Judson Carmichael - The Scared Stiff

Had this been a crime scene, that would have been a terrible way to treat the primary piece of evidence, but it wasn’t a crime scene, was it? It was an accident scene.

And now everyone was finished. Mike was turning his back to yawn, even the Ortizes were coming down from their self-satisfied high, and the bashful local cop had resigned himself to the fact that Inspector Rafez had the inside track with the beautiful rich widow. Rank, as everyone knows, has its privileges.

Lola was driven home by the inspectors. Loto sat in front with the driver and Rafez sat in back with Lola. She’d expected she might have to fend him off, but he behaved himself as he and Loto and Lola chatted about Guerrera, the changes since she’d moved away (not many), and people they might know in common (a few).

After a while, Loto began to doze. The silences lengthened. “I’ve been thinking about moving to the States myself,” Rafez said.

“Oh, yes?”

“Sure. New York City, I was thinking. I read about New York City a lot, and there’s a lot of Spanish people there.”

“That’s right.”

“The police there,” Rafez said, “they could use some cops talk Spanish, I bet that’s true.”

“I’m sure they’ve got some,” Lola said.

“Oh, yes, sure, they’d have to do that already. But look at this, Señora... Señora Lee. May I speak to you as Lola?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Thank you. And I am Rafael. Rafael Rafez.”

“How do you do,” she said politely.

“Well, Lola, here’s what I think,” he said. “I think they got cops there that speak Spanish and maybe know the people from the south, know them a little, but you look at me. Already I’m a cop, and already I’m here in South America; I got dealings with all kinds of Spanish people in this country. Not just Guerrerans, all kinds. Look at all the borders around us.”

“That’s true.”

“I think, if I got to New York,” Rafez told her, “I’d get a job with the cops in New York, they’re glad to have me, a guy knows the people like I know the people, and already a cop. Already took two courses in police technique, up in Miami. U.S. government courses, you know about them?”

“No, I don’t,” Lola said.

“Very good, very professional. I got diplomas, I’ll show you sometime.”

“That would be nice,” Lola said, and they arrived in San Cristobal, and the van behind them peeled off, and Loto woke up to say to the driver, “Take me home.”

So they had a little middle-of-the-night tour of the empty streets of San Cristobal, with the widely spaced pinkish streetlights and all the facades shuttered and shut up for the night. They stopped at a newish concrete apartment building and Loto yawned, got out of the Land Rover, and then stuck his head back in to say, “Condolences, Señora.”

“Thank you.”

Once they’d left the lights of San Cristobal behind, on the road to Sabanon, Rafez did make his move. Apparently he was a little heavy-handed, the bastard, and Lola had to defend herself with increasing vigor. She’d hoped the presence of the driver would be some sort of deterrent, but the driver never saw a thing, never even looked in the rearview mirror.

She tried to remain gentle about it, the heartbroken and dazed widow lady, but Rafez just got more and more aggressive, and it wasn’t until she gave him the nosebleed that he accepted the idea that no meant no.

Tenderhearted Lola; the nosebleed worked, but she still felt badly about it. “He’ll never get the blood out of that linen suit,” she said.

Good.

“Arturo,” I said, bouncing around in the backseat like a single piece of popcorn, “stop a second.” I was in back as we drove too fast out the potholed dirt road from the Scarlet Toucan after we’d drop-kicked the Beetle into the river, because I was supposed to be changing clothes, out of Barry and into Felicio, but the road flung me around so much I couldn’t do a thing. “Stop, will you?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “We gotta clear outa here.”

“Just stop while I get these pants on, Arturo.”

So he did stop, though reluctantly, and I at last finished getting dressed, switched to the front seat, and slammed the door, before Arturo sent us leaping forward again. Braced, I said, “One question.”

“It was beautiful, man,” he said. He grinned, and his teeth gleamed in the reflected headlight glow; the dashboard lights didn’t work on the Impala either.

I repeated myself. “One question, Arturo. Who was that guy?”

He risked a quick glance at me. “What guy?”

“The guy we put in the Beetle.”

“How do I know?” he asked me. “He was just somebody Ortiz had around. He said we was lucky, he had a guy the right size and sex and age and everything.”

“Arturo,” I said, “that was no peon, that was no nameless indigent. That guy had a manicure.”

“He did?” Arturo made the turn onto the main road, heading north, and we could both relax a little. “A manicure,” Arturo repeated, and grinned and shook his head.

“What’s going on, Arturo?”

“Looks like,” Arturo said, “somebody else got a scam working.”

“Just so it doesn’t make trouble for me .”

“How can it? The body come from Ortiz, the body’s goin’ back to Ortiz.”

“Well, that’s true.”

He gave me another grin. “And whaddaya thinka that Beetle, out there in the air?”

I grinned back at him. “It was great.”

He nodded, watching the dark road. “It was beautiful, hermano. I shoulda brought a video camera.”

I laughed, feeling the tension ease down another notch. “Arturo, we couldn’t stand there making a movie.”

“Be a hell of a movie,” he said.

It was almost two-thirty in the morning when we finally pulled to a stop in front of the anonymous wall surrounding Cousin Carlos’s place. Carlos had given a key to Arturo, who gave it to me, and it worked first time, as simple as if I’d been coming here this way for years.

I waved to Arturo, who yawned and waved back, and I went on inside as he drove off. I’d asked him earlier if he didn’t want to stay here tonight, rather than do more hours of driving, but he said that was okay, he wasn’t going all the way home to Sabanon but would stay over in San Cristobal. Maybe that meant his alleged wife and putative children were about to get a rare and precious Arturo sighting.

In any event, I was now on my own. I let the door in the wall snick shut behind me, which put me in darkness alleviated only slightly by star shine, just enough to make out the general shape of the building. Arturo had told me what I should do next. The same key would unlock the front door of the house. I should go in there, and I’d see a nightlight down the hallway to my right, which would be in the kitchen. I should continue on past the kitchen to the door at the end of the hall, which would be open. That was my room.

Yes. The key worked on the house door, as promised. I stepped inside into greater darkness, with what might have been a living room in front of me. I could vaguely see hints of the windows that would overlook the pool and the lawn and the river. A hall extended to my right, as advertised; the spill of light from a doorway on the left down there must be the kitchen. And the black rectangle beyond it would be the doorway to my new room.

I moved slowly and silently down the carpeted hall, not wanting to wake anyone. More of those free-form metal sculptures were on the walls here, like the ones I’d noticed on the inside of the perimeter wall. They were interesting abstract things, at the same time both primitive and sophisticated. They didn’t seem to go with Cousin Carlos at all. But you never know about people.