“That’s hardly even quasi-legal.”
I said, “The way he gets the information is legal enough.”
She wasn’t amused, just impatient. “What type of activity do you think he might be planning while he’s in Rio Bravo?”
I said, “I’ve hardly had time to formulate a guess.”
“You were hired for that specific purpose,” she said.
I could feel myself winding up, and when I was wound all the way, I just took off the brake and let myself come apart.
I said, “You come to me with an assignment. You give me practically no data. Then you ask the impossible. If you want specific information aimed at answering a specific question, you’ll have to come down off that damned pedestal you work so hard to balance yourself on and tell me what I need to know.”
She surprised me. She could have got up and begun a buck and wing routine and she wouldn’t have surprised me more.
She laughed. It was a rich, throaty laugh, all full of innuendo. And so was the way she looked at me from under long lashes. She stopped laughing, got up, and offered me cigarets from a fancy box. I took one. She held the lighter for me. Then she parked on one corner of the desk and swung a foot wearing a pale green shoe and a dusky nylon stocking. Her smile was generous; it promised me everything. Everything but money, I thought.
This was such a thorough-going reversal of character on her part that for a moment I could only sit and suck on my cigaret and absorb an eyeful of neat leg.
She said, “You’re a man who doesn’t push easily.”
I agreed that I liked to think of myself that way.
She said, “I also assume you think of yourself as ethical.”
I said, “Despite what you might have read about me in the papers.”
She said, “I like a man with spirit. Let’s say that yesterday’s job was a test. If you’d come to me with a made up story of what you thought Pachuco might be up to, I would have assumed you were lying. As you say, you haven’t had time to determine anything.”
She got off the desk and returned to her chair. She kept the smile. She said, “I’ll begin at the beginning. Not long ago I received a phone call from Enrico Pachuco. He told me that he had some information I might find worth buying. From what you tell me about him, he was obviously beginning a blackmail routine.”
I said, “Did he say anything else?”
Before she spoke again, she hesitated. It wasn’t a long hesitation, just the kind a speaker would make while trying to organize his thoughts. But Rosanne Norton wasn’t the type who needed time to organize her thoughts. From what I’d seen, she was organized down to the last pedicured toenail.
The hesitation made me think she might be doing a little doctoring on her story. She said finally, “He refused to give me even a clue as to what information he had in mind. He did say that he would contact me again today. He hasn’t done so yet.”
I said, “So you wanted to find out just what kind of a man you were dealing with?” She nodded. I went on, “And you wanted to find out where he might be vulnerable.”
Her smile started to fade, but it rallied and held firm. “You might say that,” she agreed.
I said, “Therefore, I assume he has information you might find worth buying.”
The smile went fast. She tried to haul it back but couldn’t make it. Her natural disposition defeated her. She said coldly, “If you mean that I’m open to blackmail, the answer is no—except insofar as anyone in business might be.”
I acted as if she hadn’t turned off the heater. I said thoughtfully, “Let’s proceed from there, shall we? You have business interests which extend across the border. I can’t see Pachuco interested in any others. Is there anything about your hotels that isn’t aboveboard?”
“How could hotels be anything but aboveboard, for heaven’s sake?”
“Some of them might be high class call houses in disguise,” I pointed out. “And if the managers aren’t paying off to the right parties….”
She said, “I don’t own the hotels. My company simply has interests in some of them.”
That statement led me right where I wanted to go—to Navarro. I said, “Is the Rio Bravo hotel one of yours?”
“I have a twenty-five per cent interest.”
I said, “And the other seventy-five per cent belongs to Navarro?”
She said, “As far as I know.” There was nothing in her voice and nothing in her expression worth my noting. But this time her eyes gave her away. When I said “Navarro” I could see the veil drop over her eyes. She would just as soon drop Navarro from the conversation.
I said, “He seems to be quite the magnate in Rio Bravo.”
Her voice closed Navarro out. “He’s an excellent businessman.”
I said, “What kind of reputation does he have?”
“I’ve never inquired.”
I said, “But if he’s a kind of partner of yours, surely you know how he does business?” My naivete was hanging out for everyone to see.
She grew even frostier. “Since I can’t see how Mr. Navarro could enter into our problem, shall we talk of someone else?”
I said, “He might.” But she didn’t bite on that. I tried a different tack. “As a possible source of trouble, let’s say the hotels are out. But what of your labor agency? That has Mexican connections.”
She said, “I am exceedingly careful. Both the Mexican and U.S. governments are very touchy about the way the workers are handled. I’ve even lost contracts because I refused to supply workers to employers whose standards of housing or wages or food were not satisfactory.”
She sounded very righteous, very indignant, and very believable. I was sorry. I’d hoped to discover that I had an ogress on my hands.
I said, “Even so, something like that can be very touchy. If you trusted your Mexican partner too much and he did something illegal and Pachuco found out about it….”
I was inviting her to tell me who her Mexican partner was. I saw no reason for her to hesitate. It was information I could get easily enough. Still she did hesitate before she said, “That’s impossible. My Mexican partner is Mr. Navarro.”
I said, “Oh. Then you can’t think of any reason why Pachuco thinks he can blackmail you?”
“None.”
I said, “If that’s the case, you don’t need me any longer.”
She said quickly, almost desperately, “But I do, Mr. Blane.” Again, there was that slight hesitation. “I must know what Pachuco has in mind. There may be something I’m not aware of that he feels he can hurt me with.”
The desperation was a little out of character. Yet, she could be genuinely frightened. A business with as many ramifications as hers would hardly be easy to keep track of completely. I said, “All right. I’ll hang around for a while and see what gives.”
She said, “I’ll continue to pay you at the rates we agreed on.”
I got up. She got up. She smiled. It wasn’t quite as warm a smile as before, but it wasn’t frosty either. I waited. She looked at me blankly. I coughed. She said, “Oh, yes,” and got her purse and pried herself loose from a few more bills.
I was tucking away the money when someone tipped the outer office on its side and all the furniture slid with a crash to one end.
I got to the door and jerked it open. Rosanne was a bare half step behind me. I stopped and she stopped. Standing beside a desk that was no longer covered with papers or typewriter was the husky, hawk-beaked man I’d seen with Rosanne at Navarro’s, the one called Porter Delman.
And on the floor sat Amalie. A litter of papers and odds and ends from the desk surrounded her. She was crying silently and tears ran down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. She got slowly to her feet and I could see that the bodice of her dress was torn halfway to her waist. A bruise was forming on the side of her neck.
It looked as if Delman had used Amalie to sweep the desk clean.
I said, “Couldn’t you find someone smaller, buster?”
“Who the devil are you?”
I said, “The guy who’s going to bust you one if you just finished doing what I think you did.” I looked past him to Amalie. She was on her feet now, holding the torn top of her dress together with one small hand. She was still crying.
“Did he do this?”
She nodded. Delman took a half step toward her. “I caught her spying,” he said. He was talking to Rosanne. “She was listening at the door when I came in.”
“That is not true!” Amalie wailed. She couldn’t hold onto English at a time like this and she burst into Spanish. “When he came, I was picking up a sheet of paper that had blown to the floor. I try to explain this but he will not listen. He grabs me and shakes me and tells me I am a spy! And he hurts me so I will tell him who pays me! I cannot tell what is not true and he pushes me so that I knock everything from the desk.”
I said, “That was a real display of bravery!”
Delman turned on me, swinging a wild left at the same time. I caught it on the side of the head and my ears rang. He swung again but this time I was ready. I ducked under his arm and hit him twice in the middle. He wasn’t as hard as he liked to think. My fist went in quite a ways. He lost all his wind and backpedalled until the edge of the desk cut across his bulky rump and stopped him.
Rosanne said in a voice like a drill sergeant, “That’s enough!”
Delman was winding up to charge me. He looked like a bull, the way his feet pawed the rug. But when she spoke, he stopped cold. I had my fist ready. I dropped my arm. Rosanne had quite an effect on people. I was more than ever reminded of my seventh grade teacher.
Rosanne said, “Porter, wait in my office. And you, Mr. Blane, go about your business.”
I said, “I’ll see this young lady home first. She’s in no condition to work any more today.”
“As you wish,” Rosanne said coldly. She let Delman go into her office and she followed. The door closed sharply.
I said to Amalie, “Pin yourself together and let’s get out of here.”
Her eyes were wide as she looked at me. “Señor, you have just struck the most powerful man in Fronteras!”
I looked at the door Delman had gone through. I was wondering why the most powerful man in Fronteras would bother to manhandle a kid like Amalie.
Just because he thought she was listening at a door?
It was an interesting question.
VI
AMALIE GOT HERSELF pinned together and we started out. She made me want to pat her head, wipe her nose, and send her off for an afternoon nap. There was something very wistful, and very young, about her.
Outside I signalled a cruising cab. I put her in the back seat and said, “You go get some sleep and you’ll feel better.” I took out my wallet to pay the driver.
She leaned toward the open window. “You do not come with me?”
I wanted to say yes. I had some questions to ask her. But I was sure that Arden was watching from her post in the drugstore. I said, “Later, chica,” and used my fatherly smile on her.
With a woebegone look, she gave the driver an address. I paid him for the ride and then waved as she was driven off. Feeling virtuous for a number of reasons, I crossed the street to the drugstore.
I opened the door and stepped in. The bright sunlight outside made the cool dimness seem greater than it was and I needed a moment to adjust my eyes. I got them into focus just in time to see someone making tracks through a door at the rear.
I looked around and spotted Arden in a booth by the front window. I went up to her. “Wasn’t that Nace who just left?”
She looked blank. “I didn’t see anyone. I was watching you.” Her eyes fastened on my skinned knuckles. I had torn them on Delman’s belt buckle. “What happened with la Norton? Did you have to fight for your honor?”
I said, “A heavyweight bully by the name of Delman was pushing around Norton’s little secretary. We had words.”
She said, “You argue with the damndest people.”
“You know him?”
“He came to the cantina with her quite a lot,” Arden said. “He seems to be a big shot on both sides of the river.” She brushed Delman away with a shrug. “I’m hungry.”
I stepped back and let her out of the booth. “We’ll eat at the hotel,” I said. “You go first. I’ll wait a minute and then follow. We’ll meet at the plaza and grab a cab across. Okay?”
She got the idea that I didn’t want to risk our being seen together so close to Rosanne’s. With a nod, she was off. I went to the back of the store and asked the clerk for some cigarets.
I said, “How do I get to the five hundred block on Tiburon Street?”
He told me that it was in the Mexican quarter, two blocks up from the river. I thanked him and left, walking slowly. I hadn’t bothered to ask him about Nace. For all of Arden’s professed ignorance, I was sure that I had seen him. I wasn’t so sure that he had been in talking to Arden; he could have been following me.
Or he could have been checking on Amalie. Since they had been together the night before, I assumed they knew one another. I wondered if Nace had made her acquaintance because she worked for Rosanne Norton.
I decided I’d have to have a talk with Ignacio Riveres Portales. And another one with Amalie.
I walked slowly south to the plaza, picked up a cab, and had it cruise to the other side where I could see Arden waiting. When she saw me, she started forward, moving fast with that swinging walk of hers. I shut my eyes. To watch Arden in motion had a way of giving me ideas I had no time for.
Arden climbed into the cab. “In pain?” she inquired solicitously.
I said, “Someday I’ll tell you all about it,” and directed the driver to head for the river.
The border formalities over, the cab took us to the Rio Bravo hotel. We went to “our” room long enough to wash and then headed for lunch. The food was edible but no more. I understood why Navarro chose to eat at his cantina.
When we’d finished, I said, “Let’s go report to Navarro.”
“He won’t be available until six,” she said. “We can do whatever you want until then.”
I said, “Fine, let’s go upstairs.”
“Anything within reason,” she said quickly.
“And,” I went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “work out our list of rules.”
Upstairs, Arden kicked off her shoes and flung herself at the bed. She landed as usual with the looseness of a rag doll. I concentrated on lighting a cigaret. I said, “I reserve the right to try to shake you off—with due warning.”
“And I reserve the right to shoot you if I can’t stop you any other way,” she said calmly. She lit a cigaret too. “But I have only one rule. I wish you’d promise to stay put once you’re in bed. I’d like to get some sleep.”
I agreed. We smiled at one another. Arden yawned. I yawned. Without saying a word, we both got ready for siesta. With the curtains drawn over the window, the room was dim and cool. I lay and listened to Arden settling herself for sleep.
I thought about how to shake her. I decided the middle of the evening would be the best time. Then I’d go to Fronteras and talk to Amalie. I’d also talk to Nace, I thought, if Nace would talk to me.
Having decided how to spend my evening, I lay awhile thinking about what to tell Navarro when I saw him at six o’clock. My obligation was to Rosanne, not to Navarro, and yet I had made a deal with him.
I thought some more about Navarro—about him and his business relationship with Rosanne Norton. I speculated idly on the possible connections between that relationship and Enrico Pachuco, deceased.
I was still speculating when I fell asleep.
• • •
When I awoke it was five o’clock. I rolled over to
tell Arden to start stirring. Her bed was empty. I rang the desk and asked the clerk if Miss Kennett had gone out.
“The señorita Kennett?” he said in a puzzled voice.
I said, “The dancer at the cantina of the Three Goats.”
“Ah!” A great light seemed to have dawned. “It is the señora Blane you wish. The señorita has become the señora.” Then, apparently, he became aware of which room was calling him.
“Should you not remember this, señor?”
“I was just using her professional name,” I said quickly.
“The señora is in the bar, señor.”
I hung up and went to change my suit. The señora, was it. I wondered who had registered Arden and me as man and wife. Navarro, I thought. Navarro was a great joker. A real funny guy.
• • •
I found Arden in the hotel bar. I parked on the stool to her right. She was drinking rye, I ordered the same.
She had a broad smile for me. “I’d like to get pie-eyed on this stuff right now,” she said.
I said, “I don’t like the idea of my wife drinking too much.”
“Your …” She set down her glass carefully. She wasn’t smiling any more. “Explain that one.”
I said, “Ask the desk clerk. He tells me we’re man and wife.”
She said, “Oh, that. Just a matter of convenience.”
My drink came and I took about half of it at a gulp. I said, “In Mexico a wife can’t push her husband around like she can in the States.” I leered at her. “So when I say jump, honey, you jump!”
“Now you listen here …” she began indignantly.
To show her that I was going to be a real Mexican type husband, I took her drink out of her hand and finished it for her. I said, “Now, go order us some dinner or whatever wives do to show the proper respect for their husbands.” I lit a cigaret and blew a smoke ring. “And don’t get any ideas of quitting your work; we need the income.”
She slid off the stool. “It so happens that my number has been cancelled for the time being. But if it hadn’t, I’d quit before I’d dance again—after a remark like that!”
Till Death Do Us Part Page 4