Candy Kid

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  “She came in later. I gave her a big play, as if I were half in the kegs, but she was interested only in your whereabouts.”

  “Nothing about the package?”

  “Not a word. Nor did I.”

  Jose had his clothes off. He shoved into bed. Beach stretched to his feet, looked down at him. “You’re welcome to your harmless smuggling, Jo—but what’s a Fed got to do with a bottle of perfume?”

  Jose grunted, “That’s what I want to find out.”

  “That’s why you stayed behind today.”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t find out.”

  Beach went slowly to the door. “I thought between the war and the occupation you’d had yourself enough trouble to last a lifetime. I thought you went civvie to live out your years in peace.”

  “I thought so too,” Jose sighed.

  He was asleep almost before the door was shut.

  II

  The house wasn’t silent when he woke. Old Juana was yelling at the granddaughters she’d brought along to do the work; yelling above a nasal Spanish singer squalling from the radio, turned loud to a local disk-jockey show. These natural disturbances hadn’t waked him, rather it was the protracted jangling of the phone bell.

  He pulled on his bathrobe, opened his door, and shouted above the clamor, “Somebody get that phone.” He saw by his watch it was near noon. The phone had stopped ringing and he waited for a report. It came in a moment out of Nancita’s head, poked around the corner. “There is nobody on the line,” she announced with pleasure.

  It wasn’t important. If it were, the caller would try again. He said, “How about rustling some breakfast? I’ll be out in about two minutes and I’m a hungry man.”

  The girl giggled and ran away.

  He wasn’t rested but he hadn’t time for more sleep today. Not until he’d seen Dulcinda Farrar. He was washing up when the phone began jangling again. He listened and it was silent. Nancita didn’t bother to knock on his door, she walked in. “Jo,” she announced with the familiarity of one who had attended on the Aragon family from before her birth, “this time it is for you.”

  His bedroom slippers slopping along the polished brick corridor remembered old Praxiteles. He didn’t want to think about el Greco. Let Harrod take care of the old one, it was his job. But the voice on the phone brought the Senor even closer to hand. He knew who it was when she spoke, before she said, “This is Dulcinda Farrar.”

  He recalled in time that with her he must be the Spanish-American playboy, nothing more. “Well,” he caroled, “you don’t waste any time, do you, Carita?”

  “Will you have lunch with me?”

  “Is it lunch time so soon?”

  “It will be by the time you reach the hotel.”

  He gave a low laugh. “I’m not that far away.” His performance wasn’t going over; her voice continued to be clipped to business. But he wasn’t going to know anything about that business. “Be patient, Dulce, I will be with you before you can order a Cantina punch.”

  “I will be waiting.”

  Nancita and her sister were standing near in big-eyed approbation of his charms. He hung up the phone, gave them a wink. “The food—you must eat it yourselves. I have a date.” They giggled. Always they giggled.

  He dressed fast. He mustn’t keep Dulcy waiting. She might change her mind about talking; he took it for granted that she wouldn’t have called unless she had something to say to him. He knew he was playing a danger game in dealing with her. He knew he ought to turn the contents of her damn package over to Harrod right now, along with his pittance of knowledge. Let the professional take over. He’d been a professional once; without the authority and machinery that went with the office, he was as helpless as the most inexperienced tyro.

  And why wasn’t he going to turn it over to Harrod? Because he was a stubborn Spanish fool, un bobo, that was why. Because he’d never yet left a job unfinished; because his curiosity was greater than his caution; because it was agreeable to have the charming Dulcinda whistling to him? Or because of a small, dark mestiza who had risked returning the package to him?

  Before he went out he’d have to find a hiding place for his mementos of Juarez. He hadn’t done anything about the stuff last night, it was still in his unpacked bags. He’d been too tired to care. But an empty house was an invitation to search; Juana and the girls would go home after lunch; Beach wouldn’t be wasting his holiday hanging around. It was too much to hope that the phony package hadn’t been spotted by now.

  The cord and paper were easy, he put them under his pajamas in the lower bureau drawer. They probably didn’t mean a thing. Where could you hide perfume where your nose wouldn’t find it? Everything in his suitcase stunk of love roses. Where could you hide a box of candy where Nancita’s sweet tooth wouldn’t unearth it? She was a good girl, she wouldn’t touch a battered penny but candy was something else again. She would have no compunctions about breaking through the sealed cellophane. Again his fingers itched to open that box. Nothing less than diamonds or pigeon’s blood rubies must be smuggled in it; when death was part of the game, the stakes had to be large. Candy was an easy disguise. But there wasn’t time now to investigate.

  He wasn’t too satisfied but the old credenza in his mother’s room was the best hiding place for the moment. There was the usual secret drawer in the heart of it. Moreover, with his mother away, her room was entered but once a week, for cleaning, and another moreover, the girls stood sufficiently in awe of Senora Aragon not to snoop through her things. He draped a pajama top over the stuff in case any of the Juana outfit should be in the corridor. They weren’t. He closed himself within his mother’s room; on second thought, dropped the bolt on the door. The secret compartment was empty. It surprised him until he remembered that Mama Mia would have put her heirloom jewels in Tio Francisco’s vaults as always when out of town.

  The perfume first. The candy box was a close fit but he wedged it in, replaced the secret panel. He left the room as unobserved as he’d entered it. And now to join Dulcy. He picked up his wallet on the run, cut through the kitchen to ask the kids, “Where’s Beach?”

  They didn’t know. Beach had left early.

  “In my car?”

  They giggled yes. As his mother’s vintage motor was tucked away for the duration as carefully as her jewels, he was left to hoof it. To wait for a taxi would take twice as long.

  The sky was a turquoise blaze, the noon sun was hot but the mountains were in it, none of that sticky border heat. He loped down the hill and had crossed the Garcia bridge before a familiar rattle and yell, “Hi, Santa Fe!” stopped him. The vacationing Fernandez brothers in their beaten truck. He climbed in. They’d started this whole thing with the foolish tag they’d given him. They now delivered him over to her again, straight to the door of the hotel: Foolish Gentleman arrives in style to lunch with Sinister Young Blonde.

  She didn’t look at all sinister. The yellow-and-brown shine of her hair, the unembellished yellow linen dress, the tanned clean skin, the modern mouth, bold and red. She was lovely, but it wasn’t her loveliness alone that his pulses recognized. It was the girl beneath the beauty.

  She’d staked out a couch in the smaller but more popular room of the Cantina. Two of Bob’s special punches were already on the table. How she’d managed to keep away the Cantina lobos, Jose didn’t know. They eyed him with loathsome envy as he established himself.

  He didn’t want to play games, he wanted to know her. But he said in a nice loud coo, “Hello, sweet.”

  Her yellow-brown eyes weren’t those of a lovely young hotel guest, they were as stone cold as those of the sorbita. She said, “I would prefer you didn’t call me that.”

  “But it’s your name. Dulce is sweet, sweet is Dulce. Sweet as candy.” He took a sip of the punch and saluted its creator presiding behind the bar. “Sweet as La Rosa del Amor.”

  She wasted no more time. “What did you do with the package?”

  He was as distressed as Juana wo
uld have been at an accusation. “You didn’t receive it?”

  “You didn’t deliver it.”

  “My cousin delivered it. The very first thing I checked on when I returned last night.”

  She said quietly, “It wasn’t the right package.”

  He was voluble. “The package you sent me to pick up contained a bottle of perfume. True? The perfume was La Rosa del Amor. True? A bottle of La Rosa del Amor was delivered to you at the desk last night? Also true?” He pretended to be quite proud of his logic.

  She repeated, “It wasn’t the right package. What did you do with the original one?”

  “Sweet,” he began and at her faint frown, apologized, “Sorry. It goes better in Spanish, yes? Dulce—”

  “The name is Dulcy.”

  “My pronunciation she is not so good?” he protested with as heavy an accent as Jaime could have offered.

  “Stop playing games. What did you do with the package you picked up for me at Senor Praxiteles’?”

  “I lost it.”

  She didn’t believe him. She was nearing anger. “That isn’t true. You opened it.”

  “Dulce!”

  “If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known what was in the package. You wouldn’t have known what to substitute.”

  “Dulce!” he explained simply, “I have a nose!” His grimace underlined it. “I didn’t find it difficult at all. That smell one could never forget.” He laughed. “It is very popular with the girls of Juarez.”

  She hadn’t mentioned the candy; if she believed him ever so slightly, she wasn’t going to. Nor was he. The dulce was the important part of it.

  “I did not open your package,” he continued with dignity. “I merely lost it.” As if confessing a humiliation, he added, “I believed you would not know the difference if I replaced it.”

  While she thought it over, he beckoned a waitress. “Another punch?”

  Dulcy shook her head.

  “Then we’ll order.”

  She barely waited for the attendant to leave the table. “Where did you lose it?”

  “In Juarez.”

  “Where?”

  “Look, chiqua, you don’t really want me to give you the old gag, do you?”

  Annoyed, she bit the corner of her lip. “You had it at the Cock. You left the Cock, crossed the bridge, took a cab to the hotel.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “You used binoculars.”

  She was stonily silent.

  “Or X-ray eyes,” he proceeded blithely. “Or,” he smiled, “you had a little talk with Canario.”

  She neither affirmed nor denied. She didn’t care. She said, “I must have that package, Mr. Aragon.”

  “I did my best, Miss Farrar,” he imitated. “I even went so far as to return to Praxiteles’ filthy hole and ask him for a refill.”

  “You did what?” She wasn’t the icily controlled Miss Farrar now. A part of her reaction came from anger, a part from incredulity—that he had confessed to Praxiteles and lived to tell the tale?—and a part, undeniably, was from fear.

  “He tried to tell me that he didn’t sell perfume.”

  Lunch intruded. He began to eat at once. She looked at her plate but not as if she was seeing it. She said, “It is important that I find the original package.”

  “Might not be easy,” he decided, eating heartily. “Lot of petty thievery in a border town. Borders always attract scum for a good many reasons. But then there’s always informers, if you can pay. Take Canario, for example.”

  She broke in, “You aren’t a fool, Mr. Aragon. Maybe I am. I didn’t know who you were when I asked you to get the package for me. I did know when I asked you to bring it here, but I believed you were honorable.” An honorable sucker. She began to eat without tasting. “You didn’t lose that package. For some reason you have decided to keep it for yourself.”

  “Why is it so important to you?” he asked.

  She put down the fork as if she’d made a decision to speak frankly. “Because it wasn’t for me, Mr. Aragon, it was for a friend. One who had done a favor for me. I was returning the favor. You can imagine how I felt when it was the wrong package.”

  “And how did you know it was the wrong one?”

  “He knew,” she said. She began to eat again as if she’d talked too much.

  Jose leaned across the table. “Don’t look now but just entering is a long, tall fellow with that weather-beaten Texas look all over his face. I wouldn’t mention him only he happens to be an El Paso cop.”

  She tried to put on the what-is-it-to-me expression but it wasn’t good.

  “He drove me to Santa Fe last night. Before that he’d searched my bags.”

  She didn’t try to hide the start that one gave her.

  “And before that he’d asked me a lot of questions about certain events that had to do with your precious package. In particular about the death of a man named Tustin.”

  She was finishing-school polite about the way she buttered her bread.

  “Let’s both stop playing games. Tustin was after you until you transferred the responsibility of safe delivery of the package to me. You were scared of him, that’s why you hired what you believed was a Mexican punk to pick up that package. Maybe you thought no one would suspect the punk, I’ll credit you with that much, but at the same time you were thinking if there was any real trouble brewing, he was expendable and you weren’t.”

  “You are insulting, Mr. Aragon.”

  “Let’s cut out the Mr. Aragon business. We’re going to see a lot of each other while you’re hanging around these parts and I’m not risking my reputation as a caballero by having a babe like you handle me with ice tongs. You can save your own face by reminding yourself that the hired man is called by his front name, none of this mister stuff. And I’m still your hired man. Until I hand the package over to you.”

  “You did find it then?” she asked quickly.

  “I didn’t lose it. It was lifted from me. I’ll get it for you. May take a little time but I’ll get it.”

  “You know who took it.”

  “Yeah, I know who took it. And I’m not telling that to you or to your dear brother or to that cop over by the bar. Us hirelings stick together. There’s two parties after that original bottle of perfume to say nothing of the cops.” He laughed. “Might be remunerative to set them bidding against each other.”

  She said bluntly, “You need money like I need more men tagging after me. You’re the Spanish-grant Aragon.” Her lips curled. “Yes, I looked you up quite completely after my initial error. What is it you really want?”

  He considered the question. “I want to talk to the man for whom the package was intended.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “And you’ll turn it over to him?”

  “Dulcita, carita, bobita!” he laughed. He simmered down. “I will tell him where he can find it.”

  He didn’t mention that Harrod was approaching the table. That Harrod had kept an eye on them all the while he stood at the bar. She didn’t know about the cop until he was speaking over her head to Jose.

  “Hello, Jo. None the worse for your late journey?”

  Jose played it surprised. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m fine. You too?” He didn’t make introductions.

  Not that it bothered Harrod. “I’d like to meet your friend.” It was demand not request.

  Jose smiled. “I ought to insist you find your own friends. Miss Farrar, Captain Harrod.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” He pushed in by Dulcinda without waiting for a reply. “I missed talking to you in El Paso.”

  “Yes?” she replied uncuriously.

  “You were at the Chenoweth the same time that Tustin was there.”

  She seemed exasperated at what could have been an insinuation. “I wasn’t with him, whoever he is. I didn’t know anyone at the hotel.”

  “Except Beach and me,” Jose supplied blandly.

  She was precise
. “Your cousin joined my table in a Juarez cafe. He’d had a little too much to drink and felt flirtatious. Later you joined us. I had no idea that either of you was staying at the Chenoweth until your cousin mentioned it. I had not noticed either of you there.” It was full statement, for Harrod not for Jose.

  “You were at the hotel about a week.” Harrod pushed at a bread crumb.

  “Yes.” The monosyllable was tentative.

  “Why?” At the lift of her eyebrows, Harrod continued. He was exploring the same vein Jose had wondered about when he first met her. “We’ve got a nice little city, Miss Farrar, I’m not saying anything against it. But even the Chamber of Commerce knows it’s no summer resort. A lot of folks come through in the summer, sure, on their way east or west. And a lot of folks have to come down on business. And there’s some who come visiting friends or their folks. But I don’t know anybody who’d spend a week there in August for no good reason.”

  She spoke with chilly amusement. “I never thought I’d have to account to the police in this country for my spending a week in any city I chose. I had a very good reason for being there, Captain Harrod. I was waiting for my brother and a friend to arrive.”

  “From Mexico?” He slid it in so easily that she’d said, “Yes,” before she knew it.

  “They got delayed?”

  Her eyes were quick. “No,” she denied. “I didn’t know exactly when they would arrive. I was ahead of schedule.”

  “Were they motoring?”

  “Really!” she murmured. “You’d better ask them about their trip. They may have traveled by train or plane or motor or burro, I didn’t ask.”

  “They must have covered a lot of territory,” Harrod mused. “You were in Mexico too, weren’t you?”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “I didn’t exactly mean that,” he said quietly. “What I meant was you were all down there together only you came back first. You flew to El Paso and waited for the others to catch up.”

  She was seething. But it was an act. Beneath, she was frightened. “Really, Captain, why do you bother to question me? You seem to know everything there is to know about my business.”