“There it is,” shouted Bill.
They stood by the elaborate marker, even now buried in dusty flowers. A weeping Virgin knelt over her fallen son amid the weeds. Trewitt was standing on a femur. He kicked it away. Looking out he could see scabby Nogales, hills encrusted with bright shacks, sheer walls over bendy little streets; and beyond that the fence of the border, like a DMZ line cutting through a combat zone; and beyond that, American Nogales, which was a neat and pretty town.
Trewitt looked back. In stone the marker read:
REYNOLDO RAMIREZ
MURIÓ EN
1982.
“There it is,” he shouted. “Dead end.”
Speight studied on the thing, looking it over.
“Wonder who brought the flowers?” he said.
Who cares, thought Trewitt. It would be dark soon; he wanted to get out of there. He looked across the boneyard to the Exclusivo cab awaiting them, its driver perched on the fender.
“Look, it’s all over,” said Trewitt. “He’s gone. There’s no link back to the night Ulu Beg came across. Let’s get out of here.”
But Speight stood rooted to the ground.
“Anybody could be down there. Or nobody,” he finally said.
Trewitt didn’t say anything.
“Maybe we ought to check out that joint of his,” Speight finally said.
“Mr. Speight, we’re not even supposed to be here. Now you want—”
But Speight did not seem to hear him.
“Yep,” he said, “I think that’s what we’ll do.” He started toward the cab, full of purpose.
Trewitt watched him go, and then realized he was standing alone in the cemetery and went racing after.
Several hours later he found himself undergoing a most peculiar torment: a deep self-consciousness, an acute embarrassment, a sense of being an imposter, all cut with a penetrating and secret sensation of delight.
The girl kept rubbing his thigh, the inside of it in fact, with her palm, dry and springy, knowing, educated in a certain way, and was simultaneously whispering of intriguing possibilities into his ear in Pidgin English.
“You got some nice money?”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Trewitt uneasily, sipping gently at what was supposed to be a margarita but was most certainly warm fruit juice and ginger ale at eight bucks a crack, gringo rate. Other girls worked the floor of what was now called Oscar’s. They were all tarts, but this one — Anita, just like in West Side Story — was all his, or he hers, as if by treaty or diplomatic agreement. No one impinged and he was trying to draw this out as long as possible, while Speight made inquiries. It occurred to him that maybe he ought to be asking the questions; after all, it was he who had unearthed this Ramirez, had unearthed this whole Mexican thing. He looked about uneasily, however, over fat Anita’s shoulder, and saw in the darkness a sleazy room full of American students and Mexican businessmen. His loafers stuck to the floor; the odor of some kind of industrial-strength disinfectant lingered everywhere.
“You got some money. We go upstairs, baby?”
“Well, ahh—”
No, let Speight handle it. Speight was the old hand, Speight had been around, knew the ropes. And where was Speight? Trewitt had seen him talking to a big boy with a moustache. Had he disappeared?
“Come on, baby. Buy Anita a little drink. A little drink for Anita, okay, baby doll?”
“Uh, just a sec.”
There. There. There was Speight, still with the moustache, talking animatedly at the back of the room. Give it to old Speight: he may have been peculiar in his ways, but he got things done. A pro.
“Come on, baby. Buy Anita some champagne.”
Even Trewitt knew enough to nix the champagne — sure to be flat Canada Dry at $200 the jeroboam — and instead okayed something called a Mexican Hatdance: it looked like warm lemonade with a pale pink — did they use the same one over and over? — maraschino cherry in it, at only $12.50 a throw. At this rate he’d have to cash another traveler’s check before long.
“Is okay?” asked the bartender.
“Fine, pal.”
“Is Roberto.” Roberto was a thin, handsome youth — he could not have been twenty yet — with a wispy moustache and soulful eyes.
“Glad to meetcha, Roberto,” barked Trewitt, heartily el turista estúpido to the hilt, and commenced a little detective work of his own.
“Say,” he said, “some fella was telling me you all had some excitement here coupla weeks back. A gunfight.”
“Oh, sí,” said the bartender eagerly. “A man, he was killed right here. Our boss Reynoldo. Bang-bang! Right almost where you are standing, señor.”
“Shot down?”
“Just like the television. Real fast. Bang-bang.”
“Wow.”
“Roberto,” said the girl in Spanish, “you stupid pig, keep your mouth shut, you don’t know who this asshole is,” then turned to Trewitt with a sweet Indian smile.
“What’d she say?” asked Trewitt.
“That you are the handsomest American she ever see.”
“She’s a fine-looking woman herself,” Trewitt said, squeezing her flank.
Anita smiled at the compliment, revealing her remaining teeth. Yet Trewitt felt a strange attraction for her. She was so low. Somewhere deep inside his brain a tiny inflammation erupted; an image flashed before his eyes. He tried to banish it; it would not leave; in fact it became more exact, more perfect, more detailed. What drew him on was her offer of perfect freedom: for money you can do anything. It was simple and liberating. Anything. Against certain temptations he knew he was helpless. He could be pretty low himself. He was not a virgin and had twice been engaged; in each case he had made a goddess out of the young woman and fled in horror upon learning she was human. Yet here was a creature so human, so fleshy, so real, so authentic, she was driving him a little nuts. Here was freedom; here was escape. He thought of young nineteenth-century men who fled the hypocrisy of Victorian society and lost themselves in the privacy of the frontier, pursuing freedom and debauchery in the same impulse and, coincidentally, building an empire. American, British, Dodge City or Lucknow, it didn’t matter; it was the same process. And here he was on the same sort of frontier, and here before him was a treasure of the frontier, his for the taking.
Trewitt shook his head. He could actually see her nipples beneath the clinging white top she wore. They were the size of fifty-cent pieces.
“Who did it, Bob? Gangsters?” Trewitt tried to get back on the track.
“Did what, señor?”
“The bang-bang. Poor old Reynoldo.”
“Rest in peace,” Roberto said. “Bad men. Evil men. Reynoldo has lots of enemies and even some of his friends—”
“Shut your mouth, stupid one,” snapped Anita.
“What did she say?”
“She say she like you very much.”
“Well, I like her too. A lot.”
“Come on, baby,” said Anita, running her open hand up the inside of Trewitt’s leg, letting it linger warmly high up, “make Anita a happy girl.”
Oh, Jesus, it felt good.
He swallowed, licked his lips.
“Anita make you real happy. There’s a nice hole for you — take your choice.”
Trewitt glanced about. Speight had vanished.
Trewitt thought, Well, if he needed me he would have gotten me, right? He just disappeared. What am I supposed to do now?
“Baby, we can do anything. Anything,” she whispered. “I treat you real good. I make you real happy.”
Oh, Jesus! Trewitt fought until he felt quite noble and then surrendered to his darker self meekly, without a whimper.