Murder Is My Dish (18 page)

“An amazing cure,” Robles agreed. “Naturally the girl still sleeps, but her breathing is normal.”

“Perfectly normal,” the trim little man, who evidently was a doctor, said. “She will awaken sound as the United States currency.”

A serving girl brought a roast, stuffed curassow, to the table. The meat is heavier than chicken or turkey, but delicious. There was very little table talk and no vegetables, following the Paranaian custom. When we finished the men had cigars and there was brandy for everybody. I ate enough curassow to keep a combat squad going on emergency rations for a week. Rosa seemed very pleased with me: every now and then she would look up from her plate and beam a smile in my direction, a kind of motherly benediction.

“Señor Drum,” Robles said after we had eaten, “I almost hate to force business on you so soon, but—”

“Hell, all you did was help get me out of a tight spot, give me a bath when I needed a bath more than anything in the world, and sleep when I needed sleep more than the bath, and a wonderful meal …” It was flowery, but the Spanish language lends itself to that kind of talk. Rosa beamed and beamed, but scowled at her brother. I finished, “So you can force anything you want on me, if you call it forcing.”

Hobbling on his aluminum crutch, Robles led me to his study. The rain drummed faintly on the roof. The cigar was excellent, and I'm not usually a cigar smoker. We sat down in overstuffed leather chairs and Robles said:

“Then you are grateful?”

“To put it mildly.”

“So are we, señor. I say this to put matters in their proper perspective. You saved Eulalia Mistral's life. You owe us nothing. Yet I am going to ask a great favor of you.” He spoke quietly and with grave dignity. The Spanish language lends itself to that, too.

“They weren't going to kill her.”

“You talked in your sleep. Is he dead?”

“Who?”

“The man at the hospital. Duarte's lieutenant.”

“Emilio shot him,” I said.

“Ah, that Emilio, he says nothing. Nothing. Well, it is a score to be settled with Duarte, when the time comes. I assure you, señor Drum, without wishing to sound melodramatic, that all such scores will be settled. But in their proper time.”

“Then that's the favor?”

“Sí, señor
. You flew down here to rescue Eulalia. This you have accomplished. While you slept, I took the liberty to make arrangements for you to be flown by private plane into Paraguay. If you wish, and if it is their wish, Eulalia and her mother can accompany you. Then, back in your own country, you can deliver the Caballero manuscript to Rafael Caballero's university press. You have done your job. You have done it well. If you go aboard that plane tomorrow, it is with the thanks and good wishes of our movement. And, I may add, when copies of the Caballero book reach this country, as they most certainly. will, they will foment trouble which the regime of Indalecio Grande will be unable to cope with. This I promise you.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“The nature of Rafael Caballero's book. Consider for a moment, señor, the kinds of people drawn to El Grande as he made his climb to power. Isn't it always so, in totalitarian movements? The idle, the shiftless, the failures, the backbiters, the psychopaths—these are a dictator's lieutenants. Consider Hitler Germany. The leader, a probable paranoid. His three top henchmen, one an overgrown fat boy playing with medals and fancy uniforms, one a psychotic who deserted his master in time of need, and one a psychopathic liar who had been a failure at writing and everything else he tried.”

Hipolito Robles went on, his voice low, his face grave, his gestures confident and certain. “Consider Soviet Russia and Stalin's cronies a few years after the dictator came to a natural end—if, indeed, his death was from natural causes. Isn't de-Stalinization symptomatic of the same disease which inevitably must strike the highest echelons of government here in the Parana Republic if the myth of Indalecio Grande is exposed for what it is? Isn't Rudolph Hess indicative of the problems El Grande will face?

“They are, of course. But there is a difference, señor. Compared with the economy of my small country, the economies of Hitler Germany and Stalinist Russia were quite stable. The Parana Republic is a small nation. Its citizens earn on the average less than two hundred American dollars a year. The cattle ranches and the lumber mills which supply this hemisphere with much of its mahogany and the coffee plantations are our chief sources of income. Would the figures interest you? Very well, señor. The Grande family owns sixty per cent of our grazing land outright, almost ninety per cent of our lumber mills, thirty-five per cent of the coffee plantations. The rest are split up among El Grande's cronies. He is a feudal lord, and they are his barons. He has turned my country back a thousand years. A thousand years, señor.

“My sister Rosa, as you have by now realized, owns one of these large ranches. Baronial fiefs, if you will. El Grande believes Rosa to be his great friend, by the way, which is why we are safe here. Rosa helps the underground by playing this part, but that is another story.

“I tell you this, señor; I vow it. Return to your country with peace in your heart. Deliver Caballero's book to its publisher, and El Grande's regime will fall, and with it Pablo Duarte must fall. Until the book is published, you see, the Western world regards Indalecio Grande as a staunch friend and supporter of hemispheric solidarity, of the United States, of the free world. A pall of propaganda hides the real El Grande from the eyes of the world. To be sure, they realize he is an absolute dictator in the South American style of
caudillismo
. But they are blinded by the oldest trick in the reactionary's evil bag of tricks: El Grande calls all his enemies Communists. El Grande called Rafael Caballero that. But of course Caballero was no more a Communist than the President of the United States is.”

“You don't have to tell me that. I read the book.”

“Then you know the power of the book. El Grande climbed to power on the backs of a totalitarian rabble. They survive today, sharing his power with him. When the book appears, to reveal the way they connived and fought amongst themselves, and secretly plotted against one another, and lied and stole and cheated and raped and plundered and murdered, the profession of extortionist will be the hottest thing in my country. With the economic plight of my people what it is, neither El Grande's nor any other rapacious regime could long withstand the power of Rafael Caballero's book. You understand, señor? It was not my wish to sound like a lecturer in Paranaian political economy, but I wanted you to know the story, to see a side of the picture you perhaps have never seen before, before you made a decision.”

“You want me to take off without doing what I came down here for, is that it?”

“You rescued Eulalia.”

“Duarte. I want Duarte. He killed my friend, señor Robles. I guess I'm kind of a lone wolf. Maybe a man in my business has to be. But Andy Dineen was my friend. He went up to New York for me on a deal that turned out too big for both of us. He banged his head against a stone wall named Pablo Duarte, and he died. Just how the hell do you think I can live with myself if I don't have a try at Duarte? He won't be touched down here for killing Andy, or a couple of other men I saw him shoot in cold blood in a New York apartment. He won't be sent back. There isn't anyone going to extradite the Paranaian security chief. Just what do you want me to do, crawl back home with my tail between my legs and drown my sorrow and my failure in a bottle of booze and ten or twenty years of divorce cases before I wind up in an alley, cold and dead like any other failure in my business or some who aren't failures, because I left my guts in your hacienda? Is that what you want?”

Hipolito Robles got up and hobbled back and forth on his aluminum crutch, a pained look on his face. He said, finally, “Your revenge, Señor Drum, or the success of our revolution. Because if severe reprisals follow Duarte's death and we are forced to act abortively, the revolution will fail. Your revenge, señor, or the one chance my people may have of seeing the sun in this generation. Which will it be?”

“It's up to you, isn't it? You threatened to kill me once.”

Robles smiled. It was a sad, tired smile. “I won't have to kill you now. Besides, you told me why I couldn't. But if you insist we can send you out of the country a prisoner.”

“Then what the hell are you wasting time yakking about?”

“I want you for a friend, not an enemy.”

“You mean you want the book. Well I'm getting a little fed up with the goddam book.”

“You don't mean that, señor.”

He was right of course. I didn't mean it. I knew I didn't and so did he. But I had to live with what was inside of me. Nobody else did. It was something you never could share. You could share the good things in life and maybe some of the bad things, the overt ones you could stand away from and look at and touch and join hands fighting. But what was inside eating away at your guts slowly was for you alone.

He was right. What happened in the Parana Republic was more important than what I had to live with, even if I had to live with it for the rest of my life. Andy Dineen would have said so himself, wouldn't he?

“Well, señor, what are you going to do?”

When I didn't answer he led me outside, hobbling alongside me through the mud. “I want to show you something,” he said. Beneath the cook-house of Rosa Robles's ranch there was a wine cellar. They had tunneled out of it, first a long low passage, its entrance hidden behind a wall of shelves with bottles lying on their sides, then a subterranean vault twenty times bigger than the wine cellar.

Robles took me down there. It was damp and cool and dark. We had a kerosene lantern. “Every man working on my sister's
ranchero
,” Robles told me, “is a loyal member of the underground. This is our headquarters, señor. It may also show you why you met me returning to my country from Puerto Casado in Paraguay.”

He held the lantern up. There were 50-caliber machine guns and 30-caliber machine guns, water-cooled and air-cooled. There were sten guns and Tommies. There were cases of ammo and rack after rack of rifles, the barrels dulled with cosmolene. There were other boxes which he opened for me, full of grenades and tear-gas bombs.

“Hell,” I said, “you've got enough for a liberation army right now.”

“No, señor. We can now equip one combat battalion, but with light weapons only. We are not ready. And since we can never get heavy weapons except if units of the Army should defect, we will not be ready until the book has done its work. I merely wanted to show you that the revolution, when it comes, will not be a paper tiger El Grande could crush with one well-armed infantry unit. You see? You believe?”

I nodded, and we got out of there.

When we returned to the hacienda, Eulalia was waiting for us. She wore a white dress. She waved to us from the doorway, smiling. She looked fine. The doctor's cure had worked its magic. She looked good enough to eat. I remembered her another way, naked, drugged, in the underground room of the old hospital building. That was Duarte's work too. But her father had died for the revolution that could free their people.

She waved again. I wanted to run to her, but I walked through the rain, which fell softly now, alongside the hobbling Hipolito Robles.

“Well?” he asked me. “Have you made up your mind?”

I looked at Eulalia. Her smile was radiant. I said, “Yeah. I'll be on that plane with Eulalia and her mother.”

But of course it wasn't going to work out that way at all.

Chapter Sixteen

E
ulalia didn't wait until we reached the house. She ran through the rain and the mud to us and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips. It began as a kiss of greeting, but pretty soon Robles was clearing his throat and telling us we ought to at least get in out of the rain. Eulalia clung to me, her lips hot and moving over my lips, on my cheek, on my eyes, then in eager little kisses down the side of my face to my neck, her breasts pressing firm and round against me, her long legs against my legs, her hands clasped at the back of my neck and her whole body straining forward and up with all the weight on her arms.

“Chet,” she said breathlessly. “Chet. All the time I remembered … how you went out there with the ransom money.… At the airport I wanted to … You kissed me … How could I say what I … Chet, Chet, all the time I was thinking if only you would come … if you came everything would be all right … In the old hospital building they did things and I thought, Chet, think of Chet … he's strong, he'll come, he'll help you. But I told myself … crazy. He'll never come. He's done his job so why should he come … down here … Oh, Chet, hold me tight.…”

Breathless phrases, punctuated by kisses. Hipolito Robles hobbled on into the house muttering but turning around to smile at us once. By then we were drenched and looking at each other and laughing.

I thought of the time in the old hospital on the hill above Ciudad Grande. Christmas Day, with church bells proclaiming the birth of the Saviour down in the river valley and the sound of the bells echoing from the high hills around the city, impinging on drugged dreams of pain and torment.

I took Eulalia's hand and walked with her back into the ranch house. She smiled up at me and leaned against me and took her hand from mine and got her arm around my back. There was a light in the dining room, and the sound of voices.

“Want to go in there?”

“No. Do you?”

“No. I want to talk to you.”

We went down the hall.

“This is my room,” Eulalia said. “All right?”

“I'm partial to ladies' bedrooms.”

“Oh, shut up, Chester Drum.” But she smiled.