by James Short
The Boller mansion had always drawn Tomàs’s eye. As a boy, it had represented a world beyond his dreams. His father, who had been the unrepentant prodigal son of a wealthy Bostonian family, once explained to him that the men who inhabited that world could look at a vacant lot, a building or a business, think a few minutes, and make a thousand dollars. “Just by using the old bean, Tommy. Why, some make money by the mere act of breathing. Others, why, when they walk down the street, money climbs out of the wallets and purses of all the other folks and pursues them, clinging to them, climbing up their pants leg into their wallets. I’ve seen it happen. I swear to it.”
“Why didn’t you stay with your rich family, Papa?”
“I had to meet your mother, don’t you know.”
Tomàs didn’t envy wealth. He believed men clever enough to make fortunes usually deserve them, and besides, their accumulation of valuables in a single location made his job easier. Nor did he particularly desire their daughters, who either seemed all manners and frills or all spirituality and dead seriousness. He preferred women with smooth skin, soft lips, warm blood and a sense of humor. Having been a guest, usually uninvited, in many great homes, he didn’t have an overwhelming curiosity to see the interior of the Boller mansion.
Others weren’t so equitable when it came to the Bollers. Eduardo Gordo, a second cousin, was hanged after being apprehended drunk in the pantry of that great house. The crime didn’t merit the punishment, and if Thornton had been sheriff and Tomàs the mayor then, the hanging would never have taken place. Anger festered in the Flats and would have perhaps taken a more lethal form had not Elvira, the wife of Eduardo, put a curse on the Boller mansion. To the great satisfaction of the superstitious, a log obligingly crushed Herman Boller, and the people of the Flats concluded that Providence had for once evened the score.
After Herman Boller’s death, the mansion began to age prematurely as if stricken by a degenerative illness. Paint peeled off the walls, revealing the bare wood. The grounds ran to weeds. The elms that once had elegantly lined the drive became shaggy and bent over like beggars dragging long coats. The mansion still retained a measure of haughtiness, but now the haughtiness was that of an aged dowager with caked-on makeup. Even stranger was the reclusion of the Bollers. Madeleine Boller—the widow of Herman—her daughter and two standoffish servants inhabited the premises in grim isolation like sailors on a great, elegant, dismasted, and rudderless ship.
The Daughter of the Witch
On a Sunday morning, after delivering a large basket of fresh strawberries to James Thornton’s house, where Mrs. Thornton was recovering from delivering their fourth child, Tomàs happened to be passing in front of the Episcopalian Church of the Epiphany. The bells in the narrow white steeple pealed as the congregants filed through the tall doors into the cool interior. At this moment, the coach from the Boller mansion pulled up. Although on any other day, the most glorious weather couldn’t tempt the Bollers outside, rain or shine, they were faithful churchgoers. Tomàs’s curiosity was piqued, and he paused a moment to observe. The hour of his own religious service, which consisted of admiring God’s handiwork from the end of the pier and saying silent prayers that traveled from the tip of a fishing rod down the line to a small hook deep in the murky water, was flexible.
The tall black servant dismounted and opened the carriage door with a dignified grace. Madeleine Boller poked her head out, glanced around suspiciously, and then descended. She had dyed black hair and black eyes with a fiery gleam as if they were the red-hot ends of pokers extending from her soul. The hollow vacuum of her cheeks pushed her lips into a pout. She wore a white dress, such as a young girl might wear to her first communion to symbolize innocence. Madeleine Boller’s waist, encircled by viciously laced stays, perhaps had a tinier circumference than any girl in Solvidado above the age of fourteen. The lady stood a moment struggling with a glove; the long pale dirty claw wrestling into the small piece of fabric spoiled what little pretension of beauty remained. Tomàs had always judged her a pure harridan.
Next followed the daughter, guided down by their black servant. As always, a veil fell from a hat across her face, hiding her features. She clasped her mother’s arm, and, thus joined, they proceeded with a firm strong step up the path to the church. Tomàs realized that this girl was a mystery to him. Madeleine had gone on a foreign tour with her two-year-old daughter a few months after her husband had died. When she returned three and a half years later, she kept the child from sight. Rumors and circumstantial evidence divined her daughter’s existence, rather than direct observation. Something obviously was terribly wrong with the girl.
Nobody was really surprised that Miss Boller’s features were covered at church. She always appeared veiled when she went for carriage drives with the servant Franklin. The nature of her deformity was an old subject of speculation. Tomàs didn’t know anybody who could claim persuasively to have seen the young woman’s face. James Thornton may have, for he visited the house fairly often, yet he never mentioned the daughter. A doctor from San Francisco came down once or twice a year. He stayed in the mansion and avoided the townspeople. It was assumed his purpose was to treat whatever ailment afflicted the young Miss Boller.
Tomàs always felt pity for the girl whenever he spied her veiled face in the carriage, but whether scarred by smallpox or burns or something worse, her tragedy wasn’t part of his world. As he now watched her walk with the other congregants into the church, however, a tiny doubt crept into his thoughts. The pride in the arch of the young woman’s spine and her straight shoulders argued against the idea of a hideous deformity. To Tomàs’s experienced eye, as far as her figure and bearing went, Miss Boller lacked nothing a man could desire. He caught the black servant observing him eyeing her. The expression on the servant’s face conveyed the message, “No Trespassing.”
The next minute, Tomàs put his speculations about Miss Boller out of his head. This was Sunday. After his morning service at the end of the pier, he had important business to see to. There would usually be two or three disputes to resolve when he arrived home at mid-day. Tomàs preferred resolving disagreements on Sunday because he could remind the disputants that making peace was a good way to celebrate the Lord’s Day. Afterward, he would entertain a full table at dinner. And then around ten p.m., Tomàs would dismiss the guests who were not staying the night and discreetly leave to pay a visit to the only establishment other than the church open on the day of the Lord—the brothel.
So, not until the next morning, as he disengaged himself from the arms of a girl whose face should have been more familiar, did Tomàs think again of the veiled Miss Boller. How ugly could she really be? Had anyone who spread those terrible rumors actually seen her with their own eyes? Yet why else would the face be always veiled? He suspected that the answer might be different than what was commonly believed. Not only ugliness is hidden from the world, but also, in his experience, items of great value.
There were two people who might really know: Sheriff James Thornton and Jacinto Bergamo, a young Portuguese man, who reconciled the trades of fisherman and undertaker for the citizens of the Flats. Jacinto’s skill as a coffin maker landed him a job as a carpenter in the Boller mansion for several months.
Jacinto had been affianced to Zacarina Munoz, a woman taken on for a time as Madeleine Boller’s maid. Possibly, she confided to him the nature of young Miss Boller’s deformity. Tomàs was mystified as to what Jacinto had seen in the presumptuous maid of thirty-six winters, with a face like a knot and a mind with an affinity for the lurid. That engagement didn’t last long. Zacarina left Solvidado soon after allowing Jacinto to lure her to his abode. Jacinto was a poor man, which necessitated sleeping in his workroom—that is, in the same room as the corpses. Zacarina didn’t notice the other occupants of their love nest until the morning. Her screams were heard from one end of the Flats to the other. People commented on how sad it was to lose your wits and reputation on the same day.
When Tomàs a
rrived at Jacinto’s home and place of business—a weathered clapboard shack of two rooms—the undertaker was standing on his rickety porch, wiping a tear away as a farmer drove off with a small coffin in the back of his cart. On seeing Tomàs, his face lighted up; perhaps he beamed more than usual because he spied a bottle of wine in Tomàs’s hand.
“Oh, my good friend, you remember me in my poverty!” He spoke English with a caress to the words. “Please, please, come in. No company today.” By that, he meant that no coffin was presently occupied.
He led Tomàs into the front parlor, a large room with a few pieces of polished furniture, which was dedicated to undertaking because people liked seeing their deceased loved ones in comfortable surroundings. In the other room, he cooked, mended nets, cleaned fish, built coffins, and did the hundred small chores required to maintain himself. In addition to his fishing and undertaking, Jacinto kept four cows, a score of chickens, and whatever stray cat or dog happened his way and adopted him.
Jacinto’s prize possession was a hog, called El Gran Conde, which was the envy of the hog fanciers in the county, and a terror to everybody else because it had once escaped, tipped over the coffin of a deceased cowboy and eaten his foot, boot and metal spurs included. The hog was starting on the spurs of the second boot when it was discovered and chased back into the pen.
Jacinto directed Tomàs to a chair in front of a turned over coffin on a bier, which served as a table. Two mason jars were set down for glasses. Without inquiring, Jacinto disappeared into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later carrying plates piled with fried perch and a half dozen eggs. Their talk was general at first, touching on mutual friends, the weather, the strange scheme Jacinto had dreamed up of building huge pipes to channel the floods from the seasonal rains underneath the town and directly into the ocean. Then, when the bottle was finished, Jacinto brought out his funeral wine whose vintage and even original fruit was a mystery, but was considered the best in Solvidado.
“Miss Boller?” Jacinto rubbed his chin. “See her? No, no, my friend. Some rocks better not lifted to peek what is underneath, eh, do you not think?”
“Did Zacarina ever see her?” Tomàs fiddled with his jar, pretending mild interest.
“Zacarina think not even God keep secret from her. She say she give poor creature bath. She say more easy to boil missionary in pot for cannibal to eat.”
“Why is she veiled?”
“Never Zacarina make up the mind. One day she say harelip up to nose so you see all teeth. Another day she say burned by oil lamp so side of face like melted wax. Another, she say terrible disease rotting flesh. Zacarina talk so much never remember last lie.”
“What do you believe about Miss Boller? You worked in the mansion.”
“Worked, yes. That is all. Paid good money to this poor man, so I do what I do and no ask question.”
“You must have heard or seen something.” Tomàs tried to convey idle curiosity in his voice.
Jacinto leaned forward. He exuded a deep earthy smell like a newly plowed field after a rain shower. The friendly expression dropped from his face. His mouth worked upon several words before he began to speak. “You want know what I think. For you, my friend, I tell. She cover her face because the devil is jealous master. The Black is devil—diablo. Diablo, I say, diablo, I mean. He speak my own language. Devil tempt in all tongues. He command dama, ‘Go to room.’ She obey like child. Devil makes dama afraid. Zacarina believe he dance with witches in hills. He is master. I think young Miss Boller—she for devil’s pleasure. When the devil kiss woman he leaves black stain. Her face is black. That’s what I think, my friend. Her body, black. Her soul, blacker. That’s what I think. But devil pays well.”
“A devil wouldn’t go to church.”
“You think so? Maybe he just brujo who sold soul for devil magic. A brujo with evil eye. In Brasilia I see many. One had spelled seven woman he make dance like puppets on a string. Him, big fat dirty brute, and seven beautiful women his slaves, no, his dogs. A brujo, perhaps. Ah, my friend, brujo or devil, I not go in there with Jesus Cristo himself by my side.”
Sensing Tomàs’s incredulity, Jacinto laughed and smacked Tomàs on the arm. “Not believe me? I no better liar than Zacarina. I see young miss end of hallway. I see her, but it is so too dark. She stands still like painting. She have three noses and four eyes and I not tell you. Only she has hair like a girl. I tell you that. Hair like a girl, and she is for his pleasure.”
Thomas Seeks an Answer from the Sheriff
Sheriff James Thornton was less illuminating.
After concluding their business one afternoon, Tomàs inquired, “The young Miss Boller, she seems to be coming out more these days. It seems a shame she always wears a veil.”
Thornton was silent for a minute, which wasn’t unusual with him. He liked to have the words lined up in his head before he spoke. “The girl prefers it that way,” he said finally.
“I don’t mean to pry, yet a man can’t help curiosity about the reason for such modesty, and you seem to be on visiting terms with the Bollers.”
Again, there was a long pause before a short answer. “I haven’t seen her without the veil. I’ve only talked to her a few times. She is a pleasant girl from what I gather.”
To Tomàs, this seemed to be entirely too much thought for so brief an answer. Thornton must have been using up the time figuring out what not to say. “Well, curiosity is like an itch—easier to scratch than ignore.”
Thornton finished the inch of bourbon in his cup with a gulp. Again, not usual with him. He then said, “You are aware there are private affairs; we all have that kind of business, where no one but the people concerned belong. I try to respect what people want private. Being the sheriff, often I know more than I ought. Many folks around here are hiding behind their own kind of veils. I’ve always held if they’re not breaking the law in my town, it’s best to let them alone.”
Tomàs recognized the threat. He was aware of the rumors of how he made his living, but he had always taken threats as challenges, so as a matter of principle he vowed to himself to lift her veil.
A Clue and the Unraveling of an Evening
Middleton returned to his car but didn’t immediately leave the hotel parking lot. He gave specific orders to each officer as he or she reported to duty. All the roads out of Solvidado were closed. The small airport and marina were put under watch. A special unit was forming to sweep the boardwalk. This time, it wasn’t going to be so easy for Hornsby to wriggle out of his net. In the midst of the disposition of his manpower, Middleton answered a call from Lieutenant Wu, a policeman of such an understated frame of mind that life itself appeared to him an unnecessary exaggeration. Middleton first didn’t recognize Wu’s voice because of the alarming tone. “We may have a riot on our hands, sir. When they spotted the girl…”
“Who are ‘they’, and what do you mean spotted?”
“The girl without any…You know… and the man.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Well, Doug happened to be playing darts at…”
“And he saw them?” Middleton asked.
“Everybody in the pub overheard the conversation about the kidnapping, and they all had just seen her and this man walking by. Doug tried to apprehend them. Everybody else decided to assist him.”
“Everybody from the pub?”
“They told others on the boardwalk who came along to lend a hand. Doug tried to stop them, but nobody listened to him since he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”
“Did they catch the couple?”
“No. They came back in a bad mood. Half of them were wet. A woman in a purple Cadillac said she thought she knew where they were going and would call the pub when she was sure. Some kids then broke into a mini- mart and stole all the beer. I stopped a bunch from turning over a car.”
“What’s the situation now?”
“It just doesn’t feel good.” Wu seemed about to dissolve into tears. “They keep on staring
at me as if they’re waiting for me to leave. Doug should be back here soon, but if something happens, I’m alone.”
“Backup will arrive in a few minutes. In the meantime, don’t confront them, but let them know that you’re around.”
Just as he hung up, the other call came in—the call he had been waiting for.
“Me again,” the voice said.
“Yes, Harriet.”
“Want to know where they went? They are on the other side of the rocks climbing up the cliff below Zacarina Park. I am giving you the first chance to get them.”
“The man may be dangerous, Harriet. Thank you for your information. Now I don’t want you to interfere in any way. Stay away. Better yet, go someplace else. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I get you. You don’t want to owe me. Mr. Police Detective can do everything by himself without help from the likes of me. La-dee-dah, La-dee-dah. Well, screw you, dick face.” Harriet hung up.
Middleton shook his head. Was everybody going to act out of character tonight? He considered his options. Although Wu was probably just spooked, a riot would be potentially a more serious affair than a kidnapping. He needed to gauge the situation himself and see if the extra manpower was necessary. He would stop by the Via Playera and then quickly move on to intercept Hornsby.
Wu was right. The closer Middleton got to Via Playera, the uglier the atmosphere turned. Couples and families were fleeing the main shopping district, hurrying back to their cars and the safety of their hotel rooms. Restaurants were closing early.
Middleton drove slowly down the street. He stopped and talked briefly to Wu and the two other scared officers who were the first of the detail to arrive. The kids, in no mood to obey authority, had refused to move on. The small police detail then attempted to arrest a man for peeing on the sidewalk and immediately a dozen of his friends intervened, swearing at the officers and dragging the malefactor away, fly still unzipped. It hadn’t seemed worth a fight, but the small victory emboldened the restless crowd.