Till Death Do Us Part

by Louis Trimble

  I thought that when she was angry, she was very cute indeed. Her eyes had a lot of spark in them and two rouge-like spots of red colored her cheeks.

  I said, “You’ll get used to it. The honeymoon is always the hardest part to adjust to.”

  She stomped off. I finished my drink and ordered another. I was at peace with the world for the first time in a long while.

  By the time I was through the second drink, it was six o’clock. I inquired for Navarro and was told he had gone to the cantina. There, I found him in his office. Arden wasn’t around, and I assumed she had gone to our room.

  Navarro waved me to a chair. I said, “My wife isn’t doing a very good job of watching me for you. I could have been long gone any time this past hour.”

  He chuckled, “The señorita telephoned me to complain of the situation.”

  I said, “Did you tell her that she’s stuck with me in more ways than one?”

  “You joke, señor.”

  I said, “The hell I do!”

  Navarro began to look worried. His joke was apparently backfiring on him. Legally, of course, I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on, but with that hotel register as evidence, I could make a lot of noise if I cared to.

  “Señor …”

  I said, “Well, let’s get to other business. I saw Rosanne Norton.”

  Navarro was willing to forget the whole subject of marriage. “And her reaction to the mention of Pachuco and my name?” he asked eagerly.

  I told him what little I had to offer. I said, “When I got to you, it was obvious she’d rather I talked about almost any other subject.”

  “Our business relations have always been amicable,” he said. “Why should the mention of my name perturb her?”

  I said, “You evidently expected it to.”

  “Mere curiosity,” he said. He wasn’t giving me anything more than Rosanne had. And the advantage was his. He had the benefit of rolls of fat to hide behind. I decided that it was about time to stop playing tag this way. I had a duty to my clients, but I also had one to myself. And Pachuco was still very dead.

  I said, “Rosanne seemed to think Pachuco came here to blackmail her. Maybe she figured you were in on the deal.”

  “I? For what could I blackmail her?”

  “You tell me,” I said. “I understand she owns a piece of this hotel and that together you two run a labor agency.”

  “Neither one is a source of trouble,” he said stiffly.

  This wasn’t the jolly Navarro with the bubbly chuckle. This was either a worried man or a puzzled one. I wished I knew which. I said, “Look, Pachuco came here and contacted Rosanne. And he scared her enough so that she was willing to part with money to get me here. Then he turns up dead, and you use his death to force me to report about my own client to you. All out of mere curiosity?”

  He shrugged. “Let us say that I like to know what my partner is up to, shall we? It is not like the lady to spend money foolishly—or any other way; naturally I am curious when she does spend any.”

  I said, “That isn’t good enough.”

  He wasn’t used to being talked to like this, no more than Rosanne was. His eyes got a hard gleam in them. “For you, señor Blane, it will have to be good enough.”

  I got up. “To hell with you.” I started for the door.

  He said, “Go eat your dinner. You obviously do not think well on an empty stomach, señor Blane.”

  He was right, of course. I stalked into the cantina and ordered a meal. By the time I was halfway through the sopa, I had simmered down a little. I was hardly in a position to walk out on him or to demand anything from him.

  I worked my way through a filete of beef. I ordered cheese cake with my coffee and a ten peso cigar with my brandy. Before the brandy and cigar were gone, I was mellow again. I decided I’d better go back and talk to Navarro. I’d had my fun; now it was time for business.

  But I had one last fling—I charged my dinner to Navarro.

  With half a cigar in my face, I started for the back of the room. As I passed the door to the bar, I glanced in. There was a lot of smoke and noise, most of it happy noise. I listened to a pair of nearby obreros in those pajama-like cotton outfits they wear going at it hot and heavy. They were getting all steamed up about the respective philosophies of Pablo Nerval and Garcia Lorca. That’s Mexico for you.

  Only one person seemed not to be enjoying himself. This was Nace, sitting quietly in a corner and staring moodily into nothingness. I walked up to him and slowed as he lifted his head. Then I went on to the front door and out to the street.

  He came after me. I moved up the sidewalk a short way from the cantina. He stopped beside me. He said in his bad English, “You sonabitch. What you doing here, huh?”

  I said, “Wondering what you’re up to, chum. Let’s go somewhere and talk about it, shall we?”

  “I have not the time to talk now. Come to my room at midnight.”

  I said, “Sure, and don’t forget to have a few answers ready—like what you’re doing here.”

  “I tell you nothing, you sonabitch,” he said. “It’s you who tell me.”

  I said, “Or what you were doing out with Rosanne Norton’s secretary last night.”

  I was trying to work him up, and I succeeded. He swore at me, in Spanish this time, and took a step backward and squared off to hit me. Short of making him appear a fool by picking him up and shaking him, I didn’t know what to do.

  I let him hit me. His fist bounced off my shoulder and he tripped over his own feet and sat down. I said, “And what you were doing in Pachuco’s room last night.” I started away. “Midnight, amigo.”

  He looked very angry and very young, sitting there on the dirty curb. I felt unhappy. I still thought of Nace as a friend.

  When I reached the door of the cantina, I saw Navarro standing there and looking out. I said, “That guy was getting an early start. He’ll have a real head tomorrow.”

  “Ah, these drunks,” he said. “And so young nowadays.”

  I wondered if either of us was fooling the other. I said, “Let’s go finish our talk, señor.“

  He said wryly, “I deserve something for the dinner you ate at my expense.”

  I laughed and he laughed. He could take a joke as well as dish one out. By the time we reached his office, he was all full of chuckles again. We sat down. He offered me one of his cigars. I took it.

  He said, “It is your opinion that the señora Norton brought you here to stop Pachuco from blackmailing her?”

  “She claims she doesn’t know what he could blackmail her about.”

  “What is your opinion of that?” he asked quickly.

  I said, “You know her; I don’t. I was hoping you had the answer.”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “she misunderstood Pachuco, and it was not blackmail which interested him.”

  I said, “He wanted to sell her information.”

  Navarro rolled his cigar around his lips. “Information of value,” he said in a positive voice. He looked at me. “Why else would someone smash Pachuco’s thumb except to demand the location of such information?”

  “Hardly for fun,” I agreed. Suddenly an idea rose up and clipped me. I said, “Speaking of torture, your little frame has fallen to pieces. Why would I have done that to Pachuco?”

  “Very simple,” Navarro said. “You were attempting to force him to write a confession clearing you of the charges which caused your trouble.”

  I said softly, “Sure, and so I put the screw on his left hand. But Pachuco was left handed, señor Navarro, and I would not be foolish enough to mangle the hand he wrote with.” I tried to see into his dark eyes. “But someone who did not know him quite so well might make that mistake.”

  Navarro said, “It is a minor point.”

  I said, “Also, for someone setting up a frame, you weren’t careful enough. Someone else was in the room before I was. And he saw Pachuco dead.”

  Navarro was ve
ry quiet. He seemed to know the person I meant; he didn’t act as if he wanted to talk about Nace.

  We smoked our cigars quietly for a while.

  Finally Navarro said, “You fight well, señor Blane, but not well enough. Pachuco is now in the coolness of the wine cellar. But when I wish, I can have him placed in your room and found there by the police.”

  We laughed at that one together—Pachuco had been a heavy drinker; the wine cellar was a very appropriate place. I thought again what a great joker this Julio Ricardo Fulgencio Navarro was.

  I said, “All right, I’m still caught. Where do we go from here?”

  “I wish your services further,” he said. “However, so that you will not feel cheated, I shall pay you.”

  I said, “I’m already taking Rosanne’s money. I can’t take yours if there’s a conflict of interests.”

  “There is not,” he said. “I wish to know the same thing the lady does—what information did this Pachuco have for sale?”

  I had the feeling that Navarro knew the answer. I had nothing tangible to go on, but the feeling was there. And I couldn’t reason it away.

  I said, “If a conflict should arise, I’ll return her money or yours, depending on which of you I think is the more honest.”

  He chuckled. “Ease your conscience any way you wish.” He opened a drawer and took out a fat roll of bills and tossed them to me. I riffled them. The first layer was of thousand peso notes; the stuffing was made up of hundred peso bills. I was holding a nice hunk of change.

  “Use that as you need to,” he said. “There is more.”

  I thought, the sonofabitch is bribing me. He was, too, but for what reason? He had me cold on the murder rap. He didn’t have to bribe me.

  VII

  I HAD A PROBLEM. I had a lot of problems. Hanging around Navarro wasn’t going to solve them for me. I had got about all I could expect from him tonight. He had given me ideas without intending to. Now, I thought, if I could get a few more ideas in the same way—from Arden and Nace—I’d have something to think about.

  I put Navarro’s wad of peso notes in my jacket pocket and went off to badger Arden. I figured that by now she’d be over her mad. If not, I hoped I could talk her out of it.

  I thought about ways of doing that, but I got no chance to use them. Arden wasn’t in our room. The desk clerk said that he hadn’t seen her coming or going. I returned to the cantina and asked Paco, the waiter if he’d seen her.

  He had. About an hour ago, she’d gone through to the rear of the cantina, to the kitchen. I went to the kitchen. The cook, a big, moon-faced character, said si, the señorita had come through his kitchen, stopped to swipe a handful of tortillas, and gone out the back door, eating them.

  I went out the back door. It led me into a dark alley that smelled ripe with garbage. I looked to the right and saw that the alley ended some distance away against an adobe wall. I turned left and started walking.

  I heard someone running and I stopped to listen. The running was heavy and not very fast. I placed it as coming from the street the alley ran into a short distance away. The running stopped. I started on again.

  I reached the mouth of the alley and took a step toward the dimly lighted street. I never got there. Someone wound up a fist and blocked me.

  The fist multiplied itself like an amoeba. It came at me everywhere at once—first on the back of the head, then against my ear, then twice in the stomach, and finally on my neck. I lost my balance and bounced back against an adobe wall that formed one side of the alley. It was black dark and I never did see the owner of the fist. For a while, I thought I’d tangled with an octopus with eight sets of knuckles. And every set was hitting hard. The only thing that kept me standing was the clumsiness of my opponent.

  A final roundhouse caught me under the ear and snapped my head back against the adobe. That was almost the last I remembered. The last was the garbage my face was burying itself in.

  • • •

  Nace said, “You sonabitch, open your mouth and drink this.”

  I opened my mouth. I felt brandy stinging a cut inside my lower lip. I made an effort and swallowed. I opened my eyes.

  I was in one of Navarro’s hotel rooms. It was smaller than the room I’d first had, but there was the usual bed and dresser and chair. I was in the chair.

  Nace was bending over me, a brandy bottle in his hand. He had a worried frown on his face, and that made him look even younger than he usually looked.

  Somewhere in the room there was a radio. An announcer was advertising mattresses in English with an atrocious Spanish accent. When he finished his spiel, he repeated the ad but in Spanish with an English accent.

  I said, “For God’s sake, get rid of that clown. My head’s ready to come apart without any help from him.”

  Nace said, “He’s a very funny fellow, that Calvin. Everybody in Fronteras and Rio Bravo listens to him every night.”

  The very funny fellow was saying, “This is Calvin Calvin calling. Remember, send your requests to me at Fronteras. And now a little number for …”

  I shut my ears to him. I took the brandy bottle out of Nace’s hand and had another swallow. It wasn’t too bad if I let it slide down my throat without touching the inside of my mouth. I handed back the bottle and got up. I found I could stand and I walked to where a small mirror hung over a washstand. On the stand was my wad of pesos.

  I said, “Taken to rolling people these days, Nace?”

  He didn’t even bother to get insulted. “That’s a lot of money for you there, Tomaso.”

  He was calling me by my first name again. I wondered why. But he wasn’t really friendly. His voice still had a lot of the cold reserve it had had since my trouble with Pachuco.

  I put the money in my pocket. Nace said, “In Rio Bravo, that many pesos could hire a half dozen killers.”

  I said, “When I kill the guy that caught me in that alley, it won’t be for pay.”

  Nace came up to me with a slip of paper in his hand. “This was pinned to your coat, Tomaso. I would like you to explain it.”

  “This” was a piece of note paper. On it someone had pencilled a message in what looked to me to be deliberately bad Spanish. I read: “Go back to Mejico and do your crooked work. Next time you will be hurt.”

  I said, “Next time?” and looked in the mirror. Nace had washed off most of the blood and garbage and I saw that I would be sore but not permanently damaged. Whoever had clobbered me was strictly an amateur. He had given me most of the beating around the head and shoulders, leaving my face more or less unmarked.

  I said, “I can’t explain the note, Nace.”

  “What is meant by ‘crooked work’?”

  I said, “You tell me.”

  He took the brandy bottle and poured himself a shot in a waterglass. “All right, I will. You came here to check ona me Pachuco for the señora Norton. I think that whatever Pachuco was doing to her, you are now doing.”

  “And I killed him so I could have a clear field?”

  “I do not think you killed him,” Nace said. “It is not like you to torture nor to use a knife.”

  I said, “Thanks. So maybe when I found him dead, I just took advantage of what he was doing.”

  “That is probably true,” he said.

  “And how did I know what Pachuco was doing?” I demanded. “I hadn’t seen him for months. When I did see him, he was dead.”

  Instead of answering that one, Nace gave a typical Latin shrug. I turned back to the mirror and dabbed a little cold water on a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth.

  I went to the chair and sat down. I said, “You aren’t big enough to have beaten me up. Have any ideas who did?”

  He shrugged again. He didn’t seem especially interested. He said, “When you did not come to see me at midnight, I went to look for you. I found you in the alley, lying in the garbage like the drunken pig.”

  I said, “Midnight!” I figured I had lain in that alley close to two ho
urs. “What time is it now?”

  The radio answered me. The character who called himself Calvin Calvin announced that it was one a.m., sign-off time, and would all the muchachos and muchachas and boys and girls and lovely people who sent in requests and bought all the deliriously wonderful products that he advertised, would they keep up the good work.

  I lit a cigaret. Nace went over and sat on the bed and stared moodily at me. I anticipated him. I said, “Would you mind telling me what kind of information I’m using to make Mrs. Norton sweat?”

  “That is what you must tell me.”

  I said, “Even if I knew, why should I tell you? In fact, what are you doing here? This is no place for a city journalist. Or is there a hot story about to break?”

  “I am working,” he said.

  I wasn’t getting very far. I decided to try another angle. I said, “You don’t think I killed Pachuco and I don’t think you did. Any ideas as to who might have?”

  He shrugged. I said, “Arden maybe?”

  He took that in his stride. “What reason would she have?”

  So he did know her. I suggested, “Navarro?”

  “That I do not know.”

  “What of Rosanne Norton herself or that baron of the cattlepens she’s engaged to?”

  He said quickly, “You should know the answer to that better than I.”

  “I wish I did,” I said. I stared at him, wondering if I should level with him, wondering if—considering how little he trusted me—levelling would do me any good.

  I decided to try. I said, “Nace, Rosanne Norton hired me to come here to find out what Pachuco was up to. I found him dead and Navarro found me. He’s got me framed for killing Pachuco. There isn’t much evidence against me but the fact that Pachuco and I had trouble is reason enough for the cops to give me a bad time.”

  “I know all this,” he said.

  I didn’t ask him where he’d found out. I suspected that I already knew. I said, “Navarro’s price for silence was to have me keep him posted on what Rosanne is doing. Now they’re partners, but she doesn’t want to talk about him and he doesn’t trust her. Does all this add up to anything in your mind?”