A Game for the Living (25 page)

“
Otero!
” The boy had heard him. “Oh no! Keep him away! What do you mean bringing him here, you sons of bitches!” A rush of curses followed.

“I'm your friend! I'm not going to harm you!” Ramón shouted.

“They're both drunk,” Theodore said to Ramón.

“Alejandro!” yelled Miguel. “You with a thousand pesos! You want more? There isn't any more! It's gone!”

The boats were only a couple of yards apart now.

“Shut your face, Miguel! These two are not the
policía!
They want to see Infante! Let me have the money,” he said in a lower voice to Theodore, and stuck out a thick, greasy palm.

Theodore took five hundreds and two fifties from his wallet. The ape-like hand closed over the notes and crushed them into a pocket of the shorts.

Ramón grabbed the rail of the
Pepita
and sprang towards it, wetting a foot. Theodore followed him, looking warily at Miguel, who had retreated to the prow and was standing braced, a bar of metal like a marlin-spike in his hand.

“Salvador, I'm a friend! I only want to talk to you!” Ramón yelled at the cabin door. He pulled at the door by its handles, but Infante held it from the inside, jerking it shut every time Ramón pulled.

Theodore stuck his hand in the crack of the door and wrenched it open. The boy catapulted on to the deck, like some vermin routed from a hole. “So there he is, Ramón!” Theodore said between his teeth.

The boy scowled up at them, hurling curses and threats.

“I'm not going to hurt you!” Ramón protested. “I know you're not the murderer! They've driven him out of his mind, Teo!”

“He's drunk on rum,” Alejandro said indifferently, from his boat.

Salvador Infante looked from Ramón to Theodore, his frightened eyes unfocusing. “What do you want?”

“To talk with you. Now get up!” Ramón said, pulling him up by one of his thin arms.

Infante was barefoot, in oversized dungarees and a white shirt which Theodore recognized as the silk shirt he had worn in Guanajuato. He swayed in Ramón's hold, but his expression was truculent. “What do you want, I said? What do you
want
?”

“Several things. I want to see the muffler,” Theodore said.

“Ah, the muffler! You have to
pay
for that! The muffler's sold, anyway!”

“Salvador, you must leave here! Get away from these men and from Acapulco!” Ramón wiped the glistening sweat from his forehead.

“Whom did you sell the muffler to, Salvador?” Theodore asked.

“Wouldn't you like to know?” Salvador Infante tried to spit, unsuccessfully. He looked very pale, as if he were going to be sick. “Where's the rum, Miguel? Hey, Miguel, the rum-m!” He was back in the cabin, groping over a bunk.

“The rum!
Seguro!
” said Miguel, coming forward with his marlin-spike and a silly smile on his face. “Do the señores like rum?”

Alejandro laughed, standing in his boat and lighting a cigarette.

The boy emerged with a rum bottle, flourished it at them and lifted it, spilling rum on his nose before his mouth found the top of the bottle. Ramón snatched it from him and threw it overboard, and at once a roar of protest went up from Salvador and Miguel. Miguel went into the cabin, mumbling that he would find another bottle.

“See the scratch on his hand, Ramón?” Theodore pointed at the hand the boy rested on the cabin roof. A pink welt with a darker line in its middle went from his wrist to his third finger. “My cat gave you that in Guanajuato,
no es vero,
Salvador?”

Salvador stared at his hand foolishly and hung his head.

Theodore seized his shirt front. “Listen! Whom did you sell the muffler to?”

“Sell the muffler? It's here,” said Miguel, gesturing at the cabin he had just come out of.

“Where is it?” Theodore asked. “Show me.”

Ramón grabbed at the bottle in Miguel's hand, but Miguel pulled it indignantly out of his reach. “Stop your drinking and get him out of here! The
policía
is after him, don't you know that?”

“Hah, don't I know that!” Miguel mocked, his thick red lips slavering. “This one here—” he indicated Alejandro—“he won't tell the
policía
—because he's making too much money out of us,
verdad,
'Jandro? But there's no more money! No more!”

And Alejandro chuckled as if he were watching a show from a distance.

“Show me the muffler, Miguel,” Theodore said.

“
Money!
” Infante said in a suddenly loud voice. He picked up a fish-head from the deck and hurled it at Alejandro, missing him. “Clear out, you filthy blood-suckers!” He repeated the word: “
Chupasangres! Chupasangres! Todos, todos chupasangres!
You have sucked
my
blood!
Pig!
” he yelled at Miguel. who swung at him with the rum bottle.

Ramón caught Miguel's arm. “Let him alone!”

“Ah, you damned fool, are you protecting that scum?” Alejandro put in, spitting into the water. He picked up his line and reached for the
Pepita's
rail.

“Can you take him away from here, Alejandro?” Ramón asked, but Alejandro paid no attention. He turned to Infante. “You don't understand the police are going to accuse you of the murder of Lelia Ballesteros? I've come to help you, Salvador!” He shook Infante's thin shoulder. “Understand, Salvador? But you have no time to waste!”

Infante's head hung listlessly to one side.

“
Oiga, hombre,
” Alejandro said, pulling at Ramón's arm. “You were one of the friends of that girl? Otero. Sure! Aren't you the fellow who confessed?”

“I confessed but nobody believes me. The
policía
doesn't believe me!” Ramón said.

“Are you
loco
?” Alejandro asked in wonderment. “Hey, didn't they
say
you were crazy? Gimme some rum, Miguel.” He held his hand out for the bottle.

“We're all crazy,” Infante mumbled, his head hanging. “
Todos locos, todos locos
—”

“Are you the man who paid ten thousand pesos for the muffler?” Alejandro asked, peering slyly at Ramón and passing a dirty hand over the top of the bottle.

“No,” Ramón said, frowning. “What muffler?” he asked Infante. “Whose muffler is it, anyway?”

Salvador Infante looked at him sideways and smiled. “I know.”

“Where did you get it?” Theodore asked him.

“From the apartment.”

“Lelia's apartment?” Theodore asked.

“Sí!” Infante said, defiantly. “
Sississi!
”

“Lelia's apartment? You're putting words in his mouth, Teo!” Ramón frowned.

“You think he was not in her apartment,
hombre
? He was bragging about it! Come here, I want to show you something.” Alejandro pulled at Ramón's arm, but Ramón shook him off and walked to the boy, who was moving towards the prow, keeping himself upright by the cabin roof.

Theodore went after Infante. “Salvador! Did you also send the postcard from Florida?”

“From Florida?” Infante smiled dreamily. “Sure. From Lelia. Hah! I had a friend send it. I told him it's to a friend whose girl friend is with me.” He poked his chest with his thumb. “Lelia's with
me,
I said, but she's supposed to be in Florida!”

“And the telephone calls, Salvador?” Theodore asked. “The silent calls?”

Salvador Infante looked sleepily blank. “I don't know them—don't know them.”

“I'd like to talk to him alone, Teo,” Ramón said.

“Come with me, señor. Come! I'll show you something.” Alejandro pulled at Theodore's arm.

“Did she let you into her apartment, Salvador? How did you get in?” Theodore asked.

But Infante turned his face away, silent.

Alejandro said in Theodore's ear: “The door was open! He said he brought her flowers to get in, and when he got in—she was dead. Dead!” Alejandro's dark face took on a faint excitement. “So he stole a few things and left,” he finished, throwing up his hands. “You don't believe me yet, señor? Come in, I'll show you. You want to see?”

“Ramón!” Theodore called, then went after him.

Ramón was talking to Infante, who was drunkenly telling him to shut up.

“Come with me, Ramón,” Theodore said, taking Ramón's arm. “Alejandro wants to show us something.
Come
!
”

“You have made him invent all that he said, Teo,” Ramón said threateningly.

“Come into the cabin. Just for a minute.”

Reluctantly, Ramón left the boy and came with him. Theodore headed Ramón first into the cabin. In the dim light, Theodore saw Alejandro crouched in the narrow space between two bunks, dragging out a small suitcase.

“This stuff— Wait. Maybe you recognize it.” Alejandro threw out some wadded shirts. “This?” He held something up in the air.

Theodore looked, and felt a quick, crushing pain in his chest.

“That's Lelia's!” Ramón exclaimed. He touched it, as if to see if it were real.

It was the obsidian necklace Theodore had taken to be repaired, the one she had worn so often that it was like looking at Lelia herself to see it—the polished oval pendant, the slender black segments with their fine gold links. Alejandro was dragging more things out of a pocket of the suitcase, and Theodore moved closer, stumbling past Ramón to touch the piece of red ribbon, the art-gum eraser, the couple of Venus pencils he knew had lain in the painted clay bowl on her bookcase. “And her keys, Ramón—her keys,” Theodore said. His fist closed over them. “Do you still think he didn't get into her apartment?”

“This?” Alejandro held up Ramón's address book, spilling a few cards from it.

But Ramón was looking at the necklace in his shaking hand.

“And this? This is the muffler.” It hung down from Alejandro's lifted hand, a pale blue muffler with crimson stripes that crossed to make large squares, a flashy muffler.

Theodore did not think he had ever seen it before. He looked at both ends of it for a label or a cleaner's mark, smelt it, but it smelt of nothing but wool. “Whose is it?”

Alejandro only gave a shrug and a smile. “He found it in the apartment. And
somebody
paid.”

What kind of man would wear such a muffler, Theodore wondered.

Theodore heard a scream like a woman's.

He ran out of the cabin. Ramón was at the prow, standing over Infante, pummeling him with both fists, and Miguel was trying to pull him off. The boy writhed violently to escape, but Ramón lifted him and hurled him into the corner where the prow narrowed, and there was a crack like that of a breaking skull. Miguel had a grip with both hands on Ramón's arm, and quite slowly, it seemed to Theodore, Ramón drew his arm back and then forward. There was a deep sound as Miguel plunged into the water, then the patter of droplets. Theodore stood with his fists stupidly clenched, the keys in one and the muffler in the other.

Ramón looked at him wildly, panting.

“Is he dead?” Theodore said.

With that, Ramón whirled as if he were insane and made a snatching movement that tore the boy's shirt off and jerked his limp body into the air. Ramón swung at him before he fell.

“And this, señor? This?” Alejandro was yelling from the stern, and, turning, Theodore saw him holding up the large photograph of Lelia that had been in his diary, torn now and flapping in the breeze. “
Linda mujer,
” Alejandro commented.

Theodore felt paralyzed and strangling. In the water he saw Miguel's head emerge, and saw his face with a sad, reconciled expression tilt with his first stroke towards the boat. “Ramón, is he dead?” Theodore asked, because Ramón was bending over Infante as if listening for his heart. Then as he came closer, he saw that Ramón was looking at a thin silver cross. It lay on the boy's smooth chest and shone in the sun like something white-hot.

Ramón whimpered, his face in his hands.

Theodore put his fingers over Infante's heart, loathing to touch him. He thought he felt a heart-beat, but it may have been his own pulse. Infante's bleeding mouth was drawn back from the teeth as if death had come with a convulsion. A smear of blood darkened the hair on his upper lip.

The boy groaned.

“Salvador, whose is the muffler?” Theodore asked. “Salvador—”

“Teo, you were right,” Ramón gasped into his hands. “And now I have killed him!”

“He's not dead. Salvador—the muffler—who paid you for it?” He put his ear near the boy's wet mouth.

The lips were saying something about
Dios,
over and over. His eyes looked vacantly at the sky. His lips stopped moving.

Alejandro bent over with his hands on his knees, looking at Infante. “Ugh!
Un católico. Un espléndido católico!
” He chuckled, stuck out a hand that looked incapable of feeling anything and held it against the chest below the cross. “Still alive.
Madre de Dios,
you can't kill this kind!”

Miguel stood dripping on the deck, blowing his nose out in his hand. “He's dead?” he asked, swaying, catching his balance.

“No. He's alive,” Alejandro said.

Miguel took a step towards the boy with a face full of drunken fury. “Dead or not, I don't want him on my boat! I've had enough of him!” He caught Infante by the throat and banged his head, once and definitively, on the deck, in the practiced movement of a fisherman who has killed a thousand fish in the same manner.