Ask for Me Tomorrow

by Margaret Millar

  “Didn’t you ask the man in the dinghy who sent him?”

  “He couldn’t speak Spanish and my English is very bad. We have been the recipients of charity before—remember the truck which carried Tula to America?—so perhaps it was merely a coincidence that the boxes came to us.”

  “Coincidences happen, of course,” Aragon said. “But in my profession they’re usually viewed with suspicion.”

  “In my profession, also.” The padre’s smile was merely a further deepening of the grooves around his mouth. “So we view with suspicion, you and I. I wish it were not so.”

  “What happened to Jenkins?”

  “No one knows or is in any hurry to find out. He had a bad effect on Mr. Lockwood. He would drive down to the village in a jeep, bringing rum and tequila and a briefcase full of drawings and blueprints and newspapers. Then after a few days he’d disappear again with more of Mr. Lockwood’s money. Anyone but Mr. Lockwood would have perceived Jenkins’ true character. He cared nothing about the villagers. He couldn’t conceal how much he

  despised the people who couldn’t read or write and didn’t care. And to me, who could read and write on a higher level than his own, he made unkind remarks about being kicked out of the Church. I was never kicked out. I left. I left voluntarily because I committed a carnal sin.”

  The padre covered his face with his sleeve and Aragon wasn’t sure whether he was wiping away tears or sweat, or whether he was attempting to hide his shame.

  “Now I have told you everything, Tomás, more than you asked. I’m a silly old man full of beer and gossip.”

  “You’ve been a great help.”

  “I hope so. I’d like very much to see Mr. Lockwood again. We had many pleasant conversations and we used to listen to his radio until the batteries wore out. Will you give him a message for me? Tell him he is missed. Tell him— No, that will be enough. He is missed. I wouldn’t really want him to know how much, it might make him feel bad if circumstances won’t permit him to come back.”

  “You mean if he’s still in jail?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he won’t be, a man of his worth, both moral and financial.”

  “I’m in no position to judge his moral worth,” Aragon said. “However, I know that five years ago he needed money very badly. ‘Desperately’ was the word he used.”

  “But he had friends, did he not—rich American friends?”

  “Rich American friends are hard to come by, especially when you’re in trouble.”

  “You said he had a wife. She is also American?”

  “Yes.”

  “And rich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps he—”

  “No. He didn’t. She refused to send him any.”

  “That is a shame.” The padre sighed, and wiped at his face again. “So you will go first to the Rio Seco jail to look for him. And if he’s not there?”

  “They must keep records.”

  “Oh, Tomás, you’re a dreamer. Records of what? Of who paid how much to which magistrate?”

  “The girl is the only lead I have.”

  “So off you go. When?”

  “I should get back to Rio Seco late tonight. Right now I’d like to look around the village.”

  “I would accompany you, Tomás, but I’m a little unsteady on my feet and this is siesta time. The sun is very hot. Do you have a hat to wear?”

  “No.”

  “Here, you can have mine.”

  “No,” Aragon said. “No thank you.” It would be unfair to the gentle little man to be reminded of him by a case of head lice.

  “Have a safe journey, Tomás. Our visit has been so enjoyable I hate to see it end. Will you ever come back?”

  “Not likely.”

  “I’ve reached the age where anyone who lets me talk seems like an old friend. By listening to my memories, you have become part of them. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I like the idea very much.”

  “Goodbye, friend.”

  “Good health and God’s blessing, padre.”

  The two men shook hands. Then Aragon started walking down toward the pier and the row of shacks beside the abandoned fish cannery.

  The severity of the sun had closed the village down as completely as if a bad storm had struck or an epidemic of plague. There was no sign of activity anywhere, even on the sloop riding at anchor in the bay. Only the sound of a crying child from inside one of the shacks indicated that they were occupied.

  Beyond the shacks, on a knoll overlooking the bay, he found what he was looking for, the beginning—and the ending—of Jenlock Haciendas. “Streets would be put in,” the padre had said, “real streets with beautiful names carved on stone pillars.” The streets, if they had ever existed, were buried under sand, but the identifying pillars remained unchanged. The same wind that blasted the paint off Dreamboat had merely kept the pillars wiped as clean as tombstones in a carefully tended cemetery. Each way was a dead end, avenues east and west, streets north and south: Calle Jardin Encanto, Calle Paloma de Paz, Avenida Cielito Verde, Avenida Corona de Oro, Avenida Gilda.

  “Avenida Gilda.” He repeated the name aloud as if the sound of it might make it more believable. The stone was perfectly symmetrical and the carving done with great care and skill in Gothic letters.

  He went back to his car. Through the open door of the mission he could hear the padre snoring. He took the remaining bottles of beer inside and left them on the table. The Blessed Virgin gave him one fierce final stare.

  He reached Rio Seco about one o’clock in the morning and checked into a hotel. It was too late to phone Gilly. Besides, he had very little to tell her and nothing she’d like to hear: B. J. and his partner, Jenkins, had been taken to jail; the boy, Pablo, was not only crippled but retarded; and in the middle of a couple of billion cubic feet of sand was a tombstone with her name carved on it.

  He went to bed.

  8

  The jail was in the center of Rio Seco as if it had been the first structure and the rest of the city had been built around it. It was shaped like a roundhouse and circled by stone walls twenty-five or thirty feet high which gave it its name: the stone quarry. La Cantera, Penitenciaria del Estado was carved above the main entrance where Aragon stood with the other people waiting to be admitted.

  In spite of the earliness of the hour, traffic was heavy and the crowd outside the jail was large—a few men of varying ages, but mostly women carrying babies and straw bags and packages wrapped in newspaper, and a handful of prostitutes in miniskirts and maxiwigs. Children played in the street, oblivious to the honking of horns and squealing of tires, or ran up the stone steps and slid down the iron banisters. Apart from the crowd an older American couple, neatly dressed and quiet, stood with their arms locked as if they were holding each other up.

  One of the three guards on duty, a young man wearing a cowboy hat and oversized boots that looked like hand-me-downs from a bigger brother, fielded questions: “Ten more minutes, I don’t make the rules, señora . . . Carlos Gonzalez got out last week . . . Café opens at nine . . . You can go home, girls, it’s too early. Give the boys a chance to wash up . . . If Gonzalez left a message, I don’t know about it . . . Anyone want a shouter? Ten cents for a shouter, fifteen cents for a first-class shouter.”

  The American man held up his hand. “Yes. Please.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen cents.”

  “Name?”

  “Sandra Boyd.”

  “Sandra Boyd. Okay, anyone else? . . . Ten cents for Cecilio Martinez . . . Five cents for Manuel Ysidro. That’s a whisper, maybe you don’t want him to hear . . . Ten for Fernando Escobar . . . Ten, Inocente Santana. We got a lot of Inocentes in this place. Not a guilty in sight, ha ha . . . Carlos Gonzalez. You’re wasting your money, señora. I told you, he’s gone. Okay, ten for Go
nzalez.”

  “Lockwood,” Aragon said. “B. J. Lockwood and Harry Jenkins.”

  “That’s two names.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t have one shouter for two names. You must have one shouter for each name.”

  “All right, thirty cents.”

  At eight thirty the gates of the Quarry opened and the crowd surged inside. No attempt was made to question or search anyone or to examine packages. It would have been impossible under the circumstances. The pushing and shoving and screaming reminded Aragon of doorbuster sales at some of the stores back home.

  Within the walls, similar high-pressure merchandising was taking place. The prison peddlers began hawking their wares: pottery, leatherwork, novelties, food and drink, children’s toys. A trio of mariachis singing “Guadalajara, Guadalajara,” gave a fiesta atmosphere to the scene.

  The mariachis picked Aragon as their first mark of the morning.

  “You want to hear a special song, señor?”

  “No thanks.”

  “We sing anything you say.”

  “Not right now.”

  “We know a hundred songs.”

  Aragon paid twenty-five cents not to hear any of them.

  The cellblocks were built in a circle around a huge recreation yard, where a soccer game was in progress. While he waited in line at the iron-grilled information window, he watched the soccer game. Both sides were dressed alike, so it was difficult to follow. But it was a very lively spectacle, since there were no referees.

  Guadalajara, Guadalajara.

  You buy a taco, señor? An empanada?

  Real, hand-tooled leather purses and belts at prices so low it is a crime.

  Balloons, dolls, madonnas, bracelets, cigarettes.

  A fight broke out between two men peddling identical calfskin wallets. Compared to the soccer game, it was dull and half-hearted and attracted little attention. Obviously the inmates had more interest in soccer than in fistfights that consisted mainly of loud words and soft blows.

  The shouters were already at work:

  “Oswaldo Fernandez, hey, Oswaldo Fernandez, hey, Fernandez.”

  “Cruz Rivera, ay ay Cruz, ay ay Rivera, ay ay ay ay Cruz Rivera.”

  “B. J. Lockwood . . . Lock—wood.”

  “Harry Jenkins . . . You are wanted, Harry Jenkins.”

  “Juanita Maria Placencia, come here, Jua—ni—ta!”

  “Sandra Boyd, if you please . . . Sandra Boyd . . . Sandra Boyd.”

  “Amelio Gutierrez, answer to your name.”

  When Aragon’s turn came he presented his credentials to the uniformed man at the information window. After consulting with his colleagues, the man sent a runner to summon the assistant to the assistant to the warden himself.

  The new arrival introduced himself as Superintendent Perdiz. “These two Americans you are asking about, I never heard of them. It would be better for you to come back later when the warden is here.”

  “How much later?”

  “Wednesday. He works very hard and needs long weekends to recuperate at his beach house.”

  “Who’s in charge when the warden’s away?”

  “The assistant warden. He’ll be back tomorrow, Tuesday. He doesn’t need such long weekends because his responsibilities are not so great.”

  “He’s got a beach house, too, I suppose.”

  “No. He likes to go to the mountains. The air is more invigorating. Here in Rio Seco we have bad air. Do you smell it? Phew!”

  Aragon smelled it. Traffic odors, people odors, jail odors, exhaust fumes, sweat, garlic, urine, cigarette smoke, antiseptic.

  “Phew,” Perdiz said again. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you understand the need for long weekends out of town?”

  “Of course.”

  “So now we are in complete agreement. A man, even one in a lowly position like mine, needs a country house for a breath of sea or mountain air on the weekends. I’d like to buy such a place but my salary won’t allow it.”

  “Would ten dollars help?”

  “A little more might inspire me to go and search the files personally. What do you think my personal attention is worth?”

  “Fifteen dollars.”

  “That’s most kind of you.”

  Perdiz accepted the bribe with solemn dignity. After all, it was part of the system, paying a mordida to influyentes, and he was an influyente. “You wait here.”

  Aragon waited. He watched the soccer game some more and bought a wallet from the loser of the fistfight, a can of ginger ale and a doll made of two withered oranges with cloves marking its features and dried red chiles for arms and legs. He didn’t know why he’d bought such a ridiculous thing until he held it in his hand and studied it for a while: it looked like Pablo, round-eyed and vacant-faced, untouched, untouchable.

  The shouters were still at work. At least one of them had brought results—the American couple were talking to a pale stringy-haired young woman wearing a ragged poncho that reached almost to her ankles. The man was doing most of the talking, the older woman was crying, the younger one looked bored.

  Perdiz returned. Nowhere in the files was there any mention of B. J. Lockwood.

  “You should have some record of him,” Aragon said. “He was arrested.”

  “How do you know he was arrested?”

  “I was told.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A priest.”

  “A priest. Then it’s very likely true that he was arrested. But maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he didn’t do anything wrong, so they let him go. If we kept records on everyone who never did anything wrong, we’d have a jail full of paper. A paper jail, isn’t that a funny idea?”

  “A real rib-tickler,” Aragon said. Gilly was now an unofficial contributor to a beach house or maybe a mountain cabin, but she wasn’t any closer to B. J. “What about Harry Jenkins?”

  “I could find nothing concerning him either. Truthfully—you want truthfully?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, truthfully. We don’t like to keep records on Americans. It’s bad for international relations. Consider which is more important, a few pieces of paper or a great war between nations.”

  “I don’t think anyone would start even a very small war over Harry Jenkins.”

  “One never knows. Peace today, war tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Well, thank you for your trouble, Perdiz.” And may your beach house be swept away by a tidal wave and your mountain cabin buried under an avalanche.

  He began pushing his way through the crowd in the direction of the main gate. When he passed the American couple he saw that both the man and the older woman were now crying, but the girl hadn’t changed expression. She was absently tying, untying and retying a couple of strands of her hair. On impulse Aragon handed her the dried orange-and-chili doll that looked like Pablo. She immediately picked out the cloves that were his eyes and popped them in her mouth. Nobody said anything.

  He had almost reached the main gate when he felt a hand touch his back between his shoulder blades. He turned abruptly, expecting to catch an inept pickpocket. Instead, he saw a Mexican woman about thirty, with dark despondent eyes and wiry black hair that seemed to have sprung out of her scalp in revolt. Her arms and hands were covered with scars of various sizes and shapes and colors, as if the wounds had occurred at different times under different circumstances.

  Her voice had the hoarseness of someone who talked too loud and too long. “I heard a shouter calling for Harry Jenkins. I said, ‘Who hired you?’ and he said, ‘An American with big glasses and a blue striped shirt.’ That’s you.”

  “That’s me. Tomás Aragon.”

  “Why do you want to see Harry?”

  “Why do you want
to know why I want to see Harry?”

  “I’m Emilia, Harry’s good friend. Very good, special. Someday we will be married in the church but that must wait. Right now I am in and he is out. Before that, I was out and he was in, and before that, we were both in. What did Harry do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you looking for him?”

  “Actually I’m looking for a friend of his. I thought Harry might give me—or sell me—some information.”

  “You buy information?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Her lips parted enough to reveal two slightly protruding front teeth. It was the closest Emilia ever came to a smile. “I have information.”

  “What kind?”

  “All kinds. The best. I’ve been around the Quarry off and on since I was fifteen. When I go away they beg me, ‘Emilia Ontiveros, come back, come back.’ If I say no, they invent charges to force me to come back because I am such a fine cook. I am the head cook in the Quarry café.”

  That explained the scars. They were burns and cuts accumulated throughout the years.

  “Do you have information about Harry Jenkins, Emilia?”

  “He is a snake. That much I give you free. The rest will be more expensive.”

  “I’d like to talk to you. Isn’t there some place we could have a little more privacy?”

  “There’s a talking room. It will cost you money, fifty cents. But a dollar would be better.”

  It was probably the primary law of the Quarry: a dollar was better than fifty cents but not as good as two dollars, which was vastly inferior to ten.

  For a dollar they were given a couple of wooden stools in the corner of a room half filled with people, most of them in the fifty-cent, or standing, class. Emilia sat with her scarred hands clenched in her lap.

  “A snake,” she repeated. “Though you would never guess it to look at him. Such honest blue eyes, such even teeth.”

  “Do you know where he’s living?”

  “Ha! I have people keeping track of him every day, every minute. I know what clothes he wears, what he eats for breakfast. He can’t buy a pack of cigarettes without me finding out. What a fool he was to think he could leave me cold after I paid good money for his release. When I leave this place again, I’m going to mash him like a turnip.”