Ask for Me Tomorrow

by Margaret Millar

  Aragon shouted at him, “Jenkins, wait for me. Hey, hold it!”

  Jenkins turned and began running toward the bridge, dodging between pedestrians and around passing cars. He was small and agile, and whatever illness he was suffering from hadn’t affected his speed. By the time he reached the bridge he was ahead of Aragon by a hundred yards or more. He started to cross the bridge, his arms flapping like the clipped wings of a chicken. Then, about a third of the way across, he suddenly stopped and clutched his stomach as though he was going to be sick again.

  He leaned over the railing. People paid no attention to him. They were like travelers on the deck of a ship politely ignoring a fellow passenger who was seasick. Five seconds later he had disappeared into the concrete darkness below the bridge.

  A woman screamed. A crowd gathered. People peered down into the darkness to see if anything exciting was going on. It wasn’t. They walked on by.

  Aragon stood at the railing. Beads of sweat rolled down his face, as cold and heavy as hailstones. I have a nice feeling about you, laddie. You’re going to bring me luck.

  “God Almighty,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Jenkins, I’m sorry.”

  A short fat young man stopped beside him. He wore a striped serape over his work clothes, and his hair was greased back over his head so that it looked like a black plastic cap. He had a wheezy worried voice: “Did you push him?”

  “Push him? For Christ’s sake, he was a friend of mine.”

  “Then why were you chasing him?”

  “I was trying to help him.”

  “Why was he running away from you?”

  “I don’t know. Now will you please—”

  “Pretty soon the police will arrive. Already I hear the sirens.”

  Aragon heard them, too.

  “They’ll be nasty,” the man said.

  “They always are when such a serious crime is

  committed.”

  “There was no crime.”

  “They arrest everyone in sight, helter-skelter. They have to act fast because corpses are usually buried the next day . . . What story will you give them?”

  “No story. Just the truth. I was trying to save him, to take him home because he was sick.”

  “It didn’t look that way to me. You were chasing him and he was trying to escape from you. The police don’t like it when Americans come here to murder each other. It gives our country a bad reputation.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “And if the Americans also swear and blaspheme—”

  “Okay, okay. How much?”

  “Twenty dollars seems a small price to stay out of our jail. We have a very poor jail.”

  Aragon gave him a twenty-dollar bill and the man disappeared into the crowd as quickly as Jenkins had disappeared into the darkness below the bridge.

  The sirens were getting closer. He started walking as fast as he could back toward the Domino Club. His legs felt rubbery and the sweat was still pouring down his face.

  12

  The back booth at the Domino Club where Jenkins had been sitting was cleaned up and smelled of disinfectant. The cleanup even included the young bartender who’d spoken to him previously. He wore a freshly laundered white jacket with the name Mitchell stitched across the breast pocket.

  Aragon sat down in the booth. About three minutes later Mitchell joined him, bringing along a cup of coffee. He didn’t offer Aragon either the coffee or anything else.

  “How’s your friend?”

  “Dead.”

  “Yeah? Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

  “His name was Harry Jenkins,” Aragon said quietly. “He wasn’t a bad man, just unlucky. He had the wrong kind of friends.”

  “There’s a right kind? Show me.”

  “What was he drinking?”

  “Beer. I took the empty bottle away myself before I had one of the boys tidy the place up.”

  “Your boys are very thorough tidy-uppers. Do they always use a gallon of disinfectant after each customer?”

  “The booth stank of puke and whiskey.”

  “You said Jenkins was drinking beer.”

  “I removed an empty beer bottle from this table. I didn’t smell it to see what had been in it. I figured a beer bottle would contain beer. Anyway, that was his usual drink. He often came in and ordered a beer. He’d nurse a single bottle along for half the night, waiting around for a touch or whatever he had in mind. How come all this fuss over one little dead man?”

  “I think he was poisoned.”

  “You think funny. Go home. Sleep it off.”

  Aragon looked at his watch. It was twenty after one. “Jenkins called me about two hours ago at my hotel. He was completely sober and in good spirits. Yet forty-five minutes and one bottle of beer later, he was so stoned out of his head that he went and jumped off a bridge. Does that make sense?”

  “My business is to make money, not sense. And you know how I do it? I keep my nose clean and out of other people’s affairs. I also stay away from booze.”

  “Jenkins told me on the phone that he was with somebody, an American.”

  “He wasn’t an American.”

  “What was he?”

  “Like I said, I mind my own affairs. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was dark-skinned and wearing the usual Mexican work clothes, half native, half cowboy.”

  “How old was he?”

  “They never show their age. I hired one last year, thought he was about thirty, until suddenly he dropped dead of old age. It’s all that grease in their skin, keeps the wrinkles away.”

  “Did Jenkins and his companion seem friendly?”

  “There was no quarrel, no fuss, no nothing, until you showed up.”

  “When I showed up, Jenkins was alone and you seemed pretty anxious to get rid of him.”

  “I hate pukers.”

  “You hate a lot of people, don’t you, Mitchell?”

  “In this business you see their worst side, until pretty soon you forget they have a better one. And ten chances to one they haven’t, anyway. Any more questions?”

  “What happened to Jenkins between the time he phoned me and the time I arrived?”

  “Nothing happened to him. He got drunk, took a walk to sober up, fell off a bridge. Period.” Mitchell finished his coffee. “So don’t throw any wild statements around. Our club has a good reputation, the best that money can buy. When a little trouble comes along, zap, it goes away again. The police are very understanding.”

  “How much are cops selling for these days?”

  “They’re dirt cheap. Which is what dirt ought to be, cheap.”

  “That’s not much of a tribute to your protectors.”

  “I pay them, I don’t have to kiss their asses,” Mitchell said. “Now, if it will shut you up and make you feel any better, I’m sorry about your friend.”

  It was the first human remark Mitchell had made. “The coffee must be getting to you,” Aragon said. “For a minute there I thought I heard the faint beating of a heart.”

  “I have the hiccups.”

  Aragon drove to the police station and waited around for the rest of the night. At seven in the morning he was informed that Jenkins’ body had been examined, and death was declared the result of injuries received in an accidental fall. Fifty dollars was found in his pocket, enough for funeral expenses. In Rio Seco, funerals were cheap, since there was no embalming, and quick if there were no survivors to wait for and the weather was hot. The body was removed to an undertaking parlor, a priest was notified, and Jenkins’ funeral service was scheduled for six o’clock that night.

  Death was always sad, the undertaker told Aragon. “But one must be realistic. The new bridge is good for business. More than thirty people have already jumped from it.”

  “The p
olice said Jenkins’ death was accidental.”

  “Such a verdict makes it easier for them. Also for the Church. The Church frowns on suicide.”

  “I think Jenkins was drugged, which makes it murder not accident or suicide.”

  “Oh no, no no. The bridge is a magnet for troubled souls seeking oblivion or what not. You have one like it in San Francisco, the Golden Gate. I read in the newspaper that more than five hundred people have jumped from it. Is this true?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Newspapers tell the truth, certainly?”

  “When they recognize it and when they want to, like you and me. The truth about Jenkins is that he was murdered.”

  “God must decide such things,” the undertaker said. “He is the Final Judge.”

  The funeral service was held in the cemetery in a mixture of Spanish and Latin, and Jenkins’ name was pronounced Arry Yen-keen. The only other mourner was the fat young man in the striped serape who’d accosted Aragon on the bridge. When their eyes met across the open grave, he pretended not to recognize Aragon. But as soon as the service was over and the priest had departed, the man spoke: “We meet again.”

  “Yes. I hope it doesn’t become a habit. I can’t afford it.”

  “You mean the money?” He pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “I didn’t want this for myself. It’s for my sister, Emilia Ontiveros, to buy a mourning dress and to light candles. She is stricken with grief.”

  Aragon thought of the jailed woman with her scarred hands and arms and her despairing eyes. In a crude sense she was lucky: her grief would be less caustic this way than the way Jenkins had planned.

  “It was a great love,” Ontiveros said. “A little more so on her part, naturally, because he was a man and men meet more temptations. Harry was always meeting temptations, especially when Emilia wasn’t around to head them off. Lighting candles for him is a waste of good money—he wasn’t even a Catholic. But Emilia is beyond reason. She can’t see how much better off she’ll be with him gone. He roused her to terrible angers. Without these angers she’d be safe at home, leading a nice normal life.”

  “What did you tell her about this death?”

  “That he drank too much, lost his balance and fell over the railing. She didn’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Harry didn’t get drunk. In all their good and bad times together she never once saw him drunk. She told me that B. J. must have pushed Harry over the railing.”

  “Who is B. J.?”

  “An American, somebody Harry knew in the old days. Harry was responsible for him being sent to jail. B. J. swore he’d get even. Maybe it’s true. I’ve never met this man, B. J., he may be very bad, very vengeful, but I can’t always take Emilia’s word for things. Her great passion makes fires in her mind and you can’t poke around until the ashes cool.” Ontiveros ran the back of his hand across his forehead as though he felt the sudden heat of one of Emilia’s fires. “I’m the oldest son in the family. It’s my duty to look after Emilia and maybe someday to find her a real husband. This will be easier with Harry gone.”

  It was getting late. No workmen had appeared to fill in the grave, as though they were in no hurry to appear for such a cheap funeral of such an unimportant man.

  “You were on the bridge,” Aragon said. “You saw what happened.”

  “Not everything. It was night and there were many people. One of them could have been B. J. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. Harry was a small man and not a worker in strong condition like myself—he would need only a little push, so quick, so natural.”

  Aragon stared down into the open grave with its plain pine box. Had B. J. long since been put into one like it? Or could he still be alive and here in Rio Seco? Suppose he’d found out that Gilly was looking for him. Suppose he wanted to avoid her as much as Harry Jenkins had wanted to avoid Emilia.

  “For all I know,” Ontiveros said, “you might be B. J.”

  “No, I’m looking for him.”

  “Why?”

  “His wife would like to see him again.”

  “She has great passion like Emilia?”

  “She had at one time.”

  “And fires in the mind?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Such women are a nuisance. Day in, day out, the family nags at me to find Emilia a husband. I might be able to do it finally now that Harry’s gone. If I had some way of collecting a little money for her dowry—”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then I might as well be going.” Ontiveros picked up a handful of earth, threw it on top of the coffin and crossed himself. “That’s from Emilia.”

  He walked away, his serape flapping around his knees. The sun was setting, expanding into an improbably brilliant flame-red ball. It looked like one of the fires in Emilia’s mind. Or Gilly’s. In ten minutes it had fallen into ashes below the horizon.

  13

  He called Gilly that night after dinner. He had nothing better to tell her this time than last time, so he poured himself a double Scotch before he tried to contact her. He got his message across in a hurry: Jenkins was dead and buried, Tula still missing, and the search for B. J. had come to a halt.

  Her reaction was unexpected—no shock, no anger. She merely sounded depressed. “We’ve lost.”

  “Yes.”

  “You might as well come home.”

  “All right.”

  There was a long silence, then a sudden burst of words. “I can’t—I can’t let it go like this. I can’t leave him in a dreary foreign prison.”

  He didn’t say what he thought: You could and you did, Gilly. Your grief may be genuine but it’s years too late, miles too short.

  She said, “Jenkins at least had a decent burial, yet it was all his fault. He dragged B. J. down into the gutter.”

  “B. J. dragged easy, Mrs. Decker. Let’s call it a folie a deux. Neither man would have gotten into such a crazy predicament without the other.”

  “You’ve turned against B. J.. Jenkins won you over.”

  “Let’s not make this a personal thing, Mrs. Decker.”

  “It’s personal to me. Not to you, naturally. I never met a lawyer yet who had any more feeling than a dead mackerel.”

  Gilly was returning to normal.

  “And you can quote me to that pompous old boss of yours, Smedler. Tell him the whole damn Bar Association hasn’t enough heart for a single baboon.”

  “He won’t be surprised,” Aragon said. “Now that your opinion of lawyers has been clarified, I’ll continue my report.”

  “Why did you let Jenkins get away from you?”

  “That’s not quite accurate, Mrs. Decker. When he refused to tell me over the phone where Tula was, I went after him and found him. But someone else got to him first and slipped something into the bottle of beer he was drinking. Whether it was intended to kill him, I don’t know.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “And why?”

  “A possible motive might have been to prevent him from giving out any more information, either about B. J. or about Tula.”

  “Maybe it was a simple robbery.”

  “He had fifty dollars on him when he was found, enough for his funeral. It was your fifty, by the way.”

  “So the funeral was my treat.” She let out a small brittle laugh. “If life is funny, how about death? It’s a real scream.”

  “It was for Jenkins. He screamed all the way down.”

  Another silence. “Why do—why do you tell me things like that?”

  “Because I’m a lawyer, I like to make people feel rotten.”

  “You’re an extremely unpleasant young man.”

  “Right now I’m
not so crazy about you either. And I’m damn glad I’m through working for you.”

  “What makes you think you’re through working for me?”

  “You said I was to come home.”

  “So I did. But at the moment—between insults—you’re still on the job, giving me your report. You may continue.”

  Aragon swallowed a chunk of pride, washing it down with a second glass of Scotch. “When Jenkins called me here late last night he was pretty high, not on drugs or alcohol, on hope and anticipation. He said he had a pigeon. I don’t think so. I think he was the pigeon. The only description I could get of his companion was that he was wearing the clothes of an ordinary Mexican workingman. This doesn’t jibe with what Jenkins told me, that the meeting offered him the chance of a lifetime, that his so-called pigeon had come down to Mexico—note the word ‘down’—to scout around for investment opportunities and that he was ready to put money into the chicken tortilla business which Jenkins was touting. We’re faced with quite a few contradictions if we look at Jenkins’ death from only one viewpoint.”

  “I have only one viewpoint,” Gilly said. “My own.”

  “I’m aware of that, Mrs. Decker. But others do exist. Jenkins had a pretty shady past and he’s undoubtedly been involved in dozens of scams in the past couple of years. That was the way he lived. Maybe it was the way he died, and B. J. and Tula and you and I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Naturally, I like the idea. I don’t want a man’s death on my conscience if I can help it.”

  “Let’s leave it at that, then. Jenkins had other enemies.”

  “What do you mean by other?”

  “Other than B. J.”

  “B. J. wasn’t his enemy. That was the trouble—he should have been. B. J. was nobody’s enemy.”

  Emilia has a different idea, Aragon thought. But she’s in jail and crazy with grief and crazy without it. Nobody will believe her. Except me, dammit. Except me.

  “Tell me about the girl, Tula,” Gilly said. “Though she isn’t a girl anymore, is she? That’s some consolation, I guess.”

  “When B. J. was arrested she followed him to Rio Seco.”