I didn’t like the way that sounded. “It could be just a coincidence. But then again it could be somebody else figured out the same thing I did about his picture plate being the only witness. Two minds with the same thought at the same time, you know. I think I’d better get started fast.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“I’ve got to make it, Midnight. There’s no two ways. All right, you did the groundwork for me; you got me the lead. Now the rest is up to me. I can’t just sit here and send out messages by carrier pigeon all night.”
She chuckled and swung her elbow at me. “Who you calling a carrier pigeon?” She went over to the table where she’d dumped all the stuff she’d brought in with her and started busting the brown paper apart. “I figured you’d want it that way, so I picked these up for you on my way back at a place I know of.”
She took out a not-very-natty outfit consisting of a pair of oil-stained dungarees, a turtle-necked seaman’s jumper and a peaked oiler’s cap. You could smell the engine room a mile away on all of them.
“Turning me into a wharf rat, are you?”
“It’ll give you more of an even chance. At least you won’t be spotted on sight if you steer clear of direct overhead street lights. They’d know you were coming, in that stuff you’ve got on now, from a block away.”
“Okay,” I said, “turn your back,” and I got into them. The odor of machine oil nearly threw you over, but after the first minute or two you got used to it. I wasn’t interested in how I smelled right then, anyway.
She scanned me critically when I was through, walked around me in a half circle, cigar tipped up at the alert. “That’ll do it,” she said finally. “You know, the funny thing about you is, you look more at home in that era-barcadero rig than in that fancy tourist’s outfit you’ve been sporting until now.”
“This is about my speed, I guess.”
“Slouch a little when you walk, and those damn-fool cops won’t know you for the same guy they lost inside this house, unless they come up and stare you right in the eye. Loosen up your legs a little; that’s all you’ve got to do. A landsman keeps his legs sort of close; a seaman spreads them out for balance. Now listen close. I’m going to give you the directions you’ve got to take to get from here over to Calle Barrios.”
I came in next to her and ducked my head intently.
“I’m not going to give you street names; that’d be just a lot of Greek to you, and you’d only get all tangled up. I’m going to give you just the directions you’ve got to head in and the number of times you’ve got to turn. You go down to the mouth of the alley and you turn to the right. That’s this hand, here. You follow the street that runs past the alley all the way to its end. When you get to its end, this time you turn left—”
“That’s this hand, here,” I said dryly.
“Now you’re on one of the main stems, and you’ve got to watch yourself.”
She rehearsed me carefully on it. First she ran through it from beginning to end three separate times herself, to get it firmly planted in my mind. Then she made me play it back to her word for word, to make sure I had it, wouldn’t go wrong.
“Think you’re set now? Havana’s a tough town to find your way around in when it’s new to you,” she warned me.
“I’ve got it down pat now,” I assured her. “I couldn’t miss it if I tried.”
“Well, just the same, don’t try.”
“You’re a good kid, Midnight,” I told her.
“That’s something I haven’t been called since I was four years old. And even then they had me mixed up with somebody else.”
I dug down deep into the pocket of my old suit. I crammed a fistful of American folding money into her hand, all I had on me. Honeymoon money. “Here,” I said. “Just in case something does go wrong and I don’t make it. For the outfit — and for being a good scout.”
She switched it to the table top and took her hand off it. “I’m not out for money. Not in this, anyway.”
This time I said it for her. I was getting to know it by heart. “I know. Flowers on a grave.”
“Listen,” she assured me jauntily, planing her hand in front of my face, “while there’s still a store counter left that I can dip from, or while they still buy my flowers at the café tables and show me where their wallets are while I pin them on for them, don’t worry about me; I’ll get along. I always have until now.”
“You’ll never get to heaven.”
She shuddered at the very thought. “It must be awfully damn lonely up there, don’t you think?”
“All right, if you won’t take it, then put it away for me until I get back. And forget where you put it.”
I listened toward the stairs, opened the door, and eased past it to the outside. Then I looked around at her before I closed it.
I wasn’t any too sure that this wasn’t good-by for keeps. I knew I ought to say something, just to sign off, but I didn’t know what.
She was standing between me and the candle, so her head was black against the dim glow of it. It made like an aura around her, and she was the last person who ought to have an aura. Or was she?
“Well, be seeing you,” I said.
She gave me the Spanish for something; I think it was “Good hunting.”
I closed the door behind me.
7
The stairs were all right. The only risk there was not putting your foot in the right place and going all the way down them headfirst. I went down them a good deal slower than I’d come up, with them and their light at my heels. I liked this way the better of the two, pitch-dark or not.
Next came the doorway flush with the alley. I eased up to it, back to wall. I evened myself up to the straight line it shaved down across my path, just let my big toe and the turn of my chin and the turn of my nose stick out past it. You couldn’t see little things like that in three different places along the wall.
The route down was clear. I couldn’t see all the way down to the mouth because of the gloom, but the part from here down was clear; they hadn’t left anyone posted. I didn’t know what their theory was, but I figured it must be that I’d made my escape good over the roof that time and out through one of the other houses; otherwise they would have left someone hanging up outside the door.
I made the turn of the doorway and started out on the first lap of the long cross-town trip. I swam along close to the wall, and I walked soft. The machine oil still smelled a lot, but then the alley had smelled too, and of the two I liked the smell of the machine oil better.
Of all the outdoor hazards I had ahead of me, this alley stretch right at the beginning was bound to be the toughest, and I was glad it was working out so easy. For one thing, if one of them came my way, I couldn’t hope to squeeze by without being recognized — there was no room; you practically had to rub noses with anyone trying to pass you. This was the narrowest thing ever; nothing all the rest of the way across town could ever again be this narrow, confine you to such close quarters. And secondly, this was the immediate region in which I’d given them the slip, in which they’d last seen me, and they were likelier to keep a closer watch around here than on any other section I’d pass through on the way over.