say a trash receptacle.”
I stood up. I reached for the letter and refolded it and put it back in my pocket.
“A trash receptacle,” I said. “Sure, that’s it. Painted with the Mexican colors, green, white, red, and a sign on it stenciled in large clear print: KEEP OUR CITY CLEAN. In Spanish, of course. And lying around it seven mangy dogs.”
“Don’t get cute, Marlowe.”
“Sorry if I let my brains show. Another small point I have already raised with Randy Starr. How come the letter got mailed at all? According to the letter the method was prearranged. So somebody told him about the mailbox. So somebody lied. So somebody mailed the letter with five grand in it just the same. Intriguing, don’t you agree?”
He puffed smoke and watched it float away.
“What’s your conclusion—and why ring Starr in on it?”
“Starr and a heel named Menendez, now removed from our midst, were pals of Terry’s in the British Army. They are wrong gees in a way—I should say in almost every way—but they still have room for personal pride and so on. There was a cover-up here engineered for obvious reasons. There was another sort of cover-up in Otatoclan, for entirely different reasons.”
“What’s your conclusion?” he asked me again and much more sharply.
“What’s yours?”
He didn’t answer me. So I thanked him for his time and left.
He was frowning as I opened the door, but I thought it was an honest frown of puzzlement. Or maybe he was trying to remember how it looked outside the hotel and whether there was a mailbox there.
It was another wheel to start turning—no more. It turned for a solid month before anything came up.
Then on a certain Friday morning I found a stranger waiting for me in my office. He was a well-dressed Mexican or Suramericano of some sort. He sat by the open window smoking a brown cigarette that smelled strong. He was tall and very slender and very elegant, with a neat dark mustache and dark hair, rather longer than we wear it, and a fawn-colored suit of some loosely woven material. He wore those green sunglasses. He stood up politely.
“Senor Marlowe?”
“What can I do for you?”
He handed me a folded paper. “Un aviso de parte del Senor Starr en Las Vegas, senor. Habla Usted Espaflol?”
“Yeah, but not fast. English would be better.”
“English then,” he said. “It is all the same to me.”
I took the paper and read it. “This introduces Cisco Maioranos, a friend of mine. I think he can fix you up. S.”
“Let’s go inside, Senor Maioranos,” I said.
I held the door open for him. He smelled of perfume as he went by. His eyebrows were awfully damned dainty too. But he probably wasn’t as dainty as he looked because there were knife scars on both sides of his face.
52
He sat down in the customer’s chair and crossed his knees. “You wish certain information about Senor Lennox, I am told.”
“The last scene only.”
“I was there at the time, senor. I had a position in the hotel. ” He shrugged. “Unimportant and of course temporary. I was the day clerk.” He spoke perfect English but with a Spanish rhythm. Spanish—American Spanish that is—has a definite rise and fall which to an American ear seems to have nothing to do with the meaning. It’s like the swell of the ocean.
“You don’t look the type,” I said.
“One has difficulties.”
“Who mailed the letter to me?”
He held out a box of cigarettes. “Try one of these.” I shook my head. “Too strong for me. Colombian cigarettes I like. Cuban cigarettes are murder.”
He smiled faintly, lit another pill himself, and blew smoke. The guy was so goddamn elegant he was beginning to annoy me.
“I know about the letter, senor. The mozo was afraid to go up to the room of this Senor Lennox after the guarda was posted. The cop or dick, as you say. So I myself took the letter to the correo. After the shooting, you understand.”
“You ought to have looked inside. It had a large piece of money in it.”
“The letter was sealed,” he said coldly. “El honor no se mueve de lado como los congrejos. That is, honor does not move sidewise like a crab, senor.”
“My apologies. Please continue.”
“Senor Lennox had a hundred-peso note in his left hand when I went into the room and shut the door in the face of the guarda. In his right hand was a pistol. On the table before him was the letter. Also another paper which I did not read. I refused the note.”
“Too much money,” I said, but he didn’t react to the sarcasm.
