Dolores Ramos George, the matriarch of the tribe, runs the store and the care and she knows everyone. She's got a reputation for being a hard, mean woman, but as far as I'm concerned, she's just a realist. She speaks her mind. I like her. She's one of the people with whom I left word about the Noyer girls. When she heard the story, she just shook her head. "Not a chance," she said. "Why didn't they keep a watch? Some parents got no sense at all."
"I know," I said. "But I have to do what I can—for the sake of the other three kids."
"Yeah." She shrugged. "I'll tell people. It won't do no good."
But now it looked as though it had done some good. And in thanks, I had brought Dolores a basket of big navel oranges, a basket of lemons, and a basket of persimmons. If we found one or both of the Noyer girls as a result of her spreading the word, I would owe her a percentage of the reward—a kind of finder's fee. But it seemed wise to make sure she came out ahead, no matter what.
"Beautiful, beautiful fruit," she said, smiling as she looked at it and handled it She was a stout, old-looking 53, but the smile took years off her. "Around here, if you don't guard a fruit tree and shoot a couple of people to prove you mean it, they'll tear off all the fruit, then cut down the tree for firewood. I won't let my boys kill people to save trees and plants, but I really miss oranges and grapes and things."
She called some of her young grandchildren to come and take the fruit into the house. I saw the way the kids were looking at everything, so I warned them not to eat the persimmons until they were soft to the touch. I cut one of the hard ones up and let each child have a taste of it so they would all know just how awful something so pretty could taste before it was ripe. Otherwise, they would have ruined several pieces of fruit as they tried to find a tasty, ripe persimmon. Just yesterday, I caught the Dovetree kids doing that back at Acorn. Dolores just watched and smiled. Anyone who was nice to her grandkids could be her friend for life—as long as they didn't cross the rest of her family.
"Come on," she said to me. "The shit pile that you want to talk with is stinkin' up the café. Is this the boy?" She looked up at Dan, seeming to notice him for the first time. “Your sister?" she asked him.
Dan nodded, solemn and silent.
"I hope she's the right girl," she said. Then she glanced at me, looked me up and down. She smiled again. "So you're finally starting a family. It's about time! I was 16 when I had my first."
I wasn't surprised. I'm only two months along, and not showing at all yet But she would notice, somehow. No matter how distracted and grandmotherly she can seem when she wants to, she doesn't miss much.
We left Natividad in the housetruck, on watch. There are some very efficient thieves hanging around Georgetown. Trucks need guarding. Travis and Bankole went into the cafe with Dan and me, but Dan and the two men took a table together off to one side to back me up in case anything unexpected happened between the slaver and me. People didn't start trouble inside George's Cafe if they were sensible, but you never knew when you were dealing with fools.
Dolores directed us to a tall, lean, ugly man dressed completely in black, and working hard to look contemptuous of the world in general and George's Café in particular. He wore a kind of permanent sneer.
He sat alone as we had agreed, so I went over to him alone and introduced myself. I didn't like his dry, papery voice or his tan, almost yellow eyes. He used them to try to stare me down. Even his smell repelled me. He wore some aftershave or cologne that gave him a heavy, nasty, sweet scent. Honest sweat would have been less offensive. He was bald, clean-shaved, beak-nosed, and so neutral-colored that he could have been a pale-skinned Black man, a Latino, or a dark-skinned White. He wore, aside from his black pants and shirt, an impressive pair of black leather boots—no expense spared—and a wide heavy leather belt decorated with what I first thought were jewels. It took me a moment to realize that this was a control belt—the kind of thing you use when you're moving around a lot and controlling several people through slave collars. I had never seen one before, but I'd heard descriptions of them.
Hateful bastard.
"Cougar," he said.
Crock of shit, I thought. But I said, "Olamina."
"The girl's outside with some friends of mine."
"Let's go see her."
We walked out of the cafe together, followed by my friends and his. Two guys sitting at the table off to his right got up when he did. It was all a ridiculous dance.
Outside, near the big, mutilated, dead stump of a redwood tree, several kids waited, guarded by two more men. The kids, to my surprise, looked like kids. They were not made up to look older or, for that matter, younger. The boys—one looked no older than 10—wore clean jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Three of the girls wore skirts and blouses, and three wore shorts and T-shirts. All the jeans were a little too tight, and the skirts were a little too short, but none were really worse than things free kids of the same ages wore.
The slaves were clean and they looked alert and wary. None of them looked sick or beaten, but they all kept an eye on Cougar. They looked at him as he emerged from the cafe, then looked away so that they could watch him without seeming to. They weren't really good at this yet, so I couldn't help noticing. I looked around at Dan, who had followed us out with Bankole and Travis. Dan looked at the slave kids, stopped for a second as his gaze swept over the older girls, then shook his head.
"None of them are her," he said. "She's not here!"
"Hold on," Cougar said. He tapped his belt and four more kids came around the great trunk of the tree—two boys and two girls. These were a little older—mid-to-late teens. They were beautiful kids—the most beautiful I had ever seen. I found myself staring at one of them.
Somewhere behind me, Dan was whimpering, "No, no, she's still not here! Why did you say she was here? She's not!" He sounded much younger than his IS years.
And I heard Bankole talking to him, trying to calm him, but I stood frozen, staring at one of the boys—a young man, really. The young man stared back at me then looked away. Perhaps he had not recognized me. On the other hand, perhaps he was warning me. I was late taking the warning.
"Like that one, do you?" Cougar purred.
Shit