Drumbeat Madrid Read online

  My tail got up as I turned away from the reception desk. I still wasn’t sure about him. I walked over to him quickly, and he turned away just as quickly. He was a tall crewcut guy in his late twenties, not as beefy as MacNeil Hollister but poured from the same general mold. I began to see the head waiter’s problem.

  I tapped the crewcut’s shoulder. His head jerked in my direction. “Let’s go get a drink,” I suggested.

  He fell into step with me without a word, and we walked into the American bar at the other end of the lobby.

  “San Miguel,” I told the bartender. “Yours?”

  “The same. I was hoping you’d have a couple of minutes, mister. But I don’t see how you figured that out.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “My sister. I saw you showing a snapshot of her to the maître d’.”

  “I guess that makes you Ray Moyers,” I said, remembering Luz’s other brother Ramón, the one who’d been raised in the States.

  “That’s what it says on my ID card,” he admitted. “What does it say on yours?”

  I showed him the photostat of my license.

  “That gives you the right to play cops and robbers in Washington,” he said, leaning his jaw in my direction. “So what?”

  “Try this one,” I said, showing him Sotomayor’s letter.

  He barely looked at it. “Hell, don’t mind me. I’m upset. I had the idea it was going to be different. Big family reunion,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t seen my sister since I was transferred out of the American Embassy in Caracas. I only met my brother José once or twice here in Spain. This is kind of a let-down. Putting it mildly.”

  “What is?”

  “Neil Hollister gave me a ring yesterday. At Zaragoza. I’m stationed there, same as him. He said Luz was missing. Kidnaped. Neil’s holding down the fort at the ranch. I got a pass from my C.O. and flew up here to see what I could find out. Did you have any luck with the maître d’?”

  “She left the terrace Tuesday afternoon with a guy who could have been MacNeil Hollister.”

  “That’s crazy. Neil wouldn’t have gone near her under the circumstances. Despite all his bluster he’s a basically shy type.”

  “He was at your uncle’s party. He’s coming to the wedding, isn’t he?”

  “That’s different. I’m telling you it couldn’t have been Neil.”

  “All right. What about you?”

  He didn’t get it at first, and then he did. His jaws clamped shut and his face darkened. He banged his glass down hard on the bar.

  “You take some chances, mister,” he said slowly. “I came damn near to poking you one. Asking me if I was the guy they saw with Luz is the same as calling me a liar. I told you her kidnaping was a hell of a shock to me.”

  “You could have seen her before she was kidnaped.”

  “I told you I didn’t. Are you calling me a liar or aren’t you?” He had raised his voice. The bartender looked at us uneasily.

  “Cool off,” I said. “You’re right: we’re both after the same thing. Could be we can help each other.”

  He said, very slowly, “I want to know, are you calling me a liar?”

  I remembered Axel Spade’s impression of Hollister: a pugnacious kid all dressed up in a soldier suit. Ray Moyers, though wearing mufti, was the same. Maybe the army did that to them. Or maybe it took an overgrown kid to decide on a career in uniform.

  “For that matter it could have been me,” I said. For the second time Moyers was slow on the uptake. Then he looked me over and got it and smiled grudgingly. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Don’t mind me. I’m all hot and bothered by this business. Shake?”

  He shook hands solemnly, like a kid making up after a schoolyard row.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “I throw some more questions and hope you don’t decide to poke me one after all.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” he assured me, but added truculently, “What kind of questions?”

  “About your family.”

  “My family. I guess you’d call them that, even if I hardly know them. Except for Luz.” Warmth invaded his voice at the mention of her name.

  “Let’s start with the one you know best then.”

  “The first time I laid eyes on Luz since she was a kid was in Caracas. I got assigned to the Embassy there as assistant military affairs officer. Neil Hollister was my chief. I took to Luz right away.”

  He had a way of speaking about her more as if she were a girlfriend than a sister. I decided that wasn’t so strange. They hadn’t really met until they were both adults.

  “Was it your idea to go down there?”

  “I had the opportunity and didn’t pass it up. I was curious about my sister. Wouldn’t you have been?”

  I admitted that I would have been.

  “She was gracious right from the start. A real lady, warm and considerate and all. Not that she didn’t have other things going for her. Luz is gorgeous. But I don’t have to tell you that. You saw her picture.”

  “I gather Hollister thought so too.”

  “For a while there in Caracas I thought they were going to get married. In a crazy way I guess I was a little jealous of Neil. If I ever get around to marriage, I’d go looking for a girl just like Luz.” His words jolted him to a realization of why we were here. “If they hurt her in any way I swear to Christ I’ll kill them. I swear I will.”

  “What happened between Hollister and Luz?”

  “Their relationship hardly had a chance to get off the ground before he was transferred. Then this older type came along wining and dining her, and pretty soon they got engaged.”

  “Axel Spade?”

  “That’s the guy. You know him?”

  “He’s my client,” I said.

  Moyers seemed less than delighted to learn who my client was. “That makes this hard,” he said. “I’ve got some ideas on the subject of Mr. Axel Spade.”

  “What kind of ideas?”

  “Better forget it.”

  “My job is to find Luz,” I said. “Who hired me doesn’t matter. You saw your uncle’s letter.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. I gave him a minute to wrestle with his conscience. He drained his beer and said, “Okay, here goes. I got the idea Spade wanted to marry Luz for the money.”

  “Then you don’t know Spade. He’s loaded. He could probably buy and sell the old Captain General himself.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it,” Moyers insisted. “Did you ever get on the subject of money with Axel Spade?” he went on with unexpected insight. “I mean, it isn’t what the money can buy. It’s an end in itself as far as Spade is concerned. He feels about money the way other men feel about—well, a pretty dame.”

  “Not just any old money,” I said. “It has to be in the nature of a financial coup to hold Spade’s interest. Then look out.”

  Moyers laughed harshly. “You didn’t think I was talking about Luz’s dowry, did you? I meant the family treasure.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper when he said that. He looked around melodramatically, as though afraid we were being spied on. The barstools to his left and my right were unoccupied. He relaxed.

  “The family what?” I said.

  “Forget it. I ought to learn to keep my big mouth shut.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s the way to help me find Luz.”

  “Mister, I don’t know one damn thing about you except you have a letter from my uncle.”

  “Do you know how much Luz means to your uncle?”

  “According to José,” she means the world to him. But that could be an act. He sure as hell scattered us to the winds when he had the chance. José got raised in boarding schools here on the Continent, Luz and my mother were packed off to Venezuela, and I could barely remember any family but the Moyers or any home but Baltimore.”

  “What do you know,” I said. “That’s where I grew up.”

  We swapped stories o
f growing up in Baltimore for a while. Moyers seemed to draw some satisfaction from the fact that he had grown up on the right side of the tracks. I hadn’t.

  “Don’t be so hard on Sotomayor,” I said. “He was probably concerned you’d all be given a rough time because your father chose the wrong side in the Civil War.”

  “Then why didn’t he send José away too? There wasn’t any reason he had to scatter us the way he did, except the treasure.” Moyers’ voice dropped again and his eyes widened.

  “What are you trying to say?” I urged.

  “I’m trying to say my mother knew about it if anyone did. But she never got over my father’s death. She spent most of the time till she died in a nursing home in Caracas. If she confided in anyone, it would have been Luz. She had no contact at all with me or José. My uncle knows that. Spade knows it too. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “You mean someone might have abducted Luz to learn what she knew about the treasure?”

  “It figures, doesn’t it?”

  “It lets Spade off the hook anyway, and your uncle. Spade’s going to marry Luz. Kidnaping her beforehand would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it? The same goes for your uncle. I got the impression Luz was as eager to see him as he was to see her.”

  “Where’d you get that crazy idea from?”

  “She came to Spain, didn’t she?”

  Somewhere in the last few minutes I had lost what little of Moyers’ confidence I’d managed to win. I wasn’t sure where. He said angrily, “Ah, you don’t understand a damn thing. I’m wasting my time with you. She came to Spain to find the treasure.” Again his voice lowered. Again his eyes got that wild look.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “The treasure.”

  He went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “I’m wasting my time in Madrid too. Pamplona’s where I ought to be. I got to see a couple of guys about a kidnaping.”

  He rose, turned his back and strode off. I called his name, but he marched away in quick time, head high and shoulders back, like a field officer leading his company on parade.

  FIVE

  In Spain the word for a long-distance phone call is conferencia. I have known otherwise brave and adventurous men who quaked at the idea of attempting one. I have known busy types, captains of industry whose time is doled out in precious minutes, who would far sooner fly or even drive clear across Spain to a meeting rather than watch the hours limp by while a conferencia gets itself lost in the labyrinth of the Spanish telephone system. But I was lucky. I had the telephone girl at the bar put a call through to the Sotomayor ranch in Navarre, and five minutes later I was speaking to Axel Spade. The connection was excellent. Even the phone circuits seemed to realize they were dealing with a Ritz hotel.

  “I met Ray Moyers,” I said. “He’s looking for Luz too. He’s got a bug in his ear about some kind of family treasure.”

  “I know,” Axel Spade said. “It’s almost the only thing he talks about, not counting Luz.”

  “Anything to it?”

  “That depends on what you mean,” Spade said, hedging. “Luz’s father was one of the richest men in Spain. Nobody knows what happened to his fortune, and if the government confiscated it they aren’t saying.”

  “Did Luz ever mention it?”

  “She was very young when she left Spain.”

  I waited. He said nothing else. I said, “She was very young when her father died too. I know that. You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Luz, as you put it,” Spade said reluctantly, “has a bug in her ear, too. She believes that shortly before his betrayal and death her father converted the family fortune into something, such as diamonds or other precious stones, that could be hidden indefinitely and wouldn’t lose its value.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Something in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars,” Spade said. He said it calmly. He was a man used to dealing with such figures. I wasn’t. I whistled.

  “Do you think there’s any truth to the story?”

  “Yes and no. Naturally Hernando Sotomayor would have attempted to keep his money out of the hands of his political enemies. The most common method, during the Civil War, was to send it to Russia for safekeeping.”

  “Some safekeeping,” I said.

  Spade chuckled. “The Russians never returned a peseta of it to anyone, of course. Their take included, among other things, the entire gold reserve of the Loyalist treasury. It’s a figure that even impresses jaded old international wheeler-dealers like me—three quarters of a billion dollars in gold.”

  My whistle was off-key this time.

  “Bear in mind that Hernando Sotomayor was the last Minister of Finance the Loyalist government had.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It isn’t common knowledge. In the last days of the war the Loyalists had two cabinets. One consisted of politicians whose names everyone knew. They were the fall guys at the end of the war. But the members of the behind-the-scenes cabinet, it was hoped, could escape retribution and even continue fighting the new government as an underground shadow cabinet. I don’t know what happened to most of them. They’d be old men by now, or they’d have died natural deaths. But Hernando Sotomayor wasn’t one of the lucky ones. He got betrayed by his brother and was executed.”

  “Moyers seems to think Luz was kidnaped because she’s the only living member of the family who knows what happened to her father’s twenty million bucks,” I said.

  “That’s ridiculous. She doesn’t know, she wants to find out.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  Spade didn’t answer me right away. Then he said, “I’ll admit to a certain amount of academic interest in the situation.”

  “Stop being cagey. I’m working for you, remember?”

  Spade sighed. “Twenty million dollars, converted to diamonds and other precious stones, hidden in some inaccessible place—that doesn’t interest me at all. But the possibility of a connection between Hernando Sotomayor’s fortune and the gold reserve of the Loyalist treasury—that does.”

  “It might interest the Spanish government too,” I said dryly.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “If Luz has knowledge of her father’s final official acts as behind-the-scenes finance minister, or if there’s a tie-in between his missing dough and the Loyalist gold reserve, Franco’s boys might be just a wee bit interested. This is a police state, after all. It could have been a government snatch.”

  “But the ransom note—”

  “A cover. Or maybe somebody out at the ranch who had nothing to do with the kidnaping saw a chance to pick up fifty thousand dollars and then chickened out because the Guardia was all over the place.”

  “My God,” said Spade.

  “I’m not trying to say that’s the way it happened, but it’s something we’ll have to consider. You sure there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

  Spade said he was sure. He sounded shocked by what I had suggested, and his own reaction must have bothered him almost as much as the possibility of a government snatch. Axel Spade was a guy who always liked to show himself on top of any situation, no matter what. He said, with an attempt at levity that almost came off, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch there have been some changes.”

  “Such as what?”

  “For one thing, the Guardia is being evacuated. For another, José and his uncle had a showdown of sorts. The boy flew back to Madrid shortly after you left.”

  “He didn’t like being Sotomayor’s fall guy?”

  “Something like that, I imagine. He has more spunk than I realized.”

  “With Sotomayor for an uncle and guardian he needs it.”

  José Sotomayor owned a penthouse duplex in a big new building on the Plaza de España. Just around the square from and several stories higher than the Edificio Español, it was the tallest building and the only real skyscraper in Madrid. I’d been steered to it by the maître d’ at the Ritz. José kept
an open account at the bar and was billed at that address.

  The conserje in the lobby wore a black, white and gold outfit that would have made a marine’s full dress uniform look like a pair of fatigues after a month on bivouac. He gave me a slow and scornful once-over. My seersucker suit was a little rumpled, but nobody had tried to show me to the nearest exit at the Ritz. He phoned upstairs to say that an emissary from Don Santiago, an American named Drum, had come calling. He wondered if I had my passport. I had it and showed it to him. He logged me in in a guest book. The time was six-thirty-seven. He had me sign the guest book, studying my hand as I did so. Maybe he was looking for dirt under my fingernails.

  “You may go up now,” he said in English.

  “Don’t I get mugged and printed first?”

  He smirked and lifted a languid hand. It wasn’t much of a gesture, but it summoned a doll out of nowhere. She was costumed like an airline stewardess in the team colors of black, white and gold. She gave me a ravishing smile and led me in a pleasant tail-wagging walk across several dozen yards of knee-high carpeting to a bank of elevators. The one on the far left opened just as we reached it.

  “What floor?” I asked.

  “It is a private elevator, señor,” she said, and backed away into nowhere as the door whispered shut between us. I figured she had accomplished her mission for the afternoon.

  The elevator was one of those quick jobs that leaves your stomach a few floors below. The walls were lined with black and white velvet, and there was a gold velvet-covered bench in back in case the trip became tiring. There was no operator, no control panel and nothing to indicate it was an elevator except that feeling in your stomach.

  The penthouse hall was lined on both sides with pop art, Spanish Warhols and Rauschenbergs showing platoons of Vita tomato juice cans, Fundador brandy and Omo soap boxes. A single bullfight poster between the elevator and the fire stairs looked like a Goya by comparison.