police. To meet me,” he said complacently, “makes them feel protected. I answer the questions.”
“You wouldn’t think so to look at him,” Annie said, watching him go, “but our timid little chief has quite an eye for the ladies. He does seem to get along with them too.”
“I don’t know about these particular ladies, though,” Julie said, seeing the women turn as one toward the lone, innocently approaching male. “Hm, I wonder why the phrase ‘lamb to the lions’ leaps to mind.”
Gideon concurred. “They’ll eat him alive.”
Twenty minutes later, as they were starting on their dinners, the chief was back, shell-shocked and staring.
“Madre de Dios,” he mumbled as he sat down with his tray. “Those ladies.”
Mercifully, the others refrained from pursuing the subject.
EIGHT
The offices of the Procuraduria General de Justicia were located well south of downtown Oaxaca, out near the airport, in a once-palatial nineteenth-century building that had gone sadly to seed. There were still touches of elegance to be seen on the outside-ornate grillwork on the upper-story windows, the remnants of fine stucco-work here and there, panels of veined marble, a pair of fountains flanking the grand stone entrance stairway, a row of elaborately wrought metal benches-but all was run-down and tatty. The stucco was flaking, the rusted fountains no longer flowed, and the benches had been painted so many times, and were so in need of yet another coat, that they were a mottled black and white, impossible to tell whether the black had chipped away to reveal the white or vice-versa. In some places-the arms, or the ornamental rosette that topped their backs, the successive layers of paint were worn all the way down to bare, gray metal. On one rosette Gideon was able to make out a single brave word in bold relief: Libertad.
The building itself, coated in two equally repellent shades of green, was also seriously in need of a new paint job (in different colors, one would hope). Only the neat line of flowering shrubs along the foundation showed signs of loving, or at least painstaking, care.
All this Gideon had to take in on the fly as he and the heavily perspiring Sandoval walked rapidly-trotted, in the smaller Sandoval’s case-over the brick-paved front plaza and up the two flights of wide, curving stone steps to the entrance. From Sandoval’s point of view, the day had gotten off to a disastrous start. He had allowed what he thought was more than ample time for the drive from Teotitlan, but he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had had a terrible time finding the place. Thus, instead of being fifteen minutes early for his two o’clock appointment, they were ten minutes late. They would have been only five minutes late had matters not been made worse when, having no convincing credentials to produce, he had been denied entrance to the official-business parking lot and had had to park on a side street two blocks away. As a result, Chief Sandoval, who had been a nervous wreck to begin with, was practically a moving puddle by the time they got there.
Once through the entrance they found themselves in a plain lobby that smelled of disinfectant, unadorned except for much-thumbed sheaves of official-looking documents hanging on cords from the walls. People moved in and out of corridors radiating from the lobby, the bureaucrats and civil servants (confident, decisive, focused) easily distinguishable from the ordinary citizens (apprehensive, uncertain, demoralized).
On one wall was a building directory, from which Gideon read aloud: “ ‘Director de la Policia Ministerial, planta sotano.’ Basement.”
“Dungeon,” Sandoval amended in a strained voice.
At the bottom of the stairwell they were blocked by a hulking giant with an imposing black mustache. He was at least a couple of inches taller than Gideon’s six-two, and a whole lot wider, dressed in black military fatigues and combat boots, with the blunt, squarish
“You wouldn’t think so to look at him,” Annie said, watching him go, “but our timid little chief has quite an eye for the ladies. He does seem to get along with them too.”
“I don’t know about these particular ladies, though,” Julie said, seeing the women turn as one toward the lone, innocently approaching male. “Hm, I wonder why the phrase ‘lamb to the lions’ leaps to mind.”
Gideon concurred. “They’ll eat him alive.”
Twenty minutes later, as they were starting on their dinners, the chief was back, shell-shocked and staring.
“Madre de Dios,” he mumbled as he sat down with his tray. “Those ladies.”
Mercifully, the others refrained from pursuing the subject.
EIGHT
The offices of the Procuraduria General de Justicia were located well south of downtown Oaxaca, out near the airport, in a once-palatial nineteenth-century building that had gone sadly to seed. There were still touches of elegance to be seen on the outside-ornate grillwork on the upper-story windows, the remnants of fine stucco-work here and there, panels of veined marble, a pair of fountains flanking the grand stone entrance stairway, a row of elaborately wrought metal benches-but all was run-down and tatty. The stucco was flaking, the rusted fountains no longer flowed, and the benches had been painted so many times, and were so in need of yet another coat, that they were a mottled black and white, impossible to tell whether the black had chipped away to reveal the white or vice-versa. In some places-the arms, or the ornamental rosette that topped their backs, the successive layers of paint were worn all the way down to bare, gray metal. On one rosette Gideon was able to make out a single brave word in bold relief: Libertad.
The building itself, coated in two equally repellent shades of green, was also seriously in need of a new paint job (in different colors, one would hope). Only the neat line of flowering shrubs along the foundation showed signs of loving, or at least painstaking, care.
All this Gideon had to take in on the fly as he and the heavily perspiring Sandoval walked rapidly-trotted, in the smaller Sandoval’s case-over the brick-paved front plaza and up the two flights of wide, curving stone steps to the entrance. From Sandoval’s point of view, the day had gotten off to a disastrous start. He had allowed what he thought was more than ample time for the drive from Teotitlan, but he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had had a terrible time finding the place. Thus, instead of being fifteen minutes early for his two o’clock appointment, they were ten minutes late. They would have been only five minutes late had matters not been made worse when, having no convincing credentials to produce, he had been denied entrance to the official-business parking lot and had had to park on a side street two blocks away. As a result, Chief Sandoval, who had been a nervous wreck to begin with, was practically a moving puddle by the time they got there.
Once through the entrance they found themselves in a plain lobby that smelled of disinfectant, unadorned except for much-thumbed sheaves of official-looking documents hanging on cords from the walls. People moved in and out of corridors radiating from the lobby, the bureaucrats and civil servants (confident, decisive, focused) easily distinguishable from the ordinary citizens (apprehensive, uncertain, demoralized).
On one wall was a building directory, from which Gideon read aloud: “ ‘Director de la Policia Ministerial, planta sotano.’ Basement.”
“Dungeon,” Sandoval amended in a strained voice.
At the bottom of the stairwell they were blocked by a hulking giant with an imposing black mustache. He was at least a couple of inches taller than Gideon’s six-two, and a whole lot wider, dressed in black military fatigues and combat boots, with the blunt, squarish
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