The Damsel
Page 17
“Do you know my financial condition?”
“The money? No, of course not. The impression I’ve given Bob is that you’re some sort of adventurer, but basically a good man. He wants to talk to you later.”
“A lot more than I want to talk to him, I bet.”
“He’ll arrange some sort of—here he comes.”
“What?” Grofield looked up to see the waiter bringing his breakfast on a tray. From the opposite direction, Bob Harrison was coming across the room, smiling in a genial way. Arriving, he said, “Good morning. I’ll have a cup of coffee with you, if I may.”
“Sure. I’d like another myself.”
Harrison sat down, saying, “The General’s resting easy.” He reached out and put his hand on Elly’s, saying, “Your father’s been wonderful, Ellen, absolutely wonderful.”
“He’s the best there is.”
“He’s taking a nap now, maybe he’ll join us later.”
Grofield said, “He’s here? On the ship?”
Elly told him, “We’re all here. There’s a regular infirmary here. It was closer than anything else, so the General was brought here right away yesterday.”
Harrison said, “It was also more convenient. As soon as Ellen’s father says it’s safe, we’ll be returning to Guerrero so the General can recuperate in his own land.”
“He’ll be all right, then,” said Grofield.
“Yes.” Harrison’s smile, so affable and impersonal, faded all at once, and he seemed to be looking back at yesterday. “God, that was something,” he said. “When the General fell, I thought they’d—I thought he was dead.” He lifted a hand to his face; the hand was shaking. “I thought they’d killed him.”
Elly, looking concerned, reached out to touch his arm, saying, “Bob? What’s the matter? I’ve never seen you this way.”
Harrison’s hand covered his face now, and his voice was muffled by it when he spoke. “God, I love that man,” he said. “You don’t know what it did to me, when I thought he was dead.” Emotion made his voice fluttery and uncertain. He lowered his hand and turned toward Grofield a face reddened and puffed by the violence of his feeling. “All that vitality,” he said, “all that strength, all that great love of life, just lying there!”
Grofield couldn’t resist it, couldn’t keep himself from saying, “The way I hear it, there are people who’d like to see General Pozos just lying there, for good and all.”
“Peasants! Little people, nobodies, cowards, all the gray little people who never lived! They say he’s a dictator, he’s a tyrant, you’ll even hear atrocity stories if you go looking for them, but so what! Some men are just bigger than others, that’s all, more alive, more vital, more important! You can’t stop them, you can’t contain them, hold them in with rules! Ellen understands that, don’t you, darling, you risked your own life to try to save him, you sensed the drive in the man, the force, the power.”
Elly was startled out of any ready answer. “Well,” she said. “Well. I just did, I only did . . .”
“You know what I say?” Harrison turned to stare at Grofield, his hands clutching the edge of the table. “I say, if a hundred men starve themselves to death in darkness in order to produce one after-dinner cigar for General Pozos to enjoy on just one evening of his life, those hundred men have fulfilled their purpose! What else would they do with their lives, what more meaningful than devote themselves to the pleasure of one of the few men who are really and truly alive? The people of Guerrero should be proud to have General Pozos for their leader!”
Grofield said, “I understand your own father is a different kind of leader, has maybe a different attitude toward people.”
“Oh, all that. I grew up with that, I know about that. I think it’s all very praiseworthy, I’m sure my father did the people of Pennsylvania proud, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being an administrator. But General Pozos— He’s so far above that paperwork bureaucrat sort of thing, he’s so— He’s a lion in a jungle full of rabbits.”
Elly, straining to change the subject, said, “Your father went back north, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. He had appointments, he only stayed long enough to be sure the General was going to be all right, then he flew on home. He and Juan.” Turning to Grofield, he explained, “The General’s son.”
“Ah.”
“The oddest thing,” Harrison said. “Someone tried to kill Juan today, too. Some lunatic, I suppose. Just ran up to him at the hotel and tried to stab him.”
Grofield looked at Elly, but she shook her head, meaning it was news to her and didn’t have any connection with the rest of it that she knew about. Grofield said to Harrison, “Was it the same mob, you suppose? Trying to kill the father and the son both on the same day?”
“The Mexican police are looking into it,” Harrison said, “but it doesn’t seem likely. More probably a dope addict, something like that. The General’s the one the gang was after. I don’t want to say anything against Juan, I’m sure he’s a pleasant boy, but he has none of his father’s power, his electricity. No, it was the General they wanted.”
“I suppose so,” said Elly faintly.
“Everyone can sense that power in the General, that aura. My father, too, he can feel it, he missed his plane to stay here and be sure the General was going to be all right.”
“Good of him,” said Grofield, looking ironically at Elly.
All at once, Harrison sat back in his chair and offered them a sheepish smile, saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t usually carry on like this. But it was such a shock, I don’t think I’m over it yet.”
Elly said, “You were going to see about papers for Mister Grofield.”
“Oh, yes.” Harrison was making an obvious effort to settle down. Trying for his usual affable smile, he said to Grofield, “Ellen tells me you’re something of a mystery man, traveling around with bullet wounds instead of papers. Well, we can get you fixed up. I can have papers for you in an hour, good enough to get you safely back into the States. Or, if you like, you could come along on the rest of the cruise, be the General’s guest in Guerrero for a while, I’m sure he’d like to thank you personally for your aid in defeating the plot against him.”
“I think,” Grofield said, “I think I’d rather leave today. I’ve got people I’m supposed to see in the States.”
“Certainly. No problem at all.”
Elly said, “Mister Grofield, would you mind if I traveled with you? I have to go north right away myself.”
Harrison said, “I thought you were coming along with us.”
“No, I have all sorts of responsibilities back in Philadelphia. Until I was kidnapped, I didn’t know I was coming down here at all.”
“What a shame,” said Harrison. He smiled brightly at both of them and said, “Well, at least you’ll have a more pleasant travel companion on the way back.”
Elly smiled at Grofield. “Isn’t that lucky,” she said.
Getting to his feet, Harrison said, “Well, let me see about that paperwork for you. I’ll talk to you a little later.”
Grofield smiled back at him. “Fine,” he said. He kept smiling until Harrison was gone, then looked at Elly and said, “What’s up?”
“The balloon. All these years Bob’s been the strong, silent type, that’s what mostly attracted me about him. Thank God he finally opened his mouth before I married him.”
“Speaking of married,” Grofield reminded her, “I still am.”
She shook her head. “Not till we cross the border,” she said.
RICHARD STARK is one of the many pseudonyms of Donald Westlake (1933–2008), a prolific author of noir crime fiction.
Stark’s short crime novels about an independent, hard-working criminal named Parker start with The Hunter (1962) (made into the film Point Blank), and end with Butcher’s Moon (1974)—and then, after more than twenty years, revive with Comeback (1998), Backflash (1999), and six more, up to the latest, Dirty Money (2008). Comeback and Backf
lash were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
In the late 1960s, Westlake also used his Stark pseudonym to write four thrillers starring Parker’s friend and associate Alan Grofield.
Donald Westlake also wrote, under his own name, a series of humorous caper novels featuring John Dortmunder; that award-winning series of fourteen novels began in 1970 with The Hot Rock and continued until Get Real (2009).