The heavy, hundred year old hand-carved door-once gracing the entrance of a now crumbled Mexican mission-yawned open on noiseless hinges, and as my left boot touched the saltillo tile of the foyer, the damn telephone welcomed me home.
I didn’t have an answering machine, having long ago decided that talking to a detached, electronic, soulless voice was an affront. Eight rings later, it was still ruining the silence, and I made it to the kitchen without breaking my neck over obstructions.
“Gastner.”
A chuckle greeted that. “You always sound like you want to punch someone,” Sheriff Salcido said.
“Not so, Eduardo. I just had a sumptuous dinner, the day wasn’t an entire waste, and I’m drowsy enough to imagine that, if not interrupted, I might manage some sleep. What’s up?”
He laughed gently again. “Us old guys march to a different drummer, no?”
“I’m too tired to march at all.”
“It’s been a long day. What’s your impression of Reuben’s niece after this? Grandniece,” he corrected.
“Sharp kid. Not blabby, which is a blessing. She has some good ideas, but I damn near had to pry ten words out of her. I’d still like to know the real reason that she wants to work for us. With her background, her grades, one of the big metro departments would snap her up. Maybe even the FBI. Certainly the INS or the Border Patrol.”
“Not everybody wants grande,” Eduardo mused. “What you just said…I could ask the same thing of you, and look at where we are. Or me. Did I ever tell you that I was once offered the chief’s job in Veracruz?”
“Is that a fact.”
“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had accepted.”
“They’d have a chief who talked like a gringo.”
“Ay, caramba,” he whispered. “I have to work on that.” In point of fact, Eduardo Salcido never had to worry about being mistaken for a gringo, even in downtown Mexico. “So…what’s tomorrow?”
“I have Ms. Reyes spending the day with Barnes in dispatch. She needs to familiarize herself with the home turf-records, communications, the lockup, the whole ball of wax.”
The sheriff made a little humming noise as if something in all that didn’t sound just right to him, but changed the subject without pursuing it.
“What did you think about the Deckers’ story?”
I leaned my rump against the counter and closed my eyes. “Hugh heard a single gun shot at three minutes after two. Seconds later, he saw someone, a single person, walking west along Highland toward a parked vehicle. Hugh thinks the person was carrying something, but can’t say what. He certainly couldn’t say that it was a rifle. Maybe a walking stick. He didn’t see Larry Zipoli, but saw the road grader.”
“Three minutes after two,” Eduardo whispered. “That’s what he told me, too. Nice that he can be so exact.” He sounded skeptical. “Tony Pino called me, by the way.”
“And?”
“He wonders what’s going to happen to Zipoli’s personnel records.”
“He does, does he?”
Eduardo’s quiet chuckle followed that. “Our boy had trouble with the bottle, no?” Of course the sheriff knew.
“That’s the understatement of the year, Eduardo. Larry Zipoli was a goddamn lush. Tony Pino should have fired his ass after the first incident ten years ago. Instead, Zipoli got a letter in his file. And more letters. And still more. What’s with that? You know Pino better than I do.”
“He’s a soft touch, Jefito. Sometimes it’s hard.”
“Pretty simple, I would think. ‘Take a hike.’ And then it’s over and done with.”
“Nothing is ever that simple.”
“So tell me what I’m missing, Sheriff. What makes it complicated.”
Silence greeted that. I could hear the Salcidos’ television set faintly in the background. After a moment, rapid-fire Spanish followed as Eduardo only half covered the receiver. Juanita-I assume it was the sheriff’s wife who cuddled in his lap-replied with a burst of her own. That went back and forth for a few minutes, and I made my way to one of the kitchen stools, propping my elbows on the counter.
Eventually Eduardo came back on the line, in English.
“You know Tony’s sister?”
“His sister?”
“Well, he’s got seven of ’em, I think. But Efita?” Another string of Spanish conversation with Juanita followed that. “My wife says it’s not Efita.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
The gentle laugh was either aimed at me or maybe he was tickling Juanita. I felt like a goddamn voyeur.
“Crystalita,” Eduardo said finally. “That’s who it was. Remember her?”
“Not a clue.” Every once in a while I was surprised to discover that there were limits to what I knew about the folks of Posadas, New Mexico.
“She almost drowned in the arroyo down behind María. Let’s see, I don’t know. It would have been maybe fifteen years ago. Maybe longer.”
“Was I here then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then it was more like eighteen years, Eduardo. Or longer.” I admit that I was racking my brains for that memory. I took a good deal of pleasure in knowing history, and even something as common as an arroyo flood in rural New Mexico should have rung a bell. I could lead a tour for arroyo fans. I could show them cuts in the prairie a dozen feet deep and four times wider that had been cut in one night by one of our characteristic frog stranglers.
“Crystalita and her daughter.” I heard more Spanish in the background. “The daughter. That was Efita, and I remember that she was only four at the time. You know, Crystalita was just nineteen, too. She was engaged to marry Hernán Muñoz.”
“Him, I remember,” I said. The Muñoz name was one of the ones engraved on the new veterans’ memorial in Pershing Park, one of the Posadas contributions to Vietnam. I’d attended the dedication of the new memorial, and spent a few minutes reading every name. That’s all it took to put some of the names into my selectively porous memory file. I could remember a name heard in passing a decade before, but not where I put my goddamn eye glasses.
“You knew him?” Eduardo asked incredulously.
“Just his name on the Pershing Memorial.” By this time, I was regretting not turning on the coffee maker. Between Eduardo’s storytelling pace and my own sympathy for history, this narrative could go on for hours. There was a fresh pack of cigarettes up in the cabinet above the fridge, but I wasn’t that desperate yet.
“So,” I prompted.
“You know that big arroyo just east of the power line down that way? It runs down behind María, and takes that turn to go under the highway. That’s where Crystalita got caught. Dark, por dios it was dark that night, raining and thunder and lightning like I’ve never seen. Crystalita, she missed the little curve in the highway right there, then hit the bridge. That truck just catapulted, Bill. Down she went, and the water in the arroyo was already running high. Hijo, what a night.”
“So she and the child drowned?”
“No, but so close. That truck was wedged by the water, cab nosed down, the water comin’ up, the flood crushing that truck against the abutment. She couldn’t get the little girl out of the child seat, you know. The way the cab was tipped, with all the water…and dark,” Eduardo’s voice fell to a whisper. I could imagine his wife lying there on the sofa, eyes huge as she listened to the memory. “With the truck lights out, the only illumination,” and he damn made a melody out of those five syllables, “could have been the lightning, Jefito. Ay.” His sigh was huge.
“The first driver to stop was Larry Zipoli, Bill. Just seconds later, on his way back home from I don’t remember where. And I don’t remember if he saw the truck’s lights go off the road, or what, but he stopped. First thing he does is slide down to the back of the truck. He sees it isn’t going to be long before maybe the water is going to dislodge it. He can’t reach either window, so he goes through the back. It’s one of those sliding deals, you know.”