“About Luz Robles?” she guessed.
“We’ll get to that. You were scared stiff you’d be identified as the girl in José Sotomayor’s life, but if that’s what you were you took his death pretty calmly. I want to know why.”
“The girl in his life,” she said bitterly. “You don’t know what it was like.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged and drank some wine. The waiter came and took my order for suckling pig.
Carmen looked past my left shoulder, staring glassy-eyed into the deep well of her past. “I owe you the truth for what you did,” she said slowly. “But still, it is difficult. I hardly know you.”
“You know you can trust me.”
She finished her wine. I filled her glass again, but she left it on the table. “I am an addict,” she said gravely, as though admitting she had some incurable and highly contagious disease. There were tears in her eyes.
“Take it easy. An addict of what?”
“He did it to me. Oh, I hated him. At first I thought it wouldn’t matter, just a little every now and then, to show I was—well, sophisticated. But then I came to crave it. Truly I could not live without it, and when that happened I would do anything he wished. Anything. What will I do now? He gave it to me. I do not know how to get it myself.” She clenched her fist next to the wine bottle, bunching the tablecloth. “What am I going to do?”
“Marijuana?” I said, remembering what José had told me.
“Sí. Marijuana. Madre de Dios, what am I going to do?”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I said harshly, and she jerked her head back as though I had struck her. “You’re no addict.”
“It’s easy for you to say.”
“Who told you marijuana’s a narcotic? Do you understand the word?”
“Sí, I understand,” she said dully.
“It’s no more habit-forming than cigarettes or whiskey, Carmen. That’s the truth. Any doctor would tell you.”
“I need it. I feel the need now. I am tight as a coiled spring inside. It was fun at the beginning. A small wickedness, I thought. It made me feel a woman of the world, after the convent. I had never even kissed a man, on the lips, with excitement. And afterward? He led me through it by easy stages, like a dancing master with a slow pupil. Finally, to satisfy my craving, I became his woman.” Tears were gleaming on her cheeks. “Please. You will forgive me. I don’t want to talk about it.”
But she was wrong, of course. She did want to talk about it. She had found someone who had helped her, and who would listen, and it had all been bottled up too long. “Maybe this thing of a man and woman,” she said, “maybe it is good. But with José I hated it. I swore to myself that one day I would kill him, but I knew I wouldn’t. To sin carnally with him, that was one thing, that was bad enough, but to take a life—no, I could never kill a man, that is the worst sin of all.”
“Look,” I said. “He’s dead. You didn’t kill him. Let it go at that.”
“But the wish. The wish is a sin too. In the eyes of God it is just as bad, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Besides, I am an addict, and God knows that as well.”
Her God and I were not on speaking terms, but her fear of addiction was something I could understand. “I smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day,” I said. “It’s probably the stupidest habit this side of a TV set or a bad marriage, and I want a cigarette right now. I’m not going to smoke one.” I put the pack on the table and nudged it across toward her. “See? It’s easy. Marijuana is no more habit-forming than cigarettes.”
“Then stop smoking,” she said flatly, but for the first time there was the slightest hint of a smile in her dark eyes.
“I guess I did sound a little smug,” I said. “The point is, I can pick up a cigarette any old time I want, and nobody will go running for the Guardia Civil. But with marijuana it’s different. Okay, so try willpower. Obviously I don’t have any.” To prove it I picked up the pack of cigarettes and lit one.
She really smiled then. “Oh, you sound so funny. Like a young and uncertain doctor trying out his bedside manner on a new patient.” I didn’t say anything. “Is that cigarette good? May I have a puff?”
I held the cigarette across the small table, but instead of taking it from me she drew my hand close to her mouth and dragged deeply. “Poor Papa,” she said, exhaling. “He wouldn’t even approve of that. He thinks I’m still about fifteen.”
“Why couldn’t he go to Don Santiago’s party?” I asked.
“He used his health as an excuse. He had a mild heart attack once, but he’s well now. He doesn’t Like Don Santiago.”
“He told me they were friends.”
“To hear him talk you would think so, but I know differently. My father hates Don Santiago.”
“Do you know why?”
“Hernando Sotomayor and my father were very close. Don Santiago betrayed his brother to the authorities for acts committed during the Civil War. He was executed.”
“They were on different sides of the fence politically?”
“Don Hernando was a Loyalist.”
“What about your father’s politics? May I ask that?”
“You may, but not even Papa could answer. He is an economist. He doesn’t understand politics. All he wants is to be left in peace to study international finance. Everyone including the Caudillo realizes that men like my father are uninvolved. They can survive changes of government, even violent ones.” Only when discussing her own problems did Carmen Prieto seem childlike. Once she got over that she was surprisingly perceptive. It was almost like talking to two different women.
The waiter displayed our suckling pig with a flourish, then took it to a nearby serving table to carve. The glazed skin oozed juices as the knife bit through it. When two plates of the hot cochinillo had been set before us, I asked Carmen, “Did you ever meet Luz Robles?”
“No, but José told me about her. He was always talking about his relatives, with scorn.” Carmen was chewing enthusiastically and talking at the same time. I decided that was a good sign. If marijuana really has a hold on you, it takes your appetite away. I got the idea that feeling sorry for herself was at least half her problem.
“He envied them,” she went on. “His brother Ramón because he had been raised a norteamericano, his sister Luz because she grew up in Venezuela the daughter of devoted foster parents. I think he hated them both without even knowing them. And Don Santiago he truly hated. He claimed Don Santiago wanted him to become a useless señorito. He was very bitter about that.”
“What about Luz Robles?” I asked. “She came to Spain to get married because Don Santiago wanted the wedding to take place here. But this afternoon you said there was another reason.”
“José told me there was another reason. He thought it was very funny,” Carmen said in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t.
“What was that?”
She put her knife and fork down and finished the wine in her glass. “José met Luz Robles at the Ritz on Tuesday afternoon. Understand that they had never seen each other before, not since they were children. She could not have known what José was like. She tried to enlist his aid.”
“To do what?”
“This is difficult to say. I’m only telling you what José told me.”
“I understand that, Carmen. But Luz Robles has been kidnaped, and the odds against a kidnap victim remaining alive very long are pretty grim. You might be able to give me a lead that could save her life.”
“But if you save her life, and if she meant what she told José, someone else will die.” She licked her lips. “According to José, Luz Robles came to Spain to murder her uncle. She wanted José to help her. Don Santiago had been responsible for their father’s death, she said, and had destroyed their mother’s life. José could hardly tell me all this, he was laughing so hard. All Don Santiago wanted was to bring Luz home to Spain, and all she wanted was to kill him.”
“Then José didn’t agree to help her?
”
“He was afraid. He didn’t admit it, but I could tell. Whenever José boasts—boasted—it was to hide his fear.”
“What did he boast about to Luz?”
“He said he knew some people who could do what she wanted done.”
“What people?”
“Here in Madrid. Former bullfighters who are often drug addicts, or worse. They live on their memories and by their wits. They are constantly in debt. They would do anything for money. Anything, José said. And Luz Robles was willing to pay. José sent her to them.”
It began, then, to make a horrible kind of sense. If Luz Robles had hired an assassin to kill her uncle, he might have decided there was more dough in it for him if he held her for ransom instead.
“Where do I find them?” I said.
“On the Calle de Preciados, near the Puerta del Sol, there is a café called El Pimpi. It is only a few streets from here. It is a hangout for old bullfighters. All Madrid knows that for ten thousand pesetas you can find a man there to do anything, payment in advance and no questions asked. It was where José purchased his marijuana. Will you go there?”
I nodded.
Carmen clutched my hand on the table. “Take me with you?”
“I can’t do that, Carmen.”
“You’ve got to. I. could never go alone. But if I went with you I could find the one called El Macareno, who used to be a matador in the days of Manolete, and he would sell me what he sold José.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s a swell way to kick the habit.”
“Why should you care what happens to me? It’s my own life. Por favor? You will take me?”
“I’m sorry, Carmen.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. It’s driving me crazy. I’d do whatever you wished if you took me.” She fluttered her eyelids in an exaggerated coquettish gesture. “There were ways I made José happy. He was a man of the world but still I pleased him. I could make you happy in the same ways.”
“Cut it out,” I said.
She fumbled in her purse and came up with a fistful of hundred-peseta notes. “Then at least see the one called El Macareno for me,” she pleaded. “Tell him you are a friend of José and he will sell you the marijuana. I’m desperate. I can’t think about anything else.”
“Look,” I said. “You’re a nice kid who got mixed up with a wrong guy. Don’t let it ruin your life, Carmen.”
“Those are just words. I’m a grown woman. I know what I want.” As though to disprove the assertion of her maturity, she began to cry softly.
“You only think you do.”
“You’re being smug again. Oh, I hate you.”
I gave her my handkerchief. She blew her nose in it hard, glaring at me. I asked for the check and paid it. Then we went outside to Axel Spade’s Jag, which was being admired by a bunch of would-be señoritos on the still-crowded street.
Neither one of us spoke on the drive back to Paseo Reina Cristina. I pulled into the floodlit driveway and cut the engine. Before I could open the door on my side, Carmen flung herself into my arms and kissed me on the mouth. “Payment in advance,” she whispered throatily against my ear, “the way it is made at El Pimpi. My papa sleeps like a dead man. We could—”
But I broke away from her, opened the door and went around the car to let her out.
“You’re being a fool,” she said. “If it’s not you, I’ll find someone else. Look at me. Can’t you understand that? I told you I was desperate.”
I understood it, all right. She meant what she said. “I’ll make a deal with you,” I said.
“Yes?” Hope kindled in her eyes. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll get the stuff. I’ll hold onto it a few days. Try not to think about it. Can you do that? Take cold baths or go horseback riding or get yourself drunk or whatever the hell you want to do that will take your mind off it. Then we’ll see.”
“Then you’ll give it to me?”
“Then we’ll see,” I said. “Right now why not start with a good night’s sleep?”
I kissed her at the doorway, lightly, without passion.
“I knew you would be nice to me,” she said.
I drove back to the Old Town to find Calle de Preciados and a has-been bullfighter who might or might not know what had happened to Luz Robles. The sweet young taste of Carmen was still on my mouth.
EIGHT
It was a typical Spanish bodega with a long zinc-topped bar at which men were crowded three deep eating tapas and drinking wine at a couple of pesetas a glass. Loud masculine talk and laughter hung in the smoke-filled air, which smelled of olive oil and sour wine. Great bunches of garlic and dark, country-cured hams were suspended from the low ceiling. Bullfight posters, most of them old and tattered, lined the wall opposite the bar like fading memories of a more exciting time and place. One of them, from the Plaza de Toros de Málaga, informed the public that on that Sunday of the Resurrection, 1947, Juan Lopez, El Macareno would compete in a mano a mano with the bullfighter who had been the best of his day, Manolete.
I worked my way to the bar and ordered a tinto. When the old man who had served my small glass of red wine scrawled a 2 on the zinc bar with a piece of chalk, I said in Spanish, “I’m looking for El Macareno.”
The old barman shrugged. “I do not understand, señor.”
My Spanish wasn’t that bad. I tried again, “My friend José Sotomayor said I could find El Macareno here.”
I waited, hoping tomorrow morning’s early editions hadn’t hit the streets yet with the news of José’s murder. The old barman gave me a bored look and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the bodega. I left a five-peseta coin on the bar and headed in that direction.
The back room of a bodega is usually a private club for the steady patrons. They play dominoes there, or listen to the sad flamenco guitar music, or talk gravely and with an interest that borders on passion of the running of the bulls, or, more and more as the Spanish government relaxes its rigid totalitarian control, they argue politics. A stranger is not welcome. He is met by a sudden charged silence and a turning of backs. After a while he goes away, and the dominoes click on the bare wood tables again, and someone plucks a flamenco lament from a battered guitar, and the deep slow voices resume.
When I opened the door of the back room of El Pimpi, it was like that. A dozen men at three tables stopped their domino playing. A man seated on a wine cask stared at the guitar on his lap with his right hand hovering over the strings. Three men who had been in animated discussion stood in a tight silent circle without moving. It was like seeing a single stationary frame of a motion picture. Even the thick cigarette smoke hung in the air, waiting for me to get the idea that I didn’t exist.
I shut the door behind me, softly. The click of the latch was the only sound. “I was told I could find El Macareno here,” I said.
The man with the guitar raised his head about an inch. “You are mistaken,” he said. “We are all from the city and we are all rich. Adiós, señor. This is a private club.” A couple of the domino players laughed. The man with the guitar was having some fun at my expense: El Macareno means the poor country boy.
“I guess anybody who fought mano a mano with Manolete wouldn’t stay a poor country boy for long,” I said.
That made the man with the guitar raise his head another inch. He was burly and middle-aged, wearing one of those electric-blue jackets you see all over Spain. He had a shock of short iron-gray hair and a three-day growth of beard like iron filings on his heavy-jawed face. Over his right eye he wore a black patch. A scar that gave his left eye a perpetual squint ran from it slantwise across his cheek, lips, chin and neck to disappear in the open collar of his shirt.
“What do you wish with El Macareno?” he said.
“It’s private,” I said. “José Sotomayor sent me.”
The burly man lunged to his feet. The guitar flew off his lap. His right hand blurred forward and down in a darting motion almost too fast to follow, catching the
guitar by its neck before it could hit the floor. He set it down gently, almost lovingly on the wine cask and jerked his jutting chin toward the door. One by one, silently, the domino players left the room. The last one out shut the door.
The burly man and I were alone in the room. “That was a pretty good trick with the guitar,” I said. “I once knew a guy who could catch flies on the wing with his hand. He never missed. He was an ex-prize fighter. You were just as quick.”
“A matador needs fast reflexes too,” the burly man said.
“Even an ex-matador still has them. You’re El Macareno, of course.”
“When did you last see Don José, señor?” He used the title mockingly, as though he didn’t think much of the gentry in general or José Sotomayor in particular.
“This afternoon,” I said.
“Late this afternoon?”
“That’s right, late.”
“How late, señor?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Around six o’clock maybe.”
He smiled. His teeth, what there were of them, were large and gleamingly white. Under the scar that slashed across his lips a couple of uppers and lowers were missing. Still smiling, he asked me:
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” I said conversationally. “Did you?”
“I wasn’t there, señor.”
“You knew about it. Has it been in the papers?”
“I never read the newspapers, except for the bullfight page. I have my sources of information, señor. But this time I fear they have let me down. Who are you?”
“Primo de la Vaca of the Guardia Civil thought it might be a good idea if I helped him track down Sotomayor’s killer.”
“Really? And you came here?”
I said nothing.
“Amigo,” El Macareno said, “I could step outside this room and speak to a man, just the few necessary words, and they would carry you out of the Old Town feet first. That would be a shame—without even learning who you are. That is, assuming I don’t know. Shall I guess?”
He tapped his forehead in an exaggerated gesture of concentration. His single eye squinted all the way shut. “You are a norteamericano who calls himself Chester Drum. You entered Spain on Monday north of Pamplona in the company of a man calling himself Axel Spade. You were a guest at the ranch of Don Santiago Sotomayor, where you learned the hidalgo’s niece had been kidnaped. I assume you came to Madrid to find her. I wish you muy buena suerte—much good luck. You will need it.”
Drumbeat Madrid Page 7