“I thank you, señor, for your kindness,” Jim said, “but I must eat.”
“Liquor for men,” El Tigre said, “food for women—and gringos.”
Jim felt himself tense, like a dog about to fight, and tried to relax. He wasn’t here to fight in barrooms. He managed a smile and turned toward the dining room. El Tigre put out his hand and caught Jim’s shoulder. Without turning, Jim threw the hand off and walked on, his spine as stiff as a wire drawn down his back and pulled taut. Then it came.
El Tigre’s hand fell harshly on his shoulder, biting through the cloth, insistent, challenging. El Tigre spoke one of the few real insults known to the good-natured Mexican tongue.
Jim turned and let him have it, a straight left to the jaw and a right to the belly.
To his astonishment, the blond Mexican ducked the left, took the right on his hip, and came boring in. His left was like a whip. Jim ducked enough to catch it on top of his head and knew it did El Tigre’s hand no good. He crossed with his right as El Tigre swung, and caught him on the point of the jaw as he came in, with the luckiest punch he had even thrown in his life—perfectly timed, in exactly the right place. The Tiger went down as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat and lay there, glassy-eyed.
Jim straightened up. He took three quick steps to the partition between the bar and the dining room and got his back against it. Then he looked from El Tigre to the four men at the bar. Two of them stared at their drinks; one of them looked at Jim and shook his head; the fourth raised his glass and nodded, as though toasting Jim. Jim Howard grinned and went into the dining room.
The little waiter was solicitous. He insisted on dipping his napkin in a glass of ice water and bathing Jim’s right hand. Bending over the swelling knuckles, he said under his breath, “You should not have done that, señor. El Tigre is a dangerous man.”
“Is he?”
“He is no good. But he is very strong, very quick. It is not without reason that he calls himself El Tigre. He has been a fighter for prizes.”
“I see,” Jim said. He had been ever luckier than he knew with that right to the jaw.
“There, señor, your hand will get better. I will bring your crab-meat cocktail. I have fixed it myself very delicate. The thing is, señor, this being a fighter for prizes is not so fortunate for El Tigre. He goes to New York, announcing he will kill every fighter of his weight in the United States. But it appears they do not fear tigers in New York. Some yanqui fighter is too good for him. He knocks out El Tigre.”
“So El Tigre doesn’t like gringos.”
“But naturally,” the waiter said. “I get the crab meat. You will enjoy it.”
Jim saw a little khaki-clad soldier lounging on his rifle in the doorway to the street. If El Tigre wanted more trouble, the police would take care of him. The thing for Jim Howard to do was to eat his dinner in peace. Then he could start south and find Fitz Jordan. Fitz had been too clever for him once. He would never be too clever again.
The waiter was bringing the lobster when the soldier in the doorway moved aside to let someone in. Jim half rose out of his chair. If El Tigre was coming back, he preferred to be on his feet. But it was not El Tigre. It was the girl he had seen half an hour before in the anteroom of Colonel Ortega’s office.
She came straight down the room to Jim’s table, smiling as she came. Jim stood up.
“Hello,” she said, as if he were an old friend with whom she had a date. Under her breath she added, “Act as if you knew me.”
“Darling,” he said, “I was so hungry I ordered my dinner. You really are late, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, as she sat down in the chair he held for her. “I couldn’t help it. I’m hungry too.”
She laid her purse, a large envelope of soft brown leather, on the table and with the gesture of a woman who knows the man opposite her well enough to feel quite at home, she took off her hat and put it on a chair. Jim saw that she had a head of blonde curls, much too good to be the work of a hairdresser. Her eyes were a deep blue against the golden tan of her face.
She leaned toward him and said in a low voice, “My name is Hope Graham. You’re Mr. Johnson, of the Treasury Department, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“Please don’t mind putting on this act with me,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to know that we’re strangers.”
He saw that she wasn’t as much at home as she was pretending to be. She was trembling.
“Take it easy,” he said.
He ordered a cocktail for her and told the waiter to serve the lobster for two and to have another one broiled. The girl picked up her purse, glanced at the chair that held her hat, decided against it. Then she sat on the purse. Jim guessed it held something she was afraid of losing.
“How did you come out with the chief?” she asked.
“All right.”
“You are going south?”
Jim nodded.
The girl took a deep breath. “I have a great favor to ask of you,” she said.
“Doing favors for pretty girls is my specialty.”
She made a little gesture of distaste. Her eyes looked coldly into his. “Don’t think because I’m putting on this act I mean it,” she said.
“Drink your cocktail,” Jim said. “You need it. And don’t forget your act. You’re being stared at.”
The girl raised her glass and smiled at him over the rim. When she smiled she was ever so charming and desirable. But he knew the smile was for the benefit of the other people in the café and not for him.
“Colonel Ortega refused me permission. He said it was absolutely impossible for a woman to go south alone.”
Jim smiled. She was an American girl, without fear, who had been brought up to believe she could go anywhere and do anything. Colonel Ortega must have thought her mad.
“I can imagine,” Jim said.
“He told me that he had given you permission to go, against his better judgment, because you insisted. He said he had no right to refuse an American official. So I told him that you were an old friend of mine; that we went to high school in Los Angeles together.”
“That was not so good,” Jim said. “I told him that I went to Harkness, which is a school in Connecticut, three thousand miles from Los Angeles.”
“Ouch!” she said.
“Eat your lobster. You will feel better when you have eaten.”
She began obediently to eat. But presently she paused and looked up at him.
“You’ll take me with you?” she said.
Jim told himself that he could not take this girl with him. He was tempted. If he didn’t take her with him he might never see her again. Under other circumstances he would thank his stars at finding her. But he could not handicap himself with a girl, no matter how much he liked her. He’d have to kid her out of it. If he made a couple of passes she’d be afraid to go with him.
“It would be a pleasure to take you anywhere,” he said.
She gave again that gesture of impatience and distaste.
“You’re an American. Please act like one. Colonel Ortega wouldn’t understand my asking to go with you, but you do. You know I’m not asking you because I like your eyes—or anything else about you. I am asking you because I have to go south and you are my only chance. It is business and nothing else.”
“You know how men are.”
Her eyes looked straight into his and they were colder than before. “Couldn’t you skip it? I have a job to do. Otherwise I shouldn’t have spoken to you. I have to go to a place between Carmichael’s ranch and Rosario. You can drop me off there and forget about me. I will pay half the expenses and a hundred dollars.”
The waiter brought the second lobster and proceeded to serve it. She was plainly as hungry as Jim was. For a few minutes they ate in silence. Then she looked up at h
im.
“You’re going to take a chance,” she said.
“An officer of the Treasury Department can’t take a girl with him when he’s hunting a criminal.”
“No,” she said, “not ordinarily. But this is different. We are not in the United States. We are south of the border. You can trust me. I shan’t interfere with you in any way. And your superior will never hear that you did a favor for a stranger.”
“How do I know that your errand is legitimate; that I wouldn’t be getting mixed up in something?”
“Oh,” she said, “you needn’t worry. It’s perfectly all right. My boss came down here last week about a mine up in the Sierra. He wrote me from San Diego to bring him some papers.”
“He asked you to come down into this country alone?”
“Why not? He knows I can take care of myself. I’ve been as far as Ensenada before. He has often driven two or three hundred miles farther south. He says it isn’t too bad. You have to be satisfied with averaging ten miles an hour. You have to know how to handle a car in bad going. But then, I do. I began driving around my father’s ranch when I was twelve.”
“You can’t drive a car into the Sierra.”
“No,” she said. “I may have to get a horse for the last twenty or thirty miles. There’s nothing but a pack trail to the mine.”
“How do you expect to find your way?”
“I have a map.”
“Let’s see your map.”
She smiles. “Would you mind if I don’t? After all, it’s a mine no one else knows about. I’m not supposed to tell anyone where it is.”
“I see,” Jim said, though he didn’t. Under the new Mexican laws, a mine was little good to the man who discovered it, especially if he was not a Mexican citizen.
“All you have to do is drop me off when we get to Carmichael’s. I’ll do the rest.”
“What if you have to camp out overnight?”
“I’ve brought a tarp and a blanket. I know how to build a fire. I’ve camped out before.”
“Alone?”
“No. But what is there to be afraid of?”
She made it seem reasonable. He’d been in California long enough to know that many Western girls thought little of doing things that would terrify most city women. And yet he couldn’t believe that a businessman would ask his private secretary to take such a trip as this girl planned unless he was desperate.
“Who is your boss?” he asked.
“His name is Fitz Jordan.”
Jim held himself rigid, trying not to show his excitement. He knew he’d succeeded in concealing his feelings from her, when she went right on. She didn’t suspect how much the information she had given him meant to him.
“If you know Los Angeles you’ve probably heard of him. He’s a well-known mining man.”
“I’ve heard the name,” Jim said.
“He’s a grand guy—the kind of man everybody likes.”
Jim knew that this was true. Fitz Jordan was a big man, and fine looking, with the kind of smile that made you like him. Jim had liked him. He’d liked Fitz Jordan so much that he’d been slow to suspect him.
The door into the bar opened. El Tigre lounged in and put a nickel in the juke box. He stood beside the machine, snapping his fingers in time to the tango the machine poured out. After a moment, he came toward Jim’s table. Jim now saw the marks of the prize fighter on him. His nose had been broken and he had old scars over both eyes.
El Tigre bowed to Hope Graham. “Will you dance?” he asked.
The girl looked at him in surprise.
Jim got up. All the hate he felt for Fitz Jordan was in him. It would be a pleasure to punch somebody’s face, and El Tigre had asked for it.
“You were going somewhere, were you not?” Jim said.
“You want to hear something?” El Tigre asked.
“The dying man’s last words?”
The Tiger leaned forward and his voice was soft. “I have a good memory, gringo.”
Something was happening at the street door. The little soldier was no longer slouching over his rifle. He stood at attention, his rifle rigid in front of him.
Colonel Ortega came in. He had changed from his uniform to crisp white linens, with a coco-straw hat from Cuba. His sad, intelligent face was turned toward Jim’s table. His eyes focused on El Tigre, and he made a slow slight gesture with his head. El Tigre went back into the bar.
Ortega sat down at a table. The waiter went running. Ortega smiled at Jim and then his chin lifted, an unmistakable command to join him. Jim got up and went across the room and sat down opposite him as a poker player sits down at a cutthroat game—without taking his eyes off those of the dealer.
Ortega ordered a vermouth for each of them.
“You have a way with you, señor,” he said, when the waiter had gone. “You have the manner of an honest man and the manners of a gentleman.”
“Thank you, colonel. But you did not come here tonight to discuss either my manner or my manners.”
“But I did. I fancied this afternoon that I found in you something that belongs to Harkness, something I learned to admire when I was there. I am incurably sentimental. It is a failing in a chief of police, perhaps. But I suffer from it.”
“So?”
“I was not always happy at school in the States. I was a foreigner and it was often lonesome for me. But I see it now as the happy time of my life. I do not forget Harkness.”
Jim nodded.
“After you had gone this afternoon, my feeling overcame me. I had to look again at the Alumni Register. I found no mention of any Johnson in the service of the United States Treasury.”
“No? Well, I, señor, have been careless. I have neglected to keep the alumni secretary informed of my activities.”
Colonel Ortega smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I knew you would have an answer, señor. I am sorry to tell you it is not satisfying to me. You see, there is a James Howard listed in the Alumni Register as a member of the Treasury Department.”
“Yes, of course,” Jim said. “I’ve heard of him.”
“I’m sure you have, señor,” Colonel Ortega said. “I have been examining his photograph in an old yearbook. Señor, do your old schoolmates call you Jim or Jimmy?”
“To my friends I am Jim.”
“Then, for the time being, at least, Jim.”
“And you, colonel?”
“Guillermo.” He gave it the full Mexican accent so it sounded like “Geel-yermo.” He smiled. “At Harkness, however, that was too difficult for the Yankees. They called me Bill.”
“Then Bill—for the time being, at least.”
“Let it be so,” Colonel Ortega said. “I am, as I have said, a sentimental man—or should I say a sensitive man? The two words have a different meaning, have they not?”
“You are both,” Jim said. “You are a man of feeling, who will never forget what he has loved. You are, moreover, a man of pride.”
“I am also a politico, and that is a word which does not translate well into English. A politico, is not the same as a politician.”
“No,” Jim said. “It is not the same.”
“Very well, Jim. As a policeman and as a politico I must know why you—an important person in your Treasury Department—present me with the credentials of an underling—a mere detective.”
Jim tried to think of something that would sound all right.
“To travel—it is a pleasure. Mexico is a beautiful land.”
“Mexico! This is not Mexico. This is Baja, a desert in the summer and worse in the winter. I stay here only because, if I am a good chief, I will go back to Mexico.” He sipped his vermouth. “Why don’t you tell me what you want, why you came here, Jim? I might be able to help you.”
Jim thought hard. He did not dare tell Colo
nel Ortega that he had come to find Fitz Jordan. Fitz was the kind of man who made himself agreeable wherever he went. He had a gift for making people like him. He had spent so much time in Baja that he would have many Mexican friends. The chances were that Colonel Ortega knew of him as a man of standing and would not believe he was a crook.
“I can’t do it, Bill,” Jim said. “I can’t tell you what my orders are.”
Colonel Ortega shrugged his shoulders. He took another sip of vermouth and looked at the ceiling.
“You have noticed this blond one who calls himself El Tigre.”
“I have observed him,” Jim said.
“He is a maker of trouble, but he is also a distant cousin of mine. His father has influence. It is not in order that I throw him out. His father wishes him to remain here. I was on my way to tell him that he does not return to Mexico.”
“He has been celebrating his return.”
“I have been informed,” Colonel Ortega said. He looked sadly at Jim. “I hear he does not like you.”
“I have a hunch he doesn’t,” Jim said.
“He is a headache. So are you. You are traveling as someone you are not. I do not intend to report it. I prefer to do nothing official. But if you do not use your head, I may have to send El Tigre after you. Unofficially, of course. Thus one of my headaches will take care of the other.”
“You have a logical mind, colonel.”
“I am a policeman,” Colonel Ortega said. “It is the rule of my profession never to do anything directly that may be done indirectly. It is my responsibility to know everything and to seem to know nothing.” He paused and looked Jim in the eye. “What about the charming young woman with whom you are dining?”
“An old acquaintance—a chance meeting.”
“She is annoyed with me,” Colonel Ortega said. “She wishes to go south. She has papers for one of your compatriots—Fitz Jordan. She feels she must deliver them. Fitz Jordan has friends in Mexico. I do not wish to anger him. I told the lady that I would have two of my men deliver her papers for her. But she refused. What can I do? Fitz Jordan should know better than to ask a girl to bring him messages in the south country. It is not country for a woman to travel alone.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 142