Free Home is the Sailor by Day Keene Page B

foot of the cliff and shuddered. The rocks and the waves had done plenty to Wolkowysk by now. I was foolish to worry about fingerprints. When the ocean got through with the Buick, there wouldn’t even be any wheel.
    Corliss deliberately looked away as we passed the bar.
    I began to sweat again. Wolkowysk had been missed by now. If he owned the bar, his employees were beginning to ask questions. If he had been an employee, his employer was beginning to wonder where he was.
    I asked Corliss if Wolkowysk had been married.
    She almost screamed the words, repressed hysteria bubbling in her. “Can’t we forget about Wolkowysk?”
    I said, “I wish we could.”
    We ate in San Diego at the best hotel, then drove south through the night, under the stars, with the windows up and the heater on and the smell of her filling the car. On my way to be married or not, I drove with only one thing on my mind, acutely conscious of Corliss, memory incubating the butterflies in my stomach. Maybe the respect and trust and other things would come later. Right now I wanted her.
    We had no trouble at the barrier. We were one of a hundred cars, possibly two hundred, filled with tourists, cheaters, gamblers. Down for the evening or a long weekend. Come to Mexico to buy a pair of huaraches for Aunt Bessie in Sioux Falls, to gamble, to grow horns on some trusting husband or wife who thought they were at a P.T.A. convention or a meeting of the Loyal Order of Moose.
    The Mexican license bureau was closed. I’d expected that. There was a bar on the main drag with a faded sign that proclaimed it to be the longest bar in the world. I parked Corliss at a table and bought her a rum Collins to work on. Then I brushed off my rusty Spanish and buttonholed the first cop I met on the street.
    “Puede recomendarme un abogado... que... comprende inglés?” I asked him.
    The policeman nodded. “Yeah. Sure thing, mate.” He pointed across the street to a lighted second-floor window. “Right over there. José Sánchez Avarillo. José is a graduate of Stanford and he speaks perfect English. Tell him that Nick sent you.”
    I walked across the street and up a flight of stairs. Avarillo was young, good-looking, smooth. He looked like the kind of lawyer I wanted, one who knew all the local angles.
    We gave each other the “Buenas noches, señor” routine. Then I counted ten ten-dollar bills on his desk. “For you, señor.”
    Avarillo eyed the bills. “Si, señor. What can I do for you?”
    I said, “I want a marriage license.”
    “Si?”
    “For one Mrs. John Mason, a widow, and Swen Nelson, single,” I picked one of the pencils from his desk and wrote the names on a pad. “Plus a priest or a judge or a justice of the peace. It doesn’t matter, as long as whoever you get is legally empowered to marry us.”
    Avarillo studied the names. “This must be done tonight, señor?”
    I gave it back to him in Spanish. “Hoy.”
    He counted the bills and put them in his vest pocket. “It shall be as you wish, Señor Nelson.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “But, as you must realize, it is long after hours for such matters. I shall be obliged to contact the license clerk at his casa. Also the custodian of the courthouse. Then there is the judge.” His smile was bland. “So, while you have paid me my fee,” he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, “there will be other minor expenses. Shall we say another hundred dollars?”
    This after he had my money in his pocket. I named him. “You sonofabitch.”
    Avarillo continued to smile. “Be that as it may. Would you disappoint the lovely señora, señor ? And I am certain she is lovely.”
    There was nothing I could do but go along. He knew it. I counted another hundred dollars on his desk.
    Avarillo put it with the other bills. “Muchisimas gracias, señor. If you and Mrs. Mason will return to this office in half an hour, both the license you request and a qualified judge will be waiting.”
    I