Seven Lies South

22

The windows of Don Julio’s office faced the small busy plaza in the center of Mirimar. The green shades were drawn against the village scenes now, the traffic, the promenaders, and the clusters of people on the terrace of the Bar Central, but they did not filter out the sounds of nighttime noises and excitements; lottery vendors were screaming their numbers, dogs yelped for bits of food at café tables, and taxis and trucks and private cars clattered past the administration building, horns soaring righteously and indignantly above the din of the village.

Don Julio’s office was small and tidy, and contained a simple, uncluttered wooden desk, several straight-backed chairs, and two filing cabinets placed on either side of the window. A tinted portrait of Generalissimo Francisco Franco hung behind Don Julio’s desk, and it seemed to Beecher that the General was staring directly into his eyes, with an expression of serene disapproval.

Beecher had completed his statement, but Don Julio had made no comment on it as yet; he sat motionless behind his desk, in a thoughtful, distant mood, frowning faintly at the light playing around the rim of his coffee cup. There was a third man present, Don Julio’s assistant, a gravely polite officer named Jorge Caldus, who wore a black suit and a black tie, and sat erectly in his chair, with his sad dark eyes fixed on a point about a foot above Beecher’s head.

The office was close and warm, but mildly fragrant with the aroma of coffee and tobacco smoke. The silence was oppressive; there was a strained quality to it, as if it might snap as suddenly and abruptly as a wire stretched beyond its breaking point. An old-fashioned pendulum clock hung beside the picture of Franco, and its measured ticking seemed to grow louder with each swing of the shining brass weight, underscoring and intensifying the heavy, still silence. The light from a naked bulb danced and gleamed across the brass buttons on Don Julio’s uniform. The reflections bothered Beecher, and he shifted his position to get away from them, but this didn’t help matters; the lights continued to splinter and sparkle against his eyes. He felt tired and grimy and just a bit uneasy; he had been prepared for anything but silence.

Don Julio cleared his throat and got to his feet. He paced the floor for a moment or so, hands clasped behind his back, and a faint frown tightening the lines in his strong handsome face. Finally he sat on the edge of his desk, and stared down at Beecher. “So that is your story,” he said. “You have forgot nothing, omitted nothing?”

“That’s it,” Beecher said. “Everything.”

“In that case, there are some things which puzzle me. The truth itself is often puzzling, you know, but if I am to accept this—” He hesitated, apparently searching for a word. “Well, let us say, if I am to accept this marvelous story, I must ask for a bit more clarification. Supposing we go over your account point by point, and see if we can’t clear up certain things which I now find unlikely or illogical.” Don Julio hesitated again, then smiled at Beecher, politely but cynically. “Earlier, I phoned to Madrid, and reported that a survivor from the missing Iberia plane would be in my custody tonight. And so, officials from our Intelligence staff, and from the Guardia Civil are on their way to Mirimar now.” Don Julio glanced significantly at the old-fashioned clock on the wall. “In an hour or so, I will give them my opinion of your statement, and then, for practical purposes, the investigation will be out of my hands. So you understand that it will be best all around if there are no puzzles or contradictions in your story.”

“Yes, of course,” Beecher said, and put a cigarette in his mouth. “But what is it that puzzles you?”

Don Julio took a lighter from his pocket, snapped it, and extended the flame to Beecher’s cigarette. “Let us begin, tritely but logically, at the beginning. The late Don Willie offered you a job in Rabat. We will start at that point. You two were not friends. I remember your telling me of several disagreeable arguments with him in the past. Now considering this, didn’t it occur to you that his offer was a bit strange?”

“Well, not particularly. He needed an American who spoke Spanish. I met those requirements.”

“Yes, of course. So you were not curious or suspicious?”

“No.”

“Very well. Next you had two unpleasant encounters with the Frenchman, whose name was Maurice Camion. You have just given me an explanation for his resentment of you, but at the time of the attacks you had no notion of why he disliked you. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t ask him for any explanation?”

Beecher hesitated; it was a small point surely, but the fact that Don Julio considered it significant made him stop and think about it. “No, I didn’t,” he said at last.

“That’s rather curious. A man whom you’ve never seen before attacks you verbally and physically. He bears you some grudge, obviously.” Don Julio shrugged. “A fancied slight? Mistaken identity? In your position, I would have demanded an explanation. But you were satisfied to leave the mystery unsolved. Weren’t you interested?”

“He was drunk both times I saw him. He didn’t like Americans. I assumed...” Beecher hesitated again, considering not only his answer, but Don Julio’s interest in it. “Well, I just assumed I rubbed him the wrong way.”

Don Julio smiled pleasantly. “If you had said rubbed him out the wrong way, I might have made one of those brilliant deductions which story-book detectives are always provided with.”

“But I didn’t,” Beecher said. He found Don Julio’s light touch irritating. “Maybe I should have been more curious about the Frenchman. But I wasn’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“Is it?” Don Julio’s smile was mildly sarcastic. “I’m relieved, in that case. Now we will take up the young woman from Canada, Laura Meadows, who, in the old-fashioned phrase, threw herself at your head. She was the factor which impelled you to decide to go to Rabat. You weren’t skeptical of her almost instant infatuation with you?” Don Julio raised an eyebrow. “No warning bell tolled through the dark seas of romance?”

“I’ve told you the complete, literal truth,” Beecher said, putting his cigarette out with an angry twist of his hand. “It may make me sound stupid and vain and insensitive, but that’s the way it happened. Look. Have you heard anything about her?”

“You mean Laura Meadows? The blonde young woman who disappeared so mysteriously with the desert nomads?” Don Julio’s manner was polite and serious, but Beecher flushed at his elaborately sarcastic choice of words.

“Goddammit, if you think I’m lying, say so,” he said.

Don Julio said quietly, “There has been no report of her from Interpol, or from the bureaus of the Moroccan or Algerian police.”

“Does that mean I’m lying?”

Don Julio shrugged. “No, of course not. But it means there is no official corroboration for your story. Let’s go on. We are making progress. Certain things are beginning to seem clearer to me.”

Beecher sighed and put another cigarette in his mouth. Laura hadn’t got to Goulamine; she hadn’t got to Goulamine; she hadn’t got anywhere. She was still somewhere in the bitter, endless desert, paying off her extravagant debt to the two wandering Arabs. Eventually they would sell her into the harem of some primitive pasha. Eventually... she’d do fine in a harem, he thought. Kidding the pasha along at night, and driving his other wives wild with intrigues. But he couldn’t see this as the end to her. She was as tough and resilient as a hard rubber ball. And the men she played with were all thumbs. They wouldn’t be able to catch and hold her; she’d bounce free somehow...

“Mike, please! I asked you a question.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why did you agree to fly Don Willie’s plane? Why didn’t you say no?”

“Because they had a gun at my head.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“No, I wanted to pay them back for what they’d done to me. I thought I’d get a chance if I went along.”

“Well, you haven’t done badly,” Don Julio said, smiling faintly. “You’re alive, and the rest of them are dead. But it’s this fact which makes your story difficult to prove. The Frenchman is dead, and the Iberian pilots are dead, and Lynch, the Englishman is dead, everyone is dead. The list is long, isn’t it?”

“You’re forgetting Ilse.”

“No, I haven’t. I wanted to hear your story first. Jorge, you will go to the Quita Pena and bring the young woman here. You know her?”

“Yes, Don Julio.” Jorge came quickly to his feet, with an alertness that suggested a formal salute. When he had gone, Don Julio strolled to the windows and stood there with his back to Beecher. He pushed the blind aside and looked out into the street. A light misting rain was falling now. Beecher heard the soft drizzle against the windowpanes.

“Very unseasonal,” he said. “Turismo will deny it. They’ll say it was spray from a boat blown ashore by a freak wind.”

“They are very zealous. But they lie in a good cause. Would you like another cup of coffee?”

“No thanks.”

Don Julio turned away from the windows and sat on the corner of his desk, one booted foot swinging slowly and rhythmically. He regarded Beecher with a curious smile. “Something about you interests me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You seem somewhat different from my old companion who enjoyed idle talk and good sherry. I don’t know what it is. Let me put it this way: if I knew that you were my enemy I wouldn’t consider it a light matter. And another thing, if you’ll forgive me, you don’t look quite so American as you did a week or so ago. Perhaps it’s because you’re tired. This is strange in an American. Most of them look as inexhaustible as children. But I’m on a tangent. Now the plane. You could find it? Direct a pilot there? You remember the location?”

Beecher closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “I remember,” he said. He could see the clearing in his mind, the stunted date palms twisting under hot sullen winds, and the desert stretching out to infinite horizons. And he saw the silver flash of Laura’s head in the moonlight, and the pain in Lynch’s eyes, and the rank sweat of death on his forehead. “I remember,” he said quietly.

“And this crate of documents you spoke of? It is on the plane? That is definite?”

“Yes. It would have been too much trouble to bring it along.”

“Still, I wish you had. I play at speculation for amusement, but as a policeman I must work with things I can touch and feel and weigh in my hands. It would be reassuring now, for instance, if this crate of yellowing documents were resting on my desk. I would enjoy looking through the papers, rubbing the dust with my fingertips, examining dates and so forth.” He smiled. “Are you disappointed at this literal streak?”

“You’ll have the chance to rub the dust with your fingers. Don’t worry about that. The box is on the plane.”

“I’m not worrying. That isn’t my function. Let me ask you a question: supposing our roles were reversed in some miraculous fashion, what do you imagine you would think of this story you’ve been telling me? What is one of the first things which might occur to you?”

“I don’t know.” Beecher shrugged. “I’d probably decide it was pretty damned fantastic.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“Think a minute. If you had freely joined forces with Don Willie, if you were a partner in his scheme, can you imagine a more effective story than the one you have just told me?”

“You mean it would make a nice alibi?”

“Something of the sort.”

Beecher smiled. “Wait until you talk to Ilse.”

“But — Don Julio leaned forward and touched Beecher gently on the shoulder with the tip of his finger. “But Ilse doesn’t know whether or not your were a willing or unwilling partner in Don Willie’s fantastic plans.”

“She knows I wasn’t involved at all.”

Don Julio crossed his arms. “How does she know that?”

“Because I told her—” Beecher stopped abruptly, as if Don Julio’s question was a wall he had stumbled against; he shook his head slowly, conscious of an almost physical sense of shock.

“You told her,” Don Julio said amiably. “Of course you did. Which leaves us, finally, with only your word supporting the story you’ve told me.”

Beecher felt unpleasantly trapped; everywhere he turned stood the bars of the policeman’s logic. “There’s the plane, the box of documents,” he said. “And Lynch’s body.”

“Yes, all these things are true,” Don Julio said, and his manner was that of a professor encouraging a student in the pursuit of logic. “I believe in the plane, and the documents, and the body of the Englishman. But these things would be just as true whether you were deceived by Don Willie, as you maintain, or whether you were working freely with him for your own profit. The question is: can I believe in you?”

Beecher sighed wearily. “I’m glad our roles aren’t reversed.”

The door opened then and Jorge came hurrying into the office. “She isn’t there,” he said to Don Julio and his eyes were bright with excitement. “She is definitely not at the Quita Pena.”

Don Julio looked thoughtfully at Beecher. “Well, you have had an explanation for everything else. What do you make of this development?”

Beecher stood up slowly. “She’s got to be there.” He stared from Don Julio to Jorge. “What are you talking about? I left her there not more than half an hour ago.”

“Perhaps that is so. I don’t know.” Jorge shrugged politely. “She is not there now. This I do know. I looked along the terrace, in the bar, at the tables in the back room. The waiters do not remember her. She is definitely not at the Quita Pena.”

“Maybe — maybe she went to buy cigarettes or something.” Beecher wet his dry lips. He felt suddenly confused and apprehensive: it was as if the ground had shifted abruptly under his feet. “You can find her,” he said to Don Julio.

“You seem quite confident of my abilities.”

“Goddammit, are you just going to stand here?” Beecher asked angrily. “She’s in the village, I tell you. People don’t disappear like phantoms.”

“Come! There is no need to shout.” Don Julio walked to the windows. “I like that phrase you just used. People don’t disappear like phantoms, wasn’t that it? I agree completely.” He pulled the shade down an inch or so, then released it; the shade shot up, snapping about the roller. “Please direct your attention to the terrace of the Bar Central,” Don Julio said. “Do you wonder that I find your story incredible?” Beecher looked through the misting rain. Cars and trucks rattled past, and an old woman was running heavily toward the doorway of a shop with a newspaper held above her head. Suddenly Beecher felt as if a huge hand had closed around his heart, squeezing life and breath from his body. He shook his head incredulously, and caught hold of the window with a tight, straining grip.

“Good God!” he said, in a thick, hoarse voice.

Don Willie was sitting alone at a table near the front of a terrace, a bottle of beer before him, and one of his huge German shepherds crouched attentively at his feet. He wore a black raincoat, with a yellow scarf knotted about his throat, and when he smiled up at a waiter bringing him change, his round red face looked as blankly cheerful as that of a Halloween pumpkin. As Beecher stared at him, still shaking his head helplessly, Don Willie collected his change and walked from the terrace, strolling without haste toward the little street which ran down to his villa. The big dog trotted at his heels, its black head swinging alertly from side to side. Don Willie proceeded down the plaza with an air of approachable majesty, exchanging an occasional smile or nod with men and women huddling in doorways out of the rain. He stopped and talked briefly with the owner of a wine shop, who was looking anxiously at the dark sky. Then he strolled on, a massive black figure in the glow of the street lamps, hands clasped behind his back, and his manner suggesting a stern but kindly bürgermeister parading through his tranquil kingdom on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.

Don Julio put a hand on Beecher’s shoulder. “He hasn’t left the village this week. This I know, Mike.”