There was nothing to be gained by staying. He was on the street again, stepping over rotting papayas, avoiding a girl who leaned out of a stall to offer a shoddy scarlet scarf for sale. Ellie was still in Mexico. He was at least sure of that. She was here either alive or dead. At the moment he was able to face the possibility that she might be dead. That was because he was so angry. A cheap little torch singer and her nail-biting boyfriend had tried to push him around. His response was ruthlessly uncomplicated. They had abducted his wife and tried to kill him. He would hunt them down and smash them.
That seemed almost as important as finding Ellie.
He was walking at random. He had left the market area and was moving along a sloping street with raised, crooked sidewalks and pink-washed wall faces, whose barred, shuttered windows hinted at some inaccessible life within. He knew nothing about the girl and the boy or where to find them again. Almost certainly the girl wouldn’t be stupid enough to go back to the Hotel Reforma, but somewhere in the suite there might be a clue that would lead to Ellie.
A car came down the sloping street with a cardboard sign reading
Libre
propped against its windshield. He hailed it and drove back to the hotel. As he entered the foyer, a dance orchestra was playing in some other room. The clerk at the desk was the one who had been there when Mark arrived. He gave the key of the suite to Mark without his having to ask for it. At least, Mark thought, he was established here as Mrs Mark Liddon’s husband. He could come and go as he pleased.
The suite was exactly as it had been when he and the girl left it. He made a systematic search of the two rooms. He found nothing to give a clue to the false Mrs Liddon’s actual identity or whereabouts and nothing that connected with Ellie. Almost certainly Ellie had never been here, anyway. It had been from the Hotel Granada that she had vanished.
He was a little steadier now and he saw that there was no need for him to go searching for Frankie and George. Since he was dangerous enough for them to have tried to kill him, they would not leave him alone. They would come after him. All he had to do was to wait.
But if he waited, what might the delay mean to Ellie?
He refused now to think of her as dead. To admit the possibility was to admit defeat before he had started to fight. Ellie had been at the Hotel Granada and she had vanished. Whether this new complication’ connected with Victor or not didn’t matter at the moment. The obvious thing was to go back to the Hotel Granada and see whether he could pick up her trail from there.
He moved to the window, looking down at the street lights shining through the trees like luminous grapefruit. Suddenly the telephone rang. He crossed the room and picked up the receiver. Incredulously he heard Frankie’s voice. She said:
‘I’m so glad you’re there, Mr Liddon. I thought you might be.’
They must be even more eager to settle accounts with him than he had imagined. The sound of her voice brought a vivid visual picture of the fair hanging hair, the pure candid lines of her face. He could feel the anger straining inside him, but he could control it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’
‘Mr Liddon, I’m sorry about what happened. So’s George.’
‘That’s nice.’ His voice was very quiet.
‘It was all a stupid mistake. George didn’t trust you. He thought you were just pretending to be Mrs Liddon’s husband. But it’s all right now. I convinced him.’
‘That’s nice too.’
She paused. ‘I know you’ll want us to explain everything and then take you to your wife. Why don’t you meet us? We’re at a bar in Artes. The Baja California.’
‘With a nice dark alley outside?’
‘I told you that was all a mistake. George thought you were the triggerman the gamblers had sent from New York to get Mrs Liddon. He was protecting her. Don’t you see?’
Was that possible? It just might be. He said nothing, waiting.
‘You must see, Mr Liddon, we’re her friends. We want to protect her. George wasn’t going to shoot. He just pulled the gun to frighten you and to get your gun if you had one. Things are different here in Mexico. People are always pulling guns on each other.’
‘And you picked up the habit — like drinking tequila?’
‘Mr Liddon, you do want to see your wife, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we’ll take you to her.’
‘Okay. Come over here and pick me up. I’ll wait for you.’
‘Oh no,’ she said quickly. ‘No. That wouldn’t do.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just that — well, it’s easier to start from here.’
She was setting her trap so clumsily that he was almost persuaded to fall into it. Perhaps that was the quickest way to reach Ellie — by letting them get at him again on their own terms, on their own ground. But he was so angry that he did not trust himself. He knew it was unwise to walk into danger when you are emotionally out of control. If he met them again to-night he would be too eager, he would jump the gun. With George that might be fatal.
He said wearily: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more subtle.’
‘Subtle? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Is George’s stomach still sore?’
‘Where you kicked him? I — I don’t know. I — Mr Liddon, are you coming?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I want to find my wife, but I want to stay alive too.’
She did not answer for a moment. When she did, she gave a little sigh. ‘I knew you wouldn’t fall for it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was George’s idea to try to make you come here. I told him it wouldn’t work. But he made me call.’
‘He twisted your arm?’
‘Mr Liddon.’ Her voice had changed. It sounded urgent and sincere. Not that it made any difference how it sounded. ‘Please listen to me. You shouldn’t be here. It was a terrible mistake you coming to Mexico.’
‘A mistake from whose point of view ?’
‘I can’t explain. I can’t tell you anything. But George is planning to kill you. He’s got to kill you if you stay.’
‘He’s not very good at killing people.’
‘Mr Liddon, be serious. If you leave, it will be all right. Your wife will be safe back in New York within a week. I swear it. Please believe me. There’s an early morning plane back to New York. Take it. Everything will be all right if you leave.’
‘And if I stay?’
‘Among other things, your wife may be killed.’
There was no way of assessing anything this girl said. Already she was so deeply implicated in lies that to believe any of her lightning shifts and changes would be imbecile.
She said again with the same emotional urgency: ‘Mr Liddon, please, please, leave.’
Things had drifted so far into a realm of unreality that there was nothing to lose by pretending to play it her way. ‘If I do leave, you guarantee Ellie will be okay?’
‘Yes, yes, I swear it.’
‘Okay. I’ll take the morning plane.’
‘You really will?’ She seemed immensely relieved.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so glad.’
‘Why are you glad?’ He was really interested to know what she would say.
She hesitated and then blurted: ‘Because I like you. You’re attractive and your folks came from Czechoslovakia. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
‘That touches me.’
‘The plane leaves at six forty-five.’
‘Okay.’
‘George doesn’t know I’ve said anything of this. I’ll see he doesn’t bother you until then.’
‘Thanks.’
She added very seriously: ‘You will go, won’t you? You’re not lying to me.’
‘I’m being as honest as you are. Goodbye.’
He dropped the receiver back on the stand. At least he was sure now that Ellie was still alive; their whole attitude implied it so clearly. If they had killed Ellie, there was no reason why they themselves shouldn’t have left Mexico. They would not have been so eager either to kill him or drive him away.
It was just possible that the girl was fool enough to believe his promise to leave. If she was, she would keep George away for the rest of the night, which would give him a chance to go
to the Hotel Granada without being under observation. But he wasn’t going to take her gullibility for granted. Presumably she had called from the cantina on Artes where they had hoped to trap him. If he went to the Granada at once, he would be there before they could reach the Reforma.
He put on his topcoat, checked that George’s revolver was loaded, slipped it in his pocket and left the suite. He walked down the stairs and out of a side door so that the desk clerk would think he was still in the suite if they should inquire. He turned up the paseo towards the center of town.
An uneventful fifteen-minute walk brought him to the door of the Hotel Granada. He entered the gloomy lobby, which was empty of tourists now. A bellboy was cleaning ashtrays. Mark could see a clerk moving behind the desk. As he approached, the clerk looked up.
It was Oscar.
He came down to the end of the desk, standing behind the trinket counter, watching Mark from dark, pleased eyes. ‘Good evening, Mr Liddon.’
Mark said: ‘You Mexicans work long hours.’
‘I sleep in the afternoon. I come again for the night shift. One has to live, Mr Liddon.’
A jaunty maroon sweater, which had not been there that morning, showed under the boy’s immaculately pressed grey jacket. Mark glanced at it. Oscar looked both shy and happy.
‘I have bought it in my lunch hour.’ He caressed the sweater’s V-neck. ‘Is pretty, no? Not so sharp as yours — but sharp.’ He paused, glancing at Mark under his long black lashes. ‘You have then found your wife at the Hotel Reforma, Mr Liddon?’
‘No,’ said Mark.
‘How brutish!’ Oscar studied a coiled crocodile belt under the glass top of the counter. She takes perhaps the sightseeing tour to Cuernavaca or Puebla? Is pretty, Puebla. Many pretty churches.’
His face was expressionless and his voice registered nothing
more than polite interest. But Mark knew, as clearly as he knew when a girl wanted to be propositioned, that the boy was waiting for a business overture. He studied the dark, impassive face curiously. Was it possible that Oscar too was connected with the conspiracy surrounding Ellie? It was unlikely. It was much more probable that what he knew, if he did know anything, was something he had been smart enough to see or overhear.
He said: ‘Where’s my wife, Oscar?’
The boy’s lashes were demurely lowered again. ‘She does not stay in the Hotel Reforma?’
‘She never got there.’
‘No? Perhaps she has changed her mind once more in the taxi. Is a lady of moods, no?’
‘You saw her get into the taxi?’
‘No, it was the other boy.’
‘But he saw her?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a blond American man?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Mrs Liddon?’ Oscar looked up and smiled vividly. ‘A tall, beautiful lady young like a girl, with light hair in little snakes — so.’ He raised his hand above his own head and twisted a finger around to indicate curls. ‘And a ring — a very fine ring with a sapphire.’
That was Ellie all right. He had given her the sapphire ring on the day before the wedding.
Oscar’s eyes had moved to Mark’s topcoat. They were examining it wistfully. ‘In Mexico,’ he announced, ‘such a coat sells itself for two hundred and fifty pesos. Here, if I work much, much, I earn two hundred and fifty pesos in one month. I have the old mother and six sisters.’ He shook his head dolefully. ‘Six sisters is much sisters.’
Mark took out his wallet. ‘Tell me where my wife is and you get two hundred and fifty pesos.’
Oscar cocked his head at the wallet and sighed. ‘Already I have said. She goes to the Hotel Reforma.’
‘Two hundred and fifty pesos?’ Mark pulled out the bills. ‘Where is she?’
When he was happy Oscar’s face was suddenly an open book. Already, Mark could see, the boy was in his mind strutting in a men’s store, trying on topcoats in front of a mirror, being lordly with the sales clerk. Oscar’s brown hand moved crabwise along the counter towards the bills. It hesitated a moment and then, very daintily, took them from Mark.
‘Suddenly I remember, Mr Liddon. Soon after she has left, she has given a call by telephone, telling me she does not go to the Hotel Reforma. She leaves a new address for dispatching letters.’
‘What is the address?’
Oscar produced a handsome lizard-skin wallet and slipped the bills inside. ‘The new address of Mrs Mark Liddon is — 20 Bonaventura, Colonia Guadalupe. Is out from the city by the big shrine.’
Mark knew the story was a bare-faced lie. Even if Ellie had called the hotel to leave a new address — which was improbable — Oscar, by his own word, had not been on duty at that time. But it didn’t matter that Oscar was lying about how he had obtained the information. The information itself just might be true.
He said: ‘If I don’t find her at that address, you return the money or I report you to the manager for taking bribes.’
Oscar’s face broke into a quick, infectious grin. ‘The manager takes bribes too.’
‘Twenty Bonaventura, Colonia Guadalupe. How do I get there?’
‘You are a rich American. For you there are taxis. For me it is the bus, the trolley car, the walking.’ Oscar was mournful again. ‘Is a terrible state to be poor.’
‘You should worry. Keep this up and you’ll have a villa in Acapulco before the year’s out.’
‘Ay!’ Oscar was transported. ‘A villa on the cliffs with a swimming pool and below the waters of Los Hornos — so blue.’ His face went grave. He said hopefully: ‘You like the ashtray I give you?’
‘Yes. It’s fine.’
‘Is small but is from the heart. I hope you find your wife, Mr Liddon.’
‘If I don’t, I’ll know you’re the biggest liar in Mexico.’
‘Liar!’ Oscar looked shocked and hurt. ‘You think I would lie to my friend?’
‘Yes,’ said Mark.
Oscar shook his head sadly. ‘You are what they call a very cynic man, Mr Liddon.’
Mark turned away from the desk and started towards the door. Oscar called after him ‘Good night, Mr Liddon. Happy Christmas in Mexico, Mr Liddon.’
ALL day, it seemed to him, parts of this unfamiliar city had been wheeling past taxi windows. His life had become a pursuit, constantly in motion, getting no nearer its destination. Ellie’s image was alarmingly dim in his mind now. He forced memories of her, trying to re-establish contact. Ellie in a yellow swimming suit lying in the sun, Ellie mixing Martinis in the lavender and grey bar, Ellie lying next to him in the great canopied bed. She would not come alive; she stalked jerkily through these remembered scenes like a faceless puppet.