She sat bolt upright and stared at me. “No,” she whispered.
“Somebody followed him to Florida and killed him.”
She made a gargoyle mask, the stage mask of tragedy, and it would have been laughable had it not been so obviously a dry agony. She thrust herself from the chair, bending, hugging herself, passed me in a stumbling run to throw herself face down on the iron bed, gasping and grinding into the bunched pillow. The rear of the little blue wrap was up around her waist, exposing the smooth brown slope of buttocks. She writhed and strangled and kicked like a child in tantrum.
I went and sat on the bed near her. At my first tentative pat of comfort on her shoulder, she made a twisting convulsive leap at me, pulled me down in the strong warm circle of her arms, making a great WhooHaw, WhooHaw of her sobbings into my neck. I wondered how many women were going to hold me and cry for Sam. I endured that close and humid anguish, perfume and hot flesh and the scent of healthy girl.
The storm was too intense to last, and as it began to dwindle I realized that in her little shiftings, changing, holdings, she was beginning to involve herself in seduction, possibly deliberately, but more likely out of that strange and primitive instinct which causes people to couple in bomb shelters while air raids are in process. I firmly and quietly untangled myself, tossed a towel over to her and went and sat in the chair near the window. I looked down and saw that the comic book on top of one of the stacks was an educational epic in the Spanish language. I guessed that she would call it Oliver Tweest.
Finally she sat up in weariness, put a pillow against the bars of the headboard, hunched herself back and leaned there, ankles crossed. She - swabbed her face and eyes and blew her nose, and sighed several times, her breath catching.
“He was a man,” she said in a soft nostalgic voice. I sensed that she had wept for him, and would not have to weep again.
“How did you meet him?”
“I work in the kitchen there. I have seventeen years, no English, just a dumb kid. He is a boat captain, like Mario and Pedro. A little room he has there, not in the hotel. Near. Men and boys are after me, you know, like the dogs walking fast, tongue hanging out, so, follow the she? Sam chase them away, move me into his room. Ai, such trouble. The padre, my family, everyone. But to hell with them. We have love. I work in the kitchen all that time. A year I guess. More. Then he works for Senor Garcia. Big boat. Lives there in the big house. No so much time for love, eh? Time for the rubia… how you say… blonde. Yes. Blonde bitch in the big house. I work a little time more in the kitchen. They make laughs at me. Screw them all, eh? I am waiting like a mouse for when he wants love? Hell, no. I come here. Sam find me out. He beats me. Four-five times. Change nothing. He wants the rubia, I do what I like. Okay? More trouble from the padre, my brothers, everybody. Bad words. Puta. I have twenty years. By God I do what I want. Pretty good room, eh? Not so hard work. Dancing, copitas, making love. Sam come here sometimes. Give me pesos. I rip them in front of the face. I hear things about the big house. Trouble. Danger. Then he come in the night to hide. Marks from fighting. He is here all day. I fix with Rodriguez. Sam say he will send much money to me one time, so I am here no more. Such a fool! This is good place I think. Many friends. Then two man give a ride in a pretty car. Out the road and then into the woods, burning, burning the foot. Where is Sam? Then you are here. Sam is dead. In Florida.” She made one stifled sobbing sound.
“Who is that blonde? Is she still around?”
“She is a friend with Senor Garcia. It is a hard name for me. Heechin. A thing like that, I think.”
“Hitchins?”
“I think so. Many fiestas in that house. Very rich man. Very sick now, I think.”
“Is the blonde still there?”
“They say yes. I have not seen.”
“Felicia, what was going on at Garcia’s house?”
“Going on? Parties, drunk, bitch blondes. Who knows?”
“Did Sam say anything?”
“He say he keep what he earn. Some big thing he had, locked. He was sleeping, I try to look. Very very heavy. Big like so.” She indicated an object about the size of a large suitcase. “Black metal,” she said.
“With a strap he fix to carry. Only a strong man like Sam can carry far.”
“He got to Los Mochis?”
“Rodriguez say yes.”
“You were willing to help him, to hide him here?”
She looked astonished. “How not? He is a man. No thing changes that, eh? I am wife for a time. This stupid girl pleased him good, eh? He… we have a strong love. It can not be for all my life, with such a one.”
“He never told you anything about what went on at Garcia’s house?”
“Oh yes. Talk, talk, talk. Persons coming and going in big cars and boats. Mucho tumulto. What is a word? Confusion. I do not listen so much to him, I think. When he is close I do not want all the talking. I say yes, yes, yes. He talks. Then soon I make him stop talking. I think misterioso y peligroso that house and those persons. No man from here ever works at that house. Just Sam.”
She got up from the bed and padded over and got a nail file and took it back to the bed and began working on her nails, giving me a hooded glance from time to time. The downstairs hubbub was vastly diminished.
“Is now late, I think, Trrav,” she said. “You can stay, you can go. I think those two man find Sam, eh?”
“Perhaps.”
“Shoot him?”
“A knife.”
She made the Mexican gesture, shaking her right hand as though shaking water from her fingertips.
“Ai, a knife is a bad dying. Pobre Sam. You look for them?”
“Yes.”
“Because you are a friend? Maybe you are a clever man, eh? Maybe what you want is in that heavy box.”
“The box is why he was killed.”
“Maybe you send me some money instead of Sam, eh?”
“Maybe.”
“Down stairs you make me think of Sam. So big. Dark almost like me, but white, white, white, like milk where the sun is not touching.”
“Felicia, please don’t tell anyone what we’ve talked about. Don’t tell anyone he’s dead.”
“Maybe only Rosita.”
“No one. Please.”
“Very hard for me,” she said, and smiled a small smile. I took the fifty, folded it into a small wad, laid it on my thumbnail and snapped it over onto the bed. She fielded it cleanly, spread it out, looked content. As one is prone to do with animals, it was a temptation to anthropomorphize this girl past her capacity, to attribute to her niceties of feeling and emotion she could never sense, merely because she was so alive, had such a marvelous body, had such savage eyes and instincts. She was just a vain, childish, cantankerous Mexican whore, shrewd and stupid, canny and lazy.
She had done all her mourning for Sam Taggart, and had enjoyed the drama of it. She was not legend. She did not have a heart of gold, or a heart of ice. She had a very ordinary animal heart, bloody and violent, responsive to affection, quick in fury, incapable of any kind of lasting loyalty. Sam had not made her what she was today. I suspect she was headed for the rooms over the Cantina Tres Panchos from the time she could toddle. Perhaps villages fill their own quotas in mysterious ways, so many mayors, so many idiots, so many murderers, so many whores.
“Not even Rosita,” I said.
“Okay Trrav.”
I stood up. “I may want to come back and ask more questions.”
“Every night I am down there. I am not there, you wait a little time, eh?”
“Sure.”
She yawned wide, unsmothered, white teeth gleaming in membranous red, pointed tongue upcurled, stretched her elbows high, fists close to her throat.
“Love me now,” she said. “We sleep better, eh?”
“No thanks.”
She pouted. “Felicia is ugly?”
“Felicia is very beautiful.”
“Maybe you are not a man, eh?”
“Maybe not.”