Ask for Me Tomorrow

“Okay. ‘Magistrate Guadalupe Hernandez, well-known in Rio Seco legal circles, died last night of a stab wound inflicted during an attempted burglary of his foothill residence. Magistrate Hernandez maintained an office in his home and it was in this room that the crime occurred. It is not known what was stolen from the ransacked office. No suspects have been arrested, but Superintendent Playa of the Police Department is following several important leads. The magistrate’s survivors include his wife, Carmela Maria Espinosa, six children, three brothers and a sister. Requiem high mass will be recited Sunday evening at Her Lady of Sorrows Church.’ That’s it, Mrs. Decker.”

“Does this mean you never even talked to him?”

“It means,” Aragon said, “that someone reached him before I did. Any man who lives the way he lived makes enemies. Maybe one of them tried to get his mordida back.”

“ ‘Ransacked office.’ What was ransacked?”

“Desk drawers, filing cabinets, everything. Even if Hernandez were alive to supervise the work, it would take a week to put things together again. As matters stand now, it will probably never be known for sure if any particular file is missing, such as one about B. J. and the circumstances of his release and his present whereabouts.”

“How do you know such a file ever existed?”

“I don’t. It probably didn’t, and even more probably doesn’t.”

“So we’ve come to another dead end.”

“Dying, anyway.”

“How I hate those words, ‘dead,’ ‘dying.’ But God knows I should be used to them by now.”

“Please,” Aragon said, “don’t go into a poor-little-me routine. I’ve been on the grill a long time tonight and I still have some sore spots. Which is better than being in jail.”

“Did they put you in jail?”

“Almost.”

“What crime did you commit?”

“I didn’t commit anything. You don’t have to commit anything to land in jail here. You just have to look as though you did or might or could.”

“I never thought you looked especially criminal,” Gilly said. “Perhaps a little on the sly side at times. You know, cunning, crafty. Maybe it’s your glasses. Do you have to wear them?”

“No, I wear them for fun.”

“You don’t have to sound so mad. It was a perfectly simple question. Everyone seems awfully touchy tonight. Reed got mad at me because I refused to fire Marco’s new nurse. He’s jealous. She’s a good nurse and I enjoy talking to her. He won’t admit that I have to see other people for a change instead of spending all my time listening to him yak about food and Violet Smith about religion. Poor Reed. I think he’d like to marry me, but someone got his bootees mixed up in the nursery.”

“Marry you?”

“Not me as in me, me as in money.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“He’s a boy. Boys are for girls. Or in Reed’s case, for other boys. If he should ever become insistent, I’ll give him a nice bonus and tell him to get lost. He’ll be leaving eventually, anyway, when Marco—” The sentence dangled unfinished like a half-knotted noose. “All right, your job’s over, Aragon. You might as well come home.”

“My other trip home lasted less than forty-eight hours.”

“This one will be permanent. I’m tired, you’re tired.”

“I have to stay here awhile.”

“You’re to come back now,” she said sharply. “We’ll settle the account. It’s probably cost me a bundle already, bribing half the people in Baja and paying for all the margaritas you’ve been swilling.”

“Margaritas don’t swill easy. I charge extra.”

“By the way, I intend to go over your expense account line by line.”

“Do that. I’ll submit it to you when I return.”

“Which will be tomorrow.”

“No.”

“You’re not hearing me, Aragon. I said—”

“I heard you and I said no. I’m going to stay here and look for the girl.”

“Wait. Listen to me—”

“Good night, Gilly.”

He put down the phone and ordered another margarita to see if it could be swilled. It couldn’t. He used it to clean his teeth — it had a very stimulating effect on the gums — and went to bed.

Nineteen

It was Sunday.

The fog of the previous night had been driven back to sea by the sun. The wet leaves of the camellias were dark-green mirrors, and the cypress trees were covered with drops of water that caught the sun and looked like tiny glass Christmas balls.

“A beautiful day,” Gilly told Marco when she brought his breakfast. “It’s so clear, the mountains look as though you could reach out and touch them. When Mrs. Morrison gets here she’ll wheel you around to the front of the house so you can see them for yourself... I know you don’t like her, but you will. And Reed can’t work every day. He went to see his mother at a rest home in Oxnard; she’s a little balmy. That’s his story, anyway. Actually, I’m not even sure he has a mother. But he must have had at one time or another, so what does it matter?”

He stared, one-eyed, at the ceiling.

“The sky? There’s not a cloud in sight and it’s very blue, like cornflowers. Remember the cornflowers I wore at our wedding? I wanted to keep them but you said not to bother, there’d be a thousand others. But I’ve never seen any since that were quite that blue.”