Garcia’s eyebrows went up.
“… until Mike Woolman told me this morning.”
The Spaniard came to his feet. “None of my business anyway,” he said. “But from what I’ve heard it was sure a screwy killing.”
Quint said, “Mike mentioned that the guy was all torn up as though a tiger had worked him over.”
“Man, you said it. But that ain’t the worst, chum. The autopsy revealed that the kidneys are missing.”
The American stared at him. “Missing?”
“That’s right, pal. Our homicide people figure they’ve got a real fruitcake on their hands. Maybe a psychopathic cannibal.” Garcia turned to go.
Quint didn’t follow him to the door. When the other got there, and with knob in hand, he turned back as though he’d forgotten something.
“Oh, by the way, old Ronald left a note scribbled on his desk. The flatfeet don’t know if it’s got anything to do with his death or not. What does this mean to you? Why was it necessary to burn H’s body?”
Quint looked at him blankly. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Why should it?”
“Search me,” Garcia shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”
The ragged young man drifted slowly, slowly back into consciousness, almost as though dreading the return to reality. The warm wave of reasoning ebbed and flowed, touched and then retreated.
Even before his eyes opened, he was dimly, dimly aware of a flickering of light. A glaringly bright flickering of light where largely there was gloom.
His lids slitted infinitesimally, so that an observer would have had to bend close to realize that they were parted at all. But though now he could see, it was as though through a dark veil. And then the flickering of light again. Realization came from far and far. The beams of light were coming through a slatted window. Slatted Spanish style to exclude the dazzle and suffocation of the mid-day sun of Iberia, but free to admit whatever faintest breeze.
From seemingly far, far away in both space and time, memory sidled back. Spending his last peseta in a bar for a copa of wine, and the nibble of tapa that came with it, in his case, a bit of cheese on a bit of bread. The despair of knowing it to be the last. The despair of clothes that could no longer be kept neat, and hence an advertisement of his worthiness to be employed. The despair of knowing that this night there was to be no bed, no alternative to roaming the streets, other than a hiding place, away from the Guardia Civil, in some dark doorway.
And then the stranger. The well dressed stranger. The foreigner who still spoke such excellent Castilian. The generous patron. And the food! And the drink!
And then, somewhere, where? the falling away into bottomless sleep.
And now this. The languor. The weakness of body and will, even as he returned to reality. To the consciousness that he lay stretched on some hard, though not uncomfortable, surface. In a darkened room. In a room so lit through the flickering of sun through slatted windows that it could scarce be made out.
He seemed to be coming from a sleep that had lasted eons but left him limp and resistless. Weak and not caring. Doubtful of the necessity for tomorrow. Doubtful of all necessity.
And then from the far distances across the room there was a new gleaming, a new reflection, pin points of gleam flickering but occasionally, but nearing, nearing…
… nearing, nearing. Two pin points of gleam, reflecting the sun through the shutters, depending on their gleam for the sun through the slats of the shutters. Nearing, nearing, now descending toward. Toward where ?
Deep, deep, impossibly, uselessly deep within his feeble consciousness came up the cry of terror. The cry to resist, to survive, to live, to live, to live. Nothing could matter but life. To live, to live. But so faint, so far.
Barely he could feel the prick of the dual points of gleam upon his throat. No pain. Only the knowledge of penetration of his life.
And then the feel of drain. Of slow gentle drain of the juice of existence. The red warm juice of existence.
Away, away. And far away the realization that there was no more poverty to be. No more a last desperate peseta. No more the employment that would never come. No more the nights without the warmness of bed. No more. For the warm juice of life was draining away…
… away, away…
Quentin Jones parked his Renault 4L on Calle de Alcala, one block up from the Plaza de la Cibeles, and hoofed it from there in the direction of the Puerta del Sol. It was pushing two o’clock and the streets were pedestrian packed as streets can be packed only in a modern city where the institution of the automobile is unknown to nine persons out of ten. In a matter of minutes the stores were going to close, and the present bustle would melt astonishingly, and remain melted until the siesta period ended and business resumed, somewhere between four and five o’clock—all according to how the individual businessman was reacting to the government’s attempt to cut short the three or four hour lunch period.
He cut across Alcala and up the side street Calle Marques de Cubas for one block, turned right for another block to emerge on Calle Jovellanos. The Edelweiss was up at the end of the street. Inwardly, Quint shrugged. The man had been in Madrid for only a couple of weeks, no more. And here he was eating in a German restaurant two meals out of three.
Quint had a sneaking suspicion that if the other were to move to Germany for a time, he’d seek out a Spanish type establishment for his meals. Maybe it was travel snobbery, he decided wryly, but Quentin Jones ate Italian food in Italy, French in France, Spanish in Spain. And in the States, steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and other American specialties, which if ordered abroad meant disaster. He had never had an edible hamburger outside the borders of the United States and had long since given up the project.
The Edelweiss even managed a Teutonic air. A breath of Germany exported to Castile. There was a heavy richness in the decor; a feeling that the businessmen bellied up to the bar, drinking their dark dunkles beer, averaged a good twenty or thirty pounds more than would the clients of a more typical Madrid establishment; an absence of the ever present odor of olive oil without which a Spanish restaurant is just not Spanish.
Quentin Jones let his eyes drift around the room, as though looking for a table. Tables were scarce this time of day.
Somebody waved to him, “Hey, Quint.”
He waved back. Twisted his mouth as though in consideration, then made his way through the tables to the other, who had one all to himself.
Quint said, “Hi, Bart. Mind if I join you? Privacy, you might prefer, but if I know the Edelweiss, in about yea many minutes the waiter is going to unload a couple of tourists on you. Tables are shared here.”
Bart Digby had half come to his feet. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Have a seat. Glad to have somebody to talk to.” He grinned his boyish grin. “Wow, was that a party last night. You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Dave Shepherd, would you? Well, there was this girl Joanne something-or-other, and she went looking for the bathroom and opened the wrong door and…”
Quint grimaced. “I heard about it,” he said. “By this time, evidently all Madrid has heard about it.”