‘I guess you have to be Hector.’ Her smile was as big as the rest of her. ‘Welcome.’
Gómez took her hands in his. He felt like he’d stepped into her house, like she’d flung open the door and welcomed him in. Life rarely took him by surprise but this was an exception.
‘Hi,’ he grunted. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’ He meant it.
She looked him up and down for a moment, not bothering to hide her interest. Gómez asked her name.
‘Yolanda.’ She nodded at the washroom door. ‘I guess you’ll have to excuse me.’
She was back within minutes. Gómez had settled at the table across from the space where she’d been sitting. He’d shaken hands with the other men, vaguely registering their names, content to settle back and await the woman’s return while the conversation resumed. Beaman was trying to get some kind of commitment from these people about numbers. He wanted at least a thousand delegates showing up in DC. Anything less, he said, and no one would notice.
The washroom door opened. Gómez tried to disguise his interest behind the menu, aware of other eyes watching her from across the diner as she squeezed back behind the table. The guys at the bar had half turned. One nodded in Gómez’s direction with a muttered comment to his buddy on the next stool. Pair of wetbacks with a bunch of niggers. Full house. His buddy laughed, said something else, and then came the audible clink of glasses.
Gómez ignored them. He wanted to know more about this woman but her interest was more pressing.
‘Agard here says you’re in the service, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Working in some top-secret outfit down south, yeah?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Santa Fe?’
‘Nice place. Especially this time of year.’
‘Not gonna tell me more?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then I guess Agard has to be right.’
Her laugh was full, deep-throated. She had a warmth that was almost magnetic. Gómez felt himself being dragged in, like a ball of cosmic dust from deepest space. Not unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.
He wanted to know about her, about what she was doing here in DC, about whatever set of circumstances had put Agard Beaman in her path. She glanced across at him with an almost motherly affection.
‘That boy needs looking after,’ she said. ‘Which I guess is where we come in.’
‘We?’
‘Me and the guys here. We need Agard, no question. You’d know that. And Agard? He needs you.’
She began to discuss money. A 25 per cent raise on whatever Gómez was getting just now. The funds would be coming from a wealthy benefactor she knew back home in California, a white guy who was making a fortune in the fruit-growing business. Gómez, she hoped, would be pleased to know that folks like these existed.
Gómez didn’t bother to hide his amusement. This woman didn’t believe in foreplay. The offer was there on the table: a straight hike of 25 per cent. He wondered briefly whether to kid her along and get down to hard negotiations, but the last thing he needed just now was to turn this conversation into a business meet. There were other parts of her that were far more interesting.
‘California?’ he queried.
‘San Diego. Beautiful city. Even nicer than Santa Fe.’
‘You been there long?’
‘Most of my life.’
‘But not born there?’
‘Ensenada. Just down the road. My folks headed north in the twenties.’
‘Bad time to look for work.’
‘Even worse in Mexico. Apples is apples. Melons is melons. Pick ’em north of the border and you get paid. Not well but better.’
‘And that worked out for you all?’
‘It worked out good. Six kids? We could strip an orchard in an afternoon.’ She reached out and briefly covered his hand. ‘That’s a joke by the way. We went hungry, if you want the truth, just like everyone else. We went hungry and we didn’t have no real place to live but you keep looking and I guess you keep picking and if you have my dad’s luck you end up with a white guy who’s at least one half decent and that makes every difference in the world.’
His name, she said, was Carlton Friedmann and she and her dad and her brothers and sister owed him everything.
‘And you know why? Because the guy’s Jewish. Because he has vision. Because he sees beyond all this …’
She nodded out towards the bar, towards the busy booths of mid-evening diners, towards the white faces that kept peering round in their direction.
‘This bother you some?’ asked Gómez.
‘Not at all. Tell you the truth I’d be disappointed if it didn’t happen. No cake rises without yeast. These people are yeast.’
‘Nice, I like that.’
‘My pleasure, Mr Gómez. They got little cages in this country where they put the people that make them feel uneasy. Ain’t real cages with real bars. It’s more a question of labels. But once you got a label, believe me, it sticks.’
‘So what’s yours?’
‘Number one, I’m a union guy, I fight for the workers, just like our black friends here. Number two, I’m Mexican. Put those two together and what does that make me?’
‘A Commie.’
‘Hey …’ She leaned across the table and kissed him on the lips. Pure delight. ‘Since when did cops get to be so savvy?’
Gómez ducked the compliment. There was no sign of service. He realised he was starving.
‘You guys ordered?’
‘Still waiting.’
‘You know what you want?’
She shook her head. Then she went from face to face around the table, asking what everyone was after. Gómez got to his feet. He’d place the order at the counter. She gazed up at him.
‘You can remember all that?’
‘Sure,’ he smiled down at her. ‘I’m a cop, remember?’
At the counter, Gómez waited for service. Both bartenders ignored him. The two guys who’d been looking at Yolanda were on his left. After a while, one of them glanced up at him.
‘Why here, buddy?’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t think this place is for white folks?’
‘The area or the diner?’
‘Both. Decent people need a break. You want to eat with them negroes there are plenty of other places.’
‘You’re telling me to get out?’
‘I’m saying you’re not welcome.’
‘You care to step outside and say that again?’
The guy on the stool looked him up and down, then shrugged and began to move. At the same time, Gómez felt a presence behind him. Yolanda.
‘I’m breaking this up, guys. Love and peace, eh? Hate to disappoint you.’
She linked an arm though Gómez’s and turned him away from the bar. She was even stronger than Gómez had expected. The black guys were on their feet, reaching for their coats. Beaman was still speaking at full throttle, finishing some point or other, oblivious to the small moment of drama at the bar. They made their way out through the restaurant, Yolanda pausing briefly at table after table, hoping the diners were enjoying their meal.
Out on the sidewalk Gómez wondered whether he was right to feel disappointment. In his world, you never caved in to pressures like these. On the contrary, you put your head down and kept swinging.
Yolanda was on the other side of the road, looking for a cab. When she found one, she yelled for everyone else to come over. The cab took all six of them. Just. Yolanda gave the driver the name of a motel a couple of miles out of town. The restaurant served until midnight. Their table was booked for nine o’clock.
Gómez stared at her.
‘You’re telling me back there was a set-up? We never meant to eat at all?’
‘Sure.’ The smile again. ‘Welcome to our world, Hector. That’s why we need you on board.’
11
Agustín arrived at dawn. Stefan was asleep when he stepped into the ro
om and the village was silent beyond the half-open window. Eva was with Agustín. She crossed to the bed and gently shook Stefan awake. He peered up at the two faces. Knowing it was early, his blood turned to ice. Something’s happened, he told himself. They’ve come to take me away.
Not so. Agustín was apologetic. He had to go to Coruña for the rest of the week. He had a lift with a fisherman taking his catch to market. He needed to be sure that Stefan’s leg could carry his weight. Then Eva could supervise the list of exercises he’d written out.
Stefan nodded. The room was freezing, even colder when Eva folded back the blankets. Something was missing and he couldn’t work out what it was. Then he had it. Not a single cough from downstairs. Not one.
‘Your father’s OK?’
‘He’s fine. He’s asleep.’
She and Agustín stood in front of Stefan. Each took one of his hands. Agustín asked him to lean forward and then stand up, just the way he’d done it the day before. Stefan did as he was told. Teetering on his heels, he tried not to shiver.
‘Your good leg,’ Agustín said. ‘Take a step forward.’
Stefan did so.
‘Now the other one.’
Stefan nodded, knowing that this was the moment of truth, the moment when he’d know whether the bone in his lower leg was fractured or not. Very slowly, he stirred the leg into action, dragged it forward. The floorboards felt icy beneath his feet.
‘Now stand on that leg. All your weight.’
Stefan was looking at Eva. She wanted this to work. He could see it on her face. Would this make it easier for her to say goodbye? To show him the door and the road to somewhere else? To rid her life of this sudden intrusion? He hoped not. He didn’t want that.
‘Your leg, Stefan.’ It was the first time she’d called him by his Christian name. Before, he hadn’t had a name at all.
‘OK.’
His gaze went from face to face. Then he transferred his full weight on to the injured leg and at the same time tried to throw it forward. The jolt of pain made him gasp. It felt white-hot, as if the very bone itself was on fire. His grip tightened on Eva’s hand. She stepped towards him but he shook his head. One more, he told himself. Just to make sure.
He tried it again, exactly the same movement, and this time the pain was even worse, a scalding wave that flooded down his leg and brought the taste of vomit to his throat.
Agustín and Eva helped him back to bed. Agustín said something Stefan didn’t understand and she nodded and left the room. Stefan, the blankets heaped around his neck again, looked up at the doctor.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I tried.’
‘No hay problema. You need time. Eva will look after you. I will be back in four days. Then we try again.’
Stefan nodded, grateful. He wanted to know about the Germans. Had they been back at all? Had he talked to them?
‘Only the man Otto. He came to take pictures of the wreck.’
‘He still thinks there are no survivors?’
‘Sí.’
Eva was back. She was carrying the splint that Ignacio had made. Stefan stared at it. Scheisse. Between them, they slipped the contraption beneath Stefan’s leg and Eva fastened the leather straps. With the splint and the crutches, Agustín explained, Stefan could still make it along the corridor to the lavatory. Stefan nodded. Wearing the splint was a return to the prison cell he thought he’d left behind.
Agustín hadn’t finished. The villagers, he said, had decided to build a memorial to the men who had lost their lives on Stefan’s submarine. Nothing extravagant, just a cairn of rocks and maybe a brass plaque recording the bare facts of the tragedy. The date. The designation of the U-boat. And the number of men who’d died. There was currently a debate about where the memorial should be. The fishermen wanted it on the clifftop, overlooking the reef. The village shopkeepers preferred a site near the harbour where it might attract visitors. Either way, the German attaché had promised to pay the costs.
‘He needs to give us this money now.’ Agustín was smiling. ‘Because soon the war will be over.’
Stefan nodded. He said he hoped so. Then he was struck by another thought.
‘So how many people will you say died? All of us? Including me?’
‘Very good question. Maybe you think about it. And maybe then you tell Eva.’
Seconds later, he was gone. Stefan heard the low mutter of voices below as Eva let him out into the street, then she was back. For the second time in ten minutes, she rolled back the blankets.
‘What are you doing?’ Stefan couldn’t understand.
For a moment she didn’t answer. Then she stooped low and kissed him on the lips. Stefan stared up at her, astonished. Then he reached for her face, traced the curve of her mouth with his forefinger.
‘Trust me,’ she said. She was smiling.
She got him out of bed. Together, without the aid of the crutches, they somehow made it to the landing outside. Every step was an effort of will but something told Stefan to ignore the pain. The door of the other bedroom was already open. Candlelight flickered on the walls. Standing beside the bed, Stefan could see a hump beneath the blankets. Eva steadied him with one hand, pulled the sheets and blankets back with the other. The hump was a stone vessel filled with hot water.
‘This is for me?’ Stefan was staring down at the bed.
Eva shook her head. Then she went to the window and closed the wooden shutters. The shutters didn’t fit properly but the room was still plunged into half-darkness. Against what was left of the light, she was nothing but a silhouette.
‘No,’ she seemed to have turned round. ‘This is for us.’
*
For a moment, through a fog of last night’s drinking, Gómez couldn’t work out where he was. The ceiling overhead, like the walls, was made of cheap cedar board. The air in the room was heavy and smelled of several generations of smokers. A thin grey light seeped around the poorly hung drapes at the window. Gómez squeezed the throb of the hangover from his eyes and reached over, looking for clues. Huge double bed. And a naked body slumbering beside his own. He gazed at it for a moment, the memories slowly piecing themselves together. Yolanda, he thought. Madre de Dios.
They’d taken the cab back to the motel, a sprawl of units beside the big road south. The meal had been shit but none of these people seemed to expect anything better and afterwards he’d left Beaman and the black guys still talking around the single Formica table that passed for the restaurant while he and Yolanda took another cab to a liquor store he’d noticed on the drive out. He bought beers and a fifth of bourbon. Without anywhere else to go, they’d settled in Yolanda’s room, sprawled on the bed, swapping life stories. By the time Gómez was done with the beers, Yolanda was close to halfway through the bourbon. She drank like a Pole, straight down, no chaser, yet when Gómez joined her for the home straight, the booze had barely touched her.
The room was hot – the big iron radiators were the sole feature that worked – and after a while she’d stripped to her bra and panties, not a trace of embarrassment. She was a big woman all over, extravagant curves, wonderful smell, and after Gómez had shed his trousers and shirt she’d said it was time to get to know each other properly. Seconds earlier they’d been talking about Pearl Harbor, about the way the Jap attack had changed everything in the space of a single Sunday morning, about the hundreds of Jap immigrants that had been rounded up in California and shipped to internment camps inland, and then suddenly she was all over him, two big people enjoying each other, total candour, total abandon, and the taste of bourbon on a stranger’s breath.
Now, up on one elbow, he looked down at her and then traced the line of her shoulder down across her breasts, then lower still. She was naked on the bed. The room was still far too hot. They’d slept without sheets. She began to stir, trapped his hand, pulled it even lower. Then she rolled over and smiled and one eye opened.
‘Buenos días,’ she said.
They made love again, G
ómez on top this time, their faces beaded with sweat, and afterwards Yolanda pronounced herself satisfied.
‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘For a cop.’
Hector padded to the cracked sink in the cupboard that passed for a bathroom, and took the scrap of towel back to bed. He mopped her face, then her belly.
‘I’m some kind of crime scene now?’ she asked. ‘Or you getting me ready for visitors? Only Agard promised to be back for breakfast. Not sure that’s such a great idea. You see his face last night?’
Gómez shook his head. He reckoned he could manage it again if she was willing. The thought put a rare smile on his face.
‘Beaman?’ he said vaguely. ‘You’re telling me I missed something?’
‘Sure. That boy’s in love with you. He came to the room last night. Asked whether you were coming home. I told him you were drunk and in my charge. Disappointment doesn’t cover it.’
Hector laughed out loud, opened his arms. He hadn’t been with a woman since trying to coax his wife into bed. It felt like the first time all over again. He ducked his head between her legs. The sweetest, sweetest taste.
‘You know the time, soldier?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Nearly half past nine.’
‘Shit.’
‘You told me last night––’
‘I know, I know.’ Gómez was already heading for the bathroom. ‘Ten fifteen downtown.’
‘You want me to get a cab?’
‘I want you to stay right where you are.’
‘I’ve got a life, soldier. You’d better believe it.’
Gómez was doing his best to soak himself while avoiding third-degree burns. The hot water was scalding. The cold tap didn’t work. When he made it back to the bedroom Yolanda was on the phone calling the cab company. By the time she put the phone down he was nearly dressed. He lifted his jacket from the single chair and headed for the door.
‘Gonna kiss me?’
‘Always.’
‘You want we do it again?’
‘Tonight.’
‘And skip the booze? Either way, I’m easy.’ She fluttered a hand and told him good luck but Gómez was already gone.
Traffic on the road into DC was backed up for half a mile after a dumpster truck hit a bridge. By the time Gómez made it to Q Street, he was half an hour late. A guy Gómez had never met before came to the door when he rang the bell. Tall, thin, wispy moustache, could have been a clerk. He mumbled a name Gómez didn’t catch and led him into O’Flaherty’s office. O’Flaherty, yet again, was on the phone. Gómez looked round for the box of goodies from Donovan’s place but couldn’t find it. The guy at the door had disappeared.
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