Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

“We have Dante,” Rossetti countered weakly.

“Oh, be quiet,” said Trevor, the threat underlined by the immobility of his hands in his jacket pockets. “You and your wife have done nothing right. You overplayed everything, as if you’d wandered into an opera by Donizetti. You completely missed the point that the only way to proceed secretly is to proceed openly.”

He reserved particular scorn for Angelica. “Disguising yourself as Sara Klein so no one would know you’d left Mexico, and hoping everyone would be racking their brains looking for a dead woman. Bah! Balderdash!” Trevor’s Spanish was curiously archaic, as if he’d learned Spanish watching comedies of manners in Madrid.

“Maldonado was in Coatzacoalcos, and getting close to the ring. He’s a wild man, Trevor; you should have seen him in my house the other evening, the way he treated Bernstein. He was mad about Sara, I only wanted to stir him up a little,” said Angelica, with strident and artificial energy.

Trevor withdrew his hand from his pocket and slapped Angelica squarely across the mouth; her jaw dropped open as if she were again drowning, and Rossetti jumped to his feet with all the indignation of a Latin caballero.

“Imbeciles,” said Trevor, through tight lips. “I should have chosen more efficient traitors. My own fault. The lady allows the ring to be taken from her while she’s imitating Esther Williams. The gentleman doesn’t dare strike me because he’s hoping to collect three ways, and the money means more to him than his honor.”

Rossetti, pale and trembling, resumed his position beside Angelica. He tried to put his arm around his wife, but she shrugged him off.

Trevor turned to Felix as if inviting him to a cricket match. “My friend, that ring holds absolutely no value for you. I give you my word of honor.”

“I place about as much stock in the word of an English gentleman as in that of a Latin caballero,” Felix commented with the counterpart of English phlegm — Indian fatalism.

“We can avoid many disagreeable scenes if you return it to me immediately.”

“You surely don’t believe I brought it with me.”

“No. But you know where it is. I trust your intelligence. Try to get it back for me.”

“How much will my life be worth if I do?”

“Ask our little pair here. They know that I pay better than anyone.”

“The stakes may go up,” Rossetti managed to say with painful bravado.

Trevor looked at him with amazement and scorn. “Do you think you can collect four times? Greedy little bastard!”

Felix observed the Director General’s private secretary with interest. “That’s right, Rossetti. You can collect from the Director General because you convinced him you were informing on Bernstein’s activities; you collect from Bernstein because he believes you were his accomplice, and for revealing the Director General’s plans to him; you collect from Trevor here by informing against your other two benefactors. And if you really want to sing, I’ll pay you more than the other three together. Or are you planning to return to Mexico, inform on us all, and get out of this with both your honor and your bankroll intact?”

“You bastard, why did you have to get in our way?” Angelica’s question was rhetorical.

“How much is the famous ring worth?” Felix asked her, his voice equally neutral.

Regaining control of himself, it was the private secretary who answered Felix, ingratiatingly, as if he’d discovered hitherto unseen virtues in this obscure chief from the Bureau of Cost Analysis. “I don’t know. I only know that Bernstein had arranged everything in Coatzacoalcos so that Angelica could take it to the United States.”

“And instead of delivering it to Bernstein’s accomplice, you double-crossed him and brought it to Trevor.”

“It’s true,” Trevor interjected before the Rossettis could respond, “that my friends the Rossettis, how shall I say it? diverted the course of normal events to bring the ring to me. Alas, you intercepted it. Whatever the case, Bernstein’s consignee must be biting his nails somewhere on this vast continent, awaiting our Angelica’s arrival on another ghost tanker we’ll call, shall we — not to deviate from our previous allusions — the Red Queen. You know, the one who demanded the head of the Knave of Hearts for stealing her tarts. I must ask that you take us to the missing ring, Señor Maldonado.”

“I repeat, I do not have it.”

“I’m aware of that. Where is it?”

“Traveling, slowly but surely, like Alice’s Mock Turtle.”

“Where, Maldonado?” said Trevor, his voice steely.

“Paradoxically, to the very place that Bernstein intended,” said Felix, not flickering an eyelash.

“I told you, Trevor.” Angelica’s voice was guttural, and hysterical. “He’s a convert to Judaism; it’s not for nothing I’m one of Ruth’s good friends. He was bound to align himself with the Jews. He’s Bernstein’s former student, he knows Mann, and he’s sent him the ring. He already knows Bernstein didn’t kill Sara…”

Trevor feigned resignation before Angelica’s unrestrained babble.

Rossetti attempted to soothe his wife. “Don’t say more than you mean to. Please be more discreet, darling. We have to go back to Mexico…”

“With Bernstein’s money, and Trevor’s, we have enough to live somewhere other than that land of trained fleas,” retorted the ungovernable Angelica.

“I promised you that we’d go wherever you wanted, darling.” Rossetti was kindlier by the minute, though more than half his kindness was reserved for himself.

“I’m sick and tired of watching you crawl up one bureaucratic step every six years! What will you be in twelve years? Bill collector? Milk inspector? What?”

“Angelica, we should at least spend a few months…”

“Don’t you ever get tired of living off my money … you pimp!”

“I said a few months, until everything gets back to normal. That’s only prudent, Angelica, we’ll have plenty of money…”

“But Trevor slapped me. Who’s going to repay that, you ball-less wonder,” shrieked Angelica, tearing off the black sunglasses to reveal her chlorine-streaked eyes.

“I will, if only you’ll shut up,” said Felix, and buried his right fist in Rossetti’s stomach at the same instant the private secretary took a knife from his pocket and pressed it to release the switchblade.

Rossetti’s gaze glittered with every imaginable threat, as, moaning and doubled over with pain, he fell on the sofa. Felix picked up the knife and pressed down the blade between a nail file and a corkscrew.

“Perfect.” Trevor smiled. “Neapolitan technology. Clean nails for the body beautiful, along with a sure way to open bottles in airplanes without fear of being poisoned. Right up Rossetti’s alley. What do you think, Maldonado? Was he going to slit Angelica’s throat or demand that I hand over the promised money?”

“He was going to pin back my wings like a butterfly’s,” Felix replied coldly.

“Oh, yes?” Trevor lifted arched eyebrows. “May I inquire why?”

“First, because I was witness to his wife humiliating him.”

“As well as I.”

“You’re not Latin. It’s a matter of clans.”

“And second?”

“Because I’m the only person who might betray him. All the rest — you, Bernstein, the Director, Angelica — have good reason to keep his secrets.”

“You’re sure of that? Well, it doesn’t matter. We must be grateful to our friends for this edifying conjugal scene.”

“You’re a bachelor?” Felix smiled.

“Witness my good health.” Trevor returned the smile.

“He’s a fag,” spat Angelica.