by Mike Resnick
“You want to say that name again?” I asked.
“Major Theodore Dobbins.”
“Got a mustache?” I said. “Always dresses in black—shirt, pants, jacket, tie, socks, probably even his shorts?”
“That’s the man!” said Diego. “I take it you know him?”
“Truth to tell, I’d kind of wished I was all through knowing him. What’s he doing here?”
“He is engaged to marry the Baroness Abigail Walters.”
“That don’t sound like a name what goes with that title,” I noted.
“She uses her maiden name, but in truth she is the widow of the Baron Gruenwald von Schimmelmetz,” said Diego. “That makes her the richest woman in Bolivia, and the biggest landowner as well. They say she is worth eight hundred million American dollars.”
“Now ain’t that amazing?” I said in wonderment.
“That a woman could be the richest citizen in Bolivia?” he asked.
I shook my head. “That Major Dobbins could sniff her out all the way from South Africa,” I told him.
“He is a fortune hunter?” asked Diego.
“He’s kind of like Frank Buck,” I said. “He finds a rich widow and he brings her back alive. To start with, anyway.”
“I strongly disapprove of that,” said Diego, with a frown that wrinkled up his big bushy eyebrows. “Perhaps it is just as well that he has a rival for the Baroness’s hand.”
I was about to ask him how he’d figgered it out so fast, since I hadn’t known myself until maybe half a minute ago, but he kept right on talking.
“Yes,” he said, “at first I thought the Australian interloper was a fortune hunter himself, just out to make trouble. After all, when I queried Interpol I learned that he’d been a jewel thief in Hong Kong, a gigolo in Rajasthan, and the owner of a house of ill repute in the notorious Reeperbahn district of Hamburg. Still, he behaved with a courtesy befitting a gentleman of his social class while he was my guest here, and I feel he was genuinely sorry for shooting those three men in a fit of pique.”
“I don’t want to start no argument with you or ruin your high opinion of him,” I said, “but most gentlemen of Rupert Cornwall’s social class spend their last few minutes on earth dancing at the end of a rope.”
“Then you know this Cornwall too?”
“We’ve run across each other a few times,” I allowed. I hoped Diego had confiscated Cornwall’s gun, since I couldn’t be sure he’d forgotten our last couple of encounters, and he’d never struck me as the kind of man what hankered to be first in line to let bygones be bygones.
“Well, since arriving, he, too, is paying court to the Baroness.”
“What does she look like?” I asked, since a man always ought to know that about the woman of his dreams.
“Ah, Señor,” he said sadly, “Nature has not been kind to her. Her eyes do not always look in the same direction. Her nose…well, it reminds one of the proboscis monkey. She is missing her two front teeth on the top, and the Baron shot the only dentist in La Paz six years ago.”
“And the rest of her?”
He shook his head. “She is hard in all the places a woman should be soft, flat in all the places a woman should be round, and soft in all the places a woman should be hard.”
“But besides that, she’s okay?” I said.
“I do not believe you have been listening to me,” said Diego.
“Eight hundred million dollars buys a lot of make-up and padding and corsets,” I said.
“It can’t cover the wart on her nose, or the shrillness of her voice or the evil glint in her eyes (whatever direction they happen to be looking),” he said.
“Tread easy, there, Diego,” I warned him. “You are speaking of the woman I intend to love.”
He just shrugged. “You world-traveling English speakers are all alike. Show you the richest widow in the country, and you descend on her like…”—it was his turn to search for the right word—“like a pack of tarantulas.”
“I didn’t know they traveled in packs,” I said.
“Until recently I didn’t know you did either,” he replied.
“You got it all wrong, Brother Diego,” I said. “I’m the only one what’s descending on the poor loveless lonely widow woman.”
“What about Major Dobbins and Señor Cornwall?” he asked.
“They’re belly-crawling scum what would have to ascend on her.”
“I suppose that makes all the difference,” he said without much sincerity.
“Sure it does,” I said. “Besides, them two ain’t got a chance next to a handsome young buck like me.”
“Young?” he said, cocking a bushy eyebrow.
I thunk about it for a minute.
“Well, I was young when I started out on this here odyssey,” I said. “I was only twenty-two when I was kind of forcibly asked to leave the U.S. of A.”
“It took you a long time to get here,” said Diego.
“I stopped at a few places along the way,” I allowed. “I think I hit fourteen countries in Africa, before I was invited to depart and never come back. I guess I must have been twenty-six then.”
“Which country asked you to leave?”
“All of ’em,” I said.
“All of them?” he repeated.
“I don’t play no favorites,” I told him. “Anyway, I tried my hand in Asia next. China, India, Japan, all them other foreign places.”
“How many?” he asked.
“Oh, maybe seven or eight. Could have been ten. Converted a lot of yellow and brown heathen before I left. Hope they stayed on the straight and narrow path I set ’em on.”
“You could always go back and see,” said Diego.
“And when eight or nine more judges and a couple of kings and sultans and maybe an emperor or two die, that’s just what I plan to do,” I said.
“They kicked you off the whole continent again?” he asked in amazement.
“Nobody kicked nobody,” I said. “They just guv me a train ticket, pointed a battalion’s worth of rifles at me, and wished me Godspeed on my way to Europe.”
“How long were you there?”
“Five years.”
“So you were thrown off three continents by the time you were thirty-one?” he said. “How about Europe?”
“Nice place,” I said. “I was even king of my own country for a few days. I guess I must have visited, oh, maybe eleven or twelve countries. Real nice folk, except for them what wasn’t. Most of ’em didn’t speak no civilized language, and they were all godless sinners, but except for that we got along right well.”
“And you were there for…?”
“Three years.”
“It only took them three years this time?” he said, his eyes wide with wonder, and I could tell that even a man of the world like Diego was impressed.
“A series of minor misunderstandings, nothing more,” I said. “One of these days I plan to go back and straighten them all out.”
“And where have you been in South America?” asked Diego.
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “I landed in San Palmero in 1934, and then I hit Brazil, and Argentina, and the Pampas (wherever that is), and, let me see now, Uruguay…oh, and Columbia, and the Lost Continent of Moo, and…”
“The Lost Continent of Moo?” he interrupted.
“Well, it ain’t as lost as it was,” I assured him. “And now here I am in Bolivia, and I was on my way Peru before I heard about the grieving widow woman and my soft Christian heart just went out to her.”
“But you haven’t been to Chile?”
“Nope. Never felt any inclination to go there.”
“You’re sure?” he insisted.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “Why?”
He mopped the sweat off his face and leaned back, suddenly all relaxed. “I have family in Chile,” he said.
“Well, I suppose me and the bride could take our honeymoon there, if you got any notes or parcels you want me to
deliver,” I said.
“NO!” he shouted. I just kind of looked at him. “I would not want you to go to the trouble, Reverend Jones,” he added quickly. “They say that Venezuela is beautiful for honeymoons this time of year.”
“That’s right generous of you, Brother Diego,” I said. “And me and the little lady’ll sure consider it. I also want to thank you for this little chat, because if we hadn’t had it I’d never have realized I was getting on to thirty-seven, and while there ain’t no question that I still look like a twenty-four-year-old movie star in his prime, I figger it’s probably time to settle down, build my tabernacle, marry my heart’s desire, and spend my next eighty or ninety years managing her money so she’s free to do the dishes and wash the clothes and slop the hogs.”
“What about your two rivals?” he asked.
“I’m a generous winner,” I said magnanimously. “They can help with the hogs. What’s the minimum wage in these here parts?”
He told me, but it was so small it didn’t translate into dollars and cents, and then we finished our checkers game, and he checked the time—he didn’t have no watch, but when the church bell rang fourteen times he knew it was either two in the afternoon or the bellringer was drunk again—and I’d served my time and I was a free man.
“So where is the Baroness’s house?” I asked.
He pointed off in the distance. “On the other side of La Paz, Reverend Jones.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Next time me and the Good Lord are having a pow-wow, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Remember: my name is Alejandro Sanchez.”
“I thunk it was Diego something-or-other,” I said.
“I changed it,” he replied quickly. “Remember, when you are talking about me with God, I am Alejandro.”
“Got it, Brother Alejandro,” I said. “And good day to you.”
I headed off toward La Paz, but we was at about ten thousand feet of altitude, and I found that even though I’m a natural athlete what’s in great shape and smack-dab in the middle of his physical prime, I started getting leg-weary.
“Hey, Brother Alejandro!” I called. “I’m exhausted!”
“You have only walked forty paces,” he noted.
“Call me a cab,” I said.
He shrugged. “All right—you’re a cab.”
“Me and God don’t appreciate no backtalking constabularies,” I said. “Get me a horse or a wagon, or you’re going to be cooking me meals for the next seventy years.”
That got a little action, and a few minutes later I was being carted off to La Paz in the back of a hay wagon. (Well, they called it a hay wagon, but I’m pretty sure hay is stiff and grassy and doesn’t smell like pig manure.)
We hit La Paz at about nine o’clock at night, and they didn’t have no drunken bellringers in their church, because at eleven and a half thousand feet there wasn’t nobody with the energy to climb up to the bell. In fact, it’s my own guess that church bells grow naturally in Bolivia, like trees and bushes and such, since no one in their right minds would want to carry one that high.
I was more than a little hungry when the wagon dropped me off in town, and I saw from some sogns that I was on Matilde Street, which I planned to change to Lucifer & Abigail Street just as soon as we got hitched, and I walked a few paces, which wasn’t no easier in La Paz at night than it was in Cochabomba in the afternoon, but finally, after enormous effort, I came to Bellisima’s Ristorante, which was four buildings down from when I got off the wagon and seemed to have wandered over from Italy by mistake. I looked in a window and saw that all the tables were covered by checkered tablecloths, all the chairs were old and rickety, and all the waiters had thick black mustaches.
I figgered I had just enough money to buy myself a meal, and maybe a few quarts of beer to bring out the nuances of its flavor, so I walked through the doorway and who should I see sitting right in front of me but Major Theodore Dobbins, late of His Majesty’s armed forces.
I walked right over and pulled up a rickety chair, which was the only kind they had.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I was just passing through,” I said. “Small world, ain’t it?”
“Too damned small,” he muttered.
“And how’s your lovely wife, the former widow Emily Perrison?” I asked. “I ain’t seen her in maybe twelve or thirteen years. Has she changed much?”
“Not in the past decade,” answered the Major.
“Give her my regards.”
“She’s been dead for eleven years,” he explained. “It seems she fell off a boat in crocodile-infested waters with no one to save her or pull her out.”
“Poor thing,” I said. “All alone, was she?”
“Except for me.” He shook his head in wonderment. “To this day I don’t know how the crocs could stand to get that close to her.”
“Ain’t you also got an adopted son?”
He nodded his head. “Horace. An ugly, foul-mouthed little brute if ever I saw one. I finally sent him off to military school.”
“Back home to Britain?” I asked.
“The Soviet gulags. I figured he’d get the discipline he’d need there.”
“You always was the caring sort,” I said.
“And right now I care for the Baroness Walters,” he said. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how you found out about her, but I won Emily’s hand in marriage when you were my rival and I can do it again.”
“I was young and immature then,” I said. “And let’s be honest: we wasn’t neither of us interested in her hand except when it was signing checks. Besides, I hear you got another rival for the dear Baroness.”
“That scoundrel Cornwall. A man of low moral standing and ill repute.”
“Not like us, huh?” I asked.
“Precisely, my dear Doctor Jones,” he said. “I am glad to see we understand one another.”
“Better than you might think, Major,” I said.
“I assume it has come to your attention that I am paying court to the Baroness Walters,” he said.
“It ain’t exactly escaped my notice,” I told him.
“That blaggard Cornwall is trying to horn in on…let me rephrase that. He refuses to acknowledge my squatter’s right to…um, that doesn’t sound a lot better, does it?” He frowned for a minute. “At any rate, he has no business being here, and as the husband of the wealthiest woman in Bolivia, I would be very generous to any friend who sent that Australian mountebank on his way.”
Actually, I was about to make the same offer to him, but I didn’t see no sense getting into an argument when poor Miss Abigail was just wasting away with no one to love her, so I told him I’d sure consider it, and that a little down payment would put me in a charitable mood regarding his intentions, and he right away reached into his pocket and guv me a twenty-pound note.
I got up and took my leave of him, since if he was here it meant she was there and doubtless waiting to fall into the arms of any handsome man of the cloth who was ready and willing to sweep her off her feet (always assuming she didn’t top out at more than one hundred and thirty pounds.)
I walked out into the street and realized I didn’t know where the Baroness lived. I figgered I’d probably have to wait until daylight, and then head off to some house that probably looked a little bigger than the Chrysler Building, but as I was trying to decide whether to spend the night on a park bench or perhaps find an obliging lady of quality what left her mercenary streak in her other dress, I heard a voice calling to me. I turned to see where it was coming from, and it seemed to me that it was emanating from a tavern called The Gelded Goliath, what looked like it had been built about the time that David whipped the original Goliath in straight falls. I wandered over and went inside it, and the second I entered a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, and a voice kind of hissed: “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You called me over, Broth
er Cornwall,” I said, because the second I heard his voice I knew it was Rupert Cornwall, even though he didn’t say “Cobber” or “bloke” or “kangaroo” nor nothing else in Australian.
“I mean, what are you doing in La Paz at all?” he demanded.
“Just enjoying the scenery,” I answered.
“It’s night out!”
“I was taking a walk and enjoying the cool night air,” I said.
“We’re at twelve thousand feet and you can barely find the air!”
“Would I be correct in assuming you are less than thrilled to see me again, Brother Rupert?” I asked.
“Of the ten people in the world I wanted never to lay eyes on again, you’re at least three of them!” he snapped.
“You got to let go of them bygones, Brother Rupert,” I said.
“Six of those bygones spent an entire afternoon beating the hell of out me in Hamburg!” he bellowed. “I had Lady Edith Quilton all wrapped up and ninety-eight percent delivered back in Rajasthan when you showed up! And thanks to you, I got to spend an extra four months in the Hong Kong jail!”
“But outside of that we’ve always been friends,” I said.
“Those are the only times in my life I’ve ever been anywhere near you!”
“What about now?” I asked.
“What about now?” he repeated. “What are you doing here, as if I couldn’t guess?.”
“Actually, I was just having a friendly chat with my old friend Major Theodore Dobbins.”
“How much did he offer you?”
“Not one red cent,” I said. “I know I seem irresistible, but he hankers after women.”
“He hankers after one woman in particular,” said Rupert. “He’s doomed to be disappointed.”
“Must be quite a looker if you both want her,” I said.
“I think I can truthfully say that there’s not another one like her anywhere in the world,” answered Rupert kind of carefully.
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“Then you know the woman of whom I’m speaking?”
“Not personally,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Not ever,” said Cornwall. “I’m warning you, Lucifer—stay away from her.”
