The Rodriguez Affair (1970)

by Pattinson, James

“Tell him to be here after breakfast tomorrow.”

  The boy had been burnt so deeply by the sun that he was almost black. His name was Pablo and he was ten years old. When he grew up, so he informed Cade in all seriousness, he was going to emigrate to the United States and become an astronaut. He was fascinated by the stars and space travel.

  “You think they will take me, señor?”

  “Why not, Pablo? They’re always looking for good men. Maybe you’ll be the first man to land on Venus.”

  The boy’s eyes shone like precious stones. “I cannot wait to grow up. Why don’t the years go faster?”

  “One day you’ll wish they didn’t go so fast,” Cade said.

  They crossed the Plaza, walked through a narrow alleyway where some plump, black-haired women were gossiping, and came out on to what could have been the main street of the town. There were some shops, some motor lorries, a few cars, people.

  “This way, señor,” Pablo said.

  They turned to the left, continued on for about two hundred yards, then plunged down another alleyway and came suddenly on a patch of waste ground where an old Chrysler convertible had come to the end of its journeys. It stood there rusting gently, with no tyres and the hood nothing but a skeleton. Some small fry were sitting in it and they were not even squabbling; perhaps in imagination they were driving down the shining streets of Caracas with all the glittering shops and nightclubs and hotels on either side.

  “They’re going places,” Cade said.

  Pablo looked infinitely contemptuous. “Children’s games,” he said with all the superiority of one who was ten years old and going to be an astronaut.

  It turned out to be a rough timber building with no paint and a corrugated iron roof. It had the smell of oil and rubber that you get wherever motor vehicles congregate. There were half a dozen cars of various ages and conditions, none very new, and there were two Italian scooters with worn saddles and smooth tyres. A man was working at a bench on the left as you went in; he was filing a piece of metal held in a vice and drops of sweat were falling on to it from his forehead. He was not much more than five feet tall and as fat as a leg of pork. He was standing on a box to give him added height.

  “That is Señor Duero,” Pablo said.

  “Thanks, Pablo. You’ve been a lot of help.” Cade felt in his pocket, pulled out some coins and gave them to the boy. “I can manage now. See you on Venus.”

  “On Venus,” the boy said. He stowed the coins in his pocket and went away whistling.

  Duero stopped filing and looked at Cade. He did not get off the box; perhaps it gave him confidence.

  “You want something, señor?”

  “A car,” Cade said.

  Duero said, a note of surprise and hope in his voice :

  “You wish to buy a car?”

  “Not to buy. I want to hire one.”

  Duero looked both disappointed and doubtful. “You wish to drive this car yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not know you, señor. To let a stranger have a car, it is a risk.”

  “l am a good driver.”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “Señora Torres told me to come to you.”

  Duero’s expression changed immediately. Suddenly he seemed to be a great deal happier. “You are staying at the Phoenix?”

  “Yes. My name is Cade.”

  “Ah, that is different” Duero got off the box and waddled towards Cade. He wiped his right hand on the seat of his trousers and held it out to Cade. Cade shook it It felt like a thick slice of raw bacon that had been left out in the sun. “Anyone that is recommended by Señora Torres, him I trust Do you wish to go far?”

  “No, not far.”

  Duero looked as though he would have liked to ask Cade where he was going, but he suppressed the desire. He waddled across to a Citroen saloon, the kind that the Citroen people had turned out in tens of thousands to populate the roads of France, not the new model but the old one that looked like a car.

  Duero kicked the tyres, each one in turn, as though to demonstrate that he was above favouritism. He put both hands on the side of the body and rocked it on its springs, producing a harsh, grating noise.

  “Good car.”

  “How much?” Cade asked.

  Duero got into the driving seat, started the engine. He revved up and thick smoke poured from the exhaust He switched off and got out He patted the bonnet with his hand as if it had been a god.

  “Good engine too.”

  “How much?”

  Duero pursed his lips and looked like a man who is reluctant to bring sordid financial considerations into a pleasant conversation but is forced to do so.

  “Fifty bolivars a day—and the petrol.”

  “Fill the tank,” Cade said.

  SEVEN

  THE SNAKE PIT

  IT WAS not, Cade had to admit, as good a car as the Mercedes he had travelled in the previous day. The upholstery had suffered from the ravages of time and hard use, and there were a lot of noises that had certainly not been there when the car had been younger. These noises became louder when they had left the town and were out on the road that led to the Gomara place. Fortunately, the engine, despite the exhaust smoke, seemed to be in fair condition, and though the steering had a nasty habit of pulling over to the left, Cade soon got used to this and fought it with appropriate pressure on the wheel.

  It was about mid-morning when he came to the road junction. He made the right turn and drove at a moderate speed towards the gate in the fence that ringed the house and outbuildings. José must have seen him coming for he had already released the padlock when Cade pulled up. He swung the gate open and walked to the car, peering in at Cade as though to make certain it was in fact he. After a momentary examination he appeared to be satisfied if not pleased.

  “I have orders to let you in, señor.”

  “Thank you,” Cade said.

  “You do not have to thank me.” José’s tone and his expression seemed to indicate that he regarded any thanks as an insult. “It is not my decision. For myself I would have left the gate locked; but I have to obey orders.”

  Cade wondered why the man should be so ill-tempered. Perhaps he was still smarting from the lash of Della Lindsay’s riding-switch and associated Cade with that humiliation. Or perhaps he was just naturally ill-disposed to the rest of mankind. Anyway, Cade was not bothered about José; he was more interested in meeting Gomara.

  He let in the clutch and drove slowly through the gateway, past the big stable building and up to the front of the house. The girl had also seen him coming, and it was she who opened the door to him.

  She said : “I see you got yourself a car.”

  “It was either that or a horse.”

  She closed the door behind him. “I had a hard time persuading Carlos to see you. You wouldn’t believe. You aren’t carrying a gun, are you?”

  “A gun?”

  “He told me to make sure. He doesn’t like men who carry guns.”

  “Who does?” Cade said. “But don’t worry. I’m clean. You can frisk me if you like.” He had left the Colt in his bag at the hotel. He had thought of bringing it and had decided not to. Perhaps it was as well in the circumstances.

  The girl gave him a long, cool stare. She had just the right amount of sun-tan for a blonde and she was not the kind who came out in freckles. With that face and that figure she certainly had all the makings of a stripper; it was easy to see how the rumours had got started in San Borja.

  “Maybe you’d enjoy that,” she said.

  “Maybe I would,” Cade said.

  But she did not give him the pleasure. “I’ll take your word, Mr. Cade. Come along. It’s this way.”

  They went down a corridor, carpeted, their feet falling silently as if on turf. From somewhere came a smell of cooking, but there was a stillness about the house, an impression of life having stopped; it was like a retreat where you waited to die. Delia Lindsay did not really fit
in; you could not imagine her waiting to die.

  They came to a door and she paused with her hand resting on the knob, “Be careful what you say to him.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Cade promised.

  She opened the door. “Go in then.”

  Cade walked in. He had expected Della to follow, but instead he heard the sound of the door closing and when he turned he saw that she had gone away and left him to it.

  It was an unusual kind of room to say the least. It was much longer than it was wide and at the far end it opened off to the right, apparently L-shaped. It was stiflingly hot and close and completely devoid of any furnishing. There were no windows, but a subdued greenish illumination came in through skylights in the lofty roof, rather like the light in deep jungle. The floor was of concrete, quite bare, and down the centre ran a wide, shallow pit. The sides of the pit were concave with an overhanging lip, like a cliff undermined by the sea. In the pit were rocks and boulders, pools of stagnant water, logs of wood and a number of plants and bushes growing in patches of soil.

  There were other things in the pit too; Cade saw them when he went to the edge and looked down. Some were gliding sinuously on mysterious errands known only to themselves, others were motionless, coiled and sleeping, their skins gleaming like metal. Snakes.

  He could understand then why Della had not come in with him. She was probably not a lover of snakes. He was not sure that he was himself.

  He was still looking down into the pit when he heard a sound like the whine of an electric motor. He turned and saw a man approaching in a wheeled chair which must have come from the other part of the room beyond the angle. It stopped about six feet from Cade and the man stared at him. He was wearing a loose linen suit, and he was very thin and his hair was white. His face looked fallen-in all over; even his temples had a hollowed-out appearance; it was as though there were a vacuum inside that was sucking down all the surface areas and revealing the bony structure like the peaks and ridges of a mountain range. His hands also were thin and bony, and the veins stood out like blue cords. In the left hand he was holding a small automatic pistol. It looked to Cade like a .25 calibre. It was pointed at him.

  “Señor Cade, I believe,” the man said. His voice too was thin, like a whisper; it seemed as drained, as bloodless as the man himself.

  “Yes‚” Cade said. “You don’t need the gun, Señor Gomara.”

  “I am a cautious man‚” Gomara said. “But no doubt you have already heard that. There may not be many more years of life remaining to me but I should not wish to have them shortened.”

  “Is that probable?”

  “Probable? Who knows?” He lowered the pistol and let it lie in his lap. “Delia tells me that you have a great desire to see me.”

  “Yes,” Cade said.

  Gomara had changed. He had grown older; older by more than the mere extent of the years that had passed. He looked ill; perhaps was ill. When Cade had seen him last he had been black-haired, vigorous, full of life, enjoying it to the full. But that had been in Argentina, and his name had not been Gomara; it had been Rodriguez.

  It had also been before the scandal.

  Carlos Rodriguez had been an important member of the Argentine government at that time. In his capacity as a newspaperman Cade had seen a good deal of Rodriguez; Rodriguez had been much in the public eye. There had also been numerous press conferences which Cade had attended.

  Carlos Rodriguez had been near the top and still rising when the bubble burst. And when the revelation came it was not merely the revelation of a corrupt politician’s shady financial dealings, of the bribery concerning government contracts, though this was bad enough. No; there was also the scandal of his private life. There were reports of wild orgies on Rodriguez’s country estate, of sexual perversions, of the seduction of young girls, of drug-taking. And then there was the matter of Isabella Martinez, whose naked body had been found floating in Rodriguez’s swimming-pool.

  It had, of course, been the end of his political career, but he had had powerful friends and much money. Before the police could take him he had disappeared, no one knew where. The Rodriguez Affair, as it was called, made news for weeks as more and more unsavoury details came to light, but the chief actor had already left the stage and did not return for the curtain call.

  Cade could see now why Gomara was such a retiring man. There were many people who would have given much to learn of his whereabouts : the Argentine police would most certainly have been interested, and poor Isabella Martinez, that beautiful and unfortunate young girl, had had relations who, if they ever found the man who had corrupted her and had been the cause of her death, would undoubtedly take a terrible revenge.

  “For what reason did you wish to see me?” Gomara asked.

  He was, Cade estimated, not yet sixty years old, but he looked nearer eighty. Perhaps he had contracted some disease that had first crippled him and now was slowly killing him. Perhaps this was the punishment for the kind of life he had led.

  “I am a journalist,” Cade said.

  Gomara looked startled. “Delia did not tell me that. She told me that you had some important information to give me.”

  “I told her that I am afraid it was a piece of subterfuge in order to get an interview with you.”

  Gomara’s sunken eyes regarded Cade stonily, as though probing for the truth, and the fingers of his left hand strayed towards the butt of the pistol; but he did not pick it up.

  “Why should you want an interview with me?”

  Cade wondered whether Gomara had recognised him also. It was possible but not likely. At press conferences in Buenos Aires he had been only one of many; there was no reason why his features should have impressed themselves on Gomara’s memory. Nevertheless, the possibility was there.

  “I am writing a magazine feature—about this part of the country—the cattle rearing—”

  “I do not rear cattle.”

  “But this was once a cattle estancia.”

  “I know nothing of that. It was before I came here.”

  “So you have not been here long?”

  “Señor Cade‚” Gomara said, “I believe you know very well how long I have been here.”

  “I have made one or two enquiries,” Cade admitted. “But one does not believe all one hears.”

  “That is so. One does not.”

  The heat in the room was really oppressive; sweat began to trickle down Cade’s face. Gomara regarded him with a sardonic expression; he himself appeared quite cool; he looked desiccated, every drop of moisture already drawn out of him.

  “You seem warm,” he said. “Why not remove your jacket? I have no objection.”

  Cade took off his jacket and draped it over his arm.

  “Are you a lover of snakes, Señor Cade?”

  Cade stared down into the pit There was that about the creatures in there which reminded him of his host: Gomara himself had something reptilian in him, and his eyes were as hard and cold as the eyes of a snake.

  “To be perfectly honest‚” Cade said, “they make me sick.”

  “Is that so?” Gomara sounded surprised. “Yet to me they are irresistibly fascinating.” He pointed his finger. “There, you see that one? That is a whipsnake from India. You can see how it got its name.”

  “Venomous?”

  “Oh, yes, very deadly. As also is that annulated snake which is one of our native breeds. And of course the viper there.”

  “Did you make this collection?” Cade asked.

  “No; it was here when I came. The original owner is dead. I am told that he got drunk one day and fell into the snake pit. Most unfortunate.”

  “Yes.”

  “There is an old man who looks after the snakes; his name is Andres. Do you mind pressing that button over there?”

  It was a bell-push in the wall. Cade put his thumb on the button, then released it. A few seconds later a man came in, not by the door by which Cade had entered but by another at the far end of th
e room.

  He was a black man and very tall—six and a half feet at least, though he stooped a little. His head was bald and shining, and he had a white beard and a wide flat nose. His arms were long, hanging loosely at his sides, and he was so thin Cade almost expected to hear his bones rattling as he walked. He was wearing a white shirt, white cotton trousers and rawhide boots. He stopped when he reached Gomara’s chair and stood there, saying nothing.

  “I have been telling Señor Cade that you are the one who looks after the snakes, Andres. Señor Cade says that snakes make him sick.”

  Andres said nothing, but he looked at Cade for a moment, then down into the pit.

  “They do not make you sick, do they, Andres?”

  “No, señor,” Andres said. He had a high, thin voice like a very old recording.

  “Show Señor Cade how easy it is to handle snakes when you know the way,” Gomara said.

  Without a word Andres lowered himself over the edge of the concrete and stepped into the pit With a movement surprisingly rapid in one so old he stooped and picked up a snake, gripping it just below the head. The snake was about three feet long and its body was covered with shining brown spots like splashes of paint. He carried it to the edge of the pit and held it out towards Cade. Cade involuntarily stepped back from that sinister head with its dripping fangs, its darting tongue and its bright cold eyes.

  Gomara laughed. “Do not be afraid. The snake is quite harmless while Andres holds it.”

  “Does he ever get bitten?”

  “You heard the question, Andres. Do the snakes ever bite you?”

  Andres grinned; there were no teeth in his mouth. “Me, señor? Why would they do that?” He held the snake close to his lips and kissed it. He put the head in his mouth, then drew it out slowly. “They are my friends, my children.” He put the snake down and it wriggled away.

  “You may go now, Andres,” Gomara said.

  Andres climbed out of the pit and left the room.

  “A remarkable old man,” Gomara said. “He has a way with snakes. I should not advise anyone else to step down into that pit.”