Candy Kid (13 page)

“I ran into those two in Juarez last night with a couple of bims. They told me someone was looking for me. Not who.” He told the truth. “I didn’t know Tustin. I didn’t know that was his name.”

“Why was he looking for you, Jo?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have an idea.”

He’d go a little further. “Listen, Lou. I saw the guy for the first time when I got here yesterday. He was coming out of the hotel as I was going in. I didn’t pay any more attention to him than that. And it wasn’t an hour later he was in my bedroom—your guest room—going through my things.”

Her eyebrows zoomed. “Why?”

“I didn’t know then, I don’t know now. I caught him at it because I was expecting Pablo with that lunch, remember?”

“What did he say?”

“He apologized for mistaking the room. You don’t mistake that apartment of yours for a room, Lou.”

“No, you don’t,” she agreed. Her pretty face was screwed tight with thinking.

“I didn’t like it. Pablo arrived about then and the guy took off. Pablo found out his name for me later.”
Tosteen
—Tustin.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“What for?”

“We like to keep an eye on irregularities.”

“He hadn’t taken anything, Lou. He’d apologized.”

She pronged a fork on the table cloth. “Did you see him again?”

“In Juarez. We passed each other again, like strangers.” He wouldn’t mention the later altercation. Maybe no one would remember it.

She frowned. “Then why?” She persisted, “That’s all there was to it, Jo?”

“That’s all.” With reservations.

She said slowly, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all.” But she’d lived too long on the border not to be suspicious. Even of Jose Aragon. “There must be more to it, Jo.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “That much doesn’t add. But how are we going to find out the rest of it? Tosteen—Tustin’s dead.”

“You said killed.”

“What do the police say?”

“They think he got drunk, fell into the river, or was rolled. That’s what they say. That he died from the tumble. Not that someone killed him.”

“Why are they so interested? Another drunk.”

“You know why,” she told him impatiently. “Neither side wants any trouble.”

“That’s what they’re saying in Juarez. On which side did it happen? It’s safer if he was killed American. Norte American.

She agreed.

“They’re afraid. They don’t want to talk about it. They know he was killed even if the cops won’t say so. Do you know el Greco, Lou?”

Alarm touched her. “Is he in on it?”

“Do you know him?”

“Everyone knows Senor Praxiteles. He does business both sides of the bridge. He’s a bad one, Jo. Where does he come in?

“I don’t know,” he began, but at the refusal in her face, he made it stronger. “I honestly don’t, Lou. But no one in Juarez wants to talk about him or about Tosteen, your Tustin. It’s fifty-fifty on not talking.”

She spoke softly. “Why were you asking questions in Juarez?”

“I was trying to get some answers.” It sounded flip but he wasn’t feeling that way. “I didn’t.”

“Why did you stay over to ask questions?”

The taxi driver hadn’t come forward. He was pretty sure of that. Dirty little guys like the cabbie could get in trouble too easy. Jose Aragon had been the one selected to take on that trouble but he’d refused. Whether the cabbie was an innocent victim or one of the Praxiteles boys, he’d keep his mouth shut. It could have been he who pushed Tosteen over the embankment to get rid of him. Jose didn’t even have to speak up.

He had waited too long to answer her. She went on, “Why did you stay over to ask questions about Tustin? Before the police knew he was dead?”

“I didn’t kill him, Lou. For God’s sake!”

“I know you didn’t,” she returned as angrily. “But how did you know?” She was almost fearful. “What have you to do with el Greco?”

“Not a damn thing. Or with Tustin. Believe it or not, but it’s God’s truth.”

“I believe you, Jo,” she said but she was still angry. Then she switched emotions. She became shrewd. “Go home, Jo.”

“I can’t.” He’d spoken too quickly.

“Why not?” The two words were bullet hard.

He shouldn’t have told her anything. Every little piece led to another little piece. He was exceedingly careful now, choosing each word, weighing it before he gave it to her. “I lost something last night in Juarez. Until I find it, I can’t go home.”

She didn’t ask what; if he’d wanted her to know that he’d have told her. But she reached back and put things in order. “What about Praxiteles?”

He’d be safe telling her the whole story. She could help him, she had an importance, the woman who ran the biggest hotel in El Paso. But the little fellows wouldn’t be safe; she wouldn’t care about Canario who’d played a joke and was this soon regretting it or of Francisca trembling in the darkness and as yet he didn’t know why. Lou would short-cut to take care of Jose Aragon and the hotel; what happened to the others wouldn’t matter. She’d been here too long, she’d known too many who deserved their border reputation. She’d tar them all with the brush until they proved otherwise. And they couldn’t prove it with two sets of police on their necks; they couldn’t prove it with el Greco’s threads winding about them.

He had no compunctions about involving the Farrar bunch, but if he did, they’d sail out of it with full white sails. Between the Farrars and a border punk, the punk wouldn’t have a chance. He’d save the Farrars for one who saw them without illusions, for himself. He must continue to speak with care. He answered her, therefore, “I don’t know yet, Lou. I only know what I’ve told you, across the bridge the two names are linked. Maybe not by the police. By the people in the Plaza. In the bars.”

“It isn’t safe to play games with Senor el Greco, Jo.”

“I’ve heard that one before.”

“Have you met him?”

He was careful. “I’ve been in his shop.”

“I wouldn’t go back. If he knows you’ve been asking questions about him, and he’ll know, I wouldn’t go back.”

“Thanks, Lou,” he said noncommittally.

She said, “You were CIC during the war.”

He flared, “You think I’m playing cloak and dagger out of habit? I’m not, Lou. But look at it straight. A guy I don’t know follows me around. Before I can find out why, he’s dead. Now the police are looking for me. I’ve got some things to learn.”

He’d finished his dinner a long time ago. Annie was hovering but not too close; she could see the boss didn’t want an interruption. He beckoned the girl now. “Bring me some peach shortcake and more coffee. How about it, Lou, join me for coffee?”

“I must get back to the desk.” When the waitress withdrew, she said, “There’s a lot you aren’t saying, Jo. I know it. You know it.”

He smiled at her fondly. “I’m hoping to get done with it tonight. Maybe I can catch a late ride. If you hear of any, let me know. You think I ought to see the cops before I leave?”

“It isn’t exactly the cops. It’s Ozzie Harrod. Border patrol. We went to school together.”

“You think I should talk to him?”

“Not until you’re ready to talk, Jo.” She shook her head gravely. “Not while you’re covering up this way. He’s no dope.”

It annoyed him that he was so wide open but he swallowed the rebuke. He said, “Okay.”

She pushed away from the table. “You’re going across the bridge again tonight.” She disapproved.

“I’ve got to.”

“You wouldn’t want to take me along?”

“I can’t, Lou.” He shook his head.

“Be careful.” She walked away on efficient heels.

The girl darted forward with the dessert as soon as the boss had gone. “Get me an afternoon paper, will you, Annie?” He smiled at her. She was eaten up with curiosity but the smile would help her to forget. It was his forward-pass smile. One he’d learned from Beach.

The story was on the front page but you had to borrow a microscope to find it. A couple of lines about a man found dead in the Rio Grande near the bridge, identified as H. E. Tustin. Believed to have lost his balance and fallen over the embankment. Suggestion was he’d lurched through too many bars; the reporter didn’t have to put that in words. Nothing about who Tustin was or what he was doing wandering on a dark embankment. The police would have been through Tustin’s papers, they’d know. It looked as if he’d have to see the police despite Lou’s warning.

When he returned to the lobby, he was aware of every face decorating it. Among these would be cops. But no one paid him any special attention and he wasn’t able to spot which ones. That was the way they wanted it. He had to go to the desk for a key. Lou ignored him. Clark handed it over without words. Lou may have warned him to keep quiet too.

As Jose turned toward the elevators, he almost bumped into Pablo. The boy said, “Your pardon, Senor,” and got himself out of the way. His flat black eyes held on Jose’s face. As if he had words on his tongue but there were others heading to the elevators and he withheld them.

The others got off along the way, couples and the usual business men. Jose rode to the top floor. He let himself into Lou’s apartment, shoved the door tight after him. He was stopped cold. By a smell. A smell he knew by now. The smell of La Rosa del Amor.

On Lou’s cocktail table was the lumpy green-wrapped package. Quickly Jose went into the bedroom, into the bath, out again, and without a halt into Lou’s room and bath. He was here alone. He was just reaching for the package when the knock sounded at the door. A knock without any special significance, not Lou’s quick rap, or Pablo’s hesitant one. A plain knock.

Automatically he hitched up his jeans, rubbed his hands dry. He crossed to the door, opened it as an ordinary guy would to an ordinary knock. He didn’t know the man who stood outside but he’d seen him in the elevator. He’d got off on the floor below. A tall, bony man, about Lou’s age, a weather-beaten face; a man with the horizon in his intelligent gray eyes, a quiet voice, a pleasant manner. He might have been a rancher. Jose guessed who he was.

“Jose Aragon? My name’s Harrod.” He held out a small leather folder. Jose took it, glanced at the credentials. “May I come in for a few minutes?”

“Yes. Come in.” He was conscious of nothing but that sickly sweet smell, Harrod couldn’t miss it. Jose was deferent as a younger man must be to an older, offering the good chair. He himself walked boldly to the couch, sat himself down. He couldn’t hide the package; he could make it harmless by making it more conspicuous.

“I was asking Miss Chenoweth about you earlier. She thought you’d checked out this morning.”

Lou hadn’t sent him up here, Lou didn’t want Jose talking with Harrod yet. The chief had other sources of information.

“I intended to,” Jose admitted. “But at the last minute I decided to stay over another day.”

“For any particular reason?”

He could answer that as he pleased. He knew Lou hadn’t talked, there hadn’t been time. She wouldn’t repeat their conversation no matter how much time there was. His delay in answering Harrod wasn’t pointed, it was as if he were considering the question. “No,” he finally decided. “I haven’t been down this way for years and I thought I’d have another day of it.”

“But your cousin left this morning?” Evidently Harrod had been trying to make something of that.

Jose said agreeably, “Yes. Someone had to take the truck back to the ranch.” He smiled. “Beach was elected.”

Harrod seemed to accept it. He might send someone north to check with Beach but that too was all right. Beach wouldn’t know anything. “You know why I’m here, Mr. Aragon.”

Jose nodded. “The death of a man named Tustin.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much.” He recited the same incidents that he had just given Lou.

“You don’t know what he wanted from you? Enough to risk searching your room?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” The package stunk in his nostrils. “Who was Tustin, Captain Harrod? What was his business?”

“We don’t know that, yet,” Harrod drawled. He had a permanent small frown which drew his eyebrows together. “You were in the late war, Mr. Aragon?” Before Jo could answer, he continued, “In intelligence.” Again he continued without waiting for Jose to speak, “From Tustin’s papers it would seem that he had traveled considerably. Across Europe to South America. Then north through Panama to Mexico City. Before this jump to El Paso.”

As if he were following a trail, or a blonde.

Jose said, “I was in the European theatre most of the war, Captain. I started out in Panama, yes, and I thought it was going to be South America. Because of language. But the brass must have decided that was too pat.”

“You didn’t run across Mr. Tustin?”

“I’m certain of it,” Jose said honestly. Nor had he run into any of the others mixed up with this. He’d take an oath on it. He was in this for one reason only, because he’d stood in the noon sun of El Paso looking like any Mexican lout wanting to earn a couple of easy bucks. He asked a question of his own. “It’s your opinion this is more than just a drunk falling in the river?”

“What do you think?” The gray eyes were shrewd, the mouth was straight.

He couldn’t play it too innocent. He said, “The first time I saw the man I thought he was a traveling salesman from Albuquerque or Dallas or Fort Worth. When I caught him with my pants, I thought he was a sneak thief. Though he looked a hell of a lot more prosperous than I. But then, I figured maybe the word had eased around that we’d sold a big shipment of cattle and we’d trucked the two prize bulls down in person, so that maybe he’d think we were paid off in cash like in the old Westerns, not by check. Last night—” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what to think. There isn’t a reason I know of why he’d be following me around. I know one thing, I wasn’t any threat to him. I’ve been out of the Army for better than a year and I was pretty anonymous when I was in it. So if it’s a grudge fight you’ve been considering, that’s out. I don’t know the score, Captain Harrod.” After all, it was true, and it sounded true. “I’d like to know it.”

“Tustin wasn’t drunk last night.”

Jose gave him a quick curious glance.

“He didn’t die from rolling down an embankment. He died from a knife in his back. He didn’t bleed much but he didn’t bleed at all down there in the river.”