The curtains of the apartment’s kitchen were drawn, but light shone through them. I crept up the stairs to the little service porch. The window was open slightly and I could hear Tony’s and-Susana’s voices. They were talking in the clipped accents of South American Spanish, made harsher by anger. I moved closer and peered through the place where the curtains didn’t quite meet.
Tony stood at the counter, pouring what looked like whiskey into a glass. Susana was in the center of the kitchen, her arms folded, one foot tapping on the floor. She tossed her mane of teased black hair and said, “What do you mean, you’re giving it up?”
“Just what I said. I am not going to do it again.”
“But, now that Frank is dead, it will be all yours.”
“Mine and Robert’s and Vic’s.”
She dismissed the others with an imperious wave of her hand. “But mainly yours.”
I was surprised. This was not the giggly sixteen-year-old Susana I knew.
“That doesn’t matter. I told you, I am through.”
Now Susana reverted to type, her lower lip pushing out in a pout. “But the money! Where will we get the money for all the pretty things?”
Tony sipped from his glass and set it down on the counter. “Don’t worry about money, my love. Now I will become director. The job pays much more than education director.”
“But as director, you could carry on your other business easily.”
His face darkened. “Enough! I hate those trips. I have decided.”
“You won’t get the job anyway,” Susana said spitefully. “Not with that Elena around. She’ll see that you don’t get it. She wants it herself.”‘ She spoke my name with a venom that took me aback.
Tony went up and put his arm around Susana. “Don’t worry about Elena, either. She is no problem.”
“So there will still be money?” She looked up at him with wide, childlike eyes.
Tony caressed her cheek. “Yes, money and pretty things. Whatever you want.”
“Money for a television for the bedroom? And maybe a week in Hawaii?”
“Yes, love.”
“Maui. That is where all the beautiful people go. We will go to Maui.”
“Yes, love.” His hand moved down her throat toward one of her full breasts.
This I didn’t need to witness. I turned away.
The distance between the service porch and the balcony off the living room was only a few feet. I went over to the iron railing and looked down at the ground. It wasn’t much of a drop, so I climbed onto the railing, deciding to chance it. For a moment, my foot on the other railing, my hands clammy as I reached to pull myself across, I faltered. Then I closed my eyes, pulled, and landed on the balcony, stumbling. They hadn’t bothered to close the living room draperies on this side.
The room was decorated in stark, modern furniture, all chrome and glass and light wood. After the discussion I had just heard about Tony’s “other business,” I looked at the furniture with interest. Expensive. It had to have cost thousands of dollars for this room alone. There was an elaborate stereo set in a teak cabinet, a large TV with a video recorder, and what looked like original artworks on glass-enclosed shelves. It was not the living room of the education director of a small, impecunious museum.
One of the lights that had been left on was by the door to the bedrooms. Tony’s suitcase sat on the floor. I went forward, skirting a kettle-style barbecue and a lawn chair, and pressed my face to the glass. The suitcase had a yellow tag that said LAX, the code letters for Los Angeles International Airport. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me figure out where Tony had been. There was also another tag, a blue one with a symbol on it. I strained my eyes, but all I could tell was that it looked like a compass, one with all the points, not just north, south, east, and west.
The light in the kitchen went out. Tony and Susana appeared in the door to the living room. I jerked back from the glass and banged into the barbecue. It made a hollow sound, like a bell ringing.
“What was that?” Tony started for the balcony door.
I looked around frantically. There was a pile of fireplace wood in one corner. I leaped for it and squeezed behind, a piece of bark scraping my skin. The balcony light came on as I crouched there, holding my breath.
The glass door slid open, and footsteps sounded on the concrete floor. After a moment Tony said, “Huh.”
“What is it?”‘ Susana asked.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Probably it was a cat. They are always jumping over from the neighbors’ balcony.”
“Probably. I ought to speak to the manager. They don’t allow cats in this building.”
“But it is a nice cat. I am thinking of getting one myself.”
“No cats, my love,” Tony said firmly. His footsteps went inside, the balcony light went out, and the door slammed shut.
I let out my breath slowly. There was no way I could have explained my presence on Tony’s balcony at one in the morning. And the scene would have quickly turned ugly had they realized I’d overheard them talking. I was going to have to be more cautious in the future.
After five minutes, when the light in the living room had gone out, I climbed back over to the service porch and hurried away from there to my car. As I drove home through the thick mist, my mind whirled with the possibilities.
Tony, Vic, Frank, and his brother Robert had had another business. Susana had said it would be all Tony’s now that Frank was dead, which meant Frank had been much more important in the scheme than either Vic or Robert. The scheme obviously involved travel on Tony’s part. Travel for what? And where to?
Well, I had one clue.
I pulled into my driveway and rushed into the house. The day’s heat was still trapped there, and it felt warm after the fog. I turned on the living room lights and went to my desk. My hands were shaking with excitement as I pulled the Yellow Pages from the drawer.
Airlines. Or was it listed as air lines, two words? I never remembered and always looked up the wrong spelling first. Airlines. No. Air lines.
I hoped that whatever carrier Tony had flown was large enough to have an ad showing its symbol. I started at the beginning, with Aer Lingus. There were plenty of symbols- stylized initials, wings, geese, ducks, and kiwi birds. No compass, however. TWA, Transamerica, UTA, United. Still no compass. I turned the page, and there it was, right at the top. Varig Brasilian Airlines. “Jets from U.S.A. to South America, Africa, and Japan.”
That covered a lot of territory, but I was willing to bet on South America, possibly Bogota’t where Tony was from. Varig flew out of L.A. International, and Tony’s bag had been coded for a return trip there. This called for mathematics, never my strong suit. I took out a pencil and a piece of scratch paper.
I wrote, “12:30,” the approximate time Tony had returned home, near the bottom of the page. How long did it take to drive here from L.A. International? At this time of night, in light traffic, about two hours. Farther up the page, I wrote, “10:30.”
All right. I’d have to knock off another hour for baggage claim and customs. I crossed out the other figure and wrote “9:30.”
That was it: I wanted a Varig flight arriving at LAX at around nine-thirty. Varig had a twenty-four-hour information and reservations line. I pulled the phone toward me and dialed.
When the sleepy-sounding clerk answered, I said, “I’m interested in service from Bogota. I understand you have a flight that arrives around nine-thirty in the evening.”
“Service to or from Bogota?”
“From.”
“Just a moment, please.” There were background noises that sounded as if he was typing. “I’m sorry, our flight from Bogota gets in at seven-oh-five.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I thought there was a flight around nine-thirty.”