The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

“I want to tell it as much in his words as possible, so you can get the same flavor as I did.”

  “Understood.”

  “Ted’s first job, back in Moultrie, Georgia, was as a handyman. Then one day his boss fired him, and replaced him with a colored man.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the colored man was prepared to work for less money, of course.”

  “Couldn’t he have offered to take less himself?”

  Dolores gave Paco a pitying look.

  “It was bad enough he’d been doing the same work as a ‘nigger’, without being paid the same wages as one,” she said. “Anyway, a couple of weeks after he’d lost his job, the Klan held a meeting – a konklave, they called it – just outside his town. Whole families went to it. They took picnic lunches with them. Even the kids were wearing Klan robes and hoods. There were speeches and games in the afternoon. Then, as night fell, the Klan marched down the main street of the town. He says there were thousands of them, from all over the state. There were five or six bands in the parade, but the only musicians who were playing their instruments were the drummers – and all they did was pound out a relentless marching rhythm which sent shivers down his spine. Some of the Klansmen carried burning torches. They looked like they were afraid of nothing and nobody. They acted as if they owned the world.”

  “So he signed up?”

  “Yes, he signed up. Hell, Paco, when you’re dirt poor it’s nice to find something – anything – which makes you feel important.”

  “Like the Communist Party?”

  Dolores shook her head, almost despairingly.

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “The Klan got Ted a new job – in a grocery store. One day the storeowner accused a colored girl of stealing a bag of sugar. She denied it, but, of course, nobody believed her. That night the local Klan went to her shack, dragged her from her bed, and strung her up from the nearest tree. Ted didn’t take part in the actual lynching, but he was there to watch, and to give it his support. The next day, when he was clearing up in the store, he found the bag of sugar. It had fallen behind the flour sacks. He says he still dreams about it.”

  “Dreams about what?” Paco asked, unremittingly. “About hanging a Negro? Or about hanging one who, on that particular occasion, wasn’t guilty?”

  “Are you really such a hard-hearted man?” Dolores asked him. “Aren’t you ever prepared to forgive anyone for their mistakes?”

  The rebuke was well deserved, Paco thought. Everybody did make mistakes. He had certainly made enough of his own.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Ted couldn’t bear to stay in his hometown any longer. He jumped on the next freight train through, and ended up in New York. You can pretty much fill in the rest yourself. He joined the union, then the Party, and when he saw the chance to do some good – coming here – he signed up without a second thought.”

  “Tell me why he hates Jews,” Paco said.

  “He doesn’t hate them.”

  “Tell me why other people – people like Mannie Lowenstein – might think he’s prejudiced against them.”

  “He was influenced by those around him. Some stevedores are anti-Semitic. Not all – but enough. Now he realizes that that prejudice is just as irrational – and just as unfair – as the one he used to have against the coloreds.”

  “He’s sure he’s got over his feelings about the Negroes, is he?” Paco asked skeptically.

  “You know that Sam Johnson led a party into Albacete to get some ammunition, don’t you?” Dolores asked.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that story.”

  “And you know that the French clerk there didn’t want to give the ammunition to them? That the two French brigadistas on guard raised their rifles, and the clerk told Sam that if he didn’t leave, he’d be shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that it seemed like he really meant it? Which was when one of the other brigadistas stood between Sam and the guards, and said that if they wanted to shoot Sam, they’d have to shoot him first.”

  “Where is all this leading?” Paco asked impatiently. “Can’t you see already? The brigadista who put his own life at risk to protect Sam’s was Ted Donaldson.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The cobbled street outside the cafeteria still glistened with a sheen of early morning frost, though small icicles which had formed on the guttering and window frames were slowly dripping away their frozen lives onto the ground below.

  It was that time of the morning when the men had gone off to work, the women were cleaning their homes, and only the aged, after a lifetime of toil, found themselves with time on their hands. Old women, dressed entirely in black, ventured cautiously out of their houses, walking with exaggerated care to avoid slipping. Old men in flat caps prodded the ground in front of them experimentally with the gnarled walking sticks they held in their gnarled hands. All of them, men and women alike, sniffed the air and gave small shudders. Though the weak winter sun had made the air a little kinder than it had been earlier, spring seemed a long, long time away.

  Paco and Fat Felipe, ignoring the hazards which older, more brittle bones dared not, strode down the Calle Mayor towards the city walls.

  “Imagine hanging somebody just for stealing a bag of sugar,” Felipe said. “A bag of sugar – for God’s sake!”

  Paco nodded in agreement, but his mind was elsewhere. He was about to make his second visit to Cindy’s sickbed that morning.

  The first time, she had seemed much the same as she had been the night before. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? he agonized.

  If she had groaned or cried out, might not that have shown that her poor damaged brain was doing something – that it was at least trying to claw its way back to the surface? Or could such a groan not equally have been her final protest against the injustices of life before her soul sank into final oblivion?

  The two policemen turned onto Calle Pez. Cindy was only a few doors away now – hovering between life and death. They reached Asunción Muñoz's front door. Someone – probably Asuncion herself – had made an attempt to wash away the bloodstains, but there was still enough of a trace to see where Cindy had fallen, and looking at the stain, Paco felt a fresh onslaught of guilt rush through his body.

  “You can’t blame yourself, jefe,” Felipe said softly.

  “Can’t I?” Paco demanded. “Then who can I blame?”

  “The man who attacked her.”

  “He wouldn’t have been able to attack her if I hadn’t first brought her to San Antonio! He wouldn’t have been able to attack her if I’d been by her side, protecting her, as I should have been. She’s my woman. She’s my responsibility. She’s my failure.”

  “Jefe...”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Paco said firmly. “Do you hear me? The subject is closed.”

  “Yes, jefe,” Fat Felipe said meekly.

  Paco knocked on the front door, but no one came to answer his call. He forced himself to wait patiently for at least half a minute, then knocked again. When there was still no muted noise of footsteps crossing a stone floor, he turned the handle – and discovered that the door was locked!

  Despite the cold air which enveloped him, sweat began to drip from his forehead. People in small Spanish towns did not lock their doors in the daytime. Most of them did not even bother to lock them at night. Yet this door undoubtedly was locked.

  Why was it locked?

  Because the house was empty?

  Or as a sign of respect for the dead body which was lying beyond the other side of the door?

  While his mind grappled with his growing dread, his hands took independent action, forming fists and hammering desperately on the door.

  “Take it easy, jefe,” Felipe said worriedly.

  “Go to hell!” Paco screamed, knowing he must be bruising his hands – and not giving a damn.

&nb
sp; The window blind was rolled up, and a frightened white face peered out. Felipe glanced at Paco, and seeing that his boss had not even noticed, he bent his bulky body down to the level of the woman’s face.

  “It’s only us,” he mouthed.

  Asunción Muñoz moved away from the window, and Felipe heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. He placed his heavy hand on his boss’s shoulders, and pulled him away.

  “The door’s being opened at this very moment,” the constable shouted. “Don’t go charging straight in, or you’ll knock Señora Munoz right across the salon.”

  The door swung open, and Paco looked through the gap at the bed. Concha Prieto was standing over Cindy and mopping the sick woman’s brow with a damp cloth.

  She wasn’t dead! he thought, gasping with relief. She couldn’t be dead – because Concha would not have wasted her time soothing the brow of a corpse.

  He rushed across the room, then flung himself onto one knee by the side of the bed.

  “I’m here, Cindy,” he said, taking one of her hands between his two. “I’m right here beside you!”

  “What the devil’s been happening here?” Fat Felipe demanded, angry that his boss had been put through so much for no apparent reason. “Why was the bloody door locked?”

  “It was locked because ... because we were afraid,” Asunción Muñoz stuttered.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “I ... I was upstairs, looking after Concha …”

  “I wasn’t feeling well,” Concha Prieto explained. “I needed to lie down.”

  “I heard a noise like that of the door catch being lifted, but I thought I was imagining it,” Asunción Muñoz continued. “Then I heard footsteps. Very soft footsteps. I went out onto the landing, and called out, ‘Who’s down there?’ Nobody answered, but then I heard the footsteps again. Louder this time – as if whoever it was had given up the idea of being quiet.”

  “We both came downstairs as quickly as we could,” Concha Prieto said. “The front door was wide open, but when I went out and looked down the street, it was deserted.”

  “So somebody came into the house,” Felipe said impatiently. “What of it? Why build it up into a drama? There are always people around who take a morbid curiosity in looking at the sick. And of course whoever it was walked quietly – that’s what you do instinctively when you’re approaching an invalid. Then your call from the top of the stairs must have startled the visitor – who’d imagined up until that point that he was alone – and made him feel suddenly ashamed of himself for being so nosy. So he left the house as quickly as he could. Who wouldn't have done the same in his place? That’s no reason to turn this place into a fortress, is it?”

  “The pillow!” Asunción Muñoz said, pointing at the one which Cindy’s head rested on.

  “What about it?”

  “We ... we found it lying on the floor by the side of the bed,” Concha Prieto said. “It couldn’t have just fallen there – not with the weight of that poor girl’s head pressing down on it. So whoever was in the room must have pulled it out from under her.”

  Felipe had not even been sure that his boss had been listening, but now Paco stood up again, and from the black look on his face, it was obvious that he had.

  “There could have only been one reason for removing the pillow, couldn’t there?” Paco said. “It was going to be a murder weapon. He intended to smother her with it!”

  “Yes,” Concha Prieto admitted. “That’s what we think. That’s why we locked the door.”

  Paco paced the floor, and Felipe watched in awed fascination as his boss transformed himself from the hysterical wreck he had been only moments earlier into the cold calculating professional who, against all odds, had arrested the killer of the headless corpse in the Atocha railway station.

  Paco came to a halt. For perhaps thirty seconds he stood perfectly still, as if tuning his mind into the pulse of the room. Then he sniffed deeply. And with that sniff came an image of the individualista bar he had visited the previous afternoon.

  “Are you on to something, jefe?” Felipe asked.

  “You’re supposed to be the one with the good nose,” Paco said. “What can you smell?”

  Felipe sniffed, just as his boss had done.

  “Garlic,” the fat constable said.

  “What else?”

  “Let me see. Cooking oil. Burnt olivewood. Soap.”

  “Those are the smells you’d expect to find here,” Paco said. “But isn’t there something else as well? Something which has no place at all in the house of a widow who lives alone?”

  Felipe sniffed again.

  “Cow shit!” he said decisively.

  “Yes,” Paco agreed grimly. “Cow shit!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Paco was striding down the street so rapidly that Felipe was finding it almost impossible to keep up with him. What was even worse, from the fat constable’s viewpoint, was that he still had no idea where they were going – or why they were going there.

  “Don’t go jumping to any hasty conclusions, jefe.” Felipe pleaded as he puffed. “You know you’re usually terribly wrong when you start jumping to hasty conclusions.”

  “There are so many conspiracy theories floating around in this bloody case that I’ve been assuming that everything that’s happened has had to be part of one of them,” Paco said – furious with himself, and furious with the world in general. “So when Cindy was attacked, I automatically accepted that it had to have something to do with Samuel Johnson’s murder.”

  “And didn’t it?”

  “I thought she must have discovered some clue which would lead me to the killer, and that’s why he’d tried to silence her,” Paco continued, talking more to himself than to his assistant. “But I was way off the mark. The real motive for the attack – which I would have seen a long time ago if the conspiracy theories hadn’t been blinding me – is much simpler than that.”

  “And what is it?”

  “If a coward wants to get his revenge on a man who’s humiliated him, he doesn’t take it out on that man himself – because he doesn’t dare,” Paco said. “So instead, he picks on someone weaker – someone he knows his enemy cares about. He hurts the enemy through hurting her.”

  “You’re talking about Iñigo Torres!” Felipe exclaimed.

  “Of course I’m talking about Iñigo Torres! He’s the one who sabotaged Juan Prieto’s tractor. Sneaking behind a woman and hitting her over the head is just his style.”

  “But why should he have tried to kill Cindy again this morning? Hadn’t he already got his revenge on you with his first attack on her?”

  “And what if she saw him before he hit her?” Paco asked. “If she regains – when she regains – consciousness, he knows she’ll tell me who her attacker was, and then he’s as good as dead.”

  They drew level with the individualista bar, and Paco pulled his pistol out of its holster.

  “Don’t do this now, jefe,” Felipe pleaded. “Wait for half an hour and see if you still …”

  “If you don’t want to have any part of this, you can go now,” Paco told him harshly.

  “I wouldn’t desert you. You know that.”

  “Then if you want to stay, don’t get in my way.”

  Paco flung the bar door open, and stepped inside. The few customers who were sitting at the tables, drinking their mid-morning cafés y copas, looked up with startled expressions on their faces.

  Paco’s eyes swept the bar, and once he had made certain that Torres was not there, he leveled his pistol at the barman’s chest.

  “Where’s Iñigo Torres!” he demanded.

  The barman's eyes were wide with fright.

  “I ... I …think that he’s ... he’s at his house.”

  “And no doubt he’s got a solid alibi for the whole morning,” Paco said. “Well, that won’t do him any good!”

  “I ... I don’t understand, señor.”

  “I’m going to see justice carried o
ut,” Paco told him. “Not government justice! Not even revolutionary justice. Ruiz’s justice!”

  “You’re going to hurt him again?”

  “I’m going to kill him!”

  “But ... but you can’t do that. It ... it wouldn’t be fair to a sick man like him,” the barman protested.

  Paco lowered his weapon.

  “A sick man?” he repeated.

  “Yes, señor.”

  “And how long has he been sick?”

  “Only a couple of hours. He was out working in the fields early this morning when his tractor suddenly turned over and rolled on top of him. Five of his ribs were crushed.”

  Luis Prieto sat alone in one of the colectivista bars, an untouched glass of sol y sombra in front of him. He seemed completely enveloped in his own thoughts, and did not even look up when the policeman from Madrid walked into the bar and sat down opposite him.

  “Iñigo Torres has had an ‘accident’ out on his land,” Paco said. “His tractor turned over.”

  “So I have heard,” Luis replied.

  “Exactly the same thing happened to your father, not so long ago,” Paco pointed out.

  “Are you saying that I was responsible for Torres’ accident?” the young peasant demanded.

  Paco laughed.

  “Without proof? Of course not! But let us just say, for the sake of argument, that it wasn’t an accident – and that you were responsible.”

  “Go on,” the young peasant said cautiously.

  “If that were the case, who could blame you? No one can prove that Torres sabotaged the collective’s tractor in order to hurt your father, either, but everybody knows that he did. So if you’d decided to pay him back in the same coin, then most people – including me – would see it as no more than justice being served.”

  “A man should always protect his own family in any way he can,” Luis Prieto said.

  “And you’re very close to your family, aren’t you?” Paco asked. “Both your father and your sister mean a lot to you.”

  “What of it?”

  “You didn’t tell Concha what you were planning to do, did you?”

  Luis Prieto smiled.