The voice on the telephone had not been Trotter’s. McGarvey had not been surprised by that fact, but he had been irritated, not only by the man himself, but by his insinuating tone. In addition to Trotter and Day — and the Cuban — knowing that McGarvey was involved, now there was Trotter’s buffer service. It was necessary, at least for the moment, for his old friend to keep him at arm’s length, but it was beginning to gall McGarvey that too many people over whom he had no control knew of his interest in Yarnell. Even if the mesh is fine, the bigger the sieve, the more that leaks out.
The music died again, the house lights dimmed, and a spot illuminated the tiny stage as the trumpet player stepped up to the microphone with a flourish. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried in a comic Mexican accent. “Miss Evita Perez!”
Applause swelled, the bandleader stepped back, a drum rolled, and a slender woman with midback-length shimmering black hair bounced out onto the stage, her arms akimbo, her hips and shoulders in constant motion, her breasts nearly bursting from her low-cut sequined gown, which was slit all the way up to her hip. She was laughing and trilling. The band picked it up as she began to sing “La Paloma,” sensuously coo-cooing into the microphone as she continued to move around the stage.
McGarvey was too far away to be able to tell much about her except that she had a great deal of energy, a modicum of talent, and that she could have been anywhere from twenty-five to fifty depending on the skill of her makeup artist. He figured that she would have to be at least in her early forties to have been married to Yarnell in the early sixties, but she looked good from where he sat.
Her audience loved her. Between songs she called out names and joked with them, telling little supposedly intimate stories that she wasn’t supposed to be telling and then pretending coquettishly to be the naughty little girl who kissed and told.
As he watched her, McGarvey began to get glimpses of a great sadness in her; and of fear that she was being laughed at and not laughed with. At times she became too strident, too shrill, and sensing this fault in herself, she pulled back from the brink … of what he wondered. At other moments she was cool and sophisticated, a talented woman very much in charge not only of herself but of the room. This was her command performance. She had the crowd eating out of her hand.
Near the end of her forty-five-minute show, her age began to show on her. McGarvey sat forward. The spots were skillfully softened, yet it was obvious that Evita was wearing down. Her dancing became a little forced, as did her stories and, in the end, even her singing. Sweat glistened on her face and upper chest, ruining her makeup, but if anything the audience loved her even more for this effort. She went above and beyond the normal role of the performer. But it was sad; as if she were a marionette doomed to dance as long as her audience demanded; or as if she were the street dancer, holding out her tin cup for spare change.
Then it was over and she was bowing deeply to thunderous applause, catcalls, and whistles. McGarvey lit a cigarette, and moments after Evita had left the stage his waitress came back to his table.
“Mr. Glynn, Miss Perez will see you now.”
McGarvey rose and followed the young woman across the floor as the guitarist in the band on stage began a sad, haunting classical melody. The nightclub became hushed. It was a change of pace, a breather, and the audience was appreciative.
“Just up the stairs, sir,” the waitress said.
Evita Perez’s apartment occupied most of the second floor. The salon itself, where she apparently held her parties, was huge, with a sunken conversation area, a large area for dancing, extremely long, plushly upholstered couches, and broad rugs of white fur. A fake fire burned in a Mexican tiled fireplace in the center of the room. Sculptures in wood, stone, and metal were scattered around the place as if it were a museum. The indirect lighting was soft, lending a curiously intimate effect to the large, open spaces. Evita, dressed in a short terry cloth robe, her hair up in a towel and her feet bare, breezed into the room. She stopped when she saw McGarvey, a sudden puzzled look coming to her narrow, sharply defined features. He decided she looked a lot better without all the garish makeup.
“Well,” she said. “You’re a hell of a lot younger than I pictured you.” Her Mexican accent was all but gone.
McGarvey smiled. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”
She returned the smile. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” she said. She motioned him to the couch in front of the fireplace. “What are you drinking?”
“Bourbon and water.”
She mixed his drink at a buffet near one of the windows, then poured herself some white wine in a long-stemmed glass. “Have you got a cigarette?” she asked, returning. She sat down next to him, her feet tucked up under her.
McGarvey lit one for her. This close, he could see a few flecks of gray in the loose strands of hair that escaped from beneath the towel. She had crow’s feet around the corners of her eyes and they were starting at the base of her nose. Her olive skin was beginning to go slack beneath and around her tiny jaw. She was definitely in her forties.
“So, what brings you to see me, Mr. Glynn … or whoever the hell you are?”
“I’m trying to get some information about a couple of people. Richard Harris and Artimé Basulto,” McGarvey said.
“Never heard of them. Should I have?”
“I thought you might’ve.”
Evita held her silence for a long time before she spoke again. She stared at McGarvey, who noticed that her eyes were circled with tiny green specks. It made her look like a cat or some other night animal.
“Are you a cop?”
“No,” McGarvey said.
“CIA?” she asked softly.
“I used to be. Now I work on my own. I listen, I watch, I ask a few questions here and there. You know how it is.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might have heard of them. Harris was an agency man in the old days. Basulto worked for him.”
“So what?” Evita asked defensively. “What does this have to do with me?” The ash from her cigarette dropped on the front of her robe. She didn’t notice.
“Artimé has gotten himself in a bit of a jam with the DEA down in Florida. Something about running coke with the help of the Cuban government.”
“You said you were looking for him.”
“I am, in a way.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Evita said. “You are a cop. So what are you doing here? What do you want from me?”
“I wondered if you had ever heard of Artimé Basulto. He might lead me back to Harris.”
She shook her head, her eyes narrow. “And then what?”
This time McGarvey took his time answering. The delay made Evita nervous. The room was warm. McGarvey sipped his bourbon. He felt like a heel with her. She was obviously in a fragile state for all of her bravado and energy on stage. He decided that Yarnell had probably hurt her very badly at one time, and she still hadn’t recovered.
“It has to do with a long time ago, actually,” he said. “Mexico City in the old days. The late fifties, early sixties.”
“I was just a little girl then,” she said wistfully. “What can any of this possibly have to do with me? Please, I am very busy tonight. I have another act to do in less than an hour, and afterward there will be a lot of people up here. Already I’m tired.”
“They were doing some very important work for the agency in Mexico City,” McGarvey said.
“I don’t know …”
“Harris is dead. Someone killed him. I want to know who, and more important, why.”
Evita reached forward with a shaking hand and stubbed out her cigarette. She got to her feet, drained her wineglass, looked at McGarvey for a long second, then went to the buffet where she poured herself another glass. She stared out the window down at the street, her back to McGarvey.