The Long escape Page 13

  "Sure did. He . . ."

  "Wait a minute. I want you to think hard. It's been more than twenty years since you saw Roberto, remem-

  ber. How long ago did you play billiards with Rodolfo here in the club?"

  He buried his nose in the rickey glass and thought hard, trying to sort out the jumble that was his memory. Because I was pretty sure of myself, I said, "Five or six years ago?"

  "About that, I guess. Seems to me it wasn't long back."

  "About how old was he then?"

  "Must have been around Roberto's age, I guess. Just a lad. We . . ."

  "Hold it. Five or six years ago, Rodolfo was about the same age as Roberto was when you last knew him, twenty years back. Rodolfo really was twenty or twenty-five years younger than Roberto. Isn't that right?"

  He worked hard on that one. The cogs kept slipping on him, but he finally guessed I was right. It seemed strange to him that two brothers should be born that far apart. It just went to show that a man was as good as his . . .

  "I told you that they were brothers," I said. "I was wrong. Rodolfo is Roberto's son. They call him Fito."

  His face lit up.

  "Why, sure. Sure he is. Hell, I remember when he was born. I went to his christening, right here in Antofagasta."

  It was as easy as that.

  I bought Willie a gin rickey and had the boy at the desk call me a taxi. There was a victoria stand near the club, but a victoria was too slow. Fito and his old man might or might not know where I was, and they might or might not try to have me knocked off. I wasn't sure. I sat low in the taxi until we reached tiie Hotel Maury, and I didn't waste any time getting under cover.

  The first plane south that had room for me left at six in the morning. It put me down in Santiago around ten. I telephoned Lee from the airport, as I had promised to do as soon as I got back to town, and learned that don Rodolfo had been kicking up because I had been released in Lee's custody. Don Rodolfo wanted me back in the tank where I belonged. He had complained to the embassy, and the embassy was riding Lee's tail about it.

  I said, "They won't be riding you for long. I'm going to see don Rodolfo right now. When I get through talking to him, he'll be a good boy."

  "I hope you're right. I've gone out on a limb for you, Al. If anything goes wrong ..."

  "Nothing will go wrong. I'll be seeing you."

  I hung up and went straight from the airport to the house on Avenida O'Higgins.

  Terry and Fito were in the patio when I got there.

  They were talking about me, as I knew from their angry expressions and the way they shut up when the maid brought me into the patio. They both looked mad and worried at the same time.

  Fito stood up, his face ugly.

  "You are not welcome in this house, Mr. Colby. You should know that."

  "I came to see your father. If he will not see me here, I will meet him at his convenience."

  "He will not see you."

  "Will you ask him?"

  "No."

  Terry said, "That will not help, Fito."

  She rang the bell.

  She did not look at me while we waited for the maid to come back. But I looked at her. I wanted her to meet my eyes. I wanted her to see that I had forgotten what she tried to sell me in jail, that she had left nothing with me that might shame her. A girl was justified in using any weapon to protect someone she loved. I wanted her to know that I realized that. I wasn't even sore at Fito because of the bullet. I wasn't sore at anybody, any more. I wished they would both understand I was only doing a job.

  She never looked at me.

  The maid showed up. Terry told her to ask don Rodolfo to come to the patio. We waited.

  Don Rodolfo bowed silently when he saw me. His icy expression didn't change.

  I said, "I apologize for violating your hospitality, don Rodolfo. There are some things we must discuss. If you would prefer to meet me at another place . . ."

  "I have said that my house is yours, senor. What have you to discuss with me?"

  "It would be better that we talk alone."

  He didn't budge. I said, "You once offered me the courtesies of your billiard room. I should like to enjoy them again."

  That puzzled him. He didn't know how to refuse me. Finally he bowed again and turned away. I followed him.

  We were at the archway when Terry said, "Father."

  He turned. So did I.

  "No tengas pena."

  Terry smiled at him, her chin up. Fito stood at her side, jaw set, fists clenched, his eyes dark.

  Do not have grief. It bucked the old boy, if he needed bucking. He knew where he stood wdth his kids, whatever happened. He inclined his head and motioned me on.

  We went down to the billiard room.

  The portrait of dona Maria hung on the wall with his others. It was a wonderful job. He had caught the look in her face that I tried to describe.

  I said, "An excellent painting, don Rodolfo. Dona Maria is well?"

  "She has had a touch of fiebre. Nothing serious."

  He thought I was playing with him. I wasn't. I wanted to get it over with as much as he did, but I didn't know how to start. Because I didn't say anything, he gestured at the billiard table. The balls were already set up.

  ""Will you play as we talk?"

  "With pleasure."

  We chalked up the cues. He wanted me to take the break, because the break is an easy billiard. I wanted him to take it. I won the argument.

  He squared off.

  As he stroked the cue ball, I said, in English, "It's my turn to win, Parker."

  a!

  riE MISSED the shot a mile. He didn't even hit his object ball. Still he tried to pretend that he hadn't understood me, looking up with his eyebrows raised as if to question me politely for forgetting that he didn't speak English.

  I said, "It's not use. I've got you cold."

  "iPerdone?"

  "It was a good scheme. But I should have known that anybody smart enough to carry two names with a single passport wouldn't find it hard to think up another twist."

  "If you will speak Spanish, please. I am confused. . . ."

  "I'm not. Not any more. All you had to do was die, and everything went to your son, Rodolfo. You became Rodolfo as well—two of you in the same house, the same name, the same loyalties, the same person in two bodies—don Rodolfo Ruano, heir to the family properties whether you called him brother or son, still keeping everything that Roberto had before he died except the identity that was no longer safe for you to keep. You fooled me for a long time."

  He shook his head, puzzled.

  "I am sorry. I have little English. I do not understand you."

  "Oh, give it up! It won't take me an hour to prove that Roberto Ruano Parker never had a brother. It won't take me five minutes to put you down on the floor and look at your teeth, if you want it that way. I tell you, it's all over!"

  We were facing each other. He had the billiard cue in his hand, holding it short, just at the right balance to clip me alongside the ear with the loaded butt end. I saw the thought come to him. Then he sighed, "walked over to the rack, and put the cue away carefully.

  "Yes," he said, in English. "It's all over. What now?"

  "Talk."

  "About what?"

  "You. Why did you run out?"

  "Does it make a difference?"

  "I want to know all the answers. I'm not a cop, and I've got nothing against you. I don't want to kick over your applecart any more than I have to."

  "Thank you. Where do you want me to begin?"

  "At the beginning."

  There were a couple of chairs against the wall. He pulled them out. We sat down. He thought for a while, staring blankly at the floor.

  "Excuse me if I speak. Spanish," he said at last. "I have avoided speaking English or listening to it for so long that it no longer comes easily to me."

  "One language is as good as another."

  "Truly." He sighed. "Pues, my wife—
dona Maria— and I were married nearly thirty years ago. We had the two children you know. I had made much money from the nitrate properties my father left me, and our marriage was happy, but I was young and accustomed to a more active life than marriage and a family offered me in Antofagasta, where we lived. Antofagasta is not an exciting place. I grew discontented as the years passed. Doiia Maria was happy with her house and children. I wanted to know the world.

  "I went to the States on what I told my wife was a business trip. Because it was not a business trip, and because I meant to be free of all restraint, I called myself Robert R. Parker, using my mother's name, and said nothing about my Chileno background. I spoke English, then, as naturally as the Americans from whom I had learned it in the nitrate fields, and passed easily for an American.

  "In California, I met the woman I married there. I was thirty-five. She was much younger, eighteen or nineteen, and beautiful. I fell in love with her. I wanted her more than I had ever wanted anything. She was—

  then, at least—chaste, and I could not have her without marriage. I think now that I could not have had her, even with marriage, had she not realized that I was wealthy. I had taken money with me, and I was free with it. That was all she knew of me, but it was enough, I was young and a fool. With no remorse, no thought for my true wife and children, I abandoned them and married Helen."

  I said, "You need not punish yourself unnecessarily."

  "I am not punishing myself. I am simply telling you the truth."

  He paused for a moment before he went on.

  "I invested my money in real estate and made more, much more, so I could give her everything she wanted— except youth. She was a child when we married. When I was fifty, she was thirty-three, at the peak of her beauty. She was—she was . . ."

  He moved his hands helplessly.

  "It is hard for me to describe her. Did you ever see her?"

  "No."

  "Then you can not understand how I felt. I knew that she was vain, and ill-mannered and cruel, a bad woman at heart, yet I would have done anything for her. She wanted parties, excitement, gaiety. I could give her those, but her friends were all of her own age. I was

  'the old man' to them—Helen's 'old man.' She joked about it, to my face. It hurt, but I bore with it. I might be her 'old man' but I loved her, and she was still my wife—or so I thought, until I discovered that she had been unfaithful to me. Not once but many times, and with friends I had accepted in my home."

  The mask slipped when he said that. I saw his mouth twist. But he went on talking in the same level voice.

  "I asked her to deny what I had heard. She laughed and called me an old fool to think that I could hold her.

  "I meant to kill her, at first. But fifteen years in California had taught me to think like a norteamericano, with the head instead of the heart. Her deatli would serve no purpose. My honor was already sucli a shabby thing that another stain more or less meant little. I thought of taking my own life, but that was the short escape of a coward. If I owed Helen nothing, there was still a debt to be paid to my true wife and children. Fifteen years too late, I realized this.

  "It was not an easy thing to do, but I made up my mind to come back. Even if I could not recover what I had thrown away, I still might be able to repay some part of what I owed. I had careful inquiries made. I learned that doiia Maria after taking those steps which were necessary to satisfy herself that Roberto Ruano did not die in the States, had guessed that I was deserting

  her. She was too proud to investigate further, or to try to bring me back against my will. She took the children to La Paz, in Bolivia, where her parents lived, so she need not explain to Antofagasta why her husband had left her. But Fito, when he became a man, had to return to attend to matters concerning the family properties. I was too much of a coward to beg doila Maria to take me back. I wrote Fito, asking him if there could be forgiveness in his heart and his sister's and his mother's for an old man who did not deserve forgiveness. He wrote back immediately. He said—he said ..."

  The Spanish grandee had to swallow before he could go on. His eyes glowed.

  I said, "You need not tell me what he wrote. I know how your children feel toward their father."

  I took Fito's photograph out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  "This is yours. It was found in the car you sold in Mexico."

  "Thank you. It was a great loss to me."

  He studied the picture for a moment before he closed his hand around it.

  "What more do you want to know? I obtained 2. United States passport. . . ."

  "I know that part of it. What did you tell dofia Maria?"

  "I lied to her, in a sense, although it does not weigh on my conscience. I told her only that I had committed a crime, and that all the steps I took to conceal my identity were necessary for my protection. She loves me enough to ask no more questions than I wish to answer. It would break her heart to know that I am a—bigamist."

  "•Your children know?"

  "Yes. I had to tell them everything, because I wanted their help in the conspiracy to protect their mother from learning the truth. They have forgiven me."

  "Few men are fortunate enough to have a family such as yours."

  "I know. I do not deserve them. It makes my happiness complete to realize that."

  His face was like a rock as he sat there spilling his guts to the stranger who was tearing down all that he had built up so carefully. His hands rested in his lap, holding Fito's photograph. He waited for me to deal the cards he would have to play out.

  I said, "Why did you not stay in Bolivia with your family, instead of returning to Chile? It would have been harder to trace you there."

  "I know. But all of our money comes from Chile, which restricts exportation of funds. In Chile I am a wealthy man, in Bolivia I would have been a pauper

  living on the charity of dona Maria's family and what little money Fito could smuggle out to us from Anto-fagasta. I did not know then that I had made a mistake in failing to sign over the California properties to Helen, but I knew her nature. I would never be wholly safe in Chile as Roberto Ruano Parker. With Fito's help I bought the fundo near Melipilla and lived there long enough to arrange things so that all my property would go to him at my death. Then—I died. Rodolfo Ruano—both Rodolfo Ruanos—came to live here, and Maria Teresa and her mother came down to join us from La Paz. Since neither dona Maria nor I entertain visitors or find it necessary to appear in public, there is very little chance that anyone we knew twenty years ago in Antofagasta will ever recognize us. We have been very happy here."

  "Until I came."

  "Until you came."

  I thought about what he had told me. He watched my face.

  I said, "Who lies in your grave on the Hacienda Quilpue?"

  "A cattle thief."

  "How did he die?"

  "Victor Chavarria—the man whose nose you broke yesterday—caught him stealing stock and shot him. We

  took liis body to a remote section oF the jiindo, dressed it in my clothes, killed my horse beside it, and left both for the bu//ards. Meanwhile I stayed away from the hacienda and grew the beard yon see. Later, wiien Victor brought the body in and identified it as my own, I also identified it for the benefit of the local alcalde. He was a stupid man, not hard to deceive."

  "You made Chavarri'a your administrador to pay him for the murder?"

  "Murder?" He seemed surprised. "It is not murder to shoot a cattle thief."

  "Has the law decided that?"

  He still seemed surprised—a little too much so. I said, "I know you have convinced your family that the killing was justifiable. But even if it happened as you say it did—and it seems strange to me that a body should turn up just when you needed it—I think the law would call it murder. I think what probably happened was that you had Chavarria go out and make you a body when you needed one. I know he would have enjoyed the job."

  The old man didn't argue. He waited for me to go
on.

  I said, "It's nothing to me how or why you killed him, or what other crimes you have committed, but so far you are open to charges for bigamy, perjury, murder,

  and a few other things. I might not be able to do anything to Fito for taking a shot at me, but I can get him for perjury. Your daughter, too."

  He said calmly, "If my crimes are nothing to you, why do you remind me of them?"

  "I don't want any difficulty when I take you back to California."

  He smiled, shaking his head.

  "I am not going back to California, Senor Colby, Never."

  "It's the easiest way. I'm doing you a favor. You have to sign papers releasing the title of the California properties to your wife. In California you can do it without publicity. Down here, it means that you would have to appear before a United States consul and identify yourself as Robert R. Parker. That would automatically perjure you for swearing that Parker, Roberto Ruano, and the body in the grave are all the same, besides opening up the question of the cattle thief's death. And the papers you would have to sign would show that you had another wife living in the States. The only possible thing for you to do is come back with me."

  He shook his head again, still smiling.

  "No."

  I was beginning to get mad. I said, "All right. Then

  I'll have the papers sent down here, and you can worry about what's going to happen to you when you sign them."

  "I am not going to sign any papers. Neither here nor in California."

  I couldn't believe it. It was impossible. There he was, licked, cornered, without a leg to stand on or a place to turn, telling me what he would do and what he would not do, as calmly as if he were in my place and I in his.

  "All of what you say is very true," he said. "I dare not sign the papers here, and I will not go back to California. That part of my life is dead. Even if I were not sure that Helen would have me jailed for the bigamy—and I know her too well to expect anything else—I would not return. I will never go back."