Till Death Do Us Part (2 page)

I was at the foot of the steps when Nace came out. He wasn’t alone; there was a slender Mexican girl on his arm. They seemed to be arguing. She didn’t want to go in the direction Nace was taking her, but she wasn’t big enough to do much more than look angry.

I backed into deep shadow. The girl clicked along on high heels, her button of a nose stuck up in the air. She was no
cantina
girl; she was dressed too tastefully in a pale, summer weight suit with a light coat thrown over her shoulders. Her dark hair was curled and on it she had a saucy hat perched. She was like Nace, young and innocent looking. But Nace only looked that way. From the girl’s air, I felt she really was innocent.

They were going toward the river. I followed, staying a half block back and walking as quietly as I could. When they reached the two blocks of honky-tonk set up for the tourist, I crossed the street and kept parallel to them.

Nace walked the girl to the border and put her into the intercity bus waiting at the Mexican end of the river bridge. He said something that caused her to hoist her nose up another notch. She was real cute about it, but she wasn’t trying to be. She was too mad at him for that. She stalked back to a seat and sat down and refused to look when he tapped on the window from the outside.

Finally the bus started and Nace turned to go. There was a wry grin on his face. I followed him again. Once I thought of moving in on him, but suddenly he seemed in a hurry, and I decided to find out what he was up to. He had obviously got rid of his girl so he could go about some business of his own.

He headed straight for the Rio Bravo hotel. I stood outside the lobby doors and watched the clerk hand him a key. He took it and started for the stairs. As soon as he made the first bend, I went in, got my own key, and moved after him.

I stopped at the top of the stairs, in a position where I could duck back out of sight. He walked to the far end of the hall and stopped before the left hand door. He didn’t use the key he had got from the clerk. Mexican hotel keys have tags too big to let you put them in your pocket. Even as far away as I was, I could see that Nace was using a key without a tag of that size.

He tried three different keys before he got the door unlocked. He opened the door carefully, with as little noise as possible. He pulled it wide and stepped quickly into the room. I heard the door shut with only the faintest of clicks.

I started down the hall, trying to avoid two creaking boards I’d noticed he’d stepped on. I reached the door and I had my hand out for the knob when it began to turn. I backed up quickly, stepping behind the curtain hanging over a fire escape window a few feet away. It wasn’t much protection; I didn’t think it would fool him if he looked around.

But he didn’t look. He shut the door, not bothering to be too quiet now, and started on down the hall. About halfway to the stairs he stopped. He used his key with the big tag and unlocked a door. He went inside. I could hear him locking the door.

I went to the room he had just left and tried the knob. He hadn’t relocked the door and it opened easily. I stepped in. The room was dark, and it had a bad smell. The smell was nothing tangible. It was more of an aura. The place felt wrong.

I got out my pencil flashlight and worked the beam along the floor, straight out ahead of me. All I could see at first was rug and typical hotel furniture. I moved farther into the room and started working the light in a circle. It reached the davenport and stopped. I had pinned down a shiny black shoe.

I walked to where I could see behind the davenport. The light moved up the shoe and along a bright yellow sock, past a trouser cuff, up a pair of gray gabardine slacks, yellow sport shirt, and finally to a fleshy neck. Before I focused the light on the face, I knew whom I would see.

Enrico Pachuco had died in pain. His sharp, hawked features were twisted in agony. His mouth hung open and I could see his teeth, even the gold inlays in three of them. His eyes were open too, and they stared emptily at me. In death he was no longer burly, no longer tough. He would never again talk gutter Spanish out of the side of his mouth, never again think he was a Latin Edward G. Robinson.

He would lie in the family plot beside his three brothers, who had died violent deaths, and there he would rot away.

I didn’t think I gave a damn, even if he had been my partner.

E
NRICO
P
ACHUCO
had been killed very quietly, very quickly. He had had a knife slipped between his ribs and into his heart.

The murderer had pulled the knife out and taken it away, but I could see a tiny dark stain on the side of Pachuco’s jacket, and I could see the tear made in the cloth. I knelt down and now I could see the reason for the pain on Pachuco’s expression.

One of his thumbs was mashed almost flat. It looked as if someone had put the thumb in a vice and then tightened down hard. I could also see the marks on Pachuco’s wrists and ankles where he had been tied. I lifted his head and saw the lump behind his ear.

I stood up, smoothed the rug where my knees had crushed the nap, and took a step backward. I had been worried about Nace having come in here, but now I felt better. Nace hadn’t had time to do a job like this on Pachuco, nor—I was sure—would he knock a man out, then tie his wrists and ankles and, finally, when he woke up, torture him.

I went to the body again and squatted down. Death had been quite recent, probably within the past two hours. The blood on Pachuco’s thumb was almost as fresh as that which came from the knife wound. I figured that he had been killed very shortly after he had been tortured.

I wondered what the thumb masher had wanted. I wondered if he’d found it.

I worked open Pachuco’s jacket and got my hand inside his pocket. I pulled out his wallet and looked longingly at the fat wad of mixed
pesos
and dollars. A lot of that money was profit made off me. But I left the money while I went through the card pockets. I found nothing out of the ordinary until I came to the little flap made to hold postage stamps. In it was a slip of paper. On the paper was a telephone number: Fronteras 3-4456, Mrs. N.

I put the slip of paper in my pocket, wiped off the wallet, and returned it to Pachuco’s pocket. I got up and began a search of the room.

I wasn’t the first to play this game. Someone—the murderer, I suspected, or perhaps Nace, had beaten me to it. Pachuco had been at the hotel for some time and he had accumulated a good deal of dirty laundry. It was scattered all over the floor of the closet. His dresser drawers had the contents all jumbled, and his two suits in the closet had been crumpled by searching hands.

I wondered if the hunt had taken place before or after Pachuco was tortured. I wondered if the searcher had found what he wanted.

And I wondered if what Pachuco had included information that I could have used to clear myself. Pachuco was a man who lived out of a suitcase. He was always on the move, for one reason or another. If he had written information telling what he had done to me, he would have carried it with him.

I realized that I was thinking of him as though he were still alive. I wished that he were. The end of Pachuco was probably the end of my hope of getting back what I had lost.

I was holding the desk blotter to the light to see if there was anything written on it when the sound of a door opening turned me around. The side door, connecting to the adjoining room, was opening. Light flooded in on me. I had a look at a shiny, dewlapped face, and at a shirt collar with reddish stains that looked as if they’d been made by flying spaghetti sauce.

Julio Ricardo Fulgencio Navarro came into the room, snapped on the overhead light, and shut the door behind him. For a big man, he had very small feet. He rocked heel and toe so violently that I expected him to lose his balance. He stopped rocking and looked from me to that piece of Pachuco he could see from where he stood.

“This is your room,
señor?”

I said, “My regrets. It is not.”

He frowned and pursed his lips. He took a few steps into the room. Now he was in a position to see all of Pachuco. He said, “It is his, perhaps?”

I said, “You should know. It’s your hotel.”

We could keep up this game all night, but I was getting tired of it. I said, “Maybe I heard a noise and came to investigate. The door was open and I entered. I found him thus.”

“Ah,” he said in the same voice he’d used to offer me brandy. “But your room is at the other end of the hall,
señor
Blane.”

I said, switching to English, “Checkmate. And now that you know my name, I assume you know a few other things too.”

He chuckled, and said, also in English, “I know that this man was your former partner.”

I said, “Were you expecting me,
señor
Navarro, or did you check up on me after I got to Rio Bravo?”

“Perhaps a little of both,” he said.

That was no answer, but I didn’t expect to get any more. I said, “Hadn’t we better call the
policia?”

“Is that wise?” His voice was so soft that I almost misunderstood him. “A dead man here. A man known to be his enemy also here.”

It wasn’t wise. Especially not in Mexico. The police here were often slow to make arrests, but when they did, the man arrested was expected to prove his innocence; it wasn’t up to the law to prove his guilt.

I said, “What do you suggest?” I was expecting him to name a figure. And if it was over what he usually chalked up as profits in an hour, I wouldn’t be able to pay.

He nodded toward the door he’d come through. “Let us leave this room. It is more pleasant elsewhere.”

We left. We went through the other room into the hall and down the stairs and to the rear of the hotel where Navarro had a suite of rooms next to his office. He was right; it was definitely more pleasant. I sat in an easy chair. Navarro chose the davenport. He lit a Havana cigar. I satisfied myself with a cigaret.

He said, “And now I wish to know why you are here.”

I had the feeling that he already knew a good deal of my business. I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m on a case.”

He lifted his eyebrows when I stopped. I remained stopped. He said, “I realize you do not wish to violate a client’s confidence, but in a situation of this kind….”

I said, “Sorry.”

He sighed. “Then I shall tell you. Mrs. Norton, the charming lady you were interested in tonight, today flew to Mexico City and hired you to come here. This is correct?”

“You’re warm,” I said.

He knew American slang too. He said, “I am hot.” He rubbed his hands together and threw one out toward the rug as if he might be tossing dice. He was very gay about the whole affair. “A natural!” His laughter bubbled in his throat like a happy geyser.

He said, “And she asked that you spy on me.”

I said, “Snakeyes.”

He frowned. “You refuse to admit this to me?”

I said, “No. She didn’t mention you.”

“You will tell me what she did not say, but you will not tell me what she did say. Is this correct?”

“Substantially,” I agreed.

He tapped a well manicured nail against a tooth. He said, “You have a strange kind of ethics, Mr. Blane.”

I knew what he was getting at. I also knew that I had only a slim chance of getting him to understand my position. But since he had me in an obviously ugly position, I figured that the chance was worth taking.

I said, “You think it’s strange that I’d hold a client’s business confidential and at the same time be the kind of bastard the newspapers made me out to be.”

He said dryly, mocking me, “Substantially that is what I think.”

I said, “It so happens that I wasn’t involved in that deal of Pachuco’s.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I would enjoy hearing your defense.”

I wouldn’t enjoy making my defense, but I saw nothing else to do. I said, “Pachuco was great for rustling up work, even when the firm didn’t need any. He located the job that started all the trouble.”

I lit another cigaret from the butt of the first. I said, “In Mexico, there are many refugees, particularly in the capital. Mexico is very hospitable and it lets in people of all types, especially if they claim political persecution.”

Navarro said, “I am aware of this about my country.” He didn’t say whether he approved or disapproved of the policy.

I said, “So when Pachuco found this group of refugees who felt they needed protection, it seemed only logical. I agreed that we take the job of checking to see if there was anyone from their own countries here bent on exterminating them. I was busy and so Pachuco handled the job by himself.”

He tapped his tooth again. “As I understand it, investigation showed that there were no threats to these people, yet your firm took money they could ill afford to spend, claiming that such threats did exist.”

I said, “That’s right. Pachuco faked the whole deal. When I found it out, we had words.” I rubbed my knuckles. “We also dissolved our partnership. But by that time, he’d taken not only their money but their valuables as security against what they supposedly owed us. When the police found out what was going on, I was selling my holdings to get the money to repay the people.”

Navarro said, “Perhaps I was wrong,
señor
Blane. Your ethics are not strange, they are merely unusual.”

I said, “Unfortunately, Pachuco was less naive than I. When the police closed in, he was already well out of the affair. He had not only left the firm, he’d fixed the records to make it look as if I was behind the entire deal. He had the money he’d milked from those poor people and I had nothing but a falsified set of records which showed I’d got all that money except a small amount which he took as salary.”

“I do not understand why you did not lose your license,” Navarro said.

“It was suspended,” I explained. “But the fact that I was making restitution at the time the police came helped me get reinstated last month. The big trouble was, of course, that I didn’t report Pachuco when I first discovered what he was up to. The police claimed that if I was as innocent as I said, I would have reported him.”

“The point is well taken,” Navarro said, as if we were having an academic argument. “Why did you not report Pachuco?”

I said, “Hell, he was my partner. I told him I’d give him a chance to make restitution.”

“And instead, he left you with the sack empty.”

I translated that to myself, “If you mean he left me holding the sack, you’re right. Only it wasn’t empty. It was full of grief.”

He said, “I would like to accept your story. But even if I do, does it make a difference at the moment? Here we are, you and I, both aware that a man has been tortured and murdered. And both of us are also aware that this man was the one who ruined your reputation and your career, who caused you to sell your branch agencies and dismiss your carefully chosen staff and ….”

I said, “You can stop the obituary,
señor
Navarro, and tell me what you want.”

“A favor,” he said promptly. “Tomorrow, I wish you to report to Mrs. Norton.”

“About what?” I asked, trying hard to look innocent.

“About your business with her,” he said. His voice told me to stop playing games. “And in the course of the conversation you are to mention Pachuco—but not that he is dead—and you are to mention my name. Observe her carefully. I wish to know her reactions when you mention these names.”

His eyes had taken on a sleepy look but they weren’t missing much. I had to work to keep a blank look. I said, “And what if I go across the border and stay there.”

“In that case, I shall call our police,” he said cheerfully. “They will have no trouble in getting the cooperation of the Texas forces and receiving you at the border.”

I said, “It will be your word against mine that I was ever in Pachuco’s room.”

He just smiled. He didn’t have to answer that. After all, I had registered at his hotel where Pachuco was staying. And my connection with Pachuco filled a fat police file in Mexico City. Besides, he was Julio Ricardo Fulgencio Navarro, magnate of Rio Bravo or some such thing. I—I was a discredited private detective with a known grudge against the murdered man.

I said, “I’ll be back.”

He smiled more broadly. “I believe you. But to insure that you will, I shall arrange for you to have an escort.”

I said, “A bodyguard? No thanks.”

He ignored me. He left the room and was gone for nearly five minutes. When he returned, he had my “escort” in tow. She stood with hands on hips, surveying me. She said, “Hi.”

I said, “Hi,” and my voice sounded weak to my ears.

My “escort” was Arden Kennett, the eccentric dancer.