“At least two men would have died last night if Antonio had finished the job he was hired to do. You did the right thing, Margarita.”
“Two men whose lives meant what to me? Life is cheap in my country, señor. It is only the death of one you love that hurts. Will you return to Madrid?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then take this warning with you. El Macareno was a hard and exacting father, but he loved his son. If there is one thing I know, it is this: he will try to kill you. It would be best if you never went back to Madrid, señor.”
Colonel MacNeil Hollister was Provost Marshal of the American army base just outside Zaragoza. I found him scowling down at a sheaf of papers on his desk, as though he would have preferred an outside job, any outside job, even one digging ditches. A fan in one corner of the office blew a hot blast of air at us. Typewriters were clacking away outside. Hollister looked up, only a little pugnaciously. He was sweating.
“I hate this weather,” he said. “Any other job in the world, you could roll up your sleeves and unbutton your collar and pull down your tie and maybe wouldn’t suffocate by noon. But not in Uncle Sugar’s army.” He shrugged. “I read in the papers’ where you were instrumental in finding Luz. All I can say is thanks, buddy. It looks like I had you figured wrong.”
“What else did the papers say?”
“That the kidnaper was shot while trying to make a getaway. Nothing much else.”
“Did it say who shot him?”
“No. I figured you did.” Hollister stood up and went to the water cooler, where he drew a couple of paper cups of water and handed me one. “I can, spike it if you want,” he said.
“No thanks.”
“What can I do for you?”
“A guy who works at the Ritz bar,” I said, “identified you as the man who saw Luz after she had lunch with her brother José and before she disappeared.”
“Identified me? That’s crazy. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in Madrid.”
“He was pretty sure,” I lied.
“Use your head, will you? You want to know the truth, I’m still carrying the torch. I get a little bit sick every time I think of Luz marrying that old guy Spade. I couldn’t go near her. I’d be all tied up in knots inside.”
“You’re going to the wedding, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet.” He sat down at the desk again and tilted his chair back. “Christ, I never thought something like this would ever happen to me. Jilted for an older man with dough.”
“Were you and Luz engaged?”
“Not exactly. I thought we had an understanding.”
“Enough of an understanding for you to hope you could patch it up?”
“Search me. Maybe deep down inside I’m still hoping Luz will come to her senses.”
“Is that why you saw her in Madrid?”
He let the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump, scraped the chair back and stood up. “Listen, buddy. I already told you I wasn’t there. Who the hell you think you are, cross-examining me like this?”
The door opened. A very pretty and stacked redhead in a blue Special Services uniform came in. “I’m sorry, Neil,” she said, “I didn’t know you were busy.”
“That’s okay,” Hollister said. Nothing more than those words had passed between them, but her entrance had drained the anger from his face and he had the look, a sort of cock-of-the-walk smugness, of a not very subtle man in the presence of an attractive woman he had possessed before and would possess again.
“I’ve cleared my desk down to the ground,” she said. “Has Ray taken off yet?”
“Late last night. I thought you knew.”
“What a pity,” the girl said. “And you still can’t make it till tomorrow?”
“Not a chance. I’m not even sure about tomorrow. They’ve got me hopping on that AWOL thing over in the third battalion. He’s been gone a month now. They can call it desertion.”
“There go the first two days of the running of the bulls,” the girl said.
That was when I dropped my peseta in the slot. “You wouldn’t be needing a lift to Pamplona, by any chance? That’s where I’m heading.”
“Really?” the girl said eagerly. “When?”
“Right away.”
She looked at Hollister, who was making a production of studying the papers on his desk. “Oh, Neil, would you mind? You know me and los toros. I’ve been waiting for this all year. You could meet me in Pamplona when you finish up here.”
“Suit yourself,” Hollister said sullenly.
“Well, if you mind.”
“No. It’s okay. Your chauffeur’s name is Drum. I forget his first name.”
“Chet,” I said.
“I’m April Foster.” She came close and shook my hand warmly. Up close I realized she was a big, rangy girl who would push six feet in her high heels and was built delightfully to scale. Her green eyes smiled at me. “Are you an aficionado?”
“I’ve seen enough bullfights to know I like them. I once saw Ordóñez win both ears and the tail in Vitoria,”
“You did? What luck! Don’t you prefer his Ronda style to the Sevillana? Don’t you really?”
“El Cordobés,” I said, “now there’s a guy out of the Sevilla school who knows what he’s doing with a cape.”
“Sure, but he’s only fair with the muleta and I’ve seen teen-age novilleros kill better. Why—”
“Cough, cough,” MacNeil Hollister said.
April laughed. “Sorry, Neil. You know how I can get carried away by the bulls.” She told me, “Neil’s never seen a bullfight. He’s half convinced himself he won’t like them. Anyway, Mr. Drum, we can argue the respective merits of the Ronda and Sevilla styles all the way down in your car. What are we driving, by the way?”
“A Jag XK-E,” I said:
“Really? You mean you’re an aficionado and you drive a Jaguar too?” She laughed again. “Better watch your step, Neil.”
Hollister didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. April realized she had carried her baiting a little too far. She told me, somewhat coolly for Hollister’s benefit, that she would meet me in the parking lot. It took her half an hour to say good-bye and get her suitcase from the BOQ.
It is less than two hundred kilometers from Zaragoza to Pamplona. The road runs flat for a while, following the valley of the Ebro River. But after Tudela you cross the river and begin to climb into the foothills of the Pyrenees, through peach orchards and stands of pine and the bare, red, unplowed earth of Spain. Always ahead, higher and higher after every switchback curve, are the mountains that divide Spain from the rest of Europe. They level off to a plateau at Pamplona, as though catching their breath, and after that they really began to climb. It is’ wild country even in the foothills.
In Axel Spade’s powerful Jag I could have made the drive in under three hours. I stretched it to a careful four, in the beginning throwing a question at April Foster every now and then, but mostly just letting her talk. After a while I realized that wasn’t going to work. She had a lot to say about bullfights and sports cars and the Spanish landscape. But all the way to Tudela she didn’t mention Hollister once.
Crossing the Ebro on a rickety wood-plank bridge I waited for a moment of silence and said; “It almost looked like you were trying to make Neil jealous.”
“Did it? I don’t know, maybe I’m a little—tired of him.”
That could have been a statement of fact, or it could have been a come-on. From where I sat, April Foster was a girl loaded with sex appeal. When you feel it that strongly it is usually mutual.
“How come tired?”
“I’m beginning to think he tries too hard to convince me I’m the only girl in his life when really he’s, well, using me as a substitute for someone else.”
“For whom?”
“A girl he knew in Caracas. Ray Moyers’ sister. She’s in Spain right now. At least when last seen she was in Spain. She was kidnape
d.” April looked out at the landscape. “Let’s forget it, okay? Every time I get in a fast car with a good-looking guy I start talking too much. It’s almost like being drunk. If you want to know what I think, more girls run the risk of being seduced in a fast-moving sports car than in the back seat of a parked sedan.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said.
She laughed. She had a nice, open, head-thrown-back way of laughing that made you want to hear it more often. But I had other things on my mind. “I know Luz Robles was kidnaped,” I said. “I rescued her.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. It was back in Zaragoza last night.”
“You rescued her?”
“I work for her fiancé,” I said. “I’m a private detective—not that it means much here in Spain.”
If April’s main interest in life, at least at the moment, was Hollister, her next question would have been obvious. She would have asked me, “What kind of girl is she?” or something like that. She didn’t. She said:
“I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve been around some, if you call working for Special Services at army bases from Alaska to Spain being around some, and believe it or not I never met a detective before. I’m impressed—or maybe curious is a better word.”
“If you hold this steering gadget for a while, ma’am, I could give you my autograph.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“It’s my interrogation technique. Get them off balance by making fun of them first.”
“Are you going to interrogate me? What for?”
“They always told me in the FBI I had to keep in practice every chance I got.”
“You were in the FBI too?”
“Uh-huh. Are you off balance yet?”
“I don’t know. Better ask your questions and I’ll find out.”
“Okay. Where was Neil Hollister last Tuesday?”
“He went to a party near Pamplona. It was given by Ray’s uncle.”
“When did he leave Zaragoza?”
April looked at me. Then she looked at a man riding the first of a string of three burros, his legs dangling almost to the ground. “It was more fun before,” she said.
“What was?”
“When we were beginning to flirt with each other. Now you’re too serious. Is Neil in some kind of trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.
“What happens if you do?”
“Search me. I’m off the case. I was fired by Luz Robles’ fiancé.”
“Fired? Don’t you mean there’s no more case? You said you rescued her.”
“Hey,” I said mildly, “Who’s asking the questions around here?”
“All right. Maybe I’m making a mistake, but here goes: he left Zaragoza Monday afternoon.”
“Going where?”
“I told you. To the uncle’s ranch outside Pamplona.”
“What was he doing, walking? He didn’t get there till late Tuesday night. There’s a possibility he was in Madrid with Luz Robles before she was kidnaped.”
“I don’t get it. I had to cheer him up all day Monday. He didn’t act like he was on his way to an assignation with his old girl friend.”
“Did he ever mention anything about a treasure?” My voice put quotation marks around the word treasure. I began to feel like Ray Moyers.
“A treasure?”
“The Sotomayor family fortune, which may or may not have been hidden right before Hernando Sotomayor was executed.”
“Sotomayor? Isn’t that Luz Robles’ uncle’s name?”
“Her father’s too. Robles was the name of the Venezuelan family that adopted her.”
“Neil never mentioned anything about a treasure or a family fortune or anything like that. I’m sure of it.”
“Or about Luz’s brother José?”
“No.”
I took a stab and threw in the only other name I knew that had any bearing on the case. “Or about a Madrileño named Prieto y Azaña?”
“That’s funny,” April said, “Neil had a slack day in the office on Monday, and I wasn’t busy either. I told you I spent most of the day trying to cheer him up. He did make a long-distance call to Madrid, though, from his office. I was right there. I’m almost certain it was person-to-person to a Señor Prieto y Azaña. It isn’t a name you’d forget.”
“What did they talk about?”
“He didn’t get Prieto in. He seemed pretty disappointed.”
We crossed the Aragon River without any conversation. April turned on the radio and found a tenor wailing his flamenco lament. The high mountains of Navarre loomed closer.
“Where are you staying in Pamplona?” April asked.
“I don’t have any reservation.”
“You must be kidding. There’ll be maybe a quarter of a million foreigners in town for the fiesta. Pamplona will be bursting at the seams: You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to make like a boy scout.”
“I was a boy scout once,” I said, “before I was a G-man.”
“Seriously, the first thing I’m going to do when we hit town is find a shop where they sell camping equipment and buy a nice soft air mattress and a tent. I’m not kidding. The only way you’ll get any sleep at all is if you camp out. ‘Le Camping,’ as the French call it, in Pamplona is on the municipal football field.”
“Suits me,” I said. “Want to go shopping together?”
“Sure.”
There was suddenly a tension between us that we could both sense, and whether it would work itself out the only way it could depended on what happened in Pamplona. “As long as you realize,” April added, “that we’ll be shopping for two tents.”
FOURTEEN
April brushed a strand of red hair from her right eye and emerged crouching from her partially erected tent. It was a small, bright orange pup tent complete with canvas flooring and aluminum poles. I had its mate in bright blue. “Complementary colors,” April had said when we bought them. “Now let’s go find the football field.”
It was about a mile from the bull ring, on the outskirts of Pamplona. Hundreds of tents in various sizes had already sprung up there between the goals and inside the cinder track surrounding the field. Cars from a dozen countries lined the track, most of them dusty from the hard drive across the Pyrenees. Beyond the cinder track, trailers had been parked and still more tents pitched. The overall effect was a nomad’s version of Levittown.
“What do you do with this gadget?” April asked me. She was holding a small aluminum disk in her hand. “It looks like a miniature flying saucer.”
“It goes under the uprights,” I said. I was trying not to smile. April hadn’t wanted me to help her pitch the small orange tent. Mine was already erected, the canvas taut, the guy lines secured to the aluminum pegs. I’d been squatting outside the flap, smoking and watching the loose canvas of April’s tent bulge and sag as she moved around inside trying to make sense out of the aluminum poles, the pegs and the guy lines. Every now and then some unladylike grumbling would emerge, but there had been no sign of April until she came out with her question.
“Catch,” she said, tossing me the aluminum disk. “I give up. Come flaunt your masculine superiority. I’m beat. Nobody told me you’d need an architect’s degree to get this darn thing up.”
It took me fifteen minutes to finish the job on her tent. By then it was almost six o’clock, but the slanting late afternoon rays of the sun were still strong. April had disappeared inside my tent.
She came out and said, “I hope you don’t mind I unpacked some of your things. Woman’s work. Hey, that tent looks swell. You weren’t kidding you were a boy scout.”
“Have any plans for chow tonight?” I asked.
“Just one. The way I hear it you’re admitting some obscure kind of failure if you ever sit down to a meal during the running of the bulls.”
“What are you supposed to do, starve to death?”
“Go pro
wling around the bodegas eating tapas and drinking wine. But things don’t really get started until about nine o’clock.”
“Bodega crawling’s on me,” I said. “Okay?”
“Sí, señor,” she said. “But me for some shuteye first.” She blew me a kiss from the flap of her tent and went crouching backward inside. The flap came down, and I watched her fingers tying it to the aluminum upright. I decided that was her way of reminding me, once more, that we had bought two tents. I went into my own tent and nodded my approval at her unpacking job. The B-4 bag stood at the head of my sleeping bag, and alongside it April had laid out a pair of slacks, two shirts and a couple pairs of undershorts and socks, all neatly folded. I got my toilet kit and walked across the field and the cinder track to the washroom. I shaved and had a cold shower, the only kind there was, and headed back to my tent to stretch out on the sleeping bag for a siesta.
But sleep wouldn’t come right away. I didn’t know whether I was on a case or not. It was a pretty good bet that everybody involved would be in Pamplona for the running of the bulls, especially since the Sotomayor ranch was only a few miles outside Pamplona. Or almost everybody. I wondered about Carmen Prieto and her father. Old man Prieto y Azaña was no aficionado. He’d made it a point to say he thought bullfighting was barbaric. Still, that hadn’t stopped him from accepting the gift of a mounted head from Hernando Sotomayor right around the time he was arrested and executed. What, I asked myself, does that have to do with anything? Go to sleep.
But then I started thinking of April. It was still warm enough that she’d probably stripped off that blue Special Services uniform before hitting her sleeping bag. Sometimes a tailored suit like that could be deceptive, but on April I had a hunch it wasn’t. She was really stacked. Flirting also came as naturally to her as talking your ear off does to a barber. I conjured up a small fantasy of untying her tentflap and poking my head in with a grin and some deathless line like, “I’m the Sheik of Araby.” If the answer was no, she could always throw a shoe at me or something.
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