Black money (26 page)

"I can drive out there, professor. Do you have a restaurant on the L.A. State campus?"

"We have three eating places," he said. "The Cafeteria, the Inferno, and the Top of the North. Incidentally our name's been changed to Cal State L.A."

"The Inferno sounds interesting."

"It's less interesting than it sounds. Actually it's just an automat. Why don't we meet at the Top of the North? That's on top of North Hall."

The college is on the eastern border of the city. I took the Hollywood Freeway to the San Bernardino Freeway, which I left at the Eastern Avenue turnoff: The campus was a sort of chopped-off hill crowded with buildings. Parking spaces were scarce. Eventually I parked in a faculty slot, and rode the elevator six stories up to the Top of the North.

Professor Bosch was a youthful-looking man in his middle thirties, tall enough to play center on a basketball team. He had a big man's slouch, and a bright disenchanted eye. His speech was staccato, with a Middle Western accent.

"I'm surprised you made it on time. It's quite a drive. I saved us a place by the window."

He led me to a table on the east side of the large buzzing room. Through the window I could see out toward Pasadena and the mountains.

"You want me to tell you what I know about Pedro Domingo," Bosch said over our onion soup.

"Yes. I'm interested in him and his relatives. Professor Tappinger said his mother was a Blue Moon girl. That's the Panamanian equivalent of a B-girl, isn't it?"

"I guess it is."

Bosch shifted his bulk in the chair and looked at me sideways across the table. "Before we go any further, why wasn't Pedro's murder reported in the papers?"

"It was. Didn't Tappinger mention that he was using an alias?"

"Taps may have, I don't remember. We both got excited, and we went round in circles for a while."

His gaze narrowed on my face. "What alias was he using?"

"Francis Martel."

"That's interesting."

Bosch didn't tell me why. "I did see the report of that shooting. Wasn't it supposed to be a gangster killing?"

"It was supposed to be."

"You sound dubious."

"I'm getting more and more that way."

Bosch had stopped eating. He showed no further interest in his soup. When his minute steak arrived he cut it meticulously into small pieces which he failed to eat.

"I seem to be asking most of the questions," he said. "I was interested in Pedro Domingo. He had a good mind, rather disordered but definitely brilliant. Also he had a lot of life."

"It's all run out now."

"Why was he using an alias?"

"He stole a pile of money and didn't want to be caught. Also he wanted to impress a girl who was hipped on French. He represented himself as a French aristocrat named Francis Martel. It sounds better than Pedro Domingo, especially in Southern California."

"It's almost authentic, too." Bosch said quietly.

"Authentic?"

"At least as authentic as most genealogical claims. Pedro's grandfather, his mother's father, was named Martel. He may not have been an aristocrat, exactly, but he was an educated Parisian. He came over from France as a young engineer with La Compagnie Universelle."

"I don't know French, professor."

"La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique de Panama is the name de Lesseps gave to his canal-building company - a big name for an enormous flop. It went broke somewhere before 1890 and Grandpere Martel lost his money. He decided to stay on in Panama. He was an amateur ornithologist, and the flora and fauna intrigued him.

"Eventually he went more or less native, and spent his declining years with a girl in one of the villages. Pedro said she was descended from the first Cimarrones, the escaped slaves who fought with Francis Drake against the Spaniards. He claimed to be a direct descendant of Drake through her - that would explain the name Francis-but I think this time he was spinning a pure genealogical fantasy. Pedro went in rather heavily for fantasy."

"It's dangerous," I said, "when you start to act it out."

"I suppose it is. Anyway, the village girl was Pedro's maternal grandmother. His mother and Pedro both took the name Domingo from her."

"Who was Pedro's father?"

"He didn't know. I gathered that his mother didn't, either. She lived a disorganized life, to put it mildly. But she did keep alive the grandfather's tradition, even long after the old man died.

"There's a French tradition in Panama, anyway. Pedro's mother taught him French along with Spanish. They read together out of Grandpere's books. The old man had been fairly literate - his library ranged from La Fontaine and Descartes to Baudelaire - and Pedro got quite a decent education in French. You can understand why the language obsessed him. He was a slum boy, with Indian and slave blood in his veins as well as French. His French-ness was his only distinction, his only hope of distinction."

"How can you possibly know all this, professor?"

"I spent some time with the boy. I thought he had promise, perhaps very brilliant promise, and he was keen to talk with someone who knew France. I spent a year there on a traveling fellowship," Bosch added in a depreciatory tone. "Also, in my advanced French composition courses I use a device - which incidentally I borrowed from Taps - the device of having my students write an essay, in French, explaining why they're studying the language. Pedro came up with a stunning piece about his grandfather and la gloire- the glory of France. I gave him an A-plus on it, my first in several years. It's the source of most of what I've been telling you."

"I don't know the language," I said, "but I'd certainly like to see that document."

"I gave it back to Pedro. He told me he sent it home to his mother."

"What was her name, do you know?"

"Secundina Domingo. She must have been her mother's second daughter."

"Judging by her last name, she never married."

"Apparently she didn't. But there were men in her life," Bosch said dryly. "One night I gave Pedro too much wine and he told me about the American sailors who used to come home with her. This was during the war, when he was still quite young. He and his mother had only the one room, and only one bed in the room. He had to wait on the landing when she had visitors. Sometimes he waited out there all night.

"He was devoted to his mother, and I think that experience pushed him a little over the edge. The night I'm talking about, when he got high on my vin ordinaire, he went into a wild oration about his country being the trampled crossroads of the world and he himself the essence of its mud, Caucasian, Indian, Negro. He seemed to identify himself with the Black Christ of Nombre de Dios, which is a famous Panamanian religious statue."

"He had Messianic delusions?"

"If he had, I wouldn't know. I'm not a psychiatrist. I think Pedro really was a ruined poet, a symbolizing idealizing soul who inherited too many problems. I admit he had some pretty weird ideas, but even the weird ones made a kind of sense. Panama was more than a country to him, more than a geographical link between North and South America. He thought it represented a basic connection between the soul and the body, the head and the heart - and that the North Americans broke the connection."

He added: "And now we've killed him."

"We?"

"We North Americans."

He toyed with the dark meat congealing on his plate. I looked out toward the mountains. Above them a jet had cut a white wound in the sky.

I was getting a picture of Allan Bosch, which I liked. He differed from an older type like Tappinger, who was so wrapped up in himself and his work that it made him a social eccentric. Bosch seemed genuinely concerned with his students. I said something to this effect.

He shrugged off his pleasure in the compliment. "I'm a teacher. I wouldn't want to be anything else."

After a pause, which was filled with the interwoven noise of the students around us, he said: "I took it hard when Pedro had to leave here. He was just about the most interesting student I ever had here or at Illinois. I've only taught the two places."

"Your friend Tappinger says the justice Department was after him."

"Yes. Pedro entered the country illegally. He had to leave Long Beach and then he had to leave here, one jump ahead of the Immigration men. As a matter of fact, I tipped him that they were making inquiries about him. I'm not ashamed of it, either," he said with a half-smile.

"I won't turn you in, Dr Bosch."

His smile became wry and defensive. "I'm afraid I'm not a Ph.D. I failed comprehensives at Illinois. I could have tried them again, I suppose, but there wasn't much point in it."

"Why not?"

"Taps had already left. I was one of his special proteges, and I inherited a certain amount of ill will. What happened to him did nothing for my morale, either. I thought if it could happen to one of the most promising scholars in my field, it could happen to anybody."

"What happened to him at Illinois?"

Bosch went into a tight-Tipped silence. I waited, and changed my angle of approach: "Is he still a leading scholar in your field?"

"He would be if he had a decent chance. But he gets no time for his work, and it's driving him crazy. When the grants are handed out, they pass him over. He can't even get a promotion in a bush league school like Montevista."

"Why not?"

"They don't like the way he combs his hair, I guess."

"Or the way his wife combs hers?"

"I suppose she has something to do with it. But frankly I'm not interested in retailing faculty gossip. We are supposed to be talking about Pedro Domingo, alias Cervantes. If you have any more questions about him, I'll be glad to oblige. Otherwise-"

"Where did he get the name Cervantes"" "I suggested it the night he left. He always struck me as a quixotic type."

I thought, but did not say, that the word applied more exactly to Bosch himself. "And did you send him to study under Tappinger?"

"No. I may have mentioned Taps to him at one time or another. But Pedro went to Montevista on account of a girl. She was a freshman, apparently quite gifted in languages-" "Who said so?"

"Taps said so himself, and as a matter of fact I talked to her, too. He brought her up for our spring arts festival. We were putting on Sartre's No Exit, and she'd never seen a contemporary play in French before. Pedro was there, and he fell in love with her literally on sight."

"How do you know?"

"He told me. In fact he showed me some sonnets he wrote about her and her ideal beauty. She was a lovely thing, one of those pure pale blondes, and very young, no more than sixteen or seventeen."

"She isn't so young and she isn't so pure, but she's still a lovely thing."

He dropped his fork with a noise which merged with the continuous clatter of the room. "Don't tell me you know her."

"She's Pedro's widow. They were married last Saturday."

"I don't understand."

"If I told you all about it, it would only make you feel worse. He made up his mind to marry her seven years ago - perhaps the night he saw her here at the play. Do you know if he made any approach to her that night, or afterwards?"

Bosch considered the question. "I'm pretty sure he didn't. Morally certain, in fact. It was one of those secret passions the Latins seem to go in for."

"Like Dante and Beatrice."

He looked at me in some surprise. "You've read Dante, have you?"

"I've read at him. But I have to admit I was quoting another witness. She said Pedro followed the girl with his eyes the way Dante followed Beatrice."

"Who on earth said that?"

"Bess Tappinger. Do you know her?"

"Naturally I know her. You might say she's an authority on Dante and Beatrice."

"Really?"

"I don't mean that quite seriously, Mr. Archer. But Bess and Taps played comparable roles in their time: the intellectual and the girl ideal. They had a very beautiful Platonic thing going before they had - before real life caught up with them."

"Could you be a little clearer? I'm interested in the woman."

"In Bess?"

"In both of the Tappingers. What do you mean when you say real life caught up with them?"

He studied my face, as if to read my intentions. "There's no harm in telling you, I suppose. Practically everybody in the Modern Language Association knows the story. Bess was a sophomore studying French at Illinois and Taps was the rising young man in the department. The two of them had this Platonic thing going. They were like Adam and Eve before the Fall. Or Heloise and Abelard. That may sound like romantic exaggeration, but it isn't. I was there.

"Then real life reared its ugly head, as I said. Bess got pregnant. Taps married her, of course, but the thing was messily handled. The Illinois campus was quite puritanical in those days. What made it worse, the Assistant Dean of Women had a crush on Taps herself, and she really hounded him. So did Bess's parents; they were a couple of bourgeois types from Oak Park. The upshot of it was, the administration fired him for moral turpitude and sent him off to the boondocks."

"And he's been there ever since?"

Bosch nodded. "Twelve years. It's a long time to go on paying for a minor mistake, which incidentally is a very common one. Teachers are marrying their students all the time, with or without shotgun accompaniment. Taps got a very raw deal, in my opinion, and it just about ruined his life. But we're wandering far afield, Mr. Archer."

The young man glanced at his wristwatch. "It's half-past one, and I have an appointment with a student."

"Cancel it and come along with me. I have a more interesting appointment."

"Oh? With whom?"

"Pedro's mother."

"You're kidding."

"I almost wish I were. She flew here from Panama this morning, and she's staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I may need a translator. How about it?"

"Sure. We'd better go in two cars so you won't have to drive me back."

32

BOSCH AND I MET at the desk of the hotel. I was a few minutes late for my appointment, and the clerk told us to go right up.

The woman who let us into the sitting room of the suite was fifty or so, still handsome in spite of her gold teeth and the crater-like circles under her eyes. She was dressed entirely in black. A trace of musky perfume hung around her like the smell of fire, giving her an aura of burnt-out sex.