She frowned, as if trying to decide my purpose in asking such questions. After a moment’s reflection she said virtuously, “I should pray, señor.”
I turned toward her. “Listen, señorita, I am not an inquisitor. I’m just a stranger in Vados who wants to know what people think about all these happenings of the past few days. Consider! Señor Dalban was killed, just as surely as if someone had held the knife with which his throat was cut. His business was ruined, he was plunged suddenly into debts that he couldn’t pay, everything he had worked for all his life was snatched away, not as a visitation from God but because a rival businessman was envious of him. Isn’t envy a sin?”
“Oh, yes, señor! A vile sin!”
“Exactly. Can it be right that somebody like Dalban should have his life’s work destroyed to satisfy a rival’s jealousy?”
She didn’t answer. Probably I was posing her questions which her confessor would regard as highly technical and best left to trained theologians.
“As for the man who was so jealous,” I went on. “You have heard of Señor Arrio?”
“Oh, of course! He is a very good man. My father work in one of his stores; he is assistant manager, and maybe one day he will be manager.” Realization dawned. “You mean — it was Señor Arrio who was so jealous?”
“Of course, Señor Arrio is very rich; Señor Dalban was also quite rich. Naturally they were rivals.”
“That I do not believe,” she said firmly. “Señor Arrio must be a good man. All the people who work for him say so, and he has set up many good stores in our country, not only in Ciudad de Vados.”
“Somebody ask Job’s opinion of that,” I muttered to myself.
“Besides,” she said, as though arriving at an important conclusion, “if Señor Dalban cared more about money than about saving his immortal soul — and he must have if he killed himself merely because he lost his money — he was certainly a wicked man. The love of money is the root of evil.”
“Then who loved money the more — Señor Dalban or Señor Arrio, who took all Dalban’s money away from him although he himself is already very rich?”
That floored her completely; she sat staring wide-eyed at me as if I were stirring her personal cosmos around and around with a spoon, and she had lost all her bearings. I tried another tack.
“You remember Señor Brown, who was killed the other day?”
“Yes, señor. I read about it in the newspaper.”
“What do you actually know about the matter? What do you think he had done?”
She looked down and spoke hesitantly. “Well, señor, everyone knew what Estrelita Jaliscos was like, so what he had done — wel…”
I was about to rescue her from her painful embarrassment when the significance of what she had actually said went through my stupidly thick skull. I almost spilled my drink as I shot forward in my chair.
“Did you say ‘everyone knew’ what she was like?”
“Why, yes!” She put her hand up to her throat as though my violent reaction had made her dizzy. “What is wrong?”
“You did say they knew?” I insisted. “Not ‘everyone knows’? You knew what sort of girl Estrelita Jaliscos was before all this happened? You haven’t come to that idea because of what the bishop has said on television, for example?”
“No, señor! What would we need to be told, in the district where I live? We have seen for many years how she carried on. She was going out alone with young men when she was only fourteen; she drank liquor — aguardiente, even tequila and rum. And it was said she — she even sold her honor.” The girl uttered these last remarks with a faintly defiant air, as though challenging anyone to contradict them.
“In short,” I said, “Estrelita Jaliscos had a reputation as an accomplished tart.”
“Señor!” she said reproachfully, and blushed brightly. I turned and signaled the bartender.
“If you were really as sheltered as you try to make out,” I said, “you wouldn’t even have known what the word means. You’ve given me some very valuable information, and I’m going to buy you a drink on the strength of it. What’ll it be?”
She giggled nervously. “First I must sing you a song,” she said. “Manuel, there behind the bar, is a friend of my father, and all the time I am here he keeps his eyes on me. I will sing, and then when you give me the drink you will say it is because you like my singing, understand?”
I gave her a sarcastic look. “I suppose you go out with boys, too,” I said. “Señor!”
“All right, that wasn’t an invitation. Go ahead and sing. How about La Cucaracha?”
“That is a bad song, señor. It is all about marijuana. Let me sing you a song of my own.”
It was an ordinary sort of pop, such as one might have heard over the radio any day anywhere in Latin America. I watched her as she sang, and came to the decision that she was about one-tenth as much of a shy violet as she liked to make out. Probably Manuel let his eyes wander occasionally.
So nothing was what it seemed, I now discovered. Estrelita Jaliscos had been a real tart, going downhill since she was fourteen. And for her sake Fats Brown was being buried tomorrow. If he’d come to trial and evidence of character had been brought, surely the prosecution’s case would have collapsed like cardboard!
Then why hadn’t he risked trial? He’d said himself on the night I found him getting drunk to “celebrate” that he was sure Estrelita Jaliscos was a tart. He knew the legal setup in Vados; he could have built a case against her for blackmail stronger than any case against himself for murder.
There was only one reason that fitted his actions. He must have been damned sure that this demand by Estrelita hadn’t simply been hatched in the brain of a teen-age gold-digger. He must have known, or have convinced himself, that he would never be permitted to clear himself.
Who could be gunning for him that hard? His rival lawyer Lucas?
No, of course not. Lucas didn’t need that kind of out.
Or — didn’t he?
There were a lot of things I needed to know about Lucas before I could answer that question. The best person to tell me them would be his other legal opponent, who had also been a good friend of Fats Brown’s — Miguel Dominguez.
I wondered if I could get hold of him at this time of the evening. I got up from my chair, and the girl singing broke off with a hurt look.
“Oh, yes!” I said, remembering. “Manuel!”
The barman came down toward me, smiling.
“Bring the young lady her usual, and charge it up to me. I’ll be back.”
“Her — usual, señor?” He looked at me expressionlessly.
“Yes, whatever she has on these occasions. A double tequila con sangrita de la viuda, I should imagine.” I grinned at the girl’s outraged expression. “I’m sorry, señorita, but I think your song is terrible. Never mind — have two drinks on me while you’re about it, and you’ll get to be a big girl one day.” And why she didn’t spit in my eye I’m still not sure.
XXIII
I must have got Dominguez away from his dinner table or something, because he sounded irritable when I called him. He thawed a little when I’d told him why I called, though not completely.
“Thank you for advising me, Señor Hakluyt,” he said. “You must, of course, understand that since Brown was never brought to trial, the character of this Jaliscos girl is of mainly academic interest. But it would be kind to his widow to do something toward clearing his reputation, if possible.”
I said, “But it mustn’t be allowed to go at that, señor. Fats Brown was a good man, better than most people I’ve met in Vados. And from the bishop on down, people continue to smear him. Now that Judge Romero’s attack on your good standing has been countered, your position in the legal world here is close to Andres Lucas’s—”