“When August came into El Torero two weeks ago, he had two men with him. They were wary men, Bren. It was the second time I’d seen him since I came down here. He has a house he rents in Cuernavaca. He wanted me to come down and visit him. I told him that he could no longer tell me what to do.”
He turned quickly toward her, “You fool! You poor, golden-headed fool!”
Her face stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“When August Brikel told you to be nice to me, why on earth didn’t you come to me with the whole story? Why? I can’t understand it.”
She looked down at her hands. “Because you would have known I was a criminal. That’s what I was, Bren, when I was in the States. And even without that, I... I’m hardly a bargain. My life hasn’t been a round of sorority teas, and sleigh rides and Sunday picnics. It’s been scabby little dressing rooms and prison and dirt.”
“Shut up, Laena!” he said quickly.
“I left while you could still remember me as something... nice.”
Slowly she raised her head until their eyes met. He spoke firmly to her. She came to him with a thin lost sound in her throat, and curled against his chest, her forehead pressing against the lean angle of his jaw, a gold-white braid across his face. Tears were a tempest and he enclosed the storm in the circle of his arms until, at long last, it died slowly away.
The words he whispered to her were not connected in orderly sequence. They did not shape themselves into neat and orderly sentences.
When at last she raised her head, her cheeks were streaked, her eyes puffy, but she was smiling.
“You cried too,” she said softly.
“Maybe it was contagious. Laena, I feel as though I’d been ill for a long long time.”
“Maybe you have been,” She laughed softly. “I know you were ill when I brought you here last night.”
“I owe you a mickey, darling.”
She stood up. “You will need a great deal of food. And then we will talk.”
He reached out and caught her hand. “I guess that I wouldn’t have killed you. I guess that I couldn’t have done it.”
Laena raised his hand to her lips. “I guess that you will kill no one, Bren.”
He snatched his hand away, said coldly, “A very slight error, Laena. Nothing that has happened between us has changed the fact that Brikel and Teed are walking around. And Tommy isn’t.”
“No, Bren! No! Even if you succeed, the policia will have you. And once again... I shall have nothing.”
“You almost make me think that all this was a gag so you could save their lives.”
“I know you’re trying to be cruel, Bren. I’ve been hurt too much. It is very difficult to hurt me with words now.”
He gave her a long look. “We will talk about it at breakfast.”
She handed him a brown paper bag containing comb, razor, blades and shaving cream, as well as tooth brush and paste. “I sent Maria after those,” she called.
“Then your horrible secret is out.”
“I know that Maria has thought me a strange one — until now. She is singing in the kitchen. I think she likes having a man in the house.”
At the door he paused, as they were ready to leave and said, “The gun, Laena. Where is it?”
“But, Bren, I—”
“The gun, Laena.” She went obediently off, but without the usual proud lift of her head. She brought it back and silently handed it to him. He checked the cylinder, snapped it shut and shoved it back in the waistband of the trousers. She watched him passively. To lighten the tension he said, with a smile, “You take orders nicely, honey.”
She didn’t smile. She said, “My people were American but I was brought up as a European girl.”
“And yet you ran out,” he said thickly. He caught her to him, found her lips...
Over the breakfast table he talked of Tommy. It was the first time he had talked of him since his death.
When he had quite finished, Laena said, “You call him a ‘crazy kid’ and you say that the biggest job you had in the war was keeping Tommy out of trouble. You must have loved him very much.”
“And that’s why Brikel and Teed are going to pay off. In spades. You might as well tell me if you know where they are. I can find out anyway. You’ll just save me some time.”
She drew on the tablecloth with a fork tine. Tiny frown wrinkles appeared between her dark eyebrows. “All right, Bren. If I tell you, can I come with you?”
“Of course not!”
“There is no way you can keep me from coming with you. They are in the rented house in Cuernavaca. It’s Wednesday now, but they’ll be in Mexico City this weekned. Their house is in the Colonia Miraval, a large house with a high wall and a staff of servants. I do not think you could get in there. When they come to the city, they stay at a large hotel. They come in a group, usually with women. They are seen with men who, here in the city, are known to be criminals, but who seem to be outside the grasp of the law. Bren, I don’t think you should try to kill them.”
He leaned closer to her. “I have to shave this face every morning. I have to look into these eyes. I want to be able to go on doing it without being ashamed of myself.”
“Revenge is childish.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Back in Nazi France I saw some samples of revenge, Bren. Did I say childish? The word is right if you can visualize a child with a deformed mind and the eyes of a beast.”
“This is the job I’ve laid out for myself.”
“Then, of course you must go through with it,” she said bitterly.
The illegal fires, lit by the charcoal vendors, shrouded the flanks of the mountains in drifting smoke that clouded the afternoon sun. The driver sped the heavy rented car through the mountain village of Tres Cumbres, down the tangled ribbon of road to Cuernavaca, golden in the sunset.
Harris rented a room in a hotel facing the zocolo in the center of the city. An hour later, in the gray dusk, he leaned against a gray wall and studied the house in which August Brikel lived. The dark young man he had encountered in the central square spoke adequate English. For ten pesos he had been glad to come along.
“Go over,” Harris said, “and rattle the gate until somebody comes out. Ask them if Mr. Brikel or Mr. Teed are there. Say there is someone down at the hotel asking for them. Tell them that it is a Miss Severence waiting down at the Hotel Linda Vista.”
The boy repeated the names. Bren Harris moved further back into the shadows. He went across to the gate. The gate tender came out and they talked. The boy came back. “He say, Señor, that the dos señores have go away today at the five hours.”
“Did he say where?”
“Si, he say they go on business over the montanas to Mexico and that they do not come back until... como se llama... how you say, the day after Sunday.”
“Monday. Go back and talk some more. Tell him that this is urgent. Where are they staying in Mexico City?”
This time it took a little longer. The boy came back and said, “He say he not know. I think he know, but the señores is giving orders for not saying.”
Bren Harris went back and checked out of his room at seven-thirty and ordered the driver to take him back to Mexico City. Heavy buses and trucks choked the mountain roads. Harris sat on the edge of the seat in a fever of impatience. He dropped his bag off at the hotel and had the driver take him to El Torero. It was quarter after nine when he arrived. He paid the bill and dismissed the rented car.
The club was nearly empty. The bartender gave him a quick look of surprise. “Scotch and water,” Bren said. “Without the chloral.”