The Scared Stiff

34

“Good morning, Mr. Emory.”

“Right on time.”

Arturo held the door for me and I slid into the Impala’s backseat. He got behind the wheel, looked at me in his mirror, and put the car in gear. As we drove out from under the porte cochere and around the curving drive away from the grand hotel, he said, “You look like you got something on your mind.”

“Ifigenia,” I said.

This time the look he gave me was puzzled. “My Ifigenia?”

“I’d hate to think there was more than one of them.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“You told her about this scam we’re doing. You told her a while ago.”

“Sure, man,” he said. “I tell Ifigenia everything.”

“And she tells the cops.”

His frown now crumpled his face into a mountain range. “Ifigenia?”

“She didn’t want you involved with me, and she told you so.”

“Sure,” he said. We were driving now through the manicured forest, neither of us paying any attention to the scenery. Arturo said, “Ifigenia never likes nothing I’m gonna do. She bitches at me all the time.”

“A month ago,” I told him, “more than a month ago, she wrote a letter to the police, telling them what I was going to do and how you were gonna help, and asking the police to come tell us they know what we’re up to so we won’t do it.”

“No!” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ifigenia sent that letter?”

“Anonymous, but yes. My name is the only name she mentioned.”

“A month ago?”

“Or more.”

“Come on, man,” he said. “How come we didn’t hear from the cops?”

“The letter just got there. Your goddamn post office strikes again.”

“You’re sure, man?” He really didn’t want to believe it.

I said, “I had dinner with the insurance investigator last night.”

This time, when he looked at me in the mirror, he was half smiling, as though we were telling jokes together. “No, man,” he said.

“Yes, man,” I said. “His name is Leon Kaplan.”

“That’s what he told us, yeah.”

“That’s what he told me too. He went to college years ago in Boston with Dulce’s husband Fernando.”

“Oh, man, that’s crazy,” he said. “That’s a, whaddaya call it. Coincidencia.”

“Coincidence,” I said.

That delighted him. “Yeah? The same word!”

“Another coincidence,” I said. “Except it isn’t, not exactly. Guerrera’s a small country, not that many people go to college in the North. And it wasn’t Kaplan’s case to begin with; he took it over because he wanted to see his old friend again.”

“Huh.”

I leaned forward, my forearms on the seat back behind him. “Arturo,” I said, “they were gonna pay off. They were all ready to pay the money when that letter showed up. The reason that son of a bitch is here is because that letter showed up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, hermano,” he said. “I wouldn’t think she’d do a thing like that.”

I sat back again. The river was just coming into view. “Well, she would,” I said. “And she did. Not to hurt you, to protect you.”

“She always nags and pushes at me, you know,” he said. “That’s why I can’t be with her all the time. I love her, man, but she drives me crazy. But this... She musta figured, Get the cops in ahead of time, nobody’s gonna be in trouble.”

“I trusted you,” I said. “You trusted Ifigenia. She trusted the post office. We were all wrong.”

“Oh, hermano, don’t say that.”

The ferry was there, and the man in the green-and-white uniform gestured for us to drive aboard, so Arturo couldn’t say anymore until we’d boarded and stopped. Then he turned around to look at me directly and say, “I don’t know what to do about her. The letter’s already gone. Whaddaya want me to do?”

“Nothing about Ifigenia,” I said. “We’ve got another problem. Let’s get out of the car.”

The ferry was moving. There was another taxi aboard, in front of us, with an old couple in it. Their driver got out and nodded to us, but the old couple stayed in the cab.

Arturo and I stood at the rail and looked at the river. Across the way, the other ferry was just pulling out. Arturo said, “What’s our other problem?”

“Tomorrow, Leon Kaplan plans to spend all day in the Hall of Records. He’s gonna look at death certificates from the Tobón family from thirty years ago and compare them with recent requests for birth certificates.”

Arturo sighed. “He’s gonna find Felicio, man.”

“If I was still at Luz’s,” I said, “or still at Carlos’s, I wouldn’t know a thing about this, and tomorrow Lola would be on her way to jail.”

“Oh, man.”

“He told me so. Last night. He smells the fraud and he wants to prove it, and he said, and I’m gonna quote him, That lady’s on her way to jail.”

“Not Lola,” he said.

“We’ve got today,” I told him. “I don’t know how we do it, but we get that death certificate out of the records.”

Arturo scrinched his face up. “Get rid of Felicio’s death certificate? How we gonna do that?”

“We’ve got a whole ferry ride to come up with an answer,” I said.

The ferry approaching us also had two vehicles on it, both of them trucks bringing provisions to the hotel. One was a slat-sided truck weighed down with cartons of canned goods, and the other was that same beer truck we’d seen the first time. The driver of the beer truck waved, and I waved back. Beside me, Arturo sighed.