A Game for the Living

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Salvador Infante tried to spit, unsuccessfully. He looked very pale, as if he were going to be sick. “Where’s the rum, Miguel? Hey, Miguel, the rum-m!” He was back in the cabin, groping over a bunk.

  “The rum! Seguro!” said Miguel, coming forward with his marlin-spike and a silly smile on his face. “Do the señores like rum?”

  Alejandro laughed, standing in his boat and lighting a cigarette.

  The boy emerged with a rum bottle, flourished it at them and lifted it, spilling rum on his nose before his mouth found the top of the bottle. Ramón snatched it from him and threw it overboard, and at once a roar of protest went up from Salvador and Miguel. Miguel went into the cabin, mumbling that he would find another bottle.

  “See the scratch on his hand, Ramón?” Theodore pointed at the hand the boy rested on the cabin roof. A pink welt with a darker line in its middle went from his wrist to his third finger. “My cat gave you that in Guanajuato, no es vero, Salvador?”

  Salvador stared at his hand foolishly and hung his head.

  Theodore seized his shirt front. “Listen! Whom did you sell the muffler to?”

  “Sell the muffler? It’s here,” said Miguel, gesturing at the cabin he had just come out of.

  “Where is it?” Theodore asked. “Show me.”

  Ramón grabbed at the bottle in Miguel’s hand, but Miguel pulled it indignantly out of his reach. “Stop your drinking and get him out of here! The policía is after him, don’t you know that?”

  “Hah, don’t I know that!” Miguel mocked, his thick red lips slavering. “This one here—” he indicated Alejandro—“he won’t tell the policía—because he’s making too much money out of us, verdad, ’Jandro? But there’s no more money! No more!”

  And Alejandro chuckled as if he were watching a show from a distance.

  “Show me the muffler, Miguel,” Theodore said.

  “Money!” Infante said in a suddenly loud voice. He picked up a fish-head from the deck and hurled it at Alejandro, missing him. “Clear out, you filthy blood-suckers!” He repeated the word: “Chupasangres! Chupasangres! Todos, todos chupasangres! You have sucked my blood! Pig!” he yelled at Miguel. who swung at him with the rum bottle.

  Ramón caught Miguel’s arm. “Let him alone!”

  “Ah, you damned fool, are you protecting that scum?” Alejandro put in, spitting into the water. He picked up his line and reached for the Pepita’s rail.

  “Can you take him away from here, Alejandro?” Ramón asked, but Alejandro paid no attention. He turned to Infante. “You don’t understand the police are going to accuse you of the murder of Lelia Ballesteros? I’ve come to help you, Salvador!” He shook Infante’s thin shoulder. “Understand, Salvador? But you have no time to waste!”

  Infante’s head hung listlessly to one side.

  “Oiga, hombre,” Alejandro said, pulling at Ramón’s arm. “You were one of the friends of that girl? Otero. Sure! Aren’t you the fellow who confessed?”

  “I confessed but nobody believes me. The policía doesn’t believe me!” Ramón said.

  “Are you loco?” Alejandro asked in wonderment. “Hey, didn’t they say you were crazy? Gimme some rum, Miguel.” He held his hand out for the bottle.

  “We’re all crazy,” Infante mumbled, his head hanging. “Todos locos, todos locos—”

  “Are you the man who paid ten thousand pesos for the muffler?” Alejandro asked, peering slyly at Ramón and passing a dirty hand over the top of the bottle.

  “No,” Ramón said, frowning. “What muffler?” he asked Infante. “Whose muffler is it, anyway?”

  Salvador Infante looked at him sideways and smiled. “I know.”

  “Where did you get it?” Theodore asked him.

  “From the apartment.”

  “Lelia’s apartment?” Theodore asked.

  “Sí!” Infante said, defiantly. “Sississi!”

  “Lelia’s apartment? You’re putting words in his mouth, Teo!” Ramón frowned.

  “You think he was not in her apartment, hombre? He was bragging about it! Come here, I want to show you something.” Alejandro pulled at Ramón’s arm, but Ramón shook him off and walked to the boy, who was moving towards the prow, keeping himself upright by the cabin roof.

  Theodore went after Infante. “Salvador! Did you also send the postcard from Florida?”

  “From Florida?” Infante smiled dreamily. “Sure. From Lelia. Hah! I had a friend send it. I told him it’s to a friend whose girl friend is with me.” He poked his chest with his thumb. “Lelia’s with me, I said, but she’s supposed to be in Florida!”

  “And the telephone calls, Salvador?” Theodore asked. “The silent calls?”

  Salvador Infante looked sleepily blank. “I don’t know them—don’t know them.”

  “I’d like to talk to him alone, Teo,” Ramón said.

  “Come with me, señor. Come! I’ll show you something.” Alejandro pulled at Theodore’s arm.

  “Did she let you into her apartment, Salvador? How did you get in?” Theodore asked.

  But Infante turned his face away, silent.

  Alejandro said in Theodore’s ear: “The door was open! He said he brought her flowers to get in, and when he got in—she was dead. Dead!” Alejandro’s dark face took on a faint excitement. “So he stole a few things and left,” he finished, throwing up his hands. “You don’t believe me yet, señor? Come in, I’ll show you. You want to see?”

  “Ramón!” Theodore called, then went after him.

  Ramón was talking to Infante, who was drunkenly telling him to shut up.

  “Come with me, Ramón,” Theodore said, taking Ramón’s arm. “Alejandro wants to show us something. Come!”

  “You have made him invent all that he said, Teo,” Ramón said threateningly.

  “Come into the cabin. Just for a minute.”

  Reluctantly, Ramón left the boy and came with him. Theodore headed Ramón first into the cabin. In the dim light, Theodore saw Alejandro crouched in the narrow space between two bunks, dragging out a small suitcase.

  “This stuff— Wait. Maybe you recognize it.” Alejandro threw out some wadded shirts. “This?” He held something up in the air.

  Theodore looked, and felt a quick, crushing pain in his chest.

  “That’s Lelia’s!” Ramón exclaimed. He touched it, as if to see if it were real.

  It was the obsidian necklace Theodore had taken to be repaired, the one she had worn so often that it was like looking at Lelia herself to see it—the polished oval pendant, the slender black segments with their fine gold links. Alejandro was dragging more things out of a pocket of the suitcase, and Theodore moved closer, stumbling past Ramón to touch the piece of red ribbon, the art-gum eraser, the couple of Venus pencils he knew had lain in the painted clay bowl on her bookcase. “And her keys, Ramón—her keys,” Theodore said. His fist closed over them. “Do you still think he didn’t get into her apartment?”

  “This?” Alejandro held up Ramón’s address book, spilling a few cards from it.

  But Ramón was looking at the necklace in his shaking hand.

  “And this? This is the muffler.” It hung down from Alejandro’s lifted hand, a pale blue muffler with crimson stripes that crossed to make large squares, a flashy muffler.

  Theodore did not think he had ever seen it before. He looked at both ends of it for a label or a cleaner’s mark, smelt it, but it smelt of nothing but wool. “Whose is it?”

  Alejandro only gave a shrug and a smile. “He found it in the apartment. And somebody paid.”

  What kind of man would wear such a muffler, Theodore wondered.

  Theodore heard a scream like a woman’s.

  He ran out of the cabin. Ramón was at the prow, standing over Infant
e, pummeling him with both fists, and Miguel was trying to pull him off. The boy writhed violently to escape, but Ramón lifted him and hurled him into the corner where the prow narrowed, and there was a crack like that of a breaking skull. Miguel had a grip with both hands on Ramón’s arm, and quite slowly, it seemed to Theodore, Ramón drew his arm back and then forward. There was a deep sound as Miguel plunged into the water, then the patter of droplets. Theodore stood with his fists stupidly clenched, the keys in one and the muffler in the other.

  Ramón looked at him wildly, panting.

  “Is he dead?” Theodore said.

  With that, Ramón whirled as if he were insane and made a snatching movement that tore the boy’s shirt off and jerked his limp body into the air. Ramón swung at him before he fell.

  “And this, señor? This?” Alejandro was yelling from the stern, and, turning, Theodore saw him holding up the large photograph of Lelia that had been in his diary, torn now and flapping in the breeze. “Linda mujer,” Alejandro commented.

  Theodore felt paralyzed and strangling. In the water he saw Miguel’s head emerge, and saw his face with a sad, reconciled expression tilt with his first stroke towards the boat. “Ramón, is he dead?” Theodore asked, because Ramón was bending over Infante as if listening for his heart. Then as he came closer, he saw that Ramón was looking at a thin silver cross. It lay on the boy’s smooth chest and shone in the sun like something white-hot.

  Ramón whimpered, his face in his hands.

  Theodore put his fingers over Infante’s heart, loathing to touch him. He thought he felt a heart-beat, but it may have been his own pulse. Infante’s bleeding mouth was drawn back from the teeth as if death had come with a convulsion. A smear of blood darkened the hair on his upper lip.

  The boy groaned.

  “Salvador, whose is the muffler?” Theodore asked. “Salvador—”

  “Teo, you were right,” Ramón gasped into his hands. “And now I have killed him!”

  “He’s not dead. Salvador—the muffler—who paid you for it?” He put his ear near the boy’s wet mouth.

  The lips were saying something about Dios, over and over. His eyes looked vacantly at the sky. His lips stopped moving.

  Alejandro bent over with his hands on his knees, looking at Infante. “Ugh! Un católico. Un espléndido católico!” He chuckled, stuck out a hand that looked incapable of feeling anything and held it against the chest below the cross. “Still alive. Madre de Dios, you can’t kill this kind!”

  Miguel stood dripping on the deck, blowing his nose out in his hand. “He’s dead?” he asked, swaying, catching his balance.

  “No. He’s alive,” Alejandro said.

  Miguel took a step towards the boy with a face full of drunken fury. “Dead or not, I don’t want him on my boat! I’ve had enough of him!” He caught Infante by the throat and banged his head, once and definitively, on the deck, in the practiced movement of a fisherman who has killed a thousand fish in the same manner.

  This happened in the time it took for Theodore to stand up and for Ramón to take his hands from his face. Then, as Theodore saw the figure lifted from the deck, he sprang forward and caught Miguel by the arm. “Stop it, man! What’re you trying to do?”

  Miguel swung out of Theodore’s reach, keeping his grip on the dungarees. The body hung like a rag. “This is my boat and I say who’re the passengers!” He made ready to heave him over, and Theodore hit Miguel in the jaw.

  Miguel staggered back and would have fallen overboard if Alejandro had not caught him. Alejandro laughed.

  Theodore turned the limp body over. More blood came from the head, giving a horrible red sheen to the black hair. He felt for pulses, for the heart. “Now he’s dead,” Theodore said. He looked up and saw Ramón’s terrified face looking at him.

  “Good,” Alejandro grunted.

  “Get him off my boat!” Miguel roared, coming at him.

  Theodore clapped his arm around Ramón’s shoulders, because Ramón looked as if he would let himself sway over the rail, or as if he were going to hurl himself over. One hand, like a stiff claw, Ramón held over his face. His sobs were like the sound of choking. “It couldn’t be helped, Ramón—couldn’t—” Theodore said stupidly, and looked just in time to see Miguel with an easy sideways swing hurl the dead boy overboard.

  There was a loud, messy splash.

  “Good riddance!” Alejandro said, and put a cigarette in his mouth. “He was a dirty fish!” He nodded affirmation of himself to Theodore.

  Of course it was good riddance, Theodore thought. Now Miguel would have all that was left of Infante’s money.

  “And all his junk—” Miguel muttered, going towards the stern.

  “The rum,” Theodore said to Alejandro. “If there’s any rum left—”

  Alejandro raised a grimy finger, smiled, and went to get it.

  “And this!” Miguel was yelling from the stern, flinging overboard a pair of trousers. “This—” An empty bottle followed the trousers. Miguel bumped his head hard on the cabin door’s lintel and cursed.

  “Not that!” Theodore said, running towards him. He caught Miguel’s wrist. “Give me that!”

  Miguel relaxed his hold on the pencils, the red ribbon, and with his other hand threw some clothes overboard.

  Ramón did not want any rum, he wanted water. Miguel had none, or at any rate refused to give Theodore any.

  “Off my boat, all of you!” Miguel shouted.

  “Is there water on your boat, Alejandro?” Theodore asked.

  Alejandro nodded that there was, and took the rum and drank.

  Theodore looked at the sea off the starboard and the prow, but the surface was smooth and empty. The sea rolled gently, as if nothing had occurred.

  “Disappeared!” said Alejandro, chuckling. “He sank!”

  “Can you take us back to Acapulco?” Theodore asked him.

  Alejandro squinted at him knowingly. “To shore, maybe. Acapulco, no. . . . Miguel, are you throwing away money?” He went to the stern and disappeared into the cabin, where Theodore heard him opening cabinets, dragging things about as he searched the last corner for a possible cache of pesos.

  Ramón’s hand was still over his face, his body upright and rigid, though Theodore gripped his arm as if he would fall if he did not. They talked at cross-purposes, Theodore of the water on Alejandro’s boat that he wanted Ramón to board, and Ramón of Lelia. Theodore did not try to hear what he said, because Ramón was talking to himself, or to her. Then Ramón took his hand down and jumped to the other boat. Theodore found some water in a large green glass bottle in the cabin. Ramón offered it first to Theodore, who declined. Then he knelt and washed his hands in the sea, and drank from the water that he poured into his palm. Theodore could hear Alejandro demanding money from Miguel, demanding two thousand pesos from the six thousand Infante had given him to hide him, or he would tell the police about all this; and at last Miguel grumblingly consented, and his grumbles grew fainter as he went into his cabin to get it.

  A moment later, Alejandro came aboard and untied them from the anchored Pepita. “Miguel!” he said to the man slouching against the cabin. “Miguel, adiós! Have a long sleep and we forget what happened today! Okay, Miguel?”

  Miguel nodded sleepily.

  And strangely, Theodore thought, they probably would forget what had happened today.

  The motor sputtered and caught. Alejandro swung the prow towards the shore, then turned a little left, murmuring something about a beach where he could put them off. There was something spry and cheerful in Alejandro’s manner now, and he never once met Theodore’s eyes with his own. Either murder had made him lively, or his primitive brain was going about its own process of forgetting, by seizing on its little business of running a boat.

  Ramón said: “You may tell me I didn
’t kill him, Teo, but it was only the last blow that I didn’t strike. He would have died from me.” He was on one knee, crouched beside the gunwale, staring down at the deck. “Revenge is not sweet, Teo. It’s as evil as the rest.”

  Theodore stood beside him, watching the shore for a spot where they might land. “Don’t think about it now.” He squeezed the rolled-up muffler in his hand.

  “I must—because that was how I thought I killed her—when I was beside myself, not even knowing what I was doing! I used to be afraid that I’d strike her like that when I was angry, you know, Teo—and wake up to find her dead. And that’s what I did with Infante—struck him until he was dead.”

  “He would have lived but for Miguel!” Theodore said forcefully, though he was not even thinking about what he said. He was wondering when Ramón would understand the significance of the muffler.

  Suddenly the memory of Lelia’s mutilated face came back to Theodore. He tried, but it was beyond his imagination that anyone could have done that. But, as Ramón was saying now, in a moment of anger anything was possible.

  “Alejandro!” Theodore called over the sound of the motor. He took two steps and was beside him. “This muffler—Do you know whom it belongs to? Didn’t Infante tell you?”

  Alejandro glanced at the muffler, then looked at Theodore, smiling. “I don’t know,” he said in a singing, jocular way.

  “I will pay you to tell me. What’ve you got to lose?” Then, as Alejandro hesitated, Theodore realized that Alejandro probably didn’t know, or he would have been glad to sell him the information, or he would have wanted to appropriate the muffler himself for blackmailing purposes. Theodore gave a sigh of fatigue and frustration.

  Alejandro’s brown shoulders shrugged. “That brat—Infante was always saying it was his most valuable possession. That’s all I know.”

  “And that’s all Miguel knows?”

  “Quién sabe?” Alejandro said indifferently.

  The police would have to question Miguel, Theodore thought. Sauzas. Only Sauzas should question Miguel, or they would get into a terrible mess over Infante’s death. Miguel would not be able to hide out now, assuming he even wanted to, with a boat. Or would he abandon his boat tonight or tomorrow, and disappear among the millions of other Mexicans who looked like him? And with how much enthusiasm would the Mexican policía look for him, anyway?