Nipped in the Bud (12 page)

It was not the easiest place in the world to locate two girls, as Miss Withers observed to her companion. Vito grudgingly tore his attention away from the track—a smaller oval which had somehow been mysteriously superimposed upon the larger
hipódromo
in the hour or two after the horse races wound up this afternoon. Out there the greyhounds were being paraded around the track at a pace slow enough to permit every last
yanqui
dollar to pass into the mutuels before they were locked into the starting gate. Each starved, humped-looking beast was led by a handler. Ahead of them waltzed a dapper zoot-suited clown in straw hat and spats, swinging a cane. From the public address system a record blasted “Good Night, Irene.”

“I like Number Three,” said Vito. “His tail has just the right curl.”

Miss Withers sniffed. “I don’t believe either of the young ladies we are seeking is running in this race. Get busy, young man.”

He sobered at once. “We never find them just wandering like this. In the stands there is a man; he rents binoculars. If we had them, and stood down there by the rail—”

“An excellent suggestion.” Miss Withers nodded. “With all the lights blazing, it would be an easy thing to sweep the entire grandstand and the betting area.” It was no sooner said then done, or very little sooner. While every other person in the throng watched the parade of dogs, the posturing master of ceremonies, or the odds board, a maiden schoolteacher and a Mexican school boy stood against the rail near the judges’ stand and watched them, face by face, row by row.

They were so engrossed that they did not see their doom until it was upon them.

Outside, in the parking lot beyond the turnstiles, Talleyrand had long since finished with the paper napkins in which his meager lunch had been wrapped. He had searched both front and back seat of the little rented coupe without finding anything of interest, not even any comforting belonging of his mistress. The small prison was narrow and chilly and lonely—and the sound of the crowd so near and yet so far set the big poodle’s heart to beating strangely.

Talley was an unusual poodle, who had led an unusual life. It would not be fair to say that he was a spoiled poodle, since he was usually more than willing to meet humans halfway. But he was a gregarious dog; moreover, a dog who had inherited certain mental traits and physical abilities from a long line of theatrical ancestors. A few minutes of careful research told him that the door latches were beyond his best efforts, but something might just possibly be done about the narrow space at the top of the window….

He went up, got head and paws out, and wriggled through, landing handily on his forefeet like a tumbler. Then without hesitation, without any stupid bloodhound’s sniffing for tracks, he was off. His hot brown eyes had seen his mistress pass through a certain gate. Like an apricot-colored streak of lightning he was after her. The gateman glimpsed only a moving shadow, the merest ghost of a dog, swore softly and then crossed himself. No more
pulque
tonight.

Inside the enclosure of Agua Caliente’s racetrack the stentorian voice of the announcer had just called the attention of the crowd to the fact that the greyhounds were nearing the starting gate. There was a rush of last-minute betters toward the pari-mutuel windows, and an equal rush outside to see the final odds. Of course there were guards and other track employees about who should have seen and headed off the determined poodle, but their attention too was in the other direction, toward the odds board or the starting gate.

Through the ramp, through the clubhouse building, out into the crowd Talley trotted, sniffing now for all he was worth. He worked his way up into the grandstand, along past the mezzanine boxes, and down the other side. Once on the stairs a man in uniform did cry after him, but Talley neatly reversed his field and darted back down the slope toward the fence, under and sometimes between the legs of the crowd, causing mild hysteria here and there in his abrupt passing.

And then the judge on the platform waved his program and crossed over the track to the other side. The grandstand lights went dark, and far across the oval a white bouncing object—a mechanical robot which could have suggested rabbit only to an animal like the dog whose eyesight is his poorest faculty—started its bouncing trip around the track.

It circled and came closer, past the racing greyhounds trapped in their wire cages, on and on in its first trip past the finish line. “They’re off!” cried the announcer’s voice, magnified a thousand times, and the crowd tensed as gates snapped open and eleven greyhounds poured forth.

Talley, having viewed the entire procedure from between the legs of an excited man at the front of the crowd, poured too. It was not that he mistook the robot mechanism for a real rabbit—indeed, he had seen rabbits only in dreams. But with a poodle’s quickness he caught the general idea and decided to enter into the spirit of the game. Over the fence he went, in the effortless leap of his loose-limbed breed. He was out on the track a stone’s throw ahead of the field, even ahead of the rabbit. But he angled cleverly toward the other side, to head off the quarry.

The excited screams of the crowd died suddenly into a mass gurgle, above which the announcer’s mechanically charged voice boomed, “At the start it’s Five, Two, and—urp!” There was nothing for anybody to say. Out on the track a comic, fantastic interloper was sprinting, timing himself so cleverly that he met the rabbit almost head on. Talley even managed to get a mouthful of cloth before the momentum of the thing flung him tail over applecart. Nothing daunted, he collected himself and set out bravely after it at a full gallop. Behind him, unnoticed in his joyful excitement, came the eleven frenzied hounds….

“Oh,
no!
” screamed Miss Hildegarde Withers, dropping the binoculars and pressing both hands over her face. She was speechless for perhaps the first time in her life, having momentarily forgotten how to pray and never having learned how to swear.

“
Jesús, María y José!
” cried Vito helpfully. “Lookit the sonofabeech go!”

Peering through her fingers, Miss Withers saw that Talley was still in there trying, but falling off the pace. Head down, brown legs flying so fast that they blurred in the white floodlights, the poodle stuck to the inside rail, waiting for that rabbit or whatever it was to run itself out.

He was still driving when suddenly he was rammed from behind by eleven greyhounds, was overcome and trampled and submerged in a mad flurry of entangled dog. The rabbit forgotten, a number of the leaders set upon Talley as the next best thing, and suddenly the night was rent by horrid sounds. It was a free-for-all, with the poodle underneath.

“I can’t bear to look!” moaned Miss Withers. “Vito, tell me—”

“Is okay,” the boy told her. “Four of ’em still running. I think number Three is in the lead—yes!”

“But—” The schoolteacher opened her eyes. There was still pandemonium out on the track, with the handlers rushing back to try and separate the dogs. No sign of Talley anywhere, not even when the fracas had been resolved. She sagged back against the fence. “They can’t have eaten him whole!” she protested. “There should at least be some brown fur—”

“
Three
wins!” observed Vito happily. The four dogs who had managed to avoid the melee had circled the track and crossed the finish line, “And I put the five bucks you paid me right on the nose!” he added.

“Not even his collar left!” Miss Withers was saying. She remained disconsolate, even when Vito pointed out to her that racing greyhounds run in leather muzzles, and that with his teeth and fuzzy protective coat Talleyrand had had rather the best of it.

She shrugged. “‘Life must go on …’” said Miss Withers dully. She had suddenly lost all interest in the proceedings, though she waited while Vito returned the rented binoculars and cashed his win ticket. They passed out through the turnstile.

“Perhaps if we wait here, and watch while people come out?” the boy suggested.

“Very well, but I feel in my bones that it won’t do any good,” the schoolteacher told him. They waited, and it didn’t. After the last race was over, and the last of the crowd had trickled forth into the parking lot and the waiting taxicabs, Vito had to agree with her. No pair of pretty young Americanas fitting the description of Dallas Trempleau and Ina Kell had been at the greyhound races this night.

Slowly the schoolteacher and the Mexican boy went back across the almost-empty parking lot to the little coupe parked at the far end. “He was only a dog, after all,” Miss Withers was saying, mostly to herself. “Companionable enough, in his way. But often a nuisance, and a considerable expense with meat prices as they are. I should have a cat anyway, or perhaps go back to tropical fish….”

They came up to the car, and she unlocked the door. “Hop in,” she told the boy, and he hopped. From beneath the car came a sheepish, bedraggled brown shadow, who hopped too. Talleyrand sat on the front seat, wagging his stump of a tail furiously, aware that he had transgressed the mysterious laws of humankind but confident of being scolded and forgiven.

“
You!
” she cried. “What have you to say for yourself?”

Talley wagged wider, unable to explain that when the press of greyhounds had become too great he had wisely withdrawn from the fray, vaulted the infield fence, and then circled around until he found a way out through the enclosure.

They drove back into Tijuana, and as they came past the Hotel Primero Vito put a hand on her arm. “We stop here, no? Maybe my cousin Carlos has found out where the gorls live?”

It was Miss Withers’ considered opinion that his cousin Carlos couldn’t find his own pants pocket, but she prided herself on keeping an open mind. “Very well,” she said, and drew over to the curb. “You may go and see.”

In a moment the boy was back, grinning. “You come with me, lady. My cousin Carlos has found where the gorls live.” He gestured. “Right there!”

“Right where?”

“In the hotel!”

“I see,” said Miss Withers grimly. “
Now
he tells us.” She paid Vito his remaining five dollars, patted him gently but firmly on the head, and sent him on his way.

“But, lady—”

“Enough is enough,” said the schoolteacher, who had had a difficult day and a still more difficult night. She watched the boy out of sight and then crossed the Avenida and again entered the hotel. Nothing, it seemed, had changed except that some of the lights in the lobby were dimmed and the palm trees in their pots were even dustier.

This time she went directly to the desk. The same young man was there, reading the same newspaper. “I am sorry, but we have no vacancies,” he said firmly.

“Oh?” Miss Withers hastily replanned her strategy. “I had so hoped that you would have something for me. You were so well recommended.”

“By who?”

Resisting the impulse to correct his English, she said, “Why, by the two American girls—”

“
Norteamericanas?
” It was a mild reproof, but definite.

“Of course. Miss Jones and her companion—they do live here?”

The ophidian eyes were ever so faintly amused. “They did, señora. But they checked out a little while ago.”

“Oh?” Miss Withers blinked. “But that was very sudden, wasn’t it?”

The padded shoulders shrugged delicately. “Perhaps. But death is always sudden, is it not?”

“
Death?
” Suddenly there was a new scent in the schoolteacher’s flaring nostrils, drowning out the dusty odor of the potted palms, the musky reek of the man’s pomade. It was an acrid, bitter scent—the smell of defeat.

“Be bold, Be bold, and every where, Be bold
…”

—EDMUND SPENSER

T
HE OILY YOUNG MAN
at the desk waited patiently, obviously enjoying the impression he had made. But then Miss Withers remembered the affinity that all Spanish peoples have for
la muerte,
even to the extent of giving their children grinning skulls of candy and gingerbread to play with. “Let’s back up and start over,” she said crisply. “Whose death was it? Not one of the young ladies?”

“Oh, no, señora.” There was almost a trace of regret in the soft, chocolaty voice. “But Miss Jones said they had to leave suddenly because of a death in the family.”

The schoolteacher relaxed. Whose death it had been and how long ago it had happened were not hard to guess at. The ripples made by Tony Fagan’s splash into eternity were still moving outward, as they would move forever.

Dallas and Ina—it could be nobody else—had obviously fled in a panic because somehow they had learned that questions were being asked about them. Vito, of course! The little scamp had taken her money and then, while she was eating dinner, had dashed off to turn another fast dollar by warning the quarry. But at least she was on the right trail. “Can you tell me where they’ve gone?” Miss Withers pressed hopefully. “I’m most anxious to reach them, because they are relatives—nieces of mine. Did they make reservations anywhere?”

The clerk shrugged. “They only throw everything into a so-beautiful big blue Cadillac and go. I suppose maybe they go home.”

Miss Withers had reasons for supposing maybe not, but she did not voice them. “But surely they left a forwarding address for mail and things?”

He grudgingly informed her that the young ladies had received no mail. The New York address given when they registered would have been located, the schoolteacher realized, somewhere in the midst of the Central Park Zoo.

“Perhaps Miss Jones and her companion will return here,” she said. “Meanwhile the room they left must be vacant, is it not? May I see it, please?”

The objections were almost interminable. The rent of the suite had been paid for the rest of the week, and really it should stand vacant. Moreover, the rooms were no doubt in great disorder. They would have to be set to rights, and the maids would not return until tomorrow. The clerk was a thousand times sorry, but he himself could not leave his desk to do the work of the housekeeper.

Miss Withers played her ace in the form of another five-dollar bill, and a moment later was headed up the stairs with a key in her hand. Three-A was at the end of the second-floor hall, in the front. Her heart beating high, the schoolteacher entered and turned on the light. She found herself in a surprisingly comfortable living room, furnished in ranchero style with handmade leather chairs and couch, and even a venerable radio in one corner. The place, however, had the appearance of having been tossed like a mixed green salad. Whoever had lived here had decamped as if all the devils of hell were after them, instead of one lone spinster.