Candy Kid (15 page)

He sighed. “This I know, Senora. It is not for myself that I visit this scoundrel, it is in the service of a friend.”

She measured him shrewdly. “You will do well to consider all things when you choose a friend.”

He agreed and took himself into the night. He crossed the warm, gentle patio with a jaunty step, let himself through the tinkling gate into the lane outside. A harmless lane with a few turista couples strolling toward their dinner. No one blocked the exit to the Avenida. The Avenida, too, was harmless, the usual crowd of early evening visitors milling into the stores, dallying at the street tiendas; the usual bands blaring through the loud-speakers of the big cafes, the usual under-tinkle of the street musicians.

He could have taken he short cut to Praxiteles, he knew the way by now. But for no particular reason, no more than a whim to repeat a previous pattern, and to remain on the lighted thoroughfare, he moved on down the Avenue toward the Plaza. At the end of the block he spied Canario, a lively gesticulating Canario, coaxing centavos by a trill of music, biding his time until later when the centavos would become pesos or preferably dollars. As Jose moved in his direction, the music stopped in a splash of cymbals, ceased abruptly and wasn’t followed by a monkey grin and a sombrero outthrust to catch the copper pieces. Canario was gone before Jose could reach the place where he stood. Vanished.

Jose’s own grin split his face from ear to ear. So tonight he was not to be welcomed by the band, tonight he was poison. It wasn’t important enough to spy out the
burlero’s
hiding place. He already knew he was poison. He couldn’t have cared less.

He continued on to the Plaza. It was the same as it had been last night, the street urchins chasing their tails, the old men selling their watermelon or roasting ears or cheap sweets, the dogs scratching their flea-bitten ears, the girls flirting their shoulders at the young men, the old women visiting the house of God. The few strangers who had wandered this far from the Avenida were too conscious of their strangeness, eager to return to the safety of their own kind. Jose wandered into the native group as if he belonged there, struck a light to a sweet cigarillo and with a grand caballero sweep of his hand, waved away the urchins who came begging.

The street wasn’t uneasy tonight. The business of Tustin had been disposed of, it had probably been disposed of before Harrod visited Jose. Without being told, he knew what the verdict had been. A man had come to accidental death through a drunken fall; most fortunate, he had fallen on the American side of the river. There was no reason for Jose to hang around, there was nothing to learn.

He was ready to move on when he saw her. It was so unexpected that he found himself gawking like the most stupid tourist. She wasn’t one of the girls who sallied arm and arm in the vicinity of the young men, baiting her attractions with giggles. She wasn’t one concerning whom the young men exchanged undertones or emitted Norte American wolfish whistles. She was with a swarm of kids playing in the street, a game of their own devising which might have been tag or shinny or kick the can, a bunch of kids, mostly boys, yelling and dodging and shouting slanderous epithets at the occasional car which dared interrupt their game. His gawking was of value in one respect, he was sure it was she although she wore dirty jeans and a faded polo shirt instead of ruffles, although the stone mask of her face was alive now with frenzied play. He knew the size of her and the shape of her eyes and the way her brittle black hair streamed away from her shoulders as she darted in and out of the crowd. He didn’t need the dangle of her earrings for identification.

He caught her on one of those darts, his hand grasped her shoulder as earlier today it had grasped Canario. “Let go!” She whirled on him angrily but his hand didn’t release its clench. When she saw who he was, fear crept around her mouth. She covered it with greater fury. “Take your hands off from me. Leave me alone. If you do not leave me alone, I will call the police.” She and her grandfather. They talked bold.

The shoulder was too slippery. He moved his fingers down her firm arm for a tighter grip. “You call the police and I will tell them you are a thief,” he replied.

“I am not a thief!” She began to whine in street-urchin fashion, “I swear by the Holy Mother I have never stolen nothing from you.” It wasn’t any more real in her mouth than in theirs. It was no more than a play for time before the kicking, the biting, the scrounging began anew. “Let go of me. I will scream for help.”

He held on.

The gang she had been playing with didn’t interfere. Unobtrusively they were moving the game as far away as possible. It was every man for himself. There were police who did not wear uniforms, the plain-clothes men. It was evident that this was a new one, sent to investigate their behavior. They would be lucky if only one of their group was interrogated.

She screamed abuse on him, she spattered him with obscene argot, she damned his soul but he held on. “When you are tired of making that noise,” he said calmly, “I will tell you what it is I want from you.” This he repeated every time she was forced to pause and refill her lungs.

She would get tired. It took a little time but she did. She went limp suddenly; he’d been expecting it and he didn’t relax his grasp, he tightened it. “What is it you want?” she muttered sullenly.

“I want some information. I will pay you for it. Where can we talk this over?”

The suggestion of payment alerted her ears as he knew it would. She’d been pretending that she would fight him no more, waiting for the moment he dropped his guard. Now there was no pretense, she stopped the fight. But she warned him, more sullen, “I will not go to your room.”

“I don’t have a room. I wish to talk now, here in Juarez. Any place you say. But it must be where no one else will be listening.”

Either she had no ideas or she didn’t understand.

He shook her slightly. “Where? To the house of your
abuelo
?”

“No,” she spat at him quickly. Her eyes remained on his face, trying to understand what it was he wanted. They didn’t find out.

“Come,” she decided. Not pleasantly. He didn’t know what to expect, there’d been a glint which boded him ill. She led, his grasp still tight on her arm, toward the Avenida. She didn’t go that far, only far enough to be away from the Plaza crowd. She gestured to the curbstone.

“My house is yours, Senor,” she mocked.

Together they sat down in the dust.

She was a quiet hostess. She said, “You can let go my arm. I will not run away.”

“If you do, I will trip you.”

He released her and took from his pocket his cigarettes. He needed a drink after this hyena; temporarily he’d have to settle for a smoke. You didn’t take kids into bars.

She stopped rubbing her arm and held out her hand. “Gimme cigarette.” It was automatic.

“You’re too young to smoke.”

She didn’t understand. On the Plaza they smoked before they could talk. He lit hers and his own. He was curious. “How old are you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

It could be true if you had el Greco for a grandfather. But he turned on her with a scowl. “I am going to ask you certain questions. You are going to answer them. If you lie, I will know you are lying. If you do not tell me the truth, I will give you to the police for stealing.”

“I have stolen nothing,” she screamed, and then her voice diminished to an undertone. She looked at him with hatred. “You have received what I took from you.”

“And if I have?” He exaggerated the shrug. “It was none the less stolen. How do I know it is the same package which was returned to me? How do I know what was removed from the package while it was in the hands of a thief?”

Fury trembled her thin body. She found it hard to make words. They came out choked, “The package was not opened. It was put in a safe place until it could be delivered to you—”

“Who told you to take the package from me?”

She didn’t answer him. She kept her eyes on him while she tried to think of an answer he would accept. Finally she said, “No one told me.”

He jumped her words, “Then why did you do it?”

“Because I hate him,” she answered with venom.

“Hate who?”

“El Greco.”

Jose snorted. “A
nieta
does not hate her
abuelito.
”

She was fierce. “I am no
nieta
of this devil.”

“The
abuelo
is not the
abuelito,
” he realized. He’d been right the first time, she was from the country. “Then why do you live in his house?”

She turned her head and looked at him. “Each time I run away, he pays someone to find me.”

“What’s he got on you?” he asked bluntly. “If he isn’t your
abuelito,
you don’t have to go back to him. Why don’t you go home? Or is it you like better the lights of Juarez?”

“I hate Juarez,” she cursed.

“Then why not go home to your family instead of living with that swine?”

“My family sold me to him.”

His eyes stretched wide. She wasn’t making it up; it was a simple and bitter statement of fact. “But—” He stammered. “But they can’t do that. You can’t sell human beings. It’s against the law—of God and government.”

“Many poor families sell their children.”

“To him?”

“Sometimes to him.”

He felt physically ill. He knew why. He didn’t look at her.

“How did you escape them?” It wasn’t because she was too young.

Her lips pulled away from her teeth. “I kick them. No one will pay money for me. They are afraid of me. He beat me and I hurt them more. Unless he kill me, I will always hurt them.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?”

“Perhaps it is because he pay much money for me. Now I must be a servant in his house.” She made a sound that could have been laughter. “I have run away again.”

“You haven’t run far. Why don’t you go home?”

“They would sell me again.”

She didn’t say it but she had figured it out. Better to battle against an enemy she already knew. He took a breath of clean air before commencing again. “All right. You took the package because you wanted it. But what were you doing at the Cafe Herrera? You tried to stop me from going to el Greco. When you couldn’t stop me, you ran out and waited for me. You can’t expect me to believe that you did all this because you hate him. Somebody had to tell you that I’d be at the cafe and that I was planning to pick up that package. Somebody who knew these things.”

Again there was the waiting period while she figured out what to say. “I will tell you how it is,” she spoke resignedly. “I listen. Always I listen. While I am scrubbing his dirty floors. While I wash the filth of his clothes. I know there is an important package to be delivered. Always I know this. Because I listen, I know that the name of the one who will come for this package is Jose Aragon.” She wasn’t glib, she told it as if it were being pulled from her tongue, bit by bit. Lie by lie.

“One moment. How do you know the name? How is it you hear this?”

“It is in the afternoon,” she remembered, lidding her eyes. “He is in the shop selling his stolen goods to turistas and the name is told to him.”

“Who tells it to him? And what are you doing in the shop while you are scrubbing floors and washing clothes?”

She had to think a long time to dream up an answer to that. “I do not know who tells it to him. I am not in the shop. I am telling you the truth,” she insisted. “I am in the kitchen when he is very angry over the telephone. The telephone he pretends he does not have but it is in a cupboard.”

“So he’s on the phone and who’s he talking to?”

“To Ramirez.” She was surprised at his stupidity.

“Ramirez is his hatchet-man? His
major-domo
?”

“His
agente.
”

“Same thing. And Ramirez was one of those goons waiting for me last night?”

“Goons? I do not know this. Ramirez and his cousin are waiting for you. This you know but you go to meet them.”

“I was safe. I didn’t have the package. You’d snitched it. Let’s get back on the phone. What was he telling Ramirez?”

Her lids lifted slowly. “He is telling him to follow you.”

“Why?”

She was impatient with his ignorance. “To make certain you deliver the package to the Senorita. He does not trust you.”

There were gaps in her story but part of it would be true. She might know even more. “Why is that perfume so important to the Senorita?”

“This I do not know.”

If she’d answered,
“Quien sabe?”
he wouldn’t have believed her. But she made a solemn statement of her ignorance.

“Didn’t you ever listen in on her?”

“How can I? She comes to the shop, a turista. I am not permitted in the shop.”

He pounced on it. “The boy, he who works in the shop. What did he tell you of her conversation?”

She seemed discouraged. “He did not hear what she says to the old man. Only that her package will be ready for her last night.”

“And why were you at the Cafe Herrera?” he asked again. It could only be that someone had placed her there, with purpose, to watch for Jose Aragon.

She slanted her eyes at the richness of his suit. “To earn a little money, Senor,” she began in a sing-song, beggar whine. “To buy for myself a new dress of silk—”

He clipped her wrist before she could move. “Suppose I tell you what really happened.”

“It is true.” She tried to twist away. “Every word I have spoken is true. I swear it by—”

“There are words you haven’t spoken. You haven’t said one word about a certain Senor Tosteen who was found this morning in that trickle of water we call the Rio Grande. Dead as a doornail.”

She was so still he would have thought she’d got away save for her fluttering wrist beneath his clamped hand.

“Senor Tosteen was most interested in Senorita Farrar’s business. So interested that once she had spoken to me he included me in that interest. Now I hardly think he was fascinated by my beauty or even hers. I think it was the package.” He shot the question. “How much did he pay you to get it for him?”