It was late afternoon. As Marco dozed in his wheelchair the long lazy rays of the sun touched the top of his head and stroked the sparse grey hairs of his good arm and fell among the folds of his lap robe. Gilly stood in the doorway and watched her husband, waiting for some sign that he was aware of her presence.

“Marco? Can you hear me?”

Only a few parts of his body were capable of movement and none of them moved. No spasm of the fingers of his right hand which operated the controls of his wheelchair, no twitch of one side of his mouth, no flutter of his right eyelid, which was the one that opened and closed normally. The other eye remained as it always did, the lid half open and half closed, the pupil dead center. Even when he was awake no one could be sure exactly what he was looking at or how much he saw. Sometimes Gilly thought the eye was accusatory, staring directly at her, and sometimes it seemed amused as if it were focused on some wry joke in the past or bit of fun in the future. “It sees nothing,” the doctor had told her. “But I’m sure you’re mistaken, Doctor. It looks at things.” “The eye is dead.”

The dead eye that saw nothing watched Gilly cross the room. She made no noise. The carpet was silent as grass.

“You’re pretending to be asleep to get rid of me, aren’t you, Marco? Well, I won’t go. I won’t go, see?”

See? The dead eye didn’t, the live one stayed hidden under its lid.

Gilly touched her husband’s forehead. It was scarred with wrinkles as if some cannibal had started to eat the flesh, had dug his nails across it leaving tracks like a fork.

“It makes me nervous when people pretend,” Gilly said. “I think I’ll scream.”

She didn’t, though. Whenever she screamed, Marco’s nurse, Reed, came running and the gardener’s Airedale started to howl and Violet Smith, the housekeeper, had a sinking spell. One of Violet Smith’s sinking spells was as memorable as the Titanic’s.

“Violet Smith says we eat too much meat, so it’s fish again tonight.” That ought to do it. He hated fish. “Marco?”

Neither the threat of screams nor fish disturbed the rhythm of his breathing.

Gilly waited. It was hot and she would have liked to sit outside on the patio for a little while to catch the breeze that started blowing in from the ocean nearly every afternoon at this time. But the patio belonged entirely to Marco. Though she was the one who’d had it designed and built, she didn’t feel at ease there. She blamed it on the plants. They were all over the place, growing in stone urns and redwood boxes on the deck, and hanging from the rafters in terra-cotta pots and moss pouches held together by wire and baskets of sea grass and palm fibers.

Marco could maneuver his wheelchair among them quite easily, but Gilly was always bumping her shins on tubs of fuchsias and getting her hair caught in the tentacles of the spider plant. Marco’s patio was comfortable only for people in wheelchairs, or children or dwarfs. Full-grown upright people found it hazardous. Marco’s nurse, Reed, cursed when he was ambushed by the hidden barbs of the asparagus fern or the vicious spikes of the windmill palm, and even Violet Smith, who never swore, used a borderline phrase when she stepped into the lily pond while trying to avoid the soft seductive ruffles of the polypody.

For dwarfs, for children, for cripples like himself, Marco’s patio was a place of fun where grownups could be booby-trapped and ordinary people made to look foolish and awkward. No child ever saw it, of course. No dwarf, either. Just Gilly and Reed and Violet Smith and occasionally the doctor, who didn’t say or do much because there wasn’t much to say or do once he’d taught Gilly how to give injections. (She had practiced on oranges until it became quite natural for her to plunge the needle into something both soft and resistant. “As the Lord is my Savior,” Violet Smith said, “that is a silly thing to do, wasting valuable oranges when you could just as easy practice on yourself.” “Shut up or I’ll practice on you,” Gilly said.)

The sliding glass door to the patio was open and there were little rustles and stirrings among the plants as if they were whispering among themselves. They might have been fussing about the smell of fish drifting across the lawn from the kitchen. They were Marco’s plants, maybe they didn’t like fish any more than he did and their protests were as weak and difficult to understand as his. Not that protests would have done much good: Violet Smith had recently joined the Holy Sabbathians and each week she seemed to acquire a new conviction. This week it was fish.

“She’ll be here with your dinner in a few minutes, Marco.”

His rate of respiration had increased and she knew for sure now that he was awake and simply didn’t want to be bothered either with food or with her.

“If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you something else after Violet Smith leaves for her meeting. Are you hungry?”

One side of his mouth moved and a noise came out. It didn’t sound like an animal or even like one of the plants outside on the patio. It was a vegetable sound coming from a vegetable. “He’s a sorrowful figure,” Violet Smith often said in Marco’s presence as if the stroke that had paralyzed his vocal cords and most of his body had also deafened him. This wasn’t true. He had, as Gilly was well aware, ears like a fox. She and Reed had to be very cautious and time their meetings according to Marco’s pills and injections.

“How would you like to eat in your Ferrari tonight?” Gilly always referred to the wheelchair as some kind of sports car. It was intended partly to amuse him and partly to soften, for her, the constant and imposing reality of it. Reed supplied her with names, most of which were unfamiliar to her — Maserati, Lotus Europa, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Jensen-Healey.

He opened his right eye slowly and with difficulty, as if the lid had been glued shut during his afternoon sleep. It was impossible to tell from the eye’s expression whether he was amused or not. Probably not. It was a very small joke and he was a very sick man. But Gilly could not help trying. Trying was part of her nature, just as giving up was part of Marco’s. He had given up long before the stroke. It was merely a punctuation mark, a period at the end of a sentence.

“Okay, so it’s the Ferrari. The Lamborghini’s in the garage, anyway, having a tune-up... Eat a little fish to keep your strength up... Do you have to go to the john?”

The fingers of his right hand dismissed the idea.

“The doctor thinks you should drink more water if you can.”

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He had given up. His hunger was only for pills, his thirst only for the fluid in the hypodermic needle.

Violet Smith came into the room with the tray, using her bony butt to close the door behind her. She was a tall, light-skinned Indian from South Dakota, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, depending on her mood and whichever state happened to be in the headlines at the time. A severe tornado in Oklahoma was likely to elicit stories of a childhood spent in constant danger darting from storm cellar to storm cellar. At these times her dull brown eyes would start gleaming like polished bronze and her smooth solemn face would crack up with excitement. She forgot all about the forms she’d filled out at the employment agency which had sent her out to Gilly less than a year ago. The information was simple: Violet Smith, now forty-two, had been born and raised, educated and employed, in Los Angeles. Gilly suspected that she’d never been east of Disneyland or north of right where she was now, Santa Felicia.

“I bought this red snapper out on the wharf this morning, fresh caught.” Violet Smith held the silver-lidded tray in front of her like a shield, half proudly, half defensively. “We should eat what the Lord provides for us in His seas and rivers instead of deliberately raising a bunch of cows and pigs and then slaughtering them.”

“Don’t proselytize,” Gilly said.

“I can’t do it if I don’t know what it means.”

“The hell you can’t.”

“Was I doing that what she said, Mr. Decker? Was I?... No? No. Mr. Decker says I wasn’t doing it. He shows good judgment. What a pity he can’t read. It diminishes a man not to be able to read his Bible.”

“He doesn’t own one.”

“It’s not too late. He could be saved in the nick of time like I was, Jesus be praised.”

“Just put the tray down and shut up.”

“I think he could be saved.”

“All right, work on it tonight at church. But kindly don’t use our real name. I won’t have a bunch of lunatics raving and ranting in public about us needing to be saved for committing God knows what sins. People might think this is a house full of thieves, crooks, murderers.”

“We are all flawed,” Violet Smith said coldly. “Just look who’s prosetizing now.”

“Proselytizing. And that’s not what it means.”

“Meaning is in the eye of the beholder. I think you were doing what you thought I was doing. Isn’t that right, Mr. Decker? Yes? He says yes.”

“Hurry up, you’ll be late for your meeting.”

Gilly looked at her wristwatch, noting with surprise how thin and wrinkled her arms were getting, as if her body were shrinking and aging in sympathy with Marco’s no matter how much food she ate or how many times Reed assured her she was still young. “You don’t look a day over forty,” Reed would say. “That’s because I’m not a day over forty, I’m ten years over forty.” “Oh, can that crap. Who counts, anyway?” She counted. He counted. Everybody counted, whether they admitted it or not. Age was the second thing a child learned. What’s your name, little girl? How old are you?... Gilda Grace Decker. I’m fifty.

Violet Smith put the tray on the adjustable metal table beside Marco’s chair and cranked the table to the correct height. “I forgot to give you Mr. Smedler’s message. He said eleven o’clock tomorrow morning in his office will be okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Some of these lawyers’ secretaries can be very snippy.”

“Yes, they can. Good night, Violet Smith.”

“Good night, Mrs. Decker. And you, too, Mr. Decker. I’ll be praying for you both.”

Gilly waited until the door closed behind her. Then she said to Marco, trying to sound quite casual, “It’s nothing for you to worry about, dear. I have to talk to Smedler about stocks, bonds, trusts, that sort of thing. Very dull, lawyerish stuff.”

It wasn’t dull, it wasn’t lawyerish, but this was not the time to tell her husband. He had to be told gradually and gently so he would understand that it wasn’t just a whim on her part. She had been thinking about it, no, planning it, for several months now. Each day it seemed more and more the right thing to do until now it was more than right. It was inevitable.

The wind had come up during the night, a Santa Ana that brought with it sand and dust from the desert on the other side of the mountain. By midmorning the city was stalled as if by a blizzard. People huddled in doorways shielding their faces with scarves and handkerchiefs. Cars were abandoned in parking lots, and here and there news racks had overturned and broken and their contents were blowing down the street, rising and falling like battered white birds.

Smedler’s office was in a narrow three-story building in the center of the city a block from the courthouse. The lesser members of the firm shared the two bottom floors. Smedler, who owned the building, kept the third floor for himself. After an earthquake a few years ago he’d remodeled it so that the only inside access to his office was by a grille-fronted elevator. The arrangement gave Smedler a great deal of privacy and power, since the circuit breaker that controlled the electric current was beside his desk. If an overwrought or otherwise undesirable client was on the way up, Smedler could, by the mere thrust of a handle, cut off the electricity and allow the client time to acquire new insights on the situation while trapped between floors.

Gilly knew nothing about the circuit breaker but she had a morbid fear of elevators, which seemed to her like little prisons going up and down. Instead she used the outside entrance, a very steep narrow staircase installed as a fire escape to appease the building-code inspector. The door at the top was locked and Gilly had to wait for Smedler’s secretary, Charity Nelson, to open it.

Charity made much the same use of the bolt as Smedler did of the current breaker. “Who’s there?”

“Mrs. Decker.”

“Who?”

“Decker. Decker.”

“What do you want?”

“I have an appointment with Mr. Smedler at eleven o’clock.”

“Why didn’t you use the elevator?”

“I don’t like elevators.”

“Well, I don’t like taxes but I pay them.”

Charity unlocked the door. She was a short wiry woman past sixty with thick grey eyebrows so lively compared to the rest of her face that they seemed controlled by some outside force. She wore a pumpkin-colored wig, not for the purpose of fooling anyone — she frequently removed it if her scalp itched or if the weather turned warm or if she was especially busy — but because orange was her favorite color. She had been with Smedler for thirty years through five marriages, two of her own, three of his.

“Really, Mrs. Decker, I wish you’d use the elevator like everyone else. It would save me getting up from my desk, walking all the way across the room to unlock the door and then walking all the way back to my desk.”

“Sorry I inconvenienced you.”

“It’s such a lovely little elevator and it would save you all that huffing and puffing. I bet you’re a heavy smoker, aren’t you?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Just out of shape, eh? You should try jogging.”

“Karate appeals to me more at the moment,” Gilly said.

She wondered why so many employees these days acted as though they worked for the government and were not obliged to show respect to anyone. Charity’s general attitude indicated that she was in the pay of the IRS, CIA and FBI and possibly God, in addition to Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, MacFee and Powell.

“Smedler’s waiting for you in his office.” Charity pressed a buzzer. “And Aragon will be up in a few minutes.”

“Who’s Aragon?”

“He’s your boy. You did specify a bilingual. N’est-ce pas?”

“N’est-ce pas. In a private, personal call to Mr. Smedler.”

“All of Smedler’s calls go through me. I am his confidential secretary.”

“You’re also a smart-ass. N’est-ce pas?”

Charity’s bushy eyebrows scurried up into her wig and hid for a moment under the orange curls like startled mice. When they reappeared they looked smaller, as if stunted by the experience. “Crude.”

“Effective, though.”

“We’ll see.”

Gilly went into Smedler’s office. He rose from behind his desk and came to greet her, a tall handsome man in his late fifties. He had known Gilly for thirteen years, since the day she married B. J. Lockwood. An old school chum of B. J.’s, Smedler had been an usher at both of his weddings. He could barely recall the first — to a socialite named Ethel — but he often thought of the second with a considerable degree of amazement. Gilly wasn’t young or especially pretty, but on that day, in her long white lace gown and veil, she’d looked radiant. She was madly in love. B. J. was short and fat and freckled and nobody had ever taken him seriously before. Yet there was Gilly, well over thirty and certainly old enough to know better, iridescing like a hummingbird whenever she looked at him. Smedler decided later that her appearance was, had to be, simply a matter of make-up, a dash of pink here, a silver gleam there, French drops to intensify the blue of her eyes. (He was frequently heard to remark during the next dozen years that it was not politics which made strange bedfellows, it was marriage.)

Except for an occasional business meeting or football game, Smedler saw very little of Gilly and B. J. after the marriage. The divorce eight years ago had been handled by an out-of-town firm, and the only inside story on it had come to Smedler from Charity: B. J. had run away with a young girl. Gilly was rumored to have taken the divorce very hard, though not all the effects were on the bad side. B. J., evidently suffering from guilt as well as his usual poor business judgment, had been very generous in dividing the community property.

“Sit down, my dear, sit down. Here, you’ll be more comfortable in the striped chair.”

He told her she looked lovely (false), that her beige silk and linen suit was very chic (true) and that he was happy to see her (a little of both).

He was, in fact, more puzzled than either happy or unhappy. Her phone call the day before had provided few details: she wanted to hire a young man who could speak Spanish and was trustworthy, to do a job for her, probably in Mexico. Why probably? Smedler wondered. And what kind of job? She had no business interests south of the border or even outside the country, except for a small money-hungry gold mine in northern Canada. But he had been a lawyer too long to go directly to the point.

“And how is Mr. Decker?”

“The same.”

“There is still no hope?”

“Well, my housekeeper prayed for him last night at church. That’s something, I suppose, when you’re as hard up for hope as I am.”

It had been three months or so since Smedler had seen her and she had aged considerably in such a short time. The results weren’t all negative, though. There seemed to be a new strength in her face and more assurance in her manner. She’d also lost quite a lot of weight. Smedler had always admired her sense of style — no matter what costume she wore, it was difficult to imagine it suiting anyone else — and the weight loss emphasized her individuality.

“About your call yesterday,” Smedler said. “It was rather enigmatic.”

“It was meant to be, in case anyone was listening in on my phone or yours.”

“Don’t worry about mine. I have no secrets from Charity.”

“I have.”

“She’s very discreet.”

“As my housekeeper would say, discretion is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Yes. Well.”

“Tell me about the young man.”

“His name’s Aragon. Tom Aragon. He’s twenty-five, bright, personable, speaks Spanish like a native, graduated from law school last spring. I find him a bit pedantic, though that could be simply his manner with me, since I’m the boss. Technically, anyway.”

“How much do I pay him?”

“That depends entirely on what you want him to do. We estimate the time of a recent graduate to be worth so much an hour.”

“Paying by the hour would be too complicated in this case. I’ll need his total services for — well, two or three weeks, perhaps longer. What’s Aragon’s monthly salary?”

“I don’t know for sure. Let’s call Charity and—”

“No. Negative no.”

“I think you may be doing Charity an injustice.”

“More likely I’m doing her a justice,” Gilly said. “Suppose I pay your office the amount of his salary plus a commission for the use of his services. Then I’ll make separate financial arrangements with Aragon. They’ll be strictly between him and me.”

“Why all the secrecy, my dear?”

“If I told you anything further, you’d try and talk me out of it.”

“Perhaps not. Give me a chance.”

“No.”

They stared at each other for a minute in silence, not hostile, but not friendly either. Then Smedler, sighing, got up and walked over to the main window. Clouds were parading across the sky like a procession of spaceships. On the earthbound street below, traffic remained sparse and sluggish. Smedler didn’t look either up or down. This is a damn stubborn woman. Okay, I can be a damn stubborn man.

“You were B. J.’s friend,” Gilly said. “But you always had a pretty low opinion of him. You treated him like a nice jolly little fellow without a brain in his head.”

“Now what in hell — I mean, what brought that on? What’s it got to do with anything? Even if it were true, which it isn’t—”

“Oh, it’s true. You made it quite obvious and it hurt. I guess it hurt me worse than it did B. J. because he never had any more faith in himself and his ability than you did. I did. I was full of faith.”

“Dammit, Gilly. Get to the point.”

“It’s simple. If I told you what I want Aragon to do, you’d just call me a fool.”

“Try me.”

“No.”

“Negative no?”

She didn’t answer.

“By God,” Smedler said. “I need a drink.”

The swimming pool in the middle of the patio was larger than the one at the YMCA where Aragon had learned to swim as a boy. At the bottom lay a ceramic mermaid which no YMCA would have tolerated. She wore nothing but a smirk.

A dark-haired good-looking man in very brief tight swim trunks was cleaning the pool with a vacuum. His movements were tense and angry. He pushed the vacuum back and forth across the mermaid’s face as though trying to obliterate her smirk. At the same time he was conducting a monologue which Aragon assumed was aimed at him.

“Nobody manages this place. It’s simply not managed. Take a look around, just look. Disgusting.”

Aragon looked. The early-morning wind from the desert had thrown a film of dust across the water and littered it with pine needles and the petals of roses and jacarandas and cypress twigs and eucalyptus pods, all the leaves and loves and leavings of plants.

“We have two daily gardeners, a cleaning woman, a day maid, a pool boy who comes twice a week and a handyman living over the garage. So what happens? The handyman has arthritis, the gardeners say it’s not their job, the day maid and cleaning woman can’t be trusted with anything more complicated than a broom, and the pool boy has a term paper in biology due this week. Guess who’s left? Reed. Good old Reed. That’s me.”

“Hello, good old Reed.”

“Who are you?”

“Tom Aragon. I have an appointment with Mrs. Decker.”

“Aragon. There was a fighter named Aragon once. Remember him?”

“No.”

“Too young, eh? Actually, so am I. My mother told me about him. She was a fight fan. I’ll never forget her actually, really — can you beat it? — putting on the gloves with me when I was six or seven years old. She was one weird old lady.”

He thrust the vacuum across the mermaid’s face again, then suddenly dropped it in the pool and continued his monologue. “It’s only the middle of October. How could the kid have a term paper due the second week of school? And the handyman with his arthritis — hell, I’m a registered nurse, I know an arthritis case when I see it. There are over eighty different kinds and he hasn’t got any of them. What he’s got is a hangover, same as he had yesterday and the day before and last month and last year. If this place were managed, he’d be kicked out. What’s behind the whole thing is this — I’m the one who uses the pool most, so if I want it clean I better bloody well clean it myself.”

He was beginning to sound like a querulous old man. Aragon guessed that he was no more than thirty-five. He also guessed that Reed’s bad mood hadn’t much connection with merely cleaning the pool. Reed confirmed this indirectly: “Gilly told me to stick around till you got here. I had to give up my five o’clock cooking class. I was going to do beef Wellington with spinach soufflé orientale. The food around here is vile. If you’re invited for dinner, split fast. Gilly hired this crazy cook who keeps getting hyped on various diets. We haven’t been served any decent red meat for a week... I don’t know what Gilly expects me to do, size you up, maybe. She can be so obscure.”

“Well, size me up.”

Reed stared. He had green murky eyes like dirty little ponds. “You look okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, it’s hard to tell nowadays. I had my wallet lifted last Thursday by two of the most innocent-faced chicks you ever saw... Go right across the patio to the glass door and shake the wind chimes good and hard. She’s in Marco’s room. If I hurry, maybe I can catch at least the soufflé part of my class.”

“Good luck.”

“A soufflé is more a matter of correct temperature and timing than luck. Do you cook?”

“Peanut butter sandwiches.”

“You might enjoy the food around here,” Reed said and disappeared around the side of the house.

“ ‘You certainly were a clean person,’ ” Gilly said. “I behold that funny, don’t you, Aragon?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a clean person with eyes as blue as the bay where a herd of whales go to copulate and calve. What a great compliment.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

She walked over to the barbecue pit and stood for a while staring down into it as if at the ashes of old forgotten fires. “I never took three showers a day. Where’d he dredge up that idea?” She turned back with a sudden explosive sound that seemed to come all the way from her bowels. “Ethel! By God, he got me mixed up with Ethel. How do you like that? He not only can’t remember which of Smedler’s wives went with us to the football stadium, he can’t even remember which of his own wives took three showers a day.”

“The letter’s been in your possession for five years. It’s a little late to fuss about it now.”

“She’s just the type to take three showers a day. And who’s fussing?”

“The evidence indicates you are.”

“Okay, you want to play lawyer, define your terms.”

“Fussing is an unnecessary futile display of irritability that stops short of loss of temper.”

“All right, I was fussing, dammit.”

“Shall I go on reading?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the brochure?” Aragon said.

“I tore it up.”

“Why?”

“I have a short fuse.”

“So what lit it?”

“The thing was such an obvious come-on, the high-flown descriptions of a marina, a social center, a golf course, the haciendas themselves, when all they really had was a hunk of desert and a bunch of whales. I felt like going to Smedler with the brochure and asking him to investigate. Instead, I just tore it up. As I said, I have a short fuse. I’m also pretty tight with a buck.”

“B. J. asked you for money?”

“Did he ever. Read on.”

For a minute neither of them spoke. The room seemed to be silenced by the ghosts of a long-gone man, a crippled child, a dream. Then Gilly said, “He not only had rotten blood, he had rotten judgment. I didn’t send him a nickel.”

“Did you answer his letter?”

“No. He didn’t want an answer. He wanted the right answer and I wasn’t prepared to give it to him. Sure, I’ve often felt guilty about it. After all, every cent I own was his to begin with.”

“What happened to Jenlock Haciendas?”

“I don’t know. Once in a while I’d look in the real-estate section of the Los Angeles Times and occasionally I’d buy a San Diego paper, but I never found any mention of Jenlock Haciendas or Bahía de Ballenas. That doesn’t prove anything, of course. He may have gotten the money from some place else and the project is a big success. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m hiring you to go down and see. Hell, maybe he’s struck it rich and I’ll touch him for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“You must consider other possibilities, Mrs. Decker. He may have left there by now. Or he may be dead.”

“In either case I want to know. I also want to know what’s happened to the boy.”

So that’s it, Aragon thought, the kid. She’s rich and getting old, she has no relatives and pretty soon when Decker dies she’ll be alone. A kid would bring life to the house again.

She said, “He’s half Mexican, sure, but he’s also half B. J., which makes him sort of related to me. Doesn’t it?”

“Not legally, no.”

“Who cares about the law? I’m talking about feelings.”

“All right. Feeling-wise, he’s sort of related to you. But please bear in mind that he has a mother and that Mexicans are very much family-oriented. There’s also the possibility that the child may be dead, depending, among other things, on the degree of his congenital impairment. I realize that you’re living under great stress right now, and people in such circumstances sometimes make plans based on an unrealistic assessment of the facts.”

“You realize that, eh? Well, I realize that lawyers often like to use twenty words when one will do.”

“How about two?”

“All right.”

“Cool it.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Even if I find the kid he won’t be for sale.”

She looked almost stunned for a moment. “Perhaps we should go back to the twenty-word system.”

“It has certain advantages.”

“Your style takes a little getting used to, Aragon, but then, so does mine. We might be able to work together satisfactorily. What do you think?”

“I don’t pick the clients,” Aragon said. “They have to pick me.”

“Okay... I pick you.”

“Fine.”

She had a check ready for him, $2,500 made out to Tomas Aragon and marked “Legal Services.”

“This should cover your airfare, car rental, living expenses, and of course, bribes. If anyone asks you, you can say you work for the local police. They may not believe you but they’ll believe the money. Are you familiar with Baja California?”

“I’ve been to Tijuana.”

“Then the answer is no. I’ve done a little research on my own. You can fly down as far as Rio Seco and rent a car there. It has the last car-rental agency until the southernmost tip of Baja. Bahía de Ballenas is roughly halfway between. It’s not marked on most maps. Just keep driving south until you come to it. There’s a new road that goes part of the way along the coast. They call it a highway but you’d better not expect too much.”

Aragon put the check in his wallet and then returned the letter from B. J. to its envelope. “Do you mind if I keep this for a while? The references might be useful.”

“Take it. By the way, let’s get something clear. I could hire any investigator for a job like this a lot cheaper than you’re going to cost me.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m paying for discretion, for the privacy of a lawyer-client relationship. You’re not to tell anyone the nature of our business, not Smedler, not the authorities, not even your wife. Do you have a wife?”

“Yes. I haven’t been seeing much of her, though. She’s in her first year of residency in pediatrics at a hospital in San Francisco.”

“Smart, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Laurie Macgregor.”

“Why didn’t she take your name?”

“She already had one of her own.”

“All very modern and with it. I see... I bet she’s pretty.”

“I think so.”

“Describe her, nonlawyer style.”

“Nonlawyer style, she’s a dynamite chick.”

Gilly was staring pensively at her image in the copper hood of the barbecue pit. “I wonder, if I were in my twenties again, would anyone call me a dynamite chick?”

“On the evidence presented so far I would assume that you were and that you would be so designated.”

“Hey, that’s nice, Aragon. You and I are going to be pals. You know what else? You’ll make a very good lawyer.”

“Well, if I don’t, I hope I’ll be married to a very good pediatrician.”

Aragon hadn’t intended it to be funny, but she laughed as if he’d made the joke of the century. He suspected that the dynamite-chick business had left his new pal, Gilly, a little intoxicated.

Violet Smith picked her way carefully around the side of the house past the thorns of the carissa and the spiked leaves of the century plants and the gopher holes in the lawn. She had seen Aragon’s car parked in the driveway and had been on her way to the barbecue room in the hope of overhearing something interesting when Mr. Decker’s bell rang. Reed was off duty and the day girl had already left, so it was Violet Smith’s Christian obligation to answer the bell. Mr. Decker had to go to the bathroom, which was messy and took forever, so that by the time she finished cleaning up, twenty minutes or more had elapsed.

Crossing the patio, she stooped to retrieve a stray leaf caught between two flagstones. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mrs. Decker talking to a strange man. She couldn’t make out the words but they must certainly have been funny because Mrs. Decker suddenly began laughing like some giddy young girl. Violet Smith transferred the leaf to the apron pocket of her uniform and slid open the screen door.

Mrs. Decker immediately sobered up and looked her age again. “You can see I’m busy, Violet Smith.”

“Mr. Decker is agitated. I think he heard a strange car come up the driveway and wants to know what is it doing here.”

“It’s waiting for Mr. Aragon,” Gilly said brusquely.

“Do I go back and tell him?”

“No. No, I’ll do it... Aragon, please stay here for a minute while I check my husband, will you?”

“Don’t hurry,” Aragon said. “I have lots of time.”

After she’d gone Violet Smith studied Aragon carefully and at length. “How come you have lots of time? Don’t you work?”

“I’m working now.”

“You give a good impression of just standing around.”

“Practice, Miss Smith. Years of practice... Mrs. Smith?”

“Violet Smith is my true name, both here and There. When people don’t call me that, I pay them no mind. I figure they might be talking to someone else. There are millions of Smiths.”

She had a point and Aragon guessed that she would cling to it even if it impaled her. He said, “I hope I haven’t disturbed Mr. Decker.”

“He’s agitated. That could be good or bad, depending. I never know. I can’t understand those monkey noises of his, meaning no disrespect. He heard a strange car and we don’t get many strangers around here.”

“Why not?”

“Mrs. Decker had Reed put up a lot of signs to scare people off, like No Peddlers, No Trespassing, Private Property, Beware of Dogs. We don’t even have a dog, except one of the gardeners brings his Airedale along in the truck which howls. The gardeners are both long-haired heathens... Have you been saved?”

“I think so.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“It’s not the sort of thing one can be sure about until — well, until later.”

“If you think there’s any doubt, it would be better to find out now than then.”

“Yes, I guess it would.”

“You know, you kind of remind me of my son. I don’t see much of him anymore. I never raised a hand to that boy until the day he vilified the Lord. He diminished Jesus and I had to slug him. My hand pained me for several weeks. I could hardly hold my Bible.”

She began dusting the glass table with a piece of tissue which she produced from one of the half-dozen pockets of her uniform. It was apparent from her vigorous movements that her slugging hand had been completely cured and that Violet Smith was ready for another round at the sound of the bell. She was a powerful woman with thick wrists, and shoulders as wide as Aragon’s.

He said, “Why does Mrs. Decker want to scare people off?”

“They might disturb Mr. Decker. He’s pretty far gone, a real sorrowful figure. I overheard Reed asking the doctor one day if it wouldn’t be more humane to pull out the plugs. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about until the doctor used the word, ‘euthanasia.’ Then I stepped right up and said I was against it. The doctor was polite enough, but oh, that Reed has a dirty tongue in his head. I felt duty-bound to report the incident to Mrs. Decker. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“Wow, she threw a terrible fit, crying and carrying on and screaming how she wanted to have her plugs pulled out, too. Then she drank a lot of booze. I told her, ‘You can’t drown your troubles, Mrs. Decker, because troubles can swim.’ Well. If you think Reed has a dirty tongue in his head you should have heard her. My ears cringed. ‘Sticks and stones,’ I said to her, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ She told me what I could do with every stick and stone between here and Seattle.”

“It wasn’t one of your more popular nights, apparently.”

“Oh, I forgave her. I knew she was just scared like everybody else who won’t accept Jesus. Scared of the old man dying and leaving her alone, and scared of dying herself. I’m used to her bad language, anyway. She’s not a true-born lady like the first Mrs. Lockwood. Mrs. Decker was the second Mrs. Lockwood.”

“You’re acquainted with the first?”

“I see her at church twice a week. We often share the same hymn book. She’s a soprano but not one of those screechy ones, just soft and ladylike as befits her birth.”

“Is she aware that you work for Mrs. Decker?”

“Sure. At our regular evening meetings we’re encouraged to stand up and talk out our predicaments and troubles. Then afterwards we all sit around and help each other.”

“Or not.”

“Or not,” Violet Smith agreed crisply. “We aren’t geniuses, you know. It’s the feeling that counts, the realizing you’re not alone, someone else cares and wants to help.”

“Your church meetings sound very interesting.”

“Oh, they are. They’re what really converted me. I didn’t mind giving up carnality, jewelry and red meat in return for comradeship and an afterlife.”

“I think you made the right decision.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not being sarcastic like Reed or Mrs. Decker?”

“No.”

“I’m glad. You know, when you’re stuck in a place like this most of the time, you’ve got to have something lively, something hopeful, going on outside. The death house — that’s what some of the employees call it. All the pretty flowers and trees, the sun shining, the pool, the birds singing, none of it makes any difference when you’re waiting for someone to die. You want to tell the birds to shut up and the sun to drop down and the flowers to fold their petals and blow away. Imagine telling a bird to shut up. But I did one day. There was this little red-headed creature singing on top of the T. V. antenna and I screamed at him, ‘Stop it, shut up, don’t you know someone’s dying down here?’ ”

“Did you ever express these feelings at any of your church meetings?”

“No. They’d think I was a loony... Listen, I hear Mrs. Decker coming back. She’s suspicious. Pretend I never said a word, not one word, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Gilly re-entered the room through the inside door that connected it with the main part of the house. She looked flushed, as though she’d been engaged in some strenuous physical or emotional exertion. She said, “I suppose Violet Smith has talked your ear off.”

“No.”

“That’s peculiar. She does it to everyone else.”

“Oh, I do not,” Violet Smith said coldly and went outside, pushing the screen door shut behind her as hard as she could.

Gilly waited for her to disappear around the side of the house. “My husband’s all right. He sometimes reacts badly when Reed goes off duty or when something unusual happens.”

“And I’m an unusual happening?”

“To Marco, yes. I’d like you to meet him. He sees the same people day after day and I’m sure he’d enjoy some different company for a change. No matter what impression Violet Smith gave you, Marco can hear and often understand as well — or almost as well — as you and I can.”

“It might be better for me to see him some other time.”

“This is the time I want you to see him, right now. I have my reasons.”

“Very well, Mrs. Decker. You’re the boss.”

Once he got off the plane in Rio Seco, Aragon lapsed naturally into Spanish. It was the language of his boyhood, his family and friends, the streets where he’d played, even his school at recess and before and after classes. During classes the official language was English. You are in the United States of America, children, and you are expected to speak the language of the United States of America. They did, when teacher was listening. When she wasn’t, the younger children said, Qué mujer tan fea, and the older ones, Chinga tu madre.

The car that he’d reserved by phone from Los Angeles was waiting for him, a compact Ford that looked older than its odometer indicated. When he checked it over, he found the oil gauge registered low, two of the tires needed air and the gas tank was only half filled. The man who seemed to be in charge at the rental agency, Zalamero, assured him that in all his years of experience in the business, almost one, such oversights had never before been detected. Zalamero spoke a mixture of Spanish and English slang sometimes called Spanglish. Aragon asked him for directions to Bahía de Ballenas.

“Bahía de Ballenas, why are you going there? It’s an el dumpo.”

“I’m thinking of buying some property.”

“My wife’s cousin has some super-duper property near here that he’s willing to sell cheap, so cheap you wouldn’t believe.”

“That’s right, I wouldn’t,” Aragon said. “Now, about Bahía de Ballenas.”

“Okey-dokey, you drive south two hundred kilometers or so until the road turns inland. You stop. You’re at a place called Viñadaco, another el dumpo, but they have tourist cabins, cafés, gas pumps. Get some gas and more water and start up again. Now you drive slow, very slow, in second gear, because the highway is going east and you are going west.”

“Are there any road signs?”

“No, no, no. You ask a person. This person answers and you have a nice talk, maybe a cup of coffee, a little social life. It’s much better than signs.”

Aragon tried to imagine the effect of this kind of social life on the Hollywood Freeway. After the initial chaos it might be quite pleasant for those who weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

Zalamero said anxiously, “You won’t tattletale the agency in the U.S. about the oil and tires?”

“No, but you should be more careful.”

“Yes, yes, yes, you bet I will be. I will personally inspect every part of every car every day.”

“Your social life is bound to suffer.”

“You’ve convinced me I have a duty to my customers. Besides, I can talk while I inspect. All Zalameros can do two things at once... How soon will you bring the car back?”

“A week, perhaps less.”

“Go with God.”

“Thanks.”

He paid a deposit on the Ford and a week’s rental in advance. It was nearly two o’clock when he started the engine.

For about twenty kilometers beyond Rio Seco the road continued to be fairly good. Then gradually it began to deteriorate, as if the surveyors and the foreman and the key workers had lost interest and dropped out, one by one.

The traffic was heavier than Aragon had expected but still sparse: dilapidated pickups and compacts and subcompacts with Mexican license plates, and newer vehicles mostly from the Western states, vans, trucks with cabover campers and complete houses on wheels like Dreamboat. The road hadn’t been built with Dreamboats or highway speeds in mind. It was narrow, the curves were poorly banked and the roadbed inadequately compacted. Drivers accustomed to American standards of engineering took the curves and unexpected dips too fast in vehicles that were too wide and heavy. The accident rate, according to a safety pamphlet distributed on the plane by an insurance company, was extremely high.

He began to understand why his rented Ford looked old for its age. Sand blew across the roadway from the low barren hills to the east and the coastal dunes to the west, pitting the car’s finish and burrowing its way through the closed windows. At times it was so fine and white that it swept past like a blizzard of talcum powder. Aragon could feel it clinging to the roof of his mouth and the membranes of his nose. It scratched the inside of his eyelids and mixed with the sweat of his palms on the steering wheel to form a sticky film of clay. The cars and vans and campers heading north were suddenly all white. They passed like ghosts of accidents. A few kilometers farther, the powder turned to sand again.If I were going in the opposite direction, I’d be halfway to San Francisco by now. Laurie might manage a couple of days off and we could splurge and stay at the Clift. Just stay. No night clubs, no theaters, no fancy dinners...

He braked to avoid a jackrabbit leaping across the road. Except for an occasional gull soaring overhead, the rabbit was the only sign of wildlife he’d seen. It was an inhospitable countryside. Clumps of creosote bushes and spindly spikes of cholla were the main vegetation, with here and there some mesquite or a palo triste like a billow of grey smoke.

Just short of two hundred kilometers the landscape suddenly changed, indicating the presence of fresh water and some kind of irrigation system. Fields of beans and chili peppers alternated with groves of palm trees. An abandoned sugar mill overlooked a scattering of adobe houses with children playing outside, and chickens and goats and burros wandering loose among them. This, according to a sign on the gas pump where Aragon stopped, was the village of Viñadaco.

The gas pump was operated by an entire family. While the man filled the tank, his wife cleaned the front windshield and a couple of small girls cleaned the back. A boy no more than five wiped off the headlights with the torn sleeve of his shirt while two teenagers lifted the hood and stared expertly at the engine without doing anything. They were mestizos, half-Indians, copper-skinned and thin-featured, with black eyes and straight black hair. Their solemn dignity reminded Aragon of Violet Smith.

He asked the woman for directions to Bahía de Ballenas.

“Nobody goes there.”

“I do.”

“But the road turns the other way towards the gulf. And it’s late, it will soon be dark. You might get stuck in the sand or lost.”

They were valid reasons but not the real one: she happened to have a vacant cabin which she rented out to tourists. Nothing fancy, of course, no running water or electricity, but a nice clean bed. For this nice clean bed the asking price was about the same as for a suite at the Beverly Hilton. The señora admitted that the price was high, but she didn’t offer to change it and Aragon didn’t argue. It was Gilly’s money. If she wanted to come down here and haggle over it, let her. He was tired and hungry.

He ate at the nearest place, a shoebox-sized cafe overlooking a pond where a dozen or so coots were floating on the water and foraging on the banks. When he was a child he’d often eaten coot, which his mother called black mallard. This sounded better but didn’t improve the taste or texture. As he ate the machaca he was served, a kind of hash, he tried to identify its contents. Coot maybe, dried goat meat probably, and chilis unmistakably, the small green innocent-looking kind that lit up his mouth and throat and brought tears to his eyes to put out the fire. Dessert was a dish of fried beans and a cactus fruit with sweet juicy pulp. He drank two bottles of beer and bought two extra to take with him in case his teeth were extra dirty.

He returned to the gas pump and the Viñadaco Hilton. The señora had left a kerosene lamp burning for him, and a basin with a pitcher of water and two small towels. After he’d stripped and washed he sat down to drink some beer. Almost immediately he discovered that the Viñadaco Hilton had one other thing which the Beverly Hilton didn’t — mosquitoes. The first bite coincided with the first twinge in his stomach. He went to sleep trying to remember some of the things Laurie had urged him to take along — antibiotics... head lice... tooth beer... Laurie, I miss you...

Only a few letters of the name still faintly visible on one side identified the ravaged hulk as Gilly’s Dreamboat. The wheels had disappeared into the ground and most of the windows were broken. The paint had been scratched by chollas and creosote bushes, rusted by fog and salt air, blasted off by wind-driven sand.

On the roof was an old sun-bleached, urine-stained mattress. A lone chicken sat in the middle of it, casually pecking out the stuffing. It was the only living thing in sight. Yet Aragon was positive that there were people inside watching his approach with quiet hostility as if they’d already found out the purpose of his visit. It seemed impossible, though he knew it wasn’t. In places where more sophisticated forms of communication were lacking, the grapevine was quick and efficient, and the fact that he’d seen no one outside the mission while he was talking to the padre meant nothing.

“Hello? Hello, in there! Can you hear me?”

He didn’t expect an answer and none came. But he kept trying.

“Listen to me. I came from the United States looking for Mr. Lockwood, Byron James Lockwood. Can anyone give me some information about him or about Tula?”

If they could, they didn’t intend to. The silence seemed even more profound: Tula’s fall from grace had evidently been far and final.

“The padre will tell you that I mean no harm. And I’m offering money in return for information. Doesn’t anyone want money?”

No one did. Money was of little value to people without a place to spend it or a desire to change their lot.

He waited another five minutes. The chicken pecking at the mattress stuffing remained the only sign of life.

The jail was in the center of Rio Seco as if it had been the first structure and the rest of the city had been built around it. It was shaped like a roundhouse and circled by stone walls twenty-five or thirty feet high which gave it its name: the stone quarry. LA CANTERA, PENITENCIARIA DEL ESTADO was carved above the main entrance where Aragon stood with the other people waiting to be admitted.

In spite of the earliness of the hour, traffic was heavy and the crowd outside the jail was large — a few men of varying ages, but mostly women carrying babies and straw bags and packages wrapped in newspaper, and a handful of prostitutes in miniskirts and maxiwigs. Children played in the street, oblivious to the honking of horns and squealing of tires, or ran up the stone steps and slid down the iron banisters. Apart from the crowd an older American couple, neatly dressed and quiet, stood with their arms locked as if they were holding each other up.

One of the three guards on duty, a young man wearing a cowboy hat and oversized boots that looked like hand-me-downs from a bigger brother, fielded questions: “Ten more minutes, I don’t make the rules, señora... Carlos Gonzalez got out last week... Café opens at nine... You can go home, girls, it’s too early. Give the boys a chance to wash up... If Gonzalez left a message, I don’t know about it... Anyone want a shouter? Ten cents for a shouter, fifteen cents for a first-class shouter.”

The American man held up his hand. “Yes. Please.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen cents.”

“Name?”

“Sandra Boyd.”

“Sandra Boyd. Okay, anyone else?... Ten cents for Cecilio Martinez... Five cents for Manuel Ysidro. That’s a whisper, maybe you don’t want him to hear... Ten for Fernando Escobar... Ten, Inocente Santana. We got a lot of Inocentes in this place. Not a guilty in sight, ha ha... Carlos Gonzalez. You’re wasting your money, señora. I told you, he’s gone. Okay, ten for Gonzalez.”

“Lockwood,” Aragon said. “B. J. Lockwood and Harry Jenkins.”

“That’s two names.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t have one shouter for two names. You must have one shouter for each name.”

“All right, thirty cents.”

At eight thirty the gates of the Quarry opened and the crowd surged inside. No attempt was made to question or search anyone or to examine packages. It would have been impossible under the circumstances. The pushing and shoving and screaming reminded Aragon of doorbuster sales at some of the stores back home.

Within the walls, similar high-pressure merchandising was taking place. The prison peddlers began hawking their wares: pottery, leatherwork, novelties, food and drink, children’s toys. A trio of mariachis singing “Guadalajara, Guadalajara,” gave a fiesta atmosphere to the scene.

The mariachis picked Aragon as their first mark of the morning.

“You want to hear a special song, señor?”

“No thanks.”

“We sing anything you say.”

“Not right now.”

“We know a hundred songs.”

Aragon paid twenty-five cents not to hear any of them.

The cellblocks were built in a circle around a huge recreation yard, where a soccer game was in progress. While he waited in line at the iron-grilled information window, he watched the soccer game. Both sides were dressed alike, so it was difficult to follow. But it was a very lively spectacle, since there were no referees.

Guadalajara, Guadalajara.

You buy a taco, señor? An empanada?

Real, hand-tooled leather purses and belts at prices so low it is a crime.

Balloons, dolls, madonnas, bracelets, cigarettes.

A fight broke out between two men peddling identical calfskin wallets. Compared to the soccer game, it was dull and half-hearted and attracted little attention. Obviously the inmates had more interest in soccer than in fistfights that consisted mainly of loud words and soft blows.

The shouters were already at work:

“Oswaldo Fernandez, hey, Oswaldo Fernandez, hey, Fernandez.”

“Cruz Rivera, ay ay Cruz, ay ay Rivera, ay ay ay ay Cruz Rivera.”

“B. J. Lockwood... Lock — wood.”

“Harry Jenkins... You are wanted, Harry Jenkins.”

“Juanita Maria Placencia, come here, Jua — ni — ta!”

“Sandra Boyd, if you please... Sandra Boyd... Sandra Boyd.”

“Amelio Gutierrez, answer to your name.”

When Aragon’s turn came he presented his credentials to the uniformed man at the information window. After consulting with his colleagues, the man sent a runner to summon the assistant to the assistant to the warden himself.

The new arrival introduced himself as Superintendent Perdiz. “These two Americans you are asking about, I never heard of them. It would be better for you to come back later when the warden is here.”

“How much later?”

“Wednesday. He works very hard and needs long weekends to recuperate at his beach house.”

“Who’s in charge when the warden’s away?”

“The assistant warden. He’ll be back tomorrow, Tuesday. He doesn’t need such long weekends because his responsibilities are not so great.”

“He’s got a beach house, too, I suppose.”

“No. He likes to go to the mountains. The air is more invigorating. Here in Rio Seco we have bad air. Do you smell it? Phew!”

Aragon smelled it. Traffic odors, people odors, jail odors, exhaust fumes, sweat, garlic, urine, cigarette smoke, antiseptic.

“Phew,” Perdiz said again. “Don’t you think so?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand the need for long weekends out of town?”

“Of course.”

“So now we are in complete agreement. A man, even one in a lowly position like mine, needs a country house for a breath of sea or mountain air on the weekends. I’d like to buy such a place but my salary won’t allow it.”

“Would ten dollars help?”

“A little more might inspire me to go and search the files personally. What do you think my personal attention is worth?”

“Fifteen dollars.”

“That’s most kind of you.”

Perdiz accepted the bribe with solemn dignity. After all, it was part of the system, paying a mordida to influyentes, and he was an influyente. “You wait here.”

Aragon waited. He watched the soccer game some more and bought a wallet from the loser of the fistfight, a can of ginger ale and a doll made of two withered oranges with cloves marking its features and dried red chiles for arms and legs. He didn’t know why he’d bought such a ridiculous thing until he held it in his hand and studied it for a while: it looked like Pablo, round-eyed and vacant-faced, untouched, untouchable.

The shouters were still at work. At least one of them had brought results — the American couple were talking to a pale stringy-haired young woman wearing a ragged poncho that reached almost to her ankles. The man was doing most of the talking, the older woman was crying, the younger one looked bored.

Perdiz returned. Nowhere in the files was there any mention of B. J. Lockwood.

“You should have some record of him,” Aragon said. “He was arrested.”

“How do you know he was arrested?”

“I was told.”

“Who told you?”

“A priest.”

“A priest. Then it’s very likely true that he was arrested. But maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he didn’t do anything wrong, so they let him go. If we kept records on everyone who never did anything wrong, we’d have a jail full of paper. A paper jail, isn’t that a funny idea?”

“A real rib-tickler,” Aragon said. Gilly was now an unofficial contributor to a beach house or maybe a mountain cabin, but she wasn’t any closer to B. J. “What about Harry Jenkins?”

“I could find nothing concerning him either. Truthfully — you want truthfully?”

“Yes.”

“All right, truthfully. We don’t like to keep records on Americans. It’s bad for international relations. Consider which is more important, a few pieces of paper or a great war between nations.”

“I don’t think anyone would start even a very small war over Harry Jenkins.”

“One never knows. Peace today, war tomorrow.”

“Yes. Well, thank you for your trouble, Perdiz.” And may your beach house be swept away by a tidal wave and your mountain cabin buried under an avalanche.

He returned to the Hotel Castillo, stopping at the desk for his key and a map of the city, the kind which gas stations back home used to give away free. The map cost two dollars, the key was free. From his room he tried, for the second time that day, to put through a call to Gilly. All the lines were in use, on business, the telefonista implied, much more urgent than his.

Over lunch and beer at the hotel café he studied the map of Rio Seco. Avenida Gobernador was within walking distance and he would have liked to walk, both for exercise and to avoid the insanities of the city traffic. (One of the oddities of the automotive age was how such good-natured, slow-moving people could become irascible speed freaks behind the wheel of a car.) But the Avenida paralleled the course of the river for several miles and he had no way of knowing on what part of it Reynoso’s shop was located. It was not in the telephone directory or on the hotel’s list of shops and services.

He found out why when he reached it. It was hardly more than a hole in the wall on the edge of the red-light district where porno bars alternated with the rows of prostitutes’ cubicles. The neighborhood was quiet and Reynoso’s place closed. Sex as well as shoemakers took a siesta.

A boy about Pablo’s age offered to watch his car to make sure nobody stole the hub caps and windshield wipers and radio antenna. “Hey, man, watch your car? One quarter for watching your car, man.”

“Who’s going to watch you?” Aragon said.

He meant it as a joke but the boy took it seriously. “My brother José. He’s working the other side of the street.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“It’s a holiday.”

“What holiday?”

“I don’t know. Somebody just told me, ‘Hey, man, you don’t got to go to school today, it’s a holiday.’ Watch your car for a quarter?”

“All right.”

He paid the money. The boy climbed on the hood of the car, leaned back against the windshield and lit the butt of a cigar he’d picked up from the road.

Aragon said, “You watch cars around here all the time?”

“Sure, man.”

“I bet you know a lot of people in the neighborhood.”

“I got eyes, don’t I?”

“I’m looking for an American named Harry Jenkins. I was told he lives in a room above Reynoso’s.”

“Whoever told you’s got eyes, too. That’s where he lives, Harry Jenkins. Some cheapskate. Never gave me a dime.”

“Reynoso’s shop is closed.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“For one of the dimes Jenkins never gave you, will you tell me how I can get up to his room?”

“You a hustler, man?”

“Let’s just say that the members of my profession are sometimes called hustlers.”

“Yeah? Okay, then. There’s an alley four, five doors down, takes you straight to Reynoso’s outside stairs.”

The boy pocketed the dime and settled back against the windshield to enjoy the final inch of the cigar.

Jenkins’ door was locked. When Aragon knocked on it, it felt flimsy as though it would collapse like cardboard if he leaned against it too heavily. He wrote a note and pushed it underneath the door:

He returned to the hotel and tried for the third time to put through a call to Gilly. The telefonista must have had a refreshing siesta, she sounded almost human: “You wish to speak personally to Mrs. Marco Decker, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“I may have a line for you now. Hold on.”

After about five minutes of back-and-forth chatter in two languages, a man answered the phone. “Hello.” A certain note of petulance in the man’s tone identified him as Reed Robertson, Marco Decker’s nurse.

“I have a person-to-person call for Mrs. Marco Decker. Is Mrs. Decker there?”

“Hold on.” Reed raised the pitch of his voice about an octave. “This is Mrs. Decker, operator. I’ll take the call.”

“Your party is on the line, sir. Go ahead.”

“Hello, Reed.”

“That you, Aragon?”

“Yes.”

“She’s in the pool. Violet Smith just took her out a robe, so she’ll be here in a minute. Listen, amigo, she’s burned up because she hasn’t heard from you.”

“She burns easy. It’s only Monday.”

“Any trace of B. J.?”

“ ‘Trace’ just about covers it. I found his ex-partner, though.”

“Harry Jenkins.”

“I gather Mrs. Decker has confided in you.”

“The old girl has to talk to somebody. It was a toss-up between me and Violet Smith. I won. If you want to call it winning.”

“What do you call it?”

“I call it a living,” Reed said. “Speaking of living, where’s Jenkins doing his, in some castle in the sky?”

“Over Reynoso’s shoemaking shop on Avenida Gobernador. I might say he’s on his uppers if I went in for bad puns.”

“So Jenlock Haciendas never got off the ground.”

“No. All the other news is bad, too.”

“How bad?”

Gilly came on the line. “Aragon? What’s this about bad? Have you found B. J.?”

“No.”

“That’s not exactly bad, is it? I mean, it’s just nothing. How is that bad?”

“B. J. seems to have disappeared.”

“From where?”

“The jail in Rio Seco.”

“Did you say jail?”

“Yes.”

“What was he doing in jail?”

“Like all the others in there, he was waiting to get out.”

“Don’t get sharp with me, dammit.”

“I’m trying not to,” Aragon said. “I don’t like delivering news like this any more than you like receiving it.”

“Why was he sent to jail? B. J. wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Flies don’t invest money in real estate developments. People do, and when they discover they’ve been swindled they complain to the police. B. J. and Jenkins were picked up in Bahía de Ballenas. While they were waiting trial B. J. disappeared. One of the other inmates told me he’d been ill and upset and the guards had to give him stuff to calm him down. ‘Stuff’ was the word used. It could have been anything.”

“Oh God, poor B. J.”

She began to cry. Aragon could hear Reed trying to soothe her: Buck up, old girl. Stop it now. Here, here’s a drink. That’s a good girl...

When things quieted down, Aragon continued, “I may get more information tonight or tomorrow. I haven’t talked to Harry Jenkins, but I found out where he’s living and left a note for him.”

“Left a note? You should have waited for him, camped on his doorstep if necessary.”

“He didn’t have a doorstep. He didn’t even have much of a door.”

“Give me his phone number. I want to talk to him myself.”

“I guess I’m not getting through to you, Mrs. Decker. Jenkins is broke. That’s the main reason I expect to hear from him. I offered him money for information about B. J.”

There was a long interval of silence. Then, “Where’s the girl, Tula?”

“I have no recent news about her. When the two men were arrested she went with them to Rio Seco. The word is that she wanted to get away from Bahía de Ballenas and the child, too.”

“Away from her own child?”

“He’s retarded as well as crippled, Mrs. Decker... Now don’t start crying again. The boy’s safe, he’s being looked after by relatives. Mexican families are very close-knit, as I mentioned to you before, and retarded children aren’t considered undesirable.”

“Have you nothing decent, nothing pleasant to tell me?”

“I think it’s both decent and pleasant that Pablo is being taken care of. He’s luckier in many ways than his American cousins.”

“How long ago did they leave him there?”

“Four years. He’s eight now, chronologically. Mentally, perhaps three. There is no way he could fit into your life, Mrs. Decker.”

“I never thought he could,” she said quietly. “I just hoped a little bit. If it were only a matter of his being crippled, I could have paid for doctors, operations... Now, of course, I realize that it’s impossible. I wish I’d never been told of his existence. Maybe B. J. told me deliberately to rouse my sympathy so I’d send him the money he asked for. If I could believe that, it would make it easier for me to accept — what I’m afraid you’re going to find out.”

“Which is?”

“That he’s dead, he died in jail and they dragged him out and buried him like a common criminal.” He heard her take a long deep breath as if to regain control of herself. “Okay, all the news is bad so far. What’s the next step?”

“I’ll talk to Jenkins.”

“Suppose he doesn’t know anything?”

“Then I’d better quit wasting your money and come home.”

“Call me after you’ve seen him. And thanks, by the way, for leveling with me, even though I didn’t like it. The truth hurts... I wonder who first discovered that.”

“Probably Adam.”

“The little boy, does he seem happy?”

“He seems not unhappy. He gets affection and enough food to eat, and he has children to play with who aren’t much more advantaged than he is. You could present a bigger problem to him than any he has now, Mrs. Decker.”

“Yes, I see. It was really stupid of me after all this time to get the idea that — well, anyway, thanks again. And call me.”

“I will.”

She hung up. Reed was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed on his chest, watching her. She had never realized before what cruel little eyes he had. They didn’t match the rest of his face, which smiled a lot.

“You were practically screaming at one point,” Reed said. “Women should learn to modulate their voices.”

“Why?”

“So people will assume they’re ladies. Also to make it harder for eavesdroppers like Violet Smith to hear everything. Violet Smith is ninety-eight percent ears and mouth and two percent common sense. She could be dangerous.”

“I didn’t say anything she can’t broadcast to the world if she wants to.”

“Fear not, she’ll want to. Wait until the next show-and-tell meeting at her church — you and B. J. will be the star attractions, with the kid thrown in for a touch of pathos. By the way, you’re not fooling me for a minute. And if Aragon weren’t such a boy scout, you wouldn’t be fooling him, either.”

“How am I trying to fool anyone?”

“The kid. You wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole even if he had a perfect physique and an IQ of a hundred and fifty.”

“You’re malicious, you’re really malicious.”

“That’s why we get along so well. Malice is something we both understand. Now, Violet Smith isn’t malicious. She’s just dumb and self-righteous, which is a lot harder to cope with. You’d better go and have a talk with her right now. Lay it on the line but keep it light, casual. Don’t let on that it matters too much.”

“You’re giving me orders?”

“Suggestions.”

“They sounded like orders.”

“No, my orders sound quite different,” Reed said. “You may find that out.”

About the time Aragon would be thinking of going to bed back home, Rio Seco was just opening up for the night. From the window of his hotel room he watched the street below. There were crowds of people, including whole families, in the cafés and markets and in a long line in front of the cinema. The curio and art dealers, the silversmiths and street vendors and sandal makers were starting the real business of the day.

Except for an hour off for dinner, Aragon had spent the evening waiting to hear from Harry Jenkins. He’d written a long letter to his wife and a short note to Smedler. He read the evening paper, La Diaria, and twice he went down to the desk to ask for messages. There were none. A third time he went down for a can of insecticide to get rid of the mosquitoes. What might have been an unusual request in most hotels was taken for granted at the Castillo. The insecticide was provided by the night clerk free of charge. “We have this problem with the bugs, sir. When we kill them, they come back. When we don’t kill them, they don’t go away.”

“I understand.”

The clerk looked surprised. “You do?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“That’s it, then. Lawyers understand everything, even bugs, yes?”

“Especially bugs,” Aragon said. “Good night.”

He sprayed the room until the mosquitoes were all dead. Then he had to open the window to get rid of the fumes, and a whole new swarm of mosquitoes entered. He settled down with some beer to match them, pint for pint. For every pint they took from him, he drank a pint to replace the fluid.

The din from the street below increased in volume. He almost missed hearing the knock on his door shortly after midnight.

He unlocked the door. “Mr. Jenkins?”

“That’s me, Harry Jenkins.”

“I’m Tom Aragon. Come in, won’t you?”

“Don’t mind if I do, seeing as you offered some reimbursement for my time and trouble. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Jenkins closed the door behind him. He was a small thin man in his mid-forties, dressed in a dark-blue suit frayed at the cuffs and so shiny across the seat of his pants that he looked as though he’d slipped in a pool of melted wax. “So you want to talk about B. J., right?”

“No. I want you to talk about him.”

“Same difference, like they say. After I read your note I sat me down to do some thinking. Here’s how it came out. One of B. J.’s old big-shot friends got a pang of conscience for not helping him out before and now he, or she, wants to buy a little peace of mind.”

“Go on.”

“Any damn fool knows that that’s the only piece of something not for sale in the world. So I figure it has to be a she, since they don’t go by the rules of reason. The question is, ‘What she?’ ”

“I thought the question was, ‘How much do you know and what is it worth?’ ”

“You have yourself a point there, laddie.”

Jenkins moved quickly and gracefully across the room, balancing on the balls of his feet like a featherweight boxer between punches. Everything about him seemed to be in motion except his eyes. They had no more life in them than patches of grey suede.

“If you read my note this afternoon,” Aragon said, “what took you so long to get here?”

“A place like this cramps my style. I don’t even have the clothes for it. I had to borrow the suit from a friend. It’s not much of a suit, but then, he’s not much of a friend, either.”

“Clothes don’t matter much anymore.”

“They do in my business.”

“What’s your business, Mr. Jenkins?”

“It varies. Right now things are slow, but I’m tossing a few ideas back and forth.” He smoothed his thinning hair across the bald spot on top of his head as if to protect the source of the ideas. “I can’t work at an ordinary job. Don’t have the stomach for it. Or the papers. The immigration boys are a nervous bunch. One little mistake and they jump you.”

“Jenlock Haciendas was more than a little mistake, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d be the first to say it. I got in over my head. My other business ventures are less ambitious.”

“Sit down, will you?”

“Thanks.”

“Join me in a beer?”

“Might as well, I guess.” Jenkins stood at the window looking down at the street. “I’d like to get out of this crappy town.”

“Why don’t you?”

“There was a little episode in Albuquerque and maybe a couple of other places. Not everybody shares my philosophy of forgive and forget... How’d you track me down, anyway?”

“Went to the Quarry and hired a shouter. One of the inmates came over to talk to me.”

“Emilia.”

“Yes.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“That when she’s released she’s going to mash you like a turnip.”

“She will, too,” Jenkins said gloomily. “Unless I get out before she does. I always had a weakness for fiery women, but now I think I’m over it.” He took a sip of beer, grimacing, as though the stuff had the bitter taste of regrets. “I have to shake this town. The cops, the immigration boys, Emilia’s relatives — I can’t walk around the block without being hassled. My only chance is meeting up with a well-heeled sucker at one of the American bars. Funny how Americans who wouldn’t give each other the time of day in Chicago or Louisville become bosom pals over a couple of drinks at the Domino Club. Well, all I need is the right bosom.” Jenkins turned and studied Aragon carefully for a moment. “It’s too bad we know each other. It cramps my style. I prefer to deal with strangers.”

“I bet you do.”

“Friends are murder in this business... I wouldn’t mind another beer if you were offering any, laddie.”

“I’m offering.” Aragon opened another can. “How did you get mixed up in something as big as the Jenlock Haciendas project?”

“Innocent-like. I mean, I didn’t walk into it. I just stood there and it grew up around me.”

“Is that what you told the magistrate?”

“I tried to. My Spanish isn’t too good. Maybe he didn’t understand me.”

“Or maybe he did.”

“It was true, so help me. I’d been hearing plenty of talk about how Baja was due for a big boom as soon as the new highway was finished. I borrowed some money, rented a jeep and went down to have a look-see. Well, the boom’s on now and it’s big, so I was right about that. The wrong part was the location and B. J... To this day I don’t know how I managed to get lost. But I did. And that’s how I arrived at Bahía de Ballenas. Ever hear of it?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, there was B. J., living in a super-deluxe motor home and looking like money. A bunch of money. It went to my head. No drink ever invented could go to my head like that. It wasn’t like getting drunk alone and sleeping it off. B. J. stayed right with me. Every idea I came up with, he came up with an improvement. Then I improved on the improvement, until finally there it was, Jenlock Haciendas, bigger than both of us. I didn’t have sense enough to be scared. I was not only out of my league, I didn’t even know what game I was playing.”

“It’s called fraud.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Me, Harry Jenkins, who never wrote on anything he didn’t swipe from a hotel lobby, suddenly had his name on a fancy letterhead. Me, who never had more than a couple of hundred bucks in his pocket, was suddenly throwing money around like there was no tomorrow. It was the longest drunk a man’s ever been on — and not a drop of liquor, so to speak.”

“What sobered you up?”

“Tomorrow,” Jenkins said. “Tomorrow came. If it was the longest drunk, it sure as hell brought the biggest hangover. I won’t be over it until I get out of this place.”

“Where’s B. J. now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“I’m a lousy guesser. Look at my record.”

“Try.”

“I kind of guess he’s dead.”

“Why?”

“Some people make out okay in the Quarry but B. J. wasn’t the type. First off, he was the wrong nationality. He kept demanding his rights and bail and habeas corpus and a bunch of stuff they never heard of in this country and wouldn’t care if they had. Second off, he was a rich boy, spoiled rotten. He never had anything but the best all his life, and suddenly there he was with nothing but the worst. There we both were, only with me it didn’t matter so much. If sheepshead is all they give me to eat — hell, I eat it. B. J. threw up just looking at it. Oversensitive he was, and then some. Bled like a stuck pig if he got the slightest scratch. And scratch he did, laddie, scratch he did. The mosquitoes had a banquet on him every night. You could hear them flying around laughing as soon as the sun went down. Call it buzzing, humming, hissing, whatever. Down here they laugh.” He added with a touch of nostalgia, “One thing you could say about Jenlock Haciendas, we never had any mosquitoes there.”

“Why not?”

“No water. Tons of sea water but no drink water.”

“You should have thought of that before you started thinking of building a bunch of haciendas.”

“Oh, we did. B. J. said it was no problem. All we had to do was build a desalinization plant to take the salt out of the sea water. He put up the money, and I mean large money. He wanted the best. Me, I never heard of a desalinization plant before, but by God, suddenly there I was with the wherewithal, so I started building one. You know what I’d do if I had it to do all over again, laddie?”

“Tell me.”

“I’d take every penny and lam out of there. Nasty, you say? Not a bit of it. I would have been doing both of us a favor, like putting a plug in a sink where a heap of money was going down the drain. Down the drain, that’s how it was. Before you could say ‘desalinization,’ things began going wrong. The boom started and the price of everything doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Supplies had to come by boat, and mostly they didn’t. Work crews had to be trucked in, and so did water. Maybe one arrived, maybe the other, maybe neither. And all the time the government was making up new rules about building on the coast. Boy, I wouldn’t go through that again for a million dollars.” He added wistfully, “Which is roughly what I expected to make.”

“That much.”

“I told you, I was drunk, crazy drunk, without touching a drop. Well, at least I didn’t lose much except time. B. J. lost everything, shirt, pants and shoelaces. Funny about that man. He must have been over fifty then, but I swear he was like a five-year-old kid believing in everything, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy.”

“I don’t see you as a tooth fairy, Jenkins, though you’d be pretty good at extractions.”

Jenkins made a small sound like a mosquito’s laugh. “So I didn’t fit the role. Well, I never asked for it, either. I got sucked into somebody else’s dream. B. J. really believed in Jenlock Haciendas. In his mind’s eye the whole project was built and operating, the haciendas occupied, people playing on the golf course, swimming in the pool, sailing around the marina, even flushing their toilets. Sure, they sent both of us to jail for fraud, but with B. J. there actually was no fraud, just a big fat dumb dream... Well, that’s all over now and good riddance.” For the first time since he entered the room, Jenkins’ eyes brightened. “I’ve been thinking, if I could lay my hands on enough cash, I’d open up a fried chicken business here. Quality stuff only, both table and takeout service.”

“I don’t think you have the beard for it, Jenkins.”

“You may be missing out on a fortune. Mexicans are crazy about chicken and if we coated it with corn meal it would be sort of like a chicken tortilla. Roll that around on your tongue. Savor it. How does it taste?”

“It tastes like one of the residents of Jenlock Haciendas just tried to flush his toilet.”

“Hell, you probably don’t have the money, anyway. That’s a cheap suit you’re wearing.”

“J. C. Penney’s.”

“You got to think bigger than J. C. Penney’s, laddie. With a well-tailored suit you could make a pretty good appearance, sort of the ambitious but honest type.”

“Thanks. I’ll try it someday.”

“Nothing too extreme, remember. People distrust extremities. One of my own weaknesses was Hawaiian shirts. I should have known better. Who’s going to trust a man in a Hawaiian shirt with anything but a ukulele concession? Nobody. Not even B. J.”

“Would you like another beer?”

“I better be moseying along to the Domino Club or El Alegre. This is the best time of night for new contacts.”

“Suckers.”

Jenkins shrugged. “Same difference. I got to live, don’t I? And if the tourists didn’t have money to spare they wouldn’t be here, so it’s not like robbing orphans and widows... Oh hell, let the suckers wait. One more beer would be nice considering how we’re down to brass tacks, you and me. I don’t often get to the brass-tacks stage with people. I hope it doesn’t become a habit.”

“I don’t think you have to worry.”

The third beer increased Jenkins’ spirit of camaraderie. “Laddie me lad, what do you want to know? Name it. What’s mine is yours — for a small stipend, of course.”

“So you think B. J. died in jail.”

“He was a sick man, I told you. Cried a lot, couldn’t eat, shriveled up like a prune. The guards kept him pretty well doped so he’d be quiet and wouldn’t bother anyone.”

“Suppose he didn’t die but simply served his time and was released. Where would he be likely to go?”

“If he didn’t have a habit, back to Bahía de Ballenas, maybe. Only he had a habit, a big one. You can’t feed a habit by holing up in a little Mexican village. You got to get out and fight, hustle, beg, steal. Poor B. J. He was soft as a marshmallow; none of that would come natural to him.”

“Perhaps he had someone who’d do it for him.”

“You mean Tula?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Oh, she could do it, all right. She was hustling a couple of weeks after she hit town. But I doubt that a nickel of the money she picked up went to B. J. She was a taker, not a giver.”

“Why do you say was?”

“I don’t know whether she is or not. So to me she’s was until I find out for sure.”

“Can you find out?”

“Maybe. I never tried. Me and Tula weren’t real buddy-buddy. Know what she used to call me? Uncle Harry. Me, half a dozen years younger than her husband and still in the prime, so to speak.”

“What was her attitude toward B. J.?”

“As long as the money held out, she put on a show of affection. She even came to see him in jail a few times for what they call in polite society ‘connubial privileges.’ That’s probably where she got the idea of taking up the work professionally. On visiting days the hustlers flock around the jail like starlings. Tula just naturally followed the flock. There wasn’t much else she was prepared to do, she couldn’t read or write. I used to see her once in a while, all gussied up hanging around the cheap bars. She pretended not to recognize me. Good old Uncle Harry found himself de-uncled.”

“You don’t think she might have paid B. J.’s fine, or put up bail or bribe money?”

“Not in a million years would be my guess. But what’s that worth? Women are not reasonable creatures, so how can a reasonable man like me tell what they’re going to do?”

“Let’s assume,” Aragon said, “that Tula is still in town and you have the right connections for finding her.”

“Consider it assumed. And then?”

“I’d like to ask her some questions. Given enough time, I might be able to find her myself. But I don’t know the city, what name she’s using, where her hangouts are, or even what she looks like.”

“So how much is it worth to you if I ask around?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

Jenkins ran an expert eye up and down the J. C. Penney suit, the Sears, Roebuck shirt and the orange birthday tie from his cousin Sandoval, who was color-blind.

“You can’t afford that kind of money, laddie, unless the job is real important. Two hundred is pretty small potatoes for something real important. Let’s raise the ante to three hundred, fifty in advance.”

The deal was settled at $250. Gilly might squawk, but Aragon had the feeling that if she and Jenkins ever met, at the Domino Club or El Alegre, they would understand each other immediately.

Jenkins put the bills Aragon gave him in his coat pocket. “I could walk out of here with this fifty and you might never see me again. Did that occur to you?”

“Certainly. You won’t do it, though. You need the rest of the money to help you get out of town. There’s Emilia and the turnip mashing, remember?”

“Hell, how could I forget. One of those relatives of hers is probably standing right outside the hotel this very minute waiting for me to come out. It’s not fair. Me, I don’t have a relative in the world unless it’s a kid some place where I got careless... Did you know B. J. and Tula had a kid?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Crazy as a coot. Makes funny noises.”

“We all make funny noises. Some may be just a little funnier.”

“Is that philosophy or bullshit, laddie?”

“A little of both.”

“No matter. I try to avoid stepping in either.” Jenkins stood up. He was unsteady on his feet, and small round patches of red had appeared at the tip of his nose and on both cheekbones like the make-up of a circus clown. “I’d better start to work. That two fifty ought to set me up in Mexicali. Mexicali’s full of tourists, it’ll be a gold mine.”

“Stay out of real estate.”

“Oh, I can’t truly regret Jenlock Haciendas. It was a great place while it lasted.” It sounded like a fitting epitaph.

Aragon said, “Suppose you come back here tomorrow night and give me a progress report.”

“If that’s how you want it.”

“I’ll be waiting for you. Good night, Jenkins.”

“I have a nice feeling about you, laddie. You’re going to bring me luck.”

Twenty-four hours later Aragon was still waiting in his hotel room to hear from Harry Jenkins. It was after eleven when the phone finally rang.

“It’s me, laddie.”

“Where are you?”

“Never mind about that. Listen, I said you were going to bring me luck, and by God, you did. I met this pigeon. He came down to Mexico to scout around for investment opportunities and I happen to have one for him. Me.”

“I’ve already invested in you, fifty bucks, two hundred more coming. I’m expecting a report.”

“All in good time. This other matter is more urgent. The pigeon’s due to leave town pretty soon and I’m trying to nail him down.”

“What are you nailing him to?”

“The chicken tortilla business. He thinks it’s a winner.”

“How many drinks has he had?”

“That’s not a nice implication,” Jenkins said reproachfully. “But I won’t hold a grudge. Maybe you got something against chickens, maybe you just lack financial vision.”

“Did you find Tula?”

“I’m on her heels. By tomorrow night I’ll be able to take you straight to her.”

“Why not tonight?”

“I told you, tonight I’m involved in a new business venture.”

“Where are you?”

“Now, why do you want to know that?”

“Because wherever it is, I’m coming. I want to protect my investment.”

“Oh hell, laddie, don’t do that. You’ll blow it for me. This may be my chance of a lifetime. He’s fat and juicy and ready for plucking.”

“Let’s get back to Tula.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you say. Only I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“I think you’re bulling me,” Aragon said. “You already know where the girl is, don’t you?”

“Even if I told you, you couldn’t find her. It’s not like she has an ordinary job with a real address and maybe even a telephone. Looking for customers while dodging the police, that takes moving around, see?”

“Where are you, Jenkins?”

“I asked you not to press me, laddie,” Jenkins said and hung up.

Aragon put the phone back on the hook. It was late and he was tired. He would have liked to go to bed and forget about Jenkins for the night, but the conversation had made him uneasy on two counts. The first was the possibility that if Jenkins plucked enough feathers out of his new pigeon, he wouldn’t wait around town for Gilly’s extra two hundred. He’d be in Mexicali by morning.

The second possibility was in a sense more disturbing. Rich, drunk, gullible tourists were not uncommon in Rio Seco, but the fact that Jenkins found one so quickly and easily was suspicious. Nobody was easier to con than a con man, and Jenkins would be easier than most. He seemed to have the same kind of basic innocence he’d criticized in B. J. If B. J. believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, Jenkins believed in rainbows with pots of gold. The only thing that would protect him from being taken was that he had nothing much to take, only the fifty dollars he’d received in advance for locating Tula.

Aragon was almost certain that Jenkins had found out where the girl lived and that the reason he’d refused to give more information over the phone was his fear of not being paid the extra two hundred. For someone in Jenkins’ position it was a natural enough fear. He’d probably cheated and been cheated hundreds of times. Now that he had something real to sell he would deliver it in person, for cash and in his own time. Meanwhile, some half-soused American tourist was hearing a lot about chicken tortillas.

As he put on his coat and tie Aragon thought back over the conversation. Jenkins had not, in fact, mentioned the word “American,” only a pigeon ready for plucking. The pigeon could be an Eskimo or an Algerian, but the odds were against it. Emilia had named three places as Jenkins’ favorite hangouts because they catered to American tourists, and Jenkins had referred to two of them the previous night, El Alegre and the Domino Club.

Aragon combed his hair and straightened his tie in front of the bureau mirror. “You’re going out on the town, laddie.”

The back booth at the Domino Club where Jenkins had been sitting was cleaned up and smelled of disinfectant. The cleanup even included the young bartender who’d spoken to him previously. He wore a freshly laundered white jacket with the name Mitchell stitched across the breast pocket.

Aragon sat down in the booth. About three minutes later Mitchell joined him, bringing along a cup of coffee. He didn’t offer Aragon either the coffee or anything else.

“How’s your friend?”

“Dead.”

“Yeah? Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“His name was Harry Jenkins,” Aragon said quietly. “He wasn’t a bad man, just unlucky. He had the wrong kind of friends.”

“There’s a right kind? Show me.”

“What was he drinking?”

“Beer. I took the empty bottle away myself before I had one of the boys tidy the place up.”

“Your boys are very thorough tidy-uppers. Do they always use a gallon of disinfectant after each customer?”

“The booth stank of puke and whiskey.”

“You said Jenkins was drinking beer.”

“I removed an empty beer bottle from this table. I didn’t smell it to see what had been in it. I figured a beer bottle would contain beer. Anyway, that was his usual drink. He often came in and ordered a beer. He’d nurse a single bottle along for half the night, waiting around for a touch or whatever he had in mind. How come all this fuss over one little dead man?”

“I think he was poisoned.”

“You think funny. Go home. Sleep it off.”

Aragon looked at his watch. It was twenty after one. “Jenkins called me about two hours ago at my hotel. He was completely sober and in good spirits. Yet forty-five minutes and one bottle of beer later, he was so stoned out of his head that he went and jumped off a bridge. Does that make sense?”

“My business is to make money, not sense. And you know how I do it? I keep my nose clean and out of other people’s affairs. I also stay away from booze.”

“Jenkins told me on the phone that he was with somebody, an American.”

“He wasn’t an American.”

“What was he?”

“Like I said, I mind my own affairs. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was dark-skinned and wearing the usual Mexican work clothes, half native, half cowboy.”

“How old was he?”

“They never show their age. I hired one last year, thought he was about thirty, until suddenly he dropped dead of old age. It’s all that grease in their skin, keeps the wrinkles away.”

“Did Jenkins and his companion seem friendly?”

“There was no quarrel, no fuss, no nothing, until you showed up.”

“When I showed up, Jenkins was alone and you seemed pretty anxious to get rid of him.”

“I hate pukers.”

“You hate a lot of people, don’t you, Mitchell?”

“In this business you see their worst side, until pretty soon you forget they have a better one. And ten chances to one they haven’t, anyway. Any more questions?”

“What happened to Jenkins between the time he phoned me and the time I arrived?”

“Nothing happened to him. He got drunk, took a walk to sober up, fell off a bridge. Period.” Mitchell finished his coffee. “So don’t throw any wild statements around. Our club has a good reputation, the best that money can buy. When a little trouble comes along, zap, it goes away again. The police are very understanding.”

“How much are cops selling for these days?”

“They’re dirt cheap. Which is what dirt ought to be, cheap.”

“That’s not much of a tribute to your protectors.”

“I pay them, I don’t have to kiss their asses,” Mitchell said. “Now, if it will shut you up and make you feel any better, I’m sorry about your friend.”

It was the first human remark Mitchell had made. “The coffee must be getting to you,” Aragon said. “For a minute there I thought I heard the faint beating of a heart.”

“I have the hiccups.”

He called Gilly that night after dinner. He had nothing better to tell her this time than last time, so he poured himself a double Scotch before he tried to contact her. He got his message across in a hurry: Jenkins was dead and buried, Tula still missing, and the search for B. J. had come to a halt.

Her reaction was unexpected — no shock, no anger. She merely sounded depressed. “We’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“You might as well come home.”

“All right.”

There was a long silence, then a sudden burst of words. “I can’t... I can’t let it go like this. I can’t leave him in a dreary foreign prison.”

He didn’t say what he thought: You could and you did, Gilly. Your grief may be genuine but it’s years too late, miles too short.

She said, “Jenkins at least had a decent burial, yet it was all his fault. He dragged B. J. down into the gutter.”

“B. J. dragged easy, Mrs. Decker. Let’s call it a folie à deux. Neither man would have gotten into such a crazy predicament without the other.”

“You’ve turned against B. J.. Jenkins won you over.”

“Let’s not make this a personal thing, Mrs. Decker.”

“It’s personal to me. Not to you, naturally. I never met a lawyer yet who had any more feeling than a dead mackerel.”

Gilly was returning to normal.

“And you can quote me to that pompous old boss of yours, Smedler. Tell him the whole damn Bar Association hasn’t enough heart for a single baboon.”

“He won’t be surprised,” Aragon said. “Now that your opinion of lawyers has been clarified, I’ll continue my report.”

“Why did you let Jenkins get away from you?”

“That’s not quite accurate, Mrs. Decker. When he refused to tell me over the phone where Tula was, I went after him and found him. But someone else got to him first and slipped something into the bottle of beer he was drinking. Whether it was intended to kill him, I don’t know.”

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“And why?”

“A possible motive might have been to prevent him from giving out any more information, either about B. J. or about Tula.”

“Maybe it was a simple robbery.”

“He had fifty dollars on him when he was found, enough for his funeral. It was your fifty, by the way.”

“So the funeral was my treat.” She let out a small brittle laugh. “If life is funny, how about death? It’s a real scream.”

“It was for Jenkins. He screamed all the way down.”

Another silence. “Why do — why do you tell me things like that?”

“Because I’m a lawyer, I like to make people feel rotten.”

“You’re an extremely unpleasant young man.”

“Right now I’m not so crazy about you either. And I’m damn glad I’m through working for you.”

“What makes you think you’re through working for me?”

“You said I was to come home.”

“So I did. But at the moment — between insults — you’re still on the job, giving me your report. You may continue.”

Aragon swallowed a chunk of pride, washing it down with a second glass of Scotch. “When Jenkins called me here late last night he was pretty high, not on drugs or alcohol, on hope and anticipation. He said he had a pigeon. I don’t think so. I think he was the pigeon. The only description I could get of his companion was that he was wearing the clothes of an ordinary Mexican workingman. This doesn’t jibe with what Jenkins told me, that the meeting offered him the chance of a lifetime, that his so-called pigeon had come down to Mexico — note the word ‘down’ — to scout around for investment opportunities and that he was ready to put money into the chicken tortilla business which Jenkins was touting. We’re faced with quite a few contradictions if we look at Jenkins’ death from only one viewpoint.”

“I have only one viewpoint,” Gilly said. “My own.”

“I’m aware of that, Mrs. Decker. But others do exist. Jenkins had a pretty shady past and he’s undoubtedly been involved in dozens of scams in the past couple of years. That was the way he lived. Maybe it was the way he died, and B. J. and Tula and you and I had nothing to do with it.”

“Naturally, I like the idea. I don’t want a man’s death on my conscience if I can help it.”

“Let’s leave it at that, then. Jenkins had other enemies.”

“What do you mean by other?”

“Other than B. J.”

“B. J. wasn’t his enemy. That was the trouble — he should have been. B. J. was nobody’s enemy.”

Emilia has a different idea, Aragon thought. But she’s in jail and crazy with grief and crazy without it. Nobody will believe her. Except me, dammit. Except me.

“Tell me about the girl, Tula,” Gilly said. “Though she isn’t a girl anymore, is she? That’s some consolation, I guess.”

“When B. J. was arrested she followed him to Rio Seco.”

“How touchingly faithful.”

“Not exactly. She went into business for herself.”

“What kind of business, a taco stand or something?”

“She’s a hooker.”

Her little gasp of surprise sounded genuine. “I... I’m sorry. I didn’t expect — I didn’t want that kind of fate for her.”

“People’s fates don’t depend on what you want, Mrs. Decker, not even your own.”

“I wish you’d have something nice to tell me for once instead of all this ugliness and death and dirt.”

“You gave me a dirty job,” Aragon said. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“Wait a minute, don’t hang up. Reed’s here trying to — I wish you’d stop interrupting, I can’t listen to two people at once. All right, I’ll ask him — Reed wants to know if you’ve been to the American consulate.”

“No.”

“They often get information about American citizens which the Mexican authorities don’t have or won’t admit having. Reed thinks you should go there and ask questions before you come home.”

“It’s a good idea.”

“Will you do it?”

“Yes.”

“That means you’re still working for me?”

“I guess I am.”

“Try sounding a little happier about it.”

“Yippee,” Aragon said and hung up.

It was almost midnight when Aragon’s call to his wife in San Francisco was finally put through. Once the connection to the hospital was made, he had to hang on the line for another five minutes while Laurie was tracked down and brought to a phone.

She sounded breathless. “Hello, Tom?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“The operator told me. She recognized your voice. She thinks it’s cute.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What do you think?”

“You roll your r’s a bit too much.”

“Rrrrreally?”

“I don’t mind. I roll mine, too, being Scottish.”

“Let’s roll our r’s together.”

“That sounds dirty,” Laurie said. “I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way.”

“Are you?”

“Well, sort of sure. Tom, have you been drinking?”

“Just enough to ease the pain of reporting in to Gilly, the Dragon Lady.”

“Is she that bad?”

“I don’t know. And the more I talk to her, the more I don’t know.”

“You have been drinking. In fact, it sounds as if you’re at a party. Are you?”

“I may be the only person in Rio Seco who isn’t,” Aragon said. “This is when all the natives start whooping it up. Men, women, children, dogs, donkeys, anything that can move is out moving.”

“Would you like to be whooping it up with them?”

“No. I prefer to sit and talk to my beautiful wife who rolls her r’s.”

“I think you’re a dirty young man.”

“You should know, lassie.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever called me lassie,” she said. “You sound sort of funny, Tom. What’s the matter?”

“It’s a long story, involving someone I liked... I have a medical question to ask you. Can you spare a minute?”

“Ten or so. I’m on my break, in the interns’ lounge.”

“What do you know about hallucinogenic drugs?”

“More than I want to, in one way. Not enough, in another. We’ve had kids brought in here so stoned we thought they were hopeless mental cases until the stuff wore off. Sometimes it didn’t. Last month an eight-year-old boy died of respiratory failure after an overdose of mescaline. He was never able to tell us how much he took or where he got it. His parents are both users, involved in some kind of consciousness-raising meditation, but neither of them would admit anything. In fact, they threatened to sue the hospital... Exactly what do you want me to tell you?”

“Just keep talking.”

“The trouble is that so many new hallucinogens are available now in addition to old stand-bys like hashish and LSD. Their street names are often enticing — Cherry Velvet, Angel Dust, China Dolls. The lethal doses vary tremendously and there is no real antidote. If the victims are in a state of great excitement, we calm them down with tranquilizers or barbituric acid derivatives, or pump their stomachs if there’s a chance some of the drug hasn’t been absorbed into the system. Ordinarily, though, we simply provide custodial care until the effects wear off. Does this sound like a lecture?”

“I asked for it. Go on.”

“In addition to the new drugs, we’re faced with combinations of old ones, or mixtures of old and new, which can be lethal. A tolerable amount of cocaine taken at the same time as a tolerable amount of methedrine becomes intolerable... This someone you liked, is he dead?”

“He was killed in a fall from a bridge. The police claim it was an accident. In a broad sense they’re right. If someone tampered with the brakes of my car and I couldn’t stop in time to avoid a collision with a truck, it would be an accident. I think someone tampered with Jenkins’ brakes. About forty-five minutes before I found him, he called me from a nightclub to postpone a date we’d made. He said he’d met someone with money to invest in Mexico and that he’d sold him the idea of investing in a chicken tortilla business. I was skeptical. I knew Jenkins was anxious to leave town before his girlfriend got out of jail and I didn’t want him to leave until he gave me the rest of the information he’d promised me. I went to the nightclub and found Jenkins in pretty bad shape. He was vomiting, sweating profusely and breathing very rapidly. He seemed to be out of his head. Or rather, in and out, mainly out. He recognized me briefly and talked to me.”

“Did he ask you for anything?”

“Help. He asked me for help and I couldn’t—”

“I meant something specific, a drink of water, perhaps.”

“He asked me for some water. He even tried to get some for himself out of a fountain. The fountain was dry.”

“Go on.”

“I went to find help for him,” Aragon said. “I thought he’d stay there at the fountain until I came back. He didn’t. He started running away when he saw me again as if he was trying to escape from an enemy. I ran after him. He was probably heading for home, he lived on the other side of the bridge. Well, he didn’t make it. Suddenly he went to the railing, leaned over and fell.”

“Did he seem dizzy?”

“Crazy, dizzy, how do you tell the difference?”

“Vertigo and disorientation are both signs of LSD poisoning. So are the other symptoms you mentioned — profuse sweating, very rapid pulse, nausea and vomiting, dryness of the mouth, dilation of the pupils. An autopsy might reveal traces of LSD in the urine.”

“There won’t be an autopsy. He’s already buried. And the bottle he was drinking from is in a pile of rubbish with a hundred other bottles like it, and the man he was drinking with can’t be identified, let alone questioned.”

“Is your story the only evidence of foul play?”

“My story is not evidence. Even if it were, even if the police were certain that Jenkins was murdered, it wouldn’t concern them much. He was unimportant, an ex-convict with no money and a warrant waiting for him in Albuquerque and maybe a dozen other places. He was low man on the totem pole. There was no way up, no way down. The only way was out, to grow wings and fly out.” I met this pigeon... the chicken tortilla business is a winner... the hustlers flock around the jail like starlings... I’m chicken birdie, lean fly. “He talked a lot about birds. I mean, they came naturally into his conversation more than into most people’s. He may even have been trying to fly when he went off the bridge.”

“That’s not uncommon with LSD.”

Aragon heard a faint tap-tap-tap on the line and he knew Laurie was drumming her fingers on the table or desk the way she did when something was bothering her and she was trying to straighten it out in her mind. He said, “Okay, what’s the matter?”

“The man who gave Jenkins the LSD, or whatever, had no way of predicting that Jenkins would either attempt to fly or suffer an attack of vertigo just as he happened to be crossing a bridge. He was betting on a very, very long shot. That’s dumb.”

“So we have a dumb murderer. They’re not, as a class, noted for brains.”

“Or else the bridge thing wasn’t actually necessary and the man was sure Jenkins had already ingested a lethal dose. He could have been waiting around for Jenkins to pass out when you appeared at the club and scared him off... You have to consider a third possibility, too.”

“Such as?”

“There wasn’t any murder or any murderer. A couple of guys were getting their kicks by mixing drinks and drugs, like the housewife taking her Valium with a glass of muscatel or the high school kid carrying a flask of vodka to wash down the rainbows he can buy in the hall for a quarter apiece. Alcohol is usually half of the lethal mixtures in the cases that come our way.”

“Jenkins was drinking beer—”

“Mild, but still alcohol. Drink enough and you’re drunk.”

“—and only one bottle, according to the bartender. The man with him was someone Jenkins hoped to con out of enough money to get him to Mexicali. He needed all his wits about him. He wasn’t likely, under the circumstances, to mess around with any drugs or to break his pattern of nursing along one beer for a whole evening.”

“So where are we?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “I’ll be going back to Santa Felicia either tomorrow or Friday. The Dragon Lady has asked me to check the American consulate here for any record of her ex-husband. After that I’ll head for home and forget all about Jenkins and bridges and B. J. and Tula, the whole enchilada.”

“No, you won’t.”

“How do you know I won’t?”

“You’ve always liked enchiladas.”

“I can take them or leave them.”

“You’d better leave this one,” she said. “I mean that seriously, Tom. You should be in court handling a complicated tax case or somebody’s nice messy divorce.”

“This is somebody’s messy divorce, or was at the beginning. Now it’s something even messier, something weird, crazy. I’m getting bad vibes.”

“I speak as a doctor — there’s nothing you can do for bad vibes except walk away from their source. So start walking.”

“Tomorrow. Friday at the latest. May I ask you one more question?”

“You will, anyway.”

“Is LSD readily accessible?”

“Here in San Francisco you can practically buy it over the counter if you go to the right counter. In Mexico, the whole drug situation is pretty murky. Officially, narcotics and hallucinogens are illegal. Yet it’s well known that mescal buttons and high-grade marijuana are widely grown. Less well known is the fact that opium poppies are cultivated just as successfully as they are in Turkey. The heroin extracted from them is not white like the stuff grown in Turkey. It’s a peculiar color, that’s why they call it Mexican Brown. It’s equally strong, and a hundred times more dangerous because it’s so much easier to smuggle into the country. There are nearly two thousand miles of border, most of it unguarded... But I haven’t really answered your question. Maybe I was just postponing admitting that I don’t know how accessible LSD is in Rio Seco. My guess is, not very. It’s a product of labs, not fields. An American like Jenkins would be more likely than a Mexican to know about it and buy it.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“It fits in with what I’ve thought since the beginning, that the man with Jenkins at the Domino Club was an American and the bartender’s description of him was phony. I’d better go and pay another call on Mitchell. He plays bartender, but I’m pretty sure he’s part owner of the club.”

“It’s terribly late. And if Mitchell lied before, why shouldn’t he lie again? You can’t choke the truth out of him.”

“He was bribed. I’ll rebribe him.”

“Tom, I hate the idea of your mingling with people like that in a place like that.”

“I grew up in a barrio with people like that. I didn’t even know there were any other kinds until I reached high school.”

“Don’t give me any of that macho bull.”

“Okay, cut out the maternal bit. Bargain?”

“Some bargain,” she said. “You do what you want and I’m too far away to stop you.”

“How would you stop me, fair means or foul?”

“Diseases aren’t the only things you learn about in med school. Definitely foul.”

“I’ll take you up on that some time.”

“Tom, listen—”

“Stop worrying about me. I haven’t been in a fight for ten years. Or five, anyway. I promise to be sensible, cautious, alert, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“It would have been more reassuring without all those et ceteras,” she said coolly. “And if you bring up that barrio stuff once again, I’ll scream.”

“You can’t. You’ll scare your patients.”

“There aren’t any patients in here. Just a couple of interns so tired they wouldn’t wake up if a bomb exploded.”

“Anyway, thanks for the information about drugs. I truly appreciate it.”

“How truly?”

“I’ll bring you a present, a great big sombrero to hide all those brains of yours. Us macho men like dumb dames.”

“Go back to your enchilada. I hope you get heartburn.”

“I love you, too.”

The American consulate was located in one of the older sections of the city, the Colonia Maciza. The formidable stone building reminded Aragon of the Quarry and he soon discovered another similarity. The consul and the assistant consul, like the warden and his assistant, believed in long weekends. They had, he was told by a receptionist, gone on a deep-sea fishing trip and wouldn’t return until Monday afternoon. Possibly Tuesday. If there was a storm at sea, Wednesday. If the boat sank, never.

The consul’s executive secretary sat behind a large mahogany desk with a name plate identifying her as Miss Eckert. She was fat as a robin, and she held her head on one side as if she were listening for a worm. Aragon did his best to provide a substitute by giving her his card, Tomas Aragon, Attorney-at-Law, Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell.

Miss Eckert put on a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, glanced at the card and then dropped it quickly into the wastebasket as though she’d detected a lethal fungus somewhere between Smedler and Powell.

“Is this a confidential matter, Mr. Aragon?”

“Yes.”

“Then close the door. A man has been hanging around the corridor all week. I suspect he may be CIA. You’re not by any chance CIA?”

“Now, would I tell you if I were?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never asked anyone before.”

“The answer is no. But I may be lying.”

Miss Eckert was not amused. She leaned back in her chair with a little sigh. “I gather your business concerns an American citizen in Baja.”

“He came to Baja eight years ago. I’m not certain he’s still here or if he’s still alive. His family would like to find out.”

“Name, please?”

“Byron James Lockwood.”

“Last reported address?”

“The Quarry.”

“The Quarry. That’s the penitentiary.”

“Lockwood was arrested on a charge of fraud involving some real estate in Bahía de Ballenas. I wasn’t allowed access to the files at the Quarry. I was assured, however, that they contain no record of Lockwood’s arrest or release.”

“Are you sure he was taken there?”

“Positive. His partner in the fraud, Harry Jenkins, served time with him. I talked to Jenkins on Monday and again on Tuesday. On Wednesday I attended his funeral.”

“Was he sick? — I refer to Monday and Tuesday, of course.”

“No.”

“This is beginning to sound,” Miss Eckert said carefully, “like the kind of thing I would rather not hear.”

“Better listen anyway. Jenkins told me — and this was confirmed by someone still in the jail — that Lockwood was ill and frequently disturbed and the guards used drugs to keep him from making trouble. Maybe in the beginning they gave him something like paregoric or laudanum to quiet him, but he eventually became drug dependent. He was wearing quite a bit of expensive jewelry when he left Bahía de Ballenas. He probably used it to purchase narcotics from, or through, the guards at the jail.”

“Narcotics?” The word brought Miss Eckert’s chair upright with a squawk of dismay. “What kind of narcotics?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Oh, I knew, I knew this was going to be a rotten day. My horoscope said, stay home and attend to family affairs. I thought it couldn’t apply to me because I don’t have a family. I should have taken the advice. It meant me, all right — me.”

“What’s your sign?”

“Scorpio.”

“That’s the sign of a person who always copes, no matter how difficult the situation.”

“I thought Scorpios were supposed to be creative.”

“When they’re not coping, they’re creative.”

“If you’re trying to be funny,” Miss Eckert said, “I may as well warn you that I have a very poor sense of humor. Especially when certain subjects are brought up. Poppies. Back home in Bakersfield I used to love poppies. Here it’s a dirty word, and of course, a different kind of poppy, or Papaver somniferum.”

“Why? I mean, why is it a dirty word?”

“We — meaning all the U.S. government employees in this country — are in quite a delicate position right now. There are diplomatic negotiations going on between the two governments. Our government is well aware that illegal poppy fields are sprouting up all over the Sierra Madre, particularly the slopes on the Pacific side. It wants them destroyed. The Mexican government has pledged its cooperation and has actually burned off a few of the fields. But we’re asking for more widespread and more complete destruction, such as Army helicopters spraying the fields with herbicides. Certainly we know that something must be done quickly. The last samplings of heroin picked up in L. A. showed that all of it, one hundred percent, came from Mexico. And the last New York samplings were eighty-five percent Mexican. The stuff which is grown in Turkey and processed in Marseilles has been drawing everyone’s attention, while the Mexican stuff has been taking over the market. It’s processed in mobile labs around Culiacan, north of Mazatlan. Law enforcement officials refer to Culiacan as the new Marseilles. You see the problem?”

“Clearly.”

“Now the question is, what do we do about it? Obviously we can’t tell the Mexican government officials to spray the fields or else. We must ask. Politely. That’s called negotiating.”

“And while these negotiations are taking place you want to avoid any international incidents.”

“Yes.”

“Such as might be caused by a prominent American citizen becoming a narcotics addict while confined in a Mexican jail unfairly if not illegally.”

Miss Eckert looked grim. “That’s what we want to avoid. Exactly.”

“So let’s you and I do a little negotiating of our own.”

“I would rather not.”

“The Mexican government would rather not destroy the poppy fields, and the United States government would rather they did.”

“Which government am I supposed to be?”

“Take your pick.”

“Swiss.”

“Ah, you do have a sense of humor, Miss Eckert. Swiss. Ha ha.”

“Ha ha,” Miss Eckert said. “What are your terms?”

“I’ll keep quiet about Lockwood, and you use some of your consular clout to find out if and when he was released from jail. Somebody must have a record of him — the state or local police, the jail officials, the immigration department, the coroner. You can open doors that are closed to me. So you open doors, I shut my mouth.” Aragon took another card from his wallet and printed on it the address of his office and the telephone number. “You can write to me here, or if you want to phone, leave a message for me any time. There’s an answering service after business hours.”

“The consul should be here instead of out chasing fish or whatever. I can’t decide something like this alone.”

“Scorpios usually make quick decisions.”

“That’s what you want, is it — a quick decision? All right, here it is. I’m not going to break down doors trying to find traces of some junkie.”

“You’re not negotiating, Miss Eckert.”

“I don’t have to,” Miss Eckert said. “I’m Swiss.”

“Well, here he is, our wandering boy, fresh from foreign soil.” Charity Nelson pushed back her orange wig so she could get a better view of him. “You’ve only been gone a week but I detect a certain new maturity about you, Aragon. What happened?”

“Nothing much.”

“Did you miss me?”

“I thought of you a few times.”

“I thought of you, too. Especially when the answering service woke me up at six thirty this morning to read me a night letter addressed to you.”

“A night letter?”

“From Rio Seco. Want me to read it to you? Better say yes, I took it down in my own version of shorthand.”

“Yes.”

“Please.”

“Please.”

“Please. Hasn’t that word got a nice ring to it? I can’t recall ever hearing it around this office before.”

“You’ve put a very funny act together, Miss Nelson.”

“There’s more.”

“Spare me. Double please.”

“Okay.” She consulted a piece of paper which she took from the top drawer of her desk. “It’s signed ‘Scorpio.’ That sounds like a code name. In fact, the whole thing sounds as though it might be in code. You’re not a spy, are you?”

“Yes.”

“No kidding. Whose side are you on?”

“What sides are there? Pick one and read the letter.”

“ ‘Swiss connection reports penetrating paper doors at the stone quarry’ — I think that’s what the operator said, ‘stone quarry.’ Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Records indicate Byron James Lockwood was released three years ago by Magistrate Guadalupe Hernandez. Exact circumstances of Lockwood’s release unavailable and current whereabouts unknown. Hernandez contacted by phone but refused to give additional information. Home address, Camino de la Cima. Try Mordida.’ Who’s Mordida?”

“It’s not a who, it’s a what. A bite. A bribe.”

“What a shame. I thought it was a girl, some gorgeous brunette who’s a double or triple agent — you know, the usual thing.”

Smedler came out of his office to pick up his mail. He appeared a little too perfectly groomed, as if he’d just been given the full treatment in a beauty salon or a mortician’s prep room. “Good morning, Aragon. Great weather, isn’t it? On these crisp fall days you can feel the old corpuscles moving right along.”

“Yes, sir. It’s nice to be back.”

Smedler looked surprised. “Have you been away?... Has he been away, Miss Nelson?”

“Yes, Mr. Smedler. On a personal mission for Mrs. Decker.”

“Ah yes. How’d it go, Aragon?”

“Fine.”

“Fine. Now that’s the kind of answer I appreciate. Pour him a cup of coffee on the house, Miss Nelson.”

Smedler returned to his office while Charity put fifteen cents in the coffee machine and extracted a cup of semihot, semicreamed, semicoffee.

“Oh, you shouldn’t, Miss Nelson,” Aragon said. “This is too much, it’s beyond the call of duty. You really shouldn’t.”

“Okay, I won’t,” she said and drank the coffee herself. “I can type this letter up for you, if you like. How many copies do you need?”

“One.”

“One? Nobody ever needs just one. Since this concerns Mrs. Decker, you’ll want to give her the ribbon copy and keep a few others for your private files.”

“Why will I want to do that?”

“It’s standard practice,” Charity said. “Don’t fight it.”

“I have no private files.”

“You shouldn’t admit anything like that. You’ll never get to first base in this business without the basics. Rule one: always have plenty of copies made of everything. The less important the matter is, the more copies you ask for.”

“But I only need one. In fact, I don’t really need that. Mrs. Decker probably hasn’t any files either.”

“As a businesswoman I don’t know how to deal with people who won’t obey the ordinary commonsense business rules.”

“I’ll tell you how,” Aragon said. “Leave us alone. Forget the night letter. It never happened.”

“You’re getting weird, Aragon. I don’t think being a spy agrees with you. Maybe you should try some other line of work, something that keeps you out in the fresh air and sunshine, like a forest ranger. I can picture you ranging the forest in cute little green shorts to match all those leaves... Don’t dash off. I have lots of other suggestions.”

“Make twenty copies of each and file them.”

Aragon had been half hoping he wouldn’t be able to find it, but he could hardly have missed. It was the only house on Camino de la Cima, an oiled dirt road southeast of the city. The long winding driveway that led up to it was lined with silver-leaved eucalyptus trees that tossed and trembled at the slightest hint of wind.

The whole hillside was enclosed by hurricane fencing with half a dozen rows of barbed wire along the top. At the entrance the double iron-grilled gates were open, and so was the door of the gatehouse itself. The small building had been constructed like a miniature mission with sand-colored adobe walls and red tile roof. It reminded Aragon of the abandoned church in Bahía de Ballenas where the padre lived, but there was a couple of hundred years’ difference in age. Another and more important difference quickly became apparent. Instead of a kindly old padre coming to the door, there were two young men wearing uniforms and holsters. One of them also carried a rifle.

They watched with polite interest as Aragon parked his car and approached the gatehouse. Then the man with the rifle nodded and his companion went over to the car. He opened the right front door and looked through the glove compartment and under the seat. Then he took out the ignition keys, unlocked the trunk and searched it. He closed it again and replaced the ignition keys. Hernandez was taking good care of his past mordidas.

Aragon said, “Is this the residence of Magistrate Guadalupe Hernandez?”

The man with the rifle did the talking, in a professional monotone. “You have business with the magistrate?”

“Yes. My name is Aragon.”

“It is Saturday afternoon, surely not your ordinary business hours, Mr. Aragon.”

“This was the only time I could get here. I just arrived from Los Angeles and I was hoping Mr. Hernandez would give me an appointment this afternoon.”

“The matter you wish to see him about must be of grave importance.”

“No. I simply thought if I could contact him now, I’d be able to go back home tomorrow.”

“You don’t like our city?”

“It’s fine.”

“Very fine, I think.”

“Yes.”

“Finer than Los Angeles?”

“I’ll have to consider that for a while.”

“Take your time.” He dropped his rifle against the gatehouse door. Then he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed on his chest. “I am in no hurry. Salazar, my assistant, is in no hurry either. Are you, Salazar?”

“No, sir,” the younger man said. “I am on duty.”

“Where would you go if you weren’t on duty?”

“To the jai alai games.”

“I prefer the bullfights. You don’t have bullfights in Los Angeles, Mr. Aragon?”

“No.”

“Jai alai. Do you have jai alai?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“What do you do for amusement?”

“Punch out old ladies, kick dogs, stuff like that.”

“Ah, most uncivilized.”

“Yes.”

“So you must come here for amusement... He won’t find the magistrate very amusing today, will he, Salazar?”

“No, sir.”

“Certainly I’ve heard no one laughing.”

“Neither have I, sir.”

“Perhaps you’d better drive our American visitor up to the house to discover why no one is laughing.”

“I’m not sure that would be wise, sir.”

“You never do foolish things, Salazar? Then you must start by taking Mr. Aragon up to see Magistrate Hernandez.”

“Yes, sir.”

The blacktop road that led to the house was about half a mile long. Salazar drove it as though he were practicing for the Indianapolis 500 in low gear. He stopped at the entrance to a carport on the east side of the house. There was space for four cars but only one was in it at the moment, a late-model jeep station wagon.

“Thank you, Salazar,” Aragon said. “That was a very interesting ride.”

“I am a fine driver, do you think?”

“You are a very fine driver.” Like Rio Seco is a very fine city and your boss is a very fine man.

Salazar took the keys out of the ignition and handed them to Aragon with a solemn nod of the head. “I have only driven twice before. I guess it is a natural talent.”

The main house was a combination of mission and ranch style. Under the wide beamed overhang of the tile roof, about an acre of patio circled the house. It was furnished with dark heavy wooden benches and decorated with glazed clay pots painted in such vivid colors that the plants they contained looked drab by contrast and secondary in importance. Many of the plants were dead or dying, as if the effort of competing with the pots had been too much of a strain.

Under the arch of the main entrance, two Cadillac limousines and a Jensen Interceptor were parked with a chauffeur behind the wheel of each. The three chauffeurs and Salazar were the only people in sight, and the only sound was Salazar’s voice: “Someday when I attain a position of importance, I will buy a big car like one of those. Meanwhile I will practice by going to the cinema and watching carefully how they are driven. The important thing is aim.”

“Aim?”

“Like a rifle. You aim it just so and it shoots in that direction just so.”

Aragon hoped he wouldn’t be in the vicinity when Salazar bought his big car and aimed it just so.

An older man came out of one of the side doors. Like Salazar and the gatekeeper, he was in uniform. Either the uniform had been too small to begin with or he’d grown fat in the wearing of it. He was stuffed into it like a sausage balancing on two toothpick legs.

He said to Salazar, “Who is this person?”

“An American who flew in from Los Angeles this afternoon. His name is Aragon.”

“Does he speak Spanish?”

“Yes, Superintendent. Very well.”

“What does he want?”

“To see Magistrate Hernandez.”

“I’m sorry I barged in like this,” Aragon said. “If Mr. Hernandez is in the middle of an emergency, I can wait for a later appointment.”

The superintendent gazed at him pensively. “Oh no. The emergency has passed.”

“Is something the matter around here?”

“Why do you think something is the matter?”

“The security precautions seem excessive.”

“Excessive for what?”

“The house of an ordinary magistrate.”

“Magistrates have great power in this part of the world. Where there is great power, there are many enemies.”

“I assure you I’m not one of them.”

“I thought not,” the superintendent said. “Enemies don’t usually appear at the front gate and give their names. Unless, of course, they’re subtle. Which you are not. I consider myself an excellent judge of character and you appear to me a heavy young man — heavy-handed, heavy-footed, heavy-minded. Is this correct?”

“It may be a trifle too flattering.”

“Your tone indicates that I hit a nerve. Which nerve?”

“I ran the mile in four ten in college.”

“That’s good?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, we’ll take out the heavy-footed. The rest stays. Come inside.”

He led the way through a long narrow room that looked like a combination of art gallery, church and library. The books were leatherbound copies of English classics translated into Spanish. The pictures, in ornate gilt frames, were of a religious nature — madonnas, crucifixions, resurrections — except for one large oil painting of a man wearing a magnificent scarlet uniform with gold epaulettes and silver scabbard and sword. A dozen or more candles burned in silver candelabra below the painting and on the altar at the far end of the room.

The superintendent surveyed the room proudly as if it were his own and the man in the scarlet uniform were an earlier self, or at least a relative. “The galleria is most impressive, don’t you agree, Mr. Aragon?”

“Yes.” I hope this agreeing business starts getting easier. I may have to do a hell of a lot more of it. “Most impressive.”

“But I detect a certain hesitancy in your manner. You’re not a religious man, perhaps?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Religion can be a great solace for people in trouble.”

“Are you implying that I’m in some kind of trouble, Superintendent?”

“What kind of trouble could you be in when you only arrived in Rio Seco this afternoon? You’ve hardly had time to go out looking for it. Perhaps I can help. Come, I’ll show you the magistrate’s office.”

Beyond the altar was a massive, elaborately carved oak door with iron hinges which creaked a warning when the superintendent pushed the door open.

The room inside was in sharp contrast to the galleria. Except for a picture window which offered a view of the main entrance to the house, this was strictly an office, with fluorescent lighting, a mahogany desk with a leather swivel chair, and floor-to-ceiling shelves and files. Nearly every drawer in the desk and the files was open and spilling paper, folders, cards, manila envelopes, letters. A painting hiding a small safe had been pushed aside, but the door of the safe remained closed. In one corner of the room was a small table with two wine glasses and a bottle of Beaujolais on it. The bottle was still full, but it had been uncorked. The cork was lying on the tray with the forced-air opener still stuck in it like a hypodermic needle.

A middle-aged man sitting behind the desk rose when the superintendent and Aragon entered and immediately took Aragon’s picture with a Polaroid camera. The pictures he’d already taken were scattered on the desk in front of him. They seemed to be mainly various angles of the disarray in the room.

The superintendent said, “I assume you don’t mind having your picture taken.”

“That depends on what you’re going to do with it.”

“I may keep it in my wallet. Then again, I may not. Let’s see how it turned out... Not bad. Certain physiological characteristics are obscured, others are emphasized. It all balances out, wouldn’t you say?”

The superintendent held up the picture and Aragon glanced at it. He hardly recognized himself. The young man in the picture looked confident, almost cocky. He didn’t feel either.

“You may have deduced, Mr. Aragon, that someone paid a call on Magistrate Hernandez while he was working. He liked to catch up on his work at night whenever possible so he could spend more of the daylight hours with his children... Obviously the call wasn’t a friendly one, or at least it didn’t end up that way. Kindly remove your spectacles. I believe Ganso here would like another shot.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course not.”

He removed his spectacles. The second picture showed a little more of the truth. He looked scared. “I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with all this. I told you, I just arrived in town.”

“But you have been here before in our city?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I... well, at the beginning of the week. I left Thursday afternoon.”

“This is only Saturday afternoon. What made you leave and come back so soon?”

“I received word at my office that Magistrate Hernandez might have news of someone I’ve been searching for on behalf of a client. I’m a lawyer.”

“So? The last man I arrested was a lawyer. His interpretation of the law didn’t quite coincide with mine.” The superintendent went and stood by the window with the view of the front entrance. “Presumably your client has a name.”

“That’s privileged information.”

“In your country, yes. In mine, no. It’s one of the basic differences in our legal systems. Now, the name of your client, please.”

“Gilda Grace Decker.”

“And she hired you to find someone who also has a name.”

“Byron James Lockwood, her former husband.”

“How does Magistrate Hernandez fit into all this?”

“Lockwood was serving time in the Quarry for a real estate swindle and Hernandez was responsible for his release three years ago. No one has seen Lockwood since.”

“Perhaps,” the superintendent said dryly, “Mr. Lockwood doesn’t wish to be seen.”

“It’s possible.”

“It is, then, possible that he took steps to make sure he is not seen?”

“What kind of steps?”

“He may have come here to the house, for instance, to destroy some records pertaining to him. That would have been stupid enough, he being an ex-convict and the magistrate an important person. But what followed was surely the ultimate in stupidity... Step over here for a minute. I want you to see something.”

Aragon went to the window. Some people were coming out of the front door, three men, a stout woman, heavily veiled, leaning on the arm of a fourth man, and half a dozen children ranging in age from five to midteens. The woman and the man escorting her got into the first limousine, and the children into the second. The rest of the group entered the Jensen and all the cars began moving slowly down the driveway.

“See those people,” the superintendent said. “Where do you think they are going?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are they dressed?”

“In black.”

“Like mourners, would you say?”

“Yes.”

“Where would they be going, dressed like mourners?”

“To a funeral,” Aragon said.

For the next three hours Aragon answered questions, many of them repetitious: What was he doing in Rio Seco? What was he actually doing? What was he really actually doing? Who was Lockwood? Had he ever met him? What kind of man was he?

“It’s unlikely he could have committed any crime of violence,” Aragon said. “He was, by all accounts, a very gentle person.”

“A lot of gentle persons go into the Quarry and come out not so gentle. You speak of yesterday, I must think of now and tomorrow. Lockwood could be a changed man. You agree?”

“Yes.” I agree again. This time it’s real.

“As you can see” — the superintendent pointed to the table with the opened bottle of wine and the two glasses — “Hernandez was preparing to offer his visitor a drink. Which indicates that either he was a friend or he had come on a friendly mission such as bringing Hernandez something, a gift, say.”

“Say a mordida.”

“All right, a mordida. I don’t like the word but it is a fact of life so we’ll use it. Certainly we can assume that Hernandez was expecting someone, if not this particular person, because he left the gate open and no one is on duty in the gatehouse at night except on special occasions. So the caller arrived. Let’s call him Lockwood.”

“Let’s not.”

“Very well — Mr. Mordida, then. How’s that?”

“Better.”

“Mr. Mordida drove up to the house and Hernandez let him in. It was obviously an informal visit. Hernandez was wearing a paisley print robe over white silk pajamas. He brought Mr. Mordida here into the office and opened a bottle of wine. Up to this point the meeting was amicable. What happened to change it, I don’t know. The children and servants occupy another wing of the house and most of them were sleeping. Mrs. Hernandez heard nothing, no car driving up, no sounds of quarreling or of the office being ransacked. This isn’t surprising, since the adobe walls are a foot thick and she was in the bedroom watching television. Shortly after ten o’clock she came to say good night to her husband and found him dead and the room looking like this. She telephoned the doctor, who in turn called me. I came right out with Ganso, my photographer, and several other men. I’ve been on duty ever since, both here and at the hospital where Hernandez’s body was taken to determine the cause of death. There were no marks on him, he gave every evidence of having died naturally of a heart attack or a stroke. Except for the condition of the room, we might have left it at that. Would you like to see some of the pictures Ganso took of the body?”

“Not particularly.”

“Ganso likes to take pictures of everything. No one ever looks at them, which is a shame because the film is expensive. Are you sure you—?”

“I’m sure.”

“Very well, I’ll proceed. When Hernandez’s robe was removed at the hospital I noticed a very small spot of blood on the back of his pajama top. It seemed a peculiar place for a bloodstain. If it had been on the front it could have passed as the result of a shaving nick or even a dribble of red wine which, as you can see, Hernandez fancied. After I drew the doctor’s attention to the spot he examined Hernandez’s back very carefully and found, under the left shoulder blade, a puncture wound made by an extremely thin sharp instrument, something in the nature of an icepick. But I don’t believe it was an icepick. You see the forced-air opener still in the cork of the wine bottle over there? I think before it was inserted in the cork, it was inserted in Hernandez. The wound was so small that the skin closed over it almost immediately and all the bleeding, except for that one drop, took place internally. Death occurred fairly quickly, since the weapon penetrated the heart and the pressure of blood in the pericardial sac caused the heart to stop beating. I’m not a medical expert, I’m merely repeating roughly what the doctor told me. Whoever struck the blow was either very lucky or very skillful.”

“Lockwood was neither,” Aragon said. “All his luck was bad and his only skill seems to have been attracting women.”

“That sounds to me like good luck.”

“Not for him.”

“I could use such luck, call it good or bad.” The superintendent stared down at his belly as if he were wondering how it got there. “This Lockwood, he was probably thin?”

“No. In the only pictures I saw of him he was quite fat.”

“Tall?”

“No.”

“But very handsome?”

“No.”

“That’s most encouraging, a small fat homely man attracting many women. Yes, I like that very much, it tempts me to view you in a much friendlier light. But such a thing would be unprofessional. I am always professional.”

“I can see you are.”

“It shows, then?”

“It shows.”

The superintendent sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk and Ganso immediately took a picture of him. There was complete silence while the film was developing. The finished product showed a small homely fat man.

The superintendent gazed at it soberly. “I must keep reminding myself of Lockwood and all those women. Were they nice sensible women, the kind a man would choose to marry and to bear his children?”

“I only know one of them. She’s—” He wasn’t sure that “nice” and “sensible” were the right words to describe Gilly. “She’s very interesting.”

“Why has she not formed an attachment to some other man?”

“She did. Or at any rate she married him.”

“How is it, then, that she wants you to find Lockwood?”

“Her present husband is dying. I think she is afraid of being left alone.”

“How old is she?”

“About fifty.”

“I am not interested in any woman beyond childbearing age.”

“Naturally not.” Poor Gilly will be heartbroken. “One of the other women is still young, only twenty-three.”

“That is much better. And she likes fat homely men?”

“Her personal preferences don’t matter. She’s a hustler here in Rio Seco. You might know her. In a professional way, of course — your profession, not hers.”

“We have a great many hustlers in Rio Seco. Most of their customers are American tourists who drive down for the races or the bullfights, Navy men who drive by the busload from San Diego and Marines from Camp Pendleton.”

“Her name is Tula Lopez.”

The superintendent shook his head. “The hustlers don’t come up to me on the street and introduce themselves. If I were a private citizen and wanted to find a particular young woman, I’d put her name on the grapevine and offer a sum of money for information.”

“Or hire a shouter.”

“So you have been to the Quarry. Good. That will give you some idea of what happens to people who don’t watch their behavior... Do you know a man named Jenkins?”

“Jenkins is a common name in my country.”

“In my country it’s most unusual. Thus, when someone named Jenkins performs an unusual act like jumping off our new bridge, it arouses my curiosity and wonderment. Do you have much wonderment, Mr. Aragon?”

“Enough.”

“Then let’s wonder together about various coincidences. Mr. Jenkins and your friend, Lockwood, were both Americans. Jenkins served time in the Quarry for the same offense that Lockwood did. You tell me that Lockwood was released by Magistrate Hernandez after a payment of some kind. Now I tell you that Jenkins also was released by this same Magistrate Hernandez after paying a fine. What do you make of all this?”

“That Hernandez had ways of supplementing his income.”

“His income wouldn’t have bought the rug on this floor. Our public servants are very poorly paid, that is why they become private bosses. A little mordida here, and a little there, keeps them from starving.”

“Hernandez was about as far from starving as I am from being named to the Supreme Court.”

“Mordida is part of your system, too, so I hope you didn’t come riding across the border on a white horse.”

“I don’t ride a horse of any color,” Aragon said. “Just a ten-speed bicycle.”

“I dislike all forms of exercise except that of the imagination. From the neck up I am very athletic. I am like a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit at the dog track. Only I catch the rabbit... You smile, I see, because I don’t look like a greyhound. Well, you don’t look like a rabbit. But here we both are.”

Aragon had already stopped smiling. “I’m not sure what a greyhound would do to a real rabbit if he caught one.”

“Probably nothing. The chase is what matters to him. But the rabbit doesn’t know that. What matters to him is escape. Sometimes he makes a serious error and runs into a hole which has no exit. That’s what you did. You ran right up that driveway and into this house.”

“My coming here was a coincidence.”

“I can swallow only a certain number of coincidences. Then I start to upchuck. So let’s eliminate some of these coincidences, shall we?”

“I don’t know how.”

“We’ll begin once more at the beginning.”

The superintendent got up, walked around the room quite rapidly as if his athletic imagination were chasing him, then sat down again in the swivel chair. Aragon stared out the window, but it was dark. All he could see was the reflection of the room itself, the fat man in uniform behind the desk, the middle-aged man with the camera poking around in the clutter of ransacked papers, and the young man standing at the window peering through his hornrimmed glasses like a rabbit that had entered a hole with no exit.

“No, Mr. Aragon, tell me frankly, what brought you here this afternoon?”

“A telegram from someone at the U.S. consulate who found out that Lockwood had been released from prison by Magistrate Hernandez.”

“Did you expect to see the magistrate?”

“Yes.”

“And to ask him questions?”

“Yes.”

“And to receive answers?”

“Yes.”

“Mordidas,” the superintendent said, “do not appear in filing cabinets or record books. Or magistrates’ answers.”

“I thought it was worth a try, since my previous attempts to find Lockwood failed.”

“Now this one has also failed. What will be your next step?”

“I think I’ll go home.”

“But there is still the girl. Aren’t you going to look for her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid to.”

“Afraid? You’re strong, young—”

“I’m not afraid for myself. I do all right. I don’t back into sharp instruments or fall off bridges.”

“So...” The superintendent leaned his elbows on the desk and the tips of his fingers came together to frame an arch like a bridge. “So you did know Jenkins.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

“You implied as much.”

“I evaded the question. I wanted to make sure you were an intelligent and reasonable man.”

“And now that you’ve made sure, you will tell me everything?”

“Everything isn’t much,” Aragon said. “First I got Jenkins’ address from his girlfriend in the Quarry.”

“Her name, please.”

“Emilia Ontiveros.”

“Why is she in the Quarry?”

“For assault. Assault on Jenkins.”

“This Jenkins apparently didn’t have a way with women like Lockwood.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Miss Ontiveros is the jealous type. Anyway, Jenkins claimed that he’d lost contact with Lockwood and had no idea where he was. For a sum of money he agreed to find Tula Lopez for me. I think he found her, but he never had a chance to tell me and to collect the rest of his money. I had paid him fifty dollars in advance and promised him two hundred more for Tula Lopez. She’d borne Lockwood a child. I figured there might still be some kind of bond between them and she could possibly put me in touch with him if he’s alive, or tell me what happened to him if he’s dead.”

“Two hundred dollars to find a hustler in these parts, that’s real inflation for you. They used to be a dime a dozen, and for fifty cents they’d throw in a free case of V.D. They’re somewhat cleaner now. The tourists were complaining. Turista in Rio Seco did not always involve the digestive track... Tell me more about Jenkins.”

“The fifty dollars was found in his pocket when they picked up the pieces. It paid for his funeral. It wasn’t much of a funeral — I’m sure Hernandez did better.”

Aragon thought of the mourning party leaving the house in the Cadillacs and Jensen, the black-veiled widow with her starched and scrubbed children, the dignified, formally dressed men. They hadn’t yet returned. They were probably still at church, praying for Hernandez’s soul and paying for the candles with some of his mordidas.

“I am still upchucking coincidences,” the superintendent said. “A little wine might help settle my stomach. Would you care for some?”

Aragon glanced over at the table with the bottle of wine on it and the impaled cork. “From that bottle?”

“Certainly. Red wine should always be served at room temperature.”

“What I meant was, I thought it would be considered evidence.”

“I see no harm in drinking a little of the evidence. There’ll be enough left.” The superintendent poured two glasses of wine, gave one to Aragon and raised the other in a toast. “To crime. Without it we’d both be unemployed. Drink up.”

“I prefer not to.”

“Squeamish?”

“I was imagining what would happen to me back home if I were found drinking some of the evidence in a murder case.”

“A bad thing would happen?”

“Very bad. Maybe terminal.”

“Ah well, we’re more civilized here. A little evidence is just as good as a lot.” He drank both glasses of wine, pronounced it mediocre, wished aloud for some bleu cheese to go with it, poured a third glass and settled back in the swivel chair again. “This client of yours, the lady who is about fifty and likes fat homely men, she must be rich.”

“Yes.”

“Is she Catholic?”

“No.”

“I can be ecumenical when necessary. Is she really very rich, do you suppose?”

“Yes.”

“You know, Aragon, I could change my mind about wanting a family. After all, it might be a mistake for a man my age to start a family if he has the opportunity to marry a mature rich woman. This line of thought appeals to me suddenly. What do you think?”

“I think no.”

“Why no?”

“For starters, Mrs. Decker is already married, she doesn’t speak Spanish, she has strong opinions and states them bluntly, and she’s pretty tight with a buck.”

“But as her husband I would control her money.”

“No.”

“I would be boss.”

“No.”

“Ah well, there are other fish in the sea,” the superintendent said.

It was Sunday.

The fog of the previous night had been driven back to sea by the sun. The wet leaves of the camellias were dark-green mirrors, and the cypress trees were covered with drops of water that caught the sun and looked like tiny glass Christmas balls.

“A beautiful day,” Gilly told Marco when she brought his breakfast. “It’s so clear, the mountains look as though you could reach out and touch them. When Mrs. Morrison gets here she’ll wheel you around to the front of the house so you can see them for yourself... I know you don’t like her, but you will. And Reed can’t work every day. He went to see his mother at a rest home in Oxnard; she’s a little balmy. That’s his story, anyway. Actually, I’m not even sure he has a mother. But he must have had at one time or another, so what does it matter?”

He stared, one-eyed, at the ceiling.

“The sky? There’s not a cloud in sight and it’s very blue, like cornflowers. Remember the cornflowers I wore at our wedding? I wanted to keep them but you said not to bother, there’d be a thousand others. But I’ve never seen any since that were quite that blue.”

He was sorry.

“Oh well, they’d be faded by this time, anyway. It’s not important. I must keep reminding myself to separate what’s important from what isn’t.” She pulled open the drapes. Beyond the tips of his pygmy forest of plants, the sea shimmered like molten silver. “The kelp beds look purple... I wonder why they call that war decoration the Purple Heart. Do you know?”

He didn’t know. He’d almost forgotten there was such a thing. What else had he forgotten? A minute here, a week there, or great whole chunks of time? Things were moving inside his head, in directions he could no longer control. Sometimes they met and merged, or they broke off and parts disappeared.

Years flowed in and flowed out of his mind like tides, leaving pools of memories full of small living things. Sometimes the tides stopped, the pools dried up and nothing lived in them any longer. A strange man came and helped him move his bowels. A strange woman sat beside him, claiming to be his wife. Another strange woman had been sent by the Lord to save him, but he didn’t know from what. Strangers walked in and out while Gilly and Violet Smith and Reed hid behind clouds or in forests under snow, disappeared around corners and below horizons.

But today was very clear. It was today. The woman was Gilly, his wife. Soldiers got Purple Hearts for being wounded in action. Purpleheart was also a timber from South America named for its color. Masses of kelp looked purple from a distance; close up they were copper-colored and the leaves felt slimy when you swam over them. The woman with the morning newspaper and the glass of orange juice with the plastic tube in it was his wife, Gilly. She was a little balmy, like Reed’s mother.

She cranked up his bed and put the plastic tube in his mouth. “Drink up.”

He drank. He would have liked to tell her about the timber purpleheart, but she probably wouldn’t consider it important. Now that she was dividing things up into important and nonimportant, he wondered where he belonged. Maybe in the middle, leaning toward the non.

“That’s a good boy,” she said when he finished the orange juice. “Are you hungry this morning?”

No. But he let the egg slither down his throat.

“Violet Smith made you some of her special Sunday toast.”

The toast was cut into cubes, soaked in warm milk and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and wheat germ. She spooned it into his mouth, giving him several minutes to swallow each spoonful. During these intervals she read aloud items from the newspaper.

Threat of a local bus strike was now believed ended. A government building on Downing Street had been bombed by the IRA. Dow-Jones went up twenty-four points during the past week. Heavy rains in Northern California were expected to hit the lower part of the state late tomorrow or Tuesday. Nine students were shot a few miles from Buenos Aires. A Los Angeles woman was found guilty of embezzling thirty thousand dollars from Crocker National Bank. The Coast Guard rescued a young couple becalmed five miles from shore in a small sailboat.

“I don’t see anything in the paper about the magistrate who was murdered in Rio Seco. Aragon told me about it last night on the phone. Hernandez I believe his name was. It’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it, that he was the magistrate who took a bribe to release B. J. from jail. What a vicious man he must have been, allowing people to rot in jail until they got enough money to buy their way out. He deserved to be murdered, don’t you think so, dear?”

He went on swallowing Violet Smith’s special Sunday toast. It tasted like Monday morning.

She remembered the last time she’d seen the house.

B. J. was waiting to let her in. His face was flushed with excitement and anticipation.

“We’ll have the whole house to ourselves for a week. Ethel’s gone to visit her sister in Tucson and I’m supposed to be staying at the University Club while she’s away. Isn’t that marvelous?”

It was marvelous.

They used the guest room, which had a king-size bed with a blue silk spread that wrinkled. Afterward B. J., still naked, tried to iron out the wrinkles with his hands. He looked foolish and helpless. She loved him desperately.

“Next time,” she said, “we’ll take the spread off.”

“Next time?” He couldn’t cope with this time, let alone think about a next time. He glanced over at the suitcase she’d brought as if he couldn’t recall carrying it upstairs for her and putting it on the rack at the foot of the bed. “Maybe you shouldn’t actually move in, G. G. It might be better if we met at a motel.”

“I want to stay here. I love this room. I love you.”

“That damn spread, it’ll be the first thing she notices. Why couldn’t she have picked some material that doesn’t wrinkle?”

“You mustn’t be afraid of her.”

“She might faint. She faints a lot.”

“What if I fainted? Right this minute?”

“Oh hell, G. G., you wouldn’t. I mean... would you?”

“I guess not. I’m trying, but I can’t seem to get the hang of it.”

She sat down on the bed again, deliberately, heavily.

“For God’s sake,” he said. “Get off there.”

“No.”

“You don’t realize—”

“I realize. I just want you to love me so much that you don’t care about anything else in the world.”

“That’s crazy.”

“So I’m crazy. Do you love me anyway?”

“Sure I do. But Ethel brought that spread all the way from Hong Kong.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky she’ll take it back to Hong Kong.”

He began to laugh in spite of himself at the image of Ethel dragging the spread all the way back to Hong Kong.

Later he was sober again, and scared. Gilly wasn’t. “I don’t care,” she said, “if Ethel walks in right this minute.” She didn’t. She walked in five days later. She and her sister had an argument and Ethel came home early. She was shocked, disgusted, reproachful. She sobbed, she fainted, she screamed. Then she went back to her sister’s in Tucson to think things over.

B. J. thought things over, too. “She doesn’t really like me, you know. I don’t blame her. I’m no prize.”

“You are to me,” Gilly said.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you were crazy. Me a prize. That’s a laugh.”

“It’s true.”

“What do you suppose I should do now?”

“Get a divorce and marry me.”

“Is this — are you proposing to me?”

“Yes.”

“Women aren’t supposed to do that, G. G. They’re supposed to wait to be asked.”

“I waited. You never asked.”

“How could I? I’m married.”

“I’m not. So I’ll do the asking. Will you marry me?”

“Well, for Christ’s sake—”

“Leave Christ out of it. It’s you and me, B. J.”

B. J. consulted a lawyer and moved to the University Club. Ethel sent the bedspread to the dry cleaner. Gilly started shopping for a trousseau. If a shadow of remorse appeared now and then, she closed her eyes or turned her back. It’s you and me, B. J.

Aragon spent Sunday driving the rutted roads and walking the dusty streets of Rio Seco. He began near the shoemaker’s shop where Jenkins had lived and worked his way past the tinsmiths and weavers and potters and wood-carvers into the red-light district of sleazy bars and sin shows and cubicles where the prostitutes lived and worked and died. He talked to peddlers, cabbies, hookers, mariachis. None of them had heard of Tula Lopez.

At eight o’clock he returned to his hotel to have dinner. The clerk on duty at the desk when he stopped to pick up his room key was the same elderly man who’d given him the insecticide on the first night of his stay. He looked nervous. “You like it here at our hotel, sir?”

“It’s fine.”

“No more mosquitoes?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” I drink beer and the mosquitoes siphon it off before it can damage my liver. It’s a pretty fair system.

“I was telling Superintendent Playa what a quiet and polite young man you were for an American.”

“And why did you tell the superintendent that?”

“Because he asked.”

“That seems like a good reason.”

“I thought so.” Some crazy insect was hurling itself at the light above the desk, and the clerk watched it for a while with a kind of detached interest. “Why the superintendent asked, I don’t know. But you will certainly find out.”

“Certainly?”

“Oh yes. He’s waiting for you in the dining room. Since seven o’clock. Already he’s eaten one dinner and may have finished a second by this time. Naturally, we cannot present him with a check. It would be unwise. Yet it hardly seems fair that the hotel should pay, since the reason he’s here is you. Once in a while a policeman comes to the hotel, but never so important a one and never one with such a huge appetite.”

“Put his dinners on my bill.”

“What if you are not available later to pay the bill? Possibly you would like to settle your account tonight.”

“No, I wouldn’t like that.”

“What if I insist?”

“I wouldn’t like that, either.”

“Perhaps you are not so polite an American as I thought,” the clerk said and grabbed at the insect that was attacking the light over the desk. He missed. Aragon left the two of them battling it out.

“Well, this is it,” Violet Smith said. “It really is it, isn’t it?”

Reed yawned, stretched and opened the two top buttons of his uniform. “There’s not much point in standing around talking about it. Make yourself useful. Or scarce.”

“I’m afraid. I never saw anyone die before.”

“So don’t look.”

“It’s different with you, being a nurse. You’ve probably seen people die all over the place.”

“Usually in bed.”

“What’s it like, watching somebody die?”

“Great fun. Gives me the jollies. Ho ho ho.”

“Our minister says there’s a moment when the soul leaves the body. When it happens, can you feel it? I mean, is there kind of like a draft as the soul goes up?”

“Who says it goes up? Decker’s may be going down.”

“Oh no.”

“Some go up, some go down, some may even go sideways. Mine is definitely going down.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“Why? Are you a terrible sinner?”

“You bet your butt,” Reed said, yawning again. “I want to catch half an hour’s sleep out on the patio. Wake me if the old girl starts flinging herself around.”

He had been up since four o’clock when Gilly called him and told him her husband was dying. She’d done the same thing a dozen times in the past few months and Reed didn’t take it seriously until the doctor came and said it was true. There was talk of moving him into a hospital but Gilly refused. What could they do for him in a hospital — stick tubes up his nose and needles into his veins to prolong his suffering? So he stayed home and she stayed with him.

“He will die in my arms, where he belongs,” Gilly told Reed.

“It will be messy.”

“Surely you, of all people, should be able to put up with a little mess.”

“I’m able. Are you able?”

“Oh God, he’s trying to talk. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand his torture.”

“See what I mean?” Reed said. “Messy.”