This byway seemed deserted. It showed no light, it made no sound. The faint echo of the Avenida’s merriment whimpered from another world. Jose walked silent as a glimmering ghost, but boldly. If he was under observation from behind dark windows no suspicion should attach to him by reason of his gait. The way seemed to grow darker and more silent, although that was pure nervous stomach and he knew it. He walked the entire length of the narrow lane before coming upon the shop of Senor Praxiteles.
It was a real shop with a large glass window through which tourists might peer before entering. If they should happen to wander this far from the bridge. Jose did not stop to peer through the undisturbed dust which swathed the pane like mist. He merely made note that the darkness was broken by a flicker, dim as a candle, far in the rear of the shop. The light was so small it laid no color on the street. The entrance was on the corner, there were tip-tilted earthen steps leading to a heavy wooden door, so old the iron of the hinges and the latch were worn black and thin. Above the door was a small iron bell, a dirty piece of string hanging limply from it. Jose didn’t ring, he was loathe to disturb the absolute soundlessness of the street. He put his hand on the latch. It didn’t give. There was nothing to do but ring. Gingerly he took the soiled string between thumb and forefinger; he pulled. The clang was faint, but he could hear it echoing within the shop, attached to another bell inside. When it died away, silence lay more heavily. He could make out the tinkle of the Beer Barrel Polka from the Avenue, and it seemed he could hear the one man band and Canario’s singing whine.
Nothing happened after the bell. He stood there waiting, wondering. He might be too late but the blond girl hadn’t set any particular time for him to pick up the package. Perhaps she’d taken it for granted he would rush with the envelope from the desk to the Senor’s. The sooner to enjoy his pay. He wasn’t wondering so much about the delay as about the number of people who seemed to be in on this business. Canario couldn’t have remembered him from more than five years ago, the musico was a part of this thing. It was not accident that Canario had waylaid him, he had been watching for Jose’s appearance. The girl at Herrera’s was a part of it. And the seersucker man. As was the blonde who’d known when she hired the Mexican lout that it wasn’t a cinch job.
The door opened so softly, he was taken unawares. There’d been no warning creak, those ancient hinges were well-oiled. Someone was peering out at him but his eyes were unable to penetrate the blackness inside. The door was open but a crack. Through the aperture a voice whispered dustily, “It is too late. Return tomorrow.”
Jose rebelled. He’d be damned if he were going through this again. And he’d be damned if he were going to give up now after the trouble it had been to reach here safely, trouble to his nerves if naught else. He was missing the best chicken mole on the border, he might be missing a safe ride back to El Paso; he would not depart empty-handed.
He edged one white buckskin toe against the crack. He announced, “I won’t be here tomorrow.” The words sounded too loud in the empty night. And prophetic in an unpleasant way.
The croaking whisper didn’t care. “The shop of Senor el Greco is open only by day. El Greco is a poor man—el pobrecito—he does not have the lights electrico to shine upon his poor treasures—el pobrecito—” The voice was so old it was without cadence, there were accents laid upon accents in it.
Jose realized two things. He’d been peering at eye level for the figure, he sensed now that it huddled no taller than the latch. The other thing was that the Senor wasn’t interested in anyone without an envelope. He said, almost whispering himself, “I bring this to you.” He took the envelope from his pocket, held it to the crack in the door.
A claw snatched it. Again Jose waited. The door pushed against his foot but it didn’t close because his foot was there. Why didn’t the old buzzard let him inside? His nerves were quivering anew, expecting at any moment that Senor Tosteen would round the corner.
And then the door gave. “Come inside,” the whisper invited.
Now that the invitation had come, Jose didn’t think much of the idea. Yet sinister as the place appeared, and sinister as he knew Senor Praxiteles’ reputation to be, there should be no danger attached to picking up a package. He wasn’t here officially as he once might have been. He stepped in, blinded by the dark as the door was shut to the street. He didn’t know where the old one was standing until the whisper came from behind him, “Go straight ahead.”
He moved cautiously and perceived after a step that a heavy curtain separated this vestibule from the shop, creating the blackout. It explained how the old man had been able to study the envelope. Jose reached out and spread the curtains. The shop was dark but not black, the globule of flame at the rear conjured enormous grotesqueries of shadow which clawed the walls. The room seemed to be empty. There was no way to be sure. There were hiding places in the black of shadow, in giant ollas and mammoth woven baskets. El Greco’s poor treasures were ancient with dust, they might be ancient with value as well. It was a motley collection, the cheap clay trinkets and inevitable straw dolls on horseback mixed indiscriminately with what might be museum pieces. There was a stone altarpiece which could be Mayan.
However, Jose hadn’t come to appraise el Greco’s collection. He was no expert. The old man followed him into the room. He was as old as his voice, old and withered and dusty, yellowed like vellum with age. He would never have been tall; bent now with the years, he was no larger than a child, no larger than the sorbita who had barred Jose’s path at the cafe.
He was dressed as if he had been expecting company other than a messenger boy. He wore a frock coat, too large for him and green at the seams; the shirt front was a warped dicky, the string tie had been fumbled into an unpracticed effort at a bow. His trousers were stained with splotches, from wine dribbled down them long ago, but they were once fine broadcloth. The faded grandeur ended at the ankles. On the old man’s feet were carpet slippers, made of pieces of discarded carpet; Jose remembered once as a boy finding a like pair in the old stable at home. Perhaps, like Canario, shoes hurt the old one’s feet.
It was Senor Praxiteles, it could be no other, yet Jose asked the question. “Senor Praxiteles?”
The man did not answer. He stood there, his eyes fastened on Jose. He had eyes like a lizard, hooded, unblinking. The hand which clutched the envelope lifted slightly. “Your name is…?”
“I am Jose Aragon,” Jose repeated. “You are Senor Praxiteles?”
“Yes.”
There was again the silence, the lizard study of Jose. Perhaps the wonder why a gentleman had come for the package. There was even the possibility that the earlier Jose had been described. Jose was ready to get things into action when the Senor questioned again. “Why do you come here?”
“I come for a package.”
“Who has sent you?”
He was not supposed to know her name. He shrugged. “I am earning an honest dollar, Senor. A lady has hired me to come for her purchase.”
Evidently what he said was acceptable. Senor Praxiteles dropped the questioning. He began to shuffle slowly to the rear of the shop. Jose followed. It wasn’t a candle that led them; it was a lamp, the wick turned low to save oil. It stood on a high-built desk, out of another century. It was whispered that the old miser was the richest man in Juarez, that he owned the Avenida Juarez from the bridge to the Plaza, that he even owned the bank.
Praxiteles shuffled around to the back of the desk, his head alone visible above it. He climbed onto the high stool as if he were climbing a ladder, rung by rung. His ledgers lay open in front of him, a stubby pen rested on a pen wiper fashioned of yellow and white felt into the shape of a daisy. The white petals were smeared with dried ink. A tall brown bottle and a tumbler dregged with red-brown smelled of wine.
Impatience grew in Jose. “The package,” he reminded.
The lidded eyes lifted. “Yes,” said Praxiteles. His hand reached under the desk.
Jose had stood like th
is before and had a gun drawn on him. With el Greco it would be a knife. All Jose had was two empty hands and the instinct when to drop. But what the old man brought forth was a package, wrapped in green paper like that used by druggists in the States, tied with thin brown cord. It was about the size of a book but of uneven bulk, not the rigid oblong lines of a book. What it was, was perfume; you could smell it all the way to the Plaza.
Jose’s relief came out between his lips. As if the expelled breath had chilled him, the old man hunched his shoulders higher. “There it is,” he croaked. He seemed in a hurry for Jose to take it and be gone.
“The papers,” Jose demanded. “I am no smuggler, Senor, The lady assured me the papers were correct.”
Praxiteles’ head swiveled in the direction of the window. Swiftly Jose’s eyes followed. But there was nothing to be seen outside, nothing at all to be seen but the dust fingering the glass.
“The papers,” Jose repeated. He had not touched the package.
The yellow claws rummaged under the ledgers. They brought forth a receipt book. Praxiteles dipped the pen into an encrusted glass well. His fingers squeezed the wooden holder and he scrawled the necessary forms. Again he rooted, found an ink-scrolled blotter, blotted. Carefully he wiped the pen on the daisy before pushing the receipts across the desk. “This satisfies you?”
Jose took time to scan the scrawl. There didn’t seem anything wrong; the wording was standard. He folded his slip, placed it into the inner pocket of his coat. The unblinking eyes watched as carefully as if it were a wad of bills Jose placed there. When the receipt was stached, Praxiteles was holding out the package. Jose accepted it as if it were nothing, as if there were no blond girl and no man in a seersucker suit.
He said briefly, “Thank you, Senor.”
The withered hand edged toward the wine bottle. “I may offer you refreshment?”
He might have accepted as a gracious gesture, a pretense that between them there was friendship. But the hooded lids lifted too soon. Evil glittered across the saurian eyes.
“To my regret, I must refuse, Senor,” Jose said. “I am in haste.”
It was well. The old man’s mouth would have been sour on the glass.
III
Jose took a deep breath when he stood outside the door again. To expel the odor of mold which had seeped from the old man. The smell of the perfume he couldn’t escape. It wasted its cheap headiness on the still, dusty air of the mean little street, the fragrance seeping through the heavy green paper. His hands would be stained with it. Tosteen would have no difficulty following him now no matter what back streets Jose covered.
It was the thought of Tosteen which held him to the protection of the doorway for that long minute. Whether it was better to retrace the length of the street or to round the corner here. The lay of the street was visible; what he would find around the corner was problematical. As far as he knew, no one was aware he had come to Praxiteles, much less why. Except for the blonde. The trouble was he didn’t know very much.
Out of past experience, remembering other murky alleys, Jose hushed the rise and fall of his breath to listen. Where before the drift of metallic music from the street of the turistas had been ephemeral, it now rattled with perverse frenzy. Drowning out any faint footfall, obliterating the heartbeat, the muted breath, the trickle of blood through veins. The spoor of those who lurked in dark places. Yet without eyes and without ears, he knew. He was no longer alone on the little burro’s street.
The darkness stirred, a waver of dark against dark in the doorway of the house next door. Even as his eyes distinguished this, his nose sniffed through the reek of perfume another odor. The sweet cigar smell of a Mexican cigarillo. Around the corner.
He was caught then, between a cigarette and a shadow. It was up to him to choose. Or to step out boldly and let the choice be theirs. If it weren’t for the damn package, he’d take a chance on either one. If it weren’t for the damn package, he reflected wryly, he wouldn’t be here. The perfume was too bulky to push into his coat pocket, one hand must be engaged with hanging on to it. He wasn’t accustomed to arguing with just one hand. But if he set it down it would be the last time he’d have possession of it. By now he wasn’t doubting that someone wanted that package like crazy. Someone other than the blond dame.
He hadn’t any idea what he was going to do but he moved. Moved before Senor el Greco brought up the rear.
The whisper was softer than breath. “Senor!”
He stopped, balancing on the teetering step.
“Senor!” The sound, if you could call it a sound, came from the doorway of the next house. The shadow stepped away from the shadow and was a little thing, a sorbita. He didn’t believe it but he was off the steps, against Senor Praxiteles’ wall, and edging toward her.
“For the mercy of God,” he breathed. It was the girl, the sloe-eyed child, got up in a mourning shawl that covered her long black hair and most of her face, all but the eyes; that also covered her brown shoulders and thin white blouse, hanging down over her red flowered skirt. In the dark the skirt was black.
She said, “There is no time. Give to me the package.”
With his free hand he shoved her back into the doorway, flattened himself beside her. “What package?”
“The one you carry.” Her thin little hand reached for it.
He closed his free hand over hers. “Listen to me, Sorbita. I have here perfume for my girl, get it? I’m not giving it to you or anyone.”
She was breathing soundlessly but too fast. He realized all at once that she was terribly frightened. Her hand, despite the firmness of his clutch, was trembling.
“You will not return to your friends with that package. You will not be permitted. Give it to me and I will bring it to you safely. I swear by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
He didn’t believe her. He wasn’t expected to believe her but it was a brave try. He played along out of pity for her inexperience in these matters. “How is it you can carry it safely?”
“No one will see.” He could feel the trembling all over her fragile body. “Beneath my shawl.”
“Each man has a nose.”
One small flicker of amusement lifted her voice. “I will smell only like a girl of Juarez.”
He wanted to help her, to warn her to get out of this tumble; whatever it was, it wasn’t for a kid. Also he wanted to find out what she knew about it. If the unknown who smoked should peer around a corner, he would see only a man with a girl, eluding the watchful eyes of those who had forgotten what it was to be sick with love and separation. This close they stood together in the doorway.
At his silence, a sudden bleak anger was in her. “I will not steal it. I have sworn to you.” Her hand touched the package.
He held on. “What’s so important about it?”
The waft of smoke seemed sharper as he spoke. She twisted the package out of his hands.
“Sorbita!” He exclaimed aloud in his anger, reaching out for her but this soon she had melted away. He could hear no disappearing footsteps. The anger rose up hot in him and then burned out. There was nothing he could do now. He wouldn’t know which way to start out chasing her through the labyrinth of dark streets. He could only hope hopelessly that she had meant what she said. If not he’d find her even if he had to put the seersucker man on the job.
Right now he was free to investigate the cigarillo. And incidentally give her time to get safely away. He whistled as he rounded the corner, making sure his approach was announced. Nor did his step falter when he discerned not one but two men leaning against the side wall of the Praxiteles tienda. He walked directly up to them. “Hey, Bud,” he used American, “which way to the market?” He put a cigarette in his own mouth, struck a match.
They were Mexicans, hirelings. Not good Mexicans, youths corrupted by the evil that washed back and forth over the bridge. They wore like suits, bluish purple in this unlight, pinched at the waist, sharp-lapeled. Their shirts and ties were garish in pinks and
greens, their dark homburgs shaded their faces. Jose shook out the match and pitched it to the ground. Their shoes were narrow and pointed, patent leather.
“El Mercado?” one said.
Jose was not the man they were waiting for. He carried no box of perfume.
“You go this way,” a thumb jerked in the direction he was headed. The accent continued, “Then you go this way and then you follow the signs.”
The other said, suspicious, not certain of Jose, “The market she is not open this late.”
“You sure of that? They told me—” He slid his sleeve, looked at his watch. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s after nine, closes at nine.” They might jump him for his wristwatch and his possible wallet. He had a cigarette for weapon. “Then how do I get back to the main drag?”
Directions were reversed. The opposite direction, follow the curve of the street at the next corner.
“Okay, thanks, Mac.”
He made a wide wheel before putting his back to them. And he walked off with the cigarette glowing, slanting across to the opposite side once he’d passed the entrance of the burro’s street. From his sidelong glance, there was no sign of the small girl. If she were there, she wouldn’t let herself be visible.
Once he was out of the hirelings’ sight, he walked fast. Putting as much space as possible between them before they got new orders or started thinking. It wasn’t their job to think. The music was increasing in volume and he could see the lights ahead now. After a short block, the side-street shops, lighted ones, let him catch his breath. But not until he was again on the Avenida did he actually slow down. He cut across it and was inconspicuous among other white suits and light suits and seersucker suits.
Calle Herrera wasn’t deserted. Looking down it he could see two couples emerging through the garden door. He passed them midway. He walked by but was stopped by the “Hey, Jo,” called after him. He hadn’t noticed in his hurried passing; it was the two business men from Santa Fe with two fairly good-looking Texas dames. “Did your friend catch you?” the plump one asked. He was Wade, Wade’s Plumbing Fixtures.
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