I slid a power of attorney across the desk which authorized me among other things to pick up mail addressed to John Everson. He looked at it.
"A Mr. uh Snide will pick up the letter. He has authorization." He hung up.
I stood up. "Thank you, Mr. Hill." His nod was barely perceptible.
On the way out of the office I met that CIA punk from Athens. He pretended to be glad to see me, and shook hands and asked where I was staying. I told him at the Reforma. I could see he didn't believe me, which probably meant he knew where I was staying. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about the Everson case, like gathering vultures.
I waited almost an hour to see Colonel Figueres, but I knew he was really busy. He'd been a major when I last saw him. He hadn't changed much. A little heavier, but the same cold gray eyes and focused attention. When you see him he gives his whole concentration to you. He shook hands without smiling. I can't recall ever seeing him smile. He simply doesn't give himself occasion to do so. I told him I had come about the Everson boy's disappearance.
He nodded. "I thought you had, and I'm glad you are here. We haven't been able to give enough time to it."
"You think something may have happened to him?"
Figueres doesn't shrug. He doesn't gesticulate. He just sits there with his eyes focused on you and what is being discussed.
"I don't know. We have checked Progreso and all surrounding towns. We have checked airports and buses. If he had gone off on another dig, he would be that much easier to locate. A blond foreigner off the tourist routes is very conspicuous. We have also checked all the tourist places. Apparently he was a level-headed, serious young man ... no indications of drug use or excessive drinking. Is there any history of amnesia? Psychotic episodes?"
"None that I know of."
Dead end.
Back at the hotel, Jim and Kiki had turned up very little from questioning the landlady and neighbors. The landlady described Everson as a serious polite young man ... un caballero. He entertained few visitors and these were also serious students. There had been no noise, no drinking, no girls.
I sat down and opened the letter. It was from his twin sister in Minneapolis. It read:
Querido Juanito,
He has visited me again. He says that before you receive this letter He will have contacted you. He says you will then know what has to be done.
Your Ever Loving Sister,
Jane
At three o'clock, I called Inspector Graywood in New York. "Clem Snide here."
"Ah yes, Mr. Snide, there have been some developments in Lima. A boy did come to call for another crate and was seen to brush against the duplicate head crate. He was followed to a bicycle rental and repair shop in the Mercado Mayorista. Police searched the shop and found false identity papers in the name of Juan Mateos. The proprietor has been arrested and charged with possession of forged papers and with conspiracy to conceal evidence of a murder. He is being detained in isolation. He claims he did not know what was in the crate. He had been offered a fairly large sum to pick up the crate after it had cleared customs. The crate was to have been brought to his shop. Someone would arrange to pick it up there, and he would be paid an additional and larger sum. The customs agent who passed the crate has also been arrested. He has confessed to accepting a bribe."
"What about the boy?"
"There was no reason to hold him in connection with this case. However, since he has a record for petty theft and a history of epilepsy, he has been placed in a rehabilitation center in Lima."
"I wish I could be on the scene."
"So do I. Otherwise, I doubt if any important arrests will be made. In a country like that, people of wealth are virtually untouchable. People like the Countess de Gulpa. for example...."
"So you know about her?"
"Of course. The description of the man who contacted the customs broker tallies rather closely with your Identikit picture of Marty Blum. I have sent a copy to the Lima police and informed them that he is also wanted in connection with a murder here. Benson, it seems, was a pusher, small-time ... a number of leads but no arrests as yet. Have you found the Everson boy?"
"Not yet and I don't like the looks of it."
"You think something has happened to him?"
"Perhaps."
"I believe you have a contact from Dimitri." I had said nothing about this contact when I told my story in O'Brien's office. "Perhaps it is time to use it."
"I will."
"Your presence in South America would be most valuable. It so happens that client who wishes to remain anonymous is prepared to retain you in this connection. You will find thirty thousand dollars deposited to your bank account in Lima."
"Well, I haven't finished this case yet."
"Perhaps you can bring the Everson case to a speedy conclusion." He rang off.
It would seem that I had been called upon to act. I got out a map and couldn't find the Callejón de la Esperanza. There are small streets in Mexico City you won't find on a map. I had a general idea as to where it was and I wanted to walk around. I've cracked cases like this with nothing to go on, just by getting out and walking around at random. It works best in a strange town or in a town you haven't visited for some time.
We took a taxi to the Alameda, then started off in a north-westerly direction. Once we got off the main streets I saw that the place hadn't changed all that much: the same narrow unpaved streets and squares, with booths selling tacos, fried grasshoppers, and peppermint candy covered with flies; the smell of pulque, urine, benzoin, chile, cooking oil, and sewage; and the faces—bestial, evil, beautiful.
A boy in white cotton shirt and pants, hair straight, skin smoky black, smelling faintly of vanilla and ozone. A boy with bright copper-red skin, innocent and beautiful as some exotic animal, leans against a wall eating an orange dusted with red pepper ... a maricón slithers by with long arms and buck teeth, eyes glistening ... man with a bestial Pan face reels out of a pulquería ... a hunchback dwarf shoots us a venomous glance.
I was letting my legs guide me. Calle de los Desamparados, Street of Displaced Persons ... a farmacia where an old junky was waiting for his Rx. I got a whiff of phantom opium. Postcards in a dusty shop window. Pancho Villa posing with scowling men...gun belts and rifles. Three youths hanging from a makeshift scaffold, two with their pants down to the ankles, the other naked. The picture had been taken from behind—soldiers standing in front of them watching and grinning. Photos taken about 1914. The naked boy looked American—you can tell a blond even in black and white.
My legs pulled me in, Jim and Kiki following behind me. When I opened the door a bell echoed through the shop. Inside, the shop was cool and dim with a smell of incense. A man came through a curtain and stood behind the counter. He was short and lightly built and absolutely bald, as if he had never had hair on his head; the skin was a yellowish brown, smooth as terra-cotta, the lips rather full, eyes jetblack, forehead high and sloping back. There was a feeling of age about him, not that he looked old but as he were a survivor of an ancient race—Oriental, Mayan, Negroid—all of these, but something else I had never seen in a human face. He was strangely familiar to me and then I remembered where I had seen that face before. It was in the Mayan collection of the British Museum, a terra-cotta head about three inches in height. His lips moved into a slow smile and he spoke in perfect English without accent or inflection, eerie and remote as if coming from a great distance.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen."
"Could I see that postcard in the window?"
"Certainly. That is what you have come for."
It occurred to me that this must be Dimitri's contact, but this was not the address he had given.