“Where you think? To the Locha, where you come from.”
That was one between the eyes. I didn’t know she had even heard of La Locha’s. But I dead-panned as well as I could.
“What’s the locha? I don’t seem to place it.”
“So, once more you lie.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I went for a walk and got lost, that’s all.”
“You lie, now another time you lie. You think these girl no tell me about crazy Italian who come every night? You think they no tell me?”
“So that’s where you spend your afternoons.”
“Yes.”
She stood smiling at me, letting it soak in. I kept thinking I ought to kill her, that if I was a man I’d take her by the throat and choke her till her face turned black. But I didn’t want to kill her. I just felt shaky in the knees, and weak, and sick. “Yes, that is where I go, I find little muchacha for company, little muchacha like me, for nice little talk and cup of chocolate after siesta. And what these little muchacha talk? Only about crazy Italian, who come every night, give five-quetzal tip.” She pitched her voice into Maria’s squeak. “Sí. Cinco quetzales.”
I was licked. When I had run my tongue around my lips enough that they stopped fluttering, I backed down. “All right. Once more I’ll cut out the lying. Yes, I was there. Now will you stop this show, so we can talk?”
She looked away, and I saw her lips begin to twitch. I went in the bathroom, and started to wash the blood off my hand. I wanted her to follow me in, and I knew if she did, she’d break. She didn’t. “No! No more talk! You no go, then I go! Adios!”
She was down, and out the front door, before I even got to the head of the stairs.
Chapter 14
I ran out on the street just as a taxi pulled away from the corner. I yelled, but it didn’t stop. There was no other taxi in sight, and I didn’t find one till I went clear around the block to the stand in front of the hotel. I had him take me back to La Locha’s. By that time there were at least twenty cabs parked up and down the street, and things were going strong in all the houses. It kept riding me that even if she had gone in the place, they might lie to me about it, and I couldn’t be sure unless I searched the joint, and that meant they would call the cops. I went to the first cab that was parked there and asked him if a girl in a red dress had gone in any of the houses. He said no. I gave him a quetzal and said if she showed, he was to come in La Locha’s and let me know. I went to the next driver, and the next, and did the same. By the time I had handed out quetzals to half a dozen of them, I knew that ten seconds after she got out of her cab I would know it. I went back to La Locha’s. No girl in a red dress had come, said the Indian. I set up drinks for all hands, sat down with one of the girls, and waited.
Around three o’clock the judiciary began to leave, and after them the army, and then all the others that weren’t spending the night. At four o’clock they put me out. Two or three of my taxi drivers were still standing there, and they swore that no girl in a red dress, or any other kind of dress, had come to any house in the street all night. I passed out a couple more quetzals, had one of them drive me home. She wasn’t there. I routed out the Japs. It was an hour’s job of pidgin Spanish and wigwagging to find out what they knew, but after a while I got it straight. Around nine o’clock she had started to pack. Then she got a cab, put her things in it, and went out. Then she came back, and when she found out I wasn’t home, went out. When she came back the second time, around midnight, she had on the red dress, and kept walking around upstairs waiting for me. Then I came home, and there was the commotion, and she went out again, and hadn’t been back since.
I shaved, cleaned the dried blood off my hand, changed my clothes. Around eight o’clock I tried to eat some breakfast and couldn’t. Around nine o’clock the bell rang. A taxi driver was at the door. He said some of his friends had told him I was looking for a lady in a red dress. He said he had driven her, and could take me to where he left her. I took my hat, got in, and he drove me around to a cheap hotel, one of those I had been to myself. They said yes, a lady of that description had been there. She had come earlier in the evening, changed her clothes once and gone out, then came back late and left an early call. She hadn’t registered. About seven thirty this morning she had gone out. I asked how she was dressed. They just shrugged. I asked if she had taken a cab. They said they didn’t know. I rode back to the house, and tried to piece it together. One thing began to stick out of it now. My being out late, that wasn’t why she had left. She was leaving anyway, and after she had moved out she had come back, probably to say goodbye. Then when she found I wasn’t there she had got sore, gone to the hotel again, changed into the red dress, and come back to harpoon me with how she was going back to her old life. Whether she had gone back to it, or what she had done, I had no more idea than the man in the moon.
I waited all that day, and the next. I was afraid to go to the police. I could have checked on the Tenth Avenue end of it in a minute. They keep a card for every girl on the street, with her record and picture, and if she had gone there, she would have had to report. But once I set them on her trail, that might be the beginning of the end. And I didn’t even know what name she was using. So far, even with the drivers and at the hotel, I hadn’t given her name or mine. I had spoken of her as the girl in the red dress, but even that wouldn’t do any more. If they couldn’t remember how she was dressed when she left the hotel, it was a cinch she wasn’t wearing red. I lay around, and waited, and cursed myself for giving her five thousand quetzals cash, just in case. With that, she could hide out on me for a year. And then it dawned on me for the first time that with that she could go anywhere she pleased. She could have left town.
I went right over to one of the open-front drugstores, went in a booth, and called Pan-American. I spoke English. I said I was an American, that I had met a Mexican lady at the hotel and promised to give her some pictures I had taken of her, but I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days and I was wondering if she had left town. They asked me her name. I said I didn’t know her name, but they might identify her by a fur coat she was probably carrying. They asked me to hold the line. Then they said yes, the porter remembered a fur coat he had handled for a Mexican lady, that if I’d hold the line they’d see if they could get me her name and address. I held the line again. Then they said they were sorry, they didn’t have her address, but her name was Mrs. Di Nola, and she had left on the early plane the day before for Mexico City.
Mexico looked exactly the same, the burros, the goats, the pulquerías, the markets, but I didn’t have time for any of that. I went straight from the airport to the Majestic, a new hotel that had opened since I left there, registered as Di Nola, and started to look for her. I didn’t go to the police, I didn’t make any inquiries, and I didn’t do any walking, for fear I’d be recognized. I just put a car under charter, had the driver go around and around, and took a chance that sooner or later I’d see her. I went up and down the Guauhtemolzin until the girls would jeer at us every time we showed up, and the driver had to wave and say “postales,” to shut them up. Buying postcards seemed to be the stock alibi if you were just rubbering around. I went up and down every avenue, where the crowds were thickest, and the more the traffic held us up, the better it suited me. I kept my eyes glued to the sidewalk. At night, we drove past every café, and around eleven o’clock, when the picture theatres closed, we drove past them, on the chance I’d see her coming out. I didn’t tell him what I wanted, I just told him where to drive.