HONKY IN THE WOODPILE Page 6

  From the street-corner occupied by my hotel I could see, between a pair of tall modern apartment blocks, a glimpse of the steep green hillside beyond the city, dotted with shanties like pustules. Up there people could live for a week on the cost of that tour. Could, because they had to.

  I balled up the leaflets and threw them at a trash-can. I missed.

  Then, just as I was on the point of entering the hotel, a black Lincoln purred up and halted alongside its steps. A man emerged from the back whom I recognized because in addition to the description I’d been given I’d spotted several photos of him as I wandered around the city, mostly in record-store windows but also outside at least one night-club. He was stocky, well-fed, well-dressed, about five-six or five-seven, averagely dark for a Brascosan, with a gold tooth punctuating his mouth left of center. His driver also jumped out, then leaned back into the car to retrieve a large guitar-case. Even before that detail was added, though, I’d been confirmed in my identification because across the street three pretty shop-girls had stopped dead and were staring at the guy with ooh’s and ah’s.

  I said loudly, “Señor Lorreo!”

  He swatted the air as though I were an annoying fly, and the driver glowered at me, making to relinquish the guitar-case and drive me away.

  “Señor, I am a journalist from London, here to write about tourism in Madrugada!”

  That caught his attention all right. I rammed my point home. “And, of course, no article about your country would be complete without mention of the artistry of Jesús Lorreo.”

  He put on a broad smile. “You flatter me,” he said, not contriving to appear especially modest. With a gesture he indicated that the driver should carry his guitar indoors. “Well, I shall be happy to spare you a few minutes, though I’m such a busy man. Come inside. This is where I live, as you doubtless know.”

  Correct. According to Fierro, in a penthouse occupying the entire top floor.

  “How fortunate!” I beamed. “It’s where I’m staying. I was just returning for lunch. May I invite you, perhaps?”

  Yes, I could. I wished I’d thought of stopping off at a drugstore to buy some amphetamines and keep myself awake. This might possibly be quite important; I didn’t imagine that Lorreo was an easy man to corner, so I’d have to exploit this chance to the utmost.

  During the drinks session which preceded the meal, then during the actual lunch, I matched Fierro’s description of the man to the reality. He was—to put it kindly—uneducated… but what else could you expect of someone who wasn’t born into a garzo family? However, he was shrewd, and he had cultivated the right sort of manner to appeal both to the typical Madrugadan audience and to foreigners who didn’t understand the patois he sang in but liked to laugh when the local people did as though they too had seen the point.

  As soon as we entered the dining-room, which was hot and clammy because the air-conditioning was on the blink, the visitors eating at the other tables began to whisper and nudge one another. Lorreo blossomed. Shortly, we were joined by Sarita Redón, whom he greeted affectionately, sat down at his side, and praised inordinately to me, calling her his right arm. Well, I believed that; he must have enjoyed skillful management and excellent advice to have been able to make his fortune in face of garzo resentment at a semi-literate peasant becoming rich. Señora Redón reproved him indulgently for his exaggerations, but it was clear she enjoyed basking in her lover’s reflected glory.

  I plied them both with endless compliments, making frequent notes on a pocket pad I’d brought with me, and by the end of the meal Lorreo had taken such a liking to me—and incidentally drunk so much of the strong local beer, which I’d been avoiding for fear it might make me even sleepier—that he insisted on sending the head-waiter, Juan, for his guitar in order to give me an impromptu concert.

  That caused the other guests to rise from their chairs and drag them into a half-moon surrounding us. I could tell by the way Señora Redón sighed that she disapproved of his wasting his talent for free, but she didn’t try and argue him out of it.

  He flipped open the case and extracted his instrument, a handsome and expensive American Gibson, decorated by hand with various colorful symbols—an open eye, a hand, a sunburst, a mouth full of grinning teeth. I thought I caught a whiff of a peculiar scent while the case was open, but I couldn’t be sure. Something strong and slightly acrid. But it didn’t mean anything to me.

  He checked the timing with a flourish and inquired if there was anything I particularly wanted to hear.

  “Yes,” I said, while the room sank to silence except for the occasional clatter of cutlery and dishes in the kitchen next door. “Don’t you sing some of the songs of your famous artist and poet, Rafé Ponza? I’d like to hear one of those.”

  There was a dead pause, during which Señora Redón stared at me with bright black eyes. But the nearest of the other guests, who were also foreigners like myself, had overheard, and since they recognized Rafé’s name there was a clamor of agreement: “Oh, yes! Yes, please!”

  “Well—uh…” Lorreo said in a worried tone, and asked a mute question of his mistress. That figured. Singing Rafé’s songs wasn’t encouraged any more.

  “What about La Calabaza?” she said eventually.

  Lorreo’s brow cleared and he gave a chuckle. “Yes, perfect! La Calabaza!” Unexpectedly, he crossed himself, then strummed a four-bar introduction and launched into a catchy rhythmic melody in a distinctly African mode.

  I knew nothing about the song, except that while calabaza meant gourd it could also mean head, nut, boko, bonce. Moreover it was tough for me to follow the lyric. Madrugadan, according to what I’d read, consists partly of Spanish, partly of Catalan with a few isolated Basque idioms—because the islands were originally colonized by sailors from the north coast of Spain—and partly of a local argot which retains a good few words from African languages. It was a very long song, though, and I managed to get with it by degrees. When he concluded it on the tenth or twelfth verse to a rattle of applause I decided to see if I’d worked it out right. Since it had been written by Rafé I was sure it must involve a double meaning.

  “A difficult song for a foreigner,” I said, and both Lorreo and Señora Redón chuckled. “But if I got the drift, it was about this man whose wife kept trying to make the fruits on her gourd-vine paler, and spent all his money on the job, but because the fruit was whiter it was less ripe, so in the end it gave him indigestion?”

  It sounded like a parable directed against people who kept trying to “heighten the color”.

  “More or less—” Lorreo began off-handedly, and stopped almost in mid-word, staring over my shoulder. There was a sudden stamping and rushing of waiters and waterboys, and everyone including me looked around.

  In the doorway was a Sabatano: a man about five-ten, heavily built, wearing a pale grey suit and glasses with thick gilt frames above which a pair of Polaroid sun-lenses were flipped back like huge birthmarks on his brown forehead. There were two more behind him, but I paid them no special attention—just muscular young bodyguards doing their best to ape the boss’s manner.

  Señora Redón clambered to her feet, very shaky, and even Lorreo rose, though he did so with defiant slowness.

  “Ah—” she began, but the man’s eyes were on me. He ignored her.

  “You are Señor Curfew?” he said gruffly, as the rest of the guests moved back to their tables like frightened children, looking as though they weren’t sure why.

  I nodded. There wasn’t much point in doing anything else.

  “Ah, good. I heard you were here. Let me not interrupt you, though. I wanted only to make certain.”

  With a last lingering glance around the room he turned on his heel and marched out, his bodyguards falling in behind.

  Everybody in the dining-room stared at me as though I’d just been diagnosed a leper. Christ, wasn’t there any limit to the list of people who recognized me in this town?

  Well, if that many of them were g
oing to know me by sight, it was about time I evened the balance, tired or not.

  NINE

  Trade wasn’t exactly flourishing in the repository owned by Daniel Praxas when I dropped in at the end of the siesta. Still, that could hardly be typical. While not by any means the largest store fronting on the square outside the cake-icing-colored Cathedral of St Luke, it was among the lushest. The plate-glass door opened on what looked like real silver hinges; inside, one walked on purple carpet towards a mahogany counter under whose glass top reposed a fine hand-embroidered altar-cloth. And a discreet plaque beside the door informed the world that by appointment to the Archbishop of Madrugada this company supplied vestments, furnishings and devotional necessities to the adjacent cathedral.

  It was occupied, when I entered, by two girls: one serving, soberly clad in a dark frock high at the neck and low on the calf, and one customer, who looked incredibly out of place. She was dressed in a pathetic sketch for finery—a red satin blouse cut low on a bosom that was barely there, a yellow skirt high on legs not too much thicker than a skeleton’s, a patterned kerchief tied around her tangled hair. There was some sort of argument in progress—about prices, most likely, because she was clutching a handful of soiled and torn banknotes as though terrified they might melt into thin air, and waving them vigorously under the clerk’s nose.

  On realizing that someone else had entered, she turned to favor me with a murderous glare. If she hadn’t been wearing such a hideous expression, I saw she might have been pretty, far prettier than the girl behind the counter.

  The latter, obviously glad to be interrupted, said something to her in the local patois which sounded distinctly devoid of Christian tolerance, and tried to come over and attend to me. The other girl blocked her way.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I called. “I’ll be quite happy to browse around for a while. I’m in no hurry.”

  So, with a sigh, the clerk returned to her post, but on the way she rapped at a door in the back wall, and a voice answered: “Just a moment!”

  A man’s voice. Praxas’s? I hoped so; it was to get a sight of him that I’d come here.

  I went on looking around the merchandise on show. There were votive candles, pictures of the Madonna—who was, I noticed, if not quite white at least much paler than any Madrugadan I’d yet seen—rosaries cut from a fine native wood mottled brown, yellow and near-green, and the rest of the truck one generally finds in a place of that sort. One whole wall was taken up with a display of devotional books and pamphlets, mostly published in Spain.

  I’d just decided that if I had to make a purchase to justify my call, I’d settle for a pack of local incense—I could at least give that to someone as a present—when the door behind the counter opened and a man appeared. Yes, it was Praxas all right. Fierro had described him as accurately as the rest: under forty but looking older, thin, with a high forehead, pince-nez, slightly protuberant eyes, wearing a dark suit that managed to hint at being clerical.

  He also had on a professional smile. But that vanished the moment he spotted the girl customer.

  “You again!” he barked. “Get out of here, you bitch! You’re not going to insult the Church by using my holy objects for your devilish badoan!”

  He rushed around the counter and balled his fist as though to hit her. I coughed loudly, and for the first time he realized someone else was in the shop. Horribly embarrassed, he dropped his arm.

  “Well—well, go to your priest and confess your sin!” he ordered. “And don’t come here again, or I’ll call the police!”

  Tucking her money down the front of her blouse, the girl scoffed, “Don’t worry about that! Would anyone come back where you get such a welcome?”

  She added, glancing at me, “Thank you for being here, señor. But for you he would have beaten me and given me to the police, lying that I am a thief.”

  And she marched out, head high.

  “Apologies, señor,” Praxas muttered. “But we have had trouble with that girl before. She isn’t devout! She’s probably looking for ingredients to put in a love-charm and win back some man who’s abandoned her. I believe she’d steal the very Host from the cathedral if she had the chance!”

  I cluck-clucked appropriately.

  “Now, how can I help you?” Praxas went on, having regained what I judged to be his normal suavity.

  I trotted out my ready-prepared excuse. “I’ve seen some of the paintings of your famous artist Rafé Ponza, and I’m told he draws a lot of his symbols from Madrugadan religious tradition. I was wondering whether you had any unusual items, something you wouldn’t find anywhere but here.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t stock that sort of thing,” Praxas answered stiffly. “This is a Catholic repository. I know the Archbishop has authorized the sale of certain—ah—additional devotional articles here, but I fear he is insufficiently acquainted with their pagan associations.”

  “I see,” I said. “In other words, if I want to pick up the genuine stuff, I ought to go to—hell, what’s the word? Lord, you just used it yourself… Oh, yes! To a badoan priest, right? Do you happen to know a good one near here?”

  The girl behind the counter almost collapsed with laughter—she had to stifle it with the palm of her hand. Praxas didn’t react quite so tolerantly. He glared at me for a long moment, then stormed back towards the door of his office.

  “El señor no es hombre serio!” he threw over his shoulder. “You are not a man of good character!”

  True enough, I guess.

  Outside again, I paused to think for a moment. So far I’d managed to inspect three of Fierro’s suspects, more or less surreptitiously… if you can call being challenged in a crowded hotel dining-room surreptitious. It would be easy, too, to get a sight of Manuel García at this bar of his; according to Fierro he was affable and often to be found mingling with his customers. Not quite so simple would be the two remaining—Adelita Fal and Pedro Latanores. My imagination refused for the moment to produce a reasonable excuse for calling on a lawyer. On the other hand, I could approach Señorita Fal on all sorts of specious grounds. I could, for example, invent a friend in London who had asked me to investigate the market here for low-budget art-films, “bosomy B’s”. Yes, that would allow me to—

  “Ah, Señor Curfew,” a voice called as a white Cadillac drew up at the side of the square, and a man’s face peered at me from the rear window.

  The Sabatano who had invaded the Valencia’s dining-room.

  I just stood there while he got out, along with one of his bodyguards; the other remained at the wheel. With the end of the siesta the square had become moderately crowded with people—perhaps eighty to a hundred. Nonetheless I fully expected to be hauled off to jail, worked over, and then deported. It was only gradually that I realized he was extending me a cordial hand.

  Numb, confused, I shook with him.

  “Señor, I present myself!” he exclaimed, beaming. “José Moril! It is correct that you are a journalist, here to write about Madrugadan tourism?”

  “Yes—yes, perfectly correct.”

  “Then we should apologize! The fault must be at our embassy in London.” He was now rubbing his hands together as though eager to scrub the skin from the palms. “We are most anxious to increase our tourism from your country, and everyone who might help us promote that is entitled to the treatment I think is called in English ‘on the red carpet,’ yes?”

  Memo to self: give up the travel-writer cover. Nowadays tourism is such a major industry you’re liable to fall over your own feet.

  With some sense of strain I adjusted to the fact that he had not been set on me because Dolly had reported my presence to Gilbert, and did my best to match his grin.

  “Señor Moril, you understand it’s the intention of my editor to have me describe the reactions of an ordinary visitor to Madrugada. So I booked into a hotel like any ordinary tourist, and now I’m wandering around Brascoso like any ordinary tourist, and—”

  “Ah, your hot
el!” he said, as though suddenly reminded, and looked sorrowful. “I must have appeared unmannerly when I intruded there a few hours ago. But it was not in my mind to distract you from interviewing our famous singer, merely to confirm that you had safely arrived. To come back to your point, though: consider, señor, these two contrary arguments. First, a visitor who comes to Madrugada from England is not an ordinary tourist, because one must admit it costs money to fly such a long way. So we are already speaking of the most wealthy travelers, no? And, second, we have such a varied range of possibilities to offer, no ordinary tourist could see them all during a short stay. But someone who comes to write about the country must of course be shown the full range. Am I not right?”

  “I guess so,” I conceded. The effects of my night on the plane, during which I’d dozed for maybe as much as two and a half hours, were really catching up with me now, and my mind was sluggish.

  “Well, then!” Moril crowed. “You must permit us to give you a guided tour.”

  “That would be wonderful,” I lied, working out fuzzily how long I had to waste. “Not today, I’m afraid, because—”

  “Oh, you must be tired!” he interrupted soothingly. “For today it suffices to enjoy the sunshine, the water, the beautiful girls on the beach… but tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow would be excellent.”

  Provided it was only tomorrow. If all went well, Fierro’s message from Havana would have arrived by the evening, and I’d be due to get down to serious business.