Cities of the Plain (28 page)

BILLY PAID HIS TOLL at the booth and walked across the bridge. The boys along the river
beneath the bridge held up their buckets on poles and called out for money. He walked down
Ju‡rez Avenue among the tourists, past the bars and curioshops, the shills calling to him
from the doorways. He went into the Florida and ordered a whiskey and drank it and paid
and went out again.

He walked up Tlaxcala to the Moderno but it was closed. He tapped and waited under the
green and yellow tiled arch. He walked around the side of the building and looked in
through a broken corner in one of the barred windows. He could see the small light over
the bar at the rear of the building. He stood in the rain looking out down the street
where it lay in a narrow corridor of shops and bars and lowbuilt houses. The air smelled
of dieselsmoke and woodfires.

He went back to ju‡rez Avenue and got a cab. The driver looked at him in the mirror.

Conoce el White Lake?

S’. Claro.

Bueno. V‡monos.

The driver nodded and they pulled away. Billy sat back in the cab and watched the bleak
streets of the bordertown pass in the rainy afternoon light. They left the paved road and
went out through the mud roads of the outlying barrios. Vendors' burros piled high with
cordwood turned away their heads as the taxi passed splashing through the potholes.
Everything was covered with mud.

When they pulled up in front of the White Lake Billy got out and lit a cigarette and took
his billfold from the hip pocket of his jeans.

I can wait for you, the driver said.

That's all right.

I can come in and wait.

I might be a while. What do I owe you?

Three dollars. You dont want me to wait for you?

No.

The driver shrugged and took the money and rolled the window back up and pulled away.
Billy put the cigarette in his mouth and looked at the building there at the edge of the
barrio between the mud and cratewood hovels and the pleated sheetiron walls of the
warehouse.

He walked on to the rear of the place and turned up the alley past the warehouse and
knocked at the first of two doors and waited. He flipped the butt of the cigarette into
the mud. He'd reached to knock at the door again when it opened and the old criada looked
out. As soon as she saw him she tried to shut the door but he shoved it back open and she
turned and went scuttling down the hallway with one hand atop her head crying out. He shut
the door behind him and looked down the hall. Whores' heads in curlingpapers ducked out
and ducked back like chickens. Doors closed. He'd not gone ten feet along the hallway when
a man in black with a thin and weaselshaped face stepped out and tried to take his arm.
Excuse me, the man said. Excuse me.

Billy jerked his arm away. Where's Eduardo? he said.

Excuse me, the man said. He tried to take Billy's arm again. Mistake. Billy took him by
the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. He was so light. There was
nothing to him at all. He put up no resistance but seemed to be merely reaching about him
as if he'd lost something and Billy turned loose of the handful of black silk knotted up
in his fist just in time. The thin blade of theknife snickered past his belt and he leapt
back and raised up his arms. Tiburcio crouched and feinted with the knife before him.

You little son of a bitch, said Billy. He hit the Mexican squarely in the mouth and the
Mexican slammed back against the wall and sat down on the floor. The knife went spinning
and clattering down the hallway. The old woman at the end of the hall was watching with
her fingers in her teeth. Her eye closed and opened again in a huge and obscene wink. He
turned to the pimp and was surprised to see him struggling to his feet holding a small
silver penknife still fastened to the chain draped across the front of his pegged black
trousers. Billy hit him in the side of the head and heard bone crack. The pimp's head spun
away and he slid several feet down the hallway and lay in a twisted black pile in the
floor like a dead bird. The old woman came down the hall at a tottering run crying out. He
caught her as she went past and pulled her around. She threw up her hands and closed her
good eye. Aiee, she cried. Aiee. He gripped her wrists and shook her. D—nde est‡ mi
compa–ero? he said.

Aiee, she cried. She tried to pull away to go to the pimp lying in the floor.

D’game. D—nde est‡ mi cuate?

No sŽ. No sŽ. Por Dios, no sŽ nada.

D—nde est‡ la muchacha? Magdalena? D—nde est‡ Magdalena?

Jesœs Mar’a y JosŽ ten compasi—n no est‡. No est‡.

D—nde est‡ Eduardo?

No est‡. No est‡.

Aint a damn soul est‡, is there?

He turned her loose and she threw herself on the fallen pimp and raised his face to her
breast. Billy shook his head in disgust and went down the hall and picked up the knife and
stuck the blade between the door and the jamb and snapped the blade off and slung the
handle away and turned and came back. The criada cowered and held up one hand over her
head but he reached down past her and snatched away the silver chain from the pimp's
waistcoat and broke off the blade of the penknife also.

Has this son of a bitch got any more knives on him?

Aiee, moaned the criada, rocking back and forth with the pimp's oiled head in her bosom.
The pimp had come awake and was looking up at him with one walled eye through the woman's
stringy hair. One arm flailed about loosely. Billy reached down and got him by the hair
and pulled his face up.

D—nde est‡ Eduardo?

The criada was moaning and blubbering and sat trying to unclamp Billy's fingers from the
pimp's hair.

En su oficina, wheezed the pimp.

He turned him loose and straightened up and wiped his oily hand on the leg of his jeans
and walked down the hallway to the far end. Eduardo's foilcovered door had no doorknob to
it and he stood looking at it for a minute and then raised one boot and kicked it in. It
came completely off the hinges in a great splintering of wood and turned slightly sideways
and fell into the room. Eduardo sat at his desk. He seemed strangely unalarmed.

Where is he? said Billy.

The mysterious friend.

His name is John Cole and if you've harmed a hair on his head you're a dead son of a bitch.

Eduardo leaned back. He opened the drawer of his desk.

You better have a shoebox full of pistols in there, said Billy.

Eduardo took a cigar from the desk drawer and closed it and took his gold cigarcutter from
his pocket and held up the cigar and clipped it and put the cigar in his mouth and the
cutter back in his pocket.

Why would I need a pistol?

I'm fixin to point out several reasons if I dont get some sense out of you.

The door was not locked.

What?

The door was not locked.

I aint studyin your damn door.

Eduardo nodded. He'd taken his lighter from his pocket and was wafting the flame across
the end of the cigar and rotating the cigar in his mouth slowly with his fingers. He
looked at Billy. Then he looked past Billy. When Billy turned the alcahuete was standing
in the door, one hand on the splintered jamb, breathing slowly and evenly. One eye was
swelled half shut and his mouth was puffed and bleeding and his shirt was torn. Eduardo
gestured him away with a small toss of his chin. Surely, he said, you dont believe that we
are unable to protect ourselves from the riffraff and drunks that come here?

He put the lighter in his pocket and looked up. Tiburcio was still standing in the
doorway. çndale pues, he said. Tiburcio looked at Billy for a moment with no more
expression than a pitviper and then turned and went back down the hall.

Your friend is being sought by the police, said Eduardo. The girl is dead. Her body was
found in the river this morning.

Damn you to hell.

Eduardo studied the cigar. He looked up at Billy. You see what has come to pass.

You couldnt just cut her loose, could you.

You remember our conversation when last we met.

Yeah. I remember it.

You did not believe me.

I believed you.

You spoke to your friend?

Yeah. I spoke to him.

But your words carried no weight with him.

No. They didnt.

And now I cannot help you. You see.

I didnt come here for your help.

You might wish to consider the question of your own implication in this matter.

I got nothin to answer for.

Eduardo drew deeply on the cigar and blew the smoke slowly into the uninhabited center of
the room. You present an odd picture, he said. In spite of whatever views you may hold
everything that has come to pass has been the result of your friend's coveting of another
man's property and his willful determination to convert that property to his own use
without regard for the consequences. But of course this does not make the consequences go
away. Does it? And now I find you before me breathless and half wild having wrecked my
place of business and maimed my help. And having almost certainly colluded in enticing
away one of the girls in my charge in a manner that has led to her death. And yet you
appear to be asking me to help you to resolve your difficulties for you. Why?

Billy looked at his right hand. It was already badly swollen. He looked at the pimp seated
sideways at the desk. The expensive boots crossed before him.

You think I got no recourse, dont you?

I dont know what you have or do not have.

I know this country too.

No one knows this country.

Billy turned. He stood in the doorway and looked down the corridor. Then he looked at the
pimp again. Damn you to hell, he said. You and all your kind.

HE SAT IN A STEEL CHAIR in an empty room with his hat on his knee. When the door finally
opened again the officer looked at him and motioned him forward with the tips of his
fingers. He rose and followed the man down the corridor. A prisoner was mopping the worn
linoleum and as they passed he stepped back and waited and then went to mopping again.

The officer knocked at the captain's door with one knuckle and then opened the door and
gestured for Billy to enter. He stepped in and the door closed behind him. The captain sat
at his desk writing. He glanced up. Then he went on writing. After a while he gestured
slightly with his chin toward two chairs to his left. Please, he said. Be seated.

Billy sat in one of the chairs and set his hat in the chair beside him. Then he picked it
up again and held it. The captain laid his pen aside and stood the papers and tapped and
edged them square and set them aside and looked at him.

How may I help you? he said.

I come to see you about a girl that was found dead in the river this mornin. I think I can
identify her.

We know who she is, the captain said. He leaned back in his chair. She was a friend of
yours?

No. I seen her one time is all.

She was a prostitute.

Yessir.

The captain sat with his hands pressed together. He leaned forward and took from an
oakwood tray at the corner of his desk a large and glossy photo and handed it across.

Is that the girl?

Billy took the photo and turned it and looked at it. He looked up at the captain. I dont
know, he said. It's kindly hard to tell.

The girl in the photo looked made of wax. She'd been turned so as to afford the best view
of her severed throat. Billy held the photo gingerly. He looked up at the captain again.

I expect that's probably her.

The captain reached and took the photo and returned it to the tray face down. You have a
friend, he said.

Yessir.

What was his relationship with this girl?

He was goin to marry her.

Marry her.

Yessir.

The captain picked up his pen and unscrewed the cap. What is his name?

John Grady Cole.

The captain wrote. Where is your friend? he said.

I dont know.

You know him well?

Yes. I do.

Did he kill the girl?

No.

The captain screwed the cap back onto the pen and leaned back. All right, he said.

All right what.

You are free to go.

I was free to go when I come in here.

Did he send you?

No he didnt send me.

All right.

Is that all you got to say?

The captain put his hands together again. He tapped at his teeth with the tips of his
fingers. Outside the sound of people talking in the corridor. Beyond that the traffic in
the street.

How do you say your name?

Sir?

How do you say your name.

Parham. You say Parham.

Parham.

You aint goin to write it down?

No.

You've already got it writ.

Yes.

Well.

You are not going to tell me anything. Are you?

Billy looked down into his hat. He looked up at the captain. You know that pimp killed her.

The captain tapped his teeth. We would like to talk to your friend, he said.

You'd like to talk to him but not to the pimp.

The pimp we have already talked to.

Yeah. And I know what talks, too.

The captain shook his head wearily. He looked at the name on the pad. He looked up at
Billy.

Mr Parham, he said. Every male in my family for three generations has been killed in
defense of this republic. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. Eleven men in all. Any
beliefs they may have had now reside in me. Any hopes. This is a sobering thought to me.
You understand? I pray to these men. Their blood ran in the streets and gutters and in the
arroyos and among the desert stones. They are my Mexico and I pray to them and I answer to
them and to them alone. I do not answer elsewhere. I do not answer to pimps.

If that's true then I take back what I said.

The captain inclined his head.

Billy nodded toward the photo in the box. What have they done with her? The body.