Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

“The good professor is, how shall I say it … incapacitated.”

“Did Bernstein kill Sara Klein?”

“What do you think?”

They stared at each other in a pointless duel; each fought with the same, mutually invalidating, weapons: disbelief and certainty.

“Just remember,” said Ayub, “that the professor has more important aims in this life than chasing after a woman, even if she is a good piece.” He took three steps back, upturned palms extended. “Just keep your cool, my friend. Things are as they are. Careful, don’t drop the package. If you break the urn, we’ll both have to sweep up.”

“You dirty bastard son-of-a-bitch,” said Felix, clutching the package. “You saw her naked, you touched her with your filthy little manicured pig’s hands.”

Ayub stood silent for a second, rejecting the insult, studying his hand with its topaz rings and carved scimitars.

“Sara Klein was the lover of my cousin, a schoolteacher in the occupied territories,” Ayub said simply, his usual braggadocio stripped away. “I don’t know whether she told you that story. Maybe she didn’t have time. I know you loved her, too. That’s why I brought you her ashes.”

He turned his back to Felix and walked to the door, again the strutting conquistador. As he opened the door, he turned to look at Felix. “Take care, my friend. When we meet again, there’ll be blood in our eyes, I promise you that. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that low punch you landed. I want to even the score, I give you my word. Now more than ever.”

He left, closing the door after him.

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK that evening, Felix entered a café on the Calle Londres. Leather banquettes and a bar of polished wood were intended to suggest an English pub, but the image was distorted by the strong fluorescent lights, and the beveled mirrors repeated only sparks of a dead star.

Felix walked to the copper-rimmed bar and asked for a beer. He looked around the room and was grateful, after all, for the horrid glare that permitted him to see the patrons. That may have been why the lights had been installed, so the bar wouldn’t become a haunt for hot lovers.

It didn’t take long to spot them. The boy in bell-bottom blue-jeans and a blue-and-white-striped jersey with a big anchor across the chest. The girl with hair like a curly black lamb he recognized immediately. The question was whether they would recognize him. He walked over to them with a glass of beer in his hand. The girl was carefully shelling chestnuts in her miniskirted lap; discarded hulls clung to her laddered stockings. She was feeding the nutmeats to the boy.

“August isn’t the season for chestnuts,” said Felix.

“My sailor friend brought them to me from a long way away,” the girl said, not looking up, absorbed in shelling the nuts.

“May I?” asked Felix, as he sat down.

“Scoot over, Emiliano,” said the girl. “These seats aren’t very wide.”

“ Your seat’s too wide, baby,” the boy replied, mouth filled with chestnuts. “I don’t know why they say those English women are so jolly, they must be thin in the butt.”

“You should know,” said Felix. “A girl in every port.”

“No,” purred the girl, caressing her companion’s neck. “He’s not much, but he’s all mine.”

“We fit fine,” said Felix. “Better than in the taxi. Did you get your books back, Emiliano?”

“No, man. You know the truth of it? I’m a professional student. Right, Rosita?”

The curly-headed girl smiled, and nodded. “Want a chestnut?”

“What I want is to know where you got them.”

“I told you, Emiliano brought them to me.”

“Where did they come from?” Felix insisted.

“From far away.” Emiliano raised his eyebrows. “What I need to know is what boat they came on, and who was at the helm.”

“They came on a ship called the Tiger, and Timon was the captain’s name.”

“Umm,” Emiliano mumbled. “The captain told me to tell you to keep your cool, and that the chestnuts came from a place called Aleppo.”

“Haven’t the three of us traveled together before?”

“That’s right, man,” said Emiliano.

“Who was aboard our ship?” Felix asked.

“Umm, it was jammed. A driver, two nuns, a nurse, Rosita here, and me, a fat woman with a basketful of chickens, and a man who looked like a government type. End of report.”

Rosita shook the chestnut hulls from her lap, and the three studied one another. Then, avoiding their eyes, Felix asked, “Who killed Sara Klein?”

“The fuzz haven’t picked up the trail,” Emiliano replied, scarcely lowering his voice.

“The crime took place between midnight and one in the morning. At that hour, it’s easy to check who came in and went out of a place like the Suites de Génova.

“Tell him, Emiliano, can’t you see he loved her?” said Rosita, eyes brimming.

“Rosita, take care of your chestnuts and listen, but keep your mouth shut.”

“Whatever you say, gorgeous,” Rosita grinned, and simpered to Felix, “He’s my man. We’re crazy about each other. That’s why I can understand how you feel. The woman they killed led you down the dark alley of grief, didn’t she?”

Emiliano pinched Rosita’s exposed thigh.

“Owww!”

“And pick the shells out of your stockings; it’ll be like getting in bed with a cactus. There’s always something caught in your bloody stockings.”

“Then why do you ask me to leave them on when we go to bed?” mooed Rosita.

Felix was insistent. “What did you start to tell me?”

“The doorman swears no one suspicious went in or came out, only registered guests.”

“Can you trust him?”

“He’s been a doorman all his life. He’s not too bright, but he’s worked there nine years and no complaints.”

“Years at his job, and old, he can be bought. Look into it.”

“Right. He told me no one asked for Señorita Klein and no one sent her any messages or packages. Nothing.”

“What was going on outside?”

“What’s always going on in the Zona Rosa? Some kids in a convertible, pretty stoned, stopped in front of the hotel with some mariachis. A serenade, they said, for some lady tourist who didn’t want to leave Mexico without being serenaded. The cops moved them right along. And a nun who asked the doorman if he’d donate something to some charity. That’s the only thing out of the ordinary, a nun out alone at midnight. He didn’t give her anything, and she left.”

“How did he know she was a nun?”

“You know, the hair pulled back in a bun, zero makeup, all in black down to her ankles, a rosary in her hands. The usual bit.”

“Were the serenaders and the nun there at the same time?”

“Umm, that I don’t know.”

“Find out, and report to the captain.”

“Okay, Batman.”

“Are you sure that Bernstein didn’t enter the hotel sometime, or wasn’t registered in advance?”

“The maestro? No way. He’s been in the hospital with a gunshot wound in the shoulder. That night he was in the English Hospital, and never budged from there.”

“Where is he now?”

“That we do know. In Coatzacoalcos, Hotel Tropicana.”

“Why did he go there?”

“What I was just saying, to recover from the shot.”

“Why didn’t it come out?”

“What, man?”

“Anything about Bernstein’s wound.”

“Why would anything come out, and where?”

“In the newspapers. He was shot at the Palace.”

“No, no. It was an accident, in his home. No reason for it to be in the newspapers. He said he shot himself accidentally, cleaning a pistol. That’s what the hospital admission record shows, too.”