FROM BEHIND THE WHEEL, ANGEL SAID, 'YOU SEE, ESPANA IS not a morning country.'
I nodded at him as we bounced around another bright but unpopulated corner in Gijon, a picturesque city that reminded me of New Orleans. My passenger seat was black leatherette with no headrest, an after-market chrome stickshift rising from a rubber nipple on the floor. The speedometer optimistically suggested that Angel's SEAT 600 was capable of hitting 120 kilometers per hour, or about seventy-two mph. I decided the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard couldn't hurt.
The flight that was supposed to leave Kennedy at eight-thirty P.M. didn't actually take off until ten-thirty. I cadged a nap during the six and a half hours in the air, but with an additional time difference of six hours, it was 11:00 A.M. Spain time before the plane landed in Madrid. At customs, the officer in a tan shirt and black epaulets checked only my passport, not the small duffel bag.
In Madrid, a cab took me to the Estacien del norte, a magnificent marble building with an orange tile roof and an elaborate, platformed interior. Unfortunately, the next train to Gijon wasn't until ten P.M. My own body clock was so screwed up that I was more hungry than sleepy. For lunch, I had a menu de dia that turned out to be four courses, wine included. The weather was pleasant, and my joints were still sore from the marathon, so to loosen up I walked around Madrid for a few hours. Grand public buildings and banks, ornate gold work bordering the doors and windows, blackened statues on the parapets. Food stores with hams and legs of lamb hanging in the windows, large whole fish staring blankly from beds of cracked ice. Men and women with lottery tickets attached by clothespins to strings around their necks, crying out extended syllables like 1930s newsboys hawking an extra edition. The entrance line for the Prado Museum, a clever entrepreneur plying the captive parents by block-printing the names of sons or daughters in the matador-of-the-day space on bullfighting posters.
I slept a little during the train ride north to Gijon. A taxi strike was in progress when we arrived at six A.M. I wasted another couple of hours before Angel, a scholarly looking guy of thirty, befriended me. I'd had the foresight to cash two hundred dollars into pesetas before I'd boarded the plane in New York, and we agreed on a fair price for driving me where I wanted to go. Now, in the car, I found I had to focus on what Angel was saying to follow him at all.
'You see, the Alcalde, how you say it, the major of the city?'
'Mayor.'
'Si, si, the mayor. He want to make the taxis to forty more, but the drivers, they say no. They have the huelga, the strike, si?'
'Right.'
'Like from the
'Same word, different meaning.'
'Si, si.' Angel swerved around a piece of lumber in the road.
'You will stay in Gijon when we get back?'
'I'm not sure.'
'You should stay in our city. Gijon is a better city from Madrid. No much expensive, good food, less persons. No crimes, you don't lock the doors in the night. Most days, we have the rain, but for you, the sunshine.'
We left Gijon behind and began winding through the countryside.
Full morning light lifted the dew from green hills, occasional glimpses of the ocean to our right. Except for the curvature of the earth, I could have seen the south of England.
We'd been paralleling the coast for a few miles when Angel pointed. 'The corrida of Candas you ask me for.'
A line of stone cabanas overlooked a jettied beach. Some small fishing boats were grounded on the sand, mooring lines swaying up to the cabanas. Part of the jetty curved around, creating an enclosure that might be dry at low tide.
I said, 'Slow down a little, please.'
Angel did. A ritzy outdoor cafe was opening on the town side of the bullring, white tables and chairs under red umbrellas.
'A man of great sculpture live here before they kill him. He was name Anton. There is a museo just for him. You have the time for it?'
'Maybe later.' The cliff was rugged, dotted with gulls hovering and landing. The promontory rose about a hundred feet from jagged rocks poking through the surf. I didn't see what I was looking for.
'Can we drive around a bit?'
'Around the town?'
'Yes.'
'Si. Candas is a nice town, you see.'
We drove through narrow streets, cobblestoned walkways covered against the climate by the overhang of buildings. Little cottages of beige stucco under orange roofs, flower boxes and pots in the windows. A carefully restored theater commanded the main drag.
'Can we drive up, Angel?'
'Up? Si, up.'
We ascended and rounded a curve, and there it was. I let him go past, keeping track of where it was as we continued on.
After a few blocks I said, 'I'd like to walk for a while. Choose a bar to sit in, drinks on me.'
'I can walk you, tell you some things.'
'I'd rather try it on my own. Can I leave the duffel bag here in the car?'
Angel shrugged and parked under a sign that said Cerveza.
I approached the house, catching just the perspective in the photo on Ray Cuervo's bookshelf at the veal plant. Peeking through blinds, I couldn't see anyone. I tried the front door. Unlocked.
I entered the house of the late Dr. Enrique Cuervo Duran. A lot of dark beams contrasted with rough plaster on ceilings and some walls. Beneath my feet the reddish tile on the floor was set in black grout, the staircase Ray Cuervo had described stretching upward in front of me. I stood still long enough to be sure no one was moving in the house. Beyond the staircase I came into a room with a view of both the ocean and the bullring below, some gulls hanging and wheeling in the air currents above the cliff.
On the lawn, Ines Roja lounged in one of two chairs, perhaps twenty feet from the edge of the drop-off. A small wicker table sat between her and the empty chair. On the table stood a dark green wine bottle and a single, clear glass, like an iced tea tumbler. Roja's hands were folded in her lap, chin tilted into the sun, eyes closed. I walked outside, the breeze freshening as I reached her. Resplendent in a long-sleeved dress over sandals, she turned her head slowly to me. The black hair was slicked back, held in place by dainty silver combs. As her eyes opened, a lazy smile crossed her face.
'Not surprised, Ines?'
'I was expecting you.' She motioned at the other chair. 'You will have some cider?'
'No thanks.'
'A pity. It is new sidra, just opened. It will be very sweet.'
'No.'
When I stayed standing, Roja got to her feet, picking up the bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. She held the bottle high over her head and the tumbler at waist level.
Pouring three inches of cloudy yellow liquid in an exaggerated arc into the tumbler, Roja said, 'To carbonate the sidra.' She held the glass up to the sunlight and spoke to it. 'The professor is dead, then?'
I waited a beat. 'Yes.'
A dreamy smile this time. 'And you have come to kill me.'
'No, Ines.'
'Then to… arrest me.'
I didn't say anything to that.
Roja shook her head. After drinking the cider down, she poured another few ounces. Back in her chair, Roja set the bottle on the table and sipped from the glass. 'Sit, John.'
