I came upon the Mexican woman standing crouched in terror, wringing her hands. I smiled broadly and told her that it was a game Americans play. Don’t worry, senora. We are all very happy.
Meyer was between the gate and the entrance to the central corridor. He was clumping around in a small circle, taking quick steps to the side now and again to catch his balance. He was shaking his big head and muttering to himself. David Saunders sat spraddled like a chunky little kid. He was swaying from side to side, cradling something against the lower part of his big chest and making a small thin keening sound. He looked like he was rocking a little dolly, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a basket.
I got the gate shut and latched. I caught Meyer as he came around his circle. He stopped and shook his head violently and knuckled his eyes.
“Violence is vulgar,” he said. “It offends me.”
“You won, didn’t you?”
“By giving him a frightful blow on the fist with my forehead. The expression is, ‘I ducked into it.’”
I helped Saunders up and walked him past Bundy into the bright area of the walled court and eased him into a white iron armchair. I pulled the hand away from his chest. It was beginning to puff. Broken hands are unpredictable. There are ten thousand nerve bundles, and if the break doesn’t involve them, you don’t feel a thing until later on. But if the broken bone or bones grind into the right nerves, it is an agony that prevents you from thinking about anything else in the world, and keeps you right on the twilight edge of a faint.
I plucked Brucey off the floor and put him on a purple chaise, rolled him onto his side and neatened the thong. The maid stood staring at us. I smiled at her. Meyer smiled at her. After a few moments she smiled back and scuttled away.
Bruce lifted his head, coming awake all at once. He swung his feet to the floor and sat up. He worked his jaw from side to side and licked his lips and looked at me and said in a totally masculine manner, “You are pretty goddam impressive, McGee. Men your size are supposed to be slower.” He looked at David and frowned. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He broke his hand hitting me on the head,” Meyer said. “Terribly sorry about that.”
“But he’s in agony!” Bruce said. “He’s terribly hurt. He needs medical attention immediately. Look at his poor hand!”
“He’ll get it, after we have a little chat.”
“What in the world do we have in common worth talking about, McGee?”
“The subject of discussion is what makes you so nervous about my asking questions about Walter Rockland and the Bowie girl.”
“Am I nervous?”
“Nervous enough to talk to that redhead earlier tonight and tell her I was trying to make something out of nothing.”
“Aren’t you?”
I kicked a chair closer and sat facing him, about four feet away. “Brucey, the trouble with playing games is that you never know how much the other party knows. Rocko moved in here with you at your invitation, and put the camper in the shed out in back, and tried to hit you for a large loan, and then he tried to make off with a lot of valuable little goodies, but you’d read him right and disabled the truck. Took the rotor, probably. He jumped you and you black-belted him pretty good.”
He tossed his head to throw the bangs back. He turned pale under his golden tan, and the odd brown eyes turned to dingy little slits. At that moment he looked his age.
“I shall never, never, never forgive that treacherous, rotten British bitch.” He continued at some length. He had a truly poisonous mouth.
“All through? So why are you so edgy about it?”
“I can’t afford to get involved in anything.”
“What is there to get involved in, Bruce?”
He hesitated. “What if I happened to know that someone saw Walter Rockland and the Bowie girl together just a week ago? Ah… at the airport, getting on a flight to Acapulco.”
Misdirection. Nice footwork. Toss in a thought that warps the mind. Maybe it was true. So how to test it?
It took me quite a segment of silence to come up with the leverage. “You are a clever man, Bruce. Look at it this way. Nobody knows where Rocko is. It wouldn’t be hard to prove he lived here with you. You are very nervous about the whole thing. I can get the information to Sergeant Martinez that you fought with Rockland. I can tell him that he can find traces of human blood on the stone floor of the shed out behind this place. I can tell him your story about Rockland going to Acapulco, and I guess they could check that out and see if he did. Then I would suggest that they take this place apart looking for a body and take you apart to see what you know about it.”
“You are such a cruel son of a bitch.”
“So?”
“All right! All right! All right! I nearly moved away from here after the first four months. I had a stupid mishap with the car I had then. A drunken old fool on a bicycle ran right into the side of the car. And so I… enjoyed the hospitality of the local prison. My dear friend Freddy, now deceased, tried frantically to get me out, but they managed to hold me there five days. Police the world over seem to have this compulsion to mistreat men of my particular sexual pattern. They treated me with contempt. I did not mind that. I considered the source. The brutality from the jailors could be endured. But each night I was locked into a very large cell with the very dregs of Mexico, who had been informed, of course, of what I was. And so I was used and abused. They degraded me. It put me into a depression that lasted for months. Freddy talked me out of leaving Mexico. He said it would be the same anywhere in the world. That is a valid observation. We have no recourse in the law, really. And Walter Rockland knew that when he tried to make off with some very valuable things. He knew that I would not report the theft, that I would not dare report it for fear they’d think of some pretext for locking me up again. I don’t think I could endure that a second time. If you understand that, Mr. McGee, and understand my absolute terror, then I can tell you what happened.”
He told us that Walter, as he called him, had stayed in bed all day Friday, and had said on Saturday morning that he still felt unwell, but begged to be allowed to leave. Bruce told him to rest. At noon on Saturday while Bruce was in the kitchen fixing something for a light lunch, he had been struck from behind and knocked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, Walter was gone. So were his car keys, a couple of hundred pesos from his wallet, and his yellow English Ford. At first he had been afraid Walter had broken in and taken the valuables which he had locked up after the first atiempt, but they were still there. He had no intention of reporting it as a theft. He still had the truck and camper, and they were worth more than the car Walter had taken.
On Monday, in the middle of the morning, the police had come to see him. They had asked him about his car, asked him where it was. He had thought they had picked Walter up, and he remembered Walter’s hints about needing the money for some illegal act. He could not be tied in with any illegality, so he had invented the fictitious young American named George, and had described him in a way that would fit half the young Americans in Mexico on summer vacation. Only after they had made him go over the story several times did they tell him that an unidentified girl had gone off the mountain road, that his car was a total loss and the girl was dead.
Later that day, before learning that Eva Vitrier had identified the body, Bruce had gone to Becky and told her the whole story and had asked her what she thought he should do. He was frightened that Walter was involved somehow in the girl’s death, and that if they picked up Walter he would manage to involve Bruce somehow.