Keeping Secrets (50 page)

“I've collected some boxes intended for electrical bulbs going inside the mines. We're going to put the currency in them to ship it down,” he said, then added, “Beats coffins.”

Tetzel laughed.

“It'll be on the train by March fifth. Everything else will be arranged by the time I leave here on the first. I'll go by Barrista's, then on to visit Carlos, to lay out his battle plans. By then he'll have only a couple of weeks to get organized, and I'll stick around to help him. He thinks I've held back because of some crucial decisions in strategy that I hadn't been able to make. Barrista assured him of that.

“On March tenth, the general election will take place. If Barrista's name appears on the ballot, the whole plan will be off. If not, the call to arms will follow in exactly one week—March seventeenth.

“Is everything set from your end?”

“Oh yes, count on it,” said Tetzel. He neglected to mention that events over the past couple of months had left a great deal more to chance than Cabot expected.

“I'll be in touch the morning I leave, in the event anything new develops. Oh yes, and let me leave this with you—just in case.”

“But I don't think I'll need—”

“Just the same, you'll be handling things for Electra anyway if anything happens to me.”

“All right. And Cabot, best of luck.”

“We're going to need it. If this works, you'll be a big German hero.”

“Ah, maybe so, maybe not. It's a long way to the fatherland.… But you will be a very wealthy and powerful man.”

“That's what it is all about, isn't it?”

“For some …”

When I reported the meeting to Edwin I couldn't resist remarking on the irony of Tetzel's confident state. “Even if we never get our hands on the vouchers and other material we kept looking for in that safe, there is enough evidence stacked up against him to put him away for years. As soon as Barrista raises a gun, we'll have even more.”

“Any way you look at it, that makes you a pretty valuable agent.”

“Don't get any ideas about me continuing this kind of work. I wouldn't live to see thirty.”

“By the way, I went down to Durango today at three o'clock. Mrs. Cabot didn't show up, but her husband did.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed, then quickly asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing. I kept out of sight.”

“Well, I guess that closes the case against—” I began, thinking once again of alerting the Cabots.

But Edwin interrupted, “Just the same, keep an eye on her. She might be prompted to contact Tetzel again.”

“Oh … I didn't think of that,” I said deflatedly.

It would be a long time until the Mexican elections in March, still longer if the plans went through on the seventeenth. I noticed an ad for Joske's, hiring extra clerks during their February clearance sale, and decided to apply. The lady in personnel liked me, since I'd clerked at Christmastime and proved pretty good at selling. She was more than glad to place me in the undermuslin department, expected to be one of their busiest areas during the sale. It was only for the final week in February, but it would at least get me through a few more days with my mind diverted as much as possible from other matters. I thought maybe I could talk my way into an extra job somewhere in the store beginning in March, too, if nothing complicated my evenings.

I began on Saturday the twenty-fourth, and one of my first customers was Electra Cabot. “I've let my stock of undergarments get very low lately, and I need some new petticoats too, shorter than my old ones. Styles are getting further up the calf by the day, it seems.” She bought several boxes of merchandise, and just as I was totaling up the sale, thinking the sum was going to throw her into shock, she said, “I'm considering a little trip next Wednesday, and I have to get ready for it.”

“Oh. Going far?” I asked eagerly.

“Not very. I haven't really made up my mind about it yet.”

“Will you be gone long?”

She laughed. “I can't say about that, either. Emory's going to be away for a while, and he thought it might help me pass the time. I could use a change of scenery.”

“So could I.”

“By the way, have you found a new apartment yet?”

“No, haven't had time … but I will in the next few weeks.”

“Think you might still take Scoop?”

“If I can find a place that will permit him. That's eighteen dollars and thirty cents altogether. Shall I put it on your account?”

“Please. And I'll carry these two boxes, but I'd like the others delivered. Be sure to have them there by Tuesday afternoon, because I'll be leaving at mid-day Wednesday.”

“Who's going to look after Scoop while you're away?”

“Nathan. Thank goodness, he doesn't object to him like Emory does.”

After she walked off I got to wondering what Nathan's plans were after Cabot returned to Mexico, perhaps for good? Electra would no doubt expect to go where her husband went … that is, unless she was dealing behind his back … and from the looks of all the packages she carried out of the store, including what she bought from me, she was preparing to take along what necessities were probably lacking down in that country. Surely she wouldn't cross the border until after the shooting was over, should there be any. Cabot wouldn't want to risk her life needlessly, and since he had no more idea his plans had been laid open than did Tetzel, he would have considered her perfectly safe here in the States.

If not for the fact Nathan had changed so much over the past few months, and had gone off on some kind of religious tangent, I would have been certain he would go along to Mexico too, perhaps waiting until Electra went down. Yet there was now something peculiarly disturbing about him.… I had the feeling he was laying plans for himself that didn't include anyone else.

On Wednesday morning Keith called to invite me for lunch at his favorite little Mexican cafe on the river. This was unusual for him—normally he attended early classes then worked through the lunch hour—but, as I soon learned, there was a special reason behind his impromptu invitation. This was the day before his birthday, and he had just picked up his first tailor-made suit at Fomby-Jones, a combination birthday and early graduation present. He could hardly wait to show it off—a tapered light-brown tweed with belted back and leather buttons. The outfit also included a new white shirt and brown tie, brown Stacy-Adams shoes, and a handsome cap with a leather bill. Only when I saw how proud he was of his ensemble could I fully appreciate how demeaning his hand-me-down clothing had been for him. All through lunch he kept raising his arms as if to reaffirm the sleeve length was just right. “Tomorrow night, Ken and Christie are going to cook dinner for me—can you come? Mom and Dad and I can pick you up after work.”

I hesitated a moment. My job at Joske's was over tonight, and I'd planned to ask about extending it for a couple of weeks when I went on duty at six o'clock in the evening. To complicate matters, tomorrow was March the first, the day Cabot would leave for Mexico. It didn't seem a propitious day for making plans. However, as I watched his face, never lacking in boyish anticipation and particularly so as he awaited my reply, I realized I couldn't tell him no. Joske's would have to wait a day in between, that was all, and as for Cabot, there probably wasn't much I could do one way or another as he left for Mexico. As Edwin had explained, the United States officials could pick him up on the strength of his copper shipments inside this country a few months previous, and avoid the risk of losing him for good once he was down in Mexico. However, to do so would be to expose the findings on Tetzel before rounding up the remainder of evidence against him and the names and locations of the people he was working with, whom we still had not been able to identify.

“Sure,” I told Keith, unaware that we had let out the lines just a bit too far. Someone we would never have suspected was about to snap them.

25

Since Tetzel had a meeting elsewhere and didn't plan to return to the office until around four o'clock, I took the luxury of a two-hour lunch with Keith, never having enjoyed his company more, nor appreciated the fact that he was so detached from my other life—refreshing as a cool breeze after a rain.

Around three o'clock I meandered slowly back to the bank, and, crossing Alamo Plaza, noticed Electra Cabot disappearing into the post office. It did not occur to me just then that she should not have been there. I thought of this after I returned to work and typed the date at the top of a letterhead. She was to leave at mid-day on her trip, I remembered, then figured she might have changed her mind about going, or decided to delay till the following day, when Cabot went to Mexico. It did seem a little odd for her to have preceded him by a day, missing the chance for some more time with him, now that I thought about it.

People change plans all the time, I told myself. Yet, now that Electra was suspect, I just couldn't get her departure from schedule off my mind. By the time I walked into Joske's at six o'clock, I'd decided to go down to the house at Beauregard and Washington after work, just to see what was going on.

I arrived at ten o'clock. Picking the nearest house to theirs with its automobile missing from the garage and the lights out—my usual custom—I crouched down among some bushes nearby and watched. The only lights in the Cabot house across the street were those burning in Nathan's window. I couldn't be sure from my vantage point, but I thought the garage was empty.

I sat looking at the same unchanged scene until eleven o'clock, and, thinking how foolish I was for worrying in the first place, rose to leave. It was then the big Overland rolled down the street and turned into the drive. I waited long enough to see two dark figures start across the grounds from the garage toward the house.

Though they were too encased in shadows for me to be sure, I had no real doubt it was Cabot and Electra. She had on a big Gainsborough hat. I didn't see any other lights go on in the house, though I assumed they turned on lights at the back. I was about to leave when the people who occupied the house beside the shrubbery where I was hiding came down the street. I dropped to my knees just in time to avoid being caught by their headlights. I'd have to wait, then, till they'd gotten out of the car and gone inside. They had several children along, and there was much complaining and shifting around before they all got out of the car and inside. I wasn't sure whether there were more still out there, or if the father would come out and unload the car should it be necessary, so I waited a bit longer. Crossing would have put me in full view of anyone going back to the garage.

Meantime I kept my eyes on the Cabot house.

The lights continued to burn in Nathan's quarters. Midnight. My curiosity about him was at a peak anyhow, and I decided to steal across the street and peer in the window, just to see what in the world he could be doing up so late. Maybe I could see something that would give me a clue as to his odd behavior of late.

Oh, this is really dreadful, I thought as I crossed the street, pulse pumping. Edwin would murder me for taking this kind of an idiotic chance. But then my curiosity had truly gotten the best of me. I was spying for myself, not for the BNA. Edging up to the window, I saw Nathan seated very still in his chair. Profile to the window, his eyes were closed, his shirt collar unhooked, sleeves rolled up. At first I thought he was asleep. Then slowly his hand came over the side of the chair. He picked up a handgun and turned it over and over in his grip before laying it aside again and leaning back in the chair. All at once the things he had been saying and doing over the past few weeks made sense. He was going to take his life. I had to stop him.

The only usable explanation for banging on his door was my old starved-for-love routine. It would just have to do. The Cabots, by now asleep upstairs, would probably not even hear a gun fire between the thick walls. If not for me, there would be no one to save him from himself.

He opened the door slightly and looked out. His face was haggard. “You! What do you want?” he demanded.

“It's cold out here. May I come in?”

“Come back some other time.”

I thrust an arm inside the door. “Couldn't we just talk for a few minutes? You haven't talked to me much lately.”

He left to close the other door, leading to the foyer—it was slightly ajar—then returned. “I guess it's all right. But only for a few minutes.”

I walked in and sat down near him. The only light came from a dim desk lamp. His quarters seemed close and overpowering. He was halfway through a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself another glass, looking ahead at the wall above the desk, as though I weren't there. I glanced down at his lap and saw a black Bible there. It looked ominous somehow, in that position. I felt the blood rise in my temples. Finally I cleared my throat and said, “You're putting away an awful lot of that whiskey … how will you be able to work tomorrow?”

He looked across at the ledgers covering the desk and said, “I finished tonight. Everything Cabot has done is down there in those pages, all balanced and reconciled.…” Then he added with almost a smile, “Just like me.”

I ran my tongue over my lips. I would have given a lot to have those ledgers in my possession. “Swell. Why don't you take some time off?” I said brightly. “Do you good.”

He smiled to himself. “Oh, I am … I won't ever have to touch one of those filthy things again.”

I sat back. The liquor was apparently loosening his well-guarded tongue. There was no end to what I might find out from him tonight, if I asked the right questions. “So, you're quitting Cabot at last. I've always suspected you didn't really like keeping books.”

He raised the Bible in front of him and said, “I've found all the answers right in here … funny, all those years I was afraid, and the answers were right under my nose.”