Call Down The Hawk

by Richard Folmar

  It was shortly after midnight when Seth and Hand returned to their hotel. On entering their room, Seth said, “Better check it out, Hand.”

  The big Texan went over to their unpacked suitcases and examined his own bag first. He looked up with a grin. “They weren’t very good at it. My toothbrush and razor have been moved, and my clothes have been manhandled. I’ll bet if you check yours, you’ll find the same thing.”

  “Nothing seems to be missing,” Seth said, “but someone has definitely gone through my gear.” He remembered something. “Hand, where is your gun?”

  Hand laughed and walked over to the estufa. He dug in the old ashes and brought out something wrapped in a red bandanna. Unwrapping it, he held up his gun. “They weren’t about to get this old iron. Who do you reckon our snoop was and what he was looking for?”

  “I doubt he was a thief, he didn’t seem to take anything. No, it could have been one of the rebel sympathizers, or more likely the police. I figure they were just being nosy about who we are and what we might be doing here. Remember, this country right now seethes with intrigue. The arrival of two men from the State Department of the United States aboard a Navy ship has to raise questions as to what we are about.”

  Hand collapsed on one of the beds, “Danged funny country we find ourselves in, partner.”

  “Oh, I reckon, under these circumstances where a ruthlessdictator has seized power and the country has three rebel armies trying to seize control, getting our room searched is to be expected. It just reminds us to watch our steps while we are here.”

  Hand sat up suddenly. “Say what’s going on between you and that little law partner of yours? You used to be danged good buddies back in Baltimore. Tonight, you looked like you thought he was a real bad smell.”

  Seth waited a moment before replying. “You chose the right phrase—used to be. Someday, I’ll explain, but right now, it’s been a long day and I need to hit the hay. With luck, they may get those damned tracks repaired and we can get out of this place.”

  34

  CROY WISTER LEANED BACK IN his desk chair, stretched his arms above his head and glanced at the clock on his office wall. Five minutes to four. Once more he read the directive from the Secretary sent up to him earlier in the afternoon requesting a draft for a telegram to be addressed to Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, American Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico to commend him and staff for their valor during the recent ten day fighting in Mexico City. The draft telegram as prepared by Wister read:

  I WISH TO COMMEND YOUR EXCELLENCY AND THE STAFF OF THE EMBASSY FOR THE OUTSTANDING MANNER IN WHICH YOU HAVE LOOKED

  AFTER AMERICAN AFFAIRS DURING THE RECENT CRITICAL PERIOD IN THE CITY OF MEXICO.

  Wister scratched the tip of his nose with a cynical smile. He glanced down to the line at the bottom of the form under which was typed, William J. Bryan, Secretary of State. How interesting Mr. Secretary. Have you have changed your mind about Henry Lane Wilson? He placed the telegram form in a folder and pressed the button on his desk. His assistant

  Claude Berger appeared. “Mr. Berger, have you got the basket of reports and communications from this division ready for the Secretary?

  “Yes, sir. I was just preparing to have our messenger deliver it up to his office.”

  “Fine, please follow standard procedure for transmitting important material for the attention of the Secretary and add this folder for his attention. It contains a draft telegram to Ambassador Wilson, which, if approved by the Secretary, must go out tonight.” He watched his assistant leave with the folder. It had been a rush job getting Bryan’s telegram prepared. Ordinarily, it would have been sent to the lawyer and the chief of the Division of Latin American Affairs to check the text, but, as it was Friday afternoon, they had left early. In order to comply with the Secretary’s directive, he had handled the commendatory text. No matter, Bryan would go over it before sending it out.

  Bryan looked anxiously at the wall clock. The Pan American reception was scheduled for five o’clock and he had to rush to the New Willard to shave and change clothes so he and Mary could get to the reception. Oh drat! Did I remember to tell Mary that a dinner would follow the reception? Surely I did this morning before I left for the office.

  Their suite at the New Willard had certainly been convenient but now they had been requested by the management to move out of the Presidential Suite into smaller quarters. Actually, they would be glad to leave the hotel for a comfortable house, incorporating their own furniture. Mary had her eye on the old General Logan mansion out on Calumet Place. They both agreed it had possibilities.

  “Mr. Sweeney,” he called out through the open door of his office to one of his new clerks. His regular secretary had already left for the day. “Is there anything else requiring my attention before I leave this afternoon?”

  The clerk materialized in his doorway with a wire basket of papers and documents. “Yes sir, this last bunch just came up from the Latin Affairs Division, and sir?”

  “Yes, Mr. Sweeney?”

  “Mr. Secretary, after all, it has been a week now since I was assigned to your office, and you persist in calling me by the wrong name. It’s Sweatly, sir, not Sweeney.”

  The Commoner took the reprimand with equanimity. His face slid into a wide smile of apology. “Of course, of course, Mr. Sweatly. I once had a secretary back in Lincoln, name of Sweeney, and since you do bear a remarkable resemblance to that man, it was most natural, but unforgivable, on my part.” He glanced again at the clock. “Now, what have you there in that basket?”

  “It seems to be several reports and mostly outgoing correspondence for your consideration and a few routine items for your signature.”

  Bryan looked with dismay at the outgoing mail portions of the stack and then at the clock that read twenty minutes after four. “Do all of these have to be signed tonight, Mr. Sweatly?”

  “Apparently, sir, according to the attached note from the division chief clerk.”

  “Very well,” Bryan sighed. It would make them only a little late. “Any of those little red alert cards attached?” When a document or letter of supreme importance or affecting significant department or administration policy, the department rule required that it be flagged with a little three quarters by three inch red card, as a warning that the Secretary had better read the material because it contained matters of some consequence. Bryan had been informed of this policy on his first day in office and it had made a strong impression upon him.

  “There are no red cards in this batch, sir,” Sweatly replied.

  “Good,” Bryan said. “This should not take long. Would you telephone Mrs. Bryan at the New Willard and tell her I will be there directly? Oh yes, and remind her that the affair includes a dinner.” He began to leaf rapidly through the correspondence and affixing his signature. Finally, there was that telegram to Ambassador Wilson which he had asked to be drafted, a simple innocuous matter of little import. He OK’d its transmittal without any considered analysis.

  35

  THE REPAIRS OF THE TRACKS to Mexico City were still not completed by the end of the second day. Beamis explained that when the rebels blew them up at Maltrata, a critical bridge was badly weakened and several cars of a work train standing nearby were burned. From what he could learn from the railroad officials, it possibly would be another two or three days before the line would be open to traffic.

  Hand took the delay in stride owing to the liquid resources of the cantina he and Seth had seen on their first night in Vera Cruz. He had quickly established camaraderie with sailors from the Michigan who gravitated to the cantina on their shore leave, some to find additional pleasures with the feminine attractions upstairs.

  On the afternoon of their third day, Hand was away, presumably to the cantina, leaving Seth at the hotel writing to Bryan to explain why they were still in the port city. Beamis had authorized the in
clusion of the letter in the dispatches of the consular mail pouch. Seth had almost finished the letter, when he sensed, rather than heard, the presence of another human in the room. He turned slowly about to find the hotel bell boy just inside the door, looking half scared and half apologetic.

  “Yes, Manuel, what is it you want?”

  “Please, Senor Cane, come with me—I must show you something.”

  “I reckon I don’t take to you creeping in here without knocking, Manuel. I can’t come with you now, I am very busy.”

  The boy looked desperate, arousing Seth’s curiosity. “Please, Senor, if you do not come with me, I shall be in much trouble.”

  “Trouble—what kind of trouble?”

  “I can’t tell you, but much trouble for me. Will you come?”

  “Oh, all right, but, let me finish this letter.”

  “No, Senor, Now! You must come now!”

  Seth sighed in resignation and put the unfinished letter in a small portfolio supplied by the department, and locked it. He followed the boy out into the hall and over to the back stairs of the second floor. As they were going down the stairs to the first floor, Seth grumbled, “Manuel, this better be important. Where are we going?”

  “Not much more, you will see.”

  From the first floor they went down some more stairs into what appeared to be a storage basement for discarded furniture. Manuel led him through the semidarkness over to a room in the corner and knocked timidly on the door. It was opened quickly and two hard eyed men in ill-fitting suits came out, each pointing an enormous pistol at him. The taller of the two gestured with the pistol for him to go into the room.

  “Thank you very much, Manuel,” Seth said to the nervous bell boy.

  “Vayanse, muchacho !” the shorter of the two gunmen said, grabbing Manuel and giving him a slight shove toward the stairs.

  The boy looked back at Seth, “It will be all right, Senor Cane, you will see.”

  “Entrarse!” The tall one ordered, pointing the pistol at Seth’s head.

  36

  THE SOLE LIGHT IN THE room came from the afternoon sun coming through the dirty glass of one tiny window high up at ground level. It took several moments for Seth’s eyes to adjust to the semidarkness. When they did he saw a man in a white suit perched primly erect in a straight chair. He was holding a lighted cigarette between his thumb and forefinger as many Europeans do. The man gestured to an opposite straight chair.

  “Please be seated there, Mr. Cane. I understand you speak our language. I will be more comfortable if we now continue our conversation in Spanish.”

  Seth took the indicated chair and replied in Spanish, “What is going on here?”

  “In due time, I will explain your presence here.” The man was slight of stature, his feet barely reaching the floor, even though his chair was of standard height. His face was dominated by a prominent hawkish nose surmounted by small steel framed spectacles. His neatly trimmed black beard was flecked with gray.

  “You speak our language very well, Senor Cane. We understand your mother was one of us.”

  Seth stiffened. “It is true, my mother was Mexican, but I doubt she was one of you, who or whatever you are. What do you know of my mother?”

  The man smiled, “All that is necessary to know.”

  “And, just what do you consider necessary to know about my mother?”

  “Your mother was from Cienega de Flores. Her father, your grandfather, was a minor bank official in Monterrey. She married at seventeen to a rich Texas rancher, your father, and died giving you birth. You were raised by a Mexican housekeeper of your rich Texas father. Your Mexican grandparents died of the flu epidemic of ‘75 and two of your uncles were martyred to our cause in 1910.”

  With effort Seth controlled his shock. These were facts that he had never known. In fact, he had been told next to nothing of his mother and certainly nothing about her Mexican family or home in Mexico, or even how she had come to be married to his father, Warren Cane. It was definitely unsettling to be here with two thugs holding guns on him and having their leader tell him these things.

  “I don’t know who in hell you are, mister, or how you came to know about my mother but, the simple fact is, I was brought here by deception, and looking at those two gunmen pointing their pistols at me, it would appear that I’ve been kidnapped. If you are not aware of it, I am a special agent of the State Department of the United States and vigorously protest this treatment.”

  “My apology, Senor Cane,” the man said and gestured for his two companions to put up their weapons. “We have to take precautions, you understand. But, I am guilty of discourtesy by not introducing myself. I am Dr. Ernesto Bonillo, Chief of Intelligence for his Excellency, Governor Vanustiano Carranza.”

  “Carranza? Isn’t he a rebel chief or leader? “

  “Yes, the Governor of Coahuila and Chief of the revolutionary army to restore constitutional government in Mexico.”

  “When I first encountered your two pistoleros here, I took them for Zapatistas.”

  Dr. Bonillo smiled thinly. “Not hardly, they are of the Constitutional forces. Do they look like peasants?” No, they look like street thugs. “But, then you are new to Mexico and your mistake is perhaps understandable. It is correct that this part of the country is an area of operations by the Zapatistas, at least for now. Emiliano Zapata refuses to have anything to do with Carranza and we Constitutionalists. You are aware of their recent little diversion at Maltrata, since it has delayed your trip to the Capital. Regrettably, while we are fighting the same evil, we have to be as wary of them as we are of the Federalists.”

  “Don’t you people have the same objective?”

  “Only in the more obvious objective of removing Huerta. Unfortunately, Emiliano is only concerned with his fanciful dream of redistributing the land in Morales, and not much else. He is a provincial and cares little for the broader interests of Mexico.”

  “What about Villa?”

  “Villa?” Bonillo snorted. “He is dangerous, frankly, only a cut above a bloodthirsty bandit. He has a big army of peasants, and he is useful for now. After we take care of Huerta—well, then we will have to see.”

  “This is all very interesting, Dr. Bonillo,” Seth said. “What has it to do with my being lured down into this basement?”

  “Please be assured, we mean you no harm. We only seek a bit of information.”

  So here it comes! “Information? What kind of information?”

  “We have heard of the reason put forth for you and your assistant coming to Mexico. I am sorry, but I do not believe it. I suspect that you are sent directly here by President Wilson to meet with the butcher Huerta. Am I correct and for what purpose?”

  “We have no instructions to meet with General Huerta or anyone else in the Government of Mexico. We are here to gather facts and speed up the process relating to claims by our citizens against the Mexican Government for losses of human life and property in the ten days violence.”

  “The illegitimate Mexican Government, you mean. We are not such fools as to believe your story of the claims. Most of that work is already completed. No, Senor, we think you are here with regard to negotiate the matter of industrial concessions in trade for your government’s official recognition of the usurper. We also know that there is an agent of Mr. Edward Doheny here in Vera Cruz with you and will be leaving with you on the same train to Mexico. Is that not the truth of it?”

  Damn, he means Maury. So that’s why Bonillo has come up with his crazy theory. He thinks we are part of the same mission. That’s the reason for all this nonsense. “Dr. Bonillo, I can only reiterate that you are wrong, and I have no intention of answering any more of your assertions, particularly under the present circumstances.”

  Bonillo spread his hands in a gesture of supplication, and said in
English, “Surely, Mr. Cane, all I ask are one or two forthright answers in the name of the oppressed peoples of your mother’s country.”

  “I have sympathy for the oppressed people of any country. Your use of my mother, whom I never knew, is reprehensible. I shouldn’t have to point out that when she married my father, she became a citizen of the United States.” Seth stood up. “Now, Dr. Bonillo, I consider this interrogation at an end.” The two bodyguards quickly drew their pistols and moved toward him. “I trust you will not let your men do anything foolish, Dr. Bonillo.”

  Bonillo shook his head and waved his men back. “I promised no harm would come to you. You must think of us as your friends and next time decide to speak frankly with me. We will be in touch with you during your stay here, even though it will be at our great danger.” He motioned for his gunmen to let Seth pass.

  That night over dinner with Hand at the Hotel Diligencia, Seth recounted in detail his little adventure with Dr. Bonillo. After he finished, he added, “I now wish I had not ended that meeting so abruptly.”

  “Dang Pard, why?” Hand exploded. “Those highbinders needed to be taken down a peg or two. I should have been there.”

  “No,” Seth said. “Bonillo was courteous. I was never in any harm. It was just a chance for me to pick his brain. He might have known something about any connection of Ambassador Wilson with Madero’s murder.” Not to mention some more information about my mother.

  “Anytime a couple of toughs point their pistols in your face, there was danger. Well, maybe not this one, this time, but I ain’t taking no chances on there being a next one.”

  After a pause, Seth hesitantly said, “Hand, can I ask you something?”

  Hand looked hurt. “After all these years, Seth Cane, you have to ask me that?”

  “Have you ever heard your folks tell anything about my mother?”

  Hand looked uncomfortable. “Only the one time—at the supper table when I was about twelve—and Paw—Aw, Pard, you don’t want to know.”