Ask for Me Tomorrow

by Margaret Millar

  “I thought you intended to get married in the church.”

  “First I mash him like a turnip. Then we get married.”

  She was unmistakably serious. No matter where he was, Harry’s future didn’t look too bright.

  “Marriage might improve my temper,” she added thoughtfully. “I lose it at the stove, at the pots and pans, because they burn me. Then I throw them and they burn me again, and on it goes, back and forth. Do you think marriage has an improving effect?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “How much are you planning to pay me?”

  “You haven’t told me anything useful yet.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You said you and Jenkins served time together.”

  “That’s how we met. These two Americans were brought in one day and as soon as I saw Harry my insides started spinning.”

  “The other American was Lockwood?”

  Emilia nodded. “Him, what a crybaby, always fussing about this and that. The guards had to give him stuff to shut him down. Harry was a real man, pretending he didn’t care what the authorities did to him or how long they kept him there.”

  “What was the charge against him?”

  “Something silly like cheating. It’s the custom. Somebody cheats you, you cheat somebody else.”

  “How did Jenkins get out?”

  “Me. I had some money saved—the head cook’s pay is pretty good and there’s nothing pretty to spend it on in this place. When I finished serving my sentence I rented a nice apartment and then I went and paid Harry’s fine and we set up housekeeping. For a while we had a rosy time. But my rosy times never last. As soon as the money ran out, so did Harry. Or tried to. I caught him packing and beat him up, not bad, just enough to put him in the hospital. He didn’t squeal on me—he knew he had it coming—but the doctor at the hospital reported me to the police and they brought me back here to the Quarry. Everybody was glad to see me, of course, because my tamale pie is the best in town . . . How much are you going to pay me?”

  “For telling me your tamale pie is the best in town? Nothing. It’s not the kind of information that’s worth anything to me.”

  “What kind do you want? You name it, it’s yours. See, I’m saving up so I can buy my way out of this place and go back with Harry.”

  “And mash him like a turnip.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe my heart will melt when I see him again.”

  Aragon wouldn’t have bet a nickel on it. Emilia’s temper probably had a lower boiling point than her heart. “Is Jenkins still living in the apartment you rented?”

  “How could he afford an apartment without my help? No, he has a little room over the shoemaker’s shop, Reynoso’s, on Avenida Gobernador. It’s a low neighborhood, lots of thieves and prostitutes, but Harry hasn’t anything to steal and the prostitutes don’t bother him, because he’s broke. How am I sure? My spies are here, there and everywhere, watching. Right this minute he is”—Emilia consulted a man’s wristwatch which she fished out of the front of her dress—“sleeping. That’s Harry for you. Everybody else running around working and Harry in bed snoring his head off.”

  “What does he do when he’s not sleeping?”

  “Hangs out at bars and cafés, especially the places where Americans go, El Domino, Las Balatas, El Alegre. He’s not a drunk, liquor’s not one of his weaknesses, he goes there on business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Whatever he thinks of. He’s very smart but he has bad luck. And tourists aren’t as easy as they used to be in the old days when all he had to do was make up a few little stories. Expenses keep going up and up, and tourists keep getting more and more suspicious and stingy.”

  Aragon thought of the Hilton price he’d paid for the shack at Viñadaco and he wasn’t surprised that the tourists were getting more wary of Harry’s little stories.

  He said, “What happened to Lockwood?”

  “I don’t know. Suddenly he left. That was long before I paid Harry’s fine and got him out.”

  “Did he come back to visit Jenkins?”

  “Why should he? They weren’t friends, they were partners. He blamed Harry for leading him into trouble. How can you lead someone who doesn’t want to go?”

  “Did you notice whether Lockwood had any visitors?”

  “There are always Americans shut up in this place, and the American consulate sends somebody over to check on them from time to time. Maybe it was one of the consulate that got Lockwood released.”

  “Did his case ever come to trial?”

  “It was a single case, him and Harry together, when they were brought in. But when the magistrate finally heard it, there was just Harry. Lockwood had disappeared.”

  “Do you think he died?”

  “A lot of people do,” Emilia said philosophically. “He was an old man, anyway, more than fifty, always throwing up from his stomach.”

  “Didn’t Jenkins try to find out what happened to him?”

  “If he did he never told me. We had more interesting things to talk about in our rosy times. In the not-so-rosy we didn’t speak to each other at all.”

  She repeated Jenkins’ address, Avenida Gobernador above the shop of Reynoso the shoemaker. Aragon thanked her and gave her ten dollars. She didn’t seem too pleased at the amount, but at least she didn’t try to mash him like a turnip.

  9

  He returned to the Hotel Castillo, stopping at the desk for his key and a map of the city, the kind which gas stations back home used to give away free. The map cost two dollars, the key was free. From his room he tried, for the second time that day, to put through a call to Gilly. All the lines were in use, on business, the telefonista implied, much more urgent than his.

  Over lunch and beer at the hotel café he studied the map of Rio Seco. Avenida Gobernador was within walking distance and he would have liked to walk, both for exercise and to avoid the insanities of the city traffic. (One of the oddities of the automotive age was how such good-natured, slow-moving people could become irascible speed freaks behind the wheel of a car.) But the Avenida paralleled the course of the river for several miles and he had no way of knowing on what part of it Reynoso’s shop was located. It was not in the telephone directory or on the hotel’s list of shops and services.

  He found out why when he reached it. It was hardly more than a hole in the wall on the edge of the red-light district where porno bars alternated with the rows of prostitutes’ cubicles. The neighborhood was quiet and Reynoso’s place closed. Sex as well as shoemakers took

  a siesta.

  A boy about Pablo’s age offered to watch his car to make sure nobody stole the hub caps and windshield wipers and radio antenna. “Hey, man, watch your car? One quarter for watching your car, man.”

  “Who’s going to watch you?” Aragon said.

  He meant it as a joke but the boy took it seriously. “My brother José. He’s working the other side of the street.”

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “It’s a holiday.”

  “What holiday?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody just told me, ‘Hey, man, you don’t got to go to school today, it’s a holiday.’ Watch your car for a quarter?”

  “All right.”

  He paid the money. The boy climbed on the hood of the car, leaned back against the windshield and lit the butt of a cigar he’d picked up from the road.

  Aragon said, “You watch cars around here all the time?”

  “Sure, man.”

  “I bet you know a lot of people in the neighborhood.”

  “I got eyes, don’t I?”

  “I’m looking for an American named Harry Jenkins. I was told he lives in a room above Reynoso’s.”

  “Whoever told you’s got eyes, too. That’s where he lives, Harry Je
nkins. Some cheapskate. Never gave me a dime.”

  “Reynoso’s shop is closed.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “For one of the dimes Jenkins never gave you, will you tell me how I can get up to his room?”

  “You a hustler, man?”

  “Let’s just say that the members of my profession are sometimes called hustlers.”

  “Yeah? Okay, then. There’s an alley four, five doors down, takes you straight to Reynoso’s outside stairs.”

  The boy pocketed the dime and settled back against the windshield to enjoy the final inch of the cigar.

  Jenkins’ door was locked. When Aragon knocked on it, it felt flimsy as though it would collapse like cardboard if he leaned against it too heavily. He wrote a note and pushed it underneath the door:

  Mr. Jenkins:

  I am offering a fair price for any information you might have about B. J. Lockwood. If you are interested, please contact me at the Hotel Castillo.

  T. C. Aragon

  He returned to the hotel and tried for the third time to put through a call to Gilly. The telefonista must have had a refreshing siesta, she sounded almost human: “You wish to speak personally to Mrs. Marco Decker, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I may have a line for you now. Hold on.”

  After about five minutes of back-and-forth chatter in two languages, a man answered the phone. “Hello.” A certain note of petulance in the man’s tone identified him as Reed Robertson, Marco Decker’s nurse.

  “I have a person-to-person call for Mrs. Marco Decker. Is Mrs. Decker there?”

  “Hold on.” Reed raised the pitch of his voice about an octave. “This is Mrs. Decker, operator. I’ll take the call.”

  “Your party is on the line, sir. Go ahead.”

  “Hello, Reed.”

  “That you, Aragon?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in the pool. Violet Smith just took her out a robe, so she’ll be here in a minute. Listen, amigo, she’s burned up because she hasn’t heard from you.”

  “She burns easy. It’s only Monday.”

  “Any trace of B. J.?”

  “ ‘Trace’ just about covers it. I found his ex-partner, though.”

  “Harry Jenkins.”

  “I gather Mrs. Decker has confided in you.”

  “The old girl has to talk to somebody. It was a toss-up between me and Violet Smith. I won. If you want to call it winning.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “I call it a living,” Reed said. “Speaking of living, where’s Jenkins doing his, in some castle in the sky?”

  “Over Reynoso’s shoemaking shop on Avenida Gobernador. I might say he’s on his uppers if I went in for bad puns.”

  “So Jenlock Haciendas never got off the ground.”

  “No. All the other news is bad, too.”

  “How bad?”

  Gilly came on the line. “Aragon? What’s this about bad? Have you found B. J.?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not exactly bad, is it? I mean, it’s just nothing. How is that bad?”

  “B. J. seems to have disappeared.”

  “From where?”

  “The jail in Rio Seco.”

  “Did you say jail?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was he doing in jail?”

  “Like all the others in there, he was waiting to get out.”

  “Don’t get sharp with me, dammit.”

  “I’m trying not to,” Aragon said. “I don’t like delivering news like this any more than you like receiving it.”

  “Why was he sent to jail? B. J. wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Flies don’t invest money in real estate developments. People do, and when they discover they’ve been swindled they complain to the police. B. J. and Jenkins were picked up in Bahía de Ballenas. While they were waiting trial B. J. disappeared. One of the other inmates told me he’d been ill and upset and the guards had to give him stuff to calm him down. ‘Stuff’ was the word used. It could have been anything.”

  “Oh God, poor B. J.”

  She began to cry. Aragon could hear Reed trying to soothe her: Buck up, old girl. Stop it now. Here, here’s a drink. That’s a good girl . . .

  When things quieted down, Aragon continued, “I may get more information tonight or tomorrow. I haven’t talked to Harry Jenkins, but I found out where he’s living and left a note for him.”

  “Left a note? You should have waited for him, camped on his doorstep if necessary.”

  “He didn’t have a doorstep. He didn’t even have much of a door.”

  “Give me his phone number. I want to talk to him myself.”

  “I guess I’m not getting through to you, Mrs. Decker. Jenkins is broke. That’s the main reason I expect to hear from him. I offered him money for information about B. J.”

  There was a long interval of silence. Then, “Where’s the girl, Tula?”

  “I have no recent news about her. When the two men were arrested she went with them to Rio Seco. The word is that she wanted to get away from Bahía de Ballenas and the child, too.”

  “Away from her own child?”

  “He’s retarded as well as crippled, Mrs. Decker . . . Now don’t start crying again. The boy’s safe, he’s being looked after by relatives. Mexican families are very close-knit, as I mentioned to you before, and retarded children aren’t considered undesirable.”

  “Have you nothing decent, nothing pleasant to tell me?”

  “I think it’s both decent and pleasant that Pablo is being taken care of. He’s luckier in many ways than his American cousins.”

  “How long ago did they leave him there?”

  “Four years. He’s eight now, chronologically. Mentally, perhaps three. There is no way he could fit into your life, Mrs. Decker.”

  “I never thought he could,” she said quietly. “I just hoped a little bit. If it were only a matter of his being crippled, I could have paid for doctors, operations . . . Now, of course, I realize that it’s impossible. I wish I’d never been told of his existence. Maybe B. J. told me deliberately to rouse my sympathy so I’d send him the money he asked for. If I could believe that, it would make it easier for me to accept—what I’m afraid you’re going to find out.”

  “Which is?”

  “That he’s dead, he died in jail and they dragged him out and buried him like a common criminal.” He heard her take a long deep breath as if to regain control of herself. “Okay, all the news is bad so far. What’s the next step?”

  “I’ll talk to Jenkins.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t know anything?”

  “Then I’d better quit wasting your money and come home.”

  “Call me after you’ve seen him. And thanks, by the way, for leveling with me, even though I didn’t like it. The truth hurts… I wonder who first discovered that.”

  “Probably Adam.”

  “The little boy, does he seem happy?”

  “He seems not unhappy. He gets affection and enough food to eat, and he has children to play with who aren’t much more advantaged than he is. You could present a bigger problem to him than any he has now, Mrs. Decker.”

  “Yes, I see. It was really stupid of me after all this time to get the idea that—well, anyway, thanks again. And call me.”

  “I will.”

  She hung up. Reed was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed on his chest, watching her. She had never realized before what cruel little eyes he had. They didn’t match the rest of his face, which smiled a lot.

  “You were practically screaming at one point,” Reed said. “Women should learn to modulate their voices.”

  “Why?”

  “So people will assume they’re ladies. Also to make it ha
rder for eavesdroppers like Violet Smith to hear everything. Violet Smith is ninety-eight percent ears and mouth and two percent common sense. She could be dangerous.”

  “I didn’t say anything she can’t broadcast to the world if she wants to.”

  “Fear not, she’ll want to. Wait until the next show-and-tell meeting at her church—you and B. J. will be the star attractions, with the kid thrown in for a touch of pathos. By the way, you’re not fooling me for a minute. And if Aragon weren’t such a boy scout, you wouldn’t be fooling him, either.”

  “How am I trying to fool anyone?”

  “The kid. You wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole even if he had a perfect physique and an IQ of a hundred and fifty.”

  “You’re malicious, you’re really malicious.”

  “That’s why we get along so well. Malice is something we both understand. Now, Violet Smith isn’t malicious. She’s just dumb and self-righteous, which is a lot harder to cope with. You’d better go and have a talk with her right now. Lay it on the line but keep it light, casual. Don’t let on that it matters too much.”

  “You’re giving me orders?”

  “Suggestions.”

  “They sounded like orders.”

  “No, my orders sound quite different,” Reed said. “You may find that out.”

  The cleaning woman and day maid had left and Violet Smith was alone in the kitchen, cooking dinner and watching T. V.

  “Turn that thing off,” Gilly said.

  “I’m in the middle of a murder.”

  “Turn it off.”

  “My stars, you needn’t shout. I didn’t know this was top priority.”

  “You do now.”

  Violet Smith turned off the set, grumbling. “My programs are always being interrupted, phones ringing, Mr. Decker buzzing—”

  “Speaking of phones, did you listen in on the extension to my conversation with Mr. Aragon?”

  “I told you, I’m in the middle of a murder, which is a heap more interesting than anything Mr. Aragon has to say.”

  “Answer the question. Did you listen in?”