In agony, he struck at the door with the folded newspaper, but succeeded in making about as much noise as the scratching of a wounded cat. He felt like a wounded cat. A terrible weariness fell over him and settled permanently at the back of his neck. He beat on the door with his open palm, and a voice from the other side replied, “I’m coming, I’m coming, hold on to your shirt.”
The door opened and a man in undershirt, suspenders dangling to his knees, trousers flapping, asked, “What can I do for you?”
Felix, the cinema buff of Fifty-third Street, thought of Raimu in The Baker’s Wife. It was the driver of the one-peso cab who had taken him from the Zócalo to the Hilton. The man stared at Felix with suspicion, and Felix again remembered Raimu, but also remembered that he recognized the driver but the driver couldn’t recognize him.
“Licha sent me,” Felix said tonelessly, offering the folded newspaper to the driver, who read the message and scratched his bald head.
“That woman of mine is a regular sister of charity,” he grumbled. He turned away from Felix, waving him in. “Come on in. What happened to you? Where’d you get so banged up? No, don’t tell me. My wife thinks this house is a hospital. The dumb-bunny says she has the gift of healing, and that it hurts her to see anyone in pain. She’d do better to clean up this place first. Excuse the mess.”
The room contained a rumpled, unmade bed, an aluminum-leg table, and two oilcloth-covered chairs. Felix looked around the room for a telephone; Licha had assured him there was one. The driver pointed toward an electric hot plate with two burners, and a battered lunchbox. “There’s some beans in the frying pan and tortillas in the lunchbox. They’re cold, but tasty. There’s a little Delaware Punch left there. Help yourself while I look for some clothes for you. Ah, Lichita, baby, if you weren’t so sexy…”
“Could I have the paper back?” Felix asked.
“Here you are.” The driver tossed the paper on the table, and as he wolfed down the beans and tortillas, Felix reread the notice of Sara Klein’s death. Then he turned to the obituary columns, and found what he was looking for.
The taxi driver gave him a clean shirt, socks, and a jacket. He looked curiously at Felix’s eyes as he handed him the clothing.
“Hey, what happened to your eyes? No, don’t tell me. They look like fried eggs. Here, put on these dark glasses. You look to me like even the moon would make you squint.”
Felix put on the clothes and the dark glasses, thinking of the photophobic Director General, and asked if he could use the telephone. “You do have a phone, don’t you?”
“Imagine a taxi driver without a telephone.” He laughed. “It’s cost half my ass to get it and the other half to keep up with the bills. It’s my one luxury.”
He lifted one of the pillows. There was the telephone, nestled like a jealously incubated black duck. Felix felt like a man about to be forced to leap from a burning ship into the sea. He measured the taxi driver carefully. He was heavy, but not very solid, having gone soft from too many hours behind the wheel, too many carbonated drinks and too many beans. Felix made the leap.
“May I use it?”
“Help yourself.”
He dialed a number and got the telephone operator at the Hilton. “Give me the desk, please. Hello. Maldonado speaking, room 906.”
He saw the driver stop, like a toy on a string. Then, just as suddenly, he went on toward the table, and picked up the bottle of Delaware Punch Felix hadn’t tasted.
“Right. How’s it going? Look, I’m in a hurry. I’m at the airport.”
As he spoke, he was trying to weigh which was harder, a soft-drink bottle or the telephone receiver. Which was a better weapon to crack a man’s head? The driver tipped back the bottle and emptied it.
“After a while I’ll be sending someone by the hotel. He’ll bring a note with my instructions, written by me. Let him put the things I want in a suitcase. Of course it’s a serious matter. Wake the manager. Thanks.”
The driver set the empty bottle on the table. He stared at Felix with unassuming irony. Felix hung up.
“Look, who wants to get mixed up with the dead?” the driver asked.
“No. Better leave them in peace.”
“You know, if a man was to get paid, that’d be all there was to it, right?”
“You’ll get paid double, I promise.”
Felix left, thanking the driver.
“It’s okay, chief. Just don’t ever get married. If only that Lichita wasn’t so damn sexy.”
19
AT THE HILTON, Felix produced the note he’d written in the clinic on a piece of paper Licha had salvaged from a wastebasket. The night clerk recognized the handwriting. Licenciado Felix Maldonado was an old client. The manager had been advised and would be down in a minute.
The clerk accompanied him to room 906, and Felix packed a light suitcase with several articles of clothing, toilet things, and traveler’s checks. He flipped through the checks: each bore the signature of Felix Maldonado in the upper left-hand corner. Then he dialed a number. As he heard my voice, Felix said:
“When shall we two meet again?”
“When the battle’s lost and won,” I replied.
“I have but little gold of late, brave Timon,” Felix said to me.
“Wherefore art thou?” I asked.
“At my lodging,” he replied.
“All’s well ended if this suit be won,” were my last words before I hung up.
When Felix reached the lobby, the manager was waiting, every silver hair in place, as impeccable as if it were ten o’clock in the morning. He told Felix that they had to be sure, he knew he understood, he was so sorry, his only wish was to protect Licenciado Maldonado’s interests, such a respected client, but the handwriting, carefully examined, seemed unsteady, and the paper was of very strange quality. Could he present additional credentials, he inquired of the ill-dressed, unshaven, battered man wearing dark glasses and carrying Felix Maldonado’s suitcase in one hand.
“You’ll be receiving a telephone call any minute now,” said Felix.
The manager was obviously perturbed when he heard Felix’s voice, but at that moment was advised that he had an urgent telephone call. Ostentatiously, he shot his sleeves, revealing, as was his intention, ruby cuff links. He listened to my instructions attentively.
“But of course, sir. Absolutely. Anything you say, sir,” the manager said to me, and hung up.
Felix walked the short distance separating the Hilton from the Gayosso Mortuary on Calle Sullivan. The suitcase was very light, and he ignored the pain in his arm. Strength of soul, not the strength of a bruised body, was what was required to walk the distance to the mortuary. The sheaf of bills the manager had given him sat warm and comforting in his trousers pocket.
He stood before the main door of a three-story mausoleum of gray stone and black marble that was a way station in the stone geography of this city in which even the parks, like the one stretching between Melchor Ocampo and Ramon Guzman, seemed made of cement. He climbed the stairway of volcanic stone and read the directory: SARA KLEIN, SECOND FLOOR. A gray-uniformed man with the face of a small, friendly monkey sat dozing in the concierge’s office.
The body of a woman lay in the non-denominational chapel. From the next room came the drone of Ave Marías and the pervasive odor of funeral wreaths. The chapel contained no floral offerings from friends, business associates, or family. Only a Menorah with lighted candles. Felix approached the open coffin. A still-damp sheet covered Sara’s face and body. Someone had fulfilled the ritual of washing the body. Who? Felix asked himself as he set down his suitcase beside the gray lead casket.