I gave her a turn of the arm and reached for the door again, to go back downstairs where I’d just come from.
She grabbed me and held me fast. “You’re not quitting, are you?”
“What do you want me to do? I can’t camp out up here in your place for the rest of my life, set up light housekeeping between flying raids from the police.”
“What’s the matter? You afraid it won’t be respectable?” she peered. “It’s only safe, middle-class people that never were on the run in their lives that think a man and a woman can’t stay in the same room overnight without getting tangled up with one another. Us underdogs know better. I was holed up in a room with a guy for thirty solid days once in New Orleans — neither one of us could get out — and I bet we were more proper than half these rich families that live out on the Vedado in thirty-room mansions. We were too busy watching for the police to think of watching each other dressing. There’s a cot here and there’s a floor; what more do we need? There’s just two of us.”
She jogged me over toward the cot, to have a seat on it
I had a seat on it.
“At least ride the night out here.”
“It’ll take a year of nights, and then some. What chance have I got of clearing myself now?”
She came over and looked down at me. “I see I’ve got to talk to you to get it into your head. You chamacos from up North, you don’t seem to think in a straight line like we do; you go around curves.” She pummeled me encouragingly on the chest with the back of her hand a couple of times. “You’ve still got a chance; that hasn’t changed any. You’ve still got the same chance you had before, when you started out to get that picture. Only now, instead of getting just the picture back, you’ve got to get a whole live photographer.”
“Sure, a cinch,” I said glumly.
She made with her hands. “Well, which is easier to track down and spot — a complete man-size guy or a little two-by-four picture that can be stuck away in anyone’s pocket? Don’t you see, hombre, they’ve given themselves away to you?
“You know now, by their taking him off like that, that he knows something that could help you, that he saw something on that negative when he developed it. You’ve got more now than you had before.”
“I’m loaded down with it,” I assented parenthetically.
“Now you’re sure; before you weren’t. It’s just as good as if you saw the picture yourself.”
Her line of reasoning was okay as far as it went, but I couldn’t follow it through, get what she was driving at.
“All right, I know. But the police don’t know. I’m not hard to convince; I never did think I was guilty. They’re the ones need the telling, not me.”
“But I know how you can get these others to tell the police on themselves, just as they told you. It’s a very slim chance. It all depends on whether you are willing to gamble ten to one against your own life.”
I gave a short laugh. “I’d be willing to take even longer odds than that. Twenty to one. Twenty-five. What kind of odds am I up against now? You don’t call them short, do you? And what’s so valuable about the damn thing to me now, with her out of the way, anyway? I don’t have to save it for a rainy day.”
She bore down on my shoulder, as a sign of approval, I suppose. “That’s right, chico. That’s the talk. You’ve got the right idea.”
“What’s this angle that you’ve got? Let’s hear it.”
“Here’s what it is, here. Simply to let them get you as they got the photographer. You know who I mean by them, don’t you? This bunch, this outfit, or whoever they are. Fall into their hands. Only it must seem accidental, not on purpose.”
“I don’t catch. Then they’ll turn me over to the police right away, and that’s what I’ve been dodging all night long.”
“No, they won’t. Don’t you see, hijo, now they can’t any more. They daren’t. You know what happened to this photographer now: that he was grabbed off to keep him quiet. You can prove there was such a guy and there isn’t now any more in circulation. Nobody can get around that; you didn’t just make him up out of thin air. He existed. And now where is he? All right. So even though you still can’t clear yourself of the other thing, you can pin that on them. And they know it, you bet. If you let yourself fall conveniently into their hands the police will never see you. Not alive, not able to talk.” She spun an imaginary grain of dust off my shoulder with a snap of her finger. “You follow me so far?”
“Sure. Up to the point where I’m dead instead of alive, but that isn’t such a hot solution. For that matter, I could cut my throat right here in this room; that would be even quicker still.”
She pressed down the air with the flats of her hands in a soft-pedaling motion. “Now wait a minute. Don’t muddy it up. Mira. They can’t let the photographer go because he’ll tell the police about the picture. They can’t let you go — once they have you — because you’ll tell the police about the photographer.” She spread her hands. “Claro, no?”
“Claro, yes,” I admitted, picking up the word for whatever it was worth. “But what makes you think the photographer is still alive? If your point is that once they get me I’ll be a dead duck, doesn’t that hold, equally true of him? They have the same reason in both cases.”
“He’s still alive up to now. The fact that they didn’t finish him off right there at his estudio is proof enough of that. Why should they carry a dead body off with them, especially the hard way, up through a skylight and down off a roof? They’d just give it to him otherwise and leave him behind.” She made a slashing motion across her own throat. “He was still alive when they took him with them. How long he’s going to stay that way, that’s another matter. They either intend to get rid of him out of town someplace, where his remains will not be discovered so quickly, or in the ocean, where they will not be discovered at all.”
“And I suppose if I drop into their laps that’s what will happen to me? Is that your setup?” I gave her an off-center grin.
“That’s only Part One of my setup. Part Two has to follow immediately, like they say in the tines. If it doesn’t, then it’s just too bad for you. That’s your one chance out of the ten that I spoke of before. Part One is, you fall into their hands and they start the job of finishing you off. Part Two is, you and they both — the whole mess of you — fall into the hands of the police, and they finish the whole thing off for everybody. Well, all right, the guilt speaks for itself; they don’t have to use their magnifying glasses. Who was kidnaping who? Who was trying to shut up who? Were you trying to rub them out, or were they trying to rub you out? They’ve got two strikes against them, like we used to say in Tampa. You and the photographer. When they’re trying to shut so many people up, then they’ve got something to shut them up about. You haven’t; you’re not trying to. ¿Como te parece? What do you think of it; it’s a good scheme, no?”
“It’s lovely. I’d like to do something like it every Tuesday evening about nine or quarter past.”
She flung up her hand high overhead in reproach. “It’s the only one we got, isn’t it? What’re you talking about? You got a better one, spit it out!”
“It’s the only one we got,” I said wearily, “so it goes. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not kicking.” I stood up from the cot and gave my dungarees a hoist back and front. “I’m still willing to take the one chance left over out of those ten; that’s good enough for me. I’d take it if it was one out of fifty. But the thing is, will it work? You’ve just given it a beating with your gums, and it comes out swell. But can it be turned into action?”