The Frighteners by Donald Hamilton

sunshine.
    I whispered to the unresponsive girl: “Quite an assortment of firepower. Ammunition supply must be a problem. I see everything from a .45 Colt Auto to a 9mm Uzi to a specimen of the gutless old .30-caliber carbine that must be one of the most useless firearms ever invented but for some reason everybody loves it. . . . And there’s El Jefe in nice clean khakis; and just look at the tool he’s carrying, in addition to another .45 in a fancy holster on his left hip. We’ve got us a southpaw villain, it seems.”
    A moderately tall man, wearing a long-billed khaki cap to match his sharply pressed shirt and pants, had emerged from the van’s right front door. Even in the most romantic Mexican movies, most Latin leading men are fairly substantial; but this hero wasn’t carrying too much extra weight. I’d brought out the little telescope that had been provided for me. It was sharper than you’d expect for as small as it was. It showed the khaki-clad gent to me clearly as he stepped forward to take the keys out of the Caddy’s ignition. He went back and opened the trunk, clearly not well enough acquainted with fancy automobiles to know that you don’t need a key for that operation nowadays; all you have to do is push a button on the dashboard. He stood there studying the closely packed luggage.
    “He’s trying to figure out if there’s anything missing,” I said. ‘‘He wants to know if we—particularly you, since women aren’t supposed to be able to get very far in high heels and nylons—if we grabbed any practical clothes when we lit out of there so fast we didn’t even pause to lock the car behind us. But that’s a neat packing job and it looks undisturbed. You and Cody really had your honeymoon chariot loaded.”
    She was watching the distant scene. “What in the world is he doing ?” she asked.
    The man in the khakis was hauling some of the bags out of the trunk, perhaps to see if anything was hidden beneath them. He didn’t set them down, he simply tossed them aside and watched them hit the ground as if hoping they’d burst open, but they were good pieces and remained closed. One set was tan with brown piping; the other was dusty rose. His and hers. At last the khaki-clad gent picked up a medium-sized, rose-colored suitcase right-handed, tossed it high into the air and, with a powerful swing of the machete in his left hand, sliced it open as it came down. I remembered being told that the luggage of Will Pierce and his lady had also been demolished. Gloria gave a gasp at the sight of her intimate honeymoon garments spilling out and fluttering away across the trashy clearing. Distant whoops of laughter reached us as the whole crew, except the driver, who remained in his seat, surged forward to join the party.
    “Note the weapon our friend is using,” I said softly. “We may not have found who ordered your daddy and Mrs. Charles killed, but maybe we’ve spotted the gent who did the actual killing.”
    ‘‘But they 're destroying . . . !”
    The head man had stepped back to watch the show in a tolerant, boys-will-be-boys manner. I studied the dark, cleanshaven face, rather handsome in the Latin manner, until I knew I’d recognize it if I saw it at close range without optical equipment and passed the glass to Gloria.
    “The jefe ," I said. “Anybody you recognize? No? Well, make sure you’ll know him the next time you see him. And as many of the others as you can.”
    “Matt, they’re just . . . just vandalizing . . . !”
    “There’s not much we can do about it.”
    “But why? What’s the point?”
    “Just be glad it isn’t you,” I said. “Think how they vandalized your pop and his girlfriend.”
    Gloria gave me a shocked look; apparently I should have been more respectful of the dead. Down across the highway, they were trashing the Cadillac thoroughly. Other machetes had come into play, slicing up the soft top, smashing the lights, carving up the upholstery, chopping up the