“You want me to tell you what I know about Pedro Domingo,” Bosch said over our onion soup.
“Yes. I’m interested in him and his relatives. Professor Tappinger said his mother was a Blue Moon girl. That’s the Panamanian equivalent of a B-girl, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.” Bosch shifted his bulk in the chair and looked at me sideways across the table. “Before we go any further, why wasn’t Pedro’s murder reported in the papers?”
“It was. Didn’t Tappinger mention that he was using an alias?”
“Taps may have, I don’t remember. We both got excited, and we went round in circles for a while.” His gaze narrowed on my face. “What alias was he using?”
“Francis Martel.”
“That’s interesting.” Bosch didn’t tell me why. “I did see the report of that shooting. Wasn’t it supposed to be a gangster killing?”
“It was supposed to be.”
“You sound dubious.”
“I’m getting more and more that way.”
Bosch had stopped eating. He showed no further interest in his soup. When his minute steak arrived he cut it meticulously into small pieces which he failed to eat.
“I seem to be asking most of the questions,” he said. “I was interested in Pedro Domingo. He had a good mind, rather disordered but definitely brilliant. Also he had a lot of life.”
“It’s all run out now.”
“Why was he using an alias?”
“He stole a pile of money and didn’t want to be caught. Also he wanted to impress a girl who was hipped on French. He represented himself as a French aristocrat named Francis Martel. It sounds better than Pedro Domingo, especially in Southern California.”
“It’s almost authentic, too,” Bosch said quietly.
“Authentic?”
“At least as authentic as most genealogical claims. Pedro’s grandfather, his mother’s father, was named Martel. He may not have been an aristocrat, exactly, but he was an educated Parisian. He came over from France as a young engineer with La Compagnie Universelle.”
“I don’t know French, professor.”
“La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama is the name de Lesseps gave to his canal-building company—a big name for an enormous flop. It went broke somewhere before 1890, and Grandpère Martel lost his money. He decided to stay on in Panama. He was an amateur ornithologist, and the flora and fauna intrigued him.
“Eventually he went more or less native, and spent his declining years with a girl in one of the villages. Pedro said she was descended from the first Cimarrones, the escaped slaves who fought with Francis Drake against the Spaniards. He claimed to be a direct descendant of Drake through her—that would explain the name Francis—but I think this time he was spinning a pure genealogical fantasy. Pedro went in rather heavily for fantasy.”
“It’s dangerous,” I said, “when you start to act it out.”
“I suppose it is. Anyway, that village girl was Pedro’s maternal grandmother. His mother and Pedro both took the name Domingo from her.”
“Who was Pedro’s father?”
“He didn’t know. I gathered that his mother didn’t, either. She lived a disorganized life, to put it mildly. But she did keep alive the grandfather’s tradition, even long after the old man died.
“There’s a French tradition in Panama, anyway. Pedro’s mother taught him French along with Spanish. They read together out of Grandpère’s books. The old man had been fairly literate—his library ranged from La Fontaine and Descartes to Baudelaire—and Pedro got quite a decent education in French. You can understand why the language obsessed him. He was a slum boy, with Indian and slave blood in his veins as well as French. His Frenchness was his only distinction, his only hope of distinction.”
“How can you possibly know all this, professor?”
“I spent some time with the boy. I thought he had promise, perhaps very brilliant promise, and he was keen to talk with someone who knew France. I spent a year there on a traveling fellowship,” Bosch added in a depreciatory tone. “Also, in my advanced French composition courses I use a device—which incidentally I borrowed from Taps—the device of having my students write an essay, in French, explaining why they’re studying the language. Pedro came up with a stunning piece about his grandfather and la gloire—the glory of France. I gave him an A-plus on it, my first in several years. It’s the source of most of what I’ve been telling you.”
“I don’t know the language,” I said, “but I’d certainly like to see that document.”
“I gave it back to Pedro. He told me he sent it home to his mother.”
“What was her name, do you know?”
“Secundina Domingo. She must have been her mother’s second daughter.”
“Judging by her last name, she never married.”
“Apparently she didn’t. But there were men in her life,” Bosch said dryly. “One night I gave Pedro too much wine and he told me about the American sailors who used to come home with her. This was during the war, when he was still quite young. He and his mother had only the one room, and only one bed in the room. He had to wait on the landing when she had visitors. Sometimes he waited out there all night.
“He was devoted to his mother, and I think that experience pushed him a little over the edge. The night I’m talking about, when he got high on my vin ordinaire, he went into a wild oration about his country being the trampled crossroads of the world and he himself the essence of its mud, Caucasian, Indian, Negro. He seemed to identify himself with the Black Christ of Nombre de Dios, which is a famous Panamanian religious statue.”
“He had Messianic delusions?”
“If he had, I wouldn’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. I think Pedro really was a ruined poet, a symbolizing idealizing soul who inherited too many problems. I admit he had some pretty weird ideas, but even the weird ones made a kind of sense. Panama was more than a country to him, more than a geographical link between North and South America. He thought it represented a basic connection between the soul and the body, the head and the heart—and that the North Americans broke the connection.” He added: “And now we’ve killed him.”
“We?”
“We North Americans.”
He toyed with the dark meat congealing on his plate. I looked out toward the mountains. Above them a jet had cut a white wound in the sky.
I was getting a picture of Allan Bosch which I liked. He differed from an older type like Tappinger, who was so wrapped up in himself and his work that it made him a social eccentric. Bosch seemed genuinely concerned with his students. I said something to this effect.
He shrugged off his pleasure in the compliment. “I’m a teacher. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.” After a pause, which was filled with the interwoven noise of the students around us, he said: “I took it hard when Pedro had to leave here. He was just about the most interesting student I ever had, here or at Illinois. I’ve only taught the two places.”
“Your friend Tappinger says the Justice Department was after him.”
“Yes. Pedro entered the country illegally. He had to leave Long Beach and then he had to leave here, one jump ahead of the Immigration men. As a matter of fact, I tipped him that they were making inquiries about him. I’m not ashamed of it, either,” he said with a half-smile.
“I won’t turn you in, Dr. Bosch.”
His smile became wry and defensive. “I’m afraid I’m not a Ph.D. I failed my comprehensives at Illinois. I could have tried them again, I suppose, but there wasn’t much point in it.”
“Why not?”
“Taps had already left. I was one of his special protégés, and I inherited a certain amount of ill will. What happened to him did nothing for my morale, either. I thought if it could happen to one of the most promising scholars in my field, it could happen to anybody.”
“What happened to him at Illinois?”
Bosch went into a tight-lipped silence. I waited, and changed my angle of approach:
“Is he still a leading scholar in your field?”
“He would be if he had a decent chance. But he gets no time for his work, and it’s driving him crazy. When the grants are handed out, they pass him over. He can’t even get a promotion in a bush league school like Montevista.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t like the way he combs his hair, I guess.”
“Or the way his wife combs hers?”
“I suppose she has something to do with it. But frankly I’m not interested in retailing faculty gossip. We were supposed to be talking about Pedro Domingo, alias Cervantes. If you have any more questions about him, I’ll be glad to oblige. Otherwise—”
“Where did he get the name Cervantes?”
“I suggested it the night he left. He always struck me as a quixotic type.”
I thought, but did not say, that the word applied more exactly to Bosch himself. “And did you send him to study under Tappinger?”
“No. I may have mentioned Taps to him at one time or another. But Pedro went to Montevista on account of a girl. She was a freshman, apparently quite gifted in languages—”
“Who said so?”
“Taps said so himself, and as a matter of fact I talked to her, too. He brought her up for our spring arts festival. We were putting on Sartre’s No Exit, and she’d never seen a contemporary play in French before. Pedro was there, and he fell in love with her literally on sight.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me. In fact he showed me some sonnets he wrote about her and her ideal beauty. She was a lovely thing, one of those pure pale blondes, and very young, no more than sixteen or seventeen.”
“She isn’t so young and she isn’t so pure, but she’s still a lovely thing.”
He dropped his fork with a noise which merged with the continuous clatter of the room. “Don’t tell me you know her.”
“She’s Pedro’s widow. They were married last Saturday.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If I told you all about it, it would only make you feel worse. He made up his mind to marry her seven years ago—perhaps the night he saw her here at the play. Do you know if he made any approach to her that night, or afterwards?”
Bosch considered the question. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t. Morally certain, in fact. It was one of those secret passions the Latins seem to go in for.”
“Like Dante and Beatrice.”
He looked at me in some surprise. “You’ve read Dante, have you?”
“I’ve read at him. But I have to admit I was quoting another witness. She said Pedro followed the girl with his eyes the way Dante followed Beatrice.”
“Who on earth said that?”
“Bess Tappinger. Do you know her?”
“Naturally I know her. You might say she’s an authority on Dante and Beatrice.”
“Really?”
“I don’t mean that quite seriously, Mr. Archer. But Bess and Taps played comparable roles in their time: the intellectual and the girl ideal. They had a very beautiful Platonic thing going before they had—before real life caught up with them.”
“Could you be a little clearer? I’m interested in the woman.”
“In Bess?”
“In both of the Tappingers. What do you mean when you say real life caught up with them?”
He studied my face, as if to read my intentions. “There’s no harm in telling you, I suppose. Practically everybody in the Modern Language Association knows the story. Bess was a sophomore studying French at Illinois and Taps was the rising young man in the department. The two of them had this Platonic thing going. They were like Adam and Eve before the Fall. Or Héloïse and Abélard. That may sound like romantic exaggeration, but it isn’t. I was there.
“Then real life reared its ugly head, as I said. Bess got pregnant. Taps married her, of course, but the thing was messily handled. The Illinois campus was quite puritanical in those days. What made it worse, the Assistant Dean of Women had a crush on Taps herself, and she really hounded him. So did Bess’s parents; they were a couple of bourgeois types from Oak Park. The upshot of it was, the administration fired him for moral turpitude and sent him off to the boondocks.”
“And he’s been there ever since?”
Bosch nodded. “Twelve years. It’s a long time to go on paying for a minor mistake, which incidentally is a very common one. Teachers are marrying their students all the time, with or without shotgun accompaniment. Taps got a very raw deal, in my opinion, and it just about ruined his life. But we’re wandering far afield, Mr. Archer.” The young man glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s half-past one, and I have an appointment with a student.”
“Cancel it and come along with me. I have a more interesting appointment.”
“Oh? With whom?”
“Pedro’s mother.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I almost wish I were. She flew here from Panama this morning, and she’s staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I may need a translator. How about it?”
“Sure. We’d better go in two cars so you won’t have to drive me back.”
chapter 32
BOSCH AND I MET at the desk of the hotel. I was a few minutes late for my appointment, and the clerk told us to go right up.
The woman who let us into the sitting room of the suite was fifty or so, still handsome in spite of her gold teeth and the craterlike circles under her eyes. She was dressed entirely in black. A trace of musky perfume hung around her like the smell of fire, giving her an aura of burnt-out sex.
“Señora Rosales?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the private detective Lew Archer. My Spanish is not too good. I hope you speak English.”
“Yes. I speak English.” She looked up inquiringly at the young man beside me.
“This is Professor Bosch,” I said. “He was a friend of your son’s.”
In an unexpected gesture of emotion, more hungry than hospitable, she gave us each a hand and drew us across the room to sit on either side of her. Her hands were those of a working woman, rough and etched with ineradicable grime. Her English was good but stiff, as if it had been worked over.
“Pedro has told me about you, Professor Bosch. You were very kind to him, and I am grateful.”
“He was the best student I ever had. I’m sorry about his death.”
“Yes, it is a great loss. He would have been one of our great men.” She turned to me. “When will they release his body for burial?”
“Within a day or two. Your consul will arrange to ship it home. You really needn’t have come here.”
“So my husband said. He said I should stay out of this country, that you would arrest me and take away my money. But how can you do that? I am a Panamanian citizen, and so was my son. The money Pedro gave me belongs to me.” She spoke with a kind of questioning defiance.
“To you and your husband.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Have you been married long?”
“Two months. A little longer than two months. Pedro was content with my marriage. He gave us as a wedding gift a villa in La Cresta. Pedro and Señor Rosales, my husband, were good friends.”
She seemed to be trying to justify her marriage, as if she suspected a connection between it and her son’s death. I had no doubt it was a marriage of convenience. When the vice-president of a bank in any country marries a middle-aged woman of uncertain background, there has to be a sound business reason.
“Were they business associates?”
“Pedro and Señor Rosales?” She put on a stupid mask and lifted her hands and shoulders in a shrug that half-resembled a bargaining gesture. “I know nothing of business. It is all the more remarkable that my son was so successful in business, n’est-ce pas? He understood the workings of the Bourse—you call it Wall Street, do you not? He saved his money and invested cleverly,” she said in a kind of rhythmical self-hypnosis.
She must have suspected the
truth, though, because she added: “It isn’t true, is it, that Pedro was killed by gangsters?”
“I don’t know whether it’s true or not, señora. The killer hasn’t been run down.”
Bosch put in: “You said you doubted that it was a gangster shooting.”
The woman took comfort from this. “Of course, my son had nothing to do with gangsters. He was a fine man, a great man. If he had lived, he would have become our foreign minister, perhaps our president.”
She was spinning a web of fantasy to veil any possible truth that might emerge. I didn’t feel like arguing with her grief, but I said:
“Did you know Leo Spillman?”
“Who?”
“Leo Spillman.”
“No. Who is Leo Spillman?”
“A Las Vegas gambler. Your son was an associate of his. Didn’t he ever mention Spillman to you?”
She shook her head. I could see no indication that she was lying. But there were sorrowful depths in her black eyes, depths below depths, like strata of history older than the Incas.
“You believe that Leo Spillman killed my son, is that it?”
“I thought so until yesterday. Pedro embezzled a lot of money from Spillman.”
“Embezzled?” She appealed to Bosch. “¿Que está diciendo?”
He answered her reluctantly: “Mr. Archer thinks your son stole some money from Mr. Spillman. I don’t know anything about it.”
Her breath hissed through her gold teeth: “Está diciendo mentiras. Pedro hizo su fortuna en Wall Street.”
“She says you’re a liar,” Bosch told me with polite pleasure.
“Thanks, I got the message.” I said to her: “I’m not bringing up these matters for fun, señora. If we want to find out what happened to your son, we have to go into the question of his money. I think he was killed for his money.”
“By his new wife?” she said on a rising note.
“That’s a good question. The answer has to be no, but I’m interested in your reasons for asking it.”
“I know women, and I know my son. He was capable of a grand—a great love. Such men are always deluded by their women.”
“Do you know that Pedro was?”
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