by Bacon Thorn
She thought about his answer for a moment, and then said darkly, staring deeply into his eyes, “I understand one thing clearly: I have an uneasy feeling about you. So, why do I trust you? I think it must be because you are so unlike him. You are hard, but soft here.” She pointed a finger at her heart. “He is hard and mean. I . . .”
“Were you going to say he mistreated you?”
“Yessss,” she said, drawing out the word. “But not just me, the other girls too. There was this one time,” she whispered. “I have never seen him so drunk. He said stupid things, the tequila talking. He said some day I would see his picture in the newspapers. I can read a little. I would see how important he was. I laughed at him. I didn’t mean to. It just fell out.” Barely audible, she continued in a shaky voice, “That’s when he hit me and said he did not have to prove anything to a whore. I tried to run then, but he caught me. His face filled up with blood, and he got that crazy look in his eyes. I, I . . .”
Navarre tensed, sensing what was coming. “He did something bad to you?” he prompted.
“Yes. He has big hands. He . . . he . . . tore me with his hands. I thought I was going to die. I bled so much they had to throw away the mattress. The doctor was real mad. He tried to get me to tell him who had done it, but I wouldn’t do that. It was better for him not to know. He sewed me up and said I would be as good as new in a month, and I could go back to work.”
Navarre took a swallow of sticky-sweet mescal and turned his hardened face away from her. When he looked up at her a moment later, she said warningly, “I don’t know what your business is with Pappe. It is probably better for me not to know, but stay away from him, señor. He has taken many women, not just whores like me, but wives of the poor who are arrested for nothing. He has a mean streak in him, but sooner or later, a dark, angry one will come with murder in his heart. I think some night,” she said with a savage hiss, “he will get his cajones cut off, like ripe grapes from the vine, and he will die trying to hold himself together.”
Gracia looked steadily into Navarre’s bleak, gray eyes, and then drew back a little, pressing her fingers against her mouth, her black eyebrows arching with comprehension. “Ah, I am stupid. I missed something. It was there in your eyes all of the time. The woman, your wife! You are the dark one. You will kill him.”
Navarre sat stiffly for a moment longer; then, balancing his empty glass on the arm of the overstuffed chair, he got to his feet and walked to the door. “Hide the money,” he said. “If anyone comes to ask you about my visit, tell them I paid for your favors, nothing more. Later, if we are both lucky, someone will come to take you away from this place. Thank you for your company, señora.”
Navarre closed the door to Gracia’s room firmly and stepped into the gloom of the brick patio. Her revelation of the name of the man he had seen was confirmation of the reality of the phantom that had haunted his dreams for two years. He felt cold and hot and momentarily helpless from the strong tide of emotions that swept over him. He forced himself to move deeper into the shadows of the long balcony that overhung three sides of the patio. His mouth was dry; there was a roaring in his ears, and the muscles in his hands and arms ached from clenching his fists so tightly. He took a deep breath, let it out, and remembered a shrewd observation Hebrano had made. “We’ve all been hurt and all of us think we’re guilty of something. But you’re carrying a stone on your back. What is it? Remorse? Hate? Rage? Yes, maybe rage.”
Yes, Navarre said to himself, speaking to the absent Hebrano, you were right about the rage. Only now, I have a direction, a name, an identity.
He breathed deeply again and realized that not only had Gracia Esparza given him the name of the man in his nightmare, but he was probably the same person who was up to his neck in the killing of Raldon de la Garza. And had Raldon connected Nuños to the assassination plot?
That was the moment when Navarre heard voices and spotted three men crossing the patio, headed toward Gracia’s door. He didn’t have to be told they were Mexican police, thugs with badges. And they were looking for him. He did not even have to guess about the source of the information that had led them to the prostitute. The bartender!
Quickly, Navarre appraised his position, standing in the shadows under the balcony. He was certain the darkness concealed him, but once they discovered he was not with Gracia and they came tumbling out, turning on lights, he would be discovered. They had reached Gracia’s room now, and the tall, lanky one, who seemed to be the leader, threw her door open with a gesture of contempt. Navarre heard the surprise and anger in her voice, the sound of a blow, and a sharp scream. Then, even as he turned to run, he saw in a glance over his shoulder the lanky cop framed for an instant in light as he burst through the door with a drawn gun.
Navarre ran crouched over, hugging the darkness under the balcony, and passed the closed doors to four rooms which were used by prostitutes to entertain customers. The windows in the rooms facing the patio were unlighted, signifying that the occupants were absent. Looking ahead, Navarre saw that at a left turn was a darker, rectangular space in the wall of rooms. This had to be the inside stairwell that ascended to the second floor. It was to the stairs he was heading when he looked again over his shoulder. Undecided, the tall, lanky cop was crouched and staring alertly in Navarre’s direction. That was the moment when Navarre’s right foot struck a small clay flowerpot. It had been placed next to the door of a prostitute’s room for airing, and the blow from his shoe sent it clattering across the brick patio. The sound focused the tall cop’s eyes and he fired.
Navarre heard the bullet smack the wall and, abandoning caution, sprinted to the stairwell, taking the steps up two at a time. On the second-floor landing, he hesitated only a moment, hearing the pounding feet on the patio. Calculating that there had to be an outside exit down to the street from the second floor, he ran to his right, halting suddenly in an alcove that contained a Coke machine. There he grabbed a straw broom carelessly left standing in a corner by a room maid. At the same moment, he saw an empty bottle in a trash container and grabbed it, jamming it into the back pocket of his slacks. Then, he ran to the end of the balcony and heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the stairwell descending. Also, he heard the quickly following footsteps of the lanky cop.
Halfway down the wooden steps, Navarre halted long enough to jam the broom between the two walls of the stairway. He lodged it firmly about six inches above the edge of one of the wooden steps. As he rushed down to the lighted street, he was counting on the cop to overlook the trap, stumbling over the dangerous broom handle in his eagerness to catch sight of the man he was following.
Navarre was only a few feet away from the stairwell exit when he heard a loud curse and the tumbling clatter of the tall cop falling. He resisted turning to witness the damage to the prostrated policeman and quickly joined a small crowd of five men standing in the dusty street listening skeptically to a small, dark Mexican perched on the curb in front of a bar with a lurid neon sign that spelled out the name Mago’s. Beneath the large letters in the sign were smaller, winking yellow lights that blinked out an invitation in Spanish: Come see the donkey woman.
Navarre edged closer to the group of men, pretending to be one of them. He heard the scruffy little Mexican with a leering grin explain that one hundred pesos was a bargain to witness the remarkable sexual union of the burro on a swing with the woman who was so versatile that she could pick up a quarter with the lips of her vagina. Spying interest in Navarre’s face, the little man stepped forward with a ticket in his hand.
“Hey, señor, don’t be a miser with your money. See the sight of your life. You’ll never forget Bernie with her burro. Only one hundred pesos, señor.”
Navarre dared not turn his head away from the despicable, insistent little man because he was conscious that the tall, lanky cop had come up behind him. He was certain the man had not been close enough to him in the dark to be able to recognize him. But if he acted nervous, or scared, or out of character for a m
an determined to have a good time in Boys’ Town, he was sure the cop would pounce.
Navarre pushed the annoying little ticket seller aside and dismissed him brusquely with the remark, “There’s nothing new about a donkey woman. Go away. I need a drink.”
He pretended to stagger slightly, then straightened his shoulders and wobbled convincingly across the street, conscious that the tall, lanky cop had witnessed his rebuke to the insistent ticket seller. It was not until Navarre had seated himself on a stool in a small tavern with a polished wooden bar with dozens of alcohol stains in the venerable wood that he saw the swollen, skinned place on the lean jaw of the lanky cop. The man had followed him into the bar and taken a seat a few feet away. The damage to his face in his fall down the stairs must have enraged him, intensifying his determination to find Navarre. But he was at a disadvantage. He didn’t know what Navarre looked like. He was suspicious, but there were dozens of men on the streets of the zona in search of excitement, alcohol, violence, easy women with a price, mock savagery, and the heat of lust in strangers’ arms.
The activity outside the open door of the bar was welcome to Navarre. Once he eluded the cop, he could disappear in an instant. The street was a carnival, with a thick atmosphere of sex for sale at a bargain. There was the off-key music of curbside accordions, the full-throated jangle of jukeboxes blaring songs of love and hate, the clipped carny voice of the lottery-ticket seller, “Get your lucky number! This is your night to win.” There were strolling, chirping girls in short skirts whose brown legs flashed and beckoned. And there was the sudden wafted aroma of scented candles and the soft smell of stone-ground cornmeal layered with the sharpness of strong Mexican coffee that came from vendors’ stalls which faced the street.
Navarre yearned for a cup of black coffee with a dish of beans and fresh corn tortillas, but in the bar he entered he ordered a double shot of tequila and drank half of it to keep up the pretense of a drunk on a bender.
When he had finished the tequila and ordered a second round, he asked the bartender for directions to the men’s room. Carelessly, he left three small bills and change on the bar next to his drink. He swayed when he climbed off the barstool and looked vacantly at the lanky cop who was studying him. The man had a long, angry, lean face; small, black eyes; and a pencil-line mustache making a black crease above his upper lip.
Navarre expected the cop to follow him to the men’s room. He had decided the man’s suspicions were pinging like a bell, but he wasn’t positively certain about Navarre. Cops were hated in the zona, and one who was alone, without the reassuring presence of brothers of the badge to back him up, had to be extremely careful about an arrest that would focus attention and the derision of a gathering crowd. The sympathy was always with the person apprehended.
Navarre had no plan to stop the angry cop in the men’s room, but somehow the presence of the empty Coke bottle in his back pocket was reassuring. It was when he turned down a dark hall, which smelled of urine and stale beer, and passed the door to the closet marked mujeres that he had an inspiration. The door next to the women’s lavatory was marked hombres, and sensing that the tall cop would appear momentarily, Navarre quickly opened the mujeres door, stepped in, and slammed it briskly. He was betting that the cop, leaping to the logical conclusion that the man he was following had entered the men’s room, would take the bait.
With his ear to the door he had entered, Navarre heard swift, cautious footsteps and the sudden opening and closing of the door adjoining. A moment later he was outside with his body flattened against the wall and in his right hand the Coke bottle he had been carrying in his pocket. When the cop charged out, Navarre would be hidden behind the men’s room door until it swung back to the closed position.
Navarre had barely positioned himself against the wall when the door marked hombres sprang open and the cop emerged, cursing. Awareness of danger came too late for him to avoid the blow from Navarre. Swung like a club, the Coke bottle thudded against the tall man’s skull near the crown of his head. He dropped to the floor in a loose heap, as if all his muscles had turned to jelly. The bottle was still intact in Navarre’s hand as he looked briefly at his fallen adversary. The man would probably be out for several minutes before he regained consciousness. If found, he’d be mistaken for a drunk who’d taken on too big a load.
Quickly, Navarre dropped the bottle beside the fallen man and left the bar by the front door, walking briskly two blocks, picking his way through the crowds in the zona, and emerging finally in a less populated area of boys’ town where the adobe houses and buildings were less showy. He found a taxi across the street from a neighborhood cantina. His driver, a loquacious little man, took one quick glimpse in the rearview mirror and clamped his mouth shut. He had no wish to engage in conversation with one whose face looked as dark and bitter as an old grinding stone.
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Chapter VII
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It was a quarter to twelve when Navarre stopped his taxi a block away from Santa María Iglesia. He had instructed the driver to take him to the church, but then, as the taxi swung onto El Camino del Monte Sol, the street the old colonial stone-and-stucco structure faced, which took up most of a city block with the cathedral and adjoining buildings, he told the man he’d changed his mind and to drive on into the downtown city. As they passed the imposing façade of the church, Navarre saw there were two autos in front of Santa María. He recognized the red Fiat immediately, parked behind a dark green Chevrolet.
The taxi sped by too fast, and it was too dark for him to make out any faces in the deep shadows created by the spotlights that threw vertical shafts of yellow light to illuminate the spire of the cathedral.
When the taxi was a block away from the church, Navarre signaled the driver to stop. He paid the man, added a generous tip, and left the cab with the brief explanation that he had decided to take the air and walk. The driver shrugged and drove away.
It was a moonless night, for which Navarre was thankful. Clouds covered the stars, hiding the distant mountains that cupped the valley in which Chihuahua lay. He was dumbfounded, as he walked in the direction of the church, by the discovery of the Fiat. It couldn’t be coincidence. For some inexplicable reason, Yuma Haynes had decided to visit the church. He remembered that he had mentioned its name to her when he had explained about his visit to Hebrano in Duelos.
But why was she here? And at midnight! Surely, the priests who served the church would have gone to bed. Her presence in the church didn’t make any sense. Why should she have any interest in him? Common sense dictated that she should be relieved to be rid of him. He had given her no encouragement. Their encounter had been brief. He had avoided any nuances that would suggest there was a future between them. Why, then, had she come to the church?
As he walked, slower now, less than two hundred yards from the parked cars, he hugged the deeper shadows of the houses that fronted the street opposite the church and avoided the splash of light from a solitary street lamp.
Behind closed curtains there were faint voices, families talking and watching TV. A garbage can rattled on a back porch. A dog growled from inside a fenced yard a few feet behind him. He moved silently closer to the autos parked on the opposite side of the street, the darkness shielding his figure. He came to a standstill almost directly across from the front of the church building. He stood beneath the awning attached to the front of a small market. It overlooked the sidewalk. It was a tienda, closed now—a purveyor of sundry items from Pepsi to salsa to firewood. The lighted face of the church across the street was reflected in the windows of the store.
The neighborhood surrounding the tienda was part commercial, part residential. Navarre had a back door for retreat if he needed it through the alleys and byways at the rear of the store.
Careful to stay away from the reflecting window glass, Navarre stood silently, allowing his eyes to sharpen in the darkness and make detail out of the shapes in the green Chevrolet. There were two men in the car. One, in t
he driver’s seat, lighted a cigarette. After the flare of his match, Navarre could see the coals make a spot like a red hole in the night.
Cops, he decided, and they were watching and waiting. He was surprised. He had not anticipated such prolonged surveillance. The Fiat was empty. Yuma Haynes was in the church. Asking questions about him? Could she have contacted Hebrano? Identified herself as the woman who had picked up a hitchhiker? Stranger things had happened, but what possessed her to probe the secrets of someone she had met in passing? Was Hebrano still in the church? If so, Yuma’s visit must have relieved his mind about Navarre’s failure to turn up at the church before six o’clock. But neither he nor the rest of the priests who served Santa María Iglesia could be unaware of the cops guarding the front door, waiting to intercept Navarre. Had Hebrano urged his bishop, as he had promised, to contact Lazlo Peñas about the danger to Navarre? Damn the woman, Navarre swore softly. Why was she interfering? He was torn between staying where he was to make certain Yuma departed safely and making a wide circle that would take him behind the church. Were there cops waiting there also? He couldn’t stand here in the dark all night. Barred from the church, he had to devise an alternate plan. A simple choice, now complicated by the impulsive act of a spoiled American woman. He didn’t have much time to make up his mind. The lanky cop he had clunked with the Coke bottle was probably awake, angry, and with a sore head to increase his rancor. By now he must have reported Navarre’s escape.
The necessity for a decision was taken out of Navarre’s hands. The wide door of the church opened slowly and Yuma Haynes paused in the doorway, exchanging parting words with a priest. Navarre couldn’t identify him. Yuma shook hands with the man, and then descended the flight of steps to the sidewalk. As she reached the bottom, the door to the Chevrolet opened. The interior light switched on, illuminating the man who got out and his partner smoking a cigarette behind the wheel.