Marchand Woman

by Brian Garfield

  Anders tried to remember the face of the man with the knife. The police would be here soon; the hospital had called them. He had to clear his mind, make a decision: Give a description to the police or keep it to himself? He wanted someone to nail the bastards but at the same time he was unable to lose sight of the fact that the two men, if he could find them without police help, might lead him to Rodriguez. And he wanted Rodriguez now, not just the hired guns. It was Rodriguez who was responsible for what had happened to Rosalia. The hired guns were only tools.

  It had been dismally dark in the passage. Mainly he’d seen the knife; it had drawn his attention. The man’s face? He thought he’d know it if he saw it again—big, blocky, young, a bit of a double chin, clean-shaven except for the mustache: It might have been the face of Pancho Villa from an old photograph. Yes, he’d know the man again.

  And the man in the Buick? No. Anders had never really seen that one’s face—only enough of him, running in the cobblestoned alley, to know he was a fairly big man.

  He decided to tell the police he hadn’t got a good look at either of them.

  The nurse summoned him to the desk. “The doctor will see you now.”

  The doctor was a tired young man with dust on his glasses and fresh creases in his white smock; clearly he’d just changed into it. He was scrubbing his hands in a lavatory sink at the side of the cubicle. “Sit down.”

  “How is she?”

  “I’m sorry,” the young man said as if by rote, “she didn’t make it.”

  PART

  FOUR

  Chapter 13

  Crobey drove, as always, with one eye on the mirror. She was accustomed by now to his sudden turnings and doublings back. All the same when they reached the highway she was exasperated enough to say in a caustic voice, “I trust you’re sure you’ve lost them.”

  “Right.”

  She cast an eye at him. “You mean you were being followed?”

  “Right.”

  And she believed him. Crobey had the peripheral vision of a professional basketball player.

  She said, “Why are you angry with me this time?”

  “Forget it.”

  It didn’t take her long to work it out. Insects smashed into the windshield and the Bronco jounced her gently. Crobey’s profile was pale in the dashboard’s reflected illumination. She said, “If you didn’t have me along you’d have let them catch you, wouldn’t you?”

  “It might have been useful to ask them a few questions.”

  “Suppose they’d asked first?”

  Crobey only crooked his lip corner in a tidy smile. Feeling rebuffed she said, “Tell me something: Is there anything you do badly?”

  “Yes. Lose.”

  “Your conceit is absurd.”

  “I told you before: We’d get along faster if you’d go home.”

  She began to retort, then curbed her tongue. It was occurring to her he might be right. He tolerated her because he was a mercenary and she was his employer; he resented her because she was a woman and an amateur.

  She wondered why he put up with her at all.

  She said, “Who were they?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “But they might be some of Rodriguez’s people?”

  “Might.”

  She didn’t comprehend his equanimity; she said bluntly, “You want me to leave, then.”

  He made no answer. They were approaching the turnoff. Crobey punched the button, extinguishing the lights, and used the hand brake to slow the truck so that the brake lights wouldn’t flash. They rolled slowly off the main road into that total darkness that had frightened her so much the first time. The truck eased to a halt; she heard the ratchet of the emergency brake. Crobey hooked his elbow over the back of the seat and twisted to watch the road behind. He didn’t take the revolver from under his jacket but she knew it was there; she’d seen him put it there before they left the house.

  He had a stalking predator’s steady inexcitability. It wasn’t tranquillity; it was the cool command of an otherwise tumultuous temper. His cool passivity came across as menace.

  That morning he’d instructed her in the manufacture of a Molotov Cocktail. “You mix soil and gravel, and a little bit of soap powder to make it grunge together. Fill the bottle about one third with this gunk. It weights the bottom and gives you throwing ballast—and the gravel makes good shrapnel. Now we fill the rest up with petrol—gasoline from the pump, the octane doesn’t matter. Right to the top. Tear off this much rag, see—wad it up with this little bit of clotheslines for a fuse. Stuff it in the mouth like this to soak up gasoline from inside and make sure the clothesline pokes out an inch or two. When you light this thing get rid of it fast—throw it hard and drop on your face. Drop behind something that’ll shield you from the blast and the heat, if you’ve got a choice. In Hungary they took out Soviet tanks with these things.”

  “Why the hell are you showing me these horrible things?”

  “Because the kind of people we’re dealing with, ducks, you may find yourself getting chased into the woods by people with guns and machetes and maybe all you’ve got is your little car and your handbag. You’ve got gasoline in the car—suck it out through a hose you strip off the engine, if you have to—and I never met a woman who didn’t carry half a dozen little bottles in her handbag.”

  She’d stared with revulsion at the fused bottle of gasoline. Crobey had said, “When the crossbow was introduced in the twelfth century the Pope called it an inhuman engine of destruction and banned its use.”

  “If I were still a college sophomore I might find that world-weary cynicism of, yours dramatically mysterious. Right now I’m not too thrilled by it.”

  “Cynicism,” he’d replied, “is idealism corrupted by experience, like Machiavelli said. Remember one thing: You haven’t been there. I have. Listen to old Harry once in a while.”

  Now, watching him peer back into the darkness with his chin on his forearm, she remembered the quiet tolerant tone he’d used.

  He faced front and let the brake out and put the vehicle forward at a crawl, hunching over the wheel to peer through the night. Carole couldn’t see a thing. Branches slapped the truck, coming out of nowhere; the suspension bucked and pitched as roots and rocks went under the wheels. But Crobey seemed to know where he was going. Finally he switched on the headlights. When she looked behind she saw nothing in the red taillights’ glow except forest—the road was out of sight back there.

  After a while they reached the yard of Santana’s farm and Crobey parked the truck behind the house; they went inside and Santana, dressed as if he planned to go somewhere—a shabby seersucker jacket, a white shirt frayed at the collar—stood up in deference to Carole’s presence. He had an open can of beer in his fist: He looked, she thought, rather like a can of beer himself—stubby, squat, cylindrical.

  Santana’s face was animated. He began to speak in something approximating English but neither of them understood it and Santana lapsed into Spanish. Crobey snapped a few monosyllabic questions at him, got answers and translated for her:

  “He thinks he’s got a line on Rodriguez’s family.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Rio Piedras.”

  Santana spoke again, with gestures, and Crobey said, “All right, but keep your head down. Don’t show yourself.”

  An adventurously brash grin and Santana was gone, the screen door slapping shut behind him.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “To stake out the house.”

  “He knows the house?”

  “Sure. Probably the one where Rodriguez spent the night when Glenn’s cop spotted him.”

  “Then why send Santana? Let’s question them ourselves.” She was already turning toward the door.

  “Calm down, ducks. We’d get nowhere.”

  “What?”

  “Elementary security—if you’ve gone to ground you don’t tell civilians where you are. Not even your own wife. We could torture the c
hildren and force the wife to talk but she wouldn’t be able to tell us what she doesn’t know, would she? All we’d do is expose ourselves.” Crobey tossed his jacket onto the couch. “If Rodriguez turns up Santana will spot him. I kind of doubt he’ll turn up. He knows people are looking for him.”

  She was shocked. “Don’t you even want to know—”

  “Know what? What his wife and kiddies look like? I don’t care all that much, ducks. Go on—go to bed. You’ve got to learn how to wait things out.”

  She lowered herself into one of Santana’s ruined chairs. “How did he find them?”

  “Mostly on the telephone. He hunted down some of the old-timers from the days we all worked training fields in Alabama. You know how it goes. You dig up one veteran and he gives you the number of two others. It’s like a chain letter. The first nineteen don’t know a thing but number twenty happened to bump into Rodriguez’s wife in a supermarket or whatever. It’s harder to disappear than most people think it is. Especially if you’ve got reasons to stay around an island where people know you. If Rodriguez had really wanted to evaporate he’d have had to move to Africa or the Philippines. But he didn’t because he’s a soldier, of sorts, and this is where his army is.”

  “And Santana was able to make this contact while all Glenn Anders’ minions couldn’t?”

  “In the first place I kind of get the feeling Glenn’s minions have dried up on him. I don’t think he’s got police co-operation any longer. If he did he wouldn’t be so eager to have our help. And in the second place Glenn didn’t know all those people the way Santana did. Santana was one of them. He knew who to ask.”

  She was still tracking Anders. “Why wouldn’t he have police co-operation?”

  “My guess is they’ve told him to soft-pedal the investigation.”

  She tipped her head back onto the top of the chair and closed her eyes. She’d been running on her nerve ends too long; exhaustion was overtaking her.

  Crobey said, “Maybe tomorrow we’ll show ourselves again and let them follow us around a while. Maybe we can pull them in and ask them questions.”

  She opened her eyes. He stood in the middle of the room looking down at her, lamplight reflecting frostily off the surface of his eyes. She said, “We? Us?”

  “You wanted to be dealt in, didn’t you?”

  It made her sit up. “You’ve changed your tune.”

  “Have I?” He turned away. “Go on to bed, ducks.”

  He stood with his back to her; his spine seemed rigid—defensive; but against what?

  Too tired to resist his suggestion, she went into her cell—she thought of it as a cell: the cot, plaster flaking off the wall. There was no shade at the window; she took one or two things out of her case and then switched off the light before undressing. A narrow rind of moon had come out, throwing a bit of light through the glass, and for a while she stood taut in tawny underwear looking up toward the mountain peak. It was quite clearly silhouetted against the stars.

  The floor creaked; she turned; and knuckles rapped her door.

  “Yes?”

  She watched the knob turn. She could have spoken; she didn’t. A bit of faint illumination bounced around corners from the kitchen and outlined Crobey when the door came open. He didn’t advance, he only stood there.

  “I sort of was wondering what you’d look like without your clothes.” His voice had gone raspy.

  Almost with relief she stirred, with a slow, carnal smile. “Ah Crobey,” she murmured, “you’ve got twenty-four hours to get out of my bedroom.”

  He flipped the door shut with his heel. His hands lifted to her shoulders and dropped upon them. He stood at arm’s length. His hands seemed weightless. “You’re vibrating.”

  “I’m terrified.”

  “Tell me to leave. I’ll go.”

  With hesitant fascination she reached up, palms against his grizzled cheeks. Crobey had a face like a leather coat, she thought; the kind that looked better the more battered it got. He turned his lips into her palm, kissing her hand; everything seemed to move at sixty-four-frame slow motion. She felt the pound of a pulse in her throat and an odd vertigo—her head thrown back to look into his eyes, she felt as if he were bearing down on her like an avalanche. She cried out; but what emerged from her lips was only breath. Then he tugged her forward.

  His face loomed an inch from her own. His eyes had gone wide and the preposterous idea struck her that he was as intimidated as she was—that the monumental self-confidence was all facade.

  Astonishingly tender, he bore her down.

  Sex, to Carole, was always followed by feelings of starvation. She came back from the kitchen with a plate of cheese and half-crumbled crackers. Crobey was crowded far over on the edge of the narrow cot, hands under the back of his head, long hard body full-length. She almost tripped over the heaped tangle of his clothes where he’d left them on the floor. Even in the faint light she could see how his eyes explored her body when she sat down on the cot and set the plate beside her and began to nibble.

  Crobey hiked up on one elbow and helped himself to a snack. Holding the cracker in his hand, regarding it, he mused. “For what you’re about to receive may you be truly thankful, Harry.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “Probably not.”

  He’d have been a good father, she thought; he had the strength to be gentle.

  Robert.…

  Robert, she thought, looking at Crobey’s naked form, would have liked Crobey. Robert had no snobbery.

  She had no fear of Crobey now.

  She said, “That was terrific, you know.”

  “It’s an old trick I learned in the South Seas,” he told her gravely. “What the Trobriand Islanders call the missionary position.”

  “You’re demented.”

  Crobey laughed casually. “Maybe I am. Hell, I don’t know what I am any longer.”

  “What’s the matter, Harry?”

  “I don’t know. Postcoital depression.”

  “Tell me.” She’d buried her face in the hollow of his throat; her voice came up muffled.

  He said, “Will you promise not to laugh if I tell you something?”

  “No, but I’ll promise to try not to laugh.”

  “Supercilious bitch.”

  “Ill-mannered lout.”

  He said, “Would you find it possible to believe a slob like me could ever long for the sanctuary of a home?”

  “Why not? Everybody needs a hand to hold onto. Even me.”

  “Right. Somebody to be around to pick up the soap when I drop it in the shower.” He stirred, hooking a leg over her; his fingertips trailed up her spine. “I’m a mean tough two-headed son of a bitch, ducks. My job is terror. I did it, you know, for a while, believing in it. Then it was just a job. You fly them in, you fly them out. They put bombs in the plane and point you at a target and you go. You can destroy them so easily. The day comes when for the first time in your life you realize you can’t just keep killing them. You can’t ever kill them all. I’m too old for this foolishness and too far gone to repent. Going downhill and maybe getting scared—I never was any good at coping with failure. I’m trying to learn to accept my changing limitations, I expect, but it’s hardly a propitious moment for—this, you and me, us. Shit, why should I tell you all this?”

  “Maybe it’s time you told someone.”

  “Thing is, I’d tucked myself into a hole in the ground over there in Nassau to try and sort myself out—I was ready to chuck it in, find myself another line of work. Then you hit me with recollections of your brother Warren, who was a guy I liked and maybe owed. I didn’t think much of this job, you know. I thought you were around the bend. But you were right up there on your supercilious high horse and I never sat at a table over drinks with a woman like you before. I got it into my head to take care of two things. I was going to take you down off the high horse and I was going to get you into bed to prove you weren’t any different from any other woman.” />
  “You succeeded.”

  “Wrong, ducks. Nobody’s ever going to knock you down and as for the other thing, you’re not the same as any other woman.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because no other woman ever got to me the way you do.”

  “Go to sleep now, Harry.”

  “Right.” And, amazingly, he did.

  She drifted in a soft haze of contentment, not trying to think. Her awareness was limited to the physical present: the weight of his hard body against her, the sound and warm flutter of his breathing, the rise and fall of his ribcage under her outflung arm, the abrasive stubble on his cheek.

  After a time she heard him whimper softly in his sleep.

  She woke up feeling an absolute wreck; she opened her eyes slowly and Crobey took on a sort of surrealistic substance limned in red—the back of his head: Somehow he’d contrived to roll over without knocking them both off the cot.

  She got up gingerly, ran her tongue over her front teeth and stumbled outside carrying rudiments of clothing. By the time she mastered the use of the eccentric outdoor shower she was in a state of shimmering rage.

  Crobey laughed at her.

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh. I see. You grind your teeth every morning at eight, that’s all.”

  “One of the basic freedoms is the right to be irritable before breakfast, all right?”

  “Come on,” he said, “come over here.”

  “Can’t you see I need to be left alone right now?”

  “Be reasonable.”

  “No.” In high dudgeon she left the room, hauling the doorknob after her, and winced when the door slammed.

  In the kitchen she got out her compact and looked critically into its mirror. Then Crobey appeared, naked, a bath towel in his fist. She backed up against the sink to let him pass. Crobey made as if to walk by, then turned and pinioned her.

  He was grinning: His face came down on hers but she kept her lips stiff and still under his.