“I don’t think Freckles was lying. He said Galveston all right. He saw my machete and thought I was a drunken Indian.”
Felix accepted Captain Harding’s hospitality and spent the rest of the afternoon asleep on the sofa in his little gray wooden house by the slick, oily waters of the Gulf. Harding left him, and returned about ten that night. He’d hurried the repairs along, and had brought beer, sandwiches, and a list of all the tankers due to dock the next morning in the port of Galveston. They read it together, but the names told them nothing. Harding said they were all names of legitimate ships, but if those buccaneering pigs were changing names in every port, there was no way they could find out.
“Do you have any way of recognizing her if you see ’er, fella?”
Felix shook his head. “Only if I see the man with the freckles. Or the woman on board.”
“Never had a woman on my tanker.”
“That’s what they tell me. There was one on this one.”
“It’s hard to tell one tanker from another. We don’t get rigged up for a carnival like the cruise ships and all those fag outriggers on the Caribbean. All a tanker has to do is change her name.” Again he read the list aloud: the Graham, the Evelyn, the Corfu, the Culebra Cut, the Alice …
Felix slapped the captain’s strong, age-spotted hand. “The Alice!” He laughed.
“Yessir, and the Royal and the Darien … You always so tickled at the names of ships?” Harding, slightly annoyed, interrupted his reading.
“Bernstein’s lapse.” Felix laughed, striking his knees with his fists. “‘What a curious coincidence, as Ionesco and Alice would say.’ Really. Curiouser and curiouser…”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” said Harding, again afraid that Felix was either crazy or sunstruck.
“What time does the Alice dock tomorrow, Captain?”
29
AT FOUR O’CLOCK on the afternoon of the following day, the S.S. Alice docked beneath low-hanging clouds in Galveston. The Stars and Stripes drooped above a bow proclaiming Mobile as the tanker’s port of origin. Harding had situated Felix in the best place to see without being seen. The freckled sailor was freeing the chain to drop the gangplank, calling to the stevedores on the dock.
Leaning against the steel side of a warehouse and hidden behind a latticework of similar columns, Felix watched a tall, elegant man in white walk the length of the dock toward the gangplank: Mauricio Rossetti, the Director General’s private secretary. He stopped and waited for the completion of the docking maneuvers.
Aided by the freckled sailor, the false Sara Klein descended. She saw Rossetti and ran happily toward him. She started to kiss him, but he discreetly declined, took her arm firmly, and led her toward the exit gate. The woman was closer now and Felix could see that the imitation, if an imitation had indeed been intended, was crude, and appropriate only for deceiving fools like him hopelessly in love with women unattainable either in life or in death. But there was no mistaking the intent: the Louise Brooks haircut, the powder-whitened Machiko Kyo face, the slate-blue tailored suit.
Angelica Rossetti had studied Sara closely during the dinner party the previous week in the San Angel home filled with paintings by Ricardo Martínez. But everything about her was false; the only truth was the clear stone ring sparkling on her finger, an inter-stellar combat of luminous pinpoints in the dusk. The mounting was new. Felix rubbed the stoneless ring in his pocket.
He followed the couple from a distance. As he passed the tanker, his fingertips brushed the flagrant scar inflicted by his machete. Felix, never taking his eyes off the Rossettis, raised his arm, and Harding, who had been awaiting the signal, rushed the ship with three port policemen. The freckled sailor watching from the rail dropped his rope and disappeared into the ship. Harding and the police went aboard. Our stubby friend Freckles won’t have an ounce of shit left in his body, Felix thought.
Angelica’s only luggage was the dressing case she was carrying. She and her husband got into a Cadillac limousine driven by a chauffeur sweating beneath his gray cap. Felix climbed into the Pinto and followed them as they headed directly for the expressway to Houston.
The Rossettis’ limousine came to a stop before the white elegance of the Warwick Hotel. Felix drove to the nearby parking lot. Suitcase in hand, he entered the refrigerated comfort of the hotel. The Rossettis were registering. Felix waited until a clerk had led them through the lobby and along a row of exclusive boutiques. That meant they’d been given one of the rooms on the large crescent ringing the swimming pool. The sweating chauffeur delivered the Rossettis’ suitcases to the doorman; they still bore the Mexico-Houston luggage tags. As Felix reached the desk, the clerk was instructing the bellboy to carry Señor Rossetti’s suitcases to room number 6. Felix told the clerk that he enjoyed an early swim, and requested a room by the pool.
“It’s nice at night, too,” the Chicano clerk told him in Spanish. “The swimming pool’s open till twelve midnight. And we have facilities for parties in the cabanas.”
“How about 8, is it free?” Felix was betting that rooms facing the pool all had even numbers.
The Chicano said yes, the room was available. The bellboy carried Felix’s suitcase to his room and opened the heavy drapes for the guest to admire his private terrace and view of the swimming pool. He left, after explaining how to regulate the thermostat.
Felix undressed, but even though his body felt as sticky as a sucked caramel, he didn’t dare shower. He stood near the communicating door between his and the Rossettis’ rooms, hoping to overhear something; nothing but the clinking of glasses, muffled footsteps, drawers opening and closing, and once, the strident voice of Angelica, no, not now, not after the way you greeted me, and Rossetti’s inaudible reply.
Then the door of the adjoining room opened and closed. Felix half opened his door and peered down the hall in time to see the tall and elegant figure of Mauricio Rossetti. Felix was paralyzed with indecision. If Rossetti had the stone with him, it wouldn’t be impossible for Felix to recover it, only more difficult. He hurried to the bed and pulled on his swim trunks, preparing to follow Rossetti; after all, he knew where Angelica was, but the private secretary was leaving the hotel. As he leaned over, he saw a reflection in the sliding door to the terrace.
On the neighboring terrace, two hands grasped the light blue railing, unaware of the game of reflections facilitated by the sudden darkness. On the finger of one of those hands shone the ring with the clear stone.
He waited. Maybe Angelica would take a nap, and he would only have to vault the low parapet separating the two terraces. Again the Rossettis’ door opened and closed. Felix watched a white-robed, barefoot Angelica walk toward the pool; after making sure no lights were on in his room, he stepped onto the terrace. Angelica Rossetti was wearing a bikini beneath her robe; she dived into the water. Felix hurriedly donned the white robe hanging in his own bathroom, placed the room key in the pocket, and ran toward the pool.
Angelica emerged from the water and climbed onto the diving board. Again she dived. Felix tossed aside the robe and plunged into the opposite end of the pool.
The water was overly warm, the pool illuminated with submerged lights. In spite of the chlorine, Felix kept his eyes open; he saw Angelica, eyes closed, cleansed forever of the mask of Sara Klein, moving toward him in the water with regular strokes of arms and feet.