“Admiral Young’s daughters.”
“Why, yes. You know them?”
“Slightly,” Aragon said. Even slightly seemed like a lot.
“The girls come in here quite often looking for a bargain. They never find any, of course—it’s my business to see that people don’t get bargains—but they think they do, so they make a purchase now and then, usually a rather small one. The ruby necklace and bracelet set was more expensive than anything they’d previously bought. They took a fancy to it for some reason.”
“Juliet recognized it as Mrs. Shaw’s.”
“I see.” Tannenbaum took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the frame had carved a red arc. “Or rather, I don’t see. Surely you can’t believe they bought the set for sentimental reasons?”
“It’s possible.”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Aragon. The Admiral’s daughters aren’t given to sentiment. Behind all that moronic conversation they’re as hard-headed and hard-nosed as a pair of old Navy chiefs.”
“I think they’re pathetic.”
“Are they clients of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Wait till they try to beat you out of your fee. They won’t seem quite so pathetic.”
“The fee’s already been settled.”
“Well. You must have a way with you.”
Aragon resisted the urge to tell the truth. Smedler wouldn’t be too happy if word got out that one of his employees had, twice in the same day, offered his services free. “It’s a gift,” he said, more or less accurately. “What can you tell me about Mrs. Shaw?”
Tannenbaum replaced his glasses and looked toward the rear of the hall as if seeking the advice of his partner. Rupert was asleep and snoring. “She puzzled me, that much I can tell you. Many of my first-time customers act the way she did, nervous and ill at ease, but there was something contradictory about her, an air of excitement I couldn’t figure out. It was the watch that clued me in.”
“What kind of watch?”
“A man’s wristwatch, a gold Swiss Jubilee. Very sophisticated and classy, with a face that shows the time only when viewed from a certain angle. I picked it up to examine it for an on-the-spot appraisal, but she asked for it back, said she’d changed her mind and wanted to hold on to it as a memento of her late husband. This is a common enough practice, for a bereaved person to hold on to a watch and keep it running and ticking like a heartbeat. I didn’t believe her, though. Still don’t.”
“What do you believe?”
“A watch like that,” Tannenbaum said, “would make a very nice gift.”
Aragon was eating dinner, a barely warm pizza with mozzarella that clung in strings to the roof of his mouth and had to be dislodged with beer. He’d placed the phone on the table in front of him and every now and then he stared at it as though it was a stubborn little beast that needed to be urged into action. It rang, finally, shortly after seven-thirty and he answered on the first ring.
“Hello, Laurie.”
“Tom.” She sounded pleased. “How did you know it was me?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
“What a liar you are. You were thinking about me.”
“Yes.”
“Good things?”
“The best.”
“Me, too. Listen, Tom, we’ll see each other at Thanksgiving. That’s not too far away and I get three whole days off.”
“The last time you had three whole days off you slept two and a half of them.”
“I remember the other half-day very well,” Laurie said. “Do you?”
“Vaguely. I may have to refresh my memory at Thanksgiving.”
“That’s a lovely idea.”
“I hope so. It’s the only one I have at the moment.”
“Oh, Tom.” There was a silence. “We’d better change the subject. This one is getting us nowhere and costing twenty-four cents a minute. Let’s talk about goats.”
“I don’t want to talk about goats.”
“Yes, you do. You appointed me your assistant in charge of regenerative process, goat division . . . Well, I found out from a geriatric specialist at the County Medical Association that there are a couple of places where people can get injections of goat embryo glands to stay young. One is in Hungary, and that’s the extent of the information I could get on it. The other’s in Mexico, run by a Dr. Manuel Ortiz. Ortiz doesn’t advertise, but the word has spread around youth-oriented places like Beverly Hills. His clinic’s main attractions seem to be that it guarantees immediate results and costs a lot of money.”
“That’s the attraction?”
“It is for wealthy people who have only one thing left to spend their money on, turning back the clock.”
“Where does this Dr. Ortiz turn back the clock?”
“The clinic is a converted ranch in a small seaside village south of Ensenada.”
“Pasoloma.”
“That’s it. How did you know?”
“Just another lucky guess.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“It’s kind of complicated,” Aragon said. “And as you mentioned a while ago, this conversation is costing twenty-four cents a minute. I figure we should save our money so that when you’re old and grey we’ll be able to send you down to Pasoloma for some of Dr. Ortiz’s goat glands.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
“I come from a long line of thinkers.”
“Tom, you’re not going to tell me a thing, are you?”
“Just the usual. I love you.”
“Well, I love you, too, but it doesn’t prevent me from wondering why you’re suddenly interested in rejuvenation. Did Smedler put you on a case involving Pasoloma?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Honest.”
“The last time you went to Mexico you got in all kinds of trouble.”
“Other people got in trouble. I didn’t.”
“The Mexican police aren’t normally interested in such fine distinctions.”
“Laurie, dear, I can’t tell you any more than I already have because I don’t know any more. I’m working on a hunch and it may be miles off the track. You’ve been a great help finding out about Dr. Ortiz. Tomorrow morning I’ll get Smedler’s secretary to call Ortiz’s clinic and see if our client is there. If she is, I’ll take the papers down to her for her signature and come home, mission accomplished. If she isn’t there, I’ll start thinking up another angle.”
It sounded logical, straightforward, easy. He wondered why he didn’t feel better about it.
Aragon arrived at the office shortly before nine o’clock and took up a strategic position at the door of Smedler’s private elevator. He was beginning to know Charity Nelson’s weaknesses and strengths, and one of them was punctuality. The bell in the City Hall tower across the street was striking the hour when she came in. In addition to her handbag, she was carrying a large canvas tote fully packed and showing a number of interesting lumps and bumps. Her wig had been anchored with a scarf tied so tightly under her jaw that her lips could scarcely move when she spoke: “Whatever you want, no.”
“I wasn’t asking for anything,” Aragon said. “I’m just reporting in.”
“Like on what?”
“Mrs. Shaw.”
“You found her.”
“No.”
“Then there’s nothing to report.”
“There may be.”
“Listen, junior, this isn’t the best time to mess around. Smedler spent the night in his office because he had a fight with his wife and he’d like her to believe he killed himself, which may not be such a bad idea, but who am I to suggest it. In here”—she indicated the canvas tote—“is his breakfast. Also mine. One thing Smedler and I have in common, we don’t like problems before breakfast, so bug o
ff.”
Charity pressed the button and the little iron-grilled elevator came down from the top floor with the majestic dignity of a vehicle intended only for royalty.
When the door opened Charity said, “You’d better not come up yet, junior.”
“That canvas bag looks heavy. Let me carry it for you.”
“Okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Once in her office Charity untied the scarf anchoring her wig and filled the glass coffeepot from the water cooler. Then she began unpacking the canvas tote Aragon had put on her desk: cans of tomato juice, some fresh pears and oranges, a bag from a local doughnut shop, a plastic container of plant food, a bottle of leaf polish and a jar of instant coffee.
“I have to make a long-distance call to a place in Mexico,” Aragon said. “I thought you’d want me to do it from here.”
“Why should I?”
“Because it involves Mrs. Shaw.”
He explained. In spite of the early hour and lack of breakfast, she was pleased with his theory. It fitted not only the rumors she’d heard but also her own picture of Miranda Shaw as the kind of vain, stupid woman who would go to a clinic in Mexico to buy back her youth. Charity didn’t consider her own youth worth buying back.
She put the call in herself. Whether it was her crisp voice or just plain luck, the call was relayed through Tijuana to Pasoloma within five minutes. Almost immediately a woman answered in Spanish, switching to heavily accented English in response to Charity’s question. Yes, this was the Clinica Pasoloma but no Mrs. Shaw was registered.
Charity held her hand over the mouthpiece. “The lady says Mrs. Shaw is not there. That blows your theory, junior.”
“Let me talk to her.” He took over the phone and spoke in Spanish. But Mrs. Shaw wasn’t there in Spanish any more than she’d been in English.
The clinic, in fact, did not give out names or any other information over the telephone except to the proper authorities. Though Aragon tried to convince her that he was, as Mrs. Shaw’s lawyer, a proper authority, she didn’t wait for him to finish.
“You struck out,” Charity said. “Admit it.”
“Not yet. The woman was just following orders, no names over the telephone.”
“So?”
“Suppose I go down to the clinic and ask her in person.”
“Why don’t you take no for an answer, junior? You had a nice little idea that died. Bury it.”
Smedler came out of his office. He showed no signs of having spent a night involving any physical or emotional discomfort. He was freshly shaved and impeccably groomed. Even the frown he aimed at his secretary was normal for the time of day.
“I tried to use the phone, Miss Nelson, and it was tied up by a bunch of foreigners.”
“Sorry,” Aragon said. “I was one of them.”
Smedler ignored him. “I don’t like foreign languages spoken on my telephone, Miss Nelson. What if the CIA is listening? They might think I’m selling secrets to Cuba or something.”
“We don’t have any secrets to sell to Cuba, Mr. Smedler.”
“You and I know that but they don’t . . . Did you get the kind of doughnuts I asked for?”
“With jelly inside,” Charity said. “Mr. Aragon has a theory about Mrs. Shaw’s disappearance.”
“Cherry?”
“Yes, sir. It’s an interesting theory.”
“The strawberry ones have those irritating little things in them.”
“Seeds. Shall I authorize him to pursue it?”
“Use your judgment, Miss Nelson. You’ve shown excellent judgment in the past. Nothing has happened to warp it, surely? Then carry on.”
Smedler disappeared with the bag of doughnuts, two fresh pears and a can of tomato juice.
Aragon said, “Well, has it?”
“Has what?”
“Anything happened to warp your judgment?”
“It gets warped every hour on the hour,” Charity said with a kind of grim satisfaction. “What’s on your calendar for the next few days?”
“Nothing I can’t clean up by this afternoon or push off on someone else.”
“Will your car make it as far as Pasoloma?”
“Probably.”
“Then a couple of hundred dollars should do it.”
“Make it three.”
“The plants you see growing around here are not money trees, junior.”
“Okay, I’ll settle for two. If I run short I can always sell a few secrets to Cuba.”
“This is highway robbery,” Charity said and made out a check for three hundred dollars. “And listen, junior, you’d better get going first thing tomorrow morning before Smedler finds out how really warped my judgment has become.”
Part III
The highway was known on both sides of the border as Numero Uno.
The border with its twenty-four gates was the busiest in the world, but most of the cars and vans and buses going into Mexico stopped at Tijuana or some sixty miles further south at Ensenada. Beyond Ensenada the speed and volume of traffic decreased and Aragon was able to slow down enough to decipher an occasional weather-beaten sign along the road. Dr. Ortiz evidently didn’t believe in encouraging visitors. The word Pasoloma and an arrow pointing west toward the sea was painted on a shingle nailed to the prostrate trunk of an elephant tree.
Aragon turned right on a narrow dirt road oiled just enough to settle the top layer of dust and coat the sides of his old Chevy with a kind of black glue. The road ended abruptly on a curve with the Pacific Ocean about twenty yards ahead, and Aragon realized he’d arrived in Pasoloma. What Laurie had described on the telephone as a small seaside village was in fact a gas pump, some dilapidated wooden shacks and a dozen kids accompanied by some dogs, chickens and a burro. One of the chickens flew up and landed on the burro’s back
and the reluctant host was trying to dislodge it with a series of kicks. It was the only activity in the entire village.
The clinic itself was at the top of a newly surfaced driveway curving up a hill between boulders and paloverde trees—the original ranchhouse now serving, according to a sign on the door, as the main office; a number of outbuildings remodeled as staff residences; a cluster of modern cottages with attached carports, most of them occupied by large American cars. In addition to the cottages, two other structures were new—a rectangular one with small high windows obviously meant to discourage sightseers and another that looked like a small hospital, with a late-model station wagon and a jeep parked outside. Both vehicles were identified by the lettering on their sides as belonging to Dr. Manuel Ortiz, Clinica Pasoloma.
It was early afternoon, siesta time. Hardly anyone was in sight. A nurse in uniform was walking slowly toward the hospital, a gardener was clipping a mangy-looking hedge, leaf by leaf, and half a dozen people sat around the swimming pool. Only one was in the pool, an enormously fat man lying on his back with his belly protruding from the water like the carcass of a sea lion bloated with decomposing gases.
Aragon parked his car in front of the ranchhouse and went into the door marked Oficio.
A middle-aged woman sat behind the reception desk reading a newspaper. She had Indian features, eyes flat and expressionless as pennies, straight black hair and lips that moved only enough to permit limited conversation. Though her language was Spanish, she used no exaggerated gestures or inflections.
“The office is closed.”
“Oh, sorry,” Aragon said. “I didn’t see any sign to that effect.”
“Something happened to it.”
“Perhaps you could answer one simple question?”
She looked him over carefully. His youth pegged him as a non-customer, his accent as American, his car as poor. There was no use wasting energy on him.
“The office is closed unti
l three o’clock.”
“It’s two now. Let’s pretend we’re on daylight-saving time, that way we wouldn’t be breaking any rules, would we?”
“I think yes, we would.” She folded the newspaper and put it on the desk. “Dr. Ortiz is my sister’s son-in-law. We make the rules together, the whole family, and we keep them together.”
“I’m sure you do. You look like the kind of person who would make a good rule and stick to it.”
“This is a family enterprise.”
“And very successful, I hear.”
“Where do you hear that?”
“Santa Felicia, California,” Aragon said. “I just drove down today to see Mrs. Shaw.”
“Who?”
“Miranda Shaw. Mrs. Neville Shaw. Or perhaps Mrs. Grady Keaton.”
“Why do you want to see somebody whose name you don’t even know?”
“I represent her lawyer.”
“Our patients are not allowed to have visitors,” said Dr. Ortiz’s mother-in-law’s sister. “We make that very clear in the instructions they’re sent before they arrive for treatment. The only exceptions permitted are that a wife may bring her husband, or vice versa, if they choose to rent one of our cottages.”
He asked the price of a cottage and she mentioned a figure that would have rented half a hotel in Santa Felicia.
“It is the sea,” she added, observing his shock. “One must pay for the sound of waves and the bracing salt air.”
Aragon went down to the beach for a free trial of the waves and the bracing salt air. There was a south swell with sets of eight to ten feet and almost no wind to rough them. In California on such a day, at Hammond’s Reef, Malibu, Zuma, Huntington Beach, the water would be swarming with surfers in wet suits maneuvering for position or sitting on their boards like rows of cormorants. At Pasoloma there were only three surfers, young men wearing swim trunks instead of wet suits because the water was still summer-warm.
The Murder of Miranda Page 10
