“You look peculiar, Mr. Aragon. If you’re going to upchuck again, kindly open the window.”
He opened the window.
Twenty-two
“Well, this is it,” Violet Smith said. “It really is it, isn’t it?”
Reed yawned, stretched and opened the two top buttons of his uniform. “There’s not much point in standing around talking about it. Make yourself useful. Or scarce.”
“I’m afraid. I never saw anyone die before.”
“So don’t look.”
“It’s different with you, being a nurse. You’ve probably seen people die all over the place.”
“Usually in bed.”
“What’s it like, watching somebody die?”
“Great fun. Gives me the jollies. Ho ho ho.”
“Our minister says there’s a moment when the soul leaves the body. When it happens, can you feel it? I mean, is there kind of like a draft as the soul goes up?”
“Who says it goes up? Decker’s may be going down.”
“Oh no.”
“Some go up, some go down, some may even go sideways. Mine is definitely going down.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Why? Are you a terrible sinner?”
“You bet your butt,” Reed said, yawning again. “I want to catch half an hour’s sleep out on the patio. Wake me if the old girl starts flinging herself around.”
He had been up since four o’clock when Gilly called him and told him her husband was dying. She’d done the same thing a dozen times in the past few months and Reed didn’t take it seriously until the doctor came and said it was true. There was talk of moving him into a hospital but Gilly refused. What could they do for him in a hospital — stick tubes up his nose and needles into his veins to prolong his suffering? So he stayed home and she stayed with him.
“He will die in my arms, where he belongs,” Gilly told Reed.
“It will be messy.”
“Surely you, of all people, should be able to put up with a little mess.”
“I’m able. Are you able?”
“Oh God, he’s trying to talk. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand his torture.”
“See what I mean?” Reed said. “Messy.”
Aragon picked up his car at the airport and drove directly to Gilly’s house. He wasn’t sure how much of the truth he was going to tell her or even how much of the truth he actually knew. With the death of Tula Lopez, B. J.’s last tracks had been obliterated.
He crossed the patio. Reed was lying on a chaise beside the pool, sleeping. In spite of the fatigue circles under his eyes he looked very young and innocent, like a cherub who’d been up all night doing good deeds. Aragon spoke his name and Reed was instantly awake, his voice alert: “What are you doing here?”
“I came to give Mrs. Decker my report.”
“Bad timing. The old boy’s about to meet his maker. If there’s anything she should know, tell me and I’ll pass it along to her between fits.”
“Tula Lopez is dead.”
“Yeah? Too bad.”
“She was beaten and strangled.”
“That’s one of the hazards of her profession.”
“I wonder why anyone would bother killing a down-and-out prostitute like Tula.”
“For kicks.”
“Or money. A nice secure future, let’s say.”
“You say. I’m going back to sleep.” Reed closed his eyes as if he intended to keep his word, but Aragon noticed that the muscles in his forearms were flexed and his jaw was set too tight. “Listen, Aragon, we’re all under a strain here right now. Why don’t you get lost for a few days?”
“I’ve been lost. I think I’m on the verge of finding myself.”
“Do it someplace else.”
“No. This is the place I was last seen.”
Reed opened his eyes and sat up. “You’re talking kind of weird, you know that?”
“I’m feeling kind of weird,” Aragon said. “Like a patsy, for instance.”
“Yeah? Well, life makes patsies of us all, as my old lady used to say before someone did her a favor and ran over her with a truck. Did I ever tell you about my old lady? She was a fight fan, used to put on the gloves with me when I was six, seven years old.”
“You learned early.”
“Everybody learns early when they get the hell knocked out of them if they don’t.”
Aragon watched the plumes of pampas grass bending toward the sun like gilded birds. “It’s funny how everyone I was hired to find turned up dead.”
“Yeah, that’s a real chuckle.”
“It would have been simpler and safer if she hadn’t hired me in the first place. Why did she?”
“She had to. You speak Spanish, you see, and I don’t, except for a couple of words like ‘amigo.’ Now, I couldn’t have gone around looking for Harry Jenkins just saying ‘amigo,’ could I, amigo?” Reed lay down again, shielding his eyes with his right arm. “Don’t worry about anything. I’m not. The Mexican police aren’t likely to sweat over the murders of a hustler and a broken-down con man and a crooked judge. They certainly aren’t going to bother extraditing anybody. So cheer up. You did a job, earned your money and came out cleaner than Snow White.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Maybe I’ll think of something else later on. Right now I’m tired and need a little rest. It’s a strain waiting for someone to die, even when you don’t give a damn about him.”
“Do you give a damn about anyone, Reed?”
“Sure I do, amigo. Me.”
The drapes were closed, but enough sunlight filtered through so Aragon could see that the oxygen tank beside the bed had been disconnected. Gilly was bending over her husband, her cheek against his. Tears had turned her eyes red and left the lids like transparent blisters.
Violet Smith stood beside the door in her black uniform looking smaller and more subdued than he remembered her. She said, “This is no place for strangers.”
“I’ll leave if Mrs. Lockwood wants me to.”
“This is a sacred moment when the soul—”
“Be quiet,” Gilly whispered. “He’s trying to talk again. He’s saying something... What is it, darling? Please, what is it?”
The dying man’s mouth was moving and little noises were coming out, wordless croaks and whimpers, and finally, an identifiable sound: “Gee — gee — gee—”
Violet Smith clapped her hands. “Praise the Lord, he’s been saved. He’s trying to say ‘Jesus.’ ”
“No,” Gilly said. “Not Jesus. G. G. He always called me G. G.”
“I distinctly heard ‘Jesus.’ ”
“All right.”
“I’ll go and pray for his soul. O praise the Lord!”
“Yes.”
Gilly had not yet given any indication that she was conscious of Aragon’s presence.
“Mrs. Lockwood?”
She turned her head slightly in his direction. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hear that, B. J.? They’re all dead, just like I promised you, like I planned it.” There was a long silence, then, “He came back across the border a year ago in a vanload of wetbacks. He was destitute and sick and on drugs. He didn’t even have a wallet, but I found an old clipping in his pocket about Jenlock Haciendas, how it was going to be a great step forward for Baja. On the other side of the clipping there was a story about a Marco Decker winning the National Lottery. It seemed a lucky name. He couldn’t use his own name, he’d done too many things against the law. So I set up a new identity for him, Marco Decker, and a new marriage for myself, complete with honeymoon in France. I let the word go out, through Smedler and others, that I’d met an eligible man in Europe and intended to marry him. I even arranged for Smedler to send me trousseau money in care of American Express. They sent it back to me in Los Angeles, where I was staying with B. J. in a private hospital. I arranged everything except the stroke. That was real, that was fate.”