Till Death Do Us Part (11 page)

I found the Posada where she’d told me. I found the steps too, a rickety flight of them that leaned drunkenly against a veranda roof as they climbed to the second floor. I slipped up them and found myself in a hallway with five doors opening from it.

Four of the doors were numbered. I heard squeals of laughter from behind two of them, and a muttered male curse from behind a third. The un-numbered door concealed a dirty bathroom. I know. I looked. The fifth door was numbered 212 and there was only silence behind it. I went into the silence and shut the door softly behind me.

My pencil flashlight showed me a room almost bare of furniture. There was a deal table near the door, a sag-springed sofa across a back corner, an old bed, and a single chair. There was also a wardrobe against the wall to my right and a window at the left end of the sofa.

The room was heavy with the odor peculiar to places of its type. I crossed to the window and slid up the sash. Even with the curtains drawn, a little fresh air came in and made breathing easier.

I got behind the sofa and thought about a blackmailer smart enough to use an assignation house as a place to collect his money. In such a place, all he had to do was make whispered arrangements, and the comings and goings of anyone who used the room would be carefully ignored.

I wondered what was keeping Rosanne. According to my watch it was just short of one. I moved to a position where I could watch the door. I thought about Rosanne and her forgetting the money. It seemed a strange lapse of memory for someone usually so efficient.

But then, I reasoned, the events of the evening were hardly guaranteed to help anyone be efficient.

The church clock tolled one. Someone was walking down the hall. Rosanne was right on time, I thought, and then I realized that I wasn’t hearing her footsteps. These were too heavy, and there was none of the click she made with her high heels.

The footsteps slowed, then came on and stopped before the door. I heard the latch click back as the knob was turned. I thought, if this isn’t Rosanne, it’s the blackmailer. My breath caught in my throat. I forced myself to exhale slowly. I watched the light from the hall come in as the door began to open.

I was sure that I had my fish. I had a murderer. In a minute I’d get my hands on the killer of Pachuco and of Calvin. In a minute I’d have the evidence I needed to clear myself.

The door was suddenly flung wide. The overhead light came on, flooding the room with sharp, ugly brightness. All the shoddiness of the room leaped into clear, harsh detail.

Standing in the doorway with his gun drawn, was a man in the uniform of a Rio Bravo cop.

T
HE COP
was looking around the room. He was a stocky man with a big nose and pockmarks on his cheeks. He had a sharp pair of eyes.

He turned and called to someone out of sight. His Spanish was heavy with dialect, but I had no trouble understanding him. He said, “Take no chance. Shoot before he shoots you.”

He turned back and looked some more around the room. It was so bare that he had only two places to worry about—a wardrobe standing against the wall to my left, and the space behind the divan. I stayed where I was, praying that he’d check the wardrobe first. If he did, then his back would be to me for just a second. I could use that second.

He stared at the couch, then made a military right face and stalked toward the wardrobe. I moved. I crawled behind the couch until I reached the end close to the room’s lone window. I had no idea what lay below it, and I had no time to find out.

I got up and jumped, feet first.

He shot at me.

I felt the touch of a splinter of wood on my cheek as the edge of the window frame blew to bits. Then I was going feet first into the darkness.

The horrible sensation of falling was the kind you have in dreams. Only in a dream there’s the moment of waking before you land.

I landed. I had only time to take one breath before my feet came down hard on a sloping roof. The drop had been only about six feet, but the shock nearly stopped my heart.

I landed and slid. By the time I realized I was on the porch roof at the rear of the Posada, I was falling again. I lit on my feet in the dirt of the alley, stumbled, and started to run.

The cop upstairs pumped two bullets at me. I heard them both. He stopped shooting and started blowing his whistle. I ran faster.

There was alley and then there was an adobe wall. Behind the wall was a garden sprinkled with fresh manure. Then there was another wall, and on its other side, a chicken run. I hadn’t known chickens could make so much noise in the middle of the night.

Some irate householder blasted at me with a shotgun. I was moving fast when I caught the charge and I felt only one pellet penetrate my skin. After the shotgun, I tangled with a pair of goats, both tethered on short cords.

I said,
“Su perdon, compadres,”
sneezed at their stench, and ran again.

It was a damned nightmare. I couldn’t believe Rio Bravo had so many backyards littered with manure, livestock, and garbage.

I finally found a street. It was dark and empty. I could hear a siren not far away. Behind me someone was shouting out a window. I rounded a corner and stopped. I was at the far side of the plaza. The siren was behind me and coming fast.

The church bells tolled two.

I muttered, “Lord, here I come,” and ran up the broad sidewalk for the cathedral. I went through the doors and into the solitude of the foyer. I leaned against a wall and tried to find my breath.

Then I started thinking again.

My mind yelled mockingly at me,
sucker!

I’d been so damned clever, judging Rosanne to be on the level because she hadn’t turned me in when she had the chance. I’d overlooked the fact that she was smart enough to choose the best place of all—the place where the police could walk in and find me looking as if I were waiting to pick up the money.

I could see a case developing now: my motive for killing Pachuco, revenge and a desire to take over his blackmail business; my motive for killing Calvin, fear that he had learned what I was doing.

It was neat. It wrapped me up tight and tied a square knot in the string. And Rosanne’s pretty, manicured fingers had done it all.

Darling! Darling sucker!

I had time to think now and I laid everything that had happened out in my mind. It was all clear. Calvin had been blackmailing Rosanne. She stood it as long as she could and then hired Pachuco. He came and discovered that Calvin was smuggling weed. And now Rosanne had something to block Calvin with.

But Pachuco saw his chance to cut himself a two way slice. He found out what Calvin had on Rosanne and he knew what she had on Calvin. He would collect from them both.

That’s when Rosanne got hold of me. She didn’t want me because I knew so much about my former partner; she wanted me to be her patsy. She set me up because I had a fine motive for killing Pachuco. And then she let him have her knife right between the ribs. And then she waited for me to be arrested.

Nothing happened. I could imagine her getting panicky after I walked into her office and acted as if Pachuco were still alive. She knew she had to find out what I was up to. So she waited, and then she decided to frame me again, but good this time. She steered me to Calvin and then she tipped the police that I was a murderer. She killed Calvin and took me to see the body. She was real helpful.

And then she set me up perfectly. She let me volunteer to be the bait for her trap. And I was sucker enough to sit and wait until the trap was sprung.

If I’d had enough energy, I’d have kicked myself.

I could smell everything I’d stepped into, fallen into, and got my hands into. After a while I was almost ready to turn myself in if the cops would guarantee me a hot bath.

Thinking of a bath reminded me that my room was just across the plaza. I also thought of Navarro, of his suspicions of Rosanne and of her suspicions of him. I moved and Calvin’s little black book gouged my side. I thought about that too.

A few minutes ago everything had been clear. Now I had remembered a number of things that my theory hadn’t explained. And I remembered that Arden hadn’t made her contact with me. But she was paid by Navarro.

He might have the answer to Arden’s whereabouts. He might have the answer to the rest of my questions. I decided that the church had done all for me that it could.

I opened the church door and walked down the steps and straight across the plaza. I wasn’t challenged. The police probably thought that I had too much sense to expose myself here. But the police didn’t know how little I used the sense I had.

I went to the rear of the hotel and climbed the fire escape. I walked down the hall to the door of my room. I put the key in the lock and turned it. I went inside. I shut the door but I didn’t lock it. I turned on the light. Without Arden, the room had a hollow, empty feel. I picked up the telephone and waited for an answer.

When I got it, I asked for Navarro. He was at the
cantina. I
was connected almost at once. I said, “This is Blane. You’d better come up here right away. And tell your desk clerk to forget what room this call came from.”

“Si,”
he said, as if I’d asked for a cup of coffee. He hung up.

I went into the bathroom, stripped, and showered. I soaped and rinsed and soaped again. By the third round I began to feel a little cleaner. When Navarro arrived, I was in my shorts and hunting for a match to light my cigaret.

He supplied the light. Then he sat down and looked at me and gave out with one of his ripe chuckles.

I said, “What happened when the police came looking for Pachuco’s body?”

“It was in his room,” Navarro said.

“Did you finger me?”

“Señor
Blane! I protested the theory of your guilt. I pointed out that anyone could have done this terrible thing.”

I said, “I didn’t think you had, but I wanted to be sure. I think I know who’s behind it. If you’ll give me a few answers, I’ll lay the whole case out for you.”

He beamed at me and lit one of his Havanas. “What little I know, you are welcome to hear.”

I said, “First, where’s Arden?”

He shook his head and frowned. “Did she not go with you?”

I told him about her not showing up. He just shook his head again. I said, “Just why did you want me to check on Rosanne Norton for you?”

“Because I want to find out just why she had you brought here.”

I said, “I know why. She wanted me for a fall guy.” I told him my theory. He listened politely, moving only to take his cigar out of his mouth and give the end a meditative lick.

He said, “It is possible, but I think there is a better reason why the
señora
Norton is being blackmailed.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said.

He said, “I think someone found out that she is smuggling aliens.”

My brain opened up and light flooded in. I said, “That’s it!” Now I remembered where I’d come across some of those names on the list in Calvin’s book.

I got the book and showed it to Navarro. “See that—Vasily Hardas? And that, Ludwig Holzkopf? Those names belong to two of the refugees I went broke for a few months ago. These guys are among the men Pachuco milked.”

I stopped suddenly. I said, “Just where do you fit into this?”

Navarro gave another lick to his cigar. “A short while ago I hear a rumor that aliens are crossing the border into the United States from Rio Bravo. This is my city. I do not like there to be even rumors of such things. I am a law abiding citizen.”

I said, “So that’s why you were suspicious of me—because I’d been tangled up with aliens.”

“Both you and Pachuco had been.”

“But you also suspected Rosanne?”

“Because she went to Mexico to see you. But before that, I have a record of a call Pachuco made from the hotel here to Rosanne.”

I said, “Sure, it’s clear enough what he was doing here. After he got through milking those aliens, Pachuco thought of a way to make more money off them. He came here and got in touch with Rosanne and made a deal. He’d supply her with aliens who were willing to pay to get into the United States. She’d do the rest. Then he got the idea that she was crossing him—or maybe he thought he could get more by blackmailing her. Anyway, she killed him.”

“It is possible,” he agreed.

I said, “Just how is she smuggling them?”

Navarro shrugged. “That is what the United States Immigration people sent Miss Kennett to find out.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’d have injured my spine. I said,
“Arden—
a government agent?”

He smiled. “That is true. Why do you think she had the task of watching you? Clever, was it not?”

I said, “Clever as hell. So that’s why Ignacio is here. He smells a big news story.”

“No,” Navarro said. “He is an agent of the Mexican government. He has been watching this Pachuco for months and he followed him here.”

He licked his cigar again. “Miss Kennett is making only the preliminary investigation, you understand. She must first determine that there is smuggling.”

I said, “I’m pretty sure.”

He nodded. “There is no doubt now. It is the method she seeks.”

I said, “You ought to know that I had no part in it.”

“Both Miss Kennett and I have concluded that. Ignacio is coming around to the same place in his thinking.”

He could have said it in a lot fewer words, but it still sounded good to hear. I said, “Navarro, Rosanne knows that Arden was helping me, and that Amalie was too.” Until I mentioned her name, I’d forgotten about Amalie. Now I realized her part in this. As Nace’s girl friend, she was probably doing a spy job for him. And since he didn’t trust me, he also probably put her to work on me.

And all the time I thought it was my ingrown charm that had given her those calf-eyed looks.

But now it looked as if Blane, the great detective, had been suckered by one more female.

Navarro was gnawing on his cigar. He said, “Miss Kennett is capable of taking care of herself—if she knows that she is in danger.”

I had a sudden empty feeling in my stomach. Now I knew why Arden hadn’t met me at the hotel, and why she hadn’t left a message for me.

I said, “Navarro, you’ve got to get me back across that border.”