A Deadly Shade of Gold (14 page)

I thought of using the post office as a possible approach. Looking for an old friend. Yes indeed.

Good old Sam Taggart. He still around here? But it seemed clumsy.

A young priest walked by us and glanced over and said, "Good morning!"

"Good morning, Father," Nora said meekly. I recognized him as the same one who had been on the Tres Estrellas flight. I watched him head toward the church on the other side of the square and disappear into the dark interior. And I had a little idea worth developing.

"Are you Catholic?" I asked Nora.

"If I'm anything. Yes. I don't work at it. But it sort of builds up... and then I go to mass. Twice a year, maybe. I had an awful lot of it when I was a kid. When I was sixteen I had a brother who died, terribly. Some kind of cancer. Big horrible lumps all over his body. He got immune to the drugs. Way down the street they could hear him screaming when he had to be moved, for dressings and keeping him clean. I wore my knees out and my beads out, praying for God to take him to end that agony. He was a sweet boy. He was the best of us, really. But he lasted and lasted and lasted, until you wouldn't think he had the strength to scream like that. But he did.

Almost to the end. Why should a kid endure such torture? By the time he died, my religion was dead too. I had terrible fights with my family about it. But I wouldn't pray to anything my brother's death had proved didn't exist. Are you religious at all, Trav?"

"I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know. I think the closest we can get to awareness is when we see one man, under stress, react in... in a noble way, a selfless way. But to me, organized religion, the formalities and routines, it's like being marched in formation to look at a sunset. I don't knock it
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for other people. Maybe they need routines, rules, examples, taboos, object lessons, sermonizing. I don't."

"By the time I was twenty I saw that it was kind of shallow to blame God for what happened to my brother. I didn't go back to the church. The hold was broken by then. I go sometimes. It's kind of sweet. Nostalgic. There's a girl there I used to be, now it's the only way I ever find her again." She sighed. "How did we get onto this?"

"Check me on the routine. Any talk you have with a priest is privileged information, isn't it?"

"Up to a point. I mean if a person confessed a murder, the priest would have to tell the police.

What are you getting at?"

"That priest might know some things that would help us."

She looked startled, and then she comprehended. "But... how could I go about...."

"Ask for his help in a confidential matter. Wouldn't that keep him quiet?"

"I suppose it would."

"'Tell him you were in love with the man, that you lived in sin with him and he left you and you have been searching for him for three years. I have the idea these village priests know everything that goes on. And he speaks English."

"It would feel so strange... to lie to a priest."

"I hear it's done frequently."

"But not this way" She looked in her purse. "I have nothing to cover my head."

We went to one of the sidewalk stalls. She picked a cotton scarf. It was ten pesos, then five, then four, and finally three pesos fifty centavos, sold with smiles, with pleasure at the bargaining.

She gave me a tight-lipped and nervous look, and went off toward the church. I watched her go.

Blue and white blouse in a diamond pattern, narrow white skirt, with a slit at the side to make walking easier, blue sandals. I saw her go up the worn steps, stop and tie the dark blue kerchief around her head, then disappear into the interior, through the pointed arch of the doorway.

I went back to the bench. The broad leaves of a dusty tree shaded me. Lizards flicked across the fitted stones of the pathways. A strolling dog eyed me in unfriendly inquiry. Two small boys wanted to shine my shoes. Two black and white goats stopped and snuffled among wind-blown debris. A fat brown man with one milky eye came smiling over and, with fragmentary English, tried to sell me a fire opal, then an elaborately worked silver crucifix, then a hand tooled wallet, then a small obscene wood carving, and then, in a coarse whisper, a date with a "friendly womans, nice, fat." He sighed and plodded away. I had the feeling I was the object of intense scrutiny, of dozens of people wondering how best to pry some of the Yankee dollars out of my pocket.

I knew it would not have been that way before the hotel was built. But now the village had begun the slow transformation to the eventual mercilessness of Taxco, Cuernavaca, Acapulco. Too
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many Americans had shown them how easy it could be. Greed was replacing their inborn courtesy, pesos corrupting their morals. The village cop, agleam with whistles, bullets and buckles, strolled by, whapping himself on the calf with a riding crop.

Nora was gone a long time. A very long time. Though I was watching the church, I did not see her until she was about twenty feet from me. Her color looked bad, her mouth pinched.

"Let's walk," she said.

I got up and went with her. "Bad?"

"He's a good man. It got to me a little. Let me just unwind a little bit." She gave me a wry glance.

"Mother Church. You think you've torn loose, but... I don't know. I lit candles for him, Trav. I prayed for his soul. What would he think of that?"

"Probably he would like it."

We. headed back out of town, toward La Casa Encantada. After we passed the last of the houses, there was a path worn through grass down toward the beach. She hesitated, and I nodded, and we went down the path. The beach was the village dump, cans and broken bottles and unidentifiable metal parts of things. There was some coarse brown-black sand, and outcroppings of shale, and tumbles of old seaworn rock. We went down where the tide kept it clean, and after a hundred yards or so, came to an old piece of grey timber. She sat there and leaned on her knees and looked out. The big protective islands looked to be about eight miles offshore. An old fish boat was beating toward town, with a lug-rigged sail tan as lizard hide.

"He didn't speak very much English, Trav. Knough, I guess. When he realized who I was asking about, he became very upset. He said perhaps some people hoped Sam would come back here, but he hoped the man would never return. He said he had prayed that Sam would never return.

Prayer answered, I guess. He kept getting excited and losing his English. He came here four years ago, at just about the time the hotel was finished. Sam showed op, he thought, over a year later. He arrived on a private yacht from California. He was the hired captain. There was some kind of difficulty, and Sam was fired. He stayed. The yacht went on. The hotel needed somebody to run one of the fishing boats for guests. They helped Sam get his workpapers straightened out, a residente permit. Then he... he lived with a girl who worked at the hotel, a girl from the village.

Felicia Novaro. Then there was some trouble at the hotel, and he left and went to work for one of the families in one of those big houses beyond the hotel. Their name is Garcia. He abandoned Felicia for someone in the Garcia household. And there was trouble there. He left suddenly. I didn't get all of it, Trav. Federal police came after he left, and asked questions. It's possible that he killed someone. The priest was very cautious about that part. Trav... it didn't sound as if he was talking about Sam. He was talking about some stranger, some cruel, dangerous, violent man."

"What did he do for the Garcias?"

"Ran their cruiser, apparently, and perhaps something more. Several times he seemed on the verge of trying to tell me something, and then he would stop. Felicia Novaro doesn't work at the hotel any more. She works in town. She does not go to church. He takes that as a personal failure. She works at the Cantina Tres Panchos, and her family do not speak to her. Her people are very devout. She lives over the cantina, and he said she does foolish things, but if she comes back to God, He will forgive her."

"Will he talk to anyone about this?"

"I'm sure he won't."

I touched her shoulder. "We've got the starting place, Nora."

"Maybe I don't want to find out all these things."

"We can stop right here."

"No. I do want to find out. But I'm scared."

We walked up the beach until we came to too many big rocks, and then we picked our way through nettles and brambles and sea oats, back to the road.

In my room, I rang for Jose, and he said it was perfectly possible to have "ahmbaorgers" served at poolside, with cold Mexican beer, and he would do it at once. I told him fifteen minutes would be better than at once. I changed to swim trunks and went down and found a white metal table shaded I by a big red umbrella. Nora came down in her beach coat and her green sheath suit.

The scuba kids and the newlyweds and two couples of young marrieds apparently traveling together were in and around the pool. Nora and I swam until we saw Jose coming with the draped tray, and then I climbed out and pointed out our table to him. The "ahmboorgers" came with crisp icy salad, and very small baked potatoes.

After lunch the pool boy got us two sun mattresses and I had him put them over on the far ridge of the big apron, near the flowers and away from the other people. We stretched out under high hot sun, with just enough sea breeze to make it endurable, a breeze that clattered palm fronds and rustled the wide leaves of the dwarf banana trees, and brought little creakings and groanings from a tall stand of bamboo on the slope leading down to the boat basin.

"So?" she said at last in a sun-dazed voice.

"So we don't rush things. We don't charge around. We give the folks a chance to label us."

"As what, Trav?"

"Furtive romance, woman. You had to show identity for the tourist card. Connecting rooms.

We couldn't be Mr. and Mrs. Jones."

"I realize that! But I just..."

"Excuse me," a girl voice said. I sat up. It was one of the two scuba girls from the motor sailor, the blonde who had been in the bar in the expensive shirt. Now she was in a wet black tank suit that looked as if it had been put on with a spray can. She had the starlet face, bland, young, sensuously perfect, utterly unmarked with any taint of character, force or purpose. The lithe ripeness of her body had been tautened by the surfing, skin diving, water skiing and the beach games. This was the genus playmate, californius, a sun bunny.

She hunkered down, teetered, caught herself with knuckles against the concrete and said,

"Oops," and settled into tireless balance, sitting on her heels like a Kentucky whittler, the webbed muscles of her brown thighs bulging against a tanned softness. She was mildly, comfortably stoned.

"What it is," she said, "it's a bet. How about two years ago, three years ago? You were offensive end with the Rams. Right?"

"Wrong."

"Oh shit," she said. "Excuse me. The loser, that's me, gets to go overboard and scrub the whole goddam water line with a brush. You looked like that guy, I can't remember his name. They'd throw it right into his hands, he'd drop it, but throw it off target, he'd grab it like miracles.

Anyhow, you look the type. You play pro with anybody?"

"Just pro ball for a college."

"End?"

"Defensive line backer. Corner man."

She looked at me like a stock yard inspector. "You're big enough for pro."

"It wasn't such a big thing when I got out. And I had knee trouble off and on the last two years of it."

"Excuse me too," Nora said and got up and headed for the pool.

The sun bunny peered after her. "My asking you gave her a strain?"

"She just wants to cool off I guess."

"She's built darling for an older woman. I guess I got to get back and say I was wrong."

"Are you people moving on soon?"

"I guess so. Maybe tomorrow. Chip hasn't said. What we figured, we'd stay longer. It used to be there was always a brawl going on they say, one of the houses over there. None of us were here before, but Chip had a note to the people, a friend of a friend, you know, so we'd get in on the action, but he couldn't even get past the gate, and Arista says no parties this year up there, so that's it and it's pretty dead here. I want to go where there's good reefs. I just want to go down and cruise the reefs. It's the only thing I can't ever seem to get sick of. All the colors. Like dreaming it. Like I'm somebody else."

"What house was it, where the parties were?"

"Oh, the pink one furthest up the hill there. People name of Garcia. Real rich and crazy, Chip's friend said. Fun people, house guests and so on.

Well, see you around." She stood up and trudged back to her friends, giving me a parting smile over a muscular brown shoulder.

Nora came back and toweled herself, saying, "Just think how many of them would flock around if you were alone, dear."

"She said you're built darling for an older woman."

"God, I couldn't be more flattered."

"Nora, even if I had sent for her, why should you get huffy?"

She looked angry and then smiled. "Okay. It was a reflex. The war between women. And that, you must admit, is quite a package."

"Not my kind of package."

"I'd say it was any man's kind of package."

"Take a look at the three gorgeous meatballs she and her girlfriend are slamming around with.

They are the masculine parallel. Take your pick."

She looked over at them, and then back at me. "No thanks. Okay. I never thought of it that way.

There wouldn't be anybody to talk to, would there?"

"Not after the first day. But she came up with something."

"I beg your pardon?"