A Game for the Living (11 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sauzas had not been to Theodore's house before. He looked around him appreciatively, and commented on a painted wooden
santo
that Theodore had bought in San Miguel de Allende, and looked a long while also at one of Theodore's paintings, which was of his left hand, the forefinger and thumb making a circle that enclosed the façade of an imaginary cathedral.

“You lead a pleasant life, Señor Schiebelhut. Not like Ramón Otero. Hmph!” Sauzas was reaching for his cigarettes, before he had even removed his overcoat. “A miserable man, señor.”

“They're absolutely sure he's not guilty? Everybody who examined him?”

“Yes,” Sauzas said, nodding. “Some more sure than others, but sure!” he added, smiling. “We have a lot of such cases in police work, but usually they are total strangers. I didn't even bother to tell you that one old man who looks too old to—to
look
at a girl, much less rape her, confessed to the crime a couple of weeks ago. He had read a few details in the newspapers. He is an old man without family, without a job—destitute!” Sauzas shrugged. “No, Ramón is not guilty. His behavior is not that of a guilty man. Nor was it on the night of the murder. He had not seen the body before he walked in there that night.”

Theodore looked at him and tried to believe, just to see how it felt to believe. Sauzas had seen many more criminals than he had. Sauzas has no reason to say Ramón was innocent if he were guilty.

“Now, Señor Schiebelhut, I think I must go more extensively into your circle of friends. I can understand your reluctance to mention their names, but I would like to get to the bottom of the postcard.”

“So would I. I suppose it is barely possible that a friend or an acquaintance wrote it, Señor Capitán, but I can't believe that anyone I know could be guilty of the murder. There is a difference!”

At that moment Inocenza came in from the kitchen and busied herself at the sideboard by the dining-table.

Sauzas looked her over. “Is she married?” he asked Theodore after she had gone again, doubtless to stand behind the swinging door of the kitchen.

“No.”

“Does she have many men friends?”

“Almost none. There is one friend in Toluca named Ricardo. A quiet fellow who has worked for the same man for years, I think.”

Sauzas pulled a paper and pencil from his jacket pockets. “Do you know his full name?”

Theodore turned to the kitchen. “Inocenza? Would you come in, please?”

Inocenza came in, looking attentively at Sauzas. Theodore was sure she had heard the question, but he repeated it.

“Ricardo Trujillo,” she replied. “His
padron
is José Cerezo, but I do not know the address by heart.”

Sauzas wrote the names down. “Do you have any other—friends?” he asked, using the masculine form of the word.

Inocenza blinked modestly and smiled. “No other friends, señor.”

Sauzas looked doubtfully at Theodore.

“It is true, I think,” Theodore said.

Sauzas seemed to drop the subject reluctantly. “Very well. Now, señor—I have spoken to about twelve of your friends already—and in the last days I have seen a few of them again in regard to the postcard.”

“You may go, Inocenza,” Theodore said.

Inocenza turned and went.

Theodore and Sauzas sat down on the sofa, and in the next few minutes Theodore racked his brains for more names and at last mentioned Elissa Straeter, too. He went upstairs to get his address book from his desk. Sauzas shouted up the stair-well:

“Señor! If you perhaps have a photograph album. That would be a help.”

Theodore came back with his blue address book and his thick photograph album bound in antelope skin. Sauzas excused himself perfunctorily and spent several minutes browsing through the address book, which contained the names of people who lived in Europe and North America, too. He copied down many names and addresses.

“We must be patient, you know,” Sauzas said. “With the people who have typewriters, we must make a sample to compare with the postcard.”

“What did you hear from Inés Jackson in Florida?” Theodore asked.

“She does not recognize the typewriter. We sent her a photostatic copy of the postcard.” Sauzas shrugged. “She wrote a very intelligent letter back. She was shocked. But she does not know who could have written it.” Sauzas's head was bent over the album as he spoke. “A photograph album sometimes refreshes the memory.”

Painfully true. Half the pictures at least were of Lelia, because he had bought the album since he had met her, and he had saved comparatively few old pictures from Europe, the United States, or South America. Theodore did not let his eyes rest on any of the pictures of Lelia, but Sauzas peered at them and commented on her good looks.

“And who is this?
.
.
.
And who is this?” Sauzas kept asking, and Theodore told him who everyone was, with a few exceptions of people he could not remember in group photographs.

At last Sauzas had so many names he began to be selective.

“What do the psychiatrists advise should be done with Ramón?” Theodore asked.

“Ah!” said Sauzas, as if this were a totally different subject. “
Quién sabe?
He is not insane, no, but he has a kind of obsession. He is a very religious man, is he not? Almost all the time he was in his cell, you know, he was on his knees praying.”

“No. I didn't know.”

“What religion is yours, señor?”

“I was brought up a Protestant.”

“Um-m, naturally. Well—” Sauzas said with a deprecating shrug, as if to say Theodore would not possibly be able to understand how Ramón felt. “Some psychiatric treatment might help him, but he does not like psychiatrists.”

“I know.”

“Nor do I very much. Well—it is a terrible thing, you know, to live with a murder on the conscience and not to have committed it!”

Theodore said nothing, but he was not sure Ramón had not committed it. Perhaps he would never be sure. And maybe that was his fate, to be doubtful and undecided about everything. But this matter was tremendous. Compared to it, all the other unresolved questions in his mind seemed mere debating games. And he was paralyzed by the conviction that any other man would know what to do in an instant and would be able to take a stand.

“You are worried about him, señor,” Sauzas said.

“If he is really innocent—if he is just a man who needs help—”

“I'm not sure you could help him. Perhaps it would take a doctor after all.” Sauzas's short thumb rubbed the antelope cover of the album sensually. “Or he should go back to work—since he hasn't the money for a sea voyage.” Sauzas chuckled.

“Why do you think he confessed, Señor Capitán, if he did not do it?”

“Perhaps a way of getting attention. Perhaps for something else on his conscience.” Sauzas looked calmly at Theodore, and it was plain that he did not much care why Ramón had confessed.

Theodore tried to think of any previous behavior of Ramón's that might help to explain his confessing. Sauzas's presence rattled him. He sat there coolly professional, not caring about the why of anything. Theodore knew Ramón took his weekly confessions to the Church very seriously, and now he wondered if Ramón had ever invented in the confession-box sins and misdemeanors he had not been guilty of. “What did Ramón do when he found nobody believed his confession?”

“Oh! Just what they all do! He stuck to his story. He thinks we're all wrong. He prayed for our souls on the floor of his cell!” Sauzas chuckled.

Theodore tried to imagine this. All he could really imagine, or think, was that the police and the doctors had made a mistake. “As a layman, I can't understand how the doctors can be absolutely sure he is lying. Suppose, for instance, he knew the flower vendor slightly and didn't want to be remembered as buying two dozen carnations that evening. He would have had a little boy buy the flowers for him—just as he did!”

“Señor—it is the way he lies. Why didn't he say that about the flowers? No, señor, he couldn't think why he'd had the little boy buy them for him. He couldn't put that much together. It wasn't clear. One minute he said he bought the flowers himself, the next that he had a little boy buy them. The only thing that was clear was that he hadn't bought the flowers at all! And the postcard, señor, don't forget that. You remember how he looked when we showed it to him—first accusing one of your American friends of sending it, which may yet be true. Just a minute, Señor Schiebelhut! There is no doubt Ramón is not the murderer. One of the psychiatrists was trained at the Johns Hopkins Institute of North America. Such a man doesn't make a mistake.” He waited for a sign from Theodore that he believed him.

Theodore did not make it. “Would it be possible for me to speak to this doctor?”

“
Sí
. He is going to be here for a couple of days, I think, then he goes back to a sanatorium in Guadalajara. His name is Vicente Rojas.” Sauzas looked in his wallet, pulled out a dozen papers and cards, and finally gave Theodore two telephone numbers and the name of the hotel at which Rojas was staying. “You should be able to get him at one of these places, but he is here on business and he is very busy.” Then Sauzas stood up. “I must be on my way. Many thanks for your co-operation today, señor. We—” He stopped to look at Inocenza, who was coming in, and he smiled and thanked her as she held his coat for him. “
Adios, adiós,
” Sauzas said to both of them, and Inocenza crossed the patio in front of him to open the iron gates.

Theodore stood in the living-room.

Inocenza came back smiling. “What did I say, señor? I never believed Ramón was guilty, did I?”

“No.”

“I'm so happy for him!” she said, still radiantly smiling. “He was simply out of his mind from grief!”

She looked happy as a child, not at all puzzled or troubled by what might have made Ramón confess in the first place. To Inocenza it would all somehow be a mistake of the
policía
. Her side—which was Ramón and himself and herself—had won.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dr. Vicente Rojas looked at Theodore in a friendly way through round, black-rimmed glasses. “I can understand your doubt, Señor Schiebelhut. You would like to find who did it. But you may take my word—I would stake my reputation as a doctor that he did not.” He peered at Theodore again for a moment, then rather shyly cut a piece of papaw with his fork. He was about thirty, slender and dark-haired, with a large nose that projected from a lean, dry face.

Theodore conceded that the man looked intelligent, not the kind of man to make hasty judgments, but how much experience could one have as a psychiatrist at thirty or thirty-two at most?

“You are quite fond of Otero, are you not?”

Theodore picked up his black coffee. They were in the downstairs coffee-shop of the Hotel Francis on the Paseo de la Reforma. “Yes. We were very good friends.”

“He needs a good friend now,” Rojas remarked, looking down at the centre of the shiny black table, which resembled polished obsidian and reminded Theodore of a necklace that Lelia had often worn which had an oval obsidian pendant.

“His problems seem to be within himself.” Dr. Rojas was continuing. “He is much troubled by guilt, you know.” He moved his chair a little to let the man at the next table get out.

“But anybody who confesses to a crime he didn't commit is in a way insane, isn't he?”

Dr. Rojas gave a smile and a shrug. “It is certainly not normal. He does not fall into the category of the insane, quite. Other tests we gave he scored quite normally on. So this could be a temporary reaction to the shock of the murder—the murder of a woman he was in love with. And couldn't marry besides.”

“Do you think that he is enacting something that he had thought of doing—” Theodore did not have to go on, because Rojas had seized upon it.

“Yes, very possibly. Not consciously thought of doing, but unconsciously. And he would like to take the blame above all. He feels so much guilt, you see, that nothing can assuage it!
Nada, nada!
”

“It's the extent that I find hard to believe. The extent of the guilt.”

“Guilt is mostly below the surface—like an iceberg,” Dr. Rojas said, smiling, cutting more
papaya
. He never took a full meal in the evening, he had told Theodore, just some fruit or pastry and coffee, and he liked the fresh
papaya
here. It was a quarter to eight. Dr. Rojas had said he had an appointment at eight.

“So you think he will get over this, that it's a temporary—attitude?”

“I
believe
so,” Dr. Rojas said, though without certainty. “He would benefit from some psychiatric treatments. Believe me, I tried to help him without his knowing what I was doing, señor.” Rojas smiled. “He resists everything which he considers ‘help'. It is a sad situation. And he is not the only person in the world with such an attitude. It's because he's only thirty that I have hope. Ordinarily, the religion can be of great assistance. But not when you let it burden the mind with more guilt, eh? The Catholic Church is the greatest psychiatrist of all, taken—taken properly. And yet the Pope recently found it necessary to tell the Catholics in Spain to practise less strictly, for their mental health.” Rojas's eyes widened.

Theodore nodded. He had read Herbert Matthews on the same subject, and he wondered if that was also Dr. Rojas's source of information.

“Oh, for the undisturbed it is fine,” Rojas went on, “even for the slightly disturbed. I have seen mental patients become increasingly fanatical, however, and that is not good. Don't you agree? But let us hope Otero is not such a type. He is a man in love. His beloved is dead. Romeo was also disturbed when he thought Juliet was dead. If you remember, señor,” he added, smiling with pride at his erudition, “he killed himself.”

“Do you think Ramón is in danger of killing himself?”

Dr. Rojas appeared to consider this. “I do not see it at present, no. But I'm not omniscient. No, señor, if we had seen any immediate danger, we would not have permitted him to leave. Besides, the Catholic Church considers suicide a great sin, you know.”

Theodore looked at Rojas's alert eyes and wondered what he could ask next, what would make it all definite and sure.

“Are you going to see Otero?” Dr. Rojas asked.

“I don't know.”

Rojas was silent for a minute. “He bears some grudges against you, but they are superficial. It would help him if he could have a peaceful relationship with you.”

“Do you think he could? Now?”

“You could try. He might be resentful if you don't believe his fantastic stories—for a while. But this is what we are counting on to go away. He is very stubborn and proud. It may slip into a pose, his attitude of guilt. But I am expecting he will grow strong enough to turn loose of it. He is not so disturbed that he can't.” Dr. Rojas smiled confidently. “I am sorry, but I think I must be leaving you. I'm expecting a caller in the lobby.” He signaled for the bill.

Theodore insisted on paying, and thanked Dr. Rojas for his time. He started to ask where he might reach him in future, and then realized that he would never want to reach him in future, because he did not have that much confidence in him.

They parted cordially in the busy lobby of the hotel, amongst glittering counters of souvenirs and silver jewelry, and Theodore walked down the stairs and out on the sidewalk of the great avenue, which at this hour of late dusk, with the mildly chill breeze blowing through the tall trees that bordered it, always reminded him of
Paris on an evening in early spring. It was only six blocks or so to his
house, and he decided to walk. While he had been talking to the psychiatrist, he had had an impulse to ring up Ramón and to be friendly. The impulse had vanished, and Theodore reproached himself for his naïveté, for hanging on the psychiatrist's words as if they couldn't possibly be wrong. He went over again what the newspapers had said. The psychiatrists' opinions had simply been reported. No name had been given to Ramón's aberrations. They had put them down to ‘emotional stress'.

Theodore reached his house and kept on walking. He walked around the corner, and stopped and stared at a display in a small shop that sold modern furniture. A starving orange-colored dog, a ghost of a dog, slunk along the side of the building and stopped when it came to Theodore, looking up with a beseeching expression, its feet braced to run. If there had been a food shop near-by, he would have bought the dog a meat sandwich, he thought. Theodore extended his hand, and the creature started and loped away with its tail between its legs. He hadn't really been going to touch it, because he hadn't wanted to. And he wouldn't really have fed it, because he didn't believe in prolonging the life of an unwanted dog in Mexico. It was only a matter of time until the dog picked up some poisoned food left especially for it in some public market. Yet he felt he had let the dog down, from the dog's point of view, at least.

He walked on, feeling utterly depressed. If he could not get an answer from Sauzas or the psychiatrists that seemed satisfactory—or rather, if he did not accept their answers—he would have to find his own, he thought. He would have to make up his own mind. He would have to see Ramón, distasteful as that might be. Tomorrow, he decided, he would call Ramón. But not tonight.