In a Lady’s Service

by Tom Ardies

  “No.”

  Well, Herbert thought, what did it matter, for God’s sake? They worked. They worked! To hell with the goddam magic salve. Here in this simple hut he had discovered the secret to the Latin machismo. Staying power.

  “Incidentally,” he said, carefully tucking his treasures into a shirt pocket, “this stuff has a name, I suppose? What do you call it?”

  “La Mosca.”

  La Mosca. Herbert rolled the words on his tongue. What a beautiful name. What an absolutely beautiful name. “What does it mean?”

  Doña Otelia smiled a secret smile.

  Well, Herbert thought. What could it matter? What could it possibly matter? He expressed his thanks, profusely, again and again, and rushed outside to tell Adele.

  “Yoohoo,” he called. “Darling. Guess what?” He held up one of the little bags as a teaser and scuttled behind the hut.

  “Excuse me,” Adele said, blushing. “You know how it is. Private.” She went skipping after him.

  Oh, God, Marina thought, the color of a beet herself. For two pesos she’d leave without them. The giggles from behind the hut were becoming raucous. Were they actually going to test it there?

  Discreetly averting her face—the whole hut was not curtain enough to her mind—she caught a glimpse of Pablo. He was still under the tree where Buchanan had left him, beckoning to her weakly, his tongue too thick to call out.

  “Pay no attention,” Sebastian advised, noticing her concern. “I’ve already spoken to the old liar. He claims to know the secret of the curadoras salve, and he wants to sell it, for a price.”

  “What … ?” Marina almost fell out of the car in her scramble. “You’ll not tell the others of this,” she ordered, her skirt up, already on the run.

  Sebastian shrugged. Who else would be interested except his balmy employer? He himself could guess what was in the salve. To think that she’d pay for a list of unspeakables. Frog eyes and lizard guts. Yellow spit and black snot. Earwax and toejam and pigeon droppings.

  The doughty Cavazos, looking down on the scene from a nearby knoll, decided that he had seen enough. They must have seen him. Why else would they be scattering?

  He stood and fired a warning shot into the air—a direct hit, at last—and then started down the hill. “Halt!” he cried. “Hold it right there! Nobody moves another foot.”

  Sebastian took one look at the greasy black figure and the waving pistol.

  “B-bandidos!” Sebastian cried, starting up the Dodge.

  “Momento,” Marina wailed. Pablo had told her only one ingredient so far, and she wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. Tequila?

  “Sí,” Pablo croaked. “Tequila. I will sell you the secret for one small bottle. My compadre, Señor Buchanan, said you were a very generous woman, verdad?”

  Marina felt the bile rise. This couldn’t be happening. Not another smarcky trick by that foul Buchanan.

  Behind the hut, Herbert, visibly shaken, was also having a hard time accepting the truth. Could Adele really be right? La Mosca meant The Fly?

  “Bandidos!” Sebastian cried, a last warning. That was duty enough. He was not waiting to die. Ducking down below the dashboard, he sped away blindly, but not much more than usual.

  Cavazos lowered his pistol. Santo Dios, what a huge crime syndicate, to be able to afford such a daring, skillful chauffeur. To drive sightless! That was not only a talent—it was a gift! How could he find the will to snuff it out?

  The Dodge, kept on track by deep ruts, suddenly hit a huge rock, knocking it off the road. It veered sharply and headed for Cavazos.

  “No,” Cavazos shouted, his admiration wilting. He whirled and started running, firing wildly over his shoulder, but the Dodge pursued him relentlessly, following—as was he—the path of least resistance.

  Marina could watch no longer. Dear, loyal, brave Sebastian. What he lacked in his head, he made up in his lion’s heart, risking his life to buy her time to escape. She whispered her thanks and a prayer for his safety. Then she turned and fled.

  Adele and Herbert were already well on their way.

  “Hurry,” Adele panted.

  “I’m coming,” Herbert puffed. The Fly. How could the curadora have sold him The Fly?

  Buchanan awakened to a hen’s cluck. He opened an eye and viewed it unfondly. The beast had taken him for a nest—and deposited an egg on him.

  “Lay off,” Buchanan complained, sending it flapping. He stared at the floor of the upturned bus for a while, checking each appurtenance in turn, confirming that he had been—the reward for a good life?—miraculously spared.

  His head ached, a terrible, throbbing pain, but that didn’t count, because he’d had it before. Otherwise he was whole.

  Groaning, he struggled to his feet, crawled out of the twisted wreckage, and made his way over to the poultry truck, which was lying on its side, a greater shambles than the bus. He peered inside the cab, expecting the worst, but the driver wasn’t there, nor was he anywhere else nearby.

  Buchanan decided he ought to make a wider search. The poor fellow could have stumbled off somewhere and be in desperate need of help. But first, of course, he ought to check on Gonzales, who should be back on the road a short distance, dead or dying.

  Trudging up the hill, he was again denied a corpse, but a fragment of torn jacket, clinging to a giant cactus, provided the first clue to solving the mystery.

  Buchanan fingered the piece of rough black cloth. Yes, it was from Gonzales’ coat, all right, and the condition of the cactus—its loving arms broken and bent—indicated that it had caught the doctor when he went flying out of the bus. The blood on the thorns was more proof.

  Then what happened?

  Buchanan bent to examine the road. The overlapping tire marks were those of the bus and the Volks, which was now an accordion. But these others, which had veered off, then stopped at the cactus, they were from another vehicle, were they not?

  Yes, yes. Another car—Sebastian’s relic, see the worn, patched treads!—had come along and picked up Gonzales.

  Following the tracks back down the hill, Buchanan determined that the Dodge had stopped twice again, once at the bus, and again at the truck. He also found marks indicating that the truck driver had been dragged from his cab to the Dodge.

  So. Marina and party had happened by and whisked the pair off to hospital. That explained it all—except for one thing.

  Buchanan stood wondering. Why had he been abandoned to the fates? Look at that—there had even been time to take Gonzales’ precious boxes—and yet he was left to expire with egg on his face.

  Shaking his poor head, Buchanan sadly turned away, beginning the long journey back to the Geneve. Who would order such a rotten thing?

  Marina. Who else?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two days later, in a small cubbyhole of an office at the University of Mexico, the aging and irascible Dr. Jorge Orozco, professor emeritus of the College of Medicine, looked up from the mass of research spread across his desk.

  “You see it, do you?” he demanded, peering over cracked bifocals. “Now, at last, you see it?”

  Gonzales nodded bitterly.

  “The same side effect,” Orozco said. “It shows in every patient. Time after time after time. Without fail.” He chose a page at random and waved it in his young assistant’s face. “How could you have missed it?”

  Gonzales shrugged hopelessly. Who knew?

  “Bad research,” Orozco said, answering his own question. “You thought it was natural to the native people. You made an assumption. A very stupid assumption.”

  Gonzales shrugged again. Orozco was right. He had no defense. Nothing to say.

  “If you had any brains, you would have pulled out long ago,” Orozco said, becoming more angry. “But no, blind fool, you had to linger on, and now look at the mess you’ve made. I can’t believe such carelessness. A whole jar of the salve unaccounted for?”

  Gonzales made no reply. It was true and he couldn
’t deny it. A whole jar gone missing.

  “We can’t take any chances,” Orozco decided. “The side effect is far too dangerous. In the wrong hands …” He stopped, shaking his head, unable to speak the unspeakable. “Those vultures who descended on the village. Could one of them have taken it?”

  “Perhaps,” Gonzales admitted, finding his voice at last. That might explain why Buchanan left early, abandoning the others, stealing the bus. “The one very evil and vicious. The one who tried to murder me. Buchanan.”

  “Then you must find him.”

  “How?”

  “How do you think?” Orozco asked snappishly. “The chauffeur, Sebastian, the lad who rescued you—did he not say the vultures were registered at the Geneve?”

  “Were,” Gonzales said. “They will have checked out by now. And they are not the type to leave forwarding addresses.”

  “It is a place to start,” Orozco told him. “Go there, ask around, see what you can learn. The jar must be found and the salve destroyed.” He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and removed an ancient pistol. “You will need a gun. Don’t hesitate to use it.”

  “I have a gun.”

  “Well, have two,” Orozco said, pushing it across the desk. “And keep them both fully loaded. You don’t know how many you will have to kill.”

  Gonzales reluctantly reached for the pistol. “Perhaps we should call in the police?”

  “What kind of a fool are you?” Orozco shouted. “The side effect is too dangerous. In the wrong hands …” He stopped, unable to think the unthinkable.

  Dr. Hector Contreras, the house physician at the Geneve, put down his black bag, turned up his hearing aid, and pressed his ear against the door of 6B. There was no sound from within. Nothing.

  Contreras frowned. He trusted this wasn’t another fatality. That would make it three this week and the resident manager was already furious. Impatiently, he knocked again, his ear still pressed against the door, and the noise exploded in his head like a clash of cymbals.

  “Idiota!” Contreras cried, hopping around in a circle. “Estúpido! Ignorante!”

  “Me?” Buchanan demanded good-naturedly, pulling open the door. “You’re the silly goose who can’t read. You see the sign? No Moleste.”

  “I’m the doctor,” Contreras told him, still hopping. “You did call for a doctor, didn’t you, señor?”

  Buchanan yawned, tousled and bleary, eyes puffy from oversleep. “That was yesterday.”

  “I came as fast as I could,” Contreras said. He bit his hand, stepped on one foot and then the other, spun around in a wild pirouette, and then banged his head against the wall three times. “Why didn’t you say it was an emergency?”

  “I said I was dying,” Buchanan reminded him.

  “Dying?” Contreras laughed hysterically. “Have you not noticed the average age of the guests in this hotel? Everybody is dying. There is no keeping up with them. All I do is rush from funeral to funeral.”

  “Then don’t let me detain you,” Buchanan said, adjusting his robe. Now that he was fully awake, he realized the pain was gone, his head perfectly clear. The long sleep must have cured him. “I seem to have recovered on my own.”

  “Let me be the judge of that, shall we?” Contreras suggested, pushing past him into the room. He opened his bag and took out a thermometer and shook it down. “What was giving you the trouble? As I recall, it was your head, was it not?”

  Buchanan found the thermometer in his mouth before he could answer. He tried to remove it, but Contreras grabbed his wrist, consulting his pocket watch as he did so. “Have you had severe headaches before?”

  “Only when I drink,” Buchanan mumbled.

  “When you think?” Contreras smiled. “In that case, I have just the cure for you, señor. Stop thinking.” He made a note of Buchanan’s pulse rate and removed the thermometer. “Oh, dear.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Contreras assured him. “It’s, uh, rectal, that’s all.” He quickly returned the offending instrument to his bag. “Does it hurt anywhere else when you think?”

  “Drink,” Buchanan said, thinking no wonder it didn’t work, a bum thermometer, ha, ha. “You understand? Drink?”

  “No, gracias,” Contreras said. “Not on my rounds. I’ve got four more calls to make before lunch.” He produced a weathered stick from his bag. “Say ah.”

  “No,” Buchanan said. This was becoming ridiculous.

  “Ah,” Contreras corrected, the stick poised. “Do you always have a hearing problem? Or is this something that comes with your headaches?”

  “I haven’t got a headache.”

  “No wonder,” Contreras said. “Look at that terrible bump on your head. It’s the size of a walnut.”

  Buchanan felt his head and was surprised to find Señora Chiché’s legacy still there, and as big as ever, in fact. He’d forgotten all about it.

  “Careful,” Contreras cautioned. “You poor soul. That must be very, very painful.”

  Buchanan rubbed the lump as hard as he could. “It’s not.”

  “Of course,” Contreras said, clucking in sympathy. “Why wouldn’t it hurt? Lie down and roll up your sleeve. I have a pain killer. Morphine.”

  From a dirty needle? No thank you, Buchanan decided. He’d get an infection playing around with the hotel staph. Staph, staff, get it, ha, ha? He turned up the doctor’s hearing aid and shouted as loud as he could. “I am not in pain!”

  “You are so,” Contreras shouted back. He filled his hypo and advanced resolutely. “I know a bad bump when I see one, and unless you’ve had medication, you’re in pain, señor.”

  Buchanan backed off. That was it! Yesterday, in desperation, he had used some of Doña Otelia’s foul nostrum, from the sample jar the witch had kindly slipped into his pocket as he left her miserable hut.

  “I’ve been taking a secret remedy,” Buchanan confessed. “A magic potion …” He dodged out of the way and snatched the jar off his dressing room table. “Here. Have it.”

  “What’s this?”

  “The cure for all ills,” Buchanan said, stuffing the jar into Contreras’ black bag. He snapped it shut and handed it to him and pointed to the door. “Take it and go. You will become very rich and famous.”

  “But your bump …”

  “The Nobel Prize is within your grasp,” Buchanan said. “Leave. Depart. Exit.”

  Contreras shrugged. There was no sense arguing with an obviously distraught man. It would be best to leave and return later with help. A psychiatrist. Perhaps the police. The protection of the hotel’s other guests was paramount in nut cases of this kind.

  “Adiós, señor,” Contreras said, bowing out of the door. It banged shut behind him and opened again a moment later. Here was something to keep him quiet. “Your newspaper, señor.”

  The News was tossed in and the door banged shut once more. Buchanan was about to return whistling to bed when the headline registered on him. TOUGH JOB FACES HENRY.

  Henry?

  Oh, yes, Buchanan remembered. Secretary of State Kissinger was in town for the Tlaltelolco Conference. He picked up the paper wondering what role the wily Henry would assume in the talks. The hard-fisted negotiator, or the reserved, distant statesman? In other words, I wonder who’s Kissinger now, ha, ha?

  Details of the conference—“the most important hemispheric meeting in a quarter of a century,” he was advised—proved too much and he began thumbing idly through the rest of the paper. The other headlines all seemed to be on stories he had read before. PRICES UP … STOCKS DOWN … TORTURE SLAYING DISCOVERED …

  Hold on.

  Buchanan carefully lowered himself to the bed. The story leaped up at him.

  Police are investigating the brutal torture slaying of an elderly Indian woman in the remote village of Santa Luisa in the Guerrero mountains.

  Doña Otelia, a curadora revered by the villagers, was found dead Sunday in the mud hut that served as her clinic, an arm dotted
with cigarette burns.

  Police surmise that she was tortured for information about a secret medication reputed to have miraculous healing powers. Further details were withheld but it is understood police are trying to locate a number of tourists who visited the village on the weekend.

  Buchanan dropped the newspaper and picked up the telephone.

  “A question, por favor,” he said when the desk answered. “I don’t wish to disturb her, but could you tell me, please, if Señorita Marina McKenzie is still at the hotel?”

  “No, señor,” the clerk said. “The señorita checked out.”

  “When?”

  There was a pause while the records were checked. “Sunday evening.”

  “One other question. What about the Glasses? Señor and Señora Herbert Glass?”

  “The Glasses? Oh, yes. They also checked out. The same evening. Is there anything else?”

  “No, gracias,” Buchanan said, the phone slipping from his hand. He stood up and looked around the room frantically. Should he bother to pack? Or should he just run?

  While Buchanan wasted valuable time, three long-distance telephone calls, all of them destined to alter his life dramatically, came into Mexico City.

  The first was from Prettyman, First Secretary, Drug Research and Development, the World Health Organization, New York. It jangled a white bedside phone in a tenth-floor suite of the Hotel María Isabel on the Paseo de la Reforma. It rang half a dozen times before a thin arm snaked out from the wild tumble of sheets on the huge circular bed.

  “No calls,” Marina complained sleepily, pulling the instrument inside her tousled cocoon. “Comprende? No teléfono!”

  “Resting, darling?” Prettyman asked.

  “Mmmm,” Marina murmured. “It’s you.” She twisted luxuriously. “Sleep, beautiful sleep, and I earned it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Marina said, the icy edge to his voice shocking her fully awake. “What do you mean?”

  “No.”

  Marina struggled to free herself from the sheets and sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” Prettyman said. “That drug sample you sent us. Nobody here thinks it’s funny. Analysis, in fact, is very upset, and they’ve made a formal complaint to Management and Plans, and I frankly don’t see how I can keep it from the Director.”