and bleeding profusely. Her inspection gave me time to have another belt of La Herradura, and salt it down. Lupé, our cook, was a tall Indio girl of about twenty-five. I had often watched her high-breasted progress and wondered if a patrón played his cards just right … Now, it would seem, I had come up all aces.

Having thoroughly violated the cook—Jannina’s cool voice went on—you came lurching up the stairs, saw me running toward my room …

No! I shook my head, realizing the appalling extent of my bestial nature. Didn’t catch you?

I slipped, she admitted and, amazingly, she blushed. Her dark, scrubbed face was suffused. That damned waxed tile.

I shook my head in penance. Got you too, eh?

On those damned tiles. My back is covered with bruises.

I considered this contretemps, because it certainly was not hospitable and was probably a violation of the United Nations Charter. Meditating, I had another touch of the chilled tequila.

What can I say? I asked gently. Jannina took fire from that and tossed her high hairdo. She answered that it was simple. There were still two other girls in the house, so why didn’t I get blasted again and violate them, too?

I frowned over the thought because it seemed wrong, yet logical. Jannina was watching me, and she came flowing off the longue and took a large drink of tequila from the bottle. I handed her a salted lime quarter and she nipped it.

Look, she said with urgency. It’s not like I’m guarding the Great Kohinoor. I’m neither a schoolgirl nor a virgin, and haven’t been either for quite a while. But I like people to ask, you know. Or maybe, sometimes, I don’t even want that. She sat on the edge of the chaise longue. "But my God! You just peeled me like a banana, and pretty roughly, too, shouting raucously, ‘abajo con tu pantalones!’"

Both of us considered the enormity of my lapse in silence.

I’m sorry about that, I said finally. The tequila had me concentrated. And, well hell, you only do it because it’s there, don’t you?

Her hand went to her mouth, and she shook her head at me in unbelief. She turned her head toward the noon blaze at the barred window, and a sudden rippling rush of birdsong erupted. The trills did not fit the somnolent day, and I looked up suddenly.

That? I asked.

That, señor, said Jannina seriously, "is the sing-songlis. A bird. The little brown herald of death, and he started singing at frequent intervals after the muertos got in last night. The servants tell me that his song means somebody in this house will die soon. My candidate is you."

I nodded, listening to the high trilling. Its pitch was like that of a demented mockingbird, one that had studied with the Vatican castrati. Herald of death? Why Shit-A-Mighty, I thought angrily through my tequila haze; I’ve killed more people casually than this queer bird, and without singing a note. He’s probably a shill for some local bruja, or a Mexican mortician.

I shouted, and the bird stopped singing. Jannina was watching my face, so I changed it and reached for the bottle with the bright blue horseshoe on it. So I had caught the tall, proud cook under the shower. Well, that was all right, but Jannina was another matter. She was on record in the little mountain town as my wife, but I still wasn’t supposed to hump her. Not without permission.

Still, I reflected, diamond-sharp and tequila-bright, there are those other two—the untouched ones, the two plump little maids. If we were engineering a disaster, why not go clean on the course? That butt-twitching little Conchita … As I nodded over this salacious possibility, the ex-model smiled at me suddenly and patted the available space beside her sweet curve of hip.

I crossed over like Rover, humming Guadalajara, which is a rousing tune.

Later that night, after a festive meal by candlelight, I took my big tulip glass of cognac into the back patio, ostensibly to water the lime trees. As I performed this necessary domestic chore I could hear whispers and giggles coming out of the kitchen, which was glowing with charcoal fires. The twilight deepened over the patio wall toward the sooty blue mountains of Guanajuato, and I could smell the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine.

As its fragrance grew stronger, from waxen, unfolding blossoms, Conchita came back to shower, murmuring buenas noches, patrón to my glowing cigarette tip. Demurely. Before she reached the dark stallway, I had the China Poblana blouse off her firm young breasts. Conchita was a giggler, all right, but when soaped she had much natural rhythm. Truly. When I considered her properly showered, I spanked her tail and told her I wanted another cognac. Favor.

Carmen, the other maid, brought it—with commendable foresight, in the bottle. This time I took the shower, and Carmen scrubbed me with a coarse straw mat, well-soaped. Since the darkness of the back patio was now stygian, we had to run a very tight ship, and I had to keep calling out jabón! or cognac! Then I had a fine example of the perversity of women.

Carmen would not remove her dress, even though it was drenched and clinging to her like another skin. So I soaped it thoroughly, sluiced her down, and explained that the dress could not possibly get really clean unless she took it off. No problem—made sense, so we did it. She was a sycophant under my questioning hands.

At midnight, I was sitting alone in a woven throneshaped chair at the far end of the terrace, staring through rounded arches at the star-sparked Mexican night over the long valley. Meditating that man can have no greater treasure than a hacienda filled with biddable girls. On the basis of actual research, all I had to do was rise up, shout "hola, love!", and four doors would fly open. And each could contribute a little something.

Joseph Liam Gall, I told myself solemnly, you’ve been out in many weathers, but you’re lucky tonight. Also drunk.

Hoisting the cognac bottle, I toasted my victories and defeats and genuflected to the brooding Mexican mountains. And then the high-trilling freshet of notes from the singsonglis sounded again from somewhere very near. I laughed at the death song.

Little brown bird, I shouted, more to myself than the unseen caroler, everybody else has had a shot at me. You go ahead and try!

2

Three weeks before the servicing of these disparate ladies, I had been living a quiet, almost monastic, life in a clapboard castle high on a pine-shaded Ozark hill. There, quite sober, I had been breathing air so pure it had never been breathed before, and pursuing my own small, personal interests.

To some people these interests might have seemed strange. My huge wooden house had cupolas and turrets; it had stained-glass windows, enormous ceilings, and eight open fireplaces. There was only one road up to it from the small Ozark hamlet in the valley below, and that road stopped at a gate and a mailbox, where my five hilltop acres began.

There was no name on the mailbox, and no road beyond the gate, which was barred and locked; a ten-strand electrified fence surrounded the small estate. At least a breeze was always sighing through the thick stand of ninety-foot pines, and from the gate you could not even see the house. Slightly northwest of its rococo splendor was a forty-foot, icy waterfall, which plumed over the rock ledges and formed a deep blue pool. The waterfall came from a grotto under the top ledges; it was spring-fed, and local geologists said that the water was glacial in origin.

Between the gingerbread house and the pool was an arching bridge, which I had had lacquered by hand, using seventeen patiently applied coats. The bridge was a deep mandarin red, and under concealed spotlights it looked almost black. Below it, and on the