Señor Saint (10 page)

“I think you will go home tomorrow,” the man said, “if you don’t want to get hurt. People don’t like you to spy on them. You are just a nuisance.”

“Well, Pancho,” said the Saint judicially, “speaking purely on the spur of the moment, I should say you were just a horse’s ass.”

And then, as the fat man’s patronizing grin vanished, he moved with a speed that the other, for all his apparent professionalism, could never have allowed for. That fat man himself could never reconstruct exactly what happened: he only knew that a blow out of nowhere sapped all the strength from his fingers, and that the knife he dropped was caught in midair almost as he released it and presented point first at the tip of his own nose.

“Go back to the goat who sent you,” said the Saint, in fluent Spanish, “and tell him that it annoys me to be rushed. And when I am annoyed, I do things like this.”

The stout man flinched from the flash of metal across his eyes as the knife spun away into the night. And then a fist that felt no less metallic, although blunter, impinged crisply on his nose and sat him down suddenly in his tracks with a new constellation of lights zipping across his vision. Before he could clear his involuntarily streaming eyes, the Saint was no longer in sight.

In a taxi heading back towards town along the Rancho Boyeros highway, the driver said helpfully: “You no have a girl tonight, sir?”

“Not tonight,” “said the Saint.

“You are smart guy, I think. Some women you find make much trouble… . But if you like, if you are lonely, I have young cousin, very honest and beautiful girl-“

“Thank you,” Simon said. “But I think someone just got an option on me.”

2.

“You see,” Beryl Carrington told him, “Ramon is one of the top men in the Underground.”

“Oh,” said the Saint; and now for the first time he did begin to see a little.

She jumped up restlessly, with a swirl of the clinging negligee that she had put on when he knocked.

“It’s exciting, and rather frightening-isn’t it?-to think that things like that still have to go on, and so close to the United States.”

“Sure,” he said. “But how does it happen to concern you?”

She stared at him, puzzled and almost hurt.

“If I hadn’t heard it, I wouldn’t have believed that the Saint asked that question. Isn’t the fight for freedom, anywhere, something that concerns all of us these days?”

“I know the oratory,” Simon said mildly. “I meant-why you, personally?”

“I got into it when I met Ramon.”

“Where did you meet him? Here?”

“Yes.”

“What part of Indiana are you from?”

“Why, is the accent so obvious?”

“No, but your car plates are. Excuse me if I sound like a district attorney, but I like to know just a few things about the people I’m supposed to help.”

“I understand.” She sat down, facing him. “Prewisburg, Indiana, is the place. Probably you’ve never heard of it, it’s a very small town. I was born and raised there, and I lived there all my life. This is the farthest away I’ve ever been. I married my high school sweetheart, who was also the heir to the biggest industry in town-an umbrella factory. You don’t look like a man who ever owned an umbrella, but if you had one it could easily be a Carrington. They’re very good umbrellas. My husband was a very good guy and a good husband-and just as dull as an umbrella. We had a good, comfortable, normal, and very dull life. Until he died of a good dull case of lobar pneumonia a couple of years ago. It wasn’t until I got over that that I realized how very ordinary and how very dull my entire life had been. I wasn’t left filthy rich-that wouldn’t have been ordinary, would it?-but I could afford to go anywhere within reason. So I decided to see a few places while I was still young enough to have fun. Does that tell you enough?”

Simon nodded, and poured himself another cup of coffee -she had been having breakfast in her room when he arrived, and had ordered a fresh pot of coffee for him.

“And here you just happened to meet Ramon.”

“It wasn’t exactly that kind of pick-up,” she said.

Beryl Carrington had been told by a travel agent that if she wanted to see more of Cuba than the city of Havana where all the tourists go, it would be cheaper to have her own car ferried over from Key West. She had faced the prospect of trying to find her way around in a foreign country with some trepidation, but had finally decided to let it be an adventure.

By the time she reached her hotel after getting lost five times on her way from the dock she was wondering whether that kind of adventure could possibly be worth any economy it effected; and a call on the house phone that came to her room while she was still unpacking convinced her that she could only have fallen for the idea during a spell of mental incompetence.

“I am very sorry,” the caller said, “but I have had a little accident to your car.”

Ramón Venino, as he introduced himself with a card in the lobby, was very apologetic and very embarrassed. She was too upset at first to notice how very personable he also was.

“My hand slipped on the wheel-but that is no excuse. I was careless. I wish to take all responsibility.”

They went out together to the parking area to inspect the damage, which consisted of one moderately crumpled fender.

“It is only a little less bad because it is easy to fix,” Venino said. “Give me the key, and I will take it to a garage, and tonight I will bring it back like new.”

Very quickly and sharply she visualized herself waiting from then until Doomsday to see either him or her car again. She was distinctly pleased with her own poise and perspicacity.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’d rather take it to a garage myself.”

He inclined his head.

“As you wish. The hotel manager will recommend a place. I only insist that I pay the bill.”

After she had been directed to a garage, and was faced only with the navigational problem of actually finding it, she found Venino waiting beside her car with a taxi.

“Tell the driver where you are going,” he said, “and he will lead the way. He speaks good English, and he will help you at the garage. Then he will drive you where you want to go for the rest of the day. Don’t pay him anything-it is all taken care of.”

He bowed, and left her before she could think of anything to say.

The next morning, however, she recognized his voice when it spoke on the house telephone again.

“Please don’t be annoyed that I have brought your car back myself,” he said. “I only wish to be sure that you are completely satisfied with the repair before I pay the garage.”

The fender had been so well smoothed out and repainted that it would have taken a magnifying glass to find fault with it. And the fact remained that Venino had apparently had little difficulty in persuading the garage to turn the car over to him. If he had been a car thief with a new angle, as her hypertrophied caution had at first suspected him, he could already have gotten away with his objective.

“It looks fine,” she said.

“I can only apologize again for the inconvenience,” he said. “I am sorry we could not have met in any other way, so that I could have hoped to see you again without you thinking bad things of me.”

It was her turn to feel awkward and embarrassed.

“I think you’ve been very charming,” she said. “If everyone who had an accident was like you, the insurance companies would be out of business.”

“You are very kind. But still I have made it impossible for me ever to ask you to dinner.”

His manner was studiously correct but disarmingly wistful, and his good looks were finally able to make their impression on her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Why not ask me, and let me decide how I feel?”

He had given her the most enjoyable evening she had yet spent in Havana, and had distinguished himself further by not making a single premature pass. Therefore she had no excuse for refusing to let him drive her around sight-seeing in her own car the next day-:which prolonged itself painlessly into another dinner together, and thus into another project for the following morning. And so on.

Almost from the first evening she began to notice odd things about him-the way he would stop and look carefully up and down the street every time they came out of a building, a trick of glancing back over his shoulder at unexpected moments, his phobia about taking any table in a restaurant where he could not sit facing the entrance and with his back to a wall, the continual restless wandering of his eyes. By the third day she had no hesitation about asking him why.

“And so he told you,” said the Saint.

“I suppose it was easier for him, since I was a foreigner, so at least he could be pretty sure I wasn’t already on the other side. And we’d become very good friends very quickly. You know, that can happen.”

Simon nodded.

“What is he afraid of?”

“You forget, it’s really a dictatorship here. And Ramon is one of the people who are trying to get rid of the Strong Man and bring democracy back. You know what would happen to him if the Secret Police caught him.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t been following Cuban politics too closely,” Simon confessed. “However, what’s the program for getting rid of the Strong Man? A fine rowdy revolution, or a nice neat assassination?”

“Neither,” she said with some spirit. “Ramon and his friends aren’t gangsters. You can’t build a lasting good government on any kind of violence. And it isn’t necessary, either. The majority wants freedom, as they do in any dictatorship. They’re just held down by one small group that’s well organized and has all the key positions. So the Underground is organizing too, and they’ll just arrest that group all at once, the same as a surgeon would remove a growth, without chopping the patient up with an ax.”

“It sounds frightfully humane and tidy,” Simon remarked. “South American revolutions were a lot more fun when I was a boy. So time marches on… . Well, then is this change-over set for?”

“Very soon now. It might be almost any day.”

“If it’s all so efficiently organized and ready to roll so soon, I’m still wondering why you so desperately need me.”

She stood up again, as if the springs of repressed excitement would not let her relax.

“They’re afraid that there may be a traitor in the Underground.”

“Aha.”

“And if there is, he might know that Ramon is the, only man who has a complete list of all the members. You see what that means? If Ramon was arrested by the Secret Police, everything would be lost. He’s sure that they’d never get a single name out of him under any torture”-she shuddered- “but if they got the list, all his courage wouldn’t make any difference.”

“I’m beginning to appreciate this lad Ramon,” said the Saint. “The list, I gather, isn’t in his head.”

“Of course not. It couldn’t possibly be. There are thousands . of names and addresses on it. Naturally there has to be one key list like that; but can you imagine the responsibility of trying to keep it safe?”

Simon regarded her steadily.

“Looking at you,” he observed thoughtfully, “I gather that it makes you pretty jittery.”

She stared at him, her eyes widening and her mouth falling open.

“I didn’t say-“

“No, you didn’t say it, darling. But my brain is beginning to work. Obviously, Ramon has asked you to take care of this list.”

She brought her lips together again with a shrug of resolution.

“All right, that’s it. I’m leaving tonight, and I’m to take it back to the States with me. I can put it in a safe deposit box in Miami until Ramon needs it, and the Secret Police can’t do anything about that.”

“But you’re scared about getting it there-is that it? You’ve been seen around with Ramon too much. If he’s already being watched-which you don’t know-then you may be suspect yourself.”

“Ramon thinks the odds are on my side. As an American who’s never been here before, they ought to believe I’m … well, just a passing romance. But I can’t help thinking and thinking about the other possibility. Suppose they don’t?”

“You’ve got something to worry about.”

“So that’s why-when I saw you for the third time running last night-and by that time I knew who you were-it seemed like an omen. I had to ask you for help.” In her intensity she was completely sexless, either because she scorned such wiles or because nothing in her background was consonant with the use of them; yet for that very reason her appeal was stronger than any siren could have achieved.

“Please, will you?”

“Yes,” said the Saint calmly.

She slumped against the wall, twisting her hands together.

“I feel so stupid and small,” she said. “And I was so excited at first. Coming here, and meeting a man who turned out to be a real hero like Ramon and winning his confidence. And then having the chance to do something really important for the first time in my life-something truly dangerous and romantic, like most people only read about. But when it came right to the point, I found I didn’t have what it takes. It wasn’t only being scared of how I’d react to being arrested, or-or the things they might do to me. It was thinking of the thousands of other people whose lives I’d be responsible for. And I found out I was in a blue frozen funk, all through my insides… . You must despise me.”

“Anything but. I’m glad you had the sense to know when you were out of your depth, and the guts to admit it.” The Saint’s brows lowered over a passing thought. “Ramón spotted me last night, too-I saw you speak to each other about it. What did he say?”

“He didn’t like it. I told him it must be a coincidence, and you couldn’t possibly be against him, but he was worried. I tried to tell him what everyone knows about you, but I don’t know how much I convinced him. That’s why I still haven’t told him I spoke to you.”

Simon lighted a cigarette.

“All right. Where is this list now?”

“It’s in one of my suitcases. He left it with me last night.”

She hesitated a moment, and then went and opened a suitcase which stood on a trestle in a corner. She turned over a few folded pieces of clothing and brought out an alligator briefcase.

She came over to the Saint with it, and he took it.