"So, of course, you didn't," said Mendoza. "You made a U-tum and headed back-and you didn't see her go into any of those houses."
"Well, no, I didn't. She was a funny one, but we see plenty of them hacking, you know. But that street's too narrow for a U-turn, I had to go up to the next corner. And by the time I got back where she'd got out, no sign of her. But I did notice that the house where she said she wanted to go wasn't lighted at all, as if they were expecting somebody. Only way I knew the right address was, the house next to it had the porch light on and I saw that number."
"Yes. A very funny little story. Thanks very much for coming in. We'll want your name and so on, and a formal statement… " And just how did that little piece of melodrama tit in? Why had Cara Kingman (if it had been) have to taxi back to the apartment? And call such obvious notice to herself in the process? Polk Street. Two blocks to 267th. Which in turn was only about a mile from where Bartlett had been killed three hours earlier. The only thing Mendoza liked at all about this was that it had happened on the Friday night; and that was senseless too, just because he was set on that theory.
" Ca, vaya historial I don't believe it, it's a damned ridiculous coincidence," he said to himself. But it had to be followed up, of course. He put on his hat and set out on the six-block walk down to the old Plaza and Olvera Street.
TEN
Once, they'd been going to destroy the narrow alley with its uneven old brick paving and the gutter down its middle, the leaning ramshackle old buildings flanking it. Nothing to do, that was, with a progressive and fast-growing city proud of its modernity. Then a few civic-minded organizations got up indignant petitions and committees, and in the end it stayed, to become a landmark, one of the places tourists came to see: the first, the oldest street of that little village whose name was nearly as long as the street-the town of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, of the little portion.
At ten-thirty on a gray February morning it wasn't much to see: shabby refaced buildings, haphazard stalls cheek-by-jowl in a row down the middle, over the old gutter, and most of the shops shut, boards up in the stall windows. Night was its time, when the lights softened down the shabbiness and the tourists came, the buyers (tourists or not), and the famous old restaurant was open midway down the street, and the women who'd marketed and cooked and chatted all day in their ready-made cotton housedresses got out their shawls and combs. There'd be a couple of men with guitars stationed somewhere, and the man at the mouth of the street with his little bags of hot roasted pinon nuts, and the music and laughter drifting out of La Golondrina, the restaurant, and the buyers drifting along looking at everything (the women stumbling on the uneven bricks, in their high heels)-at the gimcrack cheap jewelry and the beautiful handcrafted real stud from the little silversmithies here and south of the border, at the handmade baskets, and braided-leather and to0led-leather shoes, at the hand-blown glass and the hand-woven cotton (also at the boxed cheap linens from Belgium, and the good stud and the bad from Japan, from the Philippines, from everywhere in Europe)-and maybe stopping to have their fortunes told by the old woman at the far end of the street.
And even at ten-thirty in the morning, over the whole street there hung the faint scent of glamour-and that was the combined scents from the little cavelike shop, three breakneck steps down from street level, where the candles were made, the incredible rainbow candles scented with pine, with orange, with jasmine and gardenia, and nameless musky saccharine odors.
Most of the shops were shut, but he knew that behind many of them were living quarters. This was a minor little errand, he needn't have come himself, but-he also knew-he might have a better chance of getting whatever there was to get than the most fluent of his Spanish-speaking sergeants.
He could have wished that the article in question had been something other than a serape. That inimitable object of Mexicana, the long strip of rough cactus cloth or cotton, garishly striped and fringed, was to be had at all but a few specialty shops: but maybe that fact was balanced by another, that it had been raining that night.
He started at the mouth of the street and took one side at a time. Not every shop had quarters attached; not everyone was at home. Everyone who was was anxious to be helpful but remembered nothing of any use to him… To be sure, most places had remained open that rainy evening. When one was under shelter, and it was the regular time for business, why not? There was always a chance that the rain would slacken, that a few people who had decided to come to the street would not be put off by the weather. And so it had been: business had been very poor, of course, but a few buyers had come-chiefly people who had reservations at the restaurant and visited the shops afterward. But many places had closed earlier than usual, ten or ten-thirty. Not all, no. Wine was pressed on him. In one place a very old woman looked on him in contempt and called him a police spy. In the place next door a pretty high-school-age girl asked him please would he talk to her brother and tell him he was crazy: "See, Joe keeps saying he's got nine counts on him to start, being Mexican-what's the use of trying to get educated and so on, he'd never get anywhere, might as well get things however you can. He's in with some real bad fellows, Mama and I get worried-and if you'd just show him-" He took the name and address for Taylor in Juvenile; Taylor would see one of the youth counselors contacted Joe and did what he could… By the time he got to the mouth of the street again, having worked his way right up one side and down the other, Mendoza, who was not a wine drinker, was feeling slightly bilious and disgruntled at this waste of time.
But there, in the end shop-scarcely more than an alcove, now, shut off from the street by a large board, with a single room behind it-he found Manuel Perez, improving the out-of-business hour by making up his accounts. Mr. Perez removed his horn-rimmed glasses, listened gravely to Mendoza's questions, and said at once that he remembered the occasion very well indeed.
"At last I arrive," said Mendoza. "Now why didn't I start here? Tell me."
It seemed that Mr. Perez had kept his shop open later than any other that rainy night, not in the hope of customers but because he was waiting for his son, who had borrowed the family car to take his girl to a school dance. La familia Perez lived a couple of miles away from the street, and especially on a cold wet night Mr. Perez had not fancied the walk home. The dance was to be over at midnight, and Diego, who was a good reliable boy, would then deliver his girl home and come to pick up his father at the shop: which in fact he had done, somewhere around twelve-thirty.
Meanwhile Mr. Perez had spent a quiet evening sitting in his shop, waiting on the few customers who came. "And you comprehend, later on it's pleasant sitting there alone-a few other shopkeepers who don't live here, they called out goodnight as they left-the Garcias two doors up stayed open late, and Mrs. Sanchez across the way too, it's anything to make a dollar with that one-but the lights go out, one by one, and presently I'm the only one left open, and all is quiet but for the rain, splat-splat-splat, outside… I took the opportunity to write a letter to my brother in Fresno, and later on I read my book-I always keep a book here for the slow times, I'm a great reader and at home with the children it's noisy… " And just about midnight, as Mr. Perez sat reading in his little lonely circle of light, a woman's voice spoke to him from the street.