“I don’t know.” It was truth or he didn’t recognize truth.
“Let’s get on with it.” As he spoke thunder quivered in the sky.
“Mr. Struyker called me the afternoon I arrived. He was pleasant. He said he understood I had a package for him and he’d pick it up after dinner. That was agreeable. But I was worried. Because the package hadn’t arrived. I didn’t know what had happened to you. But it worked out all right. The package was there by seven. When Mr. Struyker came for it, I gave it to him.” A blast of thunder split the yellowing sky.
He said, “We’d better move inside. It’s coming fast.” The first drops were falling as they ran toward the house. “I have to see to the windows. The library’s there.”
“Let me go with you.”
“Afraid of storms? Or just afraid?”
She didn’t answer but she followed him. If Francisca were near, the clat of Dulcinda’s heels was an advance warning. He thought he saw a shadow in the bedroom corridor but it was no more than a trick contrived by a half-opened door.
“Now that the hatches are battened, I’ll get more beer and we’ll carry on.” Again she followed him. Almost as if she were the sorbita. The kitchen door had blown open; it banged in the wind and the rain laid wet fingers across the floor. He made it fast. “Maybe you’re afraid accidents come in threes.” He uncapped two bottles, brought out fresh glasses. The others were outside in the rain. “You needn’t be afraid for yourself. You’re on the safe side of this. Now, it’s different with me.” He led her back to the library. “I’m next. Only I’m not superstitious.”
He put her in the big leather chair. It fit Adam yesterday; she was slight in it. The world outside had darkened under the lowering sky and sheeted rain; the room was twilit. Too dark to watch her face. He turned on a mellow lamp.
She said, “You have a nice home.”
“Yes. I like it.”
“Have you always lived here? When you were a little boy?”
“I was born here.”
“I suppose you had a sandpile when you were a little boy. I always wanted a sandpile. I read about one in a book once. We used to go to the seashore some summers but that was different. A sandpile would be something you could hold, something small and your very own.” A touch of smile came to her lips. “Do you know what Tim always wanted? A red wagon. There’s no room for a wagon in an apartment. That was when we lived in New York. We were very young. In Paris we lived in a hotel. When we weren’t at school.”
He was brusque. “You gave Struyker the package?”
“Yes.” Again she pushed back her hair although there was no heat in the air now. It was chill as death. “He called me from the lobby and I came down and gave it to him. He thanked me and went away. In about an hour he returned. I had joined Tim and Rags in the Cantina.”
“Where were they when you gave Struyker the package?”
“They’d gone down earlier. They didn’t know why I was waiting upstairs.”
He leaned toward her, not believing. “You mean they don’t know about the package?”
“No. I didn’t tell Tim that part of it. I didn’t want him to know. He had enough to worry about.”
If this were true, Tim would have had no reason to kill Beach. Nor would Rags. It left only Struyker or an accident. “You joined them in the Cantina,” he reminded her.
“Yes. And Beach was there and a lot of his friends kept coming and going from the table.” She was trying to remember the sequence. “And then Mr. Struyker came back. That was when he met my brother and the others. And invited all of us to visit Los Alamos today. When he had an opportunity to speak privately to me, he told me it was the wrong package. He seemed quite disturbed.”
He’d taken the package and gone away. It was an hour before he returned, “quite disturbed.” Struyker wasn’t the end of the trail. He was just another of the messenger boys. It didn’t take an hour to open a package and find it wrong. But to deliver it to someone who would know its wrongness, and to return, would consume an hour. He couldn’t very well have made it to Los Alamos and back in that time. But he’d driven somewhere, checked with someone.
“You know the rest,” she said. “Now will you give me the right package?”
For a moment they sat there in silence while the rain slashed the windows. Silently studying each other.
“What good will it do you?”
She said, “I want to give it to Captain Harrod.”
He was half out of his chair. “What?”
“What else is there to do?” She argued in desperation, “I tried to save Tim. I’d do it again. I was afraid he’d killed that Mexican girl because he’d killed before. He was afraid too. Now I don’t believe he did. I believe we were both being used to carry something into this country, something so dangerous that murder means nothing to those behind it. You asked me if I was afraid. I’m terribly afraid. For myself and for Tim and”—there was an imperceptible catch of breath—“for you. If Beach, who had nothing to do with this package, was killed, what chance have the rest of us? I want to put it in Captain Harrod’s hands and tell him everything. Will you give it to me?”
The crash was like a bomb, the white heat of lightning flared in the room. She was out of the chair in momentary panic, he met her halfway with the strength of his arms. He held her quietly for a long moment. Until she stopped trembling and drew away from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She sat down in the chair again, quietly, but her hands were clenched so tight they ached. She tried a shaky laugh. “War nerves.”
He didn’t say anything. He could still feel the silkiness of her, still smell her fragrance. He didn’t know what were lies and what was truth. He knew only that he hadn’t wanted to let her go. The rain was frenzied. He said, “Do you like candy?”
Her eyes were bewildered. “Candy? Why, yes, sometimes.”
“Cactus candy?”
The bewilderment increased. “I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted it.”
He laughed, a short, bitter laugh. At himself. Because he didn’t know what she was and because at the moment he didn’t care. He wanted only to know her. He said, “I can’t give you the package. It was stolen from me last night.”
She disbelieved. She cried, “You’re lying.”
“Ask Harrod. He came for it this morning. It was gone.”
A wasteland of silence lay between them. Until she said wearily, “I’d better get back to the hotel.”
“You can’t go out in this storm.”
“Before Tim and Rags get there.”
“Where are they?”
“They went to find Struyker.” She touched the telephone. “May I call for a cab?”
“But that’s ridiculous,” he pointed out. “The State Police had already gone after him.”
She said quietly, “They didn’t believe the police would find him. Actually he wasn’t going fishing. Rags remembered him saying he was spending the week-end with a friend.”
He was beginning to function. “When did Rags remember that one?”
“After you left.”
The thoughts were coming more rapidly, more horribly. “When? Right after? Did he have a telephone call first?”
“What are you trying to say?” She began to tremble.
He went to her rapidly, laid his hand over hers. “Answer me.”
“After he returned from buying some cigarettes in the lobby.”
“And you let Tim go with him after Struyker?” He was incredulous.
“I couldn’t have stopped Tim. I didn’t know. I didn’t dream.” She pleaded, “They wouldn’t do anything to Tim. He doesn’t know anything!” And she broke off, remembering Beach. Remembering how much less Beach had known. She said frantically, “They wouldn’t do anything to him. Not until I found the package for them.”
“They know it’s gone.” His voice was flat. He took the phone from under her hand, called headquarters. Danny Moreno hadn’t returned. They didn’t know wher
e Harrod was. He called the hotel. Harrod wasn’t there. Neither was Tim nor Rags. Her face was gray as the world outside. The only thing alive was the color painted on her mouth. He called Jack’s for a cab. There’d be an hour’s wait. Every cab company said the same.
She said, “I can walk.”
He was afraid to leave her here alone. Afraid someone would come for her. She’d be safe at the hotel. He said, “I’ll get you a raincoat.”
The rain was slackening after the outburst. He quoted irrelevantly, “The harder the shower, the quicker it’s over.” To say something that didn’t count helped. The hill under its gravel was soft, sucking mud. Her heels sank into it. She took off her shoes. “I can walk faster.”
He held her close by her arm. There were no offers of a ride today. When they were on pavement again, she still carried her shoes. Her nylons were caked with mud. The way the sorbita’s feet had been. He was walking too fast for her but he couldn’t help it. He was in a hurry.
As they neared the hotel, he said, “Wait for me in the lobby.”
“I’ll have to change.”
She was right; you couldn’t sit in La Fonda lobby bedraggled, rain-soaked, mud-splattered. In a world that pretended to be civilized, it was necessary to conform to the civilized pattern. No matter what hazards it entailed.
He said, “I’ll go up with you.”
There was no one in the suite. He made sure of it. He said, “Put the night latch on your door. Don’t let anyone in. Not anyone at all.”
“I won’t.” Her eyes were sharp with pain. “You’ll find Tim?”
“I’ll find Tim.” Very gently he put his mouth to hers. In pity. Because they were the bunglers and because of them the innocent died. “Don’t let anyone in,” he repeated. He had to move fast before there were more accidents.
III
He walked to McAllister’s garage. It was no longer raining, shards of blue splintered the moving clouds. He said, “I’ve got to have a car.” He should have borrowed one sooner, he wouldn’t have had to wait while they decided which one he could use. He said, “It’ll have to take a beating. Be sure it’s insured.”
It didn’t look like much but it ran. He eased it around the Plaza, up Washington, until he hit the Tesuque highway. Then he cut it loose. In less than fifteen minutes he’d reached Adam’s place. The side road was rutted but the car pulled through.
The house seemed deserted. He pounded on the door, shouted, “Adam. Adam, it’s Jo.” When there was no answer, he tried the door. It was locked. He circled the house. The back door too was locked. The windows were closed against the rain. He prised out a kitchen screen, forced up the window behind it, and boosted himself in.
He went through the house, afraid of what he would find. He didn’t find Adam. The man sprawled grotesquely by the front door had a golden beard. It wasn’t an accident that he was lying there. His neck was broken.
Jose didn’t touch him. He departed by the window, lowering it after him and replacing the screen. Let Tim be found in the locked house, the way it was planned. Only it didn’t look as if this one had been planned, this was hurried.
No one had seen Jose come, no one saw him leave. Adam’s house was hidden in its own little valley, there were no neighbors. There’d be no one to remember that Rags brought Tim here and left him here. The gente in the smaller house a half mile around the bend of the road might, if prodded, remember strange cars. That was for Danny Moreno to find out.
Jose drove back to town. He didn’t stop there. He didn’t go near the hotel. She’d find out soon enough, too soon. He could have stopped to telephone her. But he didn’t want to speak with her, to answer her unanswerable questions. He wondered if he would ever see her again. Death was jealous of what could be between them. Three times he had struck them apart.
He by-passed the Plaza to the highway south. He took it easy past State Police headquarters; when he reached the airfield cutoff he set a speed of seventy and held it to Bajada. He had to take it easier there, the storm had left not only small lakes but boulders in the road. He didn’t want to be a real accident over the side of this mountain. When he hit the plain at the foot of the hill, he returned the needle to seventy as far as Algodones.
From there on he lost time; Bernalillo was a trap and the highway in to Albuquerque too heavy with traffic after the storm. The rain had been heavy here too; sienna mud smeared the sides of the road. He forded two arroyos, they weren’t too bad yet; the brunt of the storm was yet in the Sandias. He cut off the town, using the back road to the University, from there across to the airport. He was lucky there’d be a plane south at six. It gave him time to eat a sandwich at the airport lunch counter.
By six he was flying to El Paso. It was a rough passage, the plane was tossed in and out of storms, but he felt nothing. His body was as narcotized as his mind and spirit. He didn’t want to think; he wouldn’t let himself think. Only one thing was in focus, the need to reach Francisca before the others could.
They set down in the warm Texas night. He shared a cab into town with a business man from Denver and another from Raton. They got out at the Chenoweth. He didn’t, he kept his face averted in the cab darkness while Jaime lifted their luggage. His destination was the border.
It hadn’t changed. It was as it had been only a couple of nights ago when he and Beach and Adam had strolled across the bridge together for dinner in Juarez. The lights were a spangled fan across the dark sky. Music tinkled and music blared but they didn’t set his heels to dancing. He walked heavily across the dark, dirty span, not looking at the trickle of the Rio Grande below. He spoke his piece to the American customs, dropped his pennies into the toll box, walked evenly on to the Mexican side. The heat and the stench and the sound and the color of the border pushed at him but he pushed back, winding his way through the delaying tourists.
He was safe enough here in the crowd. But once he left its cover, there was no more protection. He had no gun, no knife, only his two hands and they weren’t worth much against hands which could break a man’s neck like a brittle stick. Yet if he could reach the Plaza without being spotted by el Greco’s men, his chances were good. He hadn’t thought about arming himself when he set out, his thoughts were running deeper than protection of his own hide. It was just as well. There’d been too much killing, he wouldn’t want to add to it.
His eyes watched the faces he passed, his ears were lifted for the sing-song of the piada. He knew there could be unknowns set to watch for him, it was a chance he had to take. But he resembled too many others here to be easy to spot. Unless he were already known to the spotters.
He traversed the first two blocks and started into the third. It was then he heard the clink and tootle of Canario. The music came from within a raucous saloon. As Jose reached it, his luck splintered. The doors swung outward and with them Canario and his band. Jose took the full thudding impact of the small man and his clattering instrumentos. It was Jose who steadied him, kept him from falling.
Canario didn’t say thank you. He didn’t see Jose. He was shaking his fists at the roars of laughter behind the swaying doors. “Borrachos! Asesions! Gringos!” He spattered their habits and their ancestries with the mud of his imagination.
Jose could have slipped away but a motley group of nativos had gathered for the denunciation. On the outskirts were a sprinkling of tourists. He was caught in the center of the double circle. Only when Canario had lost breath, did he bend to retrieve his battered sombrero. And, in bending, saw Jose. For a moment Canario remained frozen in that crab-like position. Then he swooped up the hat, pulled it over his matted hair like a bowl, murmured a quick, “’Cias, Senor.” In another moment he would have crabbed out of the circle.
Jose didn’t let him go. He flung his arm about the dirty little man’s shoulder. “That’s telling them, Senor Pajaro,” he applauded. He might have been any borrachito—not borracho, borrachito—amused by the altercation. “They did not appreciate you, no? Come you shall play for one wh
o does appreciate you.” He couldn’t let Canario run to inform. “A concert for the ninos! That is what we shall have from you, Senor Bird.” He lurched Canario forward, holding him tightly. With his free hand, he fumbled in his inner pocket.
Canario whimpered, “Yes, Senor. I will go with you, Senor.” His fear was stark, he thought his captor was reaching for a gun.
Jose muttered, “Walk right along. Make music!” He lifted his voice. “Musica, musica!” They weren’t alone, they were tagged by the inevitable beggar boys. “Sing a merry song,” he commanded.
His hand slid out with the wallet. Canario’s voice quavered, “On Sunday night we are happy, we dance and we sing….”
Jose dropped one step behind. Covering his wallet in his hand, he extracted a couple of bills. One he crumpled deep into his pocket, the other he folded with the numeral alone visible. At the present exchange on the peso, five dollars American was mucho dinero. He pushed close against Canario’s shoulder. The musico’s voice shrilled more lustily, “We are happy …”
Jose let Canario see the bill. “You will make a fine concert for me and I will repay you.”
The voice became more happy. “My very good friend and I …” it sang.
“We are going to the Plaza. There you will make music for los ninos de la calle. You understand?”
Canario nodded to the words he was singing.
They wouldn’t be looking for Jose yet, they wouldn’t think he could get here so quickly. He doubted very much if they were expecting him. He would be presumed to be content to remain in Santa Fe, comforting Dulcy. If he could get to the sorbita before the word of his presence was whispered to Praxiteles, he’d take care of them for everything they’d done.
Canario wasn’t one of them. Canario was no more than a street urchin grown old, picking up centavos where he could. He didn’t want trouble with Jose or with el Greco or with the police; all he wanted was a little money with which to buy a little wine. Anybody’s money was good. For five dollars American he would be on Jose’s side for this little needed time.
They advanced toward the Plaza. Vespers were just ended, through the opened doors of the church the candles were being snuffed out, one by lonely one. The churchyard was lively as a fiesta, the old and the young and the little ones made a pattern of sound and movement. In the street below there was more sound and movement. Laughter hung over the warm night.
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