I ate another donut. Susan had explained to me that they were not healthful, and while I was in favor of healthful, rice cakes and coffee didn't do it on a stakeout. Susan had explained to me that it didn't have to be rice cakes or donuts. Why not bring along a nice lettuce, tomato, and bean sprout sandwich? I told her if Chollo reached into the bag for a donut and found a bean sprout he would shoot me, and she'd have only herself to blame for her sexual deprivation. She smiled at me sadly and began to talk to Pearl.
The door opened and Chollo got back in. He reached into the backseat for the big thermos and poured himself some coffee.
"This is the real stuff, right," he said. "In the tan thermos?"
"Yeah," I said.
I tried not to sound sullen. The decaf in the blue thermos was very satisfying.
"Place is a quadrangle, four tenements, all of them three stories, all of them connected by walkways from the third-floor back porches. The alleys between are walled up with plywood, and there's sandbags behind the plywood. There's some sort of wire fencing around the roof. It looks like they're growing plants up there. The windows are boarded up, with gun ports in them. There's a guard on one of the back porches, can see the whole interior of the quadrangle. There's at least one guy on the roof."
He sipped some coffee and made too much of how good it tasted.
Then he said, "I can hear kids in the yard in the center of the quadrangle. I could smell cooking."
"So it's not just pistoleros," I said.
"No."
"Doesn't make it easier," I said.
Chollo shrugged. We sat and looked at the tenement complex. Every hour, the guard at the front door changed. Each time, the new guard and the old one stared at the car for a time.
"Sooner or later," I said, "they are going to have to come over and ask us what we're doing."
"Sure," Chollo said.
We looked at the tenements some more. We were out of donuts and the coffee was gone. In the front seat beside me Chollo was quiet, his eyes half closed, his hands folded in his lap. I imagined myself from some distant perspective sitting in the car in the spring in a destitute city with a Mexican shooter whose full name I didn't even know. I also didn't know if I was looking for a runaway wife, or a woman who'd been kidnapped. Of course it could be neither. She could have been murdered, or died accidentally, or suffered a sudden stroke of amnesia. She could be in the tenement in front of me wearing black lace and serving champagne in her slipper, or chained in the cellar. Or she could be on a slab in some small town morgue. Or she could be in Paris, or performing with the circus in Gillette, Wyoming. All I knew for sure was that she wasn't sitting in my car with me and Chollo eating donuts.
Across the street a tall, thick-bodied man with a ponytail and a dark moustache came out onto the porch and talked with the guard. They both looked at my car.
legs."
"Does he know about his wife being a prostitute?"
"No."
"Does he know anything?"
"He knows that Quirk and I are working on it."
"What about the ex-boyfriend?"
"He's a little hard to talk with," I said. "Being as he lives in what appears to be some sort of three-story bunker in the Hispanic ghetto in Proctor."
"I thought all of Proctor was an Hispanic ghetto," Susan said.
"San Juan Hill is a sub-ghetto," I said.
"Tell me about it," Susan said.
Which, with an interruption to order chicken pie for me, and a tossed salad, dressing on the side, for Susan, I did.
"And you have your translator, this Rollo man?"
"Chollo," I said.
"Yes. Is he good?"
"Very," I said.
"Does Frank know any of this?" Susan said.
"No. Even if I told him he'd forget it."
"When you tell him, how will he be?"
"He'll manage," I said. "Belson's a tough guy and he had a long unhappy first marriage, so he learned how to dull his feelings."
Susan smiled.
"Might be why he was always such a good cop," she said. "The wound and the bow."
"Disability of some kind helps strengthen us in other areas?"
Susan nodded. The waitress brought Susan her salad, and me the pot pie and another beer. Susan took a spray of red lettuce leaf from her salad and dipped it delicately into the dressing on the side and nibbled on the end of it.
"Save some room for dessert," I said.
"Don't you think the romantic make-believe about having no past should have bothered Frank? Wouldn't it strike you as odd? It sounds cute, but can you imagine us never saying anything about before?"
"Well," I said, "I don't know much about your ex-husband."
"Yes, but you know I have one."
I nodded.
"Belson's a smart cop, and he's been one for a long time," I said. "It would strike him as odd too."
"If there is a silence," Susan said, "it is often the result of an unspoken conspiracy, maybe even an unconscious conspiracy to keep something under cover."
"You think Belson knew?" I said.
"He may not even know what she's concealing, only that there's something, and he doesn't want either of them to have to look."