Sewell Endicott said he was working late and I could drop around in the evening about seven-thirty. He had a corner office with a blue carpet, a red mahogany desk with carved corners, very old and obviously very valuable, the usual glass-front bookshelves of mustardyellow legal books, the usual cartoons by Spy of famous English judges, and a large portrait of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes on the south wall, alone. Endicótt's chair was quilted in black leather. Near him was an open rolltop desk jammed with papers. It was an office no decorator had had a chance to pansy up. He was in his shirtsleeves and he looked tired, but he had that kind of face. He was smoking one of his tasteless cigarettes. Ashes from it had fallen on his loosened tie. His limp black hair was all over the place. He stared at me silently after I sat down. Then he said: "You're a stubborn son of a bitch, if ever I met one. Don't tell me you're still digging into that mess." "Something worries me a little. Would it be all right now if I assumed you were representing Mr. Harlan Potter when you came to see me in the birdcage?" He nodded. I touched the side of my face gently with my fingertips. It was all healed up and the swelling was gone, but one of the blows must have damaged a nerve. Part of the cheek was still numb. couldn't let it alone. It would get all right in time. "And that when you went to Otatoclán you were temporarily deputized as a member of the D.A.'s staff?" "Yes, but don't rub it in, Marlowe. It was a valuable connection. Perhaps I gave it too much weight." "Still is, I hope." He shook his head. "No. That's finished. Mr. Potter does his legal business through San Francisco, New York, and Washington firms." "I guess he hates my guts—if he thinks about it." Endicott smiled. "Curiously enough, he put all the blame on his son-in-law, Dr. Loring. A man like Harlan Potter has to blame somebody. He couldn't possibly be wrong himself. He felt that if Loring hadn't been feeding the woman dangerous drugs, none of it would have happened." "He's wrong. You saw Terry Lennox's body in Otatoclan, didn't you?" "I did indeed. In the back of a cabinet maker's shop. They have no proper mortuary there. He was making the coffin too. The body was ice-cold. I saw the wound in the temple. There's no question of identity, if you had any ideas along those lines." "No, Mr. Endicott, I didn't, because in his case it could hardly be possible. He was disguised a little though, wasn't he?" "Face and hands darkened, hair dyed black. But the scars were still obvious. And the fingerprints, of course, were easily checked from things he had handled at home." "What kind of police force do they have down there?" "Primitive. The jefe could just about read and write, But he knew about fingerprints. It was hot weather, you know. Quite hot." He frowned and took his cigarette out of his mouth and dropped it negligently into an enormous black basalt sort of receptade. "They had to get ice from the hotel," he added. "Plenty of ice." He looked at me again. "No embalming there. Things have to move fast." "You speak Spanish, Mr. Endicott?" "Only a few words. The hotel manager interpreted." He smiled. "A well-dressed smoothie, that fellow. Looked tough, but he was very polite and helpful. It was all over in no time." "I had a letter from Terry. I guess Mr. Potter would know about it. I told his daughter, Mrs. Loring. I showed it to her. There was a portrait of Madison in it." "A what?" "Five-thousand-dollar bill." He raised his eyebrows. "Really. Well, he could certainly afford it. His wife gave him a cool quarter of a million the second time they were married. I've an idea he meant to go to Mexico to live anyhow — quite apart from what happened. I don't know what happened to the money. I wasn't in on that." "Here's the letter, Mr. Endicott, if you care to read it." I took it out and gave it to him. He read it carefully, the way lawyers read everything. He put it down on the desk and leaned back and stared at nothing. "A little literary, isn't it?" he said quietly. "I wonder why he did it." "Killed himself, confessed, or wrote me the letter?" "Confessed and killed himself, of course," Endicott said sharply. "The letter is understandable. At least you got a reasonable recompense for what you did for him—and since. "The mailbox bothers me," I said. "Where he says there was a mailbox on the street under his window and the hotel waiter was going to hold his letter up before he mailed it, so Terry could see that it was mailed." Something in Endicott's eyes went to sleep. "Why?" he asked indifferently. He picked another of his filtered cigarettes out of a square box. I held my lighter across the desk for him. "They wouldn't have one in a place like Otatodán," I said. "Go on." "I didn't get it at first. Then I looked the place up. It's a mere village. Population say ten or twelve thousand. One street partly paved. The jefe has a Model A Ford as an official car. The post office is in the corner of a store, the carnicería, the butcher shop. One hotel, a couple of cantinas, no good roads, a small airfield. There's hunting around there in the mountains — lots of it. Hence the airfield. Only decent way to get there." "Go on. I know about the hunting." "So there's a mailbox on the street. Like there's a race course and a dog track and a golf course and a jai alai fronton and park with a colored fountain and a bandstand." "Then he made a mistake," Endicott said coldly. "Perhaps it was something that looked like a mailbox to him—say a trash receptacle." I stood up. I reached for the letter and refolded it and put it back in my pocket. "A trash receptacle," I said. "Sure, that's it. Painted with the Mexican colors,, green, white, red, and a sign on it stenciled in large clear print: KEEP OUR CITY CLEAN. In Spanish, of course. And lying around it seven mangy dogs." "Don't get cute, Marlowe." "Sorry if I let my brains show. Another small point I have already raised with Randy Starr. How come the letter got mailed at all? According to the letter the method was prearranged. So somebody told him about the mailbox. So somebody lied. So somebody mailed the letter with five grand in it just the same. Intriguing, don't you agree?" He puffed smoke and watched it float away. "What's your conclusion—and why ring Starr in on it?" "Starr and a heel named Menendez, now removed from our midst, were pals of Terry's in the British Army. They are wrong gees in a way — I should say in almost every way — but they still have room for personal pride and so on. There was a cover-up here engineered for obvious reasons. There was another sort of cover-up in Otatoclán, for entirely different reasons." "What's your conclusion?" he asked me again and much more sharply. "What's yours?" He didn't answer me. So I thanked him for his time and left. He was frowning as I opened the door, but I thought it was an honest frown of puzzlement. Or maybe he was trying to remember how it looked outside the hotel and whether there was a mailbox there. It was another wheel to start turning—no more. It turned for a solid month before anything came up. Then on a certain Friday morning I found a stranger waiting for me in my office. He was a well-dressed Mexican or Suramericano of some sort. He sat by the open window smoking a brown cigarette that smelled strong. He was tall and very slender and very elegant, with a neat dark mustache and dark hair, rather longer than we wear it, and a fawn-colored suit of some loosely woven material. He wore those green sunglasses. He stood up politely. "Se.or Marlowe?" "What can I do for you?" He handed me a folded paper. "Un aviso de parte del Se.or Starr en Las Vegas, se.or. Habla Usted Espaflol?" "Yeah, but not fast. English would be better." "English then," he said. "It is all the same to me." I took the paper and read it. "This introduces Cisco Maioranos, a friend of mine. I think he can fix you up. S." "Let's go inside, Se.or Maioranos," I said. I held the door open for him. He smelled of perfume as he went by. His eyebrows were awfully damned dainty too. But he probably wasn't as dainty as he looked because there were knife scars on both sides of his face.
He sat down in the customer's chair and crossed his knees. "You wish certain information about Se.or Lennox, I am told." "The last scene only." "I was there at the time, se.or. I had a position in the hotel." He shrugged. "Unimportant and of course ternporary. I was the day derk." He spoke perfect English but with a Spanish rhythm. Spanish — American Spanish that is — has a definite rise and fall which to an American ear seems to have nothing to do with the meaning. It's like the swell of the ocean. "You don't look the type," I said. "One has difficulties." "Who mailed the letter to me?" He held out a box of cigarettes. "Try one of these." I shook my head. "Too strong for me. Colombian cigarettes I like. Cuban cigarettes are murder." He smiled faintly, lit another pill himself, and blew smoke. The guy was so goddam elegant he was beginning to annoy me. "I know about the letter, se.or. The mozo was afraid to go up to the room of this Se.or Lennox after the guarda was posted. The cop or dick, as you say. So I myself took the letter to the correo. After the shooting, you understand." "You ought to have looked inside. It had a large piece of money in it." "The letter was sealed," he said coldly. "El honor no se mueve de lado como los congrejos. That is, honor does not move sidewise like a crab, se.or." "My apologies. Please continue." "Se.or Lennox had a hundred-peso note in his left hand when I went into the room and shut the door in the face of the guarda. In his right hand was a pistol. On the table before him was the letter. Also another paper which I did not read. I refused the note." "Too much money," I said, but he didn't react to the sarcasm. "He insisted. So I took the note finally and gave it to the mozo later. I took the letter out under the napkin on the tray from the previous service of coffee. The dick looked hard at me. But he said nothing. I was halfway down the stairs when I heard the shot. Very quickly I hid the letter and ran back upstairs. The dick was trying to kick the door open. I used my key. Se.or Lennox was dead." He moved his fingertips gently along the edge of the desk and sighed. "The rest no doubt you know." "Was the hotel full?" "Not full, no. There were half a dozen guests." "Americans?" "Two Americanos del Norte. Hunters." "Real Gringos or just transplanted Mexicans?" He drew a fingertip slowly along the fawn-colored cloth above his knee. "I think one of them could well have been of Spanish origin. He spoke border Spanish. Very inelegant." "They go near Lennox's room at all?" He lifted his head sharply but the green cheaters didn't do a thing for me. "Why should they, sefior?" I nodded. "Well, it was damn nice of you to come in here and tell me about it, Se.or Maioranos. Tell Randy I'm ever so grateful, will you?" "No hay de que, se.or. It is nothing." "And later on, if he has time, he could send me somebody who knows what he is talking about." "Se.or?" His voice was soft, but icy. "You doubt my word?" "You guys are always talking about honor. Honor is the cloak of thieves—sometimes. Don't get mad. Sit quiet and let me tell it another way." He leaned back superciliously. "I'm only guessing, mind. I could be wrong. But I could be right too. These two Americanos were there for a purpose. They came in on a plane. They pretended to be hunters. One of them was named Menendez, a gambler. He registered under some other name or not. I wouldn't know. Lennox knew they were there. He knew why. He wrote me that letter because he had a guilty conscience. He had played me for a sucker and he was too nice a guy for that to rest easy on him. He put the bill—five thousand dollars it was—in the letter because he had a lot of money and he knew I hadn't. He also put in a little off-beat hint which might or might not register. He was the kind of guy who always wants to do the right thing but somehow winds up doing something else. You say you took the letter to the correo. Why didn't you mail it in the box in front of the hotel?" "The box, se.or?" "The mailbox. The cajdn cartero, you call it, I think." He smiled. "Otatoclán is not Mexico City, se.or. It is a very primitive place. A street mailbox in Otatodán? No one there would understand what it was for. No one would collect letters from it." I said: "Oh. Well, skip it. You did not take any coffee on any tray up to Se.or Lennox's room, Se.or Maioranos. You did not go into the room past the dick. But the two Americanos did go in. The dick was fixed, of course. So were several other people. One of the Americanos slugged Lennox from behind. Then he took the Mauser pistol and opened up one of the cartridges and took out the bullet and put the cartridge back in the breech. Then he put this gun to Lennox's temple and pulled the trigger. It made a nasty-looking wound, but it did not kill him. Then he was carried out on a stretcher covered up and well hidden. Then when the American lawyer arrived, Lennox was doped and packed in ice and kept in a dark corner of the carpinterla where the man was making a coffin. The American lawyer saw Lennox there, he was ice-cold, in a deep stupor, and there was a bloody blackened wound in his temple. He looked plenty dead. The next day the coffin was buried with stones in it. The American lawyer went home with the fingerprints and some kind of document which was a piece of cheese. How do you like that, Se.or Maioranos?" He shrugged. "It would be possible, se.or. It would require money and influence. It would be possible, perhaps, if this Se.or Menendez was dosely related to important people in Otatoclán, the alcalde, the hotel proprietor and so on." "Well, that's possible too. It's a good idea. It would explain why they picked a remote little place like Otatoclán." He smiled quickly. "Then Se.or Lennox may still be alive, no?" "Sure. The suicide had to be some kind of fake to back up the confession. It had to be good enough to fool a lawyer who had been a district attorney, but it would make a very sick monkey out of the current D.A. if it backfired. This Menendez is not as tough as he thinks he is, but he was tough enough to pistol-whip me for not keeping my nose clean. So he had to have reasons. If the fake got exposed, Menendez would be right in the middle of an international stink. The Mexicans don't like crooked police work any more than we do." "All that is possible, se.or, as I very well know. But you accused me of lying. You said I did not go into the room where Se.or Lennox was and get his letter." "You were already in there, chum—writing the letter." He reached up and took the dark glasses off. Nobody can change the color of a man's eyes. "I suppose it's a bit too early for a gimlet," he said.
They had done a wonderful job on him in Mexico City, but why not? Their doctors, technicians, hospitals, painters, architects are as good as ours. Sometimes a little better. A Mexican cop invented the paraffin test for powder nitrates. They couldn't make Terry's face perfect, but they had done plenty. They had even changed his nose, taken out some bone and made it look flatter, less Nordic. They couldn't eliminate every trace of a scar, so they had put a couple on the other side of his face too. Knife scars are not uncommon in Latin countries. "They even did a nerve graft up here," he said, and touched what had been the bad side of his face. "How close did I come?" "Close enough. A few details wrong, but they are not important. It was a quick deal and some of it was improvised and I didn't know myself just what was going to happen. I was told to do certain things and to leave a clear trail. Mendy didn't like my writing to you, but I held out for that. He undersold you a little. He never noticed the bit about the mailbox." "You know who killed Sylvia?" He didn't answer me directly. "It's pretty tough to turn a woman in for murder—even if she never meant much to you." "It's a tough world. Was Harlan Potter in on all this?" He smiled again. "Would he be likely to let anyone know that? My guess is not. My guess is he thinks I am dead. Who would tell him otherwise—unless you did?" "What I'd tell him you could fold into a blade of grass. How's Mendy these days—or is he?" "He's doing all right. In Acapulco. He slipped by because of Randy. But the boys don't go for rough work on cops. Mendy's not as bad as you think. He has a heart." "So has a snake." "Well, what about that gimlet?" I got up without answering him and went to the safe. I spun the knob and got out the envelope with the portrait of Madison on it and the five C notes that smelled of coffee. I dumped the lot out on the desk and then picked up the five C notes. "These I keep. I spent almost all of it on expenses and research. The portrait of Madison I enjoyed playing with, It's all yours now." I spread it on the edge of the desk in front of him. He looked at it but didn't touch it. "It's yours to keep," he said. "I've got plenty. You could have let things lie." "I know. After she killed her husband and got away with it she might have gone on to better things. He was of no real importance, of course. Just a human being with blood and a brain and emotions. He knew what happened too and he tried pretty hard to live with it. He wrote books. You may have heard of him." "Look, I couldn't very well help what I did," he said slowly. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt. I wouldn't have had a dog's chance up here. A man can't figure every angle that quick. I was scared and I ran. What should I have done?" "I don't know." "She had a mad streak. She might have killed him anyway." "Yeah, she might." "Well, thaw out a little. Let's go have a drink somewhere where it's cool and quiet." "No time right now, Se.or Maioranos." "We were pretty good friends once," he said unhappily. "Were we? I forget. That was two other fellows, seems to me. You permanently in Mexico?" "Oh yes. I'm not here legally even. I never was. I told you I was born in Salt Lake City. I was born in MontreaL I'll be a Mexican national pretty soon now. All it takes is a good lawyer. I've always liked Mexico. It wouldn't be much risk going to Victor's for that gimlet." "Pick up your money, Se.or Maioranos. It has too much blood on it." "You're a poor man." "How would you know?" He picked the bill up and stretched it between his thin fingers and slipped it casually into an inside pocket. He bit his lip with the very white teeth you can have when you have a brown skin. "I couldn't tell you any more than I did that morning you drove me to Tijuana. I gave you a chance to call the law and turn me in." "I'm not sore at you. You're just that kind of guy. For a long time I couldn't figure you at all. You had nice ways and nice qualities, but there was something wrong. You had standards and you lived up to them, but they were personal. They had no relation to any kind of ethics or scruples. You were a nice guy because you had a nice nature. But you were just as happy with mugs or hoodlums as with honest men. Provided the hoodlums spoke fairly good English and had fairly acceptable table manners. You're a moral defeatist. I think maybe the war did it and again I think maybe-you were born that way." "I don't get it," he said. "I really don't. I'm trying to pay you back and you won't let me. I couldn't have told you any more than I did. You wouldn't have stood for it." "That's as nice a thing as was ever said to me." "I'm glad you like something about me. I got in a bad jam. I happened to know the sort of people who know how to deal with bad jams. They owed me for an incident that happened long ago in the war. Probably the only time in my life I ever did the right thing quick like a mouse. And when I needed them, they delivered. And for free. You're not the only guy in the world that has no price tag, Marlowe." He leaned across the desk and snapped at one of my cigarettes. There was an uneven flush on his face under the deep tan. The scars showed up against it. I watched him spring a fancy gas cartridge lighter loose from a pocket and light the cigarette. I got a whiff of perfume from him. "You bought a lot of me, Terry. For a smile and a nod and a wave of the hand and a few quiet drinks in a quiet bar here and there. It was nice while it lasted. So long, amigo. I won't say goodbye. I said it to you when it meant something. I said it when it was sad and lonely and final." "I came back too late," he said. "These plastic jobs take time." "You wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't smoked you out." There was suddenly a glint of tears in his eyes. He put his dark glasses back on quickly. "I wasn't sure about it," he said. "I hadn't made up my mind. They didn't want me to tell you anything. I just hadn't made up my mind." "Don't worry about it, Terry. There's always somebody around to do it for you." "I was in the Commandos, bud. They don't take you if you're just a piece of fluff. I got badly hurt and it wasn't any fun with those Nazi doctors. It did something to me." "I know all that, Terry. You're a very sweet guy in a lot of ways. I'm not judging you. I never did. It's just that you're not here any more. You're long gone. You've got nice clothes and perfume and you're as elegant as a fifty-dollar whore." "That's just an act," he said almost desperately. "You get a kick out of it, don't you?" His mouth dropped in a sour smile. He shrugged an expressive energetic Latin shrug. "Of course. An act is all there is. There isn't anything else. In here— " he tapped his chest with the lighter—"there isn't anything. I've had it, Marlowe. I had it long ago. Well—I guess that winds things up." He stood up. I stood up. He put out a lean hand. I shook it. "So long, Se.or Maioranos. Nice to have known you — however briefly." "Goodbye." He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway. What for? Did I want him to stop suddenly and turn and come back and talk me out of the way I felt? Well, he didn't. That was the last I saw of him. I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.
The End