Ask for Me Tomorrow

by Margaret Millar

  “Or hire a shouter.”

  “So you have been to the Quarry. Good. That will give you some idea of what happens to people who don’t watch their behavior . . . Do you know a man named Jenkins?”

  “Jenkins is a common name in my country.”

  “In my country it’s most unusual. Thus, when someone named Jenkins performs an unusual act like jumping off our new bridge, it arouses my curiosity and wonderment. Do you have much wonderment, Mr. Aragon?”

  “Enough.”

  “Then let’s wonder together about various coincidences. Mr. Jenkins and your friend, Lockwood, were both Americans. Jenkins served time in the Quarry for the same offense that Lockwood did. You tell me that Lockwood was released by Magistrate Hernandez after a payment of some kind. Now I tell you that Jenkins also was released by this same Magistrate Hernandez after paying a fine. What do you make of all this?”

  “That Hernandez had ways of supplementing his income.”

  “His income wouldn’t have bought the rug on this floor. Our public servants are very poorly paid, that is why they become private bosses. A little mordida here, and a little there, keeps them from starving.”

  “Hernandez was about as far from starving as I am from being named to the Supreme Court.”

  “Mordida is part of your system, too, so I hope you didn’t come riding across the border on a white horse.”

  “I don’t ride a horse of any color,” Aragon said. “Just a ten-speed bicycle.”

  “I dislike all forms of exercise except that of the imagination. From the neck up I am very athletic. I am like a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit at the dog track. Only I catch the rabbit . . . You smile, I see, because I don’t look like a greyhound. Well, you don’t look like a rabbit. But here we both are.”

  Aragon had already stopped smiling. “I’m not sure what a greyhound would do to a real rabbit if he caught one.”

  “Probably nothing. The chase is what matters to him. But the rabbit doesn’t know that. What matters to him is escape. Sometimes he makes a serious error and runs into a hole which has no exit. That’s what you did. You ran right up that driveway and into this house.”

  “My coming here was a coincidence.”

  “I can swallow only a certain number of coincidences. Then I start to upchuck. So let’s eliminate some of these coincidences, shall we?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “We’ll begin once more at the beginning.”

  The superintendent got up, walked around the room quite rapidly as if his athletic imagination were chasing him, then sat down again in the swivel chair. Aragon stared out the window, but it was dark. All he could see was the reflection of the room itself, the fat man in uniform behind the desk, the middle-aged man with the camera poking around in the clutter of ransacked papers, and the young man standing at the window peering through his hornrimmed glasses like a rabbit that had entered a hole with no exit.

  “No, Mr. Aragon, tell me frankly, what brought you here this afternoon?”

  “A telegram from someone at the U.S. consulate who found out that Lockwood had been released from prison by Magistrate Hernandez.”

  “Did you expect to see the magistrate?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to ask him questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to receive answers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mordidas,” the superintendent said, “do not appear in filing cabinets or record books. Or magistrates’ answers.”

  “I thought it was worth a try, since my previous attempts to find Lockwood failed.”

  “Now this one has also failed. What will be your next step?”

  “I think I’ll go home.”

  “But there is still the girl. Aren’t you going to look for her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  “Afraid? You’re strong, young—”

  “I’m not afraid for myself. I do all right. I don’t back into sharp instruments or fall off bridges.”

  “So . . .” The superintendent leaned his elbows on the desk and the tips of his fingers came together to frame an arch like a bridge. “So you did know Jenkins.”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  “You implied as much.”

  “I evaded the question. I wanted to make sure you were an intelligent and reasonable man.”

  “And now that you’ve made sure, you will tell me everything?”

  “Everything isn’t much,” Aragon said. “First I got Jenkins’ address from his girlfriend in the Quarry.”

  “Her name, please.”

  “Emilia Ontiveros.”

  “Why is she in the Quarry?”

  “For assault. Assault on Jenkins.”

  “This Jenkins apparently didn’t have a way with women like Lockwood.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. Miss Ontiveros is the jealous type. Anyway, Jenkins claimed that he’d lost contact with Lockwood and had no idea where he was. For a sum of money he agreed to find Tula Lopez for me. I think he found her, but he never had a chance to tell me and to collect the rest of his money. I had paid him fifty dollars in advance and promised him two hundred more for Tula Lopez. She’d borne Lockwood a child. I figured there might still be some kind of bond between them and she could possibly put me in touch with him if he’s alive, or tell me what happened to him if he’s dead.”

  “Two hundred dollars to find a hustler in these parts, that’s real inflation for you. They used to be a dime a dozen, and for fifty cents they’d throw in a free case of V.D. They’re somewhat cleaner now. The tourists were complaining. Turista in Rio Seco did not always involve the digestive track . . . Tell me more about Jenkins.”

  “The fifty dollars was found in his pocket when they picked up the pieces. It paid for his funeral. It wasn’t much of a funeral—I’m sure Hernandez did better.”

  Aragon thought of the mourning party leaving the house in the Cadillacs and Jensen, the black-veiled widow with her starched and scrubbed children, the dignified, formally dressed men. They hadn’t yet returned. They were probably still at church, praying for Hernandez’s soul and paying for the candles with some of his mordidas.

  “I am still upchucking coincidences,” the superintendent said. “A little wine might help settle my stomach. Would you care for some?”

  Aragon glanced over at the table with the bottle of wine on it and the impaled cork. “From that bottle?”

  “Certainly. Red wine should always be served at room temperature.”

  “What I meant was, I thought it would be considered evidence.”

  “I see no harm in drinking a little of the evidence. There’ll be enough left.” The superintendent poured two glasses of wine, gave one to Aragon and raised the other in a toast. “To crime. Without it we’d both be unemployed. Drink up.”

  “I prefer not to.”

  “Squeamish?”

  “I was imagining what would happen to me back home if I were found drinking some of the evidence in a murder case.”

  “A bad thing would happen?”

  “Very bad. Maybe terminal.”

  “Ah well, we’re more civilized here. A little evidence is just as good as a lot.” He drank both glasses of wine, pronounced it mediocre, wished aloud for some bleu cheese to go with it, poured a third glass and settled back in the swivel chair again. “This client of yours, the lady who is about fifty and likes fat homely men, she must be rich.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “I can be ecumenical when necessary. Is she really very rich, do you suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, Aragon, I could change my mind about wanting a family. After all, it might b
e a mistake for a man my age to start a family if he has the opportunity to marry a mature rich woman. This line of thought appeals to me suddenly. What do you think?”

  “I think no.”

  “Why no?”

  “For starters, Mrs. Decker is already married, she doesn’t speak Spanish, she has strong opinions and states them bluntly, and she’s pretty tight with a buck.”

  “But as her husband I would control her money.”

  “No.”

  “I would be boss.”

  “No.”

  “Ah well, there are other fish in the sea,” the superintendent said.

  He postponed his report to Gilly until after he’d had dinner and some tequila in the form of three margaritas. He decided to make the call as brief as possible in the hope of avoiding any histrionics, recriminations, hindsights or whatever she was offering, so after a brief

  exchange of amenities he said, “There’s an item in tonight’s newspaper. You’d better hear it.”

  “No. Wait. Maybe I’d rather not. Your voice sounds funny.”

  “I’ve been talking for four hours.”

  “What about? No, don’t tell me. There’s something wrong, of course. There always is when the phone rings late at night like this and it’s you on the line.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Aragon? Operator, I think I’ve been cut off. Aragon, are you there? What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you to shut up.”

  “That’s rude,” Gilly said. “That’s damn bloody rude.”

  “I know.”

  “Aren’t you going to apologize?”

  “Not unless I have to.”

  “I don’t believe in forced apologies. What good are forced apologies?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You’ve been drinking again. It’s obvious from your impertinence.”

  “I’m having my third margarita.”

  “You’ll turn into a lush if you keep this up. Does alcoholism run in your family?”

  “Shucks, no. There was just Mom and Dad, and my grandparents on both sides, and my uncles Manuel and Reginato, and my Aunt Maya—she could really belt the booze—”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “I will if you will.”

  She did, for a minute. “Is it—do you have bad news?”

  “It was bad for Hernandez and not so good for me. Are you ready to listen now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. ‘Magistrate Guadalupe Hernandez, well-known in Rio Seco legal circles, died last night of a stab wound inflicted during an attempted burglary of his foothill residence. Magistrate Hernandez maintained an office in his home and it was in this room that the crime occurred. It is not known what was stolen from the ransacked office. No suspects have been arrested, but Superintendent Playa of the Police Department is following several important leads. The magistrate’s survivors include his wife, Carmela Maria Espinosa, six children, three brothers and a sister. Requiem high mass will be recited Sunday evening at Her Lady of Sorrows Church.’ That’s it, Mrs. Decker.”

  “Does this mean you never even talked to him?”

  “It means,” Aragon said, “that someone reached him before I did. Any man who lives the way he lived makes enemies. Maybe one of them tried to get his mordida back.”

  “ ‘Ransacked office.’ What was ransacked?”

  “Desk drawers, filing cabinets, everything. Even if Hernandez were alive to supervise the work, it would take a week to put things together again. As matters stand now, it will probably never be known for sure if any particular file is missing, such as one about B. J. and the circumstances of his release and his present whereabouts.”

  “How do you know such a file ever existed?”

  “I don’t. It probably didn’t, and even more probably doesn’t.”

  “So we’ve come to another dead end.”

  “Dying, anyway.”

  “How I hate those words, ‘dead,’ ‘dying.’ But God knows I should be used to them by now.”

  “Please,” Aragon said, “don’t go into a poor-little-me routine. I’ve been on the grill a long time tonight and I still have some sore spots. Which is better than being in jail.”

  “Did they put you in jail?”

  “Almost.”

  “What crime did you commit?”

  “I didn’t commit anything. You don’t have to commit anything to land in jail here. You just have to look as though you did or might or could.”

  “I never thought you looked especially criminal,” Gilly said. “Perhaps a little on the sly side at times. You know, cunning, crafty. Maybe it’s your glasses. Do you have to wear them?”

  “No, I wear them for fun.”

  “You don’t have to sound so mad. It was a perfectly simple question. Everyone seems awfully touchy tonight. Reed got mad at me because I refused to fire Marco’s new nurse. He’s jealous. She’s a good nurse and I enjoy talking to her. He won’t admit that I have to see other people for a change instead of spending all my time listening to him yak about food and Violet Smith about religion. Poor Reed. I think he’d like to marry me, but someone got his bootees mixed up in the nursery.”

  “Marry you?”

  “Not me as in me, me as in money.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “He’s a boy. Boys are for girls. Or in Reed’s case, for other boys. If he should ever become insistent, I’ll give him a nice bonus and tell him to get lost. He’ll be leaving eventually, anyway, when Marco—” The sentence dangled unfinished like a half-knotted noose. “All right, your job’s over, Aragon. You might as well come home.”

  “My other trip home lasted less than forty-eight hours.”

  “This one will be permanent. I’m tired, you’re tired.”

  “I have to stay here awhile.”

  “You’re to come back now,” she said sharply. “We’ll settle the account. It’s probably cost me a bundle already, bribing half the people in Baja and paying for all the margaritas you’ve been swilling.”

  “Margaritas don’t swill easy. I charge extra.”

  “By the way, I intend to go over your expense account line by line.”

  “Do that. I’ll submit it to you when I return.”

  “Which will be tomorrow.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Aragon. I said—”

  “I heard you and I said no. I’m going to stay here and look for the girl.”

  “Wait. Listen to me—”

  “Good night, Gilly.”

  He put down the phone and ordered another margarita to see if it could be swilled. It couldn’t. He used it to clean his teeth— it had a very stimulating effect on the gums—and went to bed.

  19

  It was Sunday.

  The fog of the previous night had been driven back to sea by the sun. The wet leaves of the camellias were dark-green mirrors, and the cypress trees were covered with drops

  of water that caught the sun and looked like tiny glass Christmas balls.

  “A beautiful day,” Gilly told Marco when she brought his breakfast. “It’s so clear, the mountains look as though you could reach out and touch them. When Mrs. Morrison gets here she’ll wheel you around to the front of the house so you can see them for yourself . . . I know you don’t like her, but you will. And Reed can’t work every day. He went to see his mother at a rest home in Oxnard; she’s a little balmy. That’s his story, anyway. Actually, I’m not even sure he has a mother. But he must have had at one time or another, so what does it matter?”

  He stared, one-eyed, at the ceiling.

  “The sky? There’s not a cloud in sight and it’s very blue, like cornflowers. Remember the cornflowers I wore at our wedding? I wanted to keep them but you said not to bother, there’d
be a thousand others. But I’ve never seen any since that were quite that blue.”

  He was sorry.

  “Oh well, they’d be faded by this time, anyway. It’s not important. I must keep reminding myself to separate what’s important from what isn’t.” She pulled open the drapes. Beyond the tips of his pygmy forest of plants, the sea shimmered like molten silver. “The kelp beds look purple . . . I wonder why they call that war decoration the Purple Heart. Do you know?”

  He didn’t know. He’d almost forgotten there was such a thing. What else had he forgotten? A minute here, a week there, or great whole chunks of time? Things were moving inside his head, in directions he could no longer control. Sometimes they met and merged, or they broke off and parts disappeared.

  Years flowed in and flowed out of his mind like tides, leaving pools of memories full of small living things. Sometimes the tides stopped, the pools dried up and nothing lived in them any longer. A strange man came and helped him move his bowels. A strange woman sat beside him, claiming to be his wife. Another strange woman had been sent by the Lord to save him, but he didn’t know from what. Strangers walked in and out while Gilly and Violet Smith and Reed hid behind clouds or in forests under snow, disappeared around corners and below horizons.

  But today was very clear. It was today. The woman was Gilly, his wife. Soldiers got Purple Hearts for being wounded in action. Purpleheart was also a timber from South America named for its color. Masses of kelp looked purple from a distance; close up they were copper-colored and the leaves felt slimy when you swam over them. The woman with the morning newspaper and the glass of orange juice with the plastic tube in it was his wife, Gilly. She was a little balmy, like Reed’s mother.

  She cranked up his bed and put the plastic tube in his mouth. “Drink up.”

  He drank. He would have liked to tell her about the timber purpleheart, but she probably wouldn’t consider it important. Now that she was dividing things up into important and nonimportant, he wondered where he belonged. Maybe in the middle, leaning toward the non.

  “That’s a good boy,” she said when he finished the orange juice. “Are you hungry this morning?”