The Rodriguez Affair (1970)

by Pattinson, James

  “Manuel Lopez and Luis Guzman,” Cade said.

  Guzman was holding a flick-knife in his right hand. The blade was clean and shining, but it could have had blood on it not so very long ago—Harry’s blood. Blood could be cleaned off.

  “We will go in here,” Lopez said. “And then we will talk.”

  He led the way into the sitting-room. Cade followed. With Guzman’s knife pricking him in the back, he had no alternative. It made him remember José Rivera, but not with any pleasure.

  “Do not shout or do anything else foolish,” Guzman said. “Not if you wish to live,” He had a harsh, growling voice, and he spoke English with an American intonation.

  “I wish to live,” Cade said.

  “Good. Then do not try any funny business.”

  “I don’t know any funny business,” Cade said. “I leave that to the TV comics.”

  Guzman scowled. Lopez brought up a kitchen chair.

  “Sit down,” Lopez said.

  Cade sat down. Guzman stood on his left and Lopez on his right.

  “Now,” Lopez said, “you will tell us where they are.” His voice was lighter than Guzman’s but it had the same American intonation. It had the same menace too.

  Cade looked at him with utter innocence. “Tell you where what are?”

  “Do not pretend ignorance. We know that Harry Banner visited you the day he died. We know he left them in your hands.”

  “Ah,” Cade said. “So it was you who searched the flat and threw things about?”

  “Yes, we did search.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  “You know we found nothing,” Guzman snarled. “Don’t act so goddam dumb.”

  “Then you must know Harry left nothing with me.”

  “We know he did.”

  “Did he tell you that before you killed him?”

  Guzman pressed the point of the flick-knife into his side and reminded him even more of José. “Perhaps we kill you too, you goddam lousy English bastard.”

  Lopez cut in sharply: “Wait, Luis. Remember last time.”

  Cade felt the point move away from his side. He guessed that Lopez was reminding Guzman that they had been too hasty with Banner and that it had better not happen again.

  “Take off your coat,” Lopez said.

  Cade was wearing a raincoat. He stood up and took it off. Lopez snatched it and searched rapidly through the pockets, then threw it aside. He frisked Cade quickly but thoroughly.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  Cade sat down again.

  “Do you mind telling me what you’re looking for?” he asked.

  Lopez said evenly : “You know perfectly well what we are looking for. We are looking for the diamonds that Harry Banner left with you.”

  “So they were diamonds, were they? Well, think of that. Harry Banner with diamonds. I wonder where he picked them up.”

  “Never mind where he picked them up. You tell us where you put them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cade said. “I never had them.”

  “I better get to work on him,” Guzman said. “I make him talk. I make him talk good.”

  Lopez nodded. “Okay, but careful. Another dead man on our hands is no use at all.”

  “Trust me,” Guzman said.

  He put out his left hand and wrenched Cade’s jacket open. He tore the shirt open also, baring the skin of Cade’s chest and stomach. He stood squarely in front of Cade and rested the point of the flick-knife delicately on the skin just an inch or so above the navel.

  “Now tell us,” Lopez whispered.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Cade said.

  Guzman put just the smallest pressure on the knife. It was like the prick of a needle.

  “Now tell us,” Lopez said again.

  Cade just looked at him. He was listening, but not to Lopez.

  The pressure on the knife increased a little. A trickle of blood like a scarlet thread ran down Cade’s stomach.

  “It will go in a long way without being fatal,” Lopez said. “But it will hurt. Now will you tell us?”

  And then Cade heard the sound he had been waiting for; a very small sound; the merest click as of a key turning in a lock perhaps.

  “No,” he said, “I will not tell you.”

  He pressed his heels on the floor and tilted the chair backwards, and as he went over he brought his right foot up hard under Guzman’s crotch. Guzman gave a yell of agony and staggered back, dropping the knife and clutching himself.

  Lopez acted swiftly. He snatched up the knife and sprang at Cade. And that was when Percy Proctor walked in.

  Percy’s left hook had always been one of his best punches; it had put better men than Manuel Lopez to sleep. Percy’s fist travelled no more than six inches and it took Lopez neatly on the point of the jaw. Lopez went down, out cold.

  Guzman was hardly worthy of Percy’s attention, but he attended to him nevertheless. As a small favour.

  “Is that all, Mr. Cade?”

  Cade got up and dabbed his stomach with a handkerchief. Then he buttoned his shirt. “That’s all, Percy. And thanks.”

  “It was hardly worth coming for.”

  “I began to think you weren’t coming. What kept you?”

  “That lift,” Percy said. “I pressed the button but it never came. In the end I decided to walk.”

  “Hell,” Cade said. “It’s broken down again.”

  Percy held out a key. “You’d better have this back now, Mr. Cade.”

  Cade took it. “I’ll be having that lock changed anyway. People get in too easily. Have you got the cord?”

  Percy hauled a length of sash-cord out of his pocket. “All here.”

  “If you’ll just tie them up,” Cade said, “I’ll ring the superintendent and tell him to come round and collect After that we’ll have a drink.”

  “I could do with a drink,” Percy said.

  FIFTEEN

  SOME BUSINESS WITH ARILLA

  CADE RANG up Holden Bales before Bales went to work.

  “About those small items of merchandise I left in your keeping, Holden.”

  “Yes?” Bales said.

  “I’d like to take them off your hands.”

  “Can’t be too soon for me.”

  “When shall I come round?”

  “This morning. Eleven o’clock. That all right?”

  “Okay. Have a good breakfast.”

  “I’ve had it,” Bales said. “It was lousy. Just between you and me, Bob,” he said, lowering his voice, “Ethel is the lousiest cook going.”

  “I know,” Cade said. “I’ve had meals with you.”

  Cade walked up the two flights of stairs to Holden Bales’s workshop, tapped on the door and pushed it open. The usual mysterious work was going on at the benches and it all looked so dingy that you could hardly imagine that this was the kind of place from which those glittering items of jewellery came. Cade wondered just how much the craftsmen got for their labours, but he knew that it would be useless to ask Holden, because Holden was not the man to give away secrets of that sort.

  Nobody appeared to be at all interested in Cade, so he walked across to the door of Bales’s tiny office. The door opened just as he got there and revealed Bales himself, unshaven, sandy fringe of hair as unkempt as ever, standing in the opening.

  “Ah, there you are, Bob. Began to think you’d forgotten the appointment.”

  “I’m not late,” Cade said.

  “Aren’t you? That’s a change. Come in.”

  Cade went in. Bales closed the door.

  “I’m glad to see you’re still at liberty, Bob.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be at liberty?”

  “The police might have nabbed you.”

  “The police haven’t got anything on me.”

  “Haven’t they? No, I suppose not You had the good sense to leave it in my hands, didn’t you?”

  “Now look here, Holden, if you think—”

  Bales li
fted his hands in protest. “No, no, I don’t think anything. And I don’t want to know anything either.” He went to the safe, opened it and took out the chamois leather bag. He handed the bag to Cade. “There you are.”

  “I think I’ll just have a look at them,” Cade said.

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you, Holden. Would I have left them with you if I hadn’t? I just want to see if they still look the same.”

  He unfastened the bag and tipped the diamonds on to the table. Now that he knew how Harry Banner had come by them they seemed to have acquired a new interest Those glittering stones had a lot to answer for; they had been the cause of much evil. And yet the stones were not responsible; they were neutral, just so many pieces of hard, bright carbon. It was man, who set so high a value on them, who was responsible; man with his desires, his greed, his cruelty.

  “What are you thinking about?” Bales asked.

  “Four corpses,” Cade said.

  “You do have pleasant thoughts. What are you going to do with the diamonds?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know anything.”

  “I don’t,” Bales said, but Cade could see that he was curious despite himself.

  “I’m going to make someone very happy,” Cade said.

  Bales looked shocked. “Not a woman! Oh dear, I knew you’d make a fool of yourself.”

  “Holden,” Cade said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He scooped up the diamonds, put them back in the chamois leather bag and dropped the bag into his pocket

  “For God’s sake,” Bales said, “don’t get into trouble. I’d never hear the last of it from Ethel.”

  “What in hell has it got to do with Ethel?”

  “Nothing. She just holds you up as a dreadful example.”

  “Well, bully for Ethel,” Cade said, and he left Bales tugging at the remains of his sandy hair.

  It was probably the way Harry Banner had brought them into the country—in his pocket; just walking through the customs as innocently as a new-born babe without the bat of an eyelid. Cade wondered what the air hostesses on the flight down to Argentina would have thought if they had known that he was carrying one hundred and forty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds on his person.

  But perhaps it would not have surprised them. Air hostesses saw just about everything; they were probably completely shock-proof.

  The flight took him down via Madrid and Lisbon and Bathurst, Recife and Rio. He hated air travel; it made him feel dirty and bleary-eyed and slightly queasy in the stomach. It was one of the questionable blessings of the technological age, and it was so utterly boring. But it did get you where you wanted to be in the shortest possible space of time. And Cade wanted to be in Buenos Aires.

  “Will passengers please fasten their seat-belts and refrain from smoking. We are about to land.”

  Cade fastened his seat-belt and refrained from smoking. He looked out of the window and could see the Rio de la Plata, that broad river on which had once floated the silver from the mines of Alto Peru; he could see too the dock area where now the giant refrigericos, the meat storehouses, stood along the waterfront Buenos Aires was one of Cade’s favourite cities; in Buenos Aires there was never any feeling of being cramped, shut in; it seemed to have borrowed some of the spaciousness of the pampas and to have translated it into urban terms. True, its peace was marred now and then by outbursts of violence, tanks in the streets and armoured cars in the parks and squares; but these were transient phenomena, and after their passing life went on much as before : the trees came into leaf along the Avenida Maipu and roses bloomed in Palermo Park; lovers strolled in the Plaza Mayo and gazed into the shops on the Calle Corrientes; policemen blew their whistles and the sound of ships’ sirens came up from the harbour.

  And now in Buenos Aires it was spring.

  The airliner landed in brilliant sunshine. Cade went through the customs with no trouble at all; he was not asked to turn out his pockets and even his luggage was given only the most cursory of examinations. If it had not been for that faintly unpleasant sense of disorientation that was one of the curses of air travel everything in the garden would have been lovely.

  But he forgot about the disorientation when he saw Juanita. She was wearing another of those flowered silk dresses that suited her so well, and an enormous hat with a floppy brim and one red flower as decoration. She did not see him at first, and he just stood looking at her, thinking how beautiful she was and what a splendid figure she had, and wondering why every man in sight did not stop and gaze at her as he was doing, but knowing that he would have resented it if they had.

  Then she turned and saw him. She smiled and came towards him, and he went to meet her.

  “Roberto.”

  That she was glad to see him there could be no doubt It made him glad too. It made the whole boring journey infinitely worth while.

  “So you got my cable,” he said.

  “Yes, Roberto.”

  “I’m glad you could come.”

  “Nothing would have prevented me.”

  He could feel the weight of the diamonds in his pocket. She did not know about them. Later she would know. He hoped the knowledge would make her happy.

  “I have a car,” she said. “Shall we go?”

  “Yes, let’s go.”

  It was a white Jaguar about a year old. She drove expertly. Cade sat beside her and relaxed, content to gaze at the passing panorama of Buenos Aires, even more content to gaze at the profile of Juanita Suarez.

  “How was the flight?” she asked.

  “Filthy. As always.”

  “You do not like flying?”

  “I endure it. It’s useful because it gets you from point A to point B very quickly. That bit in between is best forgotten.”

  He had reserved a room at a hotel in the Calle San Martin. It was not one of the top class places, but adequate for the proposed term of his stay. He was not yet certain how long that term would be. To some extent it depended on Juanita.

  “What are your plans, Roberto?”

  “First a shave and a bath. Then perhaps we could have lunch somewhere if that would suit you.”

  “I would love it.”

  “Then perhaps a look at Buenos Aires. It’s years since I was last here, you know.”

  “You wish for a guide, señor?”

  “I was hoping you would offer.”

  She dropped him at the hotel.

  “I’ll be back in an hour. I have some shopping to do.”

  “Fine,” Cade said. He watched her drive away in the direction of the Plaza Mayo.

  He went into the hotel and checked in at the reception desk A bell-boy in blue livery and a lot of brass buttons conducted him to his room. It was on the third floor with a view of the Calle San Martin from the window and a private bathroom.

  Cade asked the bell-boy to fetch a sheet of wrapping-paper and a roll of adhesive tape. In scarcely a minute he was back with the required materials. Cade tipped him generously and was rewarded with a grin and a “Gracias, señor.”

  When the bell-boy had gone Cade wrapped the bag of diamonds in the paper and sealed the parcel with adhesive tape. Then he shaved, had a shower, put on a clean shirt and felt more like a human being.

  He wrote his name on the parcel, took it down to the reception desk and asked the clerk to put it in the hotel safe.

  “Certainly, señor.”

  The clerk wrote out a receipt slip and took the parcel to an inner office. He left the door open and Cade could see him twisting the dial of a massive safe. He watched until the clerk had put the parcel away and had re-locked the safe, then left the desk.

  “What are your plans for tomorrow?” Juanita asked, looking at him across the glass of burgundy in her hand.

  They were dining at a restaurant on the Calle Recon-quista. They had had quite a busy day looking at Buenos Aires. They had been to the Zoological Gardens and the Botanical Gardens; t
hey had looked at the Obelisk and the monuments to Christopher Columbus and Admiral Brown, that Irish founder of the Argentine Navy; they had strolled along the Avenida de Mayo from Government House to Congress Hall, the famous Casa Rosada; they had sipped long, cool drinks and watched the world go by. Life could be very pleasant when one was idle and need not think of the necessity of earning a living.

  But tomorrow was another day.

  “Tomorrow I have to see a man named Arilla.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes, business.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Oh, way out in the suburbs. Nearly ten miles out.”

  “You would like me to drive you there?”

  “I’d like it very much,” Cade said. “I was going to ask you. I want you to be present when I talk to him.”

  She looked surprised. “For what reason? Does what you are going to talk about concern me?”

  “I think it does.”

  She puckered her forehead. “I cannot think what business you have to discuss with a man named Arilla that could possibly concern me, Roberto.”

  “Tomorrow you will find out.”

  “So. You wish to be mysterious.”

  “Only a small mystery,” Cade said. “By weight.”

  He reclaimed his parcel in the morning and slipped it into his pocket.

  “I trust everything is to your satisfaction, Señor Cade,” the clerk said.

  “Everything,” Cade said. He saw Juanita walk into the lobby and repeated under his breath, “Everything.”

  “Good morning, Juanita.”

  “Your car is ready, señor.”

  They walked out of the hotel and got into the white Jaguar.

  “To the house of Señor Arilla,” Juanita said.

  The Jaguar moved smoothly away from the kerb and fitted itself into the stream of traffic.

  The house of Señor Alonzo Arilla was a large building that looked rather like a school. It was square, architecturally rather plain, built of brick; it stood in fairly extensive grounds dotted with clumps of trees, very green, very English in appearance. It was in fact an orphanage.