Pedro sat on his cot. Juanita stood above him, putting a bandage on his head. There was blood on the bandage and more blood on a towel on the floor. The old man saw Pete and tried to rise.
“Bandits, señor! They come when I am sleeping. Call the police!”
Juanita pushed him down. “Be still, viejo verde! Three ladrones, all giants,” she told Pete. “They hit my brave Pedro on the head.”
“Let me see.” He examined the cut. It was clean and not too deep. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“No hospital! Hospitals are where people go to die!”
Pete let it pass. The wound wasn’t serious; Juanita could attend to it. He ran upstairs and went into his bedroom. It was a wreck. Both beds were torn apart. Clothes had been removed from the dresser and the closet, and what had not been stolen was scattered on the floor. The broken remnants of the olla in which his money had been hidden were at his feet.
He thought dully that this had been the pattern of his life. A little happiness followed immediately by violent disruption. He stepped on a fragment of the olla, ground it into powder, turned away.
13
In the bathroom he found something the thieves had overlooked: the bottle of whiskey he had put in the shower stall. He took it back to the bedroom, drew the cork. But before he drank he went inside the closet, ran his fingers along the ledge above the door. The Smith & Wesson was in its hiding place. He stood with the revolver in one hand and the whiskey in the other. He took a drink and tried to plan what he should do.
The strong liquor ran screaming through his blood stream, reawakening all the alcohol he’d had before. He would have to meet Karen. If he scrimped like hell they could still make the trip. Tomorrow he would wire for money. Karen mustn’t be disappointed, but already he was disappointing her. He was drinking, although he hadn’t meant to drink. He would have to go now, keep his date.
He drank again. The ladrones had done a thorough job, all right. He wished he’d been here and that he’d had a chance to use the thirty-eight. Damned gun wasn’t much use now. Tossing it on the bed, he started for the door.
He stopped, and slowly turned around. He stared at the bedside table, walked to it and deliberately took hold of the handle of the drawer. He pulled it open, looked inside.
The drawer was empty but there were dark brown stains on the wood. He looked at the brown stains, and sat down on the bed.
The bottle was half-full. He held it for a long time to his lips.
The bottle was empty. He opened his hand and let it fall. It smashed on the floor but that didn’t make much difference. The floor was already littered with broken trash. He looked at his watch. More than an hour had passed. He got up, lurched out the door.
Five minutes later the Buick raced into the Tahiti parking lot. He jumped from the car, ran into the Mexican cafe. Karen wasn’t there. He hurried through the cafe and scanned the tables under the palm trees on the other side. He didn’t see her. He went back inside. Leaning against the bar, he ordered Scotch.
Someone put a fifty-centavo piece in the jukebox. The jangling music grated on his nerves. He slammed his empty glass down on the bar and told the barkeep that he wanted another drink but that it was too damned noisy here. He wanted it outside.
He lost his balance going through the door, and saved himself from a fall by catching at a chair. A girl was sitting in the chair, and he saw that it was Karen. He sat down heavily.
“Where you been? Looked all over. Came out here,” he said.
“I know. I spoke to you.”
“Didn’t hear you. Terrible thing happened. House was robbed.”
She was silent.
“Well, aren’t you going to say anything? I was robbed! Ladrones cleaned me out.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “What did they take?”
“Everything. Took my money. Took my knife.”
“Your what?”
“Knife!” He was shouting at her. “Bastards stole it. Stole it out of drawer. What’s the matter? Can’t you understand?”
A shapely brown arm came before his eyes. Attached to it was a woman’s hand. In the hand was a shot glass of Scotch. He looked up at the waitress. She smiled down at him.
You think me pretty, boy? We go for ride, drink whiskey, have good time?
He knocked over his chair as he got up. He fell against the table, spilled the Scotch. Chucha backed away, and with each step she changed a little. At a distance of two yards she was no longer Chucha. She was a waitress he had never seen before.
Karen had risen, too. She was staring at him. There was a beach bag on the table. She picked it up and walked away.
14
Last night he had reached dead end. He put his clothes on slowly, his fingers nervous with the buttons of his shirt. Fully dressed, he tried to reconstruct as much as he could of what had happened. The house had been burglarized. He had gone back to the beach cafe and talked to Karen. After that, a blank. He went down to the car port.
The Buick was parked nearly in the center. The gate was still open, and he saw that the padlock had been forced. With no preliminary warning, he began to shake. He went into the kitchen, got a bottle from the closet and carried it upstairs.
But he did not drink. He stood with the bottle in his hand, and after a moment put it in the bedroom closet on the shelf. It was eleven-thirty, the time when Karen was usually at the beach. He did not feel up to facing a lot of people, but there was a chance that she might be at home. He returned to the car port and drove to the nearest public phone.
Fran Garvey answered. “You as corpselike as I am?”
“I’m pretty dead. Is Karen there?”
“Hear you got took last night. Need any cash?”
“I’ll get by. Is Karen—?”
“She’s at Caleta. Just getting by’s no fun. Come on over?”
“I can’t right now.”
“Look, Pete,” she said. “Let’s stop this horsing around. I like you — know what I mean? Come on over, and let’s talk.”
“Sorry. I’ve got a lot of things to do.”
He hung up, drove to the post office to send a telegram, then went straight home. A police car was parked at the green gate. Pedro stood beside it talking to the driver. The driver hadn’t seen him yet, and Pete slammed on the brakes. His hands grew wet with perspiration as he tried desperately to think. His mind was frozen. He needed a drink to thaw it, start it functioning again...
Once when he was eight years old he had been awakened by the soft click of a closing latch. He was lying on the couch in the living room of his parents’ house. His father was asleep in the big chair across the room. He could see his father, and the bottle on the floor beside him, by the light of a street lamp through the window. His mother—
His mother was in the room, too. It was she who had clicked the latch shut and awakened him. She was not alone.
“Dead to the world,” he heard her whisper. “Didn’t I tell you, honey? Didn’t I tell you it’d be okay?”
The shadow of a man, a stranger with his hat on, showed against the dimly lighted window. “I ain’t so sure. Maybe we better—”
“He’s passed out, hon. Nothing to be scared of. Come on.”
“How about the kid?”