“I don’t want to put you to-”
“Silencio, gringo! How do you know it doesn’t give me the chance to get out of something I didn’t want to do, eh?”
“Okay. Next problem. How do I get to talk to Mrs. Eva Vitrier?”
“That one is one rich lady. I remember it was maybe eight, nine years ago, that place was sold. Nearly two million pesos. And then a lot more to fix it up. All the other ricos out in the Colonia, they can’t wait to find out who the owner is. They think there will be entertaining. They want to see how the house has been fixed. All of a sudden they find out the owner is there, this Frenchwoman. They go calling. She will not see them. They leave cards. Nothing. Oh, she has guests come in sometimes, very few, from far away. Sometimes she is seen in the city. She shops, and has servants with her to carry packages to the car, and a man to drive the car. People say crazy things. Maybe she is the mistress of a king. Maybe she is a political refugee. Maybe it is stolen money. I think it is easy, man. I think the lady wants to be left the hell alone.”
“What does she look like? Have you seen her?”
He leaned back eyes half closed, a gentle smile on his lips. “She has no age. She could be thirty. She could be fifty. No difference. She looks like that queen of Egypt, you know. The one with the nose.”
“Nefertiti?”
“That one. Very proud. Head high. Very hot eye. One day, three or four years past, I walked behind her from one jewelry store to her car. Black hair. Cool day. Had on a dark red wool dress. She walked slow, like music, man. Long narrow back, narrow little shoulders. Not much in front, but one truly fantastic ass. Firm, round, heavy but not too heavy. Wide but not too wide. It moved just right when she walked. Nothing under that dress, man. She had some great kind of perfume. It came floating back. You know; she got in that car and it drove away, and what I wanted to do, I wanted to lean against a building and pant like a dog. Hell, I tried to meet her. She was worth a good try. Twenty good tries. I never got to first base. First base! I never found the road to the ball park. I tell you, one long look at her, and that Miranda bird of Ron’s looks like somebody’s brother.”
“So there’s no friend of hers here who could put me in direct touch?”
“She has some friends, I think. I don’t know exactly. Those friends would not be my friends. People I think who tuck their lives behind walls here, like she does. Because here they are left alone, and it is a freedom for them. I know that Gaona won’t help you. That is one tough old man. Long ago there was an election when there were strong feelings. He wanted to be a politico. Somebody shot him in the spine. He dragged himself home in the night. Four miles. Took him all night. Wore his hands to ribbons. Would not say who shot him. If I had to trust a secret to any lawyer in the world, it would be Alfredo Gaona.”
“About Mrs. Vitrier’s friends. One of them would be Bruce Bundy?”
He looked startled, then impressed. “Yes, it was his car. He loaned it to someone who loaned it to the Bowie girl. I know Bundy by sight. Three or four years he’s been here. There’s a little group of them here. Nobody pays much attention, if they stay out of trouble. But if one of them starts taking little boys from the public market home, then the police will make their life very ogly. To find out so soon that Bundy and the French lady are friends, something I did not know, means you are very quick with these things, eh?”
“I tend to go in like a bull, Enelio. Or like a kid busting into a room full of slot machines. I pull levers and kick things and usually end up with pure lemons. So I found that Bundy is a friend of Eva Vitrier, and Bundy is a friend of Lady Rebecca Divin-Harrison, and Lady Becky doesn’t like Eva worth a damn.”
He looked at me with a speculative appraisal, head cocked slightly, and then a slow grin came and widened and then he threw his head back and laughed and slammed the desk top with a big hand.
When he caught his breath, he said, “So! You do not always have those black circles under the eyes, amigo! And that mark on your neck is not a strawberry birthmark. And maybe your hands do not always tremble a little, eh? My God, you are a rare one, McGee! You and me, we are members of one club now. Goddam, there are plenty members, and I joined-let me see-fifteen years ago, and she looked exactly, I swear, the way she looks today. She had a beautiful car and she asked me if I would like to drive it. I was young. I could conquer anything. Car or woman. Perhaps it is good to learn humility when young. Four days I was not a part of the world. Four days and nights, and then ejected, blinking, weak as a new kitten, dazed, damn near destroyed. Ah, that one is legend, my friend. Muy guapa. As much woman as there can be. Too much woman. The club is big, but she selects with great care, believe me. One cannot ask to be a member. One must be invited. Some day, McGee, we will be wheeled into the sunshine with the blanket over our knees, and we will have that memory, and we will smile a nice and dirty-old-man smile. There is an old saying among the Oaxacanos: The most bitter remorse is for the sins one did not commit. She is quite mad, of course. But it is an agreeable madness, no?”
“If I recover, I’ll let you know.”
“One always recovers. I even wished to see if it had all happened as I remembered, or if I had dreamed portions of it. But she patted my face and she said, ‘Nelio, you are a dear boy and I am very fond of you, but I have turned the page you were written on. It is a very long book, and I do not have time in my life to reread any part of it if I am to finish it.’ For a time I was hurt and angry. Then later I understood. She was written in my book too, and by then I was writing a new chapter.
“About Bundy being friends with such total female creatures as Becky and Madame Vitrier, I think it is a common thing among women who do not have tea-party friendships with other women, to have a Bruce Bundy to make girl talk with. And I think he helps them with decorating things in their homes. Look maybe it is like this. Can Becky have a close friend who is a normal man or normal woman? Bundy is, for her, neutral ground. A relaxinent? Bad English. A… relaxation. I do not pry. How is it now with Becky? Not ended, I would think.”
“She thinks it isn’t. She thinks she told me just enough to keep me on the hook.” I told him about Walter Rockland moving in with Bundy, trying to hit him up for a large loan, and then trying to clean out Bundy’s little store of art treasures and getting a quick education in karate.
I said, “She told me I’d made Brucey very nervous, but there isn’t enough there, in her story, to make him nervous, so the best part is yet to come. So I am supposed to drop in, alone, for drinks and dinner tonight. And be spoon-fed another little fragment. By the time I know it all, she’ll be able to bury me at the foot of her garden, so it will be less wearing to find out what color belt Brucey earned from Brucey himself. Anyway, I’m imposing. I’m taking up too much of your time.”
“No. There are some small things I must do here, then it is enough for this day. Let me say one thing. In the picture you showed me, that is one lovely little chicken. I have respect for what you do, Travis. A father should know more of how such a one came to die. He will never understand why. But to know a little-not too much-will help.”
Seven
MOST OF the tables on the hotel porch were full when I got there. I spotted Meyer at the far end, sitting at a table with a portly man wearing a pale tan suit and a yellow sports shirt.
While the waiter was hustling me a chair, Meyer introduced him as Wally McLeen from Youngstown, Ohio. Mr. McLeen’s handshake was moist and unemphatic. His hazel eyes were magnified by the thick lenses of glasses with thick black frames. There were steel-wool tufts of hair on his sunburned skull.