Down These Strange Streets

He checked his notes again.

“—a white silk sheath dress and a wrap. She knew it was Tarnowski’s best fancy-occasion dress from a chat they’d had months ago. Another woman was with her. About Tarnowski’s age, but shorter, slim, olive complexion or a tan, long dark hair, dark eyes . . .”

“Really going to stand out in this town.”

“Sí, though if she’s going around with la Tarnowski she will! I got a composite on her too, but it’s not as definite. Mrs. Lopez said her clothes looked really expensive, and she was wearing a tanzanite necklace.”

“What the fuck’s tanzanite?”

The other thing we have hundreds of is jewelry stores.

“Like sapphire, but expensive. Here’s what she looked like.”

He showed a picture. The face was triangular, smiling slightly, framed by long straight black hair. Attractive too, but . . .

Reminds me of that mink I handled once. Pretty, and it bit like a bastard. Took three stitches and a tetanus shot.

“I don’t think she’s Latina, somehow,” he said aloud, as his fingers caressed the slight scar at the base of his right thumb.

“Yeah, me too, but I can’t put my finger on why. Incidentally, let’s do a side-by-side with the composite on the man they saw standing still outside, when the old goatsucker with the gun ran them out past him. The one he shoved into the backseat later.”

Salvador’s eyebrows went up as the pictures appeared together. “Are they sure that’s not the same person? It’s an easy mistake to make, in the dark, with the right clothes.”

His partner nodded; it was, surprisingly so under some circumstances.

“Looks a lot like Dark Mystery Woman, eh? But it was a guy, very certainly. Wearing a dark zippered jacket open with a tee underneath. Mrs. Lopez said he looked real fit. Not bulked up but someone who worked out a lot. She got a better look at him than at the woman; they went right by. Nothing from the databases on either of them, by the way, but look at this.”

His fingers moved on the screen, and the two images slid until they were superimposed. Then he tapped a function box.

“Okay, the little machine thinks they’re relatives,” Salvador said. “I could have figured that out.”

“But could you have said it was a ninety-three percent chance?”

“Sure. I just say: It’s a ninety-three percent chance. Or in old-fashioned human language, certainemente. Okay, back up to what Mystery Woman was doing earlier. She and Tarnowski get in Tarnowski’s car and drive off around five thirty, a few minutes earlier?”

“Mystery Woman was driving. Tarnowski looked shaky.” Cesar consulted his notes. “Yeah, Mrs. Lopez said Tarnowski looked like she was going to fall over, maybe sick, and the other one helped her into the car.”

“That’s two people who have to be helped into cars. This smells.”

“And then two and a half hours later someone runs in waving a sawed-off shotgun, while Mystery Woman’s brother or cousin or whatever was standing outside ignoring everything and talking to himself in a strange language—”

“Strange language?”

“They just heard a few words. Not English, not Spanish, and not anything they recognized. He talks in the strange language, falls, goatsucker-withthe-gun gives him a hand, they drive off, and then the place just happens to burn down a few minutes later.”

Salvador sighed and turned up the collar of his coat; it was dark, and cold.

“I need a drink. But get an APB out on Ellen Tarnowski and flag her name with municipal services and the hospitals statewide. Also the old gringo with the sawed-off shotgun, use the face-recognition protocol for surveillance cameras. We can get him on a reckless endangerment charge, trespassing, uttering threats, suspicion of arson, bad breath, whatever.”

“Sí, and littering. The Mystery Woman and the Mystery Man too?”

“Yeah, why not? Let them all do a perp walk and we can apologize later.”

He sat down and began doggedly prodding at the screen. First thing tomorrow he’d start tracing Tarnowski’s life. So far nobody had died, and he’d like to keep it that way. The employer was a good first place.

II

ONE OF THE JOYS OF A POLICEMAN’S LIFE, ERIC SALVADOR THOUGHT THE next day, wishing he’d taken more Tylenol with his breakfast. You meet all kinds of people. Most of them hate you. Asi es la vida. At least she’s not likely to try and blow me up with a fertilizer bomb.

Giselle Demarcio was in her fifties, with a taut, dry, ageless appearance and a slight East Coast accent, dressed in a mildly funky Santa Fe look, silver jewelry and a blouse and flounced skirt.

Sort of a fashionista version of what my great-grandmother wore around the house, Salvador thought cynically; his family, the Spanish part at least, had been in Santa Fe since the seventeenth century. Everything old gets new if you wait long enough. Rich Anglos get off the bus and live in pimped-up adobes and you end up in a double-wide on Airport Road.

She had a white mark on her finger where a wedding ring would go, and she fit in perfectly with the airy white-on-white decor of Hans & Demarcio Galleries. He was not, he noticed, being invited back to her office; this was a semipublic reception room. The art on the walls was something he could understand, at least—actual pictures of actual things. Not the cowboy-pueblo-Western art a lot of the places on Canyon Road had either, mostly older-looking stuff. There was a very faint odor of woodsmoke from a piñon fire crackling in a kiva fireplace. The whole thing screamed money. It had been a very long time since Canyon Road attracted artists because the rents were low.

Santa Fe, the town where ten thousand people can buy the State and fifty thousand can’t afford lunch, he thought.

“Would you like some coffee, Detective?” Demarcio said.

Wait a minute, Salvador thought. She’s not really hostile. She’s scared for some reason. Not of me, but scared silly and hiding it well.

“Thank you,” he said, and took the cup. “That’s nice.”

It was excellent coffee, especially compared to what he drank at home or at the station, with a rich, dark, nutty taste. He enjoyed it, and waited. Most people couldn’t stand silence. It wore on their nerves and eventually they blurted out something to fill it. Salvador had learned patience and silence in a very hard school.

“I’m worried about Ellen,” the older woman said suddenly.

The detective made a sympathetic noise. “Ms. Tarnowski worked for you?” he said.

“Works. She’s my assistant even if she didn’t show up this morning; that’s understandable with the fire and all. Not a secretary, she’s an art history graduate from NYU and I was bringing her in on our acquisitions side. I’m . . . she’s a sweet kid, but she’s gotten mixed up in something, hasn’t she?”

“You tell me, Ms. Demarcio,” Salvador said.

“I never liked that boyfriend of hers. She met him playing tennis at the country club about a year ago and they, well, it was a whirlwind thing. He gave me this creepy feeling. And then his sister showed up—”

Salvador blinked. The sister . . . the woman who was with Tarnowski? “Boyfriend?” he asked.

“Adrian Brézé.”

“Ah,” Salvador said.

As he spoke he tapped the name into his notepad’s virtual keyboard and hit the rather specialized search function. He’d long ago mastered the trick of reading a screen and paying attention to someone at the same time.

“Now, that’s interesting. Do you have a picture of him?”

It was interesting because Salvador didn’t have a picture; or much of anything else.