Message From Malaga Read Free

well brushed and washed, either as a compliment to El Fenicio or as a matter of self-respect. The contrast between them and a group of four young men who had just arrived in bedraggled shirts and stained trousers was so marked that the newcomers might just as well have entered shrieking.
    “All dressed for a hard day’s work in the fields,” Reid said, and looked away from the group. They were being led to the last free table in a back corner, and didn’t think much of it. Their protest didn’t have much effect on Esteban: take it or leave it, his impassive stare said; preferably leave it. “They’d have to be American,” Reid added with a touch of bitterness, as he listened to their voices. “Just hope those two tables of dockworkers down front don’t decide to move back and have some fun. They’re allergic to people who make a mockery out of poverty. That’s how they see the fancy dress. If these kids were poor and starving, they’d give them sympathy, even help. But the poor don’t travel abroad; the poor can’t afford cafés and night clubs; the poor don’t have cheques from home in their pockets.”
    “Kids?” Ferrier asked with a grin. The one with the beard might be in his teens, but two others—one white, one black—were certainly in their twenties; and the fourth, who wore his dark glasses even in moonlight, might be closer to thirty. “You know, I think I’ve seen one of them before.” Thin beard, young unhappy face, drooped shoulders and all. But where? Today... Not in Granada. Here in Málaga, when I was driving around searching for numbers on a street: Reid’s street, in fact. Almost at Reid’s gate, that’s where I saw him. “No importance,” he said. “He was just like me—another lost American.” But he’s still lost, Ferrier thought, lost in all directions. Then, his attention was switched away from the back-corner table to the doorway beside him. Another guitarist had emerged to make his way slowly to the stage. He was followed by a white-faced man, middle-aged, plump, whose frilled shirt was cut low at the collar to free the heavy columns of his neck. The singer, of course. A young man came next, one of the dancers, tall and thin, with elegantly tight trousers over high-heeled boots and a jacket cut short. He disdained the three rough steps that led up to the stage, but mounted it in one light leap without even a footfall sounding. Control and grace, admitted Ferrier, but how the hell does he manage to look like a real man even with a twenty-inch waist? Strange ways we have of making a living. My own included. Who among all these Spaniards would guess what I do? And here I am, the most computerised man among them, yet less formal than most of them in dress and certainly less controlled. No one else was showing any impatience. The two guitarists had started a low duet, a private test of improvisation between them; the dancer, standing behind them along with the singer, was tapping one heel at full speed, quietly, neatly, as if limbering up; the singers looked at nothing, at no one, perhaps concentrating on a new variationin tonight’s cante jondo ; the tables continued their quiet buzz of talk, a few men rose to talk with friends or make their way to the lavatory, and all Reid had done was to glance casually at his watch. Ferrier concentrated on the Spaniards around him. “Who are they? Longshoremen and who else?”
    Eight minutes to go—if this was an alert. Reid’s attention swung away from the questions in his mind and came back to the courtyard. “Well, of the regulars here, I can pick out fishermen, a lawyer, a couple of bullfighters, some business-men, an organist, several artists, workers from the factories across the river, shopkeepers, and students. And a policeman.” He dropped his voice judiciously. “That’s him, the man in the light-grey suit at the table just in front of our four fellow citizens.”
    “State Security?”
    Reid nodded.
    Ferrier, sitting