A Deadly Shade of Gold (32 page)

All I had learned was that if I was going to get any closer to C. Tomberlin, I was going to have to walk in. Or get him out of there.

At three o'clock, guessing I could catch Raoul Tenero at home in Miami, I loaded up with quarters and made a station to station call from a booth. Nita answered. I asked for Raoul. She carefully worked out the tense and construction and said, "I am calling him now soon to be here with the phone, thank you."

Raoul came on, chuckling. "Yes?"

"No names. This is the hero of Rancho Luna, boy."

"You have something to tell me? Maybe I heard it."

"Maybe you did. The man we talked about is alive, but if he had the choice maybe he wouldn't want to be."

"There have been some discussions about that. We wondered if it was the sort of story he could arrange to circulate, to take the pressure off."

"I saw him."

"Then I'll tell the others. We'll have a drink to that tonight. We'll drink to a long life for him."

"Now for a name. Mineros."

"Yes?"

"Can you fill me in a little? Background?"

"Of all the men in the world, perhaps he had the best reason to want to find the first man we were talking about. He disappeared, aboard a chartered boat."

"I know. Who was with him? I could check old newspapers, but this is quicker."

"Rafael Mineros. Enrique Mineros, his eldest son. Maria Talavera, who was at one time engaged to Rafael's nephew, who died in a Cuban prison. Manuel Talavera, her brother."

"They are dead."

"Presumed dead?"

The operator came on and told me to buy another three minutes. I fed the quarters in, and then said, "Definitely dead. The man you are going to drink to-he gave the orders."

"God in heaven, what a disaster that man has been to the Mineros family!"

"You can tell from the money how far away I am."

"I have a pretty good guess."

"Raoul, I need one contact here. Somebody I can trust. Trust as much as I trust you. Is there any kind of organized group here?"

"My friend, when two Cubans meet, the first thing they do is organize a committee. Out there, it is not like here. Comparatively few, but mostly a heIl of a lot richer. There are several kinds of cats out there. Some of them cashed up and left six, seven, eight, ten years ago. Some at the right time, some scared out by Mr. B, or his buddies, who wanted what they had to leave behind.

Then there am the ones who cashed up and got out when the brothers C looked as if they were going to make it down out of the mountains. Then there are the disenchanted, who stayed and saw red. There are other exiles too, South America, Central America, from old friends of little Eva to reasonably genuine patriots. But I don't have to think a long time to think of a man out there. Paul Dominguez. I have it here in the book. Just a moment. 2832 Winter Haven Drive.

Long Beach."

"Thanks. How do I let him know I have your blessing?"

"Hmmm. Tell him he still owes me a pair of boots. If that isn't enough, he can phone me."

"He is sensible?"

"More so than you or I, amigo. And as much man as the two of us."

I found Dominguez in the book. A woman with a young and pleasant voice said he would be home about six. There wasn't enough time left to go down to Oceanside and find out who had chartered the Columbine to Rafael Mineros. I looked the name up in the book and found a Rafael Mineros in Beverly Hills and an Esteban Mineros in the Bel Air section.

I got back to Buena Villas at four thirty. About ten cars had come home. I parked in front of 28.

As I got out of the Falcon, a woman came striding toward me. She looked like the young George Washington, except that her hair was the color of mahogany varnish.

"Who are you and what the hell is going on?" she demanded at ten paces. She wore a Chinese smock and pale blue denim pants.

I let her march up to me and stop and wait for the answer. "Are you Honey?"

'Yes. What the hell is Junebug trying to pull around here?"

"Maybe you can solve my problem, Honey."

"I'm the one with the problem. I'm responsible. Turn over the house key and her car key and clear the hell out of here."

I extricated one fifty dollar bill and said, "My problem is do I give this to Junebug? Do I leave it on the desk in there for Francine? Or do I turn it over to you?"

Her eyes wavered and her belligerence diminished. "What do you think you're buying?"

"A quiet place. No fuss, no muss, nothing to upset Mrs. Broadmaster."

"You know her?"

"I've seen quite a bit of her. Should I give this to Junebug?"

"I've got a responsibility."

"In a few days you get the key back. And Junebug gets another of these."

Her hand, faster than light, snapped the bill away and shoved it into the pocket of the oriental coat. "I look after the place for Fran. I can see she gets this. But you shouldn't use the car. It's not right you should use the car. It should be more if you use the car. Did Junebug say it would be so much, like making a deal with her?"

"I don't think she realizes I intended to pay for it. I'll tell her the kind of deal I've made with you."

"Why bother? It's my responsibility isn't it? Fran left the key with me. Maybe I'll have to go in
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and clean up when you leave. Junebug wouldn't do that, and you know it. So it can be between us. What Fran said, if I want to put somebody up, okay. A favor for a favor. But it should be more for the car."

"How much more, Honey?"

"Well... the same again?"

"You know, if it was that much, I'd have to ask Junebug if she thought I was being taken."

"You know, I don't have to dicker with you. You can get out."

"Give me back the money and I'll give you the keys."

"If you need a place, you need a place. How about twenty?"

"Twenty is fine."

"Suppose you do this for my protection. You get a key made and give me hers back. Then... if somebody is looking for you and they find you...... "

"That's fair enough."

She looked around, checking to see if anybody was looking at us. "After dark, you put the regular key in my mailbox tomorrow. With that twenty dollars like we agreed. You won't bust the place up or anything?. "

"I want to live quietly."

"You tell Junebug I came over and we got along, and I said any friend of hers. Okay?"

"Fine."

"Fran is back May tenth."

"Oh, I'll be long gone. Don't you worry."

"I worry about everything all day long and half the night. I worry about things you never heard of," she said. She went scuttling away, up the line, and went into a bungalow four doors from mine.

Junebug rapped at my door at twenty after five. I got up and let her in. She hadn't been in her place yet. She wore her office outfit, a tight dark skirt and a white nylon blouse. She grinned a significant grin with her little comedy face, and squinched her jack o' lantern eyes, and hugged up for a big kiss of hello. Then she went stilting around on her office heels in a proprietary manner, and exclaimed at how I had neatened it up, saying I'd probably make a good husband even if I didn't look it. I told her Honey had been to call.

She looked stricken. "Oh dear Jesus," she said.

"What's the trouble? We got along fine. She said any friend of yours is a friend of hers. She gave
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me Francine's car keys and told me to drive carefully."

"You're kidding!"

I showed her the car keys.

"I will be damned," she said. "Who would have thought? Well, it just goes to show you never know, do you? Mack, dear, I'm just sick about not thinking of something. I got paid today and when I cashed my check I thought of it. You poor dear, what have you done about food? Gee, I could have left you a few bucks, you know. Did you get your money yet?"

"I looked a guy up and got a small loan. I'm okay."

"Well, thank goodness for that. Can I loan you some more?"

"No. I'm fine, thanks."

"What do you want to do tonight, honey? I like to swing a little on Friday because I can sleep in."

"I have to go see a man."

"About a job?"

"Yes."

She gave me a sultry glance, with some contrived eyelash effects. "Well, that won't take all night will it?"

The glance matched the unanticipated kiss of hello at the door. Obviously she had been thinking about the situation, and had come to specific conclusions. The engineer was in Canada. I was the stranger, on my way through, and the place was perfectly safe, without likelihood of spying or interruption. She had found me presentable. She had done me a big favor. She wanted a little pre-marital fling. But it had to go by the rules. I could guess what her rules would be.

Once she had induced me to make the pass, then she could dramatize, perhaps shed a few obligatory tears about not wanting to betray the man she was going to marry. After token resistances, enough of them to lay a firm foundation for the rationalizations she would need later on, she would find herself-to her horror and astonishment-seduced. After the enjoyment thereof, she could wallow in a delicious guilt, the dramatic agony of betrayal, with tears and protestations. The image would be preserved, and it would be a practice session for the infidelities after marriage, when Engineer was in Yucatan or Kenya and the babies were in their beds.

She was a reasonably ripe and lusty-looking little woman, but in my adult years I have lost my taste for soap opera intrigue and high school solutions. I knew exactly what she would say, and exactly what she would expect me to say. The two of us would be able to convince her, after the fact, that she was truly virtuous, that it had been just one of those things redblooded people can't help. Doomed to that vapid kind of communication, there could be no real contact between us, and no importance to it. I had to make the pass or we would never get to the corny dialogue. So I did not make it, thus saving herself from herself, or me from her, or something, and managed
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to leave such a tiny scratch on the surface of her pride any Miracle Cleaner would make it invisible in a moment.

I drove to a pay phone and called Paul Dominguez. His accent was very slight. I didn't tell him my name. I merely said that I needed help, and Raoul Tenero had said to remind him that he still owed Raoul a pair of boots.

After a thoughtful silence he asked me where I was, then told me to meet him at eight o'clock at the bar at Brannigan's Alibi, a place near the Long Beach Municipal Airport. He said to look for a man with two packs of cigarettes on the bar in front of him, stacked one on the other. He named the brand. It was a very tidy little identification device, and I knew I would remember it and perhaps use it myself one day.

I got lost and arrived at ten past eight. It was one of those sawdusty places with joke signs on the wall, doing a good neighborhood trade. I went to the bar and looked around and saw the two packs in front of a man who stood alone at the far end of the bar. He was tall and quite slender, with a tanned and almost bald head, a youthful face, big, powerful-looking hands. He wore slacks, a white sport shirt and a pale blue jacket.

I moved in beside him and said, "Hi, Paul."

He gave me a quick look of inventory, smiled and greeted me, and then looked beyond me and gave a little nod. I turned and saw two men get up from a booth near the door. One finished the dregs of his beer, put the glass down and followed the other one out.

I got myself a beer and we carried them over to a booth.

"Precautions?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I phoned Raoul. I got the description, McGee. Maybe somebody had you place that call to him. If somebody else had showed up, it would have turned out to be a different thing. Old habits, I guess. But I don't think they'd take the trouble over me, not after all this time. How is Raoul actually?"

"His stomach is getting better. He's busy. He's making out."

Dominguez smiled. "We never knew it was going to turn out like this, neither one of us. We were so goddam idealistic, you know. Up in those goddam mountains, sitting at the feet of our leader. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. The great democratic revolution. Raoul and I were galloping idealists. Havana Yacht Club idealists. We grew the club beards. Three months after the triumphal march into Havana, we knew we'd been had, McGee. Dupes of the first order. When they started shooting our friends, we got out. That makes us traitors to the new order. So I take precautions."

"What was it about the pair of boots?"

"Raoul and I were specialists. We called ourselves the ordnance supply corps. We had a group of ten. We'd raid small army posts. Homemade bombs. Lots of fire power. Sneakers, blackface, absolute discipline. Hit hard, grab weapons and high tail it the hell out. Raoui was very proud of a pair of paratrooper boots he had. I said one guard area was clear, and Raoul went in, but I missed one of them. The son of a gun must have been asleep behind a bush. He cut loose with a
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weapon on full automatic, and as Raoul dived for cover, one slug tore the heels off both boots and stung his feet so badly he thought he'd been hit. From then on he wore sneakers like everybody else on our little team."

We had measured each other. I liked the way he had explained the boots. He had the look. I can't explain what it is. Raoul has it, in smaller measure. Sam Taggart had it, also in lesser degree.

This Paul Dominguez was so slender as to look almost frail, but no sane man who'd had a good long look at him would try pushing him around. It isn't class. It isn't a special style. It isn't anything in his eyes. Perhaps you can call it the smell of a man who lives by absolutes. If you take him on, you have to be prepared to kill him, because there is no other way of winning. I realized that Felicia Novaro had that flavor too-and his eyelashes were as long as hers.

"Raoul says you used to play those games too," he said.

"In a different war. You didn't go on the picnic?"

He shrugged. "I went over there to a training area. Man, I didn't like the way it was shaping up.