The sight of these two furies coming at him made him panic. He pressed the accelerator right down to the floorboard. The engine flooded and died again, and he knew that he had no choice but to wait.
He turned down the window and looked back at the road, narrowing his eyes until the two Juanitas merged into one. He could hear her screaming twenty yards away. A scream in this part of town was interpreted not as a cry for help, but as a sign of impending trouble: the group of young Negroes and Mexicans had disappeared without a trace, and the doors below the sign billar had closed as if in response to an electronic ear alert to the decibels of danger. When and if the police arrived, nobody would know anything about a car thief and a screaming woman.
Fielding glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was 6:30. There was still plenty of time. All he had to do was keep his head, and the girl would be handled easily enough. The fact that she was running toward the car indicated that she hadn’t called the police. The important thing was to stay calm, play it cool...
But as he watched her approach, rage beat against his temples and exploded behind his eyes with flashes of colored lights. Between flashes Juanita’s face appeared, streaked with black tears, red from cold and exertion.
“You — sonna bitch — stole my car.”
“I was coming to pick you up. I told the bartender I’d be right back.”
“Dirty — liar.”
He reached across the seat and unlocked and opened the right front door. “Get in.”
“I’m gonna — calla cops.”
“Get in.”
The repetition of the direct order and the opening of the door had the same effect on her as his putting the dime on the table in the café. The dime was there to be picked up; the door was there to be entered. She went around the front of the car, keeping her eyes fixed steadily on Fielding as if she suspected he might try to run her down.
She got in, still breathing hard from her sprint down the road. “You sonofabitch, what’ve you got to say?”
“Nothing you’d believe.”
“I wouldn’t believe nothing you said, you—”
“Take it easy.” Fielding lit a cigarette. The flare of the match blended with the lights flashing behind his eyes, so that he wasn’t quite sure which was real. “I’m going to make a bargain with you.”
“You make a bargain with me? That’s a laugh. You’ve got more guts than a sausage factory.”
“I want to borrow your car for a couple of hours.”
“Oh, you do, eh? And what do I get out of it?”
“Some information.”
“Who says I want information from an old crackpot like you?”
“Watch your language, girl.”
Although he didn’t raise his voice, she seemed to sense the force of his anger, and when she spoke again, she sounded almost conciliatory. “What kind of information?”
“About your rich uncle.”
“Why should I want to hear about him for? He’s been dead and buried for four years. Besides, how would you know anything about him that my old lady didn’t tell me already?”
“There’s no similarity between what your old mother told you and what I’m going to tell you. If you cooperate. All you have to do is lend me your car for a couple of hours. I’ll drive you home now and bring the car back to your house when I’ve finished my errand.”
Juanita rubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand, looking surprised to find tears there, as if she’d already forgotten that she had wept and why. “I don’t want to go home.”
“You will.”
“Why will I?”
“You’re going to be curious to find out why your mother has been lying in her teeth all these years.”
He started the car and pulled away from the curb. Juanita seemed too astonished to object. “Lying? My old lady? You must be crazy. Why, she’s so pure she...” Juanita used an ancient and earthy figure of speech without embarrassment. “I don’t believe you, Foster. I think you’re making all this up so you can get the car.”
“You don’t have to believe me. Just ask her.”
“Ask her what?”
“Where your rich uncle got his money.”
“He had cattle interests.”
“He was a cowhand.”
“He owned—”
“He owned nothing but the shirt on his back,” Fielding said, “and ten chances to one he’d stolen that.” This was not true, but Fielding couldn’t admit it, even to himself. He had to keep himself convinced that Camilla had been a liar, a thief, and a scoundrel.
Juanita said, “Then where did the money come from that he left to me in the trust fund?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you — there is no trust fund.”
“But I get $200 regular every month. Where does it come from?”
“You’d better ask your mother.”
“You talk like she’s a crook or something.”
“Or something.”
He turned left at the next corner. He wasn’t familiar with the city, but in his years of wandering, he had taught himself to observe landmarks carefully so he could always find his way back to his hotel or rooming house. He did it now automatically, like a blind man counting the number of steps between places.
Juanita was sitting on the edge of the seat, tense and rigid, one hand clutching her plastic purse and the other the snakeskin shoes. “She’s no crook.”
“Ask her.”
“I don’t have to. Her and me, maybe we don’t get along so buddy-buddy, but I swear she’s no crook. Unless she was doing something for somebody else.”
“Unless that, yes,” Fielding said blandly.
“How come you pretend to know so much about my uncle and my old lady?”
“Camilla was a friend of mine once.”
“But you never even saw my old lady till this afternoon.” She paused to give this some thought. “Why, you never even saw me till that day you got in the fight with Joe.”
“I’d heard about you.”
“Where? How?”
He was tempted, momentarily, to tell her where and how, to show her the letter from Daisy he’d taken out of the old suitcase that morning. It was this letter, dated almost four years previously, that had sent him to the Velada in the first place, in the hope of finding, or getting some information about, a young woman called Juanita Garcia. That she happened to be there at the time was luck, but he still wasn’t sure whether it was good luck or bad luck. That her husband happened to drop in and started the quarrel was pure bad luck: it had put Fielding’s timing off, it had temporarily dislodged his whole purpose in coming to town, and, what might turn out to be the worst misfortune yet, it had brought Pinata into the affair. Pinata, and then Camilla. One of the most terrible shocks in Fielding’s life occurred at the moment he looked across Mrs. Rosario’s bedroom and saw the picture of Camilla.
That’s when I should have stopped, he thought. I should have walked away right then.
Even now he didn’t know why he hadn’t stopped; he was just aware that the gnawing restlessness inside him disappeared when he was playing a game of danger, whether it was a simple matter of cheating at cards or defrauding a landlady, or whether it involved, as it did now, his own life or death.
“I don’t believe you ever heard of me before,” Juanita said, and it was obvious from her tone that she wanted to believe it, that she was flattered by the notion of being recognized by strangers, like a movie star. “I mean, I’m not famous or anything, so how could you?”