Harlequin

by Morris West

  ‘We got in late.’

  ‘And you played much later. She’s an attractive woman.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘I want to see you today.’

  ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Do you know the Plaza of the Three Cultures?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘Three o’clock outside the church door.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Alone, Mr Desmond.’

  ‘Just as you say. Do you know a good cure for hangover?’

  ‘The best – don’t drink, Especially don’t drink tequila. Hasta luego, amigo!’

  There was no cure for living, except dying; so I was forced to suffer it. I shaved shakily, bathed slowly and dressed painfully, trying to ignore the chattering imps inside my skull-case. When, finally, I made the long journey to the lounge, I found Suzanne, miraculously fresh, dressed for the street, just taking the covers off the breakfast dishes. She made little noises of pity, apologised for keeping me out late and stood over me like a Gorgon while I ate what she was pleased to call a civilised breakfast. Then, just as I felt the first faint stirrings of life, she announced that I needed fresh air and exercise. I protested in vain that the only fresh air was in the hotel, and at seven thousand feet above sea-level, even that was too thin for comfort. I managed to delay the ordeal by half an hour while I called Saul Wells and briefed him on Alexander Duggan. I gained ten minutes more for a brief visit to Harlequin and Julie. Then, still protesting, I was hustled out into the Sunday splendour.

  The Mexicans will tell you their capital is an infested city – infested with rich people, poor people, monuments, churches, history, disease, animals, children, colour, noise, legend, police, ghosts, tourists and a hundred different languages. Try to absorb it all at once and it leaves you dazzled and breathless. Take it slowly, pace by Sunday pace, with a sharing woman on your arm, and the mosaic begins to make sense. The Aztecs are still there, walking the asphalt that hides their old capital of Tenochtlitlan. The conquistadores are still there, driving Mercedes and Fiats and living like the lords of creation within a stone’s throw of festering slums. The Virgin of Guadeloupe still watches over this most Catholic of cities and the serpent-god still stirs, deep in the folk-memory. Turn into a shady courtyard, sit on a stone bench and you will think yourself back in old Seville. Poke your head through a cellar door and you will see a huddle of victims, more hopeless than any who waited to have their hearts cut out on the sacred pyramid. Cock an ear to student talk and you will hear wilder revolution than Dolores the priest cried in the countryside. Sit in the boardrooms of the industrialists and they will tell you there is more wealth under the ground than Montezuma ever dreamed.

  Buy a balloon, toss a coin to the mariachis and they will play it all away and make you believe that there never was and never could be a gayer place to spend a Sunday.

  Came the moment when even Suzanne surrendered and we sat drinking iced beer at a sidewalk café, watching the passing parade and feeling pleasantly remote from it all.

  Suddenly, apropos of nothing at all, Suzanne said, ‘Paul, I have the feeling that we’re being watched.’

  ‘Of course we are. We’re strangers, palefaces’

  ‘I’m serious, Paul. Don’t look now, but there’s a man standing by a red car on the other side of the street. I’ve seen him at least four times in different places this morning.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Youngish, wearing blue trousers and a white shirt open at the neck… There’s a van coming. When it passes him, I’ll tell you to turn… Now!’

  I swivelled in the chair so that I sat facing directly across the street. When the van passed, I saw him leaning against a lamp standard smoking a cigarette. He could have been any Sunday idler, ogling the girls, except that the girls were behind him on the sidewalk. I signalled the waiter, paid the check and the pair of us walked swiftly down the street in the direction of the Paseo de la Reforma. The fellow tossed away his cigarette and hurried across the road towards the café. Fifty yards down the street, we stopped a taxi. He was still behind us. As we drove off, I could see him frantically looking for another cab. Suzanne was shaken.

  I tried to dismiss it with guesswork. ‘Aaron Bogdanovich is in town. I’m seeing him today. That was probably one of his people.’

  ‘If it wasn’t?’

  ‘Then someone hired a very clumsy spy.’

  ‘Paul, what’s happened to us? I don’t recognise anyone any more – not even myself. We’re like characters out of Kafka, living in a world of hints and allusions and nameless terrors. We don’t have to submit to it. None of us does – especially George. Why, Paul… why?’

  It was a hard question to answer in a rattling taxi, tearing at break-neck speed down the Paseo. I waited until we were back in the hotel, feet up and quiet in our small, impermanent haven.

  ‘ …Suzy, I can’t tell you I’ve got the right answer – or any answer at all. The best I can do is reason it with you, as I’m trying to reason it with myself, as George is trying to reason it, too. Ask me whether Harlequin et Cie or even a half-acre cabbage-patch is worth a man’s life, I’ll tell you it isn’t. Ask me whether we have the right to be sitting here in the Camino Real while, out there, twelve kids huddle in a cellar and their father can’t get work to feed them: of course, we haven’t. We’re wrong. The system’s wrong and it’s crumbling under our feet. It’s like this city, which is floating on a lake of sewage. If the pumps break down, the streets will be knee deep in filth… So we try to make the unworkable work. We try to keep terror at bay, while we evolve a better kind of life for everyone. There are those who say it can’t be done; better to blow the whole mess sky-high and start from nothing. That’s a bigger illusion than Utopia; because, after the blow-up, the looters are back, and the exploiters and the slavers. That’s the terrible paradox: the meek shall inherit the earth; but the tyrants and the assassins run it. In a sense, they are necessary to each other. Action provokes reaction. Once you fight, someone or something dies. One death creates vendetta. And most people are too confused to see what is happening under their noses. Let me tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. I was in the war in the Pacific. We were holding a position on the underside of a hill in New Guinea. The Japanese had been shelling us for three days. The next day they would overrun us. We were ordered to pull back with our wounded. We got most of them out. Two were so badly injured, they couldn’t be moved. They were within hours of death. If we took them, they would suffer intolerable agony for nothing. If we left them, they would be butchered in the first assault. They begged to be killed. I killed them – two friends! Right or wrong, Suzy? I’ve never really known. There was no one to tell me, then or afterwards. Comes a moment when reason fails and only the heart prompts… Sorry, girl, that’s the best I can do.’

  She didn’t say anything. She came to me, bent and kissed me on the lips and walked out of the room. I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty: time to freshen myself and go meet a man who had all the answers, because he slept in a grave.

  The Plaza of the Three Cultures is aptly named. It lies within the confines of ancient Tlatlelolco, where the final, bloody slaughter of the Aztecs took place. A marble tablet celebrates the event, and the irony of its aftermath:

  On the 13th of August, 1521, Tlatlelolco… fell to the might of Heman Cortes. This was neither a triumph nor a defeat, but the painful birth of a mixed race which is the Mexico of today.

  The Mexico of today is celebrated in block after block of steel and concrete and glass; square, featureless and impersonal. The memory of the Aztecs is enshrined in a great, truncated pyramid of hewn stone. Between them both, higher than the pyramid, lower than the concrete blocks, stands the Church of Santiago, with its mismatched towers and its crenellated walls, that give it a grim fortress look.

  When I arrived, the Plaza was quiet. Those who could afford to eat were still at table. Those who could not were dozing through
siesta or flirting drowsily on the lawns of Chapultepec Park waiting for the hour of the bullfight. Aaron Bogdanovich sat, relaxed and saturnine, on the steps of the church, chewing on a stick of sugar-cane. I dusted off a place for myself and sat beside him.

  He gave me an off-hand greeting and plunged straight into business. ‘I hear you’ve been busy. Tell me about it.’

  I recited it for him, day by day, hour by hour. Occasionally, he interrupted me and asked me to repeat a phrase or interpret an atmosphere. Most of the time, he sat, munching the sweet fibre and staring, empty-eyed, at the pyramid below us. When I had finished, he tossed away the cane, spat the pulp into the dust and said, without emphasis:

  ‘I passed Leah Klein’s story. It made half a page in the London press this morning. Reactions were lively. New York will run it tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you happy about that?’

  ‘It helps you: which is what I’m paid to do.’

  ‘How will Yanko react to it?’

  ‘He’s already reacted. He’s on his way back to New York!.’

  ‘The FBI warned us to expect trouble in Mexico City.’

  ‘They were right.’

  ‘How much do they know?’

  ‘About what, Mr Desmond?’

  ‘Frank Lemnitz, for instance, and Valerie Hallstrom!.’

  ‘Less than I do; more than you.’

  ‘That tells me damn-all.’

  ‘Don’t be angry, Mr Desmond. It clouds the judgment. You say you and your friend were followed this morning. Describe the man again.’

  I described him.

  Bogdanovich frowned and shook his head. ‘New to me. My man didn’t recognise him, either.’

  ‘I didn’t see your man.’

  ‘If you had, he wouldn’t be working for me. However, I’d better tell you now: your troubles will start the moment Yanko gets back to New York. As from tomorrow, you and Harlequin will have bodyguards – day and night. And I don’t want any arguments from either of you. If the women go out, together or alone, they’ll be accompanied, too.’

  ‘If you say so. What news of Tony Tesoriero?’

  ‘We’ve got him, here in Mexico. I want you and Harlequin to visit him tomorrow. He should be ready by then.’

  He might have been making monkey-talk for all I understood of it. I stared at him stupidly.

  For the first time he gave me that cold autumn smile: ‘The contract to kill Valerie Hallstrom was let in Mexico City. A lot of that business is done here. So, through friends, we dropped the word to Tony Tesoriero that there was another contract to be discussed. We gave him his fare and a wad of spending money and picked him up at the airport. Since then we’ve been resting him at a hacienda in the country.’

  ‘Why do you need us?’

  ‘It’s a part of the strategy. Also, you owe me money. I’d like to collect a quarter of a million tomorrow, in dollars.’

  ‘You did mention a hundred thousand.’

  ‘The expenses have been high.’

  ‘We’ll need twenty-four hours to get the dollars.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s make it the day after tomorrow. I’ll send a limousine to the hotel at nine in the morning. It’s a fifty-mile drive. You’ll be briefed when you get there.’

  ‘I’d like to talk about Alex Duggan. I’ve put Saul Wells to work on him. I wonder if that’s enough.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Let’s say Saul is a conventional investigator.’

  ‘And we have different methods?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Could you describe any that you think might be useful?’

  ‘Well… no.’

  ‘Good! You see, Mr Desmond, it takes a long time to train people for our sort of work. Very few subjects are suitable. You were thinking about Frank Lemnitz, weren’t you? I told you my people would meet him in London. They met him. The girl the police are looking for was our girl. We’re looking for her, too. We think she’s dead. When they got back to the hotel after making the rounds of the clubs, someone was waiting in the bedroom. That someone shot Lemnitz and walked our girl out of the hotel at gunpoint.’

  ‘Why not kill her, too?’

  ‘The way it was done, it looked better. And our girl might have been induced to talk. Nothing is as simple as it sounds. You buy oil from Libya to fly aeroplanes. The Libyans give passports and asylum to the people who blow them up. We train soldiers for the Shah of Persia and Japanese fanatics shoot up Lod airport… In Israel, we had Jews spying for the Syrians. The British won’t send us parts for our tanks, while their own soldiers are killed in Ulster by Arab-trained guerillas. Basil Yanko plots like a mafia don and Uncle Sam makes him rich with defence contracts. Don’t tell me my business, Mr Desmond. I’m still learning it myself! As for Saul Wells, let him do his job in his own way. I’ll call him and tell him what to do about Alex Duggan – which is just to make sure he stays alive!’ For a fraction of an instant, he softened, and I saw, or thought I saw, a flash of humanity in his eyes, as he added the sardonic afterthought: ‘Face it, Mr Desmond! The war goes on, even when the guns are silent. You want twenty per cent on your money, you don’t give it to an orphanage; you invest it with the men who make guns to keep the orphanage filled. Tuesday morning, nine o’clock. Cash on the barrel-head!’

  He left me then, and I stood watching him as he strode down the concrete ramp and past the Aztec pyramid to the other side of the Plaza. Moved by a sudden impulse, I went into the church. It was cool inside, turbulent with images and baroque ornament, but calm withal, as though the passion that had created it had all been spent and only the mystery remained, still unsolved, forever insoluble. I could not pray. There was nothing to praise in the world – least of all myself. There was nothing to ask for. I had all that money could buy – and it wasn’t enough. If Aaron Bogdanovich were right, there was no hope – only a deferment of ultimate disaster. Faith, there was: some men died for it and some killed for it, too. Love?… Well, yes, there was love: strange, tangled, selfless, noble or perverse; but it was there, the last handhold before the leap into chaos. I knelt and buried my face in my hands and shut myself into a dream-place with the little love I had left to keep.

  In the fall of the afternoon, we all met for drinks in Harlequin’s suite. For twenty minutes, Juliette held the floor with her tale of a luncheon with the hidalgos of New Spain:

  ‘…My God, Suzy! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Mexican matrons! How many children did I have, and did I not expect any more? Was my husband faithful, and how in Geneva did one arrange the matter of the mistress? And daughters! I should thank God every day I did not have a daughter. Sons are different, you see. With a good father like Pedro, who understands such things, matters arrange themselves without risk – and the boy is better for it. At the beginning, an older woman is always best! Had I taken a lover yet? With a husband who travels so much, a lover is at least to be considered. Ay de mi! These North Americans with their liberation of women! What do they do but enslave themselves to work. My Pedro now!,.. Go on, George! Tell them about our Pedro!…’

  George Harlequin had his own comedy to play: the hovering domestics, the imperious commands, the punctilio of compliment and deprecation, the slow, circuitous approach to the matter at issue.

  ‘…Which is more complex than it looks, Paul. Our friend, José Luis, is not in favour with the old families, who’ve been trying to marry him to their daughters for ten years. They say he gambles, too; which is news to me, and bad news, if it is true. Pedro Galvez is a character straight out of Calderón. He will damn the Pope to hell and kneel on his death-bed for the Sacrament. He despises Yanko for an upstart and a trampista. He will despise me more if I cannot cheat better. He hates computers and would willingly dispense with them if only he could find people to write honest accounts. When I told him I was gambling everything to buy up my options, he called me a nineteenth-century romantic – but he drank to it, just the same. When I talked of violence, he s
hrugged and said if you didn’t kill the beast, there would be no meat for supper. His promise is good. He’ll hold his shares till the last moment, and see that his colleagues do the same. If we win, he’ll put business into our hands. If we don’t, he’ll have a mass sung for our miserable souls. That’s my news, Paul. What’s yours?’

  ‘The story’s broken in London. Tomorrow it hits America. Basil Yanko’s on his way back to New York. As of tomorrow, we all have bodyguards. And on Tuesday, we hand over a quarter of a million dollars in cash money.’

  ‘No bodyguards!’ Harlequin was emphatic. ‘I’m a civilised man. I will not travel with a train of bully-boys!’

  ‘Bogdanovich insists on it. I agree with him. Suzanne and I were followed during our walk this morning. At any moment during that time we could have been shot. You owe it to all of us – and you owe it to your own child.’

  ‘The police are guarding the baby… So, we have body-guards – amen! What next?’

  ‘Keep Tuesday free. You and I have an appointment in the country.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To meet the man who killed Valerie Hallstrom.’

  ‘What does that mean, Paul?’

  ‘I don’t know. Bogdanovich wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘What are we, for God’s sake? Puppets?’

  ‘We’re strangers, George.’ Juliette chided him, firmly. ‘Strangers in an exotic city. You said that yourself, as we were driving home. And I’d like to remind you, dear husband, all I’ve seen so far is one very stuffy comer of it!’

  ‘Then, tonight, my love, we shall go dancing. You, Paul?… Suzanne? That’s settled then. Paul, why don’t you call José Luis and invite him to join us, with whatever talent he’s entertaining at this moment.’

  José Luis had infinite regrets; but tonight it was just not possible. It was a matter of family and friends of family, a reunion of long standing. Perhaps later – if only for an hour. I told him we would be at the San Angel Inn. He said it was a splendid choice: excellent music, exquisite food. He apologised again and wished us good diversion. I offered a silent prayer that I would still be on my feet to enjoy it.