The Shadow of the Shadow (12 page)

"Only in a moral sense, my dear bard, only in a moral sense."

Manterola hesitated, then played another four, hoping Tomas
wouldn't close the hand and leave him with the six/five and the
double fives.

"Oul fliend the joulnalist is playing at suicide," said Tomas,
closing the game.

"Shit, I knew it," said Manterola. He poured his partner a glass
of brandy as a sort of apology. "Sorry about that, my dear lawyervoyeur. They don't all come out the same."

"The thing that worries me is that, at least in this case, they
don't all go in the same."

"Did you find out anything else?" asked the poet, standing up
and stretching. "Apart from your stimulating discovery of coitus
telegraphicus."

"Nothing. And I spent five hours inside that damn wardrobe.
Even now, when I close my eyes, I feel like there's a hanger
watching me."

"We waited for you for a few hours, and then we had to call
the game. The bartender couldn't believe it. I think it's only the
third time in two years we haven't played. Once when Tomas was
in jail for a week, and the other time when I got run over, and now
this," said Manterola, proud of their little club's consistency.

Verdugo mixed the dominoes with a monotonous, sleepy
shuffle.

"So who was this dead man that inspired our friend Colonel
Gomez to play that clever trick with the doorknob?" asked the
poet.

"He was a Brit. An engineer working for one of the British oil
companies, El Aguila, I think it was. He was here on a business
trip."

Tomas looked up from the bones. El Aguila was part of his
personal territory in the land of memories. In the same way that
Pancho Villa and his Northern Division belonged to the poet, the
haciendas of the old aristocracy to the lawyer, and bloody murders
to the reporter, El Aguila belonged to him.

"Blinkman was his name. I didn't have time to dig any deeper.
There was just enough time before deadline to get in the story of
the suicide that wasn't a suicide."

"Did you say anything about Colonel Gomez being involved
in the trick with the key?" asked Verdugo.

The four friends drew their dominoes from the pile in the
middle of the table, each in his own way. The poet lined his up in
a row, pressed with his fingers on either end and stood them up all at once. The lawyer stood his up one by one and left them in the
order he found them. Manterola set his on their sides, and Tomas
took a minute to arrange his bones to his satisfaction.

"No, I kept quiet on that score. I figured it was enough for
now to unmask the fake suicide. It didn't seem prudent to go any
further. Somehow I got the feeling it was something that didn't
really belong to me. Like it belonged more to the night and to this
table, gentlemen."

"Mantelola, in this town gentlemen lide holses, and I happen
to have left my holse at home..."

"Tomas is right, we're more the infantry type," said Verdugo.
"But the inkslinger's got a point," said the poet, scratching his
mustache with his index finger. "No matter how you look at it,
this thing belongs to us. Whether we like it or not. The dead
trombonist is mine..."

"And I've got the suicide that wasn't a suicide, the English
oilman, the widow, and the colonel that fell out of the window..."

"And I've got the picture show at the Widow Roldan's, and the
tryst between Ramon the Spic and Conchita," said Verdugo.

"All I've got is a blood debt with Colonel Gomez," said
Tomas.

"What about the Chinagirl you rescued?"

"Don't take youl coincidences too fal afield, comlade. She's
just a pool lonely olphan who managed to escape when the police
laided that gambling house whele they had hel like a plisonel. Like
a slave. It's the kind of thing you heal about all too often these
days, unfoltunately."

"But how can you be sure she's got nothing to do with it?"
asked the reporter, playing a blank off the poet's opening domino. "I don't know what to think anymore. Everything seems to be
connected. It all fits together too well. Do you all believe in fate?"

"I suppose I ought to. Isn't that what they say: Fatalistic
Olientals?"

"Seriously, Tomas," persisted the reporter.

There was a pause in the play as the four friends stopped a
minute to think the question over. The rest of the bar was deserted.
The swinging doors had been still for over half an hour. The night,
the place, belonged to the four of them and the bartender. And to
the four of them alone, and to the table and the bones, belonged
the fragments of a mystery that revolved around the house of the
Widow Roldan.

"No, not me. I believe in chance, and when the coincidences
stalt to pile up, I believe it's time to do something about it."

"At this point I'm ready to believe in anything," said the poet.
"I believe the Archangel Gabriel wants us to get involved in
something and he's been sending us messages."

"Why the Archangel Gabriel?"

"Well, I don't believe in God, so I had to pick somebody up
there."

"I believe it's going to rain all night long," said the lawyer, and
the players turned their attention back to the game.

The Chinaman played a six/three and forced Verdugo to pass.

"What'd you do with her, Tomas?"

"I took hel to my humble home, as my countlymen say in bad
novels."

"Do I detect a glimmer of Oriental romance here?" asked the
poet. "Without wanting to pry, of course..."

"I don't leally know, illustlious bald. Fol now we'le just going
to shale loom and boald."

"What'd you say her name was?"

"Losa Lopez."

"Losa Lopez?"

"I think he means Rosa Lopez," clarified Manterola.

"Ah, another enigma for this rain-swept night," said the poet,
playing the double-four, and with the last three fours hidden safely
in his hand.

AFTER LEAVING THE TAQUERIA where they ate a
late dinner, the poet lagged behind, pissing contentedly against
a lamppost. It was time to call it a night. Manterola was only a
few blocks from home, Verdugo would head south, and the poet
and the Chinaman would walk together as far as Tacubaya where
Tomas would catch a streetcar for San Angel.

"Come on, we don't have all night," the Chinaman called to
Fermin.

The poet saw the lights of a car turning the corner onto Gante
Street and driving slowly toward them, and he hurriedly packed
away his valuable instrument and buttoned his fly.

The car passed by Fermin, hidden in the shadows, and stopped
a few yards beyond where Manterola stood lighting Verdugo's
cigar.

Tomas was the first to react.

"Look out!" he shouted, whipping out his knife and hurling it
at the automobile.

Two masked men got out of the backseat. Alerted by the
Chinaman's warning, Verdugo clamped the half-lit cigar between
his teeth, dropped to his knees, and drew his revolver.

Manterola was slower to react and it wasn't until he heard the
shot and felt the burning pain in his leg that he realized what was
going on.

From behind his lamppost, the poet fired his long-barreled
.45, booming like a cannon in the quiet night. The bullet ricocheted off the body of the car and shattered the jaw of one of the
masked men. The red blood soaked invisibly into the red kerchief that covered his nose and mouth. The second masked man fired
three times at Verdugo. The lawyer returned fire, stepping out a
strange ballet as he scurried desperately for cover behind a nearby
flower box. The bullets slammed into the wall behind him. A
windowpane exploded somewhere in the dark. One bullet passed
cleanly through the palm of his left hand and another knocked his
hat off his head.

Manterola was thrown backward onto the sidewalk. His glasses
were broken, but he pulled out a twenty-five-caliber Browning
automatic and fired at the biggest thing he could see, emptying an
entire round in the direction of the car.

The masked attacker trading fire with Verdugo glanced out of
the corner of his eye at his companion, spread out on the ground
and making strange noises through his shattered jaw. With lead
raining down on him from all sides, he broke into a run, wildly
firing his last two bullets and killing a dog that stood anxiously
watching the gunfight from a nearby rooftop.

The masked man, pausing at the corner to reload, turned to see
if he was being pursued and in that moment Tomas' knife caught
up with him. Hurled through the air, it drove home, slicing into
his throat. Blood oozed through the kerchief over his face.

One by one the lights came on in the surrounding houses,
adding to the glow from the lampposts. The poet approached the
car and kicked the man with the bloodied kerchief in the head.
The man jerked once and then lay still. Inside the car, a third man
lay across the steering wheel, one of Manterola's bullets through
his head. The poet reached in and turned off the engine.

The silence was strangely sudden and complete.

Together the reporter and Verdugo assessed their wounds.
"Damn it all to hell, my leg's as good as busted. I'm going to be
a gimp for the rest of my days," complained the reporter as he
tightened his belt around the upper half of his leg in the form of
a tourniquet.

"As for me, it's going to be a while before I can move the dominoes like I used to," Verdugo answered him.

"How's yours, Tomas?" shouted the poet.

"Deceased," said the Chinaman from the end of the block. He
wiped his knife on the dead man's trousers.

"This one seems like he's still got some life in him," said the
poet, pointing to the man sprawled next to the car.

Two mounted policemen rounded the corner of Gante Street.
A pair of hookers, friends of Verdugo, curiously approached the
scene of the battle from the other direction.

"Call an ambulance. If it's not too much trouble," Verdugo
shouted up to a man in pajamas leaning out to get a look from a
third-story window.

A few minutes later they could hear the bells of the approaching
ambulance. It reminded the poet of the bells that announced the
start of the bullfights in Zacatecas.

By now the street was bright with light, making that little
corner of the city seem like just another part of the bigger party.