“I wanted to ask you about someone else,” I said, and walked back to my leaning spot against the sink.
“Don’t you ever get tired of stickin’ your nose in other people’s business? I’ve got a business to run here. I ain’t got the time.”
“Victor, you’ve got all the time in the world.”
He glanced over at me, his ugly round face framing unblinking eyes. No doubt Victor was a real charmer as a bartender. I could imagine a disconsolate traveling salesman pouring out his heart and soul to Victor during a Christmas Eve drinking binge at the Broken Spur. Right at the climax of the salesman’s sob story, just before he rose from his stool to walk into the restroom to blow his brains out, Victor would say, “Look, you want any carrot sticks or not?”
“I oughta just throw you out.” He said it without much conviction.
I shrugged. “You could do that, I guess. Hell, old and fat as I am, it wouldn’t take much.”
“You people are bad for business.” He gestured toward the parking lot. “That car out there…ain’t nobody going to stop while it’s here. If it ain’t parked there, then you guys sit down at the windmill.”
“Help me put somebody in jail, and we’ll leave you alone,” I said.
“Who are you talking about?”
“I want to know about Tammy Woodruff.”
He laughed a short, harsh bark. “What you think, you’re going to put Tammy in jail, now?”
“I didn’t say that. I just want to know a little more about her.”
“So would every other tachon in the county,” Sanchez snorted.
“I know she was a little wild, Victor. That’s why it’s important. She may have known something about the other night,” I said. “Give me five minutes.”
“You could write a book about that ramerita.” He pushed a six-pack of paper towels into perfect alignment on the shelf, then stood facing the shelves with his hands on his hips. I didn’t say anything, and finally he turned around and regarded me. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
He walked through the swinging door to the kitchen and I followed. The coffee was a lot fresher and more fragrant than I was used to and I didn’t bother drowning it with milk and sugar.
Cup in hand, he beckoned me out toward one of the dining rooms off the main barroom. We sat down at a chrome-edged table, Victor turning his chair sideways so he could lean against the wall. I turned mine so my belly wouldn’t crowd the table.
“What’s she done now?” Victor asked.
“We’re trying to find one of her boyfriends.”
Victor almost smiled. “You got a good cutting horse? It’s a big herd.”
“So I’m beginning to understand.”
“What’s his name?”
“We don’t know.”
He regarded me with interest. “Not such a good time for you, eh?”
I thought about the last week. Victor was right. “No. Not such a good time.”
He took a sip of his coffee and then lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“We can’t. She’s dead.”
The coffee cup had gotten halfway to Victor’s mouth before his hand stopped. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t break the silence. Without taking a sip, he set the cup back down. “How did she die?”
“We think she was murdered, Victor. Up on San Patricio Mesa.” He knew who lived near the mesa as well as anyone.
He frowned and looked off into the distance. Then, so softly I could hardly hear him, he said, “This is bad.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Did you talk with the Torrance boy?”
“Yes.”
“He followed after her with his tongue down to here,” Victor said, and dropped his hand to his crotch. “But that’s not so strange. At one time or another, I think she gave a turn to everyone in the county, except maybe old Francisco Pena.”
“Brett Prescott?”
“Sure.”
“Who was she with Sunday night?”
“I didn’t see her Sunday night.”
“Patrick Torrance was in here then?”
“I already told you he was.”
“And you didn’t see her come in that night? The boy told me that she did.”
Sanchez shrugged. “If she did, it was when I was in back. You could ask my son. Maybe he saw her. She even made a pass at him one time. I told him to mind his own business. He’s too stupid to know any better.”
“Who was tending bar that night?”
“I was.”
“And you didn’t see her?”
He looked at me with remarkable patience considering his temperament, but he didn’t bother answering the repeat question.
“Do you know who drives an older model pickup truck with a wrought-iron stock rack on the back? Pulls a big stock trailer once in a while? Whole rig covered with mud?”
“Half the ranchers in the county, maybe. You want more coffee?”
“No thanks. No one in particular?”
He shrugged. “If I saw the vehicle standing in front of me, maybe I could tell you. Otherwise…” He ground out his cigarette.
“Did you think there was anything unusual about the way Patrick Torrance was acting Sunday night?”
“I didn’t notice.” He looked at his watch. “You know, I got concerns of my own. I don’t pay any attention.”
I didn’t pursue the questions any further. Being the “see nothing, hear nothing” bartender that he was, nothing I could say was likely to jar Victor loose. He could sit on a keg of gunpowder, and when it exploded, he’d say, “You know, I might have heard something, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too busy.”
I left the bar feeling better, though. Victor hadn’t told me not to come back. That was a start.
I pulled out on the state highway from the parking lot and drove south, passing the turnoff to County Road 14. I stayed on the highway as it curved up through the western pass of the San Cristobal Mountains. On the south slope, after a series of switchbacks guaranteed to keep drivers of huge, clumsy RVs alert, the highway swept down through the intersection with State 80 running east and west and finally past the ancient village of Regal.
That settlement, counting twenty-five people on a good day, was a quarter mile off the highway, and the dirt approach road was hard-packed clay and stone. It wound across an arroyo and passed within ten feet of the carved front doors of the IglEsia de Nuestra Madre. The year 1849 was carved in the cornerstone of the mission, the second oldest structure in the village. An even older mission, now in ruins, lay half a mile to the east, it was part of one of the least visited historical monuments in the state.
Like so many ancient Mexican settlements, the streets of Regal were sunken dirt channels that meandered from yard to yard, with the adobe houses fronting immediately on the byways. If I wasn’t careful, I could catch the front fender of 310 on someone’s porch swing.
As many houses were abandoned as occupied, and they varied from neat, tidy little four-room adobes with steeply pitched metal roofs and brightly painted window trim to crumbling piles of rain-melted adobe blocks with broken windows, shattered door casements, and junk-strewn yards.
I idled up one nameless pathway after another, threading the patrol car right through yards and winter-dormant gardens. And one dog after another joined the chase, escorting me through town.
What few names were posted either above doorways, on long-abandoned mailboxes, or in the small yards were musical and familiar, Martinez, Sanchez, Chavez, Misquez, Hernandez. As I drove by one small house with M. Esquibel on the bent peeling mailbox, I saw an old man making his way one shaking step at a time around the side of his home, eyes glued to the ground, cane placed carefully for each step. In one arm he carried half a dozen sticks of firewood.
He ignored me, perhaps not even hearing the quiet idle of my car’s engine, or perhaps not seeing well enough to catch the motion.
Around the other side of the house was a small adobe barn, remodeled sometime during the current century to serve as a garage. The wooden door was down, making the structure unique. It was the only outbuilding I’d seen in the village whose contents weren’t both visible and spilling out far beyond the confines of the original structure. But it fitted the rest of the yard, neat and tidy.