The Black Path of Fear

15

Morro Castle was like a stubby chunk of pink chalk standing on end in the early-morning light. We drifted in slow past it, so slow we hardly seemed to move at all. But it finally worked its way around behind us, and we were in the harbor, and there was Havana back again. After a night that felt as though it hadn’t happened at all.

I came off the ferry and passed through the customs. It was the second time in three days. The guys just looked at me.

“That was just a quick business trip there and back,” I explained. “Something that had to be attended to personally.”

They thumbed me through.

The sun was low yet, and the roof tops were only beginning to get their first coat of it; the dazzling paint job hadn’t been laid on heavy. Down on the sidewalks it was still cool and shady.

I was beginning to know my way around Havana. I knew where I wanted to go, and that always helps. I headed straight for police headquarters and Acosta’s office. But I walked slow; I took my time. It was early yet, and I wanted to give him time to get there.

He was. I found him at his desk by the time I got in. He must have just got there ahead of me. He was starting to straighten up things from the day before. He looked up when he saw me standing there in the door.

“What brings you around here so early?” he exclaimed.

I came the rest of the way in and closed the door after me.

“I’ve just killed two men in Miami, Florida,” I said.

His hands stopped fussing with the papers, fell sort of flat and quiet on top of them, but without letting them go.

He took a minute’s time to look down. Then he looked up at me. He looked at me a long time.

“Why do you come in here?” he said in a low voice that I could hardly hear. “Why didn’t you go to them, up there?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted with a sort of half-baked smile. “I guess because — it’s closer to her, down here. Or maybe because a guy likes to go to a guy that’s already somewhat familiar to him, about a thing like that. That he’s already spoken to and knows; who isn’t a stranger.” I laughed at it myself.

He quit looking at me finally, started shoving a lot of papers around. As though something or other was over, and he was about ready for the next thing.

I waited as long as I could. Finally I got tired. “Well, what are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“About what I told you when I came in here.”

He got annoyed, like a busy man does when you pester him about something. His forehead pleated up impatiently. “I don’t speak English so good,” he snapped. “I often miss hearing things that are said to me, especially when they’re said too fast.”

“I can say it slower. I just killed two men in Miami. Eddie Roman and Bruno Giordano or Jordan. Is that slow enough?”

He shook his head. “My English stinks today. If I should get a radiogram from the Miami police telling me to hold a man named Scott for murder up there, that would be different. Then I’d go out looking for a man named Scott, and when I found him I’d hold him for them. I’d have to. Unless or until that should happen, would you mind not coming in here and mumbling things in English that I don’t quite catch?”

“Suppose you never hear from them?” I said. “It’s quite likely that you won’t.”

“Then how can I know about a thing unless I’m properly notified?” he flared. “I’m not a mind reader, you know!

Now, mira, you been standing around here ten minutes, and I still don’t know what you want. I’m a busy man. Buenos dias, señor. There’s a door right behind you.”

It finally sank in, what he was trying to do. I suppose I should have thanked him. I wasn’t sure it was worth it. What was he giving me? A long-term option on a headache, instead of a quick cure. I wasn’t sure he had any thanks coming.

I turned and drifted toward the door he’d pointed out “I’ll be around the town,” I said.

“I know,” I heard him murmur. “Stick to rum. It goes quicker.”

A cop came in all flustered and jabbered something to him a mile a minute. He was holding the back of his hand with a handkerchief, as though it had been scratched or bitten.

Acosta threw up his hands and raked them through his hair. He turned to me suddenly. “How much money you got on you?”

I told him.

He didn’t seem to care how much it was. “Would you mind putting it up as bail, so we can get that — that epidemic off our hands?”

I didn’t know what he meant for a minute.

“That girl, that woman! She’s been raising Cain in there all night, all day yesterday. If you haven’t got enough, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket. Anything to get her out of here!”

I handed it over to him. “What are you holding her for, anyway? Material witness? She doesn’t—”

“She lifted the pocket watch of one of my detectives right as they were bringing her in in custody the first time. Somebody that didn’t know any better let the charge go down on the blotter, and we’ve been stuck with her ever since! It’s worse than one of these hurricanes that blows in from the sea every now and then; at least they go right on out again.”

I kept my face straight with difficulty. “She must be slipping,” I felt like saying. “What was she doing with her other hand at the time?”

The fine or whatever it was went through, and in a minute or two you could hear a scuffling and commotion coming down the corridor from in back somewhere. You could hear it long before it got there. As though a heavy trunk were being bounced around, or as though the trunk were bouncing its handlers around. Either way.

Then the door slapped open. It was taking two of them to hold her. And even then they could have used a couple extra pairs of hands apiece. She was keeping them busy.

“Release her, release her.” Acosta waved at them hectically. “If I have any more of my men bitten I’ll have them all at the dispensary. Open the street door,” he added prudently.

They took their hands off her quick, like they were only too glad to. They even stepped noticeably back, gave her plenty of room.

She didn’t take immediate advantage of the invitingly open outside door. First she looked down at herself. She brushed off all the places where their hands had been. She made the pantomime eloquent, wringing out her hands separately as though she were dropping off clotted filth. Then she readjusted her attire by giving it a half turn around on her here and there. Like armor that had slipped its moorings.

Then she started in toward him, instead of out the other way. She came on slow and sultry. She had on her war walk. She was carrying that chip on her hip again, like the other night in the room when I’d first met her. She looked tough as gravel. She looked dangerous to monkey with or get in the way of.

Acosta stood his ground — or rather sat it out, behind the desk. There were two of his own men present, and he couldn’t do otherwise. But if I read the expression on his face correctly, he would have given anything to shift back a little farther, chair and all.

She came to a halt about halfway over to the desk, sent him a glare that should have charred him where he sat.

Everybody was noticeably quiet; himself and the two cops over by the door as well. After all, men are instinctively peace-loving animals. Particularly when they’re liable to get badly mauled for not being.

I cleared my throat to see if I could draw her off. She hadn’t looked at me at all. “Hello, Midnight,” I said deprecatingly. It didn’t work. She kept her eyes on him. “I’ll talk to you outside,” she said. “I don’t like the air in this place.”

Then she swung with one side of her mouth. One of the documents in front of him on the desk jumped a little.

Then she turned and went on back, walking slow and sultry, dangerous to tamper with. The two cops at the door shifted even farther aside, gave her all the clearance she needed.

She stood there in the open doorway for a minute, broadside to all of us, facing the way out. She gave him a final searing glare by way of postscript. Then she flexed one knee joint, brought up something, put a carefully preserved cigar segment to her mouth. And then as a final index of her regard for these surroundings she reached up toward the top of the door, struck a great transverse swipe all the way down across it that ended in a sizzling match flare. A moment later the steaming matchstick landed across the threshold, well inside the room, in the general direction of Acosta.

She moved on, passed from view. A little cigar smoke came drifting back past the vacant doorway.

I looked at Acosta. He was surreptitiously mopping his brow and trying to pretend that he wasn’t. Then he took a blotter and touched it lightly to the document that had jumped before. “Close that door,” he barked. “I don’t want her back in here again.”

I caught up with her outside on the street a couple of moments later. She was walking along slow, taking her time, not afraid of anyone, cop or civilian, making them get out of her way. I called to her and went chasing after her.

“Well, it’s over, Midnight,” I said, falling into step beside her.

“It’s over, guapo,” she agreed.

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say about it, so we didn’t say it.

We walked over in the general direction of Sloppy’s. We stopped when we got to the corner below.

“I’d like to ask you in for a drink,” I said, “but—”

“I know. There’s someone waiting for you in there. Flowers on a grave.”

She dusted off my sleeve with a comradely flick of her hand, and that was our way of saying good-by, I guess.

Two ships that pass in the night; two paths that cross in the dark.

I watched her for a moment, then I turned. She went her way, and I went in.

I stood there with a daiquiri, right where we’d stood that night. Her dying words came back to me. “Let me know how that picture we took together turns out.”

“It turned out okay, darling,” I said softly. “It turned out okay.” I held up my glass to her, wherever she was. Then I snapped it against the bar.

It was lonely standing there by myself at the bar like that.