Bag Limit (26 page)

Chapter Forty-one

There were no holes in the walls or busted glass in my home. In fact, the scene at Guadalupe was downright peaceful—until I’d hung up my coat and hat and started toward the living room. A cacophony of falling objects, screams, giggles, and other odd noises rolled out of the kids’ bedroom. I stopped in my tracks.

“They’re playing Idiot Blocks,” Buddy said. He and Francis were sitting calmly in the living room, each with a glass near at hand.

“This I’ve got to see,” I said. The bedroom door stood half open, and the three kids—two small and one large—were camped on the floor with the braided rug thrown back. They were surrounded by a welter of wooden blocks of all sizes and shapes, some as large as a shoe box. Off in the corner, I recognized the old battered cardboard box that served as a storage bin on the upper shelf in my garage.

Three large blocks had already been assembled as foundation of the new structure, and I could see that instability was the name of the game. Francisco was holding Tadd’s hand so that my grandson couldn’t put another block in place.

“C. G. goes next, dodo,” Francisco was saying. “You started.”

“I know I started,
loco-moto
, ” Tadd said. He saw me in the door and grinned. “Then C. G., then you. So whose turn is it now?” He wrestled the block free from Francisco’s clawlike grip. “It’s mine, and this is where it goes.”

The exchange was enough to crumble both Francisco and his little brother into a heap of giggles.

“Did everything go all right?” Tadd asked, and the two Guzman kids spun around, prompting the inevitable.

“Padrino!”
Francisco announced. He scrambled to his feet and flung himself at me. Carlos beamed, but remained near the blocks. He reached out and touched the large, angular blue block.

“This one’s mine,” he said soberly.

“That’s good,” I said. “And yes. Everything went just fine. Who’s winning?”

“Tadd cheats,” Francisco said in my ear.

“Well, you’ll have to watch him, then,” I said, and returned to the living room.

I found a soft spot on the old sofa and collapsed, resting my head on one of the corduroy pillows. “And
C. G.
? That’s new, isn’t it?”

“That started last year,” Francis Guzman said. “Francisco decided that he’d call his brother ‘C. G.,’ and Carlos was supposed to call him ‘Frank.’”

“Very executive,” I said.

With a grunt I sat forward and wrestled off my boots. Freed from a couple of pounds of leather and neoprene, I swung my feet up on the corner of the coffee table and sighed, eyes closed.

“What can I get you, Dad?” Buddy asked.

“No phone calls,” I whispered. “What’s that stuff you’re drinking?”

“A little brandy.”

I opened one eye and looked his way. He held up the glass, tantalizing. I rocked my head from side to side. “If I start on that, it’ll put me right to sleep.”

“That’s the object.” Francis laughed. “You’ve had quite a day.”

“Days,” I said. “Days and days. But we’re making progress.” I sat up a little straighter and opened my eyes. “Actually, we’re not, but it sounds better, especially during an election.”

“Alan Perrone was telling me that he wasn’t a hundred percent sure about Sosimo Baca, either,” Francis said, and I looked at him sharply.

“When did you talk with him?”

“He called here a while ago. He just wanted to chat. During the course of things, we got to talking a little bit about the case.”

“He told us earlier that he thought Sosimo got punched in the gut. Or hit, somehow. He doesn’t think that anymore?” I felt a rise of irritation. If the coroner had new information, I would have liked to have heard it myself.

“No, he still thinks that. But we were talking about aneurysms in general. You just can’t predict.” He made a small explosive gesture with the hand that wasn’t holding the brandy glass. “Some just pop, no warning.”

“But he thinks Sosimo was struck, somehow.”

“Yes.” He sipped the brandy. “I thought I might swing by the hospital tomorrow and have a chat with Alan. See how things are going with him.”

“Things are going fine, as far as I know,” I said. “He’d like to see you, especially if there was a little business mixed in with the visit.”

Francis flashed a broad smile just as the blocks in the bedroom crashed to the floor again. The tower must have been spectacular, with enough force to send one of the key components skittering out into the hall. Francisco emerged on his hands and knees, grabbed the block, and disappeared.

“Maybe I will,” I said to my son, pointing at his brandy glass. “With my house falling down around my ears, maybe I’ll need something to help me sleep.”

“They wind down eventually,” Estelle said.

In a moment, Buddy handed me a large snifter with a dark, fragrant puddle in the bottom. “Thank you,” I said. “I keep rediscovering things I’d forgotten I had.” I admired the glass. “These haven’t been out of the cabinet in God knows how long.” I took a sip and remembered why I didn’t bother to buy much brandy.

I swirled it a little, and decided to just plunge in.

“Are you toying with the idea of going back into partnership with Perrone?”

Caught by surprise, Francis Guzman paused with his glass halfway to his mouth.
To hell with it
, I thought. I’d been about to add something to soften the question, to ameliorate it, to give him an easy out with a quip. But I didn’t. I let it hang there, unadorned and blunt.

Francis Guzman took a sip and set his glass down. “He made an offer in early August that I turned down,” he said. He folded his hands in his lap. “They finally got the bond issue straightened out, so the day after tomorrow they’ll know if there’s going to be the local share of four million bucks for the hospital renovation.”

“A good chance,” I said. “A bond issue hasn’t gone down in flames in quite a while. The schools got two million last year.”

“Well, there’s always the risk that the voters will say enough is enough.” He shrugged. “Anyway, when it looked like that would go through and make it to the ballot, Alan started bugging me a little bit.”

“Good for him.”

“Well, it was bad timing,” Francis said. “And then I had my little accident…”

“Not so little,” Estelle said.

He flexed his hand, regarding the scar with detachment. “It’s kind of like, one thing happens and that snowballs. Sophia paid us a visit toward the end of summer. You remember my aunt?”

“Indeed I do,” I said. Sophia Tournal, the semiretired attorney from Veracruz, was hard to forget.

“She thinks we ought to relocate down there.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Talk about extremes. From Rochester, Minnesota, to Veracruz, Mexico.”

“Lots of advantages,” Francis said. “The ocean, the culture.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Estelle had nestled beside him, and looped her arm through his. “We talk about this all the time, Bill. And the one thing that we keep circling back to is the language. Just in the six months we’ve been up north, I see both Francisco and Carlos using Spanish less and less.”

“I don’t think they’d ever actually forget,” I said.

“Oh, yes. They forget. We can see it. First, they lose the edge, you know what I mean? They lose the depth, the fluency. Next thing you know, all they can say in Spanish is the daily around-the-house stuff.” He leaned forward some more and drilled his right index finger into his temple for emphasis. “Or worse yet, the street slang, the Spanglish. They lose the capacity to be truly bilingual. To be able to
think
in either language, at any level.”

“So you got an offer from Sophia, too.”

He nodded. “Basically a blank check. She plays hardball.”

“I bet she does. I can understand how she’d be delighted to have you guys in the neighborhood. I’m a little surprised that you’d consider going from big to bigger, though. If you think Rochester is a busy place, imagine Veracruz. What is it, about five times bigger?”

“About four times,” Estelle said, and I felt a little pang of comfort that she’d taken time to check.

“Not to mention about fifty times bigger than Posadas on a busy day,” I added. “What did Sophia offer?”

“Like I said, basically a blank check,” Francis said. “She owns a building that would make a nice clinic. One block from the beach.” He flashed a smile full of perfectly regular white teeth, and I had no trouble imagining the young doctor on a surfboard, beard dripping salt water, arms spread for balance. “More important, there’s a real need there.”

“I’m sure there is. There’s a need anywhere that there are human beings. It just depends what you want.”

The smile spread wider. “Counteroffer?”

That took me so by surprise that for a moment the words didn’t register. To stall for time, I took a second sip of the powerful brandy. No sounds issued from the bedroom. Either the combatants had all fallen asleep, or the game was getting to the deadly stage where a single hand tremor could send the tower crashing to the floor amid high-pitched cries of
“Idiota! Idiota!”
I set the brandy glass down with care.

“I didn’t realize that you would seriously consider coming back to Posadas,” I said.

“We haven’t ruled out anything yet,” Francis said.

“What would be the attraction?” I asked, and even as I spoke the words, I wondered if there was anyone who had lived for any length of time in any of the thousands of tiny communities around the country, or for that matter the millions around the world, who hadn’t been asked that question at one time or another.

“It’s small,” Estelle said quickly, and I sympathized. I couldn’t imagine her finely tuned senses bombarded by city life. The edge would dull quickly just to protect itself from sensory overload.

“And quiet,” I said.

“There’s a need, with more to come,” Francis said. “But most important, it’s close to home for Mama, and for Estelle. Even for me. And
los niños
like it here.” He relaxed back. “And we’ve got a lot of friends here, you know.”

“A few,” I said. “One or two.”

“Now would be the time to establish something,” Francis said. “There’s going to be more and more interaction at the border. You’re going to get a twenty-four-hour crossing at Regal sooner than later…”

“That’s coming in January,” I said.

Francis held up his hands. “See? That opens up the culture crossover even more. The medical services in those border towns are pathetic. A good, comprehensive clinic here would be only thirty miles away from Mexico.”

“That would please your mother,” I said to Estelle.

“But not so much Sophia,” she said. “But she understands.”

“The new track would help you some, I guess,” Buddy commented.

“Sure,” Francis agreed, and I looked at my son, puzzled.

“What new track?”

“You need to read your own paper.” My son laughed. He stretched backward and hefted the bulk of the Sunday El Paso daily from where it had been resting behind the lamp. He shuffled sections until he found the one that passed for regional news, folded it to manageable size, and handed it to me. “Lower left.”

I took the paper and shifted my glasses. The article was nothing more than a small squib, boxed in the corner and buried by a feature story about a threatened minnow in the Rio Grande. I would have skipped it even if I’d been reading the paper carefully. As it was, I’d forgotten that the damn thing had even landed on my front doorstep.

“I’ll be damned,” I said, and read the article again.

“You hadn’t heard about that?” my son asked.

“No. Then again, I’ve been living under a rock lately.” I read the article a third time. “Well, that slimy son of a bitch,” I said.

Buddy pointed at my glass. “You want that stuff?”

“No. Help yourself.” I handed him the glass.

“Hate to see it go to waste,” he said. “That track thing might explain a little bit why Cliff Larson thinks it’s a good time to retire, Dad. It’s going to be a busy place if that racetrack starts up.”

“It doesn’t look like an ‘if,’” Estelle said. She handed the paper to her husband, who tossed it back on the table beside Buddy.

“Buddy showed me that article earlier,” Francis said. “Who knows? You might be able to lease out some of your back acreage for horse barns. I remember you were thinking about that once upon a time.”

“That’s just what I need,” I scoffed. “And I said I’d give Cliff Larson a couple of weeks to help him out. This thing won’t open a gate for two years, even without any snafus. It won’t be my problem.” I put my feet back up on the table. “Anyway, a few minutes ago, you asked me what my counteroffer was. Leave me half an acre around this house, without touching any of the cottonwoods out back of the kitchen. You can have the rest.”

Francis didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the first time in the ten years I’d known the Guzmans that I’d offered them my property. But circumstances had been different. “You’ve got room for any sized building you want, a new water line and sewer hookups on Escondido, space for parking, easy access to the interstate frontage road—and you’re less than two miles from the hospital.”

“Don’t forget the helipad,” my son added with a laugh.

“That’s right…and room for a helipad.” Another crash came from the bedroom, followed by a screech.

“It’s time the kids settled down some,” Estelle said, and untangled herself from her husband. “Otherwise we’ll never get them to bed. They’ll be going all night.”

“You think on it,” I said to Francis, trying to sound more reasonable and calm than I felt. The suggestion was as much for my benefit as the Guzmans’. I didn’t have the expertise of a good car salesman, and had no idea what I could say that would be just the right words to close the deal. I swung my feet down off the low table. “Anyone want some coffee besides me?”