Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“Yessir, they have a very nice posada .”

He led me across the many-puddled parking lot to a fairly new Simca sedan. I climbed squishing into the front seat.

“Wet night.”

“Yessir.”

He drove me through it for half an hour, entertaining me with fragments of autobiography. Like the nurse who had vaccinated me in Mazatlan, he had learned his English in the Central Valley.

“I was a wetback,” he said with some pride. “Three times I walked across the border. Two times they picked me up on the other side and hauled me back on a bus. The third time, I made it, all the way to Merced. I worked around Merced for four years, in the fields. You know Merced?”

“I know it. How were working conditions?”

“Not so good. But the pay, it was very good. I made enough to come back home and go into business.” He slapped the wheel of his Simca.

We emerged from between steep black hills onto a lakeshore road. I caught pale glimpses of ruffled water. A herd of burros crossed the headlights and galloped away into darkness. Through the streaming windshield they looked like the grey and shrunken ghosts of horses.

Church towers, buttressed by other buildings, rose from the darkness ahead. The rain was letting up, and had stopped by the time we reached the village. Though it was past ten o’clock, children swarmed in the doorways. Their elders were promenading in the steep cobbled streets, which had drained already.

At the corner of the central square an old woman in a shawl had set up a wooden table on the sidewalk. She was serving some kind of stew out of a pot, and I caught a whiff of it as we went by. It had a heady pungency, an indescribable smell which aroused no memories; expectation, maybe, and a smattering of doubt. The smell of Mexico.

I felt closer to home when we reached the posada . The night clerk was a big middle-aged American named Stacy, and he was glad to see me. The pillared lobby of the place had a deserted air. Stacy and I and my driver, who was waiting for me just inside the entrance, were the only human beings within sight or sound.

Stacy fussed over me like somebody trying to give the impression that he was more than one person. “I can certainly fix you up, Mr. Archer. I can give you your choice of several nice private cottages.”

“Any one of them will do. I think I’ll only be staying one night.”

He looked disappointed. “I’ll send out the mozo for your luggage.”

“I have no luggage.”

“But you’re all wet, man.”

“I know. Luckily this is a drip-dry suit.”

“You can’t let it dry right on you.” He clucked sympathetically. “Listen, you’re about my size. I’ll lend you some slacks and a sweater if you like. Unless you’re thinking of going right to bed.”

“I wasn’t intending to. You’re very kind.”

“Anything for a fellow American,” he said in a mocking tone which was half serious after all.

He took me through a wet garden to my cottage. It was clean and roomy; a fire was laid in the fireplace. He left me with instructions to use the bottled water, even for cleaning my teeth. I lit the fire and hung up my wet suit on a wall bracket above the mantel.

Stacy came back after a while with an armful of dry clothes. His large rubbery face was flushed with generosity and a meantime drink. The flannel slacks he gave me were big in the waist. I cinched them in with my belt and pulled on his blue turtleneck sweater. It had a big monogrammed “S” like a target over the heart, and it smelled of the kind of piny scent they foist off on men who want to smell masculine.

“You look very nice,” Stacy declared.

He stood and watched me in wistful empathy. Perhaps he saw himself with ten pounds shifted from his waistline to his shoulders, and ten lost years regained. He got a bit flustered when I told him I was going out. He may have been looking forward to an intimate conversation by the fire: And what is your philosophy of life?

Keep moving, amigo.

Stacy knew where the Hatchens lived, and passed the word in rapid Spanish to my driver. We drove to a nameless street. The only sign at the corner had been painted on a wall by an amateur hand: “ Cristianismo si, Comunismo no .” A church tower rose on the far side of the wall.

The Hatchens’ gate was closed for the night. I knocked for some time before I got a response. My knocking wasn’t the only sound in the neighborhood. Up the street a radio was going full blast; hoofs clip-clopped; a burro laughed grotesquely in the darkness; the bell in the church tower rang the three-quarter hour and then repeated it for those who were hard of hearing; a pig squealed.

A man opened the upper half of the wicket gate and flashed a bright light in my face. “ Quién es ? Are you American?”

“Yes. My name is Archer. You’re Mr. Hatchen?”

“Dr. Hatchen. I don’t know you, do I? Is there some trouble?”

“Nothing immediate. Back in the States, your wife’s daughter, Harriet, has run off with a young man named Burke Damis whom you may know. I came here to investigate him for Colonel Blackwell. Are you and Mrs. Hatchen willing to talk to me?”

“I suppose we can’t refuse. Come back in the morning, eh?”

“I may not be here in the morning. If you’ll give me a little time tonight, I’ll try to make it short.”

“All right.”

I paid off my driver as Hatchen was opening the lower gate. He led me up a brick walk through an enclosed garden. The flashlight beam jumped along in front of us across the uneven bricks. He was a thin aging man who walked with great strenuosity.

He paused under an outside light before we entered the house. “Just what do you mean when you say Harriet’s run off with Damis?”

“She intends to marry him.”

“Is that bad?”

“It depends on what I find out about him. I’ve already come across some dubious things.”

“For instance?” He had a sharp wizened face in which the eyes were bright and quick.

“Apparently he came here under an alias.”

“That’s not unusual. The Chapala woods are full of people living incognito. But come in. My wife will be interested.”

He turned on a light in a screened portico and directed me through it to a further room. A woman was sitting there on a couch in an attitude of conscious elegance. Masses of blondish hair were arranged precariously on her head. Her black formal gown accentuated the white puffiness of her shoulders. The classic lines of her chin and throat were a little blurred by time.

“This is Mr. Archer, Pauline. My wife,” Hatchen said proudly.

She took my hand with the air of a displaced queen and held onto it in a subtle kind of Indian wrestling until I was sitting beside her on the couch.

“Sit down,” she said unnecessarily. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Mr. Archer is an emissary from dear old Mark.”

“How fascinating. And what has dear old Mark been up to now? Wait, don’t tell me. Let me guess.” She held a forefinger upright in front of her nose. “He’s worried about Harriet.”

“You’re a good guesser, Mrs. Hatchen.”

She smiled thinly. “It’s the same old story. He’s always brooded over her like a father hen.”

“Mother hen,” Hatchen said.

“Father hen.”

“At any rate, she’s run off and married that Damis chap,” he said.

“I’m not surprised. I’m glad she had it in her. All Harriet ever needed was a little of her mother’s spirit and fortitude. Speaking of spirits, Mr. Archer–” she waved her finger “–Keith and I were just about to have a nightcap. Won’t you join us?”

Hatchen looked at her brightly. He was still on his feet in the middle of the room. “You’ve had your ration, dear one. You know what the doctor said.”