eyes.
Parker went into the doctor’s house, a white stucco building behind a white stucco wall with a black metal gate in it. The gate was open now, but at night it would be locked. Glass shards were embedded in the top of the wall. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was wider here than in the States, which made the haves a lot warier.
Inside, the doctor was coldly indignant. ‘This man,’ he said, ‘should have been to a doctor two days ago. He should be in a hospital. I don’t care how severe he thinks his marital problems are, his medical problems believe me are much worse.’ He was a short, slender, olive-skinned man with a thin moustache, large outraged eyes, and perfect accent-free English.
Parker had given him a song and dance about Grofield being a husband caught in bed with another man’s wife, being shot by husband number two, being terrified that his own wife would find out about it because she was the one in the family with money. It was a story of intrigue, romance, danger, and derring-do that he and Grofield had worked out beforehand, the kind of story Grofield could act with a lot of gusto and the doctor could take a Latin pleasure in.
But now the doctor was indignant, outraged. ‘Heseems to have no comprehension of the severity of his wound,’ he said, motioning angrily at the closed door behind which lay Grofield, ‘but you’re his friend, you should have forced him to come here before this.’
‘There wasn’t anything I could do, Doctor. He’s got a mind of his own.’
Then it went on like that for a while, the doctor talking out his sense of outrage, Parker being as patient with him as he could, the kid watching with bright-eyed lack of comprehension.
Finally the doctor was done. Parker had had to let him run out his string, so there wouldn’t be any trouble later on, but he was glad when it was finally done. ‘I’ll see he takes care of himself from now on,’ he said. ‘Can I take him with me now?’
‘He’s a very sick man.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’ve removed the bullet and bandaged the wound, and I’ve given him a sedative. He’s asleep.’
‘What does that mean?’
The doctor said, ‘It means he’s asleep. He should be allowed to rest.’
‘That’s all right with you, if he sleeps here a while?’
‘Of course.’
Parker looked at his watch. ‘What if I come back at six o’clock?’
‘Very well.’
‘Good. You want me to pay you now or then?’
‘Then. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’ll take my bags now.’
‘All right. They’re in the corner there, where you left them.’
Parker had told him the suitcases were his, but had offered no explanation. People don’t explain themselves to one another when they’re on the up-and-up; let the doctor work up his own theory about the suitcases.
Now, Parker took them and motioned to the kid to come on, and they left the doctor’s house and went back out to the street. The kid said, ‘You want me to carry one of those?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
They walked back up to Insurgentes, each carrying a suitcase. They had to wait a while for a pesero,because not many of them came out this far.
While they were waiting, Parker said, ‘What I want now is a hotel. Not a Hilton, but not a dive. A small quiet hotel where they mind their own business. Away from the centre of town, if possible.’
‘Most of the big tourist hotels are around the Alameda,’ the kid said. ‘You want to be away from them?’
‘Right.’
‘Then there’s some others right off Insurgentes, down near Reforma. Back in around the jai alai fronton.Small, but they speak English, most of them.’
‘That’s what we want. You lead the way.’
A peserofinally came and they rode it back towards the middle of town, getting off at Avenue Gomes Farias, heading east towards the Plaza de la Republica. They tried two hotels but both were full, and finally found one behind the frontonon Edison.
‘The room isn’t for me,’ Parker explained. ‘I’m getting it for a friend of mine. This is his luggage.’
‘So you sign his name,’ said the clerk. He spoke English with a combination of Greenpoint and Mexican accents.
Parker wrote ‘Joseph Goldberg, New York City,’ and the clerk himself took them up in the elevator to the room, carrying the two suitcases. Parker gave him a five-peso note, stashed the suitcases in the closet, and said to the kid, ‘Now we do some buying.’
For the next hour and a half they went from store to store, while Parker bought clothing and other stuff. He got two suits, four white shirts, two belts, five ties, two pairs of shoes and six of socks, five sets of underwear, a raincoat, a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, a hairbrush, a razor and a packet of blades, a can of shoe polish, two Mexican guidebooks and an English-Spanish dictionary, two cheap silver bracelets gift-wrapped, two quarts of tequila, a straw ladies’ handbag, an expensive leather suitcase, a small original oil painting in a wooden frame all about a foot square, a high-price carton of American cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a can of lighter fluid. The kid
