Dress Her in Indigo (9 page)

Collapsed a row of flats and they burned. And I held two screaming tots, one after the other, on my lap, charred little things, trying to pop morphine into them before they died. Managed with one and didn't with the other. Dreadful stench. Total pointlessness. Walked all night, said odd things. They put me off to rest. I was expected to pick up the loose ends of my life and start over, somehow. Do good works. But there were no loose ends, lamb. And I had a bellyful of good works.

"So one makes an accounting of sorts. I had, God knows, money enough, and time, and a strong body. And I was in a world that charred tots, and I wanted no more of it. What I had most adored with Robin was all the lovely free marital fornication. Never could get enough. He used to say I had great natural talent. So I vowed solemnly, ducks, to be come the jolly best piece of Anglo-Saxon ass in all Christendom. It is sad and remarkable that people really know so little about it. They sort of fumble about and trust to luck. I knew 'that all I had to work with was my body. I had to keep it as enticing as possible, because one must arouse intense desire, or the game is lost before it is begun, what? I haven't changed an inch or a pound in twenty years, my dear. I stay on the most strict routine of diet and exercise. And I go twice a year to a Swiss clinic for hormone balance, and there is a clever little Japanese doctor in California who does clever little operations when they're needed. To know how to use the body, one must go to Yoga.

God, how I labored, and then suddenly it fell into place. I have absolute and independent control now of every muscle in my body, even all those reactions that are supposed to be involuntary responses to erotic stimulus. And all this time, my dear, I was studying all the books on the arts of love that I could find. Hindu, Arabic, Ancient Egyptian. I am now a repository of all that learning and skill. And I know some astonishing things, luv. It is a responsibility, actually.

I had to learn a great deal about anatomy, neurology, glandular functions, all that. So you see what's in store, my good man? You've had a taste. And now I shall destroy you, bit by delicious bit. Because you shall respond again and again after you are quite certain you are finished. I need merely do some odd thing like... this?"

And as I was tumbled back into my role of awed participant in the second strenuous, virtuoso performance, I realized I had come upon a prime example of that uniquely English-phenomenon, the true eccentric. Some of them build cathedrals out of bits of matchstick. , Some of them count the number of stalks of hay in the average haystack. Some write a hundred letters a week to the London Times. Some catalogue all the birds in fifty meadows. They are all quite mad, but do not know that they are mad, since they find a socially acceptable outlet for their monomania. This woman had been driven mad in a mad war, and had retained one little ledge of sanity and built the rest of the structure of her life upon it. But I could not carry my realizations any further, because something hitherto unknown had begun to happen, and it felt as if my head were starting to fry at the hair roots. I thought I heard her laughing, but then all I could hear in some far corner of the most primitive part of my mind, was myself roaring, atavistic and lonely.

There was another time of respite when, halfheartedly, I asked about Bruce Bundy and Rockland. She told me that they had met on the veranda of the Marques del Valle many weeks ago, and that Bruce knew Rockland had let himself be picked up. Bruce had told her that Rockland was not exactly inexperienced. He had then begun to ask Bruce to lend him money.

Some large amount. Ten or fifteen thousand. It was to be some sort of investment scheme.

Rockland had hinted that it was illegal but quite safe. He would double Bruce's money. He then got very surly when Bruce said he would not cash in perfectly good securities in order to lend money to an animal off the streets. Then apparently Rocko had to leave the trailer park. Bruce let him bring the truck and camper and put it in the shed beyond his wall where Bruce garaged his little English Ford. There was room for both. He had moved into Bruce's house on an apparently permanent basis. But he had spent Thursday, the last day of July, away from the house all day and a good part of the evening. When he came back he had asked Bruce to lend him a smaller amount. Three thousand or even two. When Bruce refused, Rockland had accepted it too calmly. In the small hours of Friday morning, Bruce had heard the distant sound of Rocko trying to start his truck. Bruce put his robe on and hurried out. She said Bruce had taken something out of the motor and hidden it. Rocko got out of the truck and tried to hit Bruce. But Bruce had won some sort of belt for some sort of way of fighting, and he kept in splendid shape, and so he had hit Rocko and knocked him unconscious, but when he fell he had hit his nose on the stone floor and bled, and it had made Bruce ill. When Rocko could walk, feeling very weak and shaky, Bruce had helped him into the house and into bed, and then he had gone back and searched the truck and found his little Picasso bronzes, and the solid gold amulets from Yucatan, and the prints and drawings by famous Mexican artists, and some of his better silverware.

Out of an increasingly hazy state, I interrupted her at this point in her narrative to ask her what she was doing.

"Dearest, don't tighten up like that. Trust your Becky. There. Turn just a little bit more this way.

That's a dear. This will rest and relax you. It's something Japanese women used to know,
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thousands of years ago. Just don't think about me. Don't think about anything. Just let your mind drift."

So, though curious, it was restful, relaxing, soothing. It was indeed. For quite a while. And then it began to have quite another effect. And when that effect was sufficiently and unmistakably evident, Lady Rebecca Divin-Harrison swung triumphantly and exuberantly aboard, with spurs, whip, checkrein, and posted tirelessly and happily across the endless moors.

I lay dead, yet managed to say, "Then what happened?"

"Weren't you paying attention?"

"I mean to Bruce and Rockland."

"No, dear, I've told you too much. No more for now. I shouldn't have told you a bloody thing, you know."

"Then I think I am going to sleep."

"Really? Really?... Really?"

"Cut it out, Becky. Whatever ancient rite that happens to be, cut it out. Because it is not going to do any good. Look. I am not ashamed to admit I'm finished. All done. I haven't got any desire at all to set any records. And I don't feel any childish urge to prove anything to anybody. Okay? I have to go to sleep, Becky."

"Yes, darling. I agree. Utterly. I've quite finished you off, poor darling."

"Then stop."

"Don't writhe away from me like that. It is awfully impolite. Travis, darling, let me just prove to both of us that we are both absolutely correct, that there is nothing more you can possibly contribute to the evening."

"It's been proven."

So she hummed to herself. She kept busy. Adjust spark and coil. Hop out and run around to the radiator and try the hand crank. Thumb out of the way in case of backfire. Back to spark, coil, mixture. Prime carburetor. Crank again. What the hell is she humming? For God's sake, Roll Out the Barrel.

Should be humming Bless 'em All. Ancient engine catches, sputters, stops, catches again. And then, by God, settles into a deep-gutted roar. Hop behind the wheel, kick it into gear. And I once again enwrapped all that hot limber skill, endured her delighted chuckling, romped her onto her spring-steel spine, and tried in my endless, mindless, idiot frenzy to hammer her down through the damn silk sheets, down through the foam and springs, down through the carpeting and the tile and the beams and down into the deep black Mexican soil under the lovely and formal old house, where I could be buried without fanfare and sleep forever and ever and ever.

Six

MEYER WAS gone when I woke up at ten o'clock Saturday morning. When I came out of the shower he was sitting on his bed with a bright red flower tucked behind his ear, beaming at me.

"I heard you come in," he said. "Just after daylight. I think I should say I heard you come tottering in. I never heard so much heavy sighing. You sounded like a leaky truck tire."

I pulled my shorts up and turned and said, "I never noticed what really nasty little blue eyes you have, pal."

"What happened after I left?"

"Poor David passed out and was promoted to the status of houseguest."

"Make a note that I am not astonished."

"And I went to Lady Rebecca's house with her for a nightcap."

"Again, no surprise. And then?"

I sat on my bed to rest up a little. "I gathered a few bits of information about Rockland which I shall shortly impart to you, Meyer. I do not make a practice of discussing a lady. I just wish to tell you that the few bits of information were earned."

Bland astonishment. "Really, old chap? Why, to look at the lady, I should have thought her a jolly amusing romp, what? All slap and tickle. Good earthy sport, what?"

"If I had the strength, I swear, I would reach over and hit you right in the mouth, dear friend."

He faked sudden comprehension. "Aha! Oh! Like that, eh? It wasn't because it was distasteful, eh? You mean that she was tasteful and somewhat on the demanding side, old man?"

"Meyer, believe me, I will never try to explain it to you or describe it to you. I do not want to think about it. Here is what you do for me. Some day, two or three years from now, hire the most luscious, unprincipled, hot-blooded wench you can find. Have her strip down and sneak aboard the Flush and climb into the master's bunk with the sleeping master. Then you wait outside. If you hear an ungodly thump, it will be her girlish rump bouncing off the deck after I kick her out of bed. When you hear that thump, take the girl away, wait a year, and try again."

"Is this the McGee talking?"

"McGee, the misogynist. From now on, buddy, every broad in the world is going to look as enticing as a rubber duck. I would rather have one handful of cold mashed potato than two handsful of warm young mammalian overdevelopment."

"Did you get too much sun yesterday.?"

"Just help me through the day, Meyer. Help me and shut up. Catch me when I start to wobble.

Keep me out of drafts. Order me good nourishing food and get me to bed early. Now get me up that hill to the dining room."

At breakfast I told him about the Rocko-Brucey affair, as much as I knew of it. We agreed it fit
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with Bruce Bundy's asking us in when I used Rockland's name on him. He had to know if Rockland had devised some way to make him unhappy and-had sent us around to set him up.

Meyer worried at it, hairy dog with an old meatless bone. "Then we go another step. Bundy had to believe Rocko could make trouble."

"It begins to look," I said, "as if Rockland knew just how to make trouble for people. I think the hotel covered up the ugly truth with those hints about theft. I think he was scavenging the older lonely ones. Hustling them. Setting them up with pot, hustling them with sex, male and female, and then putting the squeeze on."

"So a type like that comes to Mexico in a truck and camper? Roughing it?"

"Bix drew out part of the money before they left. She drew out the balance from Mexico.

Twenty Isn't a bad score."

"If he knew she had it," Meyer said.

"And he could lever it out of her easier out of the country. But we have to find one of the others to find out what went on, dammit. Either Rockland himself or the musician or the sculptor or the other girl."

At this stage of the game it seemed to be a good Idea to split up. Meyer acquires people as easily as a hairy dog picks up burrs. He smiles and listens carefully, and the little blue eyes gleam with good humor and personal interest. He says the right things at the right time, and surprisingly often the random stranger tells him things he wouldn't tell a blood relative or a psychiatrist. No bore, no matter how classic, ever manages to bore Meyer. It is a great talent, to be forever interested in everyone.

We agreed that the best thing to do would be for me to drop Meyer downtown and then go off and see what I could learn at Eva Vitrier's place. I got lost twice in the Colonia district before I located Avenida de las Mariposas. A man driving a delivery truck helped me locate the home of Eva Vitrier.

It was an estate, enclosed by a high stone wall. The morning sun shone through the shards of glass of the ten thousand broken bottles cemented into the top of the wall. I found a vehicle gate, double-chained and locked. I rattled the gate and hollered, to no effect. I could look through the bars at a curve of driveway paved with brick, disappearing into the trees and plantings, but I could see no part of any building inside the compound. I located the main pedestrian entrance, a solid and massive door of ancient wood, iron-studded. There was a bell button set into the recessed stone beside the door. No one answered.

Around the corner, on a narrower street, I found a smaller wooden door and, beyond it, a double door which could open wide enough for* a goodsized truck. I pushed another bell button by the smaller door and heard a distant ringing. As I was trying it for the third and last time, a hinged square set into the door swung open and a broad, bronze, impassive Indio face looked out at me.

I asked for the senora. He said she was not there. I asked when she would be back. He said he could not know. Tomorrow? Oh, no. Maybe many weeks, many months, maybe a year. Where is she, then? One does not know. Who does know? One must ask el Senor Gaona. Who is he? He
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is the lawyer of the senora. Where is he? In his office, doubtless. Where is his office? It is in the city. In this city? Where else? On what street is his office? It is on Avenida Independencia. What number? One cannot say. It is near the corner of Avenida Cinco de Mayo.

As I started to thank him, he slammed the little opening. It startled me. A rude Mexican is a great rarity.

I had to wait fifteen minutes before Senor Alfredo Gaona y Navares could see me. I waited on a rump polished wooden bench in a musty ten-by-ten office dominated by a large old lady at a large old typing desk, operating a machine that looked as if Mark Twain had invented it. At last two women in black came out of the inner office, arms around each other, sobbing soffly. I was directed to go in.