Weep for Me

by John D. MacDonald

  Now I’m getting like you. Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  “You shouldn’t get tight. You’ll get careless and say the wrong thing to the wrong person.”

  She was reluctant, and then she responded with a crazed wildness, with a new fury that surpassed anything that had gone before.

  When I awakened in the late afternoon with a dull headache, she had left the suite. I showered, dressed, feeling dulled, emotionless, apathetic. My hands trembled. I knew that I could not live with this frame of mind and so I ordered up drinks and once again achieved that feeling of well-being and confidence.

  She came back at dusk, saying that she had been walking. We ate down in the dining room. I was becoming more expert at maintaining the precise degree of drunkenness that I seemed to require. She kept watching me with an odd expression.

  We had nothing to say to each other.

  Thursday I bought a copy of the New York Times for Wednesday when they came in from the airport at ten o’clock. I took it back up to the suite as soon as I saw the article. We sat side by side on a deep wide couch as we read it together.

  From the sedate, sober Times account, you could see how the tabloids would handle it. It had all the ingredients for a tabloid story. Bank teller absconds with quarter million and pretty ex-wife of Chicago manufacturer. She had been working as a bookkeeper in the same bank, and assisted in the deception.

  One sentence bothered me. I heard her catch her breath as she read it. “The couple is believed to have fled in a green Chrysler sedan bearing New York plates, 8S81-74, registered in the name of Walter C. Marshall. Police expect an early arrest.”

  She stood up, her lips compressed. “We’ll have to check out right away, Kyle.”

  “How on earth did they find out about the car?”

  “Never mind that. We’ve got to get out of here. Start packing.”

  “But the tourist cards. They’re in that name and—”

  “We can’t help that. Mexican police will grab us in a minute and ship us back. You were right. We should have gone to Flores right away.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were driving down Juarez. We found a parking place near the Hotel Reforma. I locked the car and we went in. The phone book was confusing. At last I found the name and number. I scribbled number and address on a slip of paper and took it to the desk. A young girl with a brilliant smile took a map of Mexico City, marked the location of the hotel, placed an X at the place of the address, and said, “It is in Chapultepec, sir. You stay on Avenida Reforma most of the way. Not hard, no?”

  I tipped her and walked back across the lobby to where Emily stood by the side door. We got into the car and spent almost two hours finding the Chapultepec address. It was disappointing. A high tan ancient wall, crude solid wooden gates. I nosed the car up to the gates, got out, and pushed a bell button set into the gate pillar. After a long time a little square opened in the gate and a bronzed flat face stared out at me.

  “Señor Flores,” I said.

  The eyes stared flatly at me, then beyond me, at the car, at Emily. The little door flapped shut. Five long minutes passed.

  “Did he understand you?” Emily asked.

  “How do I know?”

  “You don’t have to bite my head off. Ring the bell some more.”

  I held my thumb on it for long seconds. At last the little door opened again. This time it was the lean, Spanish-looking face of a man in his forties.

  “I am Manuel Flores,” he said, with no trace of accent. “Is there something you wish?”

  “A private conversation, Mr. Flores.”

  He studied the car and the woman, as his servant had done. Emily suddenly got out of the car and came up to the gate. “We can’t discuss it out here, Señor Flores,” she said in that warm, calm voice.

  He looked at her with very evident approval. “And I cannot permit myself to talk through a gate with such a charming person. One moment, please.”

  There was the sound of metal on metal, and the gate opened wide enough for us to walk in. The gate from the drive led between formal gardens and through a big arch into the courtyard of a huge Spanish house. Fountains made rainbow spray in the sun and three gardeners were at work. Beyond the arch I could see a second arch, and another fountain beyond that.

  Manuel Flores had the shoulders and torso of a truly enormous man. But his legs were overly short and bowed. Large, well-kept white hands appeared to hang almost to his knees. He held himself erect, and there was about him an unusual air of slow, courteous dignity. His face was long, the nose high-bridged, mouth thin.

  “I have not had the pleasure” he said softly.

  “We wish to become Argentine citizens, señor,” Emily said. “At a price, of course.”

  There was a flicker in his eyes that could have been amusement. He did not lose his air of gravity. “In that case, I suggest you go to the Argentine embassy. If I can help with any introductions, I should be glad to—”

  “I am certain that you can help us better than the embassy,” she said, matching his gravity and dignity.

  His eyebrows raised and he touched himself lightly over the heart. “I can help you? But I am a Mexican citizen. I have nothing to do with such citizenship.”

  “I can see your point. Strangers come in off the street. It could be a trap of some sort, couldn’t it?”

  He looked baffled. “A trap? Why should I be trapped? For what reason?”

  “Please, Señor Flores. We are in trouble. We need your help. I can mention one name. Harry Shawn.”

  He stood very still for a moment. “Do I know him?”

  “I do. I was his wife for five years.”

  “This is most curious. There must be some grave misunderstanding. But the least I can do is offer you the hospitality of my house until it is straightened out. Perhaps, señor, you could drive the car inside and through the first arch, and park it on the right with the other cars.”

  He swung the gates wide. I drove the car in and parked it as he had directed Then I stood and waited for them. They walked slowly up the drive toward me, between the formal beds of flowers. She looked-very slim beside his wide-shouldered bulk. I saw his grave smile, saw her brush against him, and knew that it had been intentional.

  As they approached he said to me, “I have explained to your wife that as I have guests, it would perhaps be best if you would both permit me to show you to a room where you can wait until my guests have left. I am certain that you will find it comfortable, Mr. Smith.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I shall come and talk to you after they have left, and we shall see if we can clear up this misunderstanding,”

  He took us up an outside stone staircase to a second-floor outside corridor railed by a low stone wall. Halfway down the corridor he opened a heavy wooden door, ornately carved, and stepped aside with a formal bow.

  I pulled the door shut. The room was a bedroom, full of odd black heavy furniture, and with a canopied bed.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “He has to be careful. You can’t blame him for that.”

  “I suppose not. He’s pretty suave, isn’t he?”

  “Rather nice, I thought.”

  “I noticed that you thought he was all right. How soon are you planning to sleep with him?”

  “Oh, shut up! Sometimes you make me feel sick.”

  I sat on a heavy, uncomfortable chair. She sprawled on the bed. The long hours passed. She napped for a time. I would have found it impossible. I paced back and forth on the tile floor.

  At dusk there was a tap on the door. Emily stood up quickly, adjusting her dress. I opened the door and Flores came in.

  “I am truly sorry for the delay,” he said. He smiled at me. “Mr. Smith, are you a man of great restraint?”

  “Why?”

  “I find I must do something that embarrasses me greatly. It is certainly not the act of a gentleman, and if you take offense, it will not surprise me greatly.”

>   “What are you getting at?” I demanded.

  He smiled again and took Emily by the wrist. “Come, over to the window, my dear,” he said. He turned her so that her back was to the fading light. “Now if you would kindly raise your skirt so that I can see the small of your back, my dear.”

  “Just what is the idea of—”

  “Be still,” she said angrily. “I know what he’s after.”

  I subsided. She pulled her skirt up. Flores bent and took a quick close look at the small of her back, then patted her shoulder. “All right, Emily, my dear.”

  He went to the door and opened it. He said something in a low tone to the man who stood outside. The man nodded, holstered a heavy revolver and walked away.

  He came back in and sat down with a sigh and smiled in turn at both of us. “Sometimes one has to be so desperately melodramatic. And telephone descriptions are never very adequate. Harry Shawn is not very apt at giving descriptions, and it took me a long time to get the Chicago connection through. The only valid portion of the description concerned the two small moles just to the left of the base of her spine.”

  “Suppose they hadn’t been there,” I said, still angry.

  “Then I would have known, of course, that you are not the two young people who took the quarter-million American dollars. Mr. Shawn gave me that bit of information. I wasn’t aware of it. Now tell me just how much trouble you are in, please.”

  Emily spoke first. “They found out the names we’re using. We don’t know how, unless it was traced through the car somehow. Our tourist cards are in that name. Mr. and Mrs. Walter C. Marshall. Until midmorning we were registered at the Hotel del Prado under those names. Someone will have found out by now, because it was in the New York papers, the name we were using.”

  “That is too bad. It makes my services more difficult. And more expensive, of course.”

  “Can you help us?” she asked.

  His shrug was expressive. “Who can say? I can try, but not to the point of endangering myself, or my standing here. Harry was dreadfully careless in ever letting you hear my name or know of this function that I can sometimes perform. But, as I said before, it will be expensive. There are many hungry hands, many mordiscos. You know that word? It means little bites. It is a famous Mexican institution Many little bites must be taken of your money to smooth the way.”

  “How much?” Emily asked in a low tone.

  “One hundred and twenty-five thousand American dollars.”

  “But that’s half!” she said, her voice going shrill.

  “Exactly.”

  “Fifty thousand is all we’ll pay. Not a cent more, Mr. Flores,” she said coldly.

  He stood up, sighed. “As you wish. My man will open the gate as you drive out.”

  “Come on, Kyle,” she said. “I haven’t forgotten the other name Harry mentioned. Maybe he’ll be more cooperative.”

  Flores stood up. His teeth gleamed white in the darkening room as he smiled. “It is rather foolish of you to attempt to bluff.”

  “This is not a bluff,” she said.

  We went down the corridor, down the steps, across the court to the car. We were not followed. I said, “Isn’t this sort of crazy?”

  “Shut up. Just drive the car.”

  I backed around, drove down the dusky garden to the gate. I gave two short blasts on the horn. Nothing happened. After long moments Flores came walking out.

  “I cannot see such a beautiful woman go like a bull into the ring. I shall make it one hundred thousand.”

  “Please have the gate opened,” she said.

  “You should pause to consider the risk I am taking.”

  “Seventy thousand, Mr. Flores.”

  “Not one peso less than ninety thousand, Miss Rudolph, payable at once.”

  “Eighty!”

  “Eighty-seven.”

  “Split the difference, then.”

  “At eighty-five? Done.”

  “No, the difference between eighty-seven and eighty. Eighty-three thousand, five hundred.”

  “You are difficult, my dear. For the sake of my pride, make it eighty-four.”

  She agreed. I reparked the car. I carried the heavy brown bag up to the room. After the proper amount was counted out on a heavy carved chest, I strapped the bag up again and slid it under the canopied bed, then let him in. He was all prepared for the money. He had brought a brief case.

  He counted it carefully, solemnly. “Ochenta y dos, ochenta y tres, ochenta y cuatro. It is correct.” He stowed it away, latched the bulging brief case.

  He sighed and straightened up. “Now it is arranged. And now, Miss Rudolph, will you tell me whether or not it was a bluff? Did you have another name?”

  “I will tell you if you will tell me how little I should have paid you.”

  “Agreed, Was it a bluff?”

  “Of course.”

  He smiled gravely. “In this case, I should have been satisfied with a quarter. You gave me a third.”

  I saw her give him a look of frozen rage that slowly melted away. And she smiled. He began to chuckle and soon her laugh joined his. I could not join in. I saw nothing humorous in the situation. She stopped laughing abruptly, and began to flush. I had never seen her color up that way.

  “What do we do next?” I asked Flores.

  “You wait.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Contact friends. Make arrangements.”

  “How do we leave the country?”

  “I shall dispose of your car. You will be flown to Acapulco in a private plane. You will stay at my beach house there and wait some more. One night you will be taken out to a launch offshore. I do not wish to tell you where the launch will take you. It will be to a small town not in Mexico. There your papers will be waiting. Proper papers, and biographies to memorize and destroy. Near the town is a small airstrip. Another plane will fly you to Argentina and you will be landed at a private strip where you will be met and instructed by a friend of mine who is of the political police. He will have arranged a place for you to live. You will learn the language as soon as possible. And you will be safe there. Is not so much service worth what you have paid?”

  “That’s quite a system. I hope it works,” I said.

  “It has worked for a great many persons,” Flores said, “particularly during the years 1945 and ’46. There were many seeking refuge then.”

  “How many got to their destination?”

  He gave me a long cool look and in that moment I decided that I would not care to meet up with him when he decided to drop his air of sober gravity.

  “I hope, Mr. Cameron, that I misjudged your implication. Now permit me to give a few orders. You will not leave this room except with my permission. I shall have your luggage brought up. You will be given food here, and anything you require within reason. That door, as you may have noticed, opens onto a bath. Once we are at Acapulco, you will have more freedom. When, you wish anything, speak to the man who will be outside your door. He speaks English. Is there anything that can be brought to you now?”

  “Something to drink. Anything.”

  He bowed like a headwaiter. “And you, Miss Rudolph?”

  “If we could have magazines, books, a small radio?”

  “I had already planned to have those sent up.”

  After he had gone, I said, “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t be absurd!”

  “That launch may take us straight out into the Pacific and drop us over the side. It would be less trouble and more profit.”

  “Don’t go around looking for trouble.”

  “And I don’t like the way you two looked at each other.”

  “Your nerves are going bad, Kyle.”

  Broad-faced, placid, barefooted girls brought up the luggage, a tray of liquor and ice, the other items that Flores had promised. I lay back on the bed with a glass in my hand and watched her try on her new clothes, one dress after another. She moved as though at any momen
t she might crouch and start preening her fur with a sharp pink tongue.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There in that tiled, high-ceilinged room, I began to lose track of time. I drank steadily. By careful dosage I learned to maintain at all times the precise edge that I wanted. My thoughts were slow and mild and philosophic. Once I had found this better drug, it seemed that I had no more use for her in her narcotic capacity.

  Daylight and darkness, differentiating the days, became less important. The food was abundant. Good. But I ate little. I watched her a lot. She exercised often, following a set routine that I soon memorized, so that I knew which one she would do next, and how many of each one. She spent hours on face, nails, hair. She seemed to bathe a dozen times a day. And she did not drink, or speak to me. We were like two animals of different species that can be penned safely in the same cage.

  And one night I awoke and found that she was gone. I thought about her being gone. My brain turned over slowly, reluctantly, like a motor that has been allowed to sit idle for too long. I felt under the bed, pulled out the suitcase, opened it, made certain the money was still there. I put it back under the bed.

  I got up and went to the door. My weakness startled me a little. It was an effort to lift my feet. I opened the door and leaned heavily against the frame. A squat man, silhouetted against the night, moved closer to me. A cigarette end glowed in the night.

  “Where did she go?” I demanded.

  “No sé.”

  “Speak English, damn you!”

  “No sé,” he repeated in a surly voice.

  Anger clotted red behind my eyes and I reached for him. There was a hard jab against my diaphragm. I looked down and saw the metallic glint, very faint, very deadly. The pressure against me was steady. It increased and I backed into the room. He pulled the door shut. I tottered back to the bed, sat down heavily. The two feeble lights made heavy shadows in the corners of the room. I trembled, as though cold.

  The next time I woke up it was daylight. She was beside me, sleeping heavily. For a long time I couldn’t remember what it was that I was going to talk to her about.

  I shook her awake as soon as I remembered.

  “What? What is it?”