The Long escape Read online

  She shook her head, watching me.

  "Then," I said, turning the picture over in front of her eyes, "Why do you suppose your uncle carried this photograph of Fito with him for fifteen years?"

  I had put her where the lights from the casino would shine in her face. Seeing the picture cold turkey like that frightened her, before she could cover up. It was just plain fright, nothing else.

  I could see her trying to think up an answer. Before she had time to work it out, I hit her again.

  "And why, after you told me that you had never heard of Roberto Ruiz Parker, did you change your mind and invite me to your home so your father could tell me about your uncle, whose return to this country you all kept so well hidden until my arrival?"

  She shook her head. I had rocked her enough, but I fired the third battery because it was eating at me and I couldn't help it.

  "And finally, why are you being so nice to me? Did you like my appearance at the embassy? Or am I being kept happy on orders from don Rodolfo?"

  Later I kicked myself plenty for the last one. It had nothing to do with the job. It was a dumb thing to say, from any viewpoint. I might even have got some kind of an ansAver to the other questions if I had kept my trap shut. Instead, she stood up.

  "Will you take me home, please?"

  I took her home.

  We didn't talk going back to the car, we didn't talk during the drive, and she didn't want to wait for me to take her to her door. But I put my hand on her wrist before she could get out of the car.

  "For the last question I asked, I apologize," I said. "It was a stupid thing to say. I am going to know the answers to the other questions before I leave Chile."

  "Good night."

  "Good night."

  I let her go.

  The mozo who gave me back my deposit on the coupe later that night went over the car pretty carefully first, the way they all do to see if there are any burns in the upholstery. There was a hairpin on the seat. He picked it up, grinning at me.

  "A rubia," he said. "You had good luck with the car, friend?"

  "Excellent luck," I said. "The best."

  I bought a bottle of pisco on the way back to the jiotel and killed it in my room, lying flat on my back on the bed looking at the dark.

  FiTO CALLED on me the next morning.

  I was still in bed when he came. My match with the pisco bottle had left me feeling pretty rocky. Even at that low altitude, where a hangover doesn't hurt half as much as it does up in the mountains, I had a bad case of whips and jingles. When I creaked out of bed to open the door and saw Fito standing there, his jaw tight and his eyes hard, I thought he was going to take a poke at me.

  I stepped back, ready to mill with him if his hands came up but not feeling enthusiastic about it. He walked into the room without taking off his hat.

  "My father asked me to bring you these,"

  He held out a couple of cards.

  They were the guest-cards the old man had promised me. I took them and saw that don Rodolfo Ruano was guaranteeing my credit at his clubs.

  "Thanks. Sit down."

  "No, thank you."

  "Excuse me, then."

  I poured myself a glass of water and sat down on the

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  bed. I'ito stood where he was, in the middle of the room, looking mad.

  "My sister told me of your conversation last night. I thought I had better come talk to you."

  I drank some of the water.

  "I gather that you are not wholly satisfied with what we ha'e done to help you."

  His accent was thicker than usual, and he stumbled over a couple of words. I said, "Speak Spanish."

  "I prefer English. I want to be sure that we understand each other. Why did you ask my sister those questions last night?"

  I overlooked the crack at my Spanish, which was a lot better than his own, and answered his question.

  "I wanted information."

  "Have we not given you all the information you need? Are you not satisfied that we have helped you do what you came here to do? Do you expect to gain something by molesting my sister with insulting questions . . . ?"

  "They weren't meant to be insulting."

  "They were."

  "They were not." I poured myself another glass of water. "If you want to make something personal out of it, go right ahead. But don't waste your time inventing insults that didn't take place. I wanted information.

  I asked for it. Your sister didn't answer me, that's all."

  "Certainly not. Any questions that concern my family should be addressed to me, or to my father. My sister . . ."

  "I'll address one to you now, then. Will you try to persuade your father to give me an authority to open your uncle's grave?"

  "No!"

  He didn't even stop to think. It came out as if I had punched him in the belly.

  "Why not?"

  "Because when a man dies, his body is put to rest.-It is not laid away so that strangers can come along afterward and paw over his bones. Is that hard for you to understand?"

  "I don't want to paw over his bones. I want a dentist to look at his teeth and tell me a few things."

  "Why?"

  "Because, as I explained to your father, the United States courts may not be willing to take anybody's word about the fact of death, under oath or otherwise, when the death involves title to a quarter of a million dollars worth of property, and more. If they don't take the affidavits, I've got to get facts. The best way I can get them is to open the grave."

  "What is it to us what you want?" Fito shouted. His

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  neck, was getting red. "Is it a concern of ours what your courts need or do not need? My uncle was a chileno. He came home to die. Leave him in peace!"

  "He claimed United States citizenship when he was in the United States," I said. "Also he deserted his wife. Disturbing the peaceful rest of the bones of a liar and a wife deserter doesn't worry me a hell of a lot."

  I was needling him to see if he would get mad enough to spill something, but I thought for a minute he was going to bust me instead. I was still sitting on the bed. When he took a step toward me, I put both feet down flat and leaned forward, planning to come up inside anything he threw at me. He stood there for a minute, his neck swelling, his fists bunched. Then he turned on his heel and roared out of the room, leaving the door open.

  A bellboy knocked on the door while I was shaving. He sold me two cablegrams for ten pesos each. I didn't know whether to feel good or bad after I had read them.

  The first one said:

  MiGG (that meant "My good God!") do i have to do

  THE JOB MYSELF QUESTION MARK IF YOU CAn't SATISFY YOURSELF YOU CAN't SATISFY ME AND I CAN't SATISFY A CALIFORNIA COURT STOP TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE STOP GET ME RESULTS AND PLEASE REPEAT PLEASE MAKE THEM RESULTS NOT GUESSES COMMA HUNCHES COMMA OR HEAR-

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  SAY STOP IN OTHER WORDS COMMA IS HE OR ISN't HE QUESTION MARK AM CREDITING TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED YOUR ACCOUNT NATCITBANK THERE STOP THAT IS ALL IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD STOP HAVE NOT YET BEEN ABLE TO OBTAIN PICTURE BUT WILL FORWARD IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP

  The other cable was what I had asked for. It said:

  REGRET AFFIDAVITS INSUFFICIENT STOP REQUIRE FURTHER SUBSTANTIATION OF IDENTITY.

  I got over to the bank in a hurry. I didn't need the money right away, but I wanted to get it out o£ hock before they glued it down. The official exchange rate, the bank rate, was about twenty-three for one, and I could get twice that on any street corner.

  I had forgotten all about Idaho Farrell until I saw her at a desk in the foreign-exchange department of the bank. She saw me at about the same time. She got up from her desk and came over to where I was standing.

  "Good morning. Mister Colby."

  "Good morning. Miss Farrell."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I have some dollars in your bank which I would like to get out of your
clutches as soon as possible."

  "How many dollars?"

  "Twenty-five hundred."

  "I'm afraid you'll have to take it out in pieces. We can't exchange more than five hundred at a time."

  "I don't want exchange. I want dollars."

  She laughed. "So does everyone else."

  I said, "Look, can't we make a deal? I can get . . ."

  ". . . forty-seven for one on the free market and twenty-three for one from us. I know. I'm sorry. Once it's in the bank, you can only get bank rates."

  "There goes sixty thousand pesos, then. Easy come, easy go. What's new in the financial world?"

  We chewed the rag for a while. All we had to talk about was the ambassador's party, so we kicked it around until it wore out, and then it was time for the bank to take its mid-day siesta. I asked Idaho to go to lunch with me.

  She looked me over carefully.

  I said, "I'm a respectable business man. All I want to do is discuss possible ways and means of salvaging those sixty thousand pesos. For your professional advice, I'll let you pick the restaurant and the lunch."

  "You don't look like a respectable business man to me."

  "What do I look like?"

  "I'm not sure." She frowned. "Whatever it is, it isn't respectable. I'll meet you outside the side door in fifteen minutes. Over there."

  It was nearer half an hour before she showed up. I didn't mind waiting. The sun was warm in the street, and I had begun to develop an idea. By the time she came through the side door and took my arm, the idea had jelled.

  We walked arm in arm up Calle Bandera in the warm sunlight.

  So far, all I have said about Idaho Farrell is that she was friendly and had a snub nose. About the rest of her, it will do to say that she was small, and that practically every man we passed on the street either sucked in his breath as we went by or muttered "lAy!" They do that in Chile. They do it all over South America, so I'm not picking on one country. The favorite South American outdoor sport is tossing piropos —compliments, you might call them—at the girls. A good-looking woman walking alone comes in for a running stream of cracks like "iQue giiapa!" or ";Dichoso el esposo!" or "jLin-dissima!" or "jDios mio, prestame la luz de los ojos para encender mi cigarrillo!" "Lend me the light of your eyes to light my cigarette" is one of the floweriest. Usually they are shorter and closer to the point. To be fair about it, most of the time the piropos are really intended as compliments, even when they are rough, and the girls expect them. If the clerk at the post-office window, for example, tells a nice-looking customer that

  she is the flossiest piece of goods to have bought a stamp from him during his entire governmental career, she doesn't slug him. She says, Thank you very much. Of course an accompanied woman doesn't get so much of it, but she gets enough.

  Idaho got more than enough, from my viewpoint. I was conditioned by Mexico City, where the attitude toward females, particularly gringas, isn't complimentary. Idaho must have felt my forearm tighten.

  She patted my wrist.

  "Don't let it get you, mister. It doesn't bother me."

  "It bothers me."

  "What can you do about it? Hit somebody?"

  "That might help."

  "It would help you to go to jail. Have you ever been in Buenos Aires?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know what they do there?"

  "No."

  "They pinch. You can tell how popular you are by counting your black and blue spots when you get home. And if you turn around and slap them, they're insulted because you misunderstood an admiring gesture." She rubbed the place where I had spilled champagne at the embassy party. "I was tw^o years in Argentina. Most of the time I couldn't sit down."

  I had to laugh with her. We reached the restaurant she was taking me to before anybody hurt my feelings again.

  The lunch was good. We ate lobster, the great big babies that come from Juan Fernandez, until our eyes stuck out. Idaho said the big pincer claws made her wince, thinking of Buenos Aires. She was a good two-fisted eater, and she either didn't care what happened to her figure or knew it was too good to worry about. When we had tucked away all the groceries we could hold, she sighed guiltily.

  "I'm afraid I embezzled a good meal, mister. There isn't anything you can do about your sixty thousand pesos. I'd like to help you, but the government ..."

  "Forget the pesos. I've got a better idea for you and me."

  She made a face that said, "Oh-oh!"

  "Strictly business. First, let me tell you why I'm here, so you'll understand what I'm talking about."

  I told her all there was to tell about the job, from soup to nuts. I spelled everything out for her, told her my guesses, explained my hunches, showed her Adams' cables and the Ruano affidavits, then my passport and the license I held from the Mexican government, so she would know I was coming clean.

  "I'm stuck now," I said. "I've got a strong hunch

  that tliey are sellin
  "I can tell you the answer as well as a lawyer could," Idaho said. "You can't open a grave without permission from the family or an order from the police. The police won't give you an order without something tangible to go on."

  "I haven't anything tangible to go on. That's why I'm stuck."

  She nodded at Adams' cablegrams, which were lying on the table.

  "Have you told don Rodolfo that the affidavits aren't enough?"

  "Not yet. I'm going to. I'm going to ask him to open his brother's grave. I expect him to turn me down."

  "Then what?"

  "Then I'll have to nose around and dig up something to use to put pressure on him. That's where you come in."

  She didn't say anything.

  "Here's the proposition. There was something funny about Roberto's death. Rodolfo inherited a big chunk of valuable family property when he died. You told me that Rodolfo banks with you, and he told me he gave his brother money to buy a fundo near Melipilla, the Hacienda Quilpue—money which he had held in trust while Roberto was away. Your bank will have a record of their financial transactions. I want . . ."

  "You don't have to say any more. I can't do it."

  "Let me finish. You can turn me down afterward. I'm not a crook or a blackmailer. I've told you exactly where I stand and why I need the information. Anything you give me will be used only to determine if a crime has been committed. And I'll pay a hundred dollars American for whatever you can get, whether it helps or not."

  "What kind of a crime do you think was committed?"

  "Murder, maybe."

  "Murder?"

  "Maybe. I don't know. A man who has enjoyed complete control of a lot of money for twenty years has a good motive for bumping off anybody who turns up to take it away from him. The family properties were all in Roberto's name. Even if Rodolfo shared the income with him, as he says, a whole pie is bigger than half a pie."

  Slie pushed a bread crumb across the tablecloth with her finger,

  I said, "Here's a last argument. If Roberto Ruano was murdered, it isn't my job to pin down his murderer. But I have to prove that he is really dead, and to do that I've got to get enough to squeeze somebody into cooperating with me. I think I might get what I need if I knew more about their financial transactions. If I do, I'll keep it confidential. If I don't, nobody is hurt."

  I waited, watching her. She was as easy to read as a newspaper headline. I knew what was going on in her head, and I liked her more because she was on the level, even if it interfered with the job.

  At last she said, "I'll think about it. I'd like to help you, if I can. But I don't want any money for it."

  "The money isn't mine. It's a legitimate expense."r />
  She flushed.

  "How would you show it on your expense sheet? Bribery?"

  There wasn't anything to say to that.

  We left the restaurant and went back to the bank, not talking, just walking along side by side while the taxi-drivers and pool-hall cowboys sucked in their breaths and muttered "jAy, Dios!" It didn't bother me, this time. She wasn't walking with me. She just happened to be going in the same direction at the same time at the same rate of speed, thinking her own thoughts.

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  She wouldn't make another date with me. She said she'd look me up at my hotel in a day or two to let me know her answer. I left her at the bank and went to see a lawyer with whom I had corresponded once when I was working on an embezzlement runaway.

  He told me what Idaho had told me. I didn't give him any names, just asked him what my prospects were of getting a grave open without family permission. He said they were lousy, and didn't charge me anything for the information.

  After that I didn't know what to do. I felt let down. Having some kind of a lead to work on is one thing, because no matter how tough the going is you can keep working at it and feel that you are getting some place. All I had was a hunch and lots of no co-operation from everybody. Even if I did get a lead from Idaho, it would be one of those strings that had to be worked backward until I found a snarl in the line that would give me a new angle. I couldn't go forAvard. I had run Robert R. Parker to where the trail ended—his grave.

  That was a thought. If I had to work backward, I might as well start at the end of the line.

  It was still early in the afternoon. I hired the coupe again and drove to Melipilla.

  ^

  It was nearly four o'clock before I got there. Stretches of the road were out, and I had to detour a couple of times, once crossing a river on a planked-over railroad bridge that scared the devil out of me while I rattled across with three inches of clearance on either side and no railing. Otherwise I didn't mind the drive. Melipilla lies to the southwest of Santiago, where they grow some of the best fruit in the world, and the orchards were just shifting over from blossom to leaves. It was pretty country.