Jeopardy Is My Job. Marlowe Stephen

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СКАЧАТЬ rubber had been punished running over sharp rocks in the beds of dried out freshets on the road. I clung to the wheel. It bucked and squirmed under my hands like a living thing, and I had to contend with Stu Huntington’s dead weight sitting where I should have been sitting. The Lancia fishtailed in a wide slewing loop like a skier executing a Christie stop. Headlights to cliff edge again, not a very high cliff now, but more than high enough for the purpose.

      The car tilted. I could see nothing. Dust enveloped us blindingly. For an awful moment I wondered if, after all, Huntington was still alive. Because I knew I had to leave the Lancia in a hurry. But no: he had to be dead. The dent in the side of his head was as big as my fist, and deep.

      I fumbled with the door handle on my side and yanked it open. The car began to nose down as its front wheels left the road, it was that close. I leaped as far as I could. I didn’t want to get clipped by the rear fender.

      Feet-first I hit the ground, staggered two steps on a wildly bouncing treadmill, lost my balance and went down. Then I was out of the cloud of dust and rolling, and then I heard a crashing, splintering sound, and then I saw the moonlit sky and the earth, the sky again and the earth again, and the earth slammed the breath out of my lungs and the sky wouldn’t give it back to me, and I was pulled and pushed and jumped on and pummeled and my mouth filled with dust, sand and pebbles.

      I came to rest against a rock. I sat there, trying very hard to breathe and learning how difficult it can be. After a long time I got up. I was quaking like a leaf in a gale, but my legs held me up. I staggered in a little circle, and then a bigger one, until I found the direction I wanted, which was downhill. I made it to the bottom of the road, where it joined the highway. A short way up the pavement toward Torremolinos, a man straddling a motorbike with his feet on the ground was staring down at something. I went over there, not on the double.

      The Lancia had left one fender and one wheel on the highway. What was left of Stu Huntington had been thrown clear, and it was what riveted the man on the motorbike’s attention. The rest of the car had plowed through the flimsy guardrail and over some rocks into the sea.

      The man on the motorbike stared and stared. When I reached him I swayed and touched him, and still looking at what lay in the road he said, very softly, “Mother of God,” and was quickly and rackingly sick.

      chapter five

      They were really in a hurry that night—for Spain.

      An hour after we had gone over, the Guardia sent a creaky old man along the road from Fuengirola on a bike. He wobbled to a stop, saw what was to be seen, solemnly removed his winged black-patent-leather hat, stood with head bowed, remounted his bike and asked me, “You wish a doctor?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. I added on a slightly belligerent note, “This man was murdered.”

      “Yes,” the creaky old man said in his creaky old man’s voice, “clearly it was a terrible accident.”

      I stared at him. My Spanish is not that bad. He shrugged and began pedaling back toward town as fast as a kid who had spent the day on his bike doing nothing, enjoying every minute of it and in no hurry to get home.

      My head ached and there was going to be a nasty bruise all up and down one side of my rib cage. I could feel it every time I moved my left arm. I stared out at the water, wished I hadn’t finished my pack of cigarettes, and waited.

      The next one to make his appearance was a cocky-looking boy in an old four-door Seat that lacked any sort of markings except a couple of fender dents. The boy got out, gave me a confident but not friendly smile and went to work shooting pictures from various angles with an archaic press camera that must have been an heirloom from the time of Primo de Rivera and a strobe light that looked brand-new.

      Finally taking off his patent-leather hat the boy asked me, “He was a Catholic?”

      “I don’t know,” I said.

      “An American?”

      “Right. His name is—”

      “Why tell me, señor? I only take pictures.”

      As if to disprove that point, he got a tarp from the trunk of the Seat and rolled what was left of Stu Huntington in it. I helped him tote it to the car. My side ached and my head started spinning. I was suddenly very sleepy. We stuffed the tarp on the rear seat and climbed in front together. The boy had forgotten his camera and had to go back for it. Then we drove into Fuengirola.

      The Guardia substation was in a small building a quarter of a mile from the portable bull ring. I was given the freedom of a ten-by-ten whitewashed room. If I wanted to sit, there was a single hard chair. If I wanted to stretch out and catch up on my sleep, there was a bed with a flat spring and no mattress. There was also a small window, barred, and a door, shut and bolted on the other side. I stood at the window and heard a bus roar by in the direction of Gibraltar. A couple of flies buzzed me without any real interest and went back to climbing the walls for the night. A big moth fluttered hopefully but suicidally about the single small bulb dangling on its cord.

      Around a quarter after three on my watch, the door opened and a man wearing Guardia gray-greens but no patent-leather hat came in. The black leather holster creaked at his side as he sat on the edge of the bed-spring and lit a cigarette. He was no youngster, but not as old as the guy on the bike. His sleeve was decorated with three stripes. He looked wistful and not tough at all. He looked like Don Quixote without the little pointy beard to give him style.

      In excellent English and conversationally he said, “What an awful experience to happen to an American tourist on his first day in Spain. I am Sergeant Martinez, Mr. Drum.”

      He stuck out his hand. I shook it and said, “I’m no tourist. I’m a private detective.”

      Sergeant Martinez gave me a wistful Don Quixote smile. “There is no such thing as a private detective in Spain. It is as I said. You are, you see, an American tourist.”

      “Okay, I’m a tourist. Do I still get to report a murder?”

      He stood up, went to the window and gazed out at the silence or listened to the darkness. “Clearly, I failed to understand. You said murder?”

      “Huntington was dead before that car crashed.”

      “He was?” Sergeant Martinez laughed a mild, wistful laugh. “Then where were you driving the body?”

      “I wasn’t driving. He was.”

      “A dead man?”

      “He was behind the wheel with a dent in the side of his skull. I was sapped and put in the car next to him unconscious, and then we went for our ride.”

      “You should not have driven so fast on such a road. The tires. It was a blowout, of course.” Martinez scowled. “What does ‘sapped’ mean?”

      “Hit over the head from behind.”

      “And where did this happen?”

      “The cave of Fuentes.”

      “You went to the cave of Fuentes with the dead man?”

      “No. I saw him earlier here in Fuengirola. Arguing with a man named Fernando. A blind sculptor who lives in Torremolinos.”

      “Arguing СКАЧАТЬ