“What are you doing here?”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.” Ayub was unbearably cocksure. Felix grabbed his lapel.
Ayub patted Felix’s hand. “Are we feeling better now, friend? Do you want to go back and let Lichita take care of you?”
“Remember, I knocked you down with one hand, dwarf,” said Felix, still grasping Ayub’s lapel.
“I’m not forgetting anything.” Ayub’s eyes suddenly clouded with rancor. “But I prefer to bring that up on another occasion. Not now.”
Smoothly, Ayub removed Felix’s hand, as his self-congratulatory smile returned. “That’s two lapels ruined; the Director General got one with his cigarette the other day, and now you, twisting and pulling. If things go on like this, I won’t be earning enough to pay my tailor’s bills.”
“Who’s your tailor? Lockheed?” Felix stared at Ayub’s bright Braniff-colored suit.
“Classy, mmh?” Ayub smiled, stroking a lapel. “But what a way to greet a friend. Especially a friend who’s bringing you a present.”
He offered Felix the newspaper-wrapped package, which Felix accepted with marked reluctance. “Okay, I’ve had enough of this clowning around. What do you want, Ayub? If you’re thinking of beating me up, you’ll have a hard time of it unless you’ve brought a gang of gorillas with you. I’ll kick the shit out of you.”
“Aren’t you going to open my present?” Ayub smiled as if secretly he thought there was no greater gift than his presence. “It isn’t a bomb, I give you my word.” He laughed almost hysterically.
“What is it, then?”
“Open it with care, friend. It’s Sara Klein’s ashes. Don’t want to let them fly away.”
Felix checked his impulse to punch Ayub, because the eyes of the little man who smelled of clove and dressed like a DC-7 had lost any trace of mockery or aggression or complacency. His cocky attitude refuted it, but his eyes shone with a tenderness that reflected a kind of pain, a kind of shame.
“You accepted the responsibility for Sara Klein’s body?” asked Felix, the package in his hands.
“The Embassy claimed to have no knowledge of her.”
“She was a citizen of the state of Israel.”
“They said she had no relatives there and that she’d lived in Mexico longer than in Israel.”
“But you aren’t a relative.”
“All I had to do to get them to release her body to me was say that I was her friend and would take care of the details. It was easy to see she was a hot potato in the Israelis’ hands. They snapped at the chance.”
“Bernstein was her lover. It should have been up to him.”
“The good professor is, how shall I say it … incapacitated.”
“Did Bernstein kill Sara Klein?”
“What do you think?”
They stared at each other in a pointless duel; each fought with the same, mutually invalidating, weapons: disbelief and certainty.
“Just remember,” said Ayub, “that the professor has more important aims in this life than chasing after a woman, even if she is a good piece.” He took three steps back, upturned palms extended. “Just keep your cool, my friend. Things are as they are. Careful, don’t drop the package. If you break the urn, we’ll both have to sweep up.”
“You dirty bastard son-of-a-bitch,” said Felix, clutching the package. “You saw her naked, you touched her with your filthy little manicured pig’s hands.”
Ayub stood silent for a second, rejecting the insult, studying his hand with its topaz rings and carved scimitars.
“Sara Klein was the lover of my cousin, a schoolteacher in the occupied territories,” Ayub said simply, his usual braggadocio stripped away. “I don’t know whether she told you that story. Maybe she didn’t have time. I know you loved her, too. That’s why I brought you her ashes.”
He turned his back to Felix and walked to the door, again the strutting conquistador. As he opened the door, he turned to look at Felix. “Take care, my friend. When we meet again, there’ll be blood in our eyes, I promise you that. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that low punch you landed. I want to even the score, I give you my word. Now more than ever.”
He left, closing the door after him.
24
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK that evening, Felix entered a café on the Calle Londres. Leather banquettes and a bar of polished wood were intended to suggest an English pub, but the image was distorted by the strong fluorescent lights, and the beveled mirrors repeated only sparks of a dead star.
Felix walked to the copper-rimmed bar and asked for a beer. He looked around the room and was grateful, after all, for the horrid glare that permitted him to see the patrons. That may have been why the lights had been installed, so the bar wouldn’t become a haunt for hot lovers.
It didn’t take long to spot them. The boy in bell-bottom blue-jeans and a blue-and-white-striped jersey with a big anchor across the chest. The girl with hair like a curly black lamb he recognized immediately. The question was whether they would recognize him. He walked over to them with a glass of beer in his hand. The girl was carefully shelling chestnuts in her miniskirted lap; discarded hulls clung to her laddered stockings. She was feeding the nutmeats to the boy.
“August isn’t the season for chestnuts,” said Felix.
“My sailor friend brought them to me from a long way away,” the girl said, not looking up, absorbed in shelling the nuts.
“May I?” asked Felix, as he sat down.
“Scoot over, Emiliano,” said the girl. “These seats aren’t very wide.”
“Your seat’s too wide, baby,” the boy replied, mouth filled with chestnuts. “I don’t know why they say those English women are so jolly, they must be thin in the butt.”
“You should know,” said Felix. “A girl in every port.”
“No,” purred the girl, caressing her companion’s neck. “He’s not much, but he’s all mine.”
“We fit fine,” said Felix. “Better than in the taxi. Did you get your books back, Emiliano?”
“No, man. You know the truth of it? I’m a professional student. Right, Rosita?”
The curly-headed girl smiled, and nodded. “Want a chestnut?”
“What I want is to know where you got them.”
“I told you, Emiliano brought them to me.”
“Where did they come from?” Felix insisted.
“From far away.” Emiliano raised his eyebrows. “What I need to know is what boat they came on, and who was at the helm.”
“They came on a ship called the Tiger, and Timon was the captain’s name.”
“Umm,” Emiliano mumbled. “The captain told me to tell you to keep your cool, and that the chestnuts came from a place called Aleppo.”
“Haven’t the three of us traveled together before?”
“That’s right, man,” said Emiliano.
“Who was aboard our ship?” Felix asked.
“Umm, it was jammed. A driver, two nuns, a nurse, Rosita here, and me, a fat woman with a basketful of chickens, and a man who looked like a government type. End of report.”
Rosita shook the chestnut hulls from her lap, and the three studied one another. Then, avoiding their eyes, Felix asked, “Who killed Sara Klein?”
“The fuzz haven’t picked up the trail,” Emiliano replied, scarcely lowering his voice.
“The crime took place between midnight and one in the morning. At that hour, it’s easy to check who came in and went out of a place like the Suites de Génova.
“Tell him, Emiliano, can’t you see he loved her?” said Rosita, eyes brimming.
“Rosita, take care of your chestnuts and listen, but keep your mouth shut.”