Once Departed

by Mack Reynolds

  Quint reached out to grab the letters. The detective held him off with his right arm, still scanning the mail, looking for God only knew what. As Quint could remember, there certainly wasn’t anything in it pertaining to Brett-Home, or even Madrid. But that wasn’t the point.

  The detective’s fling of arm had caught Quint off balance. He recovered now and, without conscious thought, went into the karate Kokutsu-dachi layout position. One foot was placed forward with the toes pointed straight ahead and the knee’s slightly bent, the rear leg knee bent considerably with the toes pointed outward and forward.

  The cop was startled and began to throw a right punch. Quint, under his breath breathed, “Zut!” the traditional Kiai yell, and grabbed the other’s wrist even as it came toward him. Grabbed it with his left hand. He walked in and seized the cop’s right shoulder with his right hand, striking the other’s chin with an elbow punch. Simultaneously, he moved in quickly with his right foot coming around to his opponent’s right side rear legs. He shot his own right foot forward and then quickly backwards against the detective’s rear leg, forcing him to the floor.

  A voice from the door said sharply, “Senores! Que pasa?”

  Chapter Three

  Quint Jones, automatically, had gone into the Kokutsu-dachi layout position, in half squat, his hands forward from his body, palms forward. He straightened now, his expression wry.

  It was Jose Garcia Mendez, or Joe Garcia, as he would have it. All five feet eight inches of him, and on this occasion his tight little Spanish mustache was twitching, as he took in the fallen detective, the stance of the American, the second detective clawing for his gun.

  He spoke in Spanish so rapidly that Quint Jones could follow hardly a quarter of it. The English speaking representative of Madrid law let his weapon slide back into its shoulder holster and snapped back an answer so staccato fast that the columnist gave up even the attempt to understand.

  He watched his opponent of a moment ago who had come to his feet and was straightening his clothes, meanwhile massacring Quint with his eyes, though obviously Garcia’s entry had changed his mind about continuing the fray—if he had any desire to continue it. The karate form of hand to hand combat takes the truculence quickly out of any but the most ardent foe.

  Quint looked back at Joe Garcia and interrupted that worthy’s diatribe with a sour, “Look, has it got to the point today where the mobs that go drifting through this apartment while I’m trying to work don’t even bother to knock?”

  Garcia left the cop he’d been orally belaboring and turned a surprised face to the American. “But, Quint, old chum, I’ve just been reading this square the riot act. The old rescue in the nick of time routine. I made the scene right…”

  “Rescued who?” Quint growled sacastically. “Another minute and I would have finished these two burlesque cops off.”

  Garcia’s face lost some of its good humor. “And then what would have happened, pal? These guys are just doing their duty. Their superiors might take a dim view of you practicing your jujitsu, or whatever you call it, on them.” His mouth smiled. “Aren’t you getting tired of being ordered out of countries? What was the last one, Portugal?”

  “Touche” Quint growled. “I get the message.” He turned back to the older of the two police. “I’m sorry. In my country, even the police aren’t allowed to search a man’s personal effects without a warrant. I got carried away.”

  The detective’s eyes went from the American to Jose Garcia, and then back again. His face worked in irritation. He said, finally, in English, “Senor Jones refuses to divulge the source of his information on the death of the Englishman Brett-Home.”

  Joe Garcia turned back to Quint. “What information? Did you know Ronald, Quint?”

  “Barely. A friend told me about his being found dead. That’s all I know about it.”

  Garcia turned back to the plainclothesman. “Mr. Jones is a friend of Michael Woolman, of World Wide Press, who discovered the body. Undoubtedly that was the source of his information. Am I correct, pal?”

  Quint shrugged. There was obviously no point in shielding Mike, if that was the situation. He wondered why Mike hadn’t mentioned the fact. And wondered further about the circumstance which led to his discovering the Englishman’s corpse.

  Garcia said to the detective, “I am sure Mr. Jones has given you whatever information he possesses. If there are other questions, you can call upon him again later.”

  Of a sudden, all was good temper again.

  Quint held out a hand to the younger cop, twisted his face ruefully, turned on his charm. “Sorry,” he said, as though he meant it.

  The other shrugged and shook. The two said their goodbyes and left dutifully.

  Quint went over to the sideboard and poured himself a double Fundador. “Drink?” he said, without turning. Now that the excitement was over, he felt shaken, as always when physical action had terminated. When in emergency, he acted cool enough, he found, but when the danger point was over reaction hit him hard.

  Garcia didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “You know, pal, you’d make a top politician, especially in one of your democratic countries. You can turn it on and off like a tap.”

  The American tossed the drink back, stiff wristed, and turned to the other. Garcia had made himself at home on the couch, one neatly trousered leg crossed over the other.

  Quint said, “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The old magnetic personality. If that young sap had stuck around another few minutes, you would have had him kissing you.”

  “Oh, great,” Quint growled. Something Mike Woolman had said about Garcia came back to him. He said, “I didn’t have to turn on the magnetic personality. All you had to do was tell them to run along, and they ran.”

  Joe Garcia flicked his thumbnail along his neat mustache. “Anything for a pal. As a matter of fact, my old man is a personal friend of some of the big Falange mucky-mucks. I wouldn’t want to throw too much weight around, but I can fix a traffic ticket, that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah,” Quint said. He resumed his chair behind the typewriter, and looked at it gloomily. “My agent’s been riding my tail to keep him supplied further in advance with columns. Three’ll get you five, I don’t finish even my regular quota this week.”

  Garcia said easily, “I read that piece you did on El Caudillo. Really, chum, do you think it’s good policy to give Franco a working over while living here in Spain?”

  Quint looked at him flatly. “The authorities can always kick me out if they don’t like my version of what I see. Like you said, Portugal was the last place. However, if old lard-assed Franco, as Papa Hemingway used to call him, wants to continue this present we’re-all-good-democrats-together skit, and suck up to such outfits as NATO and the Common Market, he’d better take it easy on expelling newspaper columnists syndicated in a few hundred papers throughout the free world.”

  Garcia flushed, for once the bonhomie gone from his expression. “Just a suggestion, chum,” he said unhappily. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your business.”

  “You couldn’t,” Quint said. “Listen, Garcia, what did you come up here for? These are supposed to be my working hours.”

  “I was just passing,” the Spaniard said. He shifted in his chair. “To tell you the truth, I was thinking about the shindig at Ferd and Marty’s last night. And about poor Ronald.” He shifted again. Recrossed his legs. “It wasn’t exactly the sort of blowout you usually turn up for.”

  Quint held up a hand. “Please, let’s not try to be subtle. Come right out and say what you want to know is do I have any inside dope on Brett-Home. Everybody else in town has been in here this morning asking me. I’ll give you the same answer. I don’t know a damn thing about him. I didn’t even know he was a British agent…”

  Garcia’s eyebrows went up.

  “… until Mike Woolman told me this morning.”

  The Spaniard came to his feet. “None of my bus
iness anyway,” he said. “But from what I’ve heard it was sure a screwy killing.”

  Quint said, “Mike mentioned that the guy was all torn up as though a tiger had worked him over.”

  “Man, you said it. But that ain’t the worst, chum. The autopsy revealed that the kidneys are missing.”

  The American stared at him. “Missing?”

  “That’s right, pal. Our homicide people figure they’ve got a real fruitcake on their hands. Maybe a psychopathic cannibal.” Garcia turned to go.

  Quint didn’t follow him to the door. When the other got there, and with knob in hand, he turned back as though he’d forgotten something.

  “Oh, by the way, old Ronald left a note scribbled on his desk. The flatfeet don’t know if it’s got anything to do with his death or not. What does this mean to you? Why was it necessary to burn H’s body?”

  Quint looked at him blankly. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Why should it?”

  “Search me,” Garcia shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”

  The ragged young man drifted slowly, slowly back into consciousness, almost as though dreading the return to reality. The warm wave of reasoning ebbed and flowed, touched and then retreated.

  Even before his eyes opened, he was dimly, dimly aware of a flickering of light. A glaringly bright flickering of light where largely there was gloom.

  His lids slitted infinitesimally, so that an observer would have had to bend close to realize that they were parted at all. But though now he could see, it was as though through a dark veil. And then the flickering of light again. Realization came from far and far. The beams of light were coming through a slatted window. Slatted Spanish style to exclude the dazzle and suffocation of the mid-day sun of Iberia, but free to admit whatever faintest breeze.

  From seemingly far, far away in both space and time, memory sidled back. Spending his last peseta in a bar for a copa of wine, and the nibble of tapa that came with it, in his case, a bit of cheese on a bit of bread. The despair of knowing it to be the last. The despair of clothes that could no longer be kept neat, and hence an advertisement of his worthiness to be employed. The despair of knowing that this night there was to be no bed, no alternative to roaming the streets, other than a hiding place, away from the Guardia Civil, in some dark doorway.

  And then the stranger. The well dressed stranger. The foreigner who still spoke such excellent Castilian. The generous patron. And the food! And the drink!

  And then, somewhere, where? the falling away into bottomless sleep.

  And now this. The languor. The weakness of body and will, even as he returned to reality. To the consciousness that he lay stretched on some hard, though not uncomfortable, surface. In a darkened room. In a room so lit through the flickering of sun through slatted windows that it could scarce be made out.

  He seemed to be coming from a sleep that had lasted eons but left him limp and resistless. Weak and not caring. Doubtful of the necessity for tomorrow. Doubtful of all necessity.

  And then from the far distances across the room there was a new gleaming, a new reflection, pin points of gleam flickering but occasionally, but nearing, nearing…

  … nearing, nearing. Two pin points of gleam, reflecting the sun through the shutters, depending on their gleam for the sun through the slats of the shutters. Nearing, nearing, now descending toward. Toward where ?

  Deep, deep, impossibly, uselessly deep within his feeble consciousness came up the cry of terror. The cry to resist, to survive, to live, to live, to live. Nothing could matter but life. To live, to live. But so faint, so far.

  Barely he could feel the prick of the dual points of gleam upon his throat. No pain. Only the knowledge of penetration of his life.

  And then the feel of drain. Of slow gentle drain of the juice of existence. The red warm juice of existence.

  Away, away. And far away the realization that there was no more poverty to be. No more a last desperate peseta. No more the employment that would never come. No more the nights without the warmness of bed. No more. For the warm juice of life was draining away…

  … away, away…

  Quentin Jones parked his Renault 4L on Calle de Alcala, one block up from the Plaza de la Cibeles, and hoofed it from there in the direction of the Puerta del Sol. It was pushing two o’clock and the streets were pedestrian packed as streets can be packed only in a modern city where the institution of the automobile is unknown to nine persons out of ten. In a matter of minutes the stores were going to close, and the present bustle would melt astonishingly, and remain melted until the siesta period ended and business resumed, somewhere between four and five o’clock—all according to how the individual businessman was reacting to the government’s attempt to cut short the three or four hour lunch period.

  He cut across Alcala and up the side street Calle Marques de Cubas for one block, turned right for another block to emerge on Calle Jovellanos. The Edelweiss was up at the end of the street. Inwardly, Quint shrugged. The man had been in Madrid for only a couple of weeks, no more. And here he was eating in a German restaurant two meals out of three.

  Quint had a sneaking suspicion that if the other were to move to Germany for a time, he’d seek out a Spanish type establishment for his meals. Maybe it was travel snobbery, he decided wryly, but Quentin Jones ate Italian food in Italy, French in France, Spanish in Spain. And in the States, steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and other American specialties, which if ordered abroad meant disaster. He had never had an edible hamburger outside the borders of the United States and had long since given up the project.

  The Edelweiss even managed a Teutonic air. A breath of Germany exported to Castile. There was a heavy richness in the decor; a feeling that the businessmen bellied up to the bar, drinking their dark dunkles beer, averaged a good twenty or thirty pounds more than would the clients of a more typical Madrid establishment; an absence of the ever present odor of olive oil without which a Spanish restaurant is just not Spanish.

  Quentin Jones let his eyes drift around the room, as though looking for a table. Tables were scarce this time of day.

  Somebody waved to him, “Hey, Quint.”

  He waved back. Twisted his mouth as though in consideration, then made his way through the tables to the other, who had one all to himself.

  Quint said, “Hi, Bart. Mind if I join you? Privacy, you might prefer, but if I know the Edelweiss, in about yea many minutes the waiter is going to unload a couple of tourists on you. Tables are shared here.”

  Bart Digby had half come to his feet. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Have a seat. Glad to have somebody to talk to.” He grinned his boyish grin. “Wow, was that a party last night. You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Dave Shepherd, would you? Well, there was this girl Joanne something-or-other, and she went looking for the bathroom and opened the wrong door and…”

  Quint grimaced. “I heard about it,” he said. “By this time, evidently all Madrid has heard about it.”

  “Oh,” Digby said.

  The waiter came around. Digby was already into his liver dumpling soup, but Quint ordered Hose im Topf, a rabbit pate that was good in the German restaurant, and Weisswurst, a white sausage made of veal, calves’ brains and spleen which he considered the best single dish ever dreamed up by the herrenvolk. To wash it down he asked for a half bottle of Niersteiner.

  There was a watchful something in Digby’s manner. Knowing the man’s background, Quint Jones wondered how he could have ever been taken in by the other’s camouflage as a more average than average young American businessman on the make. Crew cut and overly aggressive voice to the contrary, Bart Digby had obviously, now that Quint really looked at him, got more of his education from Hard Knocks University than he had from such as Harvard Business School.

  Quint said idly, “I suppose you heard the other news too. About your friend.”

  Digby looked at him for a long moment. “I’d heard about it,” he said evenly, “but I’m surprised that you have.”

 
“Newspaper folk have special sources,” Quint said. The wine had arrived, and he watched as the cork was pulled and a small amount poured for his approval. He sipped it and nodded, and the waiter half filled the wineglass.

  Quint looked up at his companion. “But, so have folk connected with the U.S. Embassy. So I suppose that’s how you found out about Brett-Home’s being killed. The police are evidently trying to hush the whole thing up. Bad for the tourist trade.”

  Digby said, “I have no connections with the American Embassy. Not any longer.”

  Quint said nothing, very politely.

  Bart Digby scowled at him, but dropped the point. He said, “What’s your interest?”

  But the waiter was approaching with Quint’s food, and for the moment, both of them held silence.

  When he had gone, Quint shrugged. “You know the business I’m in. I get paid for being curious about things and then commenting on them if they’re interesting enough.” He took a bite of his sausage. “This has all the earmarks of being very interesting indeed.”

  Bart Digby thought about it for awhile. “I wouldn’t rush into print on this thing, Quint.”

  “So who’s rushing? All morning my work’s been interrupted by characters digging into my relationship with Brett-Home.”

  “Oh?” The other’s eyes narrowed again. “Just what was your relationship? You told me last night you knew him.”

  “I knew him vaguely. Which brings to mind, what was your own relationship?”

  Digby pursed his lips. His answer came too pat. “We ran into each other once, in a while on various assignments when I was still with the C.I.A. So when I got here to Madrid and ran into him, we got together to have a few drinks. That sort of thing.”

  “Yeah,” Quint said.

  “What does that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that something big was supposed to happen at the Dempsey party. And you probably knew what it was. Ronald Brett-Home getting himself killed evidently threw a wrench into the works.” Quint finished off his sausage. “You know, the next time the Spanish police start pestering me about it, I might drop them a few hints about you just to get them off my own back.”