Candy Kid (26 page)

Canario whimpered, “Yes, Senor. I will go with you, Senor.” His fear was stark, he thought his captor was reaching for a gun.

Jose muttered, “Walk right along. Make music!” He lifted his voice.
“Musica, musica!”
They weren’t alone, they were tagged by the inevitable beggar boys. “Sing a merry song,” he commanded.

His hand slid out with the wallet. Canario’s voice quavered, “On Sunday night we are happy, we dance and we sing….”

Jose dropped one step behind. Covering his wallet in his hand, he extracted a couple of bills. One he crumpled deep into his pocket, the other he folded with the numeral alone visible. At the present exchange on the peso, five dollars American was
mucho dinero.
He pushed close against Canario’s shoulder. The musico’s voice shrilled more lustily, “We are happy …”

Jose let Canario see the bill. “You will make a fine concert for me and I will repay you.”

The voice became more happy. “My very good friend and I …” it sang.

“We are going to the Plaza. There you will make music for
los ninos de la calle.
You understand?”

Canario nodded to the words he was singing.

They wouldn’t be looking for Jose yet, they wouldn’t think he could get here so quickly. He doubted very much if they were expecting him. He would be presumed to be content to remain in Santa Fe, comforting Dulcy. If he could get to the
sorbita
before the word of his presence was whispered to Praxiteles, he’d take care of them for everything they’d done.

Canario wasn’t one of them. Canario was no more than a street urchin grown old, picking up centavos where he could. He didn’t want trouble with Jose or with el Greco or with the police; all he wanted was a little money with which to buy a little wine. Anybody’s money was good. For five dollars American he would be on Jose’s side for this little needed time.

They advanced toward the Plaza. Vespers were just ended, through the opened doors of the church the candles were being snuffed out, one by lonely one. The churchyard was lively as a fiesta, the old and the young and the little ones made a pattern of sound and movement. In the street below there was more sound and movement. Laughter hung over the warm night.

Jose halted Canario at the corner. “Play now,” he ordered. “Play fine and strong, the old songs that all may sing with you. The lively tunes for dancing.” Under his breath, he said fiercely, “Tell them you come to play for them. Make them happy to sing and dance. I will be watching.” His hand gestured to his pocket.

Canario’s head bobbed like a strawman’s. He clanged the cymbals, he blew the cornet, he trilled the flute. The children were beginning to gather around him. Jose stepped back against the wall. No one would notice him. It would not be often that Canario left the tourists of an evening to play for the people of Juarez.

Jose waited until the circles widened about the songbird. He moved with the swiftness of a shadow. To the side of a boy. He whispered, “Five dollars American to speak with Francisca.” The boy turned black stone eyes up at him. He darted away. Jose moved to another. “Five dollars American to speak with Francisca.” He weaved in and out of the throng. Whispering where he thought it was wise. And not too unsafe. When he’d completed the circle he returned to the black shadow of the wall.

Canario wasn’t frightened any longer. He was enjoying his art. Jose didn’t have to prod him to continue the concert, he had forgotten the instigator. But it wouldn’t go on forever. The old bones of the
viejos
would begin to ache for the bed. The little ones’ eyes would hang heavy; the fathers and mothers would remember the work to be done tomorrow. The lovers would seek darker corners.

And Jose waited on against the dark wall. He was stricken with the hopelessness of it before a boy sidled to him. “What is it you want with Francisca?”

He restrained the surge of excitement. He spoke quietly, “Only to speak with her. Five dollars American. The same for her.”

“You are not the police?” The boy was an innocent, a wise one would not have dared ask.

He said, “If I were the police, would I offer dollars? I would demand you take me to her. Five dollars,” he tempted.

The boy couldn’t refuse. “I will see if I can find her.”

He could find her. He wouldn’t have approached the stranger if he hadn’t known where she was. But she would have more than one hiding place. If endangered, she would disappear into a deeper hole. Jose couldn’t risk that. How to send word without speaking his name. It wasn’t safe to speak it lest the whisper reach the Calle de la Burrita before he was ready. He hesitated. “Tell her it is one who needs her help.”

He didn’t know whether it would work. He didn’t know why she’d run away. If, inconceivably, it had been because she was frightened of him, she’d be scarcely less frightened that he had followed her. If it had been because she had come to him for one purpose only, to steal the Praxiteles’ package, she’d have a price on it. Unless she already had had her price. He had no facts, nothing but a mouthful of ifs. If she wanted to sell him out, he was here waiting for it, a sitting pigeon. Yet he dared not move to a safer spot. He must be waiting when the boy returned.

The merrymakers were still clustered about Canario but already they were dwindling. It wasn’t heat that made Jose’s shirt cling to his shoulders; after sundown it wasn’t that hot. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him but you could never tell. Others too could be hiding in shadow. To break the tension, he cupped a cigarette and lighted it.

He’d taken but a few draws when he spied the skulking boy. Whether the same one or not, he didn’t know, even when the
muchacho
sidled against the wall toward him. It could have been the cigarette he desired. Jose dropped the cigarette and the boy swooped it up. But he muttered, “Come.”

Jose didn’t follow too closely. He thought he’d lost the kid as they edged through the crowd and then he saw the shape of him half a block ahead. He knew it was the right one from the little wraith of smoke wisping from his mouth. After another block Jose had lost him. He was alone, an open target in a part of the city which belonged to the people. Where he was an intrusion. And he heard the whisper from the deeper dark of an alley, “Come,” saw again the small carmine circle in the dark.

He followed on, twisting through these hidden warrens as did the boy. He had no idea where he was, he could never find his way back to the square without a guide. No longer could he hear the faint tinkle of Canario. Overhead there was the clean dark of the sky and the whiteness of a million stars but these were too far away to light his path. When he came to a stop in the meanest of the alleys, it was because he had bumped into the boy. The
nino
didn’t say, “Come,” this time; he said, “Gimme.”

For one sickening moment Jose called himself fool. The boy didn’t care whether he led the way to Francisca. Why should he? A fool had five dollars to throw away; why shouldn’t a
pobrecito
accept it? Or more, with a knife in a dark alley. The boy was young but no one was young who lived on the streets of a border city. Jose tensed himself, ready to spring, to strike, when her voice came to him. “What is it you want with me?”

He couldn’t see her. She was somewhere in the deep darkness, somewhere beyond the boy.

The boy whined softly, “You say you will gimme five dollars.”

Jose fumbled for the boy’s hand. The child, suddenly ugly, said, “You give me paper.”

“It’s a five-dollar bill,” Jose snapped. He turned the small shoulders to face the last curve they had made. “Wait for me back there.” He mustn’t lose his guide.

The child passed him on soft feet. Jose moved in the direction of Francisca’s voice until he could see the shape of her against the crumbling wall. Until he could hear the muted tinkle of her earrings.

“Keep away from me,” she whispered.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said angrily. “You don’t want me to shout what I must say.”

“Stay where you are,” she insisted. But she moved a few steps closer, not too close. She was wearing the clothes he had given her.

“Why did you run away?”

She was sullen. “You do not want me. It is the
gringo
you want in your house.”

“What
gringo
?”

“The one who comes to you at night. With the hair—
mantaquilla
—”

“Oh, no!” Jose breathed softly. The answer couldn’t be that this guttersnipe was jealous of Dulcy. “Oh, no!” he repeated. It couldn’t be for this that the pack had had to run full tilt for the border.

“It is not true?” she raged. “With my own eyes I see her. She say she will wait for you—”

He broke in. “Wait a minute. When did she come?”

“After you went away. When the accident happen. But she will not stay. Before your friend came, she was not there.”

He was trying to make it fit. “You didn’t skip out then. You were there when I got home.”

Out of the silence came her smaller voice. “I did not know. Until you sent me away that night. Because it was not me you wanted.” She spat the words, “It was The Blonde!”

He sighed,
“Quica.”
But he let it alone. He said, “You have the perfume. And the sweets.”

She maintained sullen silence.

“You didn’t take them because Dulcy came to my house. You had taken them before.”

She muttered, “I didn’t steal them.”

“I didn’t say you stole them. But you took them from me again. I know this is true. If any of the others had them, they wouldn’t have had to come to the border to find you.”

“They are seeking me?” She moved a little closer to him.

“They’re seeking what you have. And they know you have it.” He remembered briefly, without emotion, the men who lay dead. He said, “You don’t matter any more to them than—than anyone else who’s been in their way.”

She blustered, “They will not find me.” But fear whistled through the words.

“They’ll find you. Senor el Greco will pay much to find you.”

Again she shivered closer. They’d said all these words before, not so long ago, yet long ago. Then there had been time for words.

“Where is the perfume?”

“I hide it.”

“It wouldn’t take you long to find it, would it?” He didn’t know how to appeal to her because he wasn’t sure yet why she had taken the things. He had to ask, pleading a straight answer, “Why did you take them again, Francisca? Why?”

She said, “It was better that you do not keep these things.”

“Because you knew they were dangerous to me?” He said, “I’m in worse danger now.”

After a moment she whispered, “Go away. Go home.”

“I can’t. Unless I end this. Running away won’t help. Death can run faster than I.” He spaced the words evenly, as if he’d committed them to memory. He might have been discussing a piece of bread. “Before I visit Senor Praxiteles, I wish the perfume.”

She whispered quickly, “You will not go there.”

“I must. To make an end to all of this.”

“An end to you.”

“I don’t think so.” If he were wrong, he wouldn’t care very much.

“You do not go there,” she touched his sleeve. Most lightly. “Let the police take care of him.”

“I wish I could.” He meant it. “It isn’t that easy. Not on the border.” And there was a part of it that had to be his, that no one else could pay off. “Well?”

She said reluctantly, “I will give the perfume to you.”

He didn’t hear her leave him. He didn’t know she had gone until he realized that he could not longer distinguish the rise and fall of her breath. He was alone in this ugly, hostile dark. He needed a cigarette to quell the beat of his nerves but he was afraid to make a light. He leaned away from the wall just enough to peer up to the bend of the narrow alley. The blur must be the boy who had led him here. The boy would hang around only as long as his patience permitted. He was missing the
cabalgata.
He already had more money in his jeans than he’d ever had at one time, even if he couldn’t believe the piece of green paper was as good as silver cartwheels.

The night was warm, too warm for comfort. The minutes passed with sticky slowness. She might not return. She couldn’t fail to realize the importance of what she held, not with everyone concerned shuttling back to the border after it. She could decide to hold it for a higher bid. And again, she might not return because she couldn’t. There wouldn’t be a kid on the Plaza who didn’t know where she was hidden. Among them there could be one who would sell her out to Praxiteles, or let loose a foolish word. If she didn’t return, Jose would have no idea where to search for her. He could search but he would never find. His nerves were unraveling when he felt her beside him.

“This is what you want?”

His hand fumbled for hers, closed over the roundness of the bottle, removed from the cheap cardboard box. The insidious scent was already filtering into his nostrils. “That’s it.” He slid it into his jacket pocket. “Thanks. There’s one thing more,
ninita.
” He hoped he could put it across without making it sound important. “I want you to meet me on the other side. Later. Can you make it?”

“I can.” She had no hesitation about the answer. But for him she was disturbed. “You will not be there.”

“I’ll be there,” he vowed. “Go to the Chenoweth.”

“They do not want me at the Chenoweth.”

He repeated with emphasis, “Go to the Chenoweth. To Lou. Tell her I send you and that she’s to keep you safe for me.” He added, making it casual but definite, “Take the
dulce
with you. You will do this for me?”

Her answer came slowly. “Yes. I will do this.”

“I’ll meet you there.” He glanced up the street. His small guide was still leaning against the corner house. He was no more than a shadow against the darkness but he was there. “Until later,” Jose murmured. He started to move but her hand caught his sleeve.

“My five dollars,” she demanded. “You tell this boy five dollars for him, five dollars for me, if I talk to you.”

He’d forgotten. “Sure,” he said. It was too dark to distinguish one bill from another. Just in case this was a signal of betrayal, he stooped to his haunches before he struck a light. He extinguished it almost at once. But there was no activity from any direction. He extracted the five he’d thumbed and passed it into her hand. “There’ll be more,” he said quietly, “if you bring the sweets to me at the Chenoweth.”