by Desmond Cory
“Scared of you? I . . . I hardly know. . . .”
“Oh yes, you do. You’re scared yourself. You look as though you’d swallowed a hatpin.”
The Chief of Police greeted this rather discourteous comment with a nervous titter. “Of course, the señores forasteros come this way very rarely. And we hardly ever see a killer here—other than Paquito Mendes, of course, and we all know him. Not that it isn’t an honour.” He bowed once again to Hendricks, so low as almost to knock his forehead against the table. “It’s a very great honour. But the people here are of a nervous disposition, and unaccustomed to professional gentlemen.”
Trout glanced quickly sideways, to observe that Hendricks was looking every bit as puzzled as he himself felt. These references to “killers” and “professional gentlemen” were altogether perplexing; they could, of course, have been held to apply to Fedora, who was certainly something out of the ordinary in that line, but it was obvious that Marquez was directing his remarks exclusively to Hendricks—who, so far as Trout knew, had never ^hot so much as a South American general in his life. “What’s he getting at?” he asked, in English. “Do you think he’s mistaken you for someone?”
Something like a flicker of enlightenment crossed Hendricks’ face. “Maybe that’s it,” he said. “Yes,
that could be it.” And he leaned forward across the table. “My name,” he said, “is Michael Hendricks. I’m a mining engineer. Late in the employ of the Seago Company in Santiago.”
“Ah yes. I understand.” The Chief of Police flicked an eyelid conspiratorially. “A mining engineer, eh?”
“Yes. These are my associates—Mr. Trout and Mr. Fedora. And here are my papers, should you wish to see them.”
The Chief of Police, smiling to oneself as one does who humours the wishes of the eccentric but stinking rich, took the papers and began to examine them. Gradually, his expression changed. “But these are very good,” he said admiringly. “These are excellent.”
“What d’you mean, excellent? They’re genuine.”
“But how can they be?”
Hendricks clicked his tongue in annoyance. “People do occasionally carry genuine papers about with them,” he said. “You’d be surprised.”
Marquez was surprised. He seemed positively amazed. “But if you are a mining engineer, as these papers claim,” he said slowly, “how can you, at one and the same time, be a professional killer? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“And who the devil said I was a professional killer? I’m nothing of the sort.”
“Nobody said you were. But—” Marquez surveyed Hendricks’ immaculate attire as though he were examining the plumage of some rare and exotic bird in an aviary. “But you’re dressed as one.”
“Dressed as one?” Hendricks raised his hand and smote himself on the forehead; the Chief of Police cowered back in his chair at the movement, letting the papers slip from his fingers to the floor. “Oh, my God. They do that here, too, do they? I should have thought of that, I really should.”
“Thought of what?” said Trout. He sounded quite irritable; the heat in the little room was driving beads of moisture through the tanned skin on his cheeks and forehead, and the palms of his hands were soaking wet. “I’m wearing a black suit,” said Hendricks. “That’s all there is to it. And round here, only the gunboys wear black—or so it seems. I came across that custom once in Mexico, but I’d no idea it stretched this far south.”
“Are you sure it is that?” Fedora seemed rather dubious.
Hendricks turned again towards the Chief of Police. “What you mean is that everyone thinks I’m a killer because I’m wearing a black suit?”
“Of course,” said Marquez. “Naturally.”
“Well, I’m not. That’s all. I’m a mining engineer, and I’ve been wearing this suit for the past six months in Caracas without anyone drawing any conclusions from it. This business of gunmen wearing black, Señor Jefe, must be purely a local custom. I can assure you that in Caracas the gunmen dress just the same as everyone else.”
“Is that so?” Marquez pushed out his lower lip. “Of course, in Caracas things may be different. I wouldn’t know. But if it’s as you say, how do the people who live there know if a man is a killer or not?”
“They don’t,” said Hendricks. “Not until it’s too late.”
“I prefer things our way,” said Marquez decidedly. “And if you’re not, after all, a professional killer, then I strongly advise you to change your dress. It’s lucky for you that Paquito Mendes isn’t in town; he’s a very fine killer indeed—naturally, or he wouldn’t carry for Galdos—and he doesn’t like competition, no, not at all. I don’t suppose you’re even wearing a gun?”
Hendricks hesitated for a moment. “I am, as a matter of fact,” he said. “I always do. But that hasn’t anything to do with it.”
He might have gone on, but at that moment the door opened and the barman entered, a wine bottle and four tumblers sprouting from one enormous hand and four poisonous-looking cigars clenched, like malformed fingers, in the other. He planked these articles down on the table and departed, without saying a word; Marquez grinned, scooped up the bottle and commenced to pour.
“So all this was just a misunderstanding,” he said. “Just an unfortunate misunderstanding, and you gentlemen are autenticos ingenieros. Now that everything’s been cleared up, perhaps we can begin to discuss matters more seriously. Salud.”
“Salud” said the others, sipping cautiously at the wine. It tasted like vinegar, Fedora decided, but it was the wrong colour. After two or three gulps, you got used to it.
“. . . We are friends of Mr. West,” said Trout.
There was no immediate reaction to his statement. Marquez’s fingers remained curled around the half-emptied tumbler on the table, not seeming to press it unduly hard; his eyes were focused dreamily on the thick straw-coloured liquid inside it. Then, “Ah,” he said. “Friends of Don Roberto. I see.”
Trout took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. A couple of high-denomination banknotes became detached from his pocket in the process: he caught them as they fluttered forwards, put them on the table and left them there.
“We’d be interested to know the details of his death,” he said.
Marquez looked up, revealed his gold teeth in a sudden flashing smile. “I can only tell you what everyone in the town knows, expertise. Don Roberto was drowned in the river. A very sad business indeed.”
“But how did it happen?”
Marquez shrugged. ” e ‘Quien sabe? It is believed that one night he drank a little too much, that he went out riding past the Salto del Gato, that his horse slipped. . .. He was missing for four days before his body was found. His horse returned to the stable, riderless. Now he is buried here under the cypress trees in our little local graveyard.”
This unexpected lyrical touch met with little response from his authence. “What did he do here?” asked Trout. “When he was alive, I mean?”
“He worked for the combine, of course.”
“But what sort of work?”
“Hombre, how would I know? Here, if a man Works for the combine, that’s enough for us. One asks no more questions of him.”
“I’m not asking questions of him” said Trout softly. He took another banknote from his shirt pocket, let it fall beside the others on the table. “I’m asking questions of you. The Chief of Police in a town such as this gets to know many things that nobody else ever hears of.”
“That’s true,” admitted Marquez. His eyes turned to rest, for the first time, on the banknotes; but the faintly acquisitive gleam in them was now dulled by a film of reflectiveness. “But if he is wise, he soon learns to say nothing of such things. Usually, they are best forgotten.”
Trout pushed the handkerchief back into his pocket with an impatient gesture, reached out to gather up the banknotes. “Come on,” he said to the others, in English. “We’re not getting anywhere with this
character.”
“Un momento, caballero. Un momento.” Marquez also rose to his feet, waving his hands in an agitated manner. “Let’s not be impetuous, I pray. Let us not be abrupt and inconsiderate. Please sit down and assist me to finish off this excellent bottle of wine. There’s no hurry, surely?”
“No,” said Trout. “There’s no hurry. That doesn’t mean we have any time to waste.” He sat down and put the banknotes back on the table again; this time, curiously, there were four of them. “Because we haven’t.”
“I comprehend perfectly. Time, I know, is money in the business world. All the same,” said Marquez, drinking rather a lot of wine rather quickly, “you will understand that when one treats of an organisation such as the Galdos combine, one is always well advised to weigh one’s words. Señor Galdos is a very fine gentleman indeed, very generous, but a trifle impulsive and hot-tempered. There are many things of which one cannot be sure that he would approve; and discussing the affairs of the combine with strangers is emphatically one of them. I hope you follow me.”
“That,” said Trout, “is why we chose to come to you for information rather than to go directly to the offices of the combine. We’re not especially interested in business matters. Only in the matter of Don Roberto’s death.”
“The trouble is that so often in this town death is a business matter.”
For a few moments, Trout and Marquez looked at one another. Then Trout said, “All right. Never mind about his death. Tell us something more general about him. About his social life—where he lived, what he liked to do, who he liked to do it with. His friends and his amusements—all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.”
Marquez nodded slowly. “Don Roberto liked best of all to drink and to gamble,” he said. “Most nights he liked to play cards with Señor Galdos and other high-up officers of the combine. I’ve heard it said that he lost nearly all his money that way, and the last couple of months before his death he hardly played at all. But he played the night he died. It is generally known.”
“Where did he use to play? Here in town?”
“No, no. Sometimes at his own place. But usually at Señor Galdos’ hacienda, which lies some twenty miles out of town on the camino del sur. There are gambling parties there most weekends. Señor Galdos, too, likes to gamble more than almost anything.”
“And where did Don Roberto use to live?”
Marquez dipped his forefinger in the wine, traced out a wavering outline on the bare wood of the table. “This is the turning off the camino del sur that leads to the Salto del Gato. There was a bridge over the river there, but it fell down five years ago. And just to one side is the Venta de los Pajaros. That was where he lived.”
“Is anyone living there now?”
“Me creo que sí. Su ama de casa.”
“.You mean his. . .? Well—but what about his wife?”
Marquez drew another moist wiggle on the table-top; a line this time without apparent significance, “If I were you,” he said eventually, “I should be careful to leave Dona Gracia out of all future inquiries. She has been living at the hacienda of Señor Galdos for the past seven or eight months—ever since she and Don Roberto got here, in fact. For the rest, no sí y no quiero saber.”
There was a brief silence.
“Señor Galdos is there now, then?”
“Yes. He leaves in October, usually, and returns in February. This year, he came back early.” Marquez plucked at the table with his finger-nails. “I’ve told you no more than what everybody knows; nobody can blame me for that. The person who can tell you most about Don Roberto is Maria Gonzales. Why don’t you go and see her?”
“That’s the ama de casa, is it? The, er, housekeeper?”
“Yes. As far as I know, she’s still living there. Go and see her.”
“All right,” said Trout. “We will. Who is she?”
Marquez drank more wine, wiped his mouth carefully with the back of his hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s got no relatives round here. Heard tell she comes from the western provinces. They say the women there are very passionate; it’s the mountain air.
“I’ll make a note of that,” said Trout.
. . . The continued sequence of question and answer, combined with the stifling heat and the sticky wine, was making Fedora more than a little drowsy; he ran a finger round inside the sopping collar of his khaki shirt, and tried to sit up straighter in the chair. Even Hendricks had been compelled to undo the buttons of his neat black gunman’s jacket. “And him?” asked Trout. “Was he liked?”
“Who?”
“West.”
“Oh yes. He was liked.”
“Would you go so far as to call him popular?”
Marquez shrugged. “It’s not a word we use much round here.”
“But had he any enemies, apart from Galdos?”
“He and Señor Galdos were the best of friends,” said Marquez piously.
“Even after Galdos had won all his money at cards and taken his wife from him? A mild, timid sort of character, was he?”
“Nothing like that,” said Marquez. “They were the best of friends, like I said. That’s all. And the Galdos combine gave him a wonderful funeral.”
“I know,” said Trout. “Under the cypress trees in the little graveyard.”
“That’s right,” said Marquez. “Very pretty.”
“And everybody went to the funeral, I suppose?”
“Everybody. There were free drinks afterwards, I remember. In Pepe’s place.”
“So he hadn’t any enemies at all?”
“I don’t say that,” said Marquez. “You mustn’t misunderstand me. We don’t bear grudges here in Los Cielos. Once a man is dead we have nothing against him.”
“Sporting of you,” said Trout. “He just has to be dead, that’s all.”
“That’s all. And then we all go very happily to his funeral. It is, one might even say, expected of us.”
Trout sighed. “Had anything happened to him before he drowned?”
“Happened to him?”
“He didn’t by any chance drown of a bullet through the head?”
“Todo es posible en Los Cielos” Marquez extended his hands very wide indeed, then permitted them to flop down again, dispiritedly, at his side. “The river flows very fast through the Salto del Gato, and there are many rocks; then it flows very slowly through the campos. The body was badly battered, you will understand, in the first place; and then, after four days down in the campos with the little fishes. . . .”
“Don’t go on,” said Trout. “I don’t want to dream about it, if I can help it.” His gaze had become extremely thoughtful; his hands, resting on the table, flipped his empty tumbler from side to side. In the end he picked up one of the four cigars that still lay un-smoked where the barman had put them, opened it with his thumbnail and lit it. Then he placed the tumbler carefully on top of the banknotes and got to his feet. “We’re grateful for your assistance, Jefe.”
“You can best oblige me,” said Marquez unhappily, “by at once forgetting any small service I may have done you.”
“We will. But we won’t forget,” said Trout chummily, extending his hand, “that we now have a friend in Los Cielos, a true friend, a man we can rely on in the future for such small and trifling services as these. Goodbye, Señor Jefe, and many thanks.”
“Vaya con Dios,” said Marquez, tilting back his chair a fraction. His hands held the edge of the table, very tightly. His brown face, raised towards the door as the others left, was covered with a thin and disagreeable film of sweat. . . . Fedora, the last out, closed the door behind him; and they walked out of the dark bar into the glaring street.
“I wouldn’t say we got much for the money,” said Fedora.
“No, we didn’t. But we may yet,” said Trout. They began to walk over the irregular cobbles of the pavement towards the Land Rover, slipping from time to time on greasy patches of slush that the heat of the sun had brought to ferment
ing-point. The odour rising from these puddles was nauseous in the extreme. “We’ll go and see what this Maria Gonzales has got on the ball.”
“If the place isn’t as stinking hot as it is here,” said Fedora, “we might move in.”
“Yes, that’s not a bad idea. I don’t suppose they’ll mind if we pay the rent in U.S. dollars.” Trout paused for a moment to respire deeply. “This is about the lousiest hole I’ve ever struck. Smells like a sewer, hotter than hell and everybody seems to run away from us into holes in the woodwork. Not even Kafka could have thought of it.”
“So it’s not like Cannes, after all?”
“Well, no,” said Trout. “Not exactly.”
Twelve miles up the camino del sur, they found the turning that Marquez had mentioned; a narrow, rutted passage between great clumps of green cane and high, swinging palm trees. The country here was a curious blend between the scrubby bushland of the sierras and the lush, rotten verdure of the plains that they had left behind the day before; it was a little higher than Los Cielos itself, and perhaps a very little cooler. But the insects seemed, if anything, to have increased in number and hung in black, whispering swarms over the clear spaces to either side of the road.
There were parrakeets in the palm trees, gaily-coloured and noisy; and butterflies of gigantic size and fantastic hues weaved slowly to and fro in the vivid sunlight. All round them, the hills rose up, shimmering to blueness in the distance, fogged by the heat haze; the scene as a whole had the unreal, surrealist beauty to be found only in the tropical selvas or at times in opium dreams, the beauty of a world where all is luxuriant, frantic colour, colour gone mad, and line is utterly lost in a riot of squirming proliferation. . . . Then one looks up and sees the hills, colourless, august and bleak, dominating the valley with a sweeping, august serenity. Two worlds, one seeming to rise from the other and yet to be totally unconnected with it. . . .
Trout edged the Land Rover forward at a steady fifteen miles an hour, nursing the front wheels gently over the awkward bumps. “Was the Congo anything like this, Johnny?”
