HONKY IN THE WOODPILE Page 14

  “Here for a purpose?” I inquired.

  “I doubt it. Just thirsty.”

  “You agree with me they’ll leave it until tonight?”

  “If they can. If you don’t do anything so utterly outrageous they’re compelled to act. But no later than tonight.”

  “Suits me,” I said, and told the driver where to head for next.

  Manuel García had given me the first of my many clues when he said that Sabatanos no longer felt entitled to take over a bar and order free drinks for their friends under threat of arson or smashing the place up. That was an index of the public’s changing attitude towards them.

  Until as recently as the early fifties, according to what I’d learned from Fierro, Diego and the many books and articles I’d read, ninety-odd per cent of Madrugadans had literally no conception of the world outside their own cluster of islands unless some member of their immediate circle had made a trip abroad. Many of them had never even seen Brascoso. There was no television; there had been local radio since the thirties, but half the available programs were sponsored items, pre-packaged in Latin America or the States, which the big international corporations paid to have put on the air, and the other half consisted of propaganda, slanted news, and Catholic preaching.

  For people with such limited horizons the height of ambition was to have a daughter marry into a Sabatano family, or see a son adopted into what might be called “the clan”. The garzos, of course, held themselves absolutely aloof. Such adoptions didn’t happen often, but when they did the family of the lucky person was assured of the cream of everything available for the foreseeable future, plus cachet, prestige and as much security as could be found anywhere in Madrugada.

  Obviously there were other avenues of advancement. Even on the most poverty-stricken of the out-islands, a handful of really enterprising guys had made careers in trade, by securing the monopoly of new and valuable commodities like detergents and nylon fishing-nets, to cite a couple of examples Fierro had given me. But, as you might expect, people like that were among the best publicity for the Porfiroso government, and the worst obstacles to the liberation movement. Like the old “court Jews” of Eastern Europe, having secured their own privileges, they were eager to prevent anyone else catching up with them.

  In any case, success of that degree couldn’t be attained without garzo patronage, or to a lesser extent the patronage of the big companies—chiefly American—which had set up local factories to exploit the cheap labor here. A mere twelve years ago, Fierro had assured me, some firms were paying a dollar to a dollar twenty-five for a ten-hour day. Diego had said that the spending power of the personnel at the naval base, plus the extravagance of the tourists, had done a little to improve the situation, but some of the foreign-owned hotels and casinos were still hiring youngsters at fifty or sixty dollars a month, then firing them when they had been employed long enough to rate a raise and replacing them with newcomers. There was no shortage of those; up the hill fifty dollars was enough to support a whole family, especially if it was paid in US currency and doled out little by little so that the diminishing exchange rate kept pace with the galloping inflation.

  “But lately they are learning a lot of things they used not even to suspect,” Diego had told me in the small hours of this morning. “It takes time for the lesson to sink in, but every crime—the burning of Fierro’s clinic, the murder of Carlos Deniz—each is another straw on the pile. Five years ago, even one year ago, there was not enough resentment among the people to liberate the country. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, these islands will catch fire.”

  Today, if I had anything to do with it.

  Glancing back at the Sabatanos as the taxi moved away. I said to Diego, “You know, it really annoyed me to find I’d been put in that slave-cell.”

  “Yes, Max, I noticed,” he said with a wry grin. I’d persuaded him to stop calling me “señor” by about one a.m.

  “Did you feel the same?”

  “Me? I was never in those cells. I know of nobody else who came out without having been starved and beaten to the point where he could hardly think for himself any more. Or herself. That’s why I’m going along with your scheme, which at the top of my head I think is absurd. A man who can get away from the Sabatanos must bear a charmed life. And, as you’ve already gathered, we Madrugadans are brought up to be superstitious.”

  He laughed and clapped me on the arm.

  “Count yourself lucky, my friend! Anyone less credulous would have told you to go to hell!”

  Well… yes. Except that as the day wore on, it looked more and more as though my unfounded conclusion about the identity of the blagro must be correct, in which case my plan was ticking along like a well-made alarm-clock, set to go off with a loud noise when I wanted it to.

  My strategy was simple: to do the most provocative things I could think of in the places where the Sabatanos could not descend on me without attracting unfavorable attention. I’d had a bad moment when Diego had pointed out the two of them drinking coke, but they hadn’t noticed me, and I was fairly sure we weren’t being followed. I began to let myself believe that Moril might well not have told even his colleagues about my escape, for fear either of ridicule or of losing majiz’ and with it his status in the Sabatano hierarchy.

  Of course, if I were fool enough to let myself be trapped in a dark corner, I’d be dead. So I went for the brightest lights, the most crowded places with the highest proportion of foreign visitors, and Diego stuck by my side like a three-dimensional shadow. We even went to the can together.

  As we moved around, we talked: first of all to finalize details for my inevitable departure underground, then when that was sorted out progressing to something about which he knew a great deal more than I did—badoan. I was currently extremely interested in that subject, and I’d struck lucky in Diego. He hadn’t merely been joking when he said he’d been raised superstitious; most of his family were believers, and he even had a cousin who’d nearly become a zacheo, the male counterpart of my friend at Cayachupo.

  At intervals I took time out to try and place a crucial phone-call to a number I’d obtained from Latanores. The first couple of times there was no reply, but the third time it went through, and my last faint doubts concerning the guy vanished when he turned out not to have been lying about that number. I’d already ascertained it wasn’t listed in the Brascoso directory.

  Diego was worried in case the line were tapped. I told him it probably was, but definitely not by the Sabatanos.

  We drank in the bars of the most luxurious hotels, where discreet notices announced ten per cent reduction for payment in US currency. As a bonus because I was spending some of the small bills from Rafé’s hoard they also ignored the way Diego was dressed—casually, so to speak, compared with the other clients. We strolled on some of the most exclusive beaches, too, and we ate both lunch and dinner in restaurants favored by wealthy local businessmen, where as many customers spoke American English as Spanish. I wrote Criné! on the walls of all the men’s rooms I used, knowing that some poor devil with a bucket would have to wash it off before returning to his hillside slum, but hoping he might mention that he’d seen the slogan, and where.

  In the restaurant where we went for dinner I had a tricky encounter. That American with the bandaged hand who’d been on the launch when Moril took me to Aragon was in the bar with a couple of friends and recognized me. He invited me and Diego to have a drink on him, introduced himself as Barrie Bryan, and explained that though he couldn’t spend his time fishing as he’d intended he didn’t want to waste the cost of his trip, so he’d been sounding out people from other American corporations established here to see if it would be worth his own firm setting up a Madrugadan branch. Apparently he’d been at this non-stop since our former meeting, when as I well recalled he’d plied Moril with questions and done me an inadvertent favor.

  Conveniently, he and his pals seemed to be on New York time and had already eaten dinner although it wa
s not yet eight o’clock, so we had a handy excuse for keeping the conversation a short one. Into it I packed a deal of information designed to discourage him, chiefly concerning the protection rackets run by the Sabatanos… and to my surprise one of his companions, after asking how I knew all this and being told I was a journalist, agreed with me in terms nearly as strong as those Fierro had used when describing the situation in the first place. For the wrong reasons, of course; what worried him was that so long as they were making these immense kick-backs the workers couldn’t buy the goods manufactured in the States his company had hoped to create a market for down here.

  But he footnoted his own opinion by saying, “Frankly I don’t see a chance in hell of getting rid of those bloodsuckers.”

  Stick around, I thought. You might see it happen.

  Leaving behind a trail as wide and obvious as a superhighway, I wrote Criné! in beach-sand, on used paper napkins, on the backs of meal-checks and bar-bills, and dragged the name of Ponza into every possible conversation at the top of my voice—just before moving on somewhere else. That wasn’t hard, owing to Rafé’s reputation as an artist.

  At first I was cautious. Then, as the hours slipped by, I realized just how right I’d been to deduce that there weren’t enough Sabatanos to cope with a population of nearly six million. If they’d enlisted their rivals the police to help out, that might have done them some good; in fact, however, it was clear they were too jealous or possibly ashamed to share the story of my escape with the fuzz, for more than once during the day Diego and I found ourselves being saluted by a cop because we walked with a Sabatano swagger!

  Still, they couldn’t be enjoying the novel experience of having somebody wander around Brascoso cocking snooks at them. By evening at latest a trap was going to slam shut.

  One way and another, it was the weirdest day of my life. I was… Well, I guess I was high. Higher than I’d ever been on any brand of grass or hash. And if one existed which could be relied on to generate this mix of emotions—well, then, brother, I would go a long way to avoid it!

  To start with, there was hate involved. Being put in a slave-cell had reached so deep into my subconscious I felt I’d been stabbed in the brain. On top of that came simple self-preservation. My urge in that direction is well developed. If it weren’t I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I have; I’m in a profession where there’s an awful lot of wastage.

  But on top of that again…

  Something absolutely brand-new in my experience, the factor above all that was making me light-headed, outright foolhardy, in a way I’d never normally have tolerated.

  I was on the run from black men.

  Everywhere else I’d ever been, I’d been able to abide by a simple broad principle. A guy with the same color skin as mine—more or less—might sell me out, but he wouldn’t automatically hate me. Correspondingly a guy with light skin might help me, but he was infinitely more likely to be my enemy.

  In this country, though, it was a black man who’d locked me up, because another black man had blown my cover, and if I got shot it would be a black man who pulled the trigger on orders from another black man.

  It wasn’t the easiest notion I’d ever tried to adjust to.

  NINETEEN

  Now for the really dicey bit…

  At about nine-thirty, on schedule, we headed cautiously back to the hotel, passing on the way a night-club outside which a large crowd of Brascosans were chanting and dancing, overflowing from the sidewalk into the roadway despite the best efforts of a bunch of policemen. Big posters announced that this was where Lorreo was performing tonight.

  With Diego still at my side I paused across the road in shadow of a shop-awning which someone had neglected to reel in, and looked the scene over. Diego listened, which was more important. But the patois they were using was too thick for me.

  Almost all of them were young, say fifteen to twenty, and flashily well-dressed, the girls in cheap cotton or nylon dresses, the boys in frilled shirts and brightly colored pants.

  “Lorreo’s fans?” I said quietly.

  “Yes, of course. And they are making a complaint I have not heard before.”

  “A complaint? About this idol of theirs?”

  “Yes. Saying that he comes here to sing at the expensive night-club they can’t afford to enter, when he ought to be singing for the common people.”

  “How interesting,” I said, and we moved on.

  But, as we approached the street-corner where the Valencia stood, a figure rushed out of shadow and caught me by the arm. Diego cursed roundly in patois and seized him.

  “Hey!” I said. “Don’t hurt him. That’s one of the waiters from the Valencia.”

  “Yes, señor!” The guy almost crowed with relief at being recognized. “Señor, a matter of life and death! I have been here two hours instead of going home. It’s the Sabatanos!”

  “What about them?”

  “They came into the hotel, Don José and the two who are always with him, and two more I don’t know are watching the entrance from a car. They have Señora Redón prisoner in her office, and one of them is at the reception desk in place of the regular clerk—waiting for you!”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s nice to know exactly where to look.”

  He stared at me blankly. “Aren’t you—?” And had to gulp loudly. “Aren’t you going to run quickly and hide? That was what the señora said I should tell you to do.”

  I glanced at Diego. He curled his thick upper lip back to show his teeth, prominent as a beaver’s.

  Well, it’s always reassuring to find things falling patly into place.

  “Run?” I said. “Like hell we’re going to run. We’re going right in there to tell Moril what a son of a bitch he is.”

  The waiter gazed at me for a long moment. Suddenly he uttered a stifled cry and took to his heels.

  I couldn’t approve. On the other hand I couldn’t blame him, either.

  Diego knew the layout of the hotel intimately. Last night wasn’t the first time he’d lain low here. Sarita Redón didn’t enjoy having to hide wanted men, but apparently she had never refused anyone. Two or three of her staff, naturally, had to be in on the secret, particularly Juan, but while the remainder no doubt suspected what was going on there had never been a serious leak. Señora Redón was known as a generous and fair employer, and having a job with her was more of a long-term prospect than currying the temporary favor of the fickle Sabatanos.

  So there were ways to get into the hotel, and—with luck—out again.

  We took a roundabout route to avoid the front entrance. Having circled about three blocks, we headed back past the rear of the hotel, where I’d met Diego this morning. That approach also was being watched from a car by two men equipped with a walkie-talkie which I spotted in the light from a nearby store-window.

  So we headed for a third entrance, which was certain not to be guarded.

  “You must really have hurt their majiz’!” Diego murmured. “I never saw so many of them at one place and time since the day they burned Fierro’s clinic.”

  On the far side of the block there was another service court. One of the buildings sharing it, five stories high, belonged to an American clothing company, having two floors of offices and three of tailoring shops. It boasted that rarity in Madrugada, a fire-escape.

  No one paid any attention to us as we slipped into the dark courtyard, avoiding the inevitable cluster of overfull garbage-cans, and cautiously pulled down the bottom section of the escape. No one saw us climb to the top, and then keep going across the flat roof beyond.

  “This way!” Diego hissed, and led me back to the hotel on the upper level. With the aid of a pocket-knife he eased aside the catch of a skylight… and we dropped into Lorreo’s penthouse.

  It was in darkness, but a moonbeam followed us through the skylight, and I was able to make out a few details. Clearly Lorreo enjoyed luxury. I noticed in particular a fine wall-display of Madrugadan folk-art, includin
g masks similar to those I’d seen at the geraba. And there was an odd scent in the air which I recognized.

  I had no time now to make a thorough inspection, though. Diego was beckoning me, having checked that the exit was clear—not the elevator, naturally, but the emergency door to the service stairs. Guns ready, just in case, we hurried down them without being spotted, although we heard laughter and the chink of glasses as we passed the second floor and had to dodge behind a corner while a waiter went by with a bucket of ice, and a couple of minutes later we found ourselves in the corridor behind Sarita’s office connecting the bar, the dining-room and the kitchens. We had just turned towards the office when there was a sudden burst of noise as the door from the bar swung open and shut. A lot of people in there seemed to be having a lively time. A white-jacketed waiter appeared carrying a tray with glasses, soda, a bottle of Scotch, and a huge stainless-steel ice-bucket like the one we’d just seen being delivered upstairs.

  He stopped so abruptly he almost let the lot go crash, and Diego and I showed him our guns and put fingers to our lips. He got the idea all right, and stood there swallowing enormously, the whites showing clear around his eyes.

  “S-s-señor!” he whispered after a moment. “Don José! He is in Señora Redón’s office! This is for him!”

  “How many with him?” I asked softly.

  “One—one other man. The second is at the reception desk.”

  “Thanks, we were warned about him.” I caught Diego’s eye. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Probably.” He grinned and took the tray. “Off with your jacket, man! You or me, Max?”

  “It’ll have to be me. You could never button that jacket around you.”

  It was too small for me too, really, but luckily it was only too short, not too tight, and I was wearing dark pants that would pass at a glance for a waiter’s. When I’d done it up, I removed the lid of the ice-bucket and scooped out a generous handful of the contents. The waiter had a napkin over his arm; I laid it on the remaining ice and put my gun on top of that.