Juanita’s face immediately assumed the peculiarly bland expression that indicated she was interested. “What’d you say to her?”
“That I’d keep an eye out for you, and if you showed up, I’d tell you to call her back. So now I’m telling you.”
“Thanks,” Juanita said without moving.
“You gonna do it?”
“So she can go blabbing to my old lady? What do you think I am, like stupid?”
“You better call her,” the bartender said stubbornly. “She’s at the Velada.”
“So she’s at the Velada. And I’m here, at—what’s the name of this dump?”
“El Paraiso.”
“The Paradise. Hey, Foster, ain’t that a laugh? You and me are strangers in paradise.”
The bartender turned to Fielding. One of his eyelids was twitching in unexpressed irritation. “If you’re a friend of hers, you better persuade her to talk to Mrs. Brewster. There’ve been a couple of men looking for her at the Velada. One of them was a private detective.”
A detective, Fielding thought. So Pinata was in this, too.
He wasn’t exactly surprised. He’d been half expecting it ever since Daisy’s letter was delivered to him at the warehouse. There was no other way for her to have found out where he was working except through Pinata. Obviously, if Pinata was looking for Juanita, that was what Daisy had hired him to do. But how did Camilla come into it? As far as Fielding knew, the name hadn’t been mentioned in Daisy’s presence; she was unaware such a man had ever existed.
He realized suddenly that both Juanita and the bartender were staring at him as if they were waiting for an answer. He hadn’t heard any question.
“Well,” the bartender said.
“Well, what?”
“You know any private detective around town?”
“No.”
“That’s funny, because he was looking for you, too.”
“Why me? I haven’t done anything.”
Juanita protested shrilly that she hadn’t done anything, either, but neither of the men paid any attention.
Fielding was squinting up at the bartender as if he found it difficult to focus his eyes. “You said two men came to the Velada. Who was the other one?”
“Search me.”
“A cop?”
“Mrs. Brewster would have mentioned it if he’d been a cop. All she told me, he was a big man with blond hair and he acted funny. Jumpy, like. You know anybody like that?”
“Sure, lots of them.” One in particular, Fielding thought. He warn’t jumpy the last time I saw him, in Chicago, but now he has reason to be. “Some of my best friends are jumpy.”
“Yeah, I bet.” The bartender glanced briefly at Juanita. “I gotta get back to work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
When he had gone, Juanita leaned across the table and said confidentially, “I think Mrs. Brewster was making it all up so I’ll get scared and go home. I don’t believe there’s any detective looking for me, or any big blond man, either. Why would they want to see me for?”
“Maybe they have some questions.”
“What about?”
He hesitated a minute. He wanted to help the girl because in a disturbing way she reminded him of Daisy. It was as if some perverse fate had singled them both out to be victims, Daisy and Juanita, who had never met and perhaps never would, although they had so much in common. He felt sorry for them. But Fielding’s pity, like his love and even his hate, was a variable thing, subject to changes in the weather, melting in the summer, freezing in the winter, blowing away in a high wind. Only by a miracle did it survive at all.
Proof of its survival was in the single monosyllable he spoke now. “Paul.”
“Paul who?”
“Your son.”
“Why would they ask questions about him? He’s too young to be in any trouble. He’s not even four. All he can do is maybe break windows or steal a little.”
“Don’t be naive, girl.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Innocent.”
Juanita’s eyes widened in outrage. “I’m not innocent. I may be dumb, but I’m not innocent.”
“All right, all right, skip it.”
“I’m not going to skip it. I want to know how come two men are so interested in my kids all of a sudden.”
“Not the others, just Paul.”
“Why?”
“I think they’re trying to find out who his father is.”
“Well, of all the goddamn nerve,” Juanita said. “What business is it of theirs?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, either, but it so happens I was married at the time. I had a husband.”
“What was his name?”
“Pedro Garcia.”
“And that’s who Paul’s father is?”
Juanita picked up one of the snakeskin shoes, and Fielding thought for a moment that she was going to hit him with it. Instead, she began pushing it on her left foot. “By God, I don’t have to sit here and be insulted by no lousy imitation district attorney.”
“I’m sorry, I have to ask these questions. I’m trying to help you, but I’ve got my own hide to save, too. What happened to Garcia?”
“I divorced him.”
Fielding knew that at least this part of her story was a deliberate lie. After he’d left Pinata’s office the previous Monday, he’d gone to City Hall to check the records. It was Garcia who’d brought the divorce suit; Juanita had not contested it or asked for alimony or child support, a curious omission if the child was actually Garcia’s. It occurred to Fielding now, not for the first time, that perhaps Juanita herself didn’t know who the boy’s father was and didn’t care much, either. He might have been someone she picked up in a bar or on the street, or a sailor from a ship visiting the harbor or an airman down from Vandenberg. Juanita’s pregnancies were inclined to be casual. One thing was certain: the little boy Paul bore no resemblance to Jim Harker.
Juanita finished squeezing her feet into the shoes and tucked her purse under her arm. She seemed ready to leave, but she made no move to do so. “What do you mean, you got your own hide to save?”
“The detective’s looking for me, too.”
“That’s funny when you come to think of it. Someone must’ve told him we were together.”
“Mrs. Brewster maybe.”
“No.” Her tone was positive. “She wouldn’t give a detective the time of day.”
“No one else knows except her and your mother.”
“By God, that’s it. That’s who told him, my old lady.”
“But first someone else must have given him your address,” Fielding said. “Maybe the busboy or one of the waitresses.”
“They don’t know my address. I never tell people like that nothing personal about myself.”
“He found out from somewhere.”
“All right, so he found out from somewhere. What do I care? I haven’t committed any crime. Why should I run away?”
“It’s possible,” Fielding said carefully, “that you’re a part of something you’re not fully aware of.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t explain it to you.” He couldn’t explain it to himself, either, because there were gaps in his knowledge that must be filled in. Once they were filled in, his duty would be done and he could be on his away again. The important thing now was to get rid of the girl. She was too conspicuous, and he had to travel light and fast and, if he was unlucky, far.
Luck. Fielding believed in it as some men believed in God, country, or mother. To luck he credited his triumphs; on lack of it he blamed his misfortunes. Several times a day he rubbed the tiny rabbit’s foot that dangled from h
is watch chain, always expecting miracles from the fragile inert scrap of bone and fur, but not complaining if a miracle failed to occur. It was this quality of fatalism that always baffled his second wife and enraged his first. He knew now, for example, that he was inviting disaster in the same way that he knew he was getting drunk. He accepted both as things over which he personally had no control. Whatever happened, how the dice rolled, the ball bounced, the cookie crumbled, would be a matter of luck or lack of it. His sense of responsibility was no greater than that of the severed paw he wore on his watch chain.
“Why can’t you explain things to me?” Juanita said.
“Because I can’t.”
“All this hinting around like I was going to be killed or something—well, it don’t scare me. Nobody’d want to kill me. Why, nobody even hates me except my old lady and sometimes Joe and maybe a few others.”
“I didn’t say you were going to be killed.”
“It sounded like that.”
“I just warned you to be careful.”
“How the hell can I be careful if I don’t know who of or what of?” She leaned across the table, studying him soberly and carefully. “You know what I think? I think you’re a crackpot.”
“That’s your considered opinion, eh?”
“It sure is.”
Fielding wasn’t offended. He was, in fact, quite pleased because once again luck had taken charge of his affairs. By calling him a crackpot the girl had relieved him of any sense of responsibility toward her. It made what he intended to do to her easier, even inevitable: She called me a crackpot, therefore it’s all right to steal her car.
The immediate problem was to get her away from the table for a few minutes and make sure she left her purse behind with the keys in it.
He said abruptly, “You’d better call Mrs. Brewster.”
“Why?”
“For your own sake—leaving me out of it entirely—you should find out everything you can about the two men who are looking for you.”
“I don’t want to talk to her. She’s always telling me what to do.”
“Well, in case you change your mind ...” He took a dime out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of her.
Juanita stared at the coin with a child’s petty avarice. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Let her do the talking.”
“Maybe it’s all lies about the two men. She wants me to get scared and go home.”
“I don’t think so. It strikes me she’s a pretty good friend of yours.”
It was the dime that clinched her decision. She slid it off the table with the casual ease of an experienced waitress. “Watch my purse, will you?”
“All right.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Sure.”
She teetered across the floor to the phone booth, which was jammed in a corner between the end of the bar and the door to the kitchen. Fielding waited, stroking his little rabbit’s foot with affection as one might stroke a living pet. Once again it was a matter of luck whether Juanita could remember Mrs. Brewster’s phone number or whether she would have to look it up in the directory. If she had to look it up, he would have thirty seconds or more to open the purse, search through all Juanita’s junk to find the keys, and reach the front door. If she dialed the number directly, he’d be forced to grab the purse and run, taking a chance on getting past the bartender and the half-dozen customers he was serving. The sentimental side of Fielding’s nature, always erratic after a few drinks and apt to disappear entirely after a few more, balked at the idea of stealing a woman’s purse. The car was a different matter. He’d stolen quite a few cars in his lifetime; he had also put the bite on a great many women. But he had never actually stolen a purse from any of them. Besides, there were the risks involved: the thing was too large to put in his pocket or hide under his coat. There seemed only one other alternative—to dump its contents out of sight on the seat beside him, pick out the car keys, and replace the purse on the table. The whole operation would require no more than four or five seconds. . . .
Juanita was dialing.
The purse lay within reach of his hand, a black plastic rectangle with a gold clasp and handle. The plastic was so shiny that Fielding could see in miniature the reflection of his own face. It looked curiously young and unlined and innocent, not the image that stared back at him in the mornings between flyspecks and dabs of toothpaste and other unidentified residues of life. This face in the plastic belonged to his youth, as the picture in Mrs. Rosario’s bedroom belonged to Camilla’s youth. Camilla, he thought, and the knife of pain that stabbed him between the ribs seemed as real as the navaja that had so senselessly killed his friend. We were both young together, Curly and I. It’s too late for him now, but there’s still a chance for me.
He wanted suddenly and desperately to take the purse, not for the money or for the car keys which were in it, but for that reflection of his own face, that innocence intact, that youth preserved in plastic and protected from the sins of time.
He glanced across at the phone booth. Juanita, scowling, was in the act of hanging up. He thought that his opportunity was lost, that she had reached the Velada and been told Mrs. Brewster had gone. Then he saw her pick up the directory chained to the wall, and he knew she must have received a busy signal and decided to recheck the phone number. Luck was giving him another chance.
His eyes returned to the purse, but this time his angle of vision was different and the image that stared back at him was like the images in a fun house. The forehead projected out to the right and the jaw to the left, and in between was a distorted nose and two malevolent slits of eyes. With a little cry of rage he grabbed the purse off the table and dumped its contents on the seat beside him. The car keys were on a small chain separate from Juanita’s other keys. He slid them into his pocket, stood up, and walked toward the front door. He didn’t hurry. The trick was to appear casual. It was the kind of thing he’d done a hundred times before, the friendly, final good-bye-see-you-later to the landlady or grocer or hotel clerk or liquor dealer whom he had no intention of paying or ever seeing again.
He smiled at the bartender as he passed. “Tell Juanita I’ll be back in a few minutes, will you?”
“You didn’t pay for the last round of drinks.”
“Oh, didn’t I? Terribly sorry.” It was a delay he hadn’t anticipated, but he kept the smile on his face as he fished around in his pocket for a dollar. The only sign of his anxiety was a brief, nervous glance in the direction of the phone booth. “Here you are.”
“Thanks,” the bartender said.
“Juanita’s talking to Mrs. Brewster. I thought I’d take a little walk to clear my head.”
“You do that.”
“See you later.”
As soon as Fielding was outside, he dropped the pretense of being casual. He hurried along the sidewalk, the cold brisk air slapping his face with a wintry hand.
At this point he had no clear or extensive plan of action. Impulsively and without thought of the consequences, he had rushed into the middle of something he only half understood. Getting the car and going to Daisy’s house—this was as far ahead as he could see. At Daisy’s house he would almost inevitably run into Ada, and the idea excited him. At this stage he was quite ready to meet her. Sober, he couldn’t have faced her; drunk, he would certainly pick a quarrel, perhaps a very violent one. But right now, somewhere in between, he felt able to deal with her, confront her without malice, expose her without cruelty. Right now he could teach her a few lessons in civilization, in manners: My dear Ada, it grieves me to bring this to your attention but in the interests of justice, I must insist you reveal the truth about your part in this devious little scheme. . . .
It didn’t even seem ironic to him that he should be planning remarks about truth an
d justice when, in fact, his whole life had been a marathon race, with truth a few jumps ahead of him and justice a few jumps behind. He had never caught up with the one, and the other had never caught up with him.
The car was at the end of the block, parked in front of a long frame building with a dimly lit sign announcing its function: billar. The sign, printed only in Spanish, made it clear that whites were not welcome. Although the place was jammed, the noise coming out of the open door was subdued, punctuated by the click of balls and score racks. A group of young Negroes and Mexicans were hanging around outside, one of them with a cue in his hand. He was using the cue like a drum major, raising it and lowering it in time to some rhythms he heard in his head or felt in his bones.
As Fielding approached, the boy pointed the cue at him and said, “Rat ta ta ta ta. Man, you’re dead.”
Sober, Fielding might have been a little intimidated by the group; drunk, he would certainly have made trouble. But in between, right now—”That’s pretty funny, kid. You ought to be on TV”—and he brushed past the boy with a grin and made his way to the car.
There were two keys on the ring he’d taken from Juanita’s purse—one for the luggage compartment, the other for the doors and ignition. He tried the wrong key on the door first. It was a bad start, made worse by the fact that the boys were watching him with sober interest, as if they knew perfectly well what he intended to do and were waiting to see how he did it and if he would get caught. Later—if there was a later—they would be able to give a good description of both him and the car. Or perhaps Juanita had already called the police, and they had a description on the radio right now. He had counted on her distrust of officials to prevent such a move, but Juanita was unpredictable.
Once inside her car, he had a moment of panic when he looked at the dashboard. He hadn’t driven a car for a long time, and never one like this, with so many buttons and switches that he couldn’t tell which was supposed to turn on the lights. Even without lights, though, he knew where to find the most important object in the car—the half-pint of whiskey he’d bought at one of the bars and later hidden on the floorboard under the seat. The bottle had hardly touched his lips before he began feeling the effects of its contents. First there was a fleeting moment of guilt, followed by the transition of guilt to blame, blame to revenge, revenge to power: By God, I’m going to teach all of them a lesson.
A Stranger in My Grave Page 23
