“Last time I heard someone say that was on Tom Mix and his Ralston Straight Shooters.”
The Indian wasn’t impressed. He gestured toward my car with his thumb, and turned and started away.
“Tell your boss it’s about somebody named Zabriskie,” I said.
The Indian stopped and turned around.
“Who the hell is Zabriskie,” he said, “and why does Mr. del Rio care?”
“Ask him,” I said. “He’ll want to see me.”
The Indian paused for a moment and pushed his lower lip out beyond his upper.
“Okay,” he said, “but if you’re horsing around with me I’m going to come out there and put your ass on the ground.”
“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
