Even the unnatural rearward hoist of my arms stopped hurting. But I was straight up and down, and I wanted to sleep the way you were supposed to sleep, the long way. I tried to lie down a couple of time and I couldn’t; my feet just skidded.
Over the open top of the thing the sound of a voice, dim, unrecognizable, coming from far away, roused me flickeringly and for the last time. A snatch of something being said out there: “They’re going already... They’ll be out in a minute... I told you... I don’t know — some street girl around here who was probably thrown out of the drink shop and wanted to get even... They’re going to arrest her for giving a false alarm...”
I didn’t know who it was who was going, and I didn’t care; good, let them go. All I wanted to do was sleep. But I wanted to sleep lying down, the way I was used to; it felt tight this way.
I tried again and leaned forward. Somebody, something, wouldn’t let go of me. I leaned forward with all my might, tried to throw myself down.
My head came to rest against the locked front of the clothespress. I don’t know how much a head weighs. Mine felt like it weighed a ton. But even a little added weight is sometimes enough to tip a scale ...
I was falling asleep. Falling — I could feel myself going down into it headfirst. Sleep sure was deep, for you to fall into it like that. Somebody in my dreams screamed, “Look out! It’s coming down—”
The last flicker of consciousness went with a sort of soft thud that might have made a big thundering noise all around me, that might have even shaken the whole building, but that I didn’t even hear or feel inside me, where I now was.
I was lying flat now, the way you should sleep.
I didn’t know if this was sleep or death. But even if it was death, gee, it sure felt good to die.
13
I came to again — you always do, until the last time, and the last time is the time that counts — and I couldn’t get where it was I was supposed to be at first. All I could tell was it was day again; there was light coming in a barred window opposite me, and the night, that long Havana night, was over at last. The night that had seemed to last forever while it was going on. When it had begun we’d been taking in the town in an open carriage together, I remembered, about to start a new life. And look at me now.
I was on some sort of cot. I still had on my waterfront duds, or at least part of them, but somebody had thrown a threadbare blanket carelessly over my legs and left my feet sticking out at the other end. I pushed myself up on my arm, and for a minute everything went wavy, then settled down again.
I looked around. There was that window with the bars on it, but that doesn’t mean anything down there; they all have them below the second story — custom of the country. Otherwise you couldn’t tell what the place was. It wasn’t an out-and-out cell; just a shade or two above that — sort of detention room, I guess. There was a calendar put out by a Cuban brewery tacked up on the wall, but they’d quit peeling the leaves off at February. February 1934, I might add.
There was a door, and just as my eyes got to it, it opened and a cop looked in at me. Just on a knob turn; no business about locks and keys or anything. “Estdo despierto, Inspector.” I heard him call out to someone. He pulled his head back again and closed it before I could say anything, but he was a cop; I was pretty sure of that.
Well, the other bunch didn’t have me, but they did. Back where I’d started again.
There was a stage wait of several minutes, then it reopened, and the same cop held it back for someone else to come through. Acosta showed up holding a batch of papers in his hand. He stopped short to say something over his shoulder by way of postscript to them in the other room, and I caught a glimpse through the doorway of a starchless figure being hauled off between two cops, legs dragging across the floor behind him, a peaked cap on the back of his head. Then the door was closed.
Acosta spanked the sheaf of papers he was holding. “¡Por fin!” he said jubilantly.
I didn’t know if he meant me or the papers.
“Well, how’s the ex-suspect?” he grinned.
I blinked at him, logy. Brilliant repartee.
“Ex. You know, used to be?”
“You mean I’m in the clear?”
He chuckled. “Well, carajo, where you been all night?” he jeered good-naturedly.
I answered that with a slight but expressive moan.
“I know,” he answered for me. “In an overturned wardrobe closet, flat on your face, among other places. We pulled you out headfirst through the top of it, easier than standing it up again; it would have taken a hydraulic jack.”
The cop came in with black coffee, and I got most of it down my chin, but enough went in to do me some good. It’s wonderful stuff for a hang-over from a hypodermic. Then they gave me a cigarette, and it went up and down in my hand like a yo-yo.
Acosta was beaming as if he loved everybody in the world — well, everybody on his side of the fence. I guess cops do when they’ve just cleaned up a case.
“Boy, you talk about near misses!” he jabbered. “My raiding party was already outside in the alley again after going straight through to the store side and coming back to report nothing suspicious. If they’d let well enough alone, we’d have been already on our way. But, like fools, they called me back inside again for a minute — I suppose to give me a little additional soft soap. While I’m standing there in the passage talking it over, boom! I thought the whole building was coming down on my head. A little stream of plaster comes spilling down from the ceiling, right on both my shoulders. I blew my whistle, and we closed in again, and this time we went upstairs as well as down.”
He quirked his head. “It was worth the trip, believe me. We found a den going full blast — we suspected there was one somewhere around here, but we’d never been able to locate it until now. And we found enough raw opium, packed up and ready to go out, to choke an ox. And, lastly, we found you and your wardrobe companion. There was quite a time up there. They lost their heads, made the mistake of pulling guns on us, so we — how you say it — went to town on them.”
“Who’d you get?”
“We got ’em all. But some of them not in serviceable condition any more. We came in from both sides, see, and nailed them in the middle. They didn’t have anywhere to go.”
“They’ve got someplace to go now,” I growled resentfully.
“Don’t worry, their tickets are bought and they’re on the train.”
“There was a picture that would have saved me. If I only could have got hold of it when I tried—”
“Oh, we’ve got that ourselves,” he assured me. “It’s Exhibit A.”
“I saw him burn it in front of my very eyes!”
“That was the negative. Campos made one print of the picture before they broke in on him at his place. He put it where he always puts his prints to dry out, and so they won’t curl up at the edges. Under the mattress of his cot. Not a very professional system, but then he works on a shoestring, anyway. So they took the negative, but they missed that. He’d already seen what was on it, and he told us where to look for it as soon as he came back to consciousness.”
“How is he; did he pull through?” I asked eagerly.
“He’s in the hospital. They gave him a pretty bad shellacking, but he’ll probably be up and around again in plenty of time for us to use him as a material witness when your friend in there goes on trial for murder. Between the attack on him and the attack on you and the picture and Paulsen’s own confession, which is what I’m holding in my hand, I don’t think we’ve got much to worry about.”