He said, “Well, we didn’t discuss whether you want it in installments or in a lump sum. Monthly payments are usually—”
“Oh, a lump sum,” I said. “There’s so much to do right away, and then my older brother is a banker in California. He’II know what to do.”
“If you’re sure—” He was looking at Mrs. Cunningham, and didn’t yet entirely trust her.
I said, “Oh, I’m sure this poor woman won’t try to cheat me, Mr. Fraser.”
Mrs. Cunningham cried, “Oh God!” and wailed into her handkerchief.
“Besides,” I said, “I’ll phone my brother and have him fly east at once. He can handle everything for me.”
“I suppose,” he said, “if we expedite things, we could have your money for you in a few days.”
“I’ll have my brother call you,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. He hesitated, holding his briefcase. “Mrs. Cunningham, are you coming along? Is there anywhere I can drop you?”
“Let the woman rest here a while,” I said. “I’ll make her some tea.”
“Very well.”
He left reluctantly. I walked him to the front door, where he said to me, quietly, “Miss Wilson, do me a favor.”
“Of course, Mr. Fraser.”
“Promise me you won’t sign anything until your brother gets here to advise you.”
“I promise,” I said, sighing.
“Well,” he said, “one more item and I’m done.”
“Mr. Roche, you mean?”
“Right. I’ll talk to him, if I can find him. Not that it’s necessary.” He smiled and said goodbye and walked away down the hall.
I closed the door, feeling glad he didn’t think it necessary to talk to Roche. He would have found it somewhat difficult to talk to Roche, since Roche was in the process of being buried under the name of Edward Cunningham, his charred remains in the burned-out real estate office having been identified under that name by Mrs. Edward Cunningham.
Would Roche have actually pushed that charge of embezzlement he’d been shouting about? Well, the question was academic now, though three months ago it had seemed real enough to cause me to set up this hasty and desperate — but, I think, rather ingenious — plan for getting myself out of the whole mess entirely. The only question had been whether or not our deep-freeze would preserve the body sufficiently over the three months of preparation, but the fire had settled that problem, too.
I went back into the living room. She got up from the sofa and said, “What’s all this jazz about a brother in California?”
“Change of plans,” I said, “I was too much the innocent, and you were too much the wronged woman. Without a brother, Fraser might have insisted on hanging around, helping me with the finances himself. And the other Miss Wilson is due back from Greece in two weeks.”
“That’s all well and good, Ed,” my wife said. “But where is this brother going to come from? She doesn’t have one, you know — the real Miss Wilson, I mean.”
“I know.” That had been one of the major reasons I’d hired Miss Wilson in the first place — aside from our general similarity of build — the fact that she had no relatives, making it absolutely safe to take over her apartment during my impersonation.
My wife said, “Well? What are you going to do for a brother?”
I took off the gray wig and scratched my head, feeling great relief. “I’ll be the brother,” I said. “A startling family resemblance between us.”
She shook her head, grinning at me. “You are a one, Ed,” she said. “You sure are a one.”
“That’s me,” I said, “The sweetest man in the world.”
A Good Story
The big snake moved in its cage, getting hungry. Flat eyes watched Leon walk through and out of the barn; Leon pretended not to notice. There’d been nothing in the mail today, so he was free. He walked past the cages and cotes, past the sawdust-smelling shed where the crates were hammered together, past the long, low main house, with its mutter of air conditioning, and on down the dry dirt road into town, where he bought a beer in the cantina next to the church and stepped outside to enjoy the day.
The sun in the plaza was bright, the air clean and hot, and when he tilted the bottle and put his head back, the lukewarm beer foamed in his mouth. Stripped to the waist, T-shirt dangling from the back pocket of his cutoff jeans, moccasins padding on the baked brown earth, Leon strolled around the plaza, smiling up at the distant crown of the Andes.
Slowly he sipped his beer, enjoying the sensations. This town was so high above sea level, the air so thin, that perspiration dried on him as soon as it appeared. Eight months ago, when he’d first come to Ixialta, Leon had found that creepy and disconcerting, but now he liked the dry crackle and tingle on his flesh, the accretion of salt that he could later brush off like talcum powder.
Eight months; no time at all. The work he did was easy and the money terrific, and the temptation to just drift along with it was very strong — that’s what Jaime-Ortiz counted on, he knew that much — but he’d promised himself to give it no more than a year. Tops; one year. Go home rich and clean and 24, with the world before him. Leon grinned, a tall, sloping boy with wiry arms and the hard-muscled legs of a jogger, and was still grinning when the car appeared.
Except for Jaime-Ortiz’ six vehicles, cars were a rarity in Ixialta. The dirt road winding up the jungled mountainside was a mere spur from the trans-Andean highway, dead-ending in this public square, surrounded by low stucco buildings.
In the past eight months, how many strangers had been here? A government tax man had come to talk with Jaime-Ortiz, had stopped for lunch and a bribe and had departed. A couple of closemouthed Americans had brought up the new satellite dish, hooked it up and showed Jaime-Ortiz how it worked.
And who else? A pair of British girls working for the UN on some hunger survey; two sets of dopers searching for peyote, going away disappointed; a couple of American big-game hunters who’d stayed three days, shot one alpaca and contracted dysentery; and one or two more. Maybe seven interventions from the outside world in all this time.
And now here was number eight, a dusty maroon rental Honda with a pair of Americans aboard. The 30ish woman who got out on the passenger side was an absolute drop-dead ice blonde. In khaki slacks, thonged sandals, pale-blue blouse and leather shoulder bag, she was some expensive designer’s idea of a girl foreign correspondent. The big dark sunglasses, though, were an error; only Jackie O., in Leon’s opinion, could wear Jackie O. sunglasses without loss of status. Still, this was a dream walking.
The man was something else. Wide-rumped in stiff new jeans, he wore office-style brown oxfords and a long-sleeved buttondown shirt. He was an office worker, a professor of ancient languages, a bank teller, and he didn’t belong on this mountain. Nor with that woman.
Leon approached, smiling, planning his opening remark, but the woman spoke first, frowning as though he were the doorman: “What place is this?”
“Ixialta,” he told her.
“The high Ixi,” she said, unexpectedly. Hi ere was a faint roughness in her voice, not at all unpleasant. “What’s an Ixi?”
“Maybe a god.” Leon had never asked that question.
The man had draped himself with cameras. Blinking through clip-on sunglasses over his spectacles, he said, “Look at those cornices! Look at that door!”
“Yes, Frank,” she said, uninterested, and pointed at Leon’s beer. “That looks good.”
“I’ll get you one.”
“And shade,” she said, looking around.
“Table beside the cantina.” He pointed. “In the shade, in the air, you can watch the world go by.”