The Second Saladin - Страница 62

“Well, he’s—” Miles began, wondering where he would end, at the same time enchanted, fascinated, by the catastrophe of the moment. But exactly as his mind purged clean of words, some factotum — Miles hadn’t ever seen him enter — leaned and placed before him a message, which Miles proceeded to read in a confident voice as though he’d known it all along, despite the fact that he was as amazed as any of them to discover that late last night Chardy had been playing basketball with some inner-city kids on a lit playground in Anacostia and some rough words had been exchanged and poor Paul had been beaten rather severely.

“He’s in Saint Teresa’s, in Southeast.”

He smiled at Sam.

“Is there any more water?”

47

Now they had him in a far city and a secret place. He had been tended and cleaned and cared for. He had expected a trial to begin soon and knew that he was guilty. It didn’t matter the crime, he’d committed so many. Jail held no terror — he’d been there and knew he’d flourish if his health held — but he missed his dry heat and his beer and his girls and his food. He missed the Madonna even, old ugly cow. At least he’d escaped the Huerras. It would be nice to head back to Mexico City when this was all over and cut the old man’s throat. He’d flop like a fish when he bled. But Ramirez knew he’d never get close enough. Still, in this cool, dull American room it was a pleasant thought to fill his head until the trial. He wondered if they’d give him a lawyer; they’d already given him a doctor to fix his three gunshot wounds and his broken nose. He never knew it worked like this. He thought maybe they’d broken a law too, but he also realized that in this world, if you were strong and bold and well equipped, there were no laws.

But there was no trial. And the Americans were not interested in his crimes. They didn’t care for the drug-smuggling, the illegal-running, the whoremongering. They cared for only one thing: pictures.

“Pictures? You bring me all this way to look at pictures? Pretty strange.”

“We have.” His interrogator spoke Spanish. Tape recorders whirred, the lights were bright, some kind of apparatus had been strapped around his chest and arm, and tense men huddled about his bed. Whatever he knew must be pretty important.

“Show me pictures, then. What the hell? I want you to be happy.”

“Look carefully at this one, Señor Ramirez.”

He squinted through his swollen eyes.

“Jesus Mary. He didn’t have no beard,” Ramirez said in his border English. “And he was dressed regular, like some kind of norteamericano. I thought he was. But that face.”

“You brought him across the border?”

“Sí.”

“And there was shooting.”

“I shoot no one. That one done the shooting. I swear it. I shoot no one. I didn’t even have no gun. He took my gun before. He’s a very smart hombre, I’ll tell you. He came to me in my place and say, ‘Hey, mister, you take me to Los Estados, I pay you good.’ And I tell him—”

“All right, Mr. Ramirez. We’re very short on time. Here, look through these. I have here over two hundred photographs of men. I want you to look at them closely. You tell me if you’ve seen any recently.”

The faces flicked past. A dreary group — out of focus, blurry. Men in uniforms of strange countries, men photographed at long distance, men in cars or the rain. Most had hard features, the sharpness, the seediness of Europeans; only a few were Latino.

A familiar set of features suddenly were before him. He studied hard.

“Leo,” somebody said, “the needle just jumped through the roof.”

“That one, Mr. Ramirez?” Now he knew why he was here.

“Never seen him.”

“Leo, the needle’s still climbing. It’s going into orbit.”

“Mr. Ramirez, our machine tells us you’re lying. You have seen this man before.”

Ramirez settled his vision in the far distance. Wire mesh ran through the windows — so he was in a prison then, was he? They really had him.

“Mr. Ramirez, we’re not here to prosecute you. You are not part of any legal proceedings. Nothing you say will be held against you. In point of fact, officially this is not happening. We need your cooperation.”

Ramirez sat and stared placidly ahead.

“Mr. Ramirez. Look on it as a debt of honor. The United States, your friendly northern neighbor, sent a young man to save you from your enemies. Then a helicopter. Your life was saved twice. It seems to me you owe us. It’s a debt of honor. I know how important your honor is.”

“Is no debt,” said the Mexican. “The debt was made no good when the man with the dark beard hit me in the nose. I want some money. Is no honor here. Your people, they have no honor.”

“Now that’s a mentality we can deal with,” somebody said.

“Okay, Sal, cut the smart stuff,” the one called Leo said. “All right, Mr. Ramirez, how much?”

“I want,” said Ramirez, “two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars?”

“Two hundred, U.S. In cash.”

“I think we can afford that,” said Leo.

“Now,” said Ramirez.

Leo reached into his wallet, counted out some bills. “I have only twenty-three dollars on me now. And some change.”

“How much change?”

Leo searched his pockets. “Sixty-three cents.”

“I take it all. You get the rest later.”

“Twenty-three dollars and sixty-three cents, here you are,” Leo said. “Haggerty, make a note of that, okay?”

“Sure, Leo. We won’t stiff you.” There was some laughter.

Ramirez began to speak.

“He wore a cream suit. He try to kill me. He get me here,” and he pulled open his robe to show them the recent wound. “He and another little pig, a fat pig who didn’t say much and needed a shave.”

“Probably Sixto. They worked as a team in Nicaragua.”

“What happened, Mr. Ramirez? This is a very dangerous individual.”

“I shot him in the guts and his friend twice — in the head. With a little Colt I used to keep at the register.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

“Jesus Christ,” somebody finally said. “Did you hear that?”

“Is he lying?”

“Leo, we get no increase in respiration.”

“He got ’em both? Jesus, Leo, can you believe that?”

“I know,” said Leo. “They didn’t even bother to hire anybody. They went after him themselves, with their best people, right from the start.”

“That would make those guys Chardy wasted on the mountain part of that crack Cinco de Julio commando brigade that raised so much hell in Angola.”

“They really went after him with the cream, Leo. They wanted him greased something bad.”

“Christ,” said Leo, “wait till Chardy hears his friend Mr. Ramirez took down a full colonel and a major in Cuban Military Intelligence.”

48

The nun smiled and said that yes, Mr. Chardy could have visitors, at least until four, when the hospital would be cleared. There were visiting hours again at six, until eight.

“Thank you, Sister,” Lanahan said — at his most charming. “And how are you?”

“I’m fine, young man,” she said.

“I’m so glad to see you Ye still in the habit, Sister. You don’t see it so much anymore. I don’t care for these new uniforms. Some don’t even wear uniforms, which is quite a bit too far out for my taste. The habit communicates such seriousness, such dignity.”

“That’s the way we feel, young man.”

“Goodbye.”

Miles, warmed by the conversation, rode the elevator up four stories and turned down one hall and then another, tracking room numbers. His soles clicked crisply on the linoleum. He walked through doors and along corridors, surprised that the place was so huge. Crucifixes adorned every wall, and pictures of Jesus and Mary. He smiled at the nuns. It had been — how long since he’d been in an exclusively Catholic institution? So long. Too long. He thought of asking where the chapel was, and stopping for a moment. The warmth and love of the place embraced him. And pleased him; Chardy, in a place like this? It would be good for him. At last he found the wing.

NEUROLOGICAL, the sign said. It figured. Chardy, the nut-case, in the loony department. He stepped through double doors. No nuns or priests here, not even a doctor in this bleak green corridor. He paused, counting the room numbers.

CHARDY PAUL, read the typed card framed next to the doorjamb.

He paused again. The door was closed. What crawled on his spine? A feeling of things wrong, dead wrong, all about him. His profession, however, inclined him to paranoia, and one succeeded in it by virtue of controlling these devouring sensations. Yet still he felt sucked in. Gray light came through the window just down the way at the end of the hall, displaying a slice of the panorama of the city, though one without monuments.

Lanahan’s attack at last quelled itself, and he felt okay again, ready to check in on Chardy, to see him with his own eyes, to know that everything was all right; and then to have it out with him, the whole thing, who was boss, the cavalier attitude, his whole rotten bad attitude that had poisoned things since the very beginning; and then finally to the business of Trewitt, which he meant to pop on him by surprise to break him down with; and then to call Sam, make a fresh start. And therefore spare himself any further rites of terror such as the one he’d undergone at the Ops meeting yesterday.