I checked into an eight-peso hotel near Sears, and walked over to Lola's, my stomach cold with excitement. The bar was in a different place, redecorated, with new furniture. But there was the same old bartender behind the bar, with his gold tooth and his moustache.
"¿Cómo está?" he said. We shook hands. He asked where I had been, and I told him South America. I sat down with a Delaware Punch. The place was empty, but someone I knew was bound to come in sooner or later.
The Major walked in. A retired Army man, gray-haired, vigorous, stocky. I ran through the list crisply with the Major:
"Johnny White, Russ Morton, Pete Crowly, Ike Scranton?"
"Los Angeles, Alaska, Idaho, don't know, still around. He's always around."
"And oh, uh, whatever happened to Allerton?"
"Allerton? Don't believe I know him."
"See you."
"'Night, Lee. Take it easy."
I walked over to Sears and looked through the magazines. In one called Balls: For Real Men, I was looking at a photo of a Negro hanging from a tree: "I Saw Them Swing Sonny Goons." A hand fell on my shoulder. I turned, and there was Gale, another retired Army man. He had the subdued air of the reformed drunk. I ran through the list.
"Most everybody is gone," Gale said. "I never see those guys anyway, never hang around Lola's anymore."
I asked about Allerton.
"Allerton?"
"Tall skinny kid. Friend of Johnny White and Art Gonzalez."
"He's gone too."
"How long ago?" No need to play it cool and casual with Gale. He wouldn't notice anything.
"I saw him about a month ago on the other side of the street."
"See you."
"See you."
I put the magazine away slowly and walked outside and leaned against a post. Then I walked back to Lola's. Burns was sitting at a table, drinking a beer with his maimed hand.
"Hardly anybody around. Johnny White and Tex and Crosswheel are in Los Angeles."
I was looking at his hand.
"Did you hear about Allerton?" he asked.
I said, "No."
"He went down to South America or some place. With an Army colonel. Allerton went along as guide."
"So? How long has he been gone?"
"About six months."
"Must have been right after I left."
"Yeah. Just about then."
I got Art Gonzalez's address from Burns and went over to see him. He was drinking a beer in a shop across from his hotel, and called me over. Yes, Allerton left about five months ago and went along as guide to a colonel and his wife.
"They were going to sell the car in Guatemala. A '48 Cadillac. I felt there was something not quite right about the deal. But Allerton never told me anything definite. You know how he is." Art seemed surprised I had not heard from Allerton. "Nobody has heard anything from him since he left. It worries me."
I wondered what he could be doing, and where. Guatemala is expensive, San Salvador expensive and jerkwater. Costa Rica? I regretted not having stopped off in San Jose on the way up.
Gonzalez and I went through the where-is-so-and-so routine. Mexico City is a terminal of space-time travel, a waiting room where you grab a quick drink while you wait for your train. That is why I can stand to be in Mexico City or New York. You are not stuck there; by the fact of being there at all, you are travelling. But in Panama, crossroads of the world, you are exactly so much aging tissue. You have to make arrangements with Pan Am or the Dutch Line for removal of your body.
Otherwise, it would stay there and rot in the muggy heat, under a galvanized iron roof.
That night I dreamed I finally found Allerton, hiding out in some Central American backwater. He seemed surprised to see me after all this time. In the dream I was a finder of missing persons.
"Mr. Allerton, I represent the Friendly Finance Company. Haven't you forgotten something, Gene?
You're supposed to come and see us every third Tuesday. We've been lonely for you in the office. We don't like to say 'Pay up or else.' It's not a friendly thing to say. I wonder if you have ever read the contract all the way through? I have particular reference to Clause 6(x) which can only be deciphered with an electron microscope and a virus filter. I wonder if you know just what
'or else' means, Gene?
"Aw, I know how it is with you young kids. You get chasing after some floozie and forget all about Friendly Finance, don't you? But Friendly Finance doesn't forget you. Like the song say, 'No hiding place down there.' Not when the old Skip Tracer goes out on a job."
The Skip Tracer's face went blank and dreamy. His mouth fell open, showing teeth hard and yellow as old ivory. Slowly his body slid down in the leather armchair until the back of the chair pushed his hat down over his eyes, which gleamed in the hat's shade, catching points of light like an opal. He began humming "Johnny's So Long at the Fair" over and over. The humming stopped abruptly, in the middle of a phrase.
The Skip Tracer was talking in a voice languid and intermittent, like music down a windy street.
"You meet all kinds on this job, Kid. Every now and then some popcorn citizen walks in the office and tries to pay Friendly Finance with this shit."
He let one arm swing out, palm up, over the side of the chair. Slowly he opened a thin brown hand, with purple-blue fingertips, to reveal a roll of yellow thousand-dollar bills. The hand turned over, palm down, and fell back against the chair. His eyes closed.
Suddenly his head dropped to one side and his tongue fell out. The bills dropped from his hand, one after the other, and lay there crumpled on the red tile floor. A gust of warm spring wind blew dirty pink curtains into the room. The bills rustled across the room and settled at Allerton's feet.
Imperceptibly the Skip Tracer straightened up, and a slit of light went on behind the eyelids.
"Keep that in case you're caught short, Kid," he said. "You know how it is in these spic hotels.
You gotta carry your own paper."
The Skip Tracer leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Suddenly he was standing up, as if tilted out of the chair, and in the same upward movement he pushed the hat back from his eyes with one finger. He walked to the door and turned, with his right hand on the knob. He polished the nails of his left hand on the lapel of his worn glen plaid suit. The suit gave out an odor of mold when he moved. There was mildew under the lapels and in the trouser cuffs. He looked at his nails.
"Oh, uh . . . about your, uh . . . account. I'll be around soon. That is, within the next few. ..." The Skip Tracer's voice was muffled.
"We'll come to some kind of an agreement." Now the voice was loud and clear. The door opened and wind blew through the room. The door closed and the curtains settled back, one curtain trailing over a sofa as though someone had taken it and tossed it there.