Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  “But this situation has a personal dimension. It doesn’t boil down exactly in the way you describe.”

  “Only because you allowed it to develop that way.” Again the steely look.

  “So what would you would have said to the widow?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Cross, but I’m a painter. That’s all I do. I’m not that smart and it’s too hard to be good at more than one thing.” Maybe this was why Laura Soames was now tripping down the primrose path with Volf. I tried to see Soames with brush in hand, with Maya or Barbara posing. It didn’t work.

  “Julian, suppose for a moment that you actually were a painter. Would you paint only the pictures that you knew would turn out?”

  “Of course. Only those. I’d want to know in advance.”

  “Then you would never paint any pictures because you can’t know that, especially in the beginning. And later, let’s say here that you had somehow painted your first 50 pictures anyway, you could never grow from there because you would be eliminating the element of serendipity, and without that, your pictures would be dead and lifeless. Every painter who’s any good is a gambler as well. The farther you reach out of your comfort zone, the greater the likelihood that you’ll fall on your face. But out there on that same tricky edge is the possibility of doing something great. Being slightly off-balance is good. I’m off-balance now, going around sticking my nose into this. Maybe if I do aggravate someone I might be quick enough to see the blow coming. And then the killer will be off-balance.”

  Soames looked at me in silence for a moment. “I don’t fall on my face,” he said with certainty. I think this was the only part of what I’d said that registered with him.

  “That’s why your shirt is so crisp.”

  “Exactly.”

  We shook hands again on the worn steps. How many footsteps did it take to wear through an inch or two of stone? And how much shoe leather would that be? And what would it take to wear Julian Soames down? I couldn’t imagine. It would not be anything I could come up with.

  “Come on by some evening for a drink, Paul, and we’ll have another look at this idea of a comfort zone.”

  I sure he could have lectured on it. I shook his hand and as I moved down Loreto, I reentered the world of risk and possibility. However, one possibility I hadn’t factored in was the bullet hole through the windshield of the artmobile.

  Chapter 19

  Had I been sitting in the driver’s seat the bullet would have gone right into my forehead. Toward the rear of the van was another hole, ragged and somewhat larger, in the headliner short of the rear door. I got out and ran my hand over the top outside, but there was no hole there, only a tiny bulge; the bullet had not exited. Just another souvenir of this case, and as far as I was concerned, it could stay where it was. I considered calling Delgado, but all I’d get from him would be another lecture on minding my own business. Driving home, the hole in the glass made a low whistling noise. I chewed the single piece of gum I’d bought from the girl in the Jardin and plugged it.

  When I pulled up to the house Maya and Cody were standing outside talking. As I stopped at the curb Cody saw the bullet hole at once and came over to the artmobile. He leaned his arms on my door and looked in.

  “Well, I can see from the freckles that the bullet missed you.”

  “I wasn’t in the car at the time. What freckles?”

  “In this kind of attack you get freckles on your face from the molten glass powder blown off by the bullet. That plus the hole in your head.”

  “I don’t have any freckles.”

  “Exactly. We’ll check for the hole later.”

  Maya slid in beside me from the passenger door. She put her arms around me.

  “Are you all right? You scare me sometimes. Who shot at you?”

  Cody had taken a pen from his shirt pocket and was poking out the gum to get a closer look at the hole.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it wasn’t Julian Soames because I was with him when it happened, inside his house.”

  “Good alibi,” said Cody. “Looks like another small caliber. Mind if I dig it out in back? I always wanted to get into the forensic side. I assume you didn’t call Delgado.”

  “No. Go ahead and dig it out.”

  “How could anyone shoot like this in the middle of the day?” asked Maya.

  Cody’s voice came from the back now, as he probed the head liner. “With all the firecrackers around, people don’t notice the noise. If the shooter was not directly in view of anyone, like down between the cars, it wouldn’t be that hard. Here we go.” He withdrew his fingers from the fabric to show us a flattened and curved slug. In the palm of his hand, it was only the back end of the bullet that wasn’t totally distorted from the impact of the glass and then the brace of the steel top of the van.

  “Twenty-five caliber, I’d say. Not a common gun, but I’ll bet if the police shared with us what they know about the gun that killed Tobey, it’s probably a match.”

  “Paul, maybe you should back out.” This from Maya.

  “Back off?”

  “OK. Whatever. You know what I mean. I am very worried here. I could be screaming soon.”

  “Then do you tell Marisol or do I?”

  “You are not fair. This is a gringo thing. You always try to make us have choices we don’t want to have. You and I have to go on and Marisol is already ruined. We can’t bring back Tobey.” She slid back out onto the sidewalk, distancing herself from me. I felt like she was about to blow up.

  “Now wait a minute.” Cody’s ham-like paws descended on Maya’s shoulders. His thick fingers found the taut cords in her neck and her whole upper body relaxed in less than a minute. Her head began to wobble slightly like one of those plastic figures people mount on their dashboard. The tension faded as traffic moved past us in a steady rumble; water trucks, ice cream trucks, pickups full of workers in from the farms, cars full of kids coming back from school, taxis with tourists, seven Benedictine nuns in a van. Cody pressed his face into her hair from behind. I had never seen him like this. “Don’t discount me,” he said. “I love you guys. If I have any say in it, nothing else bad will happen here.”

  She turned around and pulled him down to her face and kissed him on the mouth. These Méxican girls. Everybody’s family. I guess if someone had to be family, it ought to be Cody, but I don’t kiss guys that big. I locked the van and we went inside the house.

  * * *

  The next name on the customer list was John Schleicher. It was familiar because he was said to rival Perry in wealth (or at least, in expenditure) and although he never attended the normal gringo gatherings, he was spoken of with respect in the ex-pat community because of his heavy contributions to their charities. The only thing I knew about him other than that was that he owned a great historic house in town which had not, during my time here, ever appeared on the house tour list. Nor did I know anyone who acknowledged having been inside. The house was said to have belonged at one time to General, and later eleven-term President, Santa Anna, the butcher of the Alamo. Of course, this ownership had been claimed for other houses in San Miguel as well, usually those on the market with spectacular price tags.

  In my early years in San Miguel, Schleicher’s house on Cuadrante had sat empty and unloved with a perpetual for sale sign affixed to the second floor, even though its potential was obvious. At one of the house tours I had heard that it was owned by a newly rich dot.com couple from New York, who had bought it impulsively on a visit to San Miguel, but then sadly walked away from it when they realized how daunting a project it would be. Another case of more money than sense, I thought at the time. When the dot.com boom folded, nothing further happened, other than the sign going up.

  Its architectural style was the high classical of the eighteenth century, with pedimented windows and a grand entry. Brass knockers with lion’s heads on the tall double doors challenged your approach. The elaborate stonework of the facade had taken a series of hits from what must have
been revolutionary gunfire. No shortage of that over the years.

  It didn’t sell again until two or three years after I arrived; the potential was there to bring it back as the great mansion it had once been, but it was too much beyond the means and ambitions of most people I knew. Folks like Perry and Barbara Watt, who had enough money to do it without breaking a sweat, often preferred new construction. They wanted their fiber optic wiring in the walls under the reproduction finishes, the larger sewer pipes, the grounded outlets, the purified water systems. Now pristine, the Schleicher house sits in disdainful isolation; there is nothing on the street remotely like it because Cuadrante is a street of mixed uses. Farther down to the west its name changes to Pila Seca and the first block there holds, among other things, a bed and breakfast, a laundry and two art galleries. Neither of these galleries has ever exhibited a single painting by Paul Zacher, which suggests, I fear, just how mixed it becomes.

  On the morning after the Diego Delgado debacle at the Charco, news of which had traveled rapidly through town, I dialed the number from Tobey’s customer list for John Schleicher. After three rings it picked up. The man who answered had a refined voice but an abrupt manner.

  “Schleicher,” he said, without saying “hello.” He sounded like he was in a hurry. I introduced myself and said I was sorry to bother him.

  “I wonder how you could have gotten this number? I’m not in the book.”

  I explained I was a friend hoping to get some information about Tobey Cross and his name was on the customer list.

  “I didn’t know him.”

  “Tobey Cross was the antique dealer who was murdered three weeks ago,” I said, noticing he had said, “didn’t know him,” as if he knew Tobey was no longer around. “Perhaps you’ll remember making some purchases from him. He specialized in Mayan ceramics and colonial paintings and silver and gold.”

  “I don’t have any of that. I’m not a collector. Sorry.”

  “Mr. Schleicher, Tobey Cross’s records indicate you purchased four ceramic pieces and two paintings from him over the last six years. The latest was five months ago.”

  “Must be a mistake; don’t believe everything you read. Anything else?”

  Without waiting for my response, he hung up. We were a long way from the courtesy of Bill Frost and Clare Mason.

  I wrote down the conversation as closely as I could get to word for word and then dialed Cody.

  “Williams,” he said.

  They both must have gone to the same finishing school. “I’m trying to reach a moth-eaten old cop who’s got more bullet holes in him than a roadside yield sign in Montana.”

  “That’d be me. What have you got?”

  “Schleicher, John.” I gave the address on Cuadrante. “The eager purchaser of six pieces from Galeria Cruz over the last six years and now has never heard of Tobey Cross in his life.”

  “Alzheimer’s. It’s a killer. Turns your brain to jelly. I suppose it goes without saying that he also doesn’t want to see you.”

  I read off the conversation from my notebook.

  “He’s terse and pithy. What do you say I call the boys in Chicago and see if they can get a line on him? That name sounds like I ought to know it. I thought that before, when I looked at the customer list, and I should have done it then. It’ll probably take until tomorrow. I’ll get back to you.”

  I put down the phone and sat for a while in the living room. The chair creaked as I leaned back. I had naively hoped I might talk to Schleicher this morning and now I had a void. Maya was at the market and I had finished the foliage on the replacement for the ruined picture and Barbara had not called about another session. There was probably not going to be any painting today. I locked the door, double checked it, and left.

  Walking south on Quebrada, the morning light was clear and beautiful. That crap the local painters always say about the quality of light here is probably true. A woman realtor from Texas drove by and waved at me from her Acura SUV. The passenger side was badly scraped. There are some tight corners in this town. There have been times when I considered buying a motorcycle.

  After two blocks I turned left on Pila Seca and walked past the two galleries. One of them was showing pictures with what looked like sequins all over them. Maybe paint was in short supply now. I could understand their role on evening gowns, but I wondered how you would render skin tones in sequins. I’ve done too much painting to be trendy.

  Three blocks down, where Pila Seca becomes Cuadrante, the Schleicher house stood as if reborn. Suddenly it was 1740. A great thing about San Miguel is that there are craftsmen here who can do anything. As in Europe, the old skills live, the ones that, back in the States, everyone thinks are dead and forgotten. The pockmarks and bullet holes in the skin of the old mansion were gone. The mashed and eroded stonework at the windows and the front door was now freshly reproduced in exactly the same patterns, no shortcuts, carved the same way as the originals. The rusted ironwork of the window grills and balconies had been sandblasted and repainted. The entry doors gleamed with new varnish and the freshly polished lion-head knockers flashed in the sun. The old stucco was smoothly patched. Whatever else this grump Schleicher might be, he knew how to restore a house to the last level of detail, or at least he could afford the most expert help and didn’t hesitate to sign them up.

  The house stood on a corner lot, and I left Cuadrante and walked down the side street. Seventy or eighty feet down the street, the house wall became a garden wall about twelve feet high. There was a single gate in it that filled the opening and gave no view inside. At the far end of the property a roof line appeared eight feet higher than the wall, with a row of square mullioned windows below it. Staff quarters, I thought; no slaves here.

  I hung about for half an hour, pretending to look in the shop windows, watching the traffic. The casual American tourist taking in the sights, nothing much on his mind. From a doorway, an old woman in a shawl thrust a cup at me; I added a few brass coins to the others in it. I gave her more than 20 centavos. Could have been 40, even.

  During the time I was there no one entered or left the house. The windows were shuttered on the inside and gave away nothing. Walking past I heard no sounds from within or from the garden. Friendly, outgoing John Schleicher. His life was an open book, but on inspection the individual pages were oddly blank.

  On the Cuadrante side of the house, at the left edge of the property, was a double carriage gate with an open grill near the top. Over the gates was a stone arch with a lantern above. By standing on my toes I could see through the ironwork down a drive that ran past more windows, but they were smaller than on the other two sides on the street. Evidently this was the service side of the house. The gates were padlocked. I picked up a pebble from the cobblestones of the street and threw it as far down the drive as I could. In about four seconds a large Doberman came screaming toward me, legs flying, and hit the carriage gate, fangs bared, and barking with everything he had. This answered my second question: Schleicher had security.

  With my hands in my pockets I slipped quickly down Cuadrante. A couple of neighbors looked out their doors, but I saw no movement from the mansion.

  * * *

  Much later that day I was in bed with my favorite Méxican artist’s model when the phone rang. I was starting to hate these 10:30 calls. But it was not Marisol, it was Cody. Maya started to sweet talk him until I pinched her bare butt and she gave me the phone.

  “Zacher,” I said.

  “This one is what I think you guys call beengo. We didn’t use that word in Peoria, but I understand it now.”

  “It’s bingo,” I said. “I know this.”

  “Well, our boy John Schleicher has got what we used to call in the trade a checkered past. Twenty-one arrests going back 32 years. He’s 51 now. Starts with cocaine possession, which he pled to and got a suspended sentence for first offense. There’s some minor stuff, but later also possession with intent to distribute, illegal fire arms, assault with a deadly, and
sex with a 14 year old girl. He walked on most of it, usually from witnesses becoming suddenly unavailable. He came to trial only three times, with one acquittal and one hung jury, after which the charges were dropped. The only conviction was at the last trial, consensual sex with a minor, and he got off with a suspended sentence and probation because she supported his argument that she was a hooker who claimed she was eighteen.”

  “One sweet guy. So why is he down here?”

  “This is good. He walked into a narcotics buy that was set up out of Trenton, New Jersey. Something like three or four kilos of coke. Not really big time, but a great stash for your own parties. He figured it out somehow and dropped the cop on the ground before he could get his gun out or call in back up. Then he ran. That was the last they saw of him.”

  “But why aren’t they all over him? He’s down here under his own name, right?”

  “The Méxican authorities have never allowed him to be extradited. Our guys have been trying for years. He’s connected, or his family is. I think that’s how he walked all those times. It probably wasn’t muscle on the witnesses, more likely it was cash. His last address in the States was in Short Hills, New Jersey, a pricey suburb of New York.”

  “So you don’t think he’s Mafia? Or do you?”

  “I think he’s most likely a very spoiled bad boy with a gun. Or several guns. And good taste, and enough money to live the way he likes. He’s chosen our little backwater to do it in.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why didn’t we know about him?”

  “Because I think he’s behaving himself down here, or at least he was until he had a serious disagreement with Tobey Cross. I mean, if the authorities were holding extradition at bay for you, you’d want to keep your head down, right, and not embarrass them? I’m sure he’s paying someone off, but he doesn’t want the heat to fall on them, either. Because if it does the price of protection goes way up.”

  “So you like him for Tobey?”

  “Think on it. Why else would Schleicher deny knowing him?”