'I don't mean that quite seriously, Mr. Archer. But Bess and Taps played comparable roles in their time: the intellectual and the girl ideal. They had a very beautiful Platonic thing going before they had - before real life caught up with them.'
'Could you be a little clearer? I'm interested in the woman.'
'In Bess?'
'In both of the Tappingers. What do you mean when you say real life caught up with them?'
He studied my face, as if to read my intentions. 'There's no harm in telling you, I suppose. Practically everybody in the Modern Language Association knows the story. Bess was a sophomore studying French at Illinois and Taps was the rising young man in the department. The two of them had this Platonic thing going. They were like Adam and Eve before the Fall. Or Heloise and Abelard. That may sound like romantic exaggeration, but it isn't. I was there.
'Then real life reared its ugly head, as I said. Bess got pregnant. Taps married her, of course, but the thing was messily handled. The Illinois campus was quite puritanical in those days. What made it worse, the Assistant Dean of Women had a crush on Taps herself, and she really hounded him. So did Bess's parents; they were a couple of bourgeois types from Oak Park. The upshot of it was, the administration fired him for moral turpitude and sent him off to the boondocks.'
'And he's been there ever since?'
Bosch nodded. 'Twelve years. It's a long time to go on paying for a minor mistake, which incidentally is a very common one. Teachers are marrying their students all the time, with or without shotgun accompaniment. Taps got a very raw deal, in my opinion, and it just about ruined his life. But we're wandering far afield, Mr. Archer.'
The young man glanced at his wristwatch. 'It's half-past one, and I have an appointment with a student.'
'Cancel it and come along with me. I have a more interesting appointment.'
'Oh? With whom?'
'Pedro's mother.'
'You're kidding.'
'I almost wish I were. She flew here from Panama this morning, and she's staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I may need a translator. How about it?'
'Sure. We'd better go in two cars so you won't have to drive me back.'
32
BOSCH AND I MET at the desk of the hotel. I was a few minutes late for my appointment, and the clerk told us to go right up.
The woman who let us into the sitting room of the suite was fifty or so, still handsome in spite of her gold teeth and the crater-like circles under her eyes. She was dressed entirely in black. A trace of musky perfume hung around her like the smell of fire, giving her an aura of burnt-out sex.
'Senora Rosales?'
'Yes.'
'I'm the private detective Lew Archer. My Spanish is not too good. I hope you speak English.'
'Yes. I speak English.'
She looked up inquiringly at the young man beside me.
'This is Professor Bosch,' I said. 'He was a friend of your son's.'
In an unexpected gesture of emotion, more hungry than hospitable, she gave us each a hand and drew us across the room to sit on either side of her. Her hands were those of a working woman, rough and etched with ineradicable grime. Her English was good but stiff, as if it had been worked over.
'Pedro has told me about you, Professor Bosch. You were very kind to him, and I am grateful.'
'He was the best student I ever had. I'm sorry about his death.'
'Yes, it is a great loss. He would have been one of our great men.'
She turned to me. 'When will they release his body for burial?'
'Within a day or two. Your consul will arrange to ship it home. You really needn't have come here.'
'So my husband said. He said I should stay out of this country, that you would arrest me and take away my money. But how can you do that? I am a Panamanian citizen, and so was my son. The money Pedro gave me belongs to me.'
She spoke with a kind of questioning defiance.
'To you and your husband.'
'Yes, of course.'
'Have you been married long?'
'Two months. A little longer than two months. Pedro was content with my marriage. He gave us as a wedding gift a villa in La Cresta. Pedro and Senor Rosales, my husband, were good friends.'
She seemed to be trying to justify her marriage, as if she suspected a connection between it and her son's death. I had no doubt it was a marriage of convenience. When the vice-president of a bank in any country marries a middle-aged woman of uncertain background, there has to be a sound business reason.
'Were they business associates?'
'Pedro and Senor Rosales?'
She put on a stupid mask and lifted her hands and shoulders in a shrug that half resembled a bargaining gesture. 'I know nothing of business. It is all the more remarkable that my son was so successful in business, nest-ce pas? He understood the workings of the Bourse - you call it Wall Street, do you not? He saved his money and invested cleverly,' she said in a kind of rhythmical self-hypnosis.
She must have suspected the truth, though, because she added: 'It isn't true, is it, that Pedro was killed by gangsters?'
'I don't know whether it's true or not, senora. The killer hasn't been run down.'
Bosch put in: 'You said you doubted that it was a gangster shooting.'
The woman took comfort from this. 'Of course, my son had nothing to do with gangsters. He was a fine man, a great man. If he had lived, he would have become our foreign minister, perhaps our president.'
She was spinning a web of fantasy, to veil any possible truth that might emerge. I didn't feel like arguing with her grief, but I said: 'Did you know Leo Spillman?'
'Who?'
'Leo Spillman.'
'No. Who is Leo Spillman?'
'A Las Vegas gambler. Your son was an associate of his. Didn't he ever mention Spillman to you?'
She shook her head. I could see no indication that she was lying. But there were sorrowful depths in her black eyes, depths below depths, like strata of history older than the Incas.
'You believe that Leo Spillman killed my son, is that it?'
'I thought so until yesterday. Pedro embezzled a lot of money from Spillman.'
'Embezzled?'
She appealed to Bosch. 'Q'ue esta diciendo?'
He answered her reluctantly: 'Mr. Archer thinks your son stole some money from Mr. Spillman. I don't know anything about it.'
Her breath hissed through her gold teeth: 'Esta diciendo mentiras. Pedro hizo su fortuna en Wall Street.'
'She says you're a liar,' Bosch told me with a polite pleasure.
'Thanks, I got the message.'
I said to her: 'I'm not bringing up these matters for fun, senora. If we want to find out what happened to your son, we have to go into the question of his money. I think he was killed for his money.'
'By his new wife?' she said on a rising note.
'That's a good question. The answer has to be no, but I'm interested in your reasons for asking it.'
'I know women, and I know my son. He was capable of a grand - a great love. Such men are always deluded by their women.'
'Do you know that Pedro was?'
'He suspected it himself. He wrote me about his fear that the woman he wished to marry did not love him. I
