Dress Her In Indigo

“What if he can communicate with her directly? Is there anything that anybody could tell him that he’d think important enough to bother her with?”

Enelio got up and fixed a new drink. He shrugged. “I suppose he is responsible for the house here, and the staff. It must always be ready for her at any moment, I understand. I cannot think of any problem of the house he could not take care of without bothering her. Unless it is totally destroyed. You want me to burn it down, no thanks!”

“There must be some way.”

“He is a tough old man and he is being paid not to bother her, Travis.”

“And he is a very sharp-minded old man.”

“Very. ”

He roamed the room, scowling, pausing to sip his drink. He stopped in front of me. “One small idea. No good, maybe. From everywhere in the world it is possible to telephone to Oaxaca. I say possible. Our great larga distancia service makes grown men cry. But if he can be in touch with her, he would follow instructions if there was an order from her to him to phone her at once. Then, if somehow you could learn to where the call is placed… But how can we do that? Hide under his desk? Damn!”

“Suppose the message came to him by phone, Enelio.”

He looked blank. “So?”

“Long distance connections are frequently bad, aren’t they?”

“Bad? They are unspeakable sometimes.”

“And local lines are out of order sometimes?”

“If it is only once a week, it is a very good week.”

“So what if that old lawyer thought he was talking to the long distance operator.”

“I think I begin to see…”

“And she said she had an urgent call for him from Senora Vitrier, person to person, but when she tried to get through his line was not working, and then the long distance call faded before she could get the place of origin of the call and the number. Perhaps, if he had the number, she could try to put the call through to the lady.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “Senor McGee, you have a great talent. Of course, you have one loathsome disease, which is the need to know everything. But it is a beautiful talent. I have the correct little girl for this improvisation. Very bright, very lovely, very, very naughty. And to be trusted… Why am I, Enelio Fuentes, helping you with this nonsense?”

“Because the disease is contagious.”

“And it is also a very Mexican disease, you may have noticed.”

So we agreed that I would come to the agency at ten-thirty Friday morning and he would have the girl briefed, and we would see what happened.

In the morning I went to the hospital first. Meyer was sitting up, eating a large bowl of hot oatmeal. The compress had dwindled to a small bandage, and the swelling was down. But his bright blue eyes peered out through two slits in puffed flesh of deep purple and cobalt blue. It made him look less simian-and more like a hairy, dissipated owl. The girls had stopped checking his condition on a continuous basis. He had a dull headache. He said he felt as if he had been rolled downhill in a barrel. He said everyone was being very nice to him. He said that everybody seemed to have the idea that if they were not nice enough to him, the sefiorita from Guadalajara would say a few little things that would make their hair smoke. She had gone off to the center of town to buy some things for him which she said would make him more comfortable. He had little idea what they might be.

He asked about Elena, and Enelio, and Lita, and I said that last night we had celebrated his thick skull by stopping at Enelio’s bachelor penthouse apartment and picking up Lita and a hamper of cheese and fruit and wine, and the four of us had picnicked in the moonlight at the ruins at Monte Alban, and had toasted his health frequently, invented new lyrics to old songs, and identified the constellations. Now, Elena and Lita were resting, having vowed to slay anyone who woke them before noon. He said wistfully he was glad everybody was having such a nice time. Then he wanted to hear about Wally. He still was blacked out by a traumatic amnesia covering that period. I told him he wasn’t ready yet. He should rest.

When I got to Enelio’s office he was ready and impatient to get started. He closed and locked the office door. The chosen girl was named Amparo. She wore a pink mini-dress, had cropped hair and huge dark eyes and an amused, mocking mouth.

She was not the least bit nervous about the chore. She used Enelio’s private line, which did not go through the switchboard.

Though her Spanish was faster than I could follow, she had adopted, for the occasion, that flat, impartial, decorous tone of long distance operators the world over, and the overly careful enunciation of all numerals.

She spoke, listened, spoke again, wrote on the pad beside the phone, said something else, then sat for several moments with her palm over the mouthpiece. She then said something which ended in momentito, thanked him, and hung up.

Enelio went over and ripped the top sheet off the pad. He bent over the girl and kissed her heartily. She beamed and bridled and went switching out, giving Enelio a solemn wink after she had unlocked the door.

“She is close,” Enelio said. “Mexico City. Hotel Camino Real. Extension F.D.”

We shook hands. Successful conspiracy warms the blood. He told me that the girl had pretended to place the call, and had told him the circuits were busy and she would try again in a little while. So, when Alfredo Gaona did not hear, he would try again, and it would go through normal channels, and there would be a certain amount of confusion and apology.

He checked the schedules and discovered that if I could get to the airport in fifteen minutes, I could be in Mexico City at twenty after twelve. He said he would explain to Elena. I was not dressed for the trip. He ran me back into the suite of bedroom, dressing room, and bath off his office, grabbed some clothes, and jammed them into a small suitcase.

I gave him my car keys and told him where I was parked. He said he would inform Meyer and have the car taken up to, the hotel and the keys left at the desk. I changed to his shirt in the car on the wild ride out, and finished putting the necktie on as we got there. I knew the jacket was going to be uncomfortably snug. They were so close to departure they would not have waited for me. But they were all pleasantly glad to do a favor for Senor Fuentes. He slipped a tip into the hand of the stewardess, patted her on her behind, said he would sign inside for my ticket. We got on, and the stairs came up, and she spun the lock, and I got the belt buckled as the aircraft reached the end of the runway and turned for final check and takeoff.

I checked into the Camino Real at five after one on Friday afternoon. No reservation. A single. Any single. Yes sir, of course sir, thank you, sir. Twelve twenty-eight for the gentlemen. Enjoy your stay with us, Senor McGee.

I unpacked the assorted garments. I sat on the bed and read the instructions on how to dial other rooms in the hotel. But there was no clue as to how to dial FD. I tried the operator. With hardly a pause she said, ‘I am ver’ sorreeee, but I am ask to put no calls to that number, Senor.“

Hmmm.

Sat at the desk and used the elegant stationery and elegant envelope. Am very anxious to speak to you on a matter of the greatest importance. Name and room number. Sealed it. Senora Eva Vitrier.

Took it down to the desk. The man checked the indexed list of guests. Handed it back.

“I am sorry, sir. We have no one of that name in the hotel. Perhaps if you check the reservation desk they might know if she is coming in.” Thank you very much.

Hmmm.

So I went down to the shop near the coffee shop and bought razor, toothbrush, and the other essentials. Went into the coffee shop. Hamburger and coffee. Very touristlike.

Obviously the lady had built walls here also. She liked walls around her, with broken glass on top. Big money plus a passion for privacy makes an effective combination. How long since anyone has seen Howard Hughes?

Went back to the lobby area and roamed about until I found a bellhop with a very amiable expression. Laid ten pesos on him to tote my little sack of toiletries up to twelve twenty-eight. It was enough to make him look even more amiable. It established me as a guest. When he came back down I intercepted him again, my hand in my pocket. He looked delighted.

“Say, all these rooms have numbers, but there seems to be phone numbers with letters instead of numbers.”

“What, senor? What, please?”

“Suppose a phone number is F.D. Where is that?”

“What, senor? No understands.”

“Si el numero de telefono es effay day, donde esta el cuarto?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, senor. Isss not a room. Isss a suite. Other part of hotel, that way. Effay means is Fiesta Suite. Effay ah. Effay bay. Effay-”

I thrust another ten onto him and told him that was very interesting. And something was nibbling at the frayed edge of my memory. Yes indeed. Fiesta D, in Rockland’s little red book. With a name I could not remember. I found a writing desk and made some tries at it. I. V. Rivatera. I. V. Traviata. Close. But not close enough.

Eva Vitrier. And there is the old game of anagrams. So take out an “i” and a “v,” and you have the letters E A V T R I E R. And in three tries they assemble into Rivereta. I. V Rivereta was exactly right.

New envelope. Same note. Tear open and reseal. Mrs. I. V Rivereta. Walk to desk.

“Would you please see that this is delivered?” Checks the index. “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Walk back up to room and turn on the television and watch an episode of Gunsmoke and wonder how come they all speak Spanish; and wait. And wait. And wait. Start to give up and wonder what the hell to try next.

Quarter to five. Got the phone on the second ring.

“Mister McGee?” A throaty and charming voice, with that strange French bit with the vowels, and the little clickety R’s of the Parisian.

“This is he.” Grammar reassures.

“I ‘ave your note. What is this thing of so much great importance?”

This was a crucial moment. I had the feeling that if I said the wrong thing she would hang up, and that would be the end of it for good and all.

“It concerns Beatrice Bowie, Walter Rockland, Minda McLeen, Walter McLeen and, of course, you.”

“Perhaps it is important to you, yes? But not to me.”

At least I had not lost her yet. “I want to remind you that it is a matter of record in Oaxaca that Miss McLeen and Miss Bowie were staying with you. It is a matter of record that you identified the body. It is a matter of record that Miss Bowie was under suspicion of complicity in an attempt to smuggle narcotics into the United States.”

“This has nothing to do with me. Nothing. I should not have… done the kindness of helping them find out who that poor child was, and giving them her possessions to send home to her family. I do not become involved in such matters.”

“But the point is you did become involved. I agree with you, Mrs. Vitrier. Things should always be handled privately and with discretion. I find myself in an awkward position. I must return to Florida and report to the Bowie girl’s father. He wanted to know the circumstances of her death. If I go back to him with a lot of unanswered questions, he has the resources to pursue this matter through diplomatic channels. I have talked to your attorney in Oaxaca, Alfredo Gaona. He refused to give me any help in getting in touch with you. But from talking to him, I think I know how much you value your privacy.”

“Do you now have a desire to threaten me in some way, Mister McGee?”

“No. But should Mr. Harlan Bowie pursue this further because I could not give him any answers, I would think that the Mexican government would make a complete and official investigation, as a matter of diplomatic courtesy. And I do not think that you could… stay behind your walls under such circumstances.”

There was such a long pause I began to be afraid she had hung up very quietly. Then she said, “I have always enjoyed this country. But you see, it is not entirely necessary to me, is it? There is nothing to prevent my leaving tomorrow and never coming back here. What I have would be sold without difficulty.”

“I think that would be a very odd thing for you to do.”

“I cannot be impressed with what you might think of what I do or do not do.”

“I merely meant that it seems like such an extreme reaction to a very simple thing. I just want to fill in the blanks. It would not take much of your time. And then I would leave you alone, and I could make my report to Mr. Bowie. It’s that simple.”

“I think… you are a clever person, Mr. McGee.”

“Not particularly.”

“To learn the name I use here was a clever thing. Poor Alfredo was dreadfully upset to learn there had been no call from me. So it is to understand you found where I am by tricking that old man. But certainly he did not tell you this name I invented.”

“Sometimes there is luck.”

“Luck is something one makes for oneself, I think. Mr. McGee, I think I will give you that little time to ask your questions. You will present yourself at this suite at seven promptly?”

“Thank you very much.”

“This is done only because I must believe you are a person of some discretion and privacy.”

“I will be there at seven.”

The wing of the hotel that was given over to the suites had wider and more luxurious corridors, was more deeply carpeted, more boldly decorated. The Fiesta Suites were on the fourth floor. I had gone in and talked to the reservation people about accommodations and had learned that suites were available from forty dollars a day to three hundred dollars a day. The wing was five stories high, and the several Fiesta Suites were duplex, with the living areas on the fourth floor, opening out onto spacious, walled roof gardens, and with two bedrooms and two baths on the fifth floor, and an internal staircase. The reservation girl was friendly, not busy, willing to chat.

She said that the largest suite, the presidential suite, had four bedrooms, a servant’s room, a baronial dining room, and, on its larger roof garden, quite large shade trees and a large heated swimming pool. She said that several of the suites were permanently rented, some by businesses, some by individuals who had taken them when the hotel had opened and either lived there most of the year, or used them whenever they visited the city.

I pressed the bronze button by the door. I noticed one of those little peepholes set into the door, a wide angle lens, and I repressed my usual impulse to put my thumb over it.

The door opened six inches, as far as the heavy brass safety chain would let it. Eva Vitrier looked out through the gap at me. Enelio’s description had been apt. Her face had all the striking thrusts and angles and slightly vulpine harshness of Nefertiti.

Black hair piled high. A long muscular throat, graceful but not delicate. It was as broad as the slender face. The mouth was small and plump and fleshy. Her eyes were set oddly, one more sharply tilted than the other. She was wearing some sort of hostess gown, deep aqua, floor-length, with a wide scooped neck, a metallic golden rope belting it at the natural waistline. She had a look of extraordinary sensuous vitality kept under such exacting control, such practiced control, that she was an immediate challenge.

I could see beyond her into a hushed and handsome room, with a high ceiling and glass doors beyond, through which I could see a patio garden so verdant and substantial it was difficult to adjust to being on the fourth floor. Sizable trees, and muscular flagstones winding through heavy plantings.

“You are Mr. McGee? I do not care to ask you in, or feel the need to apologize. I am quite alone here. There is no reason why I should even give you this much time. But I was curious to… put a face and body with your voice, perhaps.”

“I’m what you imagined?”

“Does it matter? I thought you would be a large man, but with more of the American look of softness and baldness and the quick clever eyes behind glasses, the look of the ones who find their way to the money so easily I would rather you looked like that, because as you look now you disconcert me. To be so muscular and fit and brown, and to have about you a look of laughing at me somewhere inside you, and to look so… indolent-perhaps it is a part of cleverness to create an illusion of being a faithful dog one can scratch behind the ears, and send bounding off to fetch some object or to kill some animal. Now if you will tell me the blanks I will give you the little words to fill them, and everything will be tidy and proper for your report.”

So the day was fading quickly, the room darkening behind her, and I was sorry I could not be reassuringly balding and soft with little shrewd economic eyes so she would be reassured.

“Okay. What day did Minda McLeen leave and go to Mexico City?”

“The twenty-eighth day of July. A Monday.”

“What did they quarrel about?”

“I have no idea. She was a tiresome girl, nervous and restless and irritable. She asked me to lend her money so she could leave. I was glad to.”

“How much?”

“I do not know exactly. Perhaps two thousand pesos.”

“How did she travel?”

“I have no idea. Something was said about someone driving to Mexico City. I did not listen. I was not interested. I do not know if she even came here, nor do I care.”

“Why did you invite them to stay with you, when it must have been obvious to you that Miss Bowie was on drugs?”

“I felt sorry for them. One makes certain impulsive gestures from time to time, and usually regrets them. I had room for them, or for a dozen of them, at my Oaxaca home. And servants and money. It was a human impulse. I thought I might help them.”

“Did you try to do anything about the Bowie girl’s addiction?”

“Of course! I had a discreet doctor fly in and give her a complete physical examination. She was in very bad shape from the addiction, malnutrition, intestinal parasites, several small chronic infections. The McLeen girl needed medical attention too, but mostly rest and nourishing food. Soon she was able to help with the Bowie girl. I gave her much personal care. I have had some practical experience. My first husband was seriously ill for a year and a half before he died, and he would not permit anyone else to care for him. I gave her the prescribed injections to quell the withdrawal symptoms of heroin addiction.”

“And you knew what you were taking on?”

“One becomes bored and feels a bit… unnecessary from time to time. Then it is an affirmative act to make oneself needed. I would not have gone on and on with it, certainly. I had planned to have someone take her back to Florida to her home when she was well enough.”

“When did Miss Bowie leave your home?”

“She was becoming more alert and responsive. On Saturday in the early afternoon, a young man came asking to see her. I told my gate man that he could see Bix. Then Bix came to me and asked me if she could go for a ride with the young man. She said he was a friend. I thought it would be constructive to give her a test of her will and her desire to be cured. So she left with him. When she did not return Saturday night I was annoyed and disappointed, and quite alarmed. She had become a likable personality. But I had no reason to report it. One cannot keep a houseguest locked up. Then she did not return Sunday night either. My cook went to market Monday morning and came back and told, me of an unidentified girl killed on the mountain road. I had her identification and her belongings at the house. I do not care to be involved in such things. I summoned my attorney, Alfredo Gaona, and explained the situation, and sent him to make arrangements with the police so that it could be done as quickly and quietly as possible. The body was sickeningly damaged, of course, but I knew at once from the chain she wore on her ankle and the red shoe that it was Beatrice Bowie. The police came to my home and claimed her belongings. And I did not care to stay there in the house longer. It was very depressing. So I came here the same evening. I have maintained this suite since the hotel opened.”

“She was over her addiction?”

“She had been addicted intentionally to several compounds, each less powerful. It is a common method of treatment. Perhaps she could have been cured entirely. I do not know. There seemed to be in her a great need to escape herself, to blot out her known world.”

Neat blanks, neatly filled.

“What day did Mr. McLeen come to you, asking about his daughter?”

“Let me think. Was Bix there? No, because he wished to question her about where Minda might have gone. I believe that it was quite late on Saturday afternoon.”

“Then you must have told him to come back, because at that time you thought Bix would be back from her ride.”

“Then I am mistaken, and it was late on Sunday afternoon, because I did not ask him to come back. He is a very tiresome and talkative man.”

I was running out of blanks. So there was left only what I expected would be the doorslammer.

“Mrs. Vitrier, did Minda McLeen try to prevent your having an affair with Miss Bowie?”

She stared at me, so motionless I could believe she had stopped breathing. Then she gave a husky, earthy, single bark of derisive laughter.

“Do you wonder that I close the world out, Mr. McGee? There is always some kind of obscene poison, isn’t there? Can you look at me and believe that?”

“Well, it isn’t easy.”

“I have buried four husbands, Mr. McGee. They were all elderly and extremely well off. I respond to older men. Perhaps that is a weakness. I do not know. I loved them. There was poison then, too. Each time. Snickerings about how I had seen to it that they would die in bed. The world is nasty and cruel. Fortunately they left me with all the money I shall ever need, and nasty gossip cannot touch me.”

“Maybe the gossip started because you’ve brought so many big, healthy, pretty maids down there with you, one at a time of course.”

“Oh? Yes, I see. That could do it, couldn’t it? But how grotesque! It is a kind of work I do for an institution in Brussels, Mr. McGee. The rehabilitation and training of disadvantaged young girls. I give them a year of training, and when each one leaves my service, she is competent and disciplined and polite. I must confess that I select ones who are attractive to look at. I select paintings and lamps which are attractive to look at. And I try to see that they are sturdy enough to do a hard day’s work. Do you understand? One cannot protect oneself against idle malice. I am a mystery. They seek answers. They will not accept the idea that there is no mystery at all. But I believe you will. You are, I think, an understanding and complex man. You look like the sort of man who is paid to strike a ball with a stick, or to fly to another star. But you have an easiness, an awareness of pleasure, no? And a life style which contents you, I think. You disconcert me. And you intrigue me.”

“Which makes us even, Mrs. Vitrier.”

“More blanks?”

“If I think of any I’d like to come back and stand out here in the hall and have a nice little chat.”

“Sorry. This is the only chance you will have.”

“And… I’ve run out of blanks.”

She smiled, and without another word she closed the door. I stared at it and wondered if she was looking out the little peephole at me. I walked back down the corridor. Nice going, McGee. Handled it real swell. And besides, you’ve got a life style which contents you. But not very much right now. You are pure hellfire with an insurance secretary from Guadalajara, but to the pretty French lady you are as impressive as a bag boy at the A R.

Something about her was so vivid and so directed and so strong, it was difficult to think clearly in her presence.

So I adjourned the meeting to a metal table on the wide deck outside Azulejos. One was a quorum. All right. Meeting come to order. What was wrong? Standing out in the hall. She’s alone, she likes privacy, too many people could be on the make for some of that money from those four old dead boys. So she is alone, eh? Where are all the servants? All right, this is one of the great hotels of the world, and they can give you service until you drown in it, particularly if you maintain a suite like that permanently, and if you demand service, which I imagine she would. And it could be the maid’s night out.

When I came to the doorslammer, why didn’t she slam it instead of explain herself? What would she have to lose? Maybe she has so much pride in being 110 percent woman, she doesn’t want anybody to believe she likes girls.

So why hadn’t I tried to break up that act by bringing in Bruce Bundy? Because I knew she was lying anyway. And how did you know that, McGee, you subtle, clever, complex fellow? Nothing but pure instinct. Don’t knock it. Meyer says it is made up of things you saw without knowing you saw them.

So what did I see that I didn’t know I saw? Close the eyes. Focus on the room behind her. Whoal Scan back. Change focus. Something there. Corner of coffee table. Fancy box. Candy box. How do you know it’s candy? Because, dammit, there were those things on the floor there. What things? Well, candy litter. Wadded up pieces of that kind of red tinfoil and yellow and blue they wrap up good candy in. And some of those little pieces of brown paper.

So she has a sweet tooth.

And throws the debris on the floor under the coffee table?

Maybe she isn’t neat.

But wasn’t the rest of the room, what you could see of it, so neat as to be practically sterile?

She was sitting on the couch eating chocolates. Why not?

But I’d been aware of two scents coming from that woman. One was perfume, faint and astringent, and the other was gin. Gin and candy? Ech!

So the servant eats candy.

And throws the wrappers on the floor?

Well, it was a big hotel and they would take very good care of the monied guests, and they would make a practice of not handing out information for the hell of it. But a big hotel has to have a big staff, and there are always new people who haven’t learned how to keep the mouth entirely closed. And guests have room service, maid service, laundry service, dry cleaning, television repair, dog-walking service. All in Spanish, no doubt.

If you skulk you attract attention and suspicion. If you have to sneak, be loud and brash and confident about it.

My approach drew a blank with the guest service director’s staff, and it drew a blank with the travel agency office, and I struck out with the switchboard girls, and then I started hitting the shops, all open at that time of the evening, on the lower level, showing my white teeth and finding out which clerk had the most English. I varied my pitch to fit the shop situation.

“You do speak English? Good. Golly, I sure hope you can help me out of an awful spot. I just had a drink up in Fiesta Suite D as a guest of Mrs. Rivereta, and she did me a real important favor. Now what I want to do, honey, is send up a couple of little gifts. But I must be losing my mind, because I’ve drawn a blank on any name except Mrs. Rivereta, and I thought maybe you might have sold stuff and sent it up there and know the names.”

So you walk and talk, and it goes clunk, clunk clunk, and in a little silver shop it goes DING!

She was a brisk cute little thing and she had pale streaks dyed into her black, black hair, and she frowned and went thumbing through records, and asked questions of the other girl, and then finally pulled a card out.

“Yessss! I thought I remember something. But I don’t know if this is a guest living there or it is something she is taking outside the hotel to a fiesta, a birthday. These things Mrs. Rivereta signed for and they are put on her hotel bill. Very nice. Let me show you one thing.” She scampered off and came back with a thing that at first glance looked like a silver cigarette case, but turned out to be a purse gadget, with space for coins, notebook pencil, identification.

“Across here, inside, people like the name engraved. We can give two-day service. And here, see, on this copy is the name. Meenda McLeen. Also, many, many sets of our initials for luggage and personal things. M. M. In silver and gold, different esstyles. And also one bracelet with the initials. I can show you the kind of bracelet. Senor? Anything is wrong?”

‘No. You’ve. been a big help to me. Yes, you’ve been a big help, and I certainly appreciate it more than you can know.“

She was glad she had helped. Her smile was eager and pretty. I found the door without walking through the glass, and went down a corridor and came upon the coffee shop and sat at the counter and had coffee.

So it sorted out with a dismal and feral logic. Lose the first choice off a mountain road, so pick up the trail of the little brunette and cut the loss by settling for second choice. The door had stayed chained. Maybe second choice wasn’t exactly a willing guest? Want to indulge in a dramatic rescue attempt, McGee? Adolescent emotions. The thing to do is talk to Minda, because she was the one who was closest to Bix, and she would know the story and be able to guess how it must have ended.

I did some exterior surveying. I found a place where I could walk from the end of one of the buildings, parallel to it, far enough out to look up and see the night-lighted green of the fourth floor garden patios, and, above them, the narrow balconies outside the fifth floor windows of the bedrooms of the Fiesta Suites. So I got back up to the fourth floor and paced the long straight corridor, counting the strides to her door, took my count back outside and paced from the same basing-point and found that the bedrooms of Fiesta D had to open out onto the seventh and eighth balconies from the end.

Eighteen

THE ROOF areas by the tennis courts and the heliport were too popular as a place to get kissed and a place to gawk at the great humming city. The chill of nighttime at seven and a half thousand feet didn’t seem to discourage either pastime.

And there was one of the hotel guard staff wandering around from time to time, on no schedule. I spent almost an hour and a half noodling around, knowing exactly the route I had to take, but unable to make my start because people get very edgy about watching other people go over the edge of a roof.

When the crowd was down to one couple and they moved toward the stairs, I moved to my drop zone, and as I did not know how long the privacy would last, I swung over, hung by my fingertips, kicked myself away from the wall, and dropped, landed on balance, and scuttled over and stood behind a bank of floodlights waiting for somebody to start yelling.

Of course somebody could have been looking out of the window of one of the rooms and might now be phoning the desk to complain about people sneaking around at midnight. So move along, aware of the residual stiffness in the leg where Wally had popped me that good one. Down the cornice, behind the spots and floods, over to the higher one. Jump and grab. Hear the shoulder gristle pop as I pull myself up. No lights on the roof at this level. Angle across. Look down, count the shallow balconies. Seven and eight. Pick any number from seven to eight. Because seven is lucky, I chose eight. High ceilings in their hotel. Looked like a thirty-foot drop into the fourth-floor roof garden.

Make it fifteen down to the floor of the little balcony. Cement railing maybe four and a half feet high, so call it ten and a half down to the railing. And it was about four inches wide and had a flat top. Drop to the balcony floor and it is not going to sound exactly like a stray birdfeather floating in. And hang by the fingertips and it is going to be a blind two foot drop to the railing.

Shoes off. Tie the laces. Hang around the neck. Check the pockets for any jingle-jangle of keys or change. Take a long long look around to see who might be watching the fun. Wave and see if they wave back. Momma, momma, look at the funny man on the roofl

Get it over with. And, for God’s sake, McGee, in the future why don’t you try to believe what people tell you? Just pray for a nice landing, drawn draperies, and an unlocked door.

I let myself down, hung, rehearsed it in my head and let go. I turned toward my left to land with feet at right angles to the balcony edge. Less chance of straddling it, which would sting like crazy. Landed, by design, leaning in, off balance. Landed on the railing, then dropped like that birdfeather to the balcony floor. Looked through a screened gap eight inches wide into a room with a brighter focus of light than I could have guessed from above. It did not illuminate the balcony because it was a recessed prism light in the bedroom ceiling. It shone straight down onto a tufted blue carpeted area. Beyond it I could see, in the dim glow, an open door and bathroom fixtures beyond. To my left I could see a low couch, a chair, a coffee table. To my right I could see the bottom corner, apparently, of a bed that was against the wall to the right, said corner perhaps six feet from the narrow opening created by opening the sliding door that far. and pulling the draperies open to the same distance.

It seemed a little bright for a night light. But maybe it would serve. More probably the room was empty. I stayed down below the railing height. Less chance of being noticed from a nearby building or from one of the other balconies.

Knelt and found the edge of the sliding screen and gave it a very gentle and cautious tug. It opened silently, a full inch. Another. Another. And somebody made a groaning sigh. Just as I was getting back into my skin, somebody said something, half mutter, half whisper, and I had to steady myself down again. Whoever you are there, talking in your sleep, why the hell did you leave the light on? One small advantage, however. Enough light, maybe, to be able to distinguish one dark head and be able to see whether it was Eva Vitrier. If so, I could then make my well-known death-defying leap across empty space to the other balcony.

I got the screen open as far as the door, and knew I would need a few more inches before I could go through it sideways. Had just put my palm against the edge of the door and the screen when I heard breathing. Not the deep breathing of sleep. This was more like the long distance runner. Bellows, getting deeper and faster, a huffing and a panting, then a cough and then the unmistakable, wide-open-throated, strained, soft, have-mercy cawing of woman in climax. It ended. There were some whisperous murmurings, too faint to catch. Then silence. A new set of rules had just been posted.

The bed creaked and suddenly a pale shape moved past the corner of the bed and stopped in the light, facing the balcony. I had pulled back quickly, but one instant had stamped it into memory for as long as memory would last. Naked, skin so white it seemed to blaze in the downthrust of the ceiling spot. An incomparable figure, simultaneously rich and delicate, without blemish. Nipples of that rare youthful pink, soft pubic bush, a color paler than old pennies. And it did what the picture could not do. It brought her into the focus of memory, of almost a year ago, when Meyer took the wheel and I went forward to bend a line on the new anchor. She was the one who stood at the bow in white shorts and a red top, and had looked out across Lake Worth with almost the same soft, brooding, dreamy, inward expression. The wind had tangled her hair that day as much as bed had tangled it a year later. Welcome back from your damp Florida grave, Miss Bix.

The throaty, French-lady voice from the bed corner said, “Darling? You’re too sweaty to stand in that cold night air. You’ll get chilled.”

“Can we go out on the balcony and look at the stars, Eva?”

It was a little-girl voice, humble and obedient. “Of course, darling child. But we’ll have to put something on.”

I wondered if there was a gap at the other end of the draperies, where I could look in through the glass, from a darker area. I moved over and stood up and found a slit just wide enough. I saw Eva come to the edge of the light and hang some kind of floor-length cape or cloak over the girl’s shoulders. It was a dark, rich blue, a violet-blue. She kept her hands on the girl’s shoulders and I could hear her distinctly as she said, “Did I make you happy?”

The taller, younger girl turned quickly into Eva’s arms, eagerly, gladly. Murmurous love-words. A soft, triumphant little laugh. Long kisses. And then Bix went off into shadows while Eva stood in the edge of the light, half-smiling. Hers was a slightly more spare and forthright body, as feminine, but with more of a look of function, so that naked she seemed more naked. Swarthy skin tones, sharp breasts with broad umber-dark nipple areas, long downsweep of muscular belly to the wide, vital spread of curly blackness, a look of compacted sinew along the tops of the thighs.

Bix brought a tailored gray robe and held it for Eva to slip on. My mind had been caroming around amid probables and improbables, bouncing off obstacles, like the shiny ball finding its way down the pinball machine, looking for the bumper that would ring the bells, flash the lights, award me some free games.

As Eva Vitrier looked down to fasten the belt of the robe, taking her first step toward the balcony, I pulled the doors wider and stepped into the room. “Hate to bust in like this,” I said.

Bix Bowie moved back into the shadows and stood staring at me without expression, yet with a kind of market-dog wariness which says that to find out if stones will be thrown, or food, one must wait, ready to run and ready to eat.

Eva Vitrier leaned forward in fishwife fury, backs of her hands against her waist, elbows cocked forward. I think that had I been able to understand French, the words would have chopped out little chunks of my flesh and left smoking craters. As I waited for her to run down, she whirled and dived to grab the nightstand phone. I clapped the cradle back down an instant after she lifted it. She hit me in the middle of the forehead with the earpiece. I clopped her on the side of the head with a cupped palm. It knocked her onto her hands and knees. She rose slowly, touching her hair, and said, “Bixie sweetie, go into the bathroom and close the door.”

“I want to watch, Eva.”

“Mind me! Or there’ll be no surprise tomorrow, and no candy.”

The girl turned and went into the bathroom and closed the door. And Eva came after my eyes with ten long nails. A wiry, furious, unrestrained woman can be dangerous to all men who, out of some notion of chivalry, try to quell her furies, hold her wrists and avoid her kicks and bites until she gives up.

Chivalry is pretty flexible. And sometimes it is dead.

So I hooked her a pretty good one in the stomach as she was coming in, and it was on a slightly upward angle, so her heels lifted off the floor, her legs swung up, and the first thing that hit the floor was that rear end which Enelio had found so delectable long ago. Momentum rolled her over onto her back, and her legs went up and over and she ended on her knees, the gray robe forward, and all entangled about her head and arms, which were resting on the floor. Enelio might find that angle even more entrancing. She rolled onto her side, sat up, smoothed the robe down. She reached and caught a chair and pulled herself up and sat on it, making inhalation groans to try to suck enough air back into herself. Hit a woman, would you, McGee? I surely would, now and then.

All the spark and snap was gone. I saw switches by the door and went over and turned on the rest of the room lights. I closed the glass doors and pulled the lined draperies shut. I sat on the foot of the tousled bed.

She straightened herself. “You know, I could have you killed for that.”

“If you know where to go and how much to offer.”

“I can find out.”

“And I can walk you into the bathroom there and try to teach you to breathe underwater, and I might have to do just that if I don’t like the answers.”

“There won’t be any answers.”

“Suit yourself, French lady.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something to knot you up with. Nylons are great. Stronger than steel. Then we’ll see how much of this Kleenex we can cram into your mouth, and I’ll tie that in place, roll you under the bed there, get Miss Bowie into some clothes and take her to the Embassy and phone her father from there. So forget the answers. I don’t need them.”

“Wait a minute. Sit down. Stop opening drawers, please. Listen to me a minute. I brought her back from living death, Mr. McGee. You don’t know what she was like. Even I didn’t know how lovely she would look.”

“What is she blasting lately? She’s way off center right now.”

“She can’t get along at all without something. I don’t think she ever will. She’s on charas. An agent brings it in for me from Calcutta. It’s like marijuana, but very, very powerful. They use just the resins. I let her smoke three tiny little cigars of it a day. We make a ceremony out of it. Don’t you understand? She’s been too badly damaged. She can’t exist in the real world.”

“But your world is just dandy. Best thing for her.”

“She gets love and protection, and I keep her in good health. We have silly little games we play. I make her keep herself clean and pick up her clothes.”

“And you get her her distemper shots and keep her coat glossy, and some day you can bury her in the foot of the garden and put a mossy little headstone up. Bix. Beloved pet. But that would be a little sentimental, huh?”

“You are certainly a cruel bastard. All right! So maybe I don’t want any more challenging human relationships.”

“After four old husbands?”

“You meet the simple young ones who can introduce you to the important young ones who can introduce you to the important and rich old ones. And you work at it, you know. You give fair value. All of them use you like a waste bin, a conveniently shaped receptacle, just as males used Bixie. But there is tennis and sailing and all the vigorous games in bed, and the old ones do not last long. The money was earned. The privacy was earned. The freedom was earned.”

“I might pop you another one, just for luck.”

“I don’t think it would astonish me, actually.”

“So she gets love. From you.”

“I saw her and Minda in the zocalo. I followed them. They had to keep stopping at benches so Bix could rest. There was something about her. I had to know her. They needed help. The word probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but do you know that she had never been sexually awakened? Can you imagine how much restraint and patience it took? But now she is more easily stimulated each day. She’s very sensual. But she lives on Lesbos forever, because it is the only island she has ever known.”

“That’s pretty poetic there, French lady. What are you getting at? You want to keep her around the house?”

“She can never endure any contact with any part of her old life without reverting. I arranged to have her tourist permit renewed, in Minda McLeen’s name. It was expensive. I am taking her… to another country where identities can be purchased. I intend to see that if anything should happen to me, she shan’t want for anything.”

“So Minda went off the hill in the yellow car. That’s why she doesn’t need her own papers. And Bix’s papers went to Florida with the body and the personal effects. Was it expensive getting Minda bumped off the road, French lady?”

“It wasn’t that way.”

“What way was it?”

“Minda began to get suspicious after Bixie began to improve. And she began spying on me, and finally caught me… caressing Bixie in a way that couldn’t possibly have been anything except what it was. She made a very ugly scene, and said some very ugly things. She said she would not permit it. Permit it! Can you imagine the impertinence? She tried to stay with Bix every moment, day and night. I asked Minda to my room to discuss the problem. I tried to seduce her, because I knew that would shut her mouth, but she acted as if I were some sort of sickening animal. She said she was going to get in touch with Bix’s father. So as I was afraid I might lose Bix, the next time Minda left the house, I had a trusted friend of mine come at once in her car and pick up Bix and bring her up here to the city; I asked her to stay here in the suite with Bix until I could arrive. I informed the hotel they would be using the suite. I knew I could trust my friend to be careful and discreet, but I knew she would never be able to keep from making love to such a lovely child. But I had to accept that, even though it made me feel wretched. So when Minda came back I asked her if she had seen Bix. I pointed out that all her things were still in her room. I said she had wandered out and that I was worried. Minda knew it was a trick of some kind. She said she would stay with me and I would lead her to wherever Bix was.”

The bathroom door opened and Bix came wandering out. “I’m tired of staying in there, Eva.”

“Just a little bit longer, dear. Please.”

“Well… all right.” She went back in.

“On Saturday, in the early afternoon, that Rockland person came to my home demanding to see Minda. She did not know of it. She was in her room. I had Rockland brought to me, at the garden house beyond the pool, and I had Ram6n and his nephew stay close by I told you before, it was easy to see he was a low type, crafty and arrogant. One must exploit their greed to find out what plan they have. He was so obviously relieved to find no one else had been there before him, asking about her. It took a little time and a few simple threats, but I found out that Minda’s father was in Oaxaca and had looked for Rockland and found him. Rockland had made an arrangement to deliver the girl to her father for money. He thought he could get ten thousand American dollars if he managed the affair skillfully. Nothing could have been more obvious to me than that if he did manage it, Minda would seek aid from her father in taking Bix away from me. One cannot tell how much resource an American businessman has in such matters. It would be obvious that at the very least he would feel an obligation to acquaint the other father with the state of affairs. I would want neither the notoriety nor the legal problems, nor want to take, the chance of losing the girl. So I offered him twice what he expected from Mr. McLeen, if he would take Minda away with him on some pretext and leave her far enough away so that by the time she made her way back I could be gone and there would be no way to reach or find me. Then, if he chose, he might be able to continue his arrangement with her father.

“We set the schedule. I gave him five thousand dollars and suggested he take her to Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Campeche, on the pretext of taking her to where Bix was. Transportation is awkward from there to Oaxaca. He had a car. He could drive far into the night. It is something over three hundred miles from Oaxaca. He was to abandon her there, without funds, and return quickly. I would wait until a nine o’clock flight out of Oaxaca Monday evening. I would give him the rest of the money then, and he would, if ever questioned, swear he had loaned Bix money to fly back to the States.”

But, she related, she had been awakened at midnight on Sunday night to be told that the young American was back, that he was on foot, that he was at the gate demanding to be let in. She dressed and went down to the gate and they talked in the courtyard. He said he had been too tired to drive so far. He thought it would be just as good to take her up into the mountains. She had gone willingly when he said that Bix needed her and he was taking her to where Bix was. But she became suspicious. He had found a place to pull off the road when night fell. He had kept her there with him. He had wanted to wait long enough so that she, Mrs. Vitrier, would think he had taken Minda a long way away. He had not wanted to lose track of her because of her resale value. It was his plan to tie her to a tree or something, out of sight of the highway on Monday, and go down and get the money and come back, and pick her up again and make his deal with Wally.

Late Sunday afternoon while she was napping in the back seat of the little car, he had fallen asleep in the front seat. He had slept so heavily that apparently she had been able to work the car keys out of his pocket, put the key into the ignition, silently open a front door, brace her back against the other door, put her feet against him and suddenly shove him out onto the ground, yank the door shut and lock it. As he tried to break in, she got it started and pulled out and headed down the mountain, accelerating. He had picked a spot, after a long walk, where trucks would have to shift way down to negotiate a steep uphill curve. He had to wait hours before one came along with a tailgate he could climb onto. He had dropped off in the city and made his way to Eva’s house. When he found that Minda had never arrived, he was certain she had gone off the mountain. And if she had, she was dead.

“I took him to the sitting room which adjoins my bedroom. We discussed the possible repercussions of this event. It had been a car he had taken without permission, but he was quite certain the owner would give very little if any information to the police, and he explained why. By then, you see, I knew that a car had gone off the mountain, and they would look for it by daylight. It sickened me to think of it. She was being very difficult, but I had not wished that for her. But it had happened. And in many ways it simplified things. One must be mature and accept facts, yes? So he said he must have the rest of the money because it had been promised. He was looking at me strangely I thought. He said that in addition, I would give him the ten thousand he would have gotten from the father. I told him that was not my affair. He said it had become my affair. I had given him money to get rid of the girl and he had gotten rid of her. He said it would all be difficult to explain.

“By then I began to see that he could be of some danger to me. He was greedy and crafty and brutal, but not intelligent. It had been a mistake to make an arrangement with him. I knew that to disarm him I had to appear to be… manageable. I said I did not have so much in American dollars in the house, but I could make up the difference in Swiss francs. I got it all for him and explained the rate of exchange. I even told him the name I use in this hotel. He counted the money too many times and, also, too many times he told me that it was the last time I would have to give him money. It meant that he was thinking that he would ask again.

“He began looking at me in another strange way and said that we were now associated in this affair. He said he knew from Minda what I was, but that it would please him to come into my bed and use me as a woman, just to verify our trust and friendship. I told him there would be no pleasure in it for me, and he said that it did not particularly matter whether there was or not. At such times one must be very careful. And so I pretended fear and begged him not to, then seemed to accept the inevitable, and asked him if he minded if I had some brandy before all this would take place. He said, as I expected, that he would enjoy some also, and that we could drink a toast and seal the bargain. I got a special bottle kept in a special place, and silver glasses so that he could not tell that I would let it run out of my mouth back into the glass. In a little while he smiled foolishly and his words blurred and soon his head toppled forward and he began to snore. I took the money from him and replaced it in the wall safe in the back of my bedroom closet. I felt as if I were moving through a dream. I had quite a lot of the meperedine left, which we had sometimes given Bix when she became unmanageable. Ten little ampules. I had been taught how to administer hypodermics when my first husband was dying, and of course I had given Bix injections. I prepared him properly, with an alcohol swab, and knelt by his chair. But I could not. One wonders if it is possible to kill a human being. I had a dozen reasons to do this thing. But I could not. I could touch the point to the vein on the inside of his arm, but I could not shove it through the skin, no matter what I told myself.”

So in the end she had tied him securely, binding his wrists and ankles to the heavy chair. She had paced the floor until dawn, wondering what to do. When he began stirring, she had sedated him heavily. On Monday morning, early, Wally McLeen had arrived, having at last tracked his missing daughter to her house. She had taken him to the garden house and had given him some of the vivid highlights of Minda’s Mexican vacation, throwing in incidents that had happened to Bix as though they had happened to Minda, including how Rockland had taken her into the cornfield to service the men who had showed up out of the night at the campsite. From his reactions she was afraid he was having a massive coronary. When he was at last more normal, she had said that it was possible that Minda was dead and that Rockland was responsible. She did not say more than that. She said that if he would get hold of some vehicle and if he would come to the vehicle gate at ten that night, there was a possibility she might be able to deliver Rockland over to him, so that he could take Rockland to the police. She showed him where the vehicle gate was. She would not answer his questions.

She had then decided, later on in the day, hearing that the body could not be identified, that if she made an appearance and made the identification and then said that the last she had seen of the girl was when she had driven off with Rockland on Saturday, it would help insulate her against any further accusation.

“But when I saw how… the terrible condition of the body, I knew that one could identify it as almost anyone. There was the chain, of course, that Minda wore about her ankle. But who could say that Bix did not wear one and it was not that one? Or could say those were not Bix’s red shoes? I had the personal papers and personal things of both of them. My mind raced. I stood holding the perfumed handkerchief against my nose. I saw how it could be. If it was Bix who died, she would be mine without question. So I identified her and the police came to my house and I gave them Bix’s things. I brought Minda’s papers here, and I arranged to have the permit renewed under Minda’s name without Bix having to appear. I sent all the servants out that night. I opened the gate for Mr. McLeen. I helped him get Rockland down and into the trunk of an American sedan Mr. McLeen had rented. Mr. McLeen was very strange. He whistled and he walked on his toes, and he said that everything was splendid, that Minda was going to come back to Oaxaca and he would wait around for her until she returned. Rockland was very groggy. When he was curled up in the trunk compartment on his side, Mr. McLeen gave him little pats on the back and called him son and said everything would be arranged properly. I thought I was all right. I thought I was not feeling much of anything. But when I had shut the gate again, all of a sudden without warning, I vomited. Afterward, I felt so faint it took me a long time to finish packing the last few things. I flew from Oaxaca Tuesday on the early schedule. Bix was happy to see me, happy as a Christmas child.”

She was watching my face carefully.

Bix came out of the bathroom again. “Please?”

“All right, dear girl. Sit over there on the couch and be quiet. Mr. McGee, does she look abused? Surely you must have the right to make choices in your work. I am fond of her. I cherish her. I will take her to lovely secluded places. Look how splendid that color is for her. It makes those deep blue eyes look almost deep violet. I will dress her in indigo, and in the good blues and greens and grays. Cool tones suit her kind of beauty. I can control her… need for escape into drugs. She will not be sick, or lonely, or institutionalized. Can anyone else in the world promise that? Can her own people promise that? What do you return to them if you do your nasty little job, Mr. McGee? A young girl with a drug retarded mind. A committed and incurable addictive personality. A committed and incurable lesbian. A person the police of your country will be watching closely, as they promised. You will be taking back heartbreak. Isn’t it kinder, by far, to let her stay dead?”

“Dead?” asked Bix.

“The kid asks a good question, French lady. So do you.”

“Think about it carefully, please.”

So I sat and thought about it. It was nice and easy, her way. Let the dead stay dead. Tell a happy story to good old Harlan Bowie. Feed Meyer the story Eva had fed me through the chained door. Go back and romp away the final few days of Elena’s vacation. Mission accomplished. But should the father have the chance to undo the damage that he had started and others had finished? He had a lot of money, enough to buy penance, good clinics, sleep therapy.

“I have a wall safe here,” she said. “In that closet. I think there is the equivalent of about forty thousand American dollars. I can give you that now, and I can have an additional hundred and sixty thousand here by the day after tomorrow.”

“You buy the girl for two hundred thou?”

“That is a clumsy way to put it. I buy her happiness, and mine. I can afford it.”

“I know. You earned it. The hard way.”

I walked over toward her. She stood up and looked up at me, and I saw the hard mocking confidence in the back of her eyes. She was wearing the small smile of the winner. So I smiled too, and I sighed, and I wondered if it was getting to be too attractive a habit as I steadied her with one hand, chopped the side of that long muscular throat with the other, caught her as she dropped, and slung her onto the bed.

Bix had stood up. “Now what are you doing?”

“I am going to take you for a nice little ride in a nice murderous taxi, sweetie.”

“To the movies?”

“Maybe. Why don’t you go put some clothes on? Where are they?”

“In there. In that other room in the closet and all over.”

“Go get dressed.”

“Sure.”

She went into the next room. I wanted to fix French lady so she would stay put for a nice long time, but not too long, in case nobody dared unlock the suite unless asked. I yanked the sheets out from under her and took them in and dropped them in the tub and got them sopping wet. I took them out and spread them out on the rug, took her out of her gray robe, put her down at one end of the soaked sheets, and rolled her up in them like a window shade. I put her back on the bed with the last wet end tucked neatly under her. As long as they stayed wet, she stayed still. When they dried out, she would wiggle loose.

I pried her jaw down and found that in spite of the plump little meaty mouth, there was room in there for a hell of a lot of Kleenex, if you packed it carefully. I knotted a nylon stocking in place, webbing it between her teeth and against the Kleenex so she couldn’t tongue it out of the way and start yelling.

Then I went in to see how Bixie was progressing. She had lost ground, because she had shed the robe and added one lacy pale-green bra. So I told her I expected her to shape up better than that, which at the moment was the wrong expression, and I started digging around trying to find what you put on a naked young girl to take her to the Embassy in the middle of the night.

I heard some kind of disturbance, but by then I had found where the skirts and blouses and sweaters were. So I took time to match them up reasonably well. Bix had gone back into the first bedroom. I heard a lovely gasping delighted giggling, and I heard some kind of muffled grunting and thrashing.

When I hurried in I saw that Bix was bending over the bed, and she had grasped Eva Vitrier firmly with thumb and first two fingers, right by the Neferati nose, thus cutting off all air except what the woman might try to suck through all that Kleenex. French lady’s face had turned very, very dark. Her eyes were bulging and blind, and she was spasming and grunting and flapping, looking very much like an oversized, dying whitefish in the bottom of a skiff. And, believe me, she did not have very far to go. Like twenty seconds more, possibly. I snatched Bix’s playful fingers off lovergirl’s nose, and Eva subsided, breath whistling as she hyperventilated through that noble beak. She opened her eyes and looked up at me, in combination loathing and appeal. Her effort had burst a blood vessel in one eye, and half the white had turned bright crimson.

I tucked her wet sheet firmly under her, patted her on the cheek, took Bixie in, and crowded her into her clothes. She passed inspection. In the elevator on the way down she said, “Wasn’t Eva funny? Wasn’t she funny, though?”

“She was a scream, kid.”

“I wish you hadn’t made me stop.”

“So do I, sort of.”

So we taxied to the Embassy, not far down Reforma, and stood on the wide sidewalk as the cab went away. She yawned.

“Is this the movies?”

“Bixie baby, things can get very, very, very rough for you. I don’t even know if you can understand how rough they have been, or will get. I would feel a lot better if I thought maybe you could cut it.”

“Oh hell yes,” she said.

“Let’s go in.”

Nineteen

MEYER WAS at the Oaxaca airport to meet me when I came back from Florida via Mexico City five days later.

He looked fit and smug and amused, and he wore a straw hat from the market and a blue shirt covered with zippers with metal rings in them.

I peeled out of the inbound line and said, “Relapse? What the hell kind of a relapse are you having?”

“It’s no worse than a bad cold.”

“Then you could have all by yourself gotten on a plane and all by yourself flown home, right?”

“But I don’t like to travel alone. Anyway, are you paying for the extra trip?”

“No. But this isn’t the happiest place in the world to come back to, for me. I guess you know that.”

“Oh, I guess I do. But I don’t have to get depressed just because you do. That wasn’t such a great phone connection. How did Harl take it?”

“How the hell did you expect him to take it? He’s bursting with joy and hope and all that, in a good effort to hide the fact that what we took back there to him might be, in his code of values, better off dead. She started coming apart. She was very, very raggedy by the time the reunion happened.”

“Nothing out of the Vitrier woman?”

“What could she do? Why should she try to do anything? And they had to buy my story. I saw the girl wandering around near Sanborne’s. I was sure I recognized her as Beatrice Bowie, who was supposed to have died. In fact, I was in Mexico at her father’s request, finding out how she died. Here you are, Embassy. Straighten things out. They would rather have had me hand them some armed infernal device. They hated it. They kept looking very Princeton and sighing and hunting for new forms to fill out. Meyer, goddamit, pack! I want to be home. I want to be on the Flush. I want to go to some island no developer has ever found yet, where no beer can has yet washed ashore.”

“Enjoy beautiful Oaxaca.”

And she hit me at a dead run, grabbing and laughing and saying if we were going to stand out here all day, she, Elena, could not wait for the surprise.

I told her she was supposed to be back at work. She told me she wanted a little more vacation, and so did Margarita, and so they took a little more.

“But can they just do that?” I asked Meyer.

“When Enelio Fuentes owns that much of the insurance company they can, buddy.”

So we had drinks and dinner at the Victoria, abundant and long and I tried to be festive, but it kept slipping on me. I kept worrying the whole thing. Picking at it. Meyer said impatiently, “Will you kindly get off that tiresome point of no return, McGee? Please? For me? And for these Guadalajara girls, and for your own sake? A grown-up man must make a lousy decision from time to time, knowing it is lousy, because the only other choice is lousy in another dimension, and no matter which way he jumps, he will not like it. So he accepts the fact that the fates dealt him two low cards, and he goes on from there. Or better, why don’t you two go on from here. I seem to have been moved into another cottage, and only this insurance friend of mine seems able to find it after dark.”

But it still kept nibbling and chewing at me. It kept me just a little apart from all the joy of Elena. And it woke me near dawn, thinking again of that look in Harlan Bowie’s eyes, and wondering if the son of a bitch would clap her away somewhere forever, for her own good, of course.

Dawn-thoughts are the bleak ones. And these took me back to T. Harlan Bowie’s arena-Garden Suite Number Five in that quietest part of Coral Gables. As a medical precaution they had put him on a tranquilizer and then told him I was on the way, bringing back his only chick, alive. I left Bix with his nurse-therapist, Mrs. Kreiger, while I tried to prepare him for her.

I tried, but I don’t think he was listening closely. “Look, Mr. Bowie, she went down there with rotten people. It was a setup. She could put her hands on twenty-five thousand, and they knew it, and they conned her out of it, every dime of it. Some people, Mr. Bowie, have too much of a taste for marijuana. It takes over. They just float and they don’t give a damn.”

“My daughter isn’t that kind of person, McGee.”

“She was fogged over, believe me. In the early part of the trip the three men were all banging her, and the other girl too-the one you buried.”

“Then they were taking her by force, and I am going to see that they are prosecuted.”

“This wasn’t kid games. Two of them are dead. She’s under suspicion of conspiring to smuggle heroin across the border. She got hooked on heroin, Mr. Bowie. She was an addict, or is an addict. A woman gave her a home cure. She cycled her down through some other opiates and got her over onto something that’s not physically addicting. It was a lot of trouble. The woman wanted her.”

“Wanted her?”

“And got her, as a girlfriend, as a female homosexual partner.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m just trying to tell you that this is a different girl. She’s an addictive personality, and she isn’t going to be able to handle any part of this without getting back onto some kind of a high. And you can’t reach her because she bombed herself so long and so big, her mind is not on our wavelength anymore. I’m trying to tell you that-”

“McGee, I think I’m a little tired of you telling me things. I want to see my daughter, please.”

Bixie was down off the charas high, and was being threatened with all the hard edges of reality, and she wanted no part of it. She was mean, edgy, suspicious, and unpredictable. She was vulgar and sullen and semi-psychotic. And she was not about to rush in and kiss dear old daddy and cry tears of joyous welcome, and express any sympathy for his being in a wheelchair.

She came scuffing in, glanced at him, and went over and slouched into a chair. Mrs. Kreiger saw him having problems with the wheelchair and hurried around and wheeled him over to the girl. He reached and grabbed her hand. He was weeping. “Bix. Oh, Bix honey.”

But Bix honey looked narrow-eyed at me. “Is this the big treat, you rotten, dirty bastard? You bring me back to this silly old fart? Where’s Eva? What have you done to Eva? Look, I’ve got to have a surprise. Honest to God, I’ve got to have a surprise or I’m going to go up the walls screaming.”

“You’re home now!” he said.

“Somebody get him off me,” she said.

“I thought you were dead, honey.”

She looked at him with the coldest dark blue eyes in town. “And I wish you were, old man. I wish to hell you were.”

Mrs. Kreiger said, “Doctor Kohn wants to have a look at her. Should I… take her along now?”

“Yes. And… let me know what they suggest, please.”

When they were gone he wiped his eyes and shook his head. “It isn’t possible she could change so much. What can… be done?”

“I think maybe you’ve got to make her able to live with somebody she despises. She despises Bix Bowie, and always has, but didn’t know there was a way to escape. It will take a lot of love, a lot of patience, a lot of motivation to make her ever believe that the Bix Bowie of the real world isn’t a total failure. Excuse me, but what else have you got worth doing?”

“It… it’s a second chance?”

“And very damned slim.”

“It’s the only thing I can do.”

So maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t give it the big try. Or it might last only so long. I wondered about that look in his eye. Maybe I’d only imagined it was there. Second try, second rejection. But maybe, just maybe, he might have the guts for the job.

I heard a rooster crow a long way across the silence of the predawn morning in Oaxaca.

Near dawn, and Elena was curled into me, fists against my chest, round knees pressing against my belly. So I kissed the sleeping eye that was nearest and handiest.

She grunted and came but partway up out of sleep, far enough to begin a slow and determined worming and squirming, trying to work the undermost leg under me, under my waist. When I saw what she was trying to do, I made it easier for her. She slid the leg under, and then hooked her calf back against me. She lifted the other leg over me, the drowsy weight of it coming down across my waist. She uncurled her fists and slid her hands around my ribs, one under me, one on top, and flattened her palms against my back.

So then there was the unseen questing, and a guiding touch, and then a snubbed pressure increasing until-celebrated with a little snuff of sudden insuck of air through her nose-we were suddenly, sleekly, deeply coupled. She hitched her self a little higher, changed her position, moved her hands further around me, and made her small warm sound of contentment.

I slid my hands down her back until they reached and cupped the warm, smooth, solid buttocks. And like some familiar, faithful, trusty, loyal little machine, that touch and pressure was enough to start the slow, rhythmic pumping of her hips, rich and sleepy and demanding.

So with gray at the windows, and her mouth turning upward for the kiss, with the slow deep steady beat that would begin to change only when we neared climax, this became the reality, this became the life-moment, this became the avowal, the communion, the immortality. The private rhythm of our need, a small and personal and totally shared thing, was that special thing in the world and in time which changed the Rockos and Evas, the Jerrys and Wallys and Bruceys and Carls, the Bixies and Beckys to scare-masks fashioned of cardboard and spit, empty things which hang on strings from an empty tree, turning in the parching wind that blows across the empty heart.

“Ah,” said the tireless, tawny, loving engine. Bless all the sisters, wherever they are.

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Table of Contents

Travis McGee #11 Dress Her In IndigoJohn D. MacDonald