Antonio knows these things as well as any man for a thousand miles, maybe more, including the best in the bistros in Acapulco. He hopes Quincy has nothing to go on but proximity and the personal renown of the golden boy. Not that Antonio is a boy, but such is the figure of speech most employed by admirers.
What else could Quincy have? He has no motive and no weapon, which equals zero. Still, a man who knows the neighborhood might anticipate round one leading directly to rounds two through fifty-six, once the evidence and witnesses line up. Who cares about such a fisherman? It’s not like all such men can be or should be so easily cured, but really; a fisherman is not a magistrate. Is he? Was he?
Antonio takes solace in small measure and solitude in the dank, dark cell his betrothed imagines. Lying back, he sees her and wishes her here, so she might see the torment he casually endures. He wonders if Mrs. Mayfair left and feels a small pulse of need down below. He doesn’t exactly wish her to see him so disposed, nor does he wish her here otherwise, except maybe for a few minutes, for the relaxation available in sweet communion.
Shifting the lumpy pad, Antonio repositions, doubtful that a man can sustain the pulse for long in such a place. He knows the pulse can lose its better sense and fail to distinguish between what it wants and what is available in such a place. Confident the distinction will endure in his own mind, he narrows dark potential to the nagging needs of others. Once prison life begins, really begins, he will spend his days in adherence to the old regimen, push-ups, sit-ups, and crunches, so his return to the world of progress will be carved, flexed, rippling, veined, and popping if not monumental. He will rejoin the living as though he never left. In a season or two this hiatus will blur; a man of certain destiny took time out for family matters. Thank God for youth that allows time for all things.
When the pulse continues Antonio wonders if the place perversely stimulates it, or if thoughts of Mrs. Mayfair carry such power, or if his sheer strength and dynamic spirit pump the blood in spite of the lumps and grit. He chooses Mrs. Mayfair and the short work she can make of any pulse any time of day or night. Deflation is immediate on recalling the first hours of incarceration. Quincy came by to stare and ask, “Why did you do it?”
Antonio stared back for a quarter of a minute. “I did not do it.”
Quincy walked away, looking back with his follow-up question, “Then how do you know what it is?”
Antonio had to yell, “Because the guards told me!”
Quincy will be back. Maybe then a few ribs will be broken, depending on what or who turns up, or if suitable glory can be derived from a hapless culprit named Antonio. A man of Quincy’s magnitude won’t close for the kill until the evidence is gathered, the circumstance proscribed, the potential scrutinized. Quincy will hit the beach. Antonio wishes he knew what Baldo should do, but he can only know that Baldo must avoid error. Ay. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe wishing on a star or throwing coins in a fountain would serve a man in a cell as much as sending thoughts through the ether. Drifting, Antonio seeks stars and fountains.
Quincy, meanwhile, waits, steadfast and stolid as an immovable object that ferrets truth by simply waiting. The truth will out because it always does. He makes no exception here, backing out of the surf.
The pillowcase is gone. Its absence is obvious. Baldo turns the place inside out to be sure no one stashed it. Ransacking takes five minutes. Reassembly is less thorough but takes another seven. In two more he’s back on the bus with his mask and snorkel, wondering if Quincy knows this mad dash is an elaborate choreography. Maybe Quincy is having a good laugh, knowing that any choreography can only entertain the long arm of the law.
Baldo now swims in more treacherous depths than any sea, imagined or otherwise. Once in the water he will lead the way to freedom. The dispirited policemen can’t really swim but merely flail like blobs. He will lead them deep and show them a truth that will free all concerned.
With folded arms Quincy watches the water. Baldo doesn’t run but picks it up to a trot and laughs at the pasty, pudgy police boys who couldn’t get twelve feet on a good day, much less thirty on a Sunday with a four-foot break. Hungover and bloated, they struggle. Who will fear them now, the fish? The current or undertow?
Baldo stops alongside Quincy to share the view; fatsos dunking like donuts in the drink. Quincy turns to eye the lanky figure beside him. Baldo shrugs, holding up his mask and snorkel. What can I do, Your Honor? I am nearly a man, one who understands authority, right and wrong, and building within a community today so that we all may share a brighter tomorrow, so I am willing to try. I will see, if I can, what is driving these birds to frenzy. If it’s a big chunk of poor, unfortunate fisherman somehow anchored just there beyond the break, I will see that too. I may as well see whatever Your Highness needs to be seen, if such a view finds pleasure with Your Magnitude.
Baldo feels loose and good and therefore successful in his portrayal of civic intention and social conscience. It is not for nothing that he is his brother’s brother, and a bit of the maestro flows through his tender veins as well. But Quincy is not your average poolside guest, and Baldo constricts like an animal in a snare on seeing Quincy’s grin. Quincy is known from town to hotel row for his cagey skill. Crime is at issue here, and this sad situation may relate to other unsolved homicides or domestic violence. A car theft or robbery may be tied to this scene. We don’t know the full extent of corruption here on the golden coast, with the heat, the liquor, and sudden infusion of cash. Do we?
Quincy views the big picture with no holds barred. He is comandante, charged with keeping the greater order, as it were. At the hub of this mystery may be passion or money. Are you familiar with either one? No longer known as Armando Sanchez, he is known now as Quincy, who may be a rerun somewhere but still pulls excellent ratings here.
Some say he is better than Quincy as seen on TV.
Others say he would not seem so smart without his cousin at the newspaper to run his photograph with a glowing profile for every Volkswagen recovered.
Some say Quincy’s skill is real. How can such a thing be faked? He is better than his namesake on TV and better even than Columbo, they say. Some say Quincy knows, because you are lying, and he knows. The argument persists but consensus settles like concrete: Quincy can tie you hand and foot with logic for a rope to bind the momentarily unsuspecting suspect. “He was my brother,” Quincy grumbles, which of course en Español is still a grumble but sounds like El es mi hermano.
Caught off guard, Baldo flinches. But youth allows for alacrity and resilience, so the flinch is covered by a rare sound such as a mute might make when his mask strap grabs a hank of hair and pulls it. He looks up again with a sheepish smile and an unspoken, Qué? He flicks his fingertips from his lips outward then aims them at Quincy, who now asks, “How is your brother?”
Quincy knows. Of course he knows. He is Quincy.
Baldo illuminates from this sudden flash and hangs his head to hide, knowing Quincy is behind this point and shoot and will see what is shown or not shown. So he shrugs and looks up again, this time miming constraint within the vertical bars in front of him. He glares at Quincy, who eases into a half smile and says, “Go. See what you can see.”
Baldo goes, shaking his head at the fat boys bobbing, sputtering, and muttering that nothing is below, nada, sustaining ineptitude with vigorous agreement. Slipping easily under a breaking wave, Baldo disappears into a spot in the water. Let them watch and wait.
The police splash toward the spot to intercept his emergence and take credit for what he’ll find. This will be easy, since such a one will not yell for himself.
Those on the beach watch with more measured anticipation, knowing this is the brother of he who waits in jail, whose skill on stage may well be matched here in the water. Is not skill in the one conducive to skill in the other, even if the stage is up yonder, and here is merely deep and dark? In both we have youth, fitness, lithe muscles, and agility. This one has a mask and snorkel and so must be
familiar with the roiling murk, unless he stole them. Never mind, the greater potential here is that the primary suspect’s brother may soon reveal himself as the primary suspect. So he can’t speak. So what?
Baldo is good for three minutes on a dive after a decent night’s sleep. Last night wasn’t so bad, but with its distractions and those of this morning, two minutes is maximum and plenty for a casual diver riding the undertow sixty feet out easily enough. Visibility wanes but improves on the upward angle, backlit by daylight. Baldo lets the bottom fall, leveling at thirty feet or forty. He cruises farther and rises slightly for the shallow ledge that parallels the beach and accounts for the steep shore break. Familiar with these thermoclines, he is not surprised by the sudden chill at each ten feet of depth, but something here warms as startling as any thermocline. Feeling for the bottom, he grasps something big with rough skin, perhaps a big, sleeping shark. He feels further, gently to avoid a stir, and straining to see. He can’t say it is not a life, nor can he say it is, until its outline delineates, rounding and running far forward and back. This is no shark. It’s too firm. It emits a tiny pulse but is too still.
He looks slightly up when the light fades and sees the shark overhead, a tiger big enough to swallow a man, even a chubby man in baggy shorts. Well, big enough to swallow him in two bites. Anyway, Baldo knows sharks; this one is a stray, too shallow for a tiger’s special needs, drawn here, perhaps, for a taste of fisherman fillet.
Truth rises at last in an upwelling just ahead, a rising spring in shimmering light. Spewing from the canvasback beneath him is a stream of chunks and shreds, not fleshy but what Antonio calls shit del mar or chunky paella; the solid, rough-skinned form is a sewage line that runs a quarter mile out, which should be far enough to keep things happy.
But here its rupture renders it pissing distance from the beach. Perhaps the fisherman knew this and fished here because endless chum would attract the top of the food chain, and one catch could feed an entire family two days before rotting.
Baldo watches the cruising silhouette fade deeper. He cannot return the way he came, against the undertow that carried him out. So he rises to fifteen feet and swims easily in beneath the surface until he’s shallow enough to stand and march slowly out. Catching his breath by Quincy, he holds up a hand until he breathes more easily, he folds three fingers and the thumb until only one finger remains—the forefinger—indicating that he will now explain.
He squats and blows a big raspberry. Quincy is not amused, so Baldo flicks his fingertips from his butthole toward the sand, then wraps his arms around a big, invisible pipe and points to the sand beneath them. In a slow rise he follows its path out. Holding up one finger again for further enlightenment, he interrupts the flow there, just there. His hands erupt for a fissure and little raspberries rising from the break. They drift up and down the beach, exciting the birds and most likely improving the fishing, if it’s big fish at the top of the chain you want.
This last he conveys by miming a fish on the feed and then a fisherman with a hand line. His beach drama then conveys the oversize dorsal fin and row upon row of triangular teeth sharpened by nature for peak efficiency in cutting and tearing. Baldo does not fear sharks, so he smiles, dragging a toe across the sand in approximate outline of the shark just seen, then pointing to where he saw it. The shark may soon make the streets safer for those with no uniforms or guns. He removes Antonio from suspicion as well, the shark, who ate the fisherman. The fisherman was so foul that the shark got sick and puked him back up on the beach. Such could be the way of the natural mystery, could it not?
Quincy grins his biggest grin like his hero beyond the break, yet warms no further; not so fast and not so easy my skinny fish, he seems to say. He elaborates no further. Silence is the way of Quincy, who will spell things out only once at the end, just before the credits. Besides, he is walking into the surf, perhaps in afterthought but waving his arms madly and shouting at the tubby boys to come in.
Ponderously as men of law enforcement in transition from donuts to burgers, they confer and agree that this investigation is complete; nothing is here. Quincy yells, “¡Sark! ¡El grandé! ¡Sark!” And they churn the water to wash cycle.
Baldo laughs, can’t help it. He must return to his duties, for the baby turtles have been over an hour with no one to monitor their safety or hunger or to see if their water needs changing. Or to guard against direct sunlight and attend to his ailing bird. These concerns are deftly mimed until Quincy waves him off one-handed and says, “We’ll be in touch.”
Baldo nods and walks away, wondering, Hey, you got a hamster in your pocket, Señor? Why will you touch me? Why do you speak of we? Perhaps you saw Quincy on TV speak that way.
So the game plays out, each player betting and bluffing according to the cards dealt, according to skill and the influence from above. Baldo feels confident, feeling the influence from all sides and below the surface as well.
In an hour the heat rises to its apex and a man on a grimy mat over rusty bedsprings feels the sweat roll in a steady trickle. Sleep left him dazed and dizzy. But so what, if he has only to lie on his back? Doors grind open and clang shut, and the voice of authority asks a question of failing objectivity.
“Has he confessed?”
Antonio can practically hear the dolt with the keys in an audible headshake. Maybe his teeth are rattling. Further interrogation is next, perhaps with a sharper edge now that Quincy has more facts. Antonio wipes his eyes and breathes deeply. He waits. Soon he smiles, for such a delay may mean that Baldo has done the right thing, which is nothing at all or something good. Perhaps the delay is so that conclusive evidence can be processed for proper presentation, so confession can be taken directly.
But that is probably not the case, and in any event, ¡Soy inocente!
IX
Let’s Do Lunch
A mile over and ten blocks down, two women are seated at a delightful table just off the promenade with a fabulous view of the “old fishing village.” This last phrase is Mrs. Mayfair’s. She bandies it about like her middle name, affixing it to the Mexican adventure that is her life today.
Lyria remembers not so long ago when it was simply a village where tourists paid the boat operators to ride out and try to catch fish, but the waterfront wasn’t so cluttered with expensive restaurants and baubles for sale.
“Oh, this does look good. Doesn’t it?” Mrs. Mayfair gently touches her fingertips to Lyria’s arm, which seems to be a habit of hers, an expression of friendship, though Lyria can’t help but think of what else Mrs. Mayfair reaches gently to touch, and with what besides her fingertips. Mrs. M sees her young friend look down at the point of contact and blithely continues. “Anything you want, dear. This lunch is on me.”
Passing pedestrians can easily take these two as acquaintances out for lunch to catch up on old times. Few would suspect the principle industry of the day as liberating their common man from the local jail, where he festers helplessly on a murder charge. Well, there’s nothing to do now but to kill the allotted time and then call Rudolph to see what can be done.
“He is the very best,” Mrs. Mayfair assures. “I mean Rudolph. The lawyer. He’ll know what to do.”
Lyria nods, certain that the reindeer man knew what to do with the chattering gringa.
“You know, I have a taste for Mexican. I mean, not that any of these places aren’t, but I mean real Mexican. You know?”
Lyria thinks Mrs. Mayfair’s appetite is for Mexicans, real Mexicans, but of course they’re not on the menu. She nods in appeasement of the mouth that won’t stop.
Mrs. Mayfair studies the menu, simpering gratuitously and finally ordering nopole salad, shrimp cocktail, and a whole snapper, grilled. Lyria is not surprised by the excess but thinks the gringa has never tasted real nopole and won’t like it because it’s too slimy. She thinks Mrs. Mayfair orders it to fit in, but then maybe she has tried it and loves it because it’s slimy. You know? But then the wasteful gringa ordered shrimp c
ocktail and grilled snapper too, which may be more than Baldo and Antonio would eat in a day. Lyria orders a burrito.
“That’s all! Child, you must eat. We have a long day ahead of us. Please, bring her … do you have a special? Bring her the special. Please.”
Lyria looks down, resentful of superior behavior. Mrs. Mayfair touches her again as prelude to apology. Lyria surprises them both by asking, “Why do you call me child? Why do you touch me?” She waits for an answer.
“It’s only a figure of speech,” Mrs. Mayfair says, withdrawing. “I am older than you. Not that much older, I don’t think. I don’t mean to offend you.”
“Do you call Antonio child? You are older than him as well. Do you call him child when you make him do those things? Is that why you want nopole salad? Because he’s in jail?”
“What? Oh, dear. Lyria, please.” Mrs. Mayfair flashes color like a love struck squid in springtime. Beside herself with embarrassment, she blushes so immensely that her guilt is proven as surely as if she and Lyria watched an X-rated movie starring herself and young Antonio, who knows less of discretion than he does of caressing. Mrs. Mayfair wonders unabashedly what this girl can possibly mean. I want the nopole salad because Antonio is in jail? What on earth can she mean by those things I make him do? I don’t know what nopole salad is. I thought this would be a good time to try it; I’ve seen it on menus. I like salad. As far as Antonio’s behavior, well, she wants to make a lucky guess. That’s all. He could not share the details of our intimacy with his prospective mate? Surely not, unless he did.
Mrs. Mayfair’s view of Lyria as a young woman mildly jealous over misplaced hearts and flowers is dashed, gone to squiggly snow where a clear picture once was. She seems so sweet, this shy girl practically betrothed to Antonio, and he made no secret about her because it wasn’t necessary. But tact is another thing, especially with a fragile heart in the balance.
Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Page 13