“It’s not a who, it’s a what. A bite. A bribe.”
“What a shame. I thought it was a girl, some gorgeous brunette who’s a double or triple agent — you know, the usual thing.”
Smedler came out of his office to pick up his mail. He appeared a little too perfectly groomed, as if he’d just been given the full treatment in a beauty salon or a mortician’s prep room. “Good morning, Aragon. Great weather, isn’t it? On these crisp fall days you can feel the old corpuscles moving right along.”
“Yes, sir. It’s nice to be back.”
Smedler looked surprised. “Have you been away?... Has he been away, Miss Nelson?”
“Yes, Mr. Smedler. On a personal mission for Mrs. Decker.”
“Ah yes. How’d it go, Aragon?”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Now that’s the kind of answer I appreciate. Pour him a cup of coffee on the house, Miss Nelson.”
Smedler returned to his office while Charity put fifteen cents in the coffee machine and extracted a cup of semihot, semicreamed, semicoffee.
“Oh, you shouldn’t, Miss Nelson,” Aragon said. “This is too much, it’s beyond the call of duty. You really shouldn’t.”
“Okay, I won’t,” she said and drank the coffee herself. “I can type this letter up for you, if you like. How many copies do you need?”
“One.”
“One? Nobody ever needs just one. Since this concerns Mrs. Decker, you’ll want to give her the ribbon copy and keep a few others for your private files.”
“Why will I want to do that?”
“It’s standard practice,” Charity said. “Don’t fight it.”
“I have no private files.”
“You shouldn’t admit anything like that. You’ll never get to first base in this business without the basics. Rule one: always have plenty of copies made of everything. The less important the matter is, the more copies you ask for.”
“But I only need one. In fact, I don’t really need that. Mrs. Decker probably hasn’t any files either.”
“As a businesswoman I don’t know how to deal with people who won’t obey the ordinary commonsense business rules.”
“I’ll tell you how,” Aragon said. “Leave us alone. Forget the night letter. It never happened.”
“You’re getting weird, Aragon. I don’t think being a spy agrees with you. Maybe you should try some other line of work, something that keeps you out in the fresh air and sunshine, like a forest ranger. I can picture you ranging the forest in cute little green shorts to match all those leaves... Don’t dash off. I have lots of other suggestions.”
“Make twenty copies of each and file them.”
The week since he’d first arrived at the house and seen Reed cleaning the pool seemed like a month, and the patio itself was a world or two away from the squalid streets of Rio Seco. Camellias were starting to bloom, pink and perfect in their marble tubs, and the nandina leaves were already tipped with autumn bronze. Reflections of royal blue princess flowers moved back and forth in the sky blue water, rippling the outlines of the ceramic mermaid and softening her tile smirk. She looked real, like a child playing a game of drowning.
Reed was sitting at a glass and aluminum table that was set for two. He wore his working uniform, slacks and a short-sleeved cotton jacket buttoned at the throat. As usual, he wasted no time on amenities. “Sit down. You’re early. I can guess why. After a week of the food you get down there, you’re half starved.”
“I was brought up on that kind of food.”
“Yeah? You’ll probably have ulcers by the time you’re thirty. Do you know how those terribly hot spices came to be used? They were meant to cover the smell and taste of putrescent fish, fowl and animal flesh.”
“You’re a bundle of information, Reed.”
“I know... The old girl will be out in a few minutes. She’s getting herself all dolled up. What did you tell her? She hasn’t fussed like this about her appearance for months. I hope she’s not building up to a letdown. Her letdowns are rough on the hired help.”
“Are you classed as one of the hired help?”
“Not for long.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Right? Sit down, be cool. I made the lunch myself so you wouldn’t have to eat the local swill, an austere little casserole of artichoke hearts and eggs in a Ceylonese coconut-milk sauce. I had to break open four coconuts to get the right amount of milk. Violet Smith is having fits about what to do with all the coconut meat. I told her what she could do with all the coconut meat, but she didn’t buy the idea. Some people aren’t open to suggestion.”
“I can see why.”
Reed laughed, a bubbly mischievous sound that might have come from the mermaid at the bottom of the pool. “Violet Smith and I are on different wavelengths. To be frank, she doesn’t fit into the household. I want Gilly to fire her.”
“Gilly?”
“Everybody calls her by her first name — behind her back, anyway. You can’t behave the way she behaves and expect to be treated like Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t get looped and loud, or exchange insults and jokes with the staff. I don’t intend this as criticism of Gilly — it’s just her way of dealing with the tremendous emotional strain of Decker’s illness.”
Feathery scraps of pampas grass drifted across the flagstones and caught in the spikes of the firethorn bushes. The berries were ripe and ready for the winter birds.
Aragon said, “What brought you here in the first place, Reed?”
“I worked in the private hospital where Decker was a patient after his stroke. He took a fancy to me.”
“And Mrs. Decker?”
“She also took a fancy to me. Women do. Strange, isn’t it, since the fancy can hardly be called mutual. Gilly’s a nice old girl, if you like nice and old. And if you like girls.”
“You reassure me.”
“How come?”
“I’ve had the notion of something going on between you and Mrs. Decker, that you might even be thinking of marriage after Decker dies and providing B. J. doesn’t turn up.”
“Oh, come now. Why would I want to get married?”
“To enjoy an early retirement.”
“I don’t believe in early retirements or marriage. That puts two holes in your theory, enough to kill it, right?”
Aragon brushed some scraps of pampas grass off the tablecloth. They shone in the sun like golden feathers. He said, “I’m beginning to doubt very seriously that B. J. will turn up, either because he can’t or because he doesn’t want to. As for Decker, I gather he’s not going to survive.”
“None of us is going to survive, amigo. Decker’s number is coming up sooner than most, is all.”
“What do you expect will be the actual cause of death?”
“Kidney failure, cerebral hemorrhage, heart congestion, who knows? He’s in bad shape in every department. He has only one thing going for him. Gilly. She works her tail off to keep him alive. She won’t give up and she won’t let him give up. He doesn’t really want to live. She’s making him do it.”
“Why?”
“She’s a very loyal woman. Stubborn, too. She thinks fate handed Decker a bum deal and she’s fighting back. She’s a great believer in fair play, justice, all that kind of crap.” Reed got up, straightening the jacket of his uniform as if he were going on duty. “I’d better check the casserole. What did you tell Gilly on the phone?”
“That B. J. was released from jail three years ago by a magistrate named Guadalupe Hernandez.”
“So at least he didn’t leave feet first.”
“Not according to the records anyway. Hernandez wouldn’t give Miss Eckert of the consulate any details, so she suggests trying a little bribery. Or a lot. No sum was specified, but a great many officials lead high lives on low wages, so somebody must be paying.”