What Clete thought of as "Uncle Willy's house" had been built by his granduncle Guillermo, a bachelor and near-legendary ladies' man. Uncle Willy's apartment on the top floor was actually one very large room stretching the full width and length of the building.
It was designed with two objects in mind: Wide windows opening on Avenida del Libertador provided Granduncle Guillermo with what amounted to a comfortable private box for watching the horse racing at the Hipodromo across the street. And when the curtains were drawn, he had comfortable quarters for entertaining lady guests. According to Clete's father, there were an awesome number of these.
Clete's connection with the building went back to his birth. According to his father, his mother flatly refused to live in "The Museum," the Frade mansion on Avenida Coronel Diaz, and moved into Uncle Willy's house. When her time came, she left Uncle Willy's house for the hospital, where she was delivered of a male infant named Cletus Howellafter her fatherFrade.
He drove the Ford down a steep ramp into the basement garage, thinking, Just as soon as I can, I'm getting out of the Museum and coming back here.
A second stocky man walked up to the car. Clete almost didn't see him, his attention having been caught by two cars already in the garage. One of them a 1941 Buick convertible coupewas his. It was as glistening as it had been in the showroom of Davis Chevrolet-Buick in Midland, Texas, the day Uncle Jim had made it plain to him that only fools drove convertibles, and the best he could expect for a graduation present was something sensible, like a Chevy business coupe.
The second car was his father's Horche convertible touring sedan, the joy of his life. El Coronel's extraordinary attachment to his Horche was well-known, and a source of amusement to his friends.
Enrico had told Clete that from the moment el Coronel"as nervous as a first-time father"watched the massive automobile being lowered to the dock from the Dresden of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, only three people were ever behind its wheel, el Coronel himself, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, and Cletus Howell Frade.
Clete thereafter made a point of asking to drive the car whenever they rode in it, and then of driving it in a manner to cause his father to hang on with white knuckles.
I really should have buried him in that,Clete thought. He really loved that car, and he died in it.
Even in the dim light, Clete could see the shattered windshield, and the bullet holes in the massive hood and doors.
"Enrico, mi Teniente," the stocky man said, "will be here shortly. He rode with el Coronel to Our Lady of Pilar."
"He rode?"
S?, mi Teniente."
Jesus Christ, his wounds are still bleeding!
"I just came from there. El Coronel is safely inside the church."
The man nodded.
"I wish to see Enrico when he comes," Clete said.
And then I will take the stupid sonofabitch back to the hospital, where, with a little luck, they'll be able to fix the damage he did to himself by getting on a horse in his condition. Jesus, I hope I can get him out again for the funeral!
As he walked to the interior stairs that led to the kitchen, he saw where the stocky men had been sitting, in armchairs obviously moved to the garage from somewhere upstairs, and that beside the armchairs were two double-barreled shotguns.
Three women were in the kitchen when he pushed open the door. One of them was middle-aged, and the other two were younger. The two younger ones were in maid's uniforms.
Christ, with nobody living here, why do we need two maids and a housekeeper?
Oh, yeah, El Coronel told me he used this place as a guest house before I showed up. It's probably full of people here for the funeral.
The kitchen was clean and cheerful, and the tiles on the floor were spotless.
Clete had a sudden, sickeningly clear mental image of the tiles by the kitchen table, thick and slippery with the blood of Enrico's sister, Se?ora Marianna Maria Dolores Rodriguez de Pellano, who had been the housekeeper.
"Her murder was unnecessary," el Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Mart?n explained at the time. (He'd come to the murder scene to see how it affected Argentine security, not to investigate the crime.)
"'But on the other hand," Mart?n added, "from the viewpoint of the would-be assassins, it was the correct thing to do. The dead make terrible witnesses, and the government can only execute murderers once."
A voice interrupted these thoughts.
"I am Se?ora Lopez, Se?or Frade. The housekeeper. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thank you. I'm going to go upstairs for a minute, and then I'm going to wait for Enrico in the sitting."
"I have laid out some things in the sitting for our guest, Se?or Frade. If there is something else you would like, just ring. And there is whiskey and ice and soda."
"Thank you," Clete said, and smiled at her.
Did she say "our guest," singular? That's surprising. I would have thought this place would be full of people for the funeral.
He rode the elevator to Uncle Willy's apartment on the top floor. There was evidence that somebody was staying in the room, and it made him a little uncomfortable to be an intruder.
Screw it. All I'm going to do is check the secret compartment in the desk.
He walked across the room to the massive desk, and opened the secret compartment without difficulty. There was nothing in it at all.
Not even Uncle Willy's naughty pictures.
Somebody's been in there. Who? When? And did they find just the dirty slides? Or, presuming it was here, Peter's father's letter?
Damn!
He got back on the elevator and rode it back to the foyer. When he entered the sitting, he saw that a plate of sandwiches and other finger food had been laid out on a table beside a coffee service and half a dozen bottles of hard liquor.
He made himself a scotch and soda, looked for and found a cigar in a humidor, and then slipped into an armchair. He looked around the room. There was a change since he had left: The oil portrait of a Thoroughbred was no longer hanging over the fireplace. (Granduncle Guillermo had raised the horse from a colt, and had won a great deal of money on it.) In its place hung a large oil portrait of a beautiful young woman in an evening dress with an infant in her arms. The woman was Se?ora Elizabeth Ann Howell de Frade, and the infant was her firstborn, Cletus Howell Frade.
Clete had last seen it hanging in his father's private library at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
I wonder why he brought it here?
Well, it means he came here when I was in the States, which suggests that goddamned letter may be here or was here after all.
He found a match, and was in the slow process of correctly lighting the cigar when the door opened.
It was Enrico, in a Husares uniform.
The bandage on his head is leaking blood. Christ only knows what he looks like under that Student Prince Graustarkian uniform jacket.
"Mi Teniente . . ."
"I asked you not to call me that," Clete snapped.
"Se?or Clete . . ."
"What in the name of God were you thinking riding a horse in your condition?"
"I rode with your father in the cavalry all our lives, Se?or Clete. It was my duty to ride with him tonight."
"And what are you going to do, for Christ's sake, when I die? Follow me to the cemetery in an airplane?"
Not only could Enrico not immediately counter the logic of that remark, but there was a chuckle of appreciation from a previously unseen spectator.