“Did he tell you what was wrong?”
Gaspar shook his head. “No. I assumed he was ill. He was holding his side like it pained him.”
“Can you remember anything else?”
“I’m afraid not. Sorry. What would you like?”
“Red wine,” I said. A bit early for me, but when in Spain…
García grunted and looked across at Cafe Central, half obscured by the crowd of Moors and foreigners passing through the plaza.
“Look at those sons of whores over here, all smug this morning. They know they scored a point.”
“This is more than some back alley fistfight,” I said. Those happened sometimes. The international government tried to keep a lid on the tensions here, but sometimes they escalated into action. I’d never heard of a political murder, though.
“Oh, they are getting overconfident. Right after Berlin fell, they were shaking in their boots thinking Patton and Montgomery would turn their tanks around and move on Madrid. Stalin stole the honor of taking Berlin from the West, and everyone hoped the Americans and British would go after another fascist capital. When that didn’t happen, they felt better but still didn’t breathe well. They worried about political pressure, perhaps secret support for the communists and socialists…”
“But that didn’t happen either,” I sighed. It had been the greatest disappointment of my life. Not that I ever had much faith in capitalist governments, but after what they had seen from the Third Reich, you’d think they’d at least want to get rid of the fascist regimes in Spain and Portugal.
Nope.
García concluded my thoughts.
“And now that they know the other governments will leave them alone, they want to settle scores with us.”
I looked over at Cafe Central. They did look a bit smug today, at least the Spaniards over there. I noticed the usual contingent of rich Frenchmen was absent—the bankers and art dealers and businessmen. They probably figured there would be trouble today. Besides the well-to-do Spanish, who looked more numerous at Cafe Central than usual, the only other people there was a gaggle of American tourists, gaping every time a Moor walked by and trying to sneak pictures.
“Motherfuckers!” someone shouted from the balcony above us.
Upstairs was another cafe, Cafe Fuentes. Another Republican stronghold. A bit more expensive because of the attractive old interior (it had once been a palace for some descendant of the Prophet) and its bird’s eye view of the Petit Socco, so I went to the Manara. Our victim didn’t look like he could have afforded to drink at a cafe very often, and when he did it wouldn’t have been in the Fuentes.
“Sons of whores!” the guy in Cafe Fuentes shouted again.
Someone over at the Cafe Central made a crude gesture. The Americans stared, confused.
“Come on over here and do that!” the man on the balcony shouted.
“¡Viva Franco!” was the only reply he got.
Several men at Cafe Central stood and gave the fascist salute. The Americans gaped. It was like someone flipped a switch to make all their jaws drop.
García cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “I shit in the milk of Franco!”
Yeah, that’s what he said. Me cago en la leche de Franco. A common Spanish insult. You can shit in someone’s milk, you can shit in the milk of someone’s mother, you can even shit in the milk of a football team or a political party. Two years in Spain and I never figured out just what it meant.
They were fighting words, though, and everybody knew it.
A hush settled over the Petit Socco, like when a strong sea wind suddenly cuts off, seconds before it slams back at you with twice as much force as before.
A moment later, Cafe Central exploded with a barrage of insults and profanity. Some got to their feet. Men at Cafe Manara did the same. A glass flew from the balcony of Cafe Fuentes upstairs and shattered on the flagstones in front of Cafe Central.
The Americans bolted.
CHAPTER THREE
The shouting died out as a column of police marched into the plaza. At their front strode Chason Michel. Chason was Gerald’s second in command. Just as the Treaty of Algeciras dictated the chief of police be British, it dictated that his assistant be French.
Chason was an arrogant career colonial officer who had never bothered to learn Arabic or even Spanish, pretended not to speak English, and had a personal thing against me. He suspected I was still involved in Party politics and ached to prove it. He noticed me the instant he appeared and gave me a contemptuous stare.
While the feeling was mutual, I have to say that Gerald picked the right man for this particular job. Chason hated the fascists and Communists equally, the fascists for humiliating his country and the Communists for threatening everything he held dear—namely the right to lord it over people lower down the social ladder.
With a few quick gestures, Chason deployed his men all around the square, a pair guarding each entrance, and then he himself took a seat at the Tingis and ordered a cafe au lait. The man had an eye for terrain. He could see everyone from where he sat.
An odd silence settled over the Petit Socco. Besides the American tourists, no one had left except for a waiter from Cafe Central who had run down the Rue Les Almoahades after them, waving the bill over his head. The fascists and the Communists sat back down, glaring at each other. The loungers at the other cafes watched with interest, vultures for any scrap of drama.
Chason got his coffee, took a sip, and sat there as casually and idly as if nothing had happened. It looked like he planned on staying a while.
“Guess it’s all over here,” I told García. “You know anyone who was close with Juan Cardona?”
The old freedom fighter shook his head. “No one. I barely knew of him myself. The anarchists gather at the Buenaventura Durruti. It’s a restaurant just off the Corniche.”
“Never been in there. Saw the sign and kept on walking.” Buenaventura Durruti had been an anarchist leader. Caused almost as much trouble for the Republic as Franco did. At least he had the decency to die early on.
I paid for my wine, slapped García on the back, and strolled out into the plaza.
A flick of the wrist by Chason and a Moorish policeman was at my side. Quite the magic trick. The Great Chason, Prestidigitator, and His Amazing Moor. He’ll make the Moor appear and disappear right before your very eyes!
“I got the picture, bud,” I told the cop, and walked over to Chason. To my annoyance, the cop followed me. An obvious insult to do that right in front of everybody, but that’s how Chason was. Especially with me.
“Sit down,” Chason ordered.
“I got things to do.”
“Sit down.”
I sat.
“What were you doing in that cafe?”
“Having a glass of wine. That isn’t illegal as far as I know, or have the Moors taken over?”
Chason colored. The Arabs were giving the French a lot of trouble over in Algeria. All the French were terrified of a similar uprising here.
“Drinking with who?”
“García from the docks.”
Why lie? One of his officers was sure to have noted my table companion if Chason hadn’t himself.
“A friend of yours?”
“No, but your boss asked me to ask around after Juan Cardona. You know, police work.”
“We can handle it ourselves.”
“Gerald doesn’t think so.”
“What is your relationship with García?”
“Relationship? Damn, Chason, Tangier is getting to you. Can’t two men share a drink without people thinking—”
“Answer my question!”
I glanced at the neighboring tables. They were all ears. But I saw no one important at them.
“Well, I asked him about the victim but he didn’t know him. Juan Cardona was an anarchist, and García as I’m sure you know is a Communist. They don’t mix.”
“And you have the gall to say ‘they’,” Chason r
eplied with contempt.
“I left all that years ago,” I lied. At the moment I was trying to figure out how to get two Party operatives out of the International Zone and into the Spanish Zone. They needed to get down to Tetuán. Not an easy thing to do without passports.
“What else did you talk about?”
“Oh, I was telling him war stories about being in the Royal Tank Corps and fighting the Nazis in France. You remember, I told you about that. After serving in a tank crew for the Republic I got a post with the British Army. The American army wasn’t hiring yet. The next time I saw an American was when we were liberating Paris.”
Chason’s eyes narrowed. The chump had sat out the war as a colonial policeman in Senegal and resented the fact that he never got to serve. What he resented more was a bunch of Yanks and Brits saving his country.
I turned the questioning on him. “So what have you found out?”
“That’s police business.”
“I’m on police business. Gerald hired me because I speak Spanish and know the Spanish scene.”
“We have our informants.”
“Not in that crowd you don’t. Not good enough, anyway.”
There may have been a lot of factions in the republicano population—communist, socialist, anarchist, Basque and Catalan independence movements, and more minor parties than I could count—but they could sure close ranks when they wanted to.
Chason clucked his tongue, as if what I had pointed out was ridiculous instead of factual.
“Go,” he ordered. “And if you find out anything, report at once to me.”
“I’ll be having drinks with Gerald this evening. I’m sure he’ll keep you in the loop.”
Chason turned and took a sip of his cafe au lait. Score one for Shorty. Gerald and I were pals, and the police chief hated his assistant almost as much as I did. Still, he was stuck with him and Chason was actually pretty good at his job. Having the Frenchman’s eyes on me while I tried to get those operatives into Spanish Morocco didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable.
I left, walking uphill along Silversmith’s Street. To each side shone flashy jewelry shops selling the heavy gold and silver necklaces, bracelets, and anklets the natives liked alongside more delicate European fashions for Tangier’s wealthier residents. Jewelry had a different purpose depending on if you were a Moor or a European. The Moorish ladies valued their jewelry by weight, because it was their widow’s pension or alimony. Gather enough clunky bracelets over the years and it doesn’t matter if the old man kicks off before you, and the way a lot of these Moorish guys worked, they usually did. European women assumed their husbands would stick around almost as long as they did, and would get a decent pension to boot, so jewelry was more about looking nice.
The crowd was thick despite the midmorning sun that already baked the air and shone off the gray flagstones with a blinding brilliance. I shouldered through a crowd of tourists just off the boat and around a circle of Moors eating at a street stand. The rich smell of the steamed chickpeas wafted over me. A cluster of Orthodox Jews passed by, clutching religious books, eyes hidden beneath the wide brims of their black hats.
I barely noticed all this. My mind was spinning too fast. I was stumped, not sure of my next move. The obvious place to go was the Restaurante Buenaventura Durruti, but I didn’t think I could make them talk. I had never penetrated that scene and I didn’t think I could now. I was too well known—the American detective who drank Scotch with the police chief. Everybody knew what I was about. They all knew I had been in the Lincoln Brigade and later POUM, El Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, so that was strike one and two as far as the anarchists were concerned. Very provincial, most Spanish anarchists. Didn’t trust the foreign volunteers even when they accepted our help. Plus if they knew who killed Juan Cardona and were planning revenge, they wouldn’t want me around at all. That would be strike three.
The main worry was that they’d do just that and start some tit-for-tat killings that would destabilize the International Zone. That’s why Gerald hired me the first day. We’d worked on cases a few times before. A friendly relationship between private detective and chief of police can be useful for both sides. This was the first time I’d been brought in on the ground floor, though. The higher ups were worried, and Gerald was feeling the heat coming down from above.
But if not the CNT, then who could I talk to?
All those shiny jewelry displays told me who.
Just a few yards off the Grand Socco, there’s a little lane that cuts between some tall native houses. Down that street, and into a little courtyard screened from the street by a wooden fence covered with brilliant bougainvillea, is a little French cafe called Melanie’s. A few wrought iron tables and chairs sat under the shade of a fig tree. Inside were a few more. Melanie’s had proper coffee, French newspapers, good food that didn’t get too fancy, great wine, and the best pair of legs I’d ever seen on a cafe owner.
More on Melanie in a minute.
Guillaume, an old Frenchman who had left Europe as soon as the French conscripts demobilized after the Great War, stood outside in his neatly pressed white shirt and black pants. His shoes shone. He’d been in Tangier for longer than anyone else I knew, back before it was the International Zone. Used to assist the French consul on his wild pig sticking expeditions in the countryside, back when there were wild pigs to stick. Then as Tangier grew he worked as a doorman for the Minzah Hotel, and later as waiter in various cafes. Creaky, arthritic, but as erect and sharp as when he came out of basic training, he ruled over the other waiters at Melanie’s, especially the Moorish ones. The only person he deferred to was Melanie herself.
He spotted me as soon as I entered the courtyard and turned his face toward the dark interior.
“Madame, Le Petit,” he called.
Yeah, that’s me in French. “Le Petit.” When I was a kid I got into a lot of scraps because of my height until I learned to accept the inevitable and let everyone call me short.
Hey, at least being short got me into the tank corps for two wars. Nothing better than blasting the turret off a Panzer.
Well, there was one thing better, and she was walking out that door.
Actually, Melanie Durand didn’t walk. She flowed.
A tall, blonde Parisian with curves in all the right places, Melanie had been in Tangier as long as I had, and had made a better name for herself. She came out in a clingy green dress with a low top that would have caused a riot in Fez or one of the other religious towns.
She eased up to me and planted a warm kiss on my lips.
“Got a cigarette?” she asked in French. I’d learned the language just for her. OK, so I use it all over Tangier, but if we had been living in Cleveland I would have still learned it.
“For you, baby, I got a million cigarettes.”
I pulled a pack out of my pocket and gave it a little jerk so one popped halfway out. She looked me in the eye as she took it and put it to her lips.
Our hands flashed to our pockets and we both drew out a lighter like we were a pair of Western gunfighters in a showdown at high noon.
We flicked them on. I got mine lit half a second before she did.
“The flint in this isn’t working well,” she said with a humph, giving her lighter a couple more flicks before she got a flame.
“I’m winning five-three this week,” I told her.
She smiled and waggled her head. “And you’re behind eighteen-fourteen this month.”
“It’s all a matter of perspective.”
We put our flames together. Melanie lit.
Without looking away from me, she took a long drag, letting the smoke waft out her nostrils. Then she put the cigarette to my lips.
I breathed it in, filling my lungs. Before I could breathe out, her lips were on mine, and I let the smoke out slow and easy into her mouth. That turned into a luxuriant kiss as the cigarette haze coiled and expanded around us.
Guillaume found something to do ins
ide.
I looked up into those bright blue eyes and couldn’t believe my luck. How could a long, lovely drink like her see something in a half pint like me?
After a little more kissing, we sat down at a table in the courtyard. It was a Monday, so business was slow.
“You’re here early. Work?” she asked.
“Oh, I came to see you.”
“About business. I can always tell when you start a case because you get this look of focus on your face, like a sniper taking aim.”
I shuddered. “Don’t call me a sniper. Snipers always gave me the creeps.”
Once in the trenches outside Madrid, a sniper who was attached to our unit let me look through his scope. He was an American volunteer and had brought this expensive hunting rifle with him that had an amazing scope. I held it up to my eye and focused in on the lip of the fascist trench. Gave me a shock. It was like the enemy line was only five feet away. I slowly moved the scope to the side, looking along the trench.
And then I saw him—a guy looking through a gap in the sandbags. He had a regular rifle, no scope, and was only showing the top two-thirds of his face. Dark, round features. If he hadn’t been in the army, he would probably have been plump. Very heavy eyebrows. I could see he had shaved recently. I could see where the razor had slipped and left a little nick. I could see that the rest of the skin where he had shaved was red, like he had shaved without enough soap or water. We had to shave like that too.
The sniper saw where I was looking, took the rifle out of my hands, peered through the scope for a second, and put a bullet right through the guy’s face.
“So what’s going on?” Melanie asked.
“A case, you’re right,” I said, glad that her question snapped me out of it. I’m proud of my service and would do it all again, but that doesn’t mean the memories are easy to live with. “An anarchist named Juan Cardona was found stabbed in the medina this morning. Looked like he had been running, took a wrong turn, and ended up in a dead end. Knife right through the heart. Spanish army issue.”
“Fascist bastards,” Melanie said.
“That’s what someone wants us to think anyway. I’m not convinced it was a revenge killing, or at least not by the fascists. It just seems too neat. That knife was a bit too obvious. But then who did it? And why a nobody like him? Gerald wants me to help out and Chason is breathing down my neck as usual. Plus I have some other obligations that are taking away a lot of my time.”
Three Passports to Trouble Page 2