Or dead.
When I got over to the ramshackle frame house and knocked on the door, little Miguel Cardezas told me that ma-ma was in the backyard.
I went around the house. A flop-eared stray dog regarded me from the cool underside, scratched his ribs against one of the concrete block pillars on which the house stood, and tagged behind me.
Mrs. Cardezas was anchored in a cane-bottomed chair in the middle of the small, bare yard. The sun shone on the jet coils of her hair. The chair creaked under the weight of her ample body as she bent forward to dip a chicken in a small tub of hot water on the ground before her. She withdrew the headless fowl, and feathers started vanishing from the carcass.
“Good afternoon,” I said.
She paused in her chicken-picking, brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand, careful not to transfer any of the small feathers sticking to her hand.
“Como esta?”
“Not so good.”
“You’ve been ill?” She looked up at me with concern. Her round, generous face was misty with fine perspiration.
“I nearly got killed,” I said, “fighting Tina La Flor’s fight.”
“Oh, Señor Rivers...”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Think about Tina.”
“Si.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Her hand moved. I had the feeling that she was about to cross herself. “No, señor.”
“Mrs. Cardezas...”
She stood up, imploring with her hands before her, the dangling chicken detracting none from her expression. “Señor Rivers, I asked you to help Tina. Now I am sorry. I don’t want you harmed. Neither would she. Get out of it, señor. Forget that you know of it. It will work out, and she will be safe.”
The happy hound whipped my leg with his wagging tail. “It isn’t that simple, Mrs. Cardezas.”
“Don’t be unwise, señor! There are others...” She broke off.
“Others? Who?”
“I ask you...”
“Who, Mrs. Cardezas?”
“He was concerned for her also, the little fellow who called himself Gaspar.”
“Little fellow?”
“A dwarf, señor. A most sympathetic little man with bowed legs.”
“When was he here?”
“Señor... please...”
“Today?”
“Si. Yes,” she sighed. “This morning. But he saw the folly of increasing the danger to Tina.”
I caught the implication in her tone, the accusation in the large, dark eyes. “You think that I’m increasing the danger to her?”
“Now I do,” she stated. “If you are being watched, followed, and you should find her...”
“I’m going to find her, Mrs. Cardezas.”
I turned and started away. She followed me to the corner of the house, calling my name once. I glanced back when I reached the sidewalk. She was standing in the narrow driveway, the chicken in her hand. Both she and the chicken looked tired and wilted from the heat.
Gaspar the Great was an Ybor City character. I didn’t think I’d have much trouble finding him.
I started the rounds with a two-fold request, talking with bartenders, restaurant operators, hackies at their stands, characters in back rooms who had an aversion to daylight.
First I said, Rivers wants two newcomers to the local scene named Kincaid and Smith.
Second I said, where is Gaspar the Great?
Two hours and thirty minutes later I walked into a neighborhood tavern. There were two male customers down the bar talking quietly. The bartender was a supple man of Spanish descent in his mid-forties. He had a patrician face, high forehead, thin nose and likewise a patrician bearing.
“Hi, Ed.” His voice was much more democratic than his looks.
I let him have the first question, adding the description of the pair that I was scattering all over Ybor City.
He shook his head. “Don’t know them.”
“Keep an eye out?”
“Sure.”
“Seen Gaspar the Great recently?”
The bartender jerked a thumb toward the back of the place. “I believe he’s in the gentleman’s lounge.”
I walked down the bar. The tavern’s rear area was a long ell adjacent to the bar. A television set, tuned to a regatta across the bay at St. Petersburg, was mounted on a high shelf facing the length of the room.
On one of the round tables were a cluttered ashtray, a half-full glass of beer, and small, moisture-beaded pitcher with an inch of beer left at the bottom.
I helped myself to a chair at the table and watched the televising of the roaring hydroplanes trying to tear themselves free of the water.
I heard the scrape of small footsteps, and turned the chair.
On his bowed legs, Gaspar rolled his way to the table. He was no midget. He was a dwarf, with arms, legs and lower torso that had failed to mature. His head, face and upper torso were of normal size. Misshapen as he was, he had the agility of a monkey, and something of the monkey in the appearance of his face, which was swarthy and deeply wrinkled. He had dark, bushy hair that grew low on his forehead.
He reached up to grasp the back of the chair and edge of the table. He seemed to bounce from the floor to the chair. He sat on the edge of the table and smiled a greeting at me.
“Long time no see, Ed.”
“How’ve things been?”
He shrugged, made a vague gesture toward his clothing. He was wearing a tropical weight that had cost him plenty, but he’d paid that bill a long time ago. Neatly pressed, the suit showed its age in its high shine and threadbare edges.
I’d heard that in the old days Gaspar the Great had gone in for silk shirts, shoes by an English shoemaker. He’d headlined, with two other dwarfs, a trapeze act that had earned fabulous amounts. He’d carried a personal valet with him and had a penchant for walking into a place and buying champagne for the house.
But there was gray in his mop of wiry, unruly hair now, and the decline of the carny and circus circuits was old, bitter history.
Chapter Ten
He drained the contents of the beer pitcher into his glass. “Join me, Ed?”
“If I can buy.”
“Why not?” he said with a grim edge in his voice.
I ordered the beer. He gestured a silent toast and said, “I got a feeling you came in here looking for me.”
“That’s right. Did you find Tina La Flor?”
“Who said I was looking for her? Oh — I know. Mrs. Cardezas.”
I nodded.
“Well, I didn’t find her,” he said. “In fact, I quit looking. I can’t help her out of the kind of trouble she’s in now. The cops’ll find her soon enough, is my guess. What’s your angle, Ed?”
“I have a client.”
“Who wants you to find Tina?” His brows quirked haughtily. “You expect me to sell out the little doll? I am assuredly money hungry. I would put my mother’s navel on display for money. But to sell out...”
“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not necessarily against her.”
“No?” His dark eyes, set in muddy yellow whites, were cautious. “Who is this client?”
“Maybe a guy on a boat.”
“Boat? What boat?”
“Mean anything to you?”
“Can’t say that it does.”
“You have no idea where Tina is?”
He shook his head. He seemed to have something on his mind. “What is this about a boat, Ed?”
“If it means nothing...”
“Damn it,” he said angrily, his normally guttural voice piping slightly, “it doesn’t, in itself. But Tina’s an old friend. We little people got to stick together. If somebody’s carried her off on a boat, I want something done about it.”
“They haven’t, I don’t think,” I said.
I let him simmer down. Then I said, “I’m also looking for a couple guys. Named Kincaid and Smith. Strangers. Bumped into them?”