Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

He went to the tiny kitchen alcove and took two cans of beer out of the midget refrigerator, pulled the tabs off, went over and handed her one, saying, “Maybe she’s taking up with the kid to get her mind off worrying about Staniker.”

“Eh? Oh, I do not believe that is the way it is for her, truly. From the time El Capitán departed, she became more and more agitated. She walked restlessly, appearing suddenly to tell me things to do which were not needed. If I would wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes lights would be on in the house. She smoked much. All small things irritated her. And then, last Sunday, as she was becoming truly impossible, the news came of the boat from Texas being lost somehow. She said to me she was terribly worried about Captain Staniker. But how did she act? Still nervous, but she would hum little songs while pacing, and make large smiles at me and treat me kindly. She began this matter of the sailing lessons in the rented boat. Now she is becoming just a little bit ugly again, more so each day.”

He sat at the other end of the couch. “Honey, I didn’t know you were all this interested in the woman.”

“How not? There are just the two of us living here, no? Two women. I examine her. Perhaps it is — like the adventures in the daytime of the women of television. But they are good women in trouble. This one has the trouble of the money, and if she does not cure it, perhaps the house will go and my job will be gone. Perhaps she knows I watch her life as if it is television, but not so clear. Maybe not. She believes I am estupida, una burra, verdad . She asks about you. It would puzzle her, a journalist of importance visiting her maid, so I have told her you are a cook in a small Cuban restaurant. Also, I have invented others and say they visit me. It is that I do not care to have her enter my private life. It is a way — of hiding, perhaps. As, of course, she hides herself from me.”

“We all do some hiding,” he said as casually as he could manage.

“And what are you hiding, Señor?” Her look was flirtatious.

“My plans for us, chica.”

“But you said if she did not need me we would go all the way to the place in Fort Lauderdale where there is the Hawaiian food! Now you do not want to?” She looked like a troubled, disappointed child.

“Not the plans for tonight. The plans to get married and go to California to that new job I’ve been offered.”

“Oh. Do you think it would be better for me to wear high heels to that nice place, Raoul?”

He slid along the couch, put the empty beer can down, put his hands on her shoulders, held her strongly, gave her a little shake.

“Marriage, ’Cisca. Man and wife. Vows, home, kids.”

“Oh, I do not care to be married.”

He shook her again. “I care to marry you!”

Her face went absolutely still in a way he had not seen for many weeks. Her lips looked bloodless, and her eyes stared through him. He released her and she stood up and he expected her to say, as before, she had a headache, she did not feel well, he should leave, please.

Instead she said, “I am not one you would marry.”

“Why not?”

“One does not marry this description of woman. Now perhaps you would...”

He got up and said quickly, taking her hands, “High heels, almita , might make you feel more like fiesta, ha? And you will drink one of the enormous things of rum and become very foolish. Okay?”

He watched the stillness change, quite slowly, to animation, and her eyes focused upon him, merry and mischievous. “Red shoes! Red shoes!” she cried and went scuttling off to put them on.

Later in his car on the way up to Lauderdale, she wiggled closer to him and said, “I must tell you. I make up stories about my Señora Harkinson, to make it more like the television. I do it when I am ironing, mostly. When one does not think about what the hands are doing. I have imagined it is some manner of plot, about El Capitán. It was all arranged between them the yacht would become missing, and so when it happened, then she was happy because the plan was working. And it would be money, somehow, because it is what she is so worried about. But you must help me with the story. It gets difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the paper on Monday there was the picture of the Señor Kayd. Oh, a very important man. I saw the picture and knew it was the one I had seen visit my Señora. He is not one easily forgotten, a giant truly, with a big shaved head and a loud laugh, a very heavy man but not fat. Perhaps fifty years old. With a white cowboy hat and boots with silver buckles and an air of importance, with a young man who brought him in a very rich car which he polished while the huge Señor was visiting my Señora. He visited for an hour, and they had drinks together and talked. His laugh rang through the house. From what I overheard, he was a friend of the Senator Fontaine and had met her when the Senator was alive and visited her here. She got out the most expensive bottles. She had me fix the small things to eat while drinking. When I took them in, they were talking quietly, and ceased when I entered. She thanked me and told me she would not need me and I could go back to my place until she called me. After the big man left she did not call me. It was the last day of March. I am sure of that.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“A way to put Señor Kayd into the story, like television.”

“Hmmm. Let me see now. Staniker knows the Bahamas well. He tells Crissy Harkinson he knows where there’s sunken treasure, but if he goes after it he has to give a big share to the Crown. He can’t finance the venture. But she has a rich Texas friend with a big boat. He flies over and talks to her. Then, three weeks ago, he arrives here with the boat and takes on Staniker as captain and they go to find the treasure. When they get the chance, they sneak off. They break contact. They hide the boat in some narrow cut and cover it with boughs. Now they are bringing up the treasure.”

“And what will happen?” she asked breathlessly.

“Let me see. Oh, of course! When they have the treasure, they won’t dare try to bring it out in Kayd’s boat. They had a sailboat hidden too, and Mrs. Harkinson and Oliver are going to sneak over there and sail it back.”

She leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “Oh, you are such a very clever man, Raoul Kelleeeee! Treasure! Mystery! Dark plots!” Then she gave that hard little bark of laughter which so often preceded her infrequent experiments with the English she had picked up at the Homestead café. “Sotch a crock of sheet!” she said merrily, and, as he winced inwardly, he wondered if she had the faintest idea what she had said.

On that Monday morning after the news of the missing cruiser had been announced, two men sat waiting in a second floor office in Brownsville, in a mottled old stucco building two blocks from the old bridge across the Rio Bravo to Matamorros. The windows faced a narrow street where the mid-morning heat was increasing. The windows were closed. The noisy compressor on the old window unit set up a sympathetic resonance in the metal cover of the air conditioner and in the glass of the window, a resonance that built and faded like engines out of sync.

The wooden furniture was heavy, scarred, marked with the burns where cigarettes and cigars had been forgotten. The grass rug was scuffed thin, broken in places. Only the file cabinets looked new, three of them aligned against one wall, thick, gray, fire-resistant, with combination locks. Below the office was a small grocery store and bar, specializing in Mexican food, Mexican beer. The juke music was always turned high, but over the sound of the air conditioner only the repetitive thud of the bass could be heard.