“How’re they going to know it?” asked O’Malley.
“Search me.”
“Why don’t you come with us?” asked O’Malley.
“I will if Miss Paraguay doesn’t mind.”
“I do not mind.”
“Then let’s be on our way,” said Crane.
It was a nice ride into Miami. The sun was hot on their heads, but the air stirred up by the movement of the convertible was cool. Along part of the road there were lime trees and later they saw truck gardens. There were many red tomatoes on dark green vines.
In the front seat O’Malley was telling Miss Day a highly colored version of the previous night’s chase. He pointed out the place where Essex had collapsed over the wheel. “I was just about to jump from the running board into the sedan,” he said, “when Essex keeled over. It was an awful close thing.”
“Your friend is very heroic,” said Imago Paraguay softly. She was smiling a little.
“Don’t think he’s not,” said Crane. “He’s just fooling now.”
“Oh yes. I know. I have seen many brave men. I have seen many die.”
“Where? In China?”
“You think I am Chinese, señor?”
“Well …”
“Perhaps a thousand years ago there was a Chinese ancestor. But no later; of that I am sure.”
“You know your family a thousand years back?”
“Why not? The English do not alone keep records.”
“Yes, I know. The Spanish are very proud of their blood.”
Her eyes always gave him a nervous thrill. “I am of two people older than the Spanish,” she said. Pride warmed her flat voice.
“Older?”
“My father was of Granada. The people of my mother lived many years ago—a thousand years—in Guatemala, in the city of Piedras Negras. It lies now in ruins.”
“They were Indians?”
“If you wish.” Her flawless face was serene. “My ancestor was the priest of Yum Kax, god of the harvest. When barbarians conquered the old Maya Empire he fled with his family, carrying the sacred corn and many temple ornaments.”
“That was when the Spanish came under Cortez?”
“That was six hundred years before Columbus.”
Sliding from vitreous palm leaves, the sun’s rays tinged white sidewalks with green. There were elaborate signs on streets leading to vacant lots. They were nearing Miami.
“I bore you,” Imago said.
“No. Please tell me the rest.”
She smiled and said in her flat voice: “The gra-andson of my ancestor led the family to Paraguay. There the corn was pla-anted and to this day grows.”
“And the ornaments?”
“My mother’s father has them. The temple robes, of cloth much finer than silk, are gone, of course, and the quetzal feathers in the headgear too. But there is much gold and silver and jade.”
“Some museums would pay plenty for them.”
“Never! My grandfather would not sell.”
She was looking at the Miami River. Her face was cold, composed, oblivious. The curve of her jaw under her creamy skin, the perfect arch of her brows, the clean line of her red lips, the soft hollows on her cheeks, the strange black hair, so completely without life, gave her an appearance at once alien and aristocratic. He felt her strange allure. He wondered if she had been telling him the truth.
Miss Day looked around at them. Her henna-blond hair was rumpled from the wind. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Roney Plaza,” said Crane.
“Oh boy,” said Miss Day. “Let’s have lunch there.”
Chapter VIII
THEY LEFT MISS DAY, very demure, on a red leather cushion in the bar, sipping pink planters punch through a straw. Crane asked her if she would be all right while they were gone.
“Anybody bothering me better watch out,” she said.
He bet they had too. Anyone lured by her limpid blue eyes, by her dimples, by her egg-yellow hair, cut long so the curls hung nearly to her shoulders, was likely to find himself buying her champagne and the two-dollar lunch in the main dining room.
She smiled at him. “Hurry back.”
O’Malley was in front of the elevators. “On the eighth floor,” he said. “I used the old telegram gag.”
In the elevator Imago Paraguay stood between them. “You thi-ink it wise to bring Miss Day?” she asked. Her body gave off an odor of sandalwood.
“She’s very good company,” Crane said.
“Eight,” said the elevator man.
O’Malley led the way. Their footfalls were muffled by a thick rug on the corridor’s floor. They were walking toward the ocean, and from a window at the end came cool air. A stocky man in a brown suit, looking out the window, turned toward them.
Two paces back of Imago Paraguay, Crane shook his head violently at the man. He was Eddie Burns and he had been watching the count.
Casually the man put a cigarette in his mouth, lighted a match, held it in cupped hands to his face. His brown eyes strayed over them, lingered for an instant on the dancer, then passed on to the window. His cheek bore a crescent-shaped scar.
O’Malley turned left down another corridor and halted at the third door on the right. He knocked with the knuckle of his forefinger. He knocked again, loudly.
“Who is it?”
“The telegram, sir.”
“Come in.”
Imago Paraguay paused in the corridor. O’Malley opened the door and Crane went into the room. It was bright with sunlight and the two large windows framed blue sea and sky. The bed had not been made. A pair of yellow silk pajamas, trimmed with blue, lay across a chair.
Almost beside him, in the door to the bathroom, wearing trousers and an underwear top of ribbed silk, appeared Di Gregario. Creamy lather covered the left side of his face; in his hand was a safety razor. His dark eyes were surprised.
“Who …?”
Before Crane could speak, Di Gregario recognized him. His fist caught Crane’s mouth, sent him sprawling against the ivory-white wall. Crane attempted to grapple with him as he came out of the bathroom door, but the Latin shook him off, ran for the bed. O’Malley followed on his heels, hit the back of his head with a revolver, club-fashion, as his hands pawed the linen sheets. Like a celebrant about to pray, Di Gregario’s knees folded, slipped down on the floor. His outstretched arms, his head and chest rested on the bed. O’Malley felt the sheets with his left hand, found an automatic pistol, thrust it in his pocket.
“Tough guy,” he said.
Blood was trickling down a corner of Crane’s mouth. He found a handkerchief and wiped it off. He tested his teeth with his fingers to see if they were loose. They weren’t.
Turning his body so that he slipped off the bed to a sitting position on the floor, Di Gregario scowled at them. His left eyebrow, his sideburn were smeared with the shaving lather. Hate smoldered in his eyes, made the brown pupils glow like garnets.
“What do you want?” he demanded thickly.
“You oughtn’t to leave your pistol lying about like that,” said O’Malley. “Very careless.”
Di Gregario’s eyes were on Crane. “Why do you follow me?”
“We’d like to talk with you.”
Suddenly Di Gregario looked beyond Crane. Anger faded from his face; fear drained his color, left him gray. He gasped, “You!”
Crane turned and saw Imago Paraguay leaning against the hall door. She was smiling, but her jet eyes were cold. “Sí,” she said. “Imago.”
Crane watched the count with surprise. He had thought him brave, very brave. He hadn’t been afraid of the major, nor of him and O’Malley. Why was he so afraid of the dancer?
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said to him. “We’d like to ask some questions.”
Hooking one elbow onto the bed, the count got to his feet. His eyes reflected terror, but he was making an effort to control his fear. His skin was yellow.
“Señor …” h
e said, “if I could write one last word to my family?”
Crane said, “I don’t understand.”
Imago Paraguay’s laughter was brittle, like an old man’s. “He thi-inks we are of the Cuban secret police … that we will kill him.”
Crane daubed amazedly at his cut lip. “What makes him think that?”
She had both hands on her hips now. “For the government once I wa-as an agent.” Light gleamed from her glossy red fingernails.
Di Gregario’s voice exploded shrilly. “Liar!” His fingers fluttered. “You do not have to lie to me. Everyone in Havana knows the bed Imago Paraguay sleeps in.” His face was wild. “Where is the—your Corporal Cabista? Or has he murdered so many schoolboys that he is a general now?”
Imago Paraguay hissed at him in Spanish.
“No, I am not afraid.” His body was shaking, but his voice traveled down the scale. He pressed his hands to his outer thighs. “I die but once. How will you kill me, Imago? As you did my cousin Roberto? With that sharp little stinger you carry on your garter?” He faced O’Malley. “Or is it to be this man’s pistol?”
She said something to him in Spanish.
“Speak English,” Crane said.
She said, “I tell him he must learn to hold his tongue or he will lo-ose it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Listen,” Crane said. “We are not going to kill you, Di Gregario. We won’t hurt you if you answer our questions.”
The Latin’s face showed no relief.
“We want to know what’s happened to Camelia Essex,” said Crane.
As shiny white as bathtub porcelain, a steam yacht nosed across the rectangle of blue water bounded by the left window. Up to them floated the cries of bathers on the Roney Plaza beach, in the Roney Plaza pool. The window curtains moved in the ocean breeze.
“Camelia Essex?” Di Gregario whispered.
“Yeah, Camelia Essex.”
The count stepped backward, sank down on the bed. There was sweat on his forehead. “I did not know anything had happened to her.”
“You didn’t know she had been kidnaped?”
“No!” He stared up at Crane. “You think I know something of it?”
“We’re asking you.”
“I know nothing.”
“You don’t even know she’s gone?”
“I tell you I know nothing.” The passion faded from his eyes, was replaced by fear as he looked at Imago. “This is a trick.…”
“No,” said Crane.
Imago started to say something in Spanish.
“Speak English,” Crane said.
“I try to tell him re-ally Miss Essex is kidnap last night.”
O’Malley said, “Get a newspaper. That’ll prove it for him.”
A small bag of navy-blue suède hung from Imago Paraguay’s arm. “There is no need,” she said. She took a piece of paper from the bag, tossed it at Di Gregario. It fell on the floor, half under the bed, and he had to go down on one knee to reach it. His fingers had trouble unfolding it.
It was the front page of the morning’s Miami Herald. While Di Gregario read the Essex story under O’Malley’s watchful eye Crane went into the bathroom and bathed his lip in cold water. Blood, now thicker, still oozed from the cut. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and turned to find Imago Paraguay’s inscrutable eyes on him.
He tried to smile, but his lip throbbed. “Big as a balloon tire, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It must be quite painful.”
“It isn’t anything.”
“I should not like to ha-ave a man hit my mouth.”
“It isn’t anything.”
“You are very bra-ave.”
He let cold water run over the towel. “Is what Di Gregario said true?”
“What did he say?”
“That you are an agent for the Cuban government.”
“Once I was.” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “But no longer am I interested.”
He turned off the water. “And Di Gregario’s cousin?”
“Roberto Gomez?” Her teeth were small and very even. “Yes, I kill him. Why not? He did not ca-are to give me some papers he had, so …” She made a small, deadly movement with her wrist.
He felt again the peril that was so strange a part of her allure. That was her charm: to be as dangerous, as cold as a coral snake; and yet to be passionately seductive.
She was still smiling. “Now you fear me?” she asked.
“I’ll keep out of the way of your stinger,” he promised her. He tossed the bloody towel into the tub. “What is Di Gregario?”
“His family once own much la-and in Cuba.” She spoke the country’s name as if it were spelled Coo-ba. “They lose all in the la-ast revolution. Now, I think, he heads a junta.”
“A junta?”
“Men who wish to overthrow the government.”
“Ah,” said Crane.
In the bedroom O’Malley spoke. “Now d’you believe us, Count?”
“Yes. But I know nothing of it.”
Crane came out of the bathroom. “Mr O’Malley and I are in the employ of the Essex estate,” he said. “We thought you might know something about Camelia. Miss Paraguay heard we were coming to see you and said she would come along. She said she knew you.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” asked Di Gregario.
“Where are the three men who were with you?”
Surprise widened the Latin’s brown eyes. “Gone—in a boat.”
“Where?”
For an instant Di Gregario’s eyes rested on Imago Paraguay. “I do not know.”
Imago said, “Liar!” Her voice was lazy. “Tell them the truth. I am no longer interested in Cuba.”
“But the man with the lobeless ear didn’t go with them, did he?” Crane demanded.
“The man with the lobeless ear?” Di Gregario held the palms of his hands open, as though about to catch a bundle. “I do not know such a man.”
“All right,” Crane said. “Where’d the boat go?”
Di Gregario shrugged his shoulders. “A fishing trip, perhaps.”
“Look,” said O’Malley. “You come clean, dago, or I’ll bat you right on the nozzle with this.” He brandished his revolver.
The drying lather made foamy splotches on Di Gregario’s face, showed the dark stubble on the unshaven left side. “I give you my word, señores, the men in the boat have nothing to do with Camelia.” His voice was vehement. “I know nothing about her.”
“Come on,” said O’Malley, “start clicking.”
“What does he mean, ‘click’?” Di Gregario asked.
Crane ignored the question. “You don’t seem very worried about her—not for a guy who was so hot to elope a month or so ago,” he said.
“I am sorry, of course.” Di Gregario’s brown eyes were frank. “But it was over between us—she likes another.”
“Who?”
“I do not know. She told me last night that one was in her party.”
“Good lord! Not the major!” Crane exclaimed.
Imago laughed. “Somebody younger, I thi-ink.”
“Why, she hardly knew me,” said Crane.
“Nuts,” O’Malley said with disgust.
“Your friend lo-oves to joke,” Imago Paraguay told O’Malley. “He forgets Tony Lamphier.”
Di Gregario leaned against the foot of the bed. “It is the truth when I say about Camelia I know nothing.”
“But the boat,” said Imago. “Where is the boat?”
“I will not tell you.” His eyes were defiant. “You are a spy for that devil, Cabista.” His courage had returned and Crane thought he looked quite handsome with his regular features, his big dark eyes, his smooth skin and his glossy black hair.
“Want me to work on him?” asked O’Malley.
Di Gregario stared defiantly at Crane. “Kill me, but I will not tell you where the boat has gone.” Words popped from his mouth, brought flecks of spittle with them. �
�I would not trust even an enemy to the mercy of this viper.” He pointed an elbow at Imago. “My friends on the boat trust me.”
“That’s just dandy,” said Crane.
“Should I go to work?” asked O’Malley.
“No.”
“You will not ma-ake him tell?” Imago said.
“Not if he doesn’t want to.”
“You believe I know nothing of Camelia?” asked Di Gregario.
“I think I do.”
“But how do you know she is not on his boat?” demanded Imago Paraguay.
“Slut!” hissed Di Gregario.
Imago spat Spanish at him.
O’Malley reluctantly opened his linen coat, pushed his revolver in the underarm holster. “Then we’re through with this guy?”
“Yes,” said Crane. “Let’s go.”
He held the door for Imago. As she passed he could smell sandalwood sachet. She smiled a little at him. Di Gregario came as far as the bathroom door.
“I’m sorry I struck you,” he said to Crane.
“That’s O.K.,” said O’Malley. “We’re sorry we struck you.”
“I’ve been punched before,” Crane said.
“I am really sorry,” said Di Gregario.
“That’s all right,” said Crane.
“See you again,” said O’Malley.
They left the roadster in a parking lot and walked to the New York Bar, where they were to meet Doc Williams. O’Malley brooded about the count. “He talks funny,” he said. “What’s a viper?”
“A windshield viper?” Crane asked.
Men loafing in front of shops, street-corner loiterers in shirt sleeves, pedestrians stared at them as they went by, ran wistful eyes over Miss Day’s curves, ogled Imago Paraguay’s exotic face. The sun blanketed the street, made the cement hot under their feet.
“Come on,” said O’Malley.
“I guess it’s a kind of snake.” Crane guided Miss Day across the street. “He does talk like a guy in a melodrama.”
Doc Williams and a popeyed man with a round face were at a large table in the back of the grill. Williams waved at them. The man wore a mottled gray-and-white Palm Beach suit, a navy-blue shirt and a canary-yellow necktie. His face was red and his collar was too tight, causing a tirelike bulge of flesh to circle his neck.
Crane presented Williams to the two women.
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