Black Alibi (16 page)

“What do you keep quitting bike that for?” Clo-Clo asked.

La Bruja shook her head slightly, whether at the question itsebf or at the condition that had caused the question to be asked she left unresobved.

“It’s still here,” she murmured finabby.

Clo-Clo booked them over. “I know, but what is it?”

“It’s something, but I can’t make out myself what it is. It’s nothing good. Wait a minute, I’ll see if I can get it for you. It’s dark, and that means some kind of trouble. It’s a four card. It’s the four of spades and it’s right over you. Every time I shuffle them it keeps coming Out right over you. Whatever it is, it’s something that’s hanging over you, that’s nearing you, that’s on its way.” She spread her hands helpbessby.

Clo-Clo rolled her eyeballs upwards half under her lids in unspoken dismay.

“Wait a minute, I’ll try it again.” La Bruja’s hands reached out, harvested the cards into a bristling heap.

Clo-Clo turned her head stiffly aside, booked off into the shadows. “Gall me if—if it comes back again.” She cross-barred one index finger over the other, held them that way.

There was a period of bated waiting. She could hear the faint tick the cards made going down on the wood. It was very stibb in the room. The only thing that moved was a silent thing, the shadow of La Bruja’s hand on the floor, rising and fabling, rising and fabling, where Clo-Clo was booking down with averted head.

The hand stopped. The ticks of cardboard stopped. La Bruja spoke.

“It’s back again. Fourth time in a row.”

Clo-Clo bunched her shoulders. “It’s drafty in here,” she said. She turned slowly, glanced down as at something coiled to strike her. “But isn’t it you that puts them there? Isn’t it—isn’t it your hand?”

“They come in rotation. What have I to do with that? As soon as you come out, and fall into the center place, all those that follow have their places in order around you. If I meddled with that, the fortune would be worthless.”

“You mean it has been in that exact—upper corner of my card, each of the four times?”

“No, but it has been in the row over you each time. It has come out within three or four cards of your own.
It is something on its way to you
.”

Clo-Clo slashed out, caught the other’s wrist in frightened appeal. Her voice broke. “Bruja. Brujita. You gotta figure out—you gotta tell me what it is! Try!”

She waited, then seeing that no answer was forthcoming, began to try to coach her in her own metier. “What does the four mean? Is it a date I should beware of? Today’s the, bet me see—”

“No, it’s no date. There are no dates in these cards. It’s in the first row over you, so it’s
soon
.”

“Well, is it a man?”

“No, the picture cards are men, the jacks and kings.”

“Well, what could it be then? Something with four legs? Maybe it means I’m going to be trampled by a black horse.”

La Bruja shrugged.

Clo-Clo snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. Four. Something with four wheels. I should stay out of a black automobile or I’m going to get smashed up.

“It could be,” Le Bruja said uncertainly. Whatever it was, it was as disturbing to her as to her client; she wasn’t taking it bightby. Perhaps because it was a challenge to her professional skill. She continued to stare downward in stony concentration at it, the brick of still-unused cards retained in her hand, kneading a corner of her lip every now and then between her teeth.

The proprietor had fallen into a doze somewhere in the dusk-laden background. His heavy breathing was the only sound to be heard in the silences between their remarks.

“But they’re your cards. Gan’t you read them?”

“Sure I can read them—as far as they go. The spades suit is always trouble or misfortune. The ace of spades itself is the one to book out for, that’s the death card.”

Clo-Clo took a deep breath of unutterable relief. “It’s not out. So maybe if I just steer clear of a black car—” She lit a cigarette with a hand that was shaking so, the match singed the paper all down one side nearly to her lips. “Go ahead a little further, instead of turning back. Pay more out. Maybe something’lb come out after that’bl— that’ll make it clearer.”

La Bruja lidded her eyes acquiescently. Her hand moved. “That’s a money card.” Her hand moved again. “That’s a card that means a trip or journey, a small one.”

“I’m to get more money and go on a trip or journey?” suggested Clo-Clo hopefully.

“No, they’re in reverse. That means, a trip
back
because of money. Money is going to cause you to make a return trip to somewhere.”

This time Clo-Clo didn’t comment, she kept” her own counsel. She thought: “Sounds like I’m going back to the Tabarin one of these nights’ and meet that same darling of a
papacito
and be given another—”

“Go ahead,” she urged, “put the next one in line down.”

La Bruja’s free hand moved to the brick she held, stripped the top of it, carried it to the table, reversed it with a deft twist.

There was a sort of impalpable detonation between them; unseen, unheard, but as keenly felt as the flare of flashlight powder.

“Wait a minute, what’d you say just now was the—?”

Clo-Clo, eyes dilated craned her neck toward the layout. Before she could verify it, La Bruja had slapped her hand over it, effacing it.

“Don’t look at it.” La Bruja suddenly whipped it out of the set-up and left a blank space where it had been.

“The death card,” Clo-Clo whispered.

“It wasn’t right over you,” La Bruja said roughly.

“But it was right over this other one, this four thing. And
that
was touching me. Corner to corner!”

“Now look at your face,” La Bruja said accusingly. “You’re all white. You shouldn’t have asked me—” She swept her hand back and forth across the cards, obliterating their arrangement beyond repair. She jogged her chair back. “Let’s get out of here,” she said impatiently.

Clo-Clo didn’t move for a minute, didn’t act as though she’d heard her. Her eyes were still fixed unseeingby on the barren table top, where the cards had been until now, as though she could stilb see them. Once she backed her hand across the brow fringe of the chrysanthemum hair mop, leaving a little indentation in its evenness of line through which a triangular wedge of forehead peered.

“Gome on, don’t take it like that,” La Bruja tried to cheer her up.

Clo-Clo moved her head at bast, but not toward her companion. She turned it slowly, warily, the other way around, toward the half-visible streetbevel window of the shop, across the room from them, with its shutters already backed together behind it in closure for the night.

She writhed slightly, as if trying to throw some thing off. “I keep getting a feeling of somebody looking at me, somebody looking at me hard. I already had it once before, tonight, before I even came in here___”

“Maybe somebody just took a squint in, in passing, to see if Pepito is still open. I was sitting facing that way the whole time, and I didn’t see anyone. Pay the guy and let’s get out of here,” La Bruja said, in reminder that it was her invitation. “You’ll feel better outside.”

Clo-Clo put on one shoe. Then she felt underneath the shredded inner sole of the other, dredged up a thin ten-centavo piece, and put it on the table.

La Bruja had opened the door and gone out ahead. “There’s nobody out here,” she called back reassuringly. “The street’s empty!”

Clo-Clo came out after her. She drew her short elbow jacket closer around her as though she were cold. There wasn’t another moving thing in sight but the two of them. Gable Quince de Mayo lay desolate ifi the gloom around them, a blue-black tunnel running through the night.

“The tailings of the night,” La Bruja grimaced. “I always hate it. Webb, until next—” She took a preliminary step away from her.

Clo-Clo grabbed her almost spasmodically by the arm. “La Bruja, walk part of the way back with me, will you? You can go my way as well as the other, it’s just as near for you.”

La Bruja jeered, “What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” She turned nevertheless and fell into step alongside her.

“I dunno, I’ve got a funny feeling I can’t throw off.”

“That fortune got you.”

“No, I had it even before I met you, but not as strong as now. I was feeling leery already back at the Tabarin.”

“I can tell you what’s the matter with you,” La Bruja told her, with the wisdom born of greater experience. “Don’t go in too heavy for this distilled stuff, like brandy or
aguardiente
. It overstimulates and then depresses you. I used to make that mistake when I was first beginning to go around, too. Don’t let them buy you just anything they feel like. Stick to wine and light stuff. These cheap guys are only too glad to daze you, if you give them the chance. Unless you get some system into your drinking, you’ll find yourself, at the end of a hard night, with the horrors.”

They had reached the lower end of the street by now. “Well, here’s where we split up,” La Bruja let her know. “I’m not going out of my way for you, I’ve done enough tramping around already for one evening. Take it easy.”

She turned sharply left, and the tap of her heels, for a moment or two, could be heard receding along the sidewalk. Clo-Clo continued on alone in their original direction. Just before the opposite corner line cut them off from one another for good, she called out, almost despairingly: “See you around tomorrow night.”

“Maybe,” came echoing back blurredly along the resonant, empty stone chasm of the street.

Clo-Clo went her way. To her surprise, she discovered she felt a little better after leaving the other girl, rather than worse. La Bruja had a sort of dampening personality, she was well known for that; maybe that was it. Or maybe there had been a lack of sympathy there. Not that she didn’t hurry, and not that she wasn’t stibb uneasy. Plenty of both. The way home was a long one, and it had never seemed longer than it did tonight. Her feet played chopsticks under her along the sidewalk, and the tubular street, like a megaphone, seemed to carry the sound far in advance of her. They went: tickchock, tickchock, tickchock— And then suddenly they had stopped.

What was that?

It had coursed out swiftly before her, made a wide turn around her out into the middle of the road, before she could identify it. Then it fell motionless out there, poised for further flight, uncertainly booking over at her. It went “Miaow,” in slurred remonstrance.

A thrill of horror surged through her. Oh God, no, not tonight, after that card—!

Black, inky black from nose to tail tip; not a white hair in its coat.

She started to draw warily backwards a step at a time, hand out to the wall beside her, trying to get out of the loop it had half drawn around her, before it had a chance to close it entirely. Trying to keep their two paths from crossing at any point.

Just when she had got abreast of it on her rearward way, it took further fright, trickled over the paving stones an additional length away from her. Still in the wrong direction, behind her.

She flattened her back against the wall and tried to edge past it without disturbing it further in its new halting place. Suddenly it sighted sanctuary, closed in again to the same side of the way it had originally emerged from, squeezed through some sidewalk-level vent and vanished, with a delayed’ withdrawal of its tail a moment or two after the rest of it.
Behind
her.

It had drawn a complete arc around her. She couldn’t move now in either direction, backwards or forwards, without crossing its ilb-omened orbit at some point.

She called upon her patron saint, sponsor of that given name she so seldom heard any more, except around the shack. “Santa Gabriela, get me out of this!” She touched her shoulders and her forehead and her breast, to ward it off. It was worse, they said, even than breaking a mirror.

But she couldn’t stand here all night upon this island of safety. The damage was done now, irretrievable. She gathered herself together, lowered her head defensively as though she were about to charge through a curtain of fire or water; even gathered up her already brief skirt higher still with one hand, to give her limbs more freedom of action. Then she drew a deep breath and went plunging through the cat’s esoteric path and brought up short on the other side of it. Free, but tarred by misfortune.

She gave a look behind her, sighed, and continued on her way.

A few minutes later she had hit the straightaway of the Gable de Justicia, a wide diagonal swath cut remorselessly through the maze of crooked older byways, its corners a continuous series of wedges and acute angles due to its biased progression. Now all she had to do was keep on it to its outer reaches and she’d arrive back at the shack.

A street-light poob picked her up momentarily, lost her to the darkness again. A short wait, and then the next one ahead did the same thing. Then the one above that. They were spaced about one to a crossing.

Still as it was, she failed utterly to hear the car until it was almost upon her. It must have been gliding after her with its engine tuned down to inaudibility, its lights out, for several moments past. Probably he had sighted her ahead under one of those betraying light pools.

A slithering sound, light as a tape being dragged along the ground, was all the warning she had. She swerved, and it was only a few yards in back of her, pacing her. The bights must have been left off purposely, until the last minute, so that it could get close. They switched on now, drenched her from head to foot, photographed her, so to speak, then dimmed again to a dull glow at the touch of a switch. She faltered there bbinded, the back of her hand to her eyes.

But the photographic proof had turned out satisfactory, the car had stopped, and a figure had alighted to the sidewalk beside it. All she could glimpse was a rakishly diagonal hat brim and a figure that was young, almost juvenile, in its symmetry. He must be some rich man’s son, out trying to beam about life at first hand. The mere fact that he would alight and stand there waiting by the open door, instead of just sitting tight and cabling her over, showed how inexperienced he still must be. They were veritable gold mines, if you were lucky enough to strike one.