The Damsel

by Richard Stark

Honner frowned and looked off the other way. One car had passed him since Iguala, headed north, and that had been an old Citroen with a family aboard, the back seat full of kids. Besides, there was no point in the girl turning around and going north again.

  Honner said, “Then they got off the road somewhere and let you go by, and took off again behind you.”

  “No, sir. I thought they might try something like that, and I was ready for it. They hid no place, I’ll say that for a fact. You know yourself what this road is like. Most places there’s barely enough space for two cars on the road, much less off it.”

  “Still and all,” said Honner, “that’s got to be what happened. Turn around, we’ll check it out.”

  “And you’ll see I’m right.”

  They both headed south then, watching both sides of the road, and it was true there were no turnoffs, no lanes, no places to move a car into and hide it from anyone on the road.

  Abruptly Honner pulled to a stop, at a place where the road came to a peak, angled sharply to the left, and dropped downhill again. Here was one of the few places where a gravel widening had been constructed beside the road where people could stop to rest and look at the view. A single-rail, rustic log fence ran along the edge of the cliff here, and one of the log rails was missing.

  Honner walked over to look, and to his unpracticed eye it seemed as though faint tire tracks led out to the edge and over. Kolb and Borden and the two men with Borden all squinted at the ground, too, and agreed with him it did look that way. Tire tracks, and scrape marks at the edge.

  Honner disliked heights. He lay down on his stomach and inched toward the edge until his head was peeking over. He held his breath, worried about vomiting, and looked down.

  It was nearly a straight drop, and it looked like forever. There were trees in clusters down the cliff face, and a sea of dark green trees at the bottom. Looking, staring, squinting, Honner finally made out the path of something, saw where tree branches had been sheared away here and there, saw the faint evidences of a straight line leading down, and down, and down . . . to a trace of whitish color at the very bottom. Yes, there it was, so small and so far away he’d very nearly missed it. But it was there, it was definitely there.

  Honner crawled away from the edge. He felt relief at not looking over there anymore, but nothing in particular about either the girl nor the man with her. He didn’t harbor grudges nor think of vengeances.

  He got to his feet and said, “Let’s get to a phone.”

  7

  THE GOVERNOR WANTED to make it up to the boy. No, he didn’t truly want to, but he had to. With everything else crowding in on him, he had to stop everything and nursemaid the stricken Juan.

  He could feel the falseness of his smile stretching his cheeks as he came out by the pool, flopped with an attempt at casualness onto a chaise near the boy, and said, “Well, that’s better! Good to see you, boy!”

  Juan’s own smile was uncertain as he said, “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “It was that, all right! Eh, Edgar?”

  The doctor smiled nervously. “Yes, indeed.”

  Juan said, “I’m sorry if I did anything—”

  “No no no! I’m always glad to see you, Juan, you know that. If you managed to wangle a day or two away from the grind, more power to you, say I! Just ignore the way I acted, you know how I am in the morning sometimes.”

  “Uncle Edgar said you’d gotten a phone call that upset you.”

  “He did?” The Governor, startled, looked past Juan at the doctor. The man couldn’t possibly know about Ellen Marie’s death, there was no way for him to know it. And he wouldn’t just sit there, weak and nervous, his usual pallid self.

  The doctor said, “I told Juan that was probably why you snapped at him. I hope it wasn’t anything serious.”

  “Oh, no,” said the Governor, understanding now but too harried to be grateful for Edgar’s quick thinking. “Nothing serious, just a mix-up about the dinner party. Yes, and we’ll have to find a place for you, too,” he told the boy. “Near your father, if we can manage it.”

  “Don’t go to any special trouble for me,” Juan said.

  “Nonsense, boy.”

  The doctor said, “I suppose you’re looking forward to seeing your father again, eh?”

  “I suppose so,” said Juan, unconvincingly.

  The Governor said, “After graduation, he’ll see him all the time. Isn’t that right, Juan?”

  “No, sir,” said Juan.

  They both looked at the boy in surprise, the Governor feeling a sudden tightening in his stomach. Something else? Would nothing hold still for a man? He said, unable to keep the ragged edge out of his voice, “No? What do you mean, no? You’ll be going home.”

  “Uncle Luke, I—” The boy hesitated, glanced at Edgar, and started again, “Home is Pennsylvania,” he said. “The United States. I don’t know Guerrero, I don’t have any feelings about it, on the plane when the stewardess—Uncle Luke I—I want to stay with you.”

  It was the doctor who said it: “But, your father.”

  The boy turned, and it was obviously much easier for him to speak through the doctor rather than directly. “He isn’t really my father,” he said. “We don’t even know each other, we don’t really want to know each other. Uncle Luke is the one I know, the one I’m— I feel like a member of his family, not some, some banana-republic General I don’t even know.” He turned back to the Governor, straining with the urgency to be understood. “I’m an American, Uncle Luke,” he said. “Not a Guerreran. I haven’t been that since I was a little kid. I want to stay. I want to study law.”

  Through his growing frustration, the Governor was still conscious of the honor Juan was doing him, but he pushed the awareness away; it led to layers of moral complexity, of conflicting loyalties and a confusing welter of choices, none entirely good. Spreading his hands, he said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  The doctor said, “Juan, there are people, I mean people in your own country, in Guerrero, they’re depending on you.”

  “No one even knows me there.”

  “Oh, no, that’s where you’re wrong. Your father—I don’t know if you knew this, but he isn’t at all well. He could go any time, and there are people, people down there in Guerrero, they’re depending on you to take over, to uh, to lead your people, to, well—”

  “To be a puppet on strings,” Juan said fiercely. “I know all about that, what they want. The same crowd running things, with me standing on a balcony two or three times a year. But that isn’t what I want, that hasn’t anything to do with me, who I am.” Turning back to the Governor, he said, “You understand, Uncle Luke, don’t you? I’ve got to be where I feel I belong.”

  This was dangerous, and entirely unexpected. The Governor wet his lips. “‘Well, it depends,” he said carefully, “on what you want, of course, on the life you want for yourself. But there are other things, too, things to be taken into account. You can’t just thrust power away, you know, not if it’s in your hands. Power brings responsibility, Juan.”

  “Oh, I’d try to turn the government over to the best people I could find,” the boy said. “But that’s in the future, that isn’t the point. The point is I want to go on with my schooling, I want to become an American citizen. All this other stuff . . . When the General dies, we can talk about it then. You could even help me, go down there with me, help me pick the best men to take over.”

  “I suppose I could,” said the Governor thoughtfully, seeing where it all might yet work out. Maybe even better, without Juan. Choose the people who would fit in best with his own plans, have Juan give them his support, then ship Juan back to the States. Have the government “run” by men with straightforward political debts to himself, that would be much simpler in the long run than having to clear everything through a naive and inexperienced boy. “You might be right,” the Governor said. “And frankly, I hadn’t been looking forward to losing you after graduation.”

&n
bsp; “You won’t lose me, Uncle Luke,” Juan said. “You couldn’t possibly lose me.”

  Looking past the boy’s shining face, the Governor saw Edgar gazing at the boy with an expression of such wistfulness that he could only be thinking of his daughter, wondering where she was, how to end the rift between them.

  For the first time, the Governor saw how close he was to losing everybody, absolutely everybody. This plan was bringing him to the brink, everything was riding on it. And the balance was so delicate, so delicate; one injudicious push in any direction could throw the whole thing off, lead to exposure, ruin, failure.

  Edgar must not know about Ellen Marie’s death, not until afterward. It had been an accident, but even so. At this juncture, it would be fatal for Edgar to learn what had happened.

  There were too many things to think about, too many things to guard against. All he could do now was push forward, forward. Try to keep all the strings in his hands. Try to keep on top of the situation.

  Smiling with forced briskness, he said, “Enough of this now. Is this a vacation or what is it? Juan, let’s us go for a swim.”

  8

  THERE WAS a time when Richio had been considered handsome, but that was in the days before his stay at the Malenesta Prison, in the days before he lost his left eye and collected the raised road map of scars crisscrossing his body from forehead to knee. No one considered Richio handsome these days; no one considered him anything but terrifying.

  Lerin was frankly afraid of Richio, though he himself had been confined briefly at the same prison and knew firsthand something of the life Richio had lived. But few men had gone through as much as Richio and survived at all; it was too much to hope that a man would go through all that and survive sweet-tempered. A murderous rage lived inside Richio, just beneath the skin; it never slept, and almost anything could call it forth.

  On the other hand, Lerin had no desire to lose his job, and if he delayed much longer, he would be late returning to the hotel. The Hotel San Marcos did not tolerate laxness or tardiness in its staff. Lerin had come up the hill to the poor section of Acapulco, the native, non-tourist section, and just outside Richio’s room he’d been told by Maria that Richio was still asleep, Richio had drunk far too much last night, Richio was snorting with rage in his sleep and would surely awake as surly as a donkey, as vicious as a snake.

  Richio’s room was directly off the dirt street, through a slanting wooden door in the long white wall and into a dark, dirt-floored, evil-smelling room seven feet square. In here Richio slept away his hangovers, his bad dreams, his evil frustrations, coming out usually only after sundown to cadge and steal his way through the evening, drink his way through the night. Sometimes he lived alone, sometimes he shared his life with a woman; currently, with Maria, a squat whore from one of the border cities, brought here by a Texan in an air-conditioned Pontiac, left behind like a toothbrush. No one knew what Maria thought of Richio; no one cared.

  Lerin had paced back and forth in the dusty street for a quarter of an hour now, watched by the phlegmatic Maria as she squatted in the thin shade of the building. From time to time he heard the snorting and thrashing of Richio in there, and once Richio called out, hoarsely, perhaps calling for help, perhaps only calling down curses on the phantoms that oppressed him.

  Lerin stopped his pacing. “He must be waked,” he said. “There is no help for it.”

  Maria shrugged.

  “If I wake him, he will be angry,” Lerin said, talking more to himself than the girl. “If I don’t tell him now, and the boy goes away again this afternoon, he will be more angry.”

  Maria shrugged.

  “So I wake him,” said Lerin, trying to convince himself of his decisiveness. Taking a deep breath, he moved forward, pushed ajar the door, and stepped into Richio’s room.

  The room smelled like the breath from Richio’s open mouth; gaseous, rotting, humid. There was a bed along the rear wall, made of wood, covered with faded blankets that had once been bright-colored. A chair on the left was the only other furniture.

  Richio was sprawled naked across the bed on his stomach, an arm and a leg hanging over the side. His face was turned toward Lerin, his mouth was hanging open to show his few teeth. His good right eye was out of sight against the blanket, leaving only the shriveled socket of the left showing, like an inverted red prune. He was fearfully ugly, and vicious, and violent, and Lerin approached him with dry mouth and nervous hands.

  “Richio,” he said softly, almost whispering, and the man on the bed snarled in his sleep, moved his arms vaguely, settled down again. “Richio. Richio.”

  Nothing more. Lerin moved reluctantly closer, reached out, touched Richio on the shoulder.

  Richio came roaring off the bed, hands like claws. Jumping back, Lerin stumbled over his own feet, fell heavily to the dirt floor. Richio was on him like a cat, straddling him, closing his hands around Lerin’s throat. Richio’s face blazed with madness.

  “Richio! Richio! Richio!” Lerin screamed the name over and over, trying to bring Richio to his senses before the hands cut off his wind, and all at once the struggle stopped, Richio’s hands dropped away, Richio sat on Lerin’s stomach and said, “What the hell you doing?”

  “I had to talk to you.”

  Richio casually smacked him openhanded across the face, partly in friendly humor and partly in continuing irritation. “You want to talk to me. What would a moron like you have to say to a moron like me?”

  “His son is here. In Acapulco.”

  Richio leaned forward, his heavy face directly above Lerin’s. “The son? You’ve seen him?”

  “He just came to the hotel.”

  “And Pozos? Not with him?”

  “No, he’s with two gringos. Older men. They speak English and he calls them ‘uncle.’”

  Richio got to his feet, rubbing his hand against his face. “To meet his father? Why come here? You meet your old man at home, not someplace else.”

  “The other men didn’t expect him. I heard them talk a little, and he came as a surprise.”

  “Surprise.” Richio nodded. “We’ll give him a surprise.” He went to the doorway, said to Maria, “Get me some water,” Standing there, he urinated in the street.

  Lerin said, “I have to get back soon.”

  “They watch Pozos,” Richio said. “A man can’t get near the bastard. But not the son, eh? How would he like that, the bastard? Cut down his only son, eh? Would he feel that, the bastard?”

  “I have to get back, I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “That will do just as well,” Richio said. “Let Pozos live. Let him live without a son.”

  Lerin said, “One thing, please. Don’t do it when I’m around.”

  Richio looked at him in heavy surprise. “I’ll do it when the chance is good,” he said. “You just be sure you aren’t there.”

  Now that he’d told, Lerin was beginning to regret it. But the other way would have been just as bad; if he hadn’t told Richio, and afterward Richio found out the son had been at the hotel, Richio would kill him as a handy substitute.

  Maria brought in a metal pail half full of water. Taking it from her, Richio raised it to his lips, filled his mouth, gargled, spat on the floor. Then he drank, for a long while, and finally poured the remainder of the water over his head, wetting his body and more of the floor.

  “I have to get back,” Lerin said.

  Richio took a blanket from the bed, began to use it to rub himself dry. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

  9

  THERE WERE TIMES when Juan took a somewhat guilty pleasure in the fact of his own beauty. He was beautiful, in an entirely masculine way, straight and lean of body, clear of eye, with unlined brow and gleaming smile, but most of the time he remained unself-conscious about himself, not thinking about his appearance at all beyond the simple level of striving for neatness and cleanliness. But there were moments when the fact of his beauty was so forcefully present that he himself became aware
of it, and at such moments he was delighted by himself, all the while feeling it was somehow wrong to take such pleasure—almost girlish pleasure—in the accident of one’s looks.

  Now, dressed in his white bathing trunks, poised at the edge of the small swimming pool, was one of those moments. He knew the contrast of white trunks and olive skin was pleasing to the eye, knew his physique was good, his face handsome, his movements virile and graceful. He could see it reflected in the eyes of Uncle Luke, already treading water in the pool, and Uncle Edgar, sitting in a lounge chair on the other side of the pool.

  When he found himself delaying his dive into the water, posing at the brink like some movie queen, his self-consciousness turned into embarrassment and he dove awkwardly into the water, coming up sputtering to hear Uncle Luke’s hearty laughter.

  “Was that a belly-whopper! How’d you get to be so graceful?”

  “Practice,” Juan said, the embarrassment gone as quickly as it had come. He floated on his back, closing his eyes against the high late-morning sun. For a while he just floated and relaxed and lazily thought his thoughts behind closed eyes.

  Mostly that nothing ever works the way you think it will, not exactly. Like the scene he’d planned for meeting Uncle Luke, blown up by the coincidence of Uncle Luke’s being mad about a phone call just at the wrong time. And his plan to talk to Uncle Luke calmly, quietly, perhaps over dinner, instead of which he’d blurted it out right away, with no preparation, nothing organized in his head.

  That was mostly because of the awkwardness of the meeting. He had strongly felt that Uncle Luke needed something to cheer him up, something to take his mind off his irritation and the strained atmosphere between them. It was as though he had wanted to present Uncle Luke with some sort of gift, and the only gift he had was himself, his continuing to live in the United States, his total conversion to his adopted country.

  And then even that had gone unexpectedly, with Uncle Luke at first seeming to disapprove. Uncle Edgar, too, even more so. But Juan thought he understood that now, at least Uncle Luke’s objection. He’d been bending over backward to be fair, that’s all, serving as a kind of devil’s advocate for himself, wanting to be sure Juan wasn’t making a spur-of-the-moment decision he’d regret later on.