Dancing Aztecs (42 page)

And bringing memory. Hijack! New York! Gluppe!
Hiiiii
-Pedro staggered backward into the wooden fence and slowly slid down it till he was seated on the concrete.
He
was the one who was supposed to be arrested, and
José and Edwardo
were supposed to get the money and rescue him. Those job assignments made sense; Pedro would be very good at being arrested, and José and Edwardo would be very good as rescuers. The other way around made no sense, it was hopeless.

“Hey, brother. What's the problem?”

Pedro was still too befuddled and miserable even to be surprised at having understood the question, which had been spoken in Spanish. Looking, squinting under his protective awning of hands, he saw a smiling round olive face fronted by a bushy black mustache. The fellow was perhaps thirty, short and slender, in open-necked white shirt and black trousers, and a laminated card pinned to his shirt pocket identified him as an employee of Air Canada. He had been on his way to the employee bus stop when he'd noticed Pedro sitting here, and now he said, “You need help or anything?”

“I drank too much,” Pedro told him. His throat hurt when he talked.

His new friend laughed, the way people always do when faced with this particular kind of misery. “Hung over, huh?” Then, with a little frown, he said, “Where you from, anyway?”

“Descalzo.”

“Never heard of it. That the way they dress there?”

Pedro looked down at himself, slowly aware that his clothing consisted of faded dungarees raggedly cut off at the knee, and a kind of scoop-necked white peasant blouse with puffy long sleeves. The dungarees, which were too big in the torso, were cinched in around his waist with a white plastic belt, and on his feet were red four-inch wedges. “Oh,” he said. “No, I got these on the plane.”

“That must have been a hell of a flight,” said the fellow. “Why don't you go get a cup of coffee?”

“I have no dollars,” Pedro said. “I don't even have peserinas.”

“You been rolled?” A resident here for nearly eight years, he had the true New Yorker's reaction of disinterested sympathy: “That's tough. You know anybody in town?”

Which made Pedro squint up at him all over again, struck by a belated realization. “You speak Spanish!”

“What do you think
you
speak? Eskimo?”

“But this is New York!”

“You bet. You know anybody here?”

“I need—” Pedro struggled with a hostile environment of concrete and wood, trying to get up on his feet. “I need to find—Huh!”

The fellow laughed, saying, “You need help, that's what you need. Here.” And, grabbing an arm, he hauled Pedro to his feet. “There you are.”

The world dipped and swayed. The world spun and twirled. In short, the world did the Hustle. Clinging to the wooden fence, Pedro managed to complete his sentence: “I need to find the Museum of the Arts of the Americas.”

“You're putting me on.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“I don't even know
if
it is.”

“Oh.” Pedro nodded, a move he immediately regretted. Groaning, he clutched his forehead.

“A museum won't help you,” the fellow said. “Let me get you a cup of coffee. My name's Edgar, by the way.”

“Pedro,” admitted Pedro.

“Come on with me,” Edgar said.

So Pedro went with him, having nothing else to do, and his new friend led him across alternate swatches of sod and concrete until they suddenly stopped for no reason at all somewhere in the middle of the grid. “Be here in a minute,” Edgar said.

Pedro had no idea what would be here in a minute, nor did he care. Walking in these ridiculous red shoes would have been difficult at the best of times, and for Pedro this was one of the worst of times. That they were no longer walking was success enough for him. Traffic continued to curve by on a couple of roadways, several million cars were parked in neat clusters here and over there, the sun glared down like the eye of a disapproving god, and a bus angled out of nowhere to cough to a stop at Pedro's red feet.

“Come on,” said Edgar.

Pedro got on the bus with him. Edgar said a few words to the bus driver in English, and the driver glanced without interest at Pedro and nodded. Then he glanced again at Pedro, looking him up and down, and raised an eyebrow at Edgar, who laughed and said something else in English. He and the driver chuckled together, and then Edgar led Pedro to a nearby seat, and the bus jolted forward once more.

This was one of several bus lines connecting the spreadout parts of Kennedy Airport, this one being a free service exclusively for airport employees. A dozen or so people were aboard now, most of them reading newspapers, and when a man in white coveralls like Jerry's got off at United leaving
El Diario
behind Edgar took the paper off the seat and began to read. Beside him, Pedro rested in the cushioned seat and watched dull-eyed as more and more and more airport went by.

“Huh!” said Edgar.

Pedro turned his poor head and saw Edgar staring at him in wild surmise. “What?” said Pedro.

“Descalzo, huh?” And Edgar pushed the newspaper toward Pedro, folded to one particular story. “Take a look at that.”

Pedro tried, he really did, but his eyes refused to cooperate. They showed him two overlapping newspapers, with all the words fuzzy. He could see it was in Spanish, and he could see there was a murky photograph of an airplane, but that was about it. “Oh,” he said, because staring at the paper was making him feel sick. “I can't,” he said, and closed his eyes. That, however, was a mistake; quickly he popped them open again.

“I'll tell you what it says,” Edgar offered.

“Thank you.”

“It says three men hijacked an airplane to here from Descalzo last night. It says two of the men are in custody but the third one got away.”

“Oh,” said Pedro.

“It says the police are looking for him.”

“Oh,” said Pedro. Fatalistically he said, “They're going to hang me by my tongue.”

“The
police?
”

“In Descalzo.”

Edgar gave him a keen look. “It's political, huh?”

Pedro could say yes, or he could say no. If he said no, he'd have to explain what it was other than political. If he said yes, the conversation would be over. “Yes,” he said.

Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over,
everybody
has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.) Therefore, it was only natural that Edgar would smile encouragingly at Pedro, pat his dungaree-fringed knee, and say, “Don't worry. We'll take care of you.”

“You will?” And Pedro, virtually for the first time in his adult life, found himself smiling.

THE CASTAWAY …

Since Bobbi had already given up her room, she'd been taking all these phone calls at the Holiday Inn desk, and after the second conversation with the girl from Beacon Auto Transporters, she spent a minute leaning against that desk, brooding. It wasn't fair, that's all. Denied that terrific car, just after she'd gotten it. Falsely accused. And forced now to turn around and go
back to New York
, probably spend the whole weekend there before she could get another car to the Coast.

The desk clerk, a neat and friendly young man in a 1957 haircut and a yellow blazer, came over and said, “Anything wrong?”

“Hardly at all,” Bobbi told him. “What time did you say the bar opened?”

“Not till twelve noon. Sorry, it's the law.”

“I'll never make it,” Bobbi told him, and went away toward the restaurant, to have another cup of coffee and try to figure out what to do next.

Her pal from last night was in there now, surrounded by several breakfasts; sunny-side-up eggs on one plate, Canadian bacon on another, a stack of pancakes on a third, several slices of toast on a fourth, pats of butter and little containers of jelly on a fifth. Plus coffee, plus orange juice, plus a glass of water. Stopping by his table, Bobbi said, “When do you expect them to arrive?”

He looked up, a happy smile on his face. “Hey, there. When do I expect who?”

She gestured at all the food. “The Boy Scout troop.”

“Oh.” Grinning, he said, “I ordered this stuff for you. Sit down.”

“I already had breakfast,” she said, sitting across from him. “But I will take a cup of coffee.”

“Fine.” He waved his fork at the waitress, who was already on her way, empty cup in one hand and Pyrex coffeepot in the other.

Bobbi accepted her coffee, asked for Sweet and Low, got it, stirred, and said no, thanks to Jerry's offer of pancakes, toast, a piece of bacon, one of his eggs. “No, really, I'm fine.”

“I thought you were going to be on the road by now,” he said.

“So did I.”

“Trouble?”

So she told her story, with appropriate expressions of surprise and sympathy from him, and as she was finishing the mechanic came in and said, “Could I talk to you for a minute, miss?”

“Pull up a chair,” Jerry told him.

“He's the mechanic,” Bobbi explained.

The mechanic, having pulled up a chair, rested his elbows on the table and turned a worried frown toward Bobbi. “The owner called again,” he said.

“He did, huh?”

“I'm supposed to tow the car in, look it over, let him know what the problem is.”

“Fine,” she said.

“But I'm not supposed to let you drive it any more.”

“I already know about that.”

“So what do I do with your luggage?”

“Oh.” Depression was settling over Bobbi like a stationary low. “I guess they better come in here for now.”

“Okay.” The mechanic made as if to go, but then hesitated, frowning again at Bobbi. “There is something else,” he said.

“Oh, I hope not.”

“About this thing of the car being vandalized.”

“Oh,
that
.” Depression gave way briefly to anger.

“The owner wanted me to let him know if it looked like anything had been done to the car on purpose.”

“He really stinks,” she said. “He really does.”

Jerry, who'd been watching and listening to all this, now said, “The owner thinks somebody screwed up the car on purpose?”

“He thinks I did,” Bobbi told him.

“The fact is,” the mechanic said, “I looked it over some, and I think maybe something really was done to it.”

Bobbi stared at him. “That's impossible!”

“Transmission fluid on the ground,” said the mechanic. “Looks like the pan was poked with an icepick or something. And your fuel mixture looks to me like it's screwed down so you wouldn't get any air at all. You didn't drive
in
here like that.”

Bobbi said, “Do
you
think I wrecked his car?”

“No, I don't,” said the mechanic. “But I think maybe somebody did. And if it was you, I wouldn't blame you. If you'll pardon my saying so, I think that guy's a prick.”

“You're excused,” Bobbi told him. “But I really didn't do it, you know. That car was supposed to take me to California. Besides, I don't even know what those things are that you said. I wouldn't know
how
to wreck a car.”

“No, thanks,” the mechanic told the waitress. “No coffee for me.” To Bobbi he said, “The thing is, if I tell him what happened to the car, he'll blame you and he'll maybe make trouble for you.”

“Oh, God. What a mess. And who would
do
such a thing?”

The mechanic shrugged. “Fancy car,” he said. “New York plates. Somebody in a bad mood, maybe.”

“I sure hope they feel better today,” Bobbi said.

Jerry said to the mechanic, “Listen, you know she didn't do it. So why not cover, tell him it was just an ordinary breakdown?”

“Maybe,” the mechanic said. “If there aren't any parts screwed up. That's not like some Chevy or VW, you know. We don't have Jaguar parts laying around this part of the country.”

“But if you can,” Jerry said.

The mechanic shrugged. “If I can cover without getting my own ass in a sling,” he said. Then he ducked his head at Bobbi, saying, “Pardon the expression.”

“Be my guest.”

“Anyway,” the mechanic said, getting to his feet, “if I
do
have to report it, I got a cousin on the state troopers, I'll let him know the situation. But probably you'd be better off if you weren't around here any more.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I'll get your stuff.”

“Thanks.”

He went away, and Jerry said, “When he comes back, slip him a thank-you ten bucks.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. What are you gonna do now?”

“Christ knows,” she said. “Get back to New York somehow, I suppose.”

“I'll give you a lift,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were heading west.”

“I got what I came out after,” he said. “Now I'm going back. Come on along.”

She frowned at him, unsure. Wasn't she being hustled into some sort of relationship? It was all too fast, and far too soon; she'd had barely a day of independence, and here's some brand-new guy on the doorstep.

Correctly interpreting her frown, he grinned at her and spread his hands, saying, “No strings.”

“I don't know,” she said, and at that point the desk clerk in the yellow blazer appeared, saying, “Another phone call for you, Mrs. Harwood.”

“Ah!” Getting to her feet, she said, “Maybe he changed his mind! Maybe he'll let me drive it after all!” And it was only natural she should misread the look of annoyance that crossed Jerry's face.

But it wasn't Van Dinast on the phone, it was goddam Chuck. “Bobbi,” he said, “I miss you terribly.”