So I left the car at the end of the block and once again, this time by night, we walked along Calle las Artes, to the narrow front of number eighty-one.
Hundreds of years of dedicated and diligent theft have made Mexican homes very hard to crack. They grill everything you can reach. They put that busted glass into the tops of their patio walls. And they listen for thieves all the time without knowing they are listening. Thievery is a recognized, though not highly respected, profession. Artists use a limber length of bamboo with a hook at the end to snag the tourists’ trousers and pull them through the bars of the bedroom window.
There was a light upstairs, and the patio area, seen through the entrance corridor, was lighted. We stood in the shadowed darkness across the narrow street, and I said in a low tone, “I do not think we can talk our way through the gate. He won’t buy a drunk act. He won’t be bluffed, and he won’t be hustled. And it would take a trampoline or a Tarzan act to pop in there uninvited.”
“I’m still afraid you’ll think of something, Travis.”
I was afraid I wouldn’t. And then luck took a hand. If you sit still, you don’t give that lady much of a chance to operate—for or against you. But if you move around, she can get into the act oftener. She sent the tired old clattering cab down the street to pull up in front of Bruce’s house. When the back door opened the dome light went on. Bruce got out. David Saunders was in the back seat. Bruce went a few steps and looked back and then came back to the cab. He leaned in. The rough idle of the motor made it impossible to hear what he was saying. But his expression, seen through smeared glass, was animated, amused, coaxing. He made little shrugs and hand gestures. And at last David hitched himself along the seat. Bruce reached in and lifted a large suitcase out, put it down, paid the driver. The cab drove away. They moved toward the gate, Bruce carrying the suitcase. They talked outside the gate in low tones. Bruce unlocked the gate and swung it open. He began to lead David through the gate, with a quieting, comforting arm across David’s back in such a way that it reminded me of that classic, The Specialty of the House, when the plump customer is being taken into the restaurant kitchens.
So I was on my toes with good knee action, angling across, hoping Meyer was reasonably close behind me. When Bundy spun, hearing the sudden unexpected sound, I was coming through the gate full out, shoulder already dipped, and a tenth of a second from impact.
Karate, judo, boxing, jiujitsu, wrestling—not one of the formal schools of unarmed combat prepares a man for the special problem of suddenly catching a sack of bricks that has fallen out of a third story window. It was a driving, rolling block coming in from the blind side, and the impact was impressive. It took us both ten yards down that tiled corridor, right to the end of it where it opened up onto the patio. We picked up a small table en route, along with some decorative crockery that had been on it. I rolled up onto my feet, my back toward him, and spun and was bemused and disconcerted to see him bounce up in a springy way and land in the dangerous balance of the expert, hands low and slightly forward. I did not want him to start that business of Hah! and Huh! The table was on the corridor floor between us, the three remaining legs aimed toward me. So I punted it at him, getting a lot of leg into it, and getting a nice lift on it. He got his hands up in time, and as the table fell away, I was right there to pop him with a short overhand right, slightly off target, and correct the error when he came back off the wall. He had been obliging enough to wear a leather thong as a belt for his vermilion stretch slacks, and I yanked it loose, rolled him onto his face and took two fast turns around the wrists and two fast hitches that would hold long enough for me to go solve Meyer’s problem, even if Bruce woke up right now, which didn’t seem plausible.
I came upon the Mexican woman standing crouched in terror, wringing her hands. I smiled broadly and told her that it was a game Americans play. Don’t worry, señora. We are all very happy.
Meyer was between the gate and the entrance to the central corridor. He was clumping around in a small circle, taking quick steps to the side now and again to catch his balance. He was shaking his big head and muttering to himself. David Saunders sat spraddled like a chunky little kid. He was swaying from side to side, cradling something against the lower part of his big chest and making a small thin keening sound. He looked like he was rocking a little dolly, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a basket.
I got the gate shut and latched. I caught Meyer as he came around his circle. He stopped and shook his head violently and knuckled his eyes.
“Violence is vulgar,” he said. “It offends me.”
“You won, didn’t you?”
“By giving him a frightful blow on the fist with my forehead. The expression is, ‘I ducked into it.’ ”
I helped Saunders up and walked him past Bundy into the bright area of the walled court and eased him into a white iron armchair. I pulled the hand away from his chest. It was beginning to puff. Broken hands are unpredictable. There are ten thousand nerve bundles, and if the break doesn’t involve them, you don’t feel a thing until later on. But if the broken bone or bones grind into the right nerves, it is an agony that prevents you from thinking about anything else in the world, and keeps you right on the twilight edge of a faint.
I plucked Brucey off the floor and put him on a purple chaise, rolled him onto his side and neatened the thong. The maid stood staring at us. I smiled at her. Meyer smiled at her. After a few moments she smiled back and scuttled away.
Bruce lifted his head, coming awake all at once. He swung his feet to the floor and sat up. He worked his jaw from side to side and licked his lips and looked at me and said in a totally masculine manner, “You are pretty goddam impressive, McGee. Men your size are supposed to be slower.” He looked at David and frowned. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He broke his hand hitting me on the head,” Meyer said. “Terribly sorry about that.”
“But he’s in agony!” Bruce said. “He’s terribly hurt. He needs medical attention immediately. Look at his poor hand!”
“He’ll get it, after we have a little chat.”
“What in the world do we have in common worth talking about, McGee?”
“The subject of discussion is what makes you so nervous about my asking questions about Walter Rockland and the Bowie girl.”
“Am I nervous?”
“Nervous enough to talk to that redhead earlier tonight and tell her I was trying to make something out of nothing.”
“Aren’t you?”
I kicked a chair closer and sat facing him, about four feet away. “Brucey, the trouble with playing games is that you never know how much the other party knows. Rocko moved in here with you at your invitation, and put the camper in the shed out in back, and tried to hit you for a large loan, and then he tried to make off with a lot of valuable little goodies, but you’d read him right and disabled the truck. Took the rotor, probably. He jumped you and you black-belted him pretty good.”
He tossed his head to throw the bangs back. He turned pale under his golden tan, and the odd brown eyes turned to dingy little slits. At that moment he looked his age.
“I shall never, never, never forgive that treacherous, rotten British bitch.” He continued at some length. He had a truly poisonous mouth.
“All through? So why are you so edgy about it?”
“I can’t afford to get involved in anything.”
“What is there to get involved in, Bundy?”
He hesitated. “What if I happened to know that someone saw Walter Rockland and the Bowie girl together just a week ago? Ah … at the airport, getting on a flight to Acapulco.”
Misdirection. Nice footwork. Toss in a thought that warps the mind. Maybe it was true. So how to test it?
It took me quite a segment of silence to come up with the leverage. “You are a clever man, Bruce. Look at it this way. Nobody knows where Rocko is. It wouldn’t be hard to prove he lived here with you. You are very nervous about the whole thing. I can get the information to Sergeant Martinez that you fought with Rockland. I can tell him that he can find traces of human blood on the stone floor of the shed out behind this place. I can tell him your story about Rockland going to Acapulco, and I guess they could check that out and see if he did. Then I would suggest that they take this place apart looking for a body and take you apart to see what you know about it.”
“You are such a cruel son of a bitch.”
“So?”
“All right! All right! All right! I nearly moved away from here after the first four months. I had a stupid mishap with the car I had then. A drunken old fool on a bicycle ran right into the side of the car. And so I … enjoyed the hospitality of the local prison. My dear friend Freddy, now deceased, tried frantically to get me out, but they managed to hold me there five days. Police the world over seem to have this compulsion to mistreat men of my particular sexual pattern. They treated me with contempt. I did not mind that. I considered the source. The brutality from the jailors could be endured. But each night I was locked into a very large cell with the very dregs of Mexico, who had been informed, of course, of what I was. And so I was used and abused. They degraded me. It put me into a depression that lasted for months. Freddy talked me out of leaving Mexico. He said it would be the same anywhere in the world. That is a valid observation. We have no recourse in the law, really. And Walter Rockland knew that when he tried to make off with some very valuable things. He knew that I would not report the theft, that I would not dare report it for fear they’d think of some pretext for locking me up again. I don’t think I could endure that a second time. If you understand that, Mr. McGee, and understand my absolute terror, then I can tell you what happened.”
He told us that Walter, as he called him, had stayed in bed all day Friday, and had said on Saturday morning that he still felt unwell, but begged to be allowed to leave. Bruce told him to rest. At noon on Saturday while Bruce was in the kitchen fixing something for a light lunch, he had been struck from behind and knocked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, Walter was gone. So were his car keys, a couple of hundred pesos from his wallet, and his yellow English Ford. At first he had been afraid Walter had broken in and taken the valuables which he had locked up after the first attempt, but they were still there. He had no intention of reporting it as a theft. He still had the truck and camper, and they were worth more than the car Walter had taken.
On Monday, in the middle of the morning, the police had come to see him. They had asked him about his car, asked him where it was. He had thought they had picked Walter up, and he remembered Walter’s hints about needing the money for some illegal act. He could not be tied in with any illegality, so he had invented the fictitious young American named George, and had described him in a way that would fit half the young Americans in Mexico on summer vacation. Only after they had made him go over the story several times did they tell him that an unidentified girl had gone off the mountain road, that his car was a total loss and the girl was dead.
Later that day, before learning that Eva Vitrier had identified the body, Bruce had gone to Becky and told her the whole story and had asked her what she thought he should do. He was frightened that Walter was involved somehow in the girl’s death, and that if they picked up Walter he would manage to involve Bruce somehow.
Becky thought it was logical that Walter Rockland would come back after his truck, and that Bruce should leave the shed unlocked and leave the keys in it, and replace the rotor. Maybe somebody would steal it, or Rocko would retrieve it. And if neither happened, she would help him get rid of it some dark night, follow in her car while he parked it somewhere else in the city, and bring him back. In the small hours of the night, at a little after two o’clock on Tuesday morning, he heard the truck start, heard the backing and filling in the narrow alleyway, heard it speed away, the drone fading into the normal night sounds. And he did not care whether Rocko had taken it or a thief had taken it. He thought he was out of it.
“So weeks later,” he said bitterly, “you show up at my door, telling your lies about insurance. I had to let you in, because I had to be certain Rocko hadn’t sent you on some kind of blackmail project. But you didn’t say the right things because you had no way of knowing.”
“Like I have no way of knowing that all this is true.”
“It is true. And the Bowie girl is dead. Eva telephoned me to say good-by. She said she did not know when she would be back.”
“Where did she go?”
“She never says. I have no idea. I know she was very upset. It was unlike her to … identify the body. I think she had to be certain in her own mind that it was the blond girl, and she was too impatient to wait for them to identify her in some other way. I think it was quite a strong and unusual infatuation for poor Eva.”
“Infatuation?”
“You aren’t as aware as I thought, McGee. It seemed to me that Becky made it obvious last night that Eva and I are opposite sides of a very old coin. But the approach is not the same. She is very rich and quite impersonal about her … requirements. When she arrives here she will usually have a personal maid with her, never the same one. Girls of a certain type. Bovine, Nordic, bursting with health, quite young, tailored drab uniforms, terribly submissive and polite and humble. Northern Europeans. I suppose it is a great deal more efficient and less wearing than forming emotional attachments, and of course she can afford it without pain. I must say I did get a certain dirty satisfaction out of hearing how distressed she was, and realizing she is just as human and vulnerable as the rest of us. My hands are getting awfully numb. And poor David is in misery. And I have told you the whole thing.”
I looked over at Meyer. He had several small purple knuckle-lumps on his forehead. “Do you buy it?” I asked him.
“I buy it.”
“How terribly kind!” Bruce said acidly.
“Meyer, I would not like to untie him and have him start making out like we are pine boards and cinder blocks and going into that yelling and grunting bit. So why don’t you just take that same walk again, and take a cab from the square to the hotel, and if I’m not there by the time you think I should be …”
So I gave him five minutes and then untied Bruce. He flexed his hands and went at once to David, turned and asked me where my car was and would I please bring it to the front.
They sat in the back. I heard Bruce coaching him in what to say at the hospital. Bruce told me the turns to take. They talked in low tones. I heard Bruce say at one point, “But really! Somebody is going to have to wait on you hand and foot, and shouldn’t I have that right? Besides, Davey, it was all settled, wasn’t it? And your things are at my place, aren’t they? Be practical, darling!”
They got out. Bruce said he could manage from there on, thank you. He gave me an absent nod, and walked David slowly toward the ambulance entrance.
I managed to get lost and end up back in town rather than out on the Mitla Road. I got lost because my mind was too busy trying to make order out of too many fragments. I went up the hotel hill and around past the lobby entrance and down the cobblestone drive to the cottage carport.
Meyer hadn’t left any lights on. I stumbled on the steps to the front porch of the cottage, and I heard the legs of the metal porch chair scrape on the cement as he moved. I groped for the other chair and sat down, feeling a few twinges from the tumble along the tile, and wondering if they would turn into morning aches.
“Hoo, boy,” I said. “Dandy little village they’ve got here. These sweet kindly folk tear me up, they really do. I’m even beginning to wonder about Enelio Fuentes. He’ll probably turn out to be a retired female wrestler going around in drag.”
“Never fear,” said Lady Becky from the neighboring chair. “Enelio is muy hombre. I can so certify.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“That’s what I like, dearest. A warm welcome.”
“Where is Meyer?”
“He’s really a dear man. Did you know that? Oh, I packed him off. I expect he’s settling down for the night in one of the other cottages. Things are thinning out, you know. We had a nice little visit, and he went puddling off carrying his little kit. He’s marvelously tactful and understanding.”
“And treacherous.”
“I was driving around and about looking for you, darling, and saw him walking toward the zocalo, so I gave him a lift back here. Thought you might spot my car and turn into a ninny and drive away again. So I parked it discreetly. Travis dear, such a lot of nuisance and nonsense for you to hammer poor Bruce about. All you had to do was come to me. I should have told you all the rest of it.”
“If I lived long enough to hear it all.”
“But darling, you’ll want to hear it from me too, to see if it all matches up, won’t you? So doesn’t it come out to the same thing? You do struggle so. One would think I was quite sickeningly ugly or a horrid bore.”
“If you would kindly be ugly or boring, I would be very grateful.”
“But I shall be both soon enough! Any day now one ghastly wrinkle will appear, and all of a sudden I shall be … Doriana Gray? Or like that carriage one of your sentimental poets wrote about. Quite suddenly I shall dwindle into a scruffy little old lady in tennis shoes, peering through bifocals, fussing with her hearing aid, who, in a quavery little old voice, will bore everyone with her memories of lovemaking. I am here because I forgave you.”
“Thank you very much, Lady Rebecca. But you see, I wrote you down in one of the pages of my life, and now the pages have been turned, and we cannot go back and reread them because … because …”
“Because the book is very long and life is very short. Nice try, ducks. But I did the writing, and all I wrote was a preface. I told you. I was being a horrible show-offy person. I shan’t be like that at all. Promise. Besides, you would be cheating me dreadfully. I granted myself a few little moments of climax, dear, but then I nipped the poor struggling things in the bud because, should I let one get truly started, it goes on and on and on, quite unendurably. It is so terribly lasting and intense and exhausting that I have to ration myself carefully. Even so, I go dragging about for days, looking quite puffy and done in. It would be wicked at this stage to deprive me.”
I stood up slowly and made a wide circuit of her chair to reach the door. “It may be wicked, Becky. It may be unforgivable. It might even be a shocking lack of courtesy. But I am going to deprive the hell out of both of us, and I am going to get a long night’s sleep, alone. Sorry about your pride and all that. Someday I may think back and kick myself. Sorry. Go drive that bubblegum car home. Good night, Lady Rebecca. Bug off, please.”
I opened the screen door and reached in and found the switches for the room lights and porch lights and clicked everything on. She stood up and turned to face me, eyes sparkling green through the sheepdog ruff, mouth broadened in a delighted bawdy grin.
“You know, I thought you might be stuffy and stand-offish and difficult. So one does what one can to make it a fait accompli, what?”
She wore a wine red hotel blanket gathered closely around her. She laughed and said, “It would take you hours to find where I hid my clothing, dearest.”
She dropped the blanket to the porch floor. “What is that quaint Americanism you people use? Peekaboob?”
I flapped a weak and frantic hand at the switches until I hit them back the way they were and we were in darkness. Well, shucks. And puh-shaw, fellas.
“That’s right,” I said, as she found me, locked on, and strained close. “Exactly right. Peekaboob. Very quaint old saying.”