He got even angrier when he finished and looked up and saw me. His eyes blazed for a couple of seconds; then he slammed the cleaver into the block, burying the upper edge a good two inches deep, and walked hard to where I was.
“What the hell you doing here, man?” he said in a low, strained voice. “I thought I told you to stay away from me.”
“Your mother, you said, not you.”
“Yeah, well, it goes for me too.”
“We need to talk, Paco.”
“I got nothing to say to you.”
“Now. In private.”
“I just told you …”
“About your father.”
“… What about him?”
“He’s in trouble and you know it.”
“You’re full of shit, pancho.”
“Am I? Then he’s no longer missing? Everything’s fine at your house again?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I think it is,” I said. “It might also be police business. Now do we go someplace private and talk?”
We locked gazes for about five seconds. But worry or fear had taken the edge off his anger; his eyes flicked away from mine and he licked his lips. “Through the door in back, near the coolers,” he said, and walked off that way himself.
The door in back was actually two-swing doors with a sign on one of them that said No Entrada. I pushed through into a storeroom piled with crates and boxes, some full and some empty. Paco came through another swing door from the butcher shop, and without looking at me or saying anything he moved along an aisleway past the meat storage locker. I followed him out through a door at the rear, onto a short, narrow, L-shaped loading dock. There was an alley back there, and a space just wide enough for a medium-sized truck to pull in alongside the dock and then to back up to the short arm of the L for unloading. The space and the dock and the rain-swept alley were all deserted now.
Paco moved away from the door by several paces, in close to the building where the wind wasn’t quite as sharp, then stopped and turned to face me. “So?” he said.
I said, “Where’s your father?”
“Oh come on, man. You think I know? He’s been gone four days now, no word, no nothing. My mother cares but I don’t. The hell with him.”
“Suppose he’s been hurt or worse?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s what she thinks. Not me.”
“What do you think?”
“Uh-uh. I came out here because of what you think.”
“He’s involved in hiring illegals,” I said. “Has been for years. I don’t think that; I know it.”
“Big deal. So’re a couple thousand others in this city, Hispanics and Anglos both. Go call the INS. You think they care? They don’t care, not about small-timers like my old man.”
“Maybe he’s not such a small-timer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Coyotes, Paco. The coyotes.”
It was a pretty good blind shot. He went tight; you could see him drawing in on himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, pancho.”
“No, huh?”
“No. What’s coyotes got to do with anything?”
“You tell me.”
“I already told you.” He shook his head. “Man, you must think I’m some kind of dumb spick.”
“On the contrary. I think you’re a pretty smart Latino.”
“Yeah? Then why’d you mention the cops inside? So I’d come out here and tell you all I know about my old man and the wetbacks, right? Like I’m so stupid I don’t know the city cops can’t mess in INS business.”
“They can if there’s homicide involved,” I said.
Magic word. He repeated it, blinking: “Homicide?”
“Two of your father’s employers in the past month. First Frank Hanauer and now Thomas Lujack.”
“So? Some guy named Pendarves took Lujack out.”
“Did he? I don’t think so.”
Paco ran the back of his hand over the bandit’s mustache, rubbed the palm down over the front of his bloody apron. “What’re you trying to say? My old man was mixed up in murder?”
“Maybe.”
“Bullshit. He didn’t have nothing to do with either killing.”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
“You got proof he did? Show me some proof.”
“Why’d he disappear if he’s not guilty of anything?”
“Quit pushing me. I told you, I don’t know why.”
“But you’ve got some idea. Maybe your mother has too. If I have to go talk to her again, I will.”
That was the wrong thing to say; all it did was stir up his machismo. The white muscle showed again at the corners of his mouth. “Stay away from her,” he said. “I’m warning you, man-stay away from my mother!”
He punctuated the words by delivering a flat-palmed punch to the fleshy part of my chest, above the heart. There was enough force behind it, and he caught me unawares enough, so that I was driven backward into the building wall. I hit it hard with my shoulders and spine-hard enough to unfocus my eyes for a second. Any harder and there might have been some damage to my backbone.
Anger kindled bright and hot. I came off the wall sideways, like a ball bouncing crooked, and caught one handful of his apron and another handful of his hair and spun him around and slammed him up against the building. I had an urge to hit him, hurt him; managed to fight it off. He grunted, struggled, tried to punch my kidneys, but I had him pinned tight, with my hip and leg hard into his crotch so he couldn’t use his feet. The blows he struck were short-armed and didn’t hurt.
It wasn’t long before he quit trying to fight. He said between his teeth, “Anglo bastard!”
“Easy now. Unless you want to keep things rough.”
His mouth cramped up; he would have spit in my face if I hadn’t had his head turned at an off angle.
“Where’s your father?” I asked him.
“Fuck you.”
I pulled his hair, not gently. “Talk to me, Paco.”
“I don’t know where he is!”
“Tell me what he’s into, then.”
“… All right! You want to know what he’s into? He’s into young pussy, all the young pussy he can get!”
I was silent. There was nothing for me to say just yet.
“Why you think my mother drinks? Him and his young pussy.” It had been bottled up inside him for a long time; now that he’d let some of it out, the rest came spewing forth like vomit purge. “She knows he’s gonna leave someday, known it for years, but she pretends he won’t-keeps right on pretending we’re a big happy family. Well, now she’s got to face it and she can’t. Four days means he’s not coming back this time but she still can’t face it so she drinks herself sick and prays for him to come home the whole damn time. He’s a pig, he treats her like shit, and all she does is drink and pray for him to come home.”
I let go of him and backed up a step, all in one motion. But he was not going to make any more trouble with me; it was his old man he hated, his old man he wanted to hurt. He leaned against the wall and hit it with his fist-three times, hard, hurting only himself.
I asked, soft, “Who is she? The woman you think he ran off with?”
“Who knows? Some young Latina with big tits, you can bet on that.”
“You don’t have any idea who she is?”
“No.” He smoothed his hair and then spat on the dock, but not in my direction. “He didn’t brag to anybody like he usually does. Not this time.”
“Would he leave the city with her? Go back to Mexico, maybe?”
“Depends on how much dinero he had put away. What’s to keep him here? Not my mother, not me, not any of his scams.”
“What scams?” I said.
“Huh?”
“His scams, you said. What scams?”
“You already called it, man. Wetbacks.”
“Just hiring them? Or is it more than that, like smuggling them across the border? Is that the reason for his trips to San Diego and Mexico?”
Paco watched me for a clutch of seconds. His hard facade was back in place; the code of machismo would never let it crack for long. “Uh-uh,” he said through a tight, bitter smile. “I’m not gonna do your work for you. Not when it comes to my people.”