Mermaids on the Golf Course (12 page)

Andrew was suddenly conscious of the fact that each of the policemen carried a gun at his hip and a nightstick at his other hip.

“But I can tell you everything
here,
” Andrew said. “I
saw
it, that’s all.”

“But if you shot?” said one cop.

Another policeman made a gesture as if to shut him up.

Señor Diego was smiling, murmuring something to the oldest policeman.

A handcuff snapped on one of Andrew’s wrists as if by magic, and the policemen seemed to be arguing about whether to put the other wrist in the second handcuff or to attach that to a policeman’s wrist, and they decided on Andrew. He was walked out between two policemen with his wrists together in front of him. The boy lay as before, and the people around him now gave their attention to Andrew and the police, who were emerging from the hotel door into the sunlight.

“My tourist card!” Andrew cried, jerking his arm away from a policeman who had hold of him. In English he said, “I demand to have my tourist card with me!”

“Hah!” But this same policeman, after a word with a colleague, seemed to agree that they take Andrew back to his room.

Andrew took his card from the pocket in the lid of his suitcase, and a policeman took it from him, glanced at it with the air of not reading a word, then stuck it in his own back pocket.

The tan police wagon was a decrepit Black Maria with metal benches inside. Cigarette butts littered the ridged metal floor, along with stains that looked like blood and what might have been dried vomit. The car had no springs, and potholes jolted them up from the benches. The vehicle, though open to the air with its heavy wire mesh sides, seemed to hold heat like a closed oven. The policemen’s shirts became darker with sweat, they took off their caps and wiped their foreheads, talking all the while merrily.

Then suddenly Andrew was on the ridged floor. He had almost fainted, had lost his balance, and now the two policemen were hauling him back on to the bench. Andrew had no strength, as in a dream in which he couldn’t escape from something. It’s all a dream, he thought, because of the fever he had. Wasn’t he really lying on his bed in his hotel room?

The wagon stopped. They all went up a couple of steps into a yellowish stone building and into a large room with a high ceiling, maybe formerly the anteroom of a private dwelling, but which was now unmistakably a police station. An officer in uniform approached an unoccupied desk at the back of the room, beside which hung a limp and faded flag on a tall staff.

Andrew asked for the toilet. He had to ask twice, had to insist, and insist also that his handcuffs be undone. A police officer accompanied him and stood indifferently near the doorless toilet—a hole in a tiled square on the floor—while Andrew attended to his needs. There was no toilet paper, not even any newspaper scraps on the nail in the wall beside the hanging chain, which produced no water when Andrew tugged at it. It was during these unpleasant moments that Andrew became sure that he was not dreaming.

Now he was standing before the desk in the large room, with a policeman on either side of him. One policeman narrated something rapidly, and handed the man at the desk Andrew’s tourist card. This was valid for a three-week stay in Mexico, and Andrew was so far well within that limit.

“Spatz—Andrew Franklin—born Orlando, Florida,” the officer murmured, and continued with his birth date.

Suddenly Andrew had a vision of his blonde sister Esther, happy and laughing, as she had looked just two weeks ago, when she had been trying to hold her two-year-old son still enough for Andrew to make a sketch. Andrew said in careful Spanish, “Sir, there is no reason why I am here. I saw a boy—shot.”

“Hererra—Fernando,” said a policeman at Andrew’s elbow, as if performing a detail of duty. The name of the boy had already been uttered a few minutes earlier.

“Sí-sí,”
said the desk officer calmly, then to Andrew, “Who shot?”

“I did not see—from where the shot came.”

“It was just outside your hotel window. Ground floor room you have. You could have shot,” said the desk officer. Or was it, “You have shot?”

“But I have no gun!” Andrew turned to one policeman, then the other. “You have
seen
my room.”

One policeman said something to the desk officer about the Bar Felipe.

“Ahah!” The desk officer listened to further narration.

Was the cop saying he’d got rid of a gun between his hotel room and the Bar Felipe? The shot must have come from a rifle, Andrew thought. What was “rifle” in Spanish?

“The boy had robbed you,” said the desk officer.

“No! I did not say that, never!”

“He was a very bad boy. A criminal,” said the desk officer weightily, as if this altered the facts somehow.

“But I simply wanted to tell his death—to the Bar Felipe, to—” Andrew’s hands were free, and he spread his arms to indicate a length. “With a gun so long—surely.”

“You saw the gun?”

“
No!
I say—because of the
distance
—There was no one but the boy in the plaza when he—shot,” Andrew finished lamely, exhausted now.

The desk officer beckoned, and the two policemen came closer to the desk. All three talked softly, and all at once, and Andrew hadn’t a clue as to what they were saying. Then the two policemen returned to Andrew, and each took him by an arm. They were leading him towards a hall, towards a cell, probably. Andrew turned suddenly.

“I have the right to notify the American Consulate in Mexico City!” he shouted in English to the desk officer who was on his feet now.

“We shall notify the Consulate,” he replied calmly in Spanish.

Andrew took a step towards the desk and said in Spanish, “I want to do it, please.”

The desk officer shrugged. “Here is the number. Shall I dial it for you?”

“All right,” said Andrew, because he didn’t know the code for Mexico City. He didn’t entirely trust the desk officer, but he was able to stand on the officer’s left, and he saw that the number he dialed corresponded to the number in the officer’s ledger beside EE UU Consulado.

“You see?” said the desk officer, after the telephone had rung at the other end eight or nine times. “Closed until four.”

Andrew’s watch showed ten past three. “Then again at four—I try.”

The officer nodded.

The two policemen took him in charge again. Down the hall they went, and stopped at a wooden door in which a square had been cut at eye level.

The cell had one barred window, a bed, and a bucket in a corner.

“At four!” Andrew said to his escort of two, pointing to his wristwatch. “To telephone.”

They might not have heard him. They were chatting about something else, like old friends, and after turning of locks and sliding of a couple of bolts, Andrew heard them strolling down the hall, and their voices faded out and were replaced by a moaning and muttering much closer. Andrew looked around, half expecting to find another person in the cell with him, in a corner or under the bed, but the drunken or demented voice was coming from the other side of a brick wall that formed one side of the cell.

A crazy, boastful laugh came after a stream of angry-sounding Spanish.

The town drunk hauled in to sleep it off, Andrew supposed. Andrew sat on the bed. It felt like rock. There was one sheet on it, maybe to protect the blanket, a more valuable item, from being pressed too hard against the coarse wire that was the bed’s surface. He felt thirsty.

“Ah
—waaaaah
!” said the nonstop voice in the next cell. “
Yo mi ’cuerdo—’cuerdo
—woooosh-la!
Oof
!”

Of all strange things to happen, Andrew thought. What if it were all a show, all pretense, as in a film? Why hadn’t he told the officer at the desk about the three (or four?) men he had seen yesterday, apparently photographing the boy who had been shot today, laughing even, as the boy drew the pan of milk back from the kittens? Were those men of significance? Was someone filming a “candid” movie, and could he even be part of it? Could there be a hidden camera filming him now? Andrew glanced at the upper corners of his unlit cell, and became aware of the smell of old urine. He himself stank of nervous sweat. All he needed now was fleas or lice from the blanket. He snatched the blanket from the metal bed, and took it to the only source of light, the barred window opposite the brick wall. He didn’t see any lice or fleas, but he shook the blanket anyway and a thin cockroach fell out. Andrew stepped on it, with a feeling of small triumph. The floor was of rather pretty gray stone slabs. This might have been a home once, he thought, because the floor was handsome, as was the stone floor in the big room in front. The red brick wall between him and the mumbling inmate had been recently put there. Reassured somewhat about the blanket, Andrew lay down on his back and tried to collect himself.

He could explain himself in one minute to an English-speaking person at the Consulate. If that didn’t work, Mexico City was only about two hours away by car. A man from the Consulate could get here by six or so. And though Andrew had a New York address just now, his sister was next door in Houston, Texas. She could find a Spanish-speaking American lawyer. But surely things wouldn’t get
that
bad!

Andrew gave a tremendous sigh and closed his eyes.

Hadn’t he the right to a glass of water? Even a pitcher of it to wash with?

“Hey!—
Hey
!” he yelled, and banged on the door a couple of times.
“Agua—por favor!”

No one came. Andrew tried the yelling and banging again, then gave it up. He had a response only from the drunk next door, who seemed to want to engage him in conversation. Andrew glanced at his watch, lay down again, and closed his eyes.

He saw the fallen boy, the spreading red on his white shirt, the dusty green of the plaza’s trees. He saw it sharply, as if the scene were six yards in front of him, and he opened his eyes to rid himself of the vision.

At four, he shouted, then shouted and banged more loudly. After more than five minutes, a policeman said through the square aperture:

“Qué pasa?”

“I want to telephone!”

The door was opened. They walked to the desk in front, where the desk officer sat, in shirtsleeves now, with his jacket over the back of his chair. The air seemed warmer than before. Andrew repeated his request to telephone the American Consulate. The officer dialed.

This time the Consulate answered, and the officer spoke in Spanish to a woman, Andrew judged from the voice he heard faintly, then to a man.

“I must speak to someone in English!” Andrew whispered urgently.

The officer continued in Spanish for a while, then passed the telephone to Andrew.

The man at the other end did speak English. Andrew gave his name, and said he was being held in a jail in Quetzalan for something he did not do.

“Do you have a tourist card?”

“Tourist card,” Andrew said to the desk officer, not having memorized his number, and the officer pulled a manila envelope from a desk drawer and produced the card. Andrew read the number out.

“What are you being held for?” asked the American voice.

“I witnessed a shooting outside my hotel.” Andrew described what had happened. “I reported it and—now I’m being accused of it. Or suspected of it.” Andrew’s throat was dry and hoarse. “I need a lawyer—someone who can speak for me.”

“Your occupation, sir?” asked the cool voice.

“Painter. Well, I’m a student.”

“Your age?”

“Twenty-two. Is there someone in this area who can help me?”

“Not today, I’m afraid.”

The conversation dragged maddeningly on. The Consulate could not possibly send a representative until tomorrow noon. The slant of the man’s questions gave Andrew the feeling that his interrogator was not sure whether to believe him or not. The man told Andrew that he was being held on suspicion, and that there was a limit to what the American Consulate could do at a moment’s notice. Andrew was asked if he possessed a gun.

“No!—Can I give you the phone number of my sister in Houston? You can call her collect. She might be able to do something—faster.”

The man patiently took her name and telephone number, repeated that he was sorry nothing could be done today, and as Andrew stammered, wanting to make sure the man would telephone his sister, the desk officer pulled the telephone from Andrew’s grasp and came out with a spate of Spanish in a good-natured, even soothing tone, added a chuckle and hung up.

“Noon tomorrow,” the desk officer said to Andrew, and turned his attention to some papers on his desk.

Had the desk officer told the Consulate that he had been drunk and disorderly? “Can you not ask Señor Diego of the Hotel Corona to come here?”

The desk officer did not bother replying, and gestured for the policemen to take Andrew away.

Andrew asked for water, and a glass was brought quickly. “More, please.” Andrew held his hands apart to indicate the height of a pitcher.

The pitcher arrived a few minutes after Andrew was back in his cell. He washed his face and torso with his own wet shirt, letting the water fall on the stone floor. He was angry, and at the same time too weak to be angry. Absurd! He lay on the bed half awake and half asleep, and saw a series of visions, lots of people rushing (as he had never seen them) along the sidewalks of the plaza, and the grinning mouth, the big white fangs, the bulging eyes of the Aztec god he had sketched a few days ago near Mexico City. The atmosphere was menacing in all these half-dreams.

Supper arrived around six, rice with a red pepper sauce in a metal bowl, another bowl of beans. The rice dish smelled as if the bits of meat in it were tainted, but he ate the rice and beans for the strength they would give.

Andrew spent a chilly night, curled in his blanket. He was still cold at ten in the morning. At a quarter to noon, he clamored for the door to be opened. After several minutes, a different policeman from the ones Andrew knew arrived and asked what he wanted. Andrew said he was expecting a man from the American Consulate now, and said he wanted to speak to the “Capitano” at once, meaning the desk officer. All this was through the square in Andrew’s door.