The Follower, page 9
The waiter came back with some sliced hard rolls, ringed with raw onion and stuffed with some sort of chopped meat. Mark started to eat one and chili corroded the roof of his mouth like acid.
‘She flew to Guatemala this afternoon?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
The boy had high-angled cheekbones like the girl. He might almost have been her brother — her skinny twin brother burned up inside by some chili-like passion.
‘You’ve been in Venezuela, haven’t you, Mr Liddon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your wife wasn’t expecting you back till after Christmas?’
‘No.’
George picked up a little tin salt shaker and examined it with his devouring attention. ‘Mrs Liddon is flying through Guatemala to Caracas to meet you.’
Guatemala and now Venezuela. An image came of Ellie as a tiny figure dwindling, dwindling in space. The food had made him stronger but not strong enough to cope with this constant shift.
‘Why, if she was going to meet me in Venezuela, did she make this trip to Mexico?’
George looked up again. His face was well made. Women who liked that intense type might find him attractive. ‘I only know what your wife told me. It may not be the whole truth. After all, I was just a stranger — someone behind a bar.’
‘A big-hearted Harry.’
He had said that condescendingly. George flushed, the blood showing crimson under the thin white skin. He’s touchy too, Mark thought. He doesn’t like me because I’m bigger. Certainly he’s taken a weight-lifting course.
‘Mrs Liddon said she’d run up big gambling debts in New York. She couldn’t cover them. She tried to raise the money and failed. The outfit she owed the money to started to get tough. She was scared they’d hurt her so she took off for Mexico. She thought she’d be safe here, but some friend called her from New York to tell her the outfit was sending a gunman after her. She’d just heard this before she came to the bar. She was pretty frantic. I guess that’s why she spilled it all to me. She said the only place she’d be safe was with her husband. She said she’d booked a passage on the Guatemala plane. She was going to change planes there for Venezuela.’
Mark had hoped for an obvious falsehood in George’s story which would give away a hoax. It hadn’t happened that way. This was exactly what he had figured himself. Maybe Ellie was flying to Guatemala.
He glanced at Frankie. She had detached herself from the conversation and was smoking a cigarette, looking indifferently around the dilapidated bar. She was like the well-trained wife who had learned to obliterate herself when her husband talked business at lunch. Under the circumstances it did not seem to be a natural reaction.
He asked: ‘How does Frankie fit into this set-up?’
He knew then that Frankie’s indifference had been a fake. Quickly, before George could speak, she said: ‘I told him, George, about my not having papers to get back to New York, about your fixing it for me to use Mrs Liddon’s tourist card.’ Her candid blue eyes moved to Mark. ‘I didn’t tell you that part of the story. At least I didn’t tell it well. Mrs Liddon thought that if she left a phony Mrs Liddon behind as a decoy it might put the gunman off the scent long enough for her to make her get-away to Venezuela.’
‘Yes,’ put in George. ‘Mrs Liddon asked me if I knew anyone who might take on the job. Frankie showed up. It all fitted in together.’
Mark was sure then that they were working as a team. Frankie had had no time to brief George on the story she had told at the Hotel Reforma. The moment they had come to her part in the tale she had taken over. It had been done smoothly and George had followed her lead. But Mark knew now that his first instinct had been right.
They were both lying in their teeth.
He wondered how he could ever have considered believing them. It was his physical exhaustion which had confused him. He should always have trusted his sense of danger.
He didn’t, of course, know why they were lying. Off-hand, he didn’t see how they could connect with Victor. Victor had in Ellie only the routine interest of a racketeer whose policy was to eliminate patrons who welshed on their gambling debts. In Victor’s plans, there would be no place for this impersonation. Ellie must have run from one disaster head on into another. But - what?
He thought of the darkest possibility - that these two had murdered her. They were low enough, he felt, on the financial scale to have been tempted by her jewels alone. If they had done that, he would represent a great menace to them. He was something they had not bargained for, something to be appeased at all costs, to be got out of the picture. They had already told him Ellie was in Venezuela. If they were guilty - whatever their guilt - they would try to persuade him to follow her so that they would be safe from him in Mexico.
The musicians had stopped singing. They were drinking beer out of bottles. The customers were as quiet over their tequilas as if they were in church. A little barefoot boy was paddling from table to table selling papers.
Mark said to Frankie: ‘So, just for a tourist card, you’ve been ready to play pheasant to a gunman?’
‘I told you I want to get back to the States.’
Mark turned to George. ‘If my wife left her tourist card with Frankie, how did she get out of the country?’
‘She had her passport with her too.’ George smiled again that smile which was meant to be amiable. ‘You’ve had a tough break, Mr Liddon. I wish I could help, but I guess there’s only one thing to do. I don’t even know that they did actually send a gunman after her. It may have been just a scare. Certainly no one’s showed, so far as I or Frankie know.’
‘I’m sure your wife’s safe and sound in Venezuela. You’d better hop a plane and go after her.’
‘Yes,’ put in Frankie. ‘That’s what you’d better do, Mr Liddon.’
He felt for a moment the craziness of a world in which you could fly from Venezuela to New York to Mexico City to Guatemala to Venezuela. He felt weary again and dispirited. It depressed him that they thought they could fool him so easily. He got up and pushed his chair back against the wall. He ignored the girl and looked straight at George.
‘Where’s my wife?’ he said.
‘In Venezuela.’
‘Forget that nonsense. Where’s my wife?’
‘So you don’t believe us.’ George got up too, standing very straight as if he was straining to be as tall as Mark. He seemed excited. Mark knew the type. They lied well and earnestly for their cause, these fanatics, but they didn’t get their kick out of it. What they enjoyed was the dramatic moment of action. ‘Why don’t you believe us, Mr Liddon?’
Mark wondered if George was carrying a gun. He probably was. George to George would always be right. People like that can shoot anyone who stands in their way and still wear a halo.
Mark said: ‘Never mind why I don’t believe you. Where’s my wife?’ The time had come for the bluff. ‘If you don’t tell me, I shall report this girl to the police for impersonation, theft of my wife’s personal property and intent to deceive the U.S. Immigration Bureau. I shall also go to the American Embassy and demand a full investigation of my wife’s disappearance.’
Both George and he had been talking quietly, but the antagonism between them had affected the atmosphere. The other customers were conscious of it. The musicians were watching unobtrusively over their beer bottles. The clatter of dominoes had stopped.
Frankie said: ‘Please, Mr Liddon, don’t make difficulties. We don’t know any more than we’ve told you.’
Mark ignored her. He was still watching George. ‘Do I go to the police and the Embassy?’
George was smiling now. It was quite a different smile from his earlier smile of condolence. Maybe he smiled this way the day in lesson five he lifted the weight that was meant for lesson six.
‘Okay, Mr Liddon. You win.’
‘My wife didn’t fly to Guatemala?’
‘No.’
‘She’s here in Mexico?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s all right?’
‘Perfectly all right.’
‘You’ll take me to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this from the beginning?’ George was still smiling. ‘I have her interests at heart, Mr Liddon. I was waiting until I had decided you were reliable.’
‘And you’ve decided I am reliable?’
‘I’ve decided you’re reliable.’ George nodded to the door. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’
Mark paid the check. The girl pushed past him towards the door. Every man in the bar watched her in silence. Somehow the feeling of tension had made them even more conscious of her sex. Mark and George together followed the girl through the swing doors out on to the sidewalk.
They were caught up in the raucous stream of Mexican street life. After the quiet of the cantina, it was momentarily bewildering. Three men were playing a marimba in the gutter. Buyers swarmed around the stalls that sold tropical fruit and fruit drinks, grey, crimson, saffron and lime in tall glass jars. There was a stench of decaying fruit and vegetables and underfoot moved a complicated sub-life of dogs and children. The wheeze of a pipe organ sounded from the fairground beyond.
George said: ‘Let’s cut up to Artes. We can get a taxi there.’
He turned past the corner of the Salon de Lisboa into a small side street. Frankie took Mark’s arm and drew him after George. It was almost night. The alley was empty. It wound crookedly ahead towards the grotesque silhouette of the Ferris wheel. The wheel was lit now with hundreds of little gleaming bulbs, patterning the sky like an astrologer’s chart of the fixed Zodiac. Although the alley was completely silent, the street noises still roared behind them. They might have been in a deserted cavern within hearing of the sea.
Frankie was leaning on his right arm. George was strolling nonchalantly ahead. Okay. He knew exactly why they had led him into this dark alley. He knew what was going to happen. He could have avoided it, but he preferred to have the issue forced. He wasn’t unlike George. The slow-drawn-out game of cat-and-mouse had made him restless too. That and his anger readied him for violence. He wasn’t afraid of them. He had known more dangerous people than this.
George would spin around suddenly. Mark was sure of that. He would spin around and there would be a gun in his hand. But he wouldn’t do it just yet. He would wait until they were deeper in the darkness, nearer to the bellow of the fairground pipe organ which would drown out the sound of a shot. Frankie was holding on to Mark’s right arm to obstruct him if he too should have a gun. He didn’t have one. He despised the priesthood of the bullet.
They were both, of course, equally false. Both of them, from some dark reason, were trying to keep him from Ellie. But it was Frankie against whom his anger was directed. For a moment the girl had won his sympathy because she had been born or said she had been born in Czechoslovakia. She had used a kinship to trick him and he hated her for it. Women were always more contemptible than men as enemies, anyway. It was the weapons they used.
She was leaning heavily on his arm. She was warm. He could smell traces of Ellie’s perfume. The dyed hair shone faintly in the vague light. Within a foot of the spot Mark would have chosen himself George spun around. The barrel of a revolver gleamed in his right hand.
Frankie gave a little cry.
George said: ‘Okay, Mr Liddon. You asked for it.’
Mark felt a sudden exhilaration now that the moment for action had come at last. He increased his pressure of Frankie’s arm and, swinging her in front of him, pushed her violently forward so that she hit George like a missile. She sprawled on the ground. George staggered under the impact. Mark jumped at him, knocked his arm sideways, sent the gun clattering across the cobblestones and then kicked him in the stomach. George sank with a groan into the darkness. The girl scrambled to her feet and started to run away up the alley. Mark stooped for the gun. He couldn’t find it. As he groped for it, George suddenly sprang up and fled after the girl. After a minute’s fumbling Mark found the gun. He grabbed it and started in pursuit up the alley.
He could no longer hear their footsteps against the cobblestones ahead. He reached a curve in the alley and turned it, to find himself suddenly in the fairground. Lights dazzled. The pipe organ was blaring out a nineteen-twenty American song: ‘I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream.’ The instrument was set up under a shade tree, its ancient facade quivering with the effort of music-making. The square was crowded with people. He pushed through the humble throng of peasant women, children, barefooted Indians and the inevitable mongrel dogs. He passed sleazy old carnival tents and stalls selling acid-green candy. An orange carrousel, as old as the pipe organ, circulated dark solemn children on gilded horses. Ahead of him the Ferris wheel lumbered creakingly around its circle — the astrologer model in motion, working out some pedantic problem of trines and houses.
He searched the fairground grimly and thoroughly. There was no trace of George or Frankie. He went back down the alley.
Outside the Salon de Lisboa he stood alone in the darkness, feeling baffled and goaded like the bull in the arena that afternoon with the Christmas tree darts stuck in its back.
14
THE anger, pent up inside him, was dangerous, like rising river water. He moved to the corner where the shabby swing doors led into the Salon de Lisboa. He knew neither George nor the girl would have gone back there, but he pushed his way through the doors into the cantina.
The musicians were singing and twanging their guitars again. The customers were still playing dominoes or sitting silently over their drinks. Nothing outwardly changed at his entrance, but he could tell they were all aware of him. He was for them part of a tension that had not been resolved. He brought the potential of violence with him, and their reaction to him was excitement. They were quite unlike an equivalent group in an American bar, who would have been indifferent or embarrassed. It was as if each of these quiet, dark-skinned men carried a knife on his hip and was hoping that he might have to whip it out.
There was nothing to be gained by staying. He was on the street again, stepping over rotting papayas, avoiding a girl who leaned out of a stall to offer a shoddy scarlet scarf for sale. Ellie was still in Mexico. He was at least sure of that. She was here either alive or dead. At the moment he was able to face the possibility that she might be dead. That was because he was so angry. A cheap little torch singer and her nail-biting boyfriend had tried to push him around. His response was ruthlessly uncomplicated. They had abducted his wife and tried to kill him. He would hunt them down and smash them.
That seemed almost as important as finding Ellie.
He was walking at random. He had left the market area and was moving along a sloping street with raised, crooked sidewalks and pink-washed wall faces, whose barred, shuttered windows hinted at some inaccessible life within. He knew nothing about the girl and the boy or where to find them again. Almost certainly the girl wouldn’t be stupid enough to go back to the Hotel Reforma, but somewhere in the suite there might be a clue that would lead to Ellie.
A car came down the sloping street with a cardboard sign reading Libre propped against its windshield. He hailed it and drove back to the hotel. As he entered the foyer, a dance orchestra was playing in some other room. The clerk at the desk was the one who had been there when Mark arrived. He gave the key of the suite to Mark without his having to ask for it. At least, Mark thought, he was established here as Mrs Mark Liddon’s husband. He could come and go as he pleased.
The suite was exactly as it had been when he and the girl left it. He made a systematic search of the two rooms. He found nothing to give a clue to the false Mrs Liddon’s actual identity or whereabouts and nothing that connected with Ellie. Almost certainly Ellie had never been here, anyway. It had been from the Hotel Granada that she had vanished.
He was a little steadier now and he saw that there was no need for him to go searching for Frankie and George. Since he was dangerous enough for them to have tried to kill him, they would not leave him alone. They would come after him. All he had to do was to wait.
But if he waited, what might the delay mean to Ellie?
He refused now to think of her as dead. To admit the possibility was to admit defeat before he had started to fight. Ellie had been at the Hotel Granada and she had vanished. Whether this new complication’ connected with Victor or not didn’t matter at the moment. The obvious thing was to go back to the Hotel Granada and see whether he could pick up her trail from there.
He moved to the window, looking down at the street lights shining through the trees like luminous grapefruit. Suddenly the telephone rang. He crossed the room and picked up the receiver. Incredulously he heard Frankie’s voice. She said:
‘I’m so glad you’re there, Mr Liddon. I thought you might be.’
They must be even more eager to settle accounts with him than he had imagined. The sound of her voice brought a vivid visual picture of the fair hanging hair, the pure candid lines of her face. He could feel the anger straining inside him, but he could control it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’
‘Mr Liddon, I’m sorry about what happened. So’s George.’
‘That’s nice.’ His voice was very quiet.
‘It was all a stupid mistake. George didn’t trust you. He thought you were just pretending to be Mrs Liddon’s husband. But it’s all right now. I convinced him.’
‘That’s nice too.’
She paused. ‘I know you’ll want us to explain everything and then take you to your wife. Why don’t you meet us? We’re at a bar in Artes. The Baja California.’
