Puzzle for Pilgrims (16 page)

“Hello, Iris,” he said.

“Martin.” She ran to him anxiously.

“What happened, Martin?”

“I’ve been to see Johnson.”

“I know.”

Jake appeared in the bedroom door. He was in his shirt sleeves. His pants were supported by a bright pair of red and white embroidered suspenders.

“What’d he say, Martin?”

Martin ignored him and spoke as if he was talking to the air. “I told him I had outstanding debts that had to be settled. I made him see it was important. He says he might be able to get part of the money for me in a week.”

Jake’s lips stretched, showing the white teeth. “Attaboy.”

“You’re going to get your money.” Martin still didn’t look at him. “So you’ll oblige me by clearing out of here immediately. And don’t let us see your repulsive face again until it’s time to pay you off.”

Jake blinked. “Well, well,” he said.

Martin sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette. “I’ll phone you when the money’s ready. If you run low before then and ask very nicely, perhaps we’ll give you a peso or two for a beer. Now run along. I want to work.”

Jake put his hands on his hips and watched Martin with mock gravity. “Hark at him. Kind of high and mighty isn’t he, for a guy who cleaned up two million smackers by murdering his wife?”

“I don’t share your passion for being crude.” Martin’s voice was very quiet and English. “But you might get the drift of what I mean if I say you bore me. So put on your coat and clear out—if you own a coat.”

The clash between them was moving underneath a quiet surface. There was no physical threat in the air. Jake strolled to the couch. He sat down, his big thigh crowding Martin’s, intimately near.

“Hey, fellow, seems we got to get this straight. I’m not leaving. I like it here.”

Martin drew his knee away.

“Yeah, Martin. I like it here fine. If I moved out, I’d maybe move to the police station. Wouldn’t like to think of me doing that, would you?”

“If you go to the police,” said Martin,” I’ll tell them you tried to blackmail me for fifty thousand dollars.”

“You would?” Jake’s mouth drooped at the corners. “Then you and your sister and your girlfriend would be wanted for murder and I… Pretty easy to explain how I strung you along with a fake blackmail threat, isn’t it? What’s a little blackmail in Mexico anyway? After all, it was just a test. If you and your harem had been innocent, you wouldn’t have been willing to pay me.” He gestured with his hands, “You are willing to pay me. Okay, Martin.” He patted the boy’s stiff shoulder. “Feel like enjoying my company a little more now?”

Iris, her face white with distaste, said, “It’s no good, Martin. He’s got to stay if he wants to.”

Martin sat leaning forward, his arms balanced on his knees, looking down at the floor. He didn’t speak.

Jake patted his shoulder again and got up, grinning at Iris. “That’s it, Iris. One thing about women. They got more sense than men. Martin, Marietta and me’s going to get plenty fond of each other before we’re through. You too and Peter.”

He turned to me. He changed his attitude as if he were talking to a friend. “Peter, my boy, I’m sorry about dragging you in on this. After all, I know you’re as innocent as a lamb. But then, I figured you’d rather tag along, seeing that you’ve got an interest in the welfare of these two lovely ladies.”

“You mean I won’t turn you into the police because I know it’ll be Iris and Marietta who have to pay for it?” I asked.

“Something of the sort.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll stick around—even at the expense of having to look at you.”

He pouted. “Now, Peter, is that nice? Maybe it’s a plain mug, but the tomatoes go for it.” He winked at Iris. “Maybe it’s jealousy, Peter. Shouldn’t be jealous, you know. That’s not manly.”

He started rolling down the sleeves over his thick arms and buttoning them at the wrists. “Now we’ve brought up the subject of sticking together, I’m getting kind of fed-up with Mexico City.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. First place, this dump’s too small for the three of us. And there isn’t room for you and Iris. Mexico’s quite a city, too big. If we don’t stick together maybe some of us’ll get lost.”

“Meaning that Iris and I would take a powder?”

“Oh, no, Peter. I don’t think things like that about you. Deserting your friends? But… well, I figure we’d have a better time if we moved to a smaller place, somewhere we could all be together and be quite sure there’s no double-crossing going on until that money comes through.” He was looking at his square hands. The fingernails were rather dirty. “There’s a carnival starting in Veracruz. Know that?”

“No,” I said.

“Quite a carnival. Mexico’s Mardi Gras. The biggest thing in carnivals. I think we might all move down there, join in the festivities while we’re waiting for Mr. Johnson. How’s about that for an idea?”

I said, “Is this a command?”

Martin, his face dark with ferocity, got up and said, “We’re not going any damn place with you.”

Marietta had appeared at the kitchen door. She had taken off the apron. She stood there, leaning on the lintel. Her dark hair gleamed against the white woodwork. She was watching the back of Jake’s head with green, unfathomable eyes.

“Oh, yes, Martin,” she said, “we are going to Veracruz for the carnival. The louse says so. We have to do what the louse says.”

Jake swung round. His face was flushed. Marietta was the only one who could rile him.

She smiled at him, the sudden, Haven smile. “You don’t like being called louse, louse, do you? How much are you going to charge me? Fifty thousand a time?”

She pushed past him and went to Martin. She took his hand. “Martin, darling, don’t get angry. It’s no good. Life’s going to be hell anywhere so long as he’s around. Why not let it be hell in Veracruz?” She turned and looked at Jake. “Right, louse?”

They were standing close together. Their faces were close together. Marietta’s head was tilted upward. Her dark lips were half parted in a strange secret smile. It was almost as if her hatred was a kind of intimacy between them. The old discredited image came again of the two of them in Acapulco where they had never been together. I saw the two bodies on the beach. Jake flagrantly desirous, Marietta, hating, yet drawn to him like a doom. It hadn’t happened, I knew. And it couldn’t ever happen. Marietta couldn’t…

Jake was looking at her in silence. Suddenly his lips moved into a smile too. It was a smile of some sort of triumph. He said softly, “I don’t think it’s going to be hell for you in Veracruz, beautiful. I think you’re going to enjoy it.”

“You do?”

“I do.” He brushed past her to Martin. He said, “You can make arrangements to have the money sent to a Veracruz bank, can’t you? All it needs is a letter to Johnson.”

“I suppose so.”

Marietta was always an enigma to me, but usually Martin was open as a book. I could tell now that what was killing him was that his independence was being impinged upon. Whether he himself had murdered Sally or not made no difference. Jake had evidence at least to put him in prison. Jake had him where he wanted him. And never before in his life, with his train of adoring women, had Martin been dominated by someone else. Jake, with his intrusive masculinity and his subtle flick of the whip was the Enemy to him, as a tiger-tamer is the Enemy to a tiger fresh out of the jungle. Even his body was rebelling against him. Neither Iris nor I nor even Marietta was as dangerous to Jake as Martin. And he knew it.

He was watching Martin calmly. He murmured, “One thing, baby, we’d better get straight, one little thing. Just in case you’re getting ideas, I wouldn’t kill me if I were you. Know why?”

A shiver ran through Martin. He didn’t speak.

“No, baby. Don’t try to kill Uncle Jake because Uncle Jake doesn’t like being killed. Know what I did last night? Wrote a full report of the discovery of Sally’s body, including everything I noticed about the condition of the balcony. Not only that. A full report of Sally’s hiring me, too, and an outline of why she needed protection. Needless to say, I explained my reasons for suppressing evidence. I intended to use my position as your friend to trap the murderer. Oh, yes, there was a little pen picture of you and Marietta and Iris too. I wrote all that. Sent it to a Mexican lawyer I know in Taxco with quite simple instructions. Told him that if an accident or anything happened to me, he was to deliver the whole works to the Captain of Taxco Police.”

Martin just stood. I couldn’t tell whether he had been listening or whether he needed all his powers to keep his passion in check.

But I had listened. And I saw then that Jake had given the final closing tug to the net. Before, there had been that one desperate solution of killing him. Even that was gone now.

Marietta was still close to Jake. She said quietly, “The evidence Sally had against Martin and me… in the past. Did you send that to your lawyer friend too?”

“What d’you know?” exclaimed Jake. “There I go forgetting things again. No, beautiful. I got that right with me. Meant to hand Martin a sales talk on that little item. How much d’you suppose it’s worth? Ten thousand, maybe? But that’s something we can discuss later in Veracruz. No point in rushing things.”

“No,” said Marietta. “There isn’t.”

There was a bowl of tropical fruit on the side table. Jake strolled over and bit into a pomegranate. The juice, red as blood, stained his mouth.

“Well, folks. Guess everything’s fixed up, isn’t it? How’s about starting for Veracruz in an hour? That gives you plenty time to pack. And don’t worry about accommodations. Trust Jake. I reserved five rooms at the Colonial last night.”

I didn’t exactly understand why he wanted to move us to Veracruz. There was a reason, of course. There was always a reason behind anything he did. But I did know, of course, that we would have to go.

I said, “Come on, Iris. We’d better get started.”

She half turned to Martin. He didn’t seem to notice her.

Jake was saying, “Hey, Marietta. What is this place? A tavern? Do you have to order your drinks around here? How’s about a nice cool beer for Uncle Jake.”

As we left, I thought how Sally would have enjoyed this. Martin, Marietta, and Iris were the three people she had hated most in the world. All the evil she might have wished on them couldn’t have equaled this. She seemed so close that she was almost at my side. Tiny, with the heavy weight of blonde hair, the little restless hands, and the eyes sparkling with malice. I could almost hear that fight, pretty voice.

Really, Peter, this is worth being dead for.

Martin, Iris, and I were sitting in an outdoor cafe on the Zocalo, waiting for Marietta and Jake to come from the hotel. We had been in Veracruz five days, and the carnival was at its peak. Our table was on the edge of the seething sidewalk. Clusters of figures in tail-hooded black dominoes danced by through the blue evening fight, clutching each other and shrilling in the high, batlike twitter of the carnival. There were wild papier-mâché masks—masks with red, bulbous noses, masks with drawn, tragic mouths. Peasants from the country streamed past in bright traditional costumes. A huge man, dressed as a bride, paraded back and forth with a doll baby in his arms. He was moaning that he had been abandoned at the altar. The whole town had become a huge tropical aviary, alive with bird chatter and the dazzle of flashing colors.

The cafes stretched the full length of the garishly lit Zocalo, and the square was mad with sound. On the sidewalk three feet from our table, four Veracruzans in blinding white suits, with scarlet handkerchiefs knotted at their necks and bleached straw hats, were pounding a marimba. The instrument’s sad tinkle warred with the thunderous cacophony of drums from deeper inside the restaurant, where a band of half-naked boys were shaking and wriggling through a Cuban rumba. Everyone was laughing and shouting. A massive blonde, who might have been an American, was weaving through the tables, dancing with an imaginary partner and singing with tuneless shrillness. She was oblivious to everything. Her eyes were glazed in an alcoholic or morphine stupor. She had been doing it for three days. No one paid her any attention.

Streamers, yellow, red, blue, hissed through the air like flying serpents. They curled into people’s soup and twined around the legs of the harassed waiters running with trays of beer and shrimps. It was a real carnival, a people’s carnival, not a carnival for the newsreels.

For five days this insane gaiety had been our prison. We had lived through our hair-trigger relationships to the accompaniment of inebriated trumpets, full foreign laughter, and clouds of confetti. It had affected us profoundly. Even Jake was becoming jittery. He had kept us ceaselessly under observation, and I was beginning to see that he was afraid of us. Not afraid of anything we could do, because there was nothing we could do. But afraid, almost spiritually, of the constant and implacable hatred that he had brought into being.

The rest of us were changed too. A carnival can be faintly awe-inspiring at the best of times to an onlooker. For us, who were far from participants, it was almost sinister. In Mexico City, although I had known that either Martin, Marietta, or Iris must have murdered Sally, the real enormity of the crime of murder had not registered. Here it was different. After a few days, I became obsessed with the thought,
One of them is a murderer.

I watched them in a new way, with a kind of dread, waiting for a turn of the head, the movement of an eyelid, that might betray the guilt which had to be inside one of them.

I think Iris was feeling the same way. She was quiet, almost apathetic, hardly conscious of me. And Martin daily seemed less and less conscious of her. His almost sullen indifference was hard for her to bear, I knew. But then, Martin was changing more than any of us. He seemed to be retreating farther and farther into himself away from an existence he refused to lead. He didn’t write. He hardly ever spoke. He came alive only sometimes when Jake and Marietta were with us. Then he would watch Marietta for seconds on end with a blue, challenging fixity which was ominous.

For it was Marietta, more even than Jake, who had become the focus of our complex of emotions. Of the four of us, she was the only one who had not been defeated. On the surface she was much as she had always been, hauntingly beautiful, unresponsive, apart in some private dream. Sometimes she would walk away from us to spend hours sitting alone on one of the long, gray breakwaters that fingered out crookedly into the windy Gulf. Sometimes she would bring a cafe to life with a bout of sudden gaiety. She ignored me almost entirely. And, although she was always aware of Martin, she hardly ever spoke to him. Her whole orbit moved around Jake. When he wasn’t there, she watched for him with a green, patient gaze. When we were at a table, she always sat next to him. Her hand was always close to his on the cloth. And every now and then her eyes, intimate as lips, would linger on his brutal, handsome face.