Читать книгу Jeopardy Is My Job - Marlowe Stephen - Страница 8

They were really in a hurry that night—for Spain.

An hour after we had gone over, the Guardia sent a creaky old man along the road from Fuengirola on a bike. He wobbled to a stop, saw what was to be seen, solemnly removed his winged black-patent-leather hat, stood with head bowed, remounted his bike and asked me, “You wish a doctor?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I added on a slightly belligerent note, “This man was murdered.”

“Yes,” the creaky old man said in his creaky old man’s voice, “clearly it was a terrible accident.”

I stared at him. My Spanish is not that bad. He shrugged and began pedaling back toward town as fast as a kid who had spent the day on his bike doing nothing, enjoying every minute of it and in no hurry to get home.

My head ached and there was going to be a nasty bruise all up and down one side of my rib cage. I could feel it every time I moved my left arm. I stared out at the water, wished I hadn’t finished my pack of cigarettes, and waited.

The next one to make his appearance was a cocky-looking boy in an old four-door Seat that lacked any sort of markings except a couple of fender dents. The boy got out, gave me a confident but not friendly smile and went to work shooting pictures from various angles with an archaic press camera that must have been an heirloom from the time of Primo de Rivera and a strobe light that looked brand-new.

Finally taking off his patent-leather hat the boy asked me, “He was a Catholic?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“An American?”

“Right. His name is—”

“Why tell me, señor? I only take pictures.”

As if to disprove that point, he got a tarp from the trunk of the Seat and rolled what was left of Stu Huntington in it. I helped him tote it to the car. My side ached and my head started spinning. I was suddenly very sleepy. We stuffed the tarp on the rear seat and climbed in front together. The boy had forgotten his camera and had to go back for it. Then we drove into Fuengirola.

The Guardia substation was in a small building a quarter of a mile from the portable bull ring. I was given the freedom of a ten-by-ten whitewashed room. If I wanted to sit, there was a single hard chair. If I wanted to stretch out and catch up on my sleep, there was a bed with a flat spring and no mattress. There was also a small window, barred, and a door, shut and bolted on the other side. I stood at the window and heard a bus roar by in the direction of Gibraltar. A couple of flies buzzed me without any real interest and went back to climbing the walls for the night. A big moth fluttered hopefully but suicidally about the single small bulb dangling on its cord.

Around a quarter after three on my watch, the door opened and a man wearing Guardia gray-greens but no patent-leather hat came in. The black leather holster creaked at his side as he sat on the edge of the bed-spring and lit a cigarette. He was no youngster, but not as old as the guy on the bike. His sleeve was decorated with three stripes. He looked wistful and not tough at all. He looked like Don Quixote without the little pointy beard to give him style.

In excellent English and conversationally he said, “What an awful experience to happen to an American tourist on his first day in Spain. I am Sergeant Martinez, Mr. Drum.”

He stuck out his hand. I shook it and said, “I’m no tourist. I’m a private detective.”

Sergeant Martinez gave me a wistful Don Quixote smile. “There is no such thing as a private detective in Spain. It is as I said. You are, you see, an American tourist.”

“Okay, I’m a tourist. Do I still get to report a murder?”

He stood up, went to the window and gazed out at the silence or listened to the darkness. “Clearly, I failed to understand. You said murder?”

“Huntington was dead before that car crashed.”

“He was?” Sergeant Martinez laughed a mild, wistful laugh. “Then where were you driving the body?”

“I wasn’t driving. He was.”

“A dead man?”

“He was behind the wheel with a dent in the side of his skull. I was sapped and put in the car next to him unconscious, and then we went for our ride.”

“You should not have driven so fast on such a road. The tires. It was a blowout, of course.” Martinez scowled. “What does ‘sapped’ mean?”

“Hit over the head from behind.”

“And where did this happen?”

“The cave of Fuentes.”

“You went to the cave of Fuentes with the dead man?”

“No. I saw him earlier here in Fuengirola. Arguing with a man named Fernando. A blind sculptor who lives in Torremolinos.”

“Arguing about what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“But you knew they were arguing?”

“I heard them and saw them, in a bodega. I didn’t hear the words.”

“But Mr. Drum, you were seen in the Bodega Costa del Sol with the dead man earlier this evening. Last night, that is.”

“Not me.”

“You were seen driving off with him.”

“I stood up and said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

“Facts, Mr. Drum, are facts,” Sergeant Martinez said blandly but wistfully. “Why dispute them? Do you still insist Mr. Huntington was dead before the crash?”

“Keep talking,” I said.

“Because if he was, and if you were seen with him in Fuengirola earlier, and if indeed the night before you were seen with his wife on the terrace of La Atalaya in Torremolinos, and if she is a woman known to—well, if she were Spanish and a Catholic she would have much to confess to her padre—”

“Spell it out,” I said.

“If Huntington were dead before the crash, if he were murdered instead of the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident, if anyone wants to stubbornly insist he had been murdered, we need look no further than this room for our suspect.” Martinez said all that to the window. He turned on me to ask, “What were you doing at the cave of Fuentes?”

“Governor Hartshorn of Maryland sent me here to find his son.”

“In the cave of Fuentes?”

“In orbit around the moon if that’s where he happens to be.”

“We of the Guardia Civil will find the missing man. That,” Martinez said stiffly, “is our job.”

“Like getting to the bottom of a murder is your job?”

“Like investigating an accident is our job.” Martinez snickered, managing to make that sound wistful too. “You American tourists. Spain, the land of mystery. Our Moorish blood, the mountains everywhere on a landscape whose bones protrude like those of dead prehistoric animals, the gypsies, the forlorn wail of a flamenco and the brave bulls feeding the poor after their moment of truth on the sand of the arena. Please, Mr. Drum. Things happen here much as they happen in your country. Accidents too. Will you be content with that?”

I said nothing.

“What led you to the cave of Fuentes?”

“The last anyone knew, Hartshorn was on his way to see Ruy Fuentes.”

“Why, Mr. Drum?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Very well, don’t. After all it is as I have said. You are no detective here, but only a tourist.”

“Yeah, I know. And I was involved in a messy car accident and my driving companion died and if I’m a good boy you might let me stay in Spain a while longer—say, long enough to pack my bag.”

Martinez looked hurt. “But no, Mr. Drum. Either you insist foolishly it was murder, and for example see my superiors in Malaga, in which case we investigate you and everything about you and probably have you followed and possibly have you denounced; or you recognize an accident when you see one, as a witness who incidentally was not even in the car, and you are perfectly free to enjoy Spain however you wish. The choice is yours.”

“If I do it your way?”

“I told you. You are free to enjoy Spain. But then in all truth I would strongly urge you not to return to the cave of Fuentes.”

I didn’t ask why. I thought I knew why. He smiled wistfully and I smiled, not wistfully, and said, “Okay, I won’t go jousting with any windmills.”

“You know our literature?” he asked, pleased. “Then perhaps you know The Four Horsemen as well? War, plague, famine and death? Spain is a hard land, Mr. Drum, and of the four horsemen in the end it is only one that matters: death. But of course, death no longer matters to its victim. Keep that in mind: death no longer matters to its victim.”

“You mean regarding Huntington?”

“Regarding all the world. It is a truth we of Spain understand.”

I was impressed. I have been threatened with guns, knives, forty-watters, blunt instruments and cement boots, but that was the most erudite threat I’d ever received. He had me, though, and the threat wasn’t necessary. If I made noises about murder, I could be kept on ice until the bureaucratic wheels went around and around, or maybe regarded as a suspect in the frame he’d started to nail into place before we’d even met. Either way, the best I could hope for was a one-way ticket from Malaga to Madrid and from Madrid to points west. That wouldn’t help Huntington; Martinez was right: nothing would help him. But that wouldn’t find Robbie Hartshorn either.

“Pues, señor?” Martinez demanded. “Lo que digo o lo que Vd. dice?”

“Huh?” I said innocently. “I’m sorry. I don’t have enough Spainsh to read a menu.”

“A pity. I asked: your way or mine?”

I said, “It was an accident, sergeant.”

“I’m delighted to hear that, Mr. Drum. I like you, but I hope we never have to meet again. You understand?”

I said I understood. I didn’t say it was inevitable that we’d meet again, but that was what I thought.

“Adiós, Mr. Drum.”

I told him to give my regards to Sancho Panza. He laughed wistfully.