Parker turned right on Reforma and walked down to the Avenue de Los Insurgentes, the main north-south street. At the intersection of Reforma and Insurgentes there was a regal statue of an Indian named Cuauhtemoc.
On Insurgentes, Parker flagged a pesero,a cab that would take him as far as he wanted to go on Insurgentes for one peso, or eight cents. Peserosworked both Insurgentes and Reforma, tearing back and forth in red or orange Chevies and Opels and Taunuses, carrying from one to five passengers.
There were already three passengers in the back of this cab, so Parker and the kid got in front with the driver, and they went shooting north.
Parker and the kid were the last passengers off, up at Avenue Paganini near the city limits. Parker had to break a ten peso note, and the cabby made change in a hurry; he wanted to turn around and race south again. As soon as Parker had his eight pesos and was out of the cab, the driver tore away.
‘This way,’ said Parker, and walked down Avenue Paganini, passing the jeep where he’d left it for good.
Mexico City was five hundred miles farther from the American border than Casas, but it made sense to come here and so Parker had come. England and the rest of his crowd would be looking hard for Parker now, but they’d be looking in all the wrong places. Up at the border and down around Ciudad Victoria, depending whether they thought he was trying to break away or find Baron. So the thing to do was stay away from Ciudad Victoria and stay away from the border.
And the other thing to do, until he could get out of Mexico completely, was go where Americans were the least noticeable, and that was Mexico City. So when he’d left Casas with the suitcases he’d retraced the original route back through Soto la Marina and south from there past where they’d picked up the road in the first place when they’d come inland from the sea, and from there on down to Aldama, where there was a government station selling Pemex gas, the only brand available in Mexico. They didn’t have any Gasolmex, the premium grade, so Parker had them fill the jeep and the spare five-gallon can with Supermexolina, the cheaper grade. With luck this would carry him all the way to Mexico City, and he wouldn’t have to make any more stops along the way, leave any more signs of his trail.
Below Aldama the road improved. He continued south to Manuel, then west to Ciudad Mante, a fair-sized town full of men and boys but short on visible women, where he picked up route 85, a main north-south route that took him straight into Mexico City. They slept on the road above Zimapan Monday night, and got into Mexico City a little before noon on Tuesday, and Parker was no sooner across the city line than he found a doctor for Grofield and he ditched the jeep.
He’d decided Grofield could wait for a doctor, rather than waste time on the road before they could get rid of the jeep. Grofield’s wound wasn’t bleeding, and he was unconscious most of the time, so he was no trouble to transport. Every now and then he’d wake up, do some of his comic routines, and then fade away again.
Now, with Grofield at the doctor’s, with pesos in his pocket, with a good Spanish-speaking guide who looked too naive to do anything but keep his mouth shut, Parker felt he had breathing room again. He walked down Avenue Paganini and when he got to the doctor’s house he said to the kid, ‘Don’t ask any questions. Don’t say anything at all. You’re a clam.’
The kid nodded. ‘I’m a clam,’ he said. He no longer looked hangdog; excitement and curiosity danced in his eyes.
Parker went into the doctor’s house, a white stucco building behind a white stucco wall with a black metal gate in it. The gate was open now, but at night it would be locked. Glass shards were embedded in the top of the wall. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was wider here than in the States, which made the haves a lot warier.
Inside, the doctor was coldly indignant. ‘This man,’ he said, ‘should have been to a doctor two days ago. He should be in a hospital. I don’t care how severe he thinks his marital problems are, his medical problems believe me are much worse.’ He was a short, slender, olive-skinned man with a thin moustache, large outraged eyes, and perfect accent-free English.
Parker had given him a song and dance about Grofield being a husband caught in bed with another man’s wife, being shot by husband number two, being terrified that his own wife would find out about it because she was the one in the family with money. It was a story of intrigue, romance, danger, and derring-do that he and Grofield had worked out beforehand, the kind of story Grofield could act with a lot of gusto and the doctor could take a Latin pleasure in.
But now the doctor was indignant, outraged. ‘Heseems to have no comprehension of the severity of his wound,’ he said, motioning angrily at the closed door behind which lay Grofield, ‘but you’re his friend, you should have forced him to come here before this.’
‘There wasn’t anything I could do, Doctor. He’s got a mind of his own.’
Then it went on like that for a while, the doctor talking out his sense of outrage, Parker being as patient with him as he could, the kid watching with bright-eyed lack of comprehension.
Finally the doctor was done. Parker had had to let him run out his string, so there wouldn’t be any trouble later on, but he was glad when it was finally done. ‘I’ll see he takes care of himself from now on,’ he said. ‘Can I take him with me now?’
‘He’s a very sick man.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’ve removed the bullet and bandaged the wound, and I’ve given him a sedative. He’s asleep.’
‘What does that mean?’
The doctor said, ‘It means he’s asleep. He should be allowed to rest.’
‘That’s all right with you, if he sleeps here a while?’
‘Of course.’
Parker looked at his watch. ‘What if I come back at six o’clock?’
‘Very well.’
‘Good. You want me to pay you now or then?’
‘Then. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’ll take my bags now.’
‘All right. They’re in the corner there, where you left them.’
Parker had told him the suitcases were his, but had offered no explanation. People don’t explain themselves to one another when they’re on the up-and-up; let the doctor work up his own theory about the suitcases.
Now, Parker took them and motioned to the kid to come on, and they left the doctor’s house and went back out to the street. The kid said, ‘You want me to carry one of those?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
They walked back up to Insurgentes, each carrying a suitcase. They had to wait a while for a pesero,because not many of them came out this far.
While they were waiting, Parker said, ‘What I want now is a hotel. Not a Hilton, but not a dive. A small quiet hotel where they mind their own business. Away from the centre of town, if possible.’
‘Most of the big tourist hotels are around the Alameda,’ the kid said. ‘You want to be away from them?’
‘Right.’
‘Then there’s some others right off Insurgentes, down near Reforma. Back in around the jai alai frontón.Small, but they speak English, most of them.’
‘That’s what we want. You lead the way.’
A peserofinally came and they rode it back towards the middle of town, getting off at Avenue Gomes Farias, heading east towards the Plaza de la Republica. They tried two hotels but both were full, and finally found one behind the frontónon Edison.
‘The room isn’t for me,’ Parker explained. ‘I’m getting it for a friend of mine. This is his luggage.’
‘So you sign his name,’ said the clerk. He spoke English with a combination of Greenpoint and Mexican accents.
Parker wrote ‘Joseph Goldberg, New York City,’ and the clerk himself took them up in the elevator to the room, carrying the two suitcases. Parker gave him a five-peso note, stashed the suitcases in the closet, and said to the kid, ‘Now we do some buying.’