Death of a Siren Read online

  The two contestants continued circling until Hanson’s back was toward me. I swung the oar, caught him on the back of the head, and sent him sprawling. Before Elías could take advantage of the situation, I drew my revolver and pointed it at him. “Tell him to put the knife down,” I told Rojas. “Tell him I want to speak to him.”

  Elías was still filled with rage, and rum, but he had the sense to drop his knife. I looked at Hanson, who was sitting up now. “Get out of here.”

  Hanson didn’t get out of there. He leapt up and crouched, his front covered with sweat and sand and his knife firmly in his right hand. “I’m going to kill you for that,” he snarled. “Gut you like a cod.” The fury in his eyes was like a flight of spears.

  I stared at him, my heart stopping. I was looking down an alley in Hell’s Kitchen on a hot July evening, dressed in a wool business suit and tie. Even though the sun had disappeared behind the decaying five- and six-story tenements, I felt like a slab of overcooked beef in a bubbling stew pot, and the gooey asphalt made every step a struggle. An old grocer lay on the cobblestones in the alley, beaten to within an inch of his life, blood burbling out of his smashed mouth. Crouching next to the wrecked grocer was a two-bit punk, a well-known extortion specialist. In his hand was a very big, very sharp knife, and I knew he knew how to use it. My arms and shoulders tensed and, at the same time, felt childishly weak. He was shouting at me, and I understood every word he said yet had no intention of admitting I did. I knew what he was saying, but I didn’t care. The sight of the grocer enraged me, making it even more difficult to breathe in the stifling heat. In a fury I fired, then fired again. Both slugs slammed into the punk’s chest, and then he was lying on the cobbles beside the grocer, twitching slightly.

  I stood for a moment, shaking and gasping for breath. Then I knelt down beside the grocer. He was still alive. I looked up at the surrounding windows, some glinting in the dying sun, and saw no sign of life. I knew there were faces behind the windows, watching. I knew none of them would show themselves. To do so could have been fatal. I stood, turned, and ran out toward the street in search of a call box.

  But this time was different. The fear was there, that Hanson might really gut me, despite my revolver, but the fury was lacking. There was no mangled old grocer, just a young cook who was beginning to seem like a punk himself. “I’ve killed men before, and I won’t hesitate to shoot you,” I snapped. “Go home.”

  Hanson looked at the revolver, an element of craftiness replacing the blind rage in his eyes. “You have a gun. I also have a gun, and we will discuss this again someday.” He turned and walked toward his house.

  “German pigs,” translated Rojas as Elías continued to rant. “They tell us what to do and take everything they want.”

  “He’s not German.”

  “All foreigners are the same. He wanted my cousin to be his whore, and when she refused he beat her up. They take what they want.”

  “Tell all these people to get back to work,” I instructed Rojas. After the crowd had drifted off, I turned back to Elías. “Where were Ritter and Ernst the night the baroness was killed?”

  “How would I know?” he demanded.

  “Where were they?” I pressed. It was only a hunch, but I felt certain he’d know.

  “Up at the shed,” he said finally, apparently deciding he had nothing to lose by telling me.

  “The one beside the barn?”

  “Yes. Whenever the bitch had a visitor for the night, she sent them there.”

  “She had a visitor that night? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  The question caused the cook to pause a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. “I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “You’re a German. He’s a German and a very violent man.”

  “Who?”

  “The German. The German named Becker.”

  As he translated, Rojas gave me a strange look.

  “How do you know Becker was there?”

  “He arrived late in the afternoon, and the bitch sent her two dogs up to the shed. They had dinner, then Sofía and I cleaned up and left. The German was still there.”

  “Were they arguing?”

  “No, they were having fun.”

  “Where does Sofía live?” I asked, wanting to confirm Elías’s tale.

  “Up there,” he replied, pointing inland. “On the side of the mountain.”

  “How do I find her house?”

  “She’s not there. She’s gone to visit relatives on Isabela.”

  “Isabela?”

  “Another island, sir,” explained Rojas. “The biggest.”

  “Where on Isabela?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  “Why do you wish you did?”

  He paused a second. “So I could tell you.”

  Whether or not he really did know, now wasn’t the time to pound it out of him. Anyway, up till now I’d found the “good cop” routine was working pretty well.

  Damnation! Becker was involved, no matter what López kept saying. In fact, he’d suddenly become suspect number one. Now I had to find him.

  “Don’t go anywhere, Elías,” I said after thinking a moment. “I may want to talk to you again.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I live here. Do you?”

  With Rojas following, I walked down the beach to the boat and returned the oar to the sailor. “Back to the gunboat,” I told Rojas. “I want to take another look at the castle and the shed, then back to Wreck Bay.”

  The gunboat anchored below the castle, and everything looked as it had before. Rojas and I walked up to the patio and paused. The double doors were still shut and the birds still twittering, but something had changed. I opened the door. Ritter’s and Ernst’s mangled bodies were gone. López must have attended to that. There was still dried blood everywhere, but little else remained besides fragments of the broken chairs and a few other odds and ends. The room had been stripped clean of everything at all useful, as had the kitchen and the small bedroom. Only the baroness’s bedroom remained untouched. It was as if the looters believed she’d carried some virulent disease. Or they believed that some sort of evil, supernatural power lurked in that one room.

  “I told you before, sir, they’re poor people here,” remarked Rojas in answer to my unasked question.

  “OK, now we take another look at the shed.” I glanced one final time around the now-naked room and headed out to the patio.

  The hordes of carnivorous flies that had attacked us last time came back for seconds. When we reached the shed, I was angry, bitter, and frustrated, and what we found there did nothing to improve my mood: nothing had changed. “The gun, Rojas.”

  “The gun, sir?”

  “We haven’t found it yet.”

  “It could be anywhere, sir.”

  “But it might be here. We’re going to take the shed and the barn apart, and then search every square foot of the forest nearby.”

  “How would it get back here?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to look.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We spent the next hour looking but failed to find any guns or any evidence of one. “Now we do the trail, then the forest around the castle. We’ll get the whole gunboat crew on it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We fought our way back down the trail, examining every inch of forest along each side. “It could be anywhere, sir,” groaned my aide. “If the murderer did leave it behind, the people probably found it and took it.”

  I glowered at him. His logic didn’t make me feel any better. “When we reach the castle, you go out in the boat and tell the skipper to bring in all his men except one to help search.”

  He nodded.

  We made it to the castle, and I looked down at the beach. We’d left the boat there with the two oarsmen, but now the beach was empty. Where the hell was the boat?

  “Out there, sir.”

  I followed Rojas’s pointing arm and sa
w the boat out near the gunboat, rowing rapidly toward us. The gunboat skipper was standing on the tiny bridge of his vessel, waving wildly. The instant the boat’s bow slid into the rocky sand, the two oarsmen turned and started shouting at Rojas, whose expression changed from hot and tired to shocked.

  “The governor has killed himself, sir,” reported Rojas, “and the commandant wants us and the gunboat back in Wreck Bay immediately.”

  14

  When we arrived, Wreck Bay was as jammed as it probably ever has been since the departure of the pirate fleets. Pegasus and the American schooner were anchored in the center, while a dozen large, well-appointed launches were either anchored around them or moored to the pier. One of the launches was Don Vicente de Guzmán’s. The sight of Don Vicente’s launch stimulated a surge of energy that coursed through my tired body and unsettled mind. Ana might be here!

  I scanned the plaza, hoping to see her. At the same time, I was nervous about what else I might discover. From what I’d seen, the Galapaguinos had neither the time for nor an interest in politics, but events like a governor’s death have been known to lead to unexpected results. To my relief, the only sign of anything unusual was two or three sailors standing around the sandy plaza with rifles slung over their shoulders. They looked bored and seemed to be devoting their full attention to leering at the women who occasionally walked by.

  The sailor at the naval headquarters reception desk recognized us and waved us into an office. “Hello, Fred,” said Ana in a subdued voice. She was sitting behind the desk, looking both irritated and sad at the same time. “Hola, Seaman Rojas.” She was wearing a black dress and looked very proper.

  “Hello, Ana.”

  “You know about Eduardo, the governor, don’t you?”

  “The gunboat skipper said he’s killed himself. I’m sorry to hear it. He seemed troubled.”

  “His brain may have been scrambled, but he was neat right to the end. He lay down in his bathtub to avoid making a big mess and slit his wrists.” I could see her clenched hands trembling slightly. “They’ve moved him to the ice factory. They plan to send him to the mainland on the next boat.”

  “Does this create some sort of a local crisis?”

  “I doubt it. No matter what impression López may have given you, the navy really runs things here, and everybody’s accustomed to that. The civilian governor is window dressing; he’s here because some of the politicians in Quito don’t trust the navy. As long as there aren’t many problems, the navy lets the governor—or in other words, López—manage the civilians.”

  “What now?”

  “The commandant’s in the conference room with half a dozen of the more important landowners discussing the situation.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And, he asked me to wait here. He’s not a bad fellow, and I don’t think he’d personally mind my being there, but he doesn’t want to offend the more traditional planters and merchants.” A note of irritation had crept into her voice.

  “Is López in there? I’d expected to find him standing on the pier, waiting to grab me.”

  “No. I assume he’s looking after the governor.”

  “Will this cost him his job?”

  “I doubt it. Remember, there’s somebody in Quito who wants him here.”

  I stared out the window a moment, thinking of the governor as I’d seen him—a man clearly tormented almost to the limit. Beyond his limit, as it now appeared. “Whatever the political significance,” I said, “this is very sad. When I met him, the man was suffering. Do you think anybody was putting pressure on him for some reason?”

  “No,” said Ana with a sigh. As she spoke, she stared at her hands, which were still clasped on the desk in front of her. “And even if they were, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Eduardo always lived more inside his own head than outside it. He wasn’t comfortable with reality. I always found him charming but a little too self-conscious. He lacked confidence. We knew him and his family in Quito. He should never have been sent here! The appointment was his death sentence. I can’t imagine why he accepted it or why his parents agreed, unless he felt it was the only way he could redeem himself. In fact, they probably went to a lot of trouble to get it for him.”

  “Why did he need redemption?” I asked with more than casual interest.

  “Something about a lost cablegram—an important one, I’m sure, but not the end of the world. And also something about insulting somebody important. Probably accidentally. I’m willing to bet that was his real crime.”

  At least he didn’t shoot and kill the wrong guy, I mused, thinking of my own self-imposed exile to Las Encantadas.

  A pained silence settled over the room. I looked closely at Ana and realized there were tears in her eyes. Should I be jealous of the dead governor, I wondered. “Did you know him well?”

  “Socially, that’s all.”

  “Go to school with him?”

  “No. Papa let the nuns have me, and before you ask, when I was with them I did things their way.”

  The reception area filled with the sound of voices as the door to the conference room opened and the landowners emerged. All were dressed in business suits and ties with black mourning bands on their arms. A tall, robust gentleman with a full head of auburn hair detached himself from the crowd and walked into the office. “Papa,” said Ana, “this is Fred Freiman and Seaman Rojas I told you about.”

  Don Vicente de Guzmán shook my hand and nodded genially at Rojas. “I very much wish we’d been able to attend the party at the Herzogs’ the other night. I’m sure my wife and I would have enjoyed it. According to my daughter,” he continued, turning toward Rojas, “Seaman Rojas danced like a madman with Héctor Echeverría’s girl.”

  “She’s a very nice girl, sir, and knows many jokes.”

  “What did the commandant say?” demanded Ana, while Don Vicente and Rojas were still smiling at the memory of the party only one of them had attended.

  “Nothing of any significance. He says there’s a very slight concern that our Peruvian friends might send a fleet to take over our islands, but that likelihood is too small to even worry about.” Don Vicente paused while a sailor came and led Rojas off in the direction of the conference room. “Other than that, he’s very sorry that the governor was so unhappy, and we must all remember poor Eduardo as what he was: an honest, honorable, and efficient official and a noble gentleman. The commandant assumes a new governor will be appointed in due course, and in the meantime all will continue as before. I agree with him. Sad though this is, it will have no effect on life in the islands and none on politics in Quito.”

  Ana didn’t exactly dab at her eye, but she did brush it with the back of her hand.

  “Then Sergeant López will continue as before?” I asked.

  “I assume so,” replied Don Vicente.

  “Is there any chance it wasn’t suicide?”

  “A small one, I’m sure,” agreed Don Vicente, “but both the commandant and I feel that it was. His valet, who has been with Eduardo’s family his entire life, has been very concerned about him for some time. He was with Eduardo not two minutes before it happened and now appears almost suicidal himself. However, if you have some reason to suspect we are wrong, please let me know right away.”

  “I know even less than you do, sir. I just felt the question should be asked.”

  “Indeed it should.”

  The messenger returned to the office and beckoned me to follow him. “Don Vicente,” I started, offering my hand.

  “No,” said Ana, “we’ll wait, won’t we, Papa?”

  Don Vicente looked at her and smiled in a fatherly way. “Of course!” Despite his imposing appearance, he was clearly a pushover when it came to his daughter.

  The commandant was seated at the head of the table in the conference room; Rojas stood off to one side. “I understand from Seaman Rojas that you have been a very busy man, Mr. Freiman.” The naval officer was speaking English—slowly and with a heavy acc
ent, but he obviously was more fluent than he had let on at our last meeting. “He tells me you have not yet managed to identify the killer, or killers, but that you now have a reason to suspect that Herr Becker might be involved in some way.”

  Speaking slowly and as carefully as I could, I reviewed whom I’d spoken with and what I’d learned. Being unsure of the true nature of the relationship between the commandant and the sergeant, I made a point of not mentioning that López seemed intent on guiding me away from Becker, but I needn’t have been cautious—it seemed the commandant was already aware of my suspicions.

  “Yes, it is a very complex situation. I understand from Rojas that you feel Sergeant López does not want you to look for Becker.” As he spoke I noted a tone of distaste in his voice. Whether it was for the German or the sergeant I couldn’t tell.

  I glanced at Rojas and felt sorry for him. How many people could one young sailor report to and work for all at the same time without, in the end, hanging himself?

  “I may just misunderstand his desires, sir.”

  The commandant smiled slightly. “Please understand, Mr. Freiman, it is very much my desire that you locate this man Becker and determine for certain what he is doing. I am sure you understand by now that the situation in my country is every bit as complicated as that of the world at large. There are tensions between the armed forces and the civilian politicians, between the businessmen and the workers, between the aristocrats and the new industrialists, between those who wish to see Ecuador work with you North Americans and those who want to work with the Germans. It is easy to think of these islands as a forgotten corner of the world, a place of no significance. But I am certain that both Washington and Berlin have their eyes on us. Do we understand each other?”

  “We do, sir. Will you let Rojas continue to work with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sir?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to ask the question. Or even if I should.

  “Yes, Mr. Freiman?”

  “Is it possible that the governor’s unhappiness—depression—was more than a matter of his basic temperament? Could he have been worried about something else? Something specific?”