Chapter 9
"Por el amor de Dios, Ignacio, what more do you need?" Diego exclaimed, in a voice in which frustration vied with annoyance. "It all fits! I don't doubt your soldiers' testimonies, on the contrary! What they saw and heard perfectly complements Felipe's deposition!"
Saying that, he pointed his forefinger to a pile of handwritten pages lying on the alcalde's desk, and tapped them repeatedly with his finger, as if to strengthen his point.
"Too perfectly if you want my opinion, Diego. Which is indeed very troubling, don't you think?" the alcalde replied with an oily tone that did nothing but stir up Diego's anger. "Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit too perfectly..." he added.
"But of course it fits together, as that's what really happened!" Don Diego exclaimed.
"In the real world – and I speak from experience, Diego – things never fit that well together. There is always such and such small forgotten detail, overlooked or deliberately not mentioned, that leaves a small void, a discreet gap, a bit of play between the pieces. While here..."
De Soto paused and threw Diego a knowing look, almost accusingly.
"Here," he went on, "everything fits perfectly, too perfectly. As if..."
Another pause from de Soto. Another look aimed at Diego.
"…As if he'd been told the exact content of the patrol's testimony, and had been dictated a version of the story that could explain absolutely each and every point reported by my men. Without as much as a hitch, with great care given to continuity, to consistency between the two stories... You must admit that it's somewhat unsettling..."
"I don't like your insinuations at all, Ignacio," Diego said in an icy voice that slightly trembled with an anger he still managed to keep under control… for now.
He took a deep breath in order to calm down: physically assaulting an alcalde, even in a moment of anger, was never a good idea – at least unmasked – and wouldn't help his son in any way, quite the contrary.
And well, a fat lot of good that'd do to Felipe, having Diego getting himself locked up as well...
"In short, Señor Alcalde, you're keeping my son in jail and holding the charges against him on the ground that his account of the facts is entirely consistent with your soldiers' findings and report, is that right? You must admit this is quite a peculiar logic, to say the least..."
"Your son, did you say? So you're persisting in this eccentric idea of yours?"
Diego was about to retort when Soto then shrugged with an air of total indifference and brushed aside whatever he was about to answer back with a tad dismissive sweeping gesture.
"Bah," the alcalde said, "after all you're free to do as you wish."
De Soto couldn't have made it more blatant that he couldn't care less. An attitude that, in a way, got even more on Diego's nerves. No insult, no outwardly despising comment could have seemed more insulting in his eyes than this so clearly claimed indifference. But he champed at the bit and concentrated on Felipe's current predicament: this was what really mattered.
"In any case," de Soto went on, "and as I just told you, in the real world stories never match that well, they never complement each other that perfectly. So, as long as I am not convinced of your… servant's..."
He paused on this last word, as if to emphasise the small victory he had just gained over Diego about Felipe's current status.
"...innocence, he will remain in jail," de Soto finished. "It will take more than the word of a deaf-mute accused of assault on a defenseless woman for me to trust his good faith and leave him free to come and go, at the risk of endangering the other señoras and senoritas of this pueblo. These ladies' security is, I remind you, my responsibility, like that of all Los Angelinos, and I wouldn't shirk my duty towards them."
Diego was now clenching his fists and jaw, and he saw that there was nothing more he would get from de Soto for now.
"Basically, I need to find flaws in Felipe's account of the facts for you to consent to believe him..."
"In the absence of the victim's testimony, I cannot take a suspect at his word on the sole basis of his deposition, even set down on paper. There is no evidence either that he is telling the truth or that no one did 'lend him a helping hand' in writing it."
Diego narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, but managed to contain himself. However, he hastened to leave the alcalde's office, without bothering to say goodbye: there were limits to his patience – although it was very well trained and practised – and he preferred not to open his mouth now, for fear that he'd say something that would cause harm to Felipe's cause, and perhaps also his own...
z~z~z~z~z~z~z
Senorita Escalante's temper seemed to be quite short this very morning, as some of the tavern's patrons could note when they found themselves bearing the brunt of it. Yes, she was rather grumpy, for lack of sleep.
And a moody Victoria Escalante was never fun to deal with.
Diego de la Vega, for his part, wasn't in the brightest mood either, what with Felipe's situation casting a shadow on his spirits. And the conversation he had just had with the alcalde didn't do anything to dispel all these huge clouds currently darkening his usually even – and polished – temper.
The mood was therefore stormy on both parts when he entered the tavern, seeking some comfort from a conversation with the woman he secretly loved, before he'd go upstairs to the unknown patient's bedside and check on her condition. He was anxious for her to finally regain consciousness so that she can get Felipe out of the very tricky situation he was in. The alcalde had made very clear to him that it would be the surest – and maybe the only – way to exonerate his son. And to clear Felipe's name and restore his honour to everyone's eyes. To the eyes of all those who doubted…
At first, everything was going well: Victoria greeted Don Diego, he made himself push his dark thoughts at the back of his mind to answer her with a smile, and soon they were talking about the woman Diego had brought there the day before, who was still sleeping somewhere upstairs.
When Victoria stifled a yawn for the third time, Don Diego asked her:
"Are you alright? You seem a bit…"
"A bit what," she snapped.
Taken aback, Diego staggered a bit under the unexpected blow and didn't answer right away. Victoria went on:
"A bit tired, is that it? I'm looking drawn, is that what you mean? That I'm looking awful?"
"You… What? Diego stammered. NO! You never look awful, Victoria!
But she wasn't listening to him anymore and went on:
"Yes, I'm tired. Thanks to your stranger there," she said pointing a finger at the upper floor. "Because as I told you earlier, she had a rather restless night."
"Did she wake up?" Diego asked briskly, perking his head up.
"No," she answered in an annoyed voice, "otherwise that's the first thing I would have told you when you entered my tavern! No, she didn't wake up, but she's gotten into delirium. Loudly enough to shorten my night, by the way. So, I went to her bedside."
At that point of her account, an impatient patron called out to the landlady from the other side of the tavern:
"Señorita! I think you've forgotten my other jug!"
"Don't you see I'm in the middle of a conversation here?" she snapped at him. "Your jug is coming, but just hold on a minute!"
"Err…" Diego said tentatively, "If I might, Victoria, you run the risk of losing your clientele if you talk–"
"Oh but really, what do you know about clientele, Diego? Or about managing a tavern, for that matter?"
It was getting off to a bad start, Diego thought as he was himself quite annoyed by Victoria's tone getting on his nerves on top of everything else. It was starting off on the wrong foot, and most importantly it was starting off askew!
"I'm afraid we're wandering off, here, Victoria," Diego told her after he took a deep breath to calm down.
Victoria briefly closed her eyes and breathed in too, admitting that Diego had a point there.
"You're right, please forgive me," she sighed. "I'm afraid sleep deprivation doesn't agree with me…"
His usual patience being quite short today, Diego eagerly brought the conversation back to the subject that mattered to him:
"So you said she was delirious for a part of last night?"
"Yes. Shortening my own night, by the way. Whatever, at first it seemed incoherent: moans, some random interjections, these kinds of things–"
"Interjections?" Diego cut in. "Oh, so she was talking in her sleep?"
Visibly annoyed by his interruption, she failed to hide it.
"Yes," she answered a bit too strongly, "I mean, yes she spoke, but I'm not sure she was sleeping. I don't know… can hallucinating and being delirious be called 'sleeping', anyway?"
"Hallucinating?"
"Oh, Don Diego, it seemed to be horrible for her, poor thing… I think she was reliving… It must have been awful for her. In any case it was heart-rending, I was there, standing right next to her, there was nothing I could do for her, and she was writhing… and begging… one would have had to have a heart of stone not to… not to sympathise with her in… well, I'm not sure how to… in what she's been through!
Victoria seemed very flustered and she ended her sentence looking away, first to the side at a bunch of early regulars, then she lowered her head and stared at the tea towel she wash holding and twisting in her hands. Yes, she seemed troubled, but to Diego the most troubling was that she seemed not to want, not to dare look at him.
"Oh, and what, exactly?" he asked in a colder tone than he wanted to. "What, pray tell, has she been through, according to you?"
There was even in his voice a hint of warning tinged with thread, not unlike that Zorro used when addressing the alcalde for instance. But Victoria was feeling too awkward to note it, and also too annoyed with Diego: she was resenting him a little for trying to make her say aloud what she barely dared to acknowledge inwardly. She tried to dodge the issue, to kick into touch:
"Well, er…" she faltered, "I don't… er… I mean…"
She paused a moment, still not raising her eyes to her friend's face, like she was fascinated by her dishcloth that was now as twisted as if she wanted to wring it out. Then in a lowered voice, barely audible, she added:
"…y'know…"
There was no way she would have dared to look Diego in the face at this very instant. But if she had, she would have found him white-faced, pallid, nearly aghast. Disbelieving, too.
Then he stiffened, straightened up even more, pursed his lips and gritted his teeth, and in a voice colder and curter than anything she had ever heard from someone she liked, he replied:
"No I don't know."
Rallying her courage that had gone on the lam, she finally dared to raise her eyes to his face: she had never seen him that closed, that shut-down before. So foreign and different from the easy-going and affable Diego she had been rubbing shoulders with for many years.
Clenched-jawed. Stiff-shouldered. An attitude he demonstrated not even toward de Soto. To this point, at least. His antagonism toward the alcalde was always prudently contained; showed, granted, but not so… pronounced. Displayed
He went on, his tone and whole attitude still as chilly:
"And you don't know either, as you weren't there."
Victoria's short night caught up with her bad mood and her natural heated temper, and she perked up to her normal feisty self:
"And you weren't there last night," she accused him. "I was. I was there, right beside her. You haven't heard her cries. I have. You haven't heard her beg… You haven't–"
She stopped short when she finally took notice that a part of her customers were watching her and were intently listening to their discussion. She lowered her voice considerably, but her tone remained as firm as before when she told him barely above a whisper:
"You haven't heard her beg him not to touch her, to let go of her… Oh Don Diego, it was so… Well, I can't find the word, but even though I'd like to do as though I hadn't heard, try as I may I can't. I have heard. And it's impossible for me to forget that!
"And what, then?" Diego asked crisply. "Just on some words mumbled by a delirious stranger whose story you don't know, you no longer trust Felipe whom you've been knowing since he is a child? You take back the faith you had in him? Is this what your affection is like? Not you, Victoria…"
He paused, pursed his lips again, furrowed his brow, peered at her as if he could see through her, to the inmost depths of her being, then he went on:
"You blindly trust a masked man whose name, face, history, home, and even kind of life you know nothing about, to the point of giving him your faith; but at the first hearsay, at the first deceptive appearance you're willing to believe the worst about Felipe? Does one have to be sheer mystery to have your trust and faith? Can't you give them fully to a very real man, whom you've been knowing and seeing everyday for years?
Diego told her this in such an angry and reproachful tone of voice that it left her under the impression that in his eyes, it was as if she herself had double-locked Felipe's cell. That was quite a bit much to Victoria, who didn't like Diego's accusatory tone at all.
What? He dared try to make her look bad, while she had housed, tended, nursed and watched over the stranger Diego himself had brought her! While she gave up half her night at the bedside of a woman who wasn't anything to her, after all! Meanwhile, where was he last night? Quite simply cosily ensconced in his bed! That was rich, and she intended to make him aware of that.
"Well, I'll tell you what: tonight, you will watch over your stranger, and you will spend your night at her bedside, sitting on a mere chair! That will make quite a change from last night, that you probably spent like all other nights: snugly burrowed under your embroidered sheets, your head resting on a goose down pillow. After all, you don't have a job to carry out all day long on the day after; you can go to bed at dawn tomorrow, and also take a loooooong siesta!"
Diego seemed to take very badly what Victoria just threw in his face, and with a low voice quivering with rage he retorted:
"You know nothing whatsoever about my nights, Victoria; and if you imagine that I could sleep even one wink last night, then it only proves, if proof were still needed, just how little you know me."
He took a long breath, trying to calm the anger threatening to make him reveal things he would later regret having let slip out in a surge of frustrated rage.
"As little as you know Felipe, it seems," he added.
Under that blow, Victoria let out a long sigh, but she didn't recoil. Anyway, Don Diego seemed to be far too worked up right now to see reason, and she was also beginning to think that perhaps, she indeed didn't know him that well: never before had she seen him in such a state, and what's more, never before had he thrown such things in her face. Before this day, she had never really quarrelled with Diego de la Vega, and she was currently discovering how not pleasant it was. At all.
He wasn't pulling any punch.
After this short pause, she was about to retort sharply when she saw Diego reach for his jacket's inside pocket and take some handwritten sheets of paper out of it; he laid them on the counter and told her:
"If ever perchance you're still the slightest bit interested in truth, read this."
She glanced at the folded sheets and recognised the basic-quality paper she used here in her tavern, the one she had given Diego the day before.
"Felipe has set down on paper what happened yesterday morning," he told her. "I'd like to make clear, before you make the same accusations as the alcalde did, that he did so without me giving any indication as to what the soldiers said they heard and saw. He wrote it alone yesterday night, in duplicate, and I left one of the copies with the alcalde – not that it seemed to convince him in the least, incidentally, but well, you know de Soto… But you, Victoria… if a semblance of faith in Felipe remained in you, read this."
Victoria felt a bit shaken by Diego's absolute certainty but, still too angry with him and his accusations, she didn't let it show.
"And when exactly am I supposed to find the time to do that?" she retorted with a hint of bad faith. "My tavern begins to be quite overcrowded, my customers are getting impatient, and I am on my own to take care of it. Surprising though it might seem to you, some people have work to carry out!"
"Well, there's still siesta time," Diego pointed out through gritted teeth.
"I happen to already have something else planned for siesta time," she replied sharply.
"And what exactly?" Diego asked, suddenly anxious to know with whom she planned to make use of her free time.
"Well, siesta!" she snapped tit for tat. "Because, it might come as a surprise to you but under three hours a night I have some difficulties to fully function and get the daily work done."
Diego stared at her a while, seemingly preparing his next retort. Then he seemed to reconsider and glanced up, as though he wanted to see through the walls and ceiling to check on the wounded stranger who was resting in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Then he brought his attention back to Victoria.
"Still, find so much as five minutes of your time to take a look at this" he told her patting his son's prose with him palm. "I leave this copy with you, I'll get it back after siesta."
He then turned on his heels and climbed the stairs two by two before rushing into the stranger's bedroom.