I grinned at her. “Because.”
She watched me keenly. “So you lie. All this you do understand. It is big, big secret. No police.”
I might have known she was too intelligent and too enthusiastically inquisitive to be stalled off. I took her arm.
“Okay. It’s a big secret. My own private affair. Now, how about helping me tidy things up and find out what they’ve snitched?”
She was as biddable as she was bright. She asked no more questions, and started meekly to help me clean up the apartment. We fixed the living-room first and then the bedroom. As I expected, nothing, so far as I could see, had been taken.
Vera’s meekness continued until she found a photograph of Iris which had been pulled out of its frame. She picked it up and studied it with flashing eyes. She snapped imperiously:
“Who is it—this sexy woman?”
“My wife,” I said.
She swung round, looking up at me reproachfully. “You—married?”
“What did you think I was? A rich widow, too?”
“Gods!” She slammed the photograph down on the dressing-table in Russian abandon to pique. “Always it is this way. Always the real men already they are grabbed up by the cheap—”
“Careful of the noun,” I said.
“You think I care of the nouns?”
“But I do,” I said. “You’re being rude, disorderly and obstreperous.”
She blinked. “What is it this obstreperous?”
“Bad,” I said.
“Pouff.” She shrugged and dropped sulkily down on the couch. “Now, for this, I need a drink.”
She was pouting like a little girl, mad as a hornet. I thought it was rather sweet. I made her a cuba libre and, leaving her, went into the bedroom, which had formerly reigned unmolested, and stripped off the Indian’s denims. While I had a hot shower and dressed, I thought about Halliday.
When I rejoined Vera in the living-room she had finished her drink and had removed the Cossack hat and the silver foxes. She was lying exotically on the couch, smoking a cigarette. Her tempers seemed to be as short-lived as they were violent. She looked in a very good humour and, when she saw me, she laughed her deep, infectious laugh.
“Ah. Now he is pretty again, the married one.” She stroked the edge of the couch. “Come sit with me.”
I was still thinking about Deborah and Halliday. I sat down. She touched the bump above my ear, letting her fingers linger caressingly.
“Already she is better, yes? Smaller? She hurts much?”
“Not much.” She was close. Her knee brushed against me. She was luscious and obviously sexual as a French maid in an old-time bedroom comedy. But I wasn’t in an old-time bedroom comedy. I was wondering about Halliday, what he thought I had. It must be something small enough to carry around with me but, presumably, not small enough to go in my wallet. A jewel? It was hard to believe in Deborah as a jewel thief smuggling a priceless gem across borders. An Inca relic, then? With Deborah’s father an archæologist in Peru, that made more sense. But what Inca relic could be small enough? A jewel. I was back at the jewel again.
Vera’s hand had left the bump and was straying to my ear.
“I am good, no?” She purred. “I ask no questions. Inside I am sizzling with the curiosity, but I ask no questions.”
“That’s the girl,” I said.
She began to play with the lobe of my ear. “I promise the old man. For one year after he go, I promise not to have friends.”
“You did?”
“The year she is finished last Thursday.” Her face came closer to mine. She smelt like a perfume factory. Her smile was unabashed. “You who get chased and hit and burgled, you who are married to this, this—which does not bother to live with you and give you love, you like to be my friend?”
Something about the soft touch of her fingers against my skin brought back a memory of Deborah. There was no physical resemblance. Deborah had been a little inexperienced girl play-acting at being a siren. Vera was the real thing, attractive enough to inflame the plaster monk with the broken arm. But the memory produced a sudden suspicion. Deborah had made love to me a couple of hours after we met. Now Vera was doing the same thing. I wasn’t that attractive to women.
I turned and looked at her, on my guard. She looked back. Her face darkened with indignation. Abruptly her hand dropped from my ear.
“What happens? Are you the man? Or the boiled egg? To you, I am ugly—yes, revolting.”
“Don’t be dumb. You’re beautiful. Scrumptious.”
“What is this scrumptious?”
“Beautiful.”
She shrugged dramatically. “Of course I am beautiful. But you I do not please. What happens?”
“It looks like a lot’s happening—very fast.”
She ignored the implications of that remark. “You think all the time of this wife?”
“Sure I think of her.”
“You crazy? You think of the woman who is not there when another woman is here?” A gleam of understanding showed in her eyes. “Ah, I know. It is the make-up. All the day through the corpses and the shrines I go and do not change the face. Yes, that is it. The make-up, all over my face goes dribbling. Is repulsive. I fix.”
She jumped up and started for the bedroom. At the door she turned and threw me a smile of great amiability and forgiveness.
“I come back with the new face. Then is different. Then you forget your wife, that…”
“Don’t say it,” I said.
As I was waiting dubiously for her return, the door buzzer rang. I had taken such a beating since my return to Mexico City that my first reaction was one of caution. The buzzer sounded again. I moved to the window and, standing behind the curtain, looked down to the street. Outside the front door, compact, small and determined in her shrill green suit, was Mrs. Snood.
I couldn’t have been more pleased to see anyone. Mrs. Snood, with her daughters and her economies, was a monument to normalcy in a world gone crazy. She would stall the question of being Vera’s “friend” until I had more time to think. She might also be able to tell me where I could find Halliday.
At least I ought to know where he lived.
I went to the kitchen and pressed the button that released the front door. Soon a tap sounded, and I opened to her. Her bright little face lit up with pleasure when she saw me. A new orchid—yellow this time—was pinned disastrously to her lapel. Her hair was as irrepressible as ever.
“So you’re here at last. I called twice and stopped by in the morning. No reply.”
“Sorry. I was out.”
Her beady gaze fell on the swelling above my ear. “Goodness! Someone hit you?”
“I ran into a door.”
She grinned sympathetically. “Tequila does that to me, too.”
She stumped past me into the living-room and gave it an assessing look.
“Not bad. How much do they sting you a month?”
I told her. She caught sight of Vera’s silver foxes and the black Cossack cap.
“Oh, you have a friend. I’m sorry. I…”
“Think nothing of it,” I said. “I’m delighted. Sit down. I’ll give you a drink.”
“Well, just one. I have a taxi outside. I’m on my way back from those pyramids. Can’t remember the name. I thought it’d be smarter going by taxi instead of taking the tour. I think I got gypped as usual.”
“How were the pyramids?” I asked
She grinned. “Oh, pyramids.”
I poured her a Cuba libre. She took it and gulped at it thirstily.
“I stopped by,” she said, “to ask you to come to dinner to-night. My guest, of course. I’m going to pay.” She was watching me anxiously, frightened that her plan for a treat might go awry. “At Ciro’s. It’s the best place in town. Swanky orchestra and everything.”
I liked her, but, in the circumstances, I wasn’t sure that I liked her enough to endure an evening at Ciro’s. But before I said anything she leaned towards me and put her li
ttle pawlike hand on my knee.
“Please. Be a sport. I ran across Bill Halliday having breakfast at Sanborn’s with a girl this morning. I invited him. He especially wanted you, too.”
So Halliday especially wanted to see me. That was very kind of him. Suddenly the whole picture was changed.
I smiled: “Sure, sure. I’d love to come, Lena.”
“Oh, wonderful! Around eight. My room at the Reforma.”
Mrs. Snood finished her drink and got up. “Well, the taxi waiting down there makes me nervous. I know they don’t have meters in this country, but I keep on thinking of a meter ticking and…”
She stopped as Vera Garcia came out of the bedroom. Vera had put a lot of work on her face—too much so. She looked like a white-Russian imitating Lynn Fontanne imitating a white Russian.
I got up. I said: “Mrs. Snood, this is Señora Garcia.”
When she saw Mrs. Snood, Vera’s face broke into a dazzling smile. She hurried towards her. “How nice!” she cooed. “How very nice to see you again.”
I stared in surprise. “You know each other?”
“Of course,” said Vera.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Snood, too. “What a funny coincidence! Mrs. Garcia’s the girl who was with Bill Halliday this morning.”
I managed to keep my face in control. Vera dropped lazily into a chair, crossing her legs and lighting a cigarette. “Halliday?” she echoed. “Who, then, is this Halliday?”
“The man who was having breakfast with you at Sanborn’s,” said Mrs. Snood. “Isn’t he a friend of yours?”
“Oh, him,” Vera laughed. “It seems he want to be the friend.” She winked at me. “I am sitting at Sanborn’s taking the morning coffee as always. Everywhere is crowded. Up he comes, this man, to my table and ask to join me. I say why not. And he talk, talk, talk. About Iowa? Yes? Or Idaho? Some of those big empty States in America. All the time he talk.”
She winked again. “And all the time the foot under the table—she talk, too.”
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Snood. “I didn’t know he was that way with young girls.” She sighed. “His foot, she never talks under the table with me. But, then, I’m only an old hag.”
An idea came. She smiled at Vera eagerly. “Listen, I’m inviting Peter to dinner to-night with Mr. Halliday. Why don’t you come, too, Mrs. Garcia. A foursome? So much more fun. Unless you’re scared of our Cleveland wolf.”
Vera shrugged a Lynn Fontanne shrug. “Me? What are their feet for?” She looked at me cozily. “If Peter come to-night I come. I am much delighted.”
Mrs. Snood went chattering on about plans, but I wasn’t listening.
What a funny coincidence! Mrs. Snood had said. That was one way of putting it. If you wanted to, you could say it was a coincidence that Vera had had coffee with Bill Halliday in Sanborn’s and then dropped into my pasteleria for a second breakfast with her station wagon coupe parked almost outside my door. If you liked you could call it a coincidence that I should have run into her again at the Pantheon Dolores. If you liked you could also call it a coincidence that it had been Vera Garcia who had driven me to the Shrine of Los Remedios, where Junior had found his ideal opportunity to slug me.
I glanced across the room at Vera’s glossy black hair and her generous, white-rose beauty. Before Mrs. Snood’s remark she had seemed one of the most spontaneous, uncomplicated people I had ever met.
I didn’t know any more.
It was almost as if I could see, standing behind her, a tall, gangling American with a foolish smile, and a pretty little Mexican boy with a bundle of clothes in a burlap sack.
X
I arrived punctually at the tourist-de-luxe Reforma Hotel. Mrs. Snood let me into a plush suite, the price of which must have given her sleepless nights. She was wearing the bougainvillea dress ($79.50), and her hair was in its usual evening birds-nest up-sweep. She looked happy and festive.
“Oh, Peter. You’re the first. How nice!” A dumb waiter, with a bottle of rum and elegant fixings stood by a sofa. “Thought we’d have cocktails here. More fun. More economical, too. At least, that’s what I figured until they slapped the service charge on me.”
She fussed a Daiquiri out of the shaker and handed it to me. “I’m so glad Vera Garcia’s coming. Such an attractive girl. Charming.”
“Charming,” I said.
“I didn’t know she was a friend of yours.” She looked archly inquisitive. “Known her for long?”
“We met this morning,” I said. “In the cemetery.”
“The cemetery? My dear, how romantic!” She dropped down on the edge of the bed with a sigh and sipped her cocktail. “You know, I thought she and Mr. Halliday were friends, too. But it seems he was just being a naughty old man.”
“So it seems.”
“I hope they don’t fight. I do like people at my parties to like each other. It’s such fun when people do.”
In the circumstances I found her zest for life rather depressing. I could imagine her giving a cocktail party on Bikini, pointing up to the sky and saying: “Oh, look at that charming little atomic bomb. I do hope it’ll be fun when it lands.”
Vera had left my apartment with Mrs. Snood. I was still no nearer deciding whether she was another of Halliday’s stooges or whether I was developing a suspicion neurosis. There wasn’t enough data. The evidence was maddening, working equally both ways. I was hoping something would happen at the party to put me wise.
In a few minutes she came, filling the room with animation and perfume and gusty laughter. She was dressed for glamour, but, as in the morning, her glamour needed pruning. The black evening gown, sleek as seaweed, was magnificent, but she had barnacled it up with pearls, a huge amethyst stick pin and about a dozen silver bracelets. There was even a scarlet poinsettia in her hair.
If there hadn’t been so much natural beauty, she would have looked farcical. As it was, there was still a touch of comedy. She was gorgeous, but something a Marx Brother would have chased.
She was being on her best behaviour. She loved the part. She was thrilled to see us again. She adored Daiquiris.
As she prattled her charm was so guileless that the idea of her playing a double game seemed preposterous. My suspicions of her began to dissolve. After all, there was very little to be suspicious of—only a public meeting with Halliday, for which she had a convincing explanation. I started to warm to her again. Then I remembered Halliday’s guilelessness, and I was back on the fence.
I waited for his arrival with growing impatience. It was the vagueness of the situation that galled me. Until I had some glimmering of what he wanted from me, or could at least prove that he was back of it all, I couldn’t get my teeth into any plan for action. I grew increasingly keyed up. Finally, after about twenty minutes, he arrived.
Although I was prepared for it, the extreme insignificance of his appearance almost disarmed me. He shambled into the room in a grey unpressed suit and a battered old pair of brogues. His light hair tumbled untidily over his forehead and his smile below the unrevealing glasses was the essence of foolish friendliness.
He embraced Mrs. Snood in burlesque Mexican fashion and pumped my hand, calling: “Hi, there, Peter, old boy.” When he saw Vera, his face grinned with delighted surprise. “Why, if it isn’t the little señorita from Sanborn’s.”
He acted as if he had already had a few drinks and was all set to go. Mrs. Snood, fiddling with his coat, said: “She’s a friend of Peter’s.” She tapped Halliday’s arm. “And she told us what you were up to this morning.”
He seemed delighted, as if Mrs. Snood had complimented his manhood. “She told on me, eh? Well, what do you know?” He winked at me. “You must have something I haven’t got, brother. Couldn’t get to first base with her this morning.”
He grinned again at Vera to show that he was kidding, dropped down on the couch next to her, raised his Daiquiri and said: “Here’s looking at you.”
His entrance had been dyed-in-the-wool Sinclair Lewis
, and from then on he out-babbitted Babbit, telling interminable anecdotes about people called Jim and Bill and Joe in Cleveland, and then, as the cocktails stacked up inside him, he eased over into slightly smutty stories.
After a couple of Daiquiris, he said: “Little Billy has to go to the place we don’t talk about,” and disappeared through the bedroom into the bathroom. When he came out, the anecdotes were even rougher.
I had been ready for anything except this particular kind of locker-room-set boredom. As a producer, I know my actors. I couldn’t catch a false note in the performance—if it was a performance. He was any good-time Charlie, and he had made the party a dead ringer for a dozen others which must have been going on in the hotel at the moment.
And it stayed that way even after the cocktails were finished and we migrated downstairs to the very American restaurant, where a very American orchestra was playing very American dance music above a very American clamour. Lena Snood, who kept saying, “Isn’t Bill the funniest man? He kills me,” extravagantly ordered champagne. It fizzed along with the courses, and with Halliday’s “have-you-heard-this-one’s” until I began to feel stupefied.
Every now and then I danced with Vera or Mrs. Snood, but Vera seemed to have exhausted her vitality laughing at Halliday’s jokes. Mrs. Snood jabbered interminably about things to which I could no longer listen.
I had given up looking for hidden relationships or secret significances. There was obviously nothing to look for. Maybe I was on the hopelessly wrong track.
At one stage I was dancing with Mrs. Snood. Dimly I noticed that, in imitation of Vera’s poinsettia, she had pinned an unsuitable pink gladiolus in her hair. I caught the familiar words.
“…. such a funny man, Bill Halliday.”
“Yes,” I said automatically.
“Did he tell you the one about the cat with the blind eye?”
“No,” I said automatically.
She started presumably to tell me about the cat with the blind eye. Suddenly she broke off, called out and waved towards the bar.
I looked around. A large man with red hair was sitting alone on a stool, crouched disconsolately over a drink. Mrs. Snood called out again and grinned up at me.
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