Black Alibi (6 page)

“Pedro, Pedro, you have smaller fingers—”

The incipient maleness of the boy rose to take the emergency in its stride. That was what men, big and small, were meant for: a sudden crisis like this, a flurry of violence. The rest was for women. “A stone—something to hit it back with— Gimme, I can get it! Get out of the way—”

There was a building brick lying there on the floor across the room, brought in for some forgotten purpose. He snatched it up, ran back with it. A tap, two taps, three; the unruly bar sprang back.

There had been silence for a minute past, ever since that last climactic scream and maniacal lunge, but only now did they have time to realize it. There was a stillness on the other side.

In the fraction of a second’s pause that followed, she saw the boy’s eyes swollen downward at the floor. A tongue of red was licking out at his bare foot from under the door. Just that in size and shape, the tip of a human tongue. But it was in flux, fluid. Right as their eyes beheld it it was already widening, lengthening, glittering with its own volatility.

He had snatched the door inward upon them before the mother’s slowly gathering scream had time to leave her. He jumped agilely back as though something had bitten him.

It was as though clots of red mud had been pelted at the outside of the door, until, adhering, they formed a sort of spattered mound up against it. There were rags mixed in with it, and snarls of hair, and even tiny crumbs of coral, broken off a string.

The mass sidled, disintegrated all over the threshold.

Manning saw her in the Morgue, the
Caja de los Cadaveres
as it was familiarly called by those who had to do with it, the next day, before her people had claimed her. He went there with one of the men from the police department, an inspector named Robles, who felt bound to accommodate him because Manning had once secured him a couple of passes to one of Kiki Walker’s shows.

“If you insist on looking, my friend—” this Robles warned him. “I advise you not to, unless you have exceptionally strong nerves. You are liable to see it in your sleep for weeks to come. The authorities should really have her cremated, if her own people can’t afford it. Open this one,” he said to the attendant. He stood aside, to give the other an unhampered view. “Formidable, isn’t it?”

The American looked without flinching. His face whitened a little, that was all. He nodded, spellbound.

“That’s enough,” Robles said to the attendant. He turned to Manning, evidently with the idea of reading him a little lecture. “So you see what your foolish stunt has led to. It has cost a human life. And this may not be the last, before it is over.
That
thing has not been caught yet.”

Manning didn’t answer. He was staring down at the cement floor. But in a way that suggested puzzlement of some sort, rather than contrition.

“Juridically, of course, you are not responsible,” Robles went on. “That is to say, you did not foresee this, did not mean it to happen, cannot be punished personally for it. But morally you are to blame for it. It is through you alone that this girl lost her life. That is why I so readily acceded to your request and brought you down here with me to let you see her for yourself. It may teach you a lesson.”

“It wasn’t remorse that made me ask to come here,” Manning said quietly. “Nor morbid curiosity either. You’ve got me wrong. It’s—well I’ve had a troubled feeling that I can’t seem to shake off ever since I first heard of it.”

“You should have,” said Robles severely.

“No, you still don’t get me.” He ran one hand baffledly up through his hair. “Are you sure
that thing
, as you call it, did this?”

Robles looked at him first in astonishment, then almost in scorn. “What are you trying to suggest, it didn’t? Well, you’ve just seen with your own eyes. What else but the claws of such a monster could leave such ravages? She was in ribbons. No, there is no doubt in our minds on that score, how can there be? I could take you over to our laboratory, let you talk to some of the men there. Small bits of fuzz, loosened hairs from its coat, were found upon her body. They are in our possession right now. What more do you ask?”

“Nothing,” admitted Manning, looking down. “Nothing more. But then why have I got this dissatisfied feeling—?” He didn’t finish it. “Was she—did it make any attempt to—?” he faltered presently.

Robles finished it for him without a qualm, with the matterof-factness of the professional investigator. “Was she eaten, is that what you are driving at? No. I don’t know whether they do or not, I don’t know enough about them. I must ask the curator of the zoo. In any case, there is sufficient reason for its having done so this time. It occurred outside her very door, in full hearing of the mother and brother. They came rushing out, and the monster was undoubtedly frightened away before it had time to—accomplish its full purpose. If, as I said, they do that.”

“Well, was it
seen?
” Manning persisted discontentedly. “That’s what I want to know. If you say this happened right in front of her own door, and there are other houses around there, was there anyone who actually saw it? There should have been, if she screamed.”

“Oh, unless someone saw it, it doesn’t exist, is that it? That’s a very risky theory in police work, don’t you think? The houses around there are of the poor, you know the kind. One-or two-room hovels, mostly without windows, simply with a single entrance at the front. By the time they began peering timidly forth up and down the -lane, it was over. Some claim they
were
just in time to glimpse some black form slinking around the turn at the bottom of the alley. They may have, they may not have. What difference does it make?”

“It isn’t that I really doubt the jaguar attacked her,” Manning said hesitantly. “I have no theories about this. I’m not a detective at all, just a press agent out of a job. Only-only—I just have that peculiar feeling I spoke of, that there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

“More? What more could there be?” countered Robles. “What more should there be?”

Manning tugged perplexedly at the skin on the back of his neck. “I don’t know myself. I can’t explain. But, tell the truth, doesn’t it strike you as strange, almost incredible, that a wild thing, a jungle animal the size and conspicuousness of this jaguar, should remain at large, undetected and
absolutely unseen
by the human eye, in a city this large, and for this length of time? This isn’t a hill village, with the jungles near by. This is the third largest city of South America. It has not left it and then come back again, obviously. It has been here the whole time. Where? How?”

Robles pursed his lips in conditional agreement, nodded. “It’s unprecedented, it’s unbelievable, but—it has undeniably happened, hasn’t it? The animal has not been recaptured alive, its body has not been found; therefore, it’s still at large. That’s logical enough, isn’t it, Manning my friend?”

“But where does it keep itself, where does it hide in the daytime, where has it found refuge? This place is built all of stone, remember. Asphalt, cobblestones, cement sidewalks, stone houses. There are no trees, except out in the Bosque and in a few small plazas and parks. Where can it go? Thousands of people swarming about it all day long. It was seen to go into the Callejón de las Sombras at six o’clock one evening—with a crowd almost at its heels. Presto! it disappears. Not another glimpse of it from then on. It didn’t get out at the other end. The police and fire departments searched every house along that alley from top to bottom. No sign of it. Now this young girl is found torn to pieces all the way over in the Barranca working quarter, half the city away. How did it get over there unseen?”

All Robles could give him on this was, “It’s true, it’s an amazing thing. Who can say what happened? Perhaps it squeezed itself down into a sewer and traversed one of the big drainpipes that run under the city. The water in most of them would not be deep enough to drown it. And then again there is that so ridiculous suggestion some onlooker was heard to make, that night it disappeared; which may not be so ridiculous as it sounds, after all. That it took refuge in the back of some van or merchandise truck standing in there along the Callejón, was driven unsuspectingly away by the driver, and bolted out again undetected at the next stop the vehicle made.”

“Augh!” Manning swung his arm at him impatiently. “Now I’ll tell one. Here’s something else: what has it lived on during these past days and nights? Where has it gotten its food—and, above all, its water?”

“How do the less ferocious animals, stray dogs and cats, for instance, get theirs? From refuse heaps, from puddles, from the river margin.”

“Yes, but they’re seen.”

“How do we know it
hasn’t
been seen, more than once, in the distance or in the dark, and mistaken for some large black dog? There are other ways possible for it to keep itself alive, too, which we need not dwell on. These same homeless dogs and cats, lizards clambering up and down cracked walls, rats from the sewers—”

Manning turned his head away involuntarily for a moment. Then he looked back again, went on: “How is it it wasn’t easily tracked down, cornered almost at once, this second time? How is it you lost it again like the first time? Its claws, the pads of its paws, the fur about its belly, must have been soaked after such an attack—”

“It’s true, there were numerous traces of blooddyed paw prints and even drippings found near by. None led very far away, however. The dirt and dust of the pavements must have quickly dried and coated the brute’s pads. And then so many people quickly milled about, obliterating everything before we could get there.”

“For every objection of mine, you have an answer ready. But still and all, you haven’t been able to remove that dissatisfied feeling of mine. What we call in my language a hunch. Something isn’t
right
. There’s a basic implausibility to this whole thing that I can’t accept as easily as you people.”

The inspector smiled bleakly, tapped him knowingly on the shoulder. “Tell the truth, Manning. Isn’t it your own guilty conscience, about being the indirect cause of this four-legged demon’s depredations, that makes you keep trying to raise vague objections, cast shadowy doubts, on what is glaringly self-evident? Of course it is! You would like to believe that it is not the jaguar which did this, for the sake of your own peace of mind. I’m afraid I cannot accommodate you. Our test tubes, our highpowered glasses, our reagents and analyses, have been brought into play; their evidence has been given and found irrefutable. Our report has been made out accordingly, and can be substantiated by the scientific investigation which it is based on. We are not guessing when we say such-and-such and so-and-so. All these things that have occurred to you, they have occurred to us ourselves, and been weighed, never fear, and—discarded. Our findings are: that Teresa Delgado was attacked and clawed to death by a jaguar outside the door of her house in the alley known as Pasaje del Diablo, at i 1:15 o’clock Thursday night, May fourteenth. And there is nothing further to be added.”

“Except by the jaguar,” said Manning grimly.

III. Conchita Con treras

The Senora Viuda de Contreras raised her pillowed head alertly. The footfall that had attracted her, in the tiled corridor outside her open room door, had had a hesitant quality about it, as though undecided whether to come down full weight or tiptoe.

“Is that you, my daughter?” she called out.

The Senora Viuda was stretched out on a chaise longue, in a state of infirmity that was becoming more and more frequent of late. She was a handsome stately woman, with unplucked brows as thick and black as charcoal smudges, giving her face the look of habitual serenity that straight, horizontal lines are always apt to produce. Her head of thick black hair, only white as yet in one plume streaking off from her temple, was as glossy as a cockerel’s tail feathers and, like them, crisply curling in little bunches. A handkerchief soaked in cologne and placed in a narrowed band across her forehead was the only concession to her affliction. She was not one of your whining hypochondriacs. Pain was a thing between oneself and one’s God.

At her interrogation the footfall had made up its mind to come down full force. Or rather the succeeding one did, that one having already been made. A couple more followed, rather reluctantly, and then a young girl appeared in the doorway. It is hard not to be beautiful at eighteen, and for her it would have been a physical impossibility. Even the dimming devotional mourning that encased her from head to foot, complete even to smoky veil, couldn’t obscure that fact. She stood looking in submissively at the benevolent despot on the chaise, who was aware of one’s lightest footfall, almost of one’s innermost thoughts, it sometimes seemed.

“Did you wake up from your nap,
mamacita?
Do you feel better now?”

The Senora Viuda reached out to the night stand beside her, flicked open a small jet-sticked fan, began to use it. This had nothing to do with room temperature, but was the outward symptom of approaching interrogation. Lengthy, exhaustive interrogation. The deceptive brow line remained ruler straight. “Sit down a minute, Conchita mia. Here, by me.”

The girl came forward, shifted a chair, sank primly down on the very edge of it.

“There, that’s it.” The fan continued to move, taking its time. The girl shifted both insteps far in underneath the chair.

“Tell me,
hija
.” There was a pause while the fanning went on. “You were on your way to All Saints Cemetery, to pay your respects at your father’s resting place?” The examination was under way.

The girl looked up from the finger she had been wrangling with. “It is his saint’s day. It should not be allowed to pass unnoted. And as you were ill, I thought perhaps I’d—”

The Senora Viuda nodded with benevolent approval. “A good daughter doesn’t forget her departed father. She keeps the flowers fresh on his grave, doesn’t forget to visit it. That’s as it should be.” The fan whirred blandly on. “When was the last time you were there?”

“Last week, I think—I don’t know exactly. Why do you ask me,
mamacita?
”