The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  -77-

  A royal blue Packard 180 convertible coupe, the latest model, showroom fresh, geared up and drove past Hawkins as he slowed at the guardhouse, a remarkable sight, such an expensive luxury car here in Mexico City, not the least at a base full of underpaid soldiers and civil servants. Sleek, no running boards; bulbous, streamlined fenders; a solid low purr and then a growl from the motor. Atop the high tombstone radiator gleaming with chrome was another remarkable sight: as if the usual swan with raised wings wasn’t flamboyant enough, the owner had ordered a custom hood ornament, a large chrome bull’s head with frosted glass horns tipped up at the ends, at least as wide as the big radiator. Easy guess the horns were lighted at night. A friend or colleague from the bullfighting world? Hawkins wondered. He glanced back as it passed and caught the license plate. No. Not at all. Instead of the light-blue Mexican plates with clipped corners was an all-white plate with a star in the center: 281  387 … Texas.

  The top was down revealing a man behind the wheel wearing a large cream-colored cowboy hat with a cigar burned down to the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t the sort of cowboy hat you saw in movies now, but from the old silent stars of the 1920s like Tom Mix, an extra-wide brim slightly turned up with a high pointed peak that tipped far to the back. The Packard disappeared around the corner of the company street. Check, Hawkins thought. He’s heading to Corrialles’s villa.

  Hawkins didn’t think it over, watch curiously, wonder why or what, or need to, only felt a quiet sense of intense focus. He drove across the road and down a hundred yards heading back into the city, rolled to a stop by a taqueria and slowly got out, leaning on the stand. The woman was opening up, it was still late morning. Barely drawing his eyes from the gate, with a few gestures he bought a taco de birria, waiting as she prepared it, then took it back to the car with a bottle of agua mineral. He ate very slowly.

  Two barefoot children dressed in rags, an older girl with a smaller boy clutching the hem of her skirt, uneasily approached the side of the car, soberly watching him with large brown eyes, silently holding up a cupped hand. Lacking any centavos, he absentmindedly dug a one-peso coin from his pocket—a few cents—and dropped it in her hand. The children’s faces exploded in wide-eyed glee, and they ran off squealing.

  An hour and ten minutes later the Packard reemerged from the gate and sped by. Hawkins tailed it back to town, half an hour, around Chapultepec Park, through Polanco and up the Paseo de la Reforma. The man pulled in front of the Hotel Reforma, spoke with the doorman for a moment, gesturing slightly at his car, gave him—judging from the man’s smile—a big tip, then went inside. Hawkins found an empty parking spot and raced after him. Nowhere in sight. The man must’ve headed upstairs. But he couldn’t be gone for long—the doorman was holding the car out front for him. The desk clerk rang Lilly’s room. Hawkins watched the elevators, nervously drumming his fingers on the counter. The phone kept ringing. Nothing. The man shook his head, Lo siento. Sin respuesta. Not in.

  Hawkins headed for a chair, started to sit, watching the Packard still waiting outside. Damn, where is she? he thought. Then a minor miracle. Lilly sauntered through the door carrying a big pink hatbox, huge smile on her face. Of course, mission over, she’d gotten some shopping in before they broke camp. Hawkins intercepted her with a slight hug, then a little kiss, whispering, “Keep smiling. We have to follow that blue Packard in front. Go out and wait, I need to tail him, stick with him in case he goes to the bar or someone comes. The car’s four or five cars down, nod like we’re going for a drive. Be ready to move fast, we can’t lose him.” He handed her the keys, she carefully smiled, waved with her fingers and sauntered back out, easily swinging the hat box.

  Church bells had barely begun their noon toll when the cowboy exited the elevator carrying a single suitcase, setting it down in front of the desk. Hawkins finally got a close look at him. He was a huge man, easily six-four or six-five, not merely tall, but big and powerful all over, lean, not an ounce of fat, with massive, calloused hands stained dark yellow from years of pickling in tobacco smoke. A new cigar was now lit, the gray smoke exaggerating his deep five-o’clock shadow. His size was magnified by the huge hat and a pair of elaborately tooled cowboy boots. One might guess he was an entertainer, but the dark suit was very subdued, only a touch of Western embroidery on the jacket pocket. The man set his hat on the counter, revealing a full head of steel-gray hair and asked for a telegraph form in what sounded like good Spanish—“Quiero enviar un telégrafo, por favor”—his booming voice filling the lobby. While the man jotted a quick note on the form, Hawkins ambled over, bought a paper from a case by the desk and bent down to retie his shoes. Hawkins could barely make out reemer monogrammed on the side of the expensive alligator suitcase in small gold letters. His name? The man finished his note, handed the form back to the concierge and settled the bill in US dollars, drawing a large wad of cash from his pocket.

  The concierge smiled and bowed ever so slightly.

  “¡Gracias por elegir el Hotel Imperial, Señor Reemer!” And then Reemer left.

  -78-

  She started driving the minute Hawkins swung into the car, pulling into traffic, catching the Packard at the light. Hawkins might have ordinarily grabbed the wheel away, but they’d risk losing sight of him by changing drivers. Lilly seemed quick to learn to do a proper tail, however.

  “Roy!” she said, eyes darting side to side, mischievously smiling. “Is this a drill, some training?”

  “Sorry, it’s not.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not much of an answer. Why are we following this man?”

  “Because I don’t know who he is or anything about him except an hour ago he was meeting with General Corrialles. Oh, and he’s from Texas and has enough money for that very expensive car,” jabbing a finger at it. “His name is Reemer. That I know.”

  “Ah.” She stretched up, looking at it over the steering wheel, puzzled, while Hawkins slouched down, hat half over his eyes. They were close enough to hear music on the Packard’s radio, a thrumming guitar piece. A waft of gray cigar smoke floated up. “I guess—so what? The paintings are fakes, the plot’s over. No coup. The Germans are trying to kill each other. Isn’t our mission over, too? What difference could anything possibly make now?”

  “Corrialles wasn’t upset,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  It took a minute to digest that, her smile slowly collapsing into a frown.

  “Why? He lost. I’d be upset. Or angry or disappointed. That makes no sense at all.”

  “When I told him millions of dollars’ worth of paintings were fakes he almost shrugged. Then he asked if I still wanted to do business. Felt like asking, ‘Oh—and with what?’ ”

  “Could he have other ones? Your report said he was illegally looting his lands.”

  “At first I thought that, too, that he meant things from his personal collection. Then he corrected me: another forty or so—that’s the number he used—modern works, like before. But I don’t think he has them now, otherwise, he’d give them to me right away. The autumn sales in Manhattan are bearing down on us. We’re running out of time. He knows that.”

  “I don’t get it, why the fakes, why bother—”

  The Packard turned off the Paseo at the Cuauhtémoc monument, heading north on the Via del Centenario. Lilly easily followed around in the far lane on the wide avenue. Within moments the big blue convertible blew past the train station with them a few car lengths back.

  “I don’t know. The only thing we can do now is follow him, see where he’s going—don’t get too close, give him a lead.” He glanced over at the station. “At least he’s not taking a train.”

  “Righto. Don’t make it obvious.”

  Twenty minutes later they were leaving the city, passing the usual shantytowns, the traffic thi
nning. They picked up speed.

  “This is the route I took coming in. Is that good or bad?”

  “You came in from the north?”

  “Yes, through Monterrey. This is the best road, the Inter-American Highway.”

  “That’s good. If he stays on this route he’s not going east to Corrialles’s little finca, as he likes to call it, in Tlaxcala.”

  They hit the open highway and the Packard’s driver opened it up, going fast now through the open countryside, quickly passing trucks and cars.

  “Pretend you’re chewing one of those Benzedrine inhalers,” Hawkins said.

  “I don’t need that, I like driving fast. We drive fast in Canada! It’s a big country.”

  “Good. I like fast women—”

  She burst out laughing. “Oh, you do, do you!”

  “Ah, well, what can I say? The whole world is running out of time.”

  They began climbing out of the Valle de México heading toward the mountains ringing the valley. Lilly kept her foot hard on the gas, right to the floor, still barely keeping the Packard in sight. The Ford’s engine began badly overheating from the speed and altitude—about 8,300 feet. When they rolled into the intermittent stops the radiator hissed and steamed in complaint. Finally about ninety kilometers out, at Pachuca, the road bent to the west on the broad plateau through the mountains.

  “That’s it. He’s going home,” Hawkins said. “Pull over and let it cool before we blow the head off. This thing’s no match for a new Packard.” She braked to the side in a cloud of white dust, quickly switching it off. They got out and Hawkins opened the hood, releasing waves of heat before walking along a line of dry trees, both of them stretching and squinting in the haze of intense high sunlight.

  “Well, what now? Is our mission over or not?” Lilly said.

  Hawkins sighed in exasperation.

  “I don’t know. I mean, what the hell? I hate that feeling.”

  “What?”

  “Not knowing.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing, Roy, maybe he has nothing to do with anything.”

  “It’s possible. He could be a cattle rancher buying bulls. Did you see that god-awful hood ornament?” She giggled. “We have to be careful. But I don’t believe in coincidences. When you get back, contact W and General Houghton immediately. Don’t wait for Western Union. By radio. Tag it most urgent. Scratch that. Extremely urgent, emergency urgent. See if they can trace that license plate, find out who Reemer is.”

  “What about Corrialles?”

  “Right. Then a follow-on report about him, that weird conversation I had.”

  “Do you think he really has more?”

  Hawkins mulled that a second.

  “There’s no guarantee of it. He could be lying in all kinds of ways. Maybe he’s trying to save face.”

  “Eckhardt was stealing. Maybe Corrialles is stealing.”

  “Holding out on them?” Careful here, Hawkins thought. “I wouldn’t tempt him. But where’d the fakes at Parke-Bernet come from?”

  “Oh. Right. That’s crazy,” she said. Not as crazy as you think, Hawkins thought. “Could more paintings be coming from Europe?”

  “I suppose anything’s possible at this point.”

  “But why would there be two sets, one fake and one real? Why bother! It doesn’t make any sense.” They sat down on a pair of painted boulders by the side of the road.

  “Maybe …” He began turning it around in his mind, thinking aloud. “The whole scheme was a deception. Deceive Washington, start a war. Deceive General Corrialles, set him up with fake treaties, make him the fall guy. Maybe this was another deception?”

  “Of whom?”

  Who were they trying to trick—that’s the question, Hawkins realized. Seeing, he thought. What am I not seeing? Then in his mind’s eye he saw the Santa Lopez. The secret compartment. Commander Blake and the HMS Dendrobium. General Houghton shouting at Perez that the ocean was a war zone. The pieces mentally clicked together. Ships, the ocean, the navy. That open ocean is a war zone!

  He snapped his fingers, leaping up, whipping his hat off and waving it.

  “Us! Of course! Us!”

  “I don’t—”

  “They knew they had to fool us. Lilly, it’s like a magician’s trick. Misdirection! Or a decoy. They must know full well the Royal Navy’s out there on the ocean, keeping tabs on whatever goes by. They might have guessed we were intercepting their messages, like those telexes, or that it might leak somewhere along the line. That’s a real possibility on this end, the people they’re dealing with, people they don’t control. And if we didn’t know, there was a real danger anyway that we would stop and search all the ships going by, law of the sea be damned, and find them. Lilly! My guess is they did this to throw us off the trail. They want to make us think the whole thing has fallen through, give the Allies a sense of false confidence, get complacent, stop looking, when it’s really only a feint. Maybe the real ones are out there, somewhere, right now.”

  “If they’re real.”

  “Maybe I can check on that.” He leaned in the engine compartment, sniffing the radiator, then slammed the hood down. “Let’s get back.”

  “Want to drive?” she said.

  “You do just fine!”

  -79-

  Hawkins parked at the corner and sat in the car for several minutes, going over the photos of the paintings again. What am I actually looking at? he thought. Or looking for? Looking. That was the thing, he thought. No one looked, or knew how to look or, perhaps, knew enough to make sense of what they saw.

  He got out and walked up the street to the garage, holding the prints out slightly in hand, not quite an offering, but to show. Riley was inside with a pair of men, propping her caved-in roof back up with poles, pulling down the tin sheets filled with bullet holes, replacing them. She glared out at him.

  “The paintings we copied are fakes,” he said. She still glared. “When they got to New York, they spotted it right away. We made fakes of fakes.” He held the photos farther out, gave them a shake. “There was something we didn’t see. Look.” No change in her expression, but she silently came out and took the photos, thumbing through them. “We missed something,” he said.

  After looking at the fronts, she began flipping those away, keeping only the photos of the backs. To save time and money—the color prints were expensive—Hawkins had the photos of the backs mostly printed in black and white, mainly to get the labels and any writing. But the lab did do a couple in color. She riffled through until she came to those, then stopped, holding first one, then the other to her nose.

  “Yes. I did not see this. And I probably wouldn’t have noticed, we were in such a hurry. The color is wrong. They used acid, like I did, to age the frames. The color is distinctive, too much yellow in the brown, once you’re used to seeing it.” She sat down on the doorstep, wiping the tears welling again in her eyes. “If the paintings are fakes, Emilio died for nothing?” Tears began streaming down her face, her voice rising, warbling on the edge of a cry. He struggled for an answer, one he himself felt right with.

  “No. It was for everything that matters. He was like a soldier who gives his life in a war, to stop a coup against Mexico, it’s revolution. If one is truly a revolutionary, then it’s one’s duty to sacrifice.”

  She began nodding her head, still wiping tears.

  “Yes. We must make sacrifices. All artists make sacrifices for their art.”

  “And if we see—if art, if seeing itself is a revolutionary act …”

  “Yes, then we must sacrifice for that, too.” After a moment, “Why are you showing me these things?”

  He sat next to her.

  “I need to make absolutely sure. Could they have made these fakes here? In Mexico? Maybe not La Capital but elsewhere?”

  “No. There are artists outsi
de Ciudad México, yes, but they are folklorists, very good, very authentic artists, but they could not duplicate such works. All the artists who could do something like that are here. And we would know. What we did, it was a huge project. You saw it. There are many artists here, but not that many. What does it matter now?”

  “General Corrialles says he has more paintings. I was worried he was stealing the real ones, two-timing us somehow, trying to do to us what we did to the Nazis. You see? I needed to make sure he didn’t make the fakes that went to New York, and switch them here. But if what you’re saying is true—and I’m sure it is—”

  “More? Another set?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where?”

  “I have to find out. The real ones, the ones he expects to get, are out there somewhere.”

  “And what will you do then? Send them to New York City as your greedy employers demand? Finance another coup?”

  Another coup, he thought. Yes, I have to face that danger again now. If there are more paintings, real ones, the coup is back on track. If Berlin can’t back one—Corrialles said he would shoot Eckhardt and Falkenberg again—New York and London would surely put their foot forward and sponsor a “friendly” coup. Corrialles would give back the assets President Cárdenas nationalized. Yes, someone, somewhere would be willing to go along. Finally he answered, in a low, quiet voice, almost a whisper.

  “No.”

  “You betrayed us once.”

  “I didn’t know what was going on. I can’t help anyone if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You left Emilio!”

  “And you’d be dead if I hadn’t!”

  “You will leave us! Go to El Norte!”

  “No. I won’t. I would help with your roof, but I have work to do.” He rose.

  “What—your duty?”

  Duty. What is that exactly? Hawkins thought.

  “Perhaps sometimes rebellion is our duty.”