“Did he ask you for anything?”
“Help. He asked me for help and I couldn’t—”
“I meant something specific, a drink of water, perhaps.”
“He asked me for some water. He even tried to get some for himself out of a fountain. The fountain was dry.”
“Go on.”
“I went to find help for him,” Aragon said. “I thought he’d stay there at the fountain until I came back. He didn’t. He started running away when he saw me again as if he was trying to escape from an enemy. I ran after him. He was probably heading for home, he lived on the other side of the bridge. Well, he didn’t make it. Suddenly he went to the railing, leaned over and fell.”
“Did he seem dizzy?”
“Crazy, dizzy, how do you tell the difference?”
“Vertigo and disorientation are both signs of LSD poisoning. So are the other symptoms you mentioned — profuse sweating, very rapid pulse, nausea and vomiting, dryness of the mouth, dilation of the pupils. An autopsy might reveal traces of LSD in the urine.”
“There won’t be an autopsy. He’s already buried. And the bottle he was drinking from is in a pile of rubbish with a hundred other bottles like it, and the man he was drinking with can’t be identified, let alone questioned.”
“Is your story the only evidence of foul play?”
“My story is not evidence. Even if it were, even if the police were certain that Jenkins was murdered, it wouldn’t concern them much. He was unimportant, an ex-convict with no money and a warrant waiting for him in Albuquerque and maybe a dozen other places. He was low man on the totem pole. There was no way up, no way down. The only way was out, to grow wings and fly out.” I met this pigeon... the chicken tortilla business is a winner... the hustlers flock around the jail like starlings... I’m chicken birdie, lean fly. “He talked a lot about birds. I mean, they came naturally into his conversation more than into most people’s. He may even have been trying to fly when he went off the bridge.”
“That’s not uncommon with LSD.”
Aragon heard a faint tap-tap-tap on the line and he knew Laurie was drumming her fingers on the table or desk the way she did when something was bothering her and she was trying to straighten it out in her mind. He said, “Okay, what’s the matter?”
“The man who gave Jenkins the LSD, or whatever, had no way of predicting that Jenkins would either attempt to fly or suffer an attack of vertigo just as he happened to be crossing a bridge. He was betting on a very, very long shot. That’s dumb.”
“So we have a dumb murderer. They’re not, as a class, noted for brains.”
“Or else the bridge thing wasn’t actually necessary and the man was sure Jenkins had already ingested a lethal dose. He could have been waiting around for Jenkins to pass out when you appeared at the club and scared him off... You have to consider a third possibility, too.”
“Such as?”
“There wasn’t any murder or any murderer. A couple of guys were getting their kicks by mixing drinks and drugs, like the housewife taking her Valium with a glass of muscatel or the high school kid carrying a flask of vodka to wash down the rainbows he can buy in the hall for a quarter apiece. Alcohol is usually half of the lethal mixtures in the cases that come our way.”
“Jenkins was drinking beer—”
“Mild, but still alcohol. Drink enough and you’re drunk.”
“—and only one bottle, according to the bartender. The man with him was someone Jenkins hoped to con out of enough money to get him to Mexicali. He needed all his wits about him. He wasn’t likely, under the circumstances, to mess around with any drugs or to break his pattern of nursing along one beer for a whole evening.”
“So where are we?”
“Nowhere,” he said. “I’ll be going back to Santa Felicia either tomorrow or Friday. The Dragon Lady has asked me to check the American consulate here for any record of her ex-husband. After that I’ll head for home and forget all about Jenkins and bridges and B. J. and Tula, the whole enchilada.”
“No, you won’t.”
“How do you know I won’t?”
“You’ve always liked enchiladas.”
“I can take them or leave them.”
“You’d better leave this one,” she said. “I mean that seriously, Tom. You should be in court handling a complicated tax case or somebody’s nice messy divorce.”
“This is somebody’s messy divorce, or was at the beginning. Now it’s something even messier, something weird, crazy. I’m getting bad vibes.”
“I speak as a doctor — there’s nothing you can do for bad vibes except walk away from their source. So start walking.”
“Tomorrow. Friday at the latest. May I ask you one more question?”
“You will, anyway.”
“Is LSD readily accessible?”
“Here in San Francisco you can practically buy it over the counter if you go to the right counter. In Mexico, the whole drug situation is pretty murky. Officially, narcotics and hallucinogens are illegal. Yet it’s well known that mescal buttons and high-grade marijuana are widely grown. Less well known is the fact that opium poppies are cultivated just as successfully as they are in Turkey. The heroin extracted from them is not white like the stuff grown in Turkey. It’s a peculiar color, that’s why they call it Mexican Brown. It’s equally strong, and a hundred times more dangerous because it’s so much easier to smuggle into the country. There are nearly two thousand miles of border, most of it unguarded... But I haven’t really answered your question. Maybe I was just postponing admitting that I don’t know how accessible LSD is in Rio Seco. My guess is, not very. It’s a product of labs, not fields. An American like Jenkins would be more likely than a Mexican to know about it and buy it.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“It fits in with what I’ve thought since the beginning, that the man with Jenkins at the Domino Club was an American and the bartender’s description of him was phony. I’d better go and pay another call on Mitchell. He plays bartender, but I’m pretty sure he’s part owner of the club.”
“It’s terribly late. And if Mitchell lied before, why shouldn’t he lie again? You can’t choke the truth out of him.”
“He was bribed. I’ll rebribe him.”
“Tom, I hate the idea of your mingling with people like that in a place like that.”
“I grew up in a barrio with people like that. I didn’t even know there were any other kinds until I reached high school.”
“Don’t give me any of that macho bull.”
“Okay, cut out the maternal bit. Bargain?”
“Some bargain,” she said. “You do what you want and I’m too far away to stop you.”
“How would you stop me, fair means or foul?”
“Diseases aren’t the only things you learn about in med school. Definitely foul.”
“I’ll take you up on that some time.”
“Tom, listen—”
“Stop worrying about me. I haven’t been in a fight for ten years. Or five, anyway. I promise to be sensible, cautious, alert, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”