The Shadow of the Shadow (20 page)

"Five: What was the Widow Roldan doing in the building
on Humboldt Street? What was Colonel Zevada doing there?
Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have to confess I was so taken up with
the woman that I didn't really notice anything else. I apologize,
gentlemen, for my complete lack of professionalism. I didn't even
read the story in the paper the next day."

"No problem there," said Verdugo. "I read it. He fell, or was
thrown, out of the window of the waiting room of Weiss's jewelry
shop."

"But, if I remember correctly, the colonel didn't have any jewels
on him."

"And to complicate things further, the jeweler said he'd never
seen the man before."

"Excuse me, gentlemen, but, seeing as how the lepoltel hasn't
gotten alound to taking his tuln, I suggest that you all go and lead
the books of an Englishman named Althul Conan Doyle."

"Have they been translated?"

"No," said Verdugo, "but it wouldn't be a bad idea to get ahold
of a copy. He wrote a whole series of detective stories in Strand
Magazine. It's been a big hit in the United States, too. He's got this
detective that always goes around with a doctor."

"I suppose a detective needs a good doctor. We could use one,
that's for sure."

"Sorry, friends, but I think that things are complicated enough
with the Brits and the Frenchman we've already got to deal with.
What's this Frenchman's name, by the way?"

"Michel Simon, something like that. I don't know if he's left handed, but he carries his gun on the left side, in his boot, a little
number, a Derringer or some piece of trash like that."

"Derringers are what they use to make those little holes in
Swiss cheese," said the poet.

"At three yards, it'll kill you just as well as a Colt .45," said
Verdugo, who knew about that sort of thing.

"Six: How did Gomez get to be Colonel of the Gendarmery
when he used to be buddy-buddy with Pablo Gonzalez? How did
he survive the purge of the Gonzalistas in 1920?"

"Now there's a good question. Do you know anything about
that, Tomas?" asked the poet.

The Chinaman shook his head.

"Seven: How did Mr. Roldan, the widow's deceased husband,
die? That is to say, is Margarita a widow by natural causes?"

The game had come to a standstill. Tonight the four friends
were unable to interlace the conversation with the play of the
bones. None of the other regulars came over to watch the game,
as sometimes happened, and not even the bartender came by with
the usual bottle of Havana brandy.

"Eight: Does the Shadow Club, as our friend the poet has
been inspired to call it, have anything to do with the Englishman
murdered at the Hotel Regis? Is it just a coincidence that Colonel
Gomez happened to be there, and what about his little trick with
the keys? Who is the dead Englishman? What was he doing in
Mexico City? Who's his disappeared friend? What happened to
the million pesos'worth of stock certificates?"

"I've got some information there," said the poet. "I ran into
Bertram Wolfe and Williams, that patsy working for the Hearst
chain, yesterday."

"What's Wolfe say?" asked Pioquinto Manterola, who also
knew the North American journalist.

"Apparently the guy was representing the English-Dutch oil
companies. They sent him to Mexico to talk with the government
about export rights. Wolfe's got a whole theory about it. He says that since the Lamont-de la Huerta treaty was negotiated in New
York, and since President Obregon acknowledged a billion-peso
debt to the foreign bankers, with the railroads and oil-export rights
as collateral, the oil barons are afraid the government's going to try
and apply Article Twenty-seven of the constitution, which would
make all mineral and oil deposits public property. In other words,
the oil companies may be in for some tough negotiating. He says
that this guy Blinkman was sent in secret by Aguila Petroleum to
try and work out a separate deal with the government, separate
from the gringos that is, before everything blows up in Obregon's
face. Williams says that Blinkman had strange habits and that
they shoved a pistol in his mouth instead of putting something
else there, if you know what I mean. Wolfe swears up and down
the whole thing's got to do with some hanky-panky of the oil
companies, and he thinks that the hired guns of the American
companies, Huasteca Petroleum or Texas Oil, were the ones who
worked Blinkman over. He says there's going to be a lot of dead
men without a name to put on their tombstones if the companies
start to play roulette with one another like that. Williams says that
Van Horn killed him-he's the guy who shared Blinkman's room
and has since disappeared."

"That brings me to number nine: What's Tampico got to do
with all this? Both Zevada and Gomez were promoted to colonel
while stationed in Tampico, and that's where the oil companies
have their headquarters. Does this whole thing have something to
do with Tampico?"

"Tomas?" asked Verdugo.

"When I was in Tampico I was wolking filst in a laundly and
latel on as a calpintel. These two guys wele famous in Tampico
back then. 01 maybe infamous is a bettel wold. In the big stlike
back in `19, they wele both thele with oldels to splead a little lead
among the wolkels. That's all I know. Back then Tampico was a
dilty little city with a ton of dough going flora hand to hand. You
could buy a colonel of a genelal just as easy as a piece of land, if you had the sclatch. Life wasn't wolth too much in Tampico. An
oil well is like a big hole in the glound full of black shit.' hat's all
I know."

"Number ten: What's Tomas' Chinawoman got to do with all
of this?"

"Nothing," said Tomas, and he smiled as Tampico slipped
momentarily from his thoughts.

"Sorry to say it, Tomas, but there just aren't any chance
encounters in this story. So when a young woman runs out of a
gambling joint in the middle of a gunfight and asks you to take her
away, I can't help but wonder."

"Nothing," said Tomas again.

"All right then, eleven: Who hired Suarez and Felipe Tibon to
kill us? Who was the other guy that was with them? Which one
of us were they gunning for? Was it me because I'd gone after the
widow and said too much? Or the poet because he'd witnessed the
trombonist's murder? Or Tomas because he'd saved Rosa Lopez
and taken her away? Or me again because I wrote in the paper that
Blinkman had been killed instead of committed suicide? Or were
they going for all of us? And does it have anything to do with the
rest of the story?"

"That's too many questions for one night," said the poet.

"Hold your horses, Fermin, here comes another one. Number
twelve: What did Margarita Roldan want from me when she came
to visit in the hospital?"

"And what did Celeste the hypnotist want from me, apart
from that little chat about magnetic forces? It's the same question.
I never did figure it out."

"One more. Thirteen: Who's this officer that suddenly starts
taking shots at our friend the poet, and why?"

"Hell, that's an easy one," said Verdugo. "If we hadn't had so
much wine in us the other day, we could have figured it out sooner.
Was he a guy about five-seven, long sideburns, sort of bug-eyed,
thick eyebrows, in his late twenties?"

"Sorry, that's not him. If I remember right-and you've got to
understand as soon as he saw me he went for his gun-he was a
skinny guy, plenty taller than me, clean shaven, light haired. One of
these dark-skinned guys whose hair's gone blond from too much
time in the sun or cold."

"Who's your man?" Manterola asked the lawyer.

"I thought it mightbe Gomez'aide-de-camp, this little lieutenant
who was hovering around him and the hypnotist the whole time the
night of the party at the widow's. But the poet's man still sounds
familiar to me. Maybe it's some other officer in Gomez' entourage."

"Well, if he isn't, then it's even more complicated. Did he say
anything before he started shooting? Not very Mexican of him, if
you ask me, to shoot first and ask questions later."

"He didn't even say buenos dias. He looked at me, gave a doubletake, and went for his gun."

"Fourteen: Who sent the poisoned chocolates to me at the
hospital and why? Fifteen: What do we know? Are we getting in
somebody's way, and who is it? What did we do?"

"That's the best one of the bunch, inkslingel."

"And the last one, too."

""That's enough," said the lawyer Verdugo. "What do you say we
cut your sheet of paper there into pieces and divide up the questions?
I think it's about time we had some answers. At any rate, the game's
gone cold."

"And just when Tomas and I were about to win, too."

"My father always said that dominoes and talk don't mix," said
Verdugo, carefully tearing Manterola's list into four equal pieces.

"What'd he say that for?"

"Who?"

"Your dad."

"My father never said anything to me in his whole life,"answered
Verdugo.

The poet smiled. Tomas got up from his chair and headed over
to the bar of the Majestic Hotel.

MEXICO CITY STRETCHES OUT toward the south into
that proletarian world of San Angel, Puente Sierra, Tizapan,
and Contreras, towns connected to the city by the thin umbilical
cord of the Tacubaya streetcar line. Labyrinthine cobbled side
streets invariably lead to the doors of the great textile mills in the
converted shells of old haciendas: the Abeja, the Carolina, the
Eureka, the Magdalena, the Alpina, the Santa Teresa, with their
French, English, or Spanish owners-sweaty mills reeking with
the stink of the dyes, surrounded by hundreds of ramshackle hovels
the companies let out to their workers and small vegetable gardens
where the men and women from the factories spend a few hours
each week trying not to lose touch with their country roots.

It was raining in the south. But the rain was too much for this
city that was born in the rain, for the rain. The rain drives it crazy.
The streets turn into rivers that run down toward the little plaza
at the center of San Angel, rivers of mud swirl around the autos
and horse carts, wash out bicycles and spook the horses of the
mounted police that regularly patrol the town.

Covered with a gray rubber poncho, Tomas jumped across the
puddles from cobblestone to cobblestone, slipping constantly but
somehow managing to keep his balance. Finally he stopped in front
of a small cafe where three or four workers sat eating at the tables
farthest from the door. One of them, a thin man with a narrow
nose topped by thick eyebrows that practically grew together in a
single line, sat reading volume two of Les Miserables. His railroad
hat lay on the table next to an untouched bowl of soup.

"Sebastian," said the Chinaman as he approached the man.

"Well, hell, Tomas, they didn't tell me it was going to be you,"
the man answered with a big horselike grin.

"What's it been? A yeal at least..."

"Something like that," said Sebastian, motioning for the
Chinaman to take a seat. "Since May 1921."

"Did it take you long to get back in?"

"I was in Guatemala six months, doing some organizing down
there, and then I just walked back over the border. Shit, down
there the mosquitoes're thicker than the trees. I spent the rest of
the year in Atlixco under another name. The scabs were playing for
keeps, and I got mixed up in a hell of a gunfight. So I had to get
out of there and I went back on up to Tampico. But things there
just aren't the same anymore, not like when you and me were there.
You got to keep in the shadows all the time, can't work out in the
open. I'd give a speech and then have to spend the next two weeks
hiding out. But all the same, things are heating up just fine. Every
day there's more men catching on to the idea out in the oil fields.
It won't be long before they've got a union going. It's a matter of
months or a year at most, my friend."

"What bungs you to Mexico City?"