Candy Kid (3 page)

The boy took the quarter and pocketed it. “Pablo he say Tosteen.”

He didn’t get it. “What’s that?”

The boy repeated the exact words. “Pablo he say Tosteen.”

Pablo, he knew. Tosteen had no significance. And then it did. “
Mister
Tosteen?” What other message had Pablo to send but the name of a man?

The boy shrugged. “He say Tosteen.”

“Okay.” The hunch must be right. “What’s your name, fellow?”

“Jaime.”

“Jaime, you say to Pablo,
mil gracias.
”

“I will say it.” The boy pulled the door tight after him.

So Pablo had found out the guy’s name. Because of a quarter tip? Uh-uh. Because it was Aragon against Tosteen; the gringo didn’t have a chance. Jose peeled off the skimpy robe, the towel was more comfortable, then removed the white tablecloth from the tray. The shrimp salad was a special, not what you’d get if you ordered it on the menu in the coffee shop. The rye bread was cold and firm. And the bottle of beer had five brothers. Lou must have believed Jose’s phone call to the Blue Label would bring results. He put the five in the ice box behind her portable bar and fell to. He was plenty hungry. It had been a long time since that six o’clock breakfast on the ranch.

You could hear Beach and Adam from the time they got off the elevator. Their laughter cross-boomed against the corridor walls. He held the door open for them. “High time. Look at me!”

“You ain’t so pretty,” Adam allowed. Laughter rolled over his face, opened his mouth, shook his big frame. Adam was the biggest man that had walked the earth since Paul Bunyan. The biggest man who’d ever walked the Rio Grande valley. Jose was only an inch under six foot himself; beside Adam he stood like a schoolboy. So did Beach’s full six feet.

Jaime was like a toy. He trailed after them, carrying the three bags. His polished black eyes ignored Jose’s loincloth. Beach and Adam were loaded, both arms, with enormous paper sacks. More beer. Beach tipped Jaime and pushed the door to a loud shut. Adam was already at the shrimp bowl.

“Get out of there,” Jose warned. “Order your own.”

Adam swallowed the shrimp he’d filched and licked his fingers. He was a sight for sore eyes, pleasantly beery, dirty and sweaty and wonderfully normal.

“You didn’t lose any weight on your tour,” Jose remarked pointedly.

“What are you talking about? I lost fifteen pounds. So help me, I tip the scales at only two hundred and thirty this minute—full of beer though I be. Want proof?”

“I’ll take your word,” Jose said hastily. “You don’t want to break Lou’s scale. Sit yourself down—away from my lunch—and I’ll see what I can do for your emaciation.” He lifted the phone. “Send up two more big shrimp salads. This is Jose Aragon.” He cradled it, tucked the towel more safely about him as he returned to the couch, and resumed eating.

Beach said, “You could have knocked me over with a blunderbuss when I saw Adam going into ‘The Blue Label.’”

“A man can’t have his morning beer without being caught at it,” Adam decided.

“When did you get in?” Jose garbled with full mouth.

“S’morning.”

“How was the trip?”

“Pretty good. Mexico City’s always good. But the beans and
pan
got pretty monotonous in those hinterland dumps. That’s how I lost all those pounds.”

Adam had come to the Rio Grande valley in the thirties. But he wasn’t like most of the refugees from the East, well-heeled, looking for a place to sit out the coming holocaust. A guy that big couldn’t be satisfied twiddling his thumbs at parties. He’d started trading in less than a year. The war had skipped him, a lot of too big fellows had something wrong. Adam Adamsson, trader, was about the smartest importer in the state, maybe the Southwest, by now. Jose loved him like a brother. Everybody loved him.

Adam rubbed his big hand over his stubbled chin. “Got a razor, Jo? If I’m going to eat in Lou’s apartment, I got to be fancier than this.”

“Help yourself.”

Beach stretched. “You shave, Adam, I’ll shower. Put the beer on ice, Jo. What made you change your mind?”

“What do you mean change my mind?”

“You were hell-bent to get back to Santa Fe tonight.”

“I wasn’t hell-bent. I was indeterminate. It was hot.”

“Still hot,” Beach argued.

“I’m cooled off. We can get an early start in the morning when it’s fresh.”

Adam lifted the bags as if they were filled with cotton puffs. “I got to start back tonight.” He returned for a parcel, stripped off the paper, and revealed a clean shirt, socks, and shorts. He traveled light.

“What for?”

“Business.”

“Another day won’t hurt,” Jose urged. “Call your office. Tell them you’re with the Aragons.” He’d finished the last shrimp; he was pleasantly stuffed.

“I’ve got better sense,” Adam grinned slowly. He went back into the bedroom. Jose helped himself to a cigarette from Lou’s box and followed. He’d forgotten to buy that pack. The shower was pouring. Adam had all the bags open and was rummaging.

“In that one,” Jose pointed. “What’s another day?”

“I’ve got to be in Santa Fe in the morning. Shipment coming in.”

Jose stretched out on the bed which had the least junk on it. “Stay for dinner anyhow. We’ll go across the bridge. To Herrera’s.” It wasn’t that he wanted Adam’s bulk behind him on his junket. It was the fun the big guy put into any gathering.

“Sure I’ll stay for dinner. What about lunch first?”

“It’ll be along.” Jose put on clean shorts, the buzz of the razor joined the shower downpour, conversation was stymied. He unpacked his white linen suit. Not the sort of thing you carried to a ranch for the cattle, but he’d had El Paso in mind when they started out. And there were always parties in El Paso if you wanted them. The suit needed pressing, he’d send it out when lunch showed up. The others might guy him about being so fancy for dinner in Juarez, but he didn’t have to explain why. He couldn’t explain too well, it had something to do with a gorgeous gal seeing him at his worst and maybe he’d run into her again at his best.

It was Jaime who brought the lunch. And with great pleasure, a message. “Pablo say it is
Mister
Tosteen.”

Jose was gravely courteous. “
Mil gracias
to Pablo and to you, Jaime.” Closing the door on the boy, he yelled into the bedroom, “Chow,” and sidestepped the stampede.

Lou joined them around five. They hadn’t dressed yet, none of them. It was comfortable to be shirtless, sitting around gabbing about nothing. Nothing that was actually on your mind. They hadn’t been bothered by the remains of lunch and the empty bottles until they saw through her eyes.

“P-uu.” She picked up the phone. “Send up a boy, Clark.”

One big stride took Beach to the table. He began gathering the remains and hiding them under the white napery. “Honey,” he said in that sweet voice which got them whether they were seven or seventy, “we’re awful sorry we made such a mess.” He gave her the sweet smile which melted them like maple sugar. “And you so good to us.” He was six foot, yellow-haired and blue-eyed; he had the face of an angelic child and he was a brat. He was the only Aragon who resembled the old Spain side of the family, seven generations back. But he was wasting the charm on Lou. There was nobody for Lou but Adam, that’s the way it had been for twelve or fourteen years now. If Adam weren’t so damn in love with Mexico, maybe he’d see what he was missing. For a warm guy, he was a cold fish.

Lou dismissed Beach. “Go put your pants on.” She surveyed his bright pink nylon shorts with distrust. “You too, Jose. Adam, you can open a beer for me if you pigs left any.”

Jose’s shorts were candy-cane-striped. “I can’t. My suit isn’t back yet. Throw me a robe, Beach. The lady resents our peacock feathers. We’re going to dinner at Herrera’s. Join us, Lou?”

“And a glass,” she instructed Adam. “I’m a lady. Broke a tooth on a bottle once. I can’t, Jose. There’s a banquet of the dear old Rose Club and I have to be around. You boys may each bring me a jug of rum, white. I have to give a party sometime this fall, a pay-back one, and I’m stocking up.”

There was no delay on a boy when Miss Chenoweth requested. The discreet rap was Pablo this trip. He shouldered the tray but he delayed his return to the door. Jose realized the little fellow was trying to attract his attention. He sidled over to him.

“That Jaime he tell you what I say?”

Jose lowered his own voice to match Pablo’s. “He did.”

“He is so dumb that Jaime, I do not know if he tell you right.”

Jose said, “He did. Thanks.”

Pablo continued to stand there, gazing into Jose’s face with his polished eyes. Waiting for another tip. And Jose still without his pants. Then he realized that wasn’t it; Pablo wanted to say something and the other three weren’t even making polite sounds to cover this private conversation. They were all peeling their ears. Jose stepped in closer.

“That Mister Tosteen he want to know what is your name.”

Jose kept his face without expression. “He asked you?”

“He ask it of me and Jaime and Garcia, who runs the elevator.”

“And you told him what?”

“We do not know.” With the weight of the tray on his shoulders, he still managed to give the impression of a shrug. Somewhere behind the graven face lurked a smile. “Even that dumb Jaime, he understand he does not know.”

“See you later, Pablo.” Their eyes understood what he meant.
“Mil gracias.”

“Es nada.”

He leaned himself against the closed door. Now he had to face the gang. They were waiting all right, ready to jump him.

Adam jumped first. “Now, what’s that all about?”

“It couldn’t be a blonde?” Lou queried dryly.

“A blonde?” Beach sparkled.

“You mean he hasn’t told you about her?”

Adam growled, “Not one lousy word.”

“A bastard,” said Beach softly. “So that’s why we’re staying all night in El Paso.”

“Slow up,” Jose advised. How much to tell them—and in that instant, he resolved to tell them nothing. If this was a shady deal, he wasn’t going to have them involved in it. If it weren’t, the story would be better when it was embellished by further developments. “What Pablo and I were discussing,
amigos,
had nothing to do with any female.” He reached. “It had to do with his
domb primo,
Jaime. And if you doubt me, ask Pablo.”

“After you’ve got him on your side,” Beach complained. “What’s with the blonde?”

Jose reclined in a chair. “She is so beautiful,” he embroidered, “she is like the morning star caught in the leaves of a tall aspen.” The more he said of her, the more they would believe there was nothing to this but Jose trying to pick up another dame. “She is a knockout, a dream a man dreams around a lonely campfire when the cows are bawling. The tawdry rhymes of a jukebox love song become honest because the heart yearns for her beauty….”

Adam grunted. Insultingly.

“Who is she?” Beach demanded. “Where can I find her?”

“One, I don’t know. Two, lay off, she’s a lady. I’ve never met her, all I did was ask Lou who she was because she caught my eye.”

“Lou?” Beach queried.

“What difference does it make to you, love?” Lou asked lazily. “Jose saw her first.”

“I have no loyalty.”

“All of you hombres ought to get married. You’d stop thinking girls were trees or cows bawling, you’d know they were women.” Lou didn’t look at Adam.

Adam said, “If I ever meet one who can cook better than I do, I’ll remember what you said. Until then I’ll be a no good like the Aragon boys, ogling blondes.”

It was all nice and normal, just like old times. Just as if Jose’s blonde were an ordinary doll, not one mixed up with an inquisitive man in a seersucker suit.

Jose refused to trust his pristine white linen to Adam’s truck.

“All right,” Adam grudged. “We’ll take Lou’s car. But if you guys aren’t ready to come back after dinner, you’ll have to ride the trolley. I’m not going to hang around Juarez all night.”

It would have been funny, he was always the one who delayed the crowd, he knew everyone from Chihuahua to Mesa Verde. But nothing was funny now. Not even the gags about Jose’s first communion suit; Beach with an out-of-joint nose because there wasn’t time to get his whites pressed once he found out what Jose was up to.

Nothing was funny because of a slip of paper in an envelope. On the paper was penned a name, Senor Praxiteles; an address, Calle de la Burrita. The envelope was in Jose’s white pocket, where his right hand could brush casually against it. On the front of the envelope was his name, Jose Aragon.

He’d never met Praxiteles, Senor el Greco, but he’d heard enough to recognize the old man if they met in the dark. And he didn’t want to meet him in the dark. He didn’t want to go on with this. He was retired from violence, he was a part-time peaceful ranchero of Socorro county and the rest of the time a gay caballero of the royal city of Santa Fe.

He didn’t believe that the name Jose Aragon would have a special pertinence for Senor el Greco. But he couldn’t be sure. Because the web in which Praxiteles sat like an evil black spider had tendrils on every border all over the world. You could never be sure how much the wily spiders knew about those who had tried to sweep out their murky corners.

But he was done with that, Jose reassured himself with more aplomb than he possessed at this given moment. Even if el Greco did recognize the name of one small twig from a great war-time forest, it wouldn’t matter. The war was quits. Certainly there could be no violence involved in doing a favor for a pretty girl.

Yet the moment he opened the envelope and read the name of the man, Jose knew that he’d been right to put a guard on his tongue. This was not something in which he could involve Adam, tired out from three months’ trading through Mexico. Much less could he mention it to Beach who’d be determined to flail in with his usual daring. Beach had been spoiling for a ruckus since they’d taken his fighter planes away from him. And there was Jose again, thinking of it as violent. It wasn’t going to be. But an early idea he’d had to send Pablo to fetch the package died fast when he read that name. This job was his, he’d let himself in for it.