“I never told a kid to drop his pants in my life. I never needed to to make a buck.”
“Push the button then. You’ve probably got an army of character witnesses.”
“Go boil your head. You can’t tag me with that and make it stick.”
“It doesn’t have to stick. A thing like that follows you around. And if it should happen to stick, if say you crap out on stand-up citizens who’ll vouch for your sterling character, you’ll be registering as a convicted sex offender everywhere you go for the rest of your life.”
“Son of a bitch.” He opened and closed his fists. “Keep the goddamn picture, I don’t need it. What you want it for anyway? It ain’t nothing special.”
“That’s why I want it.” I glanced at my watch. “She’s probably back at the hotel by now. Maybe you can smuggle yourself into her suite under a tin cover with the prawns.”
When I looked back up, the world went blazing white. It was the second time he’d used his flashgun on me.
“This time I tripped the shutter,” he said. “I like to keep a record of all my friends.”
It must have been quite a gallery. I grinned at him through the swimming spots and got out of his car. It started up and he tried to splash me as he took off.
He partially succeeded, but I was still grinning as I brushed at the snotty mess on my pant cuff. I didn’t know any Lieutenant Franklin. Franklin’s was the face on the hundred-dollar bill I’d left with him. I didn’t figure the lie had bought me one more second in purgatory.
TWENTY-FOUR
Northwest was getting ready to open a new terminal midfield at Wayne County Metropolitan Airport, complete with an elevated tramway and more conveyor belts to lose one’s luggage on than ever before, but for the time being the airline was operating its Midwestern hub out of the Davey Terminal, a crumbling old barn built square onto a hotel where a stewardess had been raped and strangled a dozen years earlier. From where I sat in a chain bar and grill on the sunny side of security, I could see the end of a line waiting to get through the metal detectors that was the line to end all lines, full of anxious faces, resigned faces, bored faces, angry faces—faces that did not belong to travelers looking forward to new sights and fresh adventures. Instead they were worrying about how much clothing they would have to remove and whether some turtlebrain in a uniform was going to let them carry their lucky two-inch nail file aboard. Overnight the friendly skies had gone from prodding them like cattle to lockstepping them through the system like felons.
I ordered a beer and a burger. I hadn’t had breakfast that morning, which was usual, and I had skipped lunch, which wasn’t, in order to get to the airport early in case the professor’s plane caught some kind of tail wind. He was the cautious type, for good reasons, and if he found no one waiting he might return to his gate. I was still carrying around some lead splinters from an old argument, which took more explaining when bells started ringing than I cared to go into with strangers. Also I would have to buy a ticket before they let me prowl the gates. Anyway I’d skipped lunch.
He was fifteen minutes late, which according to the carriers is officially on time. He’d been right about my being able to pick him out of the crowd. Although he was built more along the lines of a Pamplona bull than I’d expected from an academic, wearing a well-cut gray worsted with a three-button jacket instead of baggy tweeds, you couldn’t miss the eye patch, and just in case you could he’d gone with white instead of conventional black, a sharp contrast against medium brown skin and a swashbuckling choice in view of his careful temperament. Heads turned when that scrap of linen went past. The blasé passengers and well-wishers packing the bar probably thought he was Wiley Post reincarnated, or an immortal film director at the least.
“Professor Zubaran?”
He’d paused inside the entrance to scan the patrons. When I stood and called his name, he dropped his chin briskly and embroidered his way between the tables, towing a black nylon carry-on by its handle behind him. He had a handshake like a Teamster and very black thick hair brushed straight back that would be iron gray in a few years. There were already traces of it in his thick moustache. His good eye—the left one—was the true Spanish black, like Picasso’s, and like Picasso’s there was no sign of pacification in it.
“You look somewhat like what I would expect a private detective to look like,” he said in his slow, careful English. “That is why I must ask to be shown identification.”
I took my license out of the folder and handed it to him. He studied it a while, head cocked to make up for his lack of depth perception. He gave it back. “I suppose complete satisfaction is a chimera. One can do so much with computers and laser printers.”
“If I thought I needed them I’d have brought X rays of my skull. How many concussions is the minimum?”
“I do not apologize. I’m told I may obtain permission to carry a concealed weapon, but so far I have refused to apply. I am afraid I would use it the first time a stranger addressed me in Spanish.”
I thanked him for rearranging his schedule. He looked at his watch, a functional stainless-steel model strapped to the underside of his wrist. A pattern of ragged white scars showed there. I had similar marks on both wrists, but mine would fade. He looked up at the people waiting with their luggage.
“My plane was late. Naturally. If that’s the security line, I can give you only a few minutes.”
We sat down. A waitress trundled over. He shook his head and she picked up my plate and utensils and drifted away. He glanced with curiosity at the large square white envelope in front of me, but he was too polite to ask about it. I folded my arms on top of it so it wouldn’t distract him.
“The Lincoln Question,” I said. “What was it?”
He pursed his lips. “The method? I thought—”
“I know the method, Professor. What did they ask?”
“What do they always ask? Names, places of meetings, specific items discussed at those meetings. I denied any such knowledge. I did so out of ignorance, not valor. I am an educator, not a revolutionary. I taught literature. They accused me of inciting rebellion. They came to arrest me in the middle of my lecture on Don Quixote. Apparently the Knight of the Woeful Countenance was not a supporter of the state.”
“I can see how far you got convincing them.”
He touched two fingers to the patch. It would be a chronic mannerism. “Curiously enough, I think they believed me. That never stopped a man who truly enjoys his work from pursuing it. I do not complain. They left me with one eye. Others were not so fortunate.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t come back for the other one.”
“I’m certain they would have gotten around to it eventually.”
“Tell me about the escape.”
He shrugged. He wasn’t as good at it as Matador, but he had me beat. “There is little to tell. Dumas would not have bothered to use it. A guard was bribed; I never found out by whom. He unlocked my cell in the middle of the night and escorted me to the entrance the guards used when they reported to work. Outside a young woman was waiting. She led me down the path to a dock. There was a rowboat there with a man in it whose name I never learned and whose face I could not see in the darkness. He rowed me to a bigger boat, a cabin cruiser designed for the luxury of its owner. I sat in a cabin for two hours, at the end of which I was escorted out and onto another dock. That man I could describe to you, but I will not. I spent a very pleasant month as the guest of a family whose name I will not repeat. In the meantime an arrangement was made with your State Department and I entered this country on a faculty exchange program. That is my thrilling story, Mr. Walker. I doubt it will excite much interest in Hollywood.”
“Did you know anyone with the revolution before you were arrested?”
“They tell me the leader had been a student in one of my classes. I wasn’t familiar with the name, and when I saw his photograph I could not place him. I had had hundreds of students over the years. I’m afraid I remem
ber very few of them.”
“I heard he studied medicine.”
“That is possible. Our university system, like yours—you see I do not yet consider it mine, even though I am employed by it—requires education in all the arts and sciences, regardless of the degree.” He rolled his shoulders again. “If the government had come to me and demanded I eliminate tales of liberty from the syllabus, I would have refused. They did not ask. I was arrested anyway. Citizens of my country are incapable of revolting on their own. They must be led to it by subversive influences. That is the party line and there is no arguing with it. The odds are with the house, as you say here.”
“So you never knew the names of your rescuers.”
“I did not say that.”
I unfolded my arms, drummed my fingers on the envelope. He glanced at it again, then raised his eye back to mine. “Mariposa Flores,” I said.
He nodded. “A name scrawled on a scrap of paper, folded and tossed between the bars of my cell while I slept. I suspect it was tossed there by the guard who took me out two nights later. I chewed it up and swallowed it. I had never seen or heard the name before, but I think it was given to me to provide me with hope.”
He lifted his hand. I thought he was going to touch the eye patch again. He unbuttoned his collar and spread it, loosening his necktie in the process. The crease around his throat wasn’t as vivid as the marks on his wrists, but it would be with him the rest of his life.
“I made the attempt the night after the Lincoln Question was put to me.” He refastened the button and straightened his tie. “A guard found me and cut me down. After I recovered, I decided to wait until the next time they asked the question. That resolve faded, however. But for that name on a scrap of paper, I probably would not have waited.”
I took a sip of my beer. It had gone warm and flat. Swallowing hurt my throat. “Any idea who decided to bootleg the name in to you?”
“None. I had no connection to the revolution. That was the fantasy of someone in the capital.”
“What did you use for a rope, your bedsheets?”
“My trousers. We did not have bedsheets. It wasn’t the Holiday Inn.”
“The rebel leader hanged himself recently. They said he used bedsheets.”
“I heard this too. He would not even have had his trousers. After my attempt, they stripped me and threw me back into the cell naked. The guard who let me out brought me an extra uniform to cover my nudity. Stripping became the standard practice after my experience. The young man was murdered.”
A boarding announcement went out over the P.A. He cocked his head, listening. It was a New Orleans flight. His was California. He looked at his watch again.
“Did you get a look at Mariposa Flores?” I asked.
“I do not know if that was her name. She did not introduce herself.” He nodded. “I saw her in the lights from the prison. A very pretty girl, even dressed as she was in man’s clothes. Her face was dirty. I suppose she’d smeared it with something to blend with the shadows.”
“Could you identify her from a picture?”
His eye went to the envelope. “You must understand this is difficult. I feel I am giving information I did not under torture.”
“This time the information could help, not hurt. The young woman is accused of a murder that took place somewhere else at the moment someone was helping you escape.”
“I remember you said something about that. Trust does not exist in me as once it did. Compared to that, what is an eye? I have another. My faith in human nature has been torn from me, and I have only suspicion and fear to fall back upon.” His face twisted into a mask of pain. I knew the feeling.
“I saw her yesterday,” I said. “She told me to ask you if you remember the problem of the birds.”
He sat up straight, knocking over his carry-on case with his elbow. The bang stopped all conversation in the bar for a beat. Then the buzz resumed. Zubaran groped for the handle and set the case upright. His eye remained on me.
“She used these words?” he asked. “‘The problem of the birds’?”
“Yeah. I thought we had plenty without birds. I guess not, though. What did she mean?”
He shook his head. He was agitated. “I will look at the picture.”
I opened the flap, drew out the eight-by-ten color photo Fritz Fleeman had taken, and smoothed it out on the table in front of him. It wanted to roll back up, but I anchored two opposite corners with the napkin dispenser and my beer glass. I’d shaded in the distracting blonde hair with the edge of a pencil. He studied the picture a long time. We’d spent longer than we’d originally set aside for our meeting, but when the P.A. system blared again he didn’t appear to be listening. It was the same wrungout voice announcing further boarding on the 3:36 to New Orleans. Have your picture IDs out and ready, also your vaccination records and your mother’s maiden name. Turn your head and cough. I decided to use some of Gilia’s fifteen thousand on new shocks and a rebuilt transmission for the Cutlass.
“I’m not certain.” He was frowning. “It could be. So much has happened since that night.”
I had a brainstorm. I should have thought of it before. I took a ballpoint pen out of my inside breast pocket, leaned across the table, and drew a bold dot to the right of the dimple above Gilia’s upper lip. I sat back and waited. It was worse than waiting for Fritz to make his move back at the office, but on that occasion I’d been pretty sure of the outcome.
He pushed the picture away suddenly, dropping his chin the way he had when he’d spotted me in the bar. I caught the beer glass before it toppled. One more noise and we’d be up to our eyebrows in the National Guard. “It is she.”
“Sure?” My heart was bumping like a square wheel.
“Yes. A bit older, and much less tomboyish. She’s done something with her hair, and whoever she had remove that mole never practiced in our country. But this is the woman who led me down the path to the boat. If your murder was committed at that time, someone else committed it.”
“Would you testify to that?”
The color slid from his face. The white patch lost some of its contrast.
“Not back home,” I said. “Here, if it comes to that. Back home it’s the rope either way.”
“For both of us. There’s no crime worse than demonstrating the fallibility of the government prison system.” He looked at his watch a third time. “Yes, I’d swear to the authorities here that what I have told you is the truth. I really must get into line now.”
I put the picture back in the envelope. We rose together and shook hands.
“What is the problem of the birds?”
He pulled up the handle of the carry-on. “It was a long walk. We knew we couldn’t very well introduce ourselves, but the silence was oppressive. She asked me if I taught mathematics. I said no and she said that was a pity, because it was a mathematical story problem that she most remembered from her own education. It seems there were fifteen birds perched upon the wall of a mission. After a while three more birds joined them, then one flew away. The question was how many birds remained.”
“Seventeen.”
“That was the answer I suggested. She said it was the same answer her teacher gave when she asked why her answer had been marked incorrect. Her answer was zero.”
He started toward the security line, pulling the case behind him. I laid some bills on the table and caught up. “Why zero?”
“When one bird flies away from a wall, all the others fly away with it. Everyone with eyes knows this. Even those with just one eye. Abstract knowledge does not apply to the world outside the classroom.”
“Pretty smart for eighteen,” I said.
“Is that how old she was? She has accomplished much in a short time.”
We stopped at the end of the line. I looked at him.
He smiled broadly then, showing some goldwork in his molars he hadn’t had done stateside. He never looked more like a buccaneer of the old Spanish Main. “Please tell t
he young lady I am a very big fan.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Driving back into the city I couldn’t keep a happy song from playing inside my head. It didn’t matter that I was crawling through a white squall that had my fellow motorists crunched over their steering wheels, grinding their teeth and peering through one swipe of their wipers at a time. I had an innocent client who could afford my rates.
One murder down, sort of. I knew who hadn’t done it, and I could prove it. It was up to a foreign government to find out who had. I thought I knew who it was, if they cared to ask me. They probably wouldn’t. Cops are cops, no matter if they lecture their suspects on their rights or throw them in a leaky basement and forget about them until it’s time to clean house with a handy suicide. Once they nail someone they like, they hang up the hammer until the next case. Their desks are piled just as high the world over. They can only afford to spend so much time and money on each item of business, and there’s no budget for quality control, not like Ford or GM or Toyota. If it comes off the line with a faulty starter and doors that fly off every time someone taps the brake, it takes a lot more than Ralph Nader to fix what’s wrong.
What I had on Angelo Suerto’s killer wouldn’t hold up in an American court. The monkeys who wore the robes in the place that held jurisdiction had built capital cases on shakier foundations, but even they wouldn’t bother to build one on what I had to offer, because the perpetrator was beyond justice of the mortal variety.
One down. One to go.
Which was the point at which the song stopped playing.
The best coroner in America, armed with the latest equipment, couldn’t pin down the hour when someone had pumped death into Jillian Rubio’s veins. It could have happened anytime between the moment she left her mother’s house and one of Miranda Guzman’s dogs first caught a whiff of something that wasn’t knotty pine seasoning under plastic on the other side of the fence across the street. Good sense said she’d died within minutes and that the lumberyard was handy, but the maximum-security wings are full of killers who wouldn’t recognize good sense if it jingled in their pockets. Someone could have kept her prisoner for a week before working up the gumption to finish what he’d started, or driven around with her corpse in the trunk for days, then returned to the scene of the abduction and dumped the evidence. A suspect with Gilia’s means and talent for disguising herself could have buzzed in on a red-eye, taken care of the business, and buzzed back to L.A. or Vegas or wherever, and no alibi would protect her. Or she might have hired it done. Some of her associates needed character witnesses in order to appear in court as a character witness for her. Hector Matador had scaled the Colombian corporate ladder by performing bloody errands for the guy on the next rung up.
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