Attempted; attempted; attempted; hadn’t even done the job right. Ten times he had fired at Kirby Galway and ten times he had missed. Well, nine and a half. One little scratch on the shoulder that Kirby carried on about as though he’d been crippled for life, before finally calming down and swearing all over again that he had absolutely, positively not killed Valerie Greene.
There were reasons at least to believe that last part, which Kirby had elucidated for him in several repetitive shouted sentences. First, if he had murdered Valerie Greene and Innocent had found him out, there was absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t now go ahead and murder Innocent as well. Second, even if he’d had time to plot a murder with Innocent’s driver, the fellow was still Innocent’s driver and Kirby would have been crazy to trust him with such a dangerous request. And third, Kirby now believed that Valerie Greene wasn’t dead after all but was living in an Indian village under the name Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
So hither they had come, hope and skepticism fighting in Innocent’s breast, to be surrounded by bright-eyed curious villagers, to be assured that yes, Sheena was living with them, she was right over the hill there — Kirby’s hill, Innocent had noted, wondering if it meant anything — and on to the village they had come, for the onset of pandemonium. Once the running and shouting and general disarray started Innocent had merely sat down on a flat stone outside one of the huts to catch his breath, knowing how it would end and wondering if he would believe it when it happened.
Which at last it did. The village had grown quieter, and here was Kirby standing spraddle-legged before him, the very icon of frustrated generalship. “She’s gone,” he said.
Innocent looked up at him; he had mostly regained his breath by now. “The question is,” he said, “do I believe it?”
Kirby looked exasperated to the point of violence. “And just when, goddam it,” he said, “was I supposed to have set up this one?”
“Your gun-toting pal Manny,” Innocent suggested. “He has a radio there at that house. He got on it as soon as we took off, he called here—”
“There’s no radio here,” Kirby said, and waved his arms extravagantly. “Search the goddam place yourself, Innocent. We never put a radio in because we didn’t want to attract attention.”
A fact — if it was a fact — that Innocent stowed away in his brain for later consideration. “There are other radios in this world,” he said. “Perhaps only half a mile from here, some friend of yours. Manny called him, told him to pass on the story he’d heard you tell me, about the white woman living in an Indian village, and the villagers calling her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and— Kirby, many people would not believe that story.”
“They’d all be wrong,” Kirby said.
“Let me ask you something,” Innocent said. “You were here the day before yesterday, they told you about Sheena living with them in their village, and you didn’t go look at her.”
“I didn’t believe it,” Kirby said.
“So why should I?”
“Because I saw a white woman after, when I flew over. I told you that, Innocent. I wasn’t sure then, but now you tell me Valerie Greene disappeared, and the degenerate you gave her to has skipped the country, and—”
“All right, Kirby, all right.” Innocent felt very tired, rather sad, oddly ineffectual. “But all at once she’s gone. She was here, but not now. Why?”
“She don’t trust you,” the English-speaking Indian — Rosita — said, suddenly with them, pointing a sharp-boned finger at Kirby. “She told me all about how you cheated Wintrop Cartwright.”
Kirby blinked. “Who?”
“The man she was gonna marry,” Rosita said.
Innocent lifted his head at that, and looked at this sharp-featured skinny girl. “She was going to marry someone?”
“Wintrop Cartwright.” Rosita smiled at Innocent, apparently finding something pleasing there. “He’s a rich man like her papa, but old. That’s why she run away. She’s a pilot, you know.”
Innocent shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he told Kirby. “If the woman does exist, she’s the wrong woman.”
“Wait a minute,” Kirby said, and turned to Rosita. “Listen,” he said, “you people just called her Sheena as a nickname, right?”
“It was Tommy’s idea,” she said. “He’s the reader.”
“So what was her real name?”
Rosita thought a second: “Valerie.”
Innocent looked at her, trying to see inside that narrow head.
Kirby said, “What was her last name?”
“How do I know? I just called her Sheena. She liked it.”
“But her real name,” Kirby insisted, “was Valerie.”
“And she told me all about you,” Rosita said. “How you don’t really have no crazy wife in an asylum anywheres, you’re just taking advantage of me.”
Innocent frowned deeply at this new development. “A crazy wife? What crazy wife?”
“Never mind,” Kirby said hastily. “The point is, Innocent, her name is Valerie, and she took off either because she’s afraid of you or she’s afraid of me. Any case, she saw us coming.”
“She has no reason to be afraid of me,” Innocent said.
Rosita said, “Maybe she thought you were here to take her back to her papa, make her marry Wintrop.”
Kirby said, “Wait a second, light is beginning to dawn. Valerie was on the run — probably from that driver of yours, Innocent — and she was afraid to tell the truth, didn’t know who she could trust, so she told these clowns the old runaway heiress plot, and they bought it.”
“That’s just what she is!” Rosita said, happy to confirm the truth. “She didn’t want to marry that Wintrop, so she got in her plane and flew away, but then she got in a storm and crashed in the Maya Mountains over there and walked and walked and walked for days and then we found her. And she made us swear we wouldn’t tell, and then she told us the truth.”
“The truth,” Kirby said. “The runaway heiress story.”
“Too many stories going around,” Innocent said.
Rosita looked off westward, toward the blue-shouldered Maya Mountains. “We’ll find her pretty soon, I think,” she said.
Innocent sat up straighten “You do? Why’s that?”
“Stand up a second,” she told him.
Innocent frowned at Kirby, who shrugged. So Innocent shrugged, and stood up, and Rosita looked at the flat stone where he’d been sitting and said, “Yeah, they’re gone.”
Innocent looked at the flat stone, at Kirby, and at Rosita. He said, “May I sit down?”
“Sure.”
“What’s gone?” Kirby said.
“Sheena’s got this throat problem or lungs or something,” Rosita explained, “so she can’t smoke, so if we turn on sometimes she can’t join in, you know?”
“And?” said Kirby, while Innocent reflected that for Kirby a crazy wife would be redundant.
Rosita said, “So I promised I’d make her some pot tortillas, but I never got around to it till today. They’re pretty strong, you know.”
“You made pot tortillas today?” Kirby asked.
“Yeah, and put them on that rock and now they’re gone. Sheena must of took them.” Rosita looked westward again, toward where the shadows lengthened on the steep faces of the mountains. “She won’t get very far,” she said.
13
Some Aspects of Pharmacological Experience
“Vaaaallll-erie! Oh, Vaaaallll-erie!”