A Game for the Living

  There was no answer.

  “Lelia?” he called. “It’s Theodore. Let me in!”

  She did not open the door for a caller she did not want to see, but Theodore was not in this category. Sometimes she was deep in a book, and if it were he, or he and Ramón together, she might take two or three minutes to come to the door, knowing they would be patient.

  Theodore knocked more loudly. “Ramón?—It’s Theodore!”

  He tried the door, which was locked, and wished he had her key. He always carried it, but for some reason, perhaps to feel quite free of her for a while, he had taken it off his key chain before he left for Oaxaca. The transom was slightly open. Theodore reached up on tiptoe and pushed it still wider.

  “Lelia?” he called once more to the transom.

  Maybe she was visiting a neighbor or had gone out to make a telephone call. He set his suitcase flat against the door, put a foot on it, and gently pulled himself up. He stuck his head through the transom and looked to see what he might land on if he climbed through. The light from the bedroom was just enough to show that the red hassock was about two feet from the door. He listened for a moment to find out if any of the other tenants happened to be on the stairs, because he would have felt very silly to be seen crawling through Lelia’s transom, but he heard nothing except a radio somewhere. He put his hands on the dusty bottom rim of the transom, stuck his head through, and pushed up from the suitcase. Once the rim of the transom began to cut him across the waist, he debated whether to push himself back out again. The pain forced him to move, and he wriggled forward until his hands lay flat against the inside of the door, his heels touched the top of the transom, and the blood rushed alarmingly to his face. Desperately, he struggled to get his right knee through the transom. It was of no use. He aimed for the red hassock and came down in a slow dive, clung to the hassock, and crumpled to the floor.

  He stood up, dusting his hands, and glanced around happily at the familiar, spacious room with its ever-changing patterns of paintings and drawings on the wall, then unlocked the door and dragged his things in. He turned on the lamp at the foot of her couch. On Lelia’s long table lay a bunch of white carnations that should have been put into a vase. On the table stood a bottle of Bacardi also, his favorite spirit, and he thought perhaps Lelia had bought it especially for him. He walked down the short hall, past the kitchen, to the bedroom. She was here, asleep.

  “Lelia?”

  She was face-down in bed, and there was blood on the pillow, lots of it, in a red cirde around her black hair.

  “Lelia!” He sprang forward and pulled back the thin pink coverlet.

  Blood stained her white blouse, covered her right arm, where he saw a ghastly, deep furrow in the flesh. The wound was still wet. Gasping and trembling, Theodore took her gently by the shoulders and turned her, and then released her in horror. Her face had been mutilated.

  Theodore looked around the room. The carpet was kicked up at one corner. That was really the only sign of disorder. And the window was wide open, which was unlike Lelia. Theodore went to the window and looked out. The window gave on the patio, and from the patio there was not a thing anyone could have climbed up on, but from the roof, only one floor above, a drainpipe came down inches from the window jamb and stopped just above the top of the window of the floor below. Theodore had told Lelia a dozen times to have bars put on the window. All the other windows of the apartments on Lelia’s floor and the floor above had bars. It was too late now to think of bars. A moment later his mind sank into a shocked despair. He sat down on a straight chair and put his hands over his face.

  It came to him suddenly: Ramón had done it. Obviously! Ramón had a violent temper. He had stepped between Ramón and Lelia several times when Ramón had been about to strike her in some burst of petulant anger. They had got into another of their Latin quarrels about nothing, he thought, or Lelia had not been appreciative enough of some present he had brought her—No, it would have to be something worse than that, something so bad he could not imagine it now, but he felt sure Ramón had done it. Ramón also had a key. He could simply have used the door.

  “Ai-i-yai-i-i-i!” cried a falsetto voice from the hall, and at the same time there was a pounding on the door.

  Theodore ran to the door and yanked it open. Footsteps were running down the stairs, and Theodore plunged after them, reaching the ground floor as he heard the wooden door of the courtyard grate on the cement walk. He ran out to the sidewalk and looked in both directions. He saw only two men walking slowly in conversation across the street. Theodore looked around the dark patio. But he had heard the wooden door move. With a sense of futility and a feeling that he might be doing the wrong thing, he went back into the building and climbed the stairs. If it had been the murderer, even if it had been, it would have been useless to go running down the street after him, not even knowing in fact in which direction to run. And maybe it hadn’t been the murderer, just a hoodlum from the street, or from the party that he now realized was going on in an apartment on the next floor up from Lelia’s. But if it had been the murderer, and he had let him get away—

  Just inside Lelia’s door, he paused. He had to behave logically. First, tell the police. Second, stand guard in the apartment so that no one could destroy any fingerprints. Third, find Ramón and see that he paid with his life for what he had done.

  Theodore went out and closed the door, intending to go to a cantina he knew of a block away where there was a telephone, but going down the second flight of stairs he ran into the woman who lived in the apartment next to Lelia’s.

  “Well, Don Teodoro! Good evening!” the woman said. “Happy Fifth of—”

  “Do you know that Lelia’s dead?” Theodore blurted. “She’s been murdered! In her apartment!”

  “Aaaaaah!” the woman screamed, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Instantly two doors opened. Voices cried: “What is it?” “What happened?” “Who was murdered?”

  And Theodore found himself simply struggling to get back up the stairs he had come down, back into Lelia’s apartment, because her door was unlocked, and even now two men were running in.

  “Please!” Theodore yelled. “You must get out! You must not touch anything! There may be fingerprints!” But nothing was of any use until twelve or fifteen of them had peeked into the bedroom and screamed and run out again, covering their eyes in horror.

  “You’re like a bunch of children!” Theodore snorted in English.

  Sra. de Silva volunteered to telephone the police from her apartment, but before she went off she said to Theodore: “I heard something at about eleven o’clock, maybe a little earlier. This clatter on the roof. But I didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t hear any glass breaking.”

  “There wasn’t any glass broken,” Theodore said quickly. “What else did you hear?”

  “Nothing!” She stared at him with wide-open eyes. “I heard this clatter. Like somebody was trying to climb over the roof. Something on the roof, anyway. But I didn’t look out. I should have looked out, holy Mother of God!”

  “Did you hear any sound of struggle in the apartment?”

  “No. Maybe I did. I’m not sure. Yes, maybe I did!”

  “Go and call the police, if you please,” Theodore said to her. “I have to stay here to keep people out.”

  A murmuring crowd had gathered in the hall just outside the door, mostly boys from the street, Theodore thought. Some of them had been drinking. He closed the door as soon as he could persuade one of the young men to take his hands from the door’s edge.

  Then he sat down on the red hassock facing the door to wait for the police. He thought about Ramón, his Catholic soul trapped in his passion for Lelia. It preyed on Ramón’s conscience that he could not marry her and could not give her up either. Theodore had heard Ramón say at least twice in fits of remorse, or perhap
s in anger at some careless word of Lelia’s: “I swear if I don’t give her up from this minute, Teo, I’ll kill myself!” Or something like that. And between killing oneself and killing the object of one’s passion was not much difference, Theodore thought. Psychologically, they equated sometimes. Well, the beast had killed her instead of himself!

  CHAPTER TWO

  The police arrived with a moaning siren. They sounded like an army coming up the stairs, but there were only three of them, a short, paunchy officer of about fifty with a Sam Browne belt and a large gun on either hip, and two tall young policemen in light khaki uniforms. The fat officer pulled a gun and casually pointed it at Theodore.

  “Step over by the wall,” he said. Then he gestured to one of the policemen to cover Theodore while he went into the bedroom to see the body.

  The crowd from the hall was oozing into the room, staring and murmuring.

  One after the other, so that Theodore was constantly covered and stared at by two of them, the young policemen also went into the bedroom to look at Lelia. One of them whistled with astonishment. They came back staring at Theodore with shocked, stony faces.

  “Your name?” asked the officer, pulling paper and pencil out of his pocket. “Age? . . . Are you a citizen of Mexico?”

  “Yes. Naturalized,” Theodore replied.

  “Keep them out of there! Don’t let anyone touch anything in there!” the officer shouted to the policemen.

  The crowd were seeping into the bedroom.

  “Do you admit this crime?” asked the officer.

  “No! I’m the one who summoned you! I’m the one who found her!”

  “Occupation?”

  Theodore hesitated. “Painter.”

  The officer looked him up and down. Then he turned to a short, dark man whom Theodore had not noticed, though he stood in the forefront of the crowd. “Capitán Sauzas, would you like to continue?”

  The man stepped forward. He wore a dark hat and a dark, unbuttoned overcoat. A cigarette hung from his lips. He looked at Theodore with intelligent, impersonal brown eyes. “How do you happen to be here tonight?”

  “I came to see her,” Theodore said. “She is a friend of mine.”

  “At what time did you come?”

  “About half an hour ago. About one o’clock.”

  “And did she let you in?”

  “No!—There was a light. I knocked and there was no answer.” Theodore glanced at one of the revolvers, which moved a little and focused on him again. “I thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep—or that she had gone out to make a telephone call. So I crawled in through the transom. When I found her, I immediately went out to phone the police. I ran into Señora—Señora—”

  “Señora de Silva,” Sauzas supplied for him.

  “Yes,” Theodore said. “I told her and she said she would call the police for me.”

  The crowd in the room, which had ranged itself so as to be able to see Theodore and Sauzas at the same time, was listening with folded arms and blandly surprised faces, but Theodore had been in Mexico long enough to read apparently impassive expressions. The crowd was more than half convinced that he had done it. Theodore could see that also in the faces of the two young policemen who held their guns on him.

  “What was your relationship to the murdered woman?” Sauzas asked. He was not making notes.

  “A friend,” Theodore said, and heard a murmur of amusement from the people around him.

  “How long had you known her?”

  “Three years,” Theodore replied. “A little more.”

  “You are in the habit of visiting her at one in the morning?”

  Again the crowd tittered.

  Theodore stood a little taller. “I have often visited her late at night. She keeps late hours,” Theodore said, trying to ignore the smile and the mumblings, some of which he could hear. They were calling Lelia “una puta”, a whore.

  Then there was the matter of his suitcase. Was he moving in? No? What then? Why had he gone to Oaxaca? So he went to a friend’s house after he left the airport and before he came here. Could he prove that? Yes. Who was Carlos Hidalgo? And where did he live? Sauzas dispatched one of the policemen to find Carlos Hidalgo and bring him back.

  There was suddenly great confusion as two men in civilian clothes came in and loudly ordered the crowd to leave. The two men shoved some of the adolescent boys out the door. Señora de Silva protested against being put out and at Sauzas’ intercession was allowed to stay. Briefly and carelessly, Sauzas repeated Theodore’s story of how he had got in and ordered the two men to look for fingerprints in the bedroom.

  “I believe I know who killed her,” Theodore said to Sauzas.

  “Who?”

  “Ramón Otero. I do not know, but I have reasons to think it is possible.” Theodore’s voice shook in spite of the effort he was making to keep calm.

  “Do you know where we can find him?”

  “He lives in the Calle San Gregorio, thirty-seven. It is not far from here. Toward the Cathedral and the Zócalo.”

  “M-m. And his relationship to the murdered woman?” Sauzas asked, lighting another cigarette.

  “A friend also,” Theodore said.

  “I see. He is jealous of you?”

  “No, not at all. We are good friends. Except that I—I know Ramón is very emotional. He is even violent if he is angry. But I must tell you also that I heard somebody knock on the door and run down the stairs at about—two or three minutes after I got here. I ran to the door and tried to catch him, but he got away.”

  “What did he look like?” Sauzas asked.

  “I never saw him,” Theodore said, at the same time getting a mental picture of a boy in a soiled white shirt and trousers fleeing down the stairs, which was only because so many roughnecks who might have hammered in that manner on the door wore white shirts and trousers. “No, I did not see him, I am sorry. There was just an ‘ai-i’ cry, like that, and the knocking, and then he ran.”

  “M-m,” said Sauzas with faint interest. “However, you seem to think it was Ramón.”

  “Not the boy who yelled, no. But I think—yes, I think it is at least possible that Ramón did this.”

  “Do you know that Ramón was here tonight?”

  “No, I don’t know.” Theodore looked at Sra. de Silva. “Do you know if Ramón was here tonight?”

  Sra. de Silva raised her eyebrows and her hands. “Quién sabe?”

  “The fingerprints will tell,” Theodore said. He felt suddenly sure that Ramón’s fingerprints would be in the bedroom.

  “All right, let us try to find Ramón. Ramón Otero in the Calle San Gregorio thirty-seven,” Sauzas said to the remaining policeman.

  The policeman saluted and clattered down the stairs.

  “You were her friend,” said Sauzas, returning to Theodore. “You were not her lover, too?”

  “Well—yes. Sometimes.”

  “And Ramón? He was not her lover, too?—Come, come. Señora de Silva has said that you both were.”

  Theodore glanced at the woman. She must have done some very fast talking to Sauzas before they entered the room. Theodore was quite used to sharing Lelia with Ramón, had long ago grown used to it, but he was not used to speaking of it before people. “That is quite true.”

  “And there is no jealousy between you? You’re all good friends?”

  “That is correct,” Theodore replied, and returned the detective’s unbelieving stare with composure. Theodore understood. Almost every day the front pages of the city’s tabloids were covered with bloody photographs of mistresses and wives and sweethearts murdered by their husbands or lovers. Well, perhaps this was no different, except that the motivation had certainly not been jealousy.

  “What weapon did you use, Señor Schiebelhut?
” Sauzas asked. “Where is the knife?”

  Theodore shook his head wearily, but in the next instant became alert as Sauzas slapped his pockets and felt down the inside and outside of his thighs. He even pulled up Theodore’s trouser cuffs and looked in the top of his socks. Sauzas had a silver ring with a large skull and crossbones on it. Still without removing his cigarette, Sauzas said:

  “Señora de Silva saw you coming down the stairs in a great hurry. You were trying to get away from the scene, weren’t you?”

  “But—I’d just found her! I was on my way to a telephone!” Theodore looked at Señora de Silva, whose face seemed frozen now in a frightened suspension of belief or even of opinion. “You should be able to determine when she died. Why don’t you get a doctor to look at her?”

  “A doctor is coming. And I have seen her,” Sauzas said calmly. “I would say she has been dead between one hour and two. I have seen enough corpses.” Sauzas was walking about, looking at Lelia’s paint-stained table, at the white carnations, and at the bottle of rum, which had been uncorked and apparently unsampled, because the rum was high in the neck. “Did you bring these flowers?”

  “No” Theodore said. “They were here.” It was not like Ramón to bring flowers, he thought. Lelia must have bought them, and then for some reason had not put them into a vase. “You might take the fingerprints on the rum bottle. Lelia always buys it for me. Her fingerprints will be on it and maybe somebody else’s.”