The Rodriguez Affair (1970)

by Pattinson, James

  HE TOOK the revolver from the holdall and loaded the cylinder with rounds. Torres had loaded it when he had had the gun, but Cade had emptied it after Torres had left in haste. Now it was loaded again.

  For a while he debated with himself the question of where to carry it. Strictly speaking, he ought to have had a shoulder holster, but there would have been something rather too melodramatic about a shoulder holster, and the harness was probably uncomfortable too, besides looking more than a little conspicuous if you discarded your jacket Even Johnson did not wear one, and he was a professional.

  He tried sticking the gun in the belt of his trousers, but it seemed awkward there and he had a feeling that you could give yourself a nasty injury that way if the thing went off by accident. Not that a revolver was likely to go off by accident, but the feeling was there all the same.

  In the end he decided to carry it in his jacket pocket. It was a lightweight jacket, but not with the gun in it; the gun itself weighed maybe a couple of pounds and it made the jacket hang down on the right side as if he was carrying all his spare cash in the pocket.

  He left the hotel and walked to Duero’s garage. He watched Duero check the oil and the petrol and the pressure in the Citroen’s tyres.

  Duero said: “I found some scratches on the back, Señor Cade. I think you should be a little more careful perhaps.”

  Cade wondered how Duero identified new scratches. Perhaps he kept a chart so that he could check up.

  “The roads are not good.” Cade said.

  If the scratches were on the back of the car they had probably been made by splinters of rock thrown up by the bullets from Johnson’s gun when he shot at José’s feet. But he did not think it necessary to tell Duero that; it might have made him nervous for the welfare of his car. Just as it would probably have made him nervous if he had known that the Citroen had been within an ace of rolling over the edge of a quarry.

  “That is why you should be careful,” Duero said.

  Cade promised to be careful, and he drove the Citroen very carefully out of the garage because Duero was watching him.

  Juanita must have been looking out for him. She came out of the hotel almost as soon as he stopped the car. He got out and held the door for her. She was wearing a white linen dress and a sun hat. She looked cool, elegant, self-assured. Cade did not attempt to disguise his admiration.

  “You make the car look shabby. Come to think of it, you make me look shabby.”

  She smiled. “You do not regret agreeing to take me with you?”

  “I regret nothing,” Cade said.

  Johnson came out of the hotel as they were about to move off. He walked to the car and looked in. “So you’re going to pay Gomara another visit?”

  “Juanita wants to meet him.”

  “You think you can arrange an interview?”

  “No, but I can try.”

  “Roberto is very persuasive,” Juanita said.

  “Uh-huh,” Johnson said. “Maybe he’s taking a persuader.” He glanced at the bulge in Cade’s pocket. “My advice to you, Rob, is be careful.”

  “That’s what Duero advised. He found some scratches on the car. I think he’s been over it with a magnifying-glass.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the car,” Johnson said. “Well, I’ll be moving along. Got a cable to send off.” He walked away.

  They came out of the town on to the hot, stony road, and a great cloud of dust rose behind them and slowly drifted away, settling like a blight on the thin and tufty grass. The car smelled of hot oil and petrol and rubber; it overpowered the unobtrusive scent that the girl was using.

  “What did Earl mean when he said you were taking a persuader?” Juanita asked.

  “He could have meant you.”

  “No, he did not mean that”

  “Who knows what he meant?”

  They passed three cars on the road and two horsemen. Traffic seemed light in that part of the world. When Cade turned the car on to the road down to the Gomara place they could see the big white house and the outbuildings with the high fence enclosing them.

  “It looks like a prison settlement,” Juanita said, and she sounded subdued, as if the very sight of the place had depressed her.

  “Maybe Gomara is a prisoner—in a way.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “He never leaves the house.”

  “You think he’s afraid to leave it?”

  “Could be.”

  The gate was padlocked. There was no sign of anyone on the other side. Cade stopped the car and sounded the horn. No one came.

  “Where is everyone?” Juanita said.

  “I don’t think Gomara keeps many servants,” Cade said. “I’ve only seen José and an old man named Andres who looks after the snakes. Della Lindsay said there were a couple of women to do the cooking and cleaning.”

  “Someone should come to the gate.”

  The place seemed dead. Cade wondered whether José had returned the previous day. Could it be that, having failed to carry out his orders successfully, he had decided to seek his fortune elsewhere? Perhaps he had been afraid that Cade would report the attempted murder to the police.

  “Sound the horn again,” Juanita suggested.

  Cade did so. Nothing happened. It was hot in the car with the sun beating down on it. In the stable on the right a horse whinnied.

  “One more go,” Cade said. He gave a long blast on the horn and suddenly José appeared, running from the direction of the house.

  José was waving his arms and shouting. When he got close enough they could hear what it was that he was shouting.

  “Go away! Go away!”

  Cade got out of the car and walked to the gate. José was still shouting. When he saw that it was Cade he stopped.

  “You!” he said.

  He seemed both angry and frightened. There was a wild, half-crazy look about him; he kept clenching and unclenching his right hand, as though gripping some invisible object and then releasing it again.

  “Open the gate,” Cade said.

  José made no move to do so. He glared at Cade. “Go away. There is nothing for you here. Go away, I tell you.”

  “I wish to speak to Señor Gomara.”

  “He will not speak to you. I have orders.”

  “I wish also to see Señorita Lindsay.”

  José’s voice rose in pitch. “You cannot see her. You cannot. You cannot come in. Go back to San Borja. You will get nothing here.”

  He turned his back on Cade and began to walk away from the gate. Cade pulled the revolver from his pocket.

  “Stop!” he said.

  José turned and saw the gun.

  “Now come back here,” Cade said.

  José hesitated a moment, then walked slowly back to the gate. He was staring at the gun as though it fascinated him.

  “Unlock the gate,” Cade said.

  Again José hesitated. Cade thumbed back the hammer of the revolver.

  “Unlock the gate.”

  Still José did not move. He licked his lips.

  “I shall count up to five,” Cade said. “Then I shall shoot you in the leg.”

  He began to count José waited until the count had reached four, then gave in. He took the key from his pocket, unfastened the padlock and swung the gate open.

  Cade eased the hammer of the revolver forward and put the weapon back in his pocket. He went back to the car, got in and drove it through the gateway. José looked like a man in torment.

  “I know now what Earl meant by persuader,” Juanita said. “Would you really have shot him in the leg?”

  “He would do worse than that to me.”

  “That is not an answer to the question.”

  “Does anyone know what he will do until it comes to the push? Maybe I would have shot him. Maybe I’d have enjoyed doing it.”

  He stopped the car in front of the house. The front door was standing wide open. He led the way up the steps of the portico and Juanita foll
owed. There was a wrought-iron bell-pull on the right of the door; it was made in the shape of a bull’s head. Cade gripped one on the horns and pulled downward. Somewhere a bell jangled; then there was silence. No one came.

  “Let’s go in,” Cade said.

  They went in. The house was silent except for the buzzing of flies. It was hot and silent and brooding.

  “Why does no one come?” Juanita said. She seemed uneasy. Cade sensed an unusual tenseness in her. Her breathing had quickened.

  Cade called softly: “Della! Della Lindsay!”

  There was no answer.

  “She could be out riding.”

  “Does she ride?”

  “Yes,” Cade said. “She was riding the first day I came here.”

  “How many horses do they keep?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There was one in the stable. It whinnied.”

  Cade was thinking about José. José had come from the direction of the house. If he had been in the house what had he been doing? And why had he been in such a state of excitement? He had been like a man in a frenzy even before he had seen who it was at the gate. So what had made him like that? Was it something that had happened in the house? And if so, what? And why was it all so silent now?

  “Roberto,” Juanita said.

  He looked at her. Her lips were parted and it was certain that she was breathing more rapidly than was normal. There was something about her eyes too—a kind of glitter. She was more controlled than José had been, but in a way there was a similarity; she too was possessed by some deep emotion, a strange excitement.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She touched his arm and he could feel her hand shaking, but he knew that it was not with fear.

  “Where is the room with the snake pit?”

  The question surprised him. It disturbed him a little too. He could not understand why she should want to know that It was surely not the snakes that she had come to see. Or was it? Was she also a lover of snakes, like Gomara?

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Tell me,” she said, and her hand tightened on his arm with a strength that he would not have expected in her.

  And then it occurred to him why she wished to know. She had come to see Gomara and it was in the snake room that he might be found. It was there that he, Cade, had been received by the man. Perhaps he was there now, dozing in his wheel-chair in the oppressive heat of that room.

  “It’s along there,” he said, pointing. “At the end of that corridor. Come; I’ll show you.”

  “No,” she said. “I prefer to go by myself.”

  “Don’t you want me to introduce you to Gomara?”

  “I can introduce myself. He won’t send me away.”

  Cade felt that that was true. Gomara—or Rodriguez— had always been attracted by a pretty woman; even now it was unlikely that his tastes had changed entirely.

  He told her which door it was and watched her walk down the corridor. He saw her open the door and go into the snake room. The door closed silently.

  But he still did not know where Della was. Again he wondered whether she had gone riding. It was possible, yet he had a feeling that she had not. There was the horse in the stable. And there was still the nagging question of why José had come running from the house with that wild look in his eye.

  Cade decided to make sure.

  He looked first in the drawing-room where he had talked to her and where Gomara had found them together. There was no one in the drawing-room. He tried another room. There was a grand piano, a Turkey carpet on the floor, armchairs trimmed with gold braid, a number of oil paintings on the walls. No one was playing the piano; no one was looking at the paintings; no one was sitting in the armchairs.

  Another room appeared to be a study. No one was studying.

  He did not try the back of the house; he did not think she would be in the kitchens. He walked to the foot of the wide, curving staircase and began to climb the stairs. The staircase ended in a balcony with a mahogany balustrade and some mounted bulls’ heads hanging on the wall. Cade guessed that they had been there before Gomara’s time and that he had not bothered to get rid of them.

  A passage led off from the balcony, doors opened from it to bedrooms. As soon as he entered the passage Cade noticed that one door was standing ajar.

  He called again softly: “Della! Are you there?”

  No one answered. He pushed the door more fully open and walked in.

  It was a large room, smelling of cosmetics and women’s clothing. The pile of the carpet on the floor was so thick that it seemed to come up over his shoes like foam. There was a kidney-shaped dressing-table with big oval mirrors and so many jars and bottles it might have been the counter of a chemist’s shop. Along one wall was a vast wardrobe with sliding doors, partly open, as though someone had been choosing a dress to wear. It could have been a difficult task; there were a lot to choose from.

  He would have known it was Della’s room even if she had not been there. But she was there. She was lying on the bed and she was wearing nothing but a pair of pale yellow briefs and a yellow brassière.

  She did not get up when Cade walked in. She did not even look at him. It might have been supposed that she was asleep if her eyes had not been open. But there was something else that proved that she was not sleeping; for no one went to sleep with the handle of a knife protruding from the body just a little below the left breast. Or if they did, it was the kind of sleep from which there was no awakening in this world.

  Della Lindsay would not be needing any diamonds where she had gone.

  TWELVE

  THE STABLE

  CADE STOOD there utterly motionless, looking down at the lovely, useless body of Della Lindsay. There was some blood, but not a great deal. One cruel thrust of that cold steel blade had been enough to stop the pumping of her heart for ever. Nor did it take any great powers of deduction to guess who had pushed the blade in. No wonder José had had that wild look in his eyes when he had come running from the house.

  But why had he killed the girl? Was this the paying off of some private grudge? Cade did not think so. He had a shrewd suspicion that in killing Delia José had merely been carrying out orders, just as he had been carrying out orders when he had tried to send Cade to his death over the precipice. Behind it all was the sinister hand of Gomara. Gomara had heard too much of what had passed between Cade and Delia; he had discovered the girl’s treachery towards him and had taken his revenge—through José.

  Cade suddenly began to move again. It was no use standing there; he had to find José. He felt a burning anger against the man that was even hotter than the anger he had felt when José had made the attempt on his own life. Della had been amoral, fickle and dishonest, but she had not deserved this; not a knife in the heart. José had got to pay for what he had done; by God he had got to pay. Gomara too. But Gomara could wait. First it was José who had to be found.

  He went out of the room and down the wide staircase and out of the house. The sun was hot; it spilled a harsh, bright light over the house and outbuildings; it wounded the eyes with its brassy spears. Cade stood on the portico steps and looked for José. He could not see him.

  Then he caught sight of the old man who looked after the snakes. Andres was coming round the corner of the house. He looked startled when he saw Cade.

  “Hey, you,” Cade shouted. “Have you seen José?”

  The old man shook his head. “I see no one, no one at all.”

  He turned and went back round the corner of the house like a rabbit bolting into its hole.

  Cade thought of following him, abandoned the idea as useless and began to walk towards the gate. The gate was still open. José was not there.

  Cade had almost reached the gate when he heard the car. He glanced back and saw the Mercedes in which Della had driven him back to San Borja. It had a different driver this time: José was at the wheel.

  So José had decided that it was time to make a
run for it. The arrival of Cade and Juanita before he had had time to dispose of Della Lindsay’s body must have upset his plans and sent him into a panic. Now he had obviously come to the conclusion that he had better get out—and fast.

  He was accelerating down the drive when Cade made a dash for the gate. It took him perhaps a second to get there and swing the gate across the path of the car. It was not the kind of gate you could drive straight through, not unless you were piloting a tank. José realised this and stood on the brakes. He was just a little too late. There was a screech of tyres, a cloud of choking dust, and the Mercedes hit the gate.

  A lesser car might have crumpled. The Mercedes withstood the shock, the gate bent slightly and José was flung forward against the wheel.

  But he recovered in a moment and was out of the car while Cade was still tugging at the revolver in his pocket. By the time he had got it clear José had disappeared inside the stable.

  Cade went after him, the revolver in his right hand. There was a tall barn type of doorway in the end of the stable and it was through this that José had gone. The main door was shut but there was a wicket standing open and Cade went in by the wicket, stepping warily in case José should be lying in wait for him.

  After the brilliant sunlight outside, the stable seemed gloomy. Cade’s nostrils caught the sharp, ammoniacal tang of horse dung mingled with the scent of hay. There was also the unmistakable odour of leather harness, and he could see some saddles and bridles hanging near the door. The stable was divided down the middle by a kind of working alleyway. On the right was a hay loft and under it were some bales of straw, corn bins, sacks, a work-bench and various implements, most of them rusty and obviously seldom used. On the left was a row of loose-boxes, only one of which appeared to be occupied—by the black horse that Delia had been riding when he had first seen her.

  He could not see José.

  He stood by the door, searching the stable with his eyes. There were scores of places wheré Jose could have been hiding and the task of ferreting him out was not an attractive one; it was about as pleasant a prospect as going into the lair of a wounded tiger. In fact, when you came to think of it, José was himself a wild animal and as dangerous as any that walked on four feet. Maybe more dangerous.