I stood up and said, “Charley, maybe a couple of years ago these fatso broads would have been worth a free jump, but now they’re so far over the hill… Charley! Can you hear me, Charley?”
“Just barely,” he roared.
“Even if they were cleaned up and dressed nice, they couldn’t even make expenses at a hardware convention in Duluth.”
I dropped all the way back to merely a hearty conversational tone and smiled down at them and said, “Thanks anyway, kids. You got any slim clean pretty little friends who need more vacation money, send them on up to the Victoria and tell them to ask for McGee. But don’t send any turned-on slobs like you two sorry girls. Fun is fun, but a man likes to keep his self respect. Right? See you around.”
I went back to Meyer. He rolled his eyes when I sat down with him. I slid down in the chair, ankles crossed, thumbs hooked in my belt, and smiled amiably at the three.
They tried to brass it out for a little while. But the redhead started snuffling and choking. They gathered up their market bundles and took the route around the nearest corner and out of sight.
Meyer sighed. “In a queasy kind of way, I think I enjoyed it. Did you?”
“The target was the redhead.”
“And?”
“She won’t be able to leave it alone, Meyer. She’ll have to pick at it. She’s not so far gone as the other two. She can’t endure anybody having that reaction to her. They have to be wrong. So she’ll have to tell me how wrong I am. Ruptured pride. And then I can ask about Nesta, Rockland, and company. What if I’d asked them today?”
He nodded. “I keep forgetting how devious you are at times. McGee, it was one of your better performances. You were in good voice. But… it was brutal.”
“Because it was too close to the truth. Let’s go.”
The car was ready when we got back to the Ford garage. The shift still whammed me on the knee bone, but everything else was fine. I found a place to park it not far from the Ford place, and we walked over to the street carnival area and then located the Los Pajaros trailer park. There was a spiked iron fence around it, crumbling stone pillars. There were big old trees with dusty leaves shading unkempt flower beds. Paths had worn the grass away, and nobody had picked up the scraps of litter in a long, long time.
The bossman was a jolly fat little type in a ragged blue work shirt and paint-spotted khakis. He had a big gold-toothed grin, and more English than I had Spanish. We went into his little office-store and he looked the information up in his registration notebook. When he pronounced Rockland, it came out “Roak-lawn.”
“Ah, yes. The Senor Roak-lawn, on place numer seexteen, from… ah… twenny-four of Abreel to… ah… twenny three in Zhuly? Yes. Tree month. He was having a camper here, was Chevrolet trock of Florida, color… how you say?… azul.”
“Blue.”
“Ah, yes. Blue!” Suddenly his smile dwindled. “Ah! Yes, it was that one. You his fren?”
“No. I am not his friend, senor.”
“Then I say. Many, many people here. Nice American turista people. That one, that Roak-o, the only one I must ask to leaving when the month is up. Too much the fights and noise. Too many times he called me bad words. This is not right, that is not right. Nothing is right for him. I have to get policia to make sure he is going.”
“Where did he go from here?”
“Who knows? Away from Oaxaca, for surely.”
“Who was with him when he left?”
“Who knows. Different people live with him here the two month. One two three four. Different girls sometimes. Boys and girls. I have no names, nothing. It is nothing to me. So, he is going now for… wan month and six day.” The grin was broad as he said, “I am not missing him moch, you bet. One other senor was asking the same things, maybe it is two weeks ago, I think. And he is asking about his daughter.”
“Was his name McLeen?”
“Ah, yes. Senor McLeen. But I do not know of the girl nothing. To me, senor, a father is never letting his daughter go off far away in these times. All is changing, no? Some of these young American, they are very nice and good. But there are the ones such like Roak-o, doing bad things.”
“Are there any young people here who were friendly with Rockland?”
“Some would know him, I think maybe. Some are here many month. Perhaps the young ones, the senor and senora… I cannot say. Here, look, is the name.”
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Knighton, of Kerrville, Texas.
They were in space number twenty. It was a travel trailer with canvas rigged to make an extra area of living space. But whatever towed the trailer was not there, and the trailer was locked. Happy Fats explained that the young man was an amateur archeologist who was writing a novel about the Zapotecan civilization in pre-Columbian Mexico, and said that the couple went on a lot of field trips in their “Lawn Roover.”
“Very young. Very nice. Very hoppy.”
So it was then a little past five on that twenty-ninth day of August, and I asked Meyer if it might not be a good time to chat with that expatriate American, Bruce Bundy, who had loaned his car to some unknown named George, who had loaned it to Bix, who had died in it, or near it.
“I used to be young and nice and hoppy.” Meyer said wistfully.
“So now you are old, and nice, and hoppy. And you don’t listen. Bundy. Bruce Bundy. Now?”
“Why sure.”
I studied the map and found Las Artes, a short street about ten blocks north of the zoealo, toward our hotel. I parked at the end of the street and locked up, and we went looking for number eighty-one.
It was a very narrow two-story house squeezed between its bulkier neighbors. Its plaster front was painted in a faded hue of raspberry Grilled iron doors were locked across the arched entrance, but the inner doors were open. We could see down a long shadowy corridor to the sun-bright flowers of the rear courtyard. I tugged a woven leather thong and a bell hanging in the archway clanged. A man, slender in silhouette, appeared and came swiftly along the corridor, and then slowed as he saw us, and stopped, frowning, in the edge of daylight, one long step inside the doorway.
“Are you looking for someone?” he asked.
“For a Mr. Bruce Bundy.”
“I am he,” he said, and it surprised me because he looked no more than thirty-four, and the police report had said he was forty-four. “What do you wish to see me about?”
“It’s about the fatal accident involving your vehicle on the third of this month.”
He shook his head and sighed. “Oh dear Lord, will I never come to the end of the bloody red tape. I have answered endless questions, and have filled out endless reports. What is your part in it?”
“This is my associate, Mr. Meyer. My name is McGee. I’m sorry to bother you, but this is a necessary part of the insurance investigation. Could we come in.”
“Now really! Are you men trying to be terribly tricky or something? The whole matter has been settled. And I must say that it was terribly unfair. I should have gotten full value for my marvelous little car, but they kept talking about my not putting that fellow, George, on the list of people authorized to drive it. Actually I shall never loan anyone a car, ever again, no matter how nicely they ask.”
“Insurance,” I said, “on the life of the deceased, Miss Beatrice Bowie of Miami, Florida. There is an accidental death clause in the policy.”
“And you came here from Florida!”
“A large sum of money is involved, Mr. Bundy.”
“And I’m sure it’s all terribly important to you and your company and the beneficiary and all that, and I suppose you are here to practically lunge at any hint that the pretty child killed herself so that you can save great wads of money, which I suppose is what you are paid to do, but I am expecting guests, and I was just about to make my famous salad dressing. So why don’t you plan to come back tomorrow, Mr. McGoo? But I won’t be able to tell you a thing, actually. I did meet those girls, but I knew them so slightly I had the names mixed up. I thought it was the little dark one they called Bix, and I was surprised to find it was the tall, quiet blond one.”