He didn't telephone the man he wanted to see. You couldn't dial the num-ber directly. You had to give it to the operator, who did the dialing for you. If you accepted the possibility that-the concierge was paid to telephone someone that he was in the hotel, then it followed that the telephone operator was proba-bly keeping a record of the numbers he called.
It wasn't really a problem. He knew where the man he wanted to see was going to be at seven-thirty. He stopped in for a going-home glass of beer at a bar on Avenida Foster, less than a dozen blocks from the Casino Hotel. Ettinger had met him there three times before. The bar was crowded at that time of day, and it was relatively easy to exchange a few words about how and where they could meet in privacy.
Ettinger hadn't had much to eat in the restaurant on the ferryboat, and it was possible that dinner might be delayed by the business he had to do tonight.
There were a half-dozen cafes and restaurants within easy walking distance of the Casino Hotel. The restaurants would probably not yet be open, but you could generally find a small steak at any cafe.
He experimented with the best place to carry the Smith & Wesson, finally deciding that the right rear hip pocket offered the most concealability.
He had a bottle of beer, a small steak, and a small salad. For dessert, there was a very nice egg custard, called "flan."
Then he walked back to the hotel and went down into the basement.
It took him several minutes to find the light switch to illuminate the cav-ernous basement garage. He walked to the Chevrolet and slipped behind the wheel.
David Ettinger's last conscious thought before the man in the back of the Chevrolet twisted his neck and shoved an ice pick through his ear into his brain was that he remembered locking the car when he parked it.
Chapter Nineteen
[ONE]
The Santo Tome-Sao Borja Ferry
Corrientes Province, Argentina
0730 16 April 1943
A long line of vehicles, trucks, pickup trucks, motorcycles, and even two two-wheeled horse-drawn carts were waiting on the dirt road to the ferry when the official Mercedes of el Coronel Pablo Porterman drove up. Colonel Porterman's car was followed by a well-polished 1937 Buick Limited four-door convertible sedan, its Kp down. In the backseat of the Buick rode, somewhat regally, el Pa-tron of Estancia San Miguel, Se¤or Cletus Frade, and Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, Retired.
Both cars drove past the vehicles waiting their turn to pass through Cus-toms and Immigration to the head of the line.
The senior Customs officer and the senior Immigration officer on duty came out of the Customs and Immigration Building to present their respects to the Commanding Officer of the Second Cavalry. They then walked to the Buick, where they were introduced to Se¤or Frade.
One of them announced that he had been privileged to know the late el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade both as el Patron of Estancia San Miguel and when el Coronel was assigned to the Second Cavalry. Both expressed their con-dolences for Se¤or Frade's recent tragic loss.
Se¤or Frade then shook el Coronel Porterman's hand and expressed his gratitude for all the courtesies the Coronel had rendered. The Buick was then passed to the head of the line of vehicles, without troubling Se¤or Frade with the routine Customs and Immigration procedures. From there it rolled onto the ferry.
The Buick was Enrico's solution to the problem of getting from Sao Borja to Porto Alegre. A telephone call was placed to Estancia San Miguel, and the Buick, kept at the estancia for the use of el Patron, was dispatched to Santo Tome.
After that, of course, Clete was unable to tell Enrico that he wanted him to stay in Santo Tome. He thought he might be able to talk him into returning to Santo Tome with the car when it returned, but he was aware that was probably wishful thinking.
Before the ferry left the shore, the driver took a rag from the trunk and wiped the dust from the Buick.
Clete left the car and stood in the bow of the open ferry as it moved away from the shore.
With something close to alarm he saw there was no more than ten inches of freeboard. The river was smooth but the current was fast-running, and it looked to him as if it wouldn't take much-running against a sandbar, for example-to cause water to come on board and send the ferry to the bottom.
Ashton was right. Trying to paddle across this in a rubber boat carrying boxes that weighed two hundred pounds apiece would have been idiocy.
Ten minutes later, when the Buick rolled off the ferry on the Brazilian side of the Rio Uruguay, the Brazilian Customs and Immigration officials who came to the car also elected not to trouble the passenger of such an elegant chauffeur-driven vehicle with routine administrative procedures.
The road on the far side of Sao Borja was wide, well-paved, and straight. The driver proceeded down it at a steady forty miles per hour.
"Enrico," Clete said, "I would like to drive."
"It would not be fitting, Se¤or Clete."
"Can you ask him to drive any faster?"