Vultures in the Sky

by Todd Downing

  He said to King: “I think that if I were in your place I should keep your information to myself for the present. We shall be in Saltillo in a few minutes and I shall consult the authorities there, have them wire back to San Antonio for particulars of the man who fainted on the platform.”

  He must have allowed more of his own apprehension to tinge his voice than he had intended, for King’s face grew grayer.

  “You think there is some connection between what happened at San Antonio and what happened on the Pullman then?” his voice was blurred.

  “I think,” Rennert leaned forward and discreetly lowered his voice, “that it is very probable that there is a connection, although there’s no certainty of it yet.” His eyes were very clear and penetrating as they studied King’s face. “About the death of this man in the tunnel. You were sitting across from him the entire time, were you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear him cry out or make any disturbance?”

  “No,” King shook his head slowly, “I didn’t. The train was making so much noise, though—”

  “Did you,” Rennert put careful emphasis upon the words, “see anyone approach his seat?”

  King lowered his eyes and regarded the silverware with drawn brows. “I hate to admit it,” he said at last, slowly, “but I’m not sure. When we got into the tunnel the dust and smoke choked me so that I had a severe coughing spell. I think, though, that someone was in the aisle between my seat and his for a moment or two.”

  “Did you get any idea of this person’s actions?”

  “No,” King ran his tongue over his lips again, “I didn’t. He just seemed to be standing there. I supposed it was the porter, he had just been through, lowering the windows. When we got out of the tunnel whoever it was had gone.”

  “It might have been the porter?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was wearing a white jacket, remember.”

  “Oh,” King stared down at the tablecloth, “that’s right. I don’t believe, then, that it was the porter. I think that I would have noticed the white jacket.”

  “Can you recall anything at all as to the size or height or dress of the person whom you saw?”

  “Nothing at all, I’m sorry to say. It was dark and I had my handkerchief up to my face most of the time. I may have been entirely mistaken.”

  Rennert was sure that King had not been mistaken, that someone had stood by the Mexican’s seat, had accomplished in some way his death while the car was plunged in darkness. He thought a moment.

  “And what have been the comments of the passengers in the Pullman since the conductor and I left?” he asked.

  “There was considerable excitement, of course. Everybody seemed to take it for granted that it was—well, a natural death. Mr. Searcey said that it was probably heart failure.”

  “Mr. Searcey?”

  “Yes, he’s the tall man in corduroy trousers. Seems to be a competent sort of fellow, not the kind to lose his head.”

  The train was slowing down at a station and Rennert glanced out the window at slate-gray dust and blank adobe walls and hot white sunlight.

  “Suppose,” he said, “that we go back into the Pullman now.”

  “All right.”

  They rose.

  King stood still in the aisle and asked hesitantly: “You’re going to question the passengers in the Pullman?”

  “Yes.”

  King stared at the doorway.

  “You won’t mention my name in connection with any of this, will you?”

  “You would prefer that I didn’t?” Rennert watched his face.

  He drew out his handkerchief and passed it over his forehead, where stood tiny beads of perspiration.

  “I’d really rather that you didn’t,” he said, his lips drawn into a sickly smile. “If there is any—well, any foul play—about this I might be in danger.”

  “I understand,” Rennert turned down the aisle. “I’ll do my best not to involve you in any danger.”

  A haze of smoke hung in the still air about the head of the woman in jade green. She had inserted another cigarette in the holder but otherwise might not have moved since they had passed her when coming into the diner.

  At the door Rennert paused.

  Upon the platform between the cars stood the conductor. His face was smooth moist clay worked to mask-like immobility. His eyes stared without expression at the sky. As Rennert watched the thick lenses moved almost imperceptibly round and round, in a regular orbit.

  As the door opened the man wheeled about suddenly, as if a galvanic shock had gone through his body. He closed his mouth and seemed to be rubbing his thick lips together with a curious rotary motion.

  Rennert stood aside and motioned King to precede him into the Pullman.

  When the door had closed he asked casually: “Was there a Pullman reservation made out of San Antonio last night which was not taken?” His eyes covertly studied the sky.

  The Mexican swallowed and nodded quickly. “Yes, señor. Number seven—lower berth—was reserved but the passenger did not come.”

  “Do you know when the Pullman ticket was purchased?”

  “Last night, I think, while the train was waiting in the station. Earlier, it had not been taken.”

  Above the flat roofs of the little town the sky was cloudless and blue, bright with a sheen of heat. Two ugly blotches moved in lazy downward spirals, round and round.

  Rennert watched them, his eyes narrowed against the glare.

  “Something worries you?” he asked quietly.

  “It is the zopilotes,” there was something incongruous about the hollow voice that emerged from the folds of fat about the Mexican’s throat. “I do not like them.”

  “God knows they’re common enough in Mexico!”

  “But today there are so many. All the morning the sky has not been clear of them. It is,” the voice echoed in a shell, “as if they were following this train.”

  Rennert’s laugh sounded harsh in his own ears. “There has been a drought in this section of the country, hasn’t there?”

  “Yes, señor. For many many weeks it does not rain.”

  “That explains the zopilotes then. Livestock and wild animals have died out on the desert, of thirst, and the vultures are waiting for more to die.”

  The conductor’s back was framed by the door. “Of course, señor, that explains them.” The door closed behind him with a soft swish.

  Rennert stood and felt the tremor of the train’s starting vibrate beneath his feet, watched the drab desert buildings slide by. They were humming in his ears again—those intangible wires that mesh the atmosphere of Mexico, dried to brittleness by the Mexican sun and charged with the electricity of the thin air that speeds the pulse-beat.

  He began to whistle “La Cucaracha,” defiantly, as he pushed open the door of the Pullman.

  “¡La cucaracha, la cucaracha

  Ya no puede caminar!

  ¡Porque le falta, porque no tiene

  Marihuana que fumar!”

  He walked down the passage past the smoker and the compartment.

  Spahr was propped in the doorway, an unlighted cigarette dangling from his lips and an alert expression on his long clean face. He glanced around as Rennert approached, straightened up and jerked the cigarette from his mouth.

  “Say,” he exclaimed eagerly, “what’s the dope on this man’s death? Just think, I was back in the diner drinking beer while something like this was happening right in the next car! What was it, heart failure? I can’t get anything out of that gargoyle over there,” with a nod of the head toward the porter, who sat, as if shriveled within his white jacket, on the seat opposite the sheet-draped figure.

  An expectant hush had fallen upon the car, rustled at the edges by the faint stir of bodily movements. Rennert pitched his voice to carry through its length.

  “Nothing can be learned about the cause of his death until the body is examined in Saltillo,” he said.
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br />   “It will be taken off there?” Spahr was standing with one foot braced against the arm of King’s chair and was studying Rennert’s face with quick eyes.

  “Yes,” Rennert’s gaze wandered past Spahr to the other occupants of the car.

  At the rear the woman in black taffeta sat as before, upright in her seat. She had laid aside her book and her head rested upon the back of the chair. She was gazing at them with an absent expression upon her placid face. Radcott stood in the center of the aisle, swaying back and forth with the motion of the car like an erect bear. His face was pink and warm and his mouth was partially open. Beside him the tall sunburned man whom King had named Searcey sat upon the arm of his seat, one leg extended along its length. One hand was still thrust into a pocket and the other lay like a chunk of dried meat upon the corduroy that covered his thigh. He regarded Rennert steadily from behind the colored glasses. The gray-haired man sat very still and looked at Rennert with eyes whose liquidness seemed suddenly filmed by thin ice. His lips were held very firmly pressed together and his breath came and went irregularly.

  “All of you are aware by now,” Rennert said, “that a man has died in this car. Did any of you know him?”

  No one spoke. Radcott made a slight negative motion of the head but the others did not move.

  “He’s probably got a passport on him,” Spahr suggested. “Why don’t we look for that and find out who he is?”

  “We shall have to let the authorities at Saltillo do that, Mr. Spahr. Mexican laws regarding the disturbance of corpses are exceedingly strict.”

  Spahr’s broad shoulders shrugged indifference.

  “Since there will be a certain amount of investigation by the authorities,” Rennert went on, “it has occurred to me that it would avoid delay and possible complications if we were all prepared to give them any information possible without delay.”

  “But what worry is it of ours,” Radcott blurted out, “if he’s a Mexican? I don’t see how it concerns us at all if a Mexican chooses a Mexican train to die in.”

  Rennert frowned. “It happens, Mr. Radcott, that we are in Mexico now and the death of a Mexican on a train or elsewhere is of considerable more importance than back in the United States”

  Radcott’s face flushed and he seemed about to reply, but restrained himself.

  The right side of Searcey’s mouth moved slightly as if he were beginning to smile. The hand upon the corduroy flattened itself a bit.

  “This man died while we were passing through the tunnel,” Rennert went on imperturbably. “Did any of you hear any outcry or any sound of a disturbance during the time we were in the tunnel?”

  Silence.

  “Did any of you see anyone approach his seat?”

  The train was going up a steep grade now and had slackened its speed. The silence seemed intensified, heavy with some of the engine’s labor.

  “I was back on the observation platform,” Radcott volunteered suddenly.

  “And I was in the diner,” from Spahr.

  Rennert, glancing sideways at him, caught a glimpse of King’s gray tight-lipped face behind the newspaperman. There was a frantic look of appeal in his eyes.

  “One person in this car approached him,” the voice of the grayhaired man at Rennert’s left sifted clearly across the train’s noises. He sat forward upon the edge of his seat and held himself braced, as it were, with his hands upon the knees of his black trousers. The blood had drained from his face, leaving the skin with an odd transparent look.

  “How do you know?” Rennert asked quietly.

  “While we were passing through the tunnel,” the man spoke slowly and with the same careful precision, “I was aware that someone was bending forward over the back of this seat in front of me. He was there for only a moment. I think that he went toward the rear of the car then.”

  “Did you hear any sound?”

  “I thought, yes, that I heard a slight choking sound but when we came out of the tunnel I saw that this gentleman,” the blue eyes rested on King’s face, “was coughing violently, so I supposed that the noise which I heard came from him.”

  “Did you,” Rennert asked evenly, “recognize this person?”

  As he put the question he saw the ice harden in the man’s eyes until they glittered in the light that struck them from the window. His hands pressed so tightly into the trousers that the knuckles stood out sharp and white like polished skulls across his skin.

  “No, I did not recognize him—but,” he squared his stooped shoulders, “I believe that I could identify him.”

  The silence that followed his words was punctuated by a sharp intake of breath from Spahr, at Rennert’s elbow.

  “How’s that?” came the eager question.

  The other looked at Spahr for an instant, then turned his head and let his eyes travel slowly about the car.

  “I am very, very sorry that it is necessary for me to speak,” he seemed to be addressing all of them, “but to conceal the truth is to lie. We humans try to salve our consciences by flimsy fictions that only mask our fear of meeting an issue face to face. One of you is concealing the fact that he leaned over this seat because he fears the consequences. It would have been much better if he had admitted it. I am but the agent—”

  “Yeah!” Spahr broke out impatiently, “but tell us how you could identify this person.”

  The man looked at him and smiled. The smile lent a strange attractiveness to his face.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “for having tried your patience with my words. When this person bent over the seat ahead my hand was resting upon the arm of this chair,” he moved his hand and laid it upon the wood in front of Rennert’s knee, “I felt very distinctly the material of his trousers. It was rough corduroy.”

  3

  The Mountains of Mexico (11:35 AM.)

  The train was nearing the top of the grade and its motion had slowed perceptibly. Ahead, the engine emitted regular puffs of travail and the shrill creaking of metal and wood tortured their ears in the stillness which had fallen upon the car.

  Searcey had risen very slowly from his seat upon the chair’s arm and had advanced unhurriedly and deliberately down the aisle. His face was as expressionless as a mask but a faint derisory smile played about the corners of his mouth, making the thin lips the only living part of his features. He still held his hands buried in the pockets of the corduroy trousers.

  “Would you mind repeating that?” he addressed the gray-haired man in an even voice that held a distinctly metallic undertone.

  The other looked back at him over the rear of the seat. “Certainly.” His smile was so nebulous that it seemed merely a shifting of the light-and-shadow effect upon his pale face. “I had hoped that you would speak out and save me the pain of doing so. As you did not—”

  “Go ahead,” the metal cut through the softness of Searcey’s voice. “Cut the preliminaries!”

  The other made a slight deprecatory gesture with his hands. “I was about to repeat that, as we were passing through the tunnel, someone approached the seat in front of me and bent over it. My left hand was lying upon the arm of my chair and this person’s clothing brushed against it. The clothing was of rough corduroy.”

  Searcey’s lips curled, twisting painfully the flesh of his flat cheeks. “And exactly what is it that you accuse me of, may I ask?” “Of nothing at all, my friend, except of having come to this man’s seat and of having failed to admit the fact.”

  Searcey’s mouth looked cruelly feral as he said: “Stay off the pipe, fellow, stay off the pipe! It always gives you dreams like that.”

  The dead surfaces of his glasses traveled about the circle of faces and came to rest upon Rennert’s. His lips relaxed a bit.

  “See here,” he said with a visible effort at pleasantness, “it strikes me that we’re getting all excited about nothing here. You seem to have been getting the lowdown on this business. Suppose you tell us what it’s all about.”

  Rennert shrugg
ed. “Really, there’s not much to tell. The man is dead, with no apparent trace of a wound. Exactly what caused his death cannot be known until we reach Saltillo.”

  “No trace of a wound?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no reason, then, to suspect that he died anything except a natural death?”

  “No,” Rennert’s gaze glanced against the opaque glass that shielded the other’s eyes. “I merely suggested that we be prepared to give our statements to the authorities at Saltillo in case they require them.”

  “Well,” Searcey took his hands from his pockets and leaned against the back of a seat, “in that case, suppose we all get acquainted and cut out the dramatics. This looks like a pretty respectable bunch of travelers to me. Since this gentleman,” he nodded with exaggerated politeness across the car, “has been so thoughtful as to drag me into it, I’ll be the first to introduce myself. My name is Searcey, William Searcey, from Forth Worth, Texas. I never saw the man who died before last night, in the smoker. I know nothing at all about him. I didn’t leave my seat while we were in the tunnel.” His laugh was mirthless. “Is there anyone else here who thinks he felt my corduroys?”

  The glasses traveled slowly about the circle, the muscles about them contracting into a squint.

  “Very well,” he shrugged his loose shoulders, “I guess that finishes me.”

  A rather uneasy silence followed.

  Rennert broke it: “Since Mr. Searcey has started the introductions, I’ll continue. My name is Rennert, from New York among other places. I was back in the smoker while we were passing through the tunnel. I returned to this car after Mr. King here had noticed that this man was lying in a peculiar position upon his seat and had called me. I touched him and found that he was dead. I called the conductor immediately.”