“Are you going to sleep all day?” he inquired loudly.
It didn’t make a dent on Beach’s honking.
He gathered the covers from the floor, dumped them on the sleeping beauty. “Come on, come on—”
Beach made sounds, bleared his eyes. He recognized Jose and growled, “For God’s sake, go away.”
“It’s morning, primo. Time to go home. Snap out of it.”
Beach buried his head under the pillow.
“I’m going to shower. Start pulling yourself together.” It took a little time for a man to come to after a bar tour of Juarez. But by the time Jose finished showering, Beach’s first fogginess should have worn off. By the time Beach finished his shower, Jose could start talking to him.
He didn’t know just how to start on it. He waited until both of them had their shirts buttoned, their sleeves rolled, their levis snug about their lean hips. The tough part was that he could give Beach neither the whole picture nor a little part of it. He could do nothing but ram the decision down Beach’s throat.
Beach opened. “Aren’t you going to pack?”
Jose didn’t ease into it. He said flatly, “No.”
“What’s the idea?”
He sat down on the rumple of his unmade bed, lighted a cigarette with deliberation. “I’m not starting back this morning.”
“For … God’s … sake!” Beach tossed the clothes he was folding in two directions. “I was sleeping peacefully. You woke me, you insisted I get up and get going. For what?”
“You’re leaving,” Jose said.
Beach eyed him as if he were nuts. Well, he was. “And you aren’t?”
“That’s correct.”
“What’s the clue?”
He had to be cautious. Otherwise he’d have Beach along and it would probably be Beach who’d get the knife. Beach was only a year younger but he’d always been like a kid brother. Maybe because Jose would have liked a kid brother along with a sister. Maybe because when the California relatives came to New Mexico in the summer, they always turned Cousin Beach over to Cousin Jose to take care of.
You didn’t get out of the habit of taking care of someone. Even when you knew they’d grown up, piloted fighters all over the Pacific, while you were stupidly pretending to be a peasant behind the enemy lines. Beach would get a kick out of going along on this ride but it was no deal. He had to protect the kid brother. This was the easiest way. There was nothing dangerous about the phony package. Thanks to it, he could keep both Beach and Dulcy out of his way.
“Unfinished business.” He tried to make it sound not very important.
Beach eyed him shrewdly. “The same as last night?”
“Somewhat the same.”
“And you’re not talking.”
“I’ll tell you later.” When it was safe.
Beach sighed. “Call down for some breakfast, double order coffee. I don’t know whether it’s you or Juarez firewater but my head is whirligigging.”
Jose reached for the phone while Beach continued his oration, “Why do I have to start back? I’m in no hurry. How long is this business of yours going to take anyway?”
Jose concluded the order before he replied, “I don’t know. I hope I can hop a ride this evening. There’s always someone driving up to Santa Fe.”
“I don’t get it. Why shouldn’t I hang around and we’ll start back tonight instead of this morning? What’s my rush?”
“The truck. They need it at the ranch. That’s why.” Actually it would make little difference whether the truck was returned this afternoon or tonight. Beach would point that out as soon as it clicked. “The other reason is that I promised to deliver a package to Santa Fe today. I can’t make it and I’m asking you to do it for me.”
It was too much to hope that Beach would ask no questions, although he was beginning to sense that Jose didn’t have any ordinary unfinished business to dispose of. Beach wasn’t one to sniff and circle a problem. He’d ask outright; if he weren’t answered he’d find out another way. He asked, “Promised whom?”
Jose revolved the answer on the spit of his mind.
“Why can’t we put this package on the next bus? What’s so important you deliver it? Or me? Who’s the package for?”
He’d have to open up a little or Beach wouldn’t cooperate. “I promised Dulcinda Farrar,” he said.
Beach’s eyes were bigger than harvest moons.
“I don’t know why it’s so important to her but it must be. She’s made it plain that her brother and that gorilla friend of his aren’t to know about it. Or anyone else.” If he could say: one man who knew too much, who wanted to know more, died last night. But that would have Beach in the thick of it. “All you have to do is take it to the desk at La Fonda and leave it there.”
Beach accepted it without more palaver. He returned to his packing. “Your business must be muy importante, boy, to give up a date with Dulcy. After the way you doted on her last night.”
“Don’t get any ideas. I’ll be there soon,” Jose warned. Beach had enough girls without getting mixed up with this one. He added a more serious warning, “You don’t take the package to her, you take it to the desk. You don’t mention it to her!” His emphasis was too heavy.
Beach was careful. “She was your blonde. I don’t get it.”
Jose was saved by the door buzzer. As if he weren’t in a hurry, he ambled to answer.
Pablo was bright as the new day. “Good morning, Senor Aragon.” There was no indication that he knew anything about trouble last night. He carried the large tray to the table, set it down, went out again without further conversation.
Unasked, he’d brought along the morning paper. Chenoweth service. Jose snatched it with the closing of the door. There was no murder on the front page. He was opening the sheet as Beach appeared. He couldn’t appear anxious now. A casual scanning showed nothing. If Tosteen had been found, he wasn’t news.
Beach began eating hearty. “Have you told Lou?”
“Not yet. I haven’t seen her. I’m leaving the hotel with you, just as if—”
Beach poised a forkful of ham and eggs in midair. “What is up?” Worry pricked his voice. “You’re not in trouble?”
“No.” Not yet. Jose appealed to him, “I can’t tell you yet, Beach. Like I said, it’s unfinished business. As quick as I can settle it, I’ll give you a full report. It’ll hand you a laugh.”
“I’ll bet,” Beach said wryly.
“You’ll lose. But I don’t want anyone at the hotel to know I’m not leaving. I’ll tell Lou later on.”
“What about Dulcy?”
“Particularly I don’t want her to know.”
She wasn’t around to know. When they went down to the desk, the lobby was the everyday thing, tourists waiting around for wives or husbands or the kids, and middle-aged business men in the big leather chairs, half of whom could have doubled for Tosteen. No one who looked any more suspicious than Tosteen had. Jose’s goodbye and thank you to Lou was as convincing as Beach’s.
She might not know for a couple of days she wasn’t rid of him, unless he returned to tell her. The maid would make the room neat. It wouldn’t occur to her to say anything about the guest’s clothes even if no guest were around. An employee didn’t display curiosity about the boss’s friends.
Clark made the package deal easy. “I believe you left this last night.” The same brown paper and dirty string. The same sweet stink. One thing different. A name penciled on the wrapping: Jose Aragon. Jose hadn’t put it there.
The sun was climbing higher, no silver cool of morning remained in it. Today would be worse to endure than yesterday. A short walk took them to the garage where their truck was parked. No one stopped them on the walk, no one noticed them. Beach pitched his bag into the cab, climbed under the wheel. “Get in,” he ordered.
When Jose started to demur, Beach repeated, “Get in.”
He obeyed. Beach started the motor and rolled into traffic. “I’ll give you
a lift to the bridge.” His eyes slid to Jose. “That’s where you’re headed?”
Jose nodded. The truck was too noisy for conversation. But Beach continued, “I wouldn’t start anything over there, if I were you. It mightn’t be healthy.”
Jose nodded again. When Beach let him out, the bottle of perfume remained on the seat where he’d left it.
III
Crossing the bridge was easy. Like always, you simply walked across, paying your pennies, mumbling your citizenship declaration. Neither the Americanos nor the Mejicanos gave a second glance to a dark young guy in levis and blue shirt, a dusty hat keeping sunstroke off his head.
He didn’t know exactly where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there. He was hunting a small girl who’d stolen a package, snatched it right out of his hands. But he wasn’t headed for Senor el Greco’s to find her, not yet. That was the way not to find her, unless it was to the Senor’s advantage that she face up to the man she’d gypped. And in that event, it would not be to the advantage of Jose Aragon.
Someone had murdered Tosteen. He didn’t doubt that it was murder any more than he doubted that Tosteen was marked for it. Any more than he doubted it had happened in Juarez and the body taxied to the other side. How the dead man had passed customs was something else again but it wouldn’t be too tough, a drunken companion declaring for his passed-out friend. Drunks were a dime a dozen on the border any summer night.
He had to start somewhere. He glanced down the Calle Herrera carelessly as he passed. The street was as deserted as it had been when he left the cafe last night. Walls made shadows where the sun slanted into the narrow street. The neon sign slept. The cafe didn’t open until five, not even the workers would be there at this hour. The sorbita would never be there again.
Jose let his steps lead him on, along the Avenue of the shops. Quiet, disinterested shops. The sidewalk vendors, too, were somnolent. Only the greenest gringos dared the blaze of noon. Those with pesos to toss away came later in the afternoon.
As he wandered along, he watched for one face. The one with whom he must begin. One particular brown face among many, a wrinkled face whose monkey grin was a mask to cover too much knowledge of the border. Jose came to the intersection without spotting the one he sought. He could follow the arrows to the Mercado or he could join the hum of the Plaza. He chose to walk aimlessly into the thicket of native life. He might have been one of them; they didn’t know him, but he wasn’t alien as he leaned against a dirty wall rolling a limp brown cigarette. He leaned there with others as aimless as himself, listening to the phrases they spoke to each other, nothing more important than the heat of the day, the tempting plumpness of a woman lagging by, the opportunities of the lottery. They knew a Norte Americano had been killed in Juarez last night. They were wary, they were watching and listening as carefully as he. If the subject was not worthy of phrases, it was because one they didn’t know stood among them, or because they’d talked too much of it before he arrived. When a policeman swanked by, there was a quivering silence among these men and women and children.
Because he was attuned to listening, Jose caught the boast of a ragged kid, “I saw him.” It was muted braggadocio, with an eye poked toward the disappearing uniform of the police. It spilled out because the excitement was too great to be subdued for long. “He was bloody all over….”
Another kid, equally ragged, equally thin, brown, and big-eyed, said with hushed vehemence, “You are a dirty, God-damn liar. There was no blood. He was in the river, all over with mud….”
The kid broke off as a gnarled woman cuffed him, demanding silence. “You talk of what you do not know. You talk too much.” The cluster of boys eased across the street, only the smaller ones whipping their eyes to the wall Jose leaned against. He knew then the silence was demanded because he was unknown. Not because he was Norte Americano, that they didn’t know. Because he might be a police spy.
He lingered a little, then drifted away from the wall, careful to move in a direction opposite to the one the boys had taken. He knew where to find out just a little more. The street boys would tell him, a few pesos would wag their tongues. But he’d have to wait until the suspicion had lulled, until others had leaned on the wall and smoked a cigarette, until his face was forgotten.
He moved on, crossing at the corner, continuing up the street deeper into the native city. His shirt was sticky against his back, his hat clung wet to his temples, his throat was dry as the dust of the street. He chose a bar no tourist would dare enter, a bar belonging to the men of Juarez. Bartolomeo’s bar. It was, if possible, hotter within its walls than in the outside sun. A lazy overhead fan did no more than stir the heat and the smell of beer and the stench of sweating flesh.
The bar wasn’t crowded, no more than half a dozen men gathered about it. The loudness of their voices diminished when Jose came in. It wasn’t that he looked any different but he smelled different; he hadn’t been long enough in the sun to overcome that. He shouldn’t have showered this morning, he should have chewed garlic for breakfast, but even then they would have known. They didn’t resent him but they didn’t know him. They were careful men.
He didn’t care. The keg beer was cold and the beer came first. The thick glass mug might not be sterile but it had been rinsed out, better than some joints he’d invaded. The man behind the bar was squat, his face pocked. The butcher’s apron wrapped across his jeans was patterned intricately with dark beery finger streaks. Jose downed half his mugful before he spoke. He might have been muttering to himself but he made sure the others heard him.
“A stranger is not welcome in the city of Juarez.” He spoke as a native, his accent was not theirs but it was not the accent of the ricos either. “It does not matter that he is a good man who attends the early mass on his saint’s day. It is not important that he is a devoted son to his angel mother or that he works very hard to bring home to her a few pesos with which she may buy for herself a new shawl. In the city of Juarez he becomes a mongrel dog.” He finished the beer and the muttering without glancing at any of them. He knew they had listened to his words and that some of them were ashamed. “Senor,” he addressed the bartender, “if you please, another beer.”
The half-dozen men were muttering together, their black-brown eyes observing him. He was not meant to hear or to notice the observation. Opinion was divided as to whether the stranger should be greeted or continue to be ignored. One fellow, he was called Salvador, was not to be convinced. His phrases were for Jose to hear. “It is not healthy to be a stranger,” and “The wise man does not speak with strangers.” He might be a type easily made apprehensive by ill events but he didn’t look it. His teeth were bad, his chest was narrow. He looked as Jose might have had he been born to Mexican peons instead of Spanish-American hidalgos. He was not a fellow you’d want to meet with at night in an alley.
Again Jose spoke to his beer. “A man is lonely when he is without friends.”
He had finally evoked a “Com’sta?” From a little old fellow in whose worn face there was no malice. “I do not believe I have seen you before.”
“I am a stranger,” Jose stated, ignoring in proper fashion what had gone before. All of them were willing to speak now that there had been a beginning of social exchange, all but Salvador who maintained his voluble distrust.
“From what part of the country do you come?”
He saw no reason to tamper with the truth any more than was necessary. “From Santa Fe,” he told them. He allowed the calloused palms of his hands to be seen, grateful for the results of cowpunching.
“And where is Santa Fe?”
He weighed the answer. “It is north. In New Mexico.”
The others gabbled, “My brother, he has been to New Mexico.” “My mother, she has a cousin who has been to the city of Silver.” “We have been to the beet fields of Colorado.” Until the surly question broke from Salvador, “Why do you come here?”
Jose shrugged gracefully. “My cousin and my
self, we have worked on a ranch in Socorro county. Only yesterday we have brought to market the cows. For this we receive money. He now has returned but to me there is the consideration, perhaps I can earn more money. It may well be that someone wishes a strong young man to deliver some cows to the north. It is possible.”
“You will find in Barto’s no men who own cows,” Salvador grunted. “For these you must go to the Chenoweth Hotel.” His example could have been El Paso, to narrow it to the Chenoweth was deliberate.
Deliberately Jose said in return, “Only a rich man can visit the Hotel Chenoweth. I am a poor man who wishes to earn his way home.” He measured the faces carefully while he took a full drink from his mug. They were off guard now, all but Salvador, and this one had dared him. He dried his upper lip with his forefinger. “I have heard there is a man who at times is in need of a delivery boy. He is called”—he paused as if trying to remember the name—“el Greco.”
Their faces closed as he spoke. They didn’t answer him in words, only in caution. One murmured, “I have heard the name.” They wanted no more of Jose because he spoke of Senor Praxiteles.
Boldly, Jose continued it, asking, “Do you know where I can find this Senor el Greco?”
The sequence of sounds did not become a phrase this time. The men edged farther away.
“Perhaps you would know, Senor,” Jose addressed the bartender.
“I do not know this man,” Barto denied flatly. He kept his eyes on Jose.
Jose drained the mug. “Someone must know. I have heard of him.” He set the mug hard on the bar. As it thudded, the little men shrank. Not Salvador or the bartender. “I will find someone who knows him,” Jose said boldly, and he walked out of the saloon. He didn’t walk far; he leaned in a shop doorway until he saw Salvador emerge.
He put his back to the street then, examining the shoddy shoes in the shop window. Until the fellow had passed. He figured it would happen this way. Salvador was moving with a purpose, much too energetically for the hour and for a fellow who had been enjoying his beer. Whether Salvador was headed to inform the police of a stranger’s interest in el Greco or whether he was going to el Greco himself was what Jose intended to find out.
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