Murder Is My Dish

by Stephen Marlowe

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Andy was an agent too.”

  “I know it. Don’t you think I know it?”

  “Will they give you much trouble?”

  Pappy said softly, almost devoutly, “You find out about Andy; I’ll worry about the trouble.”

  I told him where I could be reached, and hung up. After a quick breakfast at the Commodore coffee shop, I took the shuttle over to Times Square and the IRT subway uptown to The Heights. A small orange snowplow was clearing the campus streets and men with shovels were attacking the sidewalks which had drifted over. I followed a group of students who wore their crew cuts and toggle-topper coats like a uniform over to the administration building, where a receptionist told me which campus street to follow and which stairs to climb to reach the Spanish Language and Literature Department. Ten minutes later I was knocking on a door which bore the legend Rafael Caballero, Catalonian Culture, in black letters on maple-stained wood, and a girl’s voice told me to come in.

  It was a small office with a battleship-gray metal desk, chair, and filing cabinets. There was a closed door behind the desk and on the wall a large blowup of a Goya sketch savagely and pessimistically showing a blind beggar with a dog and a black cape and an empty hat.

  A boy in an open toggle-topper stood before the desk with his chin slumped almost to his chest. “But I think I ought to drop Spanish Sixty-seven,” he was saying. He added brightly, hopefully: “I could pick up Sixty-eight next semester.”

  The girl behind the desk said, “I’m afraid it’s much too late in the semester to even consider dropping a course.”

  “But,” the boy challenged, “I’m going to flunk.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McLeod. Really, I can’t help you.”

  “My flunking will be on your hands,” the boy said dolefully. “I want to see Mr. Caballero.”

  The girl looked up from the papers on her desk for the first time. She had long, lustrously black hair which fell straight as a well-pitched tent except where it coiled under at the bottom a couple of inches below her shoulders. She had a high forehead which called for but did not have bangs and which managed to tone down the hot dark eyes and the full, moistly red lips. Perhaps that was the idea. She wore a white cashmere sweater which clung with the tentative gentleness of an uncertain lover to the kind of torso which belonged, without any uncertainty, in a sweater ad. She was not a beautiful girl in the trite mode of beauty that Hollywood has proclaimed, but she was strikingly attractive and her easy, unaffected poise told you she knew it.

  “Mr. Caballero is not in,” she said to the boy.

  “Well, when can I see him?”

  “I don’t know when he’ll be in. Why don’t you see Dean of Men?”

  “Maybe I will,” the boy sulked.

  “You do that, Mr. McLeod,” the girl said frostily. Mr. McLeod left. The girl smiled at me with friendly curiosity.

  “I guess I go to the corner of the room too,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Caballero.”

  “Well, he really isn’t here.” Her lips were still smiling at me, but her eyes were troubled.

  “Drum’s the name. Primo Blas Lequerica, the Parana Republic’s permanent delegate to the United—”

  “Oh, Mr. Drum!” she cried, before I could finish. She got up and came around the desk, flashing a hopeful, optimistic grin. Long legs were covered by a nubby brown tweed skirt and nylons and supported by heels which gave her two inches to add to her own five-six or seven. “Then you must be working with Mr. Dineen. You can tell us where Rafael—where Mr. Caballero is!”

  “Not me,” I said. She pulled up short, close enough for me to smell a very faint but musky perfume. The eager grin went the way of yesterday’s clear and sunny weather.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But when you mentioned Mr. Lequerica, I thought—”

  “That I was the private detective he recommended to Mr. Caballero? I was. A friend of mine took the job. I take it Caballero’s missing.”

  She was disappointed enough to say tartly, “Why don’t you ask your friend?”

  “My friend is dead.”

  “Dead? Dead?” She ran the gamut from joy to despair in a few seconds. It was too much for her. She turned her back and covered her face and sobbed. I touched her shoulder and she swung around as if we’d practiced this many times before, and she shoved her face against my chest and went on sobbing.

  After a while I asked, “The police know about Caballero?”

  Her head bobbed. Her glossy black hair tickled my chin. “No, no. He’s only been missing since the night before last … we couldn’t be sure that he … but if his bodyguard … dead …”

  She found my breast-pocket handkerchief and used it. She mumbled something about being a great big baby and I said something fatherly about how a good cry helped. For some reason that made her mad. She uninhibitedly blew her nose and shoved the handkerchief back in her pocket. She stamped back to the desk and lit a cigarette. She wiped a tear from the tawny skin of her cheek.

  “I’m sorry about Mr. Dineen,” she said. “Truly sorry.” She puffed on the cigarette, scowled, and crushed it out in an ashtray.

  “This is what I know,” I told her. “Lequerica recommended me to Mr. Caballero, who wanted a bodyguard because he was completing a book said to contain the kind of dynamite that could blow the lid off twenty years of dictatorship down in the Parana Republic. Mr. Caballero had been threatened by parties unknown, and decided a bodyguard would be a good investment. I’d done some work for Preston Baylis, a Washington attorney representing the Republic’s interests in the U.S., so Baylis recommended me to Lequerica, and Lequerica to Caballero. But why Lequerica, who works for the Parana Republic government, would go out of his way to help Caballero, whose book—”

  “They’re friends, that’s why.”

  “You’re Caballero’s secretary?”

  “Yes. I am Eulalia Mistral,” she said, and offered her hand. I shook it, and observed that she pumped my hand with almost boyish enthusiasm, and made some inane remark about the wind of the same name while I thought of a dying man’s last words and a boat of the same name and whether I would ever know which one Andy had had in mind.

  “The book still bothers me, Miss Mistral,” I said. “Or Lequerica’s interest in seeing that it and its author were protected.”

  “All right. Maybe you’re right. I thought they were friends, but the only thing Lequerica did was recommend a detective. Rafael could have used the Yellow Pages.”

  “Can the book really do what they say it can do?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve worked closely with Mr. Caballero. I’ve helped him organize his notes and typed the final draft of each chapter. Mr. Caballero, you see, was a Catalonian refugee of Republican Spain who made the mistake of fleeing, back in the late thirties, to the Parana Republic. He was employed for ten years as a private tutor in the family of the Republic’s dictator, Indalecio Grande. Then, about eight years ago, he came to this country, went to work at the university, and began his book. He’s the only man who can blow the lid off Indalecio Grande’s rein of terror from the inside. I’m scared, Mr. Drum. If they’ve got their hands on him—”

  “He’s an American citizen, isn’t he?”

  “You think that would stop them?”

  “The book’s finished?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Where’s the manuscript now?”

  Eulalia Mistral lit another cigarette, and smoked it this time. “Night before last,” she said, “Mr. Caballero taught a late evening class here at the university, then left in company with Mr. Dineen. In the morning he didn’t show up.”

  “The manuscript?”

  “He usually kept it in the safe here. It was gone. Mrs. Caballero says he never reached home that night.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t somebody call the cops?”

  “Stop shouting at me.”

  “Well, why didn’t they?”

  Eulalia went to the window an
d looked out. When she turned around, there were bright angry spots of color in her cheeks and her fists were clenched. She was furious, but I didn’t have any idea why. “I don’t have to answer you!” she cried. “Who do you think you are?”

  I headed for the door, but I wasn’t exactly trying to break any speed records getting there. “Suit yourself, sister. But if you’re mad at somebody else, don’t bite my head off and expect me to stick around.”

  “Wait. Please.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve known Rafael Caballero for a long time. My father was in the Parana Republic underground.” She went on sotto voce: “He went to jail. He died there. Rafael took me to this country with him. He has been like a second father to me, but his personal affairs—are no concern of mine.”

  “His personal affairs are why you didn’t call the cops?”

  “His wife,” Eulalia said. “They don’t always get along. Sometimes he doesn’t go home. Sometimes he goes away for a while.”

  “But you were worried.”

  “He never took the manuscript before. Besides, Mrs. Caballero called a few minutes before you got here.”

  “Is that why you were so mad at the boy in the toggle-topper?”

  “We should have called the cops. But we can’t call them now.” Her eyes filled, glistening with tears. “Help us, Mr. Drum. Please help us. Rafael was kidnaped. Mrs. Caballero received a note in this morning’s mail. A ransom note.”

  I wanted to tell her that was crazy. Who would want to kidnap a teacher of Catalonian Literature who earned maybe seven thousand bucks a year? They wouldn’t, even get pocket money for their trouble.

  I didn’t tell her anything of the sort. I watched her shrug into a girl-sized trench coat and heard her say, “This is the kind of business you understand. Isn’t it? I’m going over there now, to Mrs. Caballero. Come with me, please. Say you’ll help us. Please. Oh, please!”

  She took my hand in both of hers and looked up into my face. She began to tug me toward the door. I went with her without reluctance. But I was thinking of Andy Dineen.

  Chapter Three

  THE RANSOM NOTE was the sort you would expect, possibly because it maintains the anonymity of the sender and possibly because it had been immortalized on the screen, in the mystery magazines, and in the tabloids. The words were pasted on a sheet of brown wrapping paper. The letters had been cut individually, some from the slick paper of a magazine and some from the pulp of a newspaper, and had been pasted on the wrapping paper to form words and sentences.

  “Well, there it is,” Mrs. Caballero said. “But I still don’t know why you insisted on bringing this man—”

  “Oh, what’s the matter with you, Frances?” Eulalia said. “Mr. Drum came here to help us.”

  “Read the note,” Mrs. Caballero persisted. “Go on, read it. It says to tell nobody. It says if we want to see Rafael alive. But that doesn’t matter to you, does it? Oh no, you wouldn’t care about that. All you’re interested in is that precious book. All you care about is the book. Why should you care about Rafael? All he did was save your life.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite fair, Frances.”

  “You don’t think it’s fair. Who’s asking you if it’s fair? You took advantage of me. You’re always taking advantage of me—all of you, all his friends. I was numb with despair. You saw me, you knew it, so you brought this man in here even though I told you on the telephone—”

  “I did what I thought best.”

  “What you thought was best. Best for whom? You didn’t think of me at all, did you? I’m only his wife.”

  “If you stopped thinking of yourself and thought of Rafael for a minute, maybe you’d talk some sense.”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. In my house. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about Rafael even. Only the book.”

  “Why don’t you make up your mind? Last week you accused me of making a play for him.”

  “That’s a dirty lie.”

  “You didn’t only accuse me. You accused your husband.”

  “It’s so easy for you to say, isn’t it? When he isn’t here to deny it. You waited to throw that in my face until he wasn’t here, didn’t you?”

  “All right, Frances. I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue with you. Somehow I’m always arguing with you. But we shouldn’t argue now. We’ve got to think of Rafael.”

  “You dirty little phony, you never thought of anybody in your life except yourself.”

  “Frances, under the circumstances I wish—”

  “Don’t you ‘under the circumstances’ me. This is your chance, isn’t it? To hit me when I’m down. You’ve been waiting a long time for this, haven’t you?”

  “You called me. You told me to come here.”

  “I was upset. I was so upset, I didn’t know what to do. You know when I get these migraines I can’t think straight.”

  “Your migraines. Can’t you forget your migraines? Can’t you forget yourself long enough to realize your husband’s life is in danger?”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do, you ungrateful little Spic.”

  The ungrateful little Spic slapped Mrs. Caballero’s face. Mrs. Caballero folded like a life-sized rag doll in a floppy heap on an overstuffed chair which I was sure she had used for the purpose before, many times before, and bawled like a baby.

  Mrs. Caballero had been a surprise all the way. She was a plump but pretty blonde half a dozen years older than Eulalia Mistral. She had admitted us with a great show of hand-wringing and wailing. She had done everything but tear her hair. She had a soft, round-cheeked, petulant-looking face with small full lips set in a pout of self-pity. Her body, in a quilted white housecoat, was not at all undernourished. She hadn’t been happy to see me, but when Eulalia had introduced me as Mr. Dineen’s associate, she had reluctantly stood aside and let us come in.

  The small apartment was furnished with the frills and lace antimacassars and cheap, overstuffed French Provincial furniture that a candy-eating blonde would go for. It was decorated with photographs of Mrs. Caballero in her younger days. Mrs. Caballero had been a looker, and the photographs were the typical chorus girl publicity snaps, showing more outthrust bosom, more artificially induced cleavage and more inside of thigh curves than is considered proper for a family TV audience. It was the sort of apartment, and had the sort of decorations, that Rafael Caballero or anyone would want to get away from. The candy-eating, self-pitying blonde who had been the luscious number on the publicity snaps made the picture quite complete.

  “I’m sorry, Frances,” Eulalia said. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  Frances snuffled and glared at her tormentor.

  “I’m sorry you had to see us air the wash like this, Mr. Drum,” Eulalia told me.

  “The note,” I told her. “I was looking at the note.” But Eulalia blushed anyway.

  The note said:

  MR. CABALLERO IS ALL RITE. HE NOT BEEN HURT. HE GOING TO BE ALL RITE IF YOU KEEP QUITE MRS. C. LIKE SMART WIFE. TELL NO BODY YOUR HUSBAND HE IS MISSING. WE WANT TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS CASH TWENTY FIFTY HUNDRED UNMARKED. WE CONTACK YOU AGAIN. BE SMART TO SEE HUSBAND ALIVE TELL NO BODY.

  YOUR BEST FRIEND

  “He’s just about literate,” I said, showing the note to Eulalia. “And it looks as if he has trouble with English.”

  “Spanish?”

  “Pretty likely. Parana Republic, I guess.”

  “All they want is money,” Frances Caballero said with devout conviction. She was full of surprises. I thought the money would bother her most of all.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “where are you going to get that kind of money?”

  She smiled. “Oh, it won’t be our money,” she said.

  “Now wait a minute,” Eulalia said. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking—”

  “You want them to kill Rafael? But what do you care. He isn’t your husband.”

  Eulalia
said coldly, “I’ve known Rafael Caballero longer than you have, Frances, even if you are his wife. I think I understand him better than you do. He’s spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears collecting that Republic underground money and he wouldn’t want you to throw it away because somebody sends you a note on wrapping paper that says you should.”

  Frances glared at her. It was the kind of look that was supposed to make Eulalia shrivel up and crawl out under the door. “As secretary of the Fund for Parana Independence,” Frances pointed out, “I can withdraw that money from the bank. How dare you say I can’t, when my husband’s life is at stake.”

  Eulalia gave me a questioning look. “You’re a detective, Mr. Drum. You know about things like kidnaping. Would giving them the money do any good?”

  “I’m a detective, but I’m not psychic. Maybe they really mean it. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’ll return your man without mussing a hair on his head. Maybe he’s already wearing cement boots. How should I know?”

  “But if he was somebody you loved,” Eulalia asked, “wouldn’t you be afraid to give them the money? Wouldn’t you be afraid because they might keep him alive until they got the money?”

  “If they were going to kill him, why would they wait? All right, you asked me. I’d give them the money.”

  Frances Caballero puffed out her chest. “Mr. Drum,” she said, “will you handle the transaction for us?”

  “You haven’t been told where to deliver the money. Or when.”

  “If we’re told—will you?”

  “That money—” Eulalia began.

  “That’s enough. All you’re interested in is the Fund and your sneaky underground movement. You don’t care about Rafael at all. You’re despicable.”

  Eulalia opened her mouth. No words came out. She clicked her teeth shut and swung around and headed for the kitchen. She was as mad as a girl could be without going off like a Roman candle, but she looked lovely. Despite what you may read in the slick magazines, there are very few women who can look lovely when they are that mad, but Eulalia Mistral was one of them.

  Then Eulalia jolted me. She came back with a bottle of bourbon and a tumbler. She poured the tumbler half full of bourbon and looked at it without interest and drank it off like tea. When she noticed, still without interest, that the glass had been emptied, she poured again and emptied again. She had a strong, tan throat and the muscles worked as she drank. She downed enough bourbon to float me out of drydock and she wasn’t even enjoying it. All it did was make her eyes go watery.