The Long escape

by David Dodge

  It was spring there—November. The fruit trees were in blossom. You could smell perfume in the breeze. The air was so clear that skyscrapers poking up from the middle of the city looked like something painted on a back drop. Going through the immigration gate, I asked one of the officials what Santiago's current population was.

  "A million."

  "And of Chile as a whole?"

  "Five million, more or less."

  "A populous country."

  "Truly. You intend to stay here for some time, senor?"

  "Several weeks, probably."

  "Your business?"

  "I gather needles. From haystacks."

  I don't know what made me say it. I was feeling so low that I couldn't do anything but wisecrack. He didn't

  get the joke, so I told him I was a turisla and let it go at that.

  I got a room at the Hotel Carrera and went to work as soon as I had caught up on my sleep.

  If you look at Chile on the map, you see a strip of bacon stretching twenty-five hundred miles up the west coast of South America between the Andes and the sea. Arica is at the upper end, Pimta Arenas is at the bottom, and Santiago is in the middle. What you don't see on a map is the concentration of population in the Central Valley, which is a kind of transplanted Southern California set down between the desert of the north and the cold country of the south. One fifth of all Chilenos live in Santiago, and most of the others aren't far away. The whole country centers on the capital; industry, finance, transport, social life, everything. It's like Rome; all roads go there. Parker might not be in Santiago, but there was no better place to start looking for him.

  To take care of the obvious, I called at the United States embassy and asked for information about Robert, or Roberto, Ruiz Parker, U.S. citizen. They didn't have him on the list. They suggested I try the consulate.

  I tried the consulate. They didn't have anything on him, either. However, there w^ere other consular offices at Arica, Antofagasta, Concepcion, Punto Arenas, Val-

  divia, and Valparaiso. I could try them if I wanted to.

  I said thanks very much and tried the local phone book instead.

  There were several Parker's and a lot of Ruiz's in the phone book. Chile is so full of foreign blood, German and Irish and English and Swedes and what not who came into the country in the early days, that a name like Parker is not much more uncommon than it would be in the States. And Ruiz is the Spanish equivalent of Jones. But family ties are closer there. I figured that if my man had any right to either name, I ought to get something by spading.

  I spaded for nearly two weeks. It wasn't fun. I telephoned people, called on them, wheedled them, bullied them, bribed their neighbors, lied about my business when a lie seemed better than the truth, and learned a lot of things, including some juicy scandal. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth and no news of Robert Ruiz Parker. About all I accomplished was to spread the word around Santiago that I was looking for him, for reasons of my own, and would pay for inforniation.

  The second Saturday, after a rough week of getting no'.vhere, I decided to take the train down to Viiia del Mar and spend the week end lying on the sand.

  Viiia del Mar is a beach resort about ten minutes from Valparaiso, the main Chileno seaport. Valparaiso

  is ilircc hours by train from Santiago. I was in Valparaiso before noon, and I knew that the consulate there would be open. I stopped in to ask my usual questions so my conscience wouldn't hurt too bad about taking the week end off.

  Tiie consul was a young fellow, about my age, only balder. The minute I walked into his office he said, "Al, you old son of a bitch! what are you doing here?" so I figured we must have met before. with a little help, I remembered that his name was Lee and that we had played golf together in Mexico City when he was attached to the consulate there, three or four years before. Now he was consul in Valpo.

  W^^e talked about golf for a while. He belonged to a club near the city, and he invited me to play. He said I'd find it different from Mexico City, because he had lost fifty yards from his drives since coming down to sea-level. I said I didn't have any sticks along, and anyway I wanted to lie in the sun and do nothing for a couple of days. I had been working pretty hard.

  "Working at what?"

  "I'm looking for a guy."

  "What's his name?"

  "I don't know. He called himself Parker and Ruiz and Ruiz Parker at various times. He probably isn't call-

  ing himself that now. I stopped in to see if you had any record of him."

  "American?"

  "He carried a United States passport."

  "I'll see."

  Lee rang a buzzer and asked somebody to go through the files. While we waited, he wanted to know where I was staying. I told him I had a hotel room in Santiago.

  "When are you going back?"

  "Sunday afternoon, probably."

  "Good. I'll drive you up. The ambassador is giving his Thanksgiving party Sunday night. Everybody is invited."

  "Thanksgiving?"

  I liadn't realized that the winter holidays were coming on. Spring was busting out on every tree, there in Chile. In the streets, the high sun made you squint to shut out the glare.

  "Sure. Every American in the country goes to the ambassador's Thanksgiving party. If your man is an American, he'll show up."

  "He won't be advertising his citizenship."

  "Come along anyway. It's the big party of the year, and the ambassador expects everybody to stop in for a drink. I'll introduce you to some girls."

  I said that would be fine. His man came back to re-

  port that there wasn't anytliing on Ruiz Parker in the files. I made a date to meet Lee the next afternoon, and then went on to Viiia del Mar and rented myself a beach cottage.

  The week end did mc a lot of good. I dozed a lot in the sun, Sfot more sunburn than I needed, and didn't think too much about what a hopeless job I had. Lee picked me up late Sunday afternoon.

  The party was going strong when we got to the embassy in Santiago. A lot of cars were lined up outside, and the place bulged with people standing thigh to thigh, like peanuts in a bowl. Everything was decorated with crepe-paper corn shucks and artificial pumpkins and cardboard turkey cut-outs, just like home. It seemed particularly strange because the evening was so warm and surr^mery. Spring flowers were everywhere; in vases, in the corsages the women wore, and in floral displays made up in the shape of the American flag and the Chileno flag. The joint smelled like a cross between a conservatory and a barroom.

  Somebody shoved a glass of champagne in my hand as soon as we got inside. The crush was so bad that I had to hold the glass over my head while I followed Lee through the mob to where the ambassador was telling a joke to a bunch of girls. The ambassador looked happy. I didn't blame him. Any time I have a dozen

  good-looking dolls standing around me in a circle laughing at my jokes, I'm happy, too.

  Lee horned in to the circle to introduce me to the ambassador. The ambassador stopped telling stories long enough to say I was welcome and then introduced Lee and me to the girls. I didn't catch any of the names, but I said I was very pleased to meet everyone. When the ambassador had got his laugh on the next story, I backed out of the circle and moved over toward the wall where I could look around.

  I didn't know what I was looking for. I just wanted to do something beside stand there with a glass in my hand. Lee, being official, had to circulate among the guests. That left me alone by the wail. After a while one of the girls who had been listening to the ambassador turned around, saw me there, smiled, and began to push her way toward me through the crowd.

  Until then, I hadn't really noticed her. But when she came toward me, smiling, I knew I had seen her somewhere before that party. It was the same thing that had happened when I first bumped into Lee at the consulate; I didn't know the girl's name or where I had met her, but I knew her. The difference was that, with Lee, there hadn't been any particular reason for me to remember him. This girl
was something else.

  When she had Avorked her way through the crush to where I was standing, she said, "You seem lonelee, Mr. Colby."

  From her accented English, I guessed she was chilcna. I looked at the ring finger of her left hand and said, in Spanish. "I am lonely no longer, seriorita."

  She smiled at that.

  "You speak excellent castellano for a North American. You are North American, are you not?"

  "Yes. But I was born in Mexico. I lived much of my life there."

  "What do you do here in Chile?"

  "I had heard of the beauty of your country and its women. I wished to see for myself. Now I believe what I was told."

  It was the kind of talk that sounds corny in English but is a perfectly natural way to stall a conversation along in Spanish. And I was stalling, trying to place the girl.

  She was a streaky blonde. There are plenty of blondes in Chile, and redheads, too, because many of the best families are descended from the O'Higgenses and O'Briens and Kirchbachs and Maclvers and MacKennas who had a hand in settling the country. When I say she was streaky, I don't mean a bad peroxide job. She had the kind of light hair that bleaches even lighter in the sun, so that it looks like two shades of molasses taffy

  mixed together. Her eyes were light brown, and her skin was a golden tan. Her profile was something the Greeks would have tried to copy in marble. I couldn't understand how I could have forgotten her.

  I said, "My memory fails me as I grow older, senorita. Have we not met before?"

  "Of course." She pointed toward the ambassador, still holding court across the room. "We were introduced."

  "Before that. Were you ever in Mexico?"

  "No."

  "The States?"

  "No. But I have been to Paris and London."

  "I have not. Yet I am sure I have seen you before."

  She smiled—I forgot to mention that she had beautiful teeth—and said, "At the cineT'

  I didn't get it. She said, "I have been told I look like Mapy Cortes."

  That was it. Mapy Cortes was a Mexican movie star, and a pretty flossy one to look at. I had seen Mapy's map so often on Mexican billboards that meeting it more or less in the flesh had puzzled me.

  We talked some more. I still didn't know her name. When our glasses were empty, I went hunting for a waiter.

  She was still there by the wall when I got back. So was a dark, husky young lad with a mustache and a gabar-

  dine suit I wouldn't have minded owning. They stopped talking when I came up with the champagne.

  The girl said, "Mister Colbee, I want you to meet my brother, Fito Ruano."

  We couldn't shake hands, because both of mine were still full of champagne, but we said Hello and Some party, isn't it? Fito spoke English with the same accent as his sister; good, but neither American nor British. They had learned it in school.

  Just by accident, I saw the look the girl gave him after we had stood there gassing for five minutes. He said, "The waiters have all broken their legs, and I want a drink. Excuse me, please?"

  He grinned at me as he went away.

  I waited for the pot to boil. Nothing happened.

  I said, "Your name is also Ruano, then?"

  "Of course."

  "It is hard to catch names when so many come at once. But I shouldn't have missed yours."

  "Ruano is not a common name in Chile."

  "You are chilenaT'

  "Yes. But my family came from Bolivia, originally."

  Before I could take it from there, somebody grabbed my arm. It was Lee, stretching around two other people to reach me.

  "There's an American over here named Parker. Want to meet him?"

  "Sure. Excuse me, Miss Ruano?"

  "Certainly."

  I pushed my way through the crowd behind Lee to meet the American named Parker.

  He was an engineer, just doAvn from the States, six feet two of Yankee. He didn't liave any relatives in Chile, didn't know any Ruiz's, and belonged to the Rotary club in Buffalo, New York. It took me five or ten minutes to get away from him. I didn't expect to find the streaky blonde where I had left her, but I went back to my corner anyway.

  She was still there.

  "I thought you had abandoned me." She flashed her wonderful teeth.

  "That would have been not only ungentlemanly but foolish of me," I said. "Will you take another champagne?"

  "No, thank you. Why were you so anxious to meet a man named Parker?"

  "A matter of business."

  "What is your business?"

  I hadn't been hiding it for two weeks. I said, "I look for a man named Roberto Ruiz Parker. Have you ever heard the name?"

  She wrinkled her forehead.

  "No. Wlio is he?"

  "A man I want to talk to."

  "He is in Chile?"

  "I think so."

  "I do not know him. But we have Ruiz Guerra, Ruiz Spindola, Ruiz Montufar, Ruiz Fulano, and Ruiz Tal y Tal. Possibly even Ruiz Parker."

  We both laughed. Ruiz Fulano and Ruiz Tal y Tal were like saying Ruiz Doakes and Ruiz So-and-So. It wasn't much of a joke, but she was a pretty girl.

  We talked some more, about nothing in particular. The party began to get noisy as the champagne took hold. They make good champagne in Chile, a little sweet but with plenty of authority. People began to roam around more. My girl friend nodded and said hello every few seconds as somebody passed our corner. But she didn't leave me until her brother came by, hooked her by the arm, apologized to me for taking her away, and disappeared into the crowd. She waved goodbye over her shoulder.

  I looked over the crowd, hunting for Lee. It was time to go.

  Five minutes later my girl friend was back. I was still trying to find Lee in the crowd, and I saw her coming. She had about five thousand dollars worth of mink

  wTapped around her. When she got near the edge of the mob, she put out her hand to me.

  I took it. She said, "I do not like to think of your being lonely in my city. Mister Colbee. Will you come to tea tomorrow? About four?"

  She disappeared before I could answer.

  I looked at the card she had left in my hand. It was eneraved: Maria Teresa Ruano Tarracena. On the back she had written an address on Avenida O'Higgins.

  A waiter -vvent by about then. I speared a drink off his tray and did a piece of heavy thinking.

  You have to know Latin-American social codes to understand why I wondered about Maria Teresa Ruano Tarracena. In Chile, the idea of a respectable girl sneaking a card into the hand of a strange man she had met at a party and asking him to call on her the next afternoon was crazy. Well-to-do chilenas, as a class, are pretty, intelligent, sophisticated, well-educated, speak three or four languages, and can pull their own weight in any gathering anywhere from Buenos Aires to Moscow. One thing they don't do is pick up strange men. Even assuming that Maria Teresa was so fascinated by my profile that she had to see it again soon, she should have asked her mother or her father, or whoever was head of her household, whether it was O.K. before she invited

  nic to her home. I wondered if big brother Fito had given lier the go-ahead, and why.

  The crush kept getting thicker and noisier while I was studying the card, trying to fit Maria Teresa in witli the other facts I kept stored away in a naturally suspicious mind. Somebody in the middle of the mob was giing a pretty good imitation of a turkey just before an execution chileno style, after the bird has been filled full of whiskey to relax his muscles and is staggering around under tlie ax drimker than a hoot-owl. The act was getting a lot of laughs, but it made the crowd bulge in my direction. One bulge, a nice-looking female rear, hit the glass in my hand before I could get it out of the way.

  Siie jumped and said, "Oh, damn!" as the iced champagne soaked her skirt.

  I said, "I'm sorry," handing her my handkerchief.

  "It was my fault. I should have looked where I was going."

  She sot back against the wall and swabbed at her skirt.
<
br />   I said, "I hope it doesn't stain."

  "Don't sound so worried. It happens all the time in this country." She looked up at me, smiling. "New York?"

  "California. I can do better than that with you. Kansas."

  She shook her head.

  "Pretty close. Idaho. What are you doing in Chile?"

  "Working. What are you doing here?"

  "Working."

  We introduced ourselves.

  Her name was Ann Farrell. She had a job in the foreign exchange department of the National City Bank branch there in Santiago, and she was friendly without being too friendly for a cocktail-party pickup. She was a nice kid. I enjoyed talking to her. She had a lot of dark curly hair and an Irish map with a snub nose. When she smiled, it was different from my chilena girl friend's smile; not so much voltage behind it, but more warmth.

  We talked mostly about the people at the party. She pointed out some of the big shots to me—the Ministers of So and So and This and That were all there. Society was always well represented at the ambassador's Thanksgiving party.

  "Maybe you're society yourself," Idaho said. "I saw you talking to Terry Ruano."

  "I thought his name was Fito."

  "Fito's sister. Maria Teresa."

  "Oh. Do you know her?"

  "In a business way. Her family keeps its money in my bank."

  "Is she society?"

  Idaho looked shocked.

  "You are a stranger, aren't you! The Ruanos wouldn't talk to the Cabots and the Lodges if they came all the way from Boston to leave calling cards."

  "Exclusive?"

  "Like a safe-deposit vault. Where did you meet Terry?"

  "I had a letter of introduction."

  "It must have been from God."

  I laughed and changed the subject.