Puzzle for Pilgrims (9 page)

“There was an old woman farther down by the church, that’s all.”

We both turned to Iris. She was looking at Jake, her mouth tight at the corners. “Everyone was at the fiesta,” she said.

Jake nodded, contented. “Okay, so it’s a cinch. Peter and Iris and me, we’re friends, see? We all had a drink downtown and thought it’d be fun to drop up and visit Mrs. Haven. We all came in a bunch—and found her down there where she’d fallen through the rotten balustrade. That’s what we did, isn’t it?”

There was no doubt now. He had come out in the open. I hadn’t the faintest idea what was behind it all, but he was saying,
You play along with me and I’ll play along with you and everything will be okay.

The luck seemed too good to be true. I said, “Sure Jake. I think you’ve got something there.”

“Of course I have. Jake always has something there.” He took the receiver off the hook and started talking in calm, unrattled Spanish.

I assumed he was asking the operator for the police, but I didn’t have much time to think about it because Iris had fainted.

I picked Iris up and carried her to the yellow couch. I was almost sure she had fainted from relief. She had been terrified of Jake, terrified of the police. Then miraculously Jake had become an ally and it had been too much for her.

I laid her down on the couch and took one of her unresisting hands. I realized that this was the hand which had been wearing the new ring. The ring was not there.

I glanced down and saw it lying on the carpet at my feet. I picked it up. It had obviously been too big for her finger and must have slipped off. It was a gold ring with no jewel, more like a man’s ring, with a plaited gold band and a shield of gold decorated with tiny heraldic lions. It made me think of Martin. I put it in my pocket, out of sight.

Jake had finished telephoning. He strolled across to me. I got up and joined him. He looked at Iris.

“Couldn’t take it, eh, Peter?”

“It’s the reaction.”

“Sure.” He squatted on the arm of a chair, tugging at his pants, exposing a big chunk of calf. “Women are strange. They’re the most hard-boiled animal ever created. Then suddenly they fold.”

He lit a cigarette with a heavy silver lighter. He stared over the flame at the low neck of Iris’s dress. “Well, I called the cops. They’ll be right up. Or as right up as a Mexican policeman chooses to come when there’s a fiesta.”

I thought of some odd little police station down there on the cobbled streets below us. I thought of policemen with skin brown as honey hurrying out into the music-loud darkness. It seemed almost impossible that our destinies hung now on those unknown men, so exotic, so removed from our lives.

“What did you tell them?”

“That there’d been an accident. That Mrs. Haven was dead. They knew Mrs. Haven.”

He sat there, heavy, handsome, positive of the simplicity of what lay ahead.

I said, “You’re pretty sure there’ll be no trouble, aren’t you?”

“Trouble?” He shrugged. “Where’s there any trouble about a dame falling off her own balcony?”

“There’s a lot more to this than you know.”

He opened the blue eyes wide. “There is?”

I disliked having to strip myself in front of this man whom I didn’t understand or like. But already I was hopelessly entangled with him, subtly dependent upon him too—if only because he could speak Spanish and would have to be the spokesman.

I said, “Sally’s husband is in love with my wife. He left her. He’s been trying to get a divorce. Sally wouldn’t give it to him. Everyone in Taxco knows it.”

“So.” Jake blew a smoke ring. His eyes moved slowly over me and then shifted to Iris. “A domestic drama.”

“If you like.”

“What’s his name—this guy? Sally’s husband?”

“Martin Haven.”

“Must have a lot on the ball.”

“That’s not the point right now.”

“And what is the point?” He was smiling with that amused naiveté which he cultivated and which I found somehow ominous. He never accepted an overtone. He committed you to saying what you were thinking. “What’s worrying you, Peter?”

“People will say Sally died at a convenient time for Martin and Iris.”

He blinked. “Bighearted, aren’t you? Worrying about a dame who threw you over for another man.”

“It doesn’t matter what I am,” I said.

“Well, well,” He looked down at the carpet and then up at me with mock solemnity. “Maybe we were wrong about the way Sally died. Maybe it wasn’t an accident.” The grin came again. “That poor kid. She loved her husband. She’d lost him to another girl. There she was alone with no hope of getting her man back, with no one to turn to. Life didn’t seem worth living any more. An impulse came. She was half crazy with unhappiness.” He threw out his hands. “She tossed herself through the balustrade. Suicide.”

The idea of Sally in the role of the broken blossom killing herself for unrequited love was preposterous to me, of course. But would it be preposterous to everyone?

Jake leaned forward, balanced on the chair arm, his big hands on his massive knees. “We don’t mention that at first, of course. It’s an accident. That’s what we say. But then if things don’t pan out, if they start asking awkward questions, we kind of shuffle and look uncomfortable and let them dope it out that we suspect she killed herself but are too gentlemanly to say so.” One of the hands came forward and touched my arm. I noticed the red hairs on the thick wrist. “How’s about that, Peter?”

I saw that we might just get away with it if we played it right. But that the suggestion should have come from him was the fantastic climax of his fantastic behavior. My need to know his motives was stronger than my discretion, and I said, “Why in hell are you doing this?”

“Doing what, Peter?” The old naive smile was back.

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“But you do, Peter. What d’you think I am? One of those dames with earrings and a crystal ball?”

“Why are you suppressing evidence? Why are you faking these stories for the police that aren’t true?”

“Aren’t true, Peter?” He got up and moved to my side, putting his arm heavily on my shoulder. He had to touch you whether you were male or female. “That’s making it kind of elaborate, isn’t it? I’m just simplifying, making things easier.”

“But why bother? What’s in it for you?”

He took his arm off my shoulder. He looked hurt. “Why’s there got to be anything in it for me? A pal helps out a pal, don’t he?”

“But you don’t know Iris. You hardly know me.”

“Maybe I make friends quick.” He flicked his cigarette butt into a tray. “Sure you’re my pal, Peter. And Marietta’s my pal too. Remember?” The blue eyes showed a gleam that seemed faintly derisive. “Marietta was here tonight too. I’d do a lot for Marietta.”

That was the explanation he was handing out. He was doing all this for Marietta.

Iris stirred on the couch. I hurried to her. The lashes flickered. Her eyes opened.

“Peter.”

I dropped to my knees at her side. She smiled the warm, natural smile she used to give me when she loved me. Then the smile went, crowded out by memory of where she was and what had happened, and she was a stranger again.

Jake had crossed to my side. Iris’s gaze moved to him. “You called the police?”

“Sure thing, baby.”

“And you’re going to talk to them?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’m going to talk to them. And you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

Jake squatted down next to me and took her hand. “You’ve had a big shock, baby. You’re confused. You can’t talk straight. You’re not worth wasting the cops’ valuable time on. Know where you’re going? You’re going to bye-bye in the bedroom.”

He lifted her off the couch, one big arm around her back, the other sliding behind her knees, the fingers resting on the tan silk of her stocking.

“Prostrated by shock, baby. That’s what you are. Lying on the bed, prostrated by shock. You don’t know a thing anyways. It was Peter and me who found the body. Remember? You were never out on the terrace.”

He held her close so that her cheek was touching his. He carried her away into the bedroom. When he returned, there was a knock on the door.

Feeling terrible, I opened it.

The police had arrived.

There were three of them. They were all young and solemn and small and beautiful in the dazed, swimming-eyed fashion of the young Indian. They were also very polite. They wore uniforms which were snappy but slightly too large for them, as if they were still growing and an economical government was making allowance for that fact.

What I had expected to be an ordeal wasn’t an ordeal at all. Jake, very candid and friendly, took complete charge. He talked in fluent, rapid Spanish and one or another of them would break in with a soft, almost singing question. The slightly older one who seemed to be in charge took copious notes in a small book, writing determinedly with a scrap of pink tongue tucked over the dark lower lip like a school child taking dictation. They made no attempt to see Iris and paid me scarcely any attention. Every once in a while, when my name came into the dialogue, one of them would shoot me a rather shy smile as if apologizing for talking about me in a language I couldn’t understand. I had had a preconceived idea of Mexican officials as strutting, self-important martinets. These policemen weren’t that way at all.

Jake took them out on the terrace. They were gone quite a long time, but I did not join them. I felt at the moment I could do no good, only harm. When they returned, the dialogue continued. They must have asked a great many questions about Sally’s personal life and personal habits, but Jake never appealed to me for information. He must have been putting on a colossal bluff.

It was maddening to be so in need of knowledge as to what was going on and yet be completely incapable of understanding a single phrase. I kept the three pairs of smoky, long-lashed eyes under constant observation, trying to catch a change of expression. But they remained smiling, polite, almost sympathetic.

At last Jake said something and turned to me. “Peter, come in the bedroom a moment, will you?”

The three policemen were watching me. They nodded to show that I had their permission. They smiled too—three white, sudden smiles.

I followed Jake into the bedroom. Iris, lying on the bed, sat up, pushing the hair back from her face, watching us. She had put on lipstick, and the full scarlet of her lips emphasized the whiteness of her skin.

I said, “Well?”

Jake grinned broadly and, clasping his hands together, brandished them over his head like a champion boxer.

“The winnah!”

“Tell us,” I said.

“They’re sure it’s an accident. One of them’s uncle’s the carpenter who built the building in the first place. Seems Mrs. Haven complained to him only a week ago that the balcony was rotten and dangerous. He was supposed to have come and fixed it. He didn’t come—being Mexican. And his nephew feels kind of guilty, feels the old man’s responsible. He’s the Captain of Police too. Boy, what a break!” The blue eyes were frankly triumphant. “Unless something unexpected happens, there’s not going to be any trouble. One of the other kids’ father’s the town undertaker. I’ve promised him the business for poppa. He’s going to take care of the body. I’m to hang around and supervise. We’re to notify the husband too. There’ll be an inquest. Tomorrow, maybe. But if the graft in this town is up to the graft in Mexico City, it’s in the bag. The Captain’s going to keep uncle’s nose clean. I’m going to keep very quiet about the uncle, too. Americans aren’t human beings to them anyway. They’re just crazy things with bank rolls and crazy habits. If one dies, it’s about as important as if a duck-billed platypus died.”

His buoyant optimism was such that I couldn’t help being affected by it. It no longer seemed strange that, tacitly, he and Iris and I were banded together to deceive the law. It had become a violently personal issue in which it would be fatal to lose.

And right now we seemed to be winning.

Jake had sat down on the bed, balancing himself by a hand on Iris’s knee. “One thing, Peter. In Mexico there’s a custom. There’s the same custom in the States, only it’s more under the counter back home.”

“The custom?”

“In the States you buy the Chief of Police a new automobile.” He shrugged. “Here, when a policeman’s nice to you, you’re nice to him. Got any money?”

I took out my wallet. I had a hundred-peso bill and two fifties. I wondered how much it cost to buy freedom. I offered him the bills. He laughed.

“Keep your dough. They’re all on a starvation wage. Fifty’s plenty for the three of the poor devils. It’s more than they’ve seen in months.”

That’s how much it cost. Fifty pesos for the three. Three dollars and thirty-three cents each.

Iris was leaning forward, her dark hair falling over her face.

Jake took the bill and nodded to me to follow him to the living room. The three policemen were still standing in a line, smiling.

Jake handed the bill to the Captain. He took it without the faintest trace of embarrassment. The three white grins grew broader.

Jake said something and then turned to me. “There’s no need for you to stick around. They say you can leave if the lady’s well enough to travel.”

I couldn’t believe it was being as easy as this, but it was.

“Where you staying?” asked Jake.

I hadn’t planned to spend the night in Taxco, of course. I said, “Nowhere right now.”

“Get rooms at that big hotel as you enter town. The Borda. Get me one too. I’ll join you later. Let you know about the inquest tomorrow, the works.”

“Okay,” I said.

He paused and then added softly. “And for God’s sake, before you do anything else, locate Marietta.”

Marietta.

“Try the bars,” he said. “If I know that dame, it’s the bars.” He patted my arm, like an indulgent father, although he must have been a couple of years younger than I. “Run along now, Peter. Scram.”

I went into the bedroom for Iris. I said. “It’s okay. We’re leaving.”

Out of the house, the high mountain air was sweet. Below us, the papier-mâché Star of Bethlehem hung glistening like a portent between the church’s twin steeples. The music, seeping up from the Zocalo, seemed part of the moonlight.