Ride the Pink Horse (19 page)

He could give McIntyre the story right now. Then he could walk over and say to Iris Towers and the young fellow, “It’s okay now. The Sen’s out of it.” He didn’t. He said to Mac, “I’ve got to see the Sen. Give me ten minutes alone with the Sen and I’ll talk.”

Mac should have perked up. But he didn’t. He didn’t look any happier than Iris Towers.

“It’s a deal,” Sailor insisted.

Mac said, “I’d rather you didn’t see him.”

“Why not?” He’d offered Mac a good proposition; Mac ought to accept it, not start making trouble. Mac needed him; he should play ball.

“I don’t think it’s safe.” Mac looked straight at Sailor. The Spanish hat wasn’t funny right now; it was a policeman’s hat.

“I’m not worried,” Sailor boasted. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Mac stated. “You can take care of yourself against someone else. You know how. Can you take care of yourself against yourself?”

He got it. He wasn’t dumb. Mac didn’t trust him not to use the gun.

Mac said, “I don’t want anything to happen to Senator Douglass. I told you that before. Moreover I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He took a long drink of beer. “Why I should care about that, I don’t know, Sailor,” he said in that quiet way of his. As if he were wondering about it for the first time. “All these years, every time I’ve tried to give you a hand, to steer you right, I might as well have hollered down a well. I don’t know why I’ve thought you were worth saving. Why I still think so.”

The sun had gone down, there was already a faint evening chill in the Placita. Beyond the wall, echoing from the Plaza, was singing, wild gay singing, “. . . alia en el Rancho Grande, alia donde vivia . . .” The voices whooped. The Placita was filling with lavender light Iris Towers and the young man were nearer each other. The tinkle and strum of Tio Vivo was a faint shimmering sound. And somewhere there was monotone of a muffled drum.

“Perhaps because I could have been you. If the wrong person had got hold of me when I was a kid. If the Devil had tempted me, I might not have been any stronger than you were.”

Mac was going preachy again.

“You’re free of him now, Sailor. You’re still young; that part’s over. You mustn’t make a mistake now.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Sailor smiled.

“You don’t know,” Mac said. “It could happen. You don’t want to take a chance.”

He wasn’t going to kill the Sen. All he was going to do was get the dough that was due him. He didn’t have to kill the Sen; Mac and the State of Illinois would take care of that for him. He laughed. “You got me wrong, Mac. I wouldn’t cheat you out of the Sen. I’m not gunning for him.” He shoved his hand in his right-hand pocket. All of a sudden he wanted to explain to Mac. If Mac could have been him, he could have been Mac. They’d always been mixed up together, one on one side, one on the other, like one man split in half. Maybe it was explaining to himself.

“Listen Mac,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I never used a gun in my life except when I had to, to protect myself.” Except once. And that hadn’t come off. It didn’t count. “Against guys you’d have shot it out with yourself. I never killed anyone. It’s the mugs that handle that line.” He was too good for mug stuff. He was uptown, a confidential secretary. Mac ought to know that.

Mac still didn’t trust him. “How do you know what you’ll do with gun in your pocket? Sometimes the wrong person gets in the way. A gun’s a bad thing to have handy, Sailor. I don’t like guns. I haven’t packed one since I quit pounding pavements.”

That was all right for Mac. Guns didn’t worry Sailor. He spoke with confidence. “This is for protection, that’s all.”

Mac said, “I can give you better protection. If you’ll tell me about that night, I’ll see you’re protected.”

But Mac couldn’t give him five grand, even one grand. Mac didn’t have it. Mac was a good enough guy for a cop but he wasn’t smart about money. He was an honest copper. He’d never be swanking it in Mexico City dressed up in a white Palm Beach suit, ordering champagne cocktails for a girl like Iris Towers. He wasn’t that smart.

And Mac wasn’t going to fix it up for Sailor to see the Sen. He was on his own about that. The lavender light was deepening. “I got a date,” he recalled suddenly.

Mac was tensed, ready to stick with him.

He laughed. “Not with the Sen. With a friend of mine. For beer.”

Mac relaxed. “Think it over, Sailor. I’ll be right here.”

“Okay.” He’d already got it thought over. He was seeing the Sen if he had to go to Iris Towers to work it. McIntyre, no one, could stop him.

4

Twilight was hung with early stars and the flowered lights. Sailor cut across to the whirl of Tio Vivo. He was late. He peered over the fence palings. Ignacio was turning the crank. Old Onofre fiddled. Neither one had the heart of Pancho; Tio Vivo was spiritless and the music was tin. Sailor shouted over the hubbub of Fiesta, “Where’s Pancho? Hey, where’s Pancho?”

Ignacio heard him. He shrugged, “Quien sabe?”

Well, he could catch up with Pancho later. He walked away but before he reached the curb he bumped square into the big fellow. There was a smear of chile on the dirty chin, the smell of garlic would knock you down.

Pancho beamed, “Ah there, Sailor? Where you been?” His hands patted Sailor’s shoulders tenderly.

“I got held up. Business,” Sailor said. “Listen, we’ll have that tragito a little later.” He stepped out of the embrace and his hand pulled a bill from his pocket. It was a ten. It didn’t matter; he’d be fixed up in a little while now. “Tequila, how about it?”

Pancho’s brown eyes took a happy squint at the bill. “Hokay,” he said.

A farewell party with his good angel, Pancho. Some angel. A dirty old spic who cranked a merry-go-round. “Hokay,” Sailor echoed.

He felt good swinging out of the Plaza, stepping over the curb, into the street. Not paying any attention to the villagers. They weren’t so bad; they didn’t have much fun. No wonder this tinsel Fiesta looked good to them. Nobody could have much fun living in this one-horse town. He’d be out tomorrow. It wouldn’t be Chicago but Mexico City would be even better. Sure it would; no more dirt and cold and sweat; no more jumping when the Sen lifted his little finger. Like Mac said, he’d be starting a new life. He could have it any way he wanted it. He was going to have it good with the Sen’s stake.

He returned to the hotel. He tried the Sen’s room first. No luck there. The old bitch with the yellow-gray hair was at the desk. He asked her polite, “Will you give me the number of Senator Douglass’ room?” She gave it to him like it hurt her.

“He isn’t in that room now,” Sailor explained. “I just called.”

She was snippy, “Well, I don’t know where he is.”

Somebody ought to push her nose into her face. She ought to learn some manners from the spies. From the Indians. She probably came from some small town in Kansas, so small she thought this was a metropolis. Thought this hotel was the Palmer House.

“Give me Iris Towers’ room,” he demanded.

She gave it to him with another dirty look. He’d come back here someday and have the biggest suite in the place and he’d get her fired. He rang the room.

A man’s voice answered. “Hello.”

It wasn’t the Sen. It was a young voice. A little drunk. Sailor said, “I’m trying to reach Senator Douglass. Could you tell me where I could find him?” He talked like he was a rich playboy himself. Casual and a little bored.

“I’m sorry,” the fellow said. “I don’t know where he is.”

Sailor caught him before he hung up. “May I speak to Miss Towers, please?”

The fellow was reluctant. He said, “Well—” And then she was on the phone. Her voice was husky and far away. Sort of breathless. Like she’d been interrupted.

Sailor said, “Do you know where I could reach Senator Douglass?”

“No, I’m sorry. Who is calling?”

He gave a phoney name. The Sen was hiding out in her room. He knew that as he turned away from the phone. She wouldn’t have taken a drunk to her room if it was her room. She wasn’t that kind. She and the Sen had traded rooms. But he was stalled again. He couldn’t have his talk with the Sen with Iris Towers present.

She wouldn’t stay there all evening nursing the Sen. She wasn’t in love with the Sen. He’d hypnotized her some way, like he’d hypnotized others. But you didn’t stay that way. You caught on after a while. You found out the Sen was cold as steel, you found out he was using you. Even a lug like Sailor caught on after a while. She’d be going to dress pretty soon. To dress for dinner and the big Baile. Going with a young fellow. Because the Sen was sick. All Sailor had to do was wait. Wait till she and the young fellow came downstairs. Then he’d go upstairs. Easy as that.

He strolled out of the crowd, to the back portal. There wasn’t a place to sit down. The Mexican orchestra in their satins and velvets were playing the dressed-up crowd into the New Mexican room. A crimson velvet rope held off the crowd, like it was the Pump Room. If it was the Pump Room Sailor could go up to the rope and there’d be a reservation. He was one of the Sen’s fellows.

The patio outside was filled too. The fountain splashed and the swings creaked lazily. The bar boys’ white coats were luminous under the blue floodlight, the geraniums were dark and scented. Laughter spilled over the fountain, the laughter of those who were young and protected by the best families and beautiful homes with green lawns, who were born right. Who didn’t have business here, nothing to do but dance out the Fiesta.

He stood there leaning against the door between the patio and the portal. He wasn’t surprised that Mac joined him.

Mac said, “How about dinner?”

”Too early.”

“I have a table in the dining room,” Mac said. He went on along. But he left hunger behind him.

Sailor didn’t have to stand here and wait. He could take an hour off to eat. Kill time, eat and sleep. Get off his feet. No other way to get off them during Fiesta. It would take her that long to get dressed. The New Mexican room had a better smell than a greasy joint. He could get away from Mac easy enough later.

He didn’t think about it any more. He followed the way Mac had gone. It wasn’t the New Mexican room; it was the main dining room. Another rope, another crowd, but he edged through it. “Mr. McIntyre’s table.”

He hoped Mac had done something about letting the tall girl on the door know a friend might be along. Mac had. He looked up amused when she brought Sailor to the table.

“Not too early now?”

Sailor took it. “Time sure passes quick during Fiesta.” Just as if time hadn’t been dragging her heels these days.

Mac held the menu. “Have a cocktail? Forgot, you don’t drink.” He caught the eye of a nice looking Spanish-American fellow in a dark business suit. “Could I get a martini?”

“I think so.” The fellow smiled. He didn’t have any accent. “And you, sir?”

Sailor nodded. “I’ll celebrate with you, Mac. Make it two.” The fellow made him feel at home. Two city-looking fellows in a roomful of gaudy costumes. Even the waitresses in costume. The fellow was polite too, not like the old hag at the desk. She could use a dose of Spanish blood.

“Going to the Baile?” Sailor asked Mac.

“I don’t think so. Are you?”

Mac would keep close guard on the Sen tonight. Sailor smiled inside. It wouldn’t be close enough. Mac didn’t know what room the Sen was in.

“I might,” Sailor told him. Just as if he had a girl somewhere that he was going to take care of. A lovely silver girl, not an Indian kid, or a skinny little slut with frizzy hair, or a slattern with sultry eyes and a dirty neck.

The nice looking Spanish-American in the business suit was directing a dumb kid in shapeless whites to their table. The kid had an Indian face. He handled the martini tray as if he were certain he was going to spill it. But he made it, set the cocktails down. Just slopping them a little.

Mac lifted his glass. “Viva las Fiestas!”

“Viva las Fiestas,” Sailor echoed.

The martini was cold and dry and right. When he got to Mexico City he’d start having a cocktail before dinner. It gave you a feeling of luxury to be sipping a cocktail in a gay dining room. He’d laid off liquor long enough for the Sen’s business.

He could do as he damn pleased from now on. He’d be his own boss tomorrow. Mariana.

He said, “They got you doing it, too.”

“Doing what?” Mac was writing the order.

“Talking Spanish. Viva las Fiestas. Mariana. Mi amigo. Who’d have thought we’d ever be talking Spanish together?”

Mac handed the order blank to the small dark girl. Her skirts rustled away, “Funny world,” Mac said.

Sailor kept on talking. He didn’t want Mac to get back to the case. And he didn’t want Mac to start preaching. He wanted to enjoy this hour.

“Yeah, it’s funny. When I got in here I thought they were all just a bunch of dirty spies. I didn’t have any use for any of them. But you take Pancho now.”

“Who’s Pancho?”

“The guy that runs Tio Vivo.” He thought Mac knew about Pancho. Then he saw that Mac did, only he didn’t know him by that name. “I call him Pancho. Pancho Villa. He’s got a long Spanish name. Don ]osé de something or other. Says he’s a descendant of a conquistador way back when Fiesta got started. He looks more like Pancho Villa to me.”

Mac smiled, “He does.”

“Well, you take Pancho. He’s dirty all right. I bet he doesn’t take a bath once a year. Probably never owned a tooth brush in his life. But he’s muy macho. He’d do anything for you if you’re his amigo—” He broke off. “There I go again thinking Spanish.” He took another sip. “Not because he wants something out of you but because he wants to do something for you. That’s the kind of guy Pancho is.”

Mac nodded.

“Maybe they’re not all kind of simple that way. But they don’t shove you around. They give you a smile. Even if you don’t talk their language they don’t shove you around. The way we shove them around when they come up to our town.”

“I know,” Mac said. “I’ve thought sort of along that line myself. We’re the strangers and they don’t treat us as strangers. They’re tolerant. Only they’re more than tolerant. Like you say, they’re friendly. They give you a smile not scorn.”

Sailor was thinking of Pancho. And he was talking too much, it could be the martini. “They’re poor. It isn’t good to be poor,” Sailor quoted Pancho. “But if you have to be, it’s better to be out in this country, I guess. Where nothing matters much.”

He was somewhat startled at hearing the words come out of his mouth. If he had to stay here, this alien land would get him, just like it got everyone. He’d be a mañana man himself; he wouldn’t have any more ambition than Pancho. He’d start believing like Pancho, ambition and pride got you nothing, only to be conquered by two-bit-fifty-cent gringos. Better to forget grandeur and glory, to sing and dance and work a little, un tragito on Saturday nights, go to Mass on Sunday mornings. Better to be happy in your little life than to be important. You could hold on to your pride because it was all you had left; you wouldn’t know it was only a word you’d learned long ago.

This was what the Indians had done to the intruder, this was how they would diminish him to non-existence. The Indians and the land were one, strong, changeless, unconquerable.

The frozen terror he had known as a kid before a piece of sculpture was a chill in him now. For that inanimate hunk of woman had known then that his world, squalid and miserable as it was, was not the rock he thought it was. She had known the rock would disintegrate, that in time there’d be the Sen, and the Sen would run out on him and he’d be driven into this alien land. She hadn’t warned, she hadn’t pitied or gloated; she’d known. He out of all the kids in the Art Museum that day would be trapped in a land where she knew he did not exist.

He was getting screwy. Why did he keep thinking trap? Why had he thought trap ever since he came here? A piece of land couldn’t trap a man. Even if it spread on and on like eternity all over the earth until the mountains stopped it. He wasn’t trapped. He was getting out.

He didn’t know what McIntyre had been talking about. He heard only what the copper was saying now.

“It’s good for us to see how other people live. We get awfully narrow in our own little lives. We get thinking we’re so all-fired important that nobody else counts. We forget that everyone counts, that everybody on this earth counts just as much as we do.”

Sailor said, “Yeah. You’re right, Mac.” He grinned. “Just the same, good as these people are, I’m thankful I don’t have to live here. Give me Chicago, U.S.A.” He began to eat.

Mac said, “This is the U.S.A.”

“This wouldn’t be the U.S.A. in a million years. No matter what flag they fly.” Mac didn’t know the secret. “It’s a foreign land. We don’t belong here.” Mac didn’t have to worry about the secret. He was going back to Chicago. He hadn’t been exiled by the evil of a nasty old man. Sailor wasn’t going to be exiled either. He’d get out of here and set up business in Mexico but once he was a big shot with plenty of dough to oil the wheels, he would go back to Chicago. His hands were plenty clean. He’d keep them clean. He wasn’t going to use the gun on the Sen. He could collect without that.

This was the way a man ought to eat. Service. No hurry. Clean people around you. This was the way he was going to live from now on. Free. Not just on sufferance as a gentleman with the Sen paying the bills. Nobody was going to look down a nose at him any more.

They both lit up. Comfortable. Waiting for their ice cream. Lulled.

“How long has the senator known Iris Towers?”

Mac knew when you were lulled. He was never off his single track even when he pretended to be. He was trying to add up two and two; trying to make the murder, the getting rid of an old wife to make room for a young one. As if there were need for any more motive than a fifty-grand insurance policy. Mac didn’t need to add it up to five; four was good enough.

Sailor said, “I didn’t know he knew her. Until he took this trip.”

“She’s a pretty girl.”

She was lovely as a dream; she was the only lovely thing in this strange dream.

“The Sen tell you he was going to marry the Towers girl?”

Sailor snapped it short. “He didn’t tell me a thing. He never mentioned her to me.” He didn’t want to talk about this. Maybe Mac was trying to needle him. Maybe Mac knew how he felt about this girl being mixed up with the Sen. “It’s always been strictly business between me and the Sen.” He didn’t know how to get off the subject. “Ever since he hired me that day down at the pool hall. Remember the old pool hall, Mac? I was pretty good at pool till I moved up with the Sen.” He was moving away nicely. He grinned. “Then I learned bridge and gin.”