the casino on Main—”
“Yes, I know, I saw the sign.”
“He’ll be in his office until five.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Padgett.”
“You’re certainly welcome. Ah, Mr. Messenger …?”
“Yes?”
“Is it true about Anna Roebuck? That she killed herself in San Francisco?”
“It’s true.”
“Opened her veins with a butcher’s knife? That’s what I heard. Is that how she did it?”
There was a note in her voice that made him think of a vulture poised over a piece of carrion. He said, keeping his tone level, “No, you heard wrong,” and broke the connection.
They really hate Anna, he thought, dead as well as alive. The whole town. You couldn’t blame them if she was guilty, but she’d never even been arrested, much less charged with the crimes. Judged and tried and convicted by all her neighbors except one, without benefit of even a hearing. Condemned, too, willfully if not in fact, and now that the death sentence had been carried out by her own hand, they were gloating over the bits and pieces of her remains. Like the knitting women smiling and watching heads roll in A Tale of Two Cities .
He finished the beer, tossed the empty can into the wastebasket. His watch said that it was a few minutes past three. Plenty of time: there was no need to rush to see John T. Roebuck. He was pretty sure he knew what Roebuck wanted—the same thing Mrs. Padgett and Sally Adams and Ada Kendall and the rest of them wanted. He’d go give it to him eventually, before five o’clock; he was curious about the Roebuck family and about John T., the big fish in the local pond. But there was someone else he wanted to talk to first: Anna’s only other champion, Jaime Orozco.
In the bathroom he ran the shower until he had a temperature that suited him. He spent ten minutes under it, soaking away the desert grit and trying to work the last of the soreness out of his bruised knee. Dressed again in his new clothing, he had a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Not too bad. In fact, much better than he’d expected. Not every city dweller could wear Western garb without looking like a refugee from a dude ranch, or just plain ludicrous, or both.
After a brief debate with himself, he left the Stetson in the room when he went out. No use in overdoing it.
LOCATING JAIME OROZCO took a little time and effort. There was no listing for him in the local telephone directory. Mrs. Padgett might know where he lived, but Messenger was reluctant to deal with her again after their phone conversation; he thought it would be better to ask strangers. The first one he asked, a surly attendant at a nearby gas station, either didn’t know or wouldn’t bother to tell him. He made his second stop at a taqueria , but the waitress and cook there were equally uncommunicative—probably because he was a stranger, and an Anglo at that.
It was the clerk in the Western clothing store where he’d bought his new outfit who finally told him: Jaime Orozco lived with his daughter, Carmelita Ramirez, and her family on Dolomite Street. “That’s on the south flats,” the clerk said. “Down past the new high school. I don’t know the number. You’ll have to ask one of the people down there.”
Messenger found the street easily enough. It was unpaved, part gravel and part rutted hardpan, and flanked by a haphazard collection of wood frame houses and small trailer homes, all of them sun-flayed and poor-looking. Chickens and goats and dogs were visible in most yards. All of the faces he saw were Mexican. This was what once, not so long ago, would have been called Mextown or Spictown by the white establishment. Now, with racism forced into a more euphemistic existence, it was “the south flats, down past the new high school” and “the people down there.”
A woman carrying a market basket pointed out the Ramirez home: one of the newer trailers, set inside a neatly fenced yard; a roofed arbor extended out to the rear. In the yard a chubby boy of six
“Yes, I know, I saw the sign.”
“He’ll be in his office until five.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Padgett.”
“You’re certainly welcome. Ah, Mr. Messenger …?”
“Yes?”
“Is it true about Anna Roebuck? That she killed herself in San Francisco?”
“It’s true.”
“Opened her veins with a butcher’s knife? That’s what I heard. Is that how she did it?”
There was a note in her voice that made him think of a vulture poised over a piece of carrion. He said, keeping his tone level, “No, you heard wrong,” and broke the connection.
They really hate Anna, he thought, dead as well as alive. The whole town. You couldn’t blame them if she was guilty, but she’d never even been arrested, much less charged with the crimes. Judged and tried and convicted by all her neighbors except one, without benefit of even a hearing. Condemned, too, willfully if not in fact, and now that the death sentence had been carried out by her own hand, they were gloating over the bits and pieces of her remains. Like the knitting women smiling and watching heads roll in A Tale of Two Cities .
He finished the beer, tossed the empty can into the wastebasket. His watch said that it was a few minutes past three. Plenty of time: there was no need to rush to see John T. Roebuck. He was pretty sure he knew what Roebuck wanted—the same thing Mrs. Padgett and Sally Adams and Ada Kendall and the rest of them wanted. He’d go give it to him eventually, before five o’clock; he was curious about the Roebuck family and about John T., the big fish in the local pond. But there was someone else he wanted to talk to first: Anna’s only other champion, Jaime Orozco.
In the bathroom he ran the shower until he had a temperature that suited him. He spent ten minutes under it, soaking away the desert grit and trying to work the last of the soreness out of his bruised knee. Dressed again in his new clothing, he had a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Not too bad. In fact, much better than he’d expected. Not every city dweller could wear Western garb without looking like a refugee from a dude ranch, or just plain ludicrous, or both.
After a brief debate with himself, he left the Stetson in the room when he went out. No use in overdoing it.
LOCATING JAIME OROZCO took a little time and effort. There was no listing for him in the local telephone directory. Mrs. Padgett might know where he lived, but Messenger was reluctant to deal with her again after their phone conversation; he thought it would be better to ask strangers. The first one he asked, a surly attendant at a nearby gas station, either didn’t know or wouldn’t bother to tell him. He made his second stop at a taqueria , but the waitress and cook there were equally uncommunicative—probably because he was a stranger, and an Anglo at that.
It was the clerk in the Western clothing store where he’d bought his new outfit who finally told him: Jaime Orozco lived with his daughter, Carmelita Ramirez, and her family on Dolomite Street. “That’s on the south flats,” the clerk said. “Down past the new high school. I don’t know the number. You’ll have to ask one of the people down there.”
Messenger found the street easily enough. It was unpaved, part gravel and part rutted hardpan, and flanked by a haphazard collection of wood frame houses and small trailer homes, all of them sun-flayed and poor-looking. Chickens and goats and dogs were visible in most yards. All of the faces he saw were Mexican. This was what once, not so long ago, would have been called Mextown or Spictown by the white establishment. Now, with racism forced into a more euphemistic existence, it was “the south flats, down past the new high school” and “the people down there.”
A woman carrying a market basket pointed out the Ramirez home: one of the newer trailers, set inside a neatly fenced yard; a roofed arbor extended out to the rear. In the yard a chubby boy of six
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