“How do you mean, she wanted to mix business with pleasure?”
“What?” Ralph was making little circles on the table with the wet bottom of his glass.
“Lydia. Mixing business with pleasure?”
“Oh. I'm not a businessman, the Senator always says. I ought to go along for the ride. Not worry my head. You know. It's something about oil.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Francisco Del Rey comes from an aristocratic old Venezuelan family. A lot of prestige but not much money, one of those things. Senator Hartsell has the money. They're fifty-fifty in an oil venture down here, but most of the capital was the Senator's. Del Rey has the connections, I suppose. I gather the Venezuelan government is not getting the fifty per cent it's supposed to get. The deal is worth millions.”
I signaled the waiter for another round. Ralph gulped his rum straight this time. “I like you, Chet,” he said. “I can't find someone to talk to like this very often.”
“Sure,” I said. “What has this million-dollar oil deal got to do with your wife?”
“That's the crazy part of it. Once, it had nothing to do with her. Then everything changed.”
“Is that so?”
“Um-hum,” said Ralph. “I'm almost sorry it happened.”
“What happened?”
“The Senator changed his mind.”
The waiter came around without being told this time. I was beginning to feel lightheaded from the beer and rum. Ralph was a long way ahead of me. “What did the Senator change his mind about?” I asked Ralph.
“The Senator?”
“Yeah. You said the Senator changed his mind.”
“Oh, that.” Ralph sipped his soda, drinking half of it, then poured the rum into what was left and started drinking again. He was beginning to look morose. “Deirdre was always his favorite. Would it offend you if I said he wasn't very happy when she married you?”
“No. It wouldn't offend me.”
“He wasn't very happy when she married you. “She wrote Lydia about it. She told Lydia he said it was bad enough when she married 'that astronomer fellow.' That's me. He said it was the last straw, Deirdre marrying a private detective. What in God's creation was wrong with all the eligible young bachelors in Georgetown? he wanted to know. Deirdre wouldn't listen to him, though. Deirdre went ahead and married you, just like Lydia married me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“The Senator was furious. He changed his mind.”
Ralph made more circles with the bottom of his glass. He smeared them with his index finger. He drew a tic-tac-toe sign on the plastic tabletop with his wet finger and began to play by himself. X won in five moves. We had more rum.
“You haven't told me what the Senator changed his mind about,” I pointed out.
“Yes. Because Deirdre was his favorite, it bothered him more about Deirdre's marrying you than about Lydia's marrying me. You know, Chet, I think I'm going to be sorry it happened. Sorry as all hell.”
“Buck up, pal,” I said. “What is it?”
“He didn't like the fifty-fifty arrangement with Del Rey. It was his capital. The venture needed still more capital, so Del Rey had no choice. Deirdre wrote Lydia they were making a sort of compromise.”
“What kind of compromise, Ralph?”
“Del Rey would have to give up ten per cent of his share of the company. It isn't big, like Creol Oil, you understand, but big enough. Enough. You understand? But Del Rey refused to give it outright to the Senator. Instead, he agreed to give it to Deirdre.”
“I'll be damned,” I said.
“That was clever of Del Rey, you see? He and Deirdre were old friends. I wish I was back on the mountain, Chet. It's cold this time of year, but that telescope is a joy, a real regular old joy to me. I suppose the Senator was right. I'm not cut out for big business and oil and things. Am I cut out?”
“I don't know,” I said. This time the waiter took a good look at Ralph and filled my glass only. I didn't drink it.
“The Senator thought he would have the last laugh, though. Deirdre gave him the excuse when she married you. He didn't give Del Rey's 10 percent of the oil company to Deirdre. You understand?”
“Is that right?” I said.
Ralph's head slumped down on his arms, which were folded on the table in front of him. His glasses came askew. Sitting at the next table, the fattest woman I have ever seen looked at him and smiled and nudged her small male companion with an enormous elbow.
“Ralph's head jerked up. He pointed a finger in my direction and said, “I'm a rich man now. But who wants to be rich? I just want my wife back, that's all, the way she used to be. Her sister's suicide did something to her. She—she won't even let me touch her.” For some reason he smiled, then added, “That's not so funny, huh?”
“But the ten per cent?” I prodded him.
Down went Ralph's head again. It jerked up once more and he said, “Del Rey must be ver' angry. The Senator gave the ten per cent which was suppo' to go to Del Rey's good friend Deirdre to Lydia. So now you know.”
I gave the waiter five dollars and he was delighted to help me get Ralph into the elevator and to his room. So now I knew, he said. What the hell did I know? I didn't know much.
Chapter Eleven
BRIGHT AND EARLY IN the morning we ferried across the sunblazing unruffled surface of the lake. There are no more than a dozen and a half lakes in the world larger than Lake Maracaibo. We reached La Salina, the Creol Oil city on the lake, at lunchtime.
There was a smell of oil and of brackish water on the air: brackish water because a narrow channel connects Lake Maracaibo with the Gulf of Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea beyond; oil because we were now in the forest of great steel trees, the derricks on huge pile foundations, probing for oil through a hundred feet of salt water.
A canvas-topped motor launch with the words King Oil Co., stenciled on the prow took us from La Salina to the smaller King Oil settlement in the lake. By the time we got there, my wet shirt had become one with my skin.
The air itself seemed dripping wet. The bronzed perspiring oilmen were shirtless but wore levis or khaki trousers. They also wore thin canvas shoes so their feet wouldn't blister against the oven-hot decks of the barges and tenders. They moved in slow motion. I never saw anyone hurrying all the time I was in the vicinity of Maracaibo or its burning lake.
Del Rey introduced us to a man named Hendrickson, a big, overweight Oklahoman who might have been an All-American fullback a dozen years ago but now was suffering even more than the rest of us from the heat. Del Rey was surprisingly arrogant with Hendrickson, but the Oklahoman took it complacently. Del Rey, I gathered, was not very popular with any of the men here. It didn't seem to bother him.
There was more than one type of drilling here, Hendrickson said. To work in the marshy salt bogs near the shore, the oilmen had gone amphibious, eschewing road building for canal digging and dreaming up marsh buggies which weren't particular about traveling on land or through water or over the treacherous bogs themselves.
Hendrickson mistook us for visiting VIP's—or maybe we were, because Lydia owned ten per cent of King Oil. It seemed part of his job to show VIP's around. He rambled on about jackets consisting of half a dozen and more heavy steel cylinders placed in rows and a hundred feet long to reach the bottom of the lake. They're towed by a barge to the drilling site and lowered by crane to the lake bottom. Since they weigh upwards of two hundred tons, it's no mean feat, said Hendrickson proudly.
“It's very exciting,” Lydia said. “I thought I would like it.”
And who wouldn't, owning ten per cent of all this?
We hung around and sweated until dinner. Del Rey apologized for the fact that some of the buildings at La Salina were air conditioned, but air conditioning had not yet made its way to King Oil. I took two showers in tepid, briny water, but I was sweating by the time I dried myself.
The shower stalls, small corrugated tin shacks, were located behind what
passed for a guest house at King Oil. The guest house was two stories high, of old, sagging wood. The shower stalls had no roof over them, but their sides were taller than a man and there was a little door you could latch from the inside before you pulled the string which brought down the weak cascade of water.
I was just coming out from my second shower when I heard voices nearby. Something made me duck back inside and leave the flimsy door partially ajar.
“Just what do you think you're doing, Paco?” a voice said. It was Lydia.
“My dear Lydia,” he said. He repeated it, and laughed.
They came into view. He was wearing white ducks, which were darkened with sweat along his flanks. She was wearing a large towel and an angry look on her face. I wasn't sure, but I thought he was drunk.
“My dear Lydia,” he said again. “Don't you realize I can do anything I want? After yesterday?”
“You better leave me alone.”
Her long blonde hair was wet from the shower she had just taken. She lifted up her” hand in an instinctive feminine gesture to fluff it. Del Rey said, “Anything I want.” To prove his point, he tugged at the towel, pulling it off Lydia's bronzed shoulder. It came. loose down to her waist on her right side, exposing her breast. Color rose from Lydia's shoulder and from her throat to her face. She hauled off and slugged Del Rey hard with her open hand. It made him laugh and reach for the towel again.
I was about to make like one of King Arthur's boys, when someone beat me to it. Or tried to.
Ralph Homerson hove into view along the boardwalk leading from the rear of the sagging guest house to the shower stalls. Lydia was just re-arranging her bath towel. You could see the livid imprint other hand on Del Rey's dark, handsome face.
“What's going on here?” Ralph said. He was wearing a bathrobe and carrying a pair of undershorts in one hand and a bar of soap in the other. He dropped what he was carrying and made two fists and stalked toward Del Rey and his wife.
“Oh, for Heaven's sake, Ralph,” Lydia said.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Ralph bristled.
“Just forget it, Ralph. Please.”
“I saw him trying to paw you.”
“Can't you see he's drunk?”
“I ought to punch him in the nose, Lydia.”
“Why don't you try it?” Del Rey said.
“I can take care of myself, Ralph,” Lydia told her husband.
“Well,” said Ralph.
Del Rey flashed a smile at him. “Here I am, amigo.”
Ralph lunged at him awkwardly, brushing Lydia out of the way. Ralph uncorked a right cross which might have hurt Lydia, but would not have hurt Del Rey much even if it had landed. Del Rey caught it easily with his left hand, drunk or not. He brought his own right fist up expertly, without wasted motion. It caught Ralph flush on the point of his jaw. He stumbled back three steps, one of his shower clogs hitting the bar of soap on the boardwalk. His feet flew up and out and he landed on the base of his spine.
“I am sorry I had to do that,” Del Rey said.
Lydia went to Ralph, leaning over him and giving everyone a view of what she was trying to hide from Del Rey. It was very nice. “Are you all right, Ralph?” she said.
Ralph nodded. He stood up unsteadily. There was a little trickle of blood coming down from his lips over his chin. Lydia patted it with her towel. She turned around and looked once at Del Rey. I could not see her eyes from where I was standing, but I saw his. They said he was very sure of himself.
“Shake hands?” Del Rey said, coming over to Ralph.
Ralph did not shake hands. He said, “I'll tell you something, Paco. A man usually doesn't go around talking like this, but now I have to, for your own good. I know I have a beautiful wife. It would be fantastic if other men didn't—desire her. I'm aware of that. I accept it. Sometimes I'm flattered by it. I'm not the sort of man you think Lydia Hartsell would marry, but—”
“Ralph,” Lydia said. “You're making a fool of yourself.”
“No. I have to finish. Sometimes I'm very surprised that she married me. But I love my wife, Paco. I—I adore her.” Lydia looked away from him. He went on, “I have pride, Paco. Perhaps I'm more conscious of my wife's beauty and the way other men react to her because of the way I am. I'm, telling you this for a reason. If I ever find out you lay a hand on my wife again, whether it's all right with her or not—”
“Ralph, for God's sake,” Lydia said.
“I'll kill you. Do you understand? I'll kill you.”
Del Rey's eyes did not look so confident after that. . . .
If I hadn't been out in the shower stalls and seen what had happened, I never “would have known anything was wrong at dinner. Del Rey waxed eloquent about the Venezuelan seacoast. Lydia listened to him politely. Even Ralph managed an interested smile.
“If it isn't fish,” said Del Rey during cocktails, “it will be frozen food from the United States. Creol flies it down for its people in La Salina and sells us what we need at no profit. But tonight it will be fish. There is no water for fish like the water off Margarita Island. We have sailfish, corbina, red snapper, marlin and tuna. You can take your choice. We also have oysters and much avocado. Do you like avocado?”
As it turned out, we all like avocado. We had avocado and oysters and red snapper and rum and Caracas beer. We had much talk and we three norte-americanos watched Del Rey lose his temper with the waiter when the poor fellow almost spilled something. He was that way with all the people here at King Oil. Ralph Homerson, I thought, was probably not the only one who said he would kill Del Rey, but the others had probably said it of a hot night when they couldn't sleep and the fat Maracaibo mosquitoes scented their sweat and buzzed them and made them wish oil had never been discovered in Lake Maracaibo.
“In the morning,” Del Rey promised, “I will really show you around our city on the lake. Now, though, if you will excuse me, too much time has passed since I visited with my collection. Are any of you interested in firearms?”
None of us were, but I added, “Not now, anyway.” I hoped he could see Alex Lubrano in my eyes, a little guy who wasn't much good to anybody but his family.
Del Rey got up and disappeared upstairs. I. left the Homersons sipping brandy at the table. I went outside and watched a thin sliver of moon rise up over the lake. In its pale light you could see the great derricks marching across the water becoming smaller and smaller and fainter until they merged with the blackness. It was hot. It was so damn hot, although the sun had set, that you began to think the heat came from elsewhere.
In Washington now it would be cold. The girls prancing to the Uline Ice Arena with their flashing skates would be wearing gay earmuffs. The lame ducks would be getting lamer and lamer, doing spiteful last-minute things to foul up the schedule for the bright young freshmen getting ready to replace them. Legions of Santa Clauses would guard the street corners and wait outside the big stores on F Street for the small change the clerks inside had purposely given you.
Far away across the water, I could hear someone singing. At this distance I couldn't tell if it was good singing or bad or what he was singing about or whether he had English or Spanish. The voice sounded incredibly remote, like the space between the stars, and yet belonged to the faint moonlight on the still, black water of the lake.
After a while I went back inside. Two half-breed kids were cleaning up the table from dinner. I thought I could smell Lydia's perfume lingering there. Despite what had happened this afternoon, Lydia would probably get a good night's sleep, and so would Ralph. I wouldn't, though, not with Del Rey sleeping in the same building, because here was no predicting Del Rey. He might go off to sleep himself. He might be sleeping already. Or he might stay up all night admiring his collection of firearms. He might spend a moment or an hour deciding which one he liked best for the occasion, stripping it down and oiling its parts and drying them off before reassembly, then loading the magazine with the awesome expertness of familiarity. The occasion,
of course, would be the impending demise of Chester Drum. Provided Del Rey considered it as pressing a matter tonight as he had last night.
I could stay up all night watching the moon silver lay its pale, silvery track across the dark water. I could go to my room and stretch out on my bed, being careful not to sleep, and commence sweating.
I didn't feel, like standing here all night. I didn't feel like trying to remain awake in a reclining position. There was only one thing I could do.
I went upstairs looking for Del Rey's room.
Chapter Twelve
THERE WERE THREE DOORS. Behind the first, Chester Drum might die if he foolishly sought sleep. Behind the second the Homersons were arguing in subdued voices. I opened the first door and looked into the darkened room. Somewhere nearby, water dripped. The only lock on the door was a hook-and-eye, which wouldn't withstand the onslaught of a pair of Mexican jumping beans.
I shut the door. A board creaked under my foot. The Homersons were still arguing. Patiently, earnestly, with much decorum. I couldn't hear the words. I didn't try to listen. I stood outside the third door a long time. Light streamed out under the door. Every now and then I would hear a faint metal-against-metal snicking sound. I was about to knock on the door when Del Rey's voice said:
“Please come in. I can see your shoes under the door. There isn't any doorsill, you'll notice.”
The room was larger than I had expected. The bed, dresser, desk and bar were matching pieces of some tropical hardwood I had never seen before. Two long tables of what looked like ordinary yellow pine, unpainted and unfinished, stood in the center of the room. On them was Del Rey's collection of firearms. He had enough artillery there to arm a regimental combat team. He was assembling a Luger, but watching me. All the guns to the right of the Luger were stripped down, while those to the left had been cleaned, oiled “and reassembled. No philatelist ever looked happier among his stamps.
The Second Longest Night Page 10