The Scared Stiff

43

Except he didn’t. In the dark, despite this car’s intensely bright high beams, I hadn’t noticed that modest Casa Montana Mojoca sign as we whipped by it, so I didn’t realize we’d already passed the turnoff to the hotel until I saw a dim city glow out ahead of us, smudging the black sky with ocher, like a poor erasure. I said, “Isn’t that Marona?”

“Yes, we’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rafez told me. He was still being pleasant.

I said, “But we missed the turnoff. For the hotel.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t you understand? The hotel ferry is idle until six, and of course you wish to make a report about the theft of your automobile and the attack by the bandits. There’s a police substation in Marona. We’ll go there, we can be comfortable, perhaps have a cup of coffee, you’ll make your statement, and then we’ll drive back when the ferry begins its work again.”

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. Up to that point, we’d had merely an hour and a half of pleasant chat, with long periods of silence, as though there were no suspicious elements in my story or appearance at all. Rafez had asked me where I was from, and I said New York, and he told me of his hopes to visit there someday, but didn’t tell me, as he’d told Lola, that he intended to be a policeman in New York eventually, because of his special knowledge of fighting criminals who speak Spanish.

He had also asked me how I liked Guerrera, and I’d told him it was just fine except for tonight’s unfortunate events, and he smoothly apologized on behalf of his entire nation. He then told me some anecdotes about crime fighting in Guerrera, most of which concerned his brilliant intuitive deductions — he was apparently the Sherlock Holmes of 221B Calle Panadero — and I told him some stories about crime in the greater New York area that I remembered from newspapers and television and that had nothing to do with me.

But now this wasn’t after all just a pleasant chat to kill time until I was dropped off at my hotel. It was the beginning of an interrogation.

I was sure I wasn’t going to like this.

Marona at three in the morning is not a happening place. The downtown shops are sealed behind solid metal gates, there are no moving cars or pedestrians, and the only illumination is the streetlight at every intersection. The Marona police station, on a downtown corner, is a three-story adobe structure with bars on every one of its small windows — from which very little light leaked — and an overhead garage entrance on the side street, which opened upward when our driver touched the control hooked to the visor in front of him.

Inside, a black ramp curved steeply down to a basement parking area, while the garage door clanked downward behind us with a certain finality. This concrete space below-ground could have held a dozen cars but contained only five, including something that looked a lot like a smallish tank; armored personnel carrier is what they call it, I believe. In case the muggers ever get nukes, I suppose.

The driver stopped us at a parking slot near a red metal fire door, and we all got out. The driver was a uniformed cop, not tall but bulked up, with a sidearm and a certain flat way of looking at things.

“The elevator is out of order, I’m afraid,” Rafez said. “We’ll have to walk.”

“That’s okay.”

It was the top floor we were going to, so it was up three clanging metal flights of stairs, inadequately lit by low-wattage bulbs. At the top, we went through another red metal fire door into a hallway even less adequately lit; one overhead fluorescent in the middle of a thirty-foot-long corridor.

“This way,” Rafez said, and we three walked past several closed doors until we found the one he liked. He opened it, flicked on fluorescent ceiling lights inside, and gestured smilingly for me to go in.

I didn’t like Rafez’s smile. I didn’t like anything about him. I was glad Lola had punched him in the nose.

I stepped through the doorway, and this was clearly nothing but an interrogation room. Under the flat fluorescent lighting, a gray metal desk stood in the middle of the black linoleum floor, not facing the door but sideways to it. A padded swivel chair was to its right, behind the desk, and an unpadded wooden armchair faced the desk on the left. Four armless wooden chairs were ranged at unequal intervals along the left wall, behind the wooden armchair. There was nothing else, no filing cabinets, no wastebasket, no telephone, no calendar on the wall — in fact, nothing on the walls.

Well, at least there wasn’t blood on the walls.

I hesitated, as though unsure which chair was supposed to be mine, and Rafez courteously gestured me toward the interrogatee’s place, saying, “Have a seat, why don’t you?”

“Thank you.”

We positioned ourselves traditionally, Rafez at the desk, me facing him, the driver out of sight — but not out of mind — behind me.

Rafez opened a desk drawer to take out a long yellow pad and a ballpoint pen. Placing them on the desk, he smiled at me and said, “This automobile. From whom was it rented?”

“Pre-Columbian Rent-A-Car.”

“Ah.” He made a note. “And what kind was it, please?”

I didn’t want to say it was a VW Beetle, because I didn’t want to give Rafez any reason at all to remember that terrible accident at the Scarlet Toucan three weeks ago, so, remembering another car that was typically rented in this country, I said, “A Honda Accord. It was red.”

“Red. Ah, I see,” he said, as though that were significant. Making another note, looking down at the pad, he said, “Did Carlos Perez recommend Pre-Columbian?”

Who? Did I know that name? I said, “Who?”

He looked up at me. His smile was still pleasant as he said, “Carlos Perez, your friend. I just thought naturally you would have consulted with him when you wished to rent a car.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I shook my head in honest bewilderment. “Perez? I don’t know any Carlos Perez.” I frowned, trying to think. Somebody at the hotel? “No,” I said.

He watched me very intently, and now I could see doubt in his eyes. He could tell I wasn’t faking, but he tried once more: “No? Carlos Perez from Rancio? You don’t know him?”

Oh, for God’s sake, Cousin Carlos! I’d never known his last name. Carlos and Maria, that’s who he meant. Carlos and Maria Perez.

In that instant of realization, I lost control of my face. I immediately got it back, but with Rafez immediately was not soon enough. I blinked at him, while doubt disappeared from his eyes, and that small smile returned to his mouth. “You recall him now?”

He knows, he already knows, so what can I say, how do I get around this? Denying I know Carlos Perez will only make things worse.

So I had a second sudden moment of realization. “You!” I cried, startled, and pointed at him so explosively that I heard the creak of leather from the driver behind me. “You were the policeman! When I was with Maria!”

He sat back to think that one over. Had he caught me out, or had I somehow slipped through his net? Why had I suddenly made his job so easy for him? Temporizing, he merely repeated what I’d just said: “When you were with Maria.”

“When I was pretending to be the chauffeur,” I said.

He looked at me, completely without expression. “When you were pretending to be the chauffeur.”

Was he going to use that as a tactic forever, merely repeating my own words back to me? I said, “On the road to San Cristobal. You remember.” I laughed lightly; I’ll never know how I managed it. “That could have been very embarrassing,” I said.

“Very embarrassing,” he said.

There’s an echo in here, I thought. I said, “Since I was pretending to be a Guerreran chauffeur, and I don’t speak Guerreran Spanish.”

“You don’t speak Guerreran Spanish.”

“My accent makes grown men weep. Maria told me, ‘I’ll tell you to let me handle it and you don’t say a word.’ So that’s what I did. In fact, I was afraid to look at you.”

“Afraid to look at me.”

“Afraid to look at you,” I agreed. Two could play at this game. “That’s why I didn’t recognize you before this. I just sat there and looked out the windshield, straight ahead.”

For a wonder, he didn’t repeat that. What he did instead was put down the pen so he could rub the point of his jaw with the soft flesh of his hand between thumb and forefinger. Brooding at me like that, he looked as though he were trying to unscrew his head.

A long silent moment went by. Leather creaked behind me. Rafez, more quietly than ever, said, “You were pretending to be the chauffeur.”

A very early repetition, now repeated again. I’m in a time loop here. “That’s right,” I said.

“Why?”

I looked flustered. I looked embarrassed. I said, “Inspector, you know what it’s — certainly you can — Maria and I—”

“You are suggesting,” he said, inventing a sentence all his own, “that you were having an affair with Señora Perez.”

“Inspector, Maria and I—”

“With the consent of her husband.”

I sat ramrod stiff in the chair, startled, showing a bit of fear. “No, sir! If Carlos thought for a second...” I looked left, I looked right, I lowered my voice as I said, “Please, Inspector, promise me, none of this will leave this room.”

“You had his car,” he pointed out.

“It’s her car too.”

He thought some more, unscrewing his head. Then he took the hand away so he could shake the head, emphatically and firmly. “No,” he said. “You were there for the beating of Alvarez.”

I said, “The man on Sunday, after church? Was that his name?”

“You know his name,” Rafez snapped, beginning to show his exasperation. “You know Carlos Perez’s name. You know everybody’s name. But I’m not sure I know your name.”

Uh-oh. Let’s change the subject, shall we? I said, “Honest, Inspector, I went to mass with Maria and Carlos that morning, and Carlos just said he wanted to talk with a man afterward and would I come along, and I said sure, and we walked, and Carlos and this man — Alvarez? — they talked about I don’t know what, and all of a sudden Carlos started beating up on him. I had nothing to do with it, I didn’t touch him, I don’t know the man, I never—”

“You know,” Rafez snarled, “he’s my man! You know, and Carlos knows. If he was taking, it was not for himself, it was for me, and Carlos knows that. How did Carlos find out?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, “and that’s the truth. Alvarez is your man? I don’t know what you mean by that, I don’t know why Carlos beat him up, I don’t—”

“The smuggling!” Rafez was really losing his temper now, which I didn’t at all want, but I didn’t see how to keep it from happening. “Are you going to sit there,” he growled, “and tell me you don’t know about the smuggling?”

“Well, smuggling,” I said, using his method, repeating his word while trying to think. “Of course I know it’s around,” I said.

“And what was I costing him?” Rafez demanded. “A pittance. He didn’t have to know, and if he did know he didn’t have to treat Alvarez as though — as though Alvarez were not under my protection. As though it didn’t matter that Alvarez was under my protection!”

This was weird. Rafez was interrogating me, but as we went along I was the one learning things. He was still completely at sea, and I was beginning at last to understand what had happened after mass that Sunday. I said, “Believe me, Inspector, if Carlos — Perez? I never knew his last name, I only knew those people socially — if Carlos has treated you with disrespect I don’t blame you for being upset, but I had nothing to do with it. I’m an American citizen, I’m not involved in anything in Guerrera except—”

“You’re involved in everything in Guerrera!” he shouted, which was going too far.

So I ignored it. “Nothing except Maria.” With dignity, I said, “And I hope you’ll keep my confidence on—”

“Pah!” he said, and sat back and glared at me. “You are not having an affair with Señora Perez,” he decided.

I just looked at him. He brooded at me some more, then said, “But it may be true you are not as close to Carlos Perez as I thought.”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

He nodded slowly, while he thought about things. Then he said, “Let me see your passport, Mr. Emory.”

“It’s at the hotel.” I’d been waiting hours to give that answer.

“It is not,” he said, and said to the driver, “Saco.”

Oh, no. In either language, that’s my vinyl bag. It’s all over, I thought, as the driver came heavily forward. He picked up the bag, carried it to the desk, and zipped it open. Unhappily, I watched him paw through my messily packed things. Out came all the wrong ID: The passport. The driver’s license. Even the birth certificate.

As the driver walked back to his chair, not bothering to look at me, Rafez studied the three documents before him. At last he looked up. He was puzzled, but he was ready to be enlightened. “Felicio Tobón,” he said.