The Long escape Read online

  alive within tlie limitations of a single passport wasn't something he would have picked up in Pasadena, Clali-fornia. He knew Latin America. He also knew where he was going, which I didn't, and he had not overlooked the possibility that some poor sucker like me would try to follow him. I was pretty sure that when I got to where he had made his real jump, both Robert R. Parker and Roberto Ruiz P. were going to dissolve in thin air, leaving me holding the sack. My only chance was to shortcut him, some way.

  Tiie trouble was that I didn't have the ghost of an idea how to go about it. I went back and forth over the papers Adams had sent to me like a bird dog working a field for quail. No ideas came to me. I studied the little kid's picture until I could see it with my eyes closed, trying to picture what he would look like at the age of fifty-five. It was a fair bet that the photo was either Parker or a relative w^ho might look like Parker when he grew up, and if I ever caught up with my man I had to know w^hat he looked like. I drew about a million sketches that night, trying to piece together from Parker's snapshot and the kid's picture something I could show to the next person I questioned. When I found myself putting cock eyes and bugle noses on the sketches, I went to bed.

  From La Ceiba Parker had srone on to Puerto Barrios,

  Guatemala's main Atlantic port, in a bouncy cutter that made the run once a week. I hope he was as seasick as I was when I followed him.

  In Barrios I talked to a man at the United Fruit Company office and confirmed what Henderson had told me. There were no ships sailing from the east coast of Central America to the east coast of South America. If Parker really wanted to get there by boat, he would have had to go to New Orleans and book passage from there, or pick up a ship at the Canal Zone.

  I said, "How would he do on the Pacific side?"

  The fruit-company man wasn't sure.

  "I don't know what it was like five years ago. Today, he might catch an empty cabin on one of the Grace freighters at San Jose. He might not, too. It's hard to say. If you want to come back this afternoon, I can send a wire to Guatemala City. ..."

  "Thanks, no. I have to go back that way anyhow."

  "How about lunch, then?"

  I made a face and told him about the bouncy cutter. He had traveled on it himself, so he knew why I wasn't hungry. '

  I couldn't trace Parker out of Barrios. But if he had gone to New Orleans he was out of my territory, and if he hadn't gone to New Orleans his next logical move was back to Guatemala City. A plane left for Guatemala

  City on Tuesdays. This was Thursday, so I went up on the train that left at seven the next morninj^—eleven hours in a rattle-trap day coach with hard plank seats, clouds o[ dust comini^ in through the open windows, warm !)ecr from bottles carried through the aisles by a barefooted mozo, and nothing to eat except what you could buy wrapped up in a plantain leaf from the Indian women who swarmed imder the train windows at each station. By the time we limped into Guatemala City, I ^^'as so pooped and so dirty that I didn't give a damn if Parker had sprouted wings and flown off to Cuba.

  I slept for fourteen hours and went back to see Jaime at the airport.

  He said, ''Por Dios, what is this guy, anyway—a carrier pigeon?"

  "I don't know, but I'm getting as tired of him as you are. How about taking a look through your flight records for a week or so after he went to Tegoose?"

  "Did he come back here?"

  "I don't know. I want to know if he left here."

  "Which w^ay would he be going?"

  "South, probably."

  We went through the flight records again. Mr. Robert R. Parker had left Guatemala for Balboa, in the Canal Zone. Destination Balboa.

  I didn't follow him. I was running out of clean shirts, for one thing, and you need plenty of clean shirts in Panama. Also I thought I had an idea what he might have been doing during the six days he had spent in Guatemala on his first lap. To check this, I got Jaime to give me a note to a man at the Grace Line office.

  It was a lucky break. The Grace man had a good memory, and he had been transferred from Peru to his Guatemala job just five years before. Parker—Ruiz, this time—Tvas practically the first customer he talked to. It had stuck in his mind the way events do on your first day at a neiv job or a new marriage or in the army.

  "I remember him well," he said. "He wanted to buy passage to South America. I didn't know beans about the job then, and the man who had it before me left things in a mess, so I had to dig like a beaver to find out about rates and schedules and bookings. We had a freighter in at San Jose. I told Ruiz I didn't know whether she could accommodate him or not, but if he Tvanted to take a chance, I would give him a note to the agent at the port, who knew more than I did, and he could get his information from the horse's mouth. He took the note and went to San Jose."

  The Grace man grinned, shaking his head.

  "I don't know what happened after that. I suppose he thought I was just trying to get rid of him."

  "Why would he think that?"

  "Because all of our vessels on this run go clown the west coast. He'd have to transship at the Canal, to get to the east coast. If I'd used my head I could have arranged a passage for him out of Panama and sent him there by plane."

  "He wasn't interested in going to the west coast?"

  "No. It was east coast or nothing."

  That made twice that Parker had shied from the west coast. I put it away to think about later.

  "What else can you remember about him? Did he look anything like this picture?"

  I showed him the snapshot. He said, "Your guess is as good as mine."

  "How about this?"

  I tried him with my best sketch. He shook his head. I said, "Well, for Christ's sake, what did he look like?"

  He was going to snap me up on that. I headed him off.

  "I didn't mean to sound tough," I said. "I'm jumpy. I've been trailing the guy all over Central America, and I haven't yet found anybody who even remembers if he was cleanshaven or wore a ring through his nose. Anything at all you can tell me wovild help."

  The Grace man looked at the ceiling.

  "Nope," he said at last. "It's too long ago. I can see his outline, sitting in that chair where you are, but

  I can't fit in any of the details. He didn't impress me as young, or old, or fat, or thin, or tall, or short, or good-looking or ugly. What would you remember about a man you had talked to for a few minutes five years ago?"

  "Less than you do. I'm just trying every angle I can think of. Did he speak Spanish?"

  "Yes."

  It had that half-questioning note that means, "Of course." I said, "Better Spanish than English?"

  "He didn't speak English."

  The Grace man saw the expression on my face. He said, "Wait a minute, now. I take that back. I mean to say that when a man comes into your office, carries on a long conversation in good Spanish, uses absolutely no English words at all, and has to have shipping schedules translated for him, you assume that he does not understand the language in which the shipping schedules are printed—particularly if he has a name like Roberto Ruiz."

  He gave it the Guatemala accent, which made it "Shroberto Shruiz." I said, "Did he have that 'Shroberto' accent?"

  The Grace man laughed.

  "No. That was a joke."

  "Do you know accents pretty well?"

  "Fairly well." ■ .

  "Where would you say he learned his Spanish?"

  "That's a pretty tough question."

  "I know it is. If you can't answer it, lorget it. But sometimes a man will leave an impression by the way he mushes his 'r's' or buzzes his 'y's' or swallows his 'd's', so that you automatically think 'Guatemala' or 'Argentina' or 'Colombia.' I know I do. And there are other tip-offs. We say 'bue-no!' in Mexico when we answer the phone. You can tell a Mexican every time if you hear him using a phone. Here in Guatemala you use 'vos' instead of 'tu', as they would say 'che' in Argentina. In Peru they have a word for 'adios' —what is it—like 'che' . . ."


  "Chan." The Grace man nodded. "I know what you mean. Let me think."

  He looked at the ceiling again, for a long time. I crossed my fingers.

  "It's only a guess, of course," he said.

  "I want anything I can get. Shoot."

  "Chile."

  "Why?"

  "Because he used the word 'roto' to mean a peasant, a poor man—Avhat we call a descalzado here in Guatemala. I told him that even if he could get aboard the freighter at San Jose, the accommodations wouldn't be much to brag about. He said he wasn't particular; anything that

  would do for any roto would do for him. I never heard roto used like that by anybody except a Chileno."

  "Neither have I. Anything else?"

  "I only remember the one word. I'm afraid it isn't much to go on."

  "It's better than anything I've got so far."

  We talked about shipping for a while. I promised to send him a good box of cigars from Mexico if he could get it through the customhouse. When I was leaving, he said, "It isn't any of my business who this man is or why you are looking for him, but I wonder why he didn't just hop a plane and fly to South America. He was certainly anxious to get there."

  He looked at me curiously.

  I said, "He probably wanted to Go Grace, savoring the luxurious pleasure of a perfectly appointed floating palace where Courteous Service is the watchword and no expense is spared to insure the passenger's comfort as he sails across romantic tropical seas to where the Southern Cross hangs like a glowing beacon in the sky. Am I getting the publicity right?"

  The Grace man laughed and said I was pretty close. I thanked him for his help, put on my hat, and took the afternoon plane back to Mexico City.

  One of the plane's motors got an attack of heartburn near Tapachula. We spent a stinking night there. Tapa-

  chiila is a hot little hellhole on the coastal plain just over the border inside Chiapas. We hit it ri<>ht in the middle of a temporal, one of those soggy, steaming rains that dribble on without a break for days. My hotel room was so muggy I couldn't sleep. I sat up naked most of the night writing a report to Adams, the sweat dripping off the points of my elbows and making puddles on the floor while the rain dripped down outside and made puddles in the mud.

  First I put down all I had learned. Then I put down what I guessed, which was to the effect that Robert R. Parker, the wealthy Pasadenan, was either in reality a Latin American or had spent so much time in Latin America that he could pass himself off as a Latin American, if he wanted to, when he got to where he was going. I didn't know where that was, but I offered the guess that he was heading for Chile. This I based on what the Grace man had told me, plus the fact that, although Roberto had been hot for a ship, any ship, which would take him to the east coast of South America, he had shown no interest at all in the west coast. It is only four or five hours by air from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires, and I knew he wasn't afraid of airplanes. It seemed logical that he was being careful not to leave a trail to the west coast because the west coast was where he intended to end up.

  It looked pretty convincing when I had it all written down. I went on with a few more shots in the dark.

  Parker had found that he couldn't lose his identity as long as he kept his passport. He had brushed up his rusty Spanish until he could pass as Roberto Ruiz, but he was Parker on the passport and needed the passport to get around. This was the real answer to the Grace man's question which I had answered with the wisecrack about Going Grace. There is no way you can hide your trail if you travel by plane. Too many people are around to note down in nice neat handwriting just how much you weigh and what the name is on your papers and where you got on and where you got off and what time it was and how many pieces of baggage you Tvere carrying. A ship is different. But Parker hadn't been able to get a ship from Central America, so he had gone on to Panama. There he could either buy himself a set of phony papers—it isn't as hard as you'd think—or, failing that, get a bunch of visas on his passport for every country south of the Canal and then book ship passage to some place like Buenos Aires. At Rio or Santos or Montevideo or some other place where he could buy a set of phony papers, he and the ship a ould part company. Nobody would know where he got off. And nobody would ever hear of Parker again, or Ruiz,

  either. Somebody named Pancho Chancho would turn lip in Chile later.

  This was how it looked to me from that sweaty hotel in Tapachula. I didn't know why Parker was going to such pains to muddy the waters behind him, but I suggested to Adams that his client must be even more of a bitch than he had said. It would take a woman with two heads, both covered with snakes, to make me work as hard as Parker had worked to get away from her.

  The report was pretty long before I finished with it. It still wasn't much to give Adams for the thousand dollars it had cost. I explained that I had not gone any further with the job because the next step was either to try to trail Parker out of Panama or go to Chile and sniff around there. Either step would run the cost well over his $2500 maximum. I recommended that he turn the job over to somebody who could work from the Chile end, thanked him for the business, and told him my golf was as bad as ever.

  When I got back to Mexico City I mailed the report and my bill off together with all the stuff he had sent me. I added a P.S. at the last minute. It said:

  I am also sending along a small photograph which was allegedly found in Parker's Buick and for which I paid fifty dollars. The fifty dollars is included in the enclosed bill, so the photograph is your client's property.

  I£ Parker's wife and his friends do not recognize it, it probably has nothing to do with him, but it is my only tangible contribution to your case and I send it along for what it is worth. It should at least serve to remind you that, since Parker carried a passport, the State Department will have a copy of his passport photograph. However bad such a picture may be, it will look a lot more like him than the lousy snapshot you sent me. I suggest that you try to get a copy of the picture before proceeding further.

  I honestly thought I was through with Mr. Parker when I put the report in the mail.

  iC'ix days later the job bounced right back in my face. Adams' letter was shorter and hotter than his first one. It started off with, What was the matter with me, couldn't I read English? He had asked me to find Parker, not tell him how to go about it. The expense limit was now $5000 in to to, and a check for my fee and expenses to date was enclosed, together with the stuff I had sent back to him. With a quarter of a million dollars trembling in the balance, he would be deeply grateful if I would dispense with windy reports and

  simply FIND PARKER, DEAD OR ALIVE!

  The rest of the letter said that Mrs. P. thovight her husband spoke Spanish, of a kind, but she didn't know where he had learned it and didn't give a damn. Nobody had recognized the kid's picture. Parker's passport had been issued in Los Angeles, but the file was in Washington and Adams was having trouble blasting a copy of the photograph loose from the State Department, who wanted to know what, why and wherefore. As soon as he got it, he would send it along. He didn't

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  want me to wait for the picture before getting back to work.

  The kid's photograph was beginning to look a little frayed. I cut up one of those cellophane envelopes you carry your driver's license in and made a frame, binding the edges all around with scotch tape. Then I sat down and tried to figure what I ought to do.

  My idea was still Chile. But it was only an idea, and Chile covered a lot of landscape. I could see myself stopping strange chilenos on the street and saying, "Excuse me, mister, but do you know a man named Robert R. Parker who might call himself Roberto Ruiz except that he probably isn't using either name? I don't know what name he is using or what he looks like or whether he is here in Chile at all or anything else about him, but I'd sure appreciate it if you could lead me to him." Until I had a decent picture I might pass him on the street every day for a month and never know whether I was on the right trail or just wasting my ti
me while he sat under a coffee tree somewhere in Brazil. And a hunch has to be pretty strong if you are going to ride it as far as from Mexico to Chile.

  Mine was strong. I packed all my clean shirts. Then I spent two days and another five hundred dollars of Adam's client's money getting a Chilean visa and a plane ticket to Santiago.

  I had to switch from Pan-American to a Panagra plane at Balboa. I didn't have a Panamanian visa, but I was allowed twenty-four hours on my ticket for the stopover. I stretched it to cover ilic time from eight o'clock one night, when Pan-American dumped me off at Albrook Field, to three o'clock in the morning a day and a half later, when Panagra assimied the responsibility of transporting me and my clean shirts southward. I used up three of the clean shirts shuttling back and forth between Panama City and Cristobal trying to get a line on Parker through the consulates.

  It was hotter than hell, sand flies gnawed chunks out of me whenever I stood still for two seconds, and I didn't get anywhere. I couldn't cover all the consulates in one working day, but I tried the probables, including Chile. My hunch checked, in a negative way. Nobody had ever heard of Robert R. Parker.

  The Panagra plane reached Santiago late the following afternoon, after flying along miles and miles of the most godawful desert coastline you ever saw in your life. There are deserts in Mexico, and I've crossed the Mojave in California, but they were alfalfa fields compared to Peru and northern Chile. Mile after mile of dirt hills with never a blade of grass or a tree, not a cactus plant or a dot of scrub for hours at a time except where a ribbon of dusty green lay along some stream

  trickling down out of the mountains, then more hours of bare dirt. It wasn't even sand, like an honest desert, but dirt, as dead as a landscape on the moon. Just watching it grind by from the plane window discouraged me. I didn't even perk up when the scenery finally changed and we flew in over the vineyards and orchards of Chile's central valley to come down at the Santiago airport.