Candy Kid (22 page)

“No. The friend lives in Mexico. He asked me to bring the package from el Greco’s to Mr. Struyker. I didn’t know Mr. Struyker.”

“You know what Struyker’s job is?”

“I believe he has something to do with research at Los Alamos.”

“He has,” Jose said. “He’s in the Lab.” He eyed her. “No connection?”

From the open curiosity in her face, to her there wasn’t.

“Harrod thinks there is. He thought so after Tustin’s accident. Way down on the border. He’s going to think so again now that Beach has had an accident on the Los Alamos road.” He couldn’t keep it easy when Beach came into it.

She said, “I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to ask you something straight.” He implied that he didn’t expect a straight answer. He didn’t. “Did you know what you were bringing across the border?”

Slowly she shook her head.

He probed, “This friend didn’t tell you? He simply asked you to bring it across, he didn’t explain anything?”

“That’s right.”

“And you were willing,” he scorned.

“He did me a great favor. I was willing to do him a small one,” she defended herself. “It wasn’t smuggling. He assured me of that.”

“Then why didn’t you do it yourself?” he pounced. “Why did you hire me?”

She took it carefully. “I was afraid.” At the droop of his lip. she was defensive again. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong in what I was doing. It wasn’t that at all. It was meeting that horrible old man, the one they call el Greco, the way he looked at me.” She didn’t shiver, she was only very still for a moment. “I didn’t want to go back to his shop again. I—I couldn’t. And the other man, the one who was following me. The one you call Tustin. Yes, I knew he was following me,” she admitted impatiently. She pleaded, “Don’t you understand? I couldn’t let anything happen to that package. The favor had already been done. I had to get it here safely. I didn’t think they’d know about you.”

“You didn’t know Tustin?”

Her eyes widened. “No. He never spoke to me. I didn’t actually know he was following me. But wherever I went that week, I’d see him. Even when I went to—to el Greco’s shop, I saw him waiting across the street. I knew it must be the package.”

It was a long shot but he took it. Her defenses were down. “What was the great favor?”

Fear sprang to her face anew.

“Passport trouble?” He was close. He could tell that.

She kept her face averted. She said, “I’m an American. A citizen. I didn’t need a passport to come in from Mexico.”

“But Tim was in a mess.” He’d come closer. She wasn’t going to say anything. Her lips were tight. It was Tim, her part was protecting that—
cagajon.
And suddenly he knew. Hunch, yes, but he knew. Because he’d once been in the business of finding out things without having anything but hunch to start with. Tim was a killer. Her fear tonight was that Tim had struck again. He said, “Murder is a mess.”

She began to cry. Without warning, without sound, huddled there in the big, rich chair. She wouldn’t cry easily, she probably hadn’t cried in front of anyone since she was a very little girl. All the tensions, all the fears, the actual fear tonight of death at Jose’s hands; these things and the din of his questions, crowned by his hunch, had broken her.

He let her alone. He took her glass from the table and his own, fixed them fresh, returned and held hers to her. “Drink this,” he echoed. Again he sat opposite her.

When she could, she took a swallow. “How did you know?”

He didn’t answer her. He said, “It’s not going to help anyone now to keep it bottled. The circle’s closing. Beach’s death was a mistake, you can’t protect Tim any longer.”

“He didn’t kill Beach,” she begged. “It was an accident. You said it was.”

“It wasn’t good enough,” he said. She had to do the talking or she’d find out how little he knew. He was impatient. “Why do you want to protect him?”

She shook her head. “He’s my brother.” It was a whimper. “My little brother.” Some spirit returned. “He didn’t have a chance to grow up right.” Again she hated Jose. “You probably grew up with love. We didn’t. No one cared about us. I can’t count how many stepfathers and stepmothers we had—new ones every six months. We had doctors and lawyers and Frauleins and tutors and schools, everything money could buy. But nobody cared. Did you ever hear of the Maquis?” She didn’t wait for his nod. “He went underground with them when he was still a boy. Not that he cared about them but he wouldn’t leave his tutor. A man who was good to him.”

“You were in Paris during the occupation?”

“I was taken out in time. To Switzerland. But Tim had disappeared. He learned to kill. He killed—I don’t know how many. When he was a boy.”

He said harshly, “That was war. In war you kill in self-defense.”

“What does a boy know about ethical rationalizations?” she asked with equal harshness. “He killed those he hated. He killed those who were in his way. He killed because he wanted to kill.”

“He’s not a boy now, he’s responsible for what he does. You can’t excuse him now. You can’t excuse killing.”

She negated his words. “You excuse it in war. You and all the rest of the world. You can’t breed killers and expect them to turn off the impulse when you want them to.”

He didn’t argue it. There was too much to be said; it would take a Socrates to come up with any answers. He said, “When it’s kill or be killed, a man will kill. That doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. I’ll grant you that Tim didn’t have all the breaks but there isn’t any man who has had them. He had a lot more than plenty of men I know, right here in this little town. And one thing he did have, one thing that every man has is the choice between right or wrong. It’s the ones who choose wrong who whine the excuses.” He softened, “You can’t excuse him any longer, Dulce. You can’t protect him much longer. I’m sorry for you, I know what it means. Beach was like a brother to me, a little brother.” The tears for the slayer would be more harsh than those for the slain. He got up from the couch. “You can warn him if you like. But he can’t run far enough away this time.”

He wanted to touch her shining head, gently, with compassion. He couldn’t. He walked out of the room and left her huddled there. She didn’t move, she didn’t say goodbye.

Saturday night was in full swing when he reached the first floor. It overflowed the dancing and drinking rooms into the open portales and the cool darkened patio. Saturday night at La Fonda was a tradition, it was possible that Tim Farrar and his friends had returned here to complete their gala day.

Crossing the lounge, he stepped over to the open French doorway and looked out into the patio. From the spills of light slanting from the surrounding portales, he recognized a few town faces among the hotel summer guests. Tim Farrar’s beard wasn’t visible.

“Looking for me?” The voice came from behind him. He wasn’t. Not yet. “You were up there a long time. Find out anything?”

He turned a weary face to Harrod. “I guess so. Tim Farrar ran out on a murder in Mexico.”

“He tell you that?”

Jose said, “His sister didn’t deny it. I’m looking for him. There was another accident today.”

“I heard about it.” Harrod didn’t say he was sorry, he had more appreciation of the fitness of things.

“I went up there. With Dan Moreno of the state cops.”

“I’ve talked with Moreno. He thinks you are suffering from shock. I told him you might be.”

“What else did you tell him?”

“To keep an eye on you. Was the wrong Aragon killed?”

“No, it wasn’t that. It was a bottle of perfume.”

“A bottle of perfume,” Harrod repeated. “From el Greco’s.”

He had seen it in Jose’s luggage. And left it there. Timing things his own way. If an innocent bystander or so got hurt, Harrod couldn’t let it matter to him. He had to move on to the predetermined conclusion. Maybe he knew, maybe not, that there were two bottles.

Jose said, “The wrong bottle. Beach must have asked the wrong questions.” It wasn’t jagged any more. It was a dull stone he’d have to carry inside of him for a long time.

“And you’re looking for Tim Farrar,” Harrod said.

“He’s a killer. Don’t you know that?”

“I’ve had reports from Mexico. He might have killed a girl. Or an old man. Or a shoeshine boy. She was beaten to death. The
viejo
was hit and run. The boy knifed. Those are three unsolved cases about the time Tim went traveling.”

“What about Ragsdale?”

“He’s hung around Chapala for years. Never has cared who supported him so long as he was supported. They took him on there.”

“They?”

“The Farrars. She left Tim with him and went back to Mexico City alone. She stayed on another month.”

“Who was her friend?”

“Plenty of them. She belonged to the smart set, the international set as the society reporters call it.”

She would. And Tim would be safe with a tutor, he liked tutors. Until she could arrange to get him out of the country.

The shape of it wasn’t sharp the way he had seen it when it started. He’d found that out tonight from her, now from Harrod. Harrod had tried to tell him before but he’d insisted on her being the focal point. She was no more than a smudge on the edges of the pattern. An instrument, as Jose had been. Because he’d seen it wrong, Beach was dead. And he didn’t know whether underneath everything it had only been because he’d wanted to hang on to her; he couldn’t even now be that honest with himself.

He said to Harrod, “I’ve got the right bottle.”

“How do you know which is the right one?”

He couldn’t go through anything more tonight. He was dried up. He said, “I have the clue.” The jangle of the music and the yapping and the laughter, drunk and sober, were like a knife in his head. He said, “Do you want to come up to the house and get it?”

Harrod must have seen he was ready to fold. He said, “If it’s kept this long, it’ll keep till morning, won’t it? I’ll come then.”

Jose moved from the door.

Harrod said, “Go home and sleep. Don’t look any further for Tim Farrar tonight. He’ll keep too.”

He said, “All right.” When reaction gave you the rabbit punch, there wasn’t anything else to do. He went out into the night. The Plaza was quiet now, everything dark but the hotel. The quietness of the mountain sky, the clean stab of stars was good. The chill of night was good. He wasn’t physically tired, he was only tired of thinking and feeling. He couldn’t face being shut into a gritty taxi.

It was good to walk, to be alone in the emptiness of the night. It would be good to keep walking, on and on into the dark mountains fringing the horizon. But he had to go home. He had to be there in the morning to do all the things that must be done. He had to go home because he couldn’t leave Francisca alone there all night.

She’d had too long a time now to search if that was why she had come to him. She’d had time to find the stuff and hitch halfway back to the border. Without realizing, he was striding faster; he knew he was climbing the Camino when his breathing grew heavy. He tried to slow down, to tell himself he didn’t care, that Harrod could handle her along with all the rest of it. It wasn’t true, he did care. One decent thing had to come out of this. The
sorbita
had to be given a chance. She couldn’t be allowed to turn into an animal like Tim Farrar.

The house was dark. Habit took him around the back way. He hurried across the patio. Before he could open the door, he heard her speak from a distance in the dark corridor. “You have come back.” She had the eyes of a cat.

He said, “Why didn’t you turn on the lights?”

She didn’t answer him. Maybe she didn’t know how.

He switched on a lamp in the library. She was still dressed in the skirt and blouse he’d given her. The small hearts quivered from her ears. He questioned again, almost angrily, “Why did you wait up? Why didn’t you go to bed?”

She didn’t seem to know any answers. She stood there quietly, like a servant. “You can go to bed now,” he dismissed her.

“Where do I go to bed?”

He was angered. Not with her, with himself, with the world of men. “In the room I gave you. Where did you think?” It wasn’t her fault she was what she was. He said more kindly, “Good night, Quica.”

She said, “Good night,” but she didn’t move. She was wanting to say more. He waited until it came.

“The phone, it rang very much.”

“Did you answer it?”

“Yes, Senor.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I say you are not here.”

“That’s right.” There was no use asking who had called. Even if she knew enough to take the names, she wouldn’t be able to write them. The family council, the family friends, the curious and the shocked and the kindly. The phone would have rung very much. It rang again now, a shrill prolonged sound. He didn’t want to answer but he couldn’t stand the sound.

It was Adam. “Where have you been, Jo? I’ve called and called—I’ve called every place I could think of.”

“Thanks, Adam.” He told part of the truth. “I’ve been with the police.”

“That’s one spot I missed.” Adam was like Harrod, a sense of fitness. He didn’t say anything about Beach. “Do you need me?”

He said no, and thanks again. “I’m too tired. I’m going to bed.”

“Anything I can do, you know.”

“I know, Adam.” He rang off.

She was still hanging around. “That man came back,” she said.

“What man?”

“The big one.”

“Oh.” Yes, Adam would have made a trip in when he couldn’t locate Jose by phone. “That was he just now.”

“He waited for you.”

“He’s my friend,” Jose told her. A man had so few friends. “Go to bed now.”

It looked as if she weren’t going but finally, reluctantly, she left him. He gave her time to get there and then he went to his room. He bolted his door.

D
ROWNED IN SLEEP, HE
could hear the pounding without responding to it. Until it grew more thunderous, until his name came over the booming, and the wave of it washed him awake.

Adam was thumping on the door, shouting, “Jo! Are you in there, Jo? Wake up, Jo!” It was as if he’d been at it a long time, there was a rumble of alarm.