Marchand Woman

by Brian Garfield

  She made a face at him.

  Crobey said, “I think our best shot’s still the arms merchants. If we find the dealer we might follow the shipment to Rodriguez.”

  Anders said, “I doubt he’ll be that obliging. He doesn’t leave a lot of tracks—you said that yourself. I’d like to concentrate on looking for the connection in Rio Piedras. He spent the night there with somebody.”

  “You go poking around down there,” Crobey warned, “you could get your guts handed to you.”

  “On the other hand,” Carole Marchand said, “you can’t steal second base if you insist on keeping one foot on first.”

  “I don’t follow the game, ducks.”

  Anders said, “Can I take it we’ve agreed to join forces?”

  “For the time being,” she said.

  Crobey was dubious. “It’s your money.”

  “I think it’s money well squandered,” she replied. “Let’s not tiptoe, Mr. Anders. If we keep secrets from one another we’ll have terrific problems questioning each other because the nature of our questions will have to describe the limits of our own knowledge. Miss Rojas assures us you’ve turned the bag upside down and shaken it—Harry’s obviously not convinced of that and neither am I. It seems to me you’ve had minions upon minions working on this case. Haven’t they come up with anything more than what you’ve told us? Haven’t they tried to check up on sales of paperback science-fiction books, for instance, or Gauloise cigarettes? It’s the kind of grinding legwork that requires a flat-footed legion of peons—I’d have thought your organization would have done it.”

  “Inquiries have been made.” Anders regretted his stiffness as soon as he couched it that way. “They’ve looked, they’ve asked around. They haven’t come up with anything. A lot of people buy paperbacks and cigarettes. You can’t stake out every shop on the island. Nobody’s got that much manpower. There’s a limit—you’re new to this, I guess, but believe me we’ve tried to follow every lead. Keep in mind this case isn’t right at the top of the San Juan police department’s list of urgent matters.”

  “It’s at the top of mine.” The intensity with which she spoke drove him back like a physical blow to the face. “What about yours, Mr. Anders?” The challenge was harsh, and she was throwing it in his face.

  Anders said lamely, “My instructions are to find Rodriguez. It’s my full-time job right now. I’ve got no other assignments. Does that answer you?”

  “To find Rodriguez—and do what?” She was as persistent as a dentist’s drill.

  Anders said, “Let’s just find him first, shall we?” Rising, he reached for the back of Rosalia’s chair. “Where can I reach you?”

  Crobey said, “We’ll be in touch. You’re at the Sheraton, right?”

  Carole Marchand was still watching his face; she hadn’t cooled. Anders paused and tried to smile. “We’ll find him, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” She wasn’t giving an inch. He’d failed to put anything over on her; she was shrewd—she didn’t trust him. He felt a touch of shame, as if he’d been caught with jam on his face.

  She said, “Do you have children, Mr. Anders?”

  “No.”

  “Imagine if you had,” she said. “Imagine what you’d do if someone murdered your child.”

  It was impossible to find a parking space in Old San Juan; they hadn’t even bothered—they’d come by taxi. Now and then you could find a cab in the plaza; they set out that way on foot with three or four blocks to cover. Rosalia said, “One tough lady.”

  “Not all that tough,” he judged. “But angry.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to be a father?”

  “Not with the wife I had then.”

  “How about with me?”

  “A whole mess of kids.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Is there any truth to the rumor that an unidentified male made an ass out of himself in the restaurant back there?”

  “None,” Rosalia said. “She was trying to get your goat—that’s not your fault.”

  “I don’t mind lying, it’s part of my job. I do mind when somebody catches me at it. Makes me feel like a foolish little boy.”

  “What lies did you tell them? I didn’t hear any.”

  “Lies of omission, querida. A lot of things. I didn’t tell them they’re to be shunted off into the cold as soon as we get anywhere near Rodriguez. I didn’t tell them I’m using them because I’ve been disconnected from the machinery and I need all the manpower I can get now that we’ve got no staff, no connections, no police privileges. I didn’t tell them how badly I need their help, or how high the odds are that I’ll have to betray them later. In short I didn’t level with them and she knew it.”

  “So did your friend Harry,” she said. “He just wasn’t so obvious about showing it.”

  “Well Harry understands. He won’t get sore if I push him overboard—he knows how to swim. Let’s cut through here, save a block.” It was a steep cobbled passage walled by crowded stone-and-stucco buildings; a drainage rut ran down the center. An old man with a collapsed mouth sat on a worn step nodding, reeking of wine, looking back past them. The old man sat under a twenty-five-watt bulb in the doorway. Beyond it the passage was dark—at the top was the glow of the plaza. Anders was saying, “I don’t feel sorry for Harry but the woman’s another thing.…” And then he let his voice peter out because it occurred to him that the old man hadn’t looked at him but had looked behind him, which meant the old man had seen something back there more interesting than Rosalia or Anders. He looked over his shoulder with a sudden sense of alarm.

  There were two of them, big in the shoulders, soft caps over their eyes—menace in the speed of their approach: Now they began to run and Anders took the girl’s arm. “Come on.” And bolted for the head of the passage, ankles twisting on the cobblestones, leather soles slipping. At an awkward shambling pace they scrambled for it—he couldn’t hear the two men behind; they ran on rubber soles; then he stopped and swiveled, propelling Rosalia away: “Go on—keep running.”

  One of them was nearly on him; the other unaccountably was sprinting away, back toward the street, rushing past the old man in the doorway whose head swiveled to indicate his bewildered interest in the dashing to and fro.

  The assailant slowed to a jog and Anders saw the glint of a knife and aimed a kick at it but the cobblestones unsettled him and he careened against the wall, all but going down; the assailant half circled to cut off escape and then moved in fast and Anders hauled the jacket around—he’d had it hooked over his shoulder—and dragged it against the knife, snagging the blade, a desperate parry: He’d never been good at this, and science always went out the window when panic set in.

  He heard the knife tear through the cloth but it was deflected just a little and he went for the man’s wrist left-handed, trying for a grip. He nearly missed.

  He let go the jacket and flung a fist toward the man’s face but the man knew that one and went under it, twisting his knife wrist out of Anders’ grip and swiveling: The knife plunged forward and Anders got his arm up, forearm against forearm, batting to one side—the knife scratched stucco but then the man’s knee grenaded into Anders’ thigh and he felt himself go over.

  With his back against the wall he slid off his feet, thrusting his arm out to break his fall. The assailant loomed.

  Anders tried a scissor kick but he had no purchase, slithering on the stones, and the man stepped right through it, stooping; the knife poised to slash upward through Anders’ belly, the man waiting only for a clear target, and Anders tried to bicycle his way out of it, lying on his side, but knew he couldn’t make it.

  He tried to reach out for the knife—better to lose a hand than be gutted—but the knife jinked easily to one side and jabbed toward him and Anders squeezed back from it, knowing it was hopeless, eyes popping and mouth wide open in the rictus of terror. Feeling like an utter fool. And then the man howled and sprawled away, falling across Anders’ le
gs—he heard the clatter of the knife when it fell.

  Rosalia tugged at his arm. “Come on—”

  “What the hell did you hit him with?”

  “This.” The wooden heel of her shoe. She was hopping on one foot trying to get it back on. Anders clambered to his feet and steadied her; then he made a dive for the knife and got it in his hand before the assailant rolled over. The man was groggy but not out. Anders waved the knife in his face and hissed at him: “Hold still, you bastard.”

  Something screeched up at the head of the passage. Rosalia said: “Glenn—”

  “I see it. Come on.”

  Up there a car had slewed across the opening and the driver was getting out and Anders suspected the dark shiny thing in his hand was a gun. Together they ran down the passage, bouncing off walls. Anders risked a glance over his shoulder.

  Blind luck: The big assailant was lurching back and forth on his feet trying to clear his head and blocking the sight lines of the man above.

  Anders knew the second man had run back down to the bottom, got in the car and driven around to the head of the passage to cut off escape; the man up there with the car and the gun was the same man who’d come after them on foot, the assailant’s partner. That meant there were two men and one car. It should be possible to elude them.

  Steering Rosalia by the elbow he skidded around the building corner at the foot of the passage and ran her catty-corner up the street.

  Dimly he heard the slam of a car door and the race of an engine: It meant the gunman hadn’t waited for his partner but was coming after them with the car but he had to get around several corners and hope not to encounter traffic in the narrow one-way streets of Old Town. The chances were getting better every moment. There was a drugstore half a block farther, lights splashing out onto the sidewalk—Anders made for that, hauling Rosalia by the arm.

  Tires screeched not far away. They ran full tilt toward the doorway.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “It’s closed.” A lattice gate was padlocked across the drugstore; the lights had fooled him.

  He led the way on toward the head of the street: a sharp left into another passage—blank walls, locked doors, poor light. But he could hear the car again and there wasn’t time to turn back. At least this one wasn’t cobbled. They ran fast and hard, the shirt pasted to him by sweat.

  At the corner he pulled her around the edge and they flattened back against the wall. Fighting for breath Rosalia said, “Why don’t they go crawl back under their rock? Those are the most persistent muggers I’ve ever—”

  “I guess they’re not muggers. Come on.” He moved out slowly, looking for the shadow that shouldn’t be there.

  Rosalia said, “Who are they?”

  “Rodriguez or his friends.”

  “But how did they know?”

  “Either they followed us or they followed Crobey. Come on, keep moving.” An L turn, no choice which way to go—and the passage was leading them back toward the street they’d left. The crime rate here was on a par with that of Spanish Harlem and as a result everything was locked and bolted; no way to get out of the street.

  A sign under a tall hooded whip-lamp on a silvered stalk: Calle Del Cristo. Street of Christ. He tugged her out of the pool of lamplight.

  He wished he’d paid more attention to the field courses that trained you how to get out of places; he wished he’d had more aptitude for this sort of thing.

  Above them was the veranda of El Convento. A quartet of tourists was getting into a taxi. He rushed her forward, waving, shouting to the taxi—and then a garish baroque automobile, some dinosaur of the fifties, came down Sol Street like a seed squeezed from an orange, horn-honking the length of the passage, sliding maniacally around the bend and slamming with a tremendous racket into the taxi. The old Buick bounced off and kept coming like a juggernaut, leaving the hard-hit left side of the taxi destroyed, the sheet metal looking like a crumpled paper napkin. On the sidewalk the taxi driver and the four tourists flung themselves belatedly against the wall in terror.

  The Buick was bearing down on Anders and Rosalia, its right-side wheels climbing the curb—above the sidewalk was an iron fence six feet high and Anders flung Rosalia toward it. They leaped off the ground, clenched the wrought iron overhead, drew their legs up—and the car cannoned past, the driver at the last minute lacking the nerve to crash the fence.

  The car lost a hubcap—it went rattling away bouncing off things—and the Buick slewed toward the intersection below, the driver trying to control it, fishtailing for a U turn and another try.

  Anders dropped off the fence, helped Rosalia to her feet—“You all right? Jesus!”—then they were racing for it again, heading for the battered taxi. The five people had fled into El Convento but the veranda was too long, the door too far away—the man in the Buick had a gun. Running past the taxi Rosalia said, “They don’t build those things the way they used to,” and giggled, on the near edge of hysteria. “I bet you haven’t had this much fun since World War Two.”

  “I’m not that old—” and he never finished it because the Buick had stopped and the gun started shooting and Rosalia dropped like a stone beside the taxi’s fender.

  Something plucked at Anders’ sleeve. He dived for the pavement, rolled, heard something whine away, got an elbow under him and flung himself toward Rosalia. “Querida—querida?”

  “Shit, I think he’s shot me. Jesus Cristo—I’m bleeding!”

  He crouched over her, lifting her with an arm behind her shoulders.

  “Get up, Rosalia, we can’t stay here.”

  She cried out when he touched her and he felt the sticky warmth of her blood; he couldn’t see where she was injured.

  Over the hood of the taxi he saw the Buick start to move.

  Rosalia had her feet under her after a fashion. He slid backwards into the taxi on his rump—the tourists had left both doors wide open—dragging Rosalia into the cab with him. She slumped, head lolling back, and he had to reach across her to pull her right leg into the car.

  The Buick at the foot of the street was maneuvering back and forth trying to get turned around, its wide turning radius incompatible with the narrowness of the intersection. But the taxi’s engine was reluctant and Anders could hear every turn of the starter inflict its drain on the weak battery and if it didn’t start soon it would be dead and they were trapped in the thing now and the Buick was starting to accelerate, coming up the hill right at them.

  Nearly twisting the key to breaking point Anders stared ruefully at the approaching juggernaut, yelling at the top of his lungs a strained litany of oaths—then it caught, coughed roughly, revved screaming high: Anders jammed the lever into drive and the taxi roared forward, jerking his head back, making Rosalia cry out.

  He spun the wheel left to get out from the curb and almost took the skin off his knuckles—the Buick had smashed the door in too close to the steering wheel.

  The only way through was to bluff the Buick out: a deadly game of chicken and Anders had the rage for it now, he wanted nothing except to kill the son of a bitch in the Buick and he aimed straight down the steep narrow street, knowing just the point where he’d thrust the wheel left and drive his front bumper right into the driver’s door.

  The taxi’s rear wheels scrabbled for purchase, the tail sliding a bit from side to side as it gathered speed and settled in. He had the pedal on the floor and that prevented the transmission from shifting up; the engine whined painfully to its highest revs. Collision course and he had the momentum for it now; he clenched the wheel and only then did it penetrate his awareness that the girl sagging beside him was injured and not strapped in and that the impact would crush her against the dashboard: At the last minute, with the Buick slowing and hugging the far wall, Anders straightened the wheel and shot past.

  Anders knew where the hospital was and that occupied everything in his mind except for the portion that made him keep searching the rear-view mirror. The Buick never appeared. By now its driv
er knew he’d lost his chance; probably he’d known he’d lost it when they got too near El Convento—that was why he’d started shooting at them: If they’d got inside the restaurant he’d have lost them.

  It was madness. Anders’ pulse throbbed; he blinked in quaking disbelief. The hospital—he slewed into the ambulance driveway, stopped the cab by the emergency ramp and started to yell again. After a little while they came out with a stretcher and took Rosalia inside.

  He sat on a hard bench watching the wall clock. The waiting room was crowded with people sick and people bleeding. It was the kind of sultry night that provoked violence and disease. Anders kept watching the door, half afraid his assailants would appear again.

  They wouldn’t; by now they’d have disappeared into the demimonde. Rodriguez’s people, he was sure. It gave him pause, sudden concern for Crobey and the Marchand woman.

  He looked at the clock again, got up in anger and presented himself at the desk and demanded news of the heavy-set nurse. She had nothing to tell him: Miss Rojas was undergoing emergency surgery, he must wait.

  The bullet had struck her in the back; it had hit bone somewhere, for there hadn’t been an exit wound in front. It was all he knew for certain—that and the fact that she’d been unconscious when they’d removed her from the car.

  God, God. He’d only just found her.…

  Those two with the Buick had exceeded their orders; he felt morally certain of that. They’d had instructions to follow the quarry and attack them where there were no witnesses: with knives to make no noise. Mugging victims found dead in an Old Town alley—nothing to stir up much of a fuss. The thing had gone awry because the man with the knife had been knocked down by a shoe and Anders and Rosalia had got away from them. The man in the Buick had got mad. The continuation of the attack, beyond all reason, had taken place because the man in the Buick was angry and at the same time atavistically shrewd enough to know that if he killed Anders and Rosalia he’d have no witnesses against him.

  I didn’t even get the license number, he thought savagely. Not that it would matter. The antique car would be easy enough to find; but it would prove to have been stolen. Not even an amateur killer set out on his nightwork in a car that could be traced to him.