Ask for Me Tomorrow

“They never show their age. I hired one last year, thought he was about thirty, until suddenly he dropped dead of old age. It’s all that grease in their skin, keeps the wrinkles away.”

“Did Jenkins and his companion seem friendly?”

“There was no quarrel, no fuss, no nothing, until you showed up.”

“When I showed up, Jenkins was alone and you seemed pretty anxious to get rid of him.”

“I hate pukers.”

“You hate a lot of people, don’t you, Mitchell?”

“In this business you see their worst side, until pretty soon you forget they have a better one. And ten chances to one they haven’t, anyway. Any more questions?”

“What happened to Jenkins between the time he phoned me and the time I arrived?”

“Nothing happened to him. He got drunk, took a walk to sober up, fell off a bridge. Period.” Mitchell finished his coffee. “So don’t throw any wild statements around. Our club has a good reputation, the best that money can buy. When a little trouble comes along, zap, it goes away again. The police are very understanding.”

“How much are cops selling for these days?”

“They’re dirt cheap. Which is what dirt ought to be, cheap.”

“That’s not much of a tribute to your protectors.”

“I pay them, I don’t have to kiss their asses,” Mitchell said. “Now, if it will shut you up and make you feel any better, I’m sorry about your friend.”

It was the first human remark Mitchell had made. “The coffee must be getting to you,” Aragon said. “For a minute there I thought I heard the faint beating of a heart.”

“I have the hiccups.”

Aragon drove to the police station and waited around for the rest of the night. At seven in the morning he was informed that Jenkins’ body had been examined, and death was declared the result of injuries received in an accidental fall. Fifty dollars was found in his pocket, enough for funeral expenses. In Rio Seco, funerals were cheap, since there was no embalming, and quick if there were no survivors to wait for and the weather was hot. The body was removed to an undertaking parlor, a priest was notified, and Jenkins’ funeral service was scheduled for six o’clock that night.

Death was always sad, the undertaker told Aragon. “But one must be realistic. The new bridge is good for business. More than thirty people have already jumped from it.”

“The police said Jenkins’ death was accidental.”

“Such a verdict makes it easier for them. Also for the Church. The Church frowns on suicide.”

“I think Jenkins was drugged, which makes it murder not accident or suicide.”

“Oh no, no no. The bridge is a magnet for troubled souls seeking oblivion or what not. You have one like it in San Francisco, the Golden Gate. I read in the newspaper that more than five hundred people have jumped from it. Is this true?”

“I don’t know.”

“Newspapers tell the truth, certainly?”

“When they recognize it and when they want to, like you and me. The truth about Jenkins is that he was murdered.”

“God must decide such things,” the undertaker said. “He is the Final Judge.”

The funeral service was held in the cemetery in a mixture of Spanish and Latin, and Jenkins’ name was pronounced Arry Yen-keen. The only other mourner was the fat young man in the striped serape who’d accosted Aragon on the bridge. When their eyes met across the open grave, he pretended not to recognize Aragon. But as soon as the service was over and the priest had departed, the man spoke: “We meet again.”

“Yes. I hope it doesn’t become a habit. I can’t afford it.”

“You mean the money?” He pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “I didn’t want this for myself. It’s for my sister, Emilia Ontiveros, to buy a mourning dress and to light candles. She is stricken with grief.”

Aragon thought of the jailed woman with her scarred hands and arms and her despairing eyes. In a crude sense she was lucky: her grief would be less caustic this way than the way Jenkins had planned.

“It was a great love,” Ontiveros said. “A little more so on her part, naturally, because he was a man and men meet more temptations. Harry was always meeting temptations, especially when Emilia wasn’t around to head them off. Lighting candles for him is a waste of good money — he wasn’t even a Catholic. But Emilia is beyond reason. She can’t see how much better off she’ll be with him gone. He roused her to terrible angers. Without these angers she’d be safe at home, leading a nice normal life.”

“What did you tell her about this death?”

“That he drank too much, lost his balance and fell over the railing. She didn’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Harry didn’t get drunk. In all their good and bad times together she never once saw him drunk. She told me that B. J. must have pushed Harry over the railing.”

“Who is B. J.?”