Assassins Have Starry Eyes (7 page)

I said, “If you don’t watch it, Van, you’re going to lose track of that sentence. It’s a lulu already.”

He said, “I know. My sentences get very involved when I’m embarrassed, Dr. Gregory. And I don’t like to talk to a man about his wife.”

“Then don’t strain yourself,” I said. “You’ve made your point. I’ll keep it in mind. Now shut up and let me get some sleep.”

ELEVEN

THE FOLLOWING DAY, I was called to the Project and informed by the Director that, much as he regretted having to take this step, he was suspending me from my duties until further notice. My mind had been too busy with other problems to consider this possibility, so it came as something of a shock; although it was, of course, a perfectly logical development. Returning home, I decided to look at the matter from its brightest side, which was that I was no longer obliged to hang around here. The car was still packed from the other night. I got an extra duffel bag of clothing, my rifle and some ammunition, all the reasonably non-perishable groceries from the kitchen, and added them to the load. Then I locked up the house and headed north.

Driving up to Santa Fe, I knew that spring was here by the fact that the whole top layer of the country was moving eastward on a gusty forty-mile breeze. That’s just a zephyr in these parts; you could drop a couple of eastern hurricanes into New Mexico in the spring and nobody would notice the difference. There was dust and sand blowing hubcap-deep across the highway the whole sixty miles up U.S. 85; occasionally it would get thick enough to slow down traffic, and you could see headlights go on in the yellow murk. Then it would open up again to show you the sky clear and blue overhead, and the sun shining. The radio announced that U.S. 66 was closed for dust east of Grants. I took it easy because of the poor visibility, because I wasn’t feeling too strong yet, and because those damn big wrap-around windshields cost money and you can sandblast one into frosted glass in a couple of minutes if you drive too fast through one of these disturbances.

As I approached Santa Fe, the snow-covered peaks of the Sangre de Cristos looked painfully white and clean in contrast with the dirt through which I had been driving. The wind was still blowing as I drove into town, but there wasn’t as much stuff flying around. I checked in at La Fonda, washed the sand off the body and brushed it out of the teeth, and went down to have dinner in the bar. It was a familiar place; Natalie and I always ate there when we were in Santa Fe. Eating alone, I got through the meal fast, went up to my room, did some research in the telephone book, went to bed, and slept all night.

In the morning I dressed myself conservatively in the light gabardine suit that’s practically the uniform of the country, although you can get by on tropical worsted, or even rayon cord, if you insist. I noticed by the pants that I had lost weight, which, if I had been a little healthier, would have been cause for rejoicing: I don’t like to go over two hundred. I had breakfast and spent a couple of hours driving aimlessly around town, just to see if I had company. I did. Van ought to try being followed some time, I reflected; he might understand how somebody could succumb to the temptation to stomp down on the accelerator and leave the nuisance behind.

At the moment I didn’t really care. I had no hope of keeping my activities secret anyway. I drove up the Acequia Madre toward Cristo Rey church. The Acequia Madre is the Mother Ditch; formerly, I have been told, the main water supply of the town. Although hemmed in by modern cement walls as a precaution against floods, it looks very much like a mountain creek that has lost its way and strayed into the big city. Near the center of Santa Fe it disappears underground in several places, but farther upstream it runs openly through a residential district that, like many such, is populated half by Spanish-Americans, and half by Anglos of artistic pretensions—Anglo, in case you didn’t know, is the local term for us foreigners who can’t speak Spanish.

Anyway, the ditch or stream is the Acequia Madre, and the road along it is also called Acequia Madre, and the address that interested me was a certain number along that road. It had a red door. I don’t know why, but a red front door seems to indicate an artistic female just as surely as a red light is supposed to advertise another type of female. All women of my acquaintance who learn the difference between a palette and a pincushion immediately march out and paint their front doors red. Ruth DeVry’s front door, for instance, is a deep, rich tone midway between scarlet and maroon.

Having the door spotted, I cruised around the neighborhood in a fashion I hoped looked casual, although it didn’t really matter. The Pontiac made the proper negligent attitude hard to achieve; if cars get much bigger, Santa Fe is going to have to close up shop. It’s an old city that likes its privacy, which means that every citizen surrounds his property with high adobe walls. These walls, being directly on the street, naturally limit the width of the thoroughfare. The wheelbase and overhang of my vehicle made some of the corners almost impossible to negotiate. I extricated myself from this rabbit-warren at last, and drove back to the hotel for lunch.

After lunch I went up to my room, refreshed my memory from the telephone book, and picked up the phone. The operator got the number for me right away. A girl’s voice answered.

“Miss Rasmussen?” I said. “Miss Rasmussen, this is Jim Gregory… Gregory. Yes, that’s right: Dr. Gregory, the guy you tried to shoot once. I know you don’t particularly want to see me,” I said, “but I wondered if you’d let me drop around, anyway… Yes, after dinner would be fine. Thank you, Miss Rasmussen.”

I hung up and looked at my face in the mirror. It was obviously the face of a man wondering what the hell he was letting himself in for…

Driving over after dinner, I had for a moment the free and light and somewhat guilty feeling of a kid playing hooky: I had no wife and no job and I was on my way to call on a pretty girl. It was an odd and somewhat disquieting illusion. I suppose every man every now and then wishes for a chance to start all over again; not so much that he’s dissatisfied with what he’s made of his life, as that he’s curious to see what else he might have done with it. I found a place a block off Acequia Madre where I could leave the overgrown coupe without obstructing traffic, and walked up to the door. Nina Rasmussen must have been waiting for me; she opened the door within a second or two of my knock.

Then we stood facing each other in the doorway, both remembering very clearly the circumstances of our first and only meeting. I saw that she was again wearing one of those wide, flounced, southwestern skirts. The one she had worn to the hospital to kill me had been yellow; this one was red and white, topped by a peasant blouse of white cotton with small round sleeves and a loose drawstring neck. Except for a big silver concha belt that must have set somebody back at least a hundred dollars, she was wearing no jewelry, which I liked. Too many women go hog-wild with that Indian silver. She was better-looking than I remembered; a healthy blonde girl in her middle twenties. She still wore her hair quite short; it was almost a boy’s haircut. It had grown out enough so I could not see where she had been hurt by Natalie’s pitcher of gladioli.

“Come in, Dr. Gregory,” she said. Her voice was different from what I remembered, low and pleasant, with no overtones of hatred or hysteria. “I think you’ve met my brother Tony,” she said.

The dark boy who had come to the hospital once was standing by the fireplace, which was one of those small, round, deep corner jobs that look like beehives. A couple of piñon logs were burning inside, without benefit of andirons. The rest of the room was in keeping with the native fireplace, low and dark, with the ceiling supported by the round log rafters that are called
vigas
and add a couple of thousand dollars to the value of any New Mexico residence. Back east, there’s prestige in an old Connecticut farmhouse. Here, the snob appeal is in a real adobe house with genuine
vigas.
Tony looked around and gave me a brief nod without taking his hands out of his pockets.

The girl said, “I’ll get my coat, Dr. Gregory. I won’t be a minute.”

Nothing had been said about going out, but I saw no reason to object. The boy had turned back to contemplate the fire. His uncompromising back said that I had interrupted an argument of which I had probably been the subject. I wandered around the room. There were the usual local relics scattered around: a couple of beat-up
kachina
dolls of more authentic origin than you would find in the ordinary souvenir shops, an old wooden image of a saint set in a wall niche made for the purpose, some silver and copper, a nice bowl of the black pottery that comes, I think, from San Ildefonso, and a couple of the gaudy Jemez pieces that you’re supposed to consider vulgar if you’re any kind of an expert—and we’re all experts here—but which I always like, in small doses. There was a lever-action Winchester over the fireplace. There were two large paintings on the walls, original oils, signed
F. Wild.

I approached the paintings cautiously, only because the boy was still giving me his back and there was nothing left to look at except some magazines I had already read. Actually the only safe attitude to take toward home-grown art is one of complete disinterest. If they see you looking, they’ll almost inevitably ask for your opinion.

“My stepmother,” the girl said, coming up behind me. “Frances Wild. She and Dad were killed in an auto accident four years ago. She was supposed to be quite good. That’s the pueblo of Taos.” I looked respectfully at the stylized design of white cubes piled one on top of the other. Nina Rasmussen indicated the other paintings. “That one is Monument Valley.” It was an orange-red pattern of jagged lines. “Well, let’s go,” the girl said. “We’ll be home early, Tony.”

Outside it was still, dark, and quite cold. “Drive or walk?” I asked. “My car’s just down the street.”

“Walk,” she said. “That is, if you—”

“I’ll make it,” I said.

“I just didn’t know if you were completely recovered.”

“Completely enough,” I said. “Tell me, who painted the door red?”

“The door… Oh.” She laughed. “Why, Frances did, originally. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“I… I never liked her very much. So of course I couldn’t paint it a different color afterwards. It would have seemed as if I was trying to wipe out…” She stopped. “You’re a sinister person, Dr. Gregory. Already you have me telling you all about myself.”

“That’s what I came for,” I said. “You and your brother don’t look very much alike, except around the mouth and eyes.”

“He takes after Mother. She was pure Spanish, a Trujillo.” If you’ve ever been bored by old Virginia families, stay out of New Mexico. They’ve got it twice as bad. Nina Rasmussen said, “She died when Tony was born. I was six years old.”

I said, “Your luck hasn’t been very good, has it? People keep dying on you.”

She said, “That wasn’t a very tactful remark, Dr. Gregory. From you.”

I said, “I didn’t come here to be tactful. You don’t really expect me to be tactful. What does Tony do?”

“He goes to the University. He’s just up for the weekend.”

“Does he usually come home for the weekend?”

“Not ‘usually,’ but every now and then.”

“Any particular reason this weekend?”

“No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Did he let you know he was coming?”

“No,” she said. “Dr. Gregory—”

“He came up to tell you not to have anything to do with me, didn’t he?” I said. “I kind of expected that he might. I kind of stalled around to give him time to get here.”

She said stiffly, “Dr. Gregory, I don’t know what you’re driving at, but I don’t think I’ll answer any more questions. You can take me home now.”

I said, “You don’t look like a fool, Spanish. Don’t act like one.”

She stopped, and turned to face me in the darkness. “I don’t think I like—”

“Does it matter what you like, Spanish?” I asked. “Why did you agree to see me? You didn’t like that; you couldn’t have, considering that I shot and killed your boy-friend last fall. Yet you were just as sweet as sugar to me over the phone. Why? What are you scared of, Spanish?”

She said angrily, “Don’t call me—”

“I’ll call you anything I damn well please,” I said. “And you’ll take it smiling. And we both know why. We both know that the guy I killed last fall was a dirty sneaking murderer who didn’t even have the nerve to do his job right. You didn’t know it last fall when you came storming to the hospital to avenge him—neither did I, for that matter. But we know it now. Don’t we, Spanish? And we know something else, don’t we?”

She whispered, “What else do we know?”

I said, “We know that your brother wasn’t just along for the ride. He had a loaded gun, too; and if I’d taken another trail that morning I’d have been Tony’s pigeon instead of Paul Hagen’s. Do you think Tony would have shot any straighter, Spanish? Or would he have got buck fever too?”

She bowed her head so I could not see her face. Presently she whispered, “What are you going to do?”

I did not speak at once. Then I laughed. It was a harsh and ugly sound in the darkness.

Her head came up quickly. “You didn’t know!” she gasped. “You didn’t know! It was a trick—”

She hit me. I caught her wrists and held her. I don’t like to be hit by anybody, even a woman, without hitting back; if they want to deal with the situation on that plane, they can damn well take the consequences.

I said, “Don’t do that again, Spanish. Just because I’ve got a Ph.D. doesn’t mean I don’t get mad like ordinary people; and you’re spotting me damn close to sixty pounds.” She relaxed slowly. I felt the tension go out of her. I released her. She looked down, rubbing her wrists, and said dully, “I didn’t say anything.”

“You said enough.”

“Do the police—”

“They don’t figure in this. It’s a private venture.”

“How did you—”

“When it happened last fall, I was willing to pass it as an accident. Since then, too many other things have happened; it simply had to fit in somewhere.”

“The police investigated very thoroughly. They didn’t find anything. You can’t prove anything, Dr. Gregory. The fact that… that you bullied me into betraying myself is not evidence.”

I said, “I’m not looking for evidence, Miss Rasmussen. And I want to apologize for my crude behavior. I knew I’d never get anything out of you by being polite. All I want is information. My wife is missing. I’m trying to find her.”