it, I mean it, Lew.'
I cut her short: 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Tappinger. I've got a job to do. Counseling discontented housewives isn't my line.'
'Don't you like me at all?'
'Sure I like you.'
I was the last of the big spenders; I couldn't refuse her that.
'I knew you did. I could tell. When I was sixteen I went to a gypsy fortune-teller. She said there'd be a change in my life in a year, that I'd meet a handsome clever man and he would marry me. And that's the way it worked out. I married Taps. But the fortune-teller said there'd be another change when I was thirty. I can feel it coming. It's almost like being pregnant again. I mean it. I thought my life was over and done with-' 'All this is very interesting,' I said. 'We'll go into it another time.'
'But it won't wait.'
'It will have to.'
'You said you liked me.'
'I like a lot of women.'
It was an oafish remark.
'I don't like many men. You're the first since I' The sentence died unfinished. I didn't encourage her to resurrect it. I didn't say a word.
She burst into tears, and hung up on me.
Bess was probably schitzy, I told myself, or addled on bedroom novels, suffering from cabin fever or faculty- wife neurosis or the first untimely hint of middle age, like frost on the Fourth of July. Clearly she had troubles, and a wise man I knew in Chicago had said once and for all: 'Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.'
But Bess was hard to put out of my mind. When I got my car out of the parking lot and headed south on the San Diego Freeway, she was the one I felt I was driving toward, even though it was her husband I was going to see.
At noon I was waiting outside his office in the Arts Building. At one minute after twelve he came down the corridor.
'I could set my watch by you, professor.'
He winced. 'You make me feel like a mechanical man. Actually I hate being on this rigid schedule.'
He unlocked the door and flung it open. 'Come in.'
'I understand you found out something more about Cervantes.'
He didn't answer me until we were sitting facing each other across his desk. 'I did indeed. After I left you yesterday I decided to throw the schedule overboard for once. I canceled my afternoon class and drove up to Los Angeles State with that picture you gave me of him.'
He patted his breast pocket. 'His name is Pedro Domingo. At least he was registered at L.A. State under the name. Professor Bosch thinks it's his true name.'
'I know. I talked to Bosch yesterday.'
Tappinger looked displeased, as if I'd gone over his head. 'Allan didn't tell me that.'
'I called him after you left. He was busy, and I got very little from him. He did say that Domingo was a native of Panama.'
Tappinger nodded. 'That was one of the things that got him into trouble. He'd jumped ship and was in this country illegally. It's why he changed his name when he came here to us. The Immigration officials were after him.'
'When and where did he jump ship?'
'It was sometime in 1956, according to Allan, when Pedro was twenty. He came ashore at San Pedro. Perhaps he thought the place would be lucky for him. Anyway, he practically stepped off the boat into a classroom. He attended Long Beach State for a year - I don't know how he got the college to accept him - and then he shifted to Los Angeles State.
'He was there for two years, and Allan Bosch got to know him fairly well. He struck Allan in very much the same way he struck me - as a highly intelligent young man with problems.'
'What kind of problems?'
'Social and cultural problems. Historical problems. Allan described him as a kind of tropical Hamlet trying to cope with contemporary reality. Actually that description applies to most of the Central and South American cultures. Domingo's problems weren't just personal, they belonged to his time and place. But he yearned for the luminous city.'
Professor Tappinger seemed to be on the brink of a lecture. I said: 'The what?'
'The luminous city. It's a phrase I use for the world of spirit and intellect, the distillation of the great minds of past and present.'
He tapped the side of his head, as though to claim membership in the group. 'It takes in everything from Plato's Forms and Augustine's Civitas Dei to Joyce's epiphanies.'
'Could you take it a little slower, professor?'
'Forgive me.'
He seemed confused by my interruption. 'Was I talking academic jargon? Actually Pedro's dilemma can be stated quite simply: he was a poor Panamanian with all the hopes and troubles and frustrations of his country. He came out of the Santa Ana slums. His mother was a Blue Moon girl in the Panama City cabarets, and Pedro himself was probably illegitimate. But he has too much gumption to accept his condition or remain in it.
'I know something of what he must have felt. I wasn't a bastard, but I worked my way up out of a Chicago slum, and I knew what it was to go hungry in the Depression. I'd never have made it through university without the G.I. bill. So you see, I can sympathize with Pedro Domingo. I hope they won't punish him too severely when they catch him.'
'They won't.'
He noticed the finality of my tone. Slowly his eyes came up to mine. They were sensitive, rather feminine eyes, which had probably been fine-looking before strain reddened the whites. 'Has something happened to him?'
'He's dead. A gunman shot him yesterday. Don't you read the papers?'
'I have to confess that I very seldom look at them. But this is dreadful news.'
He paused, his sensitive mouth pulled out of shape. 'Do you have any notion who killed him?'
'The prime suspect is a gambler named Leo Spillman. He's the other man in the picture I gave you.'
Tappinger got it out of his pocket and studied it. 'He looks dangerous.'
'Domingo was dangerous, too. It's fortunate for Ginny that she got out of this alive.'
'Is Miss Fablon all right?'
'She's as well as can be expected, after losing her mother and her husband in the same week.'
'Poor child. I'd like to see her, and comfort her if I could.'
'You better check with Dr Sylvester. He's looking after her. I'm on my way to see him now.'
I rose to go. Tappinger came around the desk. 'I'm sorry I can't invite you to lunch today,' he said with a kind of aggressive fussiness. 'There isn't time.'
'I don't have time, either. Give my regards to your wife.'
'I'm sure she'll be glad to have them. She's quite an admirer of yours.'
'That's because she doesn't know me very well.'
My attempt to treat it lightly didn't come off. The little man looked up at me with strained and anxious eyes.
'I'm concerned about Bess. She's such a dreamer, so addicted to Bovarysme. And I don't think you're good for her.'
'Neither do I'
'You won't take it personally, Mr. Archer, if I suggest that perhaps you'd better not see her again?'
'I wasn't planning to.'
Tappinger seemed relieved.
