The Candy Kid
Dorothy B. Hughes
For Betty and Holm Bursum—
and Juarez
Contents
One
II
III
Two
II
III
Three
II
III
Four
II
III
IV
Five
II
III
IV
V
One
HE WAS LEANING AGAINST the front of the Chenoweth Hotel waiting for Beach when the girl came by. He smelled as if he’d been out herding steers for two weeks, which was a fact. He didn’t look as if his blue shirt and faded levis had been clean this morning, which was also a fact. He was sweaty and he looked it, he could feel the little trickles of it running down behind his ears into his neck. An August morning in El Paso didn’t do much for that Man of Distinction appearance, and chaperoning stock didn’t exactly perfume a guy. He pushed his battered brown hat further back on his head for coolness. The shade of the hotel was almost as insufferable as the sun of the streets. He wished to God that Beach would hurry and get over here. If they were going to stay all night he’d have a shower before lunch, if they could get a room. He didn’t expect any particular trouble on the room, the Chenoweth would always take care of him if they had any space at all. Yet you never knew when some convention would be taking up that last midge of space.
He wasn’t having much luck rolling a cigarette, his hands were too sweaty. Just as he was thinking that he’d better go in and buy a pack, wait for Beach in the air-cooled coffee shop, the girl came around the corner. She was tall, almost as tall as he, but he took a quick look at the pavement and saw that she was propped on heels. That made him feel more male. She had a million-dollar figure in a neat blue-and-white checkered suit, pin checks; the shoes were blue-and-white spectators. She wasn’t wearing a hat; her blond and brown hair, cut short, was like a cap on her head. She didn’t look like Texas, not even like Dallas. She looked like turista from the East, New York or Philadelphia; or turista from the West, not Hollywood Boulevard but Wilshire; Beverly Hills, Romanoffs, the Bel-Air Bay club. She was upper-level stuff.
She glanced at him, the way a girl does at a man standing around doing nothing, and he saw she had a clean-cut, sun-browned face, with eyes that matched her hair, gold and brown. Cold sober, high noon in summer-drenched El Paso, he described her eyes thus romantically, gold and brown.
He let the cigarette dribble to the pavement. It hadn’t been much good anyway. And he let his eyes rest on the girl with pure pleasure. It wasn’t often, no matter what street corner you were standing on, that you got a look at something this good. Of course it had to be then, at that very moment, that the Fernandez brothers rattled by in their old truck.
Ignacio, ignoring the fact that he was at the wheel, leaned out of the cab to yell, “Que hay, Santa Fe! How’s tricks, kid?” It was pure exuberance on Ignacio’s part, being released from the bondage of herding cattle, for a day and night in the border town. He and Jose had parted not more than thirty minutes ago at the yards.
But during the diversion, the girl’s heels tapped on into the hotel; when the truck had gone by, so had the girl. Jose came to a definite conclusion. To wait outside the hotel in the heat was plain nuts. To go inside was the way of wisdom. And to follow the girl inside was the will of the Lord, else why had she been sent to tempt him? If you didn’t wrassle with temptation when you were tempted, how could you call yourself a godly man? You couldn’t, not in his book. You were just a damned sissy who ran away instead of facing up to good and evil, making a choice. Jose laughed at himself for conducting a private theological debate just because a slick dame had passed by. But he would go on in the Chenoweth to wait for Beach. He needed a cigarette, and if he just happened to run into the girl again, that was pure luck. Nothing angled for.
Having made the decision, he pushed himself away from the plate-glass window, resettled his hat, and started toward the hotel door. He hadn’t taken more than a stride when the door revolved and deposited the same girl outside again. She headed directly toward him. He wasn’t dreaming. He knew she could have been heading in this direction to pass him and go on about her business. But she’d bump into him in a minute if she didn’t stop moving. The clincher was that her eyes were on his face, not in a careless onceover but in a prying fashion, as if she were trying to get into his mind. It was quick, she hadn’t time for more. He’d been right about her eyes, they were gold and brown.
She stopped cold just before she bumped. “Senor?” she began.
“Si?” If she was going in for Spanish-speaking, he’d play along. Some of the turistas couldn’t resist going native in a big way.
But he wanted to laugh when she continued, “You want to make a little money, maybe? Un pequeno dinero? A little job, a little money, si?” She’d taken him for a bum, a border Mexican living off odd jobs for the turistas, the one hundred per cent Anglo-Saxon, gringo tourists. Well, he looked like a bum. And smelled like one. The hail from the Fernandez boys and their dirty truck had helped out the disguise.
Because it was funny, he played along. He could do the pidgin Mex better than she. “What you want, Maam?”
She studied his face, and then her eyes slanted quickly through the windows into the hotel lobby. What she saw there, he didn’t know. What he saw was a scattering of the kind of old codgers who sit around in hotel lobbies. He also saw that Lou Chenoweth was at the desk which meant he and Beach could stay all night even if the hotel was sleeping guests in the boiler room. Lou had more than once shared her own apartment with the Aragon boys.
The girl faced him again. As cool as if it weren’t ninety-nine in the shade. But she didn’t say what she wanted. She continued to sell the job quite as if he had shrugged off her initial offer. “It’s very simple. It won’t take much of your time. A little job. Por favor.” In her kindergarten Spanish she seemed to think that amusing. “Por dinero,” she corrected herself.
Jose thought it was a laugh too. If only Beach wouldn’t come barging up and spoil it. If only Beach had run into some of the Socorro gang and was sitting in a nice air-cooled bar over a cold beer. Which was what Jose had been suspecting with increasing ire for some time, while he sweat it out in front of the Chenoweth.
“No mas dinero,” said Jose firmly. “Dol-lars. American dollars.”
“Si,” the girl said quickly. “I’ll pay in dollars. Dollars not pesos.”
He simulated thinking it over. “O-kay,” he agreed without much interest. The act must be good or she was an awfully green gringo because she didn’t doubt it. She relaxed at his agreement. “What you want me to do?” he asked with the proper accent and intonation.
She was still reluctant to come out with it. She took another quick glimmer at the lobby and made up her mind. “It’s a package. I want you to get it for me.”
“O-kay,” he agreed. “I get the package for you. Where is it?” He was pretty sure what the answer would be and then he’d play indignant and turn the whole job down. She’d think she’d run into an honest bum. Until she ran into him later coming out of Lou’s suite and realized it had been a gag. He hoped she’d think it funny then. He knew he shouldn’t have carried it this far but it was so easy. And a new way to get acquainted with a new babe.
“I don’t want you to get it now.” She was talking rapidly. “I want you to come to the desk here at six o’clock. Exactly six o’clock,” she stressed.
Indeed she was green. Expecting a Mexican to be anywhere on the dot.
“There’ll be an envelope for you at the desk. The address where you’re to go will be in it. You’ll give that envel
ope to”—she retained that information—“to the man whose name will be on the paper and he’ll give you a package. Then you bring it back to the desk and you’ll get another envelope. In it will be ten dollars, American. For your trouble. Do you understand?” She’d increased the speed of her words until she was out of breath. She’d also increased the frequency of her flickers through the window.
Jose acted dumb. “The clerk—how does he know these envelopes they are for me?”
She said impatiently, “Your name is on them. What’s your name?”
“Jose Aragon.”
She’d never heard of him. He was right; she was from outside. “Your name will be on both envelopes.”
He had to force information now, in order to get out from under. “But where is it I go?” he persisted in his newly adopted dialect. “I got no car. I cannot—”
“Juarez, of course.”
He began edging. “No, Miss. I cannot do this thing. The police, they are very careful—”
“You’re not smuggling anything,” she snapped. “I’ve paid the duty. It’s just that—be at the desk at six,” she concluded and walked away fast.
He didn’t get it; there wasn’t a soul in sight. But she must have developed a sixth sense against interruption. For he could still hear the receding heels when the door emitted one of the lobby loungers. Certainly not anyone to get excited about, just an ordinary middle-aged guy with jowls and a reddened face that began to get redder the minute he hit the outdoor heat. A guy with a paunch, a sagging seersucker suit, and a sweat-stained panama. A guy who could have been Kansas or Illinois or any middle-western spot between.
He went on by without glancing twice at Jose. He walked in the same direction as the girl but in no hurry. Jose waited until he’d passed and then he himself entered the hotel. As he crossed the lobby he let his eyes wander over the inmates. They weren’t any different here inside from what they had been through the window. A more harmless-looking crew he’d never seen. They were of varying heights and widths and age, but outside of that they all looked like the one who’d just gone out. The girl couldn’t have been nervous about anyone here.
Jose saw two familiar shapes sitting together over by the muraled wall and lifted a hand and smiled in greeting. You always ran into Santa Feans in El Paso. The two gestured in return. They’d be down to hurry electrical or plumbing shipments. Jose continued on to the desk.
Lou saw him coming and her round pretty face, squared with a curly gray bob, waggled at him. “Where have you been?”
“Has Beach been around?”
“No. But he’s been calling for an hour.”
“For an hour I’ve been standing in front of your gracious hostelry,” Jose interrupted with a ferocious scowl, “waiting for that lame-brain cousin of mine.”
“He ran into Adam—” Without being aware, her voice made the name special.
“Oh-oh,” Jose interjected softly.
“—and they’re having a beer at the Blue Label. They want you to join them.”
“Look, Chiquita,” Jose leaned over the counter and gave her his best smile, “do I resemble a man who wants to go out again into that devastating heat for a beer when I can have the same served me in the shower of one of your finest air-cooled rooms?”
Lou’s chin set. “No, you look, Jo Aragon, you know just as well as I do that I wrote you and Beach two weeks ago that with the summer tours I couldn’t put you up unless you reserved in advance.”
“But, Carita—”
“The name is Lou.”
“Carita, Losita, what’s in a name? Look at me. Smell me.” He pulled at the sticky shirt. “Steers. And El Paso sunshine. Do you want your darling Jose to stink like a Tejano?”
“Mind your tongue. I’m a Tejano myself.”
“But not in the heart. Nor in the church records. Darling Lou, I am on my knees.”
“You’re not on your knees and you know it. You wouldn’t get on your knees for La Guadalupe in person, you might spoil the starch of your pants.”
“Look at them,” he wailed.
She loved him and she loved Beach. The Aragon kids, they were still grimy little kids to Lou. And she loved the game they played. In a minute she’d offer him her guest room because he was too well-bred to ask for it. Spanish well-bred, when you did not ask a favor of one too ill-bred to offer it. She said, “You’d put me out of my own room for your own pleasure.”
“But my lovely one, you know better!” He exaggerated indignation. “I would sleep in the gutter, bathe in the Rio Grande, yes, under the International Bridge—” Both of their noses wrinkled simultaneously. “—before I would cause you the least trouble.”
“You’ve always caused me trouble. You and Beach, both of you. The only peace I’ve ever had was when you two were overseas.” She tinkled the desk bell. A young dark face, impenetrable, ambled to answer. “Pablo, take Mr. Aragon up to my apartment.” She handed the key to the boy. “And get him two cold beers. I don’t suppose you have any bags.” She pushed the register to Jose. He signed for himself and for Beach.
“You’re wrong. We have bags and bags. We’re on our way home from the ranch—”
“The long way,” Lou commented dryly.
“Business,” he bowed gravely. “Darling Lou, you will call Beach and tell him we’re here and to bring the bags over at once?”
“Why don’t you call him?”
“Because I’m lazy,” he grinned. “And because I’m not speaking to him. Or his beer-guzzling companion. When did Adam get in?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know. I haven’t seen him. He hasn’t a reservation either.” But he’d get one. She’d throw out the Governor of Texas or the Aragon boys for her precious Adam. And the big lug didn’t know it. Another thing, what was Adam doing in El Paso? He wasn’t supposed to come back from Mexico for another month.
Jose turned to follow Pablo, not that he needed the kid to show him upstairs. But that was Lou, a hotel woman with routine in her mind even when her heart was going soft. Then he swung quickly back again. “Lou!”
“What now?” She pretended exasperation.
“Who’s the blonde staying here?”
“Do you think I can tell you the name of all the guests? The blonde! Dozens of blondes.”
He used gesture to describe her. “The tall, beautiful brown-blonde?” His face took on a mimicry of the girl’s, that Anglo sure-of-itself expression.
Lou’s eyebrows beetled at him. “You spot them, don’t you, Don Juan?”
“Can I help it if I have the eye of an artist?”
“The eye of an old goat.” Only she didn’t say old goat. What she said was cabron.
“I will ignore the insult to the Aragon family. The name, please.”
“She calls herself Dulcinda Farrar.”
“Where’s she from? Is she with her husband or her papa or, may I be forgiven the thought, a boy friend?”
“Jose,” said Lou firmly, “I give you shelter. I even give you beer. But you’ll darn well have to do your romancing without my help. Now get out of here before I change my mind and send you packing.”
He departed. One thing he knew. Dulcinda wasn’t a recent arrival, Lou hadn’t had to refer to the register for her name. And she wasn’t with a husband or Papa or boy friend or Lou would have said so. What was a girl of her class doing hanging around El Paso in the heat of August? The town wasn’t a summer resort. It would be full of passing-through transients this month, and the tours that stopped for a day, and men having to come down on business. But why a Dulcinda Farrar who could be at some fashionable and cool resort?
The kid, Pablo, was hanging around the elevator, waiting with the mestizo patience which negated time. Jose came up to him and flipped the key from his hand. “You rustle the beer, chico, and I’ll go up. I know the way. I’m thirsty.” He stepped in the elevator, informed Pablo’s twin, “Six,” and began the quick ascent. The Chenoweth was modern and efficient; it had to be with Lou at t
he helm.
He could have told Lou about his derring-do with Dulcinda Farrar. They’d have had a big laugh over it. But deliberately, he’d kept quiet. Perhaps instinctively; that warning red light of instinct derived from experience. For the way the girl had kept peering around, the way she’d talked, fast and quiet, wasn’t the way of an American girl on the noon-day street of an American town. It was the sort of thing he’d run into in Germany, first behind the lines, and later in occupation. And in certain other border states. He hadn’t said anything to Lou because this might be more than a simple case of hiring a Mexican loafer to smuggle something over the border. He didn’t believe for a moment that Dulcinda had paid duty on whatever the package held, not unless duty was the least important part of this.
“Six,” the elevator boy said in his accent.
How long the cage had been stopped at the floor, Jose didn’t know. He snapped out of his wondering. “Thanks, chum,” he smiled. He went along the corridor to the front, used the key to enter Lou’s place. She had a nice-sized sitting room; some good, brilliantly splashed Mexican paintings and rugs; some good American furniture covered in dusty white upholstery. She also had two bedrooms, her own and one for her guests, a bath for each. He pocketed the key, left the door ajar for Pablo, and headed for the familiar guest room. He stripped fast, letting his clothes drop to the floor. He couldn’t insult the sun-yellow chairs or bedspreads with their stink. He hoped Beach would rush the bags over. And Adam with them. He hadn’t seen Adam for months. It was a futile hope, that those beery companions would show speed, but he could hope that they would have had enough before he finished his shower. There were certain restrictions as to what a man could accomplish garbed in a bath towel.
He started the shower blending. He didn’t want the girl to turn out to be anything but a sweet kid trying to bring across more perfume than she could use. He’d had enough international experience ever to want to return to such complications. Automatically he picked up his levis and emptied the pockets. And not so automatically, he dropped his wallet and loose change and keys into the top bureau drawer, closed it. He left a quarter on the scarf for the boy.
Candy Kid Page 1