Wall of Glass (17 page)

The village of Las Mujeres perches on the side of a deep pine-covered valley, and from it, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Albuquerque, over ninety miles to the south and maybe a hundred years in the future. But this wasn't a clear day. Just above me, not fifty yards away, the clouds were trailing between the dark tree trunks like the tentacles of some enormous smoky beast.

On the outskirts of town was a small cemetery, the forest looming around it, the flower wreaths on the graves looking drab and somber in the gray. After that came the houses, the first of them fairly new, of cinderblock or framing. Very soon these gave way to squat brown adobe structures, some with thickets of bushes growing atop their flat roofs, all with woodpiles of piñon logs. For most of the year up here you needed a fire in the hearth.

I drove through town to the general store, as Carla Chavez had directed me, and turned right into a dirt alleyway.

Her brother's house was like the houses that flanked it: a small square adobe building. But unlike those, whose tiny front yards were littered with rusting auto parts and deceased kitchen appliances, the yard here was neat and well-tended, with a narrow rectangular garden running along the wooden fence. And here the future had arrived; a satellite dish was tilted back, ready to receive signals from the stormy sky.

I parked the station wagon in front, got out, went through the gate and up to the door. Knocked on it. Nothing. Knocked on it again.

A window swung open in the house to my left and a heavy-set woman, gray hair pulled back in a bun, poked her head out.

“Benito Chavez?” I said.

Without a word, expressionless, she pulled her head back in and shut the window.

“Have a nice day,” I said.

L
A
C
ANTINA
was on the other side of town, set far enough away from it that the sounds of revelry wouldn't vex the villagers, but close enough for the villagers doing the revelling to totter home when the night had ended. Lying just off the road, it was a ramshackle rectangular wooden building with a rambling wooden porch and a neon Budweiser sign in one of its two dusty windows. In the gravel parking lot in front were two Chevy Impala lowriders, one candy apple red, the other midnight black.

I parked the Subaru, got out, and stood for a moment admiring the cars.

What you do is you find yourself a '63 or '64 automobile in good condition—Impalas and Monte Carlos are popular—then you go down to Albuquerque and you locate a junked Citröen. You strip away its hydraulic suspension system, including the interior switches, and you slap everything onto the Chevy's frame. You add three or four batteries to the electrical system. You customize the interior with a steering wheel six inches in diameter, and wall-to-wall carpeting, or wall-to-wall fur. You slide a stereo cassette player into the dashboard and install speakers, as many as you can afford, anywhere they'll fit. You customize the exterior with flared fenders and an ornate grille and bumpers. You buy a thousand dollars worth of spoke wheels and a couple hundred dollars worth of white-wall tires. You paint the body with three or four coats of irridescent paint. You sandblast and seal the underbody, and, if you're really a purist, you chrome it, along with anything else that'll take a coat of chrome. For the finishing touches, you might drape a pair of foam rubber dice over the rearview mirror, or stick a marijuana leaf decal to the rear window. The whole deal will run you, not including the original cost of the car itself, at least ten thousand dollars.

Then, on Saturday nights, you drive the thing slowly, at three inches off the ground, down around the Plaza at Santa Fe. If you spot a cop—the legal minimum height for a license plate is twelve inches—you flip a switch and your hydro, powered by the extra batteries, quickly pump-hops the car back up to legality. If you spot a couple of cruising chicks, you do the same. It's a kind of mating dance.

Together, the two cars in the parking lot at La Cantina represented something over thirty-five thousand dollars. That was a lot of money for this neighborhood. It was a lot for mine, come to that.

La Cantina itself represented a good deal less. It needed a coat of paint, although that particular shade of sickly gray would probably be difficult to come by. The planking on the porch, worn down to bare wood, was curling up at the edges and it creaked beneath my feet like rotten ice on a frozen lake. I pulled open the screen door and stepped inside.

Maybe the three men standing at the bar, and the bartender standing behind it, had been silent even before I arrived. They were certainly silent now, watchful and appraising.

I crossed the floor, my footsteps sounding louder than they should. Wooden chairs and tables were haphazardly arranged around the room. To my right was a small pool table. To my left, a pair of video arcade games, one of them pinging inanely away to itself. Overhead, a ceiling fan whispered as it slowly turned.

The three were in their twenties, and before each sat a bottle of Coors. The two men nearest me were so alike they could've been bookends. Both were about my height and slim, both wearing jeans and T-shirts and wispy mustaches. The one farthest away was taller, thicker in the body, more muscular, and above his jeans he wore only a buttoned leather vest. No mustache. High, almost Indian cheekbones. A red headband holding down the thick black hair. On the large bicep of his left arm was a tattoo of an eagle.

The bartender, maybe forty years old, was short and fat and wore a shirt that hadn't been white for some time. His apron had probably never been white. Like the others, he kept his face empty as I approached. Like them, he was waiting.

I felt as if I'd walked into a Gary Cooper movie. Felt as if I should've tipped my Stetson and drawled, “Howdy.” I wasn't wearing a Stetson, so I smiled instead and asked the bartender what kind of beer he carried.

Lip protruding slightly, he shook his head, “
No habla inglés.
”

The line provoked huge guffaws in the two slim men. The third, with the headband, only smiled faintly and kept watching me.

“
Bueno
,” I said, still smiling at the bartender. “
Una cerveza. Corona, por favor.
”

He nodded, his face still empty, and turned and bent down to open the wooden cooler behind him, beneath the cash register. He took out a bottle of Corona, pushed the door shut, turned back, snapped the cap off with a churchkey dangling from his belt, then slammed the beer down onto the bartop. It foamed up immediately, gushing out the spout, down the sides of the bottle, and bubbling along the counter. He produced a glass and set it down, with elaborate precision, exactly in the center of the puddle.

I nodded appreciatively, as though this was exactly the way I preferred to receive my beer.

“
Cinco dólares
,” he said.

I smiled again, nodded, reached into my pocket, pulled out a five, and handed it to him. Ignoring the cash register, he slipped the bill into his pocket.

“Five dollars,” I said in cheerful Spanish. “This is an excellent beer, but the price seems a little excessive.”

He shrugged. “The beer is cheap.” He waved a hand, indicating the room. “You are paying for the atmosphere.”

More mirth from the two bookends. Despite what was probably a family resemblance, they weren't really identical. The one nearest, me was better looking, with a sensitive mouth and sharp, intelligent eyes. The second one had a nose that had been broken at least once, a wide mouth that he kept mostly open, and narrow deep-set eyes that seemed faintly glazed. Grass, or beer, or maybe just stupidity.

Smiling at them fondly, watching Headband out of the corner of my eye, I raised the dripping glass. “
Salud.
”

“Sure, bro,” said the bookend nearest me, in English. He elbowed his friend, and the two of them held up their Coors bottles. “
Salud
,” they grinned. Headband merely nodded at me, still smiling faintly.

We drank. As I set my glass back down in the puddle, the nearest bookend smiled at me. “So you speak Spanish, huh, bro?”

“A little.”

He nodded, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, thoughtful. “Too bad you speak it so shitty, huh.”

The second bookend laughed.

“It certainly is,” I said. “It's a good thing you speak English so well.” I drank some beer. “You know,” I said earnestly, “maybe you can help me. I'm trying to find someone.”

Bookend Number One looked at me. “And who's that, bro?”

“Guy named Chavez. Benito Chavez.”

He squinted, looked off at the ceiling, considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Never heard'a him.”

At the mention of the name, Bookend Number Two had dropped open his mouth and glanced at his near-double. Now, turning away, his shoulders were tight to stop them from shaking and he was trying to hide an excited grin behind a long pull of beer. From such subtle clues I deduced that Bookend Number One was most probably Benito Chavez.

Headband was still smiling. Waiting to see how I handled the two
cholos
before he stepped in.

I said, “No, I didn't think so. You look too smart to be involved with a guy like Chavez.”

He frowned. “How's that, bro?”

I shrugged. “From what I've heard, Chavez is a real loser. He was dealing coke to a guy named Biddle down in Santa Fe, and Biddle got blown away. Word is, Chavez is involved.”

He nodded thoughtfully and said, “And this Chavez dude, you're lookin' for him.”

I nodded. “I need some information.” I took a drink of beer. A few drops from the bottom of the glass plopped onto my windbreaker.

“Hey, careful, bro,” he said. Grinning, he brushed at my chest with the back of his fingers. Forcefully.

I smiled at him. “Thanks.”

“Hey, no problem.” He punched at my shoulder, pretending at playfulness but going for the nerve endings along the curve of the joint. I smiled some more.

He turned his back to the bar and leaned up against it, hooking the heel of his boot over the rail, holding the beer bottle loosely. He nodded to my cheek. “Some bruise you got there, bro.”

I nodded. “Fell off a horse.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “So what kind of information you lookin' for?”

“Information about Biddle.”

“That dude that got blown away.”

“Right.”

“I can tell you one thing about him, bro.”

“What's that?”

He grinned and pronounced the words like a redneck cowboy: “He's
daid.
”

This inspired more hilarity in Bookend Number Two.

I was getting a little tired of playing straight man. And if Bookend here was Chavez, he wasn't going to tell me anything worthwhile with his two compadres hanging around. “Well,” I said, and reached into my windbreaker pocket. Headband didn't react at all, but the other two stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as I brought out one of my calling cards. I set it on the bar. “If you run into Chavez, give him my card. Tell him there may be some money in it for him.” I moved to leave. Bookend Number One put the hand holding his beer against my chest.

“You can't leave now, bro. You didn't finish your beer.”

“That's all right. I'll come back later.”

“No later, bro.” He smiled at me and dropped his hand, nodding to the glass. “Finish the beer.”

I smiled back. “You're right. Why waste good beer.” I picked up the glass, drained it. I nodded at the three of them. “See you later.” And then I moved again to leave. Again his hand came up.

He called out over my shoulder to the bartender, “Jose, another Corona.”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

“Hey, bro,
relax.
Take it
easy.
We'll have a few beers, we'll talk, we'll smoke some good grass, we'll pass some time. Later maybe we'll go out and find ourselves some women. What you say?” Leaning forward, grinning, he poked me in the chest. “You like the Spanish women, bro?”

“Maybe some other time.”

Behind me, the bartender picked up the empty beer bottle and put a full one in its place.

Bookend Number One was facing me now, his foot off the rail, his left hand holding the beer bottle, his right resting along the bar. Setting himself up to pull off a trick that'd been old before he was born.

“What's the matter, bro?” he said. “Spanish women not good enough for you?”

“Spanish women are swell.”

“Maybe you like boys better, huh, bro?” His eyes were narrowed and I could smell the stale beer on his breath.

“Not especially,” I said.

“Maybe you just a fuckin' faggot, huh, bro? You like doin' little boys, that what it is?”

And it was then, after he'd got himself worked up for it, that he tried.

The trick is simple. As you talk, you suddenly drop your beer bottle, or your glass, whatever you're holding. The person you're talking to is distracted, his eyes instinctively following the bottle, and that's when you sucker punch him.

He dropped the bottle and I hit him with a very good left along the cheek.

As he went spinning off, face awry, his friend came bulling in, head lowered, fists up. I smashed down on his instep with the heel of my boot. He screeched and doubled over. I pounded my fist against the back of his neck, grabbed at his shoulder and hurled him off to the right, out of the way.

Because Headband was dancing toward me now, his hand snaking out of his pocket. The knife was a Balisong, the Filipino fighting knife that can whip open as quickly as a switchblade if it's handled properly.

He handled it properly, but by then I had the .38 out, pointing it at his nose. I pulled back the hammer and it made a satisfying click.

“Nice knife,” I said. “You wouldn't want to get brains all over it.”

TWELVE