Ask for Me Tomorrow

“In addition to the new drugs, we’re faced with combinations of old ones, or mixtures of old and new, which can be lethal. A tolerable amount of cocaine taken at the same time as a tolerable amount of methedrine becomes intolerable... This someone you liked, is he dead?”

“He was killed in a fall from a bridge. The police claim it was an accident. In a broad sense they’re right. If someone tampered with the brakes of my car and I couldn’t stop in time to avoid a collision with a truck, it would be an accident. I think someone tampered with Jenkins’ brakes. About forty-five minutes before I found him, he called me from a nightclub to postpone a date we’d made. He said he’d met someone with money to invest in Mexico and that he’d sold him the idea of investing in a chicken tortilla business. I was skeptical. I knew Jenkins was anxious to leave town before his girlfriend got out of jail and I didn’t want him to leave until he gave me the rest of the information he’d promised me. I went to the nightclub and found Jenkins in pretty bad shape. He was vomiting, sweating profusely and breathing very rapidly. He seemed to be out of his head. Or rather, in and out, mainly out. He recognized me briefly and talked to me.”

“Did he ask you for anything?”

“Help. He asked me for help and I couldn’t—”

“I meant something specific, a drink of water, perhaps.”

“He asked me for some water. He even tried to get some for himself out of a fountain. The fountain was dry.”

“Go on.”

“I went to find help for him,” Aragon said. “I thought he’d stay there at the fountain until I came back. He didn’t. He started running away when he saw me again as if he was trying to escape from an enemy. I ran after him. He was probably heading for home, he lived on the other side of the bridge. Well, he didn’t make it. Suddenly he went to the railing, leaned over and fell.”

“Did he seem dizzy?”

“Crazy, dizzy, how do you tell the difference?”

“Vertigo and disorientation are both signs of LSD poisoning. So are the other symptoms you mentioned — profuse sweating, very rapid pulse, nausea and vomiting, dryness of the mouth, dilation of the pupils. An autopsy might reveal traces of LSD in the urine.”

“There won’t be an autopsy. He’s already buried. And the bottle he was drinking from is in a pile of rubbish with a hundred other bottles like it, and the man he was drinking with can’t be identified, let alone questioned.”

“Is your story the only evidence of foul play?”

“My story is not evidence. Even if it were, even if the police were certain that Jenkins was murdered, it wouldn’t concern them much. He was unimportant, an ex-convict with no money and a warrant waiting for him in Albuquerque and maybe a dozen other places. He was low man on the totem pole. There was no way up, no way down. The only way was out, to grow wings and fly out.” I met this pigeon... the chicken tortilla business is a winner... the hustlers flock around the jail like starlings... I’m chicken birdie, lean fly. “He talked a lot about birds. I mean, they came naturally into his conversation more than into most people’s. He may even have been trying to fly when he went off the bridge.”

“That’s not uncommon with LSD.”

Aragon heard a faint tap-tap-tap on the line and he knew Laurie was drumming her fingers on the table or desk the way she did when something was bothering her and she was trying to straighten it out in her mind. He said, “Okay, what’s the matter?”

“The man who gave Jenkins the LSD, or whatever, had no way of predicting that Jenkins would either attempt to fly or suffer an attack of vertigo just as he happened to be crossing a bridge. He was betting on a very, very long shot. That’s dumb.”

“So we have a dumb murderer. They’re not, as a class, noted for brains.”

“Or else the bridge thing wasn’t actually necessary and the man was sure Jenkins had already ingested a lethal dose. He could have been waiting around for Jenkins to pass out when you appeared at the club and scared him off... You have to consider a third possibility, too.”

“Such as?”

“There wasn’t any murder or any murderer. A couple of guys were getting their kicks by mixing drinks and drugs, like the housewife taking her Valium with a glass of muscatel or the high school kid carrying a flask of vodka to wash down the rainbows he can buy in the hall for a quarter apiece. Alcohol is usually half of the lethal mixtures in the cases that come our way.”

“Jenkins was drinking beer—”

“Mild, but still alcohol. Drink enough and you’re drunk.”

“—and only one bottle, according to the bartender. The man with him was someone Jenkins hoped to con out of enough money to get him to Mexicali. He needed all his wits about him. He wasn’t likely, under the circumstances, to mess around with any drugs or to break his pattern of nursing along one beer for a whole evening.”

“So where are we?”