Not that they were likely to get this far. The Governor had told Honner to do what he should have done in the first place, call his other men here in Acapulco, have them start north as soon as it was light enough to travel. With Honner coming south, the others going north, they’d catch the girl in the middle, probably have her within an hour. They might even have her already, and not be near enough to a phone to report.
The thought pleased him. He was smiling as he looked to his right and saw Edgar Fitzgerald walking over from his cottage next door. The doctor looked haggard this morning, his suit rumpled on his big frame, his gray hair poorly brushed, but he said as he sat down in the other chair, “You don’t have to study me that way, Luke. I’m all right today.”
“Good. I never believed you wouldn’t be. You want some coffee?”
“No. Any news?”
“Not a word. She probably isn’t even in the country, Edgar. New York City is more likely, up there pouting and keeping to herself. She’ll show up after this is all over.”
The doctor shook his head. “She’ll never forgive me, Luke, I know that. I’ve accustomed myself to the thought. She’ll never understand, and she’ll never forgive me.” His brief smile was sour. “You give me bitter alternatives, Luke,” he said. His eyes were red, as though he’d had too little sleep.
“We do what we have to do,” the Governor told him. It was a sentence in an old argument, one he’d used half a dozen times in the course of persuading Edgar and keeping him persuaded. The sentence, by itself, now stood adequately in both their minds for the full argument.
The doctor nodded. “I know that. But it’s hard, it’s god-awful hard. I’ll be glad when it’s done, gladder than you’ll ever know.”
They were both widowers, the Governor for seven years and the doctor for three, and they had attained that shorthand of intimacy together that sometimes exists between widowers who have been friends for a long while. So the Governor did know what was going on in the doctor’s mind, and he felt deep sorrow and honest remorse for being the cause of his friend’s suffering. But he would do nothing to change it, nothing; he was stronger than his weaknesses.
He said, “When we’re both at work, when this is in the past and we’re doing, all these wounds will heal.”
The doctor said nothing. He was gazing out to sea. When at last he did speak, what he said was, “Here they come.”
The Governor looked, and here came General Pozos’ yacht, all white and gleaming, turning slowly in at the harbor, beautiful and opulent and clean. A hard ball of undigested breakfast formed in the Governor’s stomach. He heard a strange, strangled sound, and turned his head, and in the chair beside him Doctor Fitzgerald quite abruptly was crying.
2
GENERAL LUIS POZOS LAY asprawl in his bed between two women, with both of whom he was bored. In addition, he knew himself to be impotent this morning, which enraged him because it always frightened him when he was impotent, and this fear turned to rage was further turned to disgust, which he believed to be caused by the sleeping, round, warm, soft, musky bodies of the two women. They disgusted him, and he lay between them, on his back, their bodies pressing against him on both sides, and he worked his mouth beneath the thick black moustache, and raised his head, and spit in the face of the one on the right.
But it didn’t wake her. The white ribbon drooled down across her cheek, down the line of her nose, down the faintly fuzzy flesh between nose and upper lip, and dripped at last, slowly, lazily, onto the gray and rumpled sheet.
He lowered his head again, weary now. Weary, and bored, and disgusted, and impatient. The room was too hot, the bodies pressed against him were too hot. He had a headache, and a stomachache. His left eye hurt. He was impotent. He had not slept enjoyably.
He raised his arms, brought his elbows together above his chest until they were nearly touching, then slashed sideways with the two elbows, each elbow striking a heavy breast, each elbow waking one of the disgusting women.
They awoke, and sat up in some confusion, the one on the left speaking rapid Spanish, the one on the right speaking staccato Dutch. Suddenly feeling more impatience and disgust and fury and boredom than he could stand, General Pozos began to flail about the bed with fists and knees and feet and elbows, kicking and punching and ramming until he’d knocked both of them out of bed and onto the floor.
Which struck him funny. All at once he flopped back down on the pillows, opened his mouth, and began to laugh. He had an odd, nasal, disquieting laugh, a kind of loud, hoarse coughing sound as though a buzzard were laughing. He lay on his back, holding his belly and laughing, while the two women got up from the floor and stood confused and chagrined, rubbing themselves where he had pummeled them. They looked at one another and at him and at the floor. They both felt humiliated and wanted to dress, but neither dared until the General let them know he had no more current use for them.
When his laughing fit was done, he found unexpectedly that he was in a pleasant mood. He scratched himself all over, with lazy hedonism, and asked the women to bring him his dressing gown. The Dutchwoman brought it over and gave it to him, and he heaved himself out of bed.
He was a short man, but big-boned, and would have been barrel-shaped no matter how he lived. His life being given over to relaxation and enjoyment and the sensual pleasures, this short, round frame had over the years been covered by layer after layer of heavy flesh, so that recently he had been described by an enemy—he had thousands—as “that beach ball with hair.” His face showed the petulance of his nature, and he had softer, plumper hands than anyone else he had ever met, man or woman.
Once he was out of bed and into his dressing gown, it was proper for the two women to begin searching around the room for their own clothing. As they dressed, General Pozos spoke to them fondly, gently, telling them that today they were landing at Acapulco, a city in Mexico, a beautiful city of rich and happy people, a city in which he would be parting company with them. Yes, it was sad but true; their services were no longer required. Someone on the staff would see that they were taken care of, with money and documents of some sort, and that same someone would be delighted to answer whatever questions they might have on this or that topic. As for the General himself, he was saddened to be saying farewell to two such lovely and enchanting young ladies, but that of course is fate. Therefore—farewell.
Now, that is.
Both of them had been with the General long enough to know that he did all the talking, and that when he indicated a conversation was finished, it was advisable to quit his presence at once. They made the most perfunctory and brief of goodbyes, and left the room. They were both, in fact, relieved to be at the end of their relationship with General Pozos, both having heard the rumor—based on reality, as it happened—that the General one time, in a transitory rage of revulsion, had thrown one of his women off the yacht into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Rescue operations had been instigated at once, naturally, but the unfortunate young woman had never been found. As she hadn’t officially been aboard anyway, and as she’d additionally been traveling under an assumed name, there was never any trouble about the incident, nor any publicity, but rumors grow in the best-tended of gardens, the General’s not excepted.
With the women gone, the General now rang for his dressers, two thin, silent, terrified young enlisted men in the Guerreran Army, whose salaries and training and maintenance were guaranteed by military aid from the United States. They dressed their General quickly but with great caution, and silently withdrew. The General was now in his uniform for the day, which he would wear until dinnertime, when he always changed into formal civilian clothes. Today’s uniform was dark blue trimmed with gold. Fringed epaulets, a golden Sam Browne belt, an ornamental sword in a golden scabbard; he surveyed himself in a full-length mirror with great satisfaction. It gave him a pleasant feeling to wear a really good-looking uniform, and so he had over fifty of them, no two exactly alike. This dark blue was one of his particular favorites.
>
Wearing the uniform, buoyed up by his examination of it in the mirror, he left his stateroom at last and traversed the inner corridor to the dining room. Although he loved the sea, particularly from shipboard, he couldn’t stand to look upon it before breakfast.
The dining room was empty except for young Harrison, sitting with a cup of coffee at one of the tables, reading a book. Quite a reader, this young man. Quite a studier, quite a silent type. It had occurred to General Pozos more than once to wonder what this young man from Pennsylvania actually thought of him, down inside; nothing ever showed on the surface, and that was unusual. With nearly everyone, the General could read their disposition toward him instantly in their faces, in their eyes—fear, or contempt, or envy, these were the most prevalent—but in the face, in the eyes of young Harrison, there was a bland nothing and less than nothing.
The General now came ponderously across the room, his scabbard ringing against a metal chair back, and sat down at the young man’s table. “Good morning, Bob,” he said, using the heavy, blunt English he took such pride in. “A lovely day,” he added, because sunlight was pouring in the windows to his left.
Harrison looked up from his book, smiled promptly in that amiable, noncommittal way of his, and politely shut the book, not even marking his place. “Good morning, General,” he said. “Yes, it is, one of the finest we’ve had this trip.” He spoke fluent Spanish, but he knew the General preferred to speak English with him and so he obliged.
In nearly everything, in fact, Harrison was obliging and more than obliging. Only in one instance that the General could remember had Harrison refused to oblige, and then he had done so quietly, passionlessly, but permanently. That was the matter of the uniform. General Pozos preferred all members of his staff to be in uniform, though of course the uniforms must be plainer than his own, and this preference had gone unquestioned—as did his preferences generally—until he’d taken on young Harrison seven years ago. Harrison hadn’t actually refused to be fitted for a uniform, but on the other hand, the fitting never took place. Whenever the General brought the subject up, Harrison broke immediately into an unending series of calm and sensible reasons why he should always be dressed in a business suit. He was more than willing to discuss the subject, would discuss it in his quiet and reaonable manner until the General couldn’t stand the topic anymore, and would drop it as soon as the General made it clear he wanted to start talking about something else. These discussions were so tedious, so frustrating, and so unconquerable that the topic of Harrison’s uniform gradually arose with less and less frequency and ultimately stopped arising altogether. Harrison never did get, or wear, a uniform, which was, so far as the General himself could remember, the only time in his career that his will had been successfully opposed.
Harrison now was wearing a gray linen suit in the narrow style, a dacron white shirt, and a pale gray tie. He was a well setup young man, slightly over six feet tall, with a square, open, amiable, honest, typically American face, the sort of face ultimately typified by Colonel John Glenn. He wore his light brown hair in a casual crew cut, he occasionally donned horn-rim glasses when reading or working, and his fingernails were at all times scrupulously clean.
Observing him, reflecting on the fact that after seven years of close association he knew Harrison no better than when they’d first met, reflecting further on the undeniable truth that he trusted and relied on Harrison more than any other member of his staff—anyone else, yes, in the entire world—the General found himself sliding perilously close to uncomfortable thoughts and dangerous propositions. He cleared his throat noisily, clearing his mind at the same time, and said, “Well, you’ll be pleased to see your father, I expect.”
Harrison smiled. “Very much so, sir.”
There was no way to tell if that were truth or politeness; everything Harrison did was so bland, so polite, so cooperative, so emotionless. What does he think of me? the General demanded in his head, and turned aside as the first steward approached with the grapefruit half that was his invariable first course at breakfast.
Conversation between them while the General ate was perfunctory and static; comments on the trip so far, on the coming meeting with Harrison’s father, on the addition of Doctor Edgar Fitzgerald to the General’s permanent staff. Harrison had more coffee, possibly because he wanted more coffee and possibly out of an accommodating desire to sit with the General while he ate.
The General’s breakfast ended with coffee, hot and strong and black. The steward who served it was new, young, terrified, the ship rolled slightly, there was a second of imbalance, and the full cup of coffee was dumped in the General’s lap.
The General acted without premeditation. Leaping away from the table in shock and pain, his right hand was already reaching out, closing around a fork, jabbing out, plunging the fork into the stomach of the petrified steward, who merely stood there ashen-faced and gaped. The fork tines were too short and too blunt to do any real damage, though they did break the skin. The fork fell to the floor, the steward staggered back a pace, and on his uniform there appeared four spreading dots of red.
What does he think of me? the General looked quickly at Harrison, to catch him unawares, while still startled by the accident and outburst.
Harrison was on his feet, bland, polite concern on his face as he extended his own napkin for the General’s use.
3
JUAN POZOS SAT with Time magazine unread in his lap and looked out the window at the dark green of the mountains far below. Dawn glinted on the highest treetops down there, but the valleys were still deep in night.
The passenger sleeping in the seat beside him mumbled something in no language, shifted uncomfortably, and settled down again. Juan smiled ruefully at him, envying his unconscious state. The ability to sleep on airplanes he considered a mark of maturity, one of the many he had not as yet attained. He’d been airborne through the night this time, from Newark to New Orleans to Mexico City, and finally to Acapulco, and by now his eyes were burning from lack of sleep, but still they didn’t want to close.
Not that there was any point in it now; they’d be landing in less than an hour. And wouldn’t everyone be surprised to see him! Juan smiled in anticipation, seeing in his mind’s eye the expression that would soon be on the face of Uncle Luke. Amazement, and delight. “How did you manage this, you young scamp?” “Got permission to skip my Friday classes.” “Didn’t miss anything important, I hope.” (This said with an attempt at sternness that wouldn’t fool a blind man.) “Oh, just a few tests,” Juan would say, laughing, and Uncle Luke would laugh with him, put his arm around his shoulders, say, “Well, as long as you’re here.”
Juan smiled in anticipation. “Oh, just a few tests,” he said in his mind. “Oh, just a few tests.” The scene was as real as the mountains down there, as real as the thin black ribbon of road he could just glimpse here and there. Dawn sunlight semaphored from an automobile window.
The only problem was the General. If the General was drunk, or involved with women, or playing celebrity at some Hilton hotel, everything would be all right, the weekend could be very pleasant. But every once in a while the General decided to be a father, which meant he took a turn for the maudlin, slobbering on Juan’s cheek, punching his whores in the face to demonstrate his moral reformation, and deciding Juan must come away from the USA, come back to Guerrero, come home and be a real son. “I’ll buy you horses!” that was invariably the General’s cry at such times. As though the addition of polo ponies would magically turn Guerrero into home.
Juan knew where home was. He’d just left it. That was why he was coming down now to talk with Uncle Luke.
So far as he was concerned, he would be physically present in Guerrero only once more in his life, and that would be on the occasion of the General’s funeral. He didn’t wish the General ill—was indifferent to his father’s fate—but he knew that in the normal course of events the father precedes the son to the grave. His presence would be required fo
r the funeral, and afterward he would probably have to go through some sort of formality in refusing to inherit his father’s position. It might be best to have Uncle Luke along—assuming he was still alive at the time—to help Juan choose which man to support for the Guerreran presidency. It would be up to him to make that one contribution in directing his unhappy native land toward decent government, and then he could return to his own life, forgetting Guerrero forever.
That would please Uncle Luke, too. Juan knew that Uncle Luke wasn’t happy about his impending graduation from college, and he knew it was because Uncle Luke was assuming he intended to go back to Guerrero once he had his hands on that BA. That was what Juan was coming to see Uncle Luke about now. Not only did he want to stay, but he wanted to go on with college.
It was all very clear in his head. He would borrow money from Uncle Luke—he’d already acknowledged the probability that the General would refuse to pay for any more schooling past the BA—and he would insist on its being a real loan, not an outright gift. He was twenty-one now, and eager to begin taking on the responsibility of himself.
He’d thought it out with extreme care. For months he’d questioned himself about his plans for the future; did he really want to be an attorney, or was he choosing that career merely because he knew it would please Uncle Luke if Juan followed in his footsteps? But he was sure; the law was what he wanted, what he truly wanted.
United States law. Pennsylvania law.
It was unlikely, of course, that a Governor of Pennsylvania would ever be named anything like Juan Pozos, but it was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. He had briefly considered changing his name to something more normal in his adopted country—perhaps even taking the last name of Harrison, or the first name of Luke, though not both—but he was too obviously Latin, with his olive complexion, glossy hair, smooth good looks. And it would be ignoble in any case to turn his back on his true origins. He considered himself an expatriate and an émigré, but not an escapee.
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