The Man Who Risked His Partner

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  Softly Santiago murmured, “Vaya con Dios.”

  Stiff-legged, slow, and awkward, I started forward to try my fate.

  The snow fell without interference now, soft and silent, covering everything. We weren’t more than five blocks from the Santiagos’ store. But in the old part of town the night belonged to Puerta del Sol’s other population, its midnight denizens. In winter the park was nothing more than three scruffy cottonwoods and a few loose-jointed benches marked by patches of bare dirt in the dry brown untended grass. But the snow gave the place a blanket of beauty and innocence.

  A few streetlamps erratically installed and randomly vandalized around the area shed a filtered light. As I approached the park, I saw two hunched figures sitting together on one of the benches.

  I didn’t have to pretend I was under the influence. The way my gut hurt was enough. I lumbered ahead slowly, my shoes full of snow. When I reached the edge of the park, I stopped, pulled out my bottle, took off the cap, corked the mouth with my thumb, and went through the motions of drinking. Then I put the bottle away and moved closer to the two men on the bench.

  I didn’t deserve to be so blessed. Oh, I’d earned the right to know their habits. I’d paid for that knowledge. But it was months and months old, a long time in the life of a drunk. Anything could have changed. I didn’t deserve to find them there, right where I’d left them.

  Yet there they were, Luis and Jaime, not quite looking at me in the same way that I didn’t quite look at them. They’d soaked themselves in alcohol for so long that the rest of their names, along with most of their past, had dissolved out of them. Twenty years ago, they were both powers in Puerta del Sol, purveyors of fine secrets and competitors for the leverage secrets could buy. But the world got away from them. The city’s population boom produced a geometric increase in the number, complexity, and value of whispers. Younger men, more cunning men, specialists came along, reducing Jaime and Luis to the status of amateurs. To survive, they began specializing themselves. The heart had gone out of them, however, so naturally they gravitated to the subject with the least competition because it was the least interesting and violent—numbers gambling. With what they knew, their ability to advise and forewarn, to sift rumors or start them, they kept themselves in tortillas and mescal. And after enough mescal the past was mostly forgotten.

  Jaime claimed—for no obvious reason—that he was a good decade older than Luis. He looked like a shrunken version of me, his clothes stained in front and rotting under his arms, his cheeks grizzled, most of his teeth gone. He had a constant openmouthed smile that made him look like an idiot. In contrast, Luis would’ve appeared almost dapper if all his clothes hadn’t been at least fifteen years old. Somehow he contrived to remain clean-shaven, barbered, even manicured. He had the face of a grandee, and he frowned at the world with disapproval and dignity.

  But behind their differences they were closer to each other than brothers. No kinship of blood could compete with the mescal they’d shared.

  They greeted me by lowering their eyes and not speaking. At one time, I was a true companion. The amount I drank with them made up for that the fact I was Anglo, and although I was too big for decency, I had good and honorable Spanish. But I’d been away, reputedly sober. Nothing would forfeit their tolerance, never mind their trust, like being sober.

  And if they didn’t trust me, I was lost. They wouldn’t answer my questions. And they would sure as hell let el Señor know I was asking those questions. And el Senor wouldn’t take the news in a forgiving mood. Not after my previous offenses. What I was doing now was probably more dangerous than going to talk to him in person.

  Jaime and Luis waited, courteous and noncommittal, for me to begin.

  I didn’t look at them directly either. I was too far gone to really grasp the danger. But I needed answers. After a minute of mutual politeness, I took out my bottle again and offered it to them.

  Jaime grinned into the snow. Luis gave me a nod like a bow, accepted the bottle gravely, and sampled it. Then he passed it to Jaime. Like his companion, Jaime drank precisely the right amount for good manners—enough to compliment the mescal, not enough to seriously lower the level in the bottle. Still grinning, he handed it back to me.

  I screwed the cap onto the bottle. But I didn’t put it away.

  Their eyes on the mescal, Jaime and Luis shifted over, making room for me on the bench.

  “Gracias.” The screaming chain saw in my stomach made the word come out blurred and thick. Carefully I eased myself down and tried to make my involuntary whimpering sound like a sigh. I felt like I was going to faint. “Are you well?”

  “Very well,” Luis replied. He had a bottle of his own propped between his thighs. That explained his and Jaime’s presence. They hadn’t finished their bottle. But it was nearly empty. I’d caught them just in time.

  “Luis is heartless,” Jaime put in at once. “Very well, he says. He is very well. Assuredly so. He does not suffer as I do. He has no piles to make his life a torment.” His tone was as amiable as his smile. His complaints were so ingrained that they’d become a gesture of friendship. “He has been spared the canker which eats in the gums, causing the teeth to fall out. Unkindly he says that he is well while my pain grows extreme.”

  That was a hint. “I, too, suffer,” I said. “Providentially there is solace.” I uncapped my bottle and handed it to Luis.

  He took a swig and gave the bottle to Jaime. While Jaime drank, Luis said to me, “This one lacks all fortitude. Others feel pain also, but they do not speak of it unceasingly.”

  “Truly.” I needed a way to make the conversation do what I wanted. But my feet were freezing, and thirst and pain muddled my mind. “However, fortitude and honor are alike. Not all possess them equally.” While part of my brain tried to concentrate, the rest yearned for drink. “As one man varies from another, so one people varies from another.”

  Jaime nodded, passing the bottle back to Luis. “It is so. Lacking my pain, you do not understand my fortitude.”

  Luis looked at him. “Without question it is true that your fortitude is either greater or less than any other. But that is as Senor Axbrewder has said. Not all possess fortitude and honor equally.”

  A step in the right direction. Luis used my name, admitted he knew me. And while Luis drank from my bottle, Jaime aimed what was left of his teeth at me companionably.

  “And also one people varies from another,” he agreed. “It is said that the Anglos know as little of courage and dignity as of courtesy.” He seemed to be insulting me, but there was no insult in his tone. “Yet behold Senor Axbrewder. He acknowledges his suffering, yet he does not speak of it. And his politeness is well known.” In demonstration, he took my bottle from Luis. “It becomes necessary to think better of Anglos.”

  He was asking me obliquely to account for myself.

  I felt too weak to respond. In front of me, the edges of the world seemed to bleed away. Snow made everything muzzy. But I’d already come this far. It was silly not to say something.

  “Ah, it is nothing. I suffer loneliness only. It shames one to speak of it.”

  Luis cocked an aristocratic eyebrow. “The woman,” he asked delicately, “the private chota who gave you employment—? A man must have a woman. Does she not ease your loneliness?”

  “That one,” I murmured, hoping that my pain sounded like disgust and sorrow. “At one time I took great gladness in her. But since the loss of her hand”—it was a safe bet that Luis and Jaime knew the story of Ginny’s injury—“she has become shrewish. She permits me no rest. She demands my service in every way.

  “It is not enough that I must do her work. I must drive her car. I must clean. I must cook. I am a servant to her.”

  If I’d said that to anyone else, I would’ve been met with embarrassment and male shame, men wondering how I could let myself be so humiliated. But Jaime and Luis were drunks. Like me, intimately familiar with humiliation. My version of events didn’t do Ginny�
�s reputation any favors, but at the moment I didn’t care. I needed to provide a reason why I’d gone away—and why I’d come back.

  “Compadres, it is unbelievable. She requires me to kneel before her to place her shoes upon her feet.

  “Also,” I said, “she denies me a man’s right of strong drink.”

  Luis understood implicitly. He handed me my bottle.

  While I cradled it in my hands and wondered how to get rid of it, Jaime took the bait I dangled in front of him.

  “Plainly,” he said, “she is a woman of no fortitude.”

  And Luis added, “All women are harridans. But the saints know that no woman of our people would behave thus to a man. To require that he kneel before her!”

  “Your pardon. It is not my place to complain.” Deferentially I passed the bottle back. “But it becomes a man to be philosophical. I wish to understand the differences of our women. To me, it appears that all Anglo women are as mine, lacking fortitude and courage, and holding a great contempt for their men. Yet the women of your people are such as Señora Santiago, bearing herself with dignity and reserve even when her son is slain.”

  I’d started to rush. With an effort, I stopped and held my breath while my heart thudded.

  Luis took a long drink and gave the bottle to Jaime. I couldn’t see any change in Jaime, but Luis’s face seemed sharper, harder. The snow muffled everything around us. The only sounds we heard were our own voices and breathing. I could feel blood seeping from my bandages down into my pants.

  Luis asked evenly, “Are you acquainted with Señora Santiago?”

  “Sí, surely.” Nonchalance was beyond me. I had to do without it. “Señor and Senora Santiago hired my service some years ago. They honored me with their respect. I grieve for Pablo with them.”

  Then I couldn’t stop. I was out of my depth—and out of strength. Harshly I demanded, “What manner of man kills the son of such parents as Senor and Señora Santiago?”

  Luis still watched me like he’d caught a whiff of something he didn’t like. But Jaime lowered the bottle—empty now—and grinned like a banshee.

  “A gringo.”

  I wanted to pass out. A gringo? Not Chavez? Not? I gave an involuntary twitch of surprise, and the pain almost tore a yell past my teeth. “Ah, then it is simple,” I said, trying to defuse my improper intensity. “Pablo was slain by a gringo. Therefore the matter is one of money.”

  “Assuredly.” Jaime sounded almost happy. “The night was Saturday. Pablo bore with him the winnings for his numbers.” Rendered simple by alcohol, he seemed proud of his knowledge for its own sake. “Twenty thousands of dollars.”

  That was it The whole thing. Just a gringo. And twenty thousands of dollars. It proved exactly nothing. Nothing of any kind. And yet it gave me almost the entire story.

  Almost. There was one detail I might be wrong about. One bit of information that might change everything.

  But I couldn’t ask for it. Luis’s eyes had gone hard. Whatever it was that he didn’t like had become clear to him. Even though he and Jaime were drunk, I was no match for either of them. And if they believed that I was manipulating them, using them for some Anglo reason, they would need no more than ten minutes, tops, to contact el Señor.

  “Senor Axbrewder,” Luis observed softly, “you do not drink with us.” He reached for the bottle Jaime held, but it was empty. He tossed it into the snow and lifted his own. It still held an inch of mescal. “You have shared generously with us. Permit me to share with you.”

  He extended the bottle toward me.

  Just like that, I was trapped. With the radar of the drunk, he’d realized that there was something wrong with me. This was the test. If I refused to drink, I might find myself installed in a storm drain before morning.

  I wanted to drink. I was dying of thirst anyway. And I’d created this whole mess. I hadn’t told Ginny about Pablo. I wanted to drink myself out of my skull, and to hell with it.

  But I wanted something else more. I wanted to get that bastard. Nail him to the wall for what he’d done.

  If I was right about him.

  I reached for the bottle.

  And fumbled it.

  A quick lurch to try to catch it pulled a cry out of my chest, and I fell off the bench, face down into the snow.

  On top of the bottle.

  For a minute agony held me there. Then Luis and Jaime lifted me by my arms. At first they weren’t gentle. But then they saw the bloodstains on my shirt. Their surprise changed everything.

  “Mother of God,” Jaime breathed. “Shot. This is madness, Senor Axbrewder. Whose bullet have you caught?”

  Panting hard and shallow, I fought for balance, strength, anything to keep me going. “Muy Estobal.”

  “Pendejo!” Jaime dropped my arm roughly. “You are truly mad. Do you believe that I also wish to be shot?”

  Turning and cursing, he hurried away into the snowfall. I lost sight of him almost at once.

  I should’ve fallen. But Luis didn’t let me. When I swung my head around to look at him, he seemed to be smiling.

  “You have fortitude, Señor Axbrewder,” he said. “Also cojones. I honor that.”

  “Please.” Spanish failed me. I was nearly gone. That fall did something terrible to me. “Tell me why Chavez was killed.”

  Luis gave a snort that might have been laughter. “El Señor came upon the Bambino making the beast of two backs with his daughter.”

  That fit. It all fit. I was going down. But Luis held me up until Santiago came out of the snow to take me away.

  20

  For a while the whole world was snow. It fell everywhere in silence, the way dead men grieve. But then I felt something warmer against the welts around my eyes. And my posture put pressure on my guts, sharpening the hurt. I was sitting down. In the passenger seat of Santiago’s car, apparently. The heater blew at me, melting the snow in my hair, warming it away from my face. I’d lost my overcoat in the park.

  “Now hear me, Señor Axbrewder.” Emotion and uncertainty congested Santiago’s voice. “You are seriously unwell. If you do not speak to me, I must return you to the hospital.”

  Well, that made sense. He had to take my word for my condition. If I couldn’t talk, he had every reason to assume the worst.

  But I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I didn’t have any evidence. In a hospital bed I could lie there and tell people what I thought to my heart’s content, but no one would do anything about it. Not as long as I couldn’t produce one measly scrap of sane or at least concrete evidence to back me up.

  And there was something else. Something itching at the back of my brain. Only I couldn’t remember what it was. I was fine as long as I let the pain do my thinking for me. But when I tried to impose what I wanted on the process—

  Not Luis. But Jaime. Jaime, for sure. He would pass word to el Señor that I was walking around the Tin Street park with a bullet hole in my belly, asking questions about Pablo.

  That wasn’t it. But it was important enough to get my attention. With an effort that made me want to puke, I lifted my head from the back of the seat.

  “I hear you,” I breathed thinly. “I’ll be all right. Just need a little rest. Don’t take me back. Not yet.”

  He studied me closely. After a moment he demanded softly, “Have you learned who killed my son?”

  “Sí.” I answered in Spanish to make him believe me. “I know him.”

  For an instant his eyes widened. Then his face closed. All the pity that made him take care of me was gone.

  “Let us go. He must be made to pay for what he has done.”

  I agreed. It sounded simple enough, when you put it that way. Leaning my head on the seat back again like I couldn’t lift the weight of my thoughts, I gave him Reg Haskell’s address and told him how to get there.

  In response he jerked his old clunker into gear and started so hard that we went around the corner out of control and almost broke a tie-rod on the opposite curb. Whic
h reminded him that he didn’t know how to drive on snow. He tried again, slowly this time. We eased out onto the road and headed northeast through the old part of town, aiming for the Heights.

  Of course Haskell wouldn’t be there. I mused on that instead of watching where we were going. Ginny had turned him over to the cops. To Acton, who was at least honest. But that was just as well. I couldn’t deal with Haskell in my condition. All I wanted was to tear his house apart until I found something, anything, that might pass for evidence. So that he wouldn’t be able to lie his way out of trouble again.

  Now I remembered—

  Ginny had turned Haskell over to Acton. In the process, she was bound to mention Muy Estobal. Which implied el Senor.

  As soon as el Señor’s name came up, the case would go over to Cason.

  Bingo. Captain Cason. He’d rousted me for concealing evidence of a crime—and then hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. He’d been after me because the cab driver had overheard Haskell and me talking about el Senor. But Canthorpe had demonstrated that Haskell was lying. Therefore Cason had lost interest in both of us.

  Now, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I wondered whether that made any sense.

  Cason was investigating the long-overdue demise of Roscoe Chavez. A rented car got blown up, and neither the renter nor his passenger waited around to be questioned, and the cab driver who took them home reported that they spent the drive talking about an el Senor money laundry. Naturally the matter was passed to Cason. It might connect with his investigation. Pursuing a possible lead, he identified Axbrewder and Haskell, and went to all the trouble to tail and roust Axbrewder.

  And then he learned that Haskell’s story was a fake. So he forgot the whole thing.

  Oh, really?

  I didn’t have anything better to do, and loss of blood was making me light-headed anyway, so I tried to think about that. Attempting to consider the situation from Cason’s point of view, I asked myself what kind of man tries to give himself an alibi by inventing lies about el Señor. Then I asked myself how many Anglos in Puerta del Sol, especially bank accountants, even know el Señor exists? If I were Cason—who hated my guts—wouldn’t I be just the teeniest bit curious about what the hell was going on?