“Seven pesos.”
“Here. Give the other three to the fellow who cleans the bathroom so he’ll do a better job next time. It’s dirty in there.”
Laski and Graves had joined him, Laski carrying his hat. García took it from him and put it on.
“Thanks,” he said.
They walked outside.
“My car is across the street,” Graves said.
They crossed the street and got into the car, a dark-colored Buick. All three sat in the front seat.
“Let’s go to Guerrero Street,” García said. “You know where it is?”
“Yeah. What’s there?”
“We’re going to pay a visit to one of your compatriots, Graves. The widow of Roque Villegas Vargas. Maybe being a fellow American and all, she’ll tell you more.”
He told them about Anabella.
“Maybe you can get the truth out of her if you threaten to take away her American passport.”
“Let’s go.”
“But first I have to make a phone call.”
“I have a radio in the car you can use. .”
“I prefer a public phone, no offense. Stop there, at the tobacconist.”
“I’ll make sure we’re not being followed,” Laski said. “As you said, it’s ill advised to be the bait in a trap. .”
His eyes had become as sad as his voice. García got out of the car and asked for the telephone.
“García here, Colonel.”
“What do you want? You left less than an hour ago. .”
“I was with my friends at Café Canton.”
“Good for you!”
The colonel’s voice had that mocking tone of superiority it got sometimes.
“We had an altercation. .”
“Were you drunk?”
“No, Colonel. But they don’t want us there. And it seems there’s been a lot of movement at the warehouses in Nonoalco, where Wang has his merchandise. Maybe the dough is there. .”
“I’ll look into it.”
The colonel hung up. Damn! I mention that dough and he doesn’t even have time to say goodbye. He’s probably already left like a bat out of hell. And me playing the chump. I should’ve left them with their international intrigue and gone after the dough. Fucking international intrigue! Five hundred thousand bucks. That’s a very tidy sum. And me stuck in Outer Mongolia. Fucking Outer Mongolia!
He got in the car.
“Nobody’s following us,” Laski said. “I think Graves told the truth for a change, and he doesn’t have men on our tail.”
“I always tell the truth,” Graves said. “At least when it’s convenient. And such moments do turn up now and then.”
“Not often,” the Russian said, “not often.”
“Are they going to watch the warehouses?” Graves asked. “That’s important.”
“Yeah. Let’s get going.”
García knocked on the door of apartment number 9. Nobody answered.
“The bird’s probably already flown,” Laski said.
“Don’t think so,” García said. “She was too eager to collect the money and the car. Who wants to open the door?”
“It’s a cinch,” Graves said, “but I would like to observe the method used by my Soviet colleague. Someone told me that for him there is no such thing as an impenetrable lock or safe.”
Laski smiled, pleased, and leaned over the door handle.
“Very common. But I think we are being remiss in our manners. We should leave this job to our friend, Filiberto, our host.”
“Just do it, Ivan Mikhailovich. .”
“No, it would be rude. At international conferences, and this is an international conference, the representative of the host country always presides. It’s all yours, Filiberto.”
García took hold of the handle and turned. The door opened.
“They didn’t lock it,” Graves said.
They entered and García turned on the light. The room was still a mess. Only one thing was different. The corpse of what had once been Anabella Ninziffer, of Wichita Falls, alias Anabella Crawford, was sprawled out on the sofa. Someone had strangled her with an electrical cord. Laski went up and felt her wrist.
“Not long ago. Two hours at the most. .”
“Whoever killed her,” said García, “left the door open, because they planned to return.”
“Why return?” Graves asked. “They killed her so she wouldn’t talk, that’s all.”
“But they must have also thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave a corpse in plain sight, that it’d be better to hide it. Then the police would think she’d split.”
He entered the bedroom. All of Anabella’s clothes had been thrown haphazardly into a suitcase on the bed.
“Maybe she was thinking of running away,” Graves said.
“She wouldn’t have packed her clothes like that,” said Laski, who stood in the doorway looking in. “Women, especially performers, take good care of their clothes.”
“They must’ve planned to take it all away,” García said.
They went back to the living room. Graves ran his eyes over everything.
“What should we do? Shouldn’t we notify the police?”
“Better to wait for her killers. Do you agree, Ivan Mikhailovich?” García asked.
“We have to turn off the light and close the door, just as they left it.”
García closed the door and turned off the light. Some light from the street and a flashing red neon sign entered the room through the open window. Every time it flashed on, the neon lit up Anabella’s open eyes. They sat at the dining table, near the window, where they could watch the street.
“She’d look drunk if her eyes were closed,” Laski said. “I’ve never liked drunk women.”
“She probably was drunk,” García said. “Maybe she didn’t even realize what was about to happen. Doesn’t seem like she put up much of a struggle.”
“It’s not easy to strangle someone without a struggle,” Graves said.
“An electrical cord is very effective. Don’t you think so, Filiberto?”
García was going to say that he’d never used one, but then he remembered the one time he had. It was in Huasteca, and I was carrying out orders. Puny old devil who spent the whole day in his rocking chair on the porch of his house. The Boss gave the order. I came up behind him with the cord. They told me to make sure there was no fuss, so I waited till it was getting dark, around seven at night. When he stopped moving, I put him in a coffin we had brought, and we took the main road out of town. The best way to carry a body discreetly is in a coffin. A laborer coming down the road with his oxen even doffed his hat when he saw it. Then, suddenly, as we turned a corner, the fucking old man started kicking. Like he wanted someone to notice. We had to lower the coffin, open it, and give him another squeeze with the same cord. Fucking rowdy old man! His name was Remigio Luna.
Graves said:
“Not everyone puts up a fight. In Vienna, four years ago, I found it necessary to liquidate an agent. I think he was a colleague of yours, Ivan Mikhailovich. I gave one strong pull. First I wrapped my hands in handkerchiefs to protect them. He didn’t budge. He just made a gurgling sound.”
“That was Dimitrios Mikropopulos,” Laski said. “A very effective man, sometimes, but of unstable temperament and rather inclined to be disloyal, like all Levantines.”
“That was him,” Graves said. “A double agent. .”
He got up and covered Anabella’s face with a newspaper that was lying on the floor. Now, the neon lit with reddish tones the photograph of Roque Villegas, already dead, printed on the front page of the newspaper.
“A few years ago,” Laski suddenly said, “a Chinese colleague. .”
“When the Russians were their friends,” Graves clarified.
“Yes. He always carried a thin silk cord in his bag. He claimed it was the most efficient method. Once I asked him why he didn’t use nylon, and he told me that nylon stretches a little under pressure and is not as effective as silk. I think his preference was simply Chinese reactionaryism.”