by Desmond Cory
“I know what’s generally known in this town,” said Hendricks. “Though that isn’t much. It does some profitable placer mining” for diamonds along the Aracena, and three years back it opened up what looks to be a very nice little emerald property beyond Tumeremo. It has good government tie-ups and it more or less runs its own mining towns; there arc whole areas in the east where old man Galdos comes second to the devil himself—except to those who think he is the devil. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about him.”
“What sort of stories?” asked Trout.
“Not very nice ones. Three months ago, for instance, I heard that he had two men and a woman whipped to death not far from a place called Bojollo. Then last year, they said, some Mexican woman got across him, so he had her taken out to the plains and stripped and gave her el beso de la hormiga. Know what that is?”
“Ants?” said Trout. “Yes. I’ve heard of them.”
“Well, it happens. I’ve seen it done. Or at least, I’ve seen what the ants left behind them. . . . I could go on telling you things about Galdos; but the point is that he has the power to do as he likes and the things that he likes aren’t nice.”
“All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“Yes, that’s just about it. Till you’ve seen Galdos, you’ve no idea of what absolute corruption is like. If Nero had been born a South American, he might have got somewhere near it . . . but as it was . . .”
“What did West have to do with this set-up?” asked Trout, almost impatiently.
“I don’t know a thing.”
“You didn’t know him?”
“No. I’ve heard of him, but only rumours.”
“What sort of Rumours?”
“Oh, just rumours. Made him out to be a sharp sort of fellow, at any rate down in the Argentine. Liked to play at politics. Seems he got his fingers burnt there a bit—but he got out all right, and took his pile with him. Yes, he must have been smart enough.”
“What sort of an engineer was he?”
“Couldn’t say,” said Hendricks. “Never saw any of his work.”
“But good engineers don’t play at politics. Or do they?”
Hendricks sighed, sat back, crossed his legs. “You got to get used to the situation round these parts,” he said. “Mining round here is politics. Especially oil-drilling. Round here, mine-owners are politicians because they have to be. Politics means hanging on to the money you’ve already got and maybe adding something to it. It’s got nothing to do with what ow think the word means. But that’d take too long to explain.”
“I was in Chicago,” said Fedora, “at the end of the gang wars. If you think that helps.”
“You were, were you?” Hendricks looked, for a moment, straight at him, then averted his gaze once more. “Then maybe you do appreciate the layout. What were^oa doing in Old Windy? You didn’t carry a gun, by any chance?”
“Yes,” said Fedora. “I did.”
“Then maybe you’re a useful fellow to have around. Better be careful, though. Don’t go nicking anyone until you’ve caught on to the etiquette.” Hendricks licked his lips and swallowed the better part of a litre of beer. “These big mine-owners are tricky customers. They dress and talk just the way people dress and talk in Dallas or Rio de Janeiro, but their blood’s nine-tenths Indian and just when you think you may be dealing with a civilised person, you find out you’re not. They run their workers and gunboys and women like so many tribal chiefs and they keep their feet stuck right down on the earth, where the oil and the diamonds come from. Some are just plain evil, like Galdos, and others aren’t so bad and others you might even call good fellows: but they’re all half savages and you don’t want to forget that for a moment. They have their luxury flats right here in Caracas and their Cadillacs down on the Avenida de Bolivar—but those things are just for show. What they really like better than anything is a game of siete y media for really high money some place up-country, in a tin shack as like as not, with plenty of rum on the table and a couple of hefty half-caste girls waiting in the bedroom. If you always remember that, you’ll find you can get on with them. And to get on with them is better, believe you me. Well, sorry for the speech.”
“That’s all right,” said Trout. “But I don’t see anything unusual about them, the way you put it. That’s how the so-called cosmopolitan set like to behave, down in the rock pool at Cannes.”
“Never been there,” said Hendricks suspiciously. “Shouldn’t think it’s quite the same, somehow.”
“We’ll see when we get to Los Cielos,” said Trout, lifting another three bottles from the cesto. “Well, gentlemen . . . Here’s to the trip. . . .”
Chapter Two
THIRTEEN THOUSAND is not a very large population, but it is sufficient to make of Los Cielos de Aracena the most important town within a radius of a hundred miles. It stands on a soft alluvial plateau formed by a bend in the river; sometimes a bridge extends over the river and sometimes, usually after the spring rains, it doesn’t. A road runs up towards the hills to the south and another towards the hills to the north; the camino del sur and the camino del sur, respectively. There are hills to the east, too; but anyone wishing to inspect them has to go on foot. Nobody ever does, except for the prospectors of the Galdos combine—there are two of them—who are combing the vast area of unexplored territory, almost as big as Wales, that lies to the east and who sometimes come tiredly in over the sierras to renew their supplies at the largest of the town’s three general stores. Los Cielos also boasts a church, complete with cura, twenty-seven low-class saloons and three high-class bars, eleven brothels and a distillery; all these are owned by the Galdos combine, with the exception of the church—though even in this case many of the townsfolk are dubious. Los Cielos began its career as a township no more than forty-five years ago, with the opening of the placer mines three miles to the north. Until 1941 it had remained an unimportant village, and then the Galdos combine had moved in with its miners and clearing squads and manual workers and engineers and perspiring funcionarios; and after the men, as always, had come the women; and after the women, as always, had come civilisation—though not, as it happened, plumbing. The town was now, by local standards, an extraordinarily lively place; though it was true that it attained its full estimated population only once a month, when the men from the nearby mining villages of Veinte-Seis and Pedra Negra came in on lorries and mule-wagons and on donkeyback with four weeks’ wages in their pockets. Then there was high fiesta; the twenty-seven low-class saloons did a roaring trade, and so did the eleven brothels—so much so that on these occasions five subsidiary establishments opened on a back street without incurring the serious disfavour of the Galdos combine, which normally was wont to frown on good money going into other pockets than its own. Its new placer mines had been pushed out to a point some fifteen miles from the town, so that the fifteen hundred odd employees working there usually came in only on weekends; on these occasions there was also a good deal of minor junketing, but the Galdos brothels alone were perfectly able to cope—although the queues outside did get a little noisy at times. On normal weekdays, though, the population of Los Cielos ran to no more than eight thousand or so; six thousand being women and children, and two thousand (as will be apparent to those who have a head for mathematics) being men: storekeepers, barmen, tradesmen, but mostly workers at the Galdos combine’s central office, by far the most imposing building in the town and the only one, in point of fact, to have more than one storey. The senior secretaries, executives and departmental heads all occupied comfortable haciendas on the camino del sur, and their streamlined American cars littered the gravel driveway before the main building. High iron bars with spikes excluded the casual stroller from this Holy of Holies, and at the main gates two guards with black stubble on their faces prowled up and down, rifles slung on their backs and untidy hand-rolled cigarettes drooping from their mouths.
Trout and Fedora viewed this scene with interest. Trout drew the La
nd Rover to a halt just outside the gates, and one of the guards came forward to stare at them. He didn’t seem especially impressed. “Well,” said Trout to Johnny. “Now that we’ve got here, they don’t seem to think much of us.”
“They might at least have put out some flags,” said Johnny.
The guard came nearer, lowering his head to window-level. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Drive on through, you’re holding up the traffic.”
Trout, startled, glanced towards the driving-mirror; which reflected the entire length of a dusty street empty of all signs of life except for a bored-looking donkey. It had to be a joke, then, though the expression on the guard’s face seemed to render this hypothesis unlikely. He began to let out the clutch, then stopped as the guard swung his rifle up to his shoulder. “Where d’you think you’re going?” demanded the guard. “And who do you think you are, anyway? You wait a minute till I’ve had a good look at you.”
“You said to drive on through,” protested Trout.
“Changed my mind,” said the guard.
He paused to expectorate gracefully on to his left boot. “Let’s see your papers,” he said.
“Papers? What papers?”
“Why, your papers. You must have some papers, por el amor de Dios.”
“Oh, to hell with it,” said Fedora. “We don’t have to start off here, do we? Let’s check in at some bar or other and get a wash and change. Lucifer wouldn’t let us into hell, the way we’re looking now.”
“You could be right,” said Hendricks.
There was a bar at the end of the street. It didn’t have a name; none of the bars in Los Cielos had a name Other than that of the barman. And here, the man in charge was a thin, lugubrious character called Pepe. He accepted the deputation of the E.I.E. with a marked lack of fluster and led them to a courtyard at the back of the house, where there was a well and a couple of tin basins. They were able to wash and shave in lukewarm water and in rather greater comfort than at any time in the last few days. Johnny and Trout changed their shirts, which were dusty from the road and sticky with sweat; but Hendricks took the trouble to change into a neat black suit, and the extraordinary change of the behaviour of the lugubrious Pepe made the wisdom of this transformation manifest. He ushered them over to the table where they were to lunch with a fulsome solicitude that contrasted strongly with his former lack-lustre air. “Good God,” said Trout, amazed. “He must think you’re the President of the Republic, or something.”
“It’s never enough just to be rich in these parts,” said Hendricks. “You’ve got to look rich, as well. That’s why I’ve always found this suit a good investment.” And he poured villainous-looking red wine from a carafe into a thick tumbler. “Well, this dump isn’t so bad; I thought it might be a lot worse. What are we going to do when we’ve eaten? Walk round and try another tumble with that character with the popgun?”
Trout said, “I think maybe we ought to try and size the place up a bit, first.”
“As you like. But if you want to get any reliable information about West, you’ll have to do it through the Galdos offices. There isn’t any other way.”
“What about the police?”
“I’ll be very much surprised if the police here aren’t a part of the combine, as well. That’s the way they work in these districts. Though it’s just as likely,” said Hendricks, “that they haven’t any police here at all.”
In this, however, Hendricks was doing the town of Los Ciclos a grave injustice. It most certainly did possess a police force. There was a Chief of Police, named Marquez, and a Deputy Chief of Police, named Ybarra; two, in all. They had even, as the barman explained indignantly, an office; a small office in a house on one of the principal side-streets of the town. No, the street did not actually have a name, not yet; perhaps it would one day. What was undeniable was that the house had a number. This was in order to distinguish it more easily from the others. Unfortunately he, Pepe, the barman, had no idea what that number was. He, the barman, Pepe, was a stupid fellow; and besides, virtually a stranger to the place, not having lived here much more than eighteen months. However, the illustrious expertise had merely to ask in the main street for the local Jefatura de Policio, and the problem would be solved at a stroke.
That was what the barman opined; the truth was strangely otherwise. It proved virtually impossible to locate the Jefatura by the means that he had advised; and this, through the extraordinary behaviour of the local inhabitants. It wasn’t that they were hostile. Not at all. They were simply furtive, fugitive. At the very-sight of the three foreigners, they seemed to melt imperceptibly away. One man, a weary-looking willie who ambled along staring at the toes on his feet, they managed to accost before he had noticed them; his manner was then civil to the point of obsequiousness, but decidedly odd. He, it seemed, was also a stranger in town; and—while it was inconceivable that such a fine town as this should lack a Jefatura de Policia —he himself was totally ignorant as to its whereabouts. This in itself, of course, was reasonable enough; it was merely that his manner suggested that, had the señores requested him to indicate to them the position of the sun in the sky, he would have expressed himself as equally powerless to assist them. In the next fifteen minutes they captured in a similar way an elderly woman, two small boys and a prostitute who chanced to be sitting at her window; the young lady, who was not at all bad-looking as these young lathes go, was considerably more forthcoming than the others, but proved equally vacant-minded on the subject of the Los Cielos constabulary. “And,” said Hendricks, smacking his thigh in annoyance, “she must have known, if anyone in this whole bloody town does. I don’t understand it.”
“This is getting grim,” said Trout. “I’m beginning to feel like Orestes in Les Mouches. It must have been some place like this that. . . . Well, they must have got wind of what we’re up to, that’s all. So they’re trying the old freeze-off.”
“Don’t believe it,” said Hendricks succinctly. “The only way they freeze you off round these parts is with a knife or a bullet. There’s no need for subtlety, if you get my meaning. No, I. . . . It’s all very odd.”
“Let’s give it up,” suggested Fedora, “and try the offices again.”
“No, to hell with that. I’m going to find this blasted police station,” said Hendricks crossly, “or else the trying.”
But he didn’t.
It would be truer to say that the police found him. At any rate, when—more or less in desperation—they had entered the second of the high-class bars to ask directions from the owner (a man as ignorant of local geography as everyone else), a very thin man in a grey linen suit that had once been white, rose from one of the tables and, courteously doffing his hat, inquired if there were any way in which he could serve the expertise. This gentleman was, in point of fact, no other than Marquez, the aforementioned Chief of Police. But he did not immediately say so.
“Ustedes may amable,“said Hendricks. “We’re looking for the police headquarters here . . . if you would be so good as to direct us. . . . ”
“The Jefatura? Ah yes. Of course. But to direct you correctly, it would be necessary to know the exact nature of your interests. If, for instance, it were a question of passports or of work permits, you would require not the Jefatura but the Oficinas de Hacienda. Or if, on the other hand, it were a question—”
“It’s a question,” said Trout, who was no fool, “of finance. Of personal finance,” said Trout, looking his man in the eye. In his shirt pocket, his fingers rustled a banknote suggestively.
“Ah yes? I think I understand.”
“Of personal finance,” said Trout silkily, “and of. . . information.”
“Exactly. I understand you perfectly.” The thin man glanced round the bar, though he must have known very well that—apart from themselves and the barman—it was empty. Then he jerked his head meaningly to one side. “There is a private room here, expertise, where these confidential matters are perhaps more easily discussed than i
n an . . . how shall I say? . . . official atmosphere.” He nodded to the barman. “Bring us in a bottle of the solera, Henrique—and cigars. Good cigars.” He bowed. “Permit me to present myself. Pablo Marquez Vargas— su servidor. I am the Chief of Police of this town.”
“I suspected as much,” said Trout. “You have, I mean, an air of distinction that it is difficult to conceal.”
“¿Verdad que sí? Well—perhaps, perhaps. Pasen usiedes, caballeros. Through this door.”
The private room into which Marquez ushered them was very small indeed; it contained a single long table and eight chairs, and with this seemed to be full to overflowing. A calendar for the year 1952 was held against the wall by a rusty pin; on the opposite wall was a page from some American magazine, probably Esquire, depicting a young person very evidently of the female sex but striving, for some reason, to conceal this fact with the aid of a transparent bath towel. The window-opening was narrow and barred, and the heat was something shocking.
“One thing I must tell you at once, expertise“said Marquez, seating himself at the head of the table and waving them to chairs beside him. “If it is a matter of documentation, of passports to enable you to cross to British Guiana—I regret that I cannot help you. It’s not, of course, that I’m unwilling. To help in such little matters as that—that’s what we policemen are here for. I quite simply am not able. Owing to some misunderstanding with the supplier, no forged passports have been delivered to the police in this province for almost four years. A pity, of course—but there it is.”
“We didn’t want anything of that sort,” said Trout; the Chief of Police looked slightly relieved, but only slightly. “But before we go on to talk business, maybe you can tell us something. Why the hell is everyone in this town acting scared of us?”