“You don’t sound like a Ralston Straight Shooter,” I said.
The Indian tapped on the window on the driver’s side. It rolled down silently. He spoke to the driver, and the driver handed him a phone. The Indian spoke on the phone again and waited, and spoke again. Then he listened. Then he handed the phone back inside the Mercedes and walked toward the gate. The gate swung open as he walked toward it. “I’ll ride up with you,” he said.
“How nice,” I said.
We got in my car and headed up the drive. The gate swung silently shut behind us. The roadway wound uphill through what looked like pasture land. Trees defined the borders of the property, but inside the borders was smooth lawn and green grass grew thickly under the steady sweep of a sprinkler system. To my left a young woman on a white horse came up over the crest of a low hill and reined in the horse and watched as the car went past. Then we came around another turn in the road and there was the house, a long, low structure with many wings that sprawled over the top of the next hill in a kind of undulating ramble. It was white stucco with the ends of the roof beams exposed.
“Park over there,” the Indian said.
I put the rental car in a turnaround that was paved with crushed oyster shells and we got out and walked back toward the house. The Indian rang the doorbell.
We waited.
The front door was made to look as if it had been hammered together from old mesquite wood and had probably cost $5,000. The plantings along the foundation of the house were low and tasteful and tended to bright red flowers. I could smell the flowers, and the grass, and a hint of water flowing somewhere, and even fainter, a hint of the nearly sweet smell of horses. A Mexican guy opened the door. He was medium-sized and agile-looking with shoulderlength hair and a diamond stud in his ear. Behind him was another Mexican, bigger, bulkier, with a coat that fit too tight and a narrow tie that was knotted up tight to his thick neck.
Nobody said anything. The Indian turned and walked back toward my car. The graceful Mexican man nodded me into the house. Inside there was a large foyer with benches that looked like antique church pews on three walls. Three or four other Mexican men lounged on the benches. None of them looked like a poet. The slender Mexican made a gesture with his hands toward the wall, and I leaned against it while he patted me down. The bulky one stood and stared at me.
“Gun’s under the left arm,” I said.
Nobody said anything. The Mexican took my gun from my shoulder holster and handed it to the bulky guy. He stuck it in the side pocket of his plaid sport coat. The slender Mexican straightened and jerked his head for me to follow him. We went through an archway to the left and along a corridor that appeared to curve along the front of the house, like an enclosed veranda. We stopped at a door with a frosted glass window and the slender Mexican knocked and opened the door.
He nodded me through.
“Cat got your tongue?” I said He ignored me and came in the door. Through the frosted glass I could see the shadow of the bulky Mexican as he leaned against the wall outside.
Behind a bare wooden desk a man said, “What about Zabriskie?”
He looked like a stage Mexican. He had a thin droopy mustache and thick black hair that seemed uncombed and fell artfully over his forehead. He was wearing a Western-cut white shirt with billowy sleeves, and he was smoking a thin black cigar.
“You del Rio?” I said.
Behind the stage Mexican there was a low table as plain as the desk. On it was a picture of an aristocratic-looking woman with black hair touched with gray, and beside it, a picture of a young woman perhaps twenty, with olive skin and a strong resemblance to Jill Joyce. I was pretty sure I had a picture of her when she was younger, inside my coat pocket.
“I asked you a question, gringo.”
“Ai chihuahua!” I said.
Del Rio smiled suddenly, his teeth very white under the silly mustache.
“Then Chollo here sings a couple of choruses of ‘South of the Border,’ ” he said, “and we all have tortillas and drink some tequila. Si?”
“You got a guitar?” I said.
“The ‘gringo’ stuff impresses a lot of anglos,” del Rio said. “Makes them think I’m very bad.”
“Scared the hell out of me,” I said.
“I can see that,” del Rio said.
Chollo had gone to one side of the office and lounged in a green leather armchair, almost boneless in his relaxed slouch. His black eyes had no meaning in them.
“You see how we scared him, Chollo?” del Rio said.
“I could improve on it, Vic, if you want.” It was the first time he’d spoken. Neither he nor del Rio had even a hint of an accent.
“You sure you guys are Mexican?” I said.
“Straight from Montezuma,” del Rio said. “Me and Chollo both. Pure blood line. What’s this about Zabriskie?”
I took the picture out of my inside pocket and put it in front of del Rio. He looked at it without touching it. I picked it up again and put it back in pocket.
“So?” del Rio said.
“Your daughter,” I said.
Del Rio didn’t speak.
“I got it from her grandmother.”
Del Rio waited.
“Anything you don’t want him to know?” I said.
“Chollo knows what I know,” del Rio said. “Chollo’s family.”
“How nice for Chollo,” I said. “I know who your daughter’s mother is.”
“Yes?”
“Jill Joyce,” I said, “America’s cutie.”
“She tell you that?” del Rio said.
“No,” I said. “She hasn’t told me anything, and half of that is lies.”
Del Rio nodded.
“That would be Jill,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Information,” I said. “It’s like huevos rancheros to a detective.”
“Si,” del Rio said.
“Were you and Jill married?” I said.
Del Rio leaned back a little in his chair with his hands resting quietly on the bare desk top in front of him. His nails were manicured. I waited.
“Your name is Spenser,” he said. I nodded.
“Okay, Spenser. You think you’re a tough guy. I can tell. I see a lot of people who think they are a tough guy. You probably are a tough guy. You got the build for it. But if I just nod at Chollo you are a dead guy. You understand? Just nod, and…” He made an out sign, jerking his left thumb toward his shoulder.
“Yikes,” I said.
“So you know,” del Rio said, “you’re on real shaky ground here.”
“It goes no further than me,” I said.
“Maybe it doesn’t go that far,” del Rio said. “Why are you nosing around in my life in the first place?”
“I’m working on a murder in Boston,” I said. “And I’m working on protecting Jill Joyce. The two things seem to be connected and your name popped up.”
“Long way from Boston,” del Rio said.
“Not my fault. Somebody has been threatening Jill Joyce. Someone killed her stunt double. Jill won’t tell me anything about herself, so I started looking and I found her mother and then I found you.”
Del Rio looked at me again in silence.
“Okay, Spenser. I met Jill Joyce when she was Jillian Zabriskie and she was trying to be an actress, and I was starting to build my career. We were together awhile. She got pregnant. I had a wife. She didn’t want the kid, but she figured it would give her a hold on me. Even then I had a little clout. So she had it and left it with her mother. I got her some parts. She slept with some producers. I supported the kid.”
“You still got the same wife?”
“Yes. Couple years after Amanda was born, Jill’s mother started disappearing into the sauce. She was never much, but…” He shrugged. The shrug was eloquent. It was the first genuine Latin gesture I’d seen. “So my wife and I adopted her.”
“Your wife know about you and Jill?”
“No.”
“She know you’re the kid’s father?”
“No. She thinks we adopted her from an orphanage. We don’t have any other children.”