Murder Is My Dish

by Stephen Marlowe

  No answer.

  “Ella duerme,” he said. “She’s sleeping. You may go in.”

  He opened the door and stood back. There was a small window with a heavy shade drawn over it at the other end of the room. It was very dark in there.

  “Eulalia?” I said.

  No answer.

  “Go on,” my guide urged. “Ella duerme.”

  “You first,” I said.

  He shrugged and shuffled into the dark room.

  I followed him. I made out the dim outline of a bed near the window. I drew my gun and entered the room.

  “Señorita Mistral,” he said softly, cheerfully.

  There was the faintest of scraping sounds.

  In the darkness the bed looked empty.

  Something bright and as searingly painful as a tongue of flame burst in the back of my head. Then the darkness which entered through my eyes put it out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A LITTLE BLOB of flesh-colored paint kept slipping off the canvas. The canvas was a surrealistic nightmare in dripping reds and screaming yellows, depicting dismembered limbs and disembodied cries.

  The blob of flesh-colored paint had a long way to fall. It elongated and differentiated into a tiny man-figure with flailing arms and legs by the time it hit the floor. It struck hard, head first, and splattered and was scraped up with a palette knife and flattened against the dripping, screaming canvas.

  Then it slipped off the canvas again.

  “… the book,” one of the disembodied cries said.

  Unprintable.

  “… have the book?”

  Unprintable.

  “Do you truly have the book?”

  Established, in pain and torment.

  “… it.”

  “… for it.”

  “…. send …”

  “Send for it.”

  Or sometimes they left me alone. Then I would drift through the ebbing pain toward the welcome relief of sleep, but someone prodded me with a stick. I did not sleep.

  A face to remember.

  Beetle-browed and lantern-jawed. Superimposed over questions and pain like a double exposure.

  Duarte.

  Across a table. Wood planks. Light in my eyes.

  A needle. They doped me.

  Extend the threshold of pain.

  I went back in darkness. Way back. Dark small cavern where only I could fit. Furry things crawling. The world way out there and me way in here. Sheltered. Insane smile. Giggle maybe.

  Then beetle-brow and lantern-jaw superimposed over the surrealistic nightmare.

  Or sometimes the madness went away.

  A small damp room. Timbers supporting the roof. Duarte and the man who smelled, in the gray smock. With sweat streaming from his face in the hot close room as he used a rubber truncheon on me. Without leaving a mark.

  “Get up, Drum.”

  Knees like rubber.

  “Pick him up.”

  Tuesday, I had said. There were better ways, subtler ways. The box where you couldn’t quite stand, couldn’t quite sit, couldn’t quite stretch out. Drugs which took your mind away. The dry-out. But I had said Tuesday. They didn’t have the time to be elaborate.

  I got to my feet, with help. The rubber truncheon slammed against my kidneys. Then my cheek was against the damp stone floor. Water trickled somewhere.

  They told me about ruptured kidneys. You couldn’t walk upright. Bent little man who screamed every time he passed water.

  “All you have to do is send for the book.”

  I told him all he had to do.

  He said, “All right, let him sleep.”

  That was part of it. A little sleep. Maybe an hour. Just so you remembered what it was like to sleep. Then they woke you.

  When I opened my eyes I saw Eulalia Mistral.

  They had had more time with her. She moved slowly, in a dream. You could barely see the pupils of her eyes, although the light was dim in there. They hadn’t been able to get anything out of her, though. She knew nothing which could lead them to the book.

  Duarte sat on a bench against the wall, his big arms dangling, his big legs stretched out. I sat slumping in a wood chair. When the fellow in the gray smock brought Eulalia into the room, I started to get up.

  “Sit down,” Duarte said. I sat.

  Eulalia stared at me without recognition. She wore a simple, two-piece black dress with two buttons at the throat and a zipper down the left side of the skirt to mid-thigh. The fellow in the gray smock couldn’t get his eyes off her.

  “Send for the book,” Duarte told me.

  I shook my head.

  Duarte looked at the fellow in the gray smock. He had a gaunt, puckered face like a white raisin. His eyes were holes poked in it. But in their depths they gleamed, staring at Eulalia. His teeth were bad.

  Duarte smiled a little and said, “Rape her.”

  The fellow in the gray smock didn’t get it at first. His head jerked and he looked at Duarte. “Rape her,” Duarte said again. The fellow’s tight mouth did a slow thaw. He grinned, showing us his bad teeth. He made a noise in his throat. Spittle flecked his lips.

  He undid the two buttons at Eulalia’s throat. She stood acquiescent, arms at her sides, in a world of drugs and dreams. His thick blunt fingers trembled. With his fingertips he touched the bare skin of her throat. She took an uncertain step away from him. He placed his left hand heavily on her right hip and used his right hand, the fingers shaking, to pull down the zipper on the left side of her skirt. I didn’t move until she roused herself enough to slap his face. He laughed. Spittle gleamed on his chin. He started to pull her skirt down over her hips.

  I got up faster than I thought I could and staggered toward them. I picked the rubber truncheon off the table and swung it against the side of his face. He squawked like an angry bird. I hit him a second time with the stone floor.

  Something moved behind me. Spinning, I swung the truncheon at Duarte. The fellow in the smock had lifted himself on his hands. He was trying to crawl toward Eulalia. Duarte blocked the truncheon with a forearm as hard as a baseball bat. His fist moved eight inches and nearly took my head off.

  I went down after the fellow with the bad teeth, but it wasn’t my idea.

  The place wasn’t a hospital, of course. With the building of the new hospital they had converted it to the Paranaian answer to stories of the Gestapo and of Lubianka Street. I had a room which once had been a hospital room. I awoke in sunlight. The window faced east and a pattern of bars was thrown on the bare floor. My jaw felt stiff and numb. My back ached. I sat up, still wearing Esteban’s white ducks. I felt bruised down to the bone, but there wasn’t a mark on me.

  Eulalia, I thought.

  I got up. Bars and sunlight spun. I held the bedpost. Then I went to the door. At least that was my intention. I took two uncertain steps and fell down. I picked myself up and took another step. I wondered if I could do something really tough, like reaching the door and turning the doorknob. I crawled there and drew myself up. I stood on numb legs and had a bad moment. Duarte’s man had used the truncheon on the base of my spine.

  Pretty soon though my legs began to tingle. I turned the doorknob. The door was bolted on the outside.

  I dragged myself back to bed. It was very hot in the room. I lay there sweating. After a while the bolt scraped and slid and the door opened. The fellow in the smock came in. He carried a revolver in one hand and a bowl in the other.

  He leered, but the leer wasn’t for me. His thoughts were miles or years away, or both. Or maybe, I thought suddenly, they were in the underground room. He had lost two of his teeth there. He still smelled. I took the bowl of gruel. It was a tepid muck, probably cassava flour and water. I ate it while he smiled and smiled. His wide eyes showed pink above and below the irises. His lips were wet and couldn’t keep still. Saliva gleamed on his chin.

  After a while he took the bowl and his smile and got out of there. Maybe he had been a doctor when this place was a
hospital. Now he was nutty as a pecan pie.

  I lay on the bed in the hot room all day. There was a sink in one corner with rusted water taps. I drank a lot of water. At first it came out in brown spurts but soon it cleared and was drinkable. My strength returned reluctantly. The beatings I had taken fought its return. The heat fought it.

  When it began to grow dark I got up and prowled around the room. It was small and contained only the bed, the sink, and a small chair. The bed was tarnished brass with a thin mattress, probably of hair. I lifted the mattress and saw a flat spring and a covering of dust on the bare floor. I went to the door and turned the knob slowly and pushed.

  The door moved about a quarter of an inch until the bolt caught it on the outside. It wasn’t much of a bolt. A couple of good kicks would probably tear it from its mounting on the door, but by the time you could administer them, whatever passed for the riot squad around here would be on the way.

  I went back to the bed and lay down. There was still some light in the sky outside the barred window, but not much. In a few minutes it began to rain, and when the rain came down it got very dark very fast. I got up and went to the window. I looked out at a silver wall of rain. Except for the pounding of the rain, there wasn’t a sound.

  Then someone screamed.

  It was a woman’s voice and it was inside the building. I went to the door and listened. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Then the woman screamed again. I did not know if it were Eulalia, but what else could I think?

  I spread my arms and grabbed the door frame on both sides, pulling back as far as I could. I raised my foot and kicked the door about four feet off the floor. There was a rattling, banging sound and some splintering. I fell over on my back.

  I got up and set myself a second time. I was breathing hard. It wouldn’t take much to sap my strength now. I kicked the door again and this time it exploded out into the hall, hit the wall, and came swinging back toward me. The bolt assembly fell to the floor and I started running.

  I went down the hall past the rows of bolted doors, wondering why the guards hadn’t come. If the staff of uniformed flunkies at Indalecio Grande’s palace meant anything, this place ought to be crawling with armed guards.

  The woman cried out again.

  At the end of the hall was a doorway and a flight of stone steps going down. I pounded down the steps and through a corridor which opened on the timber-supported underground room.

  Eulalia was there with Duarte’s man. He was trying to embrace her, but he heard me come down and shoved her away. She stumbled over to a bench against a dirty wall with a bare bulb in a socket over her head. She sat down there and immediately slumped forward with her elbows on her knees as if she wanted to sleep more than she wanted anything in the world. She wore a pair of black panties. Her black dress was crumpled alongside of her on the bench.

  The man with the bad teeth looked at me. He shook his head as if he could not believe what he saw. It was hot and damp down there. Sweat gleamed on Eulalia’s back under the naked bulb. I started to run toward the man with the bad teeth and he pulled a gun on me and fired three times. His hands were shaking. He held the revolver with both of them up close to his face as if he were sighting with a rifle. He didn’t hit anything. Black powder pits appeared on the puckered skin of his face. I caught his wrist as I reached him, and he pumped another bullet into the ceiling. We fought for the gun. He snarled. He bit at my face. He snapped at my fingers, his teeth clicking. He bit his own tongue and screamed. I got one hand free and hit him in the face. Red froth bubbled on his lips. He fell away from me and as he fell away I hit him again. His head snapped back. He fell heavily and drew his legs up, rolling over on his side.

  He had never let go of the revolver. I took it out of his fingers and tucked it in my white ducks. I got up, breathing hard, and went over to Eulalia. She stared straight at me, without seeing me. Her breasts did not rise and fall with the motions of breathing. Her body was statue-still and yet seemed immensely relaxed. She did not sit on the bench. She dropped on it flaccidly. She had been drugged, possibly with morphine. Her will would be as flaccid as her body; the man with the bad teeth had known that. It was why he had decided to finish all by himself what Duarte had asked him to do for my benefit. But Eulalia had screamed and he hadn’t counted on that.

  I picked up Eulalia’s dress and held it in front of her. “Hurry,” I said. “Put this on.”

  “Sí, señor,” she said obediently in a very faint voice. But she just sat there.

  “Please,” I said. “We have to hurry.”

  “I am sick, señor. Very sick.”

  I got her to her feet. She leaned against me and would have fallen if my body wasn’t supporting her. I pulled the dress down over her head. Her arms were like lead. I struggled with them and put them in the sleeve holes, then zippered the dress.

  “Walk,” I said. “You’ve got to walk.”

  I held her hand. She came willingly but slowly. With each step I thought she would fall down. The man with the bad teeth was groaning. We went past him and up the stairs and outside. It seemed to take a long time. It was dark, and raining so hard you couldn’t see a yard in front of your face. The pounding rain felt good, though.

  I wondered about the guards. In the Parana Republic they would have guards for everything including the gum vending machines. I stumbled against something. I looked down. A man lay there on his back with his eyes wide to the rain and staring at me sightlessly.

  Someone shouted behind me. I turned around and saw the man with the bad teeth silhouetted in the bright light of the doorway. He was leaning against the door frame, barely able to stand. But he had found another gun and he was pointing it at us.

  Two explosions ripped the night and the rain.

  The man with the bad teeth jerked in the doorway and fell down.

  “Gringo!” a voice called.

  Shapes moved in the drumming rain. Something touched my shoulder. I started to pull the gun from my trousers.

  “Gringo,” the voice said again, very close. A face peered at mine from half a foot away. “Gringo, it is I.”

  White teeth and skin like mahogany. It was Emilio.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WE DROVE most of the night through the rain in a truck with canvas drawn taut over round steel ribs roofing the truck bed. I never saw the driver. I sat in back with Emilio and Eulalia and three men I didn’t know, all armed to the teeth. Emilio gave Eulalia some coffee beans to chew, and they seemed to help for a while. But then her head slumped to one side and she looked as if she would sleep. Emilio frowned at her and took his shirt off and went to the back of the truck, holding his shirt out in the rain. He came back with it sopping wet, slapping it up and down in front of Eulalia’s face. She spluttered and remained awake. Then one of the other men slapped the shirt up and down in front of her. Emilio knelt by her side and took off her dress, which was soaked. He stared with approval rather than with lust at her bare body. One of the men had a dry shirt for her. Emilio dressed her into it. He gave her another handful of coffee beans and she chewed them dutifully.

  I didn’t say anything. They didn’t ask me anything. One of them gave me some coffee beans too, but I shook my head. He offered me a cigarette, which I smoked.

  The truck bounced and slid and skid and bounced again over the rutted road and through the mud. I dozed off once or twice and awoke to the sound of quiet talking and the rumble of the truck’s motor and the rain drumming on the canvas.

  “I followed you to the old hospital Friday night,” Emilio told me. “It is Sunday now.” He looked down at his wrist. “No, already it is Monday morning. Alone I could do nothing. When you did not come out I contacted señor Robles. He wants you. He wants that book. He sent help in this truck. That is when you came out.” He smiled. A smile was a rarity with Emilio. So was all that talking. He said, “You’re tough, for a gringo.”

  “Dónde vamos?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

&nb
sp; “The ranchero of señor Robles’s sister,” he said, and would say no more. He sat back quietly watching Eulalia. Every time she looked as if she would doze, one of the men prodded her or slapped her face gently. She was given more coffee beans. A canvas flap hung at the rear of the truck. A kerosene lantern hung from one of the roof ribs, glowing orange, swinging, casting quick-darting shadows. I slept.

  When I awoke the truck was not moving. The canvas flap had been drawn back and a wet gray dawn waited on the other side of it. Emilio and one of the other men were just helping Eulalia down. I went after them and climbed down under my own power. I still felt giddy with lack of sleep. Every square inch of my body ached dully, throbbingly.

  Eulalia looked at me with recognition. She held out her hand and I squeezed it. Her eyes were shining. “Thank you,” she said. “They told me. Thank you.” They hadn’t told her the half of it. They didn’t know the half of it. I thought it was just as well.

  We went inside. Sleep had claimed me on much of the long ride, and still wanted me. I remember a mahogany-paneled room, walls of books, a blazing fire, Hipolito Robles getting around pretty well on one of those aluminum half-crutches, and a tall, spare, olive-skinned woman with the same high-bridged nose and the same alert, dark eyes. Robles was delighted to see Eulalia, then concerned over her. A telephone call was made and then Eulalia and Robles’s sister, whose name was Rosa, left the room together, the tall woman supporting the girl.

  Robles shook my hand. He seemed genuinely glad to see me and was obviously grateful for what I had done. Someone put a drink in my hand. It was a big snifter of good brandy with enough in it for three or four after-dinner drinks. It hit my empty stomach with a warm glow and raced through my blood. I said something which must have been funny, because Robles laughed and even Emilio grinned. They took me into a room which was damp and steamy-hot. Water poured into a tub. The brandy sang in my blood and I almost fell into the tub, clothing and all. They laughed some more and helped me out of Esteban’s white ducks and the shirt someone had given me in the truck. Then I sank slowly into the hot, soothing water like a Yogi finding Nirvana. I lay there a long time, my muscles tingling and the pain still there but very far away. The next thing I knew, they rubbed me dry. We walked a little. I crawled into a bed with crisp cool sheets. Someone said something. I answered. Then the lights went out and I slept.