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.He will get word to me.I told him it is urgent."Twenty-threeTHERE was no word from Barbara Castillo the rest of that day, or all day Saturday or Sunday.On Sunday evening when we came back to the hotel at nine, there was a note to come to her apartment.As she held the door open and we walked in, once again I was aware of the physical impact of her.She had all the presence of one of the great actresses, along with such vitality you could almost feel the electricity.It was like walking under the power lines that march across a countryside.In the field under the lines you can feel the hair lift on the nape of your neck and the backs of your hands.She wore white shorts and a red blouse, no jewelry at all.She was barefoot.I had noticed before that her hands and feet did not fit with the slenderness of the rest of her.They had a broad, sturdy look of strength and competence.She clasped her hand around my wrist.Her hand was quite cold and damp.She tugged me toward the couch.I sat beside her, and Meyer sat in the nearest chair."I know about him!" she said."Many many things.I showed Ramуn the photograph you let me take, and it is the same, but with a mustache now, and the hair much darker.""Who is Ramуn?""Oh, a nice shy little man, very broad and strong, very polite.He is Maya.One of the jefe's employees drove him in in a truck to tell me about the man he works for, Senor Hoffmann.He has worked for Senor Hoffmann for, he thinks, eight years.He went to work for him shortly after the big house was built, one year or maybe two afterwards.Remember I pointed out the road to Playa del Carmen, where we can go to Cozumel by passenger ferry or small airplane? To find Mr.Hoffmann, you go down almost to the water and turn left, to head back toward this direction.It is a public road and it goes for maybe a mile.At the end of it there is a big iron gate and a warning not to enter.Once you are through the gate, the driveway winds through some gardens and then comes to the house.It is a big house, with a beach in front of it and a lagoon beyond it, with a boathouse and garages and servants' rooms.Mr.Hoffmann is very rich, Ramуn says.But compared to Ramуn almost anybody would seem rich.I asked what kind of work Mr.Hoffmann does.Ramуn said that he often goes on business trips and stays for a long time.Many months.He is a residente.He has the proper documents.He speaks Spanish as good as any Mexican, and better than most Maya.There are six servants, including Ramуn.He has no woman, this Hoffmann.He does not have friends who visit him.He does not give parties.The only time he leaves his house and grounds is when he goes out in his boat to fish or into the jungle to hunt tigers.Or goes away on a trip.He has a big shortwave radio receiver and a big aerial.He listens to it a lot.Now he has a television set.Of course there is no station he can hear, but when he came back from the United States last year he brought American movies and a machine to play them over his television.Sometimes he lets the servants watch one.Oh, and he has an exercise room, with machines in it.""Did you say tigers?" Meyer asked."Tigers? Oh, yes.They are big tawny jungle cats.Wildcats or panthers.Do you know that men used to gather chicle in the jungle to make chewing gum? They tapped trees.The men who gathered the chicle were called chicleros.They shot the panthers.Then it became possible to make the juice in a laboratory.No more chicleros.The chicle trails are overgrown.The panthers are returning.They used to say the panther is the second most dangerous creature you can meet in the jungle.The most dangerous, of course, was the chiclero.They were wild rough men.So he fishes and hunts and stays by himself.""What about William Doyle?" I asked.She put her cool hand back on my wrist and tightened her grasp.She looked down and spoke so softly Meyer leaned forward to hear her."On that day William dropped me off, Ramуn said a man came in a small gray automobile.I showed him a picture of Willy.Ramуn said possibly it was the same man, but he could not tell, they all look so much alike to him.They went out fishing in the boat.Usually a servant named Perez went along when Hoffmann fished, but he did not go that day.When the boat came back, Hoffmann was alone.He said he had let his visitor ashore at the house of a friend, and he would come back for his car later on.And in the morning, the gray car was gone.""I'm sorry."She lifted her head to look at Meyer."You were right.William must have known somehow, maybe by accident, that Hoffman and Evan Lawrence were one and the same.It was not healthy to know that.William thought he was a friend.""Hoffman seems to have all the conveniences," I said."Oh, yes.Ramуn says they have a good well, which is very unusual in this part of Yucatan.And there are two big generators which came in long ago by ship, and tanks which hold many gallons of diesel fuel.Thousands, Ramуn said.But it is probably hundreds.Also there is a tank and a pump for the gasoline for the car and the boat.With our little car, all he had to do was take it out onto the highway and find a place to run it off the road into the jungle.The village people would soon take everything from it.What was left will rust away very quickly.He could walk back by night, ducking out of sight when traffic came.It is no problem for him.I loved the little car.It was like a fat friendly little dog.It tried hard but it could not run very fast.""Does Ramуn understand he is employed by a bad man?""He does not want to think that.But it doesn't matter what he thinks.He will do whatever his people tell him is necessary.""The others too?""If they are all Maya.And if we ask them, through the jefe.""If he goes hunting he has guns there," I said."I forgot.Many many guns.And there are burglar alarms, Ramуn said.No one can approach the house at night, or come in the lagoon in a boat.A loud siren sounds.The children of the servants have set it off by accident, and they have been very frightened.""And he is there now," Meyer said."Yes, of course.Ramуn thinks it will be a long time before he goes away on a trip.Perhaps not until next year, not until the spring.Then he will probably leave from Cozumel, Ramуn said.That is where he departs.Once a week Ramуn comes to Cancun to look for mail in the box.Some years there are no letters for Don Roberto.Some years one or two."She released my wrist.We sat there with our separate thoughts.We were together, but alone in our minds.Meyer stood up and paced and came back to stand facing us, looking down."One aspect of this keeps bothering me," he said."And it goes right back to the beginning, back to Coralita.We have no proof of anything that happened that night.All we have is a commonly accepted hypothesis which has never been checked out with anyone who was there at the time.""What are you talking about?" I asked him."There is a very wise British astronomer, Raymond Lyttleton, who has said that one must regard any hypothesis as though it were a bead which you can slide along a piece of wire.One end of the wire is marked 'zero,' for falsehood, and the other end is marked 'one,' for truth.One must never let the bead get to the absolute end of the wire, to either end, or it will fall off into irrationality.Move the bead along the wire this way and that, in accordance with inductive and deductive reasoning.""Okay, where is your bead, Meyer?""One position of the bead is where Cody Pittler got out of bed and got his father's target pistol and shot Coralita in the back of the skull and waited to ambush his father.Then the struggle and the flight.That presupposes a murderous mind from the beginning, well concealed, awaiting any outlet.Another position adds an additional person to the mix, a young male friend of Cody's caught servicing the insatiable Coralita [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]