Ask for Me Tomorrow

The room inside was in sharp contrast to the galleria. Except for a picture window which offered a view of the main entrance to the house, this was strictly an office, with fluorescent lighting, a mahogany desk with a leather swivel chair, and floor-to-ceiling shelves and files. Nearly every drawer in the desk and the files was open and spilling paper, folders, cards, manila envelopes, letters. A painting hiding a small safe had been pushed aside, but the door of the safe remained closed. In one corner of the room was a small table with two wine glasses and a bottle of Beaujolais on it. The bottle was still full, but it had been uncorked. The cork was lying on the tray with the forced-air opener still stuck in it like a hypodermic needle.

A middle-aged man sitting behind the desk rose when the superintendent and Aragon entered and immediately took Aragon’s picture with a Polaroid camera. The pictures he’d already taken were scattered on the desk in front of him. They seemed to be mainly various angles of the disarray in the room.

The superintendent said, “I assume you don’t mind having your picture taken.”

“That depends on what you’re going to do with it.”

“I may keep it in my wallet. Then again, I may not. Let’s see how it turned out... Not bad. Certain physiological characteristics are obscured, others are emphasized. It all balances out, wouldn’t you say?”

The superintendent held up the picture and Aragon glanced at it. He hardly recognized himself. The young man in the picture looked confident, almost cocky. He didn’t feel either.

“You may have deduced, Mr. Aragon, that someone paid a call on Magistrate Hernandez while he was working. He liked to catch up on his work at night whenever possible so he could spend more of the daylight hours with his children... Obviously the call wasn’t a friendly one, or at least it didn’t end up that way. Kindly remove your spectacles. I believe Ganso here would like another shot.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course not.”

He removed his spectacles. The second picture showed a little more of the truth. He looked scared. “I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with all this. I told you, I just arrived in town.”

“But you have been here before in our city?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I... well, at the beginning of the week. I left Thursday afternoon.”

“This is only Saturday afternoon. What made you leave and come back so soon?”

“I received word at my office that Magistrate Hernandez might have news of someone I’ve been searching for on behalf of a client. I’m a lawyer.”

“So? The last man I arrested was a lawyer. His interpretation of the law didn’t quite coincide with mine.” The superintendent went and stood by the window with the view of the front entrance. “Presumably your client has a name.”

“That’s privileged information.”

“In your country, yes. In mine, no. It’s one of the basic differences in our legal systems. Now, the name of your client, please.”

“Gilda Grace Decker.”

“And she hired you to find someone who also has a name.”

“Byron James Lockwood, her former husband.”

“How does Magistrate Hernandez fit into all this?”

“Lockwood was serving time in the Quarry for a real estate swindle and Hernandez was responsible for his release three years ago. No one has seen Lockwood since.”

“Perhaps,” the superintendent said dryly, “Mr. Lockwood doesn’t wish to be seen.”

“It’s possible.”

“It is, then, possible that he took steps to make sure he is not seen?”

“What kind of steps?”

“He may have come here to the house, for instance, to destroy some records pertaining to him. That would have been stupid enough, he being an ex-convict and the magistrate an important person. But what followed was surely the ultimate in stupidity... Step over here for a minute. I want you to see something.”

Aragon went to the window. Some people were coming out of the front door, three men, a stout woman, heavily veiled, leaning on the arm of a fourth man, and half a dozen children ranging in age from five to midteens. The woman and the man escorting her got into the first limousine, and the children into the second. The rest of the group entered the Jensen and all the cars began moving slowly down the driveway.

“See those people,” the superintendent said. “Where do you think they are going?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are they dressed?”

“In black.”

“Like mourners, would you say?”

“Yes.”

“Where would they be going, dressed like mourners?”

“To a funeral,” Aragon said.

Eighteen

For the next three hours Aragon answered questions, many of them repetitious: What was he doing in Rio Seco? What was he actually doing? What was he really actually doing? Who was Lockwood? Had he ever met him? What kind of man was he?

“It’s unlikely he could have committed any crime of violence,” Aragon said. “He was, by all accounts, a very gentle person.”

“A lot of gentle persons go into the Quarry and come out not so gentle. You speak of yesterday, I must think of now and tomorrow. Lockwood could be a changed man. You agree?”