Jose opened the door on his side. “You stay in the car. Your uniform might scare her. I won’t be long.” At Danny’s hesitation, he continued heatedly, “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Danny pulled out cigarettes. “Okay,” he sighed.
Jose made footprints on the wet gravel path. He heard the doorbell chime behind the closed Venetian blinds. The breaks were with him; it was a baby sitter, she was Spanish, and she was hardly in her teens. He managed a smile as he pushed inside. “Is Mr. Struyker home yet?”
“He is not here.”
“My cousin left his jacket this afternoon. Which is Mr. Struyker’s room?”
She didn’t question his asking. She led him to the door. He knew the moment the door was opened; he smelled it. La Rosa del Amor. The bottle was on the desk. Beach had seen it there. And Beach was curious. Blindly Jose quit the room.
The girl said, “The jacket?”
“He must have left it some other place,” he managed to say. Blindly he left the house, climbed in beside Danny.
“Where to now?”
It wasn’t his voice. “Santa Fe.”
Danny gave a small whisper of relief.
Jose said, “Beach was murdered.”
Danny kept asking why. Not why Beach had been murdered. Why Jose called it murder. Danny was tops of the State Police. He had a right to ask questions. But Jose didn’t have any answers to give him. Not who had done it, not why. Not that it was a colossal blunder for a lab employee to hang on to a wrong bottle of cheap perfume. Not that it was a worse bonehead play for someone to get panicky when Beach asked a quick question about it. The lab man didn’t have to know anything about the bottle, someone could have given it to him or he could have picked it out of a trash can. But he did know something or Beach wouldn’t be dead.
Jose let Danny ask questions, let him sputter, get mad, simmer down, come to patient resignation. Jose kept the cork in the bottle of his increasing hate. He had killed Beach. When he left that bottle on the seat of the truck, he killed Beach. There was no justification, not even the bitter one of sacrifice. Beach hadn’t died in Jose’s place, he’d just been a gadfly who buzzed in for a moment’s irritation and had been swatted.
Danny was still talking as they pulled over the Tesuque crest and saw the careless spill of lights, yellow and white and neon pink, which were Santa Fe. Still confident that his reason and logic had convinced Jose.
Jose said, “Let me out at the Plaza.”
Danny was dubious. “Sure. But don’t you think you should go home? Or to your Aunt’s house? The family is probably all now at your Aunt Caterina’s.”
“Tell them I’ll be there later.” He let himself out at the Museum corner while the car was still moving. He said, “Thank you, Danny. Mil gracias.”
“Drop in tomorrow.”
“You’ll be seeing me.”
He waited on the corner, under the dark beamed portales, until the tail lights circled the Plaza and disappeared. Danny might hide out around the corner to see where Jose was heading and he might not. There wasn’t anything to do except stand on the corner or go to La Fonda. Jose walked past the fancy stores, past the dark, paper-strewn staircase which by day led to Tio Francisco’s, past the flower store and the bank and the windows of exquisite Indian jewelry, past the ticket office and across to the hotel. He didn’t meet anyone.
The lobby was busy enough on a Saturday night, there was laughter and yak from the doors of the Cantina, the restaurant was filled, stringed music came from the New Mexican room beyond. He didn’t speak to anyone; if they spoke first, he nodded. The ones who knew Beach was dead would understand why he wasn’t friendly; when the others heard about it, they’d understand too. They probably all knew, even the tourists; in a small town everyone knew everything. Or thought they did. They didn’t have anything to do with their minds except probe their neighbors’ affairs.
He went directly to the desk. “What’s the number of Tim Farrar’s room?” He knew the clerk but not well, new men had come in during his years away. His face stopped any sympathy, he couldn’t take sympathy tonight.
The clerk told him. Because it was a small town and a small hotel, the clerk knew Jose wasn’t asking the number in order to go up and rifle the room. Jose picked up the house phone and gave the number. He didn’t have to wait long. She answered it.
He didn’t want her to know his voice. It didn’t sound much like his, it was tight, as if he were coming down with quinsy. “Tim Farrar in?”
She said, “No, he isn’t. Who is calling?”
He didn’t know whether she sounded uneasy or not. He said, “Moreno,” and hung up before she could ask any further questions. He took the long way to the elevators. As if he were going to the New Mexican room to dance. But no one cared where he was going or why.
Five hundred was the big suite, the best in the house. The living room was as big as the Cantina. You paid plenty for Five hundred. He knocked, waited, had his knuckles up to knock again when the door opened. His knuckles nearly shoved her face.
She said, “Oh?” and then, “Oh!” She wasn’t expecting him. Her hair was ruffled, as if she’d been lying down, and she had on a pink chiffon thing, made innocent with a little high round collar trimmed in baby lace and smocking; his sister had worn a dress like that when she was seven. Baby lace ruffled the wrists. Innocent, only you could see through chiffon like through a windowpane. She was ready for bed, she had on a pink ruffly thing underneath the chiffon, more like an evening than a night dress.
His hate of her was bile in his mouth. And yet hating her, he wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her until she became warm, until he could forget.
She backed away as he slammed the door. Fright was a quivering hand passing over her face.
He said, “Where’s your brother? Where’s Tim?”
“I don’t know.”
He took a step toward her and she said hurriedly, “I don’t know! He and Rags are having dinner with some friend in the Valley.”
“With Alvin Struyker?”
“No … I don’t know…. Perhaps …”
“Why didn’t they have dinner with him on the Hill? Why come down to the Valley for dinner?” He wouldn’t have known he was moving in on her only she kept backing away.
“I don’t know,” she cried again. “I only know they called me that they wouldn’t be here for dinner.” She had backed to the windows, the opened casements that looked down on the patio. She couldn’t move further except out those windows.
He stood in front of her. He said, “You killed Beach.”
Her mouth and eyes widened.
He repeated through clenched teeth, “You killed Beach.” His hands were on her arms, her shoulders, biting into the pink chiffon, clawing toward her throat.
She fought back, whispering, “No,” over and again. Her mouth was a machine, it could make only that husky sound. He might have killed her if the screaming laughter hadn’t sounded from the patio below. Someone who pointed out the figures in the lighted window, some dopes who thought they were witnessing a rape scene. And someone yelled the inevitable, “Hey, Jo!” before remembering it couldn’t be Jose Aragon up there with Beach dead.
His hands went limp at his sides and he walked over to the low couch, dropped there. He buried his face in those same hands. Not until then did he know what he had been about to do. She came to him, he could smell her standing there above him. She didn’t use cheap perfume, hers was the best.
He felt her touch on his shaking shoulder. He snarled, “Keep your hands off me!” He heard her walk away; he didn’t move.
After a moment she was in front of him again. She said without expression, “Drink this.”
He let his hands fall and he looked up at her. He didn’t know why but his hands and face were wet. She held out a glass of brandy. “Drink it.”
He drank it in one swallow.
She took the glass from him and she returned to the bar on the other side of the ro
om. He was all right now. He could leave.
She brought another glass, a tall one this time. She handed it to him and she sat down across from him in a squat armchair. “I didn’t know your cousin was dead,” she said quietly.
“Didn’t Tim tell you?” His voice was ugly. “He called you about dinner arrangements. Didn’t he tell you Beach wouldn’t be there?”
She still had fear of him although he was well behaved now, almost like any man having a social glass with a woman. She could sit there quietly talking with him, almost like any woman with a man, but the fear was there, beneath the pink chiffon, beneath her clean tan skin, beneath her quietness.
“He didn’t mention Beach.”
“And you didn’t,” he said sardonically.
“No, I didn’t. I took it for granted they were together. Or that Beach was returning to town.” At the look he gave her, she said with a spurt of anger, “I didn’t think of him at all. I wasn’t accustomed to taking care of him.” She broke off. Her fingers clenched together. “What happened to Beach?”
“He was in an accident,” he said. “His car went over a cliff.”
He watched the fear go out of her like smoke out of a cigarette. He didn’t understand.
“Oh,” she said. And realized she should say more. “I’m sorry.”
He cut off her sympathy. “An accident,” he stressed.
It didn’t seem to mean anything to her. “I’m terribly sorry. If we hadn’t wanted to see Los Alamos—”
He cut in again. “You didn’t go.”
Her eyes winged to his face.
“You planned the trip but you didn’t go.”
“What are you trying to say?” Her voice was as taut as his.
“You killed him. Not with your fine hands, you wouldn’t want to spoil them. But you arranged for him to die.”
She hated him as much as he hated her. She said, “You’re crazy.”
He took another drink of the highball, to show her how well controlled he was. “Why didn’t you go on the trip today? Don’t give me the overslept routine.”
“I won’t. I didn’t go because Tim didn’t want me to go. He was so thoroughly nasty about it that I didn’t want to go. If you don’t believe that, ask Rags.”
She spoke with such heat that he almost believed her.
“Why didn’t Tim want you to go?”
“Ask Rags,” she said with set lips. “Or ask Tim. He’d tell you.” She laughed, just once. The sound of it was bitter.
“Do you know Alvin Struyker?”
“I’ve met him. Once.”
“He’s a friend of your brother’s.”
“Tim met him when I did.”
“When he came for the perfume?”
She glanced at him quickly, wondering what he knew. She nodded.
“A friend of Rags?”
“Rags met him for the first time when we did.”
“Where does Rags stand in your trio? Who is he?”
“He is Tim’s”—she hesitated, found a word—“companion.”
He supplied another word. “Or bodyguard.”
Her fingers tightened together.
And another, “Or gunsel.”
She said, “Fix yourself another drink. Fix one for me, too.”
He took his empty glass across the room. “You told me you brought the perfume to Santa Fe for a friend. If you just met Struyker, he isn’t the friend. Yet he has the perfume.” He fizzed soda into two glasses, carried them back across the room. “There’s a discrepancy.”
“No. The friend lives in Mexico. He asked me to bring the package from el Greco’s to Mr. Struyker. I didn’t know Mr. Struyker.”
“You know what Struyker’s job is?”
“I believe he has something to do with research at Los Alamos.”
“He has,” Jose said. “He’s in the Lab.” He eyed her. “No connection?”
From the open curiosity in her face, to her there wasn’t.
“Harrod thinks there is. He thought so after Tustin’s accident. Way down on the border. He’s going to think so again now that Beach has had an accident on the Los Alamos road.” He couldn’t keep it easy when Beach came into it.
She said, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to ask you something straight.” He implied that he didn’t expect a straight answer. He didn’t. “Did you know what you were bringing across the border?”
Slowly she shook her head.
He probed, “This friend didn’t tell you? He simply asked you to bring it across, he didn’t explain anything?”
“That’s right.”
“And you were willing,” he scorned.
“He did me a great favor. I was willing to do him a small one,” she defended herself. “It wasn’t smuggling. He assured me of that.”
“Then why didn’t you do it yourself?” he pounced. “Why did you hire me?”
She took it carefully. “I was afraid.” At the droop of his lip. she was defensive again. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong in what I was doing. It wasn’t that at all. It was meeting that horrible old man, the one they call el Greco, the way he looked at me.” She didn’t shiver, she was only very still for a moment. “I didn’t want to go back to his shop again. I—I couldn’t. And the other man, the one who was following me. The one you call Tustin. Yes, I knew he was following me,” she admitted impatiently. She pleaded, “Don’t you understand? I couldn’t let anything happen to that package. The favor had already been done. I had to get it here safely. I didn’t think they’d know about you.”
“You didn’t know Tustin?”
Her eyes widened. “No. He never spoke to me. I didn’t actually know he was following me. But wherever I went that week, I’d see him. Even when I went to—to el Greco’s shop, I saw him waiting across the street. I knew it must be the package.”
It was a long shot but he took it. Her defenses were down. “What was the great favor?”
Fear sprang to her face anew.
“Passport trouble?” He was close. He could tell that.
She kept her face averted. She said, “I’m an American. A citizen. I didn’t need a passport to come in from Mexico.”
“But Tim was in a mess.” He’d come closer. She wasn’t going to say anything. Her lips were tight. It was Tim, her part was protecting that—cagajon. And suddenly he knew. Hunch, yes, but he knew. Because he’d once been in the business of finding out things without having anything but hunch to start with. Tim was a killer. Her fear tonight was that Tim had struck again. He said, “Murder is a mess.”
She began to cry. Without warning, without sound, huddled there in the big, rich chair. She wouldn’t cry easily, she probably hadn’t cried in front of anyone since she was a very little girl. All the tensions, all the fears, the actual fear tonight of death at Jose’s hands; these things and the din of his questions, crowned by his hunch, had broken her.
He let her alone. He took her glass from the table and his own, fixed them fresh, returned and held hers to her. “Drink this,” he echoed. Again he sat opposite her.
When she could, she took a swallow. “How did you know?”
He didn’t answer her. He said, “It’s not going to help anyone now to keep it bottled. The circle’s closing. Beach’s death was a mistake, you can’t protect Tim any longer.”
“He didn’t kill Beach,” she begged. “It was an accident. You said it was.”
“It wasn’t good enough,” he said. She had to do the talking or she’d find out how little he knew. He was impatient. “Why do you want to protect him?”
She shook her head. “He’s my brother.” It was a whimper. “My little brother.” Some spirit returned. “He didn’t have a chance to grow up right.” Again she hated Jose. “You probably grew up with love. We didn’t. No one cared about us. I can’t count how many stepfathers and stepmothers we had—new ones every six months. We had doctors and lawyers and Frauleins and tutors and schools, everything money could bu
y. But nobody cared. Did you ever hear of the Maquis?” She didn’t wait for his nod. “He went underground with them when he was still a boy. Not that he cared about them but he wouldn’t leave his tutor. A man who was good to him.”
“You were in Paris during the occupation?”
“I was taken out in time. To Switzerland. But Tim had disappeared. He learned to kill. He killed—I don’t know how many. When he was a boy.”
He said harshly, “That was war. In war you kill in self-defense.”
“What does a boy know about ethical rationalizations?” she asked with equal harshness. “He killed those he hated. He killed those who were in his way. He killed because he wanted to kill.”
“He’s not a boy now, he’s responsible for what he does. You can’t excuse him now. You can’t excuse killing.”
She negated his words. “You excuse it in war. You and all the rest of the world. You can’t breed killers and expect them to turn off the impulse when you want them to.”
He didn’t argue it. There was too much to be said; it would take a Socrates to come up with any answers. He said, “When it’s kill or be killed, a man will kill. That doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. I’ll grant you that Tim didn’t have all the breaks but there isn’t any man who has had them. He had a lot more than plenty of men I know, right here in this little town. And one thing he did have, one thing that every man has is the choice between right or wrong. It’s the ones who choose wrong who whine the excuses.” He softened, “You can’t excuse him any longer, Dulce. You can’t protect him much longer. I’m sorry for you, I know what it means. Beach was like a brother to me, a little brother.” The tears for the slayer would be more harsh than those for the slain. He got up from the couch. “You can warn him if you like. But he can’t run far enough away this time.”
He wanted to touch her shining head, gently, with compassion. He couldn’t. He walked out of the room and left her huddled there. She didn’t move, she didn’t say goodbye.
IV
Saturday night was in full swing when he reached the first floor. It overflowed the dancing and drinking rooms into the open portales and the cool darkened patio. Saturday night at La Fonda was a tradition, it was possible that Tim Farrar and his friends had returned here to complete their gala day.
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