Law of Return (14 page)

The guardias were greeted by Judge Otero, who presented them as a group to his son and granddaughter. Having observed the formalities, they melted into the crowd. The captain and his wife spotted acquaintances and went to speak to them. Sergeant Betances and Corporal Jiménez remained in a knot of people near Señorita Otero. Corporal Méndez was rapidly absorbed by a group of young soldiers who were dissecting the latest match of Madrid’s soccer club.

Lieutenant Tejada slowly circled the room, moving inconspicuously from one chatting group to another, occasionally exchanging tentative greetings with people who encountered his cool stare and wondered with embarrassment if they had met the officer somewhere before and were unintentionally snubbing him. Halfway through his circuit of the room he acquired a champagne glass and noted absently that the champagne was excellent. Snatches of conversation swirled around him. “. . . I told her it was impossible, but you know girls today. . . .” “. . . believe he scored an own goal! I was nearly sick on the floor!. . . .” “. . . Thank you, I bought it in Lisbon, last summer. . . .” “. . . No, we reopened the branch in Barcelona in October, but it’s not a good time to expand. . . .”

“. . . won’t last six weeks!” In the shadow of the double doors leading to the dining room, Tejada at last heard a voice he recognized, raised just a hair more loudly than necessary to drown out the other conversations. Eduardo Crespo was standing in a little knot of men, waving patterns in the swirls of cigar smoke to emphasize his point. The lieutenant wordlessly joined the group. Most of them were of Crespo’s generation, and all but one wore civilian evening dress. They moved aside amicably to give him room, each assuming that he knew one of the others. “The English don’t have a hope,” the lawyer continued. “They couldn’t pull out fast enough.”

There was a murmur of amused agreement, and then a slender, bearded man said with considerable belligerence, “I’m not disagreeing! I’m just saying that it’s naive to think we’ll get Gibraltar out of it.”

“Why not?” A balding man with glasses seemed to take the second speaker’s statement as a personal affront. “If they sign an armistice with Germany—” All of the men were now speaking as loudly as Crespo. Tejada wondered if they were slightly drunk or simply all lawyers.

“Why should the Germans do us any favors?” Another man spoke up to defend his bearded colleague.

“Any
more
favors, you mean.” The white-haired man whose uniform proclaimed him a colonel gave voice to Tejada’s thought.

“At any rate, it’s the end of the British Empire.” Crespo raised his voice again. “The Germans are invincible.” He caught sight of Tejada, and nodded sociably. “Good evening, Lieutenant. Nice to see you again.”

After waiting to see if Tejada wished to speak or was going to move away, Crespo began a hasty round of introductions. “I don’t believe you know Colonel Alarcón? And this is Señor Romero,” (nodding to the balding man), “Doctor Blanco,” (with a nod at the bearded man), “and Don Gabriel, Marqués de Torrenegra. This is Lieutenant Tejada.”

“A pleasure to meet you, gentlemen,” Tejada said, inspecting Crespo’s companions with interest. Those who were lawyers, he thought, might well have known Arroyo.

After a brief round of hand shaking and conventional nothings, the colonel smiled paternally at Tejada. “You must find our political debates rather dull.”

“Not at all.” Tejada was polite.

“But too much like business for a social occasion,” Señor Romero suggested with a smile.

Tejada smiled back, and deliberately misunderstood the statement. “Are you in politics?” he asked innocently.

“Me? Oh, no,” Romero looked half horrified and half embarrassed. “Nothing so important. I’m just a businessman, I’m afraid.”

“Not
just
a businessman.” Crespo was jovial. “One of our finest, Lieutenant. And one of my best clients.”

Señor Romero’s smile might have been false modesty or concealed fear. “No one with any right to express opinions about politics, I’m afraid.”

“If lawyers have the right to opinions, I agree with Crespo,” the marqués spoke up. “Germany must triumph.”

“Hear, hear.” The echoes of Doctor Blanco’s voice bounced off of the glass doors. “But I don’t know if the English—”

“England will surrender in six weeks,” Crespo repeated loudly, and Tejada noted that an empty glass was leaving a ring on the handsome sideboard beside the lawyer. “The Germans are invincible. Don’t you think so, Lieutenant?”

A strange trick of memory reminded Tejada of his boyhood when a serious young tutor had taught him the meaning of the word
invincible
. Don Leonardo’s real passion had been sixteenth-century history and he had done his best to impart his interest to Tejada and his older brother. But he had also been a conscientious and creative teacher, and had encouraged his charges to decipher newspaper headlines as reading exercises. The German troops Tejada had encountered during the war were still fresh in his memory. They had been well trained, well equipped, and well commanded. But the painfully decoded headlines of his childhood had left a deep impression. “
No,
Carlito, Portugal hasn’t sunk. Lusitania is the name of a ship
.” “I think,” he said slowly, “that the Germans are a good ally and a bad enemy. And that it’s bad luck to call any invader of England invincible,” he added.

Colonel Alarcón laughed. “How cautious! I don’t need to ask if you’re a betting man, Lieutenant!”

“I prefer sure things,” Tejada admitted. “It’s why I’ve never invested in stocks,” he added casually.

Señor Romero shook his head. “Another one! This is why it’s impossible to raise capital in Spain.”

“The Castilian temperament isn’t suited to finance,” the marqués reminded him, absentmindedly drawing a cigar case from his pocket and opening it. “Would anyone like one?” The invitation was clearly addressed to Tejada and Blanco. The others were already smoking. The lieutenant, who preferred cigarettes, declined politely, but Doctor Blanco leaned forward with alacrity.

“I’ve always heard that Castilians weren’t fiscally minded,” Tejada agreed as the lawyer struck a match. “But now and then I find myself proven wrong.” He turned to Eduardo Crespo. “Professor Arroyo, for instance. Did you know that he held shares in Banco Bilbao Vizcaya?”

“No, really?” Crespo was politely interested. “He dealt with the Basques? Typical of him, I suppose.”

Doctor Blanco blew a reproving smoke ring. “Come, now.
Nil
nisi de mortuis bene
. After all, the poor man didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

“Did you know him?” Tejada asked.

The lieutenant had tried to keep his voice casual, but there was a brief, tight silence after his words. Blanco’s voice was a little too careful as he answered, “Not well.”

“We were classmates,” Crespo amplified. “I told you no one who ever had Arroyo as a teacher ever forgot him.”

“Very true.” Don Gabriel raised one hand to signal one of the waiters bearing trays of hors d’oeuvres. As he did so, Tejada noticed that the ring on his smallest finger looked like a match to Doctor Crespo’s. For the first time, the lieutenant regretted that he had ignored the multiple fraternal societies that flourished at the university. An experienced fraternity man could probably identify the ring at a glance, he thought ruefully. Or a classics scholar, like Fernández, I suppose.

There was an awkward pause, as the marqués nibbled at a sliver of cheese. Then Doctor Blanco, with a gesture that spilled a few ashes from his cigar, said loudly, “These are excellent, Don Gabriel.”

The marqués swallowed. “Havanas.” He was succinct.

“Of course.”

There was another pause during which Tejada considered whether and how to ask Don Gabriel what he thought of Manuel Arroyo’s writings on Cuba. Before he could frame a suitable question, a lady in black silk appeared beside Colonel Alarcón and tapped him on the arm with her fan. “There you are, dear. Señora Díaz has been asking to meet you.”

“I wouldn’t wish to snub her,” the colonel replied. He turned apologetically to the little group. “If you’ll excuse me. . . .”

The colonel’s departure sent little eddies through the group. Shortly afterwards Señor Romero murmured an excuse and drifted away and the remaining men soon followed his example. Tejada strolled aimlessly, reflecting as he did so that one of the drawbacks of his job was that it was impossible for him to socialize with most of the people who he met in a professional capacity, and that he had precious little time for unrelated social events.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully, and from Tejada’s point of view, unprofitably. He met no one else who had known Manuel Arroyo, or at least no one else who admitted to knowing him. The food was good, and the company polite enough, but the lieutenant was relieved when the guardias finally took their leave and he stepped out into the cool, quiet stillness of Salamanca after midnight. Captain Rodríguez and his wife had left somewhat earlier, sharing a cab with friends. The remaining guardias walked down the Calle San Pablo toward the post, automatically falling into patrol formation as they trod the silent streets.

Tejada drew a long breath and expelled it upwards, clearing his lungs of the heat and smoke of the Oteros’ party. He could just make out the stars of Orion’s belt rising behind the buildings. Somewhere, several streets over, a horse-drawn carriage clattered along, the clop of the horse’s hooves loud in the silence.

“Well,” said Sergeant Betances, “that was a very pleasant evening.”

Betances’s voice was still pitched to carry above the constant hum of conversation at the party, and it grated on the lieutenant’s nerves. He said nothing, hoping for silence. His wish was not granted.

“Wonderful!” Jiménez agreed fervently. “I mean, that elegant house, and meeting everybody who’s anybody in Salamanca, and Judge Otero being so gracious and everything.”

Tejada felt a flicker of interest. “Did you speak much to Judge Otero?” he asked. “I only did when he presented us to his granddaughter.”

“Well,” Jiménez flushed, but the dim light protected him from discovery, “so did I. But such a gesture of trust, to introduce us to Señorita Otero! I mean bringing up a young lady like that, her family must be very careful about who she meets.”

Only everybody who’s anybody in Salamanca, Tejada thought. Jiménez might well be slightly drunk, or sleepy, or both; it would have been unfair to mock his befuddlement in such a condition.

Corporal Méndez laughed. “Forget it, son,” he advised Jiménez. “Eugenia Otero’s not for the likes of us.”

“More’s the pity,” Betances agreed, good-natured but rueful. “She’s a real beauty.” “She is, isn’t she?” There was a certain rapt note in Jiménez’s voice. “Don’t you think so, sir?” He had intended to ask for confirmation from Tejada, but the lieutenant was pondering his conversation with Crespo and his associates, and did not immediately reply.

Sergeant Betances filled the silence. “Yeah. A Velázquez,” he said, nodding.

Tejada blinked at the name, and remembered that he had not asked Arturo Velázquez anything about Arroyo’s holdings in pharmaceutical companies. “Do you think foreign companies pay dividends in pesetas?” he murmured, wondering if the doctor might also hold shares.

“I don’t think so,” Corporal Méndez said at the same time. “Not if Velázquez is the one with the long necks.”

“That’s El Greco,” Betances informed him loftily.

The sergeant’s emphatic correction put a damper on conversation and Tejada, who was tired, allowed his thoughts to skitter randomly, like waterflies on the surface of a pond. The cliché was truer in Eugenia Otero’s case than in most, he thought. The judge’s granddaughter did have something of the polished, photographic beauty of Velázquez’s
meninas
. He wondered idly what painter’s work Elena Fernández might be compared to. Not a Murillo: although she did have something of his Madonnas’ dark beauty, she lacked their softness. Not Zubarán.
Goya
, Tejada decided with satisfaction. Proud, and secret, and completely composed, no matter what.

“But it’s not just that she’s pretty.” Jiménez broke in on Tejada’s reverie, sounding a little defensive. “She’s very . . . very gentle, and innocent. Young,” he added, from the lofty height of his two decades.

“Unlike you?” Méndez challenged good-naturedly.

“She hasn’t seen much of the world.” Jiménez was painfully serious. Flushing half with embarrassment and half with pleasure he added, “She asked me if I’d ever killed anyone. I didn’t know what to say.”