Ask for Me Tomorrow

“An American, somebody Harry knew in the old days. Harry was responsible for him being sent to jail. B. J. swore he’d get even. Maybe it’s true. I’ve never met this man, B. J., he may be very bad, very vengeful, but I can’t always take Emilia’s word for things. Her great passion makes fires in her mind and you can’t poke around until the ashes cool.” Ontiveros ran the back of his hand across his forehead as though he felt the sudden heat of one of Emilia’s fires. “I’m the oldest son in the family. It’s my duty to look after Emilia and maybe someday to find her a real husband. This will be easier with Harry gone.”

It was getting late. No workmen had appeared to fill in the grave, as though they were in no hurry to appear for such a cheap funeral of such an unimportant man.

“You were on the bridge,” Aragon said. “You saw what happened.”

“Not everything. It was night and there were many people. One of them could have been B. J. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. Harry was a small man and not a worker in strong condition like myself — he would need only a little push, so quick, so natural.”

Aragon stared down into the open grave with its plain pine box. Had B. J. long since been put into one like it? Or could he still be alive and here in Rio Seco? Suppose he’d found out that Gilly was looking for him. Suppose he wanted to avoid her as much as Harry Jenkins had wanted to avoid Emilia.

“For all I know,” Ontiveros said, “you might be B. J.”

“No, I’m looking for him.”

“Why?”

“His wife would like to see him again.”

“She has great passion like Emilia?”

“She had at one time.”

“And fires in the mind?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Such women are a nuisance. Day in, day out, the family nags at me to find Emilia a husband. I might be able to do it finally now that Harry’s gone. If I had some way of collecting a little money for her dowry—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then I might as well be going.” Ontiveros picked up a handful of earth, threw it on top of the coffin and crossed himself. “That’s from Emilia.”

He walked away, his serape flapping around his knees.

The sun was setting, expanding into an improbably brilliant flame-red ball. It looked like one of the fires in Emilia’s mind. Or Gilly’s. In ten minutes it had fallen into ashes below the horizon.

Thirteen

He called Gilly that night after dinner. He had nothing better to tell her this time than last time, so he poured himself a double Scotch before he tried to contact her. He got his message across in a hurry: Jenkins was dead and buried, Tula still missing, and the search for B. J. had come to a halt.

Her reaction was unexpected — no shock, no anger. She merely sounded depressed. “We’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“You might as well come home.”

“All right.”

There was a long silence, then a sudden burst of words. “I can’t... I can’t let it go like this. I can’t leave him in a dreary foreign prison.”

He didn’t say what he thought: You could and you did, Gilly. Your grief may be genuine but it’s years too late, miles too short.

She said, “Jenkins at least had a decent burial, yet it was all his fault. He dragged B. J. down into the gutter.”

“B. J. dragged easy, Mrs. Decker. Let’s call it a folie à deux. Neither man would have gotten into such a crazy predicament without the other.”

“You’ve turned against B. J.. Jenkins won you over.”

“Let’s not make this a personal thing, Mrs. Decker.”

“It’s personal to me. Not to you, naturally. I never met a lawyer yet who had any more feeling than a dead mackerel.”

Gilly was returning to normal.

“And you can quote me to that pompous old boss of yours, Smedler. Tell him the whole damn Bar Association hasn’t enough heart for a single baboon.”

“He won’t be surprised,” Aragon said. “Now that your opinion of lawyers has been clarified, I’ll continue my report.”

“Why did you let Jenkins get away from you?”

“That’s not quite accurate, Mrs. Decker. When he refused to tell me over the phone where Tula was, I went after him and found him. But someone else got to him first and slipped something into the bottle of beer he was drinking. Whether it was intended to kill him, I don’t know.”

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“And why?”

“A possible motive might have been to prevent him from giving out any more information, either about B. J. or about Tula.”

“Maybe it was a simple robbery.”

“He had fifty dollars on him when he was found, enough for his funeral. It was your fifty, by the way.”

“So the funeral was my treat.” She let out a small brittle laugh. “If life is funny, how about death? It’s a real scream.”

“It was for Jenkins. He screamed all the way down.”

Another silence. “Why do — why do you tell me things like that?”

“Because I’m a lawyer, I like to make people feel rotten.”

“You’re an extremely unpleasant young man.”

“Right now I’m not so crazy about you either. And I’m damn glad I’m through working for you.”

“What makes you think you’re through working for me?”