A church bell pealed somewhere far off, one of those oddly flat and unresonant bells you hear in Spain, and I listened to it clang off the hours. An excited burro hee-hawed every now and then. The big trucking rigs rolled by, bound for Madrid or Barcelona. Once I heard footsteps on the stairs, but nobody came to wish me top-of-the-morning. A toilet flushed.
I dozed off around midday and woke with the same splitting headache. My taped mouth was as dry as alum. The church bell clanged flatly after a while, sixteen times. Four o’clock I couldn’t admire the view of the sky any longer: the sun hung about a yard and a half away outside the open shutters. If what they wanted to do was reduce me to a dehydrated husk with all the strength and muscle tone of a sack of cement, they were succeeding.
A few minutes after the church bells clanged, I heard footsteps on the stairs again. The door opened and Luís came into the room, looking wilted in his white jacket and overseas cap. He had a little bottle of water with him. I made eyes at it.
“I was told not to do this,” he said, and gave me a guilty look. “If you will do me the favor of promising to make no noise?”
I nodded. He ripped the tape from my mouth, taking some lip with it. I spat out a wad of oily rag. He held the neck of the bottle to my lips. The water was lukewarm. I drank some and slobbered some.
“Margarita said she would bring you something to eat.”
“When?” I croaked.
“Later.”
He stuffed the gag in his pocket and applied the tape loosely over my lips. “It will look the same,” he said uneasily. “You won’t shout or anything? Antonio would be furious.”
I nodded. He went away. I shut my eyes and could still see the sun through my eyelids. Figure Antonio made the call, I told myself. Figure he arranged a rendezvous here, somewhere near Zaragoza, in his querencia, as his father had put it. Figure that Axel Spade couldn’t sit on the Captain General and that the old man set out, some time today, for Zaragoza. It would still take him several hours to get here, driving hard and fast over the mountain roads from Navarre. The rendezvous couldn’t be before nightfall. Luz wouldn’t have wanted it before nightfall anyway. No reason for it, really, but nine times out of ten premeditated murder is a nighttime activity. I had a few hours anyway. Not that I could do anybody any good spread-eagled on a bare mattress in an oven of a room.
After a long time the sun went away from the window. Traffic on the Madrid-Barcelona highway increased as the time of siesta ended. The fierce heat subsided somewhat. It might have dipped below a hundred degrees—but not very far. I thought of a gallon of cold, foaming beer. I thought of a sauna on a Finnish lake where I once had been. After the steam room treatment you go outside wearing nothing but your skin and roll in the snow. I thought of Amundsen freezing to death in the Arctic, if Amundsen had frozen to death, and envied him that pleasant way to die. I drifted off to sleep again and woke to dusky light and a very faint breeze stirring the limp curtains at the window and Margarita hovering over me.
“Shh,” she said. I hadn’t made any noise.
She untaped my mouth. She had the bottle of water with her, full again, and a plate with a couple of dozen small pink-white shrimps on it and three big, red, juicy tomatoes. She held the water to my mouth, cupping my head with her hand, and I drank. She held the tomatoes for me, the way you hold an apple, and I demolished them. She fed me the shrimps, one at a time, daintily held between thumb and forefinger. I polished them off raptly. I hadn’t had anything to eat since the suckling pig with Carmen at Botín’s in Madrid. I licked my lips. They stung.
“Mejor?”
“Yeah, it’s better. Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress looking down at me worriedly.
I got the notion, from the way she was looking at me, that she wanted me to talk her into releasing me.
“You said it was trouble this morning,” I told her. “You were right. If I don’t get out of here soon, Antonio will be in the kind of trouble nobody can get him out of.”
“You will tell me,” she said. “It is more than that he took your woman and you came after her?”
“She’s not my woman. I never saw her before this morning.”
“I do not understand.”
“She wants to do something very bad,” I said. “She paid Antonio to help her. His father sent me here to stop them.”
Hope kindled in her eyes. “His father? Truly? Then you did not come here to harm Antonio?”
“To keep him out of harm.”
“Why should I believe you? You shot the dog. Antonio wanted to kill you for it. He raised Diablo from a puppy.”
“The dog was coming at my throat,” I said. “What else could I do?”
“Then if you had no choice,” she said slowly, and waited for me to keep talking. I said nothing. She said, “The woman, can you tell me what bad thing it is she paid Antonio to do?”
“The worst possible thing,” I said. “They’re going to kill a man.”
Her head jerked up. “He would never agree to a thing like that,” she said, but raised her hand quickly and crossed herself.
“The woman’s going to do it with his help.”
“Why should I believe you?” she said. “How can I?”
“No reason, Margarita. No reason at all.”
“But—but you believe you can stop them?”
“I can try.”
“And afterward? What would Antonio do to me afterward?”
“Do you know how they execute people for murder in your country? He faces that if I don’t stop them.”
She clutched her left breast and stared down at her lap as though unexpected pain had convulsed her. “The garrote. Ay, the garrote.”
“The executioner comes up behind you—”
“Ay, behind him, behind Antonio!” she cried.
“—and reaches over your head with a strong wire, looping it around your throat, hands crossed and then quickly uncrossed.”
Unconsciously she made the motion with her own hands while I described it. “That’s enough,” she cried. “Stop. Mother of God, that’s enough.” She buried her face in her hands.
Without another word she began to work on the knots in the twine around my wrists. Five minutes after she started I was sitting up on the mattress and staring at the raw red skin, where coarse twine and sweat had chafed, above my wrists. There were shooting pains in my upper arms. My forearms felt numb.
“Can you get my clothing?” I asked.
“Sí. It is downstairs.”
“And the gun?”
“I saw no gun.”
She was gone for a few moments and returned with my shirt, socks, suit and shoes. She stood gazing out the window while I dressed. It was almost dark outside. My clothing was rumpled and the left sleeve of the jacket badly ripped. I gave myself a quick once-over in the small mirror above the sink. Bloodshot eyes stared back at me. Caked blood matted the hair on the left side of my head. I was beginning to need a shave again. I looked like a bum. I felt like a panhandler who has spent a hard week knocking at kitchen doors without any luck.
“Where’s the car?” I asked.
“Here. In the garage. Do you feel well enough to—do what you must do?”
I shrugged. “You have any whiskey?”
“Only wine.”
I went downstairs with Margarita right behind me. A good stiff drink could keep me going for a while, but wine would only make me sleepy. Then I remembered the Fundador in the Jag’s glove compartment. Margarita led me past a grease pit and a beat-up old Ford with its front end dismantled. Crates were stacked all over the place, most of them stenciled for consignment to the island of Malta. It was the old Spanish smuggler’s dodge: contraband goods, shipped from Gibraltar and destined for the Spanish black market—automotive parts, wrist-watches, cameras and the like—are written up f.o.b. Malta. If every shipload of goods leaving Gibraltar for consignment to Malta reached that island
it would sink from the weight.
“Doesn’t the Guardia come snooping around?” I asked Margarita.
“Sí,” she said. “For their money.”
I got the Fundador and tilted my head back and drank, not stopping until the last of the brandy gurgled out of the bottle. It spread warmly in my stomach and had that quick effect liquor always has on me. I felt well enough to say, somewhat cockily:
“It might not be a bad idea for your brother to wash the Jag if he wants. I’ll be back for it later.”
“I will tell him, señor. Vaya con Dios.”
I started walking along the edge of the highway toward Zaragoza. Once I looked back through the gathering darkness. Margarita was standing near the gas pumps, peering after me. She raised one hand to wave and then changed her mind and dropped it to her side.
ELEVEN
The Spanish climate, especially on the high Castilian plateau, is more African than European. By the time I reached the house the stifling heat of the day had given way to a cool northern wind. It is the sort of weather bullfighters fear. They work through the late afternoon under the broiling bullring sun in their heavy costumes, hot and sweaty, and then toward the end of the corrida the dark shadows are cold and they wait to kill their last bulls, shivering in their own sweat. More bullfighters die of tuberculosis than horn wounds.
Light showed through the slits in the closed shutters of the house. The Peugeot station wagon was parked out front. As I approached it I could see my breath on the night air. The moon hung low in the east, just off the full. I tried a rear door of the station wagon. It wasn’t locked. I got inside, pulled the door shut quietly and crouched down on the floor between the rear seat and the back of the front seats. I tried stretching out but had to curl my knees to fit. A canvas tarp that smelled strongly of lubricating oil shared the floor with me. I pulled it over my legs and up to my shoulders, not to hide myself but to keep warm. If they used the wagon they wouldn’t see me unless they had to find something in back. If they started out on foot I would hear them leave the house and could get out and follow them. If they had set up the rendezvous for the house itself, which seemed unlikely, I’d be nearby when the Captain General arrived. If Axel Spade had any luck, none of that mattered and I could decide what to do about Luz Robles and Antonio in the morning.
I thought of Margarita, waiting at the gas station, not knowing if she had done the right thing. I thought of Axel Spade, confused about Luz but in love with her, depending on me to return her to him in one piece, despite her own inclinations in the matter. The one thing I couldn’t do was tackle that pair inside now. Antonio probably had my gun, not to mention one of his own. Luz Robles would be all keyed up for murder. If I walked in on them, somebody was going to get hurt.
It was not quite ten o’clock on my watch when I heard the house door slam. Footsteps crunched on gravel. Both front doors of the wagon opened simultaneously and the dome-light went on. Then they were in the wagon, Antonio behind the wheel. He started the engine.
“You’re sure we will arrive first?” Luz Robles asked.
“I’m giving us half an hour’s leeway.”
“I wouldn’t want him to get nervous waiting.”
“He won’t have to wait.”
We started rolling. The wagon made a right turn on the highway, heading into Zaragoza.
“I don’t like it about the American,” Antonio said.
“Neither do I, but you know what you have to do.”
“I didn’t plan on killing anyone.”
“What do you think I’m going to do to my uncle,” Luz Robles asked sweetly, “congratulate him for rescuing me?”
“That’s different. We planned on that. We didn’t plan on the American. I said I don’t like it.”
“You can worry about it all the way to the bank with your fifty thousand dollars.”
“If your uncle brings it.”
“He’ll bring it.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Quit whining. You were supposed to be tough.”
We stopped at a traffic light in Zaragoza. The lights of the city were around us, and the sounds of other cars. Antonio leaned across the seat. Looking up, I could see their heads coming together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help it if I’m worried.” He tried to kiss her, but she moved away from him just as the light changed.
“Save that for later,” she said. “I have other things on my mind now.”
“Sometimes I don’t think you’re human.”
She laughed. “Is that what you thought when we were in bed?”
Antonio did not answer. They drove for a while in silence.
“Go through it again,” Luz Robles said.
“We wait at the caminero way station. You inside, me out. I meet your uncle. He gives me the money. I tell him you are inside.”
“If he’s alone, you wait outside. If he—”
“If he’s alone?” Antonio repeated, startled. “The call specified it. He has to be alone.”
“You’re forgetting that he’s partially crippled. He may have a driver with him.”
“You said nothing about a driver.”
“It’s no real problem,” Luz Robles said patiently. “If there’s a driver he could identify you. Do you want that to happen?”
“No,” Antonio said.
“Then if there is a driver, you kill him. It is simple.”
“Simple,” Antonio said. “Have you any other surprises for me?”
“No. Only a reminder. You are not to leave under any circumstances until it is finished. My uncle will expect you to drive off, and you will. But only a little way. You will return on foot. I may need your help.”
“Yes, I know,” Antonio said.
“But if you don’t. What happens if you have cold feet? Remember, you will have bound me hand and foot in the way station. My uncle will have to release me. It will look like a kidnaping to the very end. Should anything go wrong, due to a lack of cooperation on your part—”
“I will do what I have to do.”
“But suppose you decide to skip off with the fifty thousand dollars, leaving me to fend for myself? Suppose something goes wrong and I am unable to kill my uncle and you aren’t there to help me?”
“You pretend it was a real kidnaping. You identify me as the kidnaper, and there is no way I can prove otherwise. I understand that. I said I would do it.”
“Just so you remember.”
“I wish—” Antonio began,
“You wish what?”
“Nothing.”
After a while Luz lit a cigarette and said offhandedly, “There is one small detail I forgot to mention.”
Antonio’s head jerked toward her.
“Watch the road, you fool.” Luz blew smoke calmly at the windshield. “There is no possibility that I can dispose of my uncle without your help. He has certain information I want. You will help me get it from him.”
“What?” Antonio said, bewildered. “What are you saying?”
“A small matter of making him talk. I leave the means entirely up to you. We have all night, or as long as it takes. Have I made myself clear?”
Antonio mumbled an unhappy affirmative. By then we had left the street lights of Zaragoza behind us and were on the highway again.
“There it is,” Antonio said.
From the floor in the rear of the wagon I couldn’t see the caminero way station, but I knew what it would be like. They are strung along all the main highways in Spain, every fifty kilometers or so, small one-room adobe buildings, just four walls and a roof, for use by truck drivers or wandering farm hands. They are unattended and, these days, rarely used. There was almost no chance that one this close to Zaragoza, particularly on a clear, moonlit night, would be occupied.
We pulled off the road. “Calm down,” Luz said. “You’re shaking.”
They got out. I sat up and watched them walking quickly toward the door of the way station. Antonio was carrying a kerosene
lantern and a coil of rope. Pretty soon an orange glow flickered in the two windows of the way station.
I explored the floor between the station wagon seats and found nothing but the tarp. I knelt on the rear seat and ran my hands over the platform behind it: same nothing. I climbed over the back of the front seat and found what I was looking for in the door pocket on the passenger side, a kit of tools wrapped in canvas. I removed a small wrench. It wasn’t very heavy but had good heft because the business end weighed far more than the handle.
Crouching behind the front seats again, I waited with the wrench in my hand. Ten minutes passed. I heard the way-station door shut, heard footsteps. Antonio got into the station wagon, behind the wheel, and struck three matches before he could light a cigarette.
I rose up on my knees and slammed the wrench in a short, chopping blow against the side of his head. He sighed and slumped forward against the horn ring. The horn began to blow. I wondered what Luz would make of that, tied up inside the way-station, waiting. I pulled Antonio to the right and he fell across the seats.
Getting out of the back of the wagon, I opened the front door and frisked Antonio. He had my Magnum tucked into his belt. I returned it to its holster and dragged him by his legs out of the wagon until I could jackknife his body over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I’d walk in on Luz with him like that. I might even say something clever like surprise, surprise.
Drumbeat Madrid Page 10