Three Passports to Trouble

by Sean McLachlan

  At least I don’t think so. I was running by that point.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “A spy!” someone shouted. “Block the gate!”

  I didn’t even think of going to the gate. That was on the other side of the house facing the front door. Men would be pouring out that door any moment.

  Instead I ran for the wall, hoping I could make a leap and grab onto the iron spikes, haul myself up, and get the hell out of there.

  A bullet cracked off the wall just ahead of me and I dodged left. Pulling out my gun, I fired two quick shots at the window. The men there scattered. A woman screamed.

  Electric Eddie peeked over the wall.

  “You need help, Shorty?”

  I heard the front door open and the sound of running feet.

  “Do I ever!”

  Firing at the house again to slow the Spaniards down, I lifted up my free hand. Electric Eddie hauled me up. Or at least tried to. He got me about an inch off the ground and dropped me. Leaning over the wall and trying to avoid the spikes put him in an awkward position and made it hard to use his strength.

  “Try again,” I said, glancing over my shoulder, ready to fire if anyone showed themselves.

  He tugged again.

  “I can’t. You’re too heavy.”

  “What do you mean, I’m too heavy? You saying I’m short and fat?”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “I don’t have a minute!”

  Someone peeked out the window. I fired at him and he ducked back.

  A loud sniffing came from the other side of the wall.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake, Eddie, now’s not the—”

  I heard a scrabbling noise, and suddenly Electric Eddie was wobbling on top of the wall. He gripped one of the iron spikes and reached his free hand down to me.

  “GRAB MY HAND.”

  I did, and it was like one of those big cranes at the port suddenly lifted me up. Before I knew it, I was on top of the wall.

  The next thing I knew a pistol cracked and a bullet zinged between me and Eddie.

  “HOLY MOLY.”

  Electric Eddie leaped off the wall.

  The problem was, he was still holding my hand. I toppled over and felt a sharp pain in my leg as one of the spikes gouged me. There was a tearing sound, and I ended up flailing upside down. Electric Eddie grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled.

  “Ouch! Get off me, you maniac!”

  “NO TIME. WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE.”

  My pants tore away, along with what felt like a big chunk of skin. I landed at Eddie’s feet, losing hold of my pistol. He tried to drag me along but I slapped his hands away and searched the ground for my gun.

  Just as I saw it, Electric Eddie grabbed me under the arms and hauled me off. I managed to grab the gun before I got carried like a football through the open field.

  “Let go!” I shouted. He didn’t listen so I jabbed an elbow into his ribs.

  “OW! IS THAT ANY WAY TO TREAT A PAL?”

  He didn’t let go so I jabbed him again.

  This time he did let go.

  The lunatic dropped me face first on the ground.

  I got myself upright and made sure I could walk. I could, but my leg smarted something fierce. The house was in an uproar, but so far nobody had come out of the gate and around the corner to the back. It would only be a matter of moments, though.

  “WE GOTTA GET BACK TO MY HOUSE.”

  I grabbed Eddie before he could make a run for it.

  “It’s open fields. They’ll spot us for sure.”

  I looked around. The only options were uphill and downhill. Uphill the ground got rough and was open and clear. Downhill a few olive trees grew along the slope, as well as some scattered bushes closer to the road.

  In wartime we called that kind of cover “false hope”. I’ll take that over no hope at all.

  “This way.” I limped downhill.

  “OK, WHATEVER YOU THINK BEST.”

  “Stop shouting.”

  “I’M NOT…OH.”

  Shouting came from behind us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw several figures move around both sides of the outer wall and converge at the back. Several of them looked like they were carrying guns. I pulled Eddie behind the cover of the nearest olive tree. We had only made it a hundred yards or so from the house, but the moon had just gone behind a cloud, putting the terrain in darkness.

  Not for long. Someone turned on a powerful flashlight, old army issue by the look of it. He swung the beam forward, then uphill, then finally toward our position.

  “Don’t make a move,” I whispered. “We’re far enough away that if we keep still they won’t—”

  “There they are!” one of the Falange members shouted.

  So much for that idea. We ran.

  The Spaniards were smart enough not to fire at us. We were too far away and the sound of gunfire in this open field would carry much further than the shots inside the compound.

  Instead they rushed us.

  We ran through the scattered trees, picking up speed as we continued down the slope. My thigh burned and my pants leg flapped behind me. It had been ripped from the hem all the way up to the rear.

  No other houses stood nearby. In the distance, I could see the lights of the Casbah, far too far away.

  “NOW WHAT DO WE DO?”

  “Run faster.”

  “WANT A LINE?”

  “No.”

  We came out on an open stretch and I looked behind me again. The crowd had spread out, the older ones falling back, others pacing us.

  And several, maybe five or six, catching up to us.

  “Time to think of a new plan,” I said.

  Electric Eddie stayed silent for once, which I took as a bad sign.

  And then, a miracle happened. We were approaching the road. A sharp turn around a rock outcropping downslope from us hid most of it. If we could get around that, I figured maybe I could fire at them from cover. We could hold them off until help came.

  Instead, help came early. The road began to illuminate with the approaching headlights of a car still hidden around the bend. I angled to the right to get onto the road quicker. Electric Eddie followed.

  Just as we made it to the road, a four-door Ford made the turn, bathing us in light.

  We waved our hands and shouted. In all the excitement I forgot that I had a .38 revolver in my hand.

  The Ford screeched to a stop and I heard the driver frantically grind gears, trying to get it into reverse.

  I leveled my gun at the car.

  “Stop in the name of the law!” I shouted.

  I doubt they actually bought that line, but when a guy with only half a pair of pants leaps into the road in front of you in the middle of the night and points a gun in your direction, you play along with him.

  The car stopped. I hobbled over. Standing still for a moment had made me notice just how much my leg hurt.

  I got to the driver’s side door. A panicked man who looked more than a bit drunk shoved his wallet under my nose.

  “Take it all, just don’t hurt us!” he said in an American accent.

  The “us” included a cute dame who was a lot younger and a lot drunker than he was.

  I opened the back door and got in. Electric Eddie got in the other side.

  “HI! SORRY TO DISTURB YOU FOLKS. NO NEED TO BE SCARED OF US. WE’RE JUST RUNNING FROM A GUNFIGHT. HAHAHAHAHA.”

  “Shut up, Eddie. OK, buddy, take us down to Tangier.”

  The driver turned the car around. I peered out the window. The Spaniards had stopped about fifty yards away, unsure what to do.

  I let out a long, slow breath as we drove downhill and around the bend.

  Once we got about halfway down the Mountain, the driver dared to speak.

  “So you’re not going to rob me?”

  “No, we just had a bit of trouble up there. Who’s the dame?”

  He grinned at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Girl I p
icked up at the Parade Bar. She’s sozzled.”

  I leaned forward and looked at her. She’d fallen asleep.

  “Yeah, she’s sozzled all right. Where does she live?” I asked.

  “Up on the Mountain. I was taking her home.”

  “Taking her to your home. We’ll get her back to her place.”

  “Hey, you can’t steal my girl!”

  “She ain’t your girl, Mac. When she wakes up tomorrow morning, she probably won’t even remember you. At least not if I can help it. Eddie, once we get her where she’s going, you better come back to my place. You can have the couch.”

  The driver was smart enough not to argue. We had him drop us off on Boulevard Pasteur near my apartment. By then the dame had woken up enough to mumble her address to us. As Eddie and I stood there with her slumped between us, the Moors and foreigners passing us by with barely a glance, we had another stroke of luck. Actually, she did.

  A cab slowed next to us. The driver was someone I recognized—Jim Sykes, a Cockney cab driver who had lost his license and two years of his freedom when the East End pansy bar he frequented got busted. He looked at us from under the brim of his woolen cap, a cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth.

  “Oi, Shorty. If you’re going to have a bit of fun, do it on the sly, right? Melanie will have your bollocks for breakfast.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  He noticed my ripped pants and the blood smearing my leg.

  “Not sure what it looks like, but it looks bloody awful.”

  I shook the dame.

  “Hey, what’s your address again?”

  She mumbled a place in Marshan.

  “Can you take her there?” I asked Jim.

  “Sure, mate. She’ll be safe with me.”

  “That’s why I picked you. You can get the fare from her purse,” We shoved her into the back seat of the cab, where she immediately lost her dinner and a whole bunch of drinks.

  “Oh, that’s just lovely. Think I’ll take a tip too. Thanks for nothing, you bloody bastard.”

  He peered out the window at Eddie for a moment.

  “You’re a good bit of stuff. Want to come home with me, luvvie?”

  Electric Eddie started trembling.

  “Uh, no. I’m going home with Shorty tonight.”

  Sykes looked at me, then back at Eddie, and then back at me again. Shaking his head, he drove off.

  “Thanks a million, Eddie,” I griped.

  “You think those Spaniards recognized me?” It sounded like the drive down had sobered him up.

  “Nah. You’re not out much and I don’t think they got a good look at either you or me. You never socialized with that bunch, did you?”

  “I don’t talk to my neighbors. Too dangerous.”

  I shrugged. Electric Eddie had always been paranoid. Now he had a reason to be.

  We got back to my apartment, where Hairball greeted me with a mess on the floor. I ignored it and hobbled to the bathroom to check my wound.

  It wasn’t as bad as it felt. When Electric Eddie dragged me over the fence, one of the iron spikes had gouged a furrow into my thigh and ripped the pants leg. I also had a bullet hole through the lapel of my jacket and I’d lost my new hat. At least I still had my gun.

  I threw my suit in the trash and daubed the wound with iodine.

  “You should get a shot,” Electric Eddie said, standing in the bathroom doorway and cuddling Hairball. “You could get lockjaw.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that in the morning. Mind not staring at me in my underwear?”

  “OK. Got any cocaine?”

  “No. Go to bed.”

  Electric Eddie settled himself on the couch and I went into the bedroom after bandaging my leg. Even though I was bushed, it took a long time to catch some sleep. What I had overheard kept going round and round in my head. Octavio might leave the Interzone. Octavio had made amends for unwittingly bringing an anarchist to the house. Forty of something had arrived and would be more than enough. A timetable no one knows but is counted in years. The officer speaking of how Communists were spreading propaganda among the Moors.

  That bit about Octavio making amends sure made it sound like he was the murderer. But there was something else going on, something bigger than him and Juan Cardona.

  I felt I was getting closer, but I was still missing a piece to the puzzle.

  A big piece.

  And then there was the deal I had made with the Iron Column.

  When I finally did nod off, it was a miracle I didn’t have nightmares about it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next morning after Eddie left, I went to a croaker and got a shot for lockjaw that hurt more than the original wound. Then I bought another hat and suit, saved the receipt for expenses, and took a cab to the police station. I had to cool my heels for an hour before Gerald showed up.

  “Terribly sorry for keeping you,” he said, ushering me into his office. “I had to interrogate one of the Spanish prisoners.”

  “Really? About what?”

  “Chason arrested a known Communist who works in the port. A chap named Paco García. We had hoped he knew something about those agents Madrid warned us about.”

  “Did he?” I asked, tensing. I hadn’t told García about the operatives, but you should never underestimate what García knew.

  “Not a thing. He’s a tough nut to crack. We’ve had him here since last night. Since we don’t have anything solid to hold him on, I suppose we’ll have to let him go.”

  “He gave me a few leads on the Juan Cardona case, remember.”

  “Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he try to get some fascist arrested?” Gerald poured us each a glass of Scotch. I tried not to groan. It was going to be another drinking day, wasn’t it?

  I gave him a brief run down of what I had learned, skipping the events of the previous night. Gerald was a friend, and I had been hired to investigate the case, but that didn’t give me permission to go breaking and entering. None of what I’d heard would be admissible in court and they could easily turn it around on me. The last thing I needed was a bunch of fascists pressing charges. I did manage to slip in the fact that Octavio was thinking of bolting the International Zone, putting that tidbit in the mouth of “a source that asked to remain anonymous.”

  “We have a man on him. If Octavio tries to bolt, we’ll stop him. Even though we have nothing to charge him with, we can always use the excuse that his testimony is required for the murder trial.”

  “What if he uses a fake passport and slips through the net?”

  “Hmm, there are quite a few of those in circulation, aren’t there? We stamp out one counterfeiting operation and two spring up. I’ll send his description to all border checkpoints. A Spaniard with a German accent shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”

  “Does he have a record back home?”

  “I was wondering that too. I sent word to Madrid asking for any information they had about him. No reply. I don’t know if that’s typical Spanish bureaucracy or if they simply don’t want to answer the question.”

  “What’s he been doing for the past twenty-four hours?”

  “Not much. He visited Felipe Vilaró in the hospital again yesterday, and otherwise has been staying home.”

  “No other visitors? Didn’t go anywhere?”

  “No. Didn’t even leave the house except for the hospital visit. Did some food shopping on the way back so he wouldn’t have to leave a second time.”

  “Sounds like he’s been ordered to keep a low profile. What do you know about prominent Spaniards on the Mountain?”

  Gerald swirled his Scotch and took a sip. “I’ve been looking into that. Thank you for the tip about Juan driving a truck up there. That’s significant. Not his usual work and not his usual neighborhood. As you probably know, there aren’t too many Spaniards on the Mountain.”

  “It’s a pricey postcode. So who’s there?”

  “I think we can leave out some of the
longtime residents who have lived here a generation or two. Most of those avoid politics, as you say. They have their own lives here and have distanced themselves from Spanish troubles. Let’s also assume those Spaniards in the international government are also not involved in this case. I doubt they would stick their necks out in this fashion, and if they did, we would have a devil of a time pressing charges and making them stick.”

  “So who does that leave?”

  “The owner of a chain of shops who imports Spanish goods to market to the Spanish population, a landscape and portrait painter, a Basque who owns several fishing vessels and who fled when his region fell to the fascists, and a retired military officer.”

  “You know who has my vote,” I said. That was as close as I could come to telling him what Electric Eddie and I had gotten up to.

  “Indeed. His name is Colonel Ramiro Fernández de Tomelloso.”

  “That’s a mouthful. So what’s his story?”

  “He was a lower ranking officer in Franco’s Army of Africa and fought the Moors throughout the 1920s, although to no great distinction. He only earned the usual medals. Nothing extraordinary. His record in the Spanish Civil War was equally unremarkable. I’ve seen some evidence that he’s a member of the Falange but I have yet to confirm it.”

  Don’t worry, Gerald, I thought. I’ve confirmed it.

  “Why is he living here?” I asked.

  Gerald took another sip of his Scotch. “Unclear. He spent much of his professional life in this country, and now that he’s in his late sixties I suppose he decided to retire here. He has a wife, and some children, all of whom are grown and have since moved away to the Spanish Zone or the mainland. We’re watching him, and digging into his activities. So far we’ve found nothing suspicious, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find. You work on the left-wing Spaniards and we’ll take care of the rest. I know you can’t infiltrate the right like you can infiltrate the left.”

  I didn’t think “infiltrate” was the right word, but I let it pass.