What she did not want was for Hector to time one of his dives wrong and die. Or worse, become a cripple she would have to support for the rest of their marriage. Maria, living in poverty, remembered abject poverty, and was afraid of it. When she passed a beggar in the square, pleading respectfully with the turistas for money for herself and the children, Maria felt something cold crawl about inside her. She could be that woman, she knew. The difference between what she was and what she might become was only a fraction of a second, an insane risk taken three times a day every day twenty miles down the coast at the Tower of Saint Marcos.
Hector ate greedily, gratefully, complimenting Maria on her cooking. After supper he played with the children, laughing and making promises he couldn’t keep. Though he was a man, and a good one, there was something childlike in Hector’s dark, lithe handsomeness. His was a youthful, whipcord body that moved with a matador’s grace and strength. Yet now he was thirty-four, and above his black diving trunks was the beginning of a stomach paunch. Maria knew that Hector was at the time of life when men’s reflexes and timing were beginning to deteriorate without them even suspecting it. This was a time of danger, especially in Hector’s line of work.
In bed, he placed his lean, strong arms about her, and immediately fell asleep.
The next morning, the American Martin was again at his easel on the rocks overlooking the sea and a view of the coast, and was working on the painting he’d begun yesterday. Before speaking to him, Maria stood silently at the bend in the steep path, watching him work. His huge hands were gentle and sure with the brush, lending the canvas life. He was a tall, muscular man with pale blue eyes and a full red beard. Always beside his easel was a gray foam cooler containing ice and beer. Maria had heard that he painted dozens of pictures, then drove them into the Arts and Crafts Center in Mazatlan and sold them to turistas. She didn’t know where Martin lived; no one seemed to know that.
He must have heard her, or sensed her presence on the path. “Good morning, Maria,” he said, not looking away from his canvas. He was dabbing clouds in a blue sky.
She said nothing but moved nearer.
“What do you think?” he asked, nodding his shaggy head toward the canvas.
It amazed her that anyone could create a likeness so accurately. “Bonito,” she said. Pretty. Not beautiful. Not majestic. Only Bonito.
The American Martin smiled bitterly. “Here,” he said, moving away from before the easel. He gripped her elbow and positioned her to stand where he had stood, placed a brush in her hand and moved behind her. His thick arms, pale and dusted with reddish hair, slipped around her waist.
For the next two weeks, Maria went almost every day to the rocks above the ocean. The American Martin’s gentle, thick hands did things to her that she had never dreamed possible, that Hector could never imagine. In Martin’s loving clasp she poured out all of her fears, and he gladly accepted them and kept them safely where they no longer haunted her and foretold a bleak future.
During the third week, while Hector was at the Tower of Saint Marcos, Martin said, “Drive into Mazatlan with me. We can bring your children. There’s a man I want you to meet. His name is Anderson.”
“Hector will be home soon.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Martin told her. “We’ll be back within a few hours; Hector won’t know you’ve been gone, unless the kids mention it.”
“They won’t if I tell them not to,” Maria said. “And Hector will be tired and go to sleep soon after he eats supper.”
“Then come with me,” Martin coaxed. He kissed her. When his lips had barely left hers, he said, “Anderson can make us rich, you and me.”
Maria knew that, like Hector, she was poised above a steep, exhilarating plunge. It would take courage to leap free.
She nodded silently, walked down the path and got the children, and they drove with Martin in his dusty Jeep into Mazatlan.
That Saturday, high above half a dozen tour buses and scores of American turistas, Hector stood poised on the Tower of Saint Marcos and felt the freedom, but not the fear.
That puzzled him. He studied the incoming swells, waiting for the right one to time for his dive. The ribbons of white surf along the coast beyond the cove seemed to undulate and move in unfamiliar rhythms and patterns. The sea was behaving strangely today. Perhaps that was why he wasn’t afraid; the strangeness had something to do with his own new fearlessness.
At last Hector saw an oncoming swell that would provide deep enough water when it entered the cove. He watched it approach, a rolling, glittering vast hill of water, shot with sunlight as if it contained thousands of diamonds.
It seemed to take forever to reach the point Hector had chosen, where he knew it would begin to curl into a green, sloping wall for its assault on the cove. The point from where it would enter the cove only a moment before the plummeting Hector sliced into its cool depths.
In that last few seconds, Hector realized there was something wrong. The oncoming swell wasn’t approaching smoothly; it was pausing, then rushing forward, wavering like liquid rippling in a drunkard’s unsteady glass. Hector didn’t want to dive.
But his right arm was already raised, signaling to the turistas, all watching from below through admiring, apprehensive eyes. Many were peering through camera lenses, hastily setting F-stops and shutter speeds, not admitting to the secret desire to record on film a brave man’s death. It was too late for Hector to turn away with self-respect.
As soon as he launched himself into the air, Hector felt his confidence return. Only when he had safely passed the outcropping of rock and his body was out of its arch and vertical, did he glimpse for an instant below him the backwash of blue-green water.
The wave was receding!
Terror clutched at his throat and contorted his body. There was no time to scream. He struck the water with a dark thunder that he knew was death.
“That’s that,” Martin said to Anderson, the next day in Anderson’s cluttered office in Mexico City. Anderson was a gangly giraffe of a man who breathed through his mouth and perspired a lot. “Maria slipped him some peyote. It’s a drug that distorts time sense just enough. Will there be any trouble collecting from the company?”
Anderson shook his long, pale head and said, “No problem at all; no clouds on the horizon. Why should there be? A wife uses her husband’s earnings to buy life insurance on him. And why not? He was in a dangerous occupation and she had two children to think about. Remember, I’m Great Intercontinental Insurance’s Mexico claims agent; I can verify Hector’s signature on the policy. I’ll recommend to the company that they pay his widow the settlement. There’s no way for Great Intercontinental, or anyone else, to know you and I are soon going to split that settlement fifty-fifty. And what they don’t know can’t hurt us. By the way, where’s the wealthy widow?”
“She and the kids are getting into Mexico City tomorrow,” Martin said. “After the funeral. I’ve already rented them a nice furnished apartment on the Reforma, where we’ll live happily if not ever after.”
“Can you get her to sign a policy with you as the beneficiary?” Anderson asked. “A genuine signature is always best. You can’t beat the real McCoy.”
“I’ll tell her it’s a form she needs to sign to collect the settlement. She’ll believe it. She can barely read and write.” Martin paced to the dirty window, gazed out at the traffic on Avenue Morelos, then bit the end off a cigar. He plucked the tobacco crumbs and leaf from his tongue and rolled them between his thumb and forefinger into a tight little ball, which he tossed on the floor. Anderson’s litany of smug little platitudes irritated him. Yet he didn’t want to do even one more canvas and sell it to oafs for an insultingly small sum. “I’m not so confident about this one, Anderson. Are you sure the company won’t suspect?”
Anderson tilted back his narrow, balding head and laughed through his nose. “Do you know how many Maria Gomezes there are in Mexico? They’re like Smiths and Joneses in the United States. Like
pebbles on the beach. The company will pay; they’ll never even know that this Mexico City Gomez was related to Hector Gomez of Barbilla. And your name as beneficiary won’t ring any bells at the home office. Believe me, Martin, we’re touching all the bases. We’ll soon be home free.”
“Okay,” Martin said, lighting the cigar. He blew smoke off to the side. “Get the policy written up and I’ll get Maria to sign tomorrow night, while she’s still disoriented from the funeral and the trip here. There’s no point in wasting time.”
“You’re a man after my own heart,” Anderson said, smiling and sliding open a desk drawer. “Time is money.”
“For both of us,” Martin said.
Or one of us, Anderson thought behind his smile. He was a man who planned ahead even as he tied loose ends.
So the Spanish gold in Saint Marcos Cove was not entirely a legend concocted for turistas. After his last and deepest dive, Hector Gomez did indeed produce a treasure. Complete with a curse.
The Steel Valentine
by Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale writes and thinks like nobody else. While he’s frequently called dark, what makes his work both different and masterful is its humor. There’s a great exasperated cosmic laugh in virtually all of Lansdale’s best work. He knows how pitiful we are, and he’s eager to tell us about it.
First published in 1989.
For Jeff Banks . . .
Even before Morley told him, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly.
A man did not club you unconscious, bring you to his estate and tie you to a chair in an empty storage shed out back of the place if he merely intended to give you a valentine.
Morley had found out about him and Julie.
Dennis blinked his eyes several times as he came to, and each time he did, more of the dimly lit room came into view. It was the room where he and Julie had first made love. It was the only building on the estate that looked out of place; it was old, worn, and not even used for storage; it was a collector of dust, cobwebs, spiders and desiccated flies.
There was a table in front of Dennis, a kerosine lantern on it, and beyond, partially hidden in shadow, a man sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette. Dennis could see the red tip glowing in the dark and the smoke from it drifted against the lantern light and hung in the air like thin, suspended wads of cotton.
The man leaned out of shadow, and as Dennis expected, it was Morley. His shaved, bullet-shaped head was sweaty and reflected the light. He was smiling with his fine, white teeth, and the high cheekbones were round, flushed circles that looked like clown rouge. The tightness of his skin, the few wrinkles, made him look younger than his fifty-one years.
And in most ways he was younger than his age. He was a man who took care of himself. Jogged eight miles every morning before breakfast, lifted weights three times a week and had only one bad habit—cigarettes. He smoked three packs a day. Dennis knew all that and he had only met the man twice. He had learned it from Julie, Morley’s wife. She told him about Morley while they lay in bed. She liked to talk and she often talked about Morley; about how much she hated him.
“Good to see you,” Morley said, and blew smoke across the table into Dennis’s face. “Happy Valentine’s Day, my good man. I was beginning to think I hit you too hard, put you in a coma.”
“What is this, Morley?” Dennis found that the mere act of speaking sent nails of pain through his skull. Morley really had lowered the boom on him.
“Spare me the innocent act, lover boy. You’ve been laying the pipe to Julie, and I don’t like it.”
“This is silly, Morley. Let me loose.”
“God, they do say stupid things like that in real life. It isn’t just the movies. . . You think I brought you here just to let you go, lover boy?”
Dennis didn’t answer. He tried to silently work the ropes loose that held his hands to the back of the chair. If he could get free, maybe he could grab the lantern, toss it in Morley’s face. There would still be the strand holding his ankles to the chair, but maybe it wouldn’t take too long to undo that. And even if it did, it was at least some kind of plan.
If he got the chance to go one on one with Morley, he might take him. He was twenty-five years younger and in good shape himself. Not as good as when he was playing pro basketball, but good shape nonetheless. He had height, reach, and he still had wind. He kept the latter with plenty of jogging and tossing the special-made, sixty-five pound medicine ball around with Raul at the gym.
Still, Morley was strong. Plenty strong. Dennis could testify to that. The pulsating knot on the side of his head was there to remind him.
He remembered the voice in the parking lot, turning toward it and seeing a fist. Nothing more, just a fist hurtling toward him like a comet. Next thing he knew, he was here, the outbuilding.
Last time he was here, circumstances were different, and better. He was with Julie. He met her for the first time at the club where he worked out, and they had spoken, and ended up playing racquetball together. Eventually she brought him here and they made love on an old mattress in the corner; lay there afterward in the June heat of a Mexican summer, holding each other in a warm, sweaty embrace.
After that, there had been many other times. In the great house; in cars; hotels. Always careful to arrange a tryst when Morley was out of town. Or so they thought. But somehow he had found out.
“This is where you first had her,” Morley said suddenly. “And don’t look so wide-eyed. I’m not a mind reader. She told me all the other times and places too. She spat at me when I told her I knew, but I made her tell me every little detail, even when I knew them. I wanted it to come from her lips. She got so she couldn’t wait to tell me. She was begging to tell me. She asked me to forgive her and take her back. She no longer wanted to leave Mexico and go back to the States with you. She just wanted to live.”
“You bastard. If you’ve hurt her—”
“You’ll what? Shit your pants? That’s the best you can do, Dennis. You see, it’s me that has you tied to the chair. Not the other way around.”
Morley leaned back into the shadows again, and his hands came to rest on the table, the perfectly manicured fingertips steepling together, twitching ever so gently.
“I think it would have been inconsiderate of her to have gone back to the States with you, Dennis. Very inconsiderate. She knows I’m a wanted man there, that I can’t go back. She thought she’d be rid of me. Start a new life with her ex-basketball player. That hurt my feelings, Dennis. Right to the bone.” Morley smiled. “But she wouldn’t have been rid of me, lover boy. Not by a long shot. I’ve got connections in my business. I could have followed her anywhere . . . In fact, the idea that she thought I couldn’t offended my sense of pride.”
“Where is she? What have you done with her, you bald-headed bastard?”
After a moment of silence, during which Morley examined Dennis’s face, he said, “Let me put it this way. Do you remember her dogs?”
Of course he remembered the dogs. Seven Dobermans. Attack dogs. They always frightened him. They were big mothers, too. Except for her favorite, a reddish, undersized Doberman named Chum. He was about sixty pounds, and vicious. “Light, but quick,” Julie used to say. “Light, but quick.”
Oh yeah, he remembered those goddamn dogs. Sometimes when they made love in an estate bedroom, the dogs would wander in, sit down around the bed and watch. Dennis felt they were considering the soft, rolling meat of his testicles, savoring the possibility. It made him feel like a mean kid teasing them with a treat he never intended to give. The idea of them taking that treat by force made his erection soften, and he finally convinced Julie, who found his nervousness hysterically funny, that the dogs should be banned from the bedroom, the door closed.
Except for Julie, those dogs hated everyone. Morley included. They obeyed him, but they did not like him. Julie felt that under the right circumstances, they might go nuts and tear him apart. Something she hoped for, but never happened.
&n
bsp; “Sure,” Morley continued. “You remember her little pets. Especially Chum, her favorite. He’d growl at me when I tried to touch her. Can you imagine that? All I had to do was touch her, and that damn beast would growl. He was crazy about his mistress, just crazy about her.”
Dennis couldn’t figure what Morley was leading up to, but he knew in some way he was being baited. And it was working. He was starting to sweat.
“Been what,” Morley asked, “a week since you’ve seen your precious sweetheart? Am I right?”
Dennis did not answer, but Morley was right. A week. He had gone back to the States for a while to settle some matters, get part of his inheritance out of legal bondage so he could come back, get Julie, and take her to the States for good. He was tired of the Mexican heat and tired of Morley owning the woman he loved.
It was Julie who had arranged for him to meet Morley in the first place, and probably even then the old bastard had suspected. She told Morley a partial truth. That she had met Dennis at the club, that they had played racquetball together, and that since he was an American, and supposedly a mean hand at chess, she thought Morley might enjoy the company. This way Julie had a chance to be with her lover, and let Dennis see exactly what kind of man Morley was.
And from the first moment Dennis met him, he knew he had to get Julie away from him. Even if he hadn’t loved her and wanted her, he would have helped her leave Morley.
It wasn’t that Morley was openly abusive—in fact, he was the perfect host all the while Dennis was there—but there was an obvious undercurrent of connubial dominance and menace that revealed itself like a shark fin everytime he looked at Julie.
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