Death on the Patagonian Express

by Hy Conrad

  Watching the mismatched pair tango away, Amy prayed that if this wound up on the blog, she could at least persuade Fanny to let her dub in the audio. The last thing they needed was for their unseen Trippy to sound like a giggling New York matron. Amy sipped her brown concoction and winced at the strongly bitter taste. Licorice? It certainly wasn’t Campari. She reminded herself that the Spanish for “Campari and soda” would be Campari y soda. How hard could that be? Next time.

  The old church floor was being polished nicely by dozens of pairs of shuffling feet traveling in straight lines, then twirling at seemingly random moments. All ages and types participated in the polishing, young and old, fathers and daughters, well-dressed couples in suits and gowns, and workmen who looked like they’d just gotten off their shifts. As with most bands that utilized an accordion, this one instrument dominated the sound, but it wasn’t unpleasant, Amy found. Quite hypnotic. Plumes of cigarette smoke wafted up from the tables toward the mirror ball, and starry beams of defused light spun slowly through the cavernous room.

  Visually she followed the beams, basking in the expanding warmth of the licorice and the friendly but foreign surroundings. Every now and then a beam would linger on a short woman with reddish hair decorated with a large rose. For someone who hadn’t danced in years and probably hadn’t ever tangoed, Fanny was doing well. Perhaps the tall gentleman, unlike her father, was used to taking a firm lead.

  Amy traced several more lingering beams into an alcove, a space that had once been an apse, one of the short arms of the chapel. A flash of mirrored light illuminated a face just for a moment. But it was the man’s hair that caught her eye, black and wavy and streaked with silver. She had met him only that once, during the breakfast ambush in her mother’s kitchen. But his photos were all over the promotional materials, plus the Web site, plus the puff piece last week in Online Traveler, highlighting his family’s story of resilience and hope for financial redemption.

  Without thinking too much, Amy lifted her glass of licorice-tainted rum, took one more swig, and began to weave her way around the edges of the floor toward the alcove. She felt badly about having been so hesitant to accept his generous offer and not having taken the time to see him again during his stay in New York. This would be a chance to remedy that, she thought.

  “Senor O’Bannion. Hi. I can’t tell you how much we’re looking forward to . . .”

  Jorge O’Bannion sprang to his feet and greeted her with a warm, toothy smile and his usual courtly bow. “TrippyGirl. Just this moment, I saw your mother dancing. I must be hallucinating, I told myself. Why would two sophisticated New Yorkers be in a humble dance hall? I hope Pablo didn’t send you. I’m going to have to have a talk with that boy.”

  Amy was familiar with this kind of faux modesty. What it usually meant was, “There are private places we like to keep off-limits from gawking tourists. But, oh well, what can you do?” “No, we found it on our own,” she lied. “Happy accident. What a wonderful place.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” came a voice from behind them. Amy moved out of the way just in time. In some unfathomable way, Fanny and her partner had tangoed themselves through the tables of the alcove. “Jorge, hello.” The face under the oversize rose smiled broadly. “Smile. Smile and wave.” But before Jorge could react, Fanny’s tall, accomplished partner was sweeping her into an abrupt turn. “Gotta go.” And just like that, they were weaving back through the tables to the dance floor.

  Jorge looked puzzled. “What was on your mother’s head?”

  “Just a rose,” said Amy. “We’re so looking forward to tomorrow.”

  “I am, also.”

  Jorge turned to the other person at his table, a figure half hidden in the shadows. The woman rose regally and extended her hand. Amy didn’t know whether to shake it or kiss the woman’s large, square-cut emerald ring. She settled on a light shake. The woman said something softly in Spanish. Jorge did both sides of the translation.

  “Lola Pisano, Miss Amy Abel. Senora Pisano is my partner in the New Patagonian Express. Her late husband was a school chum who many years ago traded his land holdings for more profitable things. But Lola shares my passion. It is her dream, too.” And here Jorge switched into Spanish, reiterating, in Amy’s best guess, what he’d just said, plus giving some indication that Amy was important and Lola should make an effort to be pleasant.

  Lola Pisano was a hard-looking woman. Thin, with a face that seemed all angles, like a Picasso portrait. She attempted to soften her look with a helmet of ash-blond curls. Although probably no older than Jorge, she utilized several ounces of make-up, evident even in this light, which, Amy thought, served only to age her more. One side of her head she kept subtly averted from Amy’s gaze. When Senora Pisano half stood and leaned up to speak again, Amy could make out the contours of a dark mole just below the woman’s left cheekbone. It was just large and protruding enough and in the right/wrong place to be considered disfiguring. This sight—and her own curiosity—embarrassed Amy enough to make her look down and take one more sip of her bitter rum.

  Whatever Lola said, it was accompanied by a scowl and a beady stare. Instantly, Jorge was back in his English mode, moving a step in Amy’s direction, upping the charm as if to compensate for whatever she had not understood. The Abels were such adventurous travelers! He had been so right to invite them on the tour! And the tango? He had no idea Fanny was such a good dancer. Just look at her out there!

  “Jorge, mi corazón.” Senora Pisano was on her feet, arranging a green patterned shawl across her bony shoulders. Again, the black mole was visible, and Amy took another bitter sip in an almost Pavlovian response. Lola’s next few phrases were quick and unintelligible, but the annoyance in her tone was clear.

  “Excuse me, dear Amy,” said Jorge, looking well chastened. “I look forward to tomorrow. The start of our adventure, yes?” He kissed her hand, and they both heard a jealous intake of breath coming from somewhere near the mole. Before Amy could say a proper good-bye, Lola had dragged her escort out of the shadowy apse and onto the dance floor.

  It was after 2:00 a.m. when the Abels returned to the hotel, barely past midnight in New York. Amy had a policy of not video chatting while buzzed. But it was only a light buzz, she thought, and Marcus rarely got to bed before midnight, and she knew he would want to say good night. And, most important, she needed to hear his soothing voice and see his face.

  She turned on her phone, ran a brush through her hair, and straightened the neckline of her liquor-stained Liz Claiborne. Then she arranged herself on one of the queen beds and touched the phone’s Skype icon. Twenty seconds later, Marcus’s face was on the screen, his sleepy eyes focusing beyond his aquiline nose with that adorable little bump on its bridge.

  “Oh, no. Did I wake you?” She made it sound like a shock.

  “No, no.” Marcus was at the laptop on the little desk in his bedroom. “Just turning in. Is everything all right?” He was bare-chested, and since he always slept in the nude, Amy wondered if the rest of him might be bare, as well.

  “Everything’s fine. I have a few minutes before Fanny walks in. She’s downstairs, at the bar, pointing her rose at any man who’ll pay attention.”

  “Pointing her rose? Is that a euphemism?”

  “What? Ew, no. Don’t be gross.”

  “Okay . . .” Marcus scrunched his brow in concentration. A second later he laughed. “She put the camera in a fake flower? Where? In her hairdo? That’s funny.”

  Amy sighed. “It scares me that I never have to explain my mother’s behavior to you.”

  “Some women would find that endearing.”

  “You’re right. It’s endearing.”

  “Not very convincing.”

  “How’s the office?”

  “The office is fine. Tell me about your day.”

  Amy went on to tell him about the coffin-like business class, the tourist sights, the disturbing mural, and their tango hall encounter with Jorge and his financial angel. It felt good to
review the details of her weird, exhausting day. It helped normalize it. “Oh, did you call the real estate agent? Sara’s friend?”

  “Yes.” The speed and certainty of Marcus’s reply gave Amy a feeling, 60 percent maybe, that he was telling the truth. Give or take 10 percent.

  “Good. I know some brokers don’t like dealing in rentals.”

  “Well, this guy specializes in them. I told him Village or the East Village. A one bedroom in a prewar or a brownstone. He’s not optimistic. He says we’d have more luck on the Upper West Side, above Ninety-Sixth. He also has some listings in Queens. A lot more space.”

  “Queens?” The notion of moving out of the Barrow Street house suddenly seemed extreme. It was one thing to move a few blocks away from her mother and all her childhood haunts. But across the river? In Queens? “Isn’t that a little far from the office?”

  “There’s also Hoboken,” said Marcus. “Just across the Hudson.”

  “Really? Is this guy licensed in New Jersey?” Meaning the real estate agent. “He can’t show us stuff there unless he’s licensed.”

  “I don’t know. He mentioned New Jersey.”

  The odds of Marcus telling the truth about contacting the agent had just gone down from 60 percent to around 40. But it still gave Amy something to think about. It was tough, tough and annoying, to be priced out of your own neighborhood. And how badly did she really want to move?

  “Well, keep looking,” she said, which she hoped would translate into “Start looking.” “If you find anything promising, send me the link. I don’t know how much Internet access I’ll have, but I’ll try my best.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A my loved train stations. She was too young to have seen the magnificence of New York’s old Penn Station, except in photographs, but Grand Central had always been her ideal, a cathedral of travel, with thousands of people traipsing its marble floors, some rushing home, some starting out on trips across the continent or around the world—saying sentimental good-byes or escaping or commuting while half awake. Lives that crisscrossed in a pattern unchanged for a hundred years.

  Constitución Station was also part of that tradition, with a beaux art canyon of vaulted ceilings, skylights, and creamy monumental pillars at every corner. According to Pablo’s running account of all things historical, the station had been built by the British, who at the time owned the Great Southern Railway. But the block-long building looked more French than English, and not at all like anything South American.

  Their instructions were to wait at the top of the stairs on the train level. The Abels had arrived early with Pablo, and Amy would have been content to stay in one place, to lean back against the railing with her paper cup of steaming espresso and do a little people watching. But Fanny wasn’t in the mood, and she wrangled Pablo into helping her roam the huge station and explore.

  Amy’s last words to Pablo before he was dragged away were said in a whisper. “Don’t let her buy cigarettes.”

  By the time she’d disposed of her coffee cup, other guests had gathered. Three well-dressed, impeccably groomed women clattered up the stairs together, chattering in animated Spanish. Amy hadn’t thought that her fellow travel professionals might be Spanish speakers, but it made sense. This was their territory. Meanwhile, Alicia Lindborn hovered at a nearby kiosk, trying on sunglasses. And the two men she’d noticed in the hotel’s breakfast room walked in together through one of the street-level doors. Amy’s heart sank.

  From the moment she’d seen them this morning at breakfast—or rather heard them—she’d recognized them as competitive travelers, those most annoying of creatures, professional or amateur, who spent half of every trip talking about how special all their previous trips had been. (“I’m glad we did Salalah before it became trendy.” Amy had no idea where Salalah even was. “The sunrise balloon ride is a cliché. But there’s a local who can take you up in his glider.” “We had to reserve a table exactly nine months in advance. But the food!”) And then, when they would reunite over drinks that evening, they would compete over who’d just had the best day. (“The sunset over the marsh changed my life.” “Yes, we wanted to do the sunset, but there was this legendary one-hundred-year-old guitarist performing his farewell concert in the medieval chapel. Transporting!”)

  Amy had been praying that these bores would not be among Jorge’s travel experts. But of course they were. The British offender was blond and neatly bearded, like a thirtysomething Brooklyn hipster. Thin and wiry, with at least one tattoo. It was a spider web circling his left elbow, and Amy made a mental note never to ask about it, since the story would probably involve a Hanoi bar, an exotic beverage, and a transvestite Buddhist monk. Right off, he seemed more pretentious that the other, but that might just have been his accent.

  His companion/competitor was shorter—five feet six inches?—and boxier, midforties, with a square face and close-cropped gray hair. He probably wasn’t overweight, not that much. But there was something about him, some lumbering aspect, that gave that impression. “My best meal in Buenos Aires was at a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint, believe it or not. Only the locals know it. I had to bribe a taxi driver to take—”

  The short, lumbering man halted in mid-sentence, which seemed unusual. An unwritten rule of the game was that you didn’t stop bragging until your opponent interrupted. “Well, if it isn’t TrippyGirl.” He splayed his arms with a limited range of motion and pointed himself in Amy’s direction. “Good to know you’re not totally imaginary.”

  “Not imaginary at all,” Amy answered. “At your service.” She suddenly had a good idea who this lumberer was. If he was the man she thought, then he might well object to the notion of Trippy being the half-fictional spawn of her mother’s imagination. “And you are?”

  “Todd Drucker. TD Travel.” He halted but kept his arms extended, as if embracing her shoulders from two feet away. “O’Bannion promised you’d be joining us. It’s the main reason I came.”

  His opponent stepped forward. “That and a free trip and the fact that traveling’s his job.” The man smiled warmly and extended his hand. “Edgar Wolowitz. London Times.”

  She shook it. “Amy Abel.”

  “Todd has informed me of your blog, Ms. Abel. I haven’t had the chance to read it, but I do confess to being quite jealous. Marvelous idea.” He certainly didn’t talk like a hipster.

  “Call me Amy. I didn’t realize Mr. Drucker was a fan.”

  She expected Mr. Drucker to respond with a modest-sounding “Please, we’re all fellow writers. Call me Todd,” but he didn’t. Instead . . . “Oh, I read TrippyGirl religiously, every episode, the same way I used to devour the Sunday comics as a child.”

  “Are you comparing my work to a comic strip?” Amy adjusted her Randy Jackson black frames and tried to maintain her smile.

  “Is that wrong?” said Drucker with a faux grimace and a shrug. “Sorry. I thought you would love comics. You know, bright colors, two-dimensional characters, outrageous situations. And no one for a minute believes that they’re real.”

  “My exploits are real.” Given the heat of the moment, it was a lie she had to tell.

  “Really?” Todd cocked his head. “Really? You don’t think that I know what the Jersey City PATH train looks like? I live in Jersey City.”

  “My camera was stolen in Russia. I didn’t have a good shot to illustrate the story.”

  “So you admit to posting a fake photo?”

  “I was illustrating my predicament. I know it’s not the kind of travel writing you do.”

  “She has a point,” said Edgar Wolowitz. Amy noticed his thin gold wedding band and somehow felt more at ease with this British version of a hipster. “Travel memoirs have more leeway,” he added. “Not everyone gets to write hard-hitting news pieces on the ten best hotel pools in the world.”

  “Perhaps.” If Todd Drucker was ruffled by this jibe, he didn’t let it show. “I do have to say I’m looking forward to witnessing your exploits. Should be exciting.�
� He touched a stubby finger to his chin. “Hmm, don’t tell me. A torrid affair with a gaucho and his lariat, followed by a murder on a Patagonian glacier.”

  “Just wait and see,” said Amy. And she was actually relieved when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fanny approaching from the arcade of little shops. “Oh, look. Here’s my mother.”

  “You brought your mother?” said Drucker, raising a single eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”

  Fanny was carrying an earthenware gourd, stirring the contents with a shiny metal straw, then taking a sip. “You must try this,” she ordered her daughter and thrust the steaming gourd up toward her nose. “Pablo says it’s better than coffee and cigarettes combined.”

  Pablo followed in Fanny’s wake, apologizing with a tiny wave of his hands. “It is our secret to health. One of my tourists said to me it is like a steroid green tea.”

  Amy had to think. “Green tea on steroids.” The gourd was stuffed with a greenish-brown mass of leaves and twigs.

  “Yes, exactly.” Pablo took a thermos from under his arm, popped the lid, and poured another few ounces of hot water through the gourd’s shrubbery. “You need to mash it to release the flavor.” He pulled out the straw and showed her. It was curved near the top, like a permanently fixed bendy straw. The bottom ended in a small bulbous sieve, which you used to mash up the herbs and then suck in the tea without drawing in too many of the twigs. Fanny did as she was told, then offered the gourd up again to Amy’s nose.

  “They do love their maté.” Todd Drucker managed to sound both bored and impatient. “It’s a type of South American holly, and they’ve built a whole culture around it. Rules, traditions, folklore. It’s a little bitter until you get used to it. You may want sugar.”

  “I prefer it straight,” said Fanny. “Come on.” The gourd remained under Amy’s nose, steaming up her Randy Jacksons, until she took it with both hands and sipped.