Not far from his table sat the two women he had seen at the motel swimming pool. Twice during his meal he caught the brunette’s eye and she returned his glance without expression. One more customer, a middle-aged man with severe arthritis, came slowly into the dining room and was seated. The others, who had finished, went out singly or in pairs.
The waiter was bringing his coffee when a large, rotund man came in from the lobby, paused a moment to speak to the worried headwaiter, then came on to shake hands with the arthritic gentleman. He was a big man. Mickey estimated his height at six feet six and his weight at close to three hundred pounds. But he was broad and big-boned and the weight was evenly spread. He had a round face and wore horn-rimmed glasses. There were a few strands of light-brown hair brushed across his nearly bald scalp. His manner was hearty when he greeted the guest, but after he had pulled out a chair and sat down, his voice fell to a low pitch.
Only one other incident occurred that seemed worth noting. He caught sight of the undersized maitre d’ in violent controversy with one of the waiters. The waiter, an older man with gray hair and sagging shoulders, finally shrugged and walked away. The maitre d’ was distressed. Mickey finished his coffee, waited a while for his check and left the table.
* * * *
He spent the rest of the evening in the bar, which was doing a business consistent with that in the dining room. It was a warm, comfortable room, with large booths around the walls and a small dance floor, not in use. Except for a middle-aged couple in one of the booths, he, the bartender and the two women from the motel had it to themselves.
By the simple means of buying a few drinks for the small house, he learned some elementary facts. The nervous maitre d’ was named Homer Bridges, and he was the active manager of the resort. The big man with the round face was Fred Teller, the owner. He learned that Mig, the brunette, was a schoolteacher from Los Angeles, that she supported an invalid mother, that she and Sandra, her companion, regularly spent their vacations together and that they had selected Vista del Sol this year because Mig couldn’t afford Las Vegas.
After a couple of hours of conversation that had grown more and more forced, she startled him by asking outright, “Joe, are you married?”
“No,” he said.
She seemed to give it some thought.
“I believe you,” she said then, “because it’s the day after Christmas and if you were married, you wouldn’t be alone.”
He supposed that was as accurate a way to figure it as any, though it took a few things for granted.
* * * *
The girls left at midnight. The couple in the booth had gone long since and he shared the room with Charley, the bartender. Charley was dapper, sardonic and, Mickey had noticed, talkative, though he hadn’t had much chance in the earlier part of the evening.
“Staying here at the inn?” he asked Mickey.
“No, the motel.”
“Oh. Wister’s place.”
Charley, polishing glasses, shook his head in wonder.
“There’s a guy that’s got it made, I tell you true. Got that motel, right on the highway, and a strong young Mexican girl to take care of it. He don’t lift a finger, man! She takes care of the place and he goes to Vegas.”
Pretty soon he said, “He must have won that motel in a crap game. I hear he was nothing but a bum till he started hanging around the inn here, running errands for Teller.”
“Maybe Mr. Teller gave it to him,” Mickey said. “I heard downtown that Teller owns everything around here.” Charley thought it over, shook his head.
“Nah, he never did anything that big for Teller. He’s a flunky, you know? A messenger boy.” He worked on the glasses mechanically, not having to look when he picked them up and set them down.
“I’d like to know where he found that Mexican kid. I never saw a woman work like that.”
“Maybe around Yuma—”
“Huh-uh! He got her across the border. She’s a wetback if I ever saw one.”
“Wetback?”
“Illegal immigrant. No papers.”
“Don’t they round them up, send ’em back?”
Charley shrugged.
“Who’s going to strain? Sure, if there’s a gang of ’em and they’re drifting around. But one here, one there—I guess they might get Wister’s girl someday but what the hell, he can get another one.”
When Mickey finished his drink he bought one for Charley and himself. They drank together in silence until a carload of tourists in slacks and sport shirts came in and Charley got busy. Mickey waited a while, but the conversation never got back to Wister. At one o’clock he said good night, left the inn and drove back to the motel.
It was dark and quiet. If any new patrons had arrived in his absence, there was no sign of them. He went to his room, undressed and got into bed. He was tired and restless and found himself woolgathering. He felt he had goofed off, had spent money and engaged in frivolous conversation to no purpose. He felt guilty and, in flight from the guilt, he forced his mind back to the main stream of his mission. In the process, he remembered the quivering, naked fear in Wister’s young wife when he had seen her in the office just before dinner.
After a while he got up and dressed in the dark. He stood at the window for some time, thinking, and then he left the room and walked along the veranda to the office-apartment at the front of the building.
* * * *
There was no response to his ring. He waited in the cold swirl of the desert wind. When he looked at his watch, he saw it was after two-thirty. He hesitated a moment, then rapped sharply, staccato on the door. At length her voice came from the other side, close and hesitant, as if she had been standing there for some time trying to muster the courage to open it.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me,” he said. “Joe Marine.”
He heard tumblers click in a heavy-duty lock. A chain grated and banged against the panel. A dead bolt slid back and she opened the door far enough to peer out at him.
“Yes, Mr. Marine?” she said. “Something is wrong?”
“May I come in?” he said.
Reluctantly she stepped back and let him in. She was wearing the same shapeless robe he had seen earlier and she held it tight at her throat, gazing at him with eyes dulled by weariness.
“Something is wrong, Mr. Marine?”
“Nothing wrong. I came to stay here with you so you won’t be afraid.”
She gaped at him.
“With me—señor—”
“Not what you think,” he said quickly. “I could see you were frightened to be alone. I’m not sleepy and I might as well sit around here as somewhere else.”
“No, I am all right, Mr. Marine. You—”
He smiled steadily, feeling it as an unaccustomed stiffness in his face.
“You run along to bed,” he said. “I’ll just sit out here at the desk while you sleep.”
Her eyes looked out of a primitive pool of suspicion and fear.
“Mr. Marine,” she said slowly, “what you want? You not from the poleecy?”
“No, I’m not from the police and I’m not going to steal anything. You go ahead now, get some rest. You need it.”
She continued to gaze at him with a mixture of puzzlement and suspicion. And then, either because she truly welcomed his presence, or because she was too tired to argue, she turned with a small shrug and walked out of the room. A moment later her face reappeared between the curtains.
“Mr. Marine,” she said, “you like to sit in here? More easy.”
“Thank you,” he said, and followed her into the cramped living room of the apartment.
It was in precise order and immaculate. The furniture was inexpensive, block-like, without color or excitement of design. But there was no dust, clutter or disorder. It was as clean, he thought, as a barracks just before inspection and it gave him that kind of feeling. Through an open door he saw an equally spotless kitchen.
She was looking at him w
ith dogged patience and he guessed she expected him to sit down. He obliged, selecting a broad armchair. She waited till he was seated, then turned away into the bedroom. Even the slump of weariness failed to conceal the youthful grace and resilience of her strong body. He revised his earlier estimate of her age downward. It was possible she wasn’t yet twenty.
She closed the bedroom door from inside, but a moment later opened it and left it ajar. The rose-shaded lamp beside a double bed went out and he could hear the whisper of sound she made slipping out of the robe, and the quiet lurch of the bed as she got into it. He settled back in the chair and sat quietly, leaving the floor lamp burning beside it so that if she were watching, as he felt certain she was, he would not appear as a threat in her home.
* * * *
A large heater at one side of the room gave off warmth and a faint odor of burning gas. It had no lulling effect on him, nor, evidently, on her. He could hear by her frequent turnings in the bed that she was unable to sleep. After half an hour he concluded that his intrusion had been a mistake, or anyway, ill-timed. None of his purpose could be served without her confidence. He decided to give it up for that night.
As it happened, his exit, with a pause at the bedroom door to let her know he was leaving, coincided with a momentary stillness in the bedroom.
“I’m afraid I’m disturbing you,” he said. “Do you want me to go now?”
There was an interminable stillness and he was about to go on and let himself out when he heard her speak from the dark recess of her bed.
“No—Señor Marine—you stay? Por favor?”
It took him a minute to decide whether she meant him to go or to stay. In the end, he translated “por favor” with literal roughness as, “do me the favor.”
“Sure,” he said. “If you like.”
He started back to the chair, then swerved and went into the bedroom, slowly, so as not to alarm her. He could see her dimly, a small bulk buried to the chin in the big bed. He made out the black cups of her eyes watching him. He pulled up a straight chair beside the bed and sat down.
“You ought to sleep,” he said.
“Sí—Mr. Marine—”
“My name is Joe.”
After a pause, she said, “Okay Joe.”
“Shall I turn out the light?” he asked.
“Sí, okay. You stay now—Joe?”
“Yes, I’ll stay.”
He went to the other room, turned off the lamp and returned to sit beside the bed. She had turned over and he could see the lush billow of her long black hair on the pale bedspread. She was still restless. From time to time she made a sound in her throat, as if in pain. He laid his hand gently on the spread, where it dipped to the small of her back. He felt her go tense at the touch but she made no protest. He began to stroke and massage her back slowly and firmly. Through the bedclothes he could feel the taut, serviceable sweep of her loins from ribs to hips. Even after the cramped muscles had begun to relax, the young firmness remained.
All that woman, he found himself thinking, in a rhythm set by the stroking movement of his hand, all that woman…
Her passage from wakefulness to sleep was subtle as the dropping of a leaf, but he could feel it. Later he confirmed it by the softly regular rise and fall of her ribs and the new sound of her breathing. He left his hand at rest on her back for a while. When he lifted it, she stirred briefly but went on sleeping.
He returned quietly to the chair in the living room. He sat in the dark, hearing the low hiss of the gas heater and the occasional rumble of a passing truck on the highway. It had been part of his plan to make a systematic search of the apartment while she slept, but he sat where he was, remembering her with his hand, and eventually he fell asleep.
* * * *
When he woke, she was coming from the bedroom, barefooted, wearing the colorful skirt of the day before and a fresh blouse. She had tied a ribbon in her hair and it swept down her back in a long ponytail. When their eyes met, she showed no surprise and he guessed she had got over that before he wakened.
“You like coffee, Señor Marine?” she said.
“That would be good,” he said. “Thanks.”
He waited in the big chair while she made the coffee. She brought it to him in a plastic cup and handed him a paper napkin. He drank it gratefully while she sat watching.
Neither of them made any reference to the night. But as he was leaving, after he had paid her another day’s rent and in her strained, businesslike way she had put the money away, he glanced back and she was watching him. After a moment she lowered her eyes.
“Gracias—Joe,” she said.
He nodded.
“What is your name?” he asked.
She hesitated, and then, with a rising inflection, as if asking his approval, “Margarita?”
“That’s a beautiful name,” he said. “Margarita.”
* * * *
He didn’t see her again until mid-afternoon. He slept for a couple of hours and went down to the village for lunch. When he got back to the motel, Margarita was at her cleaning in the room next to his. Her back was turned to him as he started past the room and he decided to keep going and not risk startling her by speaking to her back. Then he saw that she was struggling with a heavy mattress, trying to turn it over on a double bed. Besides going at it the wrong way from a leverage standpoint, she was grappling with something too bulky for one person to handle. As he paused, looking in, she slipped and fell on one knee beside the bed. It was a slab floor and he winced, feeling the impact with her. The mattress flopped back, awry on the bed, and she knelt where she was with her face in her folded arms, panting. He walked in silently.
“Margarita?”
She looked up at him, her long black hair tumbled about her face. He stepped around her, where she sat in the nest of her skirt, and straightened the mattress on the bed. She got up and he showed her a trick, using the weight of the mattress against its bulk and they turned it. She was limping slightly and turned her back to him to raise her skirt and inspect her bruised knee. Then she brushed her hair back from her face, and as he started out she said, “Gracias—muchas gracias.”
He scratched his head, frowning, and said, “Por—nada?”
She stared at him.
“Okay?” he said.
“Okay, Joe.”
For the first time since he had known her, she was smiling.
CHAPTER 14
He went to the inn at nine o’clock and it was the same as on the night before, only drearier. He concluded that the brunette Mig was available as a pickup, and in a clinical way, testing his own powers, he gave some time to developing the possibility. But he gave it up finally out of boredom with her chatter. When, after repeated hints from Sandra, she agreed to go home, he didn’t try to detain her.
He learned nothing new from Charley and sometime after midnight he left and returned to the motel. Margarita led him through the same ritual of the tightly locked door, except that she opened it more readily and without preliminary questioning through the panel. Few words passed between them. She got into bed and he sat with her, as before, until she fell asleep.
He had no feeling of wonder at himself. He had grown so adaptable to day-to-day changes that sitting here through the night with the weary, frightened Mexican girl seemed almost routine. He found himself resenting the certainty that Wister would return to interrupt it. He wished he knew when it would happen and whether by day or night. He would like not to be asleep in the chair at the time.
There were other things he wanted to know about Wister, too, and he decided he had better get to it. He had maybe two more nights in which to go over the apartment and it would take time, with Margarita likely to wake up at any moment. It was of the most vital importance to him to win her trust.
He made sure she was sleeping soundly and closed the bedroom door. On a constant alert for a sound from her, he made a systematic search of the living room. It didn’t take long, even though he was thorough enough
to move the heavy furniture and roll back the rug, section by section, until he was satisfied nothing was hidden under it.
The prime object of his search was the photograph Roberts had told him Wister had taken. He thought Wister would probably have kept it. If he had been hired to do the job, as Roberts had said, he would surely retain concrete evidence of performance, for his own protection, not to mention the blackmail potential.
Searching the kitchen was a longer job than the other, though not as bad as he had anticipated. There were few possessions to be removed from cupboards and drawers and replaced. But the strain of working silently, especially among dishes and pots and pans, left his nerves frayed and his hands shaking.
In the office, he went through the desk drawers carefully. He found where she kept the receipts, in a cigar box. It contained the money she had taken in, each payment clipped to the registration card for the room she had rented. A simple, efficient system, he thought. They could trust her with the money because she had nowhere to go and because Wister had put the fear of God into her.
When he looked at his watch, it was after four o’clock. His eyes were sandy with tension and lack of sleep. He put his head down on the desk and was asleep within seconds. He woke after a few minutes and returned to the living room. He slept in the big chair until Margarita roused him, coming from the bedroom.
“Buenas días, señor—Joe,” she said. “I fix café—okay?”
“Okay wonderful,” he said.
He watched her drowsily as she went about it. The short time he had spent with her had produced its effect. Two nights of sleep without fear had given her new vigor.
His throat tightened at the lithe, vigorous play of her body, bending and stretching.
They had the coffee at the kitchen table and watched the slow sunrise over the desert. The slowly strengthening light gave her flesh the texture of burnished copper. They were for the most part silent. As he was leaving he explained that he had to drive into town that day but would be back before night.
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