Murder Is My Dish (26 page)

“Pick up your phone and send for her. Then call for a jeep. If there's a guard with Eulalia, tell him to go away. I want the jeep to be waiting without a driver but ready to move. You understand?”

He looked at the service automatic, cringing. I didn't think I had hurt him that much. Probably he was afraid I would mark his face. His eyes were dull. “Yes,” he said.

“What happened to O'Tool?”

“Who?”

“The American flyer.”

“Questioned and set free, I think.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Questioned and set free. That's what happened to him. What are you going to do? Drum, listen to me. We won't make a mile out there. I know it. I know what's going on out there. You don't.”

“Make those calls,” I said.

He made them. Afterwards, while we were waiting, I had him drag the major's body and the unconscious guard into the bedroom. I took off the guard's uniform and my own clothing. I got into the uniform myself. I thought a soldier with a beard might be excused during the fireworks. He'd be better than no soldier at all, anyway.

Eulalia came under guard soon after I had changed my clothing. I went to the door with Lequerica and opened it. Eulalia started to say.something but saw my eyes and was quiet. I stood next to Lequerica with my hand behind his back and the automatic digging into his spine while he dismissed the guard, who departed with a big grin for my beard.

Eulalia walked into the room and closed the door. “Chet,” she said, “they didn't tell me what happened to you. I didn't know. I thought …” Her voice trailed off and she leaned against the door, her hands behind her pushing against the surface of the wood. She looked as if she needed its help to support her. “At the airport,” she said. “I want to tell you … I didn't know what … I was wrong, Chet. Wrong. I shouldn't have blamed you. You never—”

“Can you walk?” I cut her off. “Are you strong enough to get out of here in a hurry?”

“I'm all right. They didn't do anything to me.”

“Then let's get out of here.”

Quickly we went downstairs and outside with Lequerica. The last lurid twilight was fading and the air was acrid with smoke. Far away machine guns stitched and chattered. The equestrian statue of El Grande in front of the palace had been brought down and lay smashed on the pavement. Near it a soldier stood guard over our jeep. He saluted smartly and strode away.

When I asked Eulalia if she would rather drive or hold the gun on Lequerica, she took the pistol from me and sat in the rear of the jeep. I got in front with Lequerica and started driving.

We went past barricaded streets and soldiers patrolling near strung barbed wire, then past a block with every house in it on fire, then another with the gutted shells of houses. After that we were in a no-man's land of rubble and crude barricades. I cut the jeep's lights and drove along slowly in second gear, turning down side streets to avoid barn-cades and dark figures marching through the smoke. I didn't know if they were soldiers of the Republic or revolutionaries. Soldiers would be bad enough, but the last thing I wanted to meet head on now was a roving band of revolutionaries.

Suddenly I saw we were heading for a barricade of felled trees, chairs, tables, bedsprings, anything.

“Look out!” Lequerica shouted. “Go back, go back—”

Figures ran toward us from the rubble, silhouetted against firelight. I slammed on the brakes and put the jeep in reverse, but a truck came rumbling across the broken cobblestones behind us. More figures ran on both sides of it.

I stopped the jeep. They pulled us out roughly. They had rifles and smelled of sweat and smoke. One of them took the automatic from Eulalia. Then they herded us across the rubble and through an alley with the shells of buildings standing on either side. At the far end of the alley was a wall. The truck drove up slowly behind us and stopped with its headlights glowing. They lit the wall at the far end of the alley very brightly.

“You are just in time, Paco,” someone said.

Paco, one of the men with us, answered. Then we were shoved in with a crowd of about a dozen people, some of them soldiers in uniform and some not. We were packed close together on the fringe of the headlight beams. A man and a woman with rifles guarded us.

A fellow with a soup-strainer moustache and close-set, stupid eyes came over to us and laboriously read a document about murderers and arsonists and rapists among the Republican forces. All such, he said, were hereby sentenced to death by firing squad. Eulalia squeezed my hand suddenly. He meant everyone in the crowd. He meant us.

A few minutes after the fellow with the soup-strainer moustache read our sentence, another figure was pushed into the crowd of prisoners. He looked around desperately, the sweat streaming down his wrinkled, heavy face. He saw me and pushed his way through to me quickly. It was Ansensio Martinez. He wore the tattered remnants of a Republican uniform.

“Gringo,” he said, “I know what you think of me. I know you believe I betrayed you, but I … mother of God, gringo. They're going to shoot us. They've been shooting captured soldiers and Republicans all over the city. But I am no soldier! I am no Republican! A uniform, yes. To leave the center of the city, gringo. I am no soldier! You know that, gringo. You can tell them! It is a mistake. A great mistake. I, Ansensio Martinez, have nothing to do with this war. Tell them, gringo. Tell them before it is too late.”

I didn't answer him and he went on in a whining voice, “Señor, I implore you in the name of all you regard as holy. I am no revolutionary. I am no Republican. I am no soldier. I am nothing, señor. A nobody. I may have been guilty of looting, yes. Freely I admit it.” His eyes opened wide. “They're going to kill me,” he said. “They're going to kill us all.”

In a little while the fellow with the soup strainer moustache and the stupid eyes came back. “Listen,” I said, “you're making a mistake with us. We're not Republicans.”

One of the prisoners laughed. Perhaps he had recognized Lequerica. “No?” said the fellow with the soup-strainer moustache, coming close.

“No. Contact your leader. Hipolito Robles will know about us.”

He began to laugh. “Robles,” he said. “Robles.
Hombre
, what is Robles to me? Don't you know about Robles and his crew? All they wish to do is wait. They aren't revolutionaries. Not real revolutionaries. They only want to wait and enflame all the people. Well, we can't wait and enflame all the people.”

“I'm an American,” I said. “And this girl here. We have nothing to do with the Republicans.”

“In that uniform?” He was laughing again. He smelled of rum.

“We had to get through Republican lines,” I said.

He laughed again. I thought of Ansensio Martinez' pleading. I wasn't doing any better.

“Do you speak English?” I asked.

He snorted.

I spoke English. In English I repeated what I had said in Spanish.

“So you are an educated man,” he said. The way he said it, it was clear he hated educated men. “If you are a gringo, what are you doing among the Republican prisoners?”

“You brought me here,” I said. He snorted again.

Just then Ansensio Martinez rushed over to him, fell at his feet, and clutched his knees. “Captain! I too am no Republican, Captain!” Martinez bleated. “It is all a tragic mistake.”

The close-set eyes looked down at him. “I know you, Ansensio Martinez,” the man said. He didn't say anything else. Almost lazily he moved his leg and Ansensio Martinez crawled away.

A few minutes later they led four of the Republicans to the wall. The truck's headlights threw their shadows against the adobe. The truck's engine idled unevenly. I could smell its exhaust in the narrow alley. They bound the prisoners' arms behind their backs. Four men with rifles stood facing them from twenty feet away, one on either side of the truck's headlights and two between them. The fellow with the soup-strainer moustache barked a series of commands, the rifles roared, the prisoners at the wall jerked and fell.

Four more were shot that way. It took somewhat less than five minutes to end for all time the dreams and aspirations and hopes of each group of four men. This close, torn clothing and torn flesh splattered the wall. Now there were only enough of us left for two more groups. Ten minutes, if we were in the last group. My head felt numb. I couldn't think. Eulalia held my hand, her fingers clutching and unclutching in mine.

“Chet,” she said, “it was foolish to blame you. It was wrong. I want you to know that.”

Before I could answer, Ansensio Martinez bleated, “There is much time, gringo. There is still a great deal of time. A lot can happen in the time we have. We have told them we are not Republicans. Haven't we, haven't we?”

Then they took him in the next to last group. Before they could loop a rope around his wrists he broke away and ran awkwardly across the alley. The men in the firing squad laughed because the place was a
cul de sac
and they stood before the truck, barring his way. One of them walked toward him slowly and he looked about desperately, his eyes darting, his head twisting. He ran in funny little steps, awkwardly. He did a weird dance. Everyone was watching him, the condemned men against the wall solemnly and with great interest because he had given them a few unexpected moments of life, the men in the firing squad and our two guards with amusement.

The man from the firing squad cornered Ansensio Martinez against one wall of the alley and Martinez, bleating, charged at him headfirst. The man caught him around the neck and held on while Martinez' legs drummed on the cobbles.

The guards laughed, but the fellow with the soup-strainer moustache shouted something from the darkness and the guard nearest me almost choked in his endeavor to stop laughing. While he was still choking on his amusement, the rifle held slackly and cradled on his bent left forearm, I leaped at him because in another few moments they would bind my arms too and I had absolutely nothing to lose.

He brought the rifle up, but I grabbed the barrel and pulled it down and pushed it, shoving the butt-plate into his belly. He let go of the rifle. I swung it around in my hands, almost dropping it. Someone yelled and a rifle roared. Then I leaped out of the semi-darkness into the bright glare of the headlights and fired twice. Glass shattered as the headlights went out, plunging the alley in darkness.

“Eulalia!” I shouted.

Rifles cracked and roared and muzzle-flame spat. A man screamed. Many people were running in the alley, all the prisoners who were still alive and the revolutionaries trying to find them in the darkness. On either side of the truck a bottleneck had formed.

Then I heard Eulalia's voice. “Chet. Over here, Chet!”

I found her. We fought and pushed in the bottleneck. Rifle bullets whined from the adobe walls and the metal of the truck's hood. One struck with a wet solid sound into flesh and a man screamed and died. Then the bottleneck broke and five of us rushed out across the rubble, scattering.

I held Eulalia's hand and ran.

Someone else reached our jeep ahead of us. I did not know who he was nor what he wanted. I grabbed him and pulled him from the jeep. He turned savagely on me and fought cursing, clawing with his fingernails, gouging and using his elbows. I got room and swung and hit him once. He fell down and quickly scrambled to his feet, then turned and ran away.

Eulalia was already in the jeep. I climbed behind the wheel and felt for the ignition key. My heart banged against my ribs. The ignition key wasn't there.

It was Eulalia who found it on the floor.

As we drove away in the jeep my mind started to function again. What had come suddenly, in a rush—the numbness, the hysteria, the biological ability to face certain death—was gone. But not entirely. On bad nights I would think about it.

The drive from Ciudad Grande to the airport beyond the high ranch country was a long one. We didn't talk at all on the way. I thought of Hipolito Robles, who had no choice but to wait, knowing the army would remain loyal to its leaders until Caballero's manuscript did its work. Perhaps that made Hipolito Robles a great man, a very great man. I didn't know and I still don't. But seeing the city and what had happened in it for lack of revolutionary leadership, I wanted nothing more to do with him and his great ability to hold his forces in check. I wondered about Lequerica but did not care much if he had escaped or not.

We reached the airport just before dawn and had to wake O'Tool up. He smiled when he saw it was us and with Pedro he got the Beechcraft ready. I helped Eulalia aboard and we taxied down the field, then turned into the wind, revved up, and were airborne. Three hours later we landed in Paraguay.

There was some trouble getting Eulalia back to the States, but we managed it. I picked up my package down in Alexandria and delivered it in New York. By then I had decided it wasn't my place to condemn Hipolito Robles. Lequerica had survived the revolution and, the newspapers said, was able to keep his government out of the hands of the military junta. When what was in Caballero's book became known, the people of the Republic would rise against Lequerica, the last of the old dictator gang. And with Hipolito Robles leading them, it could be hoped the army would rise with them, not against them.

There was much unpleasantness with the New York police, but the papers got the story about Rafael Caballero's manuscript, public opinion made me a hero and made Caballero's valiant, hypochondriac, candy-eating blonde widow a heroine, and the New York cops closed their books on me.

I saw Eulalia for a while after that. I saw her maybe a half-dozen times in all. She was very busy in New York helping them prepare Caballero's manuscript for publication, and I had a living to make in D.C. No one was arrested for helping Duarte beat Andy Dineen to death. The New-York cops closed their books on that one too. I never saw Preston Baylis again, but I read in the papers that he had a nervous breakdown. He didn't wait to have his nervous breakdown after the publication of Caballero's book. It was too bad—for him. There wasn't a word in the book about him, though from the way he took it I guess there could have been.