Free A Game for the Living by Patricia Highsmith

then he hung up. It was five past four. Theodore regretted that he had waited this long. Guilty or not, Ramón was entitled to the services of a good lawyer.
    The telephone rang two or three times in the next hour. One call was from Antonio Cortés, a neighbor of Theodore’s in Cuernavaca, another from Mabel Van Blarcom in Coyoacán, a suburb of the city. The third was from Elissa Straeter, an unmarried American woman whom Theodore saw now and then at parties and whom he did not like. They all asked the same questions: was he all right; was there anything they could do; and would he like to visit them? Theodore was very fond of Mabel Van Blarcom and her Dutch husband, but he did not care to visit anybody now. Elissa, who was often drunk but did not sound drunk now, told him, in her invariably calm, polite tone, of a party scheduled for 4th March, during Carnival week, in Pedregal, an exclusive residential district just north of the city.
    â€œI can imagine you can’t think about a party now,” Elissa said in a sympathetic drone, “but maybe by the time a month rolls around—it’s Johnny Doolittle’s party, and he told me to ask anyone I wished, which doesn’t mean of course that you have to escort me, but we’d all love to see you there. I would.”
    Theodore thanked her and said he would remember and try to come.
    He went downstairs and mixed a strong whisky and water with an intention of drinking it and trying to sleep again, but he felt no nearer sleep after he had finished it, and he picked up the telephone and called the prison.
    â€œMay I speak to Capitán Sauzas?” he asked.
    Much clicking and interference on the line. He could hear both ends of a conversation concerning the presence of bicycles in an area reserved for traffic officers’ motorcycles. One of the men was very angry with the other.
    â€œCapitán Sauzas is not here,” the voice said finally.
    He was probably sleeping, Theodore thought. “May I speak to Ramón Otero?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œRamón Otero. O-t-e-r-o. He is being held there for questioning in the Ballesteros—the Ballesteros murder,” Theodore stammered nervously, knowing already that it was hopeless.
    â€œPrisoners are not allowed the use of the telephone, señor,” said the man with a smile in his voice.
    â€œCan you tell me what is happening to him? I’ll be very glad to wait while you find out.”
    â€œNo, señor, we cannot give out that information.”
    Theodore looked up his lawyer’s home telephone number—it was nearly seven now—and called it. Sr. Martinez assured him that the lawyer he had found had gone at once to the prison, but he had not heard from him since. Theodore got the office and home telephone numbers of the criminal lawyer, a Sr. Pablo Castilo Z., and called them both, but neither the office, which did not answer, nor his home, where a maid answered, gave him any information.
    Theodore opened a can of fish for Leo, fed him in the kitchen, then went to bed. He felt too tired to sleep, and there was something nightmarish about the light in the room with the blinds drawn against the slow dusk. His body felt too heavy to move, yet his brain spun lightly round and round, coming to grips with nothing.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Sr. Castillo Z. telephoned at nine-fifteen the next morning and woke Theodore up.
    â€œWell,” he said on a note of triumph, “your friend is released. They questioned him all night. I haven’t even been to bed yet. But he is free.”
    â€œThen they think he’s innocent?”
    â€œWhy, yes. So do I. The evidence is not enough—”
    â€œThey proved what time he went to his own house after dinner?”
    â€œNo—not exactly. But what they have is sufficient to show that Ramón Otero did not do it. Señor Otero thinks he was home by ten-thirty. Now the doctor does not think she was killed before