The Caper of the Golden Bulls

by William P. McGivern

  Morgan was an uncommonly fat young man with a round vulnerable face, a huge blond beard, and eyes that were clear and blue and wholly mad.

  "Wherever you go the rate drops," he cried wrathfully.

  "But I have nothing to do with the rate!" Mr. Shahari exclaimed in mild surprise. The Indian was small, neatly dressed, and he glittered; his spectacles, his fountain pens, his rings, his gold teeth, all sparkled brightly in the clear sunlight. "The rate is a constant, Mr. Morgan."

  "Then why is it always changing? Why am I always getting screwed by it?" The mountainous ranges of fat on Morgan's ribs trembled indignantly. "Just tell me that!"

  "The rate in one place is not the same as the rate in another place," Mr. Shahari explained with an air of exhaustive lucidity. "Now. How many dollars do you wish to exchange?"

  "All I've got. Twenty-eight."

  "Mr. Quince?"

  "I've got twelve pound ten."

  Quince was as thin as Morgan was fat. A thoughtful man, one of his favourite fancies was to imagine what might happen if a group of mice learned how to link arms. Might they then attack rats?

  Mr. Shahari counted out pesetas, collected dollars and pounds in return, moved to another table. Morgan stared after him furiously.

  Strange wild thoughts blew about inside his head.

  "I'd like to kill him," he said to Quince. "There's the true evil of the world. The middleman. Clipping a fat profit from both sides of every deal. In Hong Kong, Calcutta, Tangier, Paris; they're everywhere. Stealing our money whenever we cross a border. They'll have it all one of these days."

  "Now then, Ah wouldn't kill 'im," Quince said thoughtfully. "Ah wouldn't do that. Cause a bloody row, it would."

  "It wouldn't be a murder; it would be an execution." Morgan's excitement grew; his mad eyes sparkled happily. "It should be in public; with crowds to witness it. In a mood of holiday, of fiesta.

  Amidst music and fireworks, Mr. Shahari should be terminally collected for his sins against humanity. Don't you think that would be appropriate?"

  "Ah wouldn't execute 'im either," Quince said doubtfully. "Cause a bloody row, it would."

  Morgan smiled at clouds that were like wisps of cotton on the horizon, and called up a vision of Biblical retribution and justice, which was tinged, however, with respectable existential overtones. Pamplona? He nodded slowly, his chins rising and falling like pneumatic shock absorbers. Appropriate, he thought, most appropriate.

  "Angela, I simply cannot do it," Peter said. "It's not a matter of spirit, but of flesh. You commented on my drinking yesterday. You asked if it were something new. I wish to God it were. But it's been going on for years. And lately it's been accelerating at a cyclical rate of increase. Francois, give me a glass of whisky. One ice cube, if you will."

  Peter paced the floor of their suite, his eyes rolling about in his head, his movements jerky and erratic. "Just look at my hands! Do you remember how I used to take watches apart without tools? I tried it last night. It was ghastly! Screws and wheels clattering all over the place."

  "I think you're lying, Peter."

  "Why should I lie about it? I've deteriorated badly, Angela. Would you like your life hanging on my skills? My reflexes? They're shot, I tell you. Gone."

  Francois did something unexpected then, something which rather surprised Peter. He took a revolver from his pocket and swung the butt in a vicious arc at Peter's head.

  Peter thought fleetingly of defending himself with a basic judo take-down which would in all likelihood have broken the Frenchman's wrist and elbow. But he decided against this.

  He moved his head and let the gun butt whistle by. As Francois lost his balance, Peter plucked the gun from his hand and spun him into a chair.

  "Now that was very stupid," he said quietly. "I dislike physical violence." Peter broke the gun, knocked the bullets from its chambers.

  "Let me tell you something, Francois. If you ever try anything that silly again, I shall pound one of these bullets up each of your nostrils. It's the quickest and most painful way to deviate a septum I know of."

  Francois was smiling. So was Angela.

  "I was only checking your reflexes," Francois said casually.

  "Oh," Peter said. Fool, fool, fool! he thought.

  Francois stood and took the revolver from Peter. "Give me the bullets."

  Angela said mildly, "Peter, that wasn't like you. It was extremely foolish. Please don't make us impatient with you. Remember your friends."

  ***

  That night Peter wrote gloomily in his journal: Do not feel antagonistic towards people who are cleverer than you. They may have advantages you lack: i.e. brains.

  That wasn't too bad, he decided. The aptness of the phrasing cheered him; it lay like balm on his wounded ego. He continued writing. The superior person is always surrounded by inferiors; that is the curse of excellence. How trying it must be for God! To look down and find everyone on his knees! Begging favours. Give me money, God. Please don't let them score, God. I don't want to be pregnant, God, I'm a good girl But did God listen?

  That was a scary notion.

  Of course, He listens. What else does He have to do? God is love and grace. The association tempted him towards cliffs of blasphemy. Slowly he wrote: God is Grace. But the words seemed to form a happy union, innocent of disrespect or cheekiness. God is trumpets and bugles, he wrote. God is surrender. God is cellos.

  Made whole again by these annealing reflections, Peter raised a glass of brandy to his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. "They have heard the lion whimper," he said. "Now they shall hear him roar."

  "Que dice, senior-"

  "Nothing, Adela, nothing at all," he said to the maid who stood in the doorway. She went away frowning.

  Peter picked up the telephone and called the Pez Espada.

  "Pepe, this is Senor Churchman. Listen. Monsieur and Madame Morel. Is there any way you can get them out of their rooms for about half an hour?"

  "But of course, Peter. I shall tell them the suite needs to be fumigated."

  "Perfect. Will you do it right away?"

  "Of course, Peter." There was a pause. "Is that all?"

  "Yes. And thank you, Pepe."

  Peter fancied he heard a sigh as he replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  ***

  Morgan found Mr. Shahari in a bar on the beach. The Indian was tallying his scores. Stacks of cheques and bills covered the table.

  "Well, this is a break. Mind if I sit down?"

  "I'm busy, Mr. Morgan."

  "I wondered. Are you going up to Pamplona?"

  Morgan sank into a chair. The swell of his vast stomach caused the table to rise and tilt mysteriously, as it might have under the hands of a swami at a seance. "Watch it," he said.

  Mr. Shahari clutched at cheques and bills. "No, I am not going to Pamplona, Mr. Morgan."

  "Well, what if I have to change some money? There's a pound note behind your chair, I think."

  Mr. Shahari's voice came from beneath the table. "How much do you have to change?"

  "Well, right now, nothing. But next week I'll have quite a lot."

  Mr. Shahari's head rose in the air. Morgan's stomach swelled once more and drove the edge of the table against the Indian's gullet.

  "Damn, I'm sorry. Watch those cheques."

  "How much will you have to change?" Mr. Shahari said hoarsely.

  "They've just settled my father's estate. I get twenty thousand dollars next week."

  Mr. Shahari made it his business to know bits and pieces about his clients; even such a little fish as Morgan, whose father he knew to be an international lawyer of formidable reputation, and to be if last week's issue of Time could be trusted in excellent health.

  "I congratulate you, Mr. Morgan. Good-bye."

  "Then you're not going up to Pamplona?"

  "Most certainly not. Good-bye."

  Morgan confided his disappointment to Quince. "It's just that he doesn't trust me, you see. But he'
ll come all right. If someone he knows has money. That's what's so flawless about it. So perfect. A symbol of greed annihilated by greed. You've got to help me, Quince."

  "Take my word, Morgan. Killin' 'im will cause an awful bloody row. It will get around, you know."

  ***

  In dark slacks and a black shirt Peter drifted like a shadow to the side of the Pez Espada which faced the sea. In the parking lot on the other side of the hotel, car doors slammed and high-pitched laughter came floating through the night. Music rose and fell in tinkling loops.

  The first floor terrace was three feet above Peter's head. He crouched, measured the distance, sprang upward through the darkness.

  His hands caught the edge of the terrace. He secured his grip, chinned himself, swung up on top of the railing which rimmed the terrace.

  Balancing himself, Peter peered into a room in which a tall man with a cold face was practising putting.

  The man tapped a golf ball towards a mechanical gadget six feet away.

  The ball disappeared into a hole, popped out, and rolled back to him.

  Clever, Peter thought. The man sank nine putts in a row. The tenth hung on the rim of the hole. The man stamped on the floor. With a glance over his shoulder, he strolled to the gadget, his putter swinging casually. He tapped the ball in without looking at it. A woman appeared in the bedroom door.

  "Ten in a row, dear," he said.

  "Wonderful."

  Peter leaped up through the darkness. On the second floor an American couple played backgammon. On the third, an elderly woman in a bathrobe scolded a small dog. The room on the fourth floor was dark. God bless Pepe, Peter thought, as he swung lightly over the railing He let himself into Angela's suite and moved silently to the bedroom.

  From his hand a beam of light probed the darkness like a slender lance.

  It took him only a few minutes to check the closets, drawers, and luggage. He noticed a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. A hasp and combination lock secured its lid.

  Peter settled himself before the trunk, rubbed his hands together to warm them, then began delicately to manipulate the dial on the lock.

  The tumblers fell with no more sound than feathers on velvet, but to Peter's sensitive fingertips they were noisy as castanets.

  Smiling, he opened the lock, raised the lid of the trunk.

  Something cold touched his temple.

  "Get up," Francois said.

  Light flooded the room. Peter swivelled his eyes sideways and saw the muzzle of Francois's revolver inches from his head.

  "Peter, I'm becoming very cross with you," Angela said.

  Peter stood slowly, remembering Pepe's sigh and cursing himself for a bloody fool.

  Angela stood in the doorway to the living-room. She wore a short, ice-blue evening dress, and slippers with rhinestone heels. Under the shining cap of black hair, her face was white with anger.

  "You look smart, I must say," Peter said.

  "This is your last chance, Peter. Your very last."

  Francois wore a dinner jacket. Peter didn't like the fear and anger in his eyes, nor the way his knuckles had whitened on the butt of the gun.

  "Don't kill him, Francois," Angela said quietly.

  "Tell me why not? He's no good to us. We returned to our room, found a prowler, I shot him. Tell me why that isn't the intelligent thing to do! The only thing to do, as a matter of fact."

  "Peter, will you give me your word? No more tricks?"

  "I have no choice."

  "San Fermin starts a week today. Will you promise to go to Pamplona tomorrow and look things over?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you promise to do exactly what you agreed to yesterday?"

  "I promise."

  Francois looked at her angrily. "And you'll take his word?"

  "I should have thought of it before. He is very serious about promises. Aren't you, Peter?"

  "It all comes down to how one was brought up, I imagine."

  "Then I have your word. No more tricks."

  "You have my word."

  "This seems too simple," Francois said drily. The gun in his hand was still aimed at Peter's belt buckle. "He gives us a promise like a Boy Scout, and then everything is all right. Mr. Churchman, listen to me: Angela is after money, but I am fighting to save my life. There's a difference. I hope you understand it."

  There was a subtle change in the Frenchman's manner now, and Peter attempted to assay it with care and accuracy, for his instincts warned him of danger. The gun, that was it; the gun made the difference. It gave him weight and substance. Until this moment Peter had looked through Francois as he would a pane of glass. But now he fancied he saw something alive and sinister at work behind the greedy eyes, the pointlessly handsome features. The potential of the gun seemed to magnify Francois in an odd fashion; in this new dimension the very neutrality and ordinariness of his features became a fact of curious significance.

  Peter said: "I'm going to do all I can to save my friends, you can be sure of that. I've given you my word; I'll try my best. That's all I can promise you, now isn't it?"

  "Let me give you a promise in return," Francois said quietly. "If you don't get what we want, I'll kill you. Is that clear?"

  "Oh, yes. And I'll certainly keep it in mind. Goodnight, Angela."

  In the lobby Peter listened ruefully to Pepe. "They were suspicious when I told them it would be necessary to fumigate their rooms. They offered me money."

  Peter sighed. "And I didn't. It was stupid of me, Pepe. I forgot. I'm sorry."

  "That's all right, Senor Churchman."

  "It wasn't intentional, you realise. No hard feelings?"

  "Of course not. Such things shouldn't come between friends."

  "Good night, Pepe."

  "Good night, Senor Churchman."

  ***

  In a chair near the entrance to the hotel, a tall and formidably proportioned man in a black raincoat lowered his newspaper and watched Peter pass through the revolving doors. Then he popped a mint into his mouth and sucked on it. There was an odd lack of animation in his face and eyes; like a sluggish, heavy animal behind a fence, he seemed to regard the world without interest or curiosity. He might have been thirty or forty; his blond hair was clipped short, and his eyes were clear and patient under a pattern of scars that were drawn on his forehead as precisely as the lines in a tick-tack-toe game. When he stood, however, slapping the newspaper under his arm and stepping out towards the information desk, it was evident he had been trained to handle his big body with economy and precision. At the counter, he smiled at Pepe, and said in careful, unaccented English: "The man you were speaking with a moment ago can you tell me something about him?"

  He analysed Pepe's expression and drew out a wallet.

  Peter went home and drank four large brandies before going to bed. As sleep began to circle him like a vast but silent typhoon, he wondered drowsily if the film had really and truly been hidden in Angela's steamer trunk. It made very little difference one way or the other now, but he disliked not knowing; it nagged at him. Ask Angela? No.

  No good. Go back and take another look? No. There was his promise… No more tricks. "God help me," he murmured despairingly and fell asleep.

  Peter tried valiantly the following morning. He rose, showered, brushed his teeth, thought calmly of what lay ahead of him, and then went wearily back to bed.

  Much later came soft footsteps, an aroma of coffee.

  "Take it away, Adela. Please."

  "It's not Adela, it's me," Grace said. "May I open the curtains?"

  "Good God, no."

  "What's the matter, Peter? Why are you avoiding me?"

  The bed sank slightly with her weight. Waves of sluggish liquids sloshed about in Peter's head.

  "It has nothing to do with you, darling."

  "It's cruel of you not to tell me what's wrong."

  He turned his head. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back hollowed out as if she were on a show horse. Sh
e wore a white dress and her shoulders were bare. In the gloom she towered above him like a lovely iceberg floating serenely on dark polar seas.

  "I'm desperate," he said.

  "I feel so helpless. Do you want to go to bed with me?"

  "No darling." This was a first, he realised with a touch of panic. He felt his head. "Have I gone bald, by any chance?"

  "Of course not, you silly man. What ever gave you that idea? Anyway, if you comb it sideways, no one would notice such a little spot. Not for years."

  God, he thought. The bad things were happening at last. He saw himself locked in a prison cell, impotent, bald as an egg.

  "Please tell me why you're acting so strangely. I can't bear to see you like this."

  Peter looked into her splendid loving eyes, luminous now with unshed tears, and came to a decision: He told her everything.

  "What a horrid little bitch this Angela must be! Would she really throw your old friends to the wolves?"

  "She most certainly would!"

  "Peter, you aren't pulling my leg, are you "Damn it, of course not!"

  "Seriously. You went about Europe breaking into banks, stealing all kinds of money?"

  "In England too."

  "But why? And please don't say because they were there. You must have had a good reason."

  "Of course. I wanted the money."

  "Peter, you're teasing me. I'm really curious He managed to sip some coffee. Since he had gone this far, there seemed no point in not making a clean breast of things.

  "All right. I've never told anyone before. And I'd appreciate it if you'd keep all this to yourself. It makes me appear an even greater fool than I actually am." He sighed. "During the war I bombed a cathedral by mistake. It was at night so I didn't kill anybody. But I felt terrible about it. I couldn't get over it. Such staggering carelessness. It preyed on my mind. Imagine how you'd feel if you ran through a red light and killed Albert Schweitzer! Or dropped a Sevres bowl and smashed it to bits! Well, I felt even worse."

  "Oh, darling, I do love you. I can imagine how you must have felt. But aren't you being too hard on yourself? It was wartime. You were flying a mission. You were over enemy territory."