“I just wanted to hear you sing,” he told Mimi, “but I guess I’ll go to bed. In room two twenty-two.” He went upstairs.
Dort beat Ynez to his room with six minutes to spare. She slipped quickly inside when he opened the door. Grasping him secretively by the arm, she asked in a whisper, “You are an American agent, are you not?”
“Right,” said Dort, “I belong to the FBI, Military Intelligence, CIA, as well as being a Treasury man, and a Secret Service operative. Furthermore — this is top-level — I’m a B.P.O.E. with three horns.”
“Ahhhh.” Ynez looked around the room suspiciously, then remarked, somewhat loudly. “That Mimi!” The words sounded like ice-water dropped on a hot skillet.
“What about her?” asked Dort. “You promise to me, you make no trouble to Pablo, I tell you something verrrry interesting.”
Dort nodded.
“I love Pablo.” Ynez’ tragic eyes burned brightly as the full current of her love hit her. She rolled them upwards. “But that Mimi — she cause trouble. Very much trouble.”
“How?”
“She has no refined nature, that Mimi. She flirt and chase men. She try to get Senor Berman, the Americano, to give her money. He don’t do so.” Momentarily, Ynez looked triumphant as the memory of Berman’s business acumen. “Mimi — she get mad. She tell Pablo to take money away from Senor Berman.”
Dort poured a glass of warm water from a pitcher and drank it thirstily. “Well, did he?” he asked, wiping his mouth.
“No, but Pablo try. Senor Berman refuse to give up money. Then Pablo he get mad, too, and — you must believe me, Senor, Pablo does not mean it — he threaten to place knife in Senor Berman.” She added angrily, “and all on account of that Mimi!”
“Maybe Pablo didn’t mean it, but I can understand Berman thinking maybe he might,” Dort observed judiciously. “What happened next?”
“Nothing. Senor Berman write letter to you.”
“How do you know that?” Dort asked sharply.
“Everybody know that,” Ynez informed him, simply. “Then Senor Berman disappear.”
“Did Pablo snatch him?”
“Que? I mean, I do not understand.”
“Did Pablo catch him — hold him?”
“Oh, no. Pablo can. not find him. Then that Mimi, she start trying to get my Pablo to give her money.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said Dort. “I’ll have a talk with Mimi. Then I’ll arrest her, and take her back in irons to Sing Sing. When she has gray hair, I’ll send you a lock.”
“That would be nice,” Ynez assured him seriously, and left.
At five o’clock in the morning, the dawn streaked the sky above Castelonne. The last three-year-old baby had been yanked off the streets; the goats, burros, and dogs had given their final bleat, bray, and bark and had been thoroughly thrashed by their owners. All the denizens went to bed. Dort, however, got out of bed and, pulling on shirt and trousers, stalked through the hall to room 217 where he knocked at Mimi’s door.
Mimi answered it leisurely, wrapped in the familiar red and yellow wrapper. Mascara smudged her eyes until they looked not only misshaped but also misplaced. Her voice was hoarse from the hours of conversation in the bistro, and she had put her hair up in curlers.
Dort bowed and said, “You’ve never looked lovelier, M’amselle.”
“Drop dead,” snapped Mimi. “But don’t do it here. Wait until you get further down the hall.”
Dort inserted a size-twelve shoe between the door and its frame, and asked conversationally, “What’s this I hear about you putting Pablo up to slitting the good professor’s gullet?”
“Oh, that,” said Mimi pushing hard against the door in a vain attempt to close it. “Think nothing of it.”
“Well, I might overlook it,” Dort replied calmly, “if my own curiosity was less burning. C’mon, tell me. Did Pablo slit it for Berman?”
Giving up the attempt to close the door, Mimi shrugged and walked back into the room. Dort followed her and looked around. It differed from Berman’s room only by the addition of an old-fashioned dressing table with side mirrors. The table was covered with creams, lotions, bleaches, tanning preparations, colognes, perfumes, powders, pomades, and sundry other items.
“No,” Mimi told Dort. “Pablo threatened to, all right. Then that cheap-skate Berman wrote you a letter and hightailed into nowhere.” She added, musingly, “I still wonder what he did with that dough? I coulda used it.”
“Did you have something special in mind to do with it?” asked Dort.
“Sure,” Mimi answered promptly, “to get the hell out of this hole.” She began to mix a skin oil into her face, counting the strokes of her fingers under her breath, while she continued talking. “I want to go back, get to New York. I want new clothes — plenty of ’em — and a nice place to live with lots of air-conditioning.” Pausing, she regarded herself critically in the mirror. “Maybe also hire a good publicity man.”
“Did you consider the possibility that Berman might resent having Pablo carve him up?” asked Dort.
Mimi, failing to find words to express new opinions of the missing professor, stated finally, “It’d serve him right.”
“Why?”
“Look,” Mimi said, assuming a sweet reasonableness of tone, “the prof was down here for three months. He didn’t know anybody, see anybody, or talk to anybody. He just sort of walked around and looked hot — or else he read books. Then every night, every single night, he’d come to the cafe and sit and wait for me. I’d talk to him all night long.” She shrugged. “I’m not growing any younger. Now and then I’d hint maybe a girl like me would like a little present, even maybe a little money. He’d ignore my suggestions.”
“Maybe he was stupid,” suggested Dort.
“Stupid like a banker!” snapped Mimi. “So then he began to get restless. I could sort of tell he was planning to go away. He was a miserable speciman all right, but he was the best chance I had to get out of this dive. He didn’t offer to take me with him, or give me get-away dough.”
“How’d you find out Berman was loaded with dough?”
“One day I looked through his suitcase, and read all the newspaper clippings.” Mimi scooped up a wad of face cream on her fingers, and remarked, “I don’t think this estogen stuff works.” She rubbed it in anyway.
“I am listening to your story,” Dort reminded her.
“Oh. Well, next I tried to cook up something with Pablo. He don’t look like much, but he’s pretty rich for this place, He made all his dough just being a plain crook. He’s louse enough to go for a fast deal. Pablo and I agreed to split Hermie’s dough.”
As she turned back to the mirror, her eyes rose to two volumes of books stacked carelessly on top of the wardrobe. Motioning to the books, she said to Dort, “There’s the result of the prof’s generosity — for three solid months of my time.”
Dort wandered closer to examine the two volumes. He stood by the wardrobe and looked up to where they were resting. Their titles read:
He reached up and removed one of the volumes. The pages were uncut. “Yeah, I know,” Mimi observed, “I thought the same thing. I saw those lousy books in his room and that ‘Libri Sex’ threw me. I got the idea maybe they were sex books.” After a furious pause, she asked, “Do you want to know what that means? It means ‘six volumes’ in Latin.” She added, “Anyway, it’s all about some jerk named Lucretius, and I couldn’t care less!”
Dort placed the volume on the dressing table and turned to leave. Before he reaced the door, however, it opened inward with a tremendous thrust and Pablo heaved his bulk belligerently into the room. While glaring at Dort, he spoke rapidly to Mimi.