Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

“The locket wasn’t worth a penny to anyone except him,” Rosita said excitedly, covering her mouth with the napkin. “It was gone, nothing but a faded circle where it used to hang.”

“The fuzz pulled in the thief almost before he could turn around. They found him a little after six, drunk out of his mind, in one of those all-night bars on the docks. He was carrying a big roll and the locket was around his neck.”

“The snapshot was gone, the bum’d thrown it away,” moaned Rosita. “He was trying to con some girl into going to bed with him, telling her she’d be his new sweetheart and he’d put her picture in the locket.”

“They put him in jail, but when they searched him, he was clean. He said he’d found the locket on the dock, and that he’d never been on the Emmita. The hiring agent, though, said they’d been shorthanded and he’d signed on the cambujo part-time as a stevedore.”

“The cambujo? ” Felix interrupted.

Emiliano nodded. “Yeah, he usually worked in the Hotel Tropicana. He does a little bit of everything, though, even butchers beef sometimes in the market. They call him El Machete.”

He looked at Felix with pride, like a student who’s passed his exams with honors. “Old Bernstein packed up lock, stock, and barrel, and checked out of the hotel a half hour after the Emmita docked.”

“The sea had its sadness,” murmured Felix. He removed one toothpick and the whole rickety structure collapsed on the tablecloth.

“What?” said Rosita.

Felix shook his head. “Have you been watching Bernstein?”

“He’s back home. His servant girl has orders to say he’s very busy preparing his courses for the fall and he can’t receive any visitors. We found out he’s leaving for Israel tomorrow morning. An economy-class round-trip ticket, good for twenty-one days.”

“Did the Coatzacoalcos police interrogate the cambujo about his connection with Bernstein?”

“The chief said it was hopeless. The prof had paid him off. Besides, El Machete knows he’s well covered, and Mexican justice being what it is, he’ll be out of the tank before you know it.”

“Well, Bernstein has the ring, that’s the one thing we can be sure of,” said Felix.

“He wasn’t wearing it.” Rosita laughed.

Felix remembered the man who’d called himself Trevor, and Mann, and God knows how many other aliases. The only way to proceed secretly is to proceed openly.

“The chief has men watching him night and day,” said Emiliano.

“Since when?” Felix inquired skeptically.

“Since before he left for Coatzacoalcos.”

“Then the chief’s up on everything, my brief adventure in the Tropicana, my fight with the cambujo on the dock, and the connection between El Machete and Bernstein.”

“Don’t be a masochist, man,” said Emiliano, looking at Felix’s face. “The situation’s very fluid, and we’ve all got to work together. The prof hasn’t made a move we don’t know about, he hasn’t sent any letters or packages, and he hasn’t communicated with anybody. He even stopped paying his telephone bill a couple of months ago, so they’d cut off his service.”

“We had to go to his house and talk to his servants; we said we were students of his,” Rosita added.

“He’s really putting it on that he’s living like a hermit and has nothing to do with anything. He must be scared.”

Emiliano was interrupted by the waiter, who placed a plate of lasagna under his nose, and a plate of spaghetti bolognese in front of Rosita.

“He even went to the Basilica to light a candle in thanksgiving for getting well so fast.” Rosita laughed. “And him a Jew and all.”

“He went to the Guadalupe shrine?”

Felix glared at the waiter, who was asking for his order. He’d looked the same way at Bernstein during the eyeglasses incident. The waiter, as if he’d lost his last friend, scurried away to whisper with the cashier.

“Right. When he got back from Coatzacoalcos, he went straight there from the airport,” said Emiliano. “He got a candle and lighted it to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Does the chief know this?”

“In spades, and he’s busting his brain. Always with the culture, you know; he says in Mexico even the atheists believe in Guadalupe, but not the Jews. You know what he meant?”

“I think so.”

Felix pushed away from the table and regarded their faces in the strange light of the Góndola Restaurant’s Venetian stained glass. “Keep an eye on Bernstein’s departure tomorrow. If the ring leaves Mexico, it will go with him.”

“Son-of-a-bitch, man, that’s a big operation and the chief’s going to have a fit if you aren’t there. We’re greenhorns.”

“Like you said, my boy, it’s a question of teamwork. No one’s indispensable.”

“Is that what I tell the chief?”

“No. Tell him I’m following a different trail. At any rate, with the ring or without it, meet me at ten.”

“On my word, man, Rosita and I aren’t hungry for glory, we don’t want to take anything from you, you know? We’d never take the ring to the chief without seeing you first.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“The Café Kineret. I’ll treat you to a kosher breakfast.”

As he left, he wasn’t thinking about Bernstein but about the old man who’d told him he loved the Emmita like a woman: “She’s everything I have in the world.”

THE DOORMAN at the Suites de Génova came on duty at 11 p.m. Felix greeted the somnambulist-faced, ancient Indian wearing a navy-blue suit shiny from wear, as he opened the door. He never smiled; and his expression remained unchanged when Felix handed him a hundred-peso note and told him he was expecting a lady at eleven-fifteen. The doorman nodded and tucked the money in his pocket.

“Do you remember me?” asked Felix, attempting to penetrate the drowsy gaze.

Again the doorman nodded.

Felix pursued the point, handing him a second hundred-peso note. “Do you have a good memory?”

“They say I do,” said the doorman, his voice both guttural and melodious.

“When was I here?”

“You left about six days ago, and just came back.”

“Do you always remember people who come back?”

“The ones who come often, yes. The others, only if they’re nice people.” He didn’t hold out his hand, but it seemed as if he had.

Felix handed him the third hundred-peso bill. “Do you remember the nun, the night of the murder?”

The doorman studied Felix through veiled eyes and realized there would be no more bills. “Yes, I remember. Sisters never come begging for charity that time of night.”

“I want you to tell me later whether the woman who’s coming in a few minutes looks like the nun.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, chief.”

He never smiled; but the leathery wrinkles around his eyes twitched slightly. He gave no other indication that he hoped there would be more tips later.

Felix had just showered, shaved, and sprinkled himself liberally with Royall Lyme when he heard the tapping at the door. It was a little after eleven-thirty.

He opened the door. In the film library of Felix’s memory, he had always equated Mary Benjamin with Joan Bennett, after she’d changed the color of her hair to distinguish herself from her sister, the adorable blond Constance, as well as to compete with the sensational, exotic Hedy Lamarr. Now he would have to add another impression to the layers of masks; like Angelica on the docks by the Gulf of Mexico, Mary had combed her hair like Sara Klein, the bangs and crow’s-wing hair of Louise Brooks playing Wedekind’s Lulu in G. W. Pabst’s cinematic version. For an instant, he felt that a silver screen separated him from Mary; he was the spectator, she was the projected image, the threshold was the dividing line between the inadequate dreams of the movies and the pitiful reality of the public who dreamed them.