“The woman’s from Rios?” he asked Pincay.
“No, senor.”
“All right, let’s go. The body’ll be picked up shortly.”
They returned to the village and the sheriff, getting out of the car, went back in the cantina while Fiala drove off to headquarters.
Montes sweltered in the heat, but unlike Rios, there was no silence there. Buses rattled and cars roared through its narrow crowded streets. Stopping in the main plaza, Fiala went for coffee. There was plenty of time before the dead woman joined the man who’d been brought to the morgue that morning.
Two murders, and both victims had been bound with rope and shot in back of the head. Did that mean anything? Stirring his coffee, Fiala recalled the two squatting peons and the buzzards waiting overhead for the dead woman lying in the desert.
Trussed like an animal with a piece of rope. A horrible way to die, he thought, and, pushing his coffee away, walked out of the restaurant into the blazing sun. Across the street in the plaza a bench awaited him in the shade of a sour orange tree. It was a good place to think, but he soon dozed off.
Later, a hand pressed his shoulder and he opened his eyes. A policeman stood over him. “Better wake up, Victor,” he said. “They can hear you snoring at headquarters.”
Fiala smiled and glanced at his watch. An hour had gone into limbo; the Chief would have his head. Mumbling his thanks to the policeman, he hurried across the plaza to headquarters.
“You had a good sleep?” Captain Meza greeted him with from his desk. “Ah, you’re slipping, Victor.”
“A bad night,” Fiala answered, flushing. “Did they bring the woman in from Rios?”
Captain Meza nodded and grinned. “But, of course. She’s also been identified.”
“Already? That was fast.”
“One of our men recognized her. Carmen Valdez, the wife of Juan Valdez, a bellhop in the Hotel de los Reyes. Know him?”
“Only to nod to. Did he...?”
“Kill her?” Meza shrugged. “He claims he didn’t, but perhaps you’d like to talk to him yourself.”
“Later. What did you get on him?”
“Nothing. He has no record, and he’s a good worker, always on the job. He didn’t know his wife was murdered.”
“Nor missing?”
“No. According to him, they had an argument and she went to her mother’s. He thought she was still there, but...” Meza didn’t finish.
Fiala nodded. “Perhaps she had a boy-friend.”
“Valdez doesn’t think so. He was firm on that point.”
“He could be wrong.”
“Why?”
Fiala shrugged and said, “Let’s go. I want to show you something.”
Two bodies lay in the morgue, one of Carmen Valdez, the other Pedro Martinez who had been found that morning in a canyon south of the city. “Notice anything?” Fiala said.
“Both victims were shot in back of the head and their hands tied behind their backs,” Meza replied and shook his head. “Don’t tell me you’re going to make something out of that?”
“I hope to,” Fiala asserted.
“Ridiculous. We know what Martinez was.”
“We do, but did Senora Valdez? Or perhaps she did know he was a bad one. If a woman falls in love, she doesn’t care what the man is or does.”
“True, but...” and Meza grinned. “You’re on a wild one this time. I assume you believe they were lovers and Valdez caught them together and killed them.”
“It may have happened that way. I don’t know, but they’re linked together, and the same man killed both of them. If you looked closely, you’d have noticed the victims were tied in exactly the same fashion, with the same knots and same kind of rope.”
“The rope, knots and fashion of tying are pretty common, Victor, and apt to mislead. I’d say Martinez had a falling out with some of his friends and was taken care of.”
“And Senora Valdez?”
“Perhaps her husband isn’t as innocent as he appears. Perhaps he murdered his wife, but why put the two murders together? It’s too far-fetched, in spite of the rope.”
“A difference of opinion,” Fiala said, and they left the morgue.
Captain Meza returned to his desk, and Fiala went back to the restaurant. This time he finished his coffee and two cigarettes, then returned to headquarters to confer with Chief Lopez in his office. Lopez proved as skeptical as Meza. He saw no connection between the two murders.
“A petty hoodlum, and a house-wife. You can’t link them together, Victor,” he said. “Not with a piece of rope.”
Fiala shrugged and left the Chief to his limitations. He hadn’t expected much from him. Meza was a jealous fool, he thought, as he descended the steep iron steps from the balcony into the patio. Then out into the sun he stepped. The white light was blinding, but shaded benches encircled the plaza. He returned to the one where he’d dozed off, put on his dark glasses and lit a cigarette. Two people murdered, and justice like a tortoise, slow-moving but inevitable; he’d nod a while.
He closed his eyes, but couldn’t nod off with two murders to solve. The house-wife and the petty criminal made an incongruous pair. Did the rope link them, or were Captain Meza and Chief Lopez right?
The pair of dark glasses he’d put on were not for concealment. He had good reason for donning them and now, directly across the gutter, Luis Cruz stepped from the doorway of the Blue Moon restaurant and joined him on the bench.
“Have you heard about Martinez?” Fiala said, dropping his cigarette.
“I’ve heard. A bullet in the head.”
“Correct. What was he dealing in?”
“Cigarettes from the States.”
“Who was he doing business with?”
The informer frowned, for this was a painful question to answer. “The big one,” Cruz finally replied. “Escobedo.”
“I should have known that. What went wrong?”
“Who knows?” Cruz said, shrugging.
Perhaps he knew the answer, perhaps he didn’t. Let it go, Fiala thought, and said, “What do you know about Senora Valdez?”
“Who is she?”
“She was mixed up with Martinez.”
“If she was, I didn’t know about it.”
“Maybe she was one of Escobedo’s harem.”
Cruz shrugged again. “Perhaps. There are many in the harem, and who could keep score on them?”
Fiala thought about Escobedo, the untouchable, with a hand in everything, and a weakness for women. Did he kill Martinez and Senora Valdez?
“What about Juan Valdez?” Fiala asked.
“What about him, senor?”
Like pulling teeth, Fiala thought. “Just tell me anything you know,” he said impatiently.
“Valdez is nothing. A messenger boy for Escobedo.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Very sure,” Cruz said. “Martinez picked up the cigarettes at the border and brought them to Rios. Valdez took over from there and brought them into the city.”
“Why two men for that operation?”
“Martinez would have been picked up too easily if he brought the goods into the city. So Escobedo used Valdez because he was clean.”
A logical explanation, which revealed less than it proved. How had Valdez become involved with one like Escobedo? And why had his wife been murdered? Fiala took off his sun-glasses. He thanked Cruz. The informer gave him a wan smile and walked away.
It was time to check on Valdez. Fiala smoked another cigarette, then walked leisurely to the de los Reyes, an ancient hotel, but pleasant and comfortable. The manager, an old friend, was behind the desk. Fiala questioned him about Valdez, and the manager had no complaints. Valdez was the best of workers, no trouble at all, but of late he’d appeared worried. He had been given the day off. His wife...