Judson Carmichael - The Scared Stiff

As the driver walked back to his chair, not bothering to look at me, Rafez studied the three documents before him. At last he looked up. He was puzzled, but he was ready to be enlightened. “Felicio Tobón,” he said.

“I can explain,” I said.

“I truly doubt that,” he said, which made two of us.

Still, it was up to me to try. “I’m actually connected with the DEA,” I astonished myself by saying, and then I added to my gall by explaining to this policeman what that was: “The Drug Enforcement Authority.”

“Administration,” he corrected me.

I nodded and decided to say nothing more. That had been panic, a perfectly sensible reaction under the circumstances, but not a helpful one. I hadn’t made things worse by starting a yarn about being an undercover investigator for the DEA — Administration, I knew that — only because in fact things couldn’t get worse. Rafez held Felicio Tobón’s ID in his hands. He had investigated Barry Lee’s fatal accident and had worked with the insurance investigator, Leon Kaplan. It was all over. Lola and I were both going to jail.

Well, at least she’d be going to an American jail. I tried to imagine a Guerreran jail. Then I tried not to.

Rafez at last gave up waiting for me to spin another tale, and looked at the documents again. “Felicio Tobón,” he said, testing the words, assaying them. “There are Tobóns in Guerrera,” he decided. “It’s a large family, they’re all over the country.”

He looked at me as though expecting me to either agree or argue, but why should I? Let him find the way on his own; he would, soon enough. It wasn’t up to me to help him.

He nodded, as though my silence had been significant, and studied the documents some more. “They’re very good,” he said.

“They should be,” I told him. “They’re real.”

He lifted a surprised eyebrow at me, then held the birth certificate in both hands and lifted it so he could look at it with the ceiling fluorescent behind it. Then he did the same with the driver’s license. For the passport, he took a magnifying glass out of the center drawer of the desk and bent low over the first two pages. Then he put the magnifying glass back in the drawer and held up the passport to show it to me, open to the page with my picture. “But that is you,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at the picture himself, then dropped the passport on the desk. “So you are Felicio Tobón,” he said.

“It would seem so,” I agreed.

“Yet you are an American.”

I shrugged, with a sheepish little smile. These anomalies happen.

He thought it over. He drummed his fingers on the desk. Then he doodled awhile on the yellow pad. Then he did some silent whistling as he gazed over my head at the far wall. Then he nodded, apparently agreeing with himself about something, and focused on me again. “So it’s actually a case of murder,” he said.

I blinked. “Murder? Whose murder?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Emory,” he said, “or whoever you are. You are not Felicio Tobón, although your photo is in his passport and you possess all his identification. How do you happen to possess his identification?”

“That’s my picture on the driver’s license too,” I pointed out.

“I saw that,” he said impatiently. “I can only assume bribes were paid.”

“No,” I said. “You know that’s not possible. Too much bureaucracy.” I felt I should be saying warm or cold, but I was damned if I would.

He nodded; he knew I was right about the bureaucracy. Then he thought a little more, eyes inward. Then, as though talking mostly to himself, he said, “All we need is the body.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake, Felicio Tobón’s body. Good luck, pal, I thought. If that was all he needed, I was home free. Except I wasn’t, and I knew I wasn’t.

“Carlos Perez,” he said.

I watched him. Now what?

“He is the one,” Rafez decided, “who would have disposed of the body. In fact,” he said, sitting up more alertly, looking more intent, “he is related to the Tobóns!”

I watched him.

“There are Tobóns in Tapitepe as well,” he said. “That truck will turn out to belong to one of them, and you were in it, which is where this manure stain on your traveling bag came from. Oh, yes, Mr. Emory, I am a detective.”

I watched him.

“You were in Tapitepe,” he said, “dressed as Emory but with Felicio Tobón’s identification. You were in that truck, which ran out of gas. A falling out among thieves? What is your relationship with the Tobóns? First Carlos Perez in Rancio, then those scoundrels in Tapitepe. What is the link there?”

Behind me, the driver said something, an explanation or reminder of something. Rafez listened, alert, then nodded and said, “Si, si. Gracias.” To me he said, “There was a motor vehicle accident in Tapitepe tonight, a truck and a motorcycle, involving Tobóns.”

I said, “Was anyone hurt?”

“I believe everyone was hurt,” he said, “but no one was killed.”

“Good,” I said, by which I meant, bad .

“So that is connected as well,” he told me.

I watched him.

I saw it come over him, like sunrise. His head lifted, and he looked at me as though I were a Christmas present. “Felicio Tobón!” he cried.

I watched him. He leaned toward me over the desk, his voice lowering, as though this were a secret just between the two of us. “Is Lola Lee your sister?”

“Now,” I said, “I can explain.” And I did.

He was a good listener. I left out Luz, but I told him the scheme, and about Arturo’s part in it, and Carlos and Manfredo and them from Tapitepe. I included dinner with Leon Kaplan, but I left out Carlita Carnal, saying merely that we “got” the application letter from the Bureau of Records. “And that’s all,” I finished.

“Well, no,” he said. “That isn’t all. But it’s a great deal. You are very resourceful, Mr. Lee.”

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d rather be Felicio. I’m trying to get used to it.”

“Among all those other names.”

“Exactly.”

He studied me. He liked me now, I could see that, because I was a rascal now, and he could control rascals. “You have been very clever,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“And at times very lucky.”

“And at times very unlucky.”

That made him laugh. “Am I one of your unlucky times?”

“I think you’ll tell me,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It was intelligent of you to tell me the truth when you did. Or part of the truth.”

“I didn’t tell you any lies,” I said.

He said, “Are you Catholic?”

“No. But I was married in the Church. Down in Sabanon.”

“For Catholics,” he told me, “there are two kinds of sin.”

“Mortal and venial. I know about that.”

His smile was becoming edgy. “I was thinking of a different two kinds of sin.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“There are sins of commission” he explained, “and there are sins of omission. You say you told me no lies, so there are no sins of commission. Will you say you also committed no sins of omission?”

“Well,” I said, and shrugged, “nobody’s perfect.”

“Which is what makes my job possible,” he assured me. “Let me congratulate you on your wife, by the way. A very attractive woman.”

“Yes,” I said. “She told me you were attracted.”

He shrugged, palms up. “At that time,” he pointed out, “you were dead.”

“I still am,” I said. “Leon Kaplan gave up, he went back to the States. But if he finds out I’m alive, he’ll put Lola in jail. He told me so; he said it himself.”