When the searching was over, the guy with the star started up the line, jabbering at each one in Spanish. That took quite a while. When he got to me he gave me the same mouthful, but she said something and he stopped. He looked at me sharp, and jerked his thumb for me to stand aside. I don’t like a thumb any better than I like a bum’s rush.
He fired an order at the soldiers then, and they began going in and out of the rooms. In a minute one of them gave a yell and came running out. The guy with the star went in with them, and they came out with our beans, our eggs, our ground corn, our pots, bowls, charcoal, machetes, everything that had been packed on the car. A woman began to wail and the hostelero began to beg. Nothing doing. The guy with the star and the soldiers grabbed them and hustled them out of the court and up the street. Then he barked something else and waved his hand. The whole mob slunk to their rooms, and you could hear them in there mumbling and some of them moaning. He walked over to her, put his arm around her, and she laughed and they talked in Spanish. Quick work, getting the stolen stuff back, and he wanted appreciation.
She went into No. 16 and came out with the hatbox and the other stuff. He opened the door of the limousine.
“Where you going with that guy?”
I didn’t know I was going to say it. My play was to stand there and let her go, but this growl came out of my mouth without my even intending it. She turned around, and her eyes opened wide like she couldn’t believe what she heard. “But please, he is politico.”
“I asked you where you’re going with him.”
“But yes. You stay here. I come mañana, very early. Then we looked at house, yes.”
She was talking in a phoney kind of way, but not to fool me. It was to fool him, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. She kept staring at me, trying to get me to shut up. I was standing by our car, and he came over and snapped something. She came over and spoke to him in Spanish, and he seemed satisfied. The idea seemed to be that I was an American, and was all mixed up on what it was about. I licked my lips, tried to make myself take it easy, play it safe till I got on that boat. I tried to tell myself she was nothing but an Indian girl, that she didn’t mean a thing with me, that if she was going off to spend the night with this cluck it was no more than she had done plenty of times before, that she didn’t know any different and it was none of my business anyway. No dice. Maybe if she hadn’t looked so pretty out there in the moonlight I might have shut up, but I don’t think so. Something had happened back in that church that made me feel she belonged to me. I heard my mouth growl again. “You’re not going.”
“But he is politico—”
“And because he’s politico, and he’s fixed you up with a lousy sailor’s whorehouse, he thinks he’s going to take part of his graft in trade. He made a mistake. You’re not going.”
“But—”
He stepped up, then, and shot a rattle at me in Spanish, so close I could feel the spit on my face. We hadn’t been talking loud. I was too sore to yell, and Mexicans say it soft. He finished, straightened up, and jerked his thumb at me again, toward the hotel. I let him have it. He went down. I stamped my foot on his hand, grabbed the pistol out of the holster. “Get up.”
He didn’t move. He was out cold. I looked at the hotel. All you could hear was this mumbling and moaning. They hadn’t heard anything at all. I jerked open the car door and shoved her in, hatboxes and all. Then I ran around, threw the pistol on the seat, jumped in and started. I went out of the court in second, and by the time I hit the road I was in high.
I snapped on the lights and gave her the gun. In a few seconds I was in the town, and then I knew what a mistake I had made when I came out of that court, and cut right instead of left. I had to get out of there, and get out of there quick before that guy came to, and I couldn’t turn around. I mean literally I couldn’t turn around. The street was so narrow, and so choked with burros, pigs, goats, mariachis, and people, that even when you met a car you had to saw by, and a turn was impossible. It was no through street. It went through the town, and then, at the hill, it led up to the big tourist hotel, and that was the end of it. I crawled along now, the sweat coming out on my brow, and got to the bottom of the hill. There was no traffic there, but it was still narrow. I turned right on a side road. I thought I might hit a way, after a block or two, that would lead back where I had come from. I didn’t. The street just tapered off into two tracks on an open field, that as far as I could see just wandered up in the hills. I pulled into the field, to turn around. I thought I still might have time to slip back through the town, though it didn’t look like even Jess Willard could stay out that long. Then back of me I heard shots, yells, and the screech of a motorcycle siren. It was too late. I was cut off. I doused the lights and bumped over to a grove of coconut palms, where anyway I would be shaded from the moonlight.
I lined up toward the town, so I could see, and tried to think. It all depended on whether I had been noticed, turning off the main street. If I hadn’t, I might be able to lay low till the moon went down and they were asleep, then go through the town fast, and be on my way to Mexico City before they even knew I had got away. I tried not to think about the ship.
In a minute or so, the sirens began to screech louder, and three single lights streaked out of town around the harbor. That meant they had no idea I was still around. They thought I was on my way to Mexico, and were out after me. That meant we would be safe here for a little while, maybe the whole night. But where it put me, when I did start up to Mexico, and met those patrols coming back, I hated to think. And Mexico was the only place you could go. There wasn’t any other road.
We sat there a long time, and then I knew she was crying. “Why you do this? Why you do this to me?”
“Don’t you know? Why I—” I tried to make myself say “I love you,” but it stuck in my throat. “I wanted you. I didn’t want him to have you.”
“That is not true. You go away.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You sing now, yes? You sing better anybody in Mexico. You stay in Acapulco, in a house? Why you lie? You go away.”
“I never even thought of it.”
“Now for me, very bad. No house, no. Maybe he shoot me, yes. I can no work more in Mexico. He is very big politico. I — why you do this? Why you do this?”
We sat there some more, and I wondered why I didn’t feel like a heel. She had called it on me all right, and I had certainly busted up her run of luck with plenty to spare. But I didn’t feel like a heel. I was in a spot, but my face wasn’t red. Then it hit me between the eyes: I wasn’t going to run out on her.
“Juana.”
“Yes?”