Murder Is My Dish (25 page)

No one dared fire while they rolled together like that. No one, that is, except Encarnacion. She worked the bolt of her rifle and without seeming to take aim at the big cat and her father, fired. The jaguar leaped, and died.

Then dropping her rifle Encarnacion ran to where her father lay. The hunting brothers pumped volley after volley into the dead cat. Lequerica dismounted and ran to Encarnacion and El Grande. The
caudillo's
right arm was mangled and crushed. Part of his scalp had been torn away and his left temple was crushed and sunken like an old man's.

He was dead, but Encarnacion did not know this or would not believe it even when Lequerica dragged her away. I went over to Duarte and so did one of the brothers. The big man had fallen face down. Encarnacion's bullet had entered his back low on the left side. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly and clawing the ground with his huge hands, trying to get up.

Encarnacion broke away from Lequerica and walked toward us. She was smiling. She looked down at Duarte and laughed and said, “He's dying, isn't he?” When no one answered her she laughed again, without smiling. There was now absolutely no expression on her face.

“Encarnacion, please,” Lequerica said.

“Encarnacion? Who is Encarnacion?”

The girl made a noise. Maybe she thought it was the kind of noise a jaguar would make. Then she walked over to her horse, laughing to herself, and mounted. She sat very stiff and straight with an apathetic look on her face. Then she said, “It's too bad, isn't it?”

No one answered her.

“I mean, that father couldn't come along. It's been a splendid hunt. I knew it would. Oh, I knew it would. I'll have to tell father all about it.” Then, telling him: “
Padrecito
, we went on a splendid jaguar hunt. I shot the jaguar, you know. Then Señor Duarte turned into a dog. You should have been there, padrecito.”

The oldest hunting brother, kneeling near El Grande's body, cried shamelessly.

There was nothing we could do for Duarte. Two of the brothers turned him over on his back and tried to stop the bleeding where the bullet had come out above his pelvic bone. One of them brought him water from a saddle canteen, but he couldn't drink it. After about twenty minutes of shallow, desperate breathing he died quietly. I looked down at him and thought of Andy-Dineen and felt only a hollowness. It is always that way after revenge or after seeing revenge happen. It is a sick empty feeling.

We brought the bodies back into camp slung across their horses. Kiki Magyar became hysterical. señora Rivera took charge of Encarnacion, who was babbling animatedly with an expressionless face. Lequerica asked the
dueña
if Encarnacion had ever been that bad before and the woman shook her head. Already she had the look of a martyr on her face.

We walked our horses back into the town of Encarnacion Grande. A couple of the Guaranis had started out before us with the pack mules and probably arrived an hour or more before we did. The villagers met us solemnly and with grave Spanish-Indian dignity. The
alcalde
and his brother, the
pirotecnico
, who also was the village undertaker, took charge of the bodies. Lequerica didn't argue with them. He didn't have the time. He went straight to the mayor's house and spent much of the late afternoon and early evening on the phone. It was the only telephone in the town, the mayor said with pride.

In the morning we set out in the two open touring cars. One of them now was the funeral car and in the night it had been heaped with jacaranda and scarlet piuva and silver imbauba. The rest of us crowded into the other car and the cortege set out with its escort of motorcyclists. All along the road back to Ciudad Grande, in the bright hot sun, the cortege moving slowly, the people of Santa Rosa and Concepcion and the other towns came to view the two bodies in the open black touring car. The people far from Ciudad Grande were sad in the way that only Spanish-Indians can be sad, but as we approached the capital it was different.

Along the road we saw jeeps and motorcycles with sidecars, all crowded with soldiers of the Republic in their jungle-green uniforms, armed to the teeth and looking nervous. Five miles from the city we saw the first tank, an old surplus Second World War American model clanking along the road ponderously. A few civilians stood there watching it, one of them shaking his fist and shouting something I couldn't hear. A cyclist drove over to him and dismounted and without a word struck the man down with his pistol butt.

All at once I heard artillery fire coming from the direction of the city. Then our cortege had to get off the road to allow a convoy of jeeps and trucks to pass, the trucks bristling with the steel helmets and rifles of soldiers.

We entered Ciudad Grande in lurid twilight. Artillery boomed and not far away was the stitching sound of machine gun fire. A pink-gray pall hung over the city. When we pulled to a stop in front of the palace, a squad of soldiers rushed up to us. Lequerica got out quickly and spoke to them and although he was in civilian clothing they saluted him.

Then the hard-faced major who had led the troops to the airport came rushing over and exactly like a cheerleader shouted: “
Viva Lequerica! Viva Lequerica!
”

The troops took it up, but from the sounds of artillery fire and the lurid pall hanging over the city, the people of Ciudad Grande had other ideas. While the soldiers shouted and proclaimed long life for Lequerica, he conversed with the major. Finally he came over to me and asked anxgrily:

“What happened to your man in Paraguay?”

I shrugged. “Give him a little time.”

“He's had more than enough time if he's really coming.”

There wasn't a thing I could say to that.

Lequerica talked with the major again. Three soldiers marched over and led me under guard past the big equestrian statue of El Grande into the palace. Before going inside I looked back and saw Encarnacion and her dueña getting out of the touring car. It was the last time I ever saw either of them.

The soldiers led me to a suite of rooms on the third floor of the palace. It was furnished with deep red mahogany furniture in the Spanish style and every convenience you could think of including a guard at the door who smiled at me with his rifle at port arms when I opened it and looked out.

Chapter Twenty-one

I
REMAINED
a pampered prisoner for three days. They brought my meals to me. The suite had everything I needed except a razor to shave with. Sometimes I heard the guard and the palace servant who brought my meals speaking in whispers of the revolution. They spoke of solemn funeral preparations disrupted by rioting and of student demonstrations demanding freedom before a new
caudillo
clamped down a new brand of iron rule. When they came to that part they always spoke nervously. Actually, what was happening in Ciudad Grande seemed to be in the classic tradition of revolutions.

Every day I heard artillery fire, but it never came close to the palace. The machine gunning, though, moved back and forth in the streets of the city. Sometimes it was a distant stitching, a harmless sound like a battery of sewing machines, but sometimes it chattered and coughed explosively right outside the palace.

Late on the third afternoon a guard came for me. I was led downstairs and through a hallway which looked familiar. It was the way to Lequerica's apartment of course. By now Lequerica would feel certain I had never intended delivering Caballero's manuscript. I wondered what he would do about it. He was the new
caudillo
, or on his way to being the new
caudillo
. As the new
caudillo
, what happened to the manuscript meant more to him than ever before.

The soldier knocked at the door to Lequerica's apartment. It was opened by Major Corso. The soldier saluted and stationed himself in the hall. I went into the enormous living room. I had a five-day growth of beard and wore filthy clothing. Major Corso wore a crisply starched uniform. Lequerica sat on the edge of a sofa, looking cool and comfortable in fresh white linen.

He didn't bother to get up. He crossed his legs and said, “Let's have it straight, Drum, and let's have it right now. It's obvious you weren't going to deliver the book as you said. Is it within your power to deliver it?”

Major Corso stood watching us. Lequerica waited for my answer. Neither of them paid any attention to the sewing machine stitching away outside the high window.

“Yes,” I said, “I can deliver it. But not while I'm here in the Parana Republic.”

Major Corso shifted his weight and the holster hanging at his hip creaked. Lequerica said, “I don't believe you. I believe you have the book—yes. Or you know where it can be had. I believe you can get it for me, Drum. From here.”

“Because you want to believe it that way,” I said. I thought a fleeting smile touched Major Corso's hard face, but it might have been my imagination.

Not smiling at all, Lequerica got up and walked in front of me. “I'm fed up with you,” he shouted. “I've taken all I'm going to take. You'll get the book. You'll have to get the book. If you don't, you're going to be tried and convicted for the murder of Pablo Duarte. You and the Mistral girl.”

“She wasn't even there,” I said. “And you know I didn't kill him.”

“Don't think I can't have it done. Major, tell him. Have we arranged it—if necessary?”

“Yes,” Major Corso said promptly. He did not look happy though.

“I'll give you five minutes,” Lequerica said. “You'll make up your mind in five minutes or you won't make it up at all. We will have made it up for you.”

I thought of Lequerica as I had first known him: the suave diplomat, the international playboy. His polish had peeled off layer by layer as he lied and tricked his way to
caudillismo
, though. He was hardly the same man now. “You're just spitting into the wind,” I said, “and you know it. If you don't get the book, you're finished. Well, aren't you?”

“I don't think so. Duarte and El Grande bore the brunt of Caballero's attack. You said so.”

“Did I? I also said I'd get the book for you. Hell, what else was I going to say? I wanted to clear out of here, with Eulalia Mistral. Let me tell you about the book—or don't you want to hear it?”

He just looked at me. I told him what I remembered. There was a chapter in Caballero's manuscript about Lequerica and his younger brother. The younger Lequerica had been a very popular figure with the people in the Republic. But he had tried to prevent the delivery of Arturo Mistral into El Grande's hands and he had been captured and executed—at his brother's command. There was documentary evidence to prove it, and I told Lequerica that, too.

When I finished talking, what remained of Lequerica's polish and urbanity, which wasn't much by now, left him. He made a whimpering sound and cried out: “Why didn't you let it lay, Drum? Why in the name of God didn't you let the whole thing lay?”

Then he slapped my face hard enough to jar my teeth.

Without thinking, without considering it at all, I hit him. He fell backwards on the sofa, landing hard on his spine. His eyes went out of focus and he didn't try to get up. I spun around, but Major Corso whipped his service automatic out. I stood where I was.

Lequerica wiped blood from his lips. “Call the guard, Major,” he said. “Have Drum sent back to confinement.”

Major Corso looked at both of us. He took a deep breath, then shook his head. “What good would it do?” he said.

“What did you say?” Lequerica demanded.

Major Corso's hard face bore an expression of dignity and decision. “I said, what good would it do? I can't take your orders any more, señor Lequerica. Why should I? The officer corps knows what the dead Rafael Caballero has written. None of our old leaders can possibly survive for long, señor. But a military junta.…”

“You?” Lequerica gasped.

“I?” Major Corso looked surprised, as if he had never considered the possibility. “Perhaps.”

“But surely on this man's word you won't jeopardize the government?”

“It has nothing to do with this man. It is you, in the end, who jeopardizes the government, señor.”

“I command you to call the guard.”

Major Corso smiled and shook his head.

“Then I'll call him myself,” Lequerica said, and went to the door. The major did not try to stop him. Lequerica opened the door and poked his head out and spoke to the guard. Then he backed up a step, facing the door. The guard looked into the room for Major Corso. “Sir?” he said.

“No. Wait outside.”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard's face went away. The door closed. Lequerica's back stiffened.

He turned around suddenly with a tiny pistol in his hand. He shot Major Corso with it, the bullet making a small third eye above the bridge of the major's nose. The tiny pistol made very little noise.

I took two steps and reached Lequerica while he was staring in bewilderment at the major, who lurched backwards and fell down. I grabbed for Lequerica's right wrist with my left hand and clubbed the side of his neck with my right fist. He stumbled, dropping the tiny pistol and crying out. Just then the door opened and the guard sprang into the room swinging his rifle butt at me. I side-stepped and he went lunging by. “Don't turn around,” I said. “I have a gun.”

Then I stooped and picked up Major Corso's big service automatic. The guard started to turn. I swung the barrel of the gun against his head and he collapsed without a sound, sprawling over the coolie-hat chair.

Lequerica was groaning when I pulled him to his feet. His shirt tore. “Can you hear me?” I said.

He said something nasty. At least it proved he could hear me.

“Where's Eulalia Mistral? In the fort?”

When he didn't answer, I hit him gently with the major's gun, then harder. “No,” he said, sobbing. “Here in the palace. All political prisoners not connected with the revolution were brought here.”