Once Departed

staccato fast that the columnist gave up even the attempt to understand.

He watched his opponent of a moment ago who had come to his feet and was straightening his clothes, meanwhile massacring Quint with his eyes, though obviously Garcia’s entry had changed his mind about continuing the fray—if he had any desire to continue it. The karate form of hand to hand combat takes the truculence quickly out of any but the most ardent foe.

Quint looked back at Joe Garcia and interrupted that worthy’s diatribe with a sour, “Look, has it got to the point today where the mobs that go drifting through this apartment while I’m trying to work don’t even bother to knock?”

Garcia left the cop he’d been orally belaboring and turned a surprised face to the American. “But, Quint, old chum, I’ve just been reading this square the riot act. The old rescue in the nick of time routine. I made the scene right…”

“Rescued who?” Quint growled sacastically. “Another minute and I would have finished these two burlesque cops off.”

Garcia’s face lost some of its good humor. “And then what would have happened, pal? These guys are just doing their duty. Their superiors might take a dim view of you practicing your jujitsu, or whatever you call it, on them.” His mouth smiled. “Aren’t you getting tired of being ordered out of countries? What was the last one, Portugal?”

“Touche” Quint growled. “I get the message.” He turned back to the older of the two police. “I’m sorry. In my country, even the police aren’t allowed to search a man’s personal effects without a warrant. I got carried away.”

The detective’s eyes went from the American to Jose Garcia, and then back again. His face worked in irritation. He said, finally, in English, “Senor Jones refuses to divulge the source of his information on the death of the Englishman Brett-Home.”

Joe Garcia turned back to Quint. “What information? Did you know Ronald, Quint?”

“Barely. A friend told me about his being found dead. That’s all I know about it.”

Garcia turned back to the plainclothesman. “Mr. Jones is a friend of Michael Woolman, of World Wide Press, who discovered the body. Undoubtedly that was the source of his information. Am I correct, pal?”

Quint shrugged. There was obviously no point in shielding Mike, if that was the situation. He wondered why Mike hadn’t mentioned the fact. And wondered further about the circumstance which led to his discovering the Englishman’s corpse.

Garcia said to the detective, “I am sure Mr. Jones has given you whatever information he possesses. If there are other questions, you can call upon him again later.”

Of a sudden, all was good temper again.

Quint held out a hand to the younger cop, twisted his face ruefully, turned on his charm. “Sorry,” he said, as though he meant it.

The other shrugged and shook. The two said their goodbyes and left dutifully.

Quint went over to the sideboard and poured himself a double Fundador. “Drink?” he said, without turning. Now that the excitement was over, he felt shaken, as always when physical action had terminated. When in emergency, he acted cool enough, he found, but when the danger point was over reaction hit him hard.

Garcia didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “You know, pal, you’d make a top politician, especially in one of your democratic countries. You can turn it on and off like a tap.”

The American tossed the drink back, stiff wristed, and turned to the other. Garcia had made himself at home on the couch, one neatly trousered leg crossed over the other.

Quint said, “What the devil are you talking about?”

“The old magnetic personality. If that young sap had stuck around another few minutes, you would have had him kissing you.”

“Oh, great,” Quint growled. Something Mike Woolman had said about Garcia came back to him. He said, “I didn’t have to turn on the magnetic personality. All you had to do was tell them to run along, and they ran.”

Joe Garcia flicked his thumbnail along his neat mustache. “Anything for a pal. As a matter of fact, my old man is a personal friend of some of the big Falange mucky-mucks. I wouldn’t want to throw too much weight around, but I can fix a traffic ticket, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Quint said. He resumed his chair behind the typewriter, and looked at it gloomily. “My agent’s been riding my tail to keep him supplied further in advance with columns. Three’ll get you five, I don’t finish even my regular quota this week.”

Garcia said easily, “I read that piece you did on El Caudillo. Really, chum, do you think it’s good policy to give Franco a working over while living here in Spain?”

Quint looked at him flatly. “The authorities can always kick me out if they don’t like my version of what I see. Like you said, Portugal was the last place. However, if old lard-assed Franco, as Papa Hemingway used to call him, wants to continue this present we’re-all-good-democrats-together skit, and suck up to such outfits as NATO and the Common Market, he’d better take it easy on expelling newspaper columnists syndicated in a few hundred papers throughout the free world.”

Garcia flushed, for once the bonhomie gone from his expression. “Just a suggestion, chum,” he said unhappily. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your business.”

“You couldn’t,” Quint said. “Listen, Garcia, what did you come up here for? These are supposed to be my working hours.”

“I was just passing,” the Spaniard said. He shifted in his chair. “To tell you the truth, I was thinking about the shindig at Ferd and Marty’s last night. And about poor Ronald.” He shifted again. Recrossed his legs. “It wasn’t exactly the sort of blowout you usually turn up for.”

Quint held up a hand. “Please, let’s not try to be subtle. Come right out and say what you want to know is do I have any inside dope on Brett-Home. Everybody else in town has been in here this morning asking me. I’ll give you the same answer. I don’t know a damn thing about him. I didn’t even know he was a British agent…”

Garcia’s eyebrows went up.

“… until Mike Woolman told me this morning.”

The Spaniard came to his feet. “None of my business anyway,” he said. “But from what I’ve heard it was sure a screwy killing.”

Quint said, “Mike mentioned that the guy was all torn up as though a tiger had worked him over.”

“Man, you said it. But that ain’t the worst, chum. The autopsy revealed that the kidneys are missing.”

The American stared at him. “Missing?”

“That’s right, pal. Our homicide people figure they’ve got a real fruitcake on their hands. Maybe a psychopathic cannibal.” Garcia turned to go.

Quint didn’t follow him to the door. When the other got there, and with knob in hand, he turned back as though he’d forgotten something.

“Oh, by the way, old Ronald left a note scribbled on his desk. The flatfeet don’t know if it’s got anything to do with his death or not. What does this mean to you? Why was it necessary to burn H’s body?”

Quint looked at him blankly. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Why should it?”

“Search me,” Garcia shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”

The ragged young man drifted slowly, slowly back into consciousness, almost as though dreading the return to reality. The warm wave of reasoning ebbed and flowed, touched and then retreated.

Even before his eyes opened, he was dimly, dimly aware of a flickering of light. A glaringly bright flickering of light where largely there was gloom.

His lids slitted infinitesimally, so that an observer would have had to bend close to realize that they were parted at all. But though now he could see, it was as though through a dark veil. And then the flickering of light again. Realization came from far and far. The beams of light were coming through a slatted window. Slatted Spanish style to exclude the dazzle and suffocation of the mid-day sun of Iberia, but free to admit whatever faintest breeze.

From seemingly far, far away in both space and time, memory sidled back. Spending his last