We were half-way down the side-street block. Ahead loomed the safe spaciousness of the Avenida Insurgentes. The car wasn’t going to follow. I was sure of that then. Some of the tension in me eased. But my mind was tangled with questions that had no answers. Why had Junior let Halliday walk me right out from under his gun? Because he operated on orders, and there was no order to cover the sudden appearance of another American? Or because Halliday was his boss? But if Halliday had sent Junior to get me, why had Halliday bothered to rescue me? And had he rescued me deliberately? Or had this been just another of those fifty-seven varieties of coincidence?
As Halliday, rambling at my side, kept up his tipsily cheerful monologue, I found it almost impossible to imagine him capable of anything more subtle or sinister than putting on a paper hat and blowing a tin whistle.
I thought of Vera a few minutes ago, sulking, impulsively kissing me, pointing down the street. “Be sure you take the taxi.” A shiver of doubt slid through me. Vera pointing out the taxi, where Junior was waiting with the gun. Vera driving me to Los Remedios, where Junior was waiting with the gun.
Could it be Vera, and not Halliday? Vera working with someone else through Junior?
We reached the draughty corner of Insurgentes. The neon lights of a few night-clubs and elegant cantinas still twinkled in the darkness. A couple of cars were racing out to the suburbs. I wondered where I would be headed now if I had stepped into the light-blue sedan. Not to Vera. Not to Halliday. That was certain. To an obscure death in a ditch out in the rough, desolate countryside beyond Xochimilco? Or to meet my real antagonist?
But who was my real antagonist? Mr. Johnson, morose over his bride’s appendectomy? Mrs. Snood tucked up in her hotel bed with a detective story?
There were so few solutions to chose from, and none of them was worth a damn. I had expected the evening to rescue me from confusion.
It had confusion worse confounded.
We had crossed Insurgentes and moved into a dark, tree shaded side-street. Dinamarca, I thought. Halliday, who seemed even more drunk than he had been at the Reforma, came to a clumsy stop outside a modernistic apartment house door.
“Li’l apartment,” he said. “Not much to look at, nothin’ to see. B’longs fr’nd of mine. Len’ it me. Ni’-cap, me boy, old boy.”
Change clattered in his pocket as he fumbled round for his keys. He brought them out and guided one unsteadily into the lock.
“Clear the head, a ni’-cap.”
He pushed the heavy glass-and-iron door inwards and waited with alcoholic chivalry for me to pass ahead of him into the house. It could be a trap. I realized that. But if it was a trap, I was being lured into it with an elaborateness almost beyond the realms of possibility. The streets had proved themselves dangerous enough for me. There was nothing to prevent Junior from driving round the corner the moment I was alone again. Of two chances, going in with Halliday was by far the less risky.
Besides, my main purpose earlier that evening had been to get alone with Halliday. Even if my suspicions had shifted elsewhere, this was as good a chance as any to tackle him.
I walked into a hallway, which looked like an exhibit for “Home Decorating of the Future”. Halliday came after me. He swung the door to with a heavy clang.
On the second floor he stopped before an apartment marked 3, danced his key-dance again and opened the door. He went ahead and fumbled on a light-switch. A small, unexpectedly elegant living-room came into view with zebra-striped drapes and deep yellow chairs. A large bouquet of pink carnations stood in a vase on a coffee-table. The room was rich with their perfume.
It was also encouragingly empty.
“Si’ down, old boy.”
Halliday flopped a hand on to my shoulder and guided me to one of the yellow chairs. He peeled off his top-coat, letting it drop to the floor and moved towards an inner door.
“Kitschun. See wha’ I can rustle up.”
He disappeared and started to clatter behind the door. The moment was good from my point of view. If Halliday was innocent, then his drunkenness wasn’t a sham. By to-morrow whatever I said to him would have become blurred in the fumes of alcohol. If he wasn’t innocent, if he had murdered Deborah Brand and had designs on me, he was just playing drunk. But that didn’t matter either. If he was guilty there was nothing I could tell him that he didn’t know already. Provided he had no gun, I was okay.
I got up quietly and searched as much of the room as I could before I heard him coming out of the kitchen. I had ducked back into my chair when he emerged, carrying two cuba libres with exaggerated care.
“Rum, old boy,” he intoned. “Yo ho ho and a bo’l of tum.”
He handed me a glass, weaved past the pink carnations and dropped on to the yellow couch.
He raised his drink with a flourish. “Here’s skol in your eye.”
I raised my drink to him. “Thanks,” I said, deciding on the approach direct. “And thanks for saving me just now.”
“Don’ menshun it. Only too glad save a pal. Always was. Tha’s me. Bill Halliday.” He screwed up his eyes and watched me, his head cocked suspiciously on one side. “Thank me for saving you? From wha’?”
“That taxi. You knew it wasn’t a taxi, didn’t you? You knew the driver was holding me up with a gun.”
“Holdin’ you up with a— You kiddin’?”
“I’m not kidding.”
He leaned forward on the couch, blinking. “Holdin’ you up with a gun? Why?”
“For the same reason he followed me all morning and finally caught up with me and slugged me at the Shrine out at Los Remedios. The same reason that some one burgled my apartment.”
He seemed to be making a supreme effort to understand. Then he gave up—his eyes dulled. “Burgling, slugging,” he murmured. “Don’ get it. Wha’ you talking about?”
“I thought you might be able to tell me.”
“Me?” The word came out belligerently. “Why me? Wha’sh this about? Who’s apar’ment burgled? Mine washn’t burgled. ’Syours?”
I said: “Know a little boy, pretty little Mexican boy? About nineteen?”
“Wha’s his name?” asked Halliday vaguely.
“You ought to know if he’s on your pay-roll.”
He tried to get there, but couldn’t. “Pay-roll?” he repeated.
I blazed a new trail. “You took my bag instead of yours at the airport, didn’t you?”
He remembered that. “Sure. Sure. Your bag. Both gadarbine, garadine, gar…. Both same. Porter. Mishtake. Shtupid.”
“And you inquired after me at the desk in the Hotel Yucatan before you knew me.”
“Did I?” He looked puzzled, and then a smile came, a broad, sharing-the-joke smile. “Hey, there, Peter, old boy, old kidder.”
I took a real jump. “And you followed Deborah Brand to Chichén-Itzá.”
The smile faded. He looked almost alert. “Follow who?”
“Deborah Brand.”
“Follow Deborah Bran’—who?”
“You.”
“You crazy.” He spoke with great, painstaking emphasis. Then he tittered. “Deborah Bran’s dead. Can’t follow dead girl. Why’d I follow a dead girl?”
“To get what she had,” I said. “And to murder her.”
“Murder her!” For the first since we’d started to talk, he showed signs of sobering up. His mouth dropped foolishly open. “Washn’t murdered. Fell in a well.” The euphony of the phrase seemed to please him. He repeated it: “Fell in a well.”
“She could have been pushed in a well.”
“Pushed? Why?”
Why?
“I don’t know.”
He had moved back to the couch and sat down, nursing his documents. “So she was pushed in the well.” He whistled through his teeth. “What do you know?” A sudden, clever look spread over his face. “Oh, you—always kiddin’.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” he sing-songed, like a little boy saying “Nyah”. “Oh, yes, you are. Because—you know why? If you thought she’d been murdered, know wh’a you’d have done? You’d ’ve gone to the pleesh in Merida.”
He looked at me triumphantly, implying that I couldn’t get round that telling thrust.
“I didn’t go to the police then,” I said, “because I didn’t have any evidence.”
He nodded to show he understood that okay. “And now you’ve got evidence?”
“Just that they’re gunning for me.”
“Why they gunnin’ for you? Why?”
“I guess because they think I was tied up with her, because they think I’ve got something they’re looking for. Incidentally, I haven’t.”
His lips pursed into a grimace of concentration. For quite a few moments he didn’t speak. I expected him to come out with something fairly sober. But I had got it wrong. He had been sliding even farther into his drunk. He closed his eyes.
It seemed futile to continue this farcical interview. By now I was as convinced of his innocence as I was of his drunkenness. There could surely be no point to a scene of this sort if it was a fake. His eyes were still shut. His head was nodding.
I got up and said: “Well, thanks for the drink. I’ll be pushing along.”
His eyes jerked open. He peered at me blearily and then pushing himself up, lumbered to the window. He swung back one of the zebra-striped drapes. “Shtuffy in here. That’s wha’ it is. Shtuffy.” He began to fumble with the catch of the window.
I crossed to him, holding out my hand. “Well, thanks, thanks again, Halliday. Time I went home.”
He tugged the window inward with a little grunt. “Wha’s tha’?” He turned to look at me owlishly. “Goin’? What’s sense o’ tha’? Plenny of beds here. Plenny of beds. Too shnotty to shtay here? You…?”
The sentence trailed off. He was supporting himself by a hand on the drape. He seemed to be clinging to consciousness only by a hair.
“I have to…” I started. Then I stopped.
From where I stood by his side I could see down the dimly lit street below.
Half a block away, parked in the shadow of a tree, was a familiar light-blue sedan. As I looked at it a lighted cigarette was tossed out of the front window and dropped sparking on to the side-walk.
I couldn’t see him, but I could imagine him there at the wheel with his smooth, little-boy face unlined by sleep, his wide, patient eyes fixed on the door of Halliday’s apartment house—waiting.
Junior was back.
A tingle of uneasiness came. I turned to Halliday. I began: “Well, on second thoughts, since you are so kind as to invite me…”
He grunted. Behind the shell-rimmed glasses his little eyes watched me vacantly. Slowly his hand uncurled from the drape. He leaned towards me as if to embrace me. Then his knees buckled under him and he fell slantwise to the carpet.
The party was over for Halliday. One hang-over—coming up….
I prospected through a door and found a bedroom with twin beds. I dragged him into it and hoisted him on to one of the beds. I took off his shoes, tossed an extra blanket over him and left him.
Just because I didn’t believe in passing up opportunities, I made a quick search of the apartment. I found nothing of any interest.
I went back into the bedroom and glanced through the window. The blue sedan was still waiting below. With a certain satisfaction I reflected that Junior had put in quite a hard day. He was going to be an awfully tired boy to-morrow.
I was tired, too. There was no reason to stay up any longer. I stripped down to my undershorts and climbed into the other bed. Halliday was breathing heavily, but he at least didn’t snore.
I snapped off the light. In a few moments I was asleep myself.
I awoke next morning to gay, splashing sunshine. My watch said eight-thirty. Remembering, I glanced across at the other bed. Halliday still lay as I had left him, the blanket tumbled over him. I got up and walked to the window.
Pleasant, daytime things were going on in the street. A prim nursemaid was pushing a baby in a perambulator. A man was dragging a chunk of ice along in a kind of primitive kiddy-car. Two dogs were sniffing each other’s noses and wagging their tails.
The light-blue sedan was not there.
I felt clear-headed and surprisingly light-hearted. I went into the bathroom and took a hot shower. I found a razor and accessories in Halliday’s medicine cabinet. As I shaved, a feeling almost of affection for him spread through me. Okay, he was an old bore with a line of bad jokes who couldn’t hold his liquor, but at least he’d saved me from a nasty situation and had given me a comfortable bed for the night.
And he knew no more about Deborah Brand than I did.
My soapy fingers lost their grip on the razor and I felt the blade jag into my cheek. Blood trickled down towards my chin. I swore, looked for cotton, couldn’t find any, and dabbed at the blood with a towel.
I located a styptic pencil and fixed the wound. But the towel had a bloodstain on it.
The dirty-linen basket was at my right, and I opened it and tossed the towel inside. As I did so, something red and shiny, poking up through the soiled towels and shirts, caught my eye. I glanced again and then a third time.
Curiously, I reached into the basket and pulled the thing out.
It was a girl’s pocket-book—a large red pocket-book.
I held it in my hand, looking at it, memories of Yucatan crowding back. I yanked open the flap. There were things inside—a white handkerchief, a lipstick, a compact, a mirror, change. But all my attention was fixed on the handkerchief.
Embroidered neatly on its corner were the initials
D. B.