“It would have been more reassuring without all those et ceteras,” she said coolly. “And if you bring up that barrio stuff once again, I’ll scream.”
“You can’t. You’ll scare your patients.”
“There aren’t any patients in here. Just a couple of interns so tired they wouldn’t wake up if a bomb exploded.”
“Anyway, thanks for the information about drugs. I truly appreciate it.”
“How truly?”
“I’ll bring you a present, a great big sombrero to hide all those brains of yours. Us macho men like dumb dames.”
“Go back to your enchilada. I hope you get heartburn.”
“I love you, too.”
It was one o’clock, the peak of the evening in the Domino Club district. Before going inside, Aragon stopped to talk to the hustlers waiting across the street. There were about half a dozen left by this time. Most of them merely looked blank when Aragon mentioned the name. Tula Lopez. Only one, a girl about seventeen, said she used to know a Tula years ago when she first went into the racket. The Tula she knew must be very old by now, maybe twenty-five, and surely Aragon wouldn’t be interested in such a hag.
“I just want to talk to her about a family matter. Can you put out the word?”
“How much word?”
“Twenty dollars. My name is Aragon and I’m staying at the Hotel Castillo.”
“Sure, okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Blondie.”
“Blondie?”
The girl had jet-black hair reaching to her waist. “Why do you look funny? Don’t you like that name?”
“I like it fine.”
“So do all the other men. They laugh, it makes them feel good, I don’t know why. But they give me more money when they laugh and feel good. How about you?”
“We agreed on a price.”
When she opened her purse to deposit the twenty-dollar bill Aragon gave her, he saw the gleam of a knife. Blondie wasn’t taking any chances on a customer getting away without paying.
He went inside the club. Mitchell saw him coming. He wasn’t happy about it: “I thought you left town.”
“I stayed around to pick up some loose ends.”
“Loose ends is what we got plenty of. Take your pick.”
“You lied to me, Mitchell.”
“I lie a lot,” Mitchell said. “I took a course.”
“How much were you paid?”
“What for? Who by?”
“The American with Jenkins last night. How much did he pay you to forget he was here?”
“Nobody has to pay me to forget. I took a course in that, too. It’s called Elementary Survival. I recommend it to you.”
“Maybe I could hire you as a tutor. What do you charge?”
“Don’t waste your money. You’d flunk the first lesson, how not to ask questions. The second lesson’s even harder — how to spot a rat fink, get rid of him and stay in business. Adios, amigo, nice knowing you. Don’t hurry back.”
Fifteen
The American consulate was located in one of the older sections of the city, the Colonia Maciza. The formidable stone building reminded Aragon of the Quarry and he soon discovered another similarity. The consul and the assistant consul, like the warden and his assistant, believed in long weekends. They had, he was told by a receptionist, gone on a deep-sea fishing trip and wouldn’t return until Monday afternoon. Possibly Tuesday. If there was a storm at sea, Wednesday. If the boat sank, never.
The consul’s executive secretary sat behind a large mahogany desk with a name plate identifying her as Miss Eckert. She was fat as a robin, and she held her head on one side as if she were listening for a worm. Aragon did his best to provide a substitute by giving her his card, Tomas Aragon, Attorney-at-Law, Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell.
Miss Eckert put on a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, glanced at the card and then dropped it quickly into the wastebasket as though she’d detected a lethal fungus somewhere between Smedler and Powell.
“Is this a confidential matter, Mr. Aragon?”
“Yes.”
“Then close the door. A man has been hanging around the corridor all week. I suspect he may be CIA. You’re not by any chance CIA?”
“Now, would I tell you if I were?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never asked anyone before.”
“The answer is no. But I may be lying.”
Miss Eckert was not amused. She leaned back in her chair with a little sigh. “I gather your business concerns an American citizen in Baja.”
“He came to Baja eight years ago. I’m not certain he’s still here or if he’s still alive. His family would like to find out.”
“Name, please?”
“Byron James Lockwood.”
“Last reported address?”
“The Quarry.”
“The Quarry. That’s the penitentiary.”
“Lockwood was arrested on a charge of fraud involving some real estate in Bahía de Ballenas. I wasn’t allowed access to the files at the Quarry. I was assured, however, that they contain no record of Lockwood’s arrest or release.”
“Are you sure he was taken there?”
“Positive. His partner in the fraud, Harry Jenkins, served time with him. I talked to Jenkins on Monday and again on Tuesday. On Wednesday I attended his funeral.”
“Was he sick? — I refer to Monday and Tuesday, of course.”
“No.”
“This is beginning to sound,” Miss Eckert said carefully, “like the kind of thing I would rather not hear.”
“Better listen anyway. Jenkins told me — and this was confirmed by someone still in the jail — that Lockwood was ill and frequently disturbed and the guards used drugs to keep him from making trouble. Maybe in the beginning they gave him something like paregoric or laudanum to quiet him, but he eventually became drug dependent. He was wearing quite a bit of expensive jewelry when he left Bahía de Ballenas. He probably used it to purchase narcotics from, or through, the guards at the jail.”
“Narcotics?” The word brought Miss Eckert’s chair upright with a squawk of dismay. “What kind of narcotics?”
“I’m not certain.”
“Oh, I knew, I knew this was going to be a rotten day. My horoscope said, stay home and attend to family affairs. I thought it couldn’t apply to me because I don’t have a family. I should have taken the advice. It meant me, all right — me.”
“What’s your sign?”
“Scorpio.”
“That’s the sign of a person who always copes, no matter how difficult the situation.”
“I thought Scorpios were supposed to be creative.”
“When they’re not coping, they’re creative.”
“If you’re trying to be funny,” Miss Eckert said, “I may as well warn you that I have a very poor sense of humor. Especially when certain subjects are brought up. Poppies. Back home in Bakersfield I used to love poppies. Here it’s a dirty word, and of course, a different kind of poppy, or Papaver somniferum.”
“Why? I mean, why is it a dirty word?”
“We — meaning all the U.S. government employees in this country — are in quite a delicate position right now. There are diplomatic negotiations going on between the two governments. Our government is well aware that illegal poppy fields are sprouting up all over the Sierra Madre, particularly the slopes on the Pacific side. It wants them destroyed. The Mexican government has pledged its cooperation and has actually burned off a few of the fields. But we’re asking for more widespread and more complete destruction, such as Army helicopters spraying the fields with herbicides. Certainly we know that something must be done quickly. The last samplings of heroin picked up in L. A. showed that all of it, one hundred percent, came from Mexico. And the last New York samplings were eighty-five percent Mexican. The stuff which is grown in Turkey and processed in Marseilles has been drawing everyone’s attention, while the Mexican stuff has been taking over the market. It’s processed in mobile labs around Culiacan, north of Mazatlan. Law enforcement officials refer to Culiacan as the new Marseilles. You see the problem?”