by Ellery Queen
Ignoring us, he went directly to a table, obviously his by long-established right, and waited for the bartender to mix him something that looked as elaborate as a planter’s punch.
“Yes, for God’s sake don’t tell him,” I said.
The cantina was filling slowly now with the evening trade. A knot of fishermen had taken up positions at the bar. A man with a doctor’s bag dangling from one hand as though it had grown there like an appendage had taken a table alone. A table-slapping game of dominoes was going on at another. A dark small girl with enormous eyes had come out through a curtained doorway in the rear to help the bartender.
I noticed, suddenly, that Harry Munn’s eyes were following her hungrily as she moved about the room. Once, as she brushed by the table, he spoke in a rush of bad Spanish. She pushed away the hand reaching for her arm. He did not seem crushed, only dogged her with his gaze as she hurried on.
“A lovely child,” he said. “She is Rosita. There are a million girls in Mexico named Rosita, but there’s only the one, really.”
I glanced at him in surprise. The cheap liquor had granted him a return of humanity that, in his natural state, he had seemed incapable of ever again attaining.
He sampled his bottle anew, measuring out a modest amount and quaffing it in quite a civilized manner. He turned to me so suddenly I was startled.
“I guess you’re wondering how a man like me could end up in this tail-end of the universe in this condition,” he said. “You’d have to be wondering. Because you’re a writer.”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said warily.
There are a million stories like his story, all singularly unedifying. He leaned over the table. His voice sharpened, hardened.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’ve got to tell you. You understand? A person lives a whole life and never gets to tell his story. Who in Venta Prieta would listen to the likes of me?”
He jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the spick-and-span American. “Not these Mexicans. Not that American sitting over there.”
“You’re obviously going to tell it,” I said. “So why don’t you get on with it?” The air in the small room was curling now with cigarette and cigar smoke, taking on the dampish odors of beer and pulque.
He poured, measured with his eye of the remaining quantity. He seemed to think the bottle had to last the rest of his unnatural life. He sipped daintily, breathed gustily.
“You’re a man and a gentleman,” he said. “I always liked your stuff—when I used to read. I want you to know that. I always liked your stuff.”
“I won’t write about you,” I said in a last forlorn attempt to forestall Mr. Harry Munn. “That’s a promise. I never write about people who tell me the stories of their lives.”
“I don’t care about that.” He waved his hand. “I just want to tell it to somebody while I still remember. You understand?”
“Yes,” I said, touched in spite of myself by such transparent desperation. I looked across the room at the other American. He was watching us. When he saw my head turn, he took a Spanish-language newspaper from his pocket and pretended to read in the dim light.
“Take a good look at a guy, then,” Harry Munn said. “He’s got a good job, see, fine wife and kids, nice house in the suburbs. Got it made, you understand? He’s worked a long time in a trusted position, and he’ll retire with a pension that’ll put him in Florida at sixty-five with nothing to do for the rest of his life but play shuffleboard and fish from a bridge. Get the picture?”
“I get the picture,” I said. I motioned for another beer. The bartender brought it, shook his head sympathetically, went away.
“So what takes hold of a guy like that, that he decides to steal? Can you tell me?”
“Maybe you just had larceny in your soul,” I said. “How much did you get? Not enough, apparently.”
Ignoring my obvious desire to put a quick end to it, he went on. “He puts his heart and his soul into the art of embezzlement. He juggles books and accounts, he covers up, he shifts and turns. He sweats out the auditors, and he doesn’t dare take a vacation because if somebody gets a look at his books on a bad day, he’s done for.”
He stared blindly. Deep now into the sotol, his tongue was beginning to stutter. He made an effort.
“It’s a pattern, you know. Get a guy in your organization with access to money; if that guy is the first in to work and the last to leave, if he’s never sick, never takes a vacation—you can just bet he’s stealing you blind. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said, with what patience I could muster. “I understand.”
Harry Munn shook his head. “They never learn,” he said sadly. “You can go to the bosses and talk yourself blue in the face. Why, that’s old Joe, they’ll say. Good Old Joe has been with us forever. He wouldn’t take a paper clip home without accounting for it. We’ve always depended on Good Old Joe.”
He paused to lubricate his throat. His thirst fighting a losing battle with prudence, he took a pretty good slug this time. He was running through his day pretty fast. With any luck I wouldn’t have to hear the story all the tedious way to the end.
He turned his face again toward me.
“But tell me. What takes hold of that guy? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out now for a long time.”
He brooded.
“Something just reaches up and grabs him right out of that nice comfortable middle-class life and makes a criminal out of him. A day-in, day-out, forethoughtful criminal who is systematically stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, all the time so careful not to spend a dime over his legitimate income that he lives poorer than he needs to.”
“You ought to know,” I said.
“Yes,” he said broodingly. “I ought to, oughtn’t I? That’s the hell of it.”
He took a swift drink—a quick cheat on himself so he wouldn’t know he had done it.
“So what happens? He begins to get scared. He’s run his luck pretty good, he’s been careful, he’s been smart. But sooner or later, and he knows it, his luck’s got to run out. He sees jail staring him in the face—long-time jail, because banks get riled up pretty good when you steal from them. So he starts to think about cutting and running. You see the pattern?”
“I see the pattern,” I said wearily.
He sneaked another quick drink. The bottle was getting low, and he didn’t want to know it was close to becoming a dead soldier.
“He figures he’s got ’em fooled. If he can only get away with the loot, he can live a life of ease in some foreign country. Maybe by now that American wife, and the brattish kids, and that split-level house are beginning to pall on him, anyway. So he looks at the half-naked girls on the travel folders and allows himself a dream or two.”
He turned his head, searching for Rosita. She swung by the table. He reached for her with one hand, almost touching a smooth, black-satin hip.
“Rosita,” he said, “I love you, baby”—all of it in barbaric Spanish except for the endearment.
Rosita grimaced at me, twisted away.
“So he plans his escape as carefully as he planned the original crime. It’s not all that easy to get out of the country with cash money. But he figures it out—maybe he sews large bills into an overcoat, or he hides it in his car, and once over the border on a tourist card, he abandons the automobile. There’s lots of ways, some of them legitimate enough if you can afford the cost. Though it’s best to be a loner, because there’s something about money in large illegal stacks that tends to make people pretty chancy.”
“You can say that again,” I said, signaling for another beer and thinking that if ever I’d heard a story I had no use for, this was it. How trite can you get, for God’s sake? He had traveled the road as though he had invented it—and it had used him up, too, as though he were the pioneer of pioneers.
“Anyway, he gets it over the border,” he said. “He finds an obscure place where nobody will ever come looking—he thinks
. He settles down to the tropical life he’s dreamed about, all those years back and forth between drab wife and drab job.” He gazed on me anxiously. “You understand how it goes?”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s quite a story you’ve got there, Mr. Munn. Fascinating.”
He regarded me suspiciously. “Wait till you hear it all,” he said, “before you make up your mind. All right?”
“All right,” I said as patiently as I could.
He looked at his bottle. Nearly empty. His hand fumbled, toppling it. He lunged, but too late; the remaining portion spilled irrevocably. Balancing the empty bottle on the table, he regarded it mournfully.
“I suppose, by rights, it’s my round.” He transferred the plaintive look to me. “I’d be honored to treat you to a drink, mister. I just happen to be strapped right now.”
I was already motioning. The bartender shook his head reproachfully, but fetched a fresh bottle. The cantina population watched—including our American friend.
Harry Munn’s face was smeared with a smirk of satisfied greed. He had gambled a couple of swallows against my sympathetic response to the loss, and he had won. He didn’t know that I simply wanted to get him so drunk I could leave him. And I’d make damn sure he didn’t sit at my table again during my stay in Venta Prieta.
He drank generously. His tongue was perceptibly thicker when he spoke again, and his eyes would not focus.
“You think that’s the end of it,” he said. “It’s just the starting point. Because, you know what happens then?”
“No,” I said.
“They start looking for our friend,” he said triumphantly. He stared blearily. “Oh, the bank’s not too upset—they’re insured against that sort of thing. But insurance companies, now; they don’t like to pay off a loyal employee’s embezzlement. So they’re likely to put a man on your trail. You know?”
I looked at the American across the room. He was obviously listening, now that Harry Munn was forgetting to keep his voice low.
Harry Munn, wagging a finger, lowered his voice conspiratorially.
“Don’t underestimate that man. He’s tracked down a lot of people in his time. His job depends on finding people while they’ve still got enough of the loot left to make it worthwhile for the insurance company. So it behooves him to work fast.”
He was still wagging the finger.
“He’s smart, you see. He’s been there before. He doesn’t want to flush his bird too soon. He’s most interested in the money. So he works quietly, and because he knows how to look, he finds his man.” He peered at me belligerently. “Can you tell me what happens next?”
“No,” I said. “Tell me.”
“In the capital he provides himself with the necessary legal documents to enlist the arresting power of the local authorities. He comes into Venta Prieta—where our culprit thinks he’s safely hidden forever—to look the ground over. You understand?”
“No,” I said frankly. “The investigator, with one good look at you, could tell the money’s gone—so why doesn’t he go on away?” I thought about it. “Or, if you’re out to convince him the money is gone, if this is all just an act—”
Harry Munn peered for a long minute. Then, surprisingly, he giggled.
“Say now, that would make you a pretty good story, wouldn’t it? All an act!” He frowned portentously. “A story. But not real life, mister. Because there’s just one fractor you haven’t taken into account.”
He actually said “fractor.” I looked at him closely. The new bottle was half finished, and so was he. Better than half. The rest of his story had better be short.
“What fractor is that?” I said.
“The investigator,” he said, waving loose fingers in my face. “He’s a human being, too. You haven’t given him proper consideration.”
He made a pretty good fight out of that last big word.
“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“Think about that man. He knows his bird, inside and out. Understand? But—his bird’s not at all like he expected him to be. You understand?”
“No,” I said.
“Embezzlers run to a type,” he said. “The more successful they are, the more guilt there is in their souls. And. . .” He nodded wisely. “The American character doesn’t fit well with life in the Tropic Zone. It’s what they call”—he struggled with it, won—“the Protestant Work Ethic.”
He brooded again.
“But this bird. He’s happy. He’s contented. The new life is not just dream stuff; it’s really all it was cracked up to be. So, don’t you think that insurance man has got to stop and think?”
He had bewildered me this time. I wondered if his mind, so awash in the sea of cheap sotol, had cut its moorings.
“Explain it,” I said.
“This investigator,” he said. “He’s got problems of his own, right? All his working life he’s been on the go, tracking down thieves and giving them a hard time. No wife, no children, no place to call home. Just his job, and he’s good at it, and all the time he sees these other men trying for the perfect thing and never making it—when he hasn’t even had the guts to try. You understand?”
“No,” I said.
He took a long drink this time. Unaccountably, it lifted the fog from his speech.
“Except this bird,” he said. “This bird brought it off. He’s living peaceful, in a peaceful place.” He nodded. Slowly. “So our hotdog investigator, he finds a hunger inside himself for a share of it. He finds a decent place to stay. There’s a beautiful young woman he can love. So—he stays right here in Venta Prieta, along with his bird-in-the-hand, and all the time he’s carrying the documents. But he doesn’t use them. You understand now?”
“No,” I said again.
He leaned across the table. His voice was a husky whisper.
“See that American over there? Look at him. He’s got his happy little pattern of living that just suits him to a T. Every day he sleeps until noon. He goes to the barber shop for a shave and a shine. He dines in style, after which he visits the cantina to read his paper and drink those fancy punches. Then he goes home and sleeps like a baby until it’s time to do it all again tomorrow.”
“So you’re safe,” I said. “There’s no need to drink yourself to death out of daily fear he’ll use those documents.”
Harry Munn stared.
“You’re crazy stupid,” he said flatly. “He’s the guy with the money. Me, I’ve got the papers right here”—he touched his breast pocket—“to put him in jail for the rest of his natural life. And I know where the loot is stashed. To pull his string, all I’ve got to do is take a stroll down to the police station. Any time I want.”
He swung his head despairingly.
“So why don’t I do it? Why?” He gazed at me. “That American over there—he doesn’t even know who I am. You understand? He won’t speak to me, because I’m the local American drunk. I came in here, playing the drunk, just to stake him out. Pretty soon I wasn’t playing any more. Why? Why?”
“Don’t you know?” I said.
His eyes shifted. Rosita was hurrying by. He watched her hungrily. When she came back, he barred her way with an arm.
“Rosita,” he said. “There’s a moon on the beach tonight, Rosita.”
She gave him a tiny smile. I knew, suddenly: Rosita walked secretly on moonlit beaches with this strange, drunken American. She probably fed him, too, and provided the necessary daily minimum of alcohol level in his bloodstream. But, ashamed, she couldn’t let the village know.
“I’ll be there, baby,” he told her. “See if I’m not, drunk as I am. So don’t stand me up, Rosita baby.”
She sneered, pushing his arm way. At the bar a fisherman laughed. Harry acted as if he were unaware of the derision; maybe he couldn’t let himself hear. He drank deeply, directly from the bottle this time. It was the coup de grâce. His head went down on his outstretched arm.
“You understand?” he murmured, a strange
ly peaceful expression on his face.
I felt disturbed, vaguely guilty. I took bills out of my pocket, put them on the table. I scraped my chair back, looked up to see the spick-and-span American standing beside the table.
His tone of voice was censorious. “You bought him too much sotol,” he said. “Even a tourist ought to know better.” His tone softened. “Of course, you couldn’t know how Mr. Munn is. You’ll learn. . .I hope.”
He put his hands into Mr. Munn’s armpits, dragged him upright.
“Come on, Harry,” he said. “Home to bed. No beach for you tonight.”
Harry Munn sagged helplessly against his dapper protector. The heavyset little man got his weight under the lanky body, started for the door. He stopped, to smile sadly at me.
“I do this many nights,” he said. “Sad, but two Americans alone in a foreign town. It’s the least I can do.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is, isn’t it?”
I watched him struggle through the doorway with his compatriot. I noticed that Rosita cast an anxious glance as they left.
I went upstairs to my room. But I lay awake a long, long time in the tropical moonlight.
You understand?
South America
ARGENTINA
Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
(translated by Donald A. Yates)
We are proud that Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine published Jorge Luis Borges’ first work to appear in the English language. The story was titled “The Garden of Forking Paths” and it was included in our issue of August 1948. . .
Men whose word may be trusted (but Allah knows more) relate that in the early days there was a king of the islands of Babylon who gathered together his architects and magicians and ordered them to construct a labyrinth so perplexing and so subtle that prudent men would not venture to set foot in it, and those that did would become lost. This creation was a scandal, for confusion and marvel are properly operations of God and not of man.