He was drawing himself up to come back at me when the door to the cell block opened and another guard brought Ben and Hays in with him. Ben was carrying a big bucket of iced beer and Hays had a tow sack full of what I figured was grub.
Ben and Hays came up and shook hands with Norris. He seemed glad, at least, to see them. Of course I understood why he hadn’t exactly hugged my neck. He’d screwed up and he and I both knew it. My very presence must have made him feel guilty.
The two guards made a big show of going through the goods that Ben and Hays had brought, even digging down into the ice. When they finished I gave each of them a ten-dollar bill and Jack told them we’d be grateful if Norris received special treatment.
While Ben and Hays were visiting I looked around the double line of cells. There were five on each side and they were smaller than the Texas variety, being only about six foot wide and eight foot long. On Norris’s side the first two cells were occupied by two Mexicans each. Both of them appeared to be peons. They were asleep, it being proper siesta time. The cell across from Norris was vacant, but the other four on that side were filled, two with two prisoners and two with one prisoner each. The men in the individual cells were much better dressed and looked much more genteel than any of the hombres enjoying double occupancy. I figured you had to pay to get a room to yourself. I looked at the two
caballeros,
one of whom was standing at his cell front watching us, wondering what they were in for. They looked well born and well dressed enough that they ought to have been able to buy themselves out.
About that time one of the guards was unlocking the cell door and passing the goods into the cell to Norris. Ben said, “Goddammit, if I had a gun right now we’d have you out of there before these two
jefes
knew what happened.”
Of course we’d left our gun belts back at the hotel, knowing full well we’d of just had to surrender them as soon as we’d got to the jail. Better safe back at the hotel than lost somewhere in some policeman’s pocket.
Pretty soon the guards said we had to leave. Norris shook with Ben and Hays and thanked Jack for getting word out about his predicament. But when it came my turn he just looked at me defiantly and said, “Well, why don’t you go on and do what you think is right. Give in to these bastards. Pay ’em off. See if I care.”
I said, disgustedly, “You sound about ten years old, Norris. I’ll do what I have to to get you out, but when I get you home you’re gonna work about twenty hours a day because you’d better plan on bringing in two dollars for every dollar I have to spend to make up for your dumbass play. And God help you if this interferes with my wedding.”
His face suddenly fell and he once again looked like my brother. He groaned. “Oh, hell, Justa, I completely forgot about that. Oh, my God! Listen, you forget about me. Get back to Blessing. How far off is it? A week? Ten days?”
“Eight days,” I said grimly. “And my house ain’t completed.”
“Oh, damn!” he said. He left the bars and went back to his cot and sat down. With his head in his hands he said, “I’ll get out of here somehow. Leave Jack here with some money. You go back and tend to your business.”
I said, “I ought to. But it does my heart so much good to see you sitting there feeling sorry for yourself that I got to stick around and watch.”
He looked up. “Oh, go to blazes.”
The guard was tugging at my sleeve. I turned. “I’ll see you as quick as I can. Just don’t make it any harder on you or me than you feel you righteously have to.”
Walking down the line of cells the well-dressed man who’d been watching us said, “Señor.”
I stopped. He was wearing well fitting
charro
britches with silver conchos down each side and a leather jacket. He was obviously a well-to-do rancher. I said, “Yeah? I don’t speak Spanish.”
He said, in good English, “Your brother talk too much. He make trouble with a policeman here.”
“Davilla?”
“Sí. Capitán
Davilla. A very bad man. Your brother should be quiet.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I told him so already.”
He was smoking and he took a second to drop his cigarillo on the floor and grind it out with his boot before he said, casually, “
Mi nombre
—my name is Elizandro. Miguel Elizandro. I have a hacienda some thirty kilometers south of here in the little village of Zapata. I have about ten good men working for me. Very good men.” He looked at me.
I studied him in return. He was a well-set-up young man of about my age though not up to my size. But he had the attitude of a gentleman. I said, “And they don’t know you’re in here.”
“
Sí
.” he said. “Not yet.”
The guard pulled at my sleeve.
“Pronto!”
he said.
I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Just before we left the cell-block area I looked back. It was an awful somber place to be shut up in—dank and dark and sort of close fitting. About the only thing I could say about it was that the stone walls made it cooler than outside. I glanced back once more toward Norris’s cell. I’d have hated to been where he was.
I pulled Jack back as we went through the door into the corridor where all the office doors were. I said, “Ask one of these jailers which office is Davilla’s.”
He said, “You reckon that’s a good idea?”
“Just do it.”
He spoke quickly to one of the guards. The jailer just shook his head. He said something back to Jack.
“What?” I said.
Jack said, “This hombre says Davilla ain’t here. Ain’t been for a couple of days. Says he don’t know anything about no office. Says he generally hangs around the chief.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “If he ain’t been here for the last couple of days, who the hell has Obregon been negotiating with?”
Jack said, “That ain’t a serious question is it, Justa?”
“I guess not,” I said. “We better get back to the hotel and do a little figuring.”
But the clerk was waiting for us in the outer office. He said it was urgent that I see Señor Obregon at once. I sent Hays and Ben back to the hotel and Jack and I trotted along behind the clerk, who was about the fastest thing I’d seen so far in Mexico. Going over I couldn’t help thinking about the gentleman with the ranch down in Zapata. He’d said he’d had ten men, ten
good
men. I wondered if he meant that the way I’d taken it.
Pistoleros.
Señor Obregon was not alone. Seated by the side of his desk was an ordinary-looking Mexican in a badly fitting business suit. He introduced the man as
Capitán
Davilla’s representative. Making depreciating gestures, he explained, through Jack, that, naturally, Captain Davilla, being an honorable representative of the police couldn’t negotiate directly for the price of his honor, that it would have to be done through a representative.
Hell, I was beginning to wonder if this Davilla actually existed. I asked Jack to ask Obregon what the representative’s name was, but the lawyer declined on the basis that it was
“inaplicable al caso,
” of no consequence.
Well, it seemed like everything was
inaplicable al caso
except me passing money across the desk. I told Jack to insist on knowing the man’s name.
Jack tried, but after a pretty spirited exchange all he could come back with was that the man was willing to be called “José.”
“That’s just dandy,” I said. I was plenty disgusted. I said, “Tell the lawyer that we heard Davilla wasn’t even in town. Ask him who the hell he’s been talking with.”
When he’d finished Jack turned back to me and said, with that natural little smile he wore, “Says the good
capitán
has a ranch outside of town and he’s been there resting, healing up from that awful blow yore brother struck him with.”
“Norris? Hurt somebody with a punch?”
Jack pulled a face. “Hell, they goin’ to play it for all it’s worth.”
I sighed. “Well, when do we start the negotiations?”
Jack spoke to Obregon. The lawyer shook his head and said something that didn’t take long. Jack said to me, “He says they ain’t gonna be no negotiations. Already been decided. The price is twenty-five hundred dollars. Flat.”
I was startled. I really hadn’t expected it to be that much. It wasn’t a great deal of money, but I had the bad feeling we were being taken and I ain’t ever been a big hand for that.
Jack said, “You realize how much money that is in Mexico? I don’t reckon Davilla makes more than fifty dollars a month. Remember Norris saying he could have bought himself out of the arrest for a twenty-dollar bill? I figure our fat friend across the desk is the one looking for a big payday.”
I said, “Tell him it’s too much. Tell him we can’t pay.”
When Jack had finished, Obregon looked at me but talked to Jack. Jack said, “Our buddy here says it was his understanding you and your family were
ricos,
rich, very important businessmen and ranchers in the United States. He wants to know, if that is true, how such a sum could be so significant to you when yore brother’s life is involved.”
I said, “Offer him fifteen hundred. Total. Including his fee.”
I didn’t have to understand Jack’s words. All I had to do was watch the expression on Señor Obregon’s face. I don’t know whether the outrage was put on or not, but he made a mighty good show of it. You’d of thought we’d insulted him. Kind of made me wonder whose money we were talking about, his or this Captain Davilla. And there was the fact that he was sort of supposed to be my lawyer, although those little finer points didn’t seem to count south of the border. But I did find it interesting that, while him and Jack argued back and forth, Obregon never once turned to Davilla’s “representative” and asked his opinion. I found that passing strange.
Finally Jack leaned over to me and said, lowly, “I got him down to two thousand. But I think if we stall him a little, couple of days, say, that he’ll come down. Maybe to fifteen hundred.”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve got to get Norris out of there before he does or says something to get himself in deeper.”
“What shall I tell him?”
It was pushing for five o’clock so I figured the banks would be closed and I’d have to exercise that letter of credit to have the two thousand. I said, “Tell him we’ll have the money here tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.”
When Jack had told him the lawyer folded his hands on his desk and looked satisfied. He still hadn’t paid any attention to the “representative.” I wondered what cantina they’d dug him up out of.
I told Jack to ask when we could expect Norris’s release. Obregon looked at me and said, smiling so broadly that for the first time I noticed he had a gold tooth, “Queekly.”
I smiled back at him. I said, “Is that a Texas quickly or a Mexican
queekly
?”
Apparently he didn’t get it for he looked over at Jack and said,
“Cómo?”
Jack explained what I’d meant, though I reckon he did it a little more polite. Senor Obregon said, “Very queekly. En the
tarde?”
Jack said, “In the afternoon. That’ll be fast if it happens, Justa.”
I got up. “Okay,” I said. “Tell him we got a deal. We’ll be here with the money in the morning.”
We shook hands all around, formally, even the “representative,” though I was damned if I could see what part he played.
Once outside I asked Jack how much of the two thousand this Captain Davilla would see. “Not a hell of a lot,” Jack said. “Obregon will use some of it to grease the local magistrate and some for the chief of police and a little for the guards. The rest will go in his pocket. But that’s what you pay his kind for down here. They knows who to grease and how to do it. A gringo can’t operate down here like a real Mex. Don’t care how long he’s lived in the country.”
A little wind had blown up and the dust was swirling in the streets. I looked at the horses that were hitched along both sides of the streets. Mostly they were a poor, underfed-looking lot. So were a lot of the people. As we walked to the hotel I could feel eyes following us. Gringos were welcome down there as long as they brought money and left the biggest part of it.
Ben and Hayes received the news in good spirits. They were tired of Mexico and tired of worrying about Norris and just wanted to go home. I felt the same way, but I wasn’t going to do any celebrating until I saw Norris safely across the border.
That night I told the other three about the conversation I’d had with the
caballero,
Senor Elizandro. I asked Jack how far twenty kilometers was.
He said, “Oh, ’bout twelve miles, give or take a little.”
I said, “We might ought to do that fellow a good turn and get word back to his ranch that he’s in jail.”
Ben said, “Let’s get Norris out first.”
“I’m for that,” Hays said.
I said, “I meant after we see to Norris. I could give a peon a few bucks to carry word. Seems like a nice fellow. Told me Norris ought to keep his mouth shut.”
Ben laughed. “I want to see that day.”
We made an early breakfast and then sat around waiting for the bank to open, which it finally did around ten o’clock. I wasn’t too worried about the letter of credit. The night before we’d taken an inventory of what cash we all had and it had come to a little over $2100. So even if they hadn’t of cleared our letter of credit we would still have had enough for the payoff.
But it went all right. The only hitch was they didn’t have that many dollars on hand and insisted on giving us two thousand of it in pesos. Well, that wasn’t too bad although you lost a little on the exchange rate every time you swapped currencies. But considering the money we were already out for nothing it didn’t seem like much to worry about.
At eleven o’clock we were all in Senor Obregon’s outer office. This time he didn’t keep us waiting. To keep things from getting jammed up in the small office, I left Ben and Hays outside. Señor Obregon was at his desk, as was the representative of Captain Davilla. Obregon stood up as soon as we came in, as did the go-between. Obregon said, “Choo have the moneys?”