The Follower, page 10
‘With a nice dark alley outside?’
‘I told you that was all a mistake. George thought you were the triggerman the gamblers had sent from New York to get Mrs Liddon. He was protecting her. Don’t you see?’
Was that possible? It just might be. He said nothing, waiting.
‘You must see, Mr Liddon, we’re her friends. We want to protect her. George wasn’t going to shoot. He just pulled the gun to frighten you and to get your gun if you had one. Things are different here in Mexico. People are always pulling guns on each other.’
‘And you picked up the habit — like drinking tequila?’
‘Mr Liddon, you do want to see your wife, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we’ll take you to her.’
‘Okay. Come over here and pick me up. I’ll wait for you.’
‘Oh no,’ she said quickly. ‘No. That wouldn’t do.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just that — well, it’s easier to start from here.’
She was setting her trap so clumsily that he was almost persuaded to fall into it. Perhaps that was the quickest way to reach Ellie — by letting them get at him again on their own terms, on their own ground. But he was so angry that he did not trust himself. He knew it was unwise to walk into danger when you are emotionally out of control. If he met them again to-night he would be too eager, he would jump the gun. With George that might be fatal.
He said wearily: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more subtle.’
‘Subtle? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Is George’s stomach still sore?’
‘Where you kicked him? I — I don’t know. I — Mr Liddon, are you coming?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I want to find my wife, but I want to stay alive too.’
She did not answer for a moment. When she did, she gave a little sigh. ‘I knew you wouldn’t fall for it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was George’s idea to try to make you come here. I told him it wouldn’t work. But he made me call.’
‘He twisted your arm?’
‘Mr Liddon.’ Her voice had changed. It sounded urgent and sincere. Not that it made any difference how it sounded. ‘Please listen to me. You shouldn’t be here. It was a terrible mistake you coming to Mexico.’
‘A mistake from whose point of view ?’
‘I can’t explain. I can’t tell you anything. But George is planning to kill you. He’s got to kill you if you stay.’
‘He’s not very good at killing people.’
‘Mr Liddon, be serious. If you leave, it will be all right. Your wife will be safe back in New York within a week. I swear it. Please believe me. There’s an early morning plane back to New York. Take it. Everything will be all right if you leave.’
‘And if I stay?’
‘Among other things, your wife may be killed.’
There was no way of assessing anything this girl said. Already she was so deeply implicated in lies that to believe any of her lightning shifts and changes would be imbecile.
She said again with the same emotional urgency: ‘Mr Liddon, please, please, leave.’
Things had drifted so far into a realm of unreality that there was nothing to lose by pretending to play it her way. ‘If I do leave, you guarantee Ellie will be okay?’
‘Yes, yes, I swear it.’
‘Okay. I’ll take the morning plane.’
‘You really will?’ She seemed immensely relieved.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so glad.’
‘Why are you glad?’ He was really interested to know what she would say.
She hesitated and then blurted: ‘Because I like you. You’re attractive and your folks came from Czechoslovakia. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
‘That touches me.’
‘The plane leaves at six forty-five.’
‘Okay.’
‘George doesn’t know I’ve said anything of this. I’ll see he doesn’t bother you until then.’
‘Thanks.’
She added very seriously: ‘You will go, won’t you? You’re not lying to me.’
‘I’m being as honest as you are. Goodbye.’
He dropped the receiver back on the stand. At least he was sure now that Ellie was still alive; their whole attitude implied it so clearly. If they had killed Ellie, there was no reason why they themselves shouldn’t have left Mexico. They would not have been so eager either to kill him or drive him away.
It was just possible that the girl was fool enough to believe his promise to leave. If she was, she would keep George away for the rest of the night, which would give him a chance to go to the Hotel Granada without being under observation. But he wasn’t going to take her gullibility for granted. Presumably she had called from the cantina on Artes where they had hoped to trap him. If he went to the Granada at once, he would be there before they could reach the Reforma.
He put on his topcoat, checked that George’s revolver was loaded, slipped it in his pocket and left the suite. He walked down the stairs and out of a side door so that the desk clerk would think he was still in the suite if they should inquire. He turned up the paseo towards the center of town.
An uneventful fifteen-minute walk brought him to the door of the Hotel Granada. He entered the gloomy lobby, which was empty of tourists now. A bellboy was cleaning ashtrays. Mark could see a clerk moving behind the desk. As he approached, the clerk looked up.
It was Oscar.
He came down to the end of the desk, standing behind the trinket counter, watching Mark from dark, pleased eyes. ‘Good evening, Mr Liddon.’
Mark said: ‘You Mexicans work long hours.’
‘I sleep in the afternoon. I come again for the night shift. One has to live, Mr Liddon.’
A jaunty maroon sweater, which had not been there that morning, showed under the boy’s immaculately pressed grey jacket. Mark glanced at it. Oscar looked both shy and happy.
‘I have bought it in my lunch hour.’ He caressed the sweater’s V-neck. ‘Is pretty, no? Not so sharp as yours — but sharp.’ He paused, glancing at Mark under his long black lashes. ‘You have then found your wife at the Hotel Reforma, Mr Liddon?’
‘No,’ said Mark.
‘How brutish!’ Oscar studied a coiled crocodile belt under the glass top of the counter. She takes perhaps the sightseeing tour to Cuernavaca or Puebla? Is pretty, Puebla. Many pretty churches.’
His face was expressionless and his voice registered nothing more than polite interest. But Mark knew, as clearly as he knew when a girl wanted to be propositioned, that the boy was waiting for a business overture. He studied the dark, impassive face curiously. Was it possible that Oscar too was connected with the conspiracy surrounding Ellie? It was unlikely. It was much more probable that what he knew, if he did know anything, was something he had been smart enough to see or overhear.
He said: ‘Where’s my wife, Oscar?’
The boy’s lashes were demurely lowered again. ‘She does not stay in the Hotel Reforma?’
‘She never got there.’
‘No? Perhaps she has changed her mind once more in the taxi. Is a lady of moods, no?’
‘You saw her get into the taxi?’
‘No, it was the other boy.’
‘But he saw her?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a blond American man?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Mrs Liddon?’ Oscar looked up and smiled vividly. ‘A tall, beautiful lady young like a girl, with light hair in little snakes — so.’ He raised his hand above his own head and twisted a finger around to indicate curls. ‘And a ring — a very fine ring with a sapphire.’
That was Ellie all right. He had given her the sapphire ring on the day before the wedding.
Oscar’s eyes had moved to Mark’s topcoat. They were examining it wistfully. ‘In Mexico,’ he announced, ‘such a coat sells itself for two hundred and fifty pesos. Here, if I work much, much, I earn two hundred and fifty pesos in one month. I have the old mother and six sisters.’ He shook his head dolefully. ‘Six sisters is much sisters.’
Mark took out his wallet. ‘Tell me where my wife is and you get two hundred and fifty pesos.’
Oscar cocked his head at the wallet and sighed. ‘Already I have said. She goes to the Hotel Reforma.’
‘Two hundred and fifty pesos?’ Mark pulled out the bills. ‘Where is she?’
When he was happy Oscar’s face was suddenly an open book. Already, Mark could see, the boy was in his mind strutting in a men’s store, trying on topcoats in front of a mirror, being lordly with the sales clerk. Oscar’s brown hand moved crabwise along the counter towards the bills. It hesitated a moment and then, very daintily, took them from Mark.
‘Suddenly I remember, Mr Liddon. Soon after she has left, she has given a call by telephone, telling me she does not go to the Hotel Reforma. She leaves a new address for dispatching letters.’
‘What is the address?’
Oscar produced a handsome lizard-skin wallet and slipped the bills inside. ‘The new address of Mrs Mark Liddon is — 20 Bonaventura, Colonia Guadalupe. Is out from the city by the big shrine.’
Mark knew the story was a bare-faced lie. Even if Ellie had called the hotel to leave a new address — which was improbable — Oscar, by his own word, had not been on duty at that time. But it didn’t matter that Oscar was lying about how he had obtained the information. The information itself just might be true.
He said: ‘If I don’t find her at that address, you return the money or I report you to the manager for taking bribes.’
Oscar’s face broke into a quick, infectious grin. ‘The manager takes bribes too.’
‘Twenty Bonaventura, Colonia Guadalupe. How do I get there?’
‘You are a rich American. For you there are taxis. For me it is the bus, the trolley car, the walking.’ Oscar was mournful again. ‘Is a terrible state to be poor.’
‘You should worry. Keep this up and you’ll have a villa in Acapulco before the year’s out.’
‘Ay!’ Oscar was transported. ‘A villa on the cliffs with a swimming pool and below the waters of Los Hornos — so blue.’ His face went grave. He said hopefully: ‘You like the ashtray I give you?’
‘Yes. It’s fine.’
‘Is small but is from the heart. I hope you find your wife, Mr Liddon.’
‘If I don’t, I’ll know you’re the biggest liar in Mexico.’
‘Liar!’ Oscar looked shocked and hurt. ‘You think I would lie to my friend?’
‘Yes,’ said Mark.
Oscar shook his head sadly. ‘You are what they call a very cynic man, Mr Liddon.’
Mark turned away from the desk and started towards the door. Oscar called after him ‘Good night, Mr Liddon. Happy Christmas in Mexico, Mr Liddon.’
15
ALL day, it seemed to him, parts of this unfamiliar city had been wheeling past taxi windows. His life had become a pursuit, constantly in motion, getting no nearer its destination. Ellie’s image was alarmingly dim in his mind now. He forced memories of her, trying to re-establish contact. Ellie in a yellow swimming suit lying in the sun, Ellie mixing Martinis in the lavender and grey bar, Ellie lying next to him in the great canopied bed. She would not come alive; she stalked jerkily through these remembered scenes like a faceless puppet.
Suddenly it was the other girl, the girl with the calm, lying face and the fake blonde hair, who became real to him. Against his will, she leaped into his thoughts. He could reconstruct her presence close to him on the couch of the hotel suite; he could see every detail of the slightly roughened hand, lying inches from his own, which he could have touched and hadn’t. The emotion she evoked was anger. But it was a flesh-and-blood anger. Ellie had become as abstract as the solution to an algebra problem.
Outside the car window, narrow, cluttered streets hemmed them in. Apathetic burros, loaded with wood, baskets of fruit or sacks of charcoal, blocked their way. The frenzied buying and selling of trivial objects was still in full spate, and still, inevitably, a cacophony of music from street orchestras, jukeboxes, marimbas, blared through the night. The taxi nosed into a large, tree-shaded plaza in front of a huge stone church, and here the crowds and confusion were twice as chaotic as any he had yet seen.
‘Navedad.’ The driver grinned at him over his shoulder. ‘Una fiesta grande. Many people.’
Colored electric lights nestled like tiny balloons in the trees. There was yet another carrousel and tents and stalls — all the carnival squalor which had haunted his day. A group of Indians with fantastic feather head-dresses and skirts were dancing fervently beside a frozen-custard stand. Tall iron railings guarded the church from this seething mass of merrymakers or worshippers or whatever they were. And, above the church, on top of an eccentric hill like a brandished thumb, stood a small chamber-like building which was probably the shrine itself.
The taxi crawled through one block of chaos and then turned again into winding narrow streets. The houses on each side were hidden behind high stuccoed walls and barred windows. An occasional light hinted at life within, but it was obviously a humble, Mexican life, fantastically inappropriate for Ellie.
‘Bonaventure 20.’
They stopped in front of one of the blank walls no different from the dozens of others in the street. Mark stood in front of the closed, rickety wooden door, wondering why he had come. The house was situated at the foot of the thumb-like hill which led to the shrine above; a narrow, dusty alley wound upwards past its side wall. Music and clamor roared from the plaza, hidden by masonry only a few hundred feet away.
Peering in the dim light, he could make out a chipped tin plaque saying: 20, which had been nailed above the door frame. A faint radiance at one of the barred windows indicated that someone was at home. With no hope at all, he beat on the wooden panels.
The thumping echoed unexpectedly loud above the obbligato of music from the plaza. Instantly it was challenged by the shrill, neurotic barking of a dog inside. He knocked again. The barking sprang nearer. With it sounded the click of footsteps on stone or tile. He had no feeling of danger. He felt only lassitude. This wasn’t a trap. It was a mare’s nest.
A woman’s voice scolded sharply and the dog stopped barking and started to whimper. The footsteps paused with just the thickness of the door between them and him, and then, slowly, the door opened a crack. A woman’s face showed in the opening. It was a young, anonymous Mexican face framed by a dark rebozo. A dog’s snout appeared lower down, sniffing suspiciously.
The woman said nothing. In the obscure illumination her face seemed as expressionless as a face at prayer.
‘I am looking for my wife,’ said Mark slowly. ‘My wife. An American woman.’
The dog, unable to control its outraged feelings any longer, gave a falsetto yelp. The woman bent swiftly and slapped it. She looked at Mark impassively again.
‘No entiendo, Saar.’
‘An American woman. Una Americana.’
She gazed at him with the stupid look of someone who had given up all effort to understand.
‘Oscar,’ he tried. ‘Oscar sent me. Oscar.’
Her voice came suddenly, echoing the name. ‘Oscar.’
‘Oscar from the Hotel Granada.’
‘Momento.’ The woman’s face disappeared; the door slammed shut; the footsteps clicked away inside. It hadn’t been a rejection. She had obviously gone to consult some higher authority.
Above the vulgar street music the solemn boom of a bell sounded from the cathedral. The footsteps began to click again inside. This time they were confused, multiple. Once again the door opened a crack. Framed in the crack was a different face, a tiny, wrinkled, old woman’s face, sharp as a half moon. Behind it, Mark caught a glimpse of the first woman.
The half moon gazed at him. ‘¿Que quiere, Senor?’
‘Oscar sent me. Oscar from the Hotel Granada.’
‘Es amigo de Oscar,’ breathed the other woman in the shadowy background.
The bell was still tolling. Inside, the dog was whining again. The old woman studied Mark for a long moment in silence and then opened the door wide.
“Pase Vd, Senor.’
He stepped inside. The old woman closed the door behind him. They were in a dimly lit patio. Straggling vines in kerosene cans cast queer shadows on the broken-tiled floor. Dim arches hinted at rooms to left and right. From a blanketed birdcage hung on the wail came a sudden, startled chirp.
The little woman, frail and desiccated as a dead plant, stood in front of him. She was wearing black. The other, younger, woman hovered behind her. The dog, a scrawny yellow adolescent, wriggled to Mark in propitiation. The next move was obviously up to him.
He said again all he could say. ‘I want my wife. Oscar sent me for my wife.’
The women stood patiently and in silence. There was no sense of conspiracy, no feeling that they were keeping anything back from him. He seemed to be merely something incomprehensible that had happened, something that had arrived and would in time go away. The young woman suddenly and timidly asked: ‘¿No habla espanol, el Senor?’
He knew enough to understand that and said: ‘No, I don’t speak Spanish.’
‘Ah,’ said the old woman, nodding her head at something she could grasp. ‘El Senor no habla espanol.’
There were vague whisperings and movements in the shadows of the patio beyond. Cautiously a young girl emerged from the darkness. She was followed by another, and then another, and another, until there were four of them. They all! wore black. The family must be in mourning. They stood in a silent semi-circle around the two older women, watching Mark from black eyes bright with polite curiosity.
Mark said: ‘Doesn’t anybody speak English?’
The woman who had opened the door to him said again: ‘Es amigo de Oscar.’
‘Oscar,’ rippled the four girls, glancing at each other and nodding. ‘Oscar.’
All six women stood watching Mark fixedly, waiting for a revelation. Because it was useless to talk any more, Mark gestured towards the interior of the patio indicating his desire to search there for his wife. The old woman seemed to understand. She said politely: ‘Si, si, Senor.’ She turned back into the shadows and started to guide Mark deeper into the house. The five other women followed. Only the oldest of the followers, the one with the shoes, made footsteps. The others glided silently as ghosts.
