Cat was unprepared for how quickly she could run in the tight dress, but he managed to stay close behind her. Ahead half a block, across the street, he could see a small crowd of people gathered, looking into an alley. Suddenly they were moving back, away from the alley, and there was a woman’s scream. As Cat and Meg Garcia reached the spot, Bluey staggered out of the alley into the street, holding both hands against his chest.
Horrified, Cat watched as, with a great effort, Bluey pulled his hands away. In his right hand was a knife, and the front of his shirt was red and shiny. As Cat reached him the Australian sank into a sitting position, one leg collapsed under him. Cat grabbed his shoulder and took Bluey’s weight against him. With his other hand he ripped open the sodden shirt to find a spurting wound.
“Quick,” he said to the Garcia woman, “get an ambulance.” At that moment, a police car pulled up, and she began talking rapidly to the policeman, who said something into a radio. Cat got a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
Bluey wore a look of astonishment. “Cat,” he managed to say, “I wasn’t expecting...”
“Shhh, Bluey, it’s going to be all right. An ambulance is on the way. We’ll get you patched up in a hurry.” Cat knew it was a lie, even as he said it. The wound was near the center of the chest and was spurting. It had to be the aorta.
“Cat,” Bluey was saying, but more weakly, “Cat, Marisa — it goes to Marisa, she’s the only...” He stopped in mid-sentence, coughed up some blood, and stopped. There was a streetlamp above them, and as Cat looked into Bluey’s eyes, he clearly saw the pupils dilate. He removed the handkerchief from the wound; it had stopped spurting. He felt at the neck for a pulse; there was none. Cat closed Bluey’s eyes and stayed there, holding him until the ambulance came.
Cat was at the police station until midnight, numbly answering questions translated by Meg Garcia. Bluey’s body was placed on a bench in a back room until an undertaker came and took it away.
“I must send the passport with a report to the American Consul in Barranquilla,” the policeman was saying. “Is there a next of kin?”
Cat nodded. “He has a daughter in Miami, Florida.”
“Will you act for her?”
“Yes, I’ll see that she receives his personal effects.”
The policeman handed him a brown paper bag. “Do you have the address?” he asked.
“No,” Cat replied.
“Do you think it might be with his effects?” Meg Garcia asked.
Cat emptied the bag onto the desk. There were a fat wallet, the keys to the car and the airplane, some coins, and a small notebook. Cat leafed through the notebook. He wanted to leave this place.
“Here it is,” he said. “Marisa Holland, in care of Mrs. Imelda Thomas.” He read out the address in Miami.
The policeman duly noted it in his report. He handed Cat a sheet of paper. “Here is the name of the undertaker, and the telephone number of the American Consul. You must make arrangements tomorrow.”
Cat nodded. “Yes, of course. May we go now?”
“There is nothing more to do.”
“Will you catch the boy who did this?”
The policeman shrugged. “No one actually saw the stabbing occur, no one who will say so, anyway. It will be very difficult.”
They didn’t talk much on the way back to the hotel. When they parted she said, “You look exhausted. Try and get some sleep and I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning and help you make the arrangements,” she said.
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” he replied. “Do you think you might still be able to get the watch?” It was his last shred of hope. He had to have it.
“I’ll try. It may not be possible now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Cat’s body and mind cried out for rest. He managed to get to sleep without thinking.
15
Cat moved, trance-like, through the horrors of dealing with the undertaker and the American Consul. The undertaker was professionally sorrowful, the Consul, on the telephone, was brisk. It was not the first American corpse he had dealt with.
“Do you have any reason to suppose there is anyone in the United States who would want Mr. Holland’s body returned there?” he asked.
“No, I don’t believe I do.”
“Well, then, my advice is to have the undertaker bury him in Santa Marta. This is a hot climate, and even with embalming, well...”
“I see your point. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“Was there anything of value among his effects?”
“There was some money.”
“Do you want me to send it to the daughter, or will you?”
“I’ll take care of that.”
“Good.” The man sounded relieved.
The undertaker found a priest, and there was a brief, graveside service attended by Cat, Meg Garcia, the undertaker, and two gravediggers. When it was over she said, “That’s it, there’s nothing more to do.”
“There’s the watch,” Cat said. “Will you try?”
“Do you have a thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me. I’ll try to find him. Wait for me at the hotel.”
Lying on his bed with the air-conditioning turned up high, Cat tried to think. Everything depended on the wristwatch; he couldn’t leave Santa Marta without knowing about that. If the Garcia woman could find out where the boy had gotten it, there might be a thread to follow, although he was ill-equipped to follow it.
He kept expecting to hear Bluey’s voice from the next room — gruff, cheerful, practical, knowledgeable — always with an idea of what to do next. Cat didn’t know what to do next. He got up and went into Bluey’s room. The clothes he had bought in Atlanta were neatly hung in the closet and tucked into drawers. He collected them and packed them into the single canvas bag Bluey had brought with him. There was about seven thousand dollars in the jacket, the remainder of the ten thousand Cat had paid Bluey in Atlanta.
In Bluey’s wallet he found a school photograph of a small, dark little girl, very pretty. Except for a few hundred dollars, the new wallet was strangely empty — no credit cards, no driver’s license, just a few scraps of paper with unfamiliar phone numbers and incomprehensible jottings. He tossed all of it, except the photograph, the money, and Bluey’s .357 magnum, into the bag and zipped it shut. There was nothing worth sending back to the States; he’d give it all to the porter. He staggered back to his bed and slept.
There was a soft knock on the door. Cat struggled up, glancing at his bedside clock. Early evening. He had slept the whole afternoon away. He went to the door.
“May I come in?” the Garcia woman asked.
“Sure, have a seat. Did you have any luck?”
She sat down on the living-room sofa, opened her handbag, and handed him a Rolex wristwatch. “He took your thousand dollars,” she said.
Cat turned over the watch, holding his breath, and read the inscription on the back. “For Cat and Catbird, with love, Katie & Jinx.” He swallowed hard. “Did you find out where he got it?”
“Yes. He stole it from a man, a man with an eye patch. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes, yes, it does,” Cat said, growing excited. “Does he have any idea where the man is now?”
“He’s dead. The gamines killed him for the watch. A dozen of them trapped him in an alley, and... well, he wasn’t the first, and your friend, Holland, won’t be the last.”
“Did the boy know anything about the man? Anything at all?”
She shook her head. “Nothing at all. He was drinking at one of the cantinas, sitting near the sidewalk. They saw the wristwatch. When he left, drunk, they followed him. That was it.”