Murder Is My Dish (20 page)

I jumped into Emilio's jeep and started the motor. I swung around on the tarmac, skidding, and pushed the gas pedal down to the floor. The jeep surged forward. It was about half a mile to the hill. When I reached it I slammed the brakes on and leaped from the jeep, clawing the .38/44 from my belt.

The other car, also a jeep, had still not completed its U-turn when I sprinted through the mud around the shoulder of the hill and saw it. The road was very narrow. There were deep tire marks in the mud on either side of it.

“Come out of there or I'll shoot!” I shouted.

It was a battered old jeep, mud-splattered, its canvas top torn and slack without any plastic windowpane in the rear window. The man at the wheel turned around and stared at me. I had a quick look at a square, dark-skinned face. The eyes were big with fear. The jeep roared suddenly, as if it too had life and was afraid. It backed through the mud toward me very quickly, then the gears ground and it began to move forward. I fired quickly from the hip and saw a spider web appear magically in the windshield alongside the man's head. I fired again, but the jeep was moving fast now, lurching a little from side to side, gaining speed. It had taken the driver all this time to turn around on the narrow, muddy road. I saw his face again suddenly, in my mind. I knew that face.

It was Ansensio Martinez.

I ran back to Emilio's jeep and jumped in. The engine was still idling. The rain was coming down harder now. The jeep slid and slipped up over the hill, seeking traction. Then it really began to move. I saw Ansensio Martinez's jeep, a quarter of a mile away, laboring up another hill. I opened the door and leaned out to fire the .38/44 at him, but he was much too far away.

When I reached the top of the second hill, he was far below me in a drop in the convoluted terrain. I stepped on the gas and held the wheel as hard as I could. The jeep went down very smoothly. He was climbing again, following the road upwards and to the left. I was gaining on him. As long as he climbed I would gain.

The rain pelted down. I dropped the .38/44 on the seat and used my right hand to work the manual wipers. At the bottom of the hill I patted the brake pedal and swung left with the road. The rear wheels of the jeep swung right. I got both hands on the wheel and tried to ease the front of the jeep in the direction of the skid.

I felt a lurch and a drop and was staring not at the road rising on the flank of the next hill but at a wall of trees and secondary growth. The jeep struck something and I went forward hard against the windshield.

I must have blacked out for a moment. The jeep was silent now. I heard only the rain. The undergrowth against the windshield was spinning around. I tried to start the jeep, but it wouldn't kick over. I don't know how long I sat there trying. Finally I went out into the rain and staggered up the road. I stopped and almost fell down. I'd been going in the wrong direction. I went back past the jeep. It had plowed into a tree. The tree was bleeding sap and the jeep's front end was raised so you could see a bent axle. I kept on walking, not feeling the rain. After a long time I walked up and over the last hill and down the road to the airport. The hangar door was closed.

O'Tool must have seen me coming. He met me at the door of the bigger corrugated shack. “Jesus,” he said, “what happened to you? There's blood all over your face.”

I said, “Got to take off right now.”

“In this rain? We wouldn't have a chance.” I felt his hand on my arm. My head was whirling. “… inside and take a look at you.”

“You don't understand,” I said. “It was Martinez.”

He didn't answer me. He took me inside. I thought I heard low voices in the back room, but we didn't go in there. He bathed my face with a wet rag and said something about a gash on my forehead. Then he put something stinging on it, probably alcohol. After a while he said the bleeding had stopped.

“Where are they?”

“In the back with Pedro.” Pedro was the Indian.

“What's the matter?”

“The old lady's sick. They think she's dying.”

Chapter Seventeen

T
HERE
was only one small window in the bunk room, and very little light. The old lady lay on one of the lower bunks, gasping for breath and coughing. Someone had propped some pillows behind her head. She was covered with poncho. Her face looked like old yellowed ivory in the dim light. It was covered with a film of sweat. Her eyes were wide and jerked in her head when I came in. Weakly she raised one hand, for no reason that I could see. Eulalia knelt by her side, patting her wet face with a cloth.

Emilio looked at me and shook his head. The Indian, Pedro, stood with his head down, as if he were praying. I nodded toward the door and Emilio came into the front room with me. O'Tool wasn't there, but I heard the hangar door sliding.

“Bad?” I asked Emilio.

He shrugged.

“Well, what do you think?”

“The
vieja
was sick when I came for her. At first she wouldn't go. She wouldn't believe it when I said her daughter was waiting. A heavy woman,
muy borracha
, helped her to the jeep. ‘She is very sick,' the heavy woman said. The drunkard. ‘It is her heart. You take her to her daughter quickly.' The
vieja
sat without moving all the way here. You saw how we had to carry her from the jeep. I saw her legs when we put her in bed. Her ankles. Swollen, señor. Clearly, it is her heart. She is dying, I think. My father's brother died like that.”

I said, “Ansensio Martinez was in the other jeep.”

“Martinez,” he said. He made a face. “Did you get him?”

“No.”

He said nothing.

“How long will it take Martinez to get to Ciudad Grande or someplace he can call?”

“In the rain, six or seven hours. There is no place he can call from, except one of the high ranches. Six or seven hours to the city. Perhaps two hours to the high ranches.”

“He'll call if he can find a phone.”

“He'll call,” Emilio agreed bleakly. “It will mean much money to him. In the swamps on the border you should have killed him. There are telephone lines to the high ranches.”

“Two hours,” I said. And six hours for the security police to come. Eight hours in all. It was now four-thirty. We had until midnight, or a little more.

I went into the bunk room. The old lady was coughing. Her eyes darted from Pedro's face to Eulalia's to mine. She was breathing very rapidly. “Eulalia,” she said.

“I am here,
madrecito
.”

“Eulalia!”

“Yes,
madrecito
.”

“You're here. Oh, you're here.”

The old lady tried to sit up. She did not have the strength for it, but the muscles corded and stood out on her neck.

“… these others,” she said, coughing.

“Leave us,” Eulalia said, without looking up. Pedro left the bunk room.

“Listen,” I said. I didn't know what I wanted to say.

“Get out. Just get out.”

I went out and closed the door softly. We stood there waiting. Pedro poured coffee. Emilio drank his. I let mine stand. After a while the hangar door slid and we heard O'Tool running through the rain, his shoes drumming on concrete. He came in soaking wet.

“Phew! What a storm,” he said. “Plane's fine, though.”

We heard voices faintly on the other side of the door. The old lady was coughing but talking too. Eulalia spoke only a little. Pretty soon the door opened and Eulalia stood there. You could hear the old woman's short breathing behind her.

“She wants a priest,” Eulalia said.

Emilio looked at me. “There is no priest,” he said.

Eulalia touched him on the arm. “You be the priest. She wouldn't know. It is no sin if through that she can die in peace.”

Emilio swallowed hard. “I have not been to confession in a year.”

“Anyway.”

They went inside together. The door closed and there was the sound of sudden coughing and Emilio's voice. It was ten to five on O'Tool's watch when Emilio came out. O'Tool had just told me the time. There wasn't a sound in the other room.

“The
vieja
is dead,” Emilio said.

Pedro opened some cans of beans and heated them, grilling thick strips of bacon and dropping them in, then dishing beans out in tin plates. I took one of the plates, steaming hot, inside to Eulalia. She sat without moving at her mother's side. They hadn't covered the old lady's face. It looked calm and much younger in death than it had in life.

“You ought to eat.”

“No. Not now.”

“It will do you good.”

“Keep away from me.”

“At least take it.”

“Don't touch me. Get out of here.”

“Try to eat.”

“Get out of here. You killed her. You killed her.”

We hung around the front room after Pedro had cleaned the dishes. There was very little talking. We listened to the rain. At about eight o'clock we all had coffee and Irish whisky. Half an hour later Eulalia came out. She had some coffee and whisky but wouldn't eat anything.

They're on their way by now, I thought. If they can get through the rain.

Emilio asked if we wanted to be taken back to the ranch. I told him I had smashed his jeep against a tree. O'Tool said he had a small truck we could use. I shook my head. There was only one road out of there. We might meet the security police head-on. Besides, if the weather cleared we still could take off in the Beechcraft.

“I wouldn't leave now,” Eulalia said. “She would have wanted me to stay here. I could help Señor Robles.”

I shook my head. “Caballero's manuscript is only a first draft. You're the one can put it into shape.”

“I'm not going, that's all.”

By eleven o'clock O'Tool and I had killed what was left of the Irish between us. O'Tool was pacing back and forth between the zinc-topped counter and the door. Pedro and Emilio sat playing checkers on a beat-up old board Pedro brought out. Pedro was winning steadily and Emilio surveyed the board with a sad, surprised face. They were playing for cans of beer. The winner would have one and the loser would sit watching him. Pedro had five empty cans in front of him and Emilio, his face deeply troubled, had only one.…

Just before midnight, Eulalia began to cry. She didn't make a sound, but stood there with her shoulders moving and her eyes shut and the tears squeezing out under the lids. I went over to her and put my arm around her shoulders, feeling them stiffen.

“She blamed herself,” Eulalia said in a whisper. “Oh, dear God, all these years she blamed herself.”

“About your father?”

She wouldn't say anything else. She went over to the counter and sat down.

A few minutes later the rain stopped. It did not slacken gradually. It stopped as if someone had shut off a faucet. O'Tool grinned at-me as if he had been responsible, and opened the door. I went with him.

“Let's get the hell on our horse,” he said.

We ran outside together and across the wet tarmac toward the hangar. I helped him roll the big metal door up. Inside there was barely room for a small truck in front of the Beechcraft. O'Tool had attached a towline in the afternoon. He climbed into the truck and started it up. I stood at the entrance to the hangar as he rolled forward slowly in the truck. The Beechcraft came out with no more than a foot's clearance at either wing tip. I ran behind the truck and unfastened the towline and O'Tool parked the truck off to one side.

“Come on,” I shouted. “Come on, Emilio.”

O'Tool sat at the controls of the Beechcraft now. He put the running lights on and said, “The prop. The prop, Drum.”

I looked toward the shack. The door was closed. “In a minute,” I said, and went over there.

Eulalia sat near the counter, looking quite calm. Emilio stood near her with a perplexed expression on his face. He told me, “She doesn't want to go, señor.”

“Then carry her, if you have to.”

“The
vieja
… burial.…”

“You see about it. Tell Robles. Now get her outside.”

I couldn't wait for them. I couldn't help Emilio because the Beechcraft would need warming up. Emilio took Eulalia's arm and she calmly slapped his face and he calmly held her hands so she couldn't do it again. Pedro was coming over to help him when I ran for the plane.

On the way across the tarmac I heard something. It was the sound of a motor. No, of many motors. A convoy. I cursed and grabbed hold of the propeller blade. O'Tool waved his hand and I pulled down on the prop. It kicked away from me and back into position. I pulled down on it again. The engine sputtered. I pulled again and the propeller went around two or three times. The engine coughed and conked out. I looked up at the big yellow front of the monoplane. It was probably almost as old as I was. I cursed it and pulled the prop down again. Pedro and Emilio went past me, half dragging, half carrying Eulalia between them. She was shouting something hysterically. The motor sound was much closer now. I wondered if O'Tool heard it in the plane.

I pulled the prop again and suddenly smoke puffed and billowed behind it and the engine caught and coughed and roared. Pedro was crouching in the high doorway of the Beechcraft, leaning down, his hands stretched out. Emilio was trying to boost Eulalia up to him, but she kicked him and he lost his balance on the slippery tarmac and they both fell down together.

Eulalia got up and started to run. Emilio ran after her. Eulalia opened her mouth and screamed something. She ran in front of the plane, in front of its running lights, and kept going. Then suddenly lights swung out onto the tarmac, not from the plane but from the far side of the field. Eulalia ran right toward them, with Emilio behind her. I sprinted after them. Four big trucks pulled to a stop across the tarmac, their headlights like big yellow eyes in the night.