“We have to find out if you are an animal, Kelly.” His tone was uncommonly gentle. “Even if we have to hurt you to find out.”
Raoul shrugged. “Bad poker player, yes. Bad with a gun, yes. Does pain bother me? Yes. Will it break me? No. I have had some. I have endured some things. Bay of Pigs. Isle of Pines. Maybe a man should have some of those things, to find out about himself. But maybe there is no point in telling you that. Harlingen it said on the card. Border Texas, I believe. So to start with, in your eyes, I am — what are people of Latin American blood called there? Spic? So you can start with an assumption I am less as a human being than you are. It could be wrong.”
Boylston looked thoughtful. “Correction. I’ve never faulted you people on guts. In other ways? Yes. But — recently I’ve been reconsidering a lot of old attitudes. It’s possible I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. But that’s neither here nor there.”
“We’re lazy people, Lawyer. We drowse in the sun. We strum guitars and sing about broken hearts. We get very passionate and stick knives in each other. We lie a lot. Okay?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“I think you were being honest. It was very refreshing. Perhaps I don’t think very quickly after being hit in the face. Perhaps I don’t react the way you think I should. But I am not mixed up in anything. You’ll have to take my word for that.”
“When a man acts in an implausible manner regarding something of importance to me, I have to know why. We have to find out some way of trusting each other, maybe.”
“A lot would depend on what you are trying to do, what you’re after.”
“I want to be absolutely certain of something. Not legal proof. I don’t think I’m going to get legal proof. Just proof enough to satisfy me. And then I am going to arrange to have Staniker and whoever was in it with him taken quietly to some out of the way place. And the last thing I am going to do with them is toast their rotten hearts over a slow fire on a sharp stick.”
It was said with a deadly and absolute conviction which took all melodrama out of it. Raoul had heard the expression about something making the blood run cold. He had never experienced it before. The eyes and the quiet voice filled the room, and he managed, with great effort, to stop looking at Boylston. He felt that humming sensation which precedes a dead faint. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, swallowed, and said, “You convince me, Señor.”
“Are you glad you’re not one of them?”
“I will be very glad if I can convince you I’m not. If you had talked about legal proof, about police, then I would not tell you a certain story about a young woman of aristocratic birth. But now perhaps it is very necessary to tell you. First, does the word pundonor mean anything to you?”
“Point of honor? Of course. That’s another thing I respect about the latinos.”
“Enough to observe the custom?”
“Enough to be honored to be asked to observe it.”
“Then, Mr. Boylston, I will tell you everything I know or suspect. And you, in turn, will promise not to go near Francisca, or take any action which will cause others to go to her and question her.” As Boylston started to speak, Raoul stopped him and said. “And whatever you do, or however you do it, you will do it in such a way she will not be involved in it, in publicity, in questions, anything.”
“I swear I will do my best — but if I find out you have held anything back or changed the facts in any way, the bets are off.”
“Pundonor works both ways, Lawyer.”
Sam Boylston let Raoul go through it, beginning to end. There was such a marked immobility about Boylston, such an absence of random movement, change of position, physical mannerism, Raoul had the feeling no one had ever listened to him as intently, no attention had ever been as consistent and unflawed.
When he was done, Boylston went out to the ice machine and filled the plastic pitcher, came back and mixed two drinks of bourbon and water in the glistening tumblers stripped clean of their crackly packaging of waxed paper. Sam stretched out on one of the Bahama beds, head propped up, ankles crossed. He had expected to have to come back with those questions which would cut through the familiar fuzziness of both thought and expression. He had accumulated a few questions in the beginning, but Kelly had eventually answered them. Sam found himself respecting the quality of this stocky, swarthy, broad-faced man’s mind. Unlike most laymen, Kelly had made a clear distinction between fact and assumption, and between first-hand, second-hand and third-hand information.
“Raoul? I’ve got the name right?”
“You have.”
“I need help. I was going to line up somebody I can trust. Import them from Texas. I think you’re a better one to help me unravel this. I think we’re in business together. I think you better call me Sam.”
“I just told you why I don’t want any part of it, Sam.”
“Not exactly. You told me some very good reasons why you don’t want your ’Cisca involved in any way. And the best way you can bring that about is to keep me from making some stupid blunder that will bring the police and the press into the act. Miami is your back yard, Raoul. If that girl is as shaky as you seem to think she is, and if she is in danger from Staniker and company, as you think she might be, then the best thing you can do for her is ride with me.”
“My God, you know where the leverage is, don’t you? But why do you want Fearless Kelly on your team?”
“Because you’re so good with a gun. Because you’re so stupid and agile and savage. One little thing, Raoul — didn’t it itch like a place you couldn’t scratch to know about Kayd seeing the woman in March, and Staniker carrying on with the woman ever since the boat was sold, and keeping it to yourself?”
“By then, by that time, whether it was planned or not, it was done. It was over for that family. Where would my motive be? A big scoop? A terrible concern to see justice done? Okay, it was stuck in my mind where I couldn’t get at it, like a berry seed in the teeth. Because, I guess, I have the inquiring mind. The mind that wants to know what actually happened. Like when you get a call and have to leave in the middle of a movie. But we’re in a bloody world, Sam. And it grows ever more bloody. People die badly for very small reasons. It was my concern only in the way it could affect Francisca.”
Sam sat up and finished his drink. “I am an officer of the court. To that extent, a law man. Given the same kind of situation, I’d probably keep my mouth shut too. That’s our disease, isn’t it? Don’t get involved. But this thing is too close. It was my blood, and the last, aside from my son, still living in the world. And I set her up for it. Not knowing, of course. You can go crazy trying to trace all the way back, playing that game of ‘if’. If I hadn’t done this, or had done that, if the timing had been different, if I had listened, if I had understood.”
“Better to play that game than the other one.”
“The other one?”
“The game of righteousness. The one that says I weighed every move, every tangible and intangible, and I made my decision in cold blood, so I am not to blame if something went wrong.”
Sam stared over at Raoul Kelly, feeling strangely agitated. “Why should that be worse? What’s wrong with logic?”
“For playing games, it’s a fine thing. Chess, bridge, solving puzzles. Maybe it’s handy for practicing law or making money. But people don’t stand around on game boards, waiting to be moved or captured. There isn’t any rule book. Freud isn’t Hoyle. You can put in fifty cold facts and leave out one hot little emotion, and you come out dead wrong. Kelly’s equation. Want to hear it? When it comes to emotions, everybody is usually wrong. So the only chance you’ve got is to try not to be wrong so often. And give other people permission to be wrong too. What’s the matter? I’m upsetting you?”