The Damsel

by Richard Stark

  “Check. The son is a PR man in Latin America. So now we have a cast of two, father and son.”

  “Three. General Pozos.”

  “Oh? He fits in here, too?”

  “He’s the middle of it.”

  “Any more characters, or do we get to the plot now?”

  “More characters. Only one more to know about now. General Pozos has a son, too. Juan. He’s twenty-one years old, and he’s a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.”

  “Aha. The two sons have switched countries.”

  “Yes. Juan has been in the United States for eight years, since he started high school. Summertimes he spends back in Guerrero. Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter he spends with Governor Harrison. The Governor met General Pozos about twelve years ago, when they were both in Washington, and when it came time to send Juan north for his education, the Governor offered to take the boy into his own house. Bob was twenty-one then, just leaving home, and Juan, I guess, was a sort of substitute son for him.”

  “So far,” Grofield said, “I don’t seem to catch a glimpse of Honner and the boys, and Acapulco seems far away.”

  “All right, I’m getting to it. I have more to tell you about Governor Harrison, but believe me, it’s all necessary if you’re going to understand what’s happening now.”

  Grofield sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. “Carry on,” he said. But at the same time he wasn’t as impatient as he sounded; this variety of personnel, this wealth of detail and fullness of background, were indications of truth. He believed this story, or would as soon as she started to tell it; lies have a clearer and more sensible line.

  “Several years ago,” she said, “the Governor bought a house in Santo Stefano, that’s the capital city of Guerrero. He spends his summers there, spends a few days now and then the rest of the year. He’s gotten interested in Guerrero, in the country’s economy, its resources, its potential, its people, its history, just everything about it.”

  “Ahhh. A little country all his own. The kind of man you’re talking about would like that.”

  “He more than likes it,” she said. “He has an obsession for it.”

  Grofield glanced at her. She was serious, intense, level-eyed; her cheekbones were prominent, casting shadows in the small light from the dashboard. He said, low-voiced, “I believe we’re getting to it now.”

  “Yes. Governor Harrison wants Guerrero. He wants to run it himself, create a true nation of it. With General Pozos running things, the Governor can’t do much, but for eight years he’s been the most important single person in the life of General Pozos’ son Juan. When the General dies and Juan takes over—and he will, that’s guaranteed—then Governor Harrison can have Guerrero to himself. With Juan as the figurehead, with his own son Bob to handle the public relations and the paperwork, Governor Harrison can take the raw materials of a nation into his hands and do whatever he wants with it.”

  “King Luke the First.”

  But she shook her head. “No. He doesn’t want glory, he doesn’t want privilege. He doesn’t even want power, not for himself. He was born with all of that. What Governor Harrison wants is to serve the people. I’ve heard him talk, Alan, I’ve listened to him talk about this very thing, and he means it. He wants to raise the standard of living in Guerrero, wants to get good schools, good housing, good everything. He isn’t fooling, and he isn’t kidding himself. And if he gets the chance to do what he wants, it will be better for the people of Guerrero. In ten years he could make it the most advanced nation in Central America, maybe in Central and South America both. And right now it has the next to the lowest standard of living of any nation in the Western Hemisphere.”

  “So he’s a good man.”

  “No. He wants to do good things, but he’s not a good man. He’s—you’ve got to understand this, he’s had this dream in his mind for years now, years and years. And the way General Pozos lives—it would take Charles Laughton to do a movie biography of him—and the age he is, nearly sixty, it just seems as though it can’t be long to wait. But the years go by, and General Pozos keeps on living, and Governor Harrison has to keep on waiting.”

  “I think I see it coming.”

  “Of course. And Juan is graduating from college this year. The Governor wanted him to stay on, to do postgraduate work, but Juan said no. He’s going to move back to Guerrero, he’ll live there permanently. And very soon the Governor won’t control him anymore. Juan will be left to himself, and he might even grow up to be his own man.”

  “The Governor can’t afford to wait.”

  “No. And he realizes what he plans to do is evil, but he believes there are extenuating circumstances. The General is himself more evil than any single act against him could be, that’s one argument. And the ultimate good for all the people of Guerrero is more important than the immediate evil of the act, that’s another. And for a third, in a truly civilized world the General would have been executed for his crimes long ago, so this is merely the commission of an overdue good act.”

  Grofield grinned. “I must ask the Governor to do all my rationalizing for me.”

  “He’s good at it, mostly because he believes so completely himself.” She hesitated, as though at the brink of something, some dark pit, and then said, in a lower tone. “And he can convince other people, too. He’s a forceful man, a dominant man.”

  “In other words, he isn’t doing the job himself. He’s talked someone else into doing it.”

  “Yes.”

  Grofield waited, but she didn’t say anything, so finally he said, “Who?”

  “A doctor,” she said. “His own personal physician. When the Governor is running Guerrero, this doctor will run the Ministry of Health, will establish the hospitals and clinics, will even form a medical school. The two of them have talked about it for years together, the doctor’s as caught up in it as Governor Harrison, he even has architectural drawings of hospitals, he has lists of names of men he would try to hire away from American hospitals and universities.”

  “Their own private model-train layout.”

  “Yes! Yes! That’s what’s wrong with it, neither of them cares about the people! The populace, yes, but not the people, not the individual men and women. It’s just a population, and buildings, and land area, and natural resources, and harbors, and rivers . . .”

  Grofield prodded slightly, saying, “Anyway, the doctor is going to do the job himself.”

  “Yes. General Pozos is not a healthy man. He couldn’t be, the life he leads. This doctor has cared for him from time to time in the past, and now he’s volunteered to go down there and be the General’s personal physician on a full-time basis. The General, of course, thinks that’s wonderful.”

  “What’s the plan? Accident?”

  “Oh, no. Just bad health. General Pozos will waste away, will have this and that with complications. He won’t last three months. A personal physician, in constant daily contact with the patient, can kill in a thousand different ways.”

  Grofield said, “Oh.” He turned on the car heater. “This plan is new,” he said.

  “Brand-new. The General is on his yacht now, he’s spending two weeks cruising up and down the Pacific coast. He’ll be at sea until Friday morning, when he’ll come to land—”

  “At Acapulco.”

  “Yes. Mexico has separate states, you know, the same as we do, and Acapulco is in the state of Guerrero.”

  “The same name as the country.”

  “Right. So the General makes frequent stops there, for a day, two days, just long enough to pick out one or two women in bathing suits. He makes a production out of it, how the peoples of the two Guerreros, nation and state, are hand in hand in eternal friendship and all that. He makes a speech, usually, and has an official luncheon. The people at Acapulco like it fine, because Acapulco is a resort town, and colorful ceremonies about celebrities are always welcome in a resort town.”

  Grofield said, “And you, knowing about the plan, have dec
ided to go down to Acapulco on Friday and warn the General to be on the eary.”

  “On the what?”

  “On the eary. It’s slang, don’t worry about it, it means to be careful.”

  “Oh. Yes, that’s what I want to do.”

  “Whereas Governor Harrison, aware of your intention, has hired Honner to stop you. Honner has a blank check and can hire however many goons it takes.”

  “Yes. Honner’s a private detective in Philadelphia. Or at least that’s what he calls himself. He’s done the Governor’s dirty work before.”

  Grofield watched the road, a two-lane blacktop, straight as a die. Rolling, semiarid countryside stretched away on both sides, virtually lifeless. Every once in a great while there would be a small lone flickering light out in the darkness to left or right; a candle showing through the glassless window of a solitary mud hut. A smoke-snorting truck or a rushing passenger car would go by every now and again, headed south, at intervals of about ten minutes. It was bleak, poor, dry, empty country, with no towns or diners or roadside stands, no crossroads or gas stations or taverns. A bad place, particularly if Honner and his boys caught up.

  Grofield looked in the rearview mirror and couldn’t be sure it was angled right, because he couldn’t see anything in it, only blackness. He twisted quickly around in the seat, holding the wheel with his left hand, and looked out the back window, and the mirror had reported the truth; there was about a foot of visible road behind the car, glowing dull red in the illumination of the taillights, but beyond that, stretching back to the edge of the world and over, there was nothing. Emptiness, blackness, darkness, and blind nothing.

  Grofield faced front again.

  Beside him, she looked back, then front, saying, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m thinking.”

  He was thinking about her story. He believed it, both for what she’d said and for the way she’d said it. There had been hesitations here and there in the recital that led him to believe he didn’t yet have the whole truth, but he was convinced that what he’d been told was at least part of it.

  But there were still questions. He asked one of them: “You’re taking a lot of trouble, you’re risking your neck. Are you sure it’s worth it?”

  “What?”

  “Why try to save General Pozos’ life at the risk of your own? If he’s such a bastard, why sweat it?”

  “Because he’s a human being. Because no man should take another man’s life, that’s anarchy, that’s—”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” He was about to hear a judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged speech, and he would rather not. He said, “What’s the General to you? What’s the relationship between you?”

  “We’ve met, that’s all. Hello, how are you, lovely weather. At receptions, places like that.”

  “Then where’s your connection with all this? You know all the inside dope, you’ve heard the Governor talk about what he’s going to do with Guerrero, where do you come in? You the Governor’s daughter?”

  “No. The doctor’s.”

  Grofield looked at her, and saw her wide-eyed and solemn. He turned his eyes back to the road. “Big Ed Fitzgerald?”

  “Doctor Edgar Fitzgerald. He’s what they call an eminent physician. He’s my father.”

  “And he knows about Honner and—”

  “Oh no. I knew something was going on, and I knew Dad was troubled, and he finally told me what they were planning to do. What he was planning to do. I tried to talk him out of it, I tried to, tried to get him to think about it, see it, understand what he’s planning to do, but he’s blinded by visions of good works, the greater good for the greater number—”

  “The end justifies the means.”

  She smiled bitterly. She said, “He told me the Bible said that twice, once for and once against. It says the end doesn’t justify the means, but it also says by their fruits ye shall know them, meaning that good fruit has to come from a good tree, meaning the end justifies the means.”

  “He’s buried his conscience in a ton of soft, round words.”

  “Liberally sprinkled with ideals.”

  “How do we get from your father to Honner?”

  “I told him I would warn General Pozos when he got to Acapulco. You know, I don’t know of any way to get to him before that, he’s just out there in the Pacific someplace with a lot of whores. So I threatened to go to Acapulco, and he tried locking me away in my room, but I got away. So then I suppose he told the Governor, and I can just see it. The Governor calming him down, talking to him in that good, low, confidential voice of his, putting his hand around my father’s shoulders, saying, ‘Don’t you worry, Ed, we’ll find your little girl, we’ll keep her safe.’ And then telling Honner, ‘Find the little bitch, I don’t care what it costs. Don’t let her get to Pozos.’ And when Honner wants to know where the line is drawn, the Governor smiles at him and says, ‘Use your discretion.’ That’s his line, that’s the way you get evil things done for a good purpose. You hire a man and tell him what the good purpose is, and when he asks you how to get that good purpose you say to him, ‘Use your discretion.’ And this time it means, keep her alive if you possibly can, but the main thing is not to let her talk to General Pozos.”

  “But what if they decide they have to kill you? What’s your father going to do then?”

  “Nothing. He won’t know about it. They’ll cover it somehow, I’ll just disappear, nobody knows where I am. Oh, she’s off pouting somewhere, that’s all, she’ll turn up. And after the General’s dead, what does it matter?”

  “Mm.” Grofield thought. “I have one more question.”

  “All right.”

  “Why did you come to bed with me? I thought it was a bribe, at least partly, to keep me with you, but that doesn’t figure now. You wouldn’t use that kind of a bribe to save General Pozos, he’s the wrong kind of Holy Grail to sacrifice yourself for.”

  She smiled. “You should have a higher opinion of yourself.”

  “I do. I also thought it was a bribe you got change on, and that you knew it.”

  “Hah! Look out you don’t get round-shouldered from hugging yourself. You want a cigarette?”

  “Yes. I also want an answer.”

  “I’ll answer, don’t worry.” She lit two cigarettes, holding both in her mouth at the same time walrus-like, handed one to him, blew a cloud of smoke, and said, “I suppose partly it was reaction. We were safe, or at least we thought we were, and I was grateful, and the urgency was over for the moment. You know, it’s a well-known psychological fact that people think about sex right after a narrow escape. Preservation of the species, or something.”

  “People think about sex all the time. I want to know why you did something about it.”

  “Well, that’s part of it. And also, as I said, gratitude. And maybe a bribe, too, a little bit. And mostly . . .” she gave him a crooked smile and a warm look “. . . mostly curiosity.”

  “Did you find out?”

  “Mmmm.”

  Grofield grinned. “Think there might be more to learn?”

  “I don’t know. Ask me when we get wherever we’re going.”

  “San Luis Potosí. The ruby in the forehead of Old May-hee-co.”

  She waved the hand holding the cigarette, a careless gesture. “Olé,” she said.

  9

  “THE WAY I see it,” Grofield said, scratching his head and studying the map, “we can bypass Mexico City and go through a place called Toluca instead, on something called Route 55, and take that down to Taxco, but from Taxco on there’s only the one road to Acapulco, and Honner’s going to be all over that road like a white line.”

  They were sitting together on the terrace outside their hotel room. San Luis Potasí, a cramped, old picturesque city of narrow streets and Old World buildings, was spread out before them like the Spanish section of Paris in a musical by MGM. They had come here Wednesday night, and now it was nine o’clock Thursday morning, time to be leaving. Bright sunligh
t shone on the map spread out on the table in front of them, their breakfast dishes pushed to one side. The used coffee cups were taking on a cargo of cigarette butts.

  She said, “There has to be another way, Alan. Can’t we go straight to the ocean from here, and then along the coast? What’s wrong with that? Look, we go from here to Aguascalientes to Guadalajara to Colima to Tecomán on the coast.”

  “Sure,” he said. “And then look. An unimproved road as far as Aquila, and then nothing.”

  “What’s that dotted line, from Aquila to—what is it? Playa Azul.”

  He looked at the legend, said, “Proposed road. They haven’t built it yet.”

  “Couldn’t we do it anyway? Maybe we could rent a jeep, it’s probably just sand along there—”

  “It could also be jungle. Besides, that dotted line crosses two rivers, honey, and I guarantee you it does it a lot easier than we could.”

  “Well, damn!” She stubbed out another cigarette in a coffee cup, and immediately lit a fresh one. “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Trains and planes are out,” he said. “They’ll be blanketing the terminals, we wouldn’t get as far as the sidewalk. We’ve got to try it by car, that’s all there is to it. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting as far as Taxco, but after that it might be trouble.”

  “Might be!”

  “All right, will be. But we’ve got to try it.”

  She bent over the map again. “What if we went around to the other side and down to the coast and back up? Isn’t there any road there either?”

  “Nope. Look.”

  She looked, and there was nothing, and she kept on looking, and there kept on being nothing. Finally she sat up and said, “All right, I give up. We have to drive to Acapulco, and we have to take the only road, and I don’t see how we’re going to get there.”

  “What we’ll do,” he said, “is drive as far as Taxco, and then scout the territory. We can’t make plans of our own until we know how they’re set up. And they’ve got to be south of Taxco, because there’s three different roads we could be on until you get a few miles south of Taxco at, what is it, at Iguala. There’s no point in their watching three roads when they can wait a few miles farther south and only have to watch one road.”