Murder Is My Dish (11 page)

I parked my car across the wide street and went over there. The coffins were of soft yellow pine and unfinished and about one-third death size. Men and women marched back and forth in front of the swooping lawn with them. The marchers also had some straw-stuffed figures and a piggy bank as big as a dog house with the figure $40,000.00 painted in black on its side. The straw-stuffed figures were all hanging by their necks and placards proclaimed them to be effigies of Indalecio Grande. A saner picket carried a sign which said
What really happened to Rafael Caballero?
Most of the pickets had slick dark hair and tan skin and were probably refugees of the Parana Republic and Republican Spain. Many of them hadn't passed safely through their teens yet.

A line of them snake-danced toward me as I crossed the street, brandishing their signs and effigies like weapons. A couple of cops who had stationed themselves behind the iron deer on the lawn moved in my direction, their billies ready.

“Preston Baylis gets forty thousand bucks a year in blood money,” an effigy-carrying boy said.

“Blood money!” a big girl near him snarled.

“You take it easy now, you know what's good for you,” one of the cops said.

The other one asked me, “The name Drum?” And, when I had nodded, “Servants passed the word out you're expected.”

“Bloody money!” the big girl snarled again. She came close and shook her fist in my face. When I neither cringed nor tried to get tough, tears sprang to her eyes. “Blood money,” she said softly, unconvincingly.

The first cop took her by the elbow. The second cop went up the walk with me. The door was opened by a fellow in a butler's livery, and the cop went away.

“Upstairs, please, sir,” the butler said. “Mr. Baylis has taken to bed.”

I wanted to say “taken what to bed,” but it would have sailed over his head and out into the leftfield seats. With my attaché case I went up the stairs. When I reached the top a door opened in the hallway on my left and I heard: “Psst! Mr. Drum.”

It was Fawn Baylis, Preston Baylis's daughter, a spoiled but pretty and physically precocious sixteen year old I'd met once or twice while doing legwork for her old man. They shared the house with a platoon of servants now. Mrs. Baylis had been one of Preston Baylis's many mistakes: the courts had granted the father custody of their teen-aged child without even a token fight.

Fawn came into the hallway. It was dim there, but not so dim I couldn't see her. “I'm wearing a peignoir,” she said, and giggled. “Like it?”

She wore her precocious assets with a certain ingenuous charm and the peignoir fit her like Cellophane fits a pack of cigarettes. She said, “I'm so bored in this big house with nothing to do. Christmas vacation. All the other girls in school look forward to it, but I don't. I'm glad those nasty men are outside. I'm glad. I've been watching them from the window. What's the matter, don't you like it?”

“It's the nicest peignoir I ever saw a teen-ager wearing.”

She advanced, more threateningly than the pickets had.

“But it's also the only peignoir I ever saw a teen-ager wearing.”

She had over-extended her supply lines. She came up short. Her big innocent eyes glistened. I told myself they only looked innocent. “Here I am practically throwing myself at you,” she said, giggling again. This close I could smell the Scotch. It was still a few minutes before noon and she was sixteen. I felt some of Preston Baylis's inadequacy then. Inadequacy as a son. Inadequacy as a husband. Inadequacy as a father. It hovered with the smell of Scotch and expensive perfume in the dim hallway.

“Don't tell Father,” she pouted when she saw I wasn't going to catch what she had thrown.

“All right. Get back into your room.”

“Don't tell him about the peignoir. It belonged to my mother. She left it for me when she went away.”

I said nothing. She went back into her room. The door closed softly. The mingled scents of Preston Baylis's inadequacy lingered. I went down the hall with the attaché case under my arm and knocked on the door of his room.

“Come in, Chester.”

He sat up in bed with four pillows behind his head. The Sunday papers were in an untidy pile on the floor, where he had flung them.

I said, “Caballero is probably dead.”

“I know. The papers.”

“A big shot in the Paranaian Security Forces was in New York to handle the job. Did you know that?”

“No!”

“I think Lequerica knew it.”

“I can't believe that. I'll phone him.”

“He went back home.”

“Why are they doing this to me, Chester? Downstairs?”

“They probably have a contingent over at the Parana Embassy too. Don't take it so personally.”

“I'm only their legal representative in this country. The internal state of affairs in the Parana Republic isn't my business. Cold morning, isn't it?”

“It's warm in here.”

“Got a chill, I guess.” His eyes went to the attaché case and looked up, expectantly. I didn't enlighten him. “There was something?

I went over to the window. Preston Baylis's bedroom faced the front of the house. I saw bare sycamore branches, a sweep of lawn, the parade of coffins. “There's a girl named Eulalia Mistral,” I said. “She was Caballero's secretary. She's visiting her mother in the Parana Republic. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to guarantee her safety.”

“Guarantee? How can I do that?” He laughed the nervous little laugh. “Besides, what does she have to be afraid of Jaguars?” Again the nervous little laugh.

“The Paranaian Security Forces. They killed Caballero for his book. They didn't get the book. They may think she knows something about it.”

“But what can I do? I'm only their legal—”

“I know what your job is, Mr. Baylis.”

“Then you must know I couldn't—”

“Do you want it straight, or with sauce?”

I turned around. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking up at the ceiling. “I'm listening,” he said.

“There are maybe a hundred lawyers in D.C. who could represent them as well as you. Hell, maybe a thousand. But you're your father's son. Son of the great liberal jurist. That means something to them. It's the name they want, and your father's reputation here. That's what they pay you for.”

He said stiffly, “Hadn't you better go, Chester?”

“No, damn it, I hadn't better go. The girl's life may be in danger. Call down there. Call Grande himself. You could get through to him. Tell him that if the girl's harmed or threatened in any way, you'll quit. Tell him that.”

“What do you think they are, Nazis? Reds? The girl's perfectly safe, I tell you.”

“Then it wouldn't hurt if you made that call.”

He studied the ceiling, sighing. I didn't see anything up there. Maybe he was waiting for a message. “No,” he said. “I can't do it. I can't jeopardize what I have.”

“You mean forty grand a year, like the pickets say?”

“All right, yes. That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean.” His voice had gone high and thin. His face was red. “It's the bulk of my income, Chester. If I threaten them, they'll take their business elsewhere. Then what would I do?”

“They want your name. They'd take it from you.”

“I assure you, the girl is perfectly safe.”

“What in hell do you know about it?” I said, going over to the bed. “I saw Duarte, the security officer. You didn't. I saw him kill two men. But go ahead and sit on your forty thousand bucks.”

“I wish I could help you.” He laughed for no reason at all. It tore out of his throat like a sob. It must have been hell, living with himself.

I went to the door. He said: “Wasn't there something else?” His eyes had gone again to the attaché case.

I shook my head and opened the door.

He said, “No hard feelings?” He laughed nervously.

Fawn Baylis's perfume still lingered in the hall. Downstairs and outside, the pickets heckled me. On the way back to Washington I drove through a red light and almost took the fender off a car occupied by a soberly dressed couple probably on their way home from church. The near-accident was my fault, and they didn't even yell.

Chapter Ten

I
SPENT
the middle afternoon in my apartment, reading Rafael Caballero's manuscript. It wasn't a shocker. That is, it wasn't written in the style of a shocker. It was' a carefully footnoted work, a scholarly tome weighty with words like moral lacuna and misoneism and
caudillismo
and Keynesian determinants.

But factually it was a shocker. With documentary evidence in the form of photostatic positives, it chronicled the course of almost two decades of absolute dictatorship in a country bigger than the state of Texas with a population smaller than the city of Chicago. It chronicled the lies and the thefts and the behind-closed-doors bargains with astonishing objectivity. It was an authentic record. It was no one man's opinion.

And strangely, it was also a paean of love to a wild country the author had come to love despite its politics, a country of two great rivers, the Paraguay and the Parana, flowing south from the high mountains rich in tin and diamonds, through forests as dense as the Gran Chaco of Bolivia or the Matto Grosso of Brazil, to the bush lands of the great Paranaian ranches and a heritage as colorful as our own Western past and probably a lot more dangerous.

When I finished reading, it was past four o'clock. I knew something about Rafael Caballero's adopted country now. I knew the timeless, dim-lighted cathedrals of the tropical rain forest and the bustle of trade in tin, diamonds, cattle and mahogany in Ciudad Grande, the highest deep-water port on the Paraguay River. I knew something of Paranaian geography, and how an absolute dictator could rule there unchallenged for almost twenty years with the mountains of Bolivia to the north and west, the swamps of Paraguay to the west and south and the steaming jungles of Brazil to the north and east and south, keeping the prying eyes of the world away.

I knew also that Rafael Caballero had been a great man, a very great man. I also knew, clearly, why Indalecio Grande had had to kill him.

I found some wrapping paper on the closet shelf and wrapped the ream box with it. I addressed the package to myself care of General Delivery, Alexandria, Virginia. Uncle Sam, unaware, would keep Rafael Caballero's manuscript for him. I found a dozen threes left in a book of stamps and stuck all of them on the package. Then I went outside and walked two blocks up Florida Avenue to a package drop. The box was red, white, and blue in the approved new style. I looked at it. I looked at the package. There were alternatives. I could deliver the manuscript in person to the head of the department at the university where Caballero had taught. But it might not be so easy getting out of New York a second time if they wanted me for Andy Dineen's inquest. I could mail the package to the university, but couldn't chance its falling into the wrong hands up there. It was something you delivered in person or not at all.

A girl with a brightly wrapped Christmas package came along. “Well, mister?” she said, shifting about impatiently.

I put the manuscript in the package drop and went home. I had an early supper of canned soup and canned pressed meat, then got Jack Morley's house on the phone. Jack's with the Department of State and, like Andy, Pappy Piersall and me, is an F.B.I. alumnus.

Jack Jr., aged three, answered the phone. “Mph, 'lo.”

“Hearty appetite,” I said as he chewed noisily in my ear.

“I'm fine.”

“I didn't ask you.”

“I'm fine,” he said stubbornly.

He squawked as the phone was yanked away from him. He was still squawking in the background when his mother got on the phone. “I was about to tell him I'm Roy Rogers,” I complained.

“Chet! Where are you? Jack said you were out of town. Jack said—”

“Been out of town, kid. You think I'd have missed your corned beef and cabbage invite otherwise?”

“How about tomorrow then?”

“I think I'll be going out of town again. A long way out of town. That's where the man of the house comes in.”

She said she'd get him, then sobered suddenly and added, “Chet, did you see in the papers what happened to Andy? My God, Chet, it's—it's— Andy was always so full of life.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry. He was' working with you, wasn't he?”

I didn't answer that one. Jack Morley came on the phone. He's usually an easygoing guy but this time he greeted me with, “If you need any help getting the sons of bitches who did it, say the word.”

“I need some help.”

“I'll be right over.”

“No. Not like that. I have to go down where they live, in a hurry. The Parana Republic. My passport's in order, but I'll need a visa.”

“They like you down there?”

“Like the grandees liked Bolivar.”

“Then they won't let you in. You know how it is in most South American countries. You need a passport, a visa, a health certificate, immunization certificates, a dental chart, the name and address of your—”

“Use your scissors to cut the tape.”

“It wouldn't help if they don't like you. They'd declare you persona non grata before you left the airport. God, Chet. Are you really going down there after the ones who—”

“Yeah,” I said. There was that, I thought. Burying Andy wouldn't be enough. It never is. And there was Eulalia Mistral. Lequerica was a loyal Grande man. He wouldn't help me. Preston Baylis was afraid to help. Which left only Chester Drum.…

“Tell you what,” Jack was saying. “I know a guy in the Paraguayan Embassy. He ought to be able to get you a quick visa to Paraguay.”

“And?”