He was clearly surprised to see me. An old gringo with a cane and a shoulder bag. But it was my appearance that shocked him, not the fact that I was there. So it was a tip-off.
He asked me if I spoke Spanish.
“As you can see.”
He ordered the men out of the room and asked for my papers. I came out with an elaborate explanation as to why I didn’t have it on me. What, he then asked, was I doing in an abandoned house?
I told the truth. I’d been at a party and I’d returned to thank the hosts.
“What hosts?”
“The Linders.”
“Who are they?”
That was a long story and I didn’t tell it.
“Just some Americans I met.”
“Sit there and don’t move.”
He slammed the door shut behind him and then walked over to the table and sat opposite me.
He was a man of about forty-five, iron in the hair, small and chiseled and too fit. His name was Anguiano and I noticed that his hands were extremely clean, with perfectly cut and manicured nails. It isn’t always the case. He didn’t say anything for a few moments and then he crossed his legs and looked around the empty room. There was a look of faint disgust in his face.
“Did you go upstairs?” he said.
I said I’d stayed on the ground floor.
“Who is it in the sack? Do you know him?”
I asked if he’d got the pronoun correct, but he waved the question away, and now I could hear that they were poring through the whole house at a frenetic pace.
“Are you traveling alone?” he went on.
“I’m not married.”
“I didn’t ask you if you were married. I asked you if you were traveling alone.”
“So it seems.”
He then stood up, strode back to the door, and yanked it open. He shouted out into the turmoil and his team came running. He turned back and glared at me. They were taking me in and I was to do as they said. His men burst into the room and put on the cuffs. Outside in the hallway the sack had been brought down and the men stood around it holding their noses. Suspicion had fallen where it had to; the men were excitable and moralistic, as they often are. Dragged to my feet, I had the look of a criminal surprised, not agile enough to get away after using a pair of scissors to cut up another person. They hustled me outside and there were more men waiting in the road, the walkie-talkies bustling with chatter, the weapons sultry on hips. Down we went to the car, the little prison on wheels. The cat followed after us. Anguiano got into the back seat with me and we rolled off back to the city and a police station with a small room in a basement with a bed. There I was left with my shoulder bag while Anguiano went off to fill out the paperwork. I had made a mistake and yet it wasn’t the first mistake I had made, nor was it a fatal error.
TWENTY-FOUR
He came back with two coffees and so we were alone together with only the sound of pigeons outside the room’s lone window and a bulb suspended above the table. The mood was cool and undecided on his part. He wanted to know what the story was. To this question I answered that there was none: I knew no more about the sack in the upstairs room than he did.
“We ran a check on you, Mr. Marlowe. Were you in a place called Cuastecomates in the last few weeks?”
“I may have gone down there, yes.”
“But you’re not just a friend of the Linders. You’re an investigator and were thrown out of the house the other night. Some people might say you bore a grudge against Mr. Linder. Was that the case?”
“I’m used to getting thrown out of villas.”
It made him smile and he relaxed a little.
“Is that so? It must be a strange feeling. I’ve never been thrown out of a villa myself.”
“You’re a policeman.”
“In Mexico it doesn’t matter. They throw you out anyway.”
He asked me why they had ejected me from the premises that night.
“Oh,” I shrugged, “you know how the rich are.”
“Are they rich?”
“I suppose they are.”
“Were you blackmailing them for some extra cash?”
“It’s a fine idea now that I think about it.”
“Was it a fine idea the other night?”
“I went there with an open mind. I wanted to meet the man I was checking up on. You’re right, I was after him.”
It had to come out sooner or later, so better sooner, I thought. There was no harm in his knowing and it would get me off the hook more quickly.
“What were you investigating?”
He was taking notes, and so I thought I might as well give him half the truth. It would be enough for his imagination.
“Pacific Mutual?”
“It’s an insurance company in San Diego.”
And so on.
“But you could have been blackmailing them as soon as you found them. I think it’s likely.”
“You can think what you like.”
He smiled again.
“All we have are thoughts, then.”
“Well, we have a bit more than that. We have a body, for one thing. Do we know who it is?”
I said I’d like to know myself.
Something in the way I said it must have convinced him that I was not faking and he sighed and looked down at his hands folded together on the table. His marriage ring looked strangely austere and isolated, almost pathetic. He, too, stared at it as if it might inspire him to insight.
“It’s a man. We can’t say who it is because the body has been disfigured by an expert. The fingers have been filed down, as we say. And the face has been removed.”
The sweat returned and my hands went cold and wet. I leaned back and all the air went out of me.
“The forensics people are looking at it now, but we don’t have many forensics personnel here. We have to send for someone in Mexico City. Luckily, it’s only four hours away with the new road. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
“Filed down?”
He smiled a third time.
“The fingerprints are removed. We call it filing down.”
But that had to be a highly specialized job.
“To put it mildly. I’ve never seen one myself. As far as I can tell, it’s a beautiful job. It was done by someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“So you can’t identify him?”
“Not for a while. You seem genuinely curious. For a moment I actually believed your story. But I’ve heard investigators are Hollywood actors. Are you a Hollywood actor?”
“I’m Bollywood at best.”
“I see. So you can sing and dance as well? I’d still like to know what you were doing at the house the other night. It seems a very reckless and strange thing for an investigator to do. Surely you’d want to follow them from a distance.”
He was right, and I admitted it.
“But I wanted to see them in their element. It was just curiosity.”
“Curiosity?”
“I’m a child like that. It’s like wanting to torture small things.”
“Is that so?”
He considered this for a while. Was I a repulsive specimen?
No love is lost between our two professions. It’s perpetual war, gags, rib digging, and mockery. A chess game with penalties.
“You wanted to torture them. I can understand that. After a while you begin to hate the people you are chasing. I know that feeling. You want to destroy them and grind them into the dust. Is that how you feel? Everyone here is convinced that’s the reason you cut off his face. But now that I look at you—I don’t think you know how. It was done with a pair of scissors. That’s a virtuoso act of surgery and I don’t think you have the hands.”
He had already glanced down at mine
.
“But maybe you’re glad you could destroy them. Is that what you were trying to do?”
“Maybe I was,” I said truthfully.
It was truthful enough to change his mind.
“I see,” he sighed. “And you have no idea who he is?”
“I can’t imagine why they would kill someone in their own house. Maybe they had a score to settle.”
“No. Settled scores don’t involve facial surgery. It’s not vengeance. It’s concealment.”
The body, then, wasn’t just anybody.
I thought about the pathetic Roman. There was something sacrificial about him, and something between him and Donald that had been partially submerged. An antagonism. But there was no reason to disfigure him.
“How tall is the body?” I said.
“About two meters. It’s an oldish man. Maybe around seventy.”
Then it was Donald, I thought. The realization came in a single moment, and I wondered if that meant everything was over and my mission finished.
He left me then, and for the rest of the day I slept on the cot while voices and footfalls echoed around me in the labyrinth of the station. It was as if they had temporarily forgotten or mislaid me.
I thought through all the possibilities and none of them were credible. I wondered where I was. Underneath the old city, in Spanish sewers and passageways, among cellars and catacombs. The air smelled slightly of sulfur. When the light began to fade in the window, they brought in a dinner of tamales and some Coke and I began to think that this wouldn’t be as bad as I had imagined. Sure enough, I slept through the night without interruption. They must have been waiting for the forensics team to arrive from the capital. It wasn’t until ten in the morning that Anguiano returned, this time more elegantly dressed. It was as if he had been in a meeting with people more important than he was. He had two coffees this time as well, and his mood seemed to have improved a little.
“The team is here and they are working on the body. I’m going to assume you are telling the truth when you say you have no idea who it is. All the same, you were the only person on the scene. It’s difficult to make everyone believe in your ignorance. I only half believe in it myself. I think you went to the room and looked around and made sure the person in the sack was dead. That doesn’t mean you killed him. There’s no blood at all on your person and the operation will have caused a massive loss of blood. So you weren’t there when he was killed.”
“It’s a brilliant conclusion.”
“All right, it’s not that brilliant but it’s obvious enough. Still, you knew the renters of the house and you probably know where they are now. I think I have the right to ask you where they are.”
I denied everything.
“But you have an idea.”
I shook my head: “I have as much idea as you do. They’re people who like to disappear. They may even have gone on to Panama.”
After a pause, he went on: “We called your employers and your story panned out. So I have to let you go. I’m reluctant to do that, but I have no choice. You’re free to leave now, in fact.”
“It’s a shame. I was getting used to the quiet.”
Nor was it untrue. The cell was a welcome relief from the absurdity all around me.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where you are going next. I could have you followed, of course. I’d be within my rights. Someone lost his life.”
“That he did,” I said, and I saw his point. “I’ll probably give up and go home.”
I then asked him who had given them a tip-off that I would be at the house. But he shrugged; it was his information and not mine. It must have been someone who wanted me delayed for a couple of days, or maybe longer. It might not be a bad idea, I said, to trace that call and see who it might have been.
“Too late,” he countered.
We went up into the parts of the station where sunlight and fresh air existed. It’s strange how quickly you forget that the upper air exists, filled with lights, birds, dust, and the smell of cigarettes. He walked me to the front doors and we chatted about insurance frauds. They were mostly all the same, he said indifferently. Except for the ones who carved off people’s faces. He gave me his card, which was optimistic of him, and suggested that I call him if I needed to. I replied that all I needed was a lift to the bus station. They would obviously find out where I was headed, but I didn’t much care.
“Are you serious about going home?”
“I’ve given it some thought. There’s an apple pie and a pipe waiting for me and early mornings on the beach. It’s a fine life.”
We came into the hot sun of the street and the white shirt he was wearing suddenly looked princely and impressive.
“You don’t sound convinced,” he smiled.
“After a while you get tired of hotel rooms. Even nice ones with carpets. They all smell the same.”
“Ah, it’s true.”
I shook his hand and thanked him for the coffees.
“I wouldn’t go to Mexico City if I were you,” he said.
“I’ll take that as good advice.”
“Take it any way you want. But if you do go there there’s a nice hotel on the Calle Uruguay. And by the way, I’m letting you keep the money on you even though I know it’s not what you say it is. You can count it as a favor. I may need one from you someday.”
He turned and went back into the building, and the car arrived to drive me to the bus station. Once there, I went straight to the counter and got a one-way ticket to Autobuses del Norte en DF. I was sorry to be back on a bus with the little boys putting Virgin of Guadalupe stamps on our knees as if we were all going to die on the road, but there was nothing for it. Dandelion seeds and the wind. I sat at the back with the window rolled down and counted the hours passing without even looking at the clock above the driver. It felt like vagrancy, and perhaps that was the state I had aspired to all along without being able to find it: to be a stone not just rolling but gathering moss as well.
TWENTY-FIVE
I had only been to the capital once, twenty years before, and that for a brief interview of an American heiress who had holed up in a hotel there to drink herself to death. I had talked her out of it, gone for a stroll around the Pyramid of the Sun, and come home to LA. No business had ever called me back and I already knew that the city of 1968 had disappeared, never to return. In those days, it had been the most beautiful city in the Americas. But decay is written into the genes of cities. I saw it now as we came into the suburbs north of Tenayuca. The stagnant rivers and the shantytowns filled with naked, winter-like trees. There were great expanses of musty scrub fringed with refrigerator shops and the skeletal frames of unfinished buildings. The rooftops were cluttered with bent crucifixes and pink and magnolia water tanks baked in the heat. I felt that I had seen them before. Perhaps I’d dreamed about them years before and they had come out of my own unconscious to meet me on the road.
I was sure, too, that I’d already seen the drab cement motels, those multitudes of pale-green and rose shacks smothered with smoke and the power stations bristling with steel pipes and thrown into a sea of lean-tos: I had seen them in nightmares. In the depths of a blasted tenement, its side ripped out, an ancient Christmas tree sat with its red baubles in a child’s bedroom, the angel on the top sparkling in the midday light. Even if you thought of hell, you wouldn’t be able to picture a landscape dominated by the proud banners of Union Carbide and Firestone. On the soiled streetlamps the Communist counterbanners made no difference; only the shrines glimmering under the power lines were beautiful. Herds of cows flashed past in bronze-tinted fields. We came to the Autobuses del Norte at three o’clock and I walked out into the street to hail a taxi to Calle Uruguay and the hotel of the same name. It was an old place from the time of D. H. Lawrence, dark and vertical, with a room free right at the top on the roo
f, and from there I could almost see the Gran Hotel Ciudad de México.
When I arrived I asked them to send up an iron and pressed my suits myself. Then I sat on the roof until nightfall watching some fireworks that had been set in motion in the main square. The day had been clear and the tip of Popo was visible against a pale sky well into the dusk. The streets were calm and almost silent except for the clacking of mechanical toy birds that the hawkers sold to tourists at the corners. I then called the Gran Hotel and asked them if I could speak to a Mrs. Linder.
The girl said, “She’s out right now. Can I leave a message?”
“Did she make a reservation at the hotel restaurant?”
“No, sir.”
“Is she with her husband, if I may ask?”
The girl hesitated and I saw at once that she suspected that the man Mrs. Linder was with was certainly not likely to be her husband. She said she wasn’t sure, and our respective silences met in a moment of humor.
“Do you know when she’s coming back to the hotel?”
The voice became sarcastic.
“We don’t ask guests when they are returning to the hotel, sir.”
I hung up and went back to the roof.
At that point I decided the best thing to do was walk over to the Gran Hotel and see what I could see.
It stood in one corner of the zócalo where the cathedral stood, and it was one of those Porfirian piles that old men love. It was such a popular spot, with its art deco interior and stained glass, that I went straight up to the terrace bar on the roof and decided to wait here for a while in the hope that my lady decided to do the same. On the square below, people were scattered over such distances that individually they looked like little flies, flies with no wings and no malicious vitality, and among them were men playing flutes while men in Mixtec feathers performed dances. It felt like a scene that I should have seen when I was a child but never did. Seven thousand feet up, the air was thin and everything in it shone with a different light. I waited there a fair while, but still Dolores didn’t show up. In a city of many millions, there was little point in looking for her when I already knew she wouldn’t show. I felt that there was now a connection between us, such that she might well sense that I was on her tail and could maneuver herself accordingly.
Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel Page 18