“No message.”
I slammed down the receiver and hurried out into the square. Children were wrestling and rolling and scuttling about on the strip of drying grass under the statue of Washington. Cars swooped around the circle. I saw a taxi. It wasn’t light blue. I hailed it and, jumping in, called:
“Luego, al Hotel Reforma.”
The driver swerved into Londres. Ahead, completely blocking the thoroughfare, was the parade of blue-and-orange football players. For two blocks we crawled after them while anxiety gnawed me. Then the driver turned into Calle Berlin and increased speed. In about two minutes he drew up in front of the Reforma steps.
I paid him the exorbitant two-fifty pesos he demanded and ran into the lobby. Americans, all elaborately fixed up for their morning tours, were milling around, locating guides and being gypped. I glanced anxiously through them. There was no sign of Lena Snood’s indomitable little figure.
I went to the desk. An elegant young man with an elegant moustache and a large amethyst ring moved along the counter to me.
I said: “I want Mrs. Snood. Do you know if she’s in?”
“Mrs. Snood. The little lady, sir?” He indicated a little lady with his hand. “A green suit.”
“Yes. That’s it.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, sir, she left just about half an hour ago.”
At least my darkest fears had not been realized. She hadn’t died in the night. I asked: “Suppose you don’t know where she went?”
“Why, yes, sir. She stopped to cash a traveller’s cheque. A very friendly lady, sir. She told me she was going to the floating gardens of Xochimilco.”
“With a guided party?”
He permitted himself an almost personal smile. “I think not, sir. She was telling me that she thought the guided parties—rather high, sir. She was going in a taxi.”
That was Mrs. Snood all right. I was surprised she hadn’t taken a bus.
On a wild hunch, I asked: “I don’t imagine you noticed whether she was carrying a book?”
“Yes, sir, she was. She put it down on the desk while she was signing the traveller’s cheque. I noticed it.” He looked politely surprised. “Just a little book, sir. One of those little brightly coloured detective stories.”
For a moment he stood watching me, apparently embarrassed. Then he coughed.
“Excuse me, sir, but are you Mr. Duluth?”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly suspicious. “Why?”
“The person you sent to inquire for Mrs. Snood was here just a moment ago, sir.”
“The person.…?”
“The young boy, sir. The—er—messenger.”
With a face like a flower and a gun on his hip. Junior.
I said quickly: “You told him where she’d gone?”
“Why, yes, sir. He said it was most important. That you were very eager to see her immediately.” He was concerned. “Did I do something wrong, sir?”
I tried to smile. “No. It’s nothing. Nothing at all. I’d almost forgotten I’d sent him.”
At least she’s got a twenty minute start, I thought. I tried to cling on to that fact for comfort.
At least she wasn’t dead yet….
XIII
I moved away from the desk through the clusters of elegantly dressed American tourists. Mrs. Snood had a twenty minute start, but Junior had his light-blue sedan. By speeding, he could reach Xochimilco almost as quickly as she.
My first impulse was to jump a taxi and give chase. But I didn’t trust my Spanish to cope with something as elaborate as a tail job. Then I thought of Vera Garcia. Either she was or she wasn’t involved in the conspiracy. But, even if she was, it was worth taking a risk for the use of the station wagon coupe.
I hurried to the group of telephone booths at the rear of the lobby. Vera’s number was listed in the Ericsson directory. I called it, and almost immediately she answered.
“Is Peter, no?” She sounded pleased and gay. “I expect you. Oh, last night I was so mad, yes? But to-day I am no more mad.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “Listen, Vera, want to help me?”
“Oh, yes.” Her voice clapped its hands. “Oh yes, yes.”
“Then fine. Look. I’m at the Hotel Reforma. Come over right away—in the car. It’s urgent.”
“Right away I come.”
“And make it snappy. Don’t go ballerina and spend hours fixing yourself up.”
“You want I come as I am?”
“Yes.”
She giggled. “Just from the tub I am. I have not the clothes on. Not a thing. Bare, bare.”
“Then put on some clothes, clothes.”
“Yes, Peter. Quick.”
I left the booth. I hurried out on to the hotel steps chewing on a cigarette. They had slugged me and tried to kidnap me just because they thought I had the book. They knew Lena had it. What would they do to her? Particularly if they thought she was my partner. I felt cold with apprehension. I wished I had asked Vera if she owned a gun.
Cars streamed along the great show-off Paseo de La Reforma. Some Mexican movie actresses drove up and ascended the steps to the hotel, putting on more dog than a Hollywood star of twenty years ago. Silver fox, toothy smiles, scurrying little groups of satellites. The thump of a drum and the blare of trumpets sounded across the street. Soon the football parade showed up, winding into the Paseo, blue-and-orange, super-manly, but rather ragged in the formation.
I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes since I had called Vera. A station wagon coupe lurched dramatically out of the Calle Milan, crossed Reforma and swerved around to a near-crash landing at the foot of the hotel steps. The horn honked a brazen salute. An arm in elegant dove-grey was waving at me with vigour.
I ran down the steps and jumped in beside Vera.
“Atta girl,” I said. “Xochimilco. The floating gardens and drive like you had S. Hurok after you.”
She shot the car forward through the red light, and swung down the Paseo. She wasn’t under-estimating the urgency. She looked wonderful that morning. The dove-grey suit fitted her like a scabbard, and she’d had no time to junk it up with jewellery. She’d had no time for make-up, either. Her skin was clear as the morning sunlight. Sherry’s Bar in the Metropolitan Opera House had given way to the Russian peasant village.
Suddenly I found myself wishing things were different, that there wasn’t all this lethal running around, that there was just Vera.
As the car hurtled towards the suburbs, she turned from the wheel, her dark hair streaming.
“Please to tell? Do we escape or do we pursue?”
“Right now we’re pursuing.”
“The boy with the cage of the bird?”
“Incidentally.”
“Someone else?”
“Mrs. Snood.”
“Mrs. Snood!” The long, thick lashes batted over her eyes. “Is Mrs. Snood who push this girl in the cenote?”
Before I could answer, she added: “But you do not wish the questions. I know. I am good to-day. I am sorry for being mad. I just drive. Quick, quick.”
She hurtled past a second-class bus stuffed with men, women, children and animals, giving her all to the station wagon. But she had started my mind down an entirely new line of thought. Until then I had never doubted the authenticity of Lena Snood with her dead real-estate husband, her lovely home in Newark and her two lovely intellectual daughters. She had been the symbol of good old American true-blueness. But why shouldn’t she have been as plausible an actor as Halliday? I thought of her back in Yucatan bringing me the cup of coffee in my room just after Deborah’s death. She could have done it out of plain ordinary kindness. She could also have chosen it as an excuse for getting into my room. I thought of her chattering, fluttering around, picking up The Wrong Murder. She might have borrowed it innocently. But—she might just as well have been smarter than the others and realized, from the beginning, the book’s importance.
I was so used to being suspicious that everything ab
out Lena Snood suddenly turned itself inside out in my mind. Had she come to my apartment the day before as a spy? Had she invited me to the party in order to lure me to Junior with the light-blue sedan? And had Junior, just now, taken my name in vain at the Reforma, not as her enemy, but as her employee?
For the twentieth time in so many hours the whole picture went topsy-turvy. Perhaps even her reference to the book at the party had been deliberate. A private message, to the red-headed bridegroom?
I felt the way some mad people must feel when there is no longer any way of distinguishing reality from fantasy.
It was past eleven, about twenty minutes after we had left the hotel, when we arrived in the run-down little village of Xochimilco. Ahead of us loomed the ancient pink-brown church with its preposterously long flying buttress. Indian girls from the rich chinampa water-meadows squatted in front of the iron railings of the market with great scarlet, pink and cream banks of the carnations which had made the town famous. Vera whirled past them and swung into the narrow road which led through crumbling adobe brick houses, bougainvillea-smothered and pig-infested, towards the primitive dock where the pleasure-boats plied for hire.
The moment she parked people crowded around the car—boat-owners, girls selling armfuls of posies, men selling leather riding-whips and hideous religious bric-à-brac. We pushed through them towards the edge of the canal where the tourist ride started. Below us on the calm, weed-green water dozens of pleasure-boats huddled together like a herd of water-cows. Antique punts with canopies against the sun on four spindly legs, each had its name flauntingly embroidered across the canopy arch in flowers—Rosita, Lupita, Amelia, Carmen. The banks were thronged with pleasure-seekers, boat-renters and little boys trying to wangle a commission from someone—anyone. They were all chattering and laughing and bargaining like mad.
I searched through the milling crowd for Lena Snood. There was no sign of her. I hadn’t expected it, of course. By now she would be somewhere out on the canals—if she had arrived safely.
We were surrounded by straw-hatted boat-renters, slight dark Indians in white cotton pants with white cotton shirts knotted over their brown stomachs. They were all of them jabbering, pointing out individual boats, quoting prices.
“Describe Mrs. Snood to them,” I asked Vera. “Find out if anyone’s seen her. An American woman—alone.”
Vera began to talk in Spanish. The men crowded even closer.
“A green suit,” I said.
Several of the men started to talk at once. A little boy tugged at my sleeve and held up for sale an insane, wooden horse’s head painted silver. The clumsy boats with their gaudy floral decorations swung listlessly back and forth in a slight breeze. So did the tall, silver-green trees, like poplars, on the opposite bank of the canal.
One of the men around Vera, a wrinkled old Indian with a rent in his shirt, had taken the spotlight. The others, sensing his success, were dwindling away in search of other customers.
“She’s here,” Vera turned from him to me. “He saw the little American woman in the green suit arrive alone in a taxi about a quarter of an hour ago. She take the boat of his friend—the Carmelita.”
“Alone?” I asked.
“Yes, alone.”
Relief poured through me. “Okay. Does he have a boat, this guy?”
“Yes.” Vera pointed. “The Lupita. Is his.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Give him anything. Tell him to pole like hell. We’ll pay double when we find her.”
I started down the bank with Vera and the Indian after me. The Lupita was lying off shore in the middle of the canal. We hurried through the other boats, using them as a bridge, and reached it.
Under the canopy were two wooden chairs and a wooden table. We ducked into them. The old Indian released the mooring-rope, picked up his long punting-pole and started to push us forward down the boat-strewn canal.
It was Sunday—the great gala day of the week in Xochimilco, when everyone comes out from Mexico City to drift along through the flowery water-meadows, to eat and drink and dance and sing to the music of the floating orchestras. Ahead of us the boats were thick as butterflies in a summer garden. A boatload of recently embarked musicians passed us, the men in their brilliant mariachi costumes settling themselves on chairs and tuning their instruments. A girl in a canoe heaped high with red and white poppies glided past us from some remote back-water garden on her way to the market.
I began to feel relaxed. The danger was almost negligible now. Nothing could happen to Mrs. Snood out here on the noisy canals. All we had to do was to catch up with her.
The mariachis had started to play. Over the frenzied twang of guitars a deep, chesty baritone was extolling Guadalajara. The melody was caught up from all the boats around.
I let my hand trail in the cool, dark canal. Water weed small and round as green confetti brushed against my fingers.
To-morrow night I would be in New York with Iris. I tried to imagine it. I began to wonder if I would miss Vera. The realization that I was almost through with Mexico spread a veil of unreality over the whole mystery. Probably even with the book I would never know what it had all been about. Probably I would never know whether Vera was just a nice little ballerina with a temper or a—what? The entire episode would dissolve from my mind like a dream.
Suddenly the boatman shouted, “La Carmelita,” and started to punt at double the speed. We lurched forward, past the Viva Mexico, where a fat Mexican couple were precariously dancing a rumba, past the boatload of mariachis.
I climbed out into the blunt bow of the Lupita, leaning ahead to look. I saw the nose of the Carmelita. Then I caught a glimpse of green.
The boatman gave a final violent plunge with the pole. We out-distanced the boats in between and slid right alongside the boat of his friend.
I waved, grinned and opened my mouth to speak, then I closed it.
An American woman was sitting in the other punt. A small American woman in a jade-green suit. As we almost collided, she started and swung round towards me. I looked at her. She looked at me. Her hair was snow-white. Rimless pince-nez wabbled disapprovingly on a thin, spinsterish nose.
This was the one thing I had never anticipated.
She was a little American woman in a green suit, okay.
But she wasn’t Lena Snood.
I couldn’t blame the boatman. How could he be expected to tell one green-dressed gringo woman from another? But a kind of panic came over me. Had Junior caught up with Lena Snood before she reached Xochimilco? Was it already too late?
It didn’t seem likely. Lena would have been in a taxi with a twenty-minute start. Even if Junior had overtaken her, brash as he was, I doubted if he would have staged a hold-up in front of a taxi-driver. Certainly he couldn’t have harmed her in the crowd on the dock. It was much more probable that she was here somewhere on the canal—but farther ahead.
The regular canal trip was almost an hour. We hadn’t a prayer of catching up with her in the lumbering Lupita. We’d have to get back to the landing-stage and wait to intercept her there.
I said to Vera: “Tell him to get back to the dock and make it snappy.”
The boatman seemed to have entered into the spirit of this crazy American idea of fun. He knew every inch of the territory, poling ferociously through obscure little side canals, he cut off a good two-thirds of the trip and brought us into the last lap of the tourist run in less than ten minutes.
When we re-emerged into the main canal the congestion was even worse than it had been farther back.
The boatman was sweating now, but he kept on manfully, pushing us forward in spite of angry expostulations from other boatmen. I kept in the bow, standing, clinging to the flower-decorated post that held up the canopy.
The musicians in a mariachi boat ahead of us were singing and yipping and brandishing their hats.
“Cucurucu, me cantan! as palomas.
Tralalala, me canta el trobador.”
We were reaching a bend, the last bend before the dock. Side-swiping a boat with a photographer, and almost knocking his camera into the canal, we made the bend and turned it.
There were a flock of new boats ahead and, beyond them, the dock where we had embarked.
“Cucurucu…” yelled the musicians.
Three girls in the boat in front of me sat with their arms entwined around each other’s waists, their black hair hanging loose down their backs.
“Cucurucu…” they sang.
I stretched up, trying to look around their canopy. One of them rolled her eyes at me and tossed a carnation. All three burst into a gale of giggling, mermaid laughter.
A boat was drawing up at the dock. I couldn’t see its occupant. Then there was a sudden movement, and I caught a glimpse of shrill green.
My heart did a hand spring. There was more green. And then, I saw all of her. There was no doubt—no doubt at all.
Lena Snood was standing on the bank. She was a good fifty yards away, but I could see her in every detail. There was a pink camelia pinned in her untidy hair. In one hand she was, carrying a great bunch of scarlet carnations. She was fumbling in her bag. She brought out money and paid her boatman. She turned then and started up the bank. From behind I could just see a glimpse of something small and bright tucked under her arm.
The Wrong Murder by Craig Rice.
In my eagerness I climbed farther forward into the bow, lost my balance and half slipped overboard, one leg plunging into the water. The three girls in front of me giggled.
Although I was too far away for her to hear, I let out a blaring:
“Lena.”
The three girls chorused in mocking treble unison:
“Lena, Lena…”
Once again their gale of laughter swept up.
“Quick,” I said to Vera. “She’s there. Tell him to break his back.”
“Cucurucu, me canton las palomas.
Tralalala, me canta el trobador.”
The stupid, infectious tune was tossing around from one boat to another. Damn the music! If there wasn’t so much racket, I might have been able to make Lena hear.
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