Robert Butler - The Hot Country

“Not nearly as much as he’s got with him,” Diego said.

“You didn’t keep the ticket to sell.”

“I thought you’d want to see that,” he said, and paused so that, for at least a few moments, I’d think he sacrificed something for me. But then he said, “Besides. You get arrested for using a ticket with someone else’s name. No market for it.”

“So you do still know how to confess.”

“Never to a priest.”

“Go home now,” I said.

“What’s next?”

“Find me in the portales later in the day. I need to hold on to the wallet for a little while. But continue to keep an eye on our man.”

Diego saluted me and was up and across the room.

“Diego Cordero,” I said, stopping him as he opened the door. He turned to face me.

“Good job,” I said.

“I am a thief,” he said.

“You are forgiven,” I said.

He crossed himself and vanished into the night.

Early the next morning I sent a wire to Clyde asking him to find out anything he could about a German official or diplomat by the name of Friedrich von Mensinger. I also asked him to get someone to translate a few German words for me, putting only what I didn’t know in the telegram, not the whole of Mensinger’s personal notes. At the portales Bunky was nowhere to be seen. I should have gone immediately to find him. But no. He was almost certainly sleeping one off. It was best for him simply to sleep. I could talk to him later about what was going on with him. I had another guy to see.

The Hostal Buen Viaje was up Montesinos, just across from a loudly clanking, brake-grinding, engine-huffing switching section of the railroad tracks a quarter mile or so from the main terminal. It was a run-down one-story courtyard building made to work as a cheap by-the-week-or-month hotel. Gerhard’s name and room number were chalked with all the other lodgers’ on a board behind the front desk, where an old man sat deeply asleep in an upright position.

I knocked on Gerhard’s door, which faced a courtyard whose cracked and shattered tiles were overgrown with ankle-high grassy weeds. It was shortly after nine o’clock.

There was a stirring inside the room. Gerhard called out something huskily in German. I figured he was asking who the hell it was. “It’s Christopher Cobb,” I said.

“Cobb,” Gerhard said, and though it was still husky, his voice had a tone of recognition.

More stirring, and the door opened.

Gerhard was mostly dressed, wearing dark gray outing pants but also a sleeveless, button-front undershirt. The man’s arms were thickly muscled. He had the build of an athlete, which had escaped my notice when he wore his band uniform.

“The room is small,” he said, stepping out and closing the door behind him. He led me to a far corner of the courtyard and we sat at a metal table.

I’ve not spoken much of the filth of Vera Cruz. Just as the background of things, which it certainly always was. I’ve not mentioned the flies. A reporter focuses on events and strips away the incidental details that don’t come directly to bear on the events he’s interested in, and that’s a strong writerly habit and one that I think makes for a better story of any kind. But Funston was right about how the Veracruzanos lived. And how they died prematurely as a result. And a big part of that was the flies. The flies of Vera Cruz were everywhere. You walked through a curtain of them most of the time. And the zopilotes, as useful as they were, could not do a fully effective job. Or even a halfway effective job. Dead things were always around, and usually, in the heat, they pretty quickly became totally unidentifiable dead things. It was true of the streets, the plazas, the markets, the yards, the shops, the houses of the poor, and even, to some considerable extent, the houses of the wealthy. And it was certainly true of cheap hotels near the train station.

So Gerhard and I sat in the overgrown courtyard of this particular cheap hotel near the train station and our heads were surrounded by a swirl of flies and we waved at them now and then but we mostly lived the way the locals lived and let them come and go, and we were surrounded by a smell of dead things, no doubt some of them nearby in the courtyard, hidden in the weeds, being eaten bit by bit by the insects and an occasional rat, and all of this moved me to ask Gerhard Vogel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the obvious question: “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s cheap. It’s out of the way.”

“So you can read your Scribner’s .”

He smiled faintly at this. “Sure.”

“But I mostly meant Vera Cruz.”

He shrugged. But he shrugged with his eyes fixed closely on mine. Usually a guy who you’re asking questions, when he shrugs, he looks away. At least briefly.

So I took the initiative. “You hear anything about our scar-faced friend?”

He didn’t blink. After a few moments, as if this answer actually took some thought, he said, “No.”

I wanted him to translate Mensinger’s letter for me. Still, I found myself hesitating. I wondered what was going on here that I wasn’t understanding.

“But you have something?” he said.

I shrugged, keeping my eyes fixed on his. It wasn’t a natural gesture for me, and I didn’t mean it sarcastically. I just wanted to try to keep my leverage with him.

“Are you under censorship now?” he asked. Full of surprises. “All you war reporters?”

“Looks like it,” I said.

“What do you think about that?”

“What do you think I think?”

“Sorry,” he said, and this time he did look away when he shrugged.

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind saying the obvious when it’s what somebody really wants to know. But you’re a smart guy. You can ask me straight.”

He looked back to me and smiled. “We’re both smart guys,” he said.

“So what do you want to know?”

“Are you a patriot, Christopher Cobb?”

“I’m such a patriot,” I said, “I believe the press has to be free.”

“What if your country is fighting a war and your being totally free to write everything harms that effort?”

“If anything needs to be understood totally and freely, it’s a war,” I said. “Especially by a public whose sons are being asked to fight it.”

“And what about all the lying, sensational papers?”

“Who’s going to be the omniscient and impartial über-authority to read everything beforehand and say what’s lies and what’s not? The American way is where everything is freely expressed. Then the free man gets to sort things out for himself.”

Gerhard acted as if he was about to say more, but he stopped himself with a little shake of the head. Like he didn’t mean to get off on this anyway.

I had a quick bloom of newsman’s intuition. Something seemed suddenly clear about this man before me. I would find it out now. I began by asking, “You want to know if you can trust me?”

“Why’d you come here today?” he said.

“To ask you a favor.”

“And you trust me?”

“Didn’t I just ask that of you ?”

“Yes.”

A couple of beats of silence passed between us. I had to answer first. Okay.

“I don’t see the risk,” I said.

“What’s the favor?”

“I have a letter. In German. Can you translate it for me?”

He looked at me for a long moment without saying anything.

“Go ahead and ask,” I said.

“From him?”

“To him.”

I felt sure now.

Gerhard extended his hand, palm up.

I didn’t give it to him right away. Instead, I said, “Gerhard Vogel, around me at least, you don’t sound or act like a horn player in a small-time German band. Even if you’re from Pittsburgh.”